My life and loves Vol. 2

by Frank Harris

  "Mind your own business," said the tall man, getting up, and the next moment they were hard at it. Verschoyle said, "I was utterly astonished to find that my cousin did not win. The tall man was just as good as he was or a little better. There was the dickens of a fight. When the waiters came in and the police and separated them, we found that the man's name was Parnell, Charles Parnell."

  The first time I met Parnell with Mrs. O'Shea was at a dinner given by dear old Justin McCarthy. It must have been pretty early in Parnell's acquaintance with Mrs. O'Shea, for she was seated opposite to him, and Parnell scarcely ever took his eyes from her face. At this time she seemed to me a sonsy, nice looking woman of thirty-three or thirty-five with pretty face and fine eyes, very vivacious, very talkative, full of good-humoured laughter.

  Now and then, picturing a woman, she exaggerated, I thought, her Irish brogue with some artistry to bring out a characteristic; evidently a lively, clever woman and excellent company. All the while she talked, the dour, silent, handsome man opposite devoured her with his flaming eyes. I remember saying in fun to Justin afterwards, "If she were as much in love with him, as he is with her, it would indeed be a perfect union."

  But kindly Justin would not admit the liaison. "He's attracted," he said. "I think we all are. She's an interesting woman." Soon, however, everybody knew that they were lovers and lost in a mutual passion. Parnell was tall and well-made, but he seemed to me too slight to be very strong; but Mrs. O'Shea, whom I questioned on the subject, told me his mere physical strength had astonished her time and again, and she did not dwell on it at all unduly.

  Parnell was of the stuff of great men through greatness of character, but as a political leader he was curiously ill-read and ill-informed. Time and again I am compelled to draw attention to the ignorances of English politicians. Even the example of Bismarck and the astounding growth of modern Germany have taught them nothing.

  I always felt there was an insane streak in Parnell, though Mrs. O'Shea never hints at such weakness in the two great volumes she dedicated to their love story. His superstitions showed, I thought, mental weakness. I remember walking with him once to his house to dinner. At the door he stopped and would not enter. Muttering something under his breath, he said, "Do you mind walking a little more before going hi?" I didn't mind a scrap, though already we were somewhat late, but after a turn he was still dissatisfied and went on for another stroll. This time he was successful. "I hate four and eight," he said, "but when my last step brings me to the count of nine, I'm happy.

  Seven, even, will do, but nine's a symbol of real good luck and I can go in rejoicing!" And with a smiling face in he went.

  But he knew no economics and had no idea of any remedy for Irish poverty. If he had ever won to complete power in Ireland, he would certainly have disappointed his followers.

  In these first two or three years in London something happened of incalculable importance to my whole life, and the lesson came to me without any warning. I had grown accustomed to go on Saturday and Sunday to Lord Folkestone's to lunch, and after lunch Lady Folkestone used to give us coffee in the drawing-room. With the coffee there was always a pretty liqueur decanter full of cognac-really good fine Champagne. One day Lord Folkestone came away with me after lunch and said, "I wonder will you forgive me, Frank, if I tell you something purely for your good?"

  "I should hope so," I replied. "I can't conceive of anyone telling me something for my good that I'd resent."

  "I'm glad to hear you say that," he rejoined. "I'm much older than you know; life has taught me certain things, but I am a bad hand at beating about the bush, so I will tell it you straight off. I noticed yesterday that you drank five or six glasses of cognac with your coffee. Now no one can do that without ruining his constitution. You took enough today to make most people drunk; you showed no sign of it, but it will certainly have its effect. When you consider it, I think you will know it's sheer affection that makes me tell you this."

  "I'm sure of it," I said, but I spoke only from my lips, for I was mortally hurt and angry; a little while later we separated and I went on home. I took the affair terribly to heart; I could not but recognize the kindness of Lord Folkestone, the sympathy that had prompted his warning, but my vanity was so great that it hurt me desperately. That evening I came to a saner view. The best thing I can do, I said to myself, is to take the warning to heart. The way to prove that I have self-control is to show it. For one year, then, I won't drink a drop of wine or spirits. I'll stop everything.

