Becoming less violently emphatic, Frank Harris wondered if Mr. Jekyll would be willing to furnish a copy of the Herbert Spencer letter. I said I had no idea whether he would, but that I was willing to sound him. And I pointed out again that at the time when Mr. Jekyll showed me the letter he really thought more of Herbert Spencer's sending him a private and courteous reply than of the importance of the mistake that he had discovered.
"Just like an Englishman," said Frank Harris, "putting nice manners and all its bloody ritual above veracity and logic." [Later I wrote to Mr. Jekyll, stating Frank Harris's request and sending him some copies of Pearson's. But he gave a flat refusal and said that although Frank Harris's writings were "very clever," I should beware of him because he was insincere and pro-German!]
I finished telling all I could about my reading and writing, and then got my portfolio and showed Harris the little volume of my Songs of Jamaica that was published in 1912; also a bulky scrapbook full of reviews from London and Manchester, Glasgow, Dublin and Cardiff, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland, Sierra Leone, Lagos, and even Capetown—from all over the English-language world, excepting America.
Frank Harris opened the book and read the dedication, which was for Governor Olivier of Jamaica [now Lord Olivier], and exclaimed: "Sydney Olivier! Oh yes, he did become governor of some colony. I knew him quite well—one of the most brilliant and practical of the Fabians. Was he interested in you?" I said that Governor Olivier had become interested in my verse through Mr. Jekyll, and had accepted the dedication.
My scrapbook interested Frank Harris. It was crowded with the souvenirs of adolescence: pictures of famous literati cut from English and American magazines, unusual newspaper items, letters from Mr. Jekyll about my verse.... He came upon a cutting from T.P.'s Weekly with a prize poem of mine. This prompted him to say that he was well acquainted with T.P. O'Connor, whom he described as a successful Irishman whom the English liked because he never possessed an idea.
There was also a letter from Lord Stamfordham, the private secretary of King George, to Mr. Jekyll about my book. Mr. Jekyll and Lord Stamfordham had been friends from their youth and Mr. Jekyll had told me that he was trying to get a copy of Songs of Jamaica on the King's table. He said that even though the book was not read, if it were mentioned in a London drawing-room of consequence and reviewed by society, it might have a sale as a curiosity!
With his thumb on Lord Stamfordham's letter, Frank Harris said: "That's big."
"What's big?" I asked.
"Bigge," said Frank Harris, spelling the name. "That's Stamfordham's family name. I knew him quite well when he was just Bigge and secretary to Queen Victoria. I suppose he was not smart enough for King Edward, but he came back with King George, naturally. And did he do anything for your book?" I said that I didn't think so. "I am sure it would not have done you any good even if your poems had been put on the King's table," said Frank Harris. "A literary talent is not like that of a prima donna. Yet that Mr. Jekyll friend of yours is a remarkable person in a way. A man that it must have been a great experience to know. I can trace his influence in your poetry. Good, but you must go beyond that, my lad. I should have liked to match my intellect against his. I had also a great teacher-friend in Byron Smith." And Frank Harris's noble roar was modulated by a fine note of tenderness as he spoke a little about the teacher of his American university days. It interested him that I also had gone to school in Kansas.
And now he began to talk of his beginnings in Kansas, monologuing, launching out like a perfect little boat riding the great waves. Frank Harris thundered and roared and boomed and trumpeted, striding across the floor and creating action to match the color and vigor of his outpouring. Like a god laying down the commandments of literature and life he talked. Like a wizard he evoked the notable contemporary figures of the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century and paraded them in all their accoutrements, articulate, gesturing and posturing like the personages of Madame Tussaud's.