August 19, 2025 • 50 mins
09 - Section 09. 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⚠️
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⚠️
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section nine 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 second part nine.
My gentleman had now put on his clothes and recomposed himself.
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When giving me a kiss and placing me by him,
he sat himself down as gingerly as possible, with one
side off the cushion, which was too sore for him
to bear resting any part of his weight on. Here
he thanked me for the extreme pleasure I had procured him, and,
seeing perhaps some marks in my countenance of terror and
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apprehension of retaliation on my own skin for what I
had been the instrument of his suffering in his, he
assured me that he was ready to give up to
me any engagement I might deem myself under to stand
him as he had done me, But if that proceed
in my consent to it, he would consider the difference
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of my sex its greater delicacy and incapacity to undergo pain.
Reheartened at which, and piqued in honor, as I thought
not to flinch so near the trial, especially as I
well knew missus skull was an eye witness from her
stand of a spile to the whole of our transactions.
I was now less afraid of my skin than of his.
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Not furnishing me with an opportunity of signalizing my resolution
consonant to this disposition, was my answer. But my courage
was still more in my head than in my heart.
And as cowards rush into the danger they fear in
order to be dis soooner rid of the pain of
that sensation, I was entirely pleased with his hastening matters
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into execution. He had then little to do but to
unloose the strings of my petticoats and lift them together
with my shift naval high, where he just tucked them
up loosely girds and might be slipped up higher at pleasure. Then,
viewing me round with great seeming delight, he laid me
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at length on my face upon the bench, and when
I expected he would tie me as I had done him,
and held out my hands, not without fear and a
little trembling, he told me he would, by no means
terrify me unnecessarily with such a confinement, For that though
he meant to put my constancy to some trial the
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standing it was to be completely voluntary on my side,
and therefore I might be at full liberty to get
up whenever I found the pain too much for me.
You cannot imagine how much I thought myself bound by
being thus allowed to remain loose, and how much spirit
this confidence in me gave me, so that I was
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even from my heart careless how much my flesh might
suffer in honor of it. All my back parts, naked
half way up, were now fully at his mercy. And
first he stood at a convenient distance, delighting himself with
a gloating survey of the attitude I lay in, and
of all the secret stores I thus exposed to him
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in fair display. Then springing eagerly towards me, he covered
all those naked parts with a fond profusion of kisses, and,
now taking hold of the rod, rather wanton with me
in gentle inflictions on those tender, trembling masses of my
flesh behind, than in any way hurt them, till by
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degrees he began to tingle them with smarter lashes, so
as to provoke a red color into them, which I
knew as well by the flagrant glow I felt there
as by his telling me, they now emulated the native
roses of my other cheeks. When he had thus amused
himself with admiring and toying with them, he went on
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to strike harder and more hard, so that I needed
all my patience not to cry out or complain. At
least at last he twigged me so smartly as to
fetch blood in more than one lash, at sight of
which he flung down the rod flew to me, kissed
away the starting drops, and sucking the wounds eased a
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good deal of my pain. But now raising me on
my knees and making me kneel with them straddling wide
that tender part of me, naturally the province of pleasure,
not of pain, came in for its share of suffering.
For now, eyeing it wistfully, he directed the rod so
that the sharp ends of the twigs lighted there so
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sensibly that I could not help wincing and writhing my
limbs with smart so that my contortions of body must
necessarily throw it into infinite variety of postures and points
of view, fit to feast the luxury of the eye.
But still I bore everything without crying. Out, When presently
giving me another pause, he rushed, as it were, on
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that part whose lips and round about had felt this cruelty,
and by way of reparation, blese his own to them.
Then he opened shut, squeezed them, plucked softly the overgrowing moss,
and all this in a style of wild passionate rapture
and enthusiasm that expressed excess of pleasure, till betaking himself
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to the rod again, encouraged by my passiveness and infuriated
with this strange taste of delight, he made my poor
posteriors pay for the ungovernableness of it, for now showing
them no quarter. The traitor cut me so that I
wanted but little of fainting away when he gave over.
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And yet I did not utter one groan or angry expostulation.
But in heart I resolved nothing so seriously as never
to expose myself again to the like severities. You may guess, then,
in what curious pickle those soft flesh cushions of mine
were all sore, raw, and in fine terribly clawed off,
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but so far from feeling any pleasure in it, that
the recent smart made me pout a little, and not
with the greatest air of satisfaction, received the compliments and
after caresses of the author of my pain. As soon
as my clothes were huddled on in a little decency,
a supper was brought in by the discreet missus Cole herself,
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which might have piqued the sensuality of a cardinal, accompanied
with the choice of the richest dwines, all which she
sat before us, and went out again, without having by
a word, or even by a smile, given us the
least interruption or confusion in those moments of secrecy that
were not yet ripe to the admission of a third two.
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I sat down, then, still scarce in charity with my butcher,
For such I could not help considering him, and was
moreover not a little piqued at the gay, satisfied air
of his countenance, which I thought myself insulted by. But
when the now necessary refreshment to me of a glass
of wine, a little eating, all the time observing a
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profound silence, had somewhat cheered and restored me to spirits.
And as the smart began to go off, my good
humor returned accordingly, which alteration not escaping him, he said,
and did everything that could confirm me in, and indeed exalted.
But Scarce was supper well over before a change so
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incredible was wrought in me. Such violent yet pleasingly irksome
sensations took possession of me that I, scarce knew how
to contain myself. The smart of the lashes was now
converted into such a prickly heat, such fiery tinglings as
made me sigh, squeeze my thighs together, shift, and wriggle
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about my seat with a furious restlessness. Whilst these itching ardors,
as excited in those parts on which the storm of
discipline had principally fallen, detached legions of burning, subtle, stimulating
spirits to their opposite spot and center of assemblage, where
their titulation raged so furiously that I was even stinging
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mad with them. No wonder then, that, in such a taking,
and devoured by flames that licked up all modesty and reserve,
my eyes now charged the brimful of the most intense
desire fired on my companion, very intelligible signals of distress.
My companion, I say, who grew in them every instant
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more amiable and more necessary to my urgent wishes and
hopes of immediate ease. Mister Barville, no stranger by experience
to these situations, soon knew the past I was brought to,
soon perceived my extreme disorder in favor of which, removing
the table out of the way, he began a prelude
that flat uttered me with instant relief, to which I
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was not, however, so near as I imagined, for he
was unbuttoned to me and tried to provoke and rouse
to action his unactive torpid machine. He blushingly owned that
no good was to be expected from it unless I
took it in hand to re excite its languid, loitering
powers by just refreshing the smart of the yet recent
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blood raw cuts. Seeing it could no more than a
boy's top keep up without lashing, sensible then that I
should work as much for my own profit as his.
I hurried my compliance with his desire, and abridging the
ceremonial Whilst he leaned his head against the back of
a chair, I had scarce gently made him feel the
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lash before I saw the object of my wishes give
signs of life, and presently, as it were, with a
magic touch, it started up into a noble size and distinction,
indeed hastening then to give me the benefit of it.
He threw me down on the bench. But such was
the refreshed soreness of those parts behind on my leaning
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so hardened them as became me to compass the admission
of that stupendous head of his machine, that I could
not possibly bear it. I got up, then, and tried,
by leaning forwards and turning the crouper on my assailant,
to let him at the back avenue. But here it
was likewise impossible to stand his bearing so fiercely against
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me in his agitations and endeavors to enter that way,
whilst his belly battered directly against the recent sore. What
should we do? Now? Both intolerably heated, both in a fury.
But pleasure is ever invented for its own ends. He
strips me in a trice, stark naked, and placing a
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broad sette cushion on the carpet before the fire, oversets
me gently topsy turvy on it, and handly me only
at the waist, whilst you may be sure I favored
all my dispositions, brought my legs round his neck, so
that my head was kept from the floor only by
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my hands and the velvet cushion, which was now bespread
with my flowing hair. Thus I stood on my head
and hands supported by him, in such manner that whilst
my thighs clung round him, so as to expose to
his side all my back figure, including the theater of
his bloody pleasure, the center of my fore part fairly
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bearded the object of its rage, that now stood in
fine condition to give me satisfaction for the injuries of
its neighbors. But as this posture was certainly not the easiest,
and our imaginations wound up to the height, could suffer
no delay, he first, with the utmost eagerness and effort,
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just lip lodged that broad acorn fashioned head of his instrument, And,
still frenzied by the fury with which he had made
that impression, he soon stuffed in the rest. When, now
with a pursuit of thrusts fiercely urged, he absolutely overpowered
and absorbed all sense of pain and uneasiness, whether from
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my wounds behind my most untoward posture or the oversize
of his stretcher, in an infinitely predominant delight. When now
all my whole spirits of life and sensation, rushing impetuously
to the cockpit, where the prize of pleasure was hotly
in dispute and clustering to a point. There I soon
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received the dear relief of nature from these over violent
strains and provocations of it, harmonizing with which my gallant
spouted into me. Such a potent overflow of the balsamic
injection as softened and unedged all those irritating stings of
a new species of titillation which I had been so
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intolerably maddened with, and restored the ferment of my senses
to some degree of composure. I had now achieved this
rare adventure, ultimately much more to my satisfaction than I
had bespoken the nature of it to turn out. Nor
was it much lessened, you may think, by my spark's
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lavish praises of my constancy and complaisance, which he gave
weight to by a present that greatly surpassed my utmost expectation.
