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Memoirs Of Fanny Hill

by John Cleland




 LETTER THE FIRST
 LETTER THE SECOND


LETTER THE FIRST

Madam,

I sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my considering your
desires as indispensable orders. Ungracious then as the task may be, I
shall recall to view those scandalous stages of my life, out of which I
emerged, at length, to the enjoyment of every blessing in the power of
love, health and fortune to bestow; whilst yet in the flower of youth,
and not too late to employ the leisure afforded me by great ease and
affluence, to cultivate an understanding, naturally not a despicable
one, and which had, even amidst the whirl of loose pleasures I had been
tossed in, exerted more observation on the characters and manners of
the world than what is common to those of my unhappy profession, who,
looking on all though or reflection as their capital enemy, keep it at
as great a distance as they can, or destroy it without mercy.

Hating, as I mortally do, all long unnecessary prefaces, I shall give
you good quarter in this, and use no farther apology, than to prepare
you for seeing the loose part of my life, written with the same liberty
that I led it.

Truth! stark, naked truth, is the word; and I will not so much as take
the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze wrapper on it, but paint
situations such as they actually rose to me in nature, careless of
violating those laws of decency that were never made for such
unreserved intimacies as ours; and you have too much sense, too much
knowledge of the originals, to sniff prudishly and out of character at
the pictures of them. The greatest men, those of the first and most
leading taste, will not scruple adorning their private closets with
nudities, though, in compliance with vulgar prejudices, they may not
think them decent decorations of the staircase, or salon.

This, and enough, premised, I go souse into my personal history. My
maiden name was Frances Hill. I was born at a small village near
Liverpool, in Lancashire, of parents extremely poor, and, I piously
believe, extremely honest.

My father, who had received a maim on his limbs, that disabled him from
following the more laborious branches of country drudgery, got, by
making nets, a scanty subsistence, which was not much enlarged by my
mother’s keeping a little day-school for the girls in her neighborhood.
They had had several children; but none lived to any age except myself,
who had received from nature a constitution perfectly healthy.

My education, till past fourteen, was no better than very vulgar:
reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary
plain work, composed the whole system of it; and then all my foundation
in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy
timidity general to our sex, in the tender age of life, when objects
alarm or frighten more by their novelty than anything else. But then,
this is a fear too often cured at the expense of innocence, when Miss,
by degrees, begins no longer to look on a man as a creature of prey
that will eat her.

My poor mother had divided her time so entirely between her scholars
and her little domestic cares, that she had spared very little to my
instruction, having, from her own innocence from all ill, no hint or
thought of guarding me against any.

I was now entering on my fifteenth year, when the worst of ills befell
me in the loss of my fond, tender parents, who were both carried off by
the small-pox, within a few days of each other; my father dying first,
and thereby by hastening the death of my mother: so that I was now left
an unhappy friendless orphan (for my father’s coming to settle there,
was accidental, he being originally a Kentisrman). That cruel distemper
which had proved so fatal to them, had indeed seized me, but with such
mild and favourable symptoms, that I was presently out of danger, and
what then I did not know the value of, was entirely unmarked I skip
over here an account of the natural grief and affliction which I felt
on this melancholy occasion. A little time, and the giddiness of that
age, dissipated too soon my reflections on that irreparable loss; but
nothing contributed more to reconcile me to it, than the notions that
were immediately put into my head, of going to London, and looking out
for a service, in which I was promised all assistance and advice from
one Esther Davis, a young woman that had beer down to see her friends,
and who, after the stay of a few days, was returned to her place.

As I had now nobody left alive in the village, who had concern enough
about what should become of me, to start any objections to this scheme,
and the woman who took care of me after my parents’ death, rather
encouraged me to pursue it, I soon came to a resolution of making this
launch into the wide world, by repairing to London, in order to seek my
fortune, a phrase which, by the bye, has ruined more adventurers of
both sexes, from the country, than ever it made or advanced.

Nor did Esther Davis a little comfort and inspirit me to venture with
her, by piquing my childish curiosity with the fine sights that were to
be seen in London: the Tombs, the Lions, the King, the Royal Family,
the fine Plays and Operas, and, in short, all the diversions which fell
within her sphere of life to come at; the detail of all which perfectly
turned the little head of me.

Nor can I remember, without laughing, the innocent admiration, not
without a spice of envy, with which we poor girls, whose church-going
clothes did not rise above dowlas shifts and stuff gowns, beplaced with
silver: all which we imagined grew in London, and entered for a great
deal into my determination of trying to come in for my share of them.

The idea however of having the company of a towns-woman with her, was
the trivial, and all the motives that engaged Esther to take charge of
me during my journey to town, where she told me, after the manner and
style, “as how several maids out of the country had made themselves and
all their kind for ever: that by preserving their virtue, some had
taken so with their masters, that they had married them, and kept them
coaches, and lived vastly grand and happy; and some, may-hap, came to
be Duchesses; luck was all, and why not I, as well as another?”; with
other almanacs to this purpose, which set me a tip-toe to begin this
promising journey, and to leave a place which, though my native one,
contained no relations that I had reason to regret, and was grown
insupportable to me, from the change of the tenderest usage into a cold
air of charity, with which I was entertained, even at the only friend’s
house that I had the least expectation of care and protection from. She
was, however, so just to me, as to manage the turning into money the
little matters that remained to me after the debts and burial charges
were allowed for, and, at my departure, put my whole fortune into my
hands; which consisted of a very slender wardrobe, packed up in a very
portable box, and eight guineas, with seventeen shillings in silver,
stowed in a spring-pouch, which was a greater treasure than I ever had
seen together, and which I could not conceive there was a possibility
of running out; and indeed, I was so entirely taken up with the joy of
seeing myself mistress of such an immence sum, that I gave very little
attention to a world of good advice which was given me with it.

Places, then, being taken for Esther and me in the Chester waggon, I
pass over a very immaterial scene of leave-taking, at which I droped a
few tears betwixt grief and joy; and, for the same reasons of
insignificance, skip over all that happened to me on the road, such as
the waggoner’s looking liquorish on me, the schemes laid for me by some
of the passengers, which were defeated by the valiance of my guardian
Esther; who, to do her justice, took a motherly care of me, at the same
time that she taxed me for the protection by making me bear all
travelling charges, which I defrayed with the unmost cheerfulness, and
thought myself much obliged to her into the bargain.

She took indeed great care that we were not overrated, or imposed on,
as well as of managing as frugally as possible; expensiveness was not
her vice.

It was pretty late in a summer evening when we reached the town, in our
slow conveyance, though drawn by six at length. As we passed through
the greatest streets that led to our inn, the noise, of the coaches,
the hurry, the crowds of foot passengers, in short, the new scenery of
the shops and houses, at once pleased and amazed me.

But guess at my mortification and surprise when we came to the inn, and
our things were landed and delivered to us, when my fellow traveller
and protectress, Esther Davis, who had used me with the utmost
tenderness during the journey, and prepared me by no preceedings signs
for the stunning blow I was to receive, when I say, my only dependence
and friend, in this strange place, all of a sudden assumed a strange
and cool air towards me, as if she dreaded my becoming a burden to her.

