by Frank Harris
Strange, the fact that her father had used her killed my liking for Katchen.
But Lisabeth more than filled her place. One morning Lisabeth came in with my coffee. "Oh, I'm glad you've come," I said. "What good wind blew you in?"
"They're all crying," she said. "Father's been raging; but I wouldn't care what he said."
"Suppose I ask you for a kiss," I said, smiling and holding out my hand, "would you be afraid to give it?"
"Not I," she cried, coming to my side at once and giving me not one kiss, but a dozen. "You see," she said, sitting on the edge of my bed, Father has scared them, but he can't scare me and he knows it. He tried to kiss me the other day, but I wouldn't have it."
"Go to mother," I said, "or Kate, but leave me alone."
"There he is now!" she exclaimed, and at that moment the father's voice was heard in peremptory tone.
"Lisabeth, you're wanted."
"I'm not either," she replied cheekily; "you go away!" And to my astonishment he went off grumbling.
Lisabeth appealed to me and came to me in my new lodging, and I gave her dresses and trinkets as soon as I found that she was perfectly free of her father's influence. "I never liked him," she said to me once. "As soon as I saw how he made mother suffer, I was through with him. Kate can stand him, but I can't."
I found Lisabeth an engaging practical mistress. Although so young, she reckoned everything in cash. "I want a purse," she used to say, "and when I've ten thousand marks in it, I'll feel safer." And before she was fifteen she had the ten thousand marks. She was very well made, but had not nearly so pretty a face as her sister Kate; yet, in worldly wisdom, was a hundred years ahead of her.
For some reason or other, I didn't get a place in a week, but I told the woman I had seen one that would do and it would be free in two or three days. I hadn't seen Katchen in the meantime. One afternoon I had been out, and I had given the order to send for my things in the morning to transfer them to my new lodging. At that time it was very difficult to get two rooms and a bathroom without getting a whole apartment, and I had been lucky to find a good one.
In the evening I went out for a walk. I meant to go up Unter den Linden, through the great arch and into the Tiergarten: I went and had my walk and returned. Coming back under the arch, I noticed the light of one of the hotels shining into the darkness and looked away. For some reason or other, a few seconds later, when I was in the middle of the arch and complete darkness, I looked again and saw quite close to me a flash! For a moment I didn't know what it was and stopped. The next second I knew it was a big knife-like a carving knife-and I stepped to the right just in tune, for the man rushed at me and stabbed. My side step was just right, and as his knife came down, I struck him under the jaw as hard as I could and he went down like a log. In a second I had picked up the knife and saw that the man was Katchen's father. I was furious. His face was all distorted by his hatred and by my blow. His nose was bleeding and he looked a sorry sight, but the danger made me furious. I couldn't help it-I drew back and hit him as hard as ever I could, and down he went again. This time he lay still and I had to drag him by the legs out into the light. As he lay there, I kicked him two or three times and thought of calling the police. Thinking of his unhappy wife and children, I thought he had perhaps had punishment enough for once, so I lifted him up and sat him against the arch. In a few minutes he came to himself.
"You damn fool," I said, "you had better get home and behave better to your wife and children. It is lucky for you that I had given the order to leave your house, or I'd break every bone in your body. You murderous cur."
"You go," he muttered, "or I'll kill you, you damned Englishman."
"It's lucky for you," I said, "that I'm going to sleep somewhere else tonight, but the police ought to be notified about you."
He got up on his feet and was evidently pretty shaky. "I'm taking the knife," I said, "just as a memento."
"I sharpened it for you," said he, glaring at me.
As I went down Unter den Linden, it really seemed to me as if the man was mad. There was madness in his distorted face and in his growling voice. "His wife will have to patch up his eye, and his jaw will prevent his eating for a few days," I thought. But as I grew cooler, I suddenly noticed that I had taken the skin off the knuckles of both hands and they were smarting. What insanity! I could still see the woman's face and hear her voice: "I'm so unhappy! No one in the world is so miserable. To have my dear little children ruined by their father!"
