05 - Section 05. Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland.

05 - Section 05. Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland.  
This book has been notorious since it first appeared and had been banned several times and in several countries. It is a fictional work that details the adventures of an orphaned girl who ends up working in a brothel in London. Early on she falls in love with a young man named Charles, but only to end up being separated from him. She then recounts her experiences as a prostitute who, in spite of her circumstances, manages to retain her humanity and undying faith in true love.  
⚠️If you find insult/get offended or are against extreme descriptions of sexual acts PUT THE BOOK DOWN⚠️

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section five of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Memoirs of a
Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland letter the first part five.
And why should I here suppress the delight I received

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from this amiable creature in remarking each artless look, each
motion of pure undissembled nature, betrayed by his wanton eyes,
or showing transparently the glow and suffusion of blood through
his fresh, clear skin, whilst even his sturdy, rustic pressures
wanted not their peculiar charm. Oh, but say you, this

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was a young fellow of too low a rank of
life to deserve so great a display. May be so,
But was my condition strictly considered one jot more exalted?
Or had I really been much above him? Did not
his capacity of giving such exquisite pleasure sufficiently raise and
ennoble him to me? At least? Let who would for

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me cherish respect and reward the painters, the statuaries, the musicians,
arts in proportion to delight taken in them. But at
my age and with my taste for pleasure, a taste
strongly constitutional to me, the talent of pleasing with which
nature has endowed a handsome person formed to me the

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greatest of all merits, compared to which the vulgar prejudices
in favor of titles, dignities, honors, and the like held
a very low rank. Indeed, nor perhaps would the beauties
of the body be so much affected to be held cheap,
were they in their nature to be bought and delivered.

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But for me, whose natural philosophy all resided in the
favorite center of sense, and who was ruled by its
powerful in instinct in taking pleasure by its right handle,
I could scarce have made a choice more to my purpose.
Mister H's loftier qualifications of birth, fortune, and sense laid
me under a sort of subjection and constraint that were

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far from making harmony in the concert of love. Nor
had he perhaps thought me worth softening that superiority too.
But with this lad I was more on that level
which love delights in. We may say what we please,
But those we can be the easiest and freest with,
are ever those we like, not to say, love the best.

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With this stripling, all whose art of love was the
action of it, I could, without check or of awe
or restraint give a loose to joy, and execute every
scheme of dalliance my fond fancy might put me to,
in which he was, in every sense a most exquisite companion.
And now my great pleasure lay in humoring all the petulance,

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all the wanton frolic of a raw novice just flashed
and keen on the burning scent of his game, but
unbroken to the sport, and to carry on the figure
who could better tread the wood than he, or stand
fairer for the heart of the hunt. He advanced then
to my bedside, and whilst he faltered out his message,

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I could observe his color rise, and his eyes lightened
with joy in seeing me in a situation as favorable
to his loosest wishes, as if he had bespoke the play.
I smiled and put out my hand towards him, which
he kneeled down to a politeness taught him by love alone,
that great master of it, and greedily kissed. After exchanging

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a few confused questions and answers, I asked him if
he would come to bed to me for the little
time I could venture to detain him. This was just
asking a person dying with him hunger to feast upon
the dish on earth the most to his palate. Accordingly,
without further reflection, his clothes were off in an instant, when,

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blushing still more at his new liberty, he got under
the bedclothes I held up to receive him, and was
now in bed with a woman for the first time
in his life. Here began the usual tender preliminaries, as delicious,
perhaps as the crowning act of enjoyment itself, which they

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often beget. An impatience of then makes pleasure destructive of
itself by hurrying on the final period and closing that
scene of place in which the actors are generally too
well pleased with their parts not to wish them an
eternity of duration. When he had sufficiently graduated our advances
towards the main point by toying, kissing, clipping, feeling my

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breasts now round and plump, feeling that part of me
I might call a furnace mouth from the prodigious, intense
heat his fiery touches had rekindled. There, my young sportsman,
emboldened by every freedom he could wish, wantonly takes my
hand and carries it to that enormous machine of his