  Within a week I recognized how right Lord Folkestone had been to warn me.

  My whole outlook began to alter. I saw many things more quickly than I had seen them before, and I noticed that not only had I been getting stouter, but that I had been getting more lazy and more self-satisfied.

  I began to take exercise and found it at first extremely hard to walk five miles in an hour or to run a quarter of a mile without ill effects, but soon I began to get back to my former strength and health. In three or four months I found out a great many things-found that health of mind and quickness of wit depended, too, on health of body in my case. In three months I began to do my work easier, all work; and as I did away with the drink, the fat literally fell from me. I lost a couple of stone in three or four months and began to walk everywhere instead of driving, and took long walks on Sundays instead of lazy excursions in a carriage.

  Before the end of the year I told Lord Folkestone that I owed him more than I owed anyone in the world for his kind warning. "It is eleven months since you warned me," I said, "and I am resolved to go on for another year and drink nothing this next year too."

  He was delighted. "You don't know how much better you look," he said. "We have all remarked that you have gone back to the old energy and vigour that you used to have. I am more than glad, but I found it very difficult to tell you. I was so afraid of losing your friendship." I took up his hand and kissed it-one of the few men's hands I have kissed in my life.

  Most of this early time in London was brightened by occasional meetings with Oscar Wilde. As I have told in my book about him, I was introduced to him at Mrs. Jeune's; and I was surprised first of all by the kindness of his literary and artistic judgments and then by his wit and humour. "Did I know Frank Miles?" he asked shortly after we first met. "We are living together; he's one of the finest artists of this time," and nothing would do but we must look out Miles in order that I should be introduced to him then and there.

  Frank Miles was at this time, in the early eighties, a very pleasant, handsome, young fellow who made a sympathetic impression on everyone. I went to see them in Chelsea and bought a drawing of Lily Langtry by Miles that I thought wonderful: the same head, life-size, twice-once in profile and the other almost full face.

  What has become of it I really don't know. In a year or two I discovered in it Miles's limitations as an artist: it was pretty and well drawn, but hardly more.

  Miles declared that he had discovered and immortalized Mrs. Langtry, and at once Oscar stuck in gravely: "A more important discovery than America, in my opinion; indeed, America wasn't even discovered by Columbus: it has since been detected, I understand," and we all laughed. His fun was irresistible.

  Partly through the apotheosis of Mrs. Langtry, the Prince of Wales was a frequent visitor in their house; and Miles had commissions from every pretty woman in society, including the famous Mrs. Cornwallis West. What a charming, artistic home it was: Oscar and Miles invited me to tea and we were waited on by a pretty girl about sixteen years of age, most fantastically attired, whom they called Miss Sally. Sally Higgs soon became famous for her rare beauty and was painted by Leighton (afterwards Lord Leighton) as Daydreams and by Marcus Stone, the Academician, and a host of others.

  Sally was astonishingly pretty and charming to boot. I heard of her often afterwards; a couple of years later she married a boy just down from Eton, the son of a rich man. The father shipped the boy to the States and gave Sally a couple of pounds a week as solat
ium, but she soon found a rich protector and indeed never had any pecuniary difficulty, I imagine, in her whole sunny life.

  Sally, as I soon realized, was a born Bohemian and not troubled with any socalled moral scruples, though she was always gay and carefree. She assured me that Miles only liked her face and "Mr. Wilde says nice things to me and is a perfect gentleman and that's all."

  Miles was the son of a canon and a country rector who made him a good allowance and at first encouraged his intimacy with Oscar, but later rumours of Oscar's proclivities reached him, and his first book of poems confirming the canon's doubts, he insisted that the two friends should part. "My son must not be contaminated!" Much against his will, as Miles told me, he had to tell Oscar his father's decision.

