by Frank Harris
Up the long dim road where thundered The army of Italy onward By the great pale arch of the Star. It was the deep historic sense of this great people that first won me, and their loving admiration of their poets and artists and guides. I can never describe the thrill it gave me to find on a small house a marble plaque recording the fact that poor De Musset had once lived there, and another on the house wherein he died. Oh, how right the French are to have a Place Malherbe, an Avenue Victor Hugo, an Avenue de la Grande Armee, too, and an Avenue de l'Imperatrice as well, though it has since been changed prosaically into the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. From the Place de la Concorde I crossed the Seine and walked down the quays to the left and soon passed the Conciergerie and Ste. Chapelle with its gorgeous painted glass-windows of a thousand years ago; and there before me, on the lie de la Cite, the twin towers of Notre Dame caught my eyes and breath; and finally, early in the afternoon, I turned up the Boul Mich and passed the Sorbonne, and then somehow or other lost myself in the old rue St.
Jacques that Dumas pere and other romance-writers had described for me a thousand times. A little tired at length, having left the Luxembourg gardens far behind with their statues, which I promised myself soon to study more closely, I turned into a little wine shop-restaurant kept by a portly and pleasant lady, whose name, I soon learned, was Marguerite. After a most excellent meal I engaged a large room on the first floor looking on the street for forty francs a month, and if a friend should come to live with me, why, Marguerite promised, with a large smile, to put in another bed for an additional ten francs monthly, and supply us besides with coffee in the morning and whatever meals we wanted at most reasonable prices. There I lived gaudy, golden days for some three heavenly weeks. I threw myself on French like a glutton and this was my method, which I don't recommend but simply record, though it brought me to understand everything said by the end of the first week. I spent five whole days on the grammar, learning all the verbs, especially the auxiliary and irregular verbs by heart, till I knew them as I knew my alphabet. I then read Hugo's Hernani with a dictionary in another long day of eighteen hours, and the next evening went to the gallery in the Comedie Francaise to see the play acted by Sarah Bernhardt as Dona Sol and Mounet-Sully as Hernani. For a while the rapid speech and strange accent puzzled me, but after the first act I began to understand what was said on the stage, and after the second act I caught every word; and to my delight, when I came out into the streets I understood everything said to me. After that golden night with Sarah's grave trainante voice in my ears, I made rapid because unconscious progress.
Next day in the restaurant I picked up a dirty, torn copy of Madame Bovary that lacked the first eighty pages. I took it to my room and swallowed it in a couple of breathless hours, realizing at once that it was a masterwork, but marking a hundred and fifty new words to turn out in my pocket dictionary afterwards. I learned these words carefully by heart and have never given myself any trouble about French since. What I know of it, and I know it fairly well now, has come from reading and speaking it for thirty odd years. I still make mistakes in it, chiefly of gender, I regret to say, and my accent is that of a foreigner; but taking it by and large I know it and its literature, and speak it better than most foreigners, and that suffices me. After some three weeks Ned Bancroft came from the States to live with me. He was never particularly sympathetic to me and I cannot account for our companionship, save by the fact that I was peculiarly heedless and full of human, unreflecting kindness. I have said little of Ned Bancroft, who was in love with Kate Stephens before she fell for Professor Smith; but I have just recorded the unselfish way he withdrew while keeping intact his friendship both for Smith and the girl. I thought that very fine of him. He left Lawrence and the university shortly after we first met and by «pull» obtained a good position on the railroad at Columbus, Ohio. He was always writing to me to come to visit him, and on my return from Philadelphia, in 1875, I think, I stopped at Columbus and spent a couple of days with him. As soon as he heard that I had gone to Europe and had reached Paris, he wrote to me that he wished I had asked him to come with me; and so I wrote setting forth my purpose, and at once he threw up his good prospects of riches and honor and came to me in Paris. We lived together for some six months. He was a tall, strong fellow, with pale face and grey eyes; a good student, an honorable, kindly, very intelligent man; but we envisaged life from totally different sides, and the longer we were together, the less we understood each other. In everything we were antiposed; he should have been an Englishman, for he was a born aristocrat with imperious, expensive tastes, while I had really become a western American, careless of dress or food or position, intent only on acquiring knowledge and, if possible, wisdom, in order to reach greatness.