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that stood with a stiffness, a hardness, an upward bent
of erection, and which, together with its bottom dependence the
inestimable bulge of ladies jewels, formed a grand show out
of goods. Indeed, then its dimensions, mocking either grasp or span,

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almost renewed my terrors. I could not conceive how or
by what means I could take or put such a
bulk out of sight. I stroked it gently, on which
the mutinous rogue seemed to swell and gather a new
degree of fierceness and insolence, so that, finding it grew
not to be trifled with any longer. I prepared for

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rubbers in good earnest slipping then a pillow under me,
that I might give him the fairest play. I guided
officiously with my hands this furious battering ram, whose ruby head,
presenting nearest the resemblance of a heart, I applied to
its proper mark, which lay as finely elevated as we

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could wish, my hips being borne up, and my thighs
at their utmost extension. The gloomy warmth that shot from
it made him feel that he was at the mouth
of the indraught and driving forwright, the powerfully divided lips
of that pleasure thirsty channel received him. He hesitated a little,

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then settled well in the passage. He makes his way
up the straits of it with a difficulty, nothing more
than pleasing, widening as he went, so as to distend
and smooth each soft furrow, Our pleasure increasing deliciously in proportion,
as our points of mutual touch increased. In that so

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vital part of me in which I had now taken
him all in, driven and completely sheathed, and which crammed
as it was stretched splitting ripe, gave it so gratefully
straightened accommodation, so strict a fold, a suction so fierce
that gave and took unutterable delight. We had now reached

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the closest point of union. But when he beckoned to
command the fiercer, as if I had been actuated by
a fear of losing him. In the height of my fury,
I twisted my legs round his naked loins, the flesh
of which, so firm, so springy to the touch, quivered
again under the pressure. And now I had him every

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way encircled and begirt and having drawn him home to me,
I kept him fast there, as if I had sought
to unite bodies with him. At that point, this bread
a pause of action, a pleasure stopped, whilst that delicate
gluten my nether mouth, as full as it could hold,
kept pallating with exquisite relish the morsel that so deliciously

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engorged it. But nature could not long endure a pleasure
that so highly provoked without satisfying it. Pursuing then its
darling end. The battery recommenced with redoubled exertion. Nor lay
I inactive on my side, but encountering him with all
the impetuosity of motion I was mistress of the downy

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cloth of our meeting mounts was now of real use
to break the violence of the tilt, And soon, too soon, indeed,
the high wrought agitation, the sweet urgency of this to
and fro friction raised a titulation on me to its height,
so that, finding myself on the point of going, and

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loath to leave the tender partner of my joys behind me,
I am employed all the forwarding motions and arts my
experience suggested to me to promote his, keeping me company
to our journey's end. I not only then tightened the
pleasure girth round my restless inmate by a secret spring
of friction and compression that obeys the will in those parts,

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but stole my hands softly to that store bag of
nature's prime sweets, which is so pleasingly attached to its
conduit pipe from which we receive them there feeling and
most gently indeed squeezing those tender globular reservoirs. The magic
touch took instant effect, quickened, and brought upon the spur

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the symptoms of that sweet agony, the melting moment of disillusion,
when pleasure dies by pleasure, and the mysterious engine of
it overcomes the titilation it has raised in those parts
by plying them with the stream of a warm liquid
that is itself the highest of all titilations, and which
they th erstily express and draw in, like the hot

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natured leech, which, to cool itself tenaciously attracts all the
moisture within its sphere of exuction, Timing then to me
with exquisite consent, as I melted away his oily balsamic injection,
mixing deliciously with the sluices in flow from me. Sheased
and blunted all the stings of pleasure, whilst the voluptuous

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languor possessed and still maintained as motionless and fast locked
in one another's arms. Alas that these delights should be
no longer lived. For now the point of pleasure unedged
by enjoyment, and all the brisk sensations flattened upon us,
resigned us up to the cool cares of insipid life.