  Wilde went almost crazy with rage. "D'ye mean that we must part after years together because your father's a fool?" Miles could only say that he had no alternative and at once Oscar retorted, "All right, I'll leave the house at once and never speak to you again," and upstairs he went, packed his things and left: he was proud to a fault. Sally told me he never returned; and almost immediately Miles's vogue appeared to pass. I saw him from time to time in London but he quickly dropped out of social life and I was horrified to hear some years later that he had lost his wits and ended his days in a mad-house.

  When I told Oscar he still cherished his anger. "He had no wits to lose, Frank," he said. "He was an early creation of mine, like Lily Langtry, and they pass out of one's life as soon as they are realized." But I always had a soft spot in my heart for Sally, though I could not but believe that Miles was something more than a mere friend to her, which shielded her from me.

  It was his faculty of enthusiastic praise which distinguished Oscar Wilde in those first years and made his reputation, as I have said in my Life of him. Mrs.

  Langtry I had met in Brighton and taught to skate at the West Street rink, never dreaming that she would reign in London a year or so later as a peerless beauty. Oscar and Miles discovered her, but it was the Prince of Wales's admiration that gave her position and vogue. Oscar told everyone she was "the loveliest thing that had ever come out of Greece," and when one corrected him with "out of Jersey," he passed it off with "a Jersey Lily, if you please, the perfect type of flower."

  Oscar's humour, however, was his extraordinary gift and sprang to show on every occasion. Whenever I meet anyone who knew Oscar Wilde at any period of his life, I am sure to hear a new story of him-some humorous or witty thing he had said.

  The other day I saw a man who had met Wilde in New York after his first lecture tour. He told him he hoped it had been a success, and Oscar answered him gravely, but with dancing eyes.

  "A great success! My dear man, I had two secretaries, one to answer my letters, the other to send locks of hair to my admirers. I have had to let them both go, poor fellows: the one is in hospital with writer's cramp, and the other is quite bald."

  Oscar and I went together once to Whitechapel to hear Matthew Arnold lecture on Watts's picture, entitled Life, Death and Judgment. "What Puritans Englishmen all are," said Oscar as we came away. "The burden of Arnold's song:

  I slept and dreamed that life was beauty I woke and found that life was duty:

  Yet he's a real poet, Frank, an English saint in side-whiskers!" It was irresistibly comic.

  Another time we went to hear Walter Pater lecture; he talked wonderfully but continually fell into a low conversational tone as he read his address.

  "Speak up. Speak up, please. Louder! We can hear nothing!" resounded through the house time and again.

  At length he had finished and came down to join us. Of course we both praised his essay to the skies, and indeed it was exceedingly good from beginning to end, thoughtful and wonderfully phrased; but Pater had been alarmed by the frequent admonitions. "I'm afraid I was not heard perfectly," he said, trying to excuse himself. We reassured him, but he came again to the point. "Was I heard?"

  "Overheard now and then," replied Oscar, laughing, "but it was stupendously interesting." "Overheard now and then" was surely the wittiest and most charming description possible.

  I have often been asked since to compare Oscar's humour with Shaw's. I have never thought Shaw humorous in conversation. It was on the spur of the moment that Oscar's humour was so extraordinary, and it was this spontaneity that made him so wonderful a companion. Shaw's humour comes from thought and the intellectual angle from which he sees things, a dry light thrown on our human frailties.

  If you praised anyone enthusiastically or over praised him, Oscar's humour took on a keener edge. I remember later praising something Shaw had written about this time, and I added, "The curious thing is, he seems to have no enemies."

  "Not prominent enough yet for that, Frank," said Oscar, "Enemies come with success; but then you must admit that none of Shaw's friends like him," and he laughed delightfully. Ah, the dear London days when meeting Wilde had always an effect of sunshine in the mist!