Besides his gratification to missus Cole, I was, not, however,
at any time, re enticed to renew with him or
resort again to the violent expedient of lashing nature into
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more haste than good speed, which, by the way I conceive,
acts somewhat in the manner of a dose of Spanish flies,
with more pain, perhaps, but less danger, and might be
necessary to him, but was nothing less so than to me,
whose appetite wanted the bridle more than the spur. Missus Cole,
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to whom this adventurous exploit had more and more endeared me,
looked on me now as a girl after her own heart,
afraid of nothing, and on a good account, hardly enough
to find all the weapons of pleasure through attentive Then,
in consequence of these favorable conceptions, to promote either my
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profit or pleasure. She had special regard for the first
in a new gallant of a very singular turn that
she procured for and introduced to me. This was a grave, staid, solemn,
elderly gentleman whose peculiar humor was a delight in combing
fine tresses of hair, And as I was perfectly headed
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to his taste, he used to come constantly at my
toilette hours when I let down my hair as Lucy's nature,
and abandoned it to him to do what he pleased
with it, and accordingly, he would keep me an hour
or more in play with it, drawing the comb through it,
winding the curls round his fingers, even kissing it as
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he smoothed it. And all this led to no other
use of my person or any other liberties whatever, any
more than if a distinction of sexes had not existed.
Another peculiarity of taste he had, which was to present
me with a dozen pairs of the whitest kid gloves
at a time. These he would divert himself with drawing
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on me and then biting off the fingers ends, all
which fooleries of a sickly appetite the old gentleman paid
more liberally for than most others did for more essential favors.
This lasted till a violent cuff, seizing and laying him up,
delivered me from this most innocent and insipid trifler. For
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I never heard more of him after his first retreat.
You may be sure a by job of this sort
interfered in no other pursuit or plan of life, which
I led in truth, with a modesty and reserve that
was less the work of virtue than of exhausted novelty.
A glot of pleasure and easy circumstances that made me
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indifferent to any engagement in which pleasure and profit were
not eminently united. And such I could with less impatience
wait for at the hands of time and fortune. As
I was satisfied, I could never mend my pennyworths, having
evidently been served at the top of market and even
been pampered with dainties. Besides that, in the sacrifice of
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a few momentary impulses, I found a secret satisfaction in
respecting myself as well as preserving the life and freshness
of my complexion. Louisa and Emily did not carry, indeed
their reserves so high as I did, but still they
were far from cheap or abandoned, though two of their
adventures seemed to contradict this general character, which for their
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singularity I shall give you in course, Beginning first with Emily's.
Louisa and she went one night to a ball, the
first in a habit of a shepherdess, Emily in that
of a shepherd. I saw them in their dresses before
they went, and nothing in nature could represent a prettier
boy than this last did. Being so fair and well limbed.
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They had kept together for some time, when Louisa, meeting
on all the acquaintance of hers, very cordially, gives her
companion the drop and leaves her under the protection of
her boy's habit, which was not much, and of her discretion,
which was it seems still less. Emily, finding herself deserted,
sauntered thoughtless about a while, and as much for coolness
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and air as anything else. At length pulled off her
mask and went to the sideboard, where, eyed and marked
out by a gentleman in a very handsome domino, she
was accosted by and fell into chat with him. The Domino,
after little discourse in which Emily doubtless distinguished her good
nature and easiness more than her wit, began to make
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violent love to her, and drawing her insensibly to some
benches at the lower end of the masquerade room for
her to sit by him, where he squeezed her hands,
pinched her cheeks, praised and played with her fine hair,
admired her complexion, and all in a style of courtship
dashed with a certain oddity that, not comprehending the mystery
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of poor Emily, attributed to his falling in with the
humor of her disguise, and, being naturally not the cruelest
of her profession, began to incline into a parley on
those essentials. But here was the stress of the joke.
He took her really for what she appeared to be,
a smock faced boy, and she forgetting her dress, and,
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of course, ranging quite wide of his ideas, took all
those addresses to be paid to herself as a woman,
which she precisely owed to his not thinking her one. However,
this double error was pushed to such a height on
both sides that Emily, who saw nothing in him but
a gentleman of distinction by those points of dress to
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which his disguise did not extend, warmed too by the
wine he had plied her with and the caresses he
had lavished upon her, suffered herself to be persuaded to
go to a bangio with him, and, thus losing sight
of missus Cole's cautions, with a blind confidence, put herself
into his hands to be carried wherever he pleased, for
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his part, equally blinded by his wishes, whilst her egregious
simplicity favored his deception more than the most exquisite art
could have done. He supposed no doubt that he had
lighted on some soft simpleton fit for his purpose, or
some kept minion broken to his hand, who understood him
perfectly well and entered into his designs. But be that
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as it would, He led her to a coach, went
into it with her, and brought her to a very
handsome apartment with a bed in it. But whether it
was a bagnio or not, she could not tell, having
spoken to nobody but himself. But when they were alone
together and her enamorato began to proceed to those extremities
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which instantly discovered the sex, she remarked that no description
could paint up to the life the mixture of pique, confusion,
and disappointment that appeared in his countenance, joined to the
mournful exclamation by heavens a woman. This at once opened
her eyes, which had his hereto been shut in downright stupidity. However,
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as if he had meant to retrieve that escape, he
still continued to toy with and fondle her, but with
so staring an alteration from extra warmth into a chill
and forced civility that even Emily herself could not but
take notice of. It, and now began to wish she
had paid more regard to missus Cole's premonitions against ever
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engaging with a stranger, And now an excess of timidity
succeeded to an excess of confidence, and she thought herself
so much at his mercy and discretion that she stood
passive throughout the whole progress of his prelude, for now
whether the impressions of so great a beauty had even
made him forgive her her sex, or whether her appearance
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in figure in that dress still humored his first illusion,
He recovered by degrees a good part of his first warmth, and,
keeping Emily with her breeches still unbuttoned, stripped them down
to her knees, and, gently impelling her to lean down
with her face against the bedside, placed her so that
the double way between the double rising behind presented the
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choice fair to him, And he was so fairly set
in a misdirection as to give the girl no small
alarms for fear of losing a maidenhead she had not
dreamt off. However, her complaints and a resistance gentle but
firm checked and brought him to himself again, so that
turning his Steed's head. He drove him at length in
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the right road, in which his imagination, having probably made
the most of those resemblances that flattered his taste, he
got with much ado to his journey's end, after which
he led her out himself, and, walking with her two
or three streets length, got her a chair. When making
her a present, not anything inferior to what she could
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have expected. He left her well recommended to the Chairman, who,
on her directions, brought her home. This she related to
missus Cole and me the same morning, not without the
visible remains of the fear and confusion she had been
in still stamped on her countenance. Missus Cole's remark was
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that her indiscretion proceeding from a constitutional facility, there were
little hopes of anything curing her of it, but repeated
severe experience. Mine was that I could not conceive how
it was possible for mankind to run into a taste
not only universally odious, but absurd and impossible to gratify, since,
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according to the notions and experience I had of things,
it was not in nature to force such immense disproportions.
Missus Cole only smiled at my ignorance, and said nothing
towards my undeception, which was not affected but by ocular demonstration.
Some months after which a most singular accident furnished me,
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and which I will here set down, that I may
not return again to so disagreeable a subject. I had,
on a visit intended to Harriet, who had taken lodgings
at Hampton Court, hired a chariot to go out thither,
missus Cole, having promised to accompany me, but some indispensable
business intervening to detain her, I was obliged to set
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out alone, and scarce had. I got a third of
my way before the axle tree broke down, and I
was well off to get out, safe and unhurt, into
a public house of a tolerable, handsome appearance on the road. Here.
The people told me that the stage would come by
in a couple of hours at forthest, upon which, determining
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to wait for it sooner than lose the jaunt, I
had got so far forward on, I was carried into
a very clean, decent room up one pair of stairs,
which I took possession of for the time I had
to stay in right of calling for sufficient to do
the House justice. Here, whilst I was amusing myself with
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looking out of the window, a single horse chaise stopped
at the door, out of which lightly leaped two gentlemen,
for so they seemed, who came in only, as it were,
to bait and refresh a little, For they gave their
horse to be held in readiness against they came out,
And presently I heard the door of the next room
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where they were let in, and called about them briskly,
And as soon as they were served, I could just
hear that they shut and fastened the door on the inside.