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Disengaging myself then from his embrace, I made him sensible
of the reasons there were for his present, leaving me,
on which though reluctantly, he put on his clothes with
as little expedition. However, as he could help, wantonly interrupting
himself between whiles with kisses, touches and embraces, I could

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not refuse myself to Yet he happily returned to his
master before he was missed. But at taking leave I
forced him, for he had sentiments enough to refuse it,
to receive money enough to buy a silver watch, that
great article of subaltern finery, which he at length accepted
of as a remembrance. He was carefully to preserve of

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my affections and here, Madam, I ought, perhaps to make
you an apology for this minute detail of things that
dwelt so strongly upon my memory after so deep an impression.
But besides that, this intrigue bread one great revolution in
my life, which historical truth requires I should not sink

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from you. May I not presume that so exalted a
pleasure ought not to be ungratefully forgotten or suppressed by me,
because I found it in a character in low life,
where by the bye it is oftener met with purer
and more unsophisticate that among the false, ridiculous refinements with

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which the great suffer themselves to be so grossly cheated
by their pride, the great than whom, there exists few
amongst those they call the vulgar, who are more ignorant of,
or who cultivate less the art of living than they
do they, I say, who forever mistake things the most

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foreign of the nature of pleasure itself, whose capital favorite
object is enjoyment of beauty, wherever that rare, invaluable gift
is found without distinction of birth or station, as love
never had so now revenge had no longer any share
in my commerce with this handsome youth. The sole pleasures

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of enjoyment were now the link I held to him
by or though nature had done such great matters for
him in his outward form, and especially in that superb
piece of furniture she had so liberally enriched him with,
though he was thus qualified to give the senses their
richest feast, still there was something more wanting to create

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in me and constitute the passion of love. Yet Will
had very good qualities, too, gentle, tractable, and above all grateful,
close and secret, even to a fault. He spoke at
any time very little, but made it up emphatically with action,
and to do him justice. He never gave me the

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least reason to complain, either of any tendency to encroach
upon me for the liberties I allowed him, or of
his indiscretion in blabbing them. There is then a fatality
in love. Or have loved him, I must, for he
was really a treasure, a bit for the bon boush
of a duchess. And to say the truth, my liking

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for him was so extreme that it was distinguishing very
nicely to deny that I loved him. My happiness, however,
with him, did not last long but found an end
from my own imprudent neglect. After having taken even superfluous
precautions against the discovery. Our success in repeated meetings emboldened

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me to omit the barely necessary ones. About a month
after our first intercourse, one fatal morning the season mister
H rarely or never visited me in I was in
my closet, where my toilet stood, in nothing but my shift,
a bed gown, and under petticoat. Will was with me,
and both, ever too well disposed to balk an opportunity

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for my part. A warm whim, a wanton toy had
just taken me, and I had challenged my man to
execute it on the spot, who hesitated not to comply
with my humor. I was set in the arm chair,
my shift and petticoat up, my thighs widespread and mounted
over the arms of the chair, presenting the fairest mark

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to Will's drawn weapon, which he stood in act to
plunge into me. When having neglected to secure the chamber
door and that of the closet standing ajar, mister H
stole in upon us before either of us was aware,
and saw us precisely in these convicting attitudes. I gave
a great scream and dropped my petticoat the thunder struck

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lad stood, trembling and pale, waiting his sentence of death.
Mister h looked sometimes at one, sometimes at the other,
with a mixture of indignation and scorn, and without saying
a word, turned upon his heel and went out. As
confused as I was, I heard him very distinctly turn
the key and locked the chamber door upon us, so

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that there was no escape but through the dining room,
where he himself was walking about with distempered strides, stamping
in a great chafe, and doubtless debating what he would
do with us. In the meantime, poor William was frightened
out of his senses, and as much need as I
had of spirits to support myself, I was obliged to

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employ them all to keep his a little up. The
misfortune I had now brought upon him and endeared him
the more to me, and I could have joyfully suffered
any punishment he had not shared in. I watered plentifully
with my tears the face of the frightened youth, who sat,
not having strength to stand, as cold and as lifeless

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as a statue. Presently, mister H comes in to us
again and made us go before him into the dining room.
Trembling and dreading the issue. Mister H sat down on
a chair whilst we stood like criminals under examination, and
beginning with me, asked me, with an even firm tone
of voice, neither soft nor severe, but cruelly indifferent, what

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I could say for myself for having abused him in
so unworthy a manner, with his own servant too, and
how he had deserved this of me, without adding to
the guilt of my infidelity that of an audacious defense
of it in the old style of a common kept miss.
My answer was modest, and often interrupted by my tears.