  Success came to me in my work and it came, I must confess, through the gambling spirit so powerful in England. I had learned quickly on the Evening News that the London public, which wanted to know the results of this or that great horse race, was more easily won than any other public. So I was forced to study the sport which had little attraction for one so dreadfully shortsighted as I was. While interesting myself in it, I came to see that the "starting prices" were the chief factor in the gambling. One day, I think it was in 1885 or 1886, I heard that there was a great dispute about the starting prices. One morning paper, the Sporting Life, gave one set of prices and the other, the Sportsman, gave a different set. At once I called on one editor and offered to publish his "starting prices" in a special edition of the Evening News at eleven or twelve o'clock each morning, giving his paper full credit; indeed, publishing his paper's name above the prices. Of course he was to supply me with "copy" fairly early. He consented at once and gladly, even went out of his way to praise the Evening News. On leaving him, I hastened hot-foot to the rival sheet and got that editor, too, to pledge himself to give me the day's "starting prices" as early as possible, if I gave his paper credit for the news.

  With both editors I signed a contract for, I think, two or three years.

  Next morning, when the early edition of the Evening News appeared with both starting prices, I was not left long in doubt as to the value of my news.

  Instead of selling three or four thousand copies, we sold twenty thousand; and in a week this early edition sold more than all the other editions put together; and our advertisement revenue more than doubled itself in a month. I saw that with good machines I could make the paper pay immediately and pay enormously. How was I to get the 15,000, or 20,000 necessary to equip the paper with proper up-to-date machines?

  About this time or a little later I had a great experience. A young fellow came from Birmingham with the idea of founding a halfpenny morning paper. He had only?. 5,000 but he thought it should be enough, and he came to me to make terms for printing and publishing his offspring. My estimate was by far the cheapest he had had. He was very anxious to know that I would not put the price up on him later. I was greatly interested and said I had thought of starting a morning edition of the Evening News and would talk the matter over with him. He took fire at my idea of making each item of news a sort of story in the American fashion, and finally asked me would I help him with the editing. I said I'd be delighted to go in with him, but I did not think 5,000 would go far. He said it ought to go a couple of months and by that time he ought to have a circulation of 50,000; and with a circulation of 50,000, he could get 50,000 more for the venture in Birmingham. "All right," I said, "if you can get the further money, we can get the 50,000 circulation in three months." And so the Morning Mail was started; within two months we had 50,000 circulation.

  We had already received notice from The Times that they had a weekly paper called The Mail and that our Morning Mail infringed their copyright; and they began an action claiming 20,000 damages. I se
nt my friend off to Birmingham and went myself to see Arthur Walter of The Times. I told him the action was ridiculous-a morning paper, a halfpenny paper in London had neither the shape nor look of the weekly edition of The Times, which they called The Mail. Arthur Walter told me that he agreed with me, but

  that his father was very angry over the matter and that he could do nothing.

  A week later my friend came back from Birmingham and told me that The Times action had prevented him getting any money and he would have to close the paper up unless I could finance it.

  I spoke to Lord Folkestone about it and soon convinced him that a halfpenny morning paper must beat all the penny papers out of the field. Success and a great fortune were before us, offering themselves, so to speak. He caught fire at the idea of a Conservative morning halfpenny paper that might have a sale of a million and be as influential as The Times. He declared he would speak to Lord Salisbury about it; but first, with his inborn loyalty, he thought we ought to propose the scheme to Coleridge Kennard. Accordingly Kennard was brought into counsel.

  By this time I had got to know all the Kennard family pretty well. Mrs.

  Kennard was a tall, fine-looking woman without much individuality, I thought; the son, Hugh, was in the Guards and soon afterwards got married; the daughter, Merry, was charming, both kind and affectionate and very pretty. Hugh confided in me one evening; wanted to know if the Evening News could be made a pecuniary success or not. I assured him it could, but would take a year or so. Now I saw him again and set all his doubts at rest, but Coleridge, the father, seemed peevish to me. He didn't want a fortune, he said; he wanted the loss to cease. "It's costing heavily and the hopes you held out," he said to Lord Folkestone, "don't seem likely to be realized!" He soon let me know that his hope was that he might be made a baronet. "I don't care for it for myself especially," he said, "but I want it for my son and I've spent 70,000 pounds to get it, though I was told at the beginning that 40,000 would more than suffice." I came thus face to face with the fact that every title had its price.