The first evening we dined at Marguerite's and spent the night talking and swapping news. The very next afternoon Ned would go into Paris and we dined in a swell restaurant on the Grand Boulevard. A few tables away a tall, splendid looking brunette of perhaps thirty was dining with two men: I saw soon that Ned and she were exchanging looks and making signs. He told me he intended to go home with her. I remonstrated, but he was as obstinate as Charlie, and when I told him of the risks, he said he'd never do it again, but this time he couldn't get out of it. «I'll pay the bill at once,» I said, «and let's go,» but he would not; desire was alight in him and a feeling of false shame hindered him from taking my advice. Half an hour later the lady made a sign and he went out with the party, and when she entered her Victoria he got in with her, the pair on the sidewalk, he said, bursting into laughter as he and the woman drove away together.
Next morning he was back with me early, only saying that he had enjoyed himself hugely and was not even afraid. Her rooms were lovely, he declared; he had to give her a hundred francs; the bath and toilette arrangements were those of a queen; there was no danger. And he treated me to as wild a theory as Charlie had cherished: told me that the great cocottes who make heaps of money took as much care of themselves as gentlemen. «Go with a common prostitute and you'll catch something; go with a real top-notcher and she's sure to be all right!»
And perfectly at ease he went to work with a will. Bancroft's way of learning French, even, was totally different from mine. He went at the grammar and syntax and mastered them; he could write excellent French at the end of four months, but spoke it very haltingly and with a ferocious American accent. When I told him I was going to hear Taine lecture on the philosophy of art and the ideal in art, he laughed at me; but I believe I got more from Taine than he got from his more exact knowledge of French. When I came to know Taine and was able to call on him and talk to him, Bancroft, too, wanted to know him. I brought them together, but clearly Taine was not impressed, for Ned out of false shame hardly opened his mouth. But I learned a good deal from Taine, and one illustration of his abides with me as giving a true and vivid conception of art and its ideal. In a lecture he pointed out to his students that a lion was not a running beast, but a great jaw set on four powerful springs of short, massive legs. The artist, he went on, seizing the idea of the animal, may exaggerate the size and strength of the jaw a little, emphasize, too, the springing power in his loins and legs and the tearing strength of his front paws and claws; but if he lengthened his legs or diminished his jaw, he would denaturalize the true idea of the beast and would produce an abortion. The ideal, however, should only be indicated. Taine's talks, too, on literature and the importance of the environment even on great men all made profound impression on me. After listening to him for some time I began to see my way up more clearly. I shall never forget, too, some of his thought inspiring words. Talking one day of the Convent of Monte Cassino, where a hundred generations of students, freed from all the sordid cares of existence, had given night and day to study and thought, and had preserved besides the priceless manuscripts of long past ages and so paved the way for a renascence of learning and thought, he added gravely: «I wonder whether science will ever do as much for her votaries as religion has done
for hers: in other words, I wonder will there ever be a laic Monte Cassino!»
Taine was a great teacher and I owe him much kindly encouragement and even enlightenment. I add this last word, because his French freedom of speech came as pure spring water to my thirsty soul. A dozen of us were grouped about him one day talking, when one student with a remarkable gift for vague thought and highfalutin' rhetoric wanted to know what Taine thought of the idea that all the worlds and planets and solar systems were turning round one axis and moving to some divine fulfillment (accomplishment). Taine, who always disliked windy rhetoric, remarked quietly, «The only axis in my knowledge round which everything moves to some accomplishment is a woman's cunt (le con d'une jemme).» They laughed, but not as if the bold word had astonished them. He used it when it was needed, as I have often heard Anatole France use it since, and no one thought anything of it.