Instead, then, of proffering me the continuance of her assistance and
good offices, which I relied upon, and never more wanted, she thought
herself, it seems, abundantly acquitted of her engagements to me, by
having brought me safe to my journey’s end, and seeing nothing in her
procedure towards me but what natural and in order, began to embrace me
by the way of taking leave, whilst I was so confounded, so struck, that
I had not spirit or sense enough so much as to mention my hopes or
expectations from her experience, and knowledge of the place she had
brought me to.

Whilst I stood thus stupid and mute, which she doubtless attributed to
nothing more than a concern at parting, this idea procured me perhaps a
slight alleviation of it, in the following harangue: “That now we were
got safe to London, and that she was obliged to go to her place, she
advised me by all means to get into one as soon as possible; that I
need not fear getting one; there were more places than parish-churches;
that she advised me to go to an intelligence office; that if she heard
of any thing stirring, she would find me out and let me know; that in
the meantime, I should take a private lodging, and acquaint her where
to send to me; that she wished me good luck, and hoped I should always
have the grace to keep myself honest, and not bringing a disgrace on my
parentage.” With this; she took her leave of me, and left me, as it
were, on my own hands, full as lightly as I had been put into hers.

Left thus alone, absolutely destitute and friendless I began then to
feel most bitterly the severity of this separation, the scene of which
had passed in a little room in the inn; and no sooner was her back
turned, but the affliction I felt at my helpless strange circumstances,
burst out into a flood of tears, which infinitely relieved the
oppression of my heart; though I still remained stupified, and most
perfectly perplexed how to dispose of myself.

One of the drawers coming in, added yet more to my uncertainty, by
asking me, in a short way, if I called for anything? to which I replied
innocently: “No.” But I wished him to tell me where I might get a
lodging for that night. He said he would go and speak to his mistress,
who accordingly came, and told me drily, without entering in the least
into the distress she saw me in, that I might have a bed for a
shilling, and that, as she supposed I had some friends in town (there I
fetched a deep sigh in vain!), I might provide for myself in the
morning.

It is incredible what trifling consolations the human mind will seize
in its greatest afflictions. The assurance of nothing more than a bed
to lie on that night, calmed my agonies; and being ashamed to acquaint
the mistress of the inn that I had no friends to apply to in town, I
proposed to myself to proceed, the very next morning, to an
intelligence office, to which I was furnished with written directions
on the back of a ballad, Esther had given me. There I counted on
getting information of any place that such a country girl as I might be
fit for, and where I could get into any sort of being, before my little
stock should be consumed; and as to a character, Esther had often
repeated to me, that I might depend on her managing me one; nor,
however affected I was at her leaving me thus, did I entirely cease to
rely on her, as I began to think, good-naturedly, that her procedure
was all in course, and that is was only my ignorance of life that had
made me take it in the light I at first did.

Accordingly, the next morning I dressed myself as clean and as neat as
my rustic wardrobe would permit me; and having left my box, with
special recommendation, with the landlady, I ventured out by myself,
and without any more difficulty than can be supposed of a young country
girl, barely fifteen, and to whom every sign or shop was a gazing trap,
I got to the wished for intelligence office.

It was kept by an elderly woman, who sat at the receipt of custom, with
a book before her in great form and order, and several scrolls made
out, of directions for places.

I made up then to this important personage, without lifting up my eyes
or observing any of the people round me, who were attending there on
the same errand as myself, and dropping her curtsies nine deep, just
made a shift to stammer out my business to her.

Madam heard me out, with all the gravity and brow of a petty minister
of State, and seeing at one glance over my figure what I was, made me
no answer, but to ask me the preliminary shilling, on receipt of which
she told me places for women too slight built for hard work: but that
she would look over her book, and see what was to be done for me,
desiring me to stay a little, till she had dispatched some other
customers.

On this I drew back a little, most heartily mortified at a declaration
which carried with it a killing uncertainly, that my circumstances
could not well endure.

Presently, assuming more courage, and seeking some diversion from my
uneasy thoughts, I ventured to lift up my head a little, and sent my
eyes on a course round the room, where they met full tilt with those of
a lady (for such my extreme innocence pronounced her) sitting in a
corner of the room, dressed in a velvet mantle (in the midst of
summer), with her bonnet off; squat, fat, red-faced, and at least
fifty.

She looked as if she would devour me with her eyes, staring at me from
head to foot, without the least regard to the confusion and blushes her
eyeing me so fixedly put me to, and which were to her, no doubt, the
strongest recommendation and marks of my being fit for her purpose.
After a little time, in which my air, person and whole figure had
undergone a strict examination, which I had, on my part, tried to
render favourable to me, by primming, drawing up my neck, and setting
my best looks, she advanced and spoke to me with the greatest
demureness:

“Sweet-heart, do you want a place?

“Yes, and please you,” (with a curtsey down to the ground).

Upon this she acquainted me she was actually come to the office
herself, to look out for a servant; that she believed I might do, with
a little of her instruction; that she could take my very looks for a
sufficient character; that London was a very wicked, vile, place; that
she hoped I would be tractable, and keep out of bad company; in short,
she said all to me that an old experienced practitioner in town could
think of, and which was much more than was necessary to take in an
artless inexperienced country maid, who was even afraid of becoming a
wanderer about the streets, and therefore gladly jumped at the first
offer of a shelter, especially from so grave and matron-like a lady,
for such my flattering fancy assured me this new mistress of mine was,
I being actually hired under the nose of the good woman that kept the
office, whose shrewed smiles and shrugs I could not help observing, and
innocently interpreted them as marks of being pleased at my getting
into place so soon: but, as I afterwards came to know, these Beldams
understood one another very well, and this was a market where Mrs.
Brown, my mistress, frequently attended, on the watch for any fresh
goods that might offer there, for the use of her customers, and her own
profit.

Madam was, however, so well pleased with her bargain that fearing I
presume, lest better advice or some accident might occasion my slipping
through her fingers, she would officiously take me in a coach to my
inn, where, calling herself for my box, it was, I being present,
delivered without the least scruple or explanation as to where I was
going.

This being over, she bid the coachman drive to a shop in St. Paul’s
Churchyard, where she bought a pair of gloves, which she gave me, and
thence renewed her directions to the coachman to drive to her house in
——— street, who accordingly landed us at the door, after I had been
cheered up and entertained by the way with the most plausible flams,
without one syllable from which I could conclude anything but that I
was, by the greatest luck, fallen into the hands of kindest mistress,
not to say friend, that the vast world could afford; and accordingly I
entered her doors with most complete confidence and exultation,
promising, myself that, as soon as I could be a little settled, I would
acquaint Esther Davis with my rare good fortune.

You may be sure the good opinion of my place was not lessened by the
appearance of a very handsome back parlor, into which I was led and
which seemed to me magnificently furnished, who had never seen better
rooms than the ordinary ones in inns upon the road. There were two gilt
pier-glasses, and a buffet, on which a few pieces of plate, set out to
the most shew, dazzled, and altogether persuaded me that I must be got
into a very reputable family.

Here my mistress first began her part, with telling me that I must have
good spirits, and learn to be free with her; that she had not taken me
to be a common servant, to do domestic drudgery, but to be a kind of
companion to her; and that if I would be a good girl, she would do more
than twenty mothers for me; to all which I answered only by the
profoundest and the awkwardest curtsies, and a few monosyllables, such
as “’yes! no! to be sure!”

