My Life and Loves, Book 1 Read online

  I was amazed at his outspokenness. Mabel flushed crimson and I hastened to add: «In childhood girls are far more precocious. But these little lessons are usually too early to matter.» He wouldn't have it, but I changed the subject resolutely and Mabel told me some time afterwards that she was very grateful to me for cutting short the discussion. «Aubrey,» she said, «loves all sex things and doesn't care what he says or does.» I had seen before that Mabel was pretty. I realized that day when she stooped over a flower that her figure was beautifully slight and round. Aubrey caught my eye at the moment and remarked maliciously, «Mabel was my first model, weren't you, Mabs? I was in love with her figure,» he went on judicially. «Her breasts were so high and firm and round that I took her as my ideal.» She laughed, blushing a little, and rejoined, «Your figures, Aubrey, are not exactly ideal.» I learned from this little discussion that most men's sisters are just as precocious as mine were and just as likely to act as teachers in matters of sex. From about this time on the individualities of people began to impress me definitely. Vernon suddenly got an appointment in a bank at Armagh and I went to live with him there, in lodgings. The lodging-house keeper I disliked: she was always trying to make me keep hours and rules, and I was as wild as a homeless dog; but Armagh was wonder city to me. Vernon made me a day-boy at the Royal School: it was my first big school; I learned all the lessons very easily and most of the boys and all the masters were kind to me. The great mall or park-like place in the centre of the town delighted me; I had soon climbed nearly every tree in it, tree climbing and reciting being the two sports in which I excelled.

  When we were at Carrickfergus my father had had me on board his vessel and had matched me at climbing the rigging against a cabin boy, and though the sailor was first at the cross-trees, I caught him on the descent by jumping at a rope and letting it slide through my hands, almost at falling speed to the deck. I heard my father tell this afterwards with pleasure to Vernon, which pleased my vanity inordinately and increased, if that were possible, my delight in showing off. For another reason my vanity had grown beyond measure. At Carrickfergus I had got hold of a book on athletics belonging to Vernon and had there learned that if you went into the water up to your neck and threw yourself boldly forward and tried to swim, you would swim; for the body is lighter than the water and floats. The next time I went down to bathe with Vernon, instead of going on the beach in the shallow water and wading out, I went with him to the end of the pier. When he dived in, I went down the steps.

  As soon as he came up to the surface I cried, «Look! I can swim too!» and I boldly threw myself forward and, after a moment's dreadful sinking and spluttering, did in fact swim. When I wanted to get back I had a moment of appalling fear: «Could I turn around?» The next moment I found it quite easy to turn and I was soon safely back on the steps again. «When did you learn to swim?» asked Vernon, coming out beside me. «This minute,» I replied. As he was surprised, I told him I had read it all in his book and made up my mind to venture the very next time I bathed. A little time afterwards I heard him tell this to some of his men friends in Armagh, and they all agreed that it showed extraordinary courage, for I was small for my age and always appeared even younger than I was. Looking back, I see that many causes combined to strengthen the vanity in me which had already become inordinate and in the future was destined to shape my life and direct its purposes. Here in Armagh everything conspired to foster my besetting sin. I was put among boys of my age, I think in the lower fourth. The form-master, finding that I knew no Latin, showed me a Latin grammar and told me I'd have to learn it as quickly as possible, for the class had already begun to read Caesar. He showed me the first declension mensa as the example, and asked me if I could learn it by the next day. I said I would, and as luck would have it, the mathematical master passing at the moment, the form-master told him I was backward and should be in a lower form. «He's very good indeed at figures,» the mathematical master rejoined. «He might be in the Upper Division.» «Really!» exclaimed the form-master. «See what you can do,» he said to me. «You may find it possible to catch up. Here's a Caesar too; you may as well take it with you. We have done only two or three pages.» That evening I sat down to the Latin grammar, and in an hour or so had learned all the declensions and nearly all the adjectives and pronouns. Next day I was trembling with hope of praise and if the form-master had encouraged me or said one word of commendation, I might have distinguished myself in the class work, and so changed perhaps my whole life, but the next day he had evidently forgotten all about my backwardness. By dint of hearing the other boys answer I got a smattering of the lessons, enough to get through them without punishment, and soon a good memory brought me among the foremost boys, though I took no interest in learning Latin.

