My Life and Loves (Literary Classics)

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In 1878, in Brighton, he married Florence Ruth Adams, who died the following year. [ citation needed] Return to Europe [ edit ] Harris caricatured by OWL in Vanity Fair, 1913 Next day I found out that the Vidals had come from Spain and were on their way to their hacienda near Chihuahua in Northern Mexico. They meant to rest in Chicago for three or four days because Señora Vidal had heart trouble and couldn't stand much fatigue. I discovered besides that Señor Arriga was either courting his cousin or betrothed to her and at once I sought to make myself agreeable to the man. Señor Arriga was a fine billiard player and I took the nearest way to his heart by reserving for him the best table, getting him a fair opponent and complimenting him upon his skill. The next day Arriga opened his heart to me: "What is there to do in this dull hole? Did I know of any amusement? Any pretty women?" Next night I waited till the coast was clear and then hurried to the door. As soon as we were alone in the little parlor and I had kissed her, I said, "Jessie, I want you to undress. I'm sure your figure is lovely, but I want to know it".

In Mexico we never talk of members of our family," he warned: "The Señorita is pretty, of course, but very young; she has not the charm of experience, the caress of—I know so little American, I find it difficult to explain."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. 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. 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 moustache. 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 then no inkling of modern journalism.

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 he 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. He appears as a close friend of Oscar Wilde in the award-winning play by Moisés Kaufman: Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. This article may contain irrelevant references to popular culture. Please remove the content or add citations to reliable and independent sources. ( December 2018) Of course I know the publication of such a book will at once justify the worst that my enemies have said about me. For forty years now I have championed nearly all the unpopular causes, and have thus made many enemies; now they will all be able to gratify their malice while taking credit for prevision. In itself the book is sure to disgust the "unco guid" and the mediocrities of every kind who have always been unfriendly to me. I have no doubt too, that many sincere lovers of literature who would be willing to accept such license as ordinary French writers use, will condemn me for going beyond this limit. Yet ​there are many reasons why I should use perfect freedom in this last book.It was the second or third disappointment of my life the others being the conviction of my personal ugliness and the fact that I should always be too short and small to be a great fighter or athlete. In time, deeper knowledge made me modify this opinion more and more radically. Five years later I was to see Walt Whitman, the noblest of all Americans, living in utter poverty at Camden, dependent upon English admirers for a change of clothes or a sufficiency of food, and Poe had suffered in the same way. I recalled the fact that Napoleon tells how he was in love before he was five years old with a school-mate 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!"

Bit by bit the conviction was forced in upon me that if the American democracy does much to level up the lowest class, it is still more successful in levelling down the highest and best. No land on earth is so friendly to the poor illiterate toilers, no land so contemptuous-cold to the thinkers and artists, the guides of humanity. What help is there here for men of letters and artists, for the seers and prophets? Such guides are not wanted by the idle rich and are ignored by the masses, and after all the welfare of the head is more important even than that of the body and feet. In the ITV series Mr Selfridge (2013), Samuel West plays a newspaper editor and publisher called Frank Edwards, a character based on Frank Harris. [12]Harris first came to general notice as the editor of a series of London publications, including the Evening News, the Fortnightly Review and the Saturday Review, the last-named being the high point of his journalistic career, with H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw as regular contributors. [3] 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". Everything will be given you at the train," I said, "but I have these for you. Please accept them!" and I handed her three splendid red rosebuds, prettily tied up with maiden hair fern.

Nathan, George Jean (May 1910). "The Morals of the Drama Ladies". The Smart Set. p. 146 . Retrieved 20 June 2023. {{ cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: location ( link) I had seen before that Mabel was pretty: I realised 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: Curiously enough, I soon noticed that the "rake-off" had had the secondary result of giving us an inferior quality of meat; whenever the butcher was left with a roast he could not sell, he used to send it to us ​confident that Payne wouldn't quarrel about it. The negro cook declared that the meat now was far better; all that could be desired in fact, and our customers too were not slow to show their appreciation. French literature is there to give the cue and inspiration: it is the freest of all in discussing matters of sex and chiefly by reason of its constant preoccupation with all that pertains to passion and desire, it has become the world literature to men of all races. 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.It was the evening of a regatta at Kingston. 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".