Presently my mistress touched the bell, and in came a strapping
maid-servant, who had let us in. “Here, Martha,” said Mrs. Brown, “I
have just hired this young woman to look after my linen; so step up and
show her her chamber; and I charge you to use her with as much respect
as you would myself, for I have taken a prodigious liking to her, and I
do not know what I shall do for her.”

Martha, who was an arch-jade, and, being used to this decoy, had her
cue perfect, made me a kind of half curtsy, and asked me to walk up
with her; and accordingly showed me a neat room, two pair of stairs
backwards, in which there was a handsome bed, where Martha told me I
was to lie with a young gentlewoman, a cousin of my mistress, who she
was sure would be vastly good to me. Then she ran out into such
affected encomiums on her good mistress! her sweet mistress! and how
happy I was to light upon her! and that I could not have bespoke a
better; with other the like gross stuff, such as would itself have
started suspicions in any but such an unpractised simpleton, who was
perfectly new to life, and who took every word she said in the very
sense she laid out for me to take it; but she readily saw what a
penetration she had to deal with, and measured me very rightly in her
manner of whistling to me, so as to make me pleased with my cage, and
blind to the wires.

In the midst of these false explanations of the nature of my future
service, we were rung for down again, and I was reintroduced into the
same parlour, where there was a table laid with three covers; and my
mistress had now got with her one of her favourite girls, a notable
manager of her house, and whose business it was to prepare and break
such young fillies as I was to the mounting block; and she was
accordingly, in that view, alloted me for a bed-fellow, and, to give
her the more authority, she had the title of cousin conferred on her by
the venerable president of this college.

Here I underwent a second survey, which ended in the full approbation
of Mrs. Phœbe Ayres, the name of my tutoress elect, to whose care and
instruction I was affectionately recommended.

Dinner was now set on table, and in pursuance of treating me as a
companion, Mrs. Brown, with a tone to cut off all dispute, soon
over-ruled my most humble and most confused protestations against
sitting down with her Ladyship, which my very short breeding just
suggested to me could not be right, or in the order of things.

At table, the conversation was chiefly kept up by the two madams and
carried on in double meaning expressions, interrupted every now and
then by kind assurances to me, all tending to confirm and fix my
satisfaction with my present condition: augment it they could not, so
very a novice was I then.

It was here agreed that I should keep myself up and out of sight for a
few days, till such clothes could be procured for me as were fit for
the character I was to appear in, of my mistress’s companion, observing
withal, that on the first impressions of my figure much might depend;
and, as they rightly judged, the prospect of exchanging my country
clothes for London finery, made the clause of confinement digest
perfectly well with me. But the truth was, Mrs. Brown did not care that
I should be seen or talked to by any, either of her customers, or her
Does (as they called the girls provided for them), till she secured a
good market for my maidenhead, which I had at least all the appearances
of having brought into her Ladyship’s service.

To slip over minutes of no importance to the main of my story, I pass
the interval to bed time, in which I was more and more pleased with the
views that opened to me, of an easy service under these good people;
and after supper being shewed up to bed, Miss Phœbe, who observed a
kind of reluctance in me to strip and go to bed, in my shift, before
her, now the maid was withdrawn, came up to me, and beginning with
unpinning my handkerchief and gown, soon encouraged me to go on with
undressing myself; and, blushing at now seeing myself naked to my
shift, I hurried to get under the bed-clothes out of sight.

Phœbe laughed and was not long before she placed herself by my side.
She was about five and twenty, by her most suspicious account, in
which, according to all appearances, she must have sunk at least ten
good years; allowance, too, being made for the havoc which a long
course of hackneyship and hot waters must have made of her
constitution, and which had already brought on, upon the spur, that
stale stage in which those of her profession are reduced to think of
showing company, instead of seeing it.

No sooner then was this precious substitute of my mistress laid down,
but she, who was never out of her way when any occasion of lewdness
presented itself, turned to me, embraced and kissed me with great
eagerness. This was new, this was odd; but imputing it to nothing but
pure kindness, which, for ought I knew, it might be the London way to
express in that manner, I was determined not to be behind-hand with
her, and returned her the kiss and embrace, with all the fervour that
perfect innocence knew.

Encouraged by this, her hands became extremely free, and wandered over
my whole body, with touches, squeezes, pressures, that rather warmed
and surprised me with their novelty, than they either shocked or
alarmed me.

The flattering praises she intermingled with these invasions,
contributed also not a little to bribe my passiveness; and, knowing no
ill, I feared none, especially from one who had prevented all doubts of
her womanhood, by conducting my hands to a pair of breasts that hung
loosely down, in a size and volume that full sufficiently distinguished
her sex, to me at least, who had never made any other comparison.

I lay then all tame and passive as she could wish, whilst her freedom
raised no other emotion but those of a strange, and, till then, unfelt
pleasure. Every part of me was open and exposed to the licentious
courses of her hands, which, like a lambent fire, ran over my whole
body, and thawed all coldness as they went.

My breasts, if it is not too bold a figure to call so two hard, firm,
rising hillocks, that just began to shew themselves, or signify
anything to the touch, employed and amused her hands awhile, till,
slipping down lower, over a smooth track, she could just feel the soft
silky down that had but a few months before put forth and garnished the
mount-pleasant of those parts, and promised to spread a grateful
shelter over the sweet seat of the most exquisite sensation, and which
had been, till that instant, the seat of the most insensible innocence.
Her fingers played and strove to twine in the young tendrils of that
moss, which nature has contrived at once for use and ornament.

But, not contented with these outer posts, she now attempts the main
spot, and began to twitch, to insinuate, and at length to force an
introduction of a finger into the quick itself, in such a manner, that
had she not proceeded by insensible gradations that inflamed me beyond
the power of modesty to oppose its resistance to their progress, I
should have jumped out of bed and cried for help against such strange
assaults.

Instead of which, her lascivious touches had lighted up a new fire that
wantoned through all my veins, but fixed with violence in that center
appointed them by nature, where the first strange hands were now busied
in feeling, squeezing, compressing the lips, then opening them again,
with a finger between, till an “Oh!” expressed her hurting me, where
the narrowness of the unbroken passage refused it entrance to any
depth.

In the meantime, the extension of my limbs, languid stretching, sighs,
short heavings, all conspired to assure that experienced wanton that I
was more pleased than offended at her proceedings, which she seasoned
with repeated kisses and exclamations, such as “Oh! what a charming
creature thou art! What a happy man will he be that first makes a woman
of you! Oh! that I were a man for your sake!” with the like broken
expressions, interrupted by kisses as fierce and salacious as ever I
received from the other sex.

For my part, I was transported, confused, and out of myself; feelings
so new were too much for me. My heated and alarmed senses were in a
tumult that robbed me of all liberty of thought; tears of pleasure
gushed from my eyes, and somewhat assuaged the fire that raged all over
me.

