Frank Harris
My Life and Loves, v1 Chapter XIII. New Experiences: Emerson, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte SMITH MET ME at the station. He was thinner than ever and the wretched little cough shook him very often in spite of some lozenges that the doctor had given him to suck. I began to be alarmed about him, and I soon came to the belief that the damp climate of the Quaker City was worse for him than the thin, dry Kansas air.
But he believed in his doctors! He boarded with a pleasant Puritan family in whose house he had also got me a room, and at once we resumed the old life. But now I kept constant watch on him and insisted on rigorous self-restraint, tying up his unruly organ every night carefully with thread, which was still more efficient (and painful) than the whipcord. But now he didn't improve quickly: it was a month before I could find any of the old vigor in him; but soon afterwards the cough diminished and he began to be his bright self again. One of our first evenings I described to him the Bradlaugh lecture in much the same terms I have used in this narrative. Smith asked: «Why don't you write it? You ought to: the Press would take it.
You've given me an extraordinary, life-like portrait of a great man, blind, so to speak, in one eye, a sort of Cyclops. If he had been a Communist, how much greater he'd have been.» I ventured to disagree and we were soon at it hammer and tongs. I wanted to see both principles realized in life, individualism and socialism, the centrifugal as well as the centripetal force, and was convinced that the problem was how to bring these opposites to a balance which would ensure an approximation of justice and make for the happiness of all.
Smith, on the other hand, argued at first as an out-and-out Communist and follower of Marx, but he was too fair minded to shut his eyes for long to the obvious. Soon he began congratulating me on my insight, declaring I had written a new chapter in economics. His conversion made me feel that I was at long last his equal as a thinker. In any field where his scholarship didn't give him too great an advantage, I was no longer a pupil but an equal, and his quick recognition of the fact increased, I believe, our mutual affection.
Though infinitely better read, he put me forward in every company with the rarest generosity, asserting that I had discovered new laws in sociology. For months we lived very happily together, but his Hegelianism defied all my attacks: it corresponded too intimately with the profound idealism of his own character. As soon as I had written out the Bradlaugh story, Smith took me down to the Press office and introduced me to the chief editor, a Captain Forney: indeed, the paper then was usually called «Forney's Press,» though already some spoke of it as the Philadelphia Press. Forney liked my portrait of Bradlaugh and engaged me as a reporter on the staff and occasional descriptive writer at fifty dollars a week, which enabled me to save all the money coming to me from Lawrence. One day Smith talked to me of Emerson and confessed he had got an introduction to him and had sent it on to the philosopher with a request for an interview. He had wished me to accompany him to Concord. I consented, but without any enthusiasm: Emerson was then an unknown name to me.
Smith read me some of his poetry and praised it highly, though I could get little or nothing out of it. When young men now show me a similar indifference, my own experience makes it easy for me to excuse them.
They know not what they do! is the explanation and excuse for all of us. One bright fall day Smith and I went over to Concord and next day visited Emerson. He received us in the most pleasant, courteous way, made us sit, and composed himself to listen. Smith went off at score, telling him how greatly he had influenced his life and helped him with brave encouragement. The old man smiled benignantly and nodded his head, ejaculating from time to time, «Yes, yes!» Gradually Smith warmed to his work and wanted to know why Emerson had never expressed his views on sociology or on the relations between capital and labor. Once or twice the old gentleman cupped his ear with his hand, but all he said was, «Yes, yes!» or «I think so,» with the same benevolent smile. I guessed at once that he was deaf, but Smith had no inkling of the fact, for he went on probing, probing, while Emerson answered pleasant nothings quite irrelevantly. I studied the great man as closely as I could. He looked about five feet nine or ten in height, very thin, attenuated even, and very scrupulously dressed.
His head was narrow, though long, his face bony; a long, high, somewhat beaked nose was the feature of his countenance. A good conceit of himself, I concluded, and considerable will power, for the chin was well-defined and large. But I got nothing more than this; and from his clear, steadfast grey eyes I got an intense impression of kindness and good will, and-why shouldn't I say it?-of sweetness even, as of a soul lifted high above earth's cares and stragglings. «A nice old fellow,» I told myself, «but deaf as a post.» Many years later his deafness became to me the symbol and explanation of his genius. He had always lived «the life removed» and kept himself unspotted from the world: that explains both his narrowness of sympathy and the height to which he grew! His narrow, pleasantly smiling face comes back to me whenever I hear his name mentioned.
But at the time I was indignant with his deafness and out of temper with Smith because he didn't notice it and seemed somehow to make himself cheap. When we went away, I cried: «The old fool is as deaf as a post!» «Ah, that was the explanation then of his stereotyped smile and peculiar answers,» cried Smith. «How did you divine it?» «He put his hand to his ear more than once,» I replied. «So he did,» Smith exclaimed. «How foolish of me not to have drawn the obvious inference!» It was in this fall, I believe, that the Gregorys went off to Colorado. I felt the loss of Kate a good deal at first, but she had made no deep impression on my mind, and the new life in Philadelphia and my journalistic work left me but little time for regrets; and as she never wrote to me, following doubtless her mother's advice, she soon drifted out of my memory. Moreover, Lily was quite as interesting a lover and Lily too had begun to pall on me. The truth is, the fever of desire in youth is a passing malady that intimacy quickly cures. Besides, I was already in pursuit of a girl in Philadelphia who kept me a long time at arm's length, and when she yielded I found her figure commonplace and her sex so large and loose that she deserves no place in this chronicle.
She was modest, if you please, and no wonder. I have always since thought that modesty is the proper fig leaf of ugliness. In the spring of this year, 1875,1 had to return to Lawrence on business connected with my boardings. In several cases the owners of the lots refused to allow me to keep up the boardings unless they had a reasonable share in the profits. Finally I called them all together and came to an amicable agreement to divide twenty-five per cent of my profit among them, year by year. I had also to go through my examination and get admitted to the bar. I had already taken out my first naturalization papers and Judge Bassett of the district court appointed the lawyers Barker and Hutchings to examine me. The examination was a mere form. They each asked me three simple questions, I answered them, and we adjourned to the Eldridge House for supper and they drank my health in champagne. I was notified by Judge Bassett that I had passed the examination and told to present myself for admission on the twenty-fifth of June, I think, 1875. To my surprise, the court was half full. Judge Stephens even was present, whom I had never seen in court before. About eleven the judge informed the audience that I had passed a satisfactory examination and had taken out my first papers in due form, and unless some lawyer wished first to put questions to me to test my capacity, he proposed to call me within the bar. To my astonishment, Judge Stephens rose. «With the permission of the court,» he said, «I'd like to put some questions to this candidate who comes to us with high university commendation.» (No one had heard of my expulsion, though he knew of it.) He then began a series of questions which soon plumbed the depths of my abysmal ignorance. I didn't know what an action of account was at old English common law: I don't know now, nor do I want to. I had read Blackstone carefully and a book on Roman law, Chitty on evidence, too, and someone on contracts-half a dozen books, and that was all. For the first two hours Judge Stephens just exposed my ignorance: it was a very warm morning and my conceit was rubbed raw when Judge Bassett proposed an adjournment for dinner. Stephens consented and we all rose. To my surprise Barker and Hutchings and half a dozen other lawyers came round to encourage me. «Stephens is just showing off,» said Hutchings. «I myself couldn't have answered half his questions!»