My Life and Loves, Book 1 Read online

  The Germanic ideal, which is also the English and American ideal, of the conquering male that despises all weaker and less intelligent races and is eager to enslave or annihilate them must be set aside. A hundred years ago, there were only fifteen millions of English and American folk; today there are nearly two hundred millions, and it is plain that in another century or so they will be the most numerous, as they are already by far the most powerful race on earth.

  The most numerous folk hitherto, the Chinese, has set a good example by remaining within its own boundaries, but these conquering, colonizing Anglo-Saxons threaten to overrun the earth and destroy all other varieties of the species man. Even now we annihilate the Red Indian because he is not subservient, while we are content to degrade the Negro who doesn't threaten our domination.

  Is it wise to desire only one flower in this garden of a world? Is it wise to blot out the better varieties while preserving the inferior?

  And the Anglo-Saxon ideal for the individual is even baser and more inept. Intent on satisfying his own conquering lust, he has compelled the female of the species to an unnatural chastity of thought and deed and word. He has made of his wife a meek upper-servant or slave (die Haus-frau), who has hardly any intellectual interests and whose spiritual being only finds a narrow outlet in her mother-instincts. The daughter he has labored to degrade into the strangest sort of two-legged tame fowl ever imagined: she must seek a mate while concealing or denying all her strongest sex-feelings; in fine, she should be as cold-blooded as a frog and as wily and ruthless as an Apache on the war-path.

  The ideal he has set before himself is confused and confusing: really he desires to be healthy and strong while gratifying all his sexual appetites. The highest type, however, the English gentleman, has pretty constantly in mind the individualistic ideal of what he calls an «all-round man,» a man whose body is harmoniously developed and brought to a comparatively high state of efficiency.

  He has no inkling of the supreme truth that every man and woman possesses some small facet of the soul which reflects life in a peculiar way or, to use the language of religion, sees God as no other soul born into the world can ever see Him.

  It is the first duty of every individual to develop all his faculties of body, mind and spirit as completely and harmoniously as possible; but it is a still higher duty for each of us to develop our special faculty to the uttermost consistent with health; for only by so doing shall we attain to the highest self-consciousness or be able to repay our debt to humanity. No Anglo-Saxon, so far as I know, has ever advocated this ideal or dreamed of regarding it as a duty. In fact, no teacher so far has even thought of helping men and women to find out the particular power which constitutes their essence and in-being and justifies their existence. And so nine men and women out of ten go through life without realizing their own special nature: they cannot lose their souls, for they have never found them.

  For every son of Adam, for every daughter of Eve, this is the supreme defeat, the final disaster. Yet no one, so far as I know, has ever warned of the danger or spoken of this ideal.

  That's why I love this book in spite of all its shortcomings and all its faults: it is the first book ever written to glorify the body and its passionate desires and the soul as well and its sacred, climbing sympathies.

  Give and forgive, I always say, is the supreme lesson of life.

  I only wish I had begun the book five years ago, before I had been half-drowned in the brackish flood of old age and become conscious of failing memory; but notwithstanding this handicap, I have tried to write the book I have always wanted to read, the first chapter in the Bible of Humanity.

  Hearken to good counsel: Live out your whole free life, while yet on earth, Seize the quick Present, prize your one sure boon: Though brief, each day a golden sun has birth; Though dim, the night is gemmed with stars and moon.

  Chapter I. My Life and Loves

  Memory is the Mother of the Muses, the prototype of the artist. As a rule she selects and relieves out the important, omitting what is accidental or trivial. Now and then, however, she makes mistakes, like all other artists. Nevertheless, I take memory in the main as my guide. I was born on the 14th of February, 1855, and named James Thomas, after my father's two brothers; my father was in the navy, a lieutenant in command of a revenue cutter or gunboat, and we children saw him only at long intervals. My earliest recollection is being danced on the foot of my father's brother James, the captain of an Indiaman, who paid us a visit in the south of Kerry when I was about two. I distinctly remember repeating a hymn by heart for him, my mother on the other side of the fireplace, prompting: then I got him to dance me a little more, which was all I wanted. I remember my mother telling him I could read, and his surprise. The next memory must have been about the same time; I was seated on the floor screaming when my father came in and asked: «What's the matter?» «It's only Master Jim,» replied the nurse crossly; «he's just screaming out of sheer temper, Sir.