Phœbe, herself, the hackneyed, thorough-bred Phœbe, to whom all modes
and devices of pleasure were known and familiar, found, it seems, in
this exercise her those arbitrary tastes, for which there is no
accounting. Not that she hated men, or did not even prefer them to her
own sex; but when she met with such occasions as this was, a satiety of
enjoyments in the common road, perhaps, too a great secret bias,
inclined her to make the most of pleasure, wherever she could find it,
without distinction of sexes. In this view, now well assured that she
had, by her touches, sufficiently inflamed me for her purpose, she
rolled down the bed clothes gently, and I saw myself stretched naked,
my shift being turned up to my neck, whilst I had no power or sense to
oppose it. Even my growing blushes expressed more desire than modesty,
whilst the candle, left (to be sure not undesignedly) burning, threw a
full light on my whole body.

“No!” says Phœbe, “you must not, my sweet girl, think to hide all these
treasures from me. My sight must be feasted as my touch. I must devour
with my eyes this springing bosom. Suffer me to kiss it. I have not
seen it enough. Let me kiss it once more. What firm, smooth, white
flesh is here! How delicately shaped! Then this delicious down! Oh! let
me view the small, dear, tender cleft! This is too much, I cannot bear
it! I must! I must!” Here she took my hand, and in a transport carried
it where you will easily guess. But what a difference in the state of
the same thing! A spreading thicket of bushy curls marked the full
grown, complete woman. Then the cavity to which she guided my hand
easily received it; and as soon as she felt it within her, she moved
herself to and fro, with so rapid a friction, that I presently withdrew
it, wet and clammy, when instantly Phœbe grew more composed, after two
or three sighs, and heart-fetched Oh’s! and giving me a kiss that
seemed to exhale her soul through her lips, she replaced the
bed-clothes over us. What pleasure she had found I will not say; but
this I know, that the first sparks of kindling nature, the first ideas
of pollution, were caught by me that night; and that the acquaintance
and communication with the bad of our sex, is often as fatal to
innocence as all the seductions of the other. But to go on. When Phœbe
was restored to that calm, which I was far from the enjoyment of
myself, she artfully sounded me on all the points necessary to govern
the designs of my virtuous mistress on me, and by my answers, drawn
from pure undissembled nature, she had no reason but to promise herself
all imaginable success, so far as it depended on my ignorance, easiness
and warmth of constitution.

After a sufficient length of dialogue, my bedfellow left me to my rest,
and I fell asleep, through pure weariness, from the violent emotions I
had been led into, when nature which had been too warmly stirred and
fermented to subside without allaying by some means or other relieved
me by one of those luscious dreams, the transports of which are scarce
inferior to those of waking real action.

In the morning I awoke about ten, perfectly gay and refreshed. Phœbe
was up before me, and asked me in the kindest manner how I did, how I
had rested, and if I was ready for breakfast? carefully, at the same
time, avoiding to increase the confusion she saw I was in, at looking
her in the face, by any hint of the night’s bed scene. I told her if
she pleased I would get up, and begin any work she would be pleased to
set me about. She smiled; presently the maid brought in the tea
equipage, and I just huddled my clothes on, when in waddled my
mistress. I expected no less than to be told of, if not chid for, my
late rising, when I was most agreeably disappointed by her compliments
on my pure and fresh looks. I was “a bud of beauty” (this was her
style), “and how vastly all the fine men would admire me!” to all which
my answers did not, I can assure you, wrong my breeding; they were as
simple and silly as they could wish, and, no doubt, flattered them
infinitely more than had they proved me enlightened by education and a
knowledge of the world.

We breakfasted, and the tea things were scarce removed, when in were
brought two bundles of linen and wearing apparel: in short, all the
necessaries for rigging me out, as they termed it, completely.

Imagine to yourself, Madam, how my little coquet heart fluttered with
joy at the sight of a white lutestring, flowered with silver, scoured
indeed, but passed on me for spick and span new, a Brussels lace cap,
braited shoes, and the rest in proportion, all second-hand finery, and
procured instantly for the occasion, by the diligence and industry of
the good Mrs. Brown, who had already a chapman for me in the house,
before whom my charms were to pass in review; for he had not only, in
course, insisted on a previous sight of the premises, but also on
immediate surrendering to him, in case of his agreeing for me;
concluding very wisely, that such a place as I was in, was of the
hottest to trust the keeping of such a perishable commodity in, as a
maidenhead.

The care of dressing and tricking me out for the market, was then left
to Phœbe, who acquitted herself, if not well, at least perfectly to the
satisfaction of everything but my impatience of seeing myself dressed.
When it was over, and I viewed myself in the glass, I was no doubt, too
natural, too artless, to hide my childish joy at the change: a change,
in the real truth, for much the worse, since I must have much better
become the neat easy simplicity of my rustic dress than the awkward,
untoward, tawdry finery that I could not conceal my strangeness to.

Phœbe’s compliments, however, in which her own share in dressing me was
not forgot, did not a little confirm me in the first notions I had ever
entertained concerning my person; which, be it said without vanity, was
then tolerable to justify a taste for me, and of which it may not be
out of place here to sketch you an unflattered picture.

I was tall, yet not too tall for my age, which, as I before remarked,
was barely turned of fifteen; my shape perfectly straight, thin
waisted, and light and free without owing anything to stays; my hair
was a glossy auburn, and as soft as silk, flowing down my neck in
natural curls, and did not a little to set off the whiteness of a
smooth skin; my face was rather too ruddy, though its features were
delicate, and the shape was a roundish oval, except where a pit on my
chin had far from a disagreeable effect; my eyes were as black as can
be imagined, and rather languishing than sparkling, except on certain
occasions, when I have been told they struck fire fast enough; my
teeth, which I ever carefully preserved, were small, even and white; my
bosom was finely raised, and one might then discern rather the promise
than the actual growth of the round, firm breast, that in a little time
made that promise good. In short, all the points of beauty that are
most universally in request, I had, or at least my vanity forbid me to
appeal from the decision of our sovereign judges the men, who all, that
I ever knew at last, gave it thus highly in my favour; and I met with,
even in my own sex, some that were above denying me that justice,
whilst others praised me yet more unsuspectedly, by endeavouring to
detract from me, in points of person and figure that I obviously
excelled in. This is, I own, too strong of self praise; but I should be
ungrateful to nature, and to a form to which I owe such singular
blessings of pleasure and fortune, were I to suppress, through an
affectation of modesty, the mention of such valuable gifts.

Well then, dressed I was, and little did it then enter into my head
that all this gay attire was no more than decking the victim out for
sacrifice, whilst I innocently attributed all to mere friendship and
kindness in the sweet good Mrs. Brown; who, I was forgetting to
mention, had, under pretence of keeping my money safe, got from me,
without the least hesitation, the driblet (so I now call it) which
remained to me after the expenses of my journey.

After some little time most agreebly spent before the glass, in scarce
self-admiration, since my new dress had by much the greatest share in
it, I was sent for down to the parlour, where the old lady saluted me,
and wished me joy of my new clothes, which she was not ashamed to say,
fitted me as if I had worn nothing but the finest all my life-time; but
what was it she could not see me silly enough to swallow? At the same
time, she presented me to another cousin of her own creation, an
elderly gentleman, who got up, at my entry into the room, and on my
dropping a curtsy to him, saluted me, and seemed a little affronted
that I had only presented my cheek to him: a mistake, which, if one, he
immediately corrected, by gluing his lips to mine, with an ardour which
his figure had not at all disposed me to thank him for: his figure, I
say, than which nothing could be more shocking or detestable: for ugly
and disagreeable were terms too gentle to convey a just idea of it.

