My Secret Life (40 page)

A fortnight elapsed before I heard anything of him, and was surprized he had not applied for his character. Then he came to me. He was trying for a place in the country, would I give a written character as footman or valet. It was a place where he was to live out. Yes, if I was certain all was square. — Where was it? At
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near the village where Lucy lived. Then he volunteered that she was with her parents, and that he had been down to see her. I was startled, and began to think about my own little games in Lucy’s receptacle, but said, “What did you go there for? Is she with child really, or not?” “Well it’s quite true she was so and it was my fault, but she’s had a miscarriage and is all right, and we’ve made it up.” “More fool she,” said I, “you will serve the poor girl the same dirty trick again.” No he wouldn’t, he was a thinking of marrying her. “That’s like a man,” said I. “I’ll give you fifty pounds to help you if you do.” “Will you sir?” said he. I reflected. “Well, I really think I would.” “By gosh I’ll marry her in three weeks,” said he, “for it would just set us up, and I’ve saved a little money, and can go home of nights.” “Well I must think it over. Come to me tomorrow morning, and if the gentleman writes to me for your character, I will see what I can do for you.”

I was really very glad, but did not quite see why I should give fifty pounds. I had done the girl no harm, had given her lots of money, and enabled her quietly to get over her trouble which I had not brought on her. But I had deep sympathy for her, almost an affection seemed springing up in my vacant heart. So thought I, it may do good to her. She is a sweet creature and deserves it; and next morning I told him I would give him fifty pounds, so soon as he was married to her. Not knowing how I might be compromised by this act, I instructed my solicitors in the matter, told them all the circumstances (excepting that I had tailed the girl), and arranged for them to pay the fifty pounds, so soon as they were satisfied that they were married.

He got the place he wanted: soon my solicitors got a letter from her saying the marriage was to take place on a certain day, and subsequently a copy of the marriage certificate. They then paid him the money. He went to service near the village, and so did she for a time, they heard. Two or three months afterwards I received a letter with these words in it: “Sir, God bless you for your kindness, please burn this, I felt that I must thank you. Lucy.” — and I never heard of the couple afterwards. It was one of the shortest, but one of the most delicious of my amours, and I look back to it with intense satisfaction.

From first to last I had about three weeks enjoyment of her, for she was only a day past her monthly period, when the accusation came, by which she lost her situation, and I had her up to a day or two before her courses were forced on by the doctor.

I can’t explain to myself why I had such a letch for gamahuching her, excepting the extreme beauty of her cunt, and its sweet, inciting smell. I have been always fitful in this taste. To most of the women — including some splendid women — young, beautiful, lascivious, whom I have much liked, I have never done it. I have done it with a half dislike, to several lovely creatures who insisted on my doing it to them, and I licked, spitting frequently, and wiping my mouth on the sly afterwards to avoid offence; but occasionally I have liked it much, tho as I write and look back years, I don’t recollect one woman to whom I gave such cunnilingual attention as I did to Lucy. The idea of giving pleasure to a woman seems to actuate me more in what I now do, than it used. Once I seem mainly to have thought of my own pleasure. There is a strange feeling of enjoyment comes over me now, when my tongue touches the clitoris of a sweet young woman, if I like her.

Although Lucy willingly kissed my prick and balls, I never even suggested her taking it into her mouth, — do not indeed recollect the idea having ever occurred to me. I was of course curious about James’ amatory tricks, but there was little to tell, and what there was, she told me quite freely when I had had her a few days. Excepting at the house, where he shattered her virginity, he had only once had her in another house, the rest of the doings were in my house. When they had brought the dinner or luncheon things up stairs to lay the cloth, he shagged her quickly on my sofa and sometimes on the table. Directly we had left the dining-room, he did the same whilst they removed the things. So very frequently, sweet Lucy waited at table with his sperm both in and out of her cunt, and it is to be hoped that before the dinner bread was cut they washed their fingers, tho I greatly fear they did not. His prick seemed to her about the size of mine, but she had scarcely seen it, and she got with child at the second or third fucking, so she had not had much fun for her trouble. She never had the pleasure with him that I gave her, and that is all she said.

I have had a dozen women with their backs on a dining room or other table, and have found them a most convenient couch. For impromptu coition, tables are just the height for me. I can see, feel, and fuck easily on them, and can save the lady’s clothes from inconvenient rumpling. One night in the smoking room of my club, the conversation turning as usual upon women, I alluded to tables, and wondered if every man present had used them. Ten men were present, and each said he had often times done so. One man, since dead, said he had shagged every servant he had on them. He was in the F
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n office, not well off, and kept but two servants. “It’s the safest place in the house,” said he, “just before the cloth is laid. Your wife is most likely dressing, the cook cooking, and neither can interrupt you. I expect every man has put a woman’s arse on that piece of mahogany.”

Then again I sought Camille’s society, and for a long time thought her the most charming of courtezans. — She had plumped up still more, took a warm bath every day, and her skin, always good, had the most delicious, velvety smoothness. I use that word advisedly, because having an exquisite sense of touch, I notice that some women’s flesh feels like ivory, some like satin, and some like velvet, and some (which is the perfection of all) which seems a compound of all them, and I call that perfect flesh.

Moreover she had a slow, lazy, voluptuous manner of fucking, by which she seemed to prolong my pleasure, and this with her, I think, was art grafted on natural aptitude. She was never in a hurry for me to go, never said she was engaged, or that some one was coming at ** o’clock, or would I excuse her for a few minutes, or similar devices of strumpets with which I am now fully acquainted. Nor did she borrow, nor be dissatisfied with my gifts, nor say she was short of money, that her rent was due to morrow, and so on. She had plenty of friends I know, for her splendid tho quiet dresses, silk stockings, boots, and fine chemises told me that. Indeed she admitted it, showed me various men’s cards, saying that she supposed if they left her their cards, they did not object to their being seen, or why leave them. And so I used to sit for hours with her, poking her at intervals, and talking upon sexual matters, as well as all sorts of subjects, and drinking Claret and smoking.

