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. 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 give 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 shows that sex feeling may manifest 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 thirteen or fourteen and Wilde to my amazement set it as late as sixteen. 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 schoolmate 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 head-mistress, 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 onto 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 college.
There I spent the next five years, which passed leaving a blank.
I learned nothing in those years except how to play «tag,» «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 skull-cap during the service, which filled me with shame and made me hate him. There is a period in life when everything 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 pudenda of men and women. I devoured all the volumes, and bits of knowledge from them stuck to me for many a year. 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, and Annie, 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. 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 red-haired 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 be 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 the 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.