In spite of the gorgeous installation of his brunette, Ned at the end of a week found out how blessed are those described in Holy Writ, who fished all night and caught nothing. He had caught a dreadful gonorrhea and was forbidden spirits or wine or coffee till he got well. Exercise, too, was only to be taken in small doses, so it happened that when I went out he had to stay home, and the outlook on the rue St. Jacques was anything but exhilarating. This naturally increased his desire to get about and see things, and as soon as he began to understand spoken French and to speak a little, he chafed against the confinement and a room without a bath. He longed for the centre, for the opera and the boulevards, and nothing would do but we should take rooms in the heart of Paris. He would borrow money from his folks, he said. Like a fool I was willing, and so we took rooms one day in a quiet street just behind the Madeleine, at ten times the price we were paying Marguerite. I soon found that my money was melting, but the life was very pleasant. We often drove in the Bois, went frequently to the opera, the theatres and music-halls and appraised, too, the great restaurants, the Cafe Anglais and the Trois Freres, as if we had been millionaires. As luck would have it, Ned's venereal disease and the doctors became a heavy additional expense that I could ill afford. Suddenly one day I realized that I had only six hundred dollars in the bank: at once I made up my mind to stop and make a fresh start. I told my resolution to Bancroft: he asked me to wait. «He had written to his people for money,» he said,
«he would soon pay his debt to me,» but that wasn't what I wanted. I felt that I had got off the right road because of him and was angry with myself for having wasted my substance in profligate living, and worst of all, in silly luxury and brainless showing off. I declared I was ill and was going to England at once. I must make a new start and accumulate some more money, and a few mornings later I bade Bancroft good-bye and crossed the channel and went on to my sister and father in Tenby, arriving there in a severe shivering fit with a bad headache and every symptom of ague, I was indeed ill and played out. I had taken double doses of life and literature, had swallowed all the chief French writers from Rabelais and Montaigne to Flaubert, Zola and Balzac, passing by Pascal and Vauvenargues, Renan and Hugo-a glutton's feast for six months. Then, too, I had nosed out this artist's studio and that, had spent hours watching Rodin at work and more hours comparing this painter's model with that, these breasts and hips with those. My love of plastic beauty nearly brought me to grief at least once, and perhaps I had better record the incident, though it rather hurt my vanity at the time. One day I called at Manet's old studio, which was rented now by an American painter named Alexander. He had real power as a craftsman, but only a moderate brain and was always trying by beauty or something remarkable in his model to make up for his own want of originality. On this visit I noticed an extraordinary sketch of a young girl standing where childhood and womanhood meet: she had cut her hair short and her chestnut-dark eyes lent her a startling distinction. «You like it?» asked Alexander.
