Chapter I.

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 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.

“Tell what?” she asked.

“There was a man in your bed”, I replied, “last night.”

“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 had sense enough to exploit the

sugar mine.

When I was between four and five, I was sent with Annie to a girl’s

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

round 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, and 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 and 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 head: 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 gave 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 proves that sex-feeling may show 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 13 or 14 and Wilde to my amazement set it as late as 16. 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 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!”

“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 headmistress, 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 on to 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 the College.

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.

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 skullcap during the Service, which filled me with

shame and made me hate him. There is a period in life when every thing

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 the pudenda of men and women. I devoured all the volumes and

bits of knowledge from them stuck to me for many a year. But 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, Annie four years my

senior, 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, for 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 redheaded 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

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.

An examination came and I was 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 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.

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.”

I was amazed at his outspokenness; Mabel flushed crimson and I hastened

to add:

“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.”

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:

“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 realised from this little discussion that most men’s sisters were just

as precocious as mine and just as likely to act as teachers in the

matter 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 a 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 and when he dived in, I went down the steps and 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 round!” 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 and 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, and 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 soon 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, and 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 every one 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; but 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 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

Pounds 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 to 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 much 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 wouldn’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 her 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 more, but

in our hearts we knew he was telling 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 feared him and

disliked him ever since I saw him once come aboard drunk.

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.”

“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

Vernon 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 bulwarks 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, though 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 parlour; 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 alright, 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-experiences with

Strangways and Howard that I first began 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 trowsers frayed or repaired.

Was it Milman’s talk that made me self-conscious or my sex-awakening

through Howard and Strangways? T 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; for 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 view-point of the girl.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LIFE IN AN

ENGLISH GRAMMAR SCHOOL.