  Another incident fed my self-esteem and opened to me the world of books. Vernon often went to a clergyman's who had a pretty daughter, and I too was asked to their evening parties. The daughter found out I could recite and at once it became the custom to get me to recite some poem everywhere we went. Vernon bought me the poems of Macaulay and Walter Scott and I had soon learned them all by heart. I used to declaim them with infinite gusto: at first my gestures were imitations of Willie's: but Vernon taught me to be more natural and I bettered his teaching. No doubt my small stature helped the effect and the Irish love of rhetoric did the rest; but everyone praised me and the showing off made me very vain and-a more important result-the learning of new poems brought me to the reading of novels and books of adventure. I was soon lost in this new world: though I played at school with the other boys, in the evening I never opened a lesson-book. Instead, I devoured Lever and Mayne Reid, Marryat and Fenimore Cooper with unspeakable delight. I had one or two fights at school with boys of my own age. I hated fighting, but I was conceited and combative and strong and so got to fisticuffs twice or three times. Each time, as soon as an elder boy saw the scrimmage, he would advise us, after looking on for a round or two, to stop and make friends. The Irish are supposed to love fighting better than eating; but my school days assure me, however, that they are not nearly so combative, or perhaps, I should say, so brutal, as the English.

  In one of my fights a boy took my part and we became friends. His name was Howard and we used to go on long walks together. One day I wanted him to meet Strangways, the Vicar's son, who was fourteen but silly, I thought. Howard shook his head: «He wouldn't want to know me,» he said. «I am a Roman Catholic.» I still remember the feeling of horror his confession called up in me: «A Roman Catholic! Could anyone as nice as Howard be a Catholic?» I was thunderstruck and this amazement has always illumined for me the abyss of Protestant bigotry, but I wouldn't break with Howard, who was two years older than I and who taught me many things. He taught me to like Fenians, though I hardly knew what the word meant. One day I remember he showed me posted on the court house a notice offering?. 5000 sterling as reward to anyone who would tell the whereabouts of James Stephen, the Fenian head-centre. «He's travelling all over Ireland,» Howard whispered.

  «Everybody knows him,» adding with gusto, «but no one would give the head-centre away to the dirty English.» I remember thrilling to the mystery and chivalry of the story. From that moment, head-centre was a sacred symbol to me as Howard. One day we met Strangways and somehow or other began talking of sex. Howard knew all about it and took pleasure in enlightening us both. It was Cecil Howard who first initiated Strangways and me, too, in self-abuse. In spite of my novel reading, I was still at eleven too young to get pleasure from the practice; but I was delighted to know how children were made and a lot of new facts about sex. Strangways had hair about his private parts, as indeed Howard had, also, and when he rubbed himself and the orgasm came, a sticky, milky fluid spirted from Strangway's cock, which Howard told us was the man's seed, which must go right into the woman's womb to make a child. A week later Strangways astonished us both by telling how he had made up to the nursemaid of his younger sisters and got into her bed at night. The first time she wo
uldn't let him do anything, it appeared, but, after a night or two, he managed to touch her sex and assured us it was all covered with silky hairs. A little later he told us how she had locked her door and how the next day he had taken off the lock and got into bed with her again. At first she was cross, or pretended to be, he said, but he kept on kissing and begging her, and bit by bit she yielded, and he touched her sex again. «It was a slit,» he said. A few nights later, he told us he had put his prick into her and, «Oh! by gum, it was wonderful, wonderful!» «But how did you do it?» we wanted to know, and he gave us his whole experience. «Girls love kissing,» he said, «and so I kissed and kissed her and put my leg on her, and her hand on my cock and I kept touching her breasts and her cunny (that's what she calls it) and at last I got on her between her legs and she guided my prick into her cunt (God, it was wonderful!) and now I go with her every night and often in the day as well. She likes her cunt touched, but very gently,» he added; «she showed me how to do it with one finger like this,» and he suited the action to the word.