Imagine to yourself, a man rather past threescore, short and ill-made,
with a yellow cadaverous hue, great goggle eyes, that stared as if he
was strangled; an out-mouth from two more properly tusks than teeth,
livid lips, and breath like a Jake’s: then he had a peculiar
ghastliness in his grin, that made him perfectly frightful, if not
dangerous to women with child; yet, made as he was thus in mock of man,
he was so blind to his own staring deformities, as to think himself
born to please, and that no woman could see him with impunity: in
consequence of which idea, he had lavished great sums on such wretches
as could gain upon themselves to pretend love to his person, whilst to
those who had not art or patience to dissemble the horror it inspired,
he behaved even brutally. Impotence, more than necessity, made him seek
in variety, the provocative that was wanting to raise him to the pitch
of enjoyment, which he too often saw himself baulked of, by the failure
of his powers: and this always threw him into a fit of rage, which he
wreaked, as far as he durst, on the innocent objects of his fit of
momentary desire.

This then was the master to which my conscientious benefactress, who
had long been his purveyor in this way, had doomed me, and sent for me
down purposely for his examination. Accordingly she made me stand up
before him, turned me round, unpinned my handkerchief, remarked to him
the rise and fall, the turn and whiteness of a bosom just beginning to
fill; then made me walk, and took even a handle from the rusticity of
my charms: in short, she omitted no point of jockeyship; to which he
only answered by gracious nods of approbation, whilst he looked goats
and monkeys at me: for I sometimes stole a corner glance at him, and
encountering his fiery, eager stare, looked another way from pure
horror and affright, which he, characteristically, attributed to
nothing more than maiden modesty, or at least the affectation of it.

However, I was soon dismissed, and reconducted to my room by Phœbe, who
stuck close to me, not leaving me alone, and at leisure to make such
reflections as might naturally rise to any one, not an idiot, on such a
scene as I had just gone through; but to my shame be it confessed, that
just was my invincible stupidity, or rather portentous innocence, that
I did not yet open my eyes to Mrs. Brown’s designs, and saw nothing in
this titular cousin of hers but a shockingly hideous person, which did
not at all concern me, unless that my gratitude for my benefactress
made me extend my respect to all her cousinhood.

Phœbe, however, began to sift the state and pulses of my heart toward
this monster, asking me how I should approve of such a fine gentelman
for a husband. (Fine gentleman, I suppose she called him, from his
being daubed with lace.) I answered her very naturally, that I had no
thoughts of a husband, but that if I was to choose one, it should be
among my own degree, sure! so much had my aversion to that wretch’s
hideous figure indisposed me to all “fine gentlemen,” and confounded my
ideas, as if those of that rank had been necessarily cast in the same
mould that he was. But Phœbe was not to be put off so, but went on with
her endeavours to melt and soften me for the purposes of my reception
into that hospitable house: and whilst she talked of the sex in
general, she had no reason to despair of a compliance, which more than
one reason showed her would be easily enough obtained of me; but then
she had too much experience not to discover that my particular fixed
aversion to that frightful cousin would be a block not so readily to be
removed, as suited the consummation of their bargain, and sale of me.

Mother Brown had in the meantime agreed the terms with this loquorice
old goat, which I afterwards understood were to be fifty guineas
peremptory, for the liberty of attempting me, and a hundred more at the
complete gratification of his desires, in the triumph over my
virginity: and as for me, I was to be left entirely at the discretion
of his liking and generosity. This unrighteous contract being thus
settled, he was so eager to be put in possession, that he insisted on
being introduced to drink tea with me that afternoon, when we were to
be left alone; nor would he hearken to the procuress’s remonstrances,
that I was not sufficiently prepared, and ripened for such an attack;
that I was too green and untamed, having been scarce twenty-four hours
in the house: it is the character of lust to be impatient, and his
vanity arming him against any supposition of other than the common
resistance of a maid on those occasions, made him reject all proposals
of a delay, and my dreadful trial was thus fixed, unknown to me, for
that very evening.

At dinner, Mrs. Brown and Phœbe did nothing but run riot in praise of
this wonderful cousin, and how happy that woman would be that he would
favour with his addresses; in short my two gossips exhausted all their
rhetoric to persuade me to accept them: “that the gentleman was
violently smitten with me at first sight; that he would make my fortune
if I would be a good girl and not stand in my own light; that I should
trust his honour; that I should be made for ever, and have a chariot to
go abroad in,” with all such stuff as was fit to turn the head of such
a silly ignorant girl as I then was: but luckily here my aversion had
taken already such deep root in me, my heart was so strongly defended
from him by my senses, that wanting the art to mask my sentiments, I
gave them no hopes of their employer succeeding, at least very easily,
with me. The glass too marched pretty quick, with a view, I suppose, to
make a friend of the warmth of my constitution, in the minutes of the
imminent attack.

Thus they kept me pretty long at table, and about six in the evening,
after I had retired to my apartment, and the tea board was set, enters
my venerable mistress, followed close by that satyr, who came in
grinning in a way peculiar to him, and by his odious presence,
confirmed me in all the sentiments of detestation which his first
appearance had given birth to.

He sat down fronting me, and all tea time kept ogling me in a manner
that gave me the utmost pain and confusion, all the mark of which he
still explained to be my bashfulness, and not being used to see
company.

Tea over, the commoding old lady pleady urgent business (which indeed
was true) to go out, and earnestly desired me to entertain her cousin
kindly till she came back, both for my own sake and her; and then, with
a “Pray, sir, be very good, be very tender to the sweet child,” she
went out of the room, leaving me staring, with my mouth open, and
unprepared by the suddenness of her departure, to oppose it.

We were now alone; and on that idea a sudden fit of trembling seized
me. I was so afraid, without a precise notion of why, and what I had to
fear, that I sat on the settee, by the fire side, motionless and
petrified, without life or spirit, not knowing how to look or how to
stir.

But long I was not suffered to remain in this state of stupefaction:
the monster squatted down by me on the settee, and without farther
ceremony or preamble, flings his arms about my neck, and drawing me
pretty forcibly towards him, obliged me to receive, in spite of my
struggles to disengage from him, his pestilential kisses, which quite
overcame me. Finding me then next to senseless, and unresisting, he
tears off my neck handkerchief, and laid all open there, to his eyes
and hands: still I endured all without flinching, till emboldened by my
sufferance and silence, for I had not the power to speak or cry out, he
attempted to lay me down on the settee, and I felt his hand on the
lower part of my naked thighs, which were crossed, and which he
endeavoured to unlock. Oh then! I was roused out of my passive
endurance, and springing from him with an activity he was not prepared
for, threw myself at his feet, and begged him, in the most moving tone,
not to be rude, and that he would not hurt me. “Hurt you, my dear?”
says the brute, “I intend you no harm. Has not the old lady told you
that I love you? that I shall do handsomely by you?”