In my experience, incest is infinitely commoner among the Germanic peoples than it is among the Latins or Slavs. It is curious that in spite of the poverty and the fact that in some homes large families have to live in one room, incest is almost unknown among the Celts. But then I am of the opinion that the Irish and Scotch and even the Welsh Celts are far more moral in the highest sense of the word than their English neighbors.
Several of my men correspondents in America and in England have asked me to say something about venereal diseases, especially to tell them whether syphilis is curable. I am going to tell elsewhere how I met Ehrlich at the medical congress in London, I think, in 1913. He was the discoverer of salvarsan, or as he called it later "606." I was one of the few who could talk German to him, so we became real pals. Since his death a good deal of doubt has been cast on the efficacy of "606"; but the best knowledge of today justifies me in saying that diligently used and followed by treatment with mercury, it can cure syphilis; cure it so completely that there isn't a trace in the blood, and that even subsequent offspring are perfectly healthy.
Ehrlich, as I shall tell in my portrait of him, was one of the great benefactors of humanity.
Gonorrhea is much more common and much more easily cured: a great deal of rest, and unlimited drinks of strong barley water, and no sign of wine, spirits or beer, should bring about a complete cure in a month, but during the month it is very distressing, very painful, very dirty, and there is always danger of worse developments if it isn't taken seriously.
One little story may find a place here. I remember a young friend of mine who had caught syphilis in New York and who showed me a loaded revolver with which he intended to kill the woman who had infected him. I laughed at him. "The poor girl may not even have known she was ill," I said. "Don't be a fool; take my advice and always blame yourself for the mishaps of life, and no one else."
CHAPTER XIV
The prosecution of my life
In the second volume I promised that I would end this volume with an account of my life up to date, and so now I must tell what has befallen me in this past year, 1926.
I was astonished one day here in Nice to get a citation to appear before a Judge Bensa, to answer a charge of "outrage aux bonnes moeurs"-an outrage on good morals; and the Judge informed me that the outrage in question was the publication of the second volume of My Life.
"Why not the first volume?" I asked.
"Oh, because that was published in Germany; we have nothing to do with it; but this volume was printed in France, so we must take note of it."
"My crime, then," I said, "is that I wished to benefit French printers and to give them work; for if I had published the second volume in Germany or Italy, I should not have been molested."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Have you sold the book in France?" was the next question.
"It was 'privately printed,'" I said, "as you can see. I didn't anticipate any sale in France and therefore I did not trouble to get the book into the shops; but later, here and there, a book-seller whom I know has told me that he has been asked for a copy of My Life by Americans or Englishmen who wished to complete their sets of my books, and so I have given these book-sellers copies to sell, always on condition that they should not be exhibited in the windows or held for ordinary sale. The sale in France has therefore been very restricted: certainly in all, I have not sold fifty copies. It has never been mise en vente (exposed for sale)."
The Judge took note of this, but said it didn't matte
r whether I sold thirty, or three, or three thousand; it was the fact of the sale that was important. I bowed, of course, to this judicial reasoning.
At first my advocate, Maitre Gassin, told me that the case would certainly not come before any court. It was ridiculous, he thought, to make the printing of a book in France a crime, when nothing was done with the book printed in Germany and brought into France by the thousands; but the second or third time I saw him, I found that he regarded the case much more seriously.
"We are not rich in France," he said, "and I felt they would never spend the two or three thousand francs in getting your book translated, but I have seen the authorities, and they tell me that the prosecution has been started from Paris, and the money for the translation of the book has been paid. You have got some enemy or enemies in Paris who are making their influence felt."
I had already obtained from M. Bensa, the judge, a note of the pages which were objected to in the second volume of My Life: some forty in all out of four hundred, and among these marked forty were three or four pages together.