  Strangways in a moment became to us not only a hero but a miracle-man; we pretended not to believe him in order to make him tell us the truth and we were almost crazy with breathless desire. I got him to invite me up to the vicarage and I saw Mary the nurse-girl there, and she seemed to me almost a woman and spoke to him as «Master Will» and he kissed her, though she frowned and said, «Leave off» and «Behave yourself,» very angrily; but I felt that her anger was put on to prevent my guessing the truth. I was aflame with desire and when I told Howard, he, too, burned with lust, and took me out for a walk and questioned me all over again, and under a haystack in the country we gave ourselves to a bout of frigging, which for the first time thrilled me with pleasure. All the time we were playing with ourselves, I kept thinking of Mary's hot slit, as Strangways had described it, and, at length, a real orgasm came and shook me; the imagining had intensified my delight. Nothing in my life up to that moment was comparable in joy to that story of sexual pleasure as described, and acted for us, by Strangways. My Father Father was coming; I was sick with fear: he was so strict and loved to punish. On the ship he had beaten me with a strap because I had gone forward and listened to the sailors talking smut: I had feared him and disliked him ever since I saw him once come aboard drunk. It was the evening of a regatta at Kingstown. He had been asked to lunch on one of the big yachts. I heard the officers talking of it. They said he was asked because he knew more about tides and currents along the coast than anyone, more even than the fishermen. The racing skippers wanted to get some information out of him. Another added, «He knows the slants of the wind off Howth Head, ay, and the weather, too, better than anyone living!» All agreed he was a first rate sailor,

  «One of the best, the very best if he had a decent temper-the little devil.» «D'ye mind when he steered the gig in that race for all?

  Won? Av course he won, he has always won-ah! He's a great little sailor an' he takes care of the men's food, too, but he has the divil's own temper-an' that's the truth.» That afternoon of the regatta, he came up the ladder quickly and stumbled, smiling as he stepped down to the deck. I had never seen him like that; he was grinning and walking unsteadily: I gazed at him in amazement. An officer turned aside and as he passed me he said to another: «Drunk as a lord.» Another helped my father down to his cabin and came up five minutes afterwards: «He's snoring: he'll soon be all right: it's that champagne they give him, and all that praising him and pressing him to give them tips for this and that.» «No, no!» cried another. «It's not the drink; he only gets drunk when he hasn't to pay for it,» and all of them grinned; it was true, I felt, and I despised the meanness inexpressibly. I hated them for seeing him, and hated him-drunk and talking thick and staggering about; an object of derision and pity!-my «governor,» as Ver-non called him; I despised him. And I recalled other griefs I had against him. A Lord of the Admiralty had come aboard once; father was dressed in his best; I was very young: it was just after I had learned to swim in Carrickfergus. My father used to make me undress and go in and swim round the vessel every morning after my lessons. That morning I had come up as usual at eleven and a strange gentleman and my father were talking together near the companion. As I appeared my father gave me a frown to go below, but the stranger caught sight of me and laughing called me. I came to them and the stranger was surprised on hearing I could swim. «Jump in, Jim!» cried my father, «and swim round.» Nothing loath, I ran down the ladder, pulled off my clothes and jumped in. The stranger and my father were above me smiling and talking; my father waved his hand and I swam round the vessel. When I got back, I was about to get on the steps and come aboard when my father said: «No, no, swim on round till I tell you to stop.» Away I went again quite proud, but when I got round the second time I was tired; I had never swum so far and I had sunk deep in the water and a little spray of wave had gone into my mouth; I was very glad to get near the steps, but as I stretched out my hand to mount them, my father waved his hand.

  «Go on, go on,» he cried, «till you're told to stop!» I went on; but now I was very tired and frightened as well, and as I got to the bow the sailors leant over the bulwark and one encouraged me: «Go slow, Jim; you'll get round all right.» I saw it was big Newton, the stroke-oar of my father's gig, but just because of his sympathy I hated my father the more for making me so tired and so afraid.

