Fanny Hill was a woman’s experience. Written perhaps by a woman, where was a man’s, written with equal truth? That book has no bawdy word in it; but bawdy acts need the bawdy ejaculations; the erotic, full flavored expressions, which even the chastest indulge in, when lust, or love, is in its full tide of performance. So I determined to write my private life freely as to fact, and in the spirit of the lustful acts done by me, or witnessed; it is written therefore with absolute truth, and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency. Decency and voluptuousness in its fullest acceptance, cannot exist together, one would kill the other; the poetry of copulation I have only experienced with a few women, which however neither prevented them, nor me from calling a spade, a spade.
I began it for my amusement; when many years had been chronicled I tired of it and ceased. Some ten years afterwards I met a woman, with whom, or with those she helped me do; I did, said, saw, and heard, well nigh everything a man and woman could do with their genitals, and began to narrate those events, when quite fresh in my memory, a great variety of incidents extending over four years or more. Then I lost sight of her, and my amorous amusements for a while were simpler, but that part of my history was complete.
After a little while, I set to work to describe the events of the intervening years of my youth, and early middle age; which included most of my gallant intrigues and adventures of a frisky order; but not the more lascivious ones of later years. Then an illness caused me to think seriously of burning the whole. But not liking to destroy my labor, I laid it aside again for a couple of years. Then another illness gave me long uninterrupted leisure; I read my manuscript, and filled in some occurrences which I had forgotten, but which my diary enabled me to place in their proper order. This will account for the difference in style in places, which I now observe; and a very needless repetition, of voluptuous descriptions, which I had forgotten, had been before described; that however is inevitable, for human copulation, vary the incidents leading up to it as you may, is, and must be, at all times, much the same affair.
Then for the first time, I thought I would print my work that had been commenced more than twenty years before, but hesitated. I then had entered my maturity, and on to the most lascivious portion of my life, the events were disjointed, and fragmentary and my amusement was to describe them just after they occurred. Most frequently the next day I wrote all down with much prolixity, since, I have much abbreviated it.
I had from youth an excellent memory, but about sexual matters a wonderful one. Women were the pleasure of my life. I loved cunt, but also she who had it; I like the woman I fucked and not simply the cunt I fucked, and therein is a great difference. I recollect even now in a degree which astonishes me, the face, color, stature, thighs, backside, and cunt, of well nigh every woman I have had, who was not a mere casual; and even of some who were. The clothes they wore, the houses and rooms in which I had them, were before me mentally, as I wrote, the way the bed, and furniture were placed, the side of the room the windows were on, I remembered perfectly; and all the important events I can fix as to time, sufficiently nearly by reference to my diary, in which the contemporaneous circumstances of my life are recorded.
I recollect also largely what we said, and did, and generally our bawdy amusements. Where I fail to have done so, I have left description blank, rather than attempt to make a story coherent by inserting what was merely probable. I could not now account for my course of action, nor why I did this, or said that, my conduct seems strange, foolish, absurd, very frequently, that of some women, equally so, but I can but state what did occur.
In a few cases, I have for what even seems to me very strange, suggested reasons, or causes, but only where the facts seem by themselves to be very improbable, but have not exaggerated anything willingly. When I have named the number of times I have fucked a woman in my youth, I may occasionally be in error, it is difficult to be quite accurate on such points after a lapse of time. But as before said in many cases the incidents were written down a few weeks and often within a few days after they occurred. I do not attempt to pose as a Hercules in copulation, there are quite sufficient braggarts on that head, much intercourse with gay women, and doctors, makes me doubt the wonderful feats in coition, some men tell of.
I have one fear about publicity, it is that of having done a few things by curiosity and impulse (temporary aberrations), which even professed libertines may cry fie on. There are plenty who will cry fie who have done all and worse than I have and habitually, but crying out at the sins of others was always a way of hiding one’s own iniquity. Yet from that cause perhaps no mortal eye but mine, will see this history. The Christian name of the servants mentioned are generally the true ones, the other names mostly false, the phonetically resembling the true ones. Initials nearly always the true ones. In most cases the woman they represent are dead or lost to me. Streets and bawdy houses named are nearly always correct. Most of the houses named are now closed or pulled down; but any middle aged man about town would recognize them. Where a road, house, room, or garden is described, the description is exactly true; even to the situation of a tree, chair, bed, sofa, pisspot. The district is sometimes given wrongly; but it matters little whether Brompton be substituted for Hackney, or Camden Town for Walworth. Where however owing to the incidents it is needful, the places of amusement are given correctly. The Tower, and Argyle rooms, for example. All this is done to prevent giving pain to some, perhaps still living, for I have no malice to gratify.
I have mystified family affairs, but if I say I had ten cousins, when I had but six, or that one aunt’s house was in Surrey instead of Kent, or in Lancashire; it breaks the clue and cannot matter to the reader.