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In substance, as follows, that I never had a single
thought of wronging him, which was true till I had
seen him taking the last liberties with my servant Wench
here he colored prodigiously, And that my resentment at that
which I was overawed from giving vent to by complaints
or explanations with him, had driven me to a course

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that I did not pretend to justify, but that as
to the young man, he was entirely faultless for that
in the view of making him the instrument of my revenge.
I had downright seduced him to what he had done,
and therefore hoped, whatever he determined about me, he would
distinguish between the guilty and the innocent, and that for

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the rest I was entirely at his mercy. Mister h On,
hearing what I said, hung his head a little, but
instantly recovering himself, he said to me, as near as
I can retain to the following purpose, Madam, I owe
shame to myself and confess you have fairly turned the
tables upon me. It is not with one of your

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cast of breeding and sentiments that I should enter into
a discussion of the very great difference of the provocations.
Be it sufficient that I allow you so much reason
on your side as to have changed my resolutions in
consideration of what you reproach me with. And I own
too that your clearing that rascal there is fair and

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honest in you. Renew with you, I cannot the affront
is too gross. I give you a week's warning to
go out of these lodgings. Whatever I have given you
remains to you, and as I never intend to see
you more, the landlord will pay you fifty pieces on
my account, with which and every doubt paid, I hope
you will own. I do not leave you in a

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worse condition than what I took you up in, or
than you deserve of me. Blame yourself only that it
is no better. Then, without giving me time to reply,
he addressed himself to the young fellow, for you, Spark,
I shall, for your father's sake, take care of you.
The town is no place for such an easy fool

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as thou art. And to morrow you shall set out
under the charge of one of my men, well recommended
in my name to your father not to let you
return and be spoiled here. At these words, he went
out after my vainly attempting to stop him by throwing
myself at his feet. He shook me off, though he
seemed greatly moved too, and took will away with him,

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who I dareswear thought himself very cheaply off. I was
now once more adrift and left upon my own hands
by a gentleman whom I certainly did not deserve. And
all the letters, arts, friends, and treaties that I employed
within the week of grace in my lodging could never
win on him so much as to see me again.

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He had irrevocably pronounced my doom, and submission to it
was my only part. Soon after, he married a lady
of birth and fortune, to whom I have heard he
proved an irreproachable husband. As for poor will, he was
immediately sent down to the country to his father, who
was an easy farmer. Where he was not four months

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before an innkeeper's booksome young widow with a very good
stock both in money and trade, fancied and perhaps pre
acquainted with his secret excellencies, married him, and I am
sure there was at least good foundation for their living
happily together. Though I should have been charmed to see

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him before he went, such measures were taken by mister
H's orders that it was impossible. Otherwise. I should certainly
have endeavored to detain him in town, and would have
spared neither offers nor expense to have procured myself the
satisfaction of keeping him with me. He had such powerful
holds upon my inclinations as were not easily to be

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shaken off or replaced. As to my heart, it was
quite out of the question. Glad, however, I was from
my soul that nothing worse, and as things turned out,
probably nothing better could have happened to him As to
mister H. Though views of conveniency made me at first
exert myself to regain his affection, I was giddy and

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thoughtless enough to be much easier reconciled to my failure
than I ought to have been. But as I never
had loved him, and his leaving me gave me a
sort of liberty that I had often longed for, I
was soon comforted and flattering myself that the stalk of
youth and beauty I was going into trade with could
hardly fail of procuring me a maintenance. I saw myself

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under a necessity of trying my fortune with them, rather
with pleasure and gaiety than with the least idea of despondency.
In the meantime, several of my acquaintances among the Sisterhood,
who had soon got wind of my misfortune, flocked to
insult me with their malicious consolations. Most of them had

