by Frank Harris
«The nearest we've come to a law on the matter,» I said, «is contained in the so-called law of contraries: that is, if the man is stronger than the woman, the children will be mostly girls; if the woman is greatly younger or stronger, the progeny will be chiefly boys. This bears out the old English proverb: «Any weakling can make a boy, but it takes a man to make a girl.» Kate laughed and just then a knock came to the door. «Come in!» I cried, and then colored maid came in with a note. «A lady's just been and left it,» said Jenny. I saw it was from Mrs. Mayhew, so I crammed it into my pocket, saying regretfully: «I must answer it soon.» Kate excused herself and after a long, long kiss went to prepare supper, while I read Mrs.
Mayhew's note, which was short, if not exactly sweet: 'Eight days and no Frank, and no news; you cannot want to kill me: come today if possible. Lorna.» I replied at once, saying I would come on the morrow, that I was so busy I didn't know where to turn, but would be with her sure on the morrow and I signed «Your Frank.» That afternoon at five o'clock Smith came and I helped to arrange his books and make him comfy.
Chapter XI. At the Age of Eighteen
Venus toute entitre a sa proie attachie
I meant to write nothing but the truth in these pages, yet now I'm conscious that my memory has played a trick on me. It is in an artist what painters call foreshortening: events, that is, which took months to happen, it crushes together into days, passing, so to speak, from mountain top to mountain top of feeling, and so the effect of passion is heightened by the partial elimination of time. I can do nothing more than warn my readers that in reality some of the love-passages I shall describe were separated by weeks and sometimes by months, that the nuggets of gold were occasional «finds» in a desert. After all, it cannot matter to my «gentle readers,» and my good readers will have already divined the fact, that when you crush eighteen years into nine chapters, you must leave out all sorts of minor happenings while recording chiefly the important-fortunately these carry the message. It was with my knowledge as with my passions. Day after day I worked feverishly: whenever I met a passage such as the building of the bridge in Caesar, I refused to burden my memory with the dozens of new words because I thought, and still think, Latin comparatively unimportant: the nearest to a great man the Latins ever produced being Tacitus or Lucretius. No sensible person would take the trouble to master a language in order to gain acquaintance with the second-rate. But new words in Greek were precious to me like new words in English, and I used to memorize every passage studded with them, save choruses like that of the birds in Aristophanes, where he names birds unfamiliar to me in life.
Smith, I found, knew all such words in both languages. I asked him one day and he admitted that he had read everything in ancient Greek, following the example of Hermann, the famous German scholar, and he believed he knew almost every word. I did not desire any such pedantic perfection. I make no pretension to scholarship of any sort, and indeed learning of any kind leaves me indifferent, unless it leads to a fuller understanding of beauty, or that widening of the spirit by sympathy that is another name for wisdom. But what I wish to emphasize here is that in the first year with Smith I learned by heart dozens of choruses from the Greek dramatists and the whole of the Apologia and Crito of Plato, having guessed then, and still believe, that the Crito is a model short story, more important than any of even Plato's speculations. Plato and Sophocles! It was worthwhile spending five years of hard labor to enter into their intimacy and make them sister-spirits of one's soul. Didn't Sophocles give me Antigone, the prototype of the new woman for all time, in her sacred rebellion against hindering laws and thwarting conventions, the eternal model of that dauntless assertion of love that is beyond and above sex, the very heart of the divine! And the Socrates of Plato led me to that high place where man becomes God, having learned obedience to law and the cheerful acceptance of death; but even there I needed Antigone, the twin sister of Bazaroff, at least as much, realizing intuitively that my life-work, too, would be chiefly in revolt, and that the punishment Socrates suffered and Antigone dared would almost certainly be mine; for I was fated to meet worse opponents; after all, Creon was only stupid, whereas Sir Thomas Horridge was malevolent to boot, and Woodrow Wilson unspeakable! Again I am outrunning my story by half a century! But in what I have written of Sophocles and Plato the reader will divine, I hope, my intense love and admiration for Smith, who led me, as Vergil led Dante, into the ideal world that surrounds our earth as with illimitable spaces of purple sky, wind-swept and star-sown! If I could tell what Smith's daily companionship now did for me, I would hardly need to write this book; for, like all I have written, some of the best of it belongs as much to him as to me. In his presence for the first year and a half I was merely a sponge, absorbing now this truth, now that, hardly conscious of an original impulse. Yet all the time, too, as will be seen, I was advising him and helping him from my knowledge of life. Our relation was really rather that of a small, practical husband with some wise and infinitely learned Aspasialt I want to say here in contempt of probability that in all our years of intimacy, living together for over three years side by side, I never found a fault in him of character or of sympathy, save the one that drew him to his death.