A spirit of curiosity, far from sudden, since I do
not know when I was without it, prompted me, without
any particular suspicion or other drift or view, to see
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what they were and examine their persons and behavior. The
partition of our rooms was one of those movable ones that,
when taken down, served occasionally to lay them into one
for the conveniency of a large company. And now my
nicest search could not show me the shadow of a
peep hole, a circumstance which probably had not escaped the
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review of the parties on the other side, whom much
it stood upon not to be deceived in it. But
at length I observed a paper patch of the same
color as the wainscot, which I took to conceal some flaw.
But then it was so high that I was obliged
to stand upon a chair to reach it, which I
did as softly as possibly, and with the point of
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a bodkin, soon pierced it. And now applying my eye clothes,
I commanded the room perfectly, and could see my two
young sparks romping and pulling one another about entirely to
my imagination, in frolic and innocent play. The eldest might be,
on my nearest guess towards nineteen, a tall, comely young
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man in a white fustian frock with a green velvet
cape and a cut bob wig. The youngest could not
be above seventeen, fair, ruddy, completely well made, and to
say the truth, a sweet, pretty stripling. He was I fancy, too,
a country lad by his dress, which was a green
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plush frock and breeches of the same white waistcoat and stockings,
a jockey cap, with his yellowish hair long and loose
in natural curls. But after a look of circumspection which
I saw the elder cast every way round the room,
probably in too much hurry and heat, not to overlook
the very small opening I was boasted at, especially at
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the height it was, whilst my eye close to it
kept the light from shining through and betraying it. He
said something to his companion, and presently changed the face
of things. For now the elder began to embrace, to
press and kiss the younger, to put his hands into
his bosom, and give him such manifest signs of an
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amorous intention as made me conclude the other to be
a girl in disguise, a mistake that nature kept me
in countenance, for for she had certainly made one when
she gave him the male stamp. In the rashness then
of their age, and bent as they were to accomplish
their project of preposterous pleasure at the risk of the
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very worst of consequences, where a discovery was nothing less
than improbable, they now proceeded to such lengths as soon
satisfied me what they were the criminal scene they acted.
I had the patience to see to an end, purely
that I might gather more facts and certainty against them
in my design to do their desert's instant justice. And accordingly,
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when they had readjusted themselves and were preparing to go
out burning as I was with rage and indignation, I
jumped down from the chair in order to raise the
house upon them, but with such an unlucky impetuosity that
some nail or ruggedness in the floor caught my foot
and flung me on my face with such violence that
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I fell senseless on the ground, and must have lain
there some time ere any one came to my relief,
so that they alarmed, I suppose, by the noise of
my fall, had more than the necessary time to make
a safe retreat. This they effected, as I learned, with
a precipitation nobody could account for till when come to
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myself and composed enough to speak, I acquainted those of
the house with the whole transaction I had been evidenced to.
When I came home again and told missus Cole this adventure,
she very sensibly observed to me that there was no
doubt of jew vengeance one time or other overtaking these miscreants,
however they might escape for the present, and that had
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I been the temporal instrument of it, I should have
been at least put to a great deal more trouble
and confusion than I imagined. That as to the thing itself,
the less said of it was the better. But that
though she might be suspected of partiality from its being
the common cause of womankind, out of whose mouths this
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practice tended to take something more than bread, yet she
protested against any mixture of passion with a declaration extorted
from her by pure regard to truth, which was at
whatever effect this infamous passion had in other ages and
other countries, it seemed a peculiar blessing on our air
and climate, that there was a plague spot visibly imprinted
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on all that are tainted with it in this nation,
at least, for that among numbers of that stamp whom
she had known, or at least were universally under the
scandalous suspicion of it, she would not name an exemption,
hardly of one of them whose character was not, in
all other respects, the most worthless and despicable that could
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be stripped of all the manly virtues of their own
sex and filled up with only the worst vices and
follies of ours, that in fine they were scarce less
execrable than ridiculous in their monstrous inconsistence of loathing and
condemning women, and all at the same time aping all
their manners, air, lips, scuttle, and in general all their
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little modes of affectation, which become them at least better
than they do these unsexed male misses. But here washing
my hands of them, I replunge into the stream of
my history into which I may very properly engraft a
terrible sally of Louisa's, since I had some share in
it myself, and have besides engaged myself to relate it
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in point of countenance to poor Emily. It will add
to one more example to thousands, in confirmation of the
maxim that when women get, once out of compass, there
are no lengths of licentiousness that they are not capable
of running. One morning, then that both missus Cole and
Emily were gone out for the day, and only Louisa
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and I, not to mention the housemaid, were left in
charge of the house whilst we were loitering away the
time in looking through the shop windows. The son of
a poor woman who earned very hard bread, indeed by
mending stockings in a stall in the neighborhood offered us
some nosegays ringed around a small basket by selling of
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which the poor boy eked out his mother's maintenance of
them both. Nor was he fit for any other way
of livelihood, since he was not only a perfect changeling
or idiot, but stammered so that there was no understanding
even those sounds his half dozen at most animal ideas
prompted him to utter. The boys and servants in the
(32:33):
neighborhood had given him the nickname of good natured Dick,
from the soft simpletons doing everything he was bid at
the first word, and from his naturally having no turn
to mischief. Then, by the way, he was perfectly well made, stout,
clean limbed, tall of his age, as strong as a horse,
and withal pretty featured, so that he was not absolutely
(32:57):
such a figure to be snuffled at. Neither if your
nice ta could, in favor of such essentials, have dispensed
with a face unwashed, hair tangled for want of combing,
and so ragged a plight that he might have disputed
points of show with air. A heathen philosopher of them all,
this boy we had often seen and bought his flowers
(33:19):
out of pure compassion and nothing more. But just at
this time, as he stood presenting us his basket, a
sudden whim, a start of wayward fancy seized Louisa, and
without consulting me, she calls him in, and, beginning to
examine his Nosegays calls out too, one for herself, another
for me, and pulling out half a crown very currently,
(33:43):
gives it him to change, as if she had really
expected he could have changed it. But the boys scratching
his head made his signs, explaining his inability in plays
of words which he could not with all his struggling articulate.
Louisa at this says, well, my lad, come upstairs with me,
and I will give you your jewe, winking at the
(34:05):
same time to me and beckoning me to accompany her,
which I did, securing first the street door that by
this means, together with the shop, became wholly the care
of the faithful housemaid. As we went up, Louisa whispered
to me that she had conceived a strange longing to
be satisfied whether the general rule held good with regard
(34:27):
to this changeling, and how far nature had made him
amends in her best bodily gifts for her denial of
the sublimer intellectual ones begging at the same time my
assistance in procuring her this satisfaction a want of complaisance,
was never my vice, and I was so far from
opposing this extravagant frolic that now bit with the same
(34:49):
maggot and my curiosity conspiring with hers, I entered plumb
into it on my own account. Consequently, as soon as
we came into louise bed chamber, whilst she was amusing
him with picking out his nosegays, I undertook the lead
and began the attack. As it was not then very
(35:10):
material to keep much measures with a mere natural, I
made presently very free with him, though at my first
motion of meddling, his surprise and confusion made him receive
my advances, but awkwardly, nay in so much that he
bashfully shied and shied back little till. Encouraging him with
(35:30):
my eyes, plucking him playfully by the hair, sleeking his cheeks,
and forwarding my point by a number of little wantonness,
I soon turned him familiar and gave nature her sweetest alarm,
so that aroused and beginning to feel himself, we could,
amidst all the innocent laugh and grin I had provoked
him into, perceived the fire lighting in his eyes and
(35:55):
diffusing over his cheeks, blend its glow with that of
his blushes. The emotion, in short of animal pleasure, glared
distinctly in the simpleton's countenance. Yet struck with the novelty
of the scene, he did not know which way to
look or move, but tame passive, simpering with his mouth
half open in stupid rapture, stood intractably suffered me to
(36:19):
do what I pleased with him. His basket was dropped
out of his hands, which Louisa took care of. I had,
now through more than one rent, discovered and felt his thighs,
the skin of which seemed the smoother and fairer for
the coarseness and even dirt of his dress, as the
teeth of negroes seemed the whiter for the surrounding black
(36:42):
and poor indeed of habit, poor of understanding. He was, however,
abundantly rich in personal treasures, such as the flesh, firm, plump,
and replete with the juices of youth and robust, well
knit limbs. My fingers too, had now got within each
of the true, the genuine sensitive plant, which, instead of
(37:04):
shrinking from the touch, joys to meet it, and swells
and vegetates under it. Mine pleasingly informed me that matters
were so ripe for the discovery we meditated that they
were too mighty for the confinement. They were ready to break.