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long envied me the affluence and splendor I had been
maintained in, and though there was scarce one of them
that did not at least deserve to be in my case,
and would probably sooner or later come to it. It
was equally easy to remark, even in their affected pity,
their secret pleasure at seeing me thus disgraced and discarded,

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and their seeks with grief, that it was no worse
with me unaccountable malice of the human heart and which
is not confined to the class of life. They were off.
But as the time approached for me to come to
some resolution how to dispose of myself, and I was
considering round where to shift my quarters to missus Cole,

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a middle aged, discreet sort of woman who had been
brought into my acquaintance by one of the misses that
visited me. Upon learning of my situation, came to offer
her cordial advice and service to me, And as I
had always taken to her more than to any of
my female acquaintances, I listened the easier to her proposals.

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And as it happened, I could not have put myself
into worse or into better hands. In all London into worse,
because keeping a house of conveniency, there were no lengths
in lewdness. She would not advise me to go in
compliance with her customers, no scheme of pleasure or even
unbounded debauchery. She did not take even a delight in

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promoting into a better because, having had more experience of
the wicked part of the town than she had, was
fitter to advise and guard one against the worst dangers
of our profession, and what was rare to be met
with in those of hers. She contented herself with a
moderate living profit upon her industry and good offices, and

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had nothing of their greedy, rapacious turn. She was really too,
a gentlewoman born and bred, but through a train of accidents,
reduced to this course, which she pursued, partly through necessity,
partly through choice. As never woman delighted more in encouraging
the brisk circulation of trade for the sake of the

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trade itself, or better understood all the mysteries and refinements
of it than she did. So that she was consummately
at the top of her profession, and dealt only with
customers of distinction to answer the demands of whom she
kept a competent number of her daughters in constant recruit

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so she called those whom their youth and personal charms
recommended to her adoption and management, several of whom, by
her means, and through her tuition and instructions, succeeded very
well in the world. This useful gentle woman, upon whose
protection I now threw myself, having her reasons of state,
respecting mister H for not appearing too much in the

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thing herself, sent a friend of hers on the day
appointed for my removal to conduct me to my new
lodgings at a brushmaker's in R Street, Covent Garden, the
very next door to her own house, where she had
no conveniences to lodge me herself. Lodgings that, by having
been for several successions tenanted by ladies of pleasure, the

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landlord of them was familiarized to their ways, and provided
the rent was duly paid, everything else was as easy
and commodious as one could desire. The fifty guineas promised
me by mister H at his parting with me having
been duly paid me all my clothes and movables chested up,

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which were at least of two hundred pounds value. I
had them conveyed into a coach, where I soon followed them.
After taking a civil leave of the landlord and his family,
with whom I had never lived in a degree of
familiarity enough to regret the removal, but still the very
circumstance of its being a removal drew tears from me.

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I left too, a letter of thanks for mister H,
from whom I concluded myself as I really was irretrievably separated.
My maid I had discharged the day before, not only
because I had her of mister H, but that I
suspected her of having, somehow or other been the occasion
of his discovering me, in revenge, perhaps for my not

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having trusted her with him. We soon got to my lodgings, which,
though not so handsomely furnished nor so showy as those
I left, were to the full as convenient and at
half price. Though on the first floor. My trunks were
safely landed and stowed in my apartments, where my neighbor

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and now governant, missus Cole, was ready with my landlord
to receive me, to whom she took care to set
me out in the most favorable light, that of one
from whom there was the clearest reason to expect the
regular payment of his rent. All the cardinal virtues attributed
to me would not have had half the weight of

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that recommendation alone. I was now settled in lodgings of
my own, abandoned to my own conduct, and turned loose
upon the town to sink or swim as I could
manage with the current of it. And what were the consequences,
together with the number of adventures which befell me in
the exercise of my new profession, will compose the matter

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of another letter. For surely it is high time to
put a period to this. I am madam yours, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. The end of the first letter,
end of section five