«She has the most perfect figure I have ever seen.» «I like it,»
I replied. «I wonder whether the magic is in the model or in your brush?» «You'll soon see,» he retorted, a little piqued. «She's due here already,» and almost as he spoke, she came in with quick, alert steps. She was below medium height, but evidently already a woman. Without a word she went behind the screen to undress, when Alexander said, «Well?» I had to think a moment or two before answering. «God and you have conspired together!» I exclaimed, and indeed his brush had surpassed itself. He had caught and rendered a childish innocence in expression that I had not remarked, and he had blocked in the features with superb brio. «It is your best work to date,» I went on, «and almost anyone would have signed it.» At this moment the model emerged with a sheet about her, and probably because of my praise, Alexander introduced me to Mile. Jeanne and said I was a distinguished American writer. She nodded to me saucily, flashing white teeth at me, mounted the estrade, threw off the sheet and took up her pose-all in a moment. I was carried off my feet; the more I looked, the more perfections I discovered. Needless to say, I told her so in my best French, with a hundred similes. Alexander also I conciliated by begging him to do no more to the sketch but sell it to me and do another. Finally he took four hundred and fifty francs for it and in an hour had made another sketch. My purchase had convinced Mile. Jeanne that I was a young millionaire, and when I asked her if I might accompany her to her home, she consented more than readily. As a matter of fact, I took her for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne and from there to dinner in a private room at the Cafe Anglais. During the meal I had got to like her: she lived with her mother, Alexander had told me; though by no means prudish, still less virginal, she was not a coureuse. I thought I might risk connection; but when I got her to take off her clothes and began to caress her sex, she drew away and said quite as a matter of course: «Why not faire minette?» When I asked her what she meant, she told me frankly: «We women do not get excited in a moment as you men do; why not kiss me and tongue me there for a few minutes, then I shall have enjoyed myself and shall be ready.» I'm afraid I made rather a face, for she remarked coolly: «Just as you like, you know. I prefer in a meal the hors-d'oeuvres to the piece de resistance like a good many other women: indeed, I often content myself with the hors-d'oeuvres and don't take any more. Surely you understand that a woman goes on getting more and more excited for an hour or two and no man is capable of bringing her to the highest pitch of enjoyment while pleasing himself.» «I'm able,» I said stubbornly. «I can go on all night if you please me, so we should skip appetizers.» «No, no!» she replied, laughing, «let us have a banquet then, but begin with the lips and tongue!» The delay, the bandying to and fro of argument, and above all the idea of kissing and tonguing her sex, had brought me to coolness and reason. Was I not just as foolish as Bancroft if I yielded to her-an unknown girl? I replied finally,
«No, little lady, your charms are not for me,» and I took my seat again at the table and poured myself out some wine. I had the ordinary English or American youth's repugnance to what seemed like degradation, never guessing that Jeanne was giving me the second lesson m the noble art of seduction, of which my sister had taught me long ago the rudiments. The next time I was offered minette I had grown wiser and made no scruples, but that's another story. The fact is that my first visit to Paris I kept perfectly chaste, thanks in part to the example of Ned's blunder; thinks, too, to my dislike of going with any girl sexually whom I didn't really care for, and I didn't care for Jeanne. She was too imperious, and imperiousness in a girl is the quality I most dislike, perhaps because I suffer from an overdose of the humor. At any rate, it was not sexual indulgence that broke my health in Paris, but my passionate desire to learn that had cut down my hours of sleep and exasperated my nerves. I took cold and had a dreadful recurrence of malaria. I wanted rest and time to breathe and think. The little house in a side street in the lovely Welsh watering-place was exactly the haven of rest I needed. I soon got well and strong and for the first time learned to know my father. He came for long walks with me, though he was over sixty.
After
his terrible accident seven years before (he slipped and fell thirty feet into a drydock while his ship was being repaired), one side of his hair and moustache had turned white and the other remained jet-black. I was astonished first by his vigor: he thought nothing of a ten mile walk, and on one of our excursions I asked him why he had not given me the nomination I wanted as a midshipman. He was curiously silent and waved the subject aside with, «The Navy for you?
No!» and he shook his head. A few days afterwards, however, he came back to the subject of his own accord. «You asked me,» he began,
«why I didn't send you the nomination for the midshipman's examination. Now I'll tell you. To get on in the British Navy and make a career in it, you should either be well-born or well-off: you were neither. For a youth without position or money, there are only two possible roads up: servility or silence, and you were incapable of both.» «Oh, Governor, how true and how wise of you,» I cried,
«but why, why didn't you tell me? I'd have understood then as well as now and thought the more of you for thwarting me.» «You forget,» he went on, «that I had trained myself in the other road of silence: it is difficult for me even now to express myself.» And he went on with bitterness in voice and accent, «They drove me to silence: if you knew what I endured before I got my first step as lieutenant. If it hadn't been that I was determined' to marry your mother, I could never have swallowed the countless humiliations of my brainless superiors!