A waiste band that I unskewered, and a rag of
assured that I removed, and which could not have covered
(37:27):
a quarter of it, revealed the whole of the idiot's
standard of distinction, erect in full pride and display. But
such a one it was, positively of so tremendous a size,
that prepared as we were to see something extraordinary, it
still out of measure, surpassed our expectation, and astonished even me,
(37:49):
who had not been used to trade in trifles. In
fine it might have answered very well, the making a
show of its enormous head seemed in hue and sigh
not unlike a common sheep's heart. Then you might have
trolled dice securely along the broad back of the body
of it. The length of it, too was prodigious. Then
(38:12):
the rich appendage of the treasure bag beneath, large in proportion,
gathered and crisped up round in shallow furrows, helped to
fill the eye and complete the proof of his being
a natural not quite in vain, since it was full
manifest that he inherited, and largely too, the prerogative of majesty,
(38:33):
which distinguishes that otherwise most unfortunate condition and gives rise
to the vulgar saying a fool's bauble is a lady's playfellow,
not wholly without reason, For generally speaking, it is in
love as it is in war, where longest weapon carries it. Nature,
in short, had done so much for him in those
(38:54):
parts that she perhaps held herself acquitted in doing so
little for his head. For my part, who had sincerely
no intention to push the joke further than simply satisfying
my curiosity with the sight of it alone, I was content,
in spite of the temptation that stared me in the face,
with having raised a may pole for another to hang
(39:15):
a garland on. For by this time, easily reading Louisa's
desires in her wishful eyes, I acted the commodious part
and made her, who sought no better sport significant terms
of encouragement to go through stitch with her adventure, intimating
too that I would stay and see fair play, in
(39:36):
which indeed I had in view to humor a new
born curiosity, to observe what appearances active nature would put
on in a natural In the course of this her
darling operation. Louisa, whose appetite was up, and who, like
the industrious bee, was, it seems, not above gathering the
sweets of so rare a flower, though she found it
(39:59):
planted on a dull unghill, was but too readily disposed
to take the benefit of my session. Urged then strongly
by her own desires, and emboldened by me, she presently
determined to risk a trial of parts with the idiot,
who was by this time nobly inflamed for her purpose
by all the irritations we had used to put the
(40:20):
principles of pleasure effectually into motion and to wind up
the springs of its organ to their supreme pitch. And
it stood accordingly, stiff and straining, ready to burst with
the blood and spirits that swelled it to a bulk.
No I shall never forget it. Louisa, then, taking and
holding the fine handle that so invitingly offered itself, led
(40:44):
the ductiled youth by that master tool of his, as
she stepped backwards towards the bed, which he joyfully gave
way to under the incitations of instinct, and palpably delivered
up to the God of desire. Stop. Then by the
bed she took the fall she loved, and leaned to
the most gently backward upon it, still holding fast what
(41:08):
she held, and taking care to give her clothes a
convenient toss up, so that her thighs duly disclosed and elevated,
laid open all the outward prospect of the treasury of love,
the rose lipped overture, presenting the cockpit so fair that
it was not in nature even for a natural to
(41:28):
miss it, nor did he, for Louisa, fully bent on
grappling with it, and impatience of dalliance or delay, directed
faithfully the point of the battering peace, and bounded up
with a rage of so voracious appetite to meet and
favor the thrust of insertion, that the fierce activity on
(41:48):
both sides effected it with such pain of distention that
Louisa cried out violently that she was hurt beyond bearing,
that she was killed but it was too late. The
storm was up, and force was on her to give
way to it. For now the man machine, strongly worked
upon by the sensual passion, felt so manfully his advantages
(42:12):
and superiority, felt withal the sting of pleasure, so intolerable
that maddening with it. His joys began to assume a
character of furiousness, which made me tremble for the too
tender Louisa. He seemed at this juncture greater than himself.
His countenance, before so void of meaning or expression, now
(42:34):
grew big with the importance of the act he was upon.
In short, it was not now that he was to
be played the fool with, but what is pleasant enough.
I myself was awed into a sort of respect for
him by the comely terrors his motions dressed him in
his eyes shooting sparks of fire, his face glowing with
(42:55):
ardors that gave another life to it, his teeth churning,
his whole frame agitated with a raging, ungovernable impetuosity, all
sensibly betraying the formidable fierceness with which the genial instinct
acted upon him, butting then and goring all before him,
and mad and wild, like an over driven steer, he
(43:18):
plows up the tender furrow, all insensible to Louise's complaints.
Nothing can stop, nothing can keep out a fury like this,
with which, having once got its head in its blind rage,
soon made way for the rest, piercing, rending, and breaking
open all obstructions. The torn, split, wounded girl cries, struggles,
(43:43):
invokes me to her rescue, and endeavors to get from
under the young savage or shake him off. But alas
in vain her breath might as soon have stilled or
stemmed a storm in winter, as all her strength have
quelled his rough assault or put him out of his course.
And indeed all her efforts and struggles were managed with
(44:05):
such disorder that they served rather to entangle enfold her
the faster in the twine of his boisterous arms, so
that she was tied to the stake, and obliged to
fight the match out if she died for it. For
his part, instinct ridden as he was, the expressions of
his animal passion, partaking something of ferocity, were rather worrying
(44:30):
than kisses intermixed with eager, ravenous love, bites on her
cheeks and neck, the prince of which did not wear
out for some days after. Poor Louisa, however, bore up
at length better than could have been expected. And though
she suffered and greatly too, yet ever true to the
good old cause, she suffered with pleasure and enjoyed her pain.
(44:54):
And soon, now by dint of an enraged enforcement, the
brute machine drew like a whirlwind, made all smoke again,
and wedging its way up to the utmost extremity, left
her in point of penetration, nothing to fear or to desire,
and now gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth Shakespeare,
(45:17):
Louisa lay pleased to the heart, pleased to her utmost
capacity of being, so, with every fiber in those parts
stretched almost to breaking on a rack of joy, whilst
the instrument of all this overfulness searched her senses with
its sweet excess, till the pleasure gained upon her, so
(45:38):
its point stung her so home that catching at length
the rage from her furious driver, and sharing the riot
of his wild rapture, she went wholly out of her
mind into that favorite part of her body, the whole
intenseness of which was so fervously filled and employed there
alone she existed, all lost in those delirious transports, those
(46:02):
ecstasies of the senses which her winking eyes, the brightened
vermilion of her lips and cheeks, and sighs of pleasure
deeply fetched, so pathetically expressed. In short, she was now
as mere a machine, as much wrought on, and had
her motions as little at her own command as the
natural himself, who thus broke in upon her, made her
(46:26):
feel with a vengeance his tempestuous tenderness, and the force
of the metal he battered with. Their active loins quivered
again with the violence of their conflict, till the surge
of pleasure, foaming and raging to a height, drew down
the pearly shower that was to allay this hurricane. The
purely sensitive idiot then first shed those tears of joy
(46:49):
that attend its last moments, not without an agony of delight,
and even almost a roar of rapture, as the gush
escaped him. So set sensibly too for Louisa, that she
kept him faithful company, going off in consent with the
old symptoms, a delicious delirium, a tremulous, convulsive shudder, and
(47:13):
the critical dying. Oh, and now on his getting off,
she lay pleasure drenched and regorging its essential sweets, but
quite spent and gasping for breath, without other sensation of
life than in those exquisite vibrations that trembled yet on
the strings of delight, which had been too intensively touched,
(47:37):
and which nature had been so intensely stirred with, for
the senses to be quickly at peace from. As for
the changeling, whose curious engine had been thus successfully played off,
his shift of countenance and gesture had even something droll,
or rather tragic comic in it. There was now an
(47:57):
air of sad, repining foolishness, superadded to his natural one
of no meaning and idiotism. As he stood with his
label of manhood now lank, unstiffened, becalmed, and flapping against
his thighs, down which it reached half way, terrible even
in its fall, whilst under the dejection of spirit and
(48:19):
flesh which naturally followed his eyes by turns cast down
towards his struck standard, or piteously lifted to Louisa seemed
to require at her hands, But he had so sensibly
parted from to her, and now ruefully missed, but the
vigor of nature, soon returning, dissipated the blast of faintness
(48:43):
which the common law of enjoyment had subjected him to,
And now his basket rebecame his main concern, which I
looked for and brought him whilst Louisa restored his dress
to its usual condition, and afterwards pleased him, perhaps more
by taking all his head flowers off his hands and
paying him at his rate for them, than if she
(49:04):
had embarrassed him by a present that he would have
been puzzled to account for and might have put others
on tracing The motives of whether she ever returned to
the attack, I know not, and to say the truth,
I believe not. She had had her freak out and
had pretty plentifully drowned her curiosity in a glut of pleasure, which,
(49:25):
as it happened, had no other consequence than that the
lad who retained only a confused memory of the transaction, would,
when he saw her for some time after, expressed a
grin of joy and familiarity after his idiot manner, and
soon forgot her in favor of the next woman, tempted
on the report of his parts to take him in
(49:51):
end of Section nine,
Section nine 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 second part nine.
My gentleman had now put on his clothes and recomposed himself.
(00:22):
When giving me a kiss and placing me by him,
he sat himself down as gingerly as possible, with one
side off the cushion, which was too sore for him
to bear resting any part of his weight on. Here
he thanked me for the extreme pleasure I had procured him, and,
seeing perhaps some marks in my countenance of terror and
(00:43):
apprehension of retaliation on my own skin for what I
had been the instrument of his suffering in his, he
assured me that he was ready to give up to
me any engagement I might deem myself under to stand
him as he had done me, But if that proceed
in my consent to it, he would consider the difference
(01:03):
of my sex its greater delicacy and incapacity to undergo pain.