“She has indeed, sir,” said I, “but I cannot love you, indeed I cannot!
pray let me alone! yes! I will love you dearly if you will let me alone
and go away.” But I was talking to the wind, for whether my tears, my
attitude, or the disorder of my dress proved fresh incentives, or
whether he was now under the dominion of desires he could not bridle,
but snorting and foaming with lust and rage, he renews his attack,
seizes me, and again attempts to extend and fix me on the settee: in
which he succeeded so far as to lay me along, and even to toss my
petticoats over my head, and lay my thighs bare, which I obstinately
kept close, nor could he, though he attempted with his knee to force
them open, effect it so as to stand fair for being master of the main
avenue; he was unbuttoned, both waistcoat and breeches, yet I only felt
the weight of his body upon me, whilst I lay struggling with
indignation, and dying with terrors; but he stopped all of a sudden,
and got off, panting, blowing, cursing, and repeating “old and ugly!”
for so I had very naturally called him in the heat of my defence.

The brute had, it seems, as I afterwards understood, brought on, by his
eagerness and struggle, the ultimate period of his hot fit of lust,
which his power was too short-lived to carry him through the full
execution of; of which my thighs and linen received the effusion.

When it was over he bid me, with a tone of displeasure, get up: “that
he would not do me the honour to think of me any more; that the old
b——h might look out for another cully; that he would not be fooled so
by ever a country mock modesty in England; that he supposed I had left
my maidenhead with some hobnail in the country, and was come to dispose
of my skim-milk in town” with a volley of the like abuse; which I
listened to with more pleasure than ever fond woman did to
protestations of love from her darling minion: for, incapable as I was
of receiving any addition to my perfect hatred and aversion to him, I
looked on this railing, as my security against his renewing his most
odious caress.

Yet, plain as Mrs. Brown’s views were now come out, I had not the
heart, or spirit to open my eyes to them: still I could not part with
my dependence on that beldam, so much did I think myself hers, soul and
body: or rather, I sought to deceive myself with the continuation of my
good opinion of her, and choose to wait the worst at her hands, sooner
than be turned out to starve in the streets, without a penny of money
or a friend to apply to these fears were my folly.

While this confusion of ideas was passing in my head, and I sat
pensively by the fire, with my eyes brimming with tears, my neck still
bare, and my cap fallen off in the struggle, so that my hair was in the
disorder you may guess, the villain’s lust began, I suppose, to be
again in flow, at the sight of all that bloom of youth which presented
itself to his view, a bloom yet unenjoyed, and of course not yet
indifferent to him.

After some pause, he asked me with a tone of voice mightily softer,
whether I would make it up with him before the old lady returned, and
all should be well; he would restore me to his affections, at the same
time offering to kiss me and feel my breasts. But now my extreme
aversion, my fears, my indignation, all acting upon me, gave me a
spirit not natural to me, so that breaking loose from him, I ran to the
bell and rang it, with such violence and effect as to bring up the maid
to know what was the matter, or whether the gentleman wanted anything;
and before he could proceed to greater extremities, she bounced into
the room, and seeing me stretched on the floor, my hair all
dishevelled, my nose gushing out blood, which did not a little
tragedize the scene, and my odious persecutor still intent of pushing
his brutal point, unmoved by all my cries and distress, she was herself
confounded and did not know what to do.

As much, however, as Martha might be prepared and hardened to
transactions of this sort, all womanhood must have been out of her
heart could she have seen this unmoved. Besides that, on the face of
things, she imagined that matters had gone greater lengths than they
really had, and that the courtesy of the house had been actually
consummated on me, and flung: me into the condition I was in: in this
notion she instantly took my part, and advised the gentleman to go down
and leave me to recover myself, and “that all would be soon over with
me; that when Mrs. Brown and Phœbe, who were gone out, were returned,
they would take order for everything to his satisfaction; that nothing
would be lost by a little patience with the poor tender thing; that for
her part she was frightened; she could not tell what to say to such
doings; but that she would stay by me till my mistress came home.” As
the wench said all this in a resolute tone, and the monster himself
began to perceive that things would not mend by his staying, he took
his hat and went out of the room murmuring and pitting his brows like
an old ape, so that I was delivered from the horrors of his detestable
presence.

As soon as he was gone, Martha very tenderly offered me her assistance
in anything, and would have got me some hartshorn drops and put me to
bed; which last I, at first, positively refused, in the fear that the
monster might return and take me at that disadvantage. However, with
much persuasion and assurances that I should not be molested that night
she prevailed on me to lie down; and indeed I was so weakened by my
struggles, so dejected by my fearful apprehension, so terror-struck,
that I had not power to sit up, or hardly to give answers to the
questions with which the curious Martha plied and perplexed me.

Such too, and so cruel was my fate, that I dreaded the sight of Mrs.
Brown, as if I had been the criminal, and she the person injured; a
mistake which you will not think so strange, on distinguishing that
neither virtue nor principles had the least share in the defence I had
made, but only the particular aversion I had conceived against this
first brutal and frightful invader of my tender innocence.

I passed then the time till Mrs. Brown came home, under all the
agitations of fear and despair that may easily be guessed.

About eleven at night my two ladies came home, and having received
rather a favourable account from Martha, who had run down to let them
in, for Mr. Crofts (that was the name of my brute) was gone out of the
house, after waiting till he had tired his patience for Mrs. Brown’s
return, they came thundering up stairs, and seeing me pale, my face
bloody, and all the marks of the most thorough dejection, they employed
themselves more to comfort and re-inspirit me than in making me the
reproaches I was weak enough to fear, I who had so many juster and
stronger to retort upon them.

Mrs. Brown withdrawn, Phœbe came presently to bed to me, and what with
the answers she drew from me, what with her own method of palpably
satisfying herself, she soon discovered that I had been more frightened
than hurt; upon which I suppose, being herself seized with sleep, and
reserving her lectures and instructions till the next morning, she left
me, properly speaking, to my unrest; for, later tossing and turning the
greatest part of the night, and tormenting myself with the falsest
notions and apprehensions of things, I fell, through mere fatigue into
a kind of delirious doze, out of which I waked late in the morning, in
a violent fever: a circumstance which was extremely critical to
reprieve me, at least for a time, from the attacks of a wretch,
infinitely more terrible to me than death itself.

The interested care that was taken of me during my illness, in order to
restore me to a condition of making good the bawd’s engagements, or of
enduring further trials, had, however, such an effect on my grateful
disposition that I even thought myself obliged to my un-doers for their
attention to promote my recovery; and, above all, for the keeping out
of my sight of that brutal ravisher, the author of my disorder, on
their finding I was too strongly moved at the bare mention of his name.

Youth is soon raised, and a few days were sufficient to conquer the
fury of my fever: but, what contributed most to my perfect recovery and
to my reconciliation with life, was the timely news that Mr. Crofts,
who was a merchant of considerable dealings, was arrested at the King’s
suit, for nearly forty thousand pounds, on account of his driving a
certain contraband trade, and that his affairs were so desperate, that
even were it in his inclination, it would not be in his power to renew
his designs upon me: for he was instantly thrown into a prison, which
it was not likely he would get out of in haste.

Mrs. Brown, who had touched his fifty guineas, advanced to so little
purpose, and lost all hopes of the remaining hundred, began to look
upon my treatment of him with a more favourable eye; and as they had
observed my temper to be perfectly tractable and conformable to their
views, all the girls that composed her flock were suffered to visit me,
and had their cue to dispose me, by their conversation, to a perfect
resignation of myself to Mrs. Brown’s direction.