But my doings with man and woman are as true as gospel. If I say that I saw, or did, that with a cousin male, or female, it was with a cousin and no mere acquaintance; if with a servant, it was with a servant; if with a casual acquaintance, it is equally true. Nor if I say I had that woman, and did this or that with her, or felt or did aught else with a man, is there a word of untruth excepting as to the place at which the incidents occurred. But even those are mostly correctly given, this is intended to be a true history, and not a lie.
Second Preface
Some years have passed away since I penned the foregoing, and it is not printed. I have since gone through abnormal phases of amatory life, have done and seen things, had tastes and letches which years ago I thought were the dreams of erotic mad-men; these are all described, the manuscript has grown into unmanageable bulk, shall it, can it be printed? What will be said or thought of me, what become of the manuscript if found when I am dead, better to destroy the whole, it has fulfilled its purpose in amusing me, now let it go to the flames!
I have read my manuscript, through what reminiscences I had actually forgotten some of the early ones; how true the detail strikes me as I read of my early experiences; had it not been written then, it never could have been written now, has anybody but myself faithfully made such a record? It would be a sin to burn all this, whatever society may say it is but a narrative of human life, perhaps the everyday life of thousands, if the confession could be had.
What strikes me as curious in reading it, is the monotony of the course I have pursued toward women who were not of the gay class; it has been as similar, and repetitive as fucking itself; do all men act so, does every man kiss, coax, hint smuttily, then talk bawdily, snatch a feel, smell his fingers, assault, and win, exactly as I have done? Is every woman offended, say no, then oh! blush, be angry, refuse, close her thighs, after a struggle open them, and yield to her lust as mine have done? A conclave of whores telling the truth, and of Romish Priests, could alone settle the point. Have all men had the strange letches which late in life have enraptured me, though in early days the idea of them revolted me? I can never know this, my experience if printed may enable others to compare as I cannot.
Shall it be burnt or printed? How many year
s have passed in this indecision, why fear; it is for others’ good and not my own if preserved.
Volume One
Chapter I
My earliest recollections of things sexual are of what I think must have occurred some time between my age of five, and eight years. I tell of them just as I recollect them, without attempt to fill in what seems probable.
She was I suppose my nursemaid. I recollect that she sometimes held my little prick when I piddled, was it needful to do so? I don’t know. She attempted to pull my propuce back, when, and how often I know not. But I am clear at seeing the prick tip show, of feeling pain, of yelling out, of her soothing me, and of this occurring more than once. She comes to my memory as a shortish, fattish young female and that she often felt my prick.
One day, it must have been late in the afternoon, for the sun was low, but shining—how strange I should recollect that so clearly—but I have always recollected sunshine.—I had been walking out with her, toys had been bought me, we were both carrying them, she stopped and talked to some men, one caught hold of her and kissed her, I felt frightened, it was near a coach stand, for hackney coaches were there, cabs were not then known, she put what toys she had on to my hands, and went into a house with a man. What house? I don’t know. Probably a public-house, for there was one not far from a coach stand, and not far from our house. She came out and we went home.
Then I was in our house in a carpeted room with her; it could not have been the nursery I know, sitting on the floor with my toys, so was she; she played with me and the toys, we rolled over each other on the floor in fun, I have a recollection of having done that with others, and of my father and mother, being in that room at times with me playing.
She kissed me, got out my cock, and played with it, took one of my hands and put it underneath her clothes. It felt rough there, that’s all, she moved my little hand violently there then she felt my cock and again hurt me, I recollect seeing the red tip appear as she pulled down the prepuce, and my crying out, and her quieting me.
Then of her being on her back, of my striding across or between her legs, and her heaving me up and down, and my riding cock-horse and that it was not the first time I had done so; then I fell flat on her, she heaved me up and down and squeezed me till I cried. I scrambled of! of her, and in doing so, my hand, or foot went through a drum, I had been drumming on, at which I cried.
As I sat crying on the floor besides her, I recollect her naked legs, and one of her hands shaking violently beneath her petticoats, and of my having some vague notion that the woman was ill, I felt timid. All was for a moment quiet, her hand ceased, still she lay on her back, and I saw her thighs, then turning round she drew me to her, kissed me and tranquillised me. As she turned round I saw one side of her backside, I leant over it and laid my face on it, crying about my broken drum, the evening sunbeams made it all bright, it had at some time been raining I recollect.
I expect I must have seen her cunt, as I sat beside her naked thigh. Looking towards her and crying about my broken drum, and when I saw her hand moving no doubt she was frigging. Yet I have not the slightest recollection of her cunt, nor of anything more than I have told. But of having seen her naked thighs, I am certain, I seem often to have seen them, but cannot feel certain of that.
The oddest thing is, that whilst I early recollected more or less clearly what took place two or three years later on, and ever afterwards, on sexual matters; and what I said, heard, and did, and nearly consecutively, this my first recollection of cock, and cunt, escaped my memory for full twenty years.