Reheartened at which, and piqued in honor, as I thought
not to flinch so near the trial, especially as I
well knew missus skull was an eye witness from her
stand of a spile to the whole of our transactions.
I was now less afraid of my skin than of his.
(01:25):
Not furnishing me with an opportunity of signalizing my resolution
consonant to this disposition, was my answer. But my courage
was still more in my head than in my heart.
And as cowards rush into the danger they fear in
order to be dis soooner rid of the pain of
that sensation, I was entirely pleased with his hastening matters
(01:47):
into execution. He had then little to do but to
unloose the strings of my petticoats and lift them together
with my shift naval high, where he just tucked them
up loosely girds and might be slipped up higher at pleasure. Then,
viewing me round with great seeming delight, he laid me
(02:07):
at length on my face upon the bench, and when
I expected he would tie me as I had done him,
and held out my hands, not without fear and a
little trembling, he told me he would, by no means
terrify me unnecessarily with such a confinement, For that though
he meant to put my constancy to some trial the
(02:27):
standing it was to be completely voluntary on my side,
and therefore I might be at full liberty to get
up whenever I found the pain too much for me.
You cannot imagine how much I thought myself bound by
being thus allowed to remain loose, and how much spirit
this confidence in me gave me, so that I was
(02:48):
even from my heart careless how much my flesh might
suffer in honor of it. All my back parts, naked
half way up, were now fully at his mercy. And
first he stood at a convenient distance, delighting himself with
a gloating survey of the attitude I lay in, and
of all the secret stores I thus exposed to him
(03:10):
in fair display. Then springing eagerly towards me, he covered
all those naked parts with a fond profusion of kisses, and,
now taking hold of the rod, rather wanton with me
in gentle inflictions on those tender, trembling masses of my
flesh behind, than in any way hurt them, till by
(03:30):
degrees he began to tingle them with smarter lashes, so
as to provoke a red color into them, which I
knew as well by the flagrant glow I felt there
as by his telling me, they now emulated the native
roses of my other cheeks. When he had thus amused
himself with admiring and toying with them, he went on
(03:52):
to strike harder and more hard, so that I needed
all my patience not to cry out or complain. At
least at last he twigged me so smartly as to
fetch blood in more than one lash, at sight of
which he flung down the rod flew to me, kissed
away the starting drops, and sucking the wounds eased a
(04:12):
good deal of my pain. But now raising me on
my knees and making me kneel with them straddling wide
that tender part of me, naturally the province of pleasure,
not of pain, came in for its share of suffering.
For now, eyeing it wistfully, he directed the rod so
that the sharp ends of the twigs lighted there so
(04:34):
sensibly that I could not help wincing and writhing my
limbs with smart so that my contortions of body must
necessarily throw it into infinite variety of postures and points
of view, fit to feast the luxury of the eye.
But still I bore everything without crying. Out, When presently
giving me another pause, he rushed, as it were, on
(04:57):
that part whose lips and round about had felt this cruelty,
and by way of reparation, blese his own to them.
Then he opened shut, squeezed them, plucked softly the overgrowing moss,
and all this in a style of wild passionate rapture
and enthusiasm that expressed excess of pleasure, till betaking himself
(05:20):
to the rod again, encouraged by my passiveness and infuriated
with this strange taste of delight, he made my poor
posteriors pay for the ungovernableness of it, for now showing
them no quarter. The traitor cut me so that I
wanted but little of fainting away when he gave over.
(05:41):
And yet I did not utter one groan or angry expostulation.
But in heart I resolved nothing so seriously as never
to expose myself again to the like severities. You may guess, then,
in what curious pickle those soft flesh cushions of mine
were all sore, raw, and in fine terribly clawed off,
(06:03):
but so far from feeling any pleasure in it, that
the recent smart made me pout a little, and not
with the greatest air of satisfaction, received the compliments and
after caresses of the author of my pain. As soon
as my clothes were huddled on in a little decency,
a supper was brought in by the discreet missus Cole herself,
(06:25):
which might have piqued the sensuality of a cardinal, accompanied
with the choice of the richest dwines, all which she
sat before us, and went out again, without having by
a word, or even by a smile, given us the
least interruption or confusion in those moments of secrecy that
were not yet ripe to the admission of a third two.
(06:48):
I sat down, then, still scarce in charity with my butcher,
For such I could not help considering him, and was
moreover not a little piqued at the gay, satisfied air
of his countenance, which I thought myself insulted by. But
when the now necessary refreshment to me of a glass
of wine, a little eating, all the time observing a
(07:10):
profound silence, had somewhat cheered and restored me to spirits.
And as the smart began to go off, my good
humor returned accordingly, which alteration not escaping him, he said,
and did everything that could confirm me in, and indeed exalted.
But Scarce was supper well over before a change so
(07:32):
incredible was wrought in me. Such violent yet pleasingly irksome
sensations took possession of me that I, scarce knew how
to contain myself. The smart of the lashes was now
converted into such a prickly heat, such fiery tinglings as
made me sigh, squeeze my thighs together, shift, and wriggle
(07:54):
about my seat with a furious restlessness. Whilst these itching ardors,
as excited in those parts on which the storm of
discipline had principally fallen, detached legions of burning, subtle, stimulating
spirits to their opposite spot and center of assemblage, where
their titulation raged so furiously that I was even stinging
(08:19):
mad with them. No wonder then, that, in such a taking,
and devoured by flames that licked up all modesty and reserve,
my eyes now charged the brimful of the most intense
desire fired on my companion, very intelligible signals of distress.
My companion, I say, who grew in them every instant
(08:39):
more amiable and more necessary to my urgent wishes and
hopes of immediate ease. Mister Barville, no stranger by experience
to these situations, soon knew the past I was brought to,
soon perceived my extreme disorder in favor of which, removing
the table out of the way, he began a prelude
that flat uttered me with instant relief, to which I
(09:02):
was not, however, so near as I imagined, for he
was unbuttoned to me and tried to provoke and rouse
to action his unactive torpid machine. He blushingly owned that
no good was to be expected from it unless I
took it in hand to re excite its languid, loitering
powers by just refreshing the smart of the yet recent
(09:23):
blood raw cuts. Seeing it could no more than a
boy's top keep up without lashing, sensible then that I
should work as much for my own profit as his.
I hurried my compliance with his desire, and abridging the
ceremonial Whilst he leaned his head against the back of
a chair, I had scarce gently made him feel the
(09:45):
lash before I saw the object of my wishes give
signs of life, and presently, as it were, with a
magic touch, it started up into a noble size and distinction,
indeed hastening then to give me the benefit of it.
He threw me down on the bench. But such was
the refreshed soreness of those parts behind on my leaning
(10:07):
so hardened them as became me to compass the admission
of that stupendous head of his machine, that I could
not possibly bear it. I got up, then, and tried,
by leaning forwards and turning the crouper on my assailant,
to let him at the back avenue. But here it
was likewise impossible to stand his bearing so fiercely against
(10:29):
me in his agitations and endeavors to enter that way,
whilst his belly battered directly against the recent sore. What
should we do? Now? Both intolerably heated, both in a fury.
But pleasure is ever invented for its own ends. He
strips me in a trice, stark naked, and placing a
(10:51):
broad sette cushion on the carpet before the fire, oversets
me gently topsy turvy on it, and handly me only
at the waist, whilst you may be sure I favored
all my dispositions, brought my legs round his neck, so
that my head was kept from the floor only by
(11:11):
my hands and the velvet cushion, which was now bespread
with my flowing hair. Thus I stood on my head
and hands supported by him, in such manner that whilst
my thighs clung round him, so as to expose to
his side all my back figure, including the theater of
his bloody pleasure, the center of my fore part fairly
(11:34):
bearded the object of its rage, that now stood in
fine condition to give me satisfaction for the injuries of
its neighbors. But as this posture was certainly not the easiest,
and our imaginations wound up to the height, could suffer
no delay, he first, with the utmost eagerness and effort,
(11:55):
just lip lodged that broad acorn fashioned head of his instrument, And,
still frenzied by the fury with which he had made
that impression, he soon stuffed in the rest. When, now
with a pursuit of thrusts fiercely urged, he absolutely overpowered
and absorbed all sense of pain and uneasiness, whether from
(12:17):
my wounds behind my most untoward posture or the oversize
of his stretcher, in an infinitely predominant delight. When now
all my whole spirits of life and sensation, rushing impetuously
to the cockpit, where the prize of pleasure was hotly
in dispute and clustering to a point. There I soon
(12:39):
received the dear relief of nature from these over violent
strains and provocations of it, harmonizing with which my gallant
spouted into me. Such a potent overflow of the balsamic
injection as softened and unedged all those irritating stings of
a new species of titillation which I had been so
(13:01):
intolerably maddened with, and restored the ferment of my senses
to some degree of composure. I had now achieved this
rare adventure, ultimately much more to my satisfaction than I
had bespoken the nature of it to turn out. Nor
was it much lessened, you may think, by my spark's
(13:21):
lavish praises of my constancy and complaisance, which he gave
weight to by a present that greatly surpassed my utmost expectation.