Accordingly they were let in upon me, and all that frolic and
thoughtless gaiety in which those giddy creatures consume either
leisure, made me envy a condition of which I only saw the fair side;
insomuch, that the being one of them became even my ambition: a
disposition which they all carefully cultivated; and I wanted now
nothing but to restore my health, that I might be able to undergo the
ceremony of the initiation.

Conversation, example, in short all, contributed, in that house, to
corrupt my native parity, which had taken no root in education; whilst
now the inflammable principal of pleasure, so easily fired at my age,
made strange work within me, and all the modesty I was brought up in
the habit, not the instruction of, began to melt away like dew before
the sun’s heat; not to mention that I made a vice of necessity, from
the constant fears I had of being turned out to starve.

I was soon pretty well recovered, and at certain hours allowed to range
all over the house, but cautiously kept from seeing any company till
the arrival of Lord B——, from Bath, to whom Mrs. Brown, in respect to
his experienced generosity on such occasions, proposed to offer the
perusal of that trinket of mine, which bears so great an imaginary
value; and his lordship being expected in town in less than a
fortnight, Mrs. Brown judged I would be entirely renewed in beauty and
freshness by that time, and afforded her the chance of a better bargain
than she had driven with Mr. Crofts.

In the meantime, I was so thoroughly, as they call it, brought over, so
tame to their whistle, that, had my cage door been set open, I had no
idea that I ought to fly anywhere, sooner than stay where I was; nor
had I the least sense of regretting my condition, but waited very
quietly for whatever Mrs. Brown should order concerning me; who on her
side, by herself and her agents, took more than the necessary
precautions to lull and lay asleep all just reflections on my destiny.

Preachments of morality over the left shoulder; a life of joy painted
in the gayest colours; caresses, promises, indulgent treatment;
nothing, in short, was wanting to domesticate me entirely and to
prevent my going out anywhere to get better advice. Alas! I dreamed of
no such thing.

Hitherto I had been indebted only to the girls of the house for the
corruption of my innocence: their luscious talk, in which modesty was
far from respected, their description of their engagements with men,
had given me a tolerable insight into the nature and mysteries of their
profession, at the same time that they highly provoked an itch of
florid warm-spirited blood through every vein: but above all, my bed
fellow Phœbe, whose pupil I more immediately was, exerted her talents
in giving me the first tinctures of pleasure: whilst nature, now warmed
and wantoned with discoveries so interesting, piqued a curiosity which
Phœbe artfully whetted, and leading me from question to question of her
own suggestion, explained to me all the mysteries of Venus. But I could
not long remain in such a house as that, without being an eye-witness
of more than I could conceive from her descriptions.

One day, about twelve at noon, being thoroughly recovered of my fever,
I happened to be in Mrs. Brown’s dark closet, where I had not been half
an hour, resting upon the maid’s bed, before I heard a rustling in the
bed-chamber, separated from the closet only by two sash doors, before
the glasses of which were drawn two yellow damask curtains, but not so
close as to exclude the full view of the room from any person in the
closet.

I instantly crept softly and posted myself so, that seeing everything
minutely, I could not myself be seen; and who should come in but the
venerable mother Abbess herself! handed in by a tall, brawny young
Horse-grenadiers, moulded in the Hercules style: in fine, the choice of
the most experienced dame, in those affairs, in all London.

Oh! how still and hush did I keep at my stand, lest any noise should
baulk my curiosity, or bring Madam into the closet!

But I had not much reason to fear either, for she was entirely taken up
with her present great concern, that she had no sense of attention to
spare to anything else.

Droll was it to see that clumsy fat figure of her’s flop down on the
foot of the bed, opposite to the closet door so that I had a full front
view of all her charms.

Her paramour sat down by her: he seemed to be a man of very few words,
and a great stomach; for proceeding instantly to essentials, he gave
her some hearty smacks, and thrusting his hands into her breasts,
disengaged them from her stays, in scorn of whose confinement they
broke loose, and sagged down, navel-low at least. A more enormous pair
did my eyes never behold, nor of a worse colour, flagging, soft, and
most lovingly contiguous: yet such as they were, this great beef-eater
seemed to paw them with a most unenviable lust, seeking in vain to
confine or cover one of them with a hand scarce less than a shoulder of
mutton. After toying with them thus some time, as if they had been
worth it, he laid her down pretty briskly, and canting up her
petticoats, made barely a mask of them to her broad red face, that
blushed with nothing but brandy.

As he stood on one side, unbuttoning his waistcoat and breeches, her
fat brawny thighs hung down, and the whole greasy landscape lay fairly
open to my view; a wide open mouthed gap, overshaded with a grizzly
bush, seemed held out like a beggar’s wallet for its provision.

But I soon had my eyes called off by a more striking object that
entirely engrossed them.

Her sturdy stallion had now unbuttoned, and produced naked, stiff and
erect, that wonderful machine, which I had never seen before, and
which, for the interest my own seat of pleasure began to take furiously
in it, I stared at with all the eyes I had: however, my senses were too
much flurried, too much concentered in that now burning spot of mine,
to observe anything more than in general the make and turn of that
instrument; from which the instinct of nature, yet more than all I had
heard of it, now strongly informed me, I was to expect that supreme
pleasure which she had placed in the meeting of those parts so
admirably fitted for each other.

Long, however, the young spark did not remain before giving it two or
three shakes, by way of brandishing it, he threw himself upon her, and
his back being now towards me, I could only take his being ingulphed
for granted, by the directions he moved in, and the impossibility of
missing so staring a mark; and now the bed shook, the curtains rattled
so that I could scarce hear the sighs and murmurs, the heaves and
pantings that accompanied the action, from the beginning to the end;
the sound and sight of which thrilled to the very soul of me, and made
every vein of my body circulate liquid fires: the emotion grew so
violent that it almost intercepted my respiration.

Prepared then, and disposed as I was by the discourse of my companions,
and Phœbe’s minute detail of everything, no wonder that such a sight
gave the last dying blow to my native innocence.

Whilst they were in the heat of the action, guided by nature only, I
stole my hand up my petticoats, and with fingers on fire, seized and
yet more inflamed that center of all my senses: my heart palpitated, as
if it would force its way through my bosom: I breathed with pain; I
twisted my thighs, squeezed and compressed the lips of that virgin
slit, and following mechanically the example of Phœbe’s manual
operation on it, as far as I could find admission, brought on at last
the critical ecstasy, the melting flow, into which nature, spent with
excess of pleasure, dissolves and dies away.

After which, my senses recovered coolness enough to observe the rest of
the transaction between this happy pair.

The young fellow had just dismounted, when the old lady immediately
sprung up, with all the vigour of youth, derived, no doubt, from her
late refreshment; and making him sit down, began in her turn to kiss
him, to pat and pinch his cheeks, and play with his hair: all which he
received with an air of indifference and coolness that showed him to be
much altered from what he was when he first went on to the breach.

My pious governess, however, not being above calling in auxiliaries,
unlocks a little case of cordials that stood near the bed, and made him
pledge her in a very plentiful dram: after which, and a little amorous
parley, Madam set herself down upon the same place, at the bed’s foot;
and the young fellow standing sidewise by her, she, with the greatest
effrontery imaginable, unbuttons his breeches, and removing his shirt,
draws out his affair, so shrunk and diminished, that I could not but
remember the difference, now crest-fallen, or just faintly lifting its
head: but our experience matron very soon, by chaffing it with her
hands, brought it to swell to that size and erection I had before seen
it up to.