Now I must leave him for the moment and turn again to Mrs.
May-hew. Of course, I went to her that next afternoon even before three. She met me without a word, so gravely that I did not even kiss her, but began explaining what Smith was to me and how I could not do enough for him who was everything to my mind, as she was (God help me!) to my heart and body; and I kissed her cold lips, while she shook her head sadly. «We have a sixth sense, we women, when we are in love,» she began. «I feel a new influence in you; I scent danger in the air you bring with you: don't ask me to explain: I can't; but my heart is heavy and cold as death. If you leave me, there'll be a catastrophe: the fall from such a height of happiness must be fatal.
If you can feel pleasure away from me, you no longer love me. I feel none except in having you, seeing you, thinking of you – none! Oh, why can't you love like a woman loves! No! like I love: it would be heaven; for you and you alone satisfy the insatiable; you leave me bathed in bliss, sighing with satisfaction, happy as the Queen in Heaven!» «I have much to tell you, new things to say,» I began in haste. «Come upstairs,» I broke in, interrupting myself. «I want to see you as you are now, with the color in your cheeks, the light in your eyes, the vibration in your voice, come!» And she came like a sad sybil. «Who gave you the tact,» she began while we were undressing, «the tact to praise always?» I seized her and stood naked against her, body to body. «What new things have you to tell me?» I asked, lifting her into the bed and getting in beside her, cuddling up to her warmer body. «There's always something new in my love,» she cried, cupping my face with her slim hands and taking my lips with hers. «Oh, how I desired you yesternoon, for I took the letter to your house myself and heard you talking in your room, perhaps with Smith,» she added, sounding my eyes with hers. «I'm longing to believe it; but, when I heard your voice, or imagined I did, I felt the lips of my sex open and shut and then it began to burn and itch intolerably. I was on the point of going in to you, but, instead, turned and hurried away, raging at you and at myself-»
«I will not let you even talk such treason,» I cried, separating her soft thighs, as I spoke, and sliding between them. In a moment my sex was in her and we were one body, while I drew it out slowly and then pushed it in again, her naked body straining to mine. «Oh,» she cried, «as you draw out, my heart follows your sex in fear of losing it and as you push in again, it opens wide in ecstasy and wants you all, all-» and she kissed me with hot lips. «Here is something new,» she exclaimed, «food for your vanity from my love! Mad as you make me with your love-thrusts, for at one moment I am hot and dry with desire, the next moment wet with passion, bathed in love, I could live with you all my life without having you, if you wished it, or if it would do you good. Do you believe me?» «Yes,» I replied, continui
ng the love-game, but occasionally withdrawing to rub her clitoris with my sex and then slowly burying him in her cunt again to the hilt. «We women have no souls but love,» she said faintly, her eyes dying as she spoke. «I torture myself to think of some new pleasure for you, and yet you'll leave me, I feel you will, for some silly girl who can't feel a tithe of what I feel or give you what I give-» She began here to breathe quickly. «I've been thinking how to give you more pleasure; let me try. Your seed, darling, is dear to me:
I don't want it in my sex; I want to feel you thrill and so I want your sex in my mouth, I want to drink your essence and I will-» and suiting the action to the word, she slipped down in the bed and took my sex in her mouth and began rubbing it up and down till my seed spirted in long jets, filling her mouth while she swallowed it greedily. «Now do I love you, Sir!» she exclaimed, drawing herself upon me again and nestling against me. «Wait till some girl does that to you and you'll know she loves you to distraction or, better still, to self-destruction.» «Why do you talk of any other girl?» I chided her. «I don't imagine you going with another man; why should you torment yourself just as causelessly?» She shook her head. «My fears are prophetic,» she sighed. «I'm willing to believe it hasn't happened yet, though-Ah, God, the torturing thought! The mere dread of you going with another drives me crazy; I could kill her, the bitch: why doesn't she get a man of her own? How dare she even look at you?» and she clasped me tightly to her. Nothing loath, I pushed my sex into her again and began the slow movement that excited her so quickly and me so gradually for, even while using my skill to give her the utmost pleasure, I could not help comparing and I realized surely enough that Kate's pussy was smaller and firmer and gave me infinitely more pleasure; still I kept on for her delight. And now again she began to pant and choke and, as I continued ploughing her body and touching her womb with every slow thrust, she began to cry inarticulately with little short cries growing higher in intensity till suddenly she squealed like a shot rabbit and then shrieked with laughter, breaking down in a storm of sighs and sobs and floods of tears. As usual, her intensity chilled me a little; for her paroxysm aroused no corresponding heat in me, tending even to check my pleasure by the funny, irregular movements she made. Suddenly, I heard steps going away from the door, light, stealing steps: who could it be? The servant? or-? Lorna had heard them, too, and though still panting and swallowing convulsively, she listened intently, while her great eyes wandered in thought. I knew I could leave the riddle to her: it was my task to reassure and caress her. I got up and went over to the open window for a breath of air and suddenly I saw Lily run quickly across the grass and disappear in the next house: so she was the listener! When I recalled Lorna's gasping cries, I smiled to myself. If Lily tried to explain them to herself, she would have an uneasy hour, I guessed. When Lorna had dressed, and she dressed quickly and went downstairs hastily to convince herself, I think, that her darky had not spied on her, I waited in the sitting room. I must warn Lorna that my «studies" would only allow me to give one day a week to our pleasures. «Oh,» she cried, turning pale as I explained, «didn't I know it!» «But Lorna,» I pleaded, «didn't you say you could do without me altogether if 'twas for my good?»
«No, no, no! a thousand times no!» she cried. «I said if you were with me always, I could do without passion; but this starvation fare once a week! Go, go,» she cried, «or I'll say something I'll regret.
Go!» and she pushed me out of the door, and thinking it better in view of the future, I went. The truth is, I was glad to get away; novelty is the soul of passion. There's an old English proverb: «Fresh cunt, fresh courage.» On my way home I thought oftener of the slim, dark figure of Lily than of the woman, every hill and valley of whose body was now familiar to me, whereas Lily with her narrow hips and straight flanks must have a tiny sex. I thought, «D..n Lily,» and I hastened to Smith. We went down to supper together and I introduced Smith to Kate: they were just polite; but when she turned to me she scanned me curiously, her brows lifting in a gesture of, «I know what I know,» which was to become familiar to me in the sequel.
