My Life and Loves (Literary Classics)

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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.

There I spent the next five years, which passed leaving a blank. I learned nothing in those years except how to play "tig", "hide and seek", "footer" and ball. I was merely a healthy, strong, little animal without an ache or pain or trace of thought. After the midday meal I used to join Bob in the wagon and learn some Spanish words or phrases from him or question him about his knowledge of cattle. In the first week we became great friends: I found to my amusement that Bob was just as voluble in Spanish as he was tongue-tied in English, and his command of Spanish oaths, objurgations and indecencies was astounding. Bob despised all things American with an unimaginable ferocity and this interested me by its apparent unreason.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 the College.

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 first round, so to speak, with American life was over. What I had learned in it remains with me still. No people is so kind to children and no life so easy for the handworkers; the hewers of wood and drawers of water are better off in the United States than anywhere else on earth. To this one class and it is by far the most numerous class, the American democracy more than fulfills its promises. It levels up the lowest in a most surprising way. I believed then with all my heart what so many believe today, that all deductions made, it was on the whole, the best civilization yet known among men. The pain had been appalling but it was slowly diminishing and I was resolved not to give in. "Could I get a day off?" I asked Anderson: he nodded, "of course: you're the best in the shift, the best I've ever seen, a great little pony." 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 that they are not ​nearly so combative or perhaps I should say, so brutal, as the English. I could do nothing but pretend to sympathize and draw him out and this I easily accomplished, for Señor Arriga loved to boast of his name and position ​in Mexico and his conquests. "Ah, you should have seen her as I led her in the baile (dance)—an angel!" and he kissed his fingers gallantly.

From 1916 to 1922 he edited the U.S. edition of Pearson's Magazine, a popular monthly which combined short story fiction with socialist-tinted features on contemporary news topics. One issue of the publication was banned from the mails by Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson during the period of American participation in the Great War. [2] Despite this Harris managed to navigate the delicate situation which faced the left-wing press and to keep Pearson's Magazine functioning and solvent during the war years. In early June, that year, three strangers came to the Hotel, all cattlemen I was told, but of a new sort: Reece and Dell and Ford, the "Boss", as he was called. Reece was a tall dark Englishman or rather Welshman, always dressed in brown leather riding boots, Bedford Cord breeches and dark tweed cutaway coat: he looked a prosperous gentleman farmer; Dell was almost a copy of him in clothes, about middle height and sturdier—in fact an ordinary Englishman. The Boss was fully six feet, taller even than Reece with a hatchet-thin, bronzed face and eagle profile—evidently a Western cattle-man from head to foot. The headwaiter told me about them and as ​soon as I saw them I had them transferred to a shady-cool table and saw that they were well waited on. In the crime comedy Pulp, Michael Caine plays a novelist who someone compares to Frank Harris, in which Caine glibly replies, "Frank was a novice."

I record this incident at length, because it stands alone in my memory, and because it proves that sex-feeling may show itself in early childhood. 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".He appears in the first episode of the 2001 miniseries The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells, rejecting a story from Wells for being too long and too preposterous.

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 prettier 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. Why do you smile?" he asked. "Because, sir, pay like water tends to find its level!" "What the devil d'ye mean by its level?" "The level," I went on, "is surely the market price; sooner or later it'll rise towards that and I can wait." His keen grey eyes suddenly bored into me. "I begin to think you're much older, than you look, as my nephew here tells me," he said. "Put yourself down at a hundred a month for the present and in a little while we'll perhaps find the 'level,'" and he smiled. I thanked him and went out to my work. a b c d e f g h i j "Frank Harris is Dead in France: Great Author Succumbs at 75; Had Just Completed a Biography of Shaw", The Revolutionary Age [New York], vol. 2, no. 40 (5 Sept.. 1931), pp. 1, 3. But parting with the Mulligans was really painful: Mrs. Mulligan was a dear, kind woman who would have mothered the whole race if she could; one of those sweet Irish women whose unselfish deeds and thoughts are the flowers of our sordid human life. Her husband too was not unworthy of her; very simple and straight and hard-working, without a mean thought in him, a natural prey to good fellowship and songs and poteen.

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In childhood girls are far more precocious; but those 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".