I admired then, upon a fresh account, and with a nicer survey, the
texture of that capital part of man: the flaming red head as it stood
uncapt, the whiteness of the shaft, and the shrub growth of curling
hair that embrowned the foots of it, the roundish bag that dangled down
from it, all exacted my eager attention, and renewed my flame. But, as
the main affair was now at the point the industrious dame had laboured
to bring it to, she was not in the humour to put off the payment of her
pains, but laying herself down, drew him gently upon her, and thus they
finished, in the same manner as before, the old last act.

This over, they both went out lovingly together, the old lady having
first made him a present, as near as I could observe, of three or four
pieces; he being not only her particular favourite on account of his
performances, but a retainer to the house; from whose sight she had
taken great care hitherto to secret me, lest he might not have had
patience to wait for my lord’s arrival, but have insisted on being his
taster, which the old lady was under too much subjection to him to dare
dispute with him; for every girl of the house fell to him in course,
and the old lady only now and then got her turn, in consideration of
the maintenance he had, and which he could scarce be accused of not
earning from her.

As soon as I heard them go down-stairs, I stole up softly to my own
room, out of which I had luckily not been missed; there I began to
breathe more free, and to give a loose to those warm emotions which the
sight of such an encounter had raised in me, I laid me down on the bed,
stretched myself out, joining and ardently wishing, and requiring any
means to divert or allay the rekindled rage and tumult of my desires,
which all pointed strongly to their pole: man. I felt about the bed as
if I sought for something that I grasped in my waking dream, and not
finding it, could have cried for vexation; every part of me plowing
with simulated fires. At length, I resorted to the only present remedy,
that of vain attempts at digitation, where the smallness of the theatre
did not yet afford room enough for action, and where the pain my
fingers gave me, in striving for admission, though they procured me a
slight satisfaction for the present, started an apprehension which I
could not be easy till I had communicated to Phœbe and received her
explanations upon it.

The opportunity, however, did not offer till next morning, for Phœbe
did not come to bed till long after I was gone to sleep. As soon then
as we were both awake, it was but in course to bring our ly-a-bed chat
to hand, on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the
love scene I had thus, by chance, been spectatress of, served for a
preface.

Phœbe could not hear it to the end without more than one interruption
by peals of laughter, and my ingenuous way of relating matters did not
a little heighten the joke to her.

But, on her sounding me how the sight had affected me, without mincing
or hiding the pleasurable emotions it had inspired me with, I told her
at the same time that one remark had perplexed me, and that very
considerably. “Aye!” says she, “what was that?” “Why,” replied I,
“having very curiously and attentively compared the size of that
enormous machine, which did not appear, at least to my fearful
imagination, less than my wrist, and at least three of my hand-fuls
long, to that of the tender small part of me which was framed to
receive it, I could not conceive its being possible to afford it
entrance without dying, perhaps in the greatest pain, since she well
knew that even a finger thrust in there hurt me beyond bearing. As to
my mistress’s and yours, I can very plainly distinguish the different
dimensions of them from mine, palpable to the touch, and visible to the
eye; so that, in short, great as the promised pleasure may be, I am
afraid of the pain of the experiment.”

Phœbe at this redoubled her laugh, and whilst I expected a very serious
solution of my doubts and apprehensions in this matter, only told me
that “she never heard of a mortal wound being given in those parts, by
that terrible weapon, and that some she knew younger, and as delicately
made as myself, had outlived the operation; that she believed, at the
worst, I should take a great deal of liking; that true it was, there
was a great diversity of sizes in those parts, owing to nature,
child-bearing, frequent over-stretching with unmerciful machines, but
that at a certain age and habit of body, even the most experienced in
those affairs could not well distinguish between the maid and the
woman, supposing too an absence of all artifice, in their natural
situation: but that since chance had thrown in my way one sight of that
sort, she would procure me another, that should feast my eyes more
delicately, and go a great way in the cure of my fears from that
imaginary disproportion”.

On this she asked me if I knew Polly Phillips? “Undoubterly,” says I,
“the fair girl which was so tender of me when I was sick, and has been,
as you told me, but two months in the house.” “The same,” says Phœbe.
“You must know then, she is kept by a young Genoes merchant, whom his
uncle, who is immensely rich, and whose darling he is, on a pretex of
settling some accounts, but in reality to humour his inclinations for
travelling, and seeing the world. He met casually with this Polly once
in company, and taking a likning to her, makes it worth her while to
keep entirely to him. He comes to her here twice or thrice a week, and
she receives him in the light closet up one pair of stairs, where he
enjoys her in a taste, I suppose, peculiar to the heat, or perhaps the
caprices of his own country, I say no more, but to-morrow being his
day, you shall see what passes between them, from a place only known to
your mistress and myself.”

You may be sure, in the ply I was now taking, I had no objection to the
proposal, and was rather a tip-toe for its accomplishments.

At five in the evening next day, Phœbe, punctual to her promise, came
to me as I sat alone in my own room, and beckoned me to follow her.

We went down the back stairs very softly, and opening the door of a
dark closet, where there was some old furniture kept, and some cases of
liquor, she drew me in after her, and fastened the door upon us, we had
no light but what came through a long crevice in the partition between
ours and the light closet, where the scene of action lay; so that
sitting on those low cases, we could, with the greatest ease, as well
as clearness, see all objects (ourselves unseen), only by applying our
eyes close to the crevice, where the moulding of a panel had warped, or
started a little on the other side.

The young gentleman was the first person I saw, with his back directly
towards me, looking at a print. Polly was not yet come: in less than a
minute though, the door opened, and she came in; and at the noise the
door made he turned about, and come to meet her, with an air of the
greatest tenderness and satisfaction.

After saluting her, he led her to a coach that fronted us, where they
both sat down, and the young Genoes helped her to a glass of wine, with
some Naples biscuits on a salver.

Presently, when they had exchanged a few kisses, and questions in
broken English on one side, he began to unbutton, and, in fine, stript
unto his shirt.

As if this had been the signal agreed on for pulling off all their
clothes, a scheme which the heat of the season perfectly favoured,
Polly began to draw her pins, and as she had no stays to unlace, she
was in a trice, with her gallant’s officious assistance, undressed to
all but her shift.

When he saw this, his breeches were immediately loosened, waist and
knee bands, and slipped over his ankles, clean off; his shirt collar
was unbottoned too: then, first giving Polly an encouraging kiss, he
stole, as it were, the shift off the girl, who being, I suppose, broke
and familiarized to this humour, blushed indeed, but less than I did at
the apparition of her, now standing stark naked, just as she came ont
of the hands of pure nature, with her black hair loose and a-float down
her dazzling white neck and shoulders, whilst the deepened carnation of
her cheeks went off gradually into the hue of glazed snow: for such
were the blended tints polish of her skin.

This girl could not be above eighteen: her face regular and sweet
featured, her shape exquisite; nor could I help envying her two ripe
enchanting breasts, finely plumped out in flesh, but withal so round,
so firm, that they sustained themselves, in scorn of any stay: then
their nipples, pointing different ways, marked their pleasing
separation; beneath them lay the delicious tract of the belly, which
terminated in a parting of rift scarce discerning