  Look, there's not a tear in his eye.» A year or so later, it must have been, I was proud of walking up and down a long room while my mother rested her hand on my head and called me her walking stick.

  Later still I remember coming to her room at night. I whispered to her and then kissed her, but her cheek was cold and she didn't answer, and I woke the house with my shrieking-she was dead. I felt no grief, but something gloomy and terrible in the sudden cessation of the usual household activities. A couple of days later I saw her coffin carried out, and when the nurse told my sister and me that we would never see our mother again I was surprised merely and wondered why. My mother died when I was nearly four and soon after we moved to Kingstown near Dublin. I used to get up in the night with my sister Annie, four years my senior, and go foraging for bread and jam or sugar. One morning about daybreak I stole into the nurse's room and saw a man beside her in bed, a man with a red mustache. I drew my sister in and she too saw him. We crept out again without waking them.

  My only emotion was surprise, but next day the nurse denied me sugar on my bread and butter, and I said: «I'll tell!» I don't know why; I had no inkling then of modern journalism. «Tell what?» she asked.

  «There was a man in your bed last night,» I replied. «Hush, hush!» she said, and gave me the sugar. After that I found all I had to do was to say «I'll tell!» to get whatever I wanted. My sister even wished to know one day what I had to tell, but I would not say. I distinctly remember my feeling of superiority over her because she had not sense enough to exploit the sugar mine. When I was between four and five, I was sent with Annie to a girls' boarding school in Kingstown kept by a Mrs. Frost. I was put in the class with the oldest girls on account of my proficiency in arithmetic, and I did my best at it because I wanted to be with them, though I had no conscious reason for my preference. I remember how the nearest girl used to lift me up and put me in my high-chair and how I would hurry over the sums set in compound long division and proportion; for as soon as I had finished, I would drop my pencil on the floor and then turn around and climb down out of my chair, ostensibly to get it, but really to look at the girls' legs. Why? I couldn't have said. I was at the bottom of the class and the legs got bigger and bigger towards the end of the long table and I preferred to look at the big ones. As soon as the girl next to me missed me she would move her chair back and call me. I'd pretend to have just found my slate pencil which, I said, had rolled; and she'd lift me back into my high-chair. One day I noticed a beautiful pair of legs on the other side of the table near the top. There must have been a window behind the girl, for her legs up to the knees were in full light. They filled me with emotion, giving me an indescribable pleasure. They were not the thickest legs, which surprised me. Up to that moment I had thought it was the thickest legs I liked best but now I saw that several girls, three anyway, had bigger legs; but none like hers, so shapely, with such slight ankles and tapering lines. I was enthralled and at the same time a little scared. I crept back into my chair with one idea in my little hea
d: could I get close to those lovely legs and perhaps touch them-breathless expectancy! I knew I could hit my slate pencil and make it roll up between the files of legs. Next day I did this and crawled right up till I was close to the legs that made my heart beat in my throat and yet give me a strange delight. I put out my hand to touch them. Suddenly the thought came that the girl would simply be frightened by my touch and pull her legs back and I should be discovered and-I was frightened. I returned to my chair to think and soon found the solution. Next day I again crouched before the girl's legs, choking with emotion. I put my pencil near her toes and reached round between her legs with my left hand as if to get it, taking care to touch her calf. She shrieked and drew back her legs, holding my hand tight between them, and cried: «What are you doing there?» «Getting my pencil,» I said humbly. «It rolled.»