Besides his gratification to missus Cole, I was, not, however,
at any time, re enticed to renew with him or
resort again to the violent expedient of lashing nature into
(13:43):
more haste than good speed, which, by the way I conceive,
acts somewhat in the manner of a dose of Spanish flies,
with more pain, perhaps, but less danger, and might be
necessary to him, but was nothing less so than to me,
whose appetite wanted the bridle more than the spur. Missus Cole,
(14:05):
to whom this adventurous exploit had more and more endeared me,
looked on me now as a girl after her own heart,
afraid of nothing, and on a good account, hardly enough
to find all the weapons of pleasure through attentive Then,
in consequence of these favorable conceptions, to promote either my
(14:25):
profit or pleasure. She had special regard for the first
in a new gallant of a very singular turn that
she procured for and introduced to me. This was a grave, staid, solemn,
elderly gentleman whose peculiar humor was a delight in combing
fine tresses of hair, And as I was perfectly headed
(14:47):
to his taste, he used to come constantly at my
toilette hours when I let down my hair as Lucy's nature,
and abandoned it to him to do what he pleased
with it, and accordingly, he would keep me an hour
or more in play with it, drawing the comb through it,
winding the curls round his fingers, even kissing it as
(15:08):
he smoothed it. And all this led to no other
use of my person or any other liberties whatever, any
more than if a distinction of sexes had not existed.
Another peculiarity of taste he had, which was to present
me with a dozen pairs of the whitest kid gloves
at a time. These he would divert himself with drawing
(15:30):
on me and then biting off the fingers ends, all
which fooleries of a sickly appetite the old gentleman paid
more liberally for than most others did for more essential favors.
This lasted till a violent cuff, seizing and laying him up,
delivered me from this most innocent and insipid trifler. For
(15:52):
I never heard more of him after his first retreat.
You may be sure a by job of this sort
interfered in no other pursuit or plan of life, which
I led in truth, with a modesty and reserve that
was less the work of virtue than of exhausted novelty.
A glot of pleasure and easy circumstances that made me
(16:15):
indifferent to any engagement in which pleasure and profit were
not eminently united. And such I could with less impatience
wait for at the hands of time and fortune. As
I was satisfied, I could never mend my pennyworths, having
evidently been served at the top of market and even
been pampered with dainties. Besides that, in the sacrifice of
(16:39):
a few momentary impulses, I found a secret satisfaction in
respecting myself as well as preserving the life and freshness
of my complexion. Louisa and Emily did not carry, indeed
their reserves so high as I did, but still they
were far from cheap or abandoned, though two of their
adventures seemed to contradict this general character, which for their
(17:01):
singularity I shall give you in course, Beginning first with Emily's.
Louisa and she went one night to a ball, the
first in a habit of a shepherdess, Emily in that
of a shepherd. I saw them in their dresses before
they went, and nothing in nature could represent a prettier
boy than this last did. Being so fair and well limbed.
(17:25):
They had kept together for some time, when Louisa, meeting
on all the acquaintance of hers, very cordially, gives her
companion the drop and leaves her under the protection of
her boy's habit, which was not much, and of her discretion,
which was it seems still less. Emily, finding herself deserted,
sauntered thoughtless about a while, and as much for coolness
(17:49):
and air as anything else. At length pulled off her
mask and went to the sideboard, where, eyed and marked
out by a gentleman in a very handsome domino, she
was accosted by and fell into chat with him. The Domino,
after little discourse in which Emily doubtless distinguished her good
nature and easiness more than her wit, began to make
(18:12):
violent love to her, and drawing her insensibly to some
benches at the lower end of the masquerade room for
her to sit by him, where he squeezed her hands,
pinched her cheeks, praised and played with her fine hair,
admired her complexion, and all in a style of courtship
dashed with a certain oddity that, not comprehending the mystery
(18:35):
of poor Emily, attributed to his falling in with the
humor of her disguise, and, being naturally not the cruelest
of her profession, began to incline into a parley on
those essentials. But here was the stress of the joke.
He took her really for what she appeared to be,
a smock faced boy, and she forgetting her dress, and,
(18:57):
of course, ranging quite wide of his ideas, took all
those addresses to be paid to herself as a woman,
which she precisely owed to his not thinking her one. However,
this double error was pushed to such a height on
both sides that Emily, who saw nothing in him but
a gentleman of distinction by those points of dress to
(19:19):
which his disguise did not extend, warmed too by the
wine he had plied her with and the caresses he
had lavished upon her, suffered herself to be persuaded to
go to a bangio with him, and, thus losing sight
of missus Cole's cautions, with a blind confidence, put herself
into his hands to be carried wherever he pleased, for
(19:41):
his part, equally blinded by his wishes, whilst her egregious
simplicity favored his deception more than the most exquisite art
could have done. He supposed no doubt that he had
lighted on some soft simpleton fit for his purpose, or
some kept minion broken to his hand, who understood him
perfectly well and entered into his designs. But be that
(20:06):
as it would, He led her to a coach, went
into it with her, and brought her to a very
handsome apartment with a bed in it. But whether it
was a bagnio or not, she could not tell, having
spoken to nobody but himself. But when they were alone
together and her enamorato began to proceed to those extremities
(20:26):
which instantly discovered the sex, she remarked that no description
could paint up to the life the mixture of pique, confusion,
and disappointment that appeared in his countenance, joined to the
mournful exclamation by heavens a woman. This at once opened
her eyes, which had his hereto been shut in downright stupidity. However,
(20:51):
as if he had meant to retrieve that escape, he
still continued to toy with and fondle her, but with
so staring an alteration from extra warmth into a chill
and forced civility that even Emily herself could not but
take notice of. It, and now began to wish she
had paid more regard to missus Cole's premonitions against ever
(21:14):
engaging with a stranger, And now an excess of timidity
succeeded to an excess of confidence, and she thought herself
so much at his mercy and discretion that she stood
passive throughout the whole progress of his prelude, for now
whether the impressions of so great a beauty had even
made him forgive her her sex, or whether her appearance
(21:37):
in figure in that dress still humored his first illusion,
He recovered by degrees a good part of his first warmth, and,
keeping Emily with her breeches still unbuttoned, stripped them down
to her knees, and, gently impelling her to lean down
with her face against the bedside, placed her so that
the double way between the double rising behind presented the
(22:00):
choice fair to him, And he was so fairly set
in a misdirection as to give the girl no small
alarms for fear of losing a maidenhead she had not
dreamt off. However, her complaints and a resistance gentle but
firm checked and brought him to himself again, so that
turning his Steed's head. He drove him at length in
(22:23):
the right road, in which his imagination, having probably made
the most of those resemblances that flattered his taste, he
got with much ado to his journey's end, after which
he led her out himself, and, walking with her two
or three streets length, got her a chair. When making
her a present, not anything inferior to what she could
(22:46):
have expected. He left her well recommended to the Chairman, who,
on her directions, brought her home. This she related to
missus Cole and me the same morning, not without the
visible remains of the fear and confusion she had been
in still stamped on her countenance. Missus Cole's remark was
(23:07):
that her indiscretion proceeding from a constitutional facility, there were
little hopes of anything curing her of it, but repeated
severe experience. Mine was that I could not conceive how
it was possible for mankind to run into a taste
not only universally odious, but absurd and impossible to gratify, since,
(23:29):
according to the notions and experience I had of things,
it was not in nature to force such immense disproportions.
Missus Cole only smiled at my ignorance, and said nothing
towards my undeception, which was not affected but by ocular demonstration.
Some months after which a most singular accident furnished me,
(23:51):
and which I will here set down, that I may
not return again to so disagreeable a subject. I had,
on a visit intended to Harriet, who had taken lodgings
at Hampton Court, hired a chariot to go out thither,
missus Cole, having promised to accompany me, but some indispensable
business intervening to detain her, I was obliged to set
(24:14):
out alone, and scarce had. I got a third of
my way before the axle tree broke down, and I
was well off to get out, safe and unhurt, into
a public house of a tolerable, handsome appearance on the road. Here.
The people told me that the stage would come by
in a couple of hours at forthest, upon which, determining
(24:36):
to wait for it sooner than lose the jaunt, I
had got so far forward on, I was carried into
a very clean, decent room up one pair of stairs,
which I took possession of for the time I had
to stay in right of calling for sufficient to do
the House justice. Here, whilst I was amusing myself with
(24:56):
looking out of the window, a single horse chaise stopped
at the door, out of which lightly leaped two gentlemen,
for so they seemed, who came in only, as it were,
to bait and refresh a little, For they gave their
horse to be held in readiness against they came out,
And presently I heard the door of the next room
(25:17):
where they were let in, and called about them briskly,
And as soon as they were served, I could just
hear that they shut and fastened the door on the inside.