The moment I looked them out, I found that one of them was my description of English gormandizing at the Lord Mayor's banquets in the city of London, and another dealt with the conduct of Sir Robert Fowler, who was twice Lord Mayor, and his gluttony and disgusting behavior at Sir William Marriott's table when Lady Marriott had to leave the room.
Now this episode is merely revolting, and I had put it in simply because I thought it a duty to give as complete a record of my life as I could, and the habit of over-eating and over-drinking reigns in England all through the middle classes. I have told how Prince Edward put a stop to it in the best class by introducing the habit of going at once to coffee and cigarettes after dinner, instead of guzzling bottle after bottle of Burgundy or claret, which was the custom of the upper classes till he came.
Again I found that anything I had told of Prince Edward's liking for naughty stories and for witty limericks had also got me into trouble, and was marked down as offensive. Another passage especially objected to was the account of how Lord Randolph Churchill became infected with disease.
From these indications it seemed to me that the persecution came from the English Foreign Office; and this inference I have since found to be correct.
The publicity given by the prosecution will certainly add to the sale of the book, which accordingly is now about to appear in several other European languages.
Yet the prosecution was annoying if only for the cost; and just because the accusation seemed ridiculous, I became anxious. I had once tasted prison through contempt of the English Judge Horridge by commenting on the conduct of a case which never came to trial, just because the whole thing was ridiculous. I was punished without a shadow of reason. Now I was to be punished again, just for telling some truths about England and Englishmen in a foreign country. The case, I am told, won't come on for some months, but I dread it most because of the unreason in the charge.
Here for example is a book, La Garconne of Marguerite, which tells of love between men and boys, and girls with girls, yet this book has sold five hundred thousand copies in France, and the author has not been brought before any court except the court of the Legion of Honor. Verlaine, too, the great poet, has given to the world posthumously a book of poems adorned with the lewdest illustrations, and all singing the praise of unnatural vices.
Finally, I have before me a copy of a publisher's circular, issued expressly as from the Libraire du Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, with the sanction therefore of the Office of Foreign Affairs in Paris, wherein I find exposed for sale at low prices Le Marquis de Sade, Gamiani, Les Memoires de Suzon in French, and The Pearl in English-all frankly pornographic works.
My offense is after all nothing but the description of the normal love of man for woman; and I am to be punished for twenty pages in 400 and for selling thirty or forty volumes in France, every one of which, I believe, has been sold to Englishmen or Americans. My crime is that I have given work to French printers rather than to German or Italian printers. Yet my advocate, Maitre Gassin, tells me that the matter is serious and being pursued with fiendish earnestness.
One fact I must record here. As soon as news of my prosecution got into the press, all the French writers whom I know, notably Barbusse, Morand, Willy Breal, Davray, De Richter, Maurevert, and others, wrote in my favor, expressing their contempt for such persecution. Every French author of note appears to be on my side and all agree with the great phrase of Vauvenargues: "Ce qui n'offense pas la societe, n'est pas du ressort de la justice" (That which does not offend society, has nothing to do with justice).
But no English or American writer has taken up the cudgels for me or written one word in my defense. Far from that, not a single English or American writer has even considered the book fairly or tried to see any merit in it, and while English journals have usually taken the indecency for admitted, American journals, such as the New York World and the Nation, have covered me with cheap insults. All this, of course, was to be expected. But I may be permitted to believe that the genial conduct of the French writers shows a higher level of understanding and a nobler humanity.
A previous experience substantiates this belief. I was in Paris when Zola published his Nona, which described the life of a courtesan in Paris. The book came as a shock to every reader in the city. Not only did it sell over fifty thousand copies in the first week, but the day after it appeared, everyone who counted had read it and could talk of nothing else.
"This is the limit" was the one remark that went uncontradicted. Not only was the book outspoken, but it was indubitably salacious and unspeakably suggestive and provocative. Serious people at once began to talk of prosecution. And with this in mind I hurried to call on Daudet, Dumas fils and others.