  «There it is,» she said, kicking it with her foot. «Thanks,»

  I replied, overjoyed, for the feel of her soft legs was still on my hand. «You're a funny little fellow,» she said. But I didn't care. I had had my first taste of paradise and the forbidden fruit-authentic heaven! I have no recollection of her face-it seemed pleasant, that's all I remember. None of the girls made any impression on me but I can still recall the thrill of admiration and pleasure her shapely limbs gave me. I record this incident at length because it stands alone in my memory and because it shows that sex feeling may manifest itself in early childhood. One day about 1890 I had Meredith, Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde dining with me in Park Lane and the time of sex-awakening was discussed. Both Pater and Wilde spoke of it as a sign of puberty. Pater thought it began about thirteen or fourteen and Wilde to my amazement set it as late as sixteen. Meredith alone was inclined to put it earlier. «It shows sporadically,» he said, «and sometimes before puberty.» I recalled the fact that Napoleon tells how he was in love before he was five years old with a schoolmate called Giacominetta, but even Meredith laughed at this and would not believe that any real sex feeling could show itself so early. To prove the point I gave my experience as I have told it here and brought Meredith to pause. «Very interesting,» he thought, «but peculiar!» «In her abnormalities,» says Goethe, «nature reveals her secrets.» Here is an abnormality, perhaps as such, worth noting. I hadn't another sensation of sex till nearly six years later when I was eleven, since which time such emotions have been almost incessant. My exaltation to the oldest class in arithmetic got me into trouble by bringing me into relations with the head-mistress, Mrs. Frost, who was very cross and seemed to think that I should spell as correctly as I did sums. When she found I couldn't, she used to pull my ears and got into the habit of digging her long thumb nail into my ear till it bled. I didn't mind the smart; in fact, I was delighted, for her cruelty brought me the pity of the elder girls who used to wipe my ears with their pocket-handkerchiefs and say that old Frost was a beast and a cat. One day my father sent for me and I went with a petty officer to his vessel in the harbor. My right ear had bled onto my collar. As soon as my father noticed it and saw the older scars he got angry and took me back to the school and told Mrs. Frost what he thought of her and her punishments. Immediately afterwards, it seems to me, I was sent to live with my eldest brother Vernon, ten years older than myself, who was in lodgings with friends in Galway while going to college.

  There I spent the next five years, which passed leaving a blank.

  I learned nothing in those years except how to play «tag,» «hide and seek,» «footer» and «ball.» I was merely a healthy, strong little animal without an ache or pain or trace of thought. Then I remember an interlude at Belfast where Vernon and I lodged with an old Methodist who used to force me to go to church with him and drew on a little black skull-cap during the service, which filled me with shame and made me hate him. There is a period in life when everything peculiar or individual excites dislike and is in itself an offense.

  I learned here to «mitch» and lie simply to avoid school and to play, till my brother found I was coughing, and having sent for a doctor, was informed that I had congestion of the lungs; the truth being that I played all day and never came home for dinner, seldom indeed before seven o'clock, when I knew Vernon would be back. I mention this incident because, while confined to the house, I discovered under the old Methodist's bed a set of doctor's books with colored plates of the insides and pudenda of men and women. I devoured all the volumes, and bits of knowledge from them stuck to me for many a year. Curiously enough, the main sex fact was not revealed to me then, but in talks a little later with boys of my own age. I learned nothing in Belfast but rules of games and athletics. My brother Vernon used to go to a gymnasium every evening and exercise and box. To my astonishment he was not among the best; so while he was boxing I began practicing this and that, drawing myself up till my chin was above the bar, and repeating this till one evening Vernon found I could do it thirty times running: his praise made me proud.