A spirit of curiosity, far from sudden, since I do
not know when I was without it, prompted me, without
any particular suspicion or other drift or view, to see
(25:38):
what they were and examine their persons and behavior. The
partition of our rooms was one of those movable ones that,
when taken down, served occasionally to lay them into one
for the conveniency of a large company. And now my
nicest search could not show me the shadow of a
peep hole, a circumstance which probably had not escaped the
(26:00):
review of the parties on the other side, whom much
it stood upon not to be deceived in it. But
at length I observed a paper patch of the same
color as the wainscot, which I took to conceal some flaw.
But then it was so high that I was obliged
to stand upon a chair to reach it, which I
did as softly as possibly, and with the point of
(26:22):
a bodkin, soon pierced it. And now applying my eye clothes,
I commanded the room perfectly, and could see my two
young sparks romping and pulling one another about entirely to
my imagination, in frolic and innocent play. The eldest might be,
on my nearest guess towards nineteen, a tall, comely young
(26:44):
man in a white fustian frock with a green velvet
cape and a cut bob wig. The youngest could not
be above seventeen, fair, ruddy, completely well made, and to
say the truth, a sweet, pretty stripling. He was I fancy, too,
a country lad by his dress, which was a green
(27:04):
plush frock and breeches of the same white waistcoat and stockings,
a jockey cap, with his yellowish hair long and loose
in natural curls. But after a look of circumspection which
I saw the elder cast every way round the room,
probably in too much hurry and heat, not to overlook
the very small opening I was boasted at, especially at
(27:27):
the height it was, whilst my eye close to it
kept the light from shining through and betraying it. He
said something to his companion, and presently changed the face
of things. For now the elder began to embrace, to
press and kiss the younger, to put his hands into
his bosom, and give him such manifest signs of an
(27:48):
amorous intention as made me conclude the other to be
a girl in disguise, a mistake that nature kept me
in countenance, for for she had certainly made one when
she gave him the male stamp. In the rashness then
of their age, and bent as they were to accomplish
their project of preposterous pleasure at the risk of the
(28:08):
very worst of consequences, where a discovery was nothing less
than improbable, they now proceeded to such lengths as soon
satisfied me what they were the criminal scene they acted.
I had the patience to see to an end, purely
that I might gather more facts and certainty against them
in my design to do their desert's instant justice. And accordingly,
(28:32):
when they had readjusted themselves and were preparing to go
out burning as I was with rage and indignation, I
jumped down from the chair in order to raise the
house upon them, but with such an unlucky impetuosity that
some nail or ruggedness in the floor caught my foot
and flung me on my face with such violence that
(28:53):
I fell senseless on the ground, and must have lain
there some time ere any one came to my relief,
so that they alarmed, I suppose, by the noise of
my fall, had more than the necessary time to make
a safe retreat. This they effected, as I learned, with
a precipitation nobody could account for till when come to
(29:13):
myself and composed enough to speak, I acquainted those of
the house with the whole transaction I had been evidenced to.
When I came home again and told missus Cole this adventure,
she very sensibly observed to me that there was no
doubt of jew vengeance one time or other overtaking these miscreants,
however they might escape for the present, and that had
(29:36):
I been the temporal instrument of it, I should have
been at least put to a great deal more trouble
and confusion than I imagined. That as to the thing itself,
the less said of it was the better. But that
though she might be suspected of partiality from its being
the common cause of womankind, out of whose mouths this
(29:57):
practice tended to take something more than bread, yet she
protested against any mixture of passion with a declaration extorted
from her by pure regard to truth, which was at
whatever effect this infamous passion had in other ages and
other countries, it seemed a peculiar blessing on our air
and climate, that there was a plague spot visibly imprinted
(30:20):
on all that are tainted with it in this nation,
at least, for that among numbers of that stamp whom
she had known, or at least were universally under the
scandalous suspicion of it, she would not name an exemption,
hardly of one of them whose character was not, in
all other respects, the most worthless and despicable that could
(30:41):
be stripped of all the manly virtues of their own
sex and filled up with only the worst vices and
follies of ours, that in fine they were scarce less
execrable than ridiculous in their monstrous inconsistence of loathing and
condemning women, and all at the same time aping all
their manners, air, lips, scuttle, and in general all their
(31:05):
little modes of affectation, which become them at least better
than they do these unsexed male misses. But here washing
my hands of them, I replunge into the stream of
my history into which I may very properly engraft a
terrible sally of Louisa's, since I had some share in
it myself, and have besides engaged myself to relate it
(31:29):
in point of countenance to poor Emily. It will add
to one more example to thousands, in confirmation of the
maxim that when women get, once out of compass, there
are no lengths of licentiousness that they are not capable
of running. One morning, then that both missus Cole and
Emily were gone out for the day, and only Louisa
(31:50):
and I, not to mention the housemaid, were left in
charge of the house whilst we were loitering away the
time in looking through the shop windows. The son of
a poor woman who earned very hard bread, indeed by
mending stockings in a stall in the neighborhood offered us
some nosegays ringed around a small basket by selling of
(32:11):
which the poor boy eked out his mother's maintenance of
them both. Nor was he fit for any other way
of livelihood, since he was not only a perfect changeling
or idiot, but stammered so that there was no understanding
even those sounds his half dozen at most animal ideas
prompted him to utter. The boys and servants in the
(32:33):
neighborhood had given him the nickname of good natured Dick,
from the soft simpletons doing everything he was bid at
the first word, and from his naturally having no turn
to mischief. Then, by the way, he was perfectly well made, stout,
clean limbed, tall of his age, as strong as a horse,
and withal pretty featured, so that he was not absolutely
(32:57):
such a figure to be snuffled at. Neither if your
nice ta could, in favor of such essentials, have dispensed
with a face unwashed, hair tangled for want of combing,
and so ragged a plight that he might have disputed
points of show with air. A heathen philosopher of them all,
this boy we had often seen and bought his flowers
(33:19):
out of pure compassion and nothing more. But just at
this time, as he stood presenting us his basket, a
sudden whim, a start of wayward fancy seized Louisa, and
without consulting me, she calls him in, and, beginning to
examine his Nosegays calls out too, one for herself, another
for me, and pulling out half a crown very currently,
(33:43):
gives it him to change, as if she had really
expected he could have changed it. But the boys scratching
his head made his signs, explaining his inability in plays
of words which he could not with all his struggling articulate.
Louisa at this says, well, my lad, come upstairs with me,
and I will give you your jewe, winking at the
(34:05):
same time to me and beckoning me to accompany her,
which I did, securing first the street door that by
this means, together with the shop, became wholly the care
of the faithful housemaid. As we went up, Louisa whispered
to me that she had conceived a strange longing to
be satisfied whether the general rule held good with regard
(34:27):
to this changeling, and how far nature had made him
amends in her best bodily gifts for her denial of
the sublimer intellectual ones begging at the same time my
assistance in procuring her this satisfaction a want of complaisance,
was never my vice, and I was so far from
opposing this extravagant frolic that now bit with the same
(34:49):
maggot and my curiosity conspiring with hers, I entered plumb
into it on my own account. Consequently, as soon as
we came into louise bed chamber, whilst she was amusing
him with picking out his nosegays, I undertook the lead
and began the attack. As it was not then very
(35:10):
material to keep much measures with a mere natural, I
made presently very free with him, though at my first
motion of meddling, his surprise and confusion made him receive
my advances, but awkwardly, nay in so much that he
bashfully shied and shied back little till. Encouraging him with
(35:30):
my eyes, plucking him playfully by the hair, sleeking his cheeks,
and forwarding my point by a number of little wantonness,
I soon turned him familiar and gave nature her sweetest alarm,
so that aroused and beginning to feel himself, we could,
amidst all the innocent laugh and grin I had provoked
him into, perceived the fire lighting in his eyes and
(35:55):
diffusing over his cheeks, blend its glow with that of
his blushes. The emotion, in short of animal pleasure, glared
distinctly in the simpleton's countenance. Yet struck with the novelty
of the scene, he did not know which way to
look or move, but tame passive, simpering with his mouth
half open in stupid rapture, stood intractably suffered me to
(36:19):
do what I pleased with him. His basket was dropped
out of his hands, which Louisa took care of. I had,
now through more than one rent, discovered and felt his thighs,
the skin of which seemed the smoother and fairer for
the coarseness and even dirt of his dress, as the
teeth of negroes seemed the whiter for the surrounding black
(36:42):
and poor indeed of habit, poor of understanding. He was, however,
abundantly rich in personal treasures, such as the flesh, firm, plump,
and replete with the juices of youth and robust, well
knit limbs. My fingers too, had now got within each
of the true, the genuine sensitive plant, which, instead of
(37:04):
shrinking from the touch, joys to meet it, and swells
and vegetates under it. Mine pleasingly informed me that matters
were so ripe for the discovery we meditated that they
were too mighty for the confinement. They were ready to break.