Indeed she was a most enticing creature, for she had among other qualities, a small, soft, exquisitely feminine voice, and a silvery quiet laugh. In cold weather clad in a lovely loose sort of silk wrapper, she sat half fronting the fire, with perhaps one leg just over the arm of the chair, or in some attitude by which I could see half way up her thighs. As it got warmer she would loll about with a chemise so fine, that you could see the hair of her cunt through it, and her rich darkish toned flesh looked exquisite against the white by contrast.

[I had until within a year or two of the period of time now entered on, read but little erotic literature, and that in English. Now I had read much of that written by the French. How coarse and commonplace the average English baudy book is, compared with the French; and the same may be said of the pictures. With certain facilities recently possessed, I must I think (if they exist) have come across English engravings in which the workings of love (called lust), that potent factor of human action implanted in him by nature for his pleasure and the woman’s, and for the perpetuation of the human race, are artistically portrayed; yet I have scarcely seen any which, as engravings, are not coarse; designed by those evidently unaccustomed to draw the human figure at all, and quite unable to portray the male and female either in the varied incitements to, or the varied attitudes, in which they copulate. Whilst in the French are to be found copious engravings, true to life in every one of these particulars.]

This literature amused me much, as did the pictures of fantastic combinations of male and female in lascivious play and in coition. Their impossibilities even amused me, and brought frequently to my mind what I had heard of in my now wide experience with Paphian ladies. There is no end of variety in such amusements, and no limits to eccentricities in lewedness, and no harm in gratifying them, either alone with one woman or man, or in society, to whom it is congenial. A field of lascivious enjoyment new to me, seemed opening, and I thought about the out of the way erotic tricks portrayed, and of those I also might play, and that I should like to try them. I began to see that such things are harmless, tho the world may say they are naughty, and saw through the absurdity of conventional views and prejudices as to the ways a cock and cunt may be pleasurably employed.

Why, for instance, is it permissible for a man and woman to enjoy themselves lasciviously, but improper for two men and two women to do the same things all together in the same room? — Why is it abominable for any one to look at man and woman fucking, when every man, woman, and child would do so if they had the opportunity? Is copulation an improper thing to do, if not, why is it disgraceful to look at its being done? — Why may a man, and woman handle each other’s privates, and yet it be wrong for a man to feel another’s prick, or a woman to feel another’s cunt? Every one in each sex has at one period of their lives done so, and why should not any society or association of people indulge in these innocent, tho sensual, amusements if they like in private. What is there in their doing so that is disgraceful? It is the prejudice of education alone which teaches that it is.

Such reflexions for some years had crossed my mind; they tended to sweep away prejudices. And tho I still have prejudice, yet for the most part I can see no harm in gratifying my lust in the ways which the world would say is highly improper, but which appear to me that men and women are intended by instinct as well as by reflexion to gratify. This frame of mind seems to me to have been gradually developing for some time past — and accounts for much that follows.

In these opinions I was strengthened by repeated conversations with Camille. She was one of the most philosophic whores I ever knew, was fairly educated, and had a wonderfully cool common sense way of looking at things. When I had doubts of the propriety of doing this or that, she would solve them with answers which appeared to me irrefutable, at length. We seem to have been on the subject of unusual pleasures whenever we met. — In fact we were constantly talking about varieties in lustful enjoyments. She would sit down smoking a cigarette, and I a cigar, and consider whether there was wrong in frigging, gamahuching, minetting, tribadism, or sodomy. — In men frigging each other, or women doing the same, and other things. Our conclusion was that there was no harm in any of them. With that clear conscience, and aided by my imagination and by the French books and prints, erotic whims began to suggest themselves to me gradually.

I then fell ill for a short time, and during that, arranged some more of these memoirs. Soon after, disappointments, troubles of various sorts, and other considerations made me nearly burn them. Getting well I drowned my sorrows in female society, and had many of the fair mercenary ones, whom I had known before I left England. To their class I owe a debt of gratitude, and say again what I think I have said elsewhere: that they have been my refuge in sorrow, an unfailing relief in all my miseries, have saved me from drinking, gambling, and perhaps worse. I shall never throw stones at them, nor speak harshly to them, nor of them.

They are much what society has made them, and society uses them, enjoys them, even loves them; yet denies them, spurns, damns, and crushes them even whilst frequenting them and enjoying them. In short, it shamefully ill treats them in most Christian countries, and more so in protestant England than in any others that I know.

 

During my illness I was as chaste as men usually are, when they cannot be unchaste; but I thought much about women, and the complicated organs of the sexes, by the agency of which the species is continued. I reflected on the secrecy with which human beings envelop their amours — of the shame which they so ridiculously attach to any mention or reference to copulation in plain language, or indeed at all — altho it is the prime mover of humanity, and finds expression in every day life in some shape or another, by word, or deed; and is a subject which passes thro the mind, almost daily, of men and of women who are in a healthy state of body, and have once fucked, and perhaps before that.

It was a wonder to me that when both sexes feel so much pleasure in looking at each other’s genitals — that they should take such extreme pains to hide them, should think it disgraceful, to show them without mutual consent, and penal to do so separately or together in public. — I came to the conclusion that in the women it is the result of training, with the cunning intention of selling the view of their privates at the highest price — and inducing the man to give them that huge price for it — the marriage ring. Women are all bought in the market — from the whore to the princess. The price alone is different, and the highest price in money or rank obtains the woman. Then I wrote what follows, because I never had found it written in plain language elsewhere.