  About this time, when I was ten or so, we were all brought together in Carrickfergus. My brothers and sisters then first became living, individual beings to me. Vernon was going to a bank as a clerk and was away all day. Willie, six years older than I was, and Annie, and Chrissie, two years my junior, went to the same day-school, though the girls went to the girls' entrance and had women teachers. Willie and I were in the same class; though he had grown to be taller than Vernon, I could beat him in most of the lessons. There was, however, one important branch of learning in which he was easily the best in the school. The first time I heard him recite The Battle of Ivry by Macaulay, I was carried off my feet. He made gestures and his voice altered so naturally that I was lost in admiration. That evening my sisters and I were together and we talked of Willie's talent. My eldest sister was enthusiastic, which I suppose stirred envy and emulation in me. I got up and imitated him and to my sisters' surprise I knew the whole poem by heart. «Who taught you?» Annie wanted to know, and when she heard that I had learned it just from hearing Willie recite it once, she was astonished and must have told our teacher; for the next afternoon he asked me to follow Willie and told me I was very good. From this time on the reciting class was my chief education. I learned every boy's piece and could imitate them all perfectly, except one red-haired rascal who could recite The African Chief better than anyone else, better even than the master. It was pure melodrama but Red-head was a born actor and swept us all away by the realism of his impersonation. Never shall I forget how the boy rendered the words: Look, feast thy greedy eyes on gold, Long kept for sorest need; Take it, thou askest sums untold And say that I am freed. Take it; my wife the long, long day Weeps by the cocoa-tree, And my young children leave their play And ask in vain for me. I haven't seen or heard the poem these fifty odd years. It seems tawdry stuff to me now; but the boy's accents were of the very soul of tragedy and I realized clearly that I couldn't recite that poem as well as he did. He was inimitable. Every time his accents and manner altered; now be did these verses wonderfully, at another time those, so that I couldn't ape him; always there was a touch of novelty in his intense realization of the tragedy. Strange to say, it was the only poem he recited at all well. An examination came and I was the first in the school in arithmetic and first too in elocution. Vernon even praised me, while Willie slapped me and got kicked on the shins for his pains. Vernon separated us and told Willie he should be ashamed of hitting one only half as big as he was. Willie lied promptly, saying I had kicked him first. I disliked Willie, I hardly know why, save that he was a rival in the school life. After this Annie began to treat me differently and now I seemed to see her as she was and was struck by her funny ways. She wished both Chrissie and myself to call her «Nita»; it was short for Anita, she said, which was the stylish French way of pronouncing Annie. She hated «Annie»-it was «common and vulgar»; I couldn't make out why. One evening we were together and she had undressed Chrissie for bed, when she opened her own dress and showed us how her breasts had grown while Chrissie's still remained small; and indeed «Nita's» were ever so much larger and prettie
r and round like apples. Nita let us touch them gently and was evidently very proud of them. She sent Chrissie to bed in the next room while I went on learning a lesson beside her. Nita left the room to get something, I think, when Chrissie called me and I went into the bedroom wondering what she wanted. She wished me to know that her breasts would grow too and be just as pretty as Nita's. «Don't you think so?» she asked, and taking my hand put it on them. And I said,

  «Yes,» for indeed I liked her better than Nita, who was all airs and graces and full of affectations. Suddenly Nita called me, and Chrissie kissed me whispering: «Don't tell her,» and I promised. I always liked Chrissie and Vernon. Chrissie was very clever and pretty, with dark curls and big hazel eyes, and Vernon was a sort of hero and always very kind to me. I learned nothing from this happening. I had hardly any sex-thrill with either sister, indeed, nothing like so much as I had had five years before, through the girl's legs in Mrs.

  Frost's school; and I record the incident here chiefly for another reason. One afternoon about 1890, Aubrey Beardsley and his sister Mabel, a very pretty girl, had been lunching with me in Park Lane.

  Afterwards we went into the park. I accompanied them as far as Hyde Park Corner. For some reason or other I elaborated the theme that men of thirty or forty usually corrupted young girls, and women of thirty or forty in turn corrupted youths. «I don't agree with you,»

  Aubrey remarked. «It's usually a fellow's sister who gives him his first lessons in sex. I know it was Mabel here who first taught me.»