After supper I had a long talk with Smith in his room, a heart to heart talk which altered our relations. I have already mentioned that Smith got ill every fortnight or so. I had no inkling of the cause, no notion of the scope of the malady. This evening he grew reminiscent and told me everything. He had thought himself very strong, it appeared, till he went to Athens to study. There he worked prodigiously, and almost at the beginning of his stay came to know a Greek girl of a good class who talked Greek with him and finally gave herself to him passionately. Being full of youthful vigor always quickened by vivid imaginings, he told me that he usually came the first time almost as soon as he entered and that, in order to give his partner pleasure, he had to come two or three times and this drained and exhausted him. He admitted that he had abandoned himself to this fierce love-play day after day in and out of season. When he returned to the United States, he tried to put his Greek girl out of his head; but in spite of all he could do, he had love-dreams that came to an orgasm and ended in emissions of seed about once a fortnight. And after a year or so these fortnightly emissions gave him intense pains in the small of his back which lasted some twenty-four hours, evidently till some more seed had been secreted. I could not imagine how a fortnightly emission could weaken and distress a young man of Smith's vigor and health; but as soon as I had witnessed his suffering, I set my wits to work and told him of the trick by which I had brought my wet dreams to an end in the English school. Smith at once consented to try my remedy, and as the fortnight was about up, I went at once in search of a whipcord and tied up his unruly member for him night after night. For some days the remedy worked; then he went out and spent the afternoon and night at Judge Stevens' and he was ill again. Of course, there had been no connection: indeed, in my opinion, it would have been much better for Smith if there had been; but the propinquity of the girl he loved and, of course, the kissings that are always allowed to engaged couples by American custom took place unchecked, and when he went to sleep his dreaming ended in an orgasm. The worst of it was that my remedy having prevented his dreaming from reaching a climax for eighteen or twenty days, he dreamed a second time and had a second wet dream, which brought him to misery and even intenser pain than usual. I combatted the evil with all the wit I possessed. I got Ned Stephens to lend the Professor a horse; I had Blue Devil out and we went riding two or three times a week. I got boxing gloves, too, and soon either Ned or I had a bout with Smith every day: gradually these exercises improved his general health, and when I could tie on the whipcord every night for a month or so, he put on weight and gained strength surprisingly. The worst of it was that this improvement in health always led to a day or two spent with his betrothed, which undid all the good. I advised him to marry and then control himself vigorously; but he wanted to get well first and be his vigorous self again. I did all I knew to help him, but for a long time I had no suspicion that an occasional wet dream could have serious consequences. We used to make fun of them as schoolboys: how could I imagine-but as it is the finest, most highly strung natures that are most apt to suffer in this way, I will tell what happened step by step. Suffice it to say here that he was in better health when staying with me at the Gregorys' than he had been before and I continually hoped for a permanent improvement. After our talk that first night in Gregorys', I went downstairs to the dining room, hoping to find Kate alone. I was lucky: she had persuaded her mother, who was tired, to go to bed and was just finishing her tidying up. «I want to see you, Kate,» I said, trying to kiss her. She drew her head aside: «That's why you've kept away all afternoon, I suppose,» and she looked at me with a side-long glance.
An inspiration came to me. «Kate,» I exclaimed, «I had to be fitted for my new clothes!» «Forgive me,» she cried at once, that excuse being valid. «I thought, I feared-oh, I'm suspicious without reason, I know-am jealous without cause. There! I confess!» and the great hazel eyes turned on me full
of love. I played with her breasts, whispering, «When am I to see you naked, Kate? I want to; when?»
«You've seen most of me!» and she laughed joyously. «All right,» I said, turning away,» if you are resolved to make fun of me and be mean to me-» «Mean to you!» she cried, catching me and swinging me round. «I could easier be mean to myself. I'm glad you want to see me, glad and proud, and tonight, if you'll leave your door open, I'll come to you: mean, oh-» and she gave me her soul in a kiss.
«Isn't it risky?» I asked. «I tried the stairs this afternoon,» she glowed. «They don't creak: no one will hear, so don't sleep or I'll surprise you.» By way of sealing the compact, I put my hand up her clothes and caressed her sex: it was hot and soon opened to me. «There now, Sir, go,» she smiled, «or you'll make me very naughty and I have a lot to do!» «How do you mean 'naughty',» I said; «tell me what you feel, please!» «I feel my heart beating,» she said, «and, and-oh! wait till tonight and I'll try to tell you, dear,» and she pushed me out of the door. For the first time in my hie I notice here that the writer's art is not only inferior to reality in keenness of sensation and emotion, but also more same, monotonous even, because of showing the tiny, yet ineffable differences of the same feeling which difference of personality brings with it. I seem to be repeating to myself in describing Kate's love after Mrs. Mayhew's, making the girl's feeling a fainter replica of the woman's. In reality the two were completely different. Mrs.