  When I got round the third time, I swam very slowly and let myself sink very low, and the stranger spoke for me to my father, and then he himself told me to «come up.» I came eagerly, but a little scared at what my father might do, but the stranger came over to me, saying: «He's all blue; that water's very cold, Captain; someone should give him a good towelling.» My father said nothing but: «Go down and dress,» adding, «get warm.» The memory of my fear made me see that he was always asking me to do too much, and I hated him who could get drunk and shame me and make me run races up the rigging with the cabin boys who were grown men and could beat me.

  I disliked him. I was too young then to know that it was probably the habit of command which prevented him from praising me. Yet I knew in a half-conscious way that he was proud of me because I was the only one of his children who never got sea-sick. A little later he arrived in Armagh and the following week was wretched: I had to come straight home from school every day, and go out for a long walk with the «governor,» and he was not a pleasant companion. I couldn't let myself go with him as with a chum; I might in the heat of talk use some word or tell him something and get into an awful row. So I walked beside him silently, taking heed as to what I should say in answer to his simplest question. There was no companionship. In the evening he used to send me to bed early, even before nine o'clock, though Vernon always let me stay up with him reading till eleven or twelve o'clock. One night I went up to my bedroom on the next floor, but returned almost at once to get a book and have a read in bed, which was a rare treat to me. I was afraid to go into the sitting room; but crept into the dining room where there were a few books, though not so interesting as those in the parlor; the door between the two rooms was ajar. Suddenly I heard my father say: «He's a little Fenian.»

  «Fenian,» repeated Vernon, in amazement. «Really, Governor, I don't believe he knows the meaning of the word; he's only just eleven, you must remember.» «I tell you,» broke in my father, «he talked of James Stephen, the Fenian head-centre, today, with wild admiration.

  He's a Fenian, all right, but how did he catch it?» «I'm sure I don't know,» replied Vernon. «He reads a great deal and is very quick:

  I'll find out about it.» «No, no!» said my father. «The thing is to cure him. He must go to some school in England; that'll cure him.»

  I waited to hear no more but got my book and crept upstairs. So because I loved the Fenian head-centre I must be a Fenian. «How stupid father is,» was my summing up, but England tempted me, England-life was opening out. It was at the Royal School in the summer after my sex-experience with Strangways and Howard that I first beg
an to notice dress. A boy in the sixth form named Milman had taken a liking to me, and though he was five years older than I was, he often went with Howard and myself for walks. He was a stickler for dress, said that no one but «cads» (a name I learned from him for the first time) and common folk would wear a made-up tie: he gave me one of his scarves and showed me how to make a running lover's knot in it.

  On another occasion he told me that only «cads» would wear trousers frayed or repaired. Was it Milman's talk that made me self-conscious or my sex awakening through Howard and Strangways? I couldn't say, but at this time I had a curious and prolonged experience. My brother Vernon, hearing me once complain of my dress, got me three suits of clothes, one in black with an Eton jacket for best and a tall hat and the others in tweeds. He gave me shirts, too, and ties, and I began to take great care of my appearance. At our evening parties the girls and young women (Vernon's friends) were kinder to me than ever, and I found myself wondering whether I really looked «nice,» as they said.

  I began to wash and bathe carefully and brush my hair to regulation smoothness (only «cads» used pomatum, Milman said), and when I was asked to recite, I would pout and plead prettily that I did not want to, just in order to be pressed. Sex was awakening in me at this time but was still indeterminate, I imagine. Two motives ruled me for over six months: I was always wondering how I looked and watching to see if people liked me. I used to try to speak with the accent used by the «best people,» and on coming into a room I prepared my entrance. Someone, I think it was Vernon's sweetheart, Monica, said that I had an energetic profile, so I always sought to show my profile. In fact, for some six months, I was more a girl than a boy, with all a girl's self-consciousness and manifold affectations and sentimentalities: I often used to think that no one cared for me really and I would weep over my unloved loneliness. Whenever later as a writer I wished to picture a young girl, I had only to go back to this period in my consciousness in order to attain the peculiar viewpoint of the girl.