The Daily Alaska empire., 1931-08-27
FRANK HARRIS, !. NOTED AUTHOR PASSES AWAY
Former Editor of Pearson s Magazine Dies in
 France
Ccontinued rom rage oneo

, it's 10 weeks. Pressed for none I-he was always in need of funds
 he came to New York to sell SC
 ries of sensational letters and per , lhaps to make a lecture tour. Bu
 or advice of certain lawyer frien,
 that he might become involves
 with the federal authorities owe , | the. smuggling of his banned M.
 Life and Loves" he went back t,
 the Riviera.
 Runs Away Running away to New York a ,the age of IS from Galway, Ireland where he was born February IA 1856 (some biographies say 1854 Frank Harris worked on the foun' dation of the Brooklyn bridge be. ] lfore he went West to become a COW boy, then student at the Univer. sity of Kansas.
 He was admitted to the bar al Lawrence, Kans., in 1875, but aban- doned his incipient law career two years later and returned to Flu rope for further education. There he met Carlyle who turned what ever talents he had toward writ ing.
 His last residence in America was during his editorship of Pearso-.s lraagazine, which he sold in 1922 to go to Nice to write the confessions !of his autobiography.
 He already had made a reputa- ton as a rebel, iconoclast and a stormy petrel of Anglo American l literary circles During the war his : magazine was closely watched by the post office authorities and at least one edition was denied the mailing privileges.
 2 But creditors of all kinds kept him unhappy while in America un- til he finally retired to France. IT the last years he had little left but his momentoes and gifts of a life time, immensely valuable to col
 
 lectors.
 Eg0tistical, Vain
 The gaunt, hagard Irishman, ego tistical, vain, opinionated, but ,withal loving, refused to part with Fany of those gifts of Emerson lWhistler, Thoreau, Hardy and oth- CT. literary and artistic celebrities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
 ! Yet he wrote portraits of the great for Riviera periodical which paid him, spasmodically, $6 thou ] sand words This man, who had been friend of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, admitted 4 ithat he had been financially ruin- ed by the publication of My Life and Loves but he blamed the lt"dumbness of humanity" rather lthan himself for his poverty. As a final irony he is likely to be remembered as the author ol that slyly circulated Life" rather than for his Life of Oscar Wilde and "The Man Shakespeare, which are, perhaps, his greatest works from a literary viewpoint. His wife was Titan-hairec
 woman, Helen O'Hara of Dublin
 whom he met in Paris art gal lery.
 II Literary Prospector Frank Harris was literary pros
 pector, whose delight was to fine evidence of art and genius in the lworks of others Thus he was ont
 ot those who first acclaimed Shaw : and he helped develop many writ. CTS in the half century of his ac- 5 tivity.
 In his late years he pointed to ,, ,ibookcases near his bed. It contained ! first editions, signed by leading ! writers of his own lifetime; sheei after sheet from the pen of Oscal Wilde, cases of letters from othel ' contemporaries, sketches and pic. lures by artists he had known. $ 1T could live much better if sold them he said. But though lI'm hard boiled, I'd die withou
 them."
 . At the foot of the bed was { : signed photograph of an aristocrat
 lie appearing young man. a They won't recognize him fol : another 50 years,' Harris said. "Bu n he was a great artist--one of th' . greatest It was picture of Davic y Graham Phillips.
 That little blue letter case zoe a when I go," he continued That
 my private dossier on Wilde an, Lord Alfred Douglas. It's better t, , haye it destroyed than to star
 anything at this late date"
 His mother had died in his in
 fancy, but this son of a Britisl
 naval officer of Welsh blood, re v ceived good schooling until h.
 won 8 Cambridge University prize ? As he was too young to go to Cam V bridge. the judges gave the prize t, if an older boy and awarded Harri | second money. He was so infuri ,e ated he took $50 and shipped steer
 age to America. T. < He must have been hard, ' youngster, for here his first jol ~ lxxro oc L..