I got to
definite knowledge pretty early. By the time I was eleven or twelve."
"Normally?"
"What is normally? Decently, anyhow. Here again I may be forgetting much
secret and shameful curiosity. I got my ideas into definite form out of
a little straightforward physiological teaching and some dissecting of
rats and mice. My schoolmaster was a capable sane man in advance of
his times and my people believed in him. I think much of this distorted
perverse stuff that grows up in people's minds about sex and develops
into evil vices and still more evil habits, is due to the mystery we
make about these things."
"Not entirely," said the doctor.
"Largely. What child under a modern upbringing ever goes through the
stuffy horrors described in James Joyce's PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A
YOUNG MAN."
"I've not read it."
"A picture of the Catholic atmosphere; a young soul shut up in darkness
and ignorance to accumulate filth. In the name of purity and decency and
under threats of hell fire."
"Horrible!"
"Quite. A study of intolerable tensions, the tensions that make young
people write unclean words in secret places."
"Yes, we certainly ventilate and sanitate in those matters nowadays.
Where nothing is concealed, nothing can explode."
"On the whole I came up to adolescence pretty straight and clean," said
Sir Richmond.
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