Then one day talking with the husband of one of my cousins, about infantine incidents he told me something which had occurred to him in his childhood; and suddenly, almost as quickly as a magic lantern throws a picture on to a wall, this which had occurred to me came into my mind. I have since thought over it a hundred times, but cannot recollect one circumstance relating to the adventure more than I have told.
My mother had been giving advice to my cousin about nursemaids. They were not to be trusted. “When Walter was a little fellow, she had dismissed a filthy creature, whom she had detected in abominable practices with one of her children,” what they were my mother never disclosed. She hated indelicacies of any sort, and usually cut short allusion to them by saying, “It’s not a subject to talk about, let’s talk of something else.” My cousin told her husband, and when we were together he told me, and his own experiences, and then all the circumstances came into my mind, just as I have told here.
I could not, as the reader will hear, thoroughly uncover my prick tip without pain, till I was sixteen years old nor well then when quite stiff unless it went up a cunt. My nursemaid I expect thought this curious, and tried to remedy the error in my make, and hurt me. My mother, by her extremely delicate feeling, shut herself off from much knowledge of the world, which was the reason why she had such implicit belief in my virtue, until I had seen twenty-two years, and kept, or nearly so, a French harlot.
I imagine I must have slept with this nurse-maid, and certainly I did with some female, in a room called the Chinese room, on account of the color of the wall papers. I recollect a female being there in bed with me, that I awoke one morning feeling very hot, and stifled, and that my head was against flesh; that flesh was all about me, my mouth and nose being embedded in hair, or something scrubby, which had a hot peculiar odour. I have a recollection of a pair of hands suddenly clutching, and dragging me up on to the pillow, and of daylight then. I have no recollection of a word being uttered. This incident I could not long have forgotten, having told my cousin Fred, of it before my father died. He used to say it was the governess. I suppose, I must have slipped down in my sleep, till my head laid against her belly, and cunt.
Some years afterwards when I got the smell of another woman’s cunt on my fingers, it at once reminded me of the smell I had under my nose in the bed; and I knew at a flash, that I had smelt cunt before, and recollected where, but no more.
How long after, I have no idea, but it seems like two or three years, there was a dance in our house, several relations were to stop the night with us, the house was full, here was bustle, the shifting of beds, the governess going into a servant’s room to sleep, and so on. Some female cousins were amongst those stopping with us; going into the drawing room suddenly, I heard my mother saying to one of my aunts: “Walter is after all but a child, and its only for one night.” Hish-hish both said, as they saw me, then my mother sent me out of the room, wondering why they were talking about me, and feeling curious, and annoyed at being sent away.
I had been in the habit then of sleeping in a room, either with another bed in it, or close to a room leading out of it, with another bed, I cannot recollect which; I used to call out to whoever might have been there when I was in bed: for being timid, the door was kept open for me. It could not have been a man who slept there, for the men servants slept on the ground-floor, I have seen their beds there.
The night I speak of, my bed was taken out, and put into the Chinese paper room, one of the maids who helped to move it, sat on the pot and piddled; I heard the rattle, and as far as I can recollect it was the first time I noticed anything of the sort, tho I recollect well seeing women putting on their stockings and feeling the thigh of one of them just above her knee. I was kneeling on the floor at the time, and had a trumpet, which she took angrily out of my hand soon afterwards, because I made a noise.
I recollect the dance, that I danced with a tall lady, that my mother contrary to custom as it seems to me, put me to bed herself, and that it was before the dance was over, for I felt angry and tearful at being put to bed so early. My mother closed the curtains quite tightly all round a small four post bed, and told me, I was to lie quietly, and not get up till she came to me in the morning; not to speak, nor undo my curtains, nor to get out of bed, or I should disturb Mr. and Mrs.———who were to sleep in the big bed; that it would make them angry if
I did. I am almost certain she named a lady and her husband, who were going to stay with us; but can’t be sure. A man then frightened me more than a woman, my mother I dare say knew that.
I dare say, for it was the same the greater part of my life, that I went to sleep directly I laid down, usually never awaking till the morning. Certainly I must have gone fast asleep that night; perhaps I had had a little wine given me, who knows; I have a sudden consciousness of a light, and hear someone say, he is fast asleep, don’t make a noise; it seemed like my mother’s voice. I rouse myself and listen, the circumstances are strange, the room strange, it excites me, and I rise on my knees, I don’t know whether naturally, or cautiously, or how; perhaps cautiously, because I fear angering my mother, and the gentleman, perhaps a sexual instinct makes me curious, though that is not probable. I have not in fact the slightest conception of the actuating motive, but I sat up and listened. There were two females talking, laughing quietly, and moving about, I heard a rattling in the pot, then a rest, then again a rattle and knew the sound of piddling. How long I listened, I don’t know, I might have dozed and awakened again, I saw lights moved about; then I crawled on my knees, with fear that I was doing wrong, and pushed a little aside the curtains where they met at the bottom of the bed. I recollect their being quite tight by the tucking in and that I could not easily make an opening to peep through.
Erotic Classics II Page 67