Daudet received me with his usual kindness.
"I regret the book," he said. "I am sorry that Zola wrote it; it will give French literature a worse name than it has already in Europe, and, really, the stigma will be deserved. Zola has gone too far this time. I have only glanced at the book, but there are pages in it that are more provocative than the youthful indiscretions of Mirabeau or Gustave Droz."
"Then you would be in favor of prosecution?" I asked.
"Of course not," Daudet cried. "How can you imagine such a thing? Zola is a great writer. He must be allowed license that one would never accord to an ordinary penman. There will be no prosecution. We would all unite against that at once. No ordinary magistrate could sit in judgment on Emile Zola. But I am sorry he published the book. It can only damage his reputation."
"Yet everybody says that it will add greatly to his bank balance," I ventured.
Daudet held up his hands.
"Zola assuredly did not care for that aspect of it," he replied.
Dumas and the others agreed with Daudet, and Nana was left unpursued.
What will be the outcome of the prosecution of my book, I am unable even to guess. I can only abide the issue. Meanwhile I often catch myself reciting what Matthew Arnold called My Last Word:
Let the long contention cease,
Geese are swans and swans are geese;
Let them have it as they will
Thou are tired, best be still.
They out-talked thee, jeered thee, cursed thee, Better men fared thus before thee Fired their ringing shot and passed Hotly charged, though broke at last.
Charge once more and then be dumb;
Let the victors when they come,
When the forts of folly fall
Find thy body by the wall.
Let me now for a moment talk of old age again. I said in my second volume that old age had little to recommend it, but I find a good many authorities against me on the matter.
And many friends have reproached me for the sadness of the last chapter in my previous volume, which I wrote when I was about seventy. A dozen, at least, have written to me, asking me whether there were no consolations peculiar to old age. There may be many, but
not for the man who after seventy still feels young. Fortenelle at the age of ninety-five, was asked which were the twenty years of his life that he regretted the most; he replied that he regretted none of them, but that nevertheless the period he would wish to relive, the period in which he had been happiest, was from fifty-five to seventy-five. "At fifty-five," he said, "one's fortune is made; one's reputation established; one is well considered by the many, honored perhaps by the few. Moreover, one sees things as they are; most of one's passions are cooled and calmed; one has reached the goal of one's career; done what one could for society; and one has then fewer enemies, or perhaps one should say fewer envious people, because one's merit is generally recognized."
Buff on, f too, at seventy years of age, declares that the philosopher can only regard old age as a foolish prejudice; and he goes on to paint a picture of senile pleasures.
"Every day," he says, "that I get up in good health, have I not the full enjoyment of the day as much as ever I had? If I order my appetites, my desires, my hopes according to the dictates of wisdom and reason, am I not as happy as I ever could have been; and the thought of the past and its pleasures, which seem to give some regrets to old fools, affords me, on the contrary a joyful memory of charming pictures, precious recollections of pleasurable incidents; and these pictures and memories are free of taint and perfectly pure and bring to the soul only an agreeable emotion. The restlessness, the disappointments, the mistakes which accompany the pleasures of youth have all disappeared in age, and every regret should disappear with them, for what is regret, after all, but the last quiver of that foolish personal vanity which refuses to grow old."
There is a good deal of truth in all this, but not, as I say about myself, for the man who after seventy still feels young. To him, old age is like poverty; its blessings must be sought in their rarity. Bernard Shaw writes me that he is "a ruin and that all the pre-seventy in him is dead." All the pre-seventy and the pre-fifty are nearly as much alive in me as they were twenty years ago. The keenest regret I have is that I haven't money enough to go around the world for the third time and see it all again and tell of the changes which fifty years have shown in it. I should have thought some paper would be willing to pay for my account of this journey, but no one offers to, and my autobiography and my works of the last four or five years have brought me in less than any single year's work of my whole life.