A waiste band that I unskewered, and a rag of
assured that I removed, and which could not have covered
(37:27):
a quarter of it, revealed the whole of the idiot's
standard of distinction, erect in full pride and display. But
such a one it was, positively of so tremendous a size,
that prepared as we were to see something extraordinary, it
still out of measure, surpassed our expectation, and astonished even me,
(37:49):
who had not been used to trade in trifles. In
fine it might have answered very well, the making a
show of its enormous head seemed in hue and sigh
not unlike a common sheep's heart. Then you might have
trolled dice securely along the broad back of the body
of it. The length of it, too was prodigious. Then
(38:12):
the rich appendage of the treasure bag beneath, large in proportion,
gathered and crisped up round in shallow furrows, helped to
fill the eye and complete the proof of his being
a natural not quite in vain, since it was full
manifest that he inherited, and largely too, the prerogative of majesty,
(38:33):
which distinguishes that otherwise most unfortunate condition and gives rise
to the vulgar saying a fool's bauble is a lady's playfellow,
not wholly without reason, For generally speaking, it is in
love as it is in war, where longest weapon carries it. Nature,
in short, had done so much for him in those
(38:54):
parts that she perhaps held herself acquitted in doing so
little for his head. For my part, who had sincerely
no intention to push the joke further than simply satisfying
my curiosity with the sight of it alone, I was content,
in spite of the temptation that stared me in the face,
with having raised a may pole for another to hang
(39:15):
a garland on. For by this time, easily reading Louisa's
desires in her wishful eyes, I acted the commodious part
and made her, who sought no better sport significant terms
of encouragement to go through stitch with her adventure, intimating
too that I would stay and see fair play, in
(39:36):
which indeed I had in view to humor a new
born curiosity, to observe what appearances active nature would put
on in a natural In the course of this her
darling operation. Louisa, whose appetite was up, and who, like
the industrious bee, was, it seems, not above gathering the
sweets of so rare a flower, though she found it
(39:59):
planted on a dull unghill, was but too readily disposed
to take the benefit of my session. Urged then strongly
by her own desires, and emboldened by me, she presently
determined to risk a trial of parts with the idiot,
who was by this time nobly inflamed for her purpose
by all the irritations we had used to put the
(40:20):
principles of pleasure effectually into motion and to wind up
the springs of its organ to their supreme pitch. And
it stood accordingly, stiff and straining, ready to burst with
the blood and spirits that swelled it to a bulk.
No I shall never forget it. Louisa, then, taking and
holding the fine handle that so invitingly offered itself, led
(40:44):
the ductiled youth by that master tool of his, as
she stepped backwards towards the bed, which he joyfully gave
way to under the incitations of instinct, and palpably delivered
up to the God of desire. Stop. Then by the
bed she took the fall she loved, and leaned to
the most gently backward upon it, still holding fast what
(41:08):
she held, and taking care to give her clothes a
convenient toss up, so that her thighs duly disclosed and elevated,
laid open all the outward prospect of the treasury of love,
the rose lipped overture, presenting the cockpit so fair that
it was not in nature even for a natural to
(41:28):
miss it, nor did he, for Louisa, fully bent on
grappling with it, and impatience of dalliance or delay, directed
faithfully the point of the battering peace, and bounded up
with a rage of so voracious appetite to meet and
favor the thrust of insertion, that the fierce activity on
(41:48):
both sides effected it with such pain of distention that
Louisa cried out violently that she was hurt beyond bearing,
that she was killed but it was too late. The
storm was up, and force was on her to give
way to it. For now the man machine, strongly worked
upon by the sensual passion, felt so manfully his advantages
(42:12):
and superiority, felt withal the sting of pleasure, so intolerable
that maddening with it. His joys began to assume a
character of furiousness, which made me tremble for the too
tender Louisa. He seemed at this juncture greater than himself.
His countenance, before so void of meaning or expression, now
(42:34):
grew big with the importance of the act he was upon.
In short, it was not now that he was to
be played the fool with, but what is pleasant enough.
I myself was awed into a sort of respect for
him by the comely terrors his motions dressed him in
his eyes shooting sparks of fire, his face glowing with
(42:55):
ardors that gave another life to it, his teeth churning,
his whole frame agitated with a raging, ungovernable impetuosity, all
sensibly betraying the formidable fierceness with which the genial instinct
acted upon him, butting then and goring all before him,
and mad and wild, like an over driven steer, he
(43:18):
plows up the tender furrow, all insensible to Louise's complaints.
Nothing can stop, nothing can keep out a fury like this,
with which, having once got its head in its blind rage,
soon made way for the rest, piercing, rending, and breaking
open all obstructions. The torn, split, wounded girl cries, struggles,
(43:43):
invokes me to her rescue, and endeavors to get from
under the young savage or shake him off. But alas
in vain her breath might as soon have stilled or
stemmed a storm in winter, as all her strength have
quelled his rough assault or put him out of his course.
And indeed all her efforts and struggles were managed with
(44:05):
such disorder that they served rather to entangle enfold her
the faster in the twine of his boisterous arms, so
that she was tied to the stake, and obliged to
fight the match out if she died for it. For
his part, instinct ridden as he was, the expressions of
his animal passion, partaking something of ferocity, were rather worrying
(44:30):
than kisses intermixed with eager, ravenous love, bites on her
cheeks and neck, the prince of which did not wear
out for some days after. Poor Louisa, however, bore up
at length better than could have been expected. And though
she suffered and greatly too, yet ever true to the
good old cause, she suffered with pleasure and enjoyed her pain.
(44:54):
And soon, now by dint of an enraged enforcement, the
brute machine drew like a whirlwind, made all smoke again,
and wedging its way up to the utmost extremity, left
her in point of penetration, nothing to fear or to desire,
and now gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth Shakespeare,
(45:17):
Louisa lay pleased to the heart, pleased to her utmost
capacity of being, so, with every fiber in those parts
stretched almost to breaking on a rack of joy, whilst
the instrument of all this overfulness searched her senses with
its sweet excess, till the pleasure gained upon her, so
(45:38):
its point stung her so home that catching at length
the rage from her furious driver, and sharing the riot
of his wild rapture, she went wholly out of her
mind into that favorite part of her body, the whole
intenseness of which was so fervously filled and employed there
alone she existed, all lost in those delirious transports, those
(46:02):
ecstasies of the senses which her winking eyes, the brightened
vermilion of her lips and cheeks, and sighs of pleasure
deeply fetched, so pathetically expressed. In short, she was now
as mere a machine, as much wrought on, and had
her motions as little at her own command as the
natural himself, who thus broke in upon her, made her
(46:26):
feel with a vengeance his tempestuous tenderness, and the force
of the metal he battered with. Their active loins quivered
again with the violence of their conflict, till the surge
of pleasure, foaming and raging to a height, drew down
the pearly shower that was to allay this hurricane. The
purely sensitive idiot then first shed those tears of joy
(46:49):
that attend its last moments, not without an agony of delight,
and even almost a roar of rapture, as the gush
escaped him. So set sensibly too for Louisa, that she
kept him faithful company, going off in consent with the
old symptoms, a delicious delirium, a tremulous, convulsive shudder, and
(47:13):
the critical dying. Oh, and now on his getting off,
she lay pleasure drenched and regorging its essential sweets, but
quite spent and gasping for breath, without other sensation of
life than in those exquisite vibrations that trembled yet on
the strings of delight, which had been too intensively touched,
(47:37):
and which nature had been so intensely stirred with, for
the senses to be quickly at peace from. As for
the changeling, whose curious engine had been thus successfully played off,
his shift of countenance and gesture had even something droll,
or rather tragic comic in it. There was now an
(47:57):
air of sad, repining foolishness, superadded to his natural one
of no meaning and idiotism. As he stood with his
label of manhood now lank, unstiffened, becalmed, and flapping against
his thighs, down which it reached half way, terrible even
in its fall, whilst under the dejection of spirit and
(48:19):
flesh which naturally followed his eyes by turns cast down
towards his struck standard, or piteously lifted to Louisa seemed
to require at her hands, But he had so sensibly
parted from to her, and now ruefully missed, but the
vigor of nature, soon returning, dissipated the blast of faintness
(48:43):
which the common law of enjoyment had subjected him to,
And now his basket rebecame his main concern, which I
looked for and brought him whilst Louisa restored his dress
to its usual condition, and afterwards pleased him, perhaps more
by taking all his head flowers off his hands and
paying him at his rate for them, than if she
(49:04):
had embarrassed him by a present that he would have
been puzzled to account for and might have put others
on tracing The motives of whether she ever returned to
the attack, I know not, and to say the truth,
I believe not. She had had her freak out and
had pretty plentifully drowned her curiosity in a glut of pleasure, which,
(49:25):
as it happened, had no other consequence than that the
lad who retained only a confused memory of the transaction, would,
when he saw her for some time after, expressed a
grin of joy and familiarity after his idiot manner, and
soon forgot her in favor of the next woman, tempted
on the report of his parts to take him in
(49:51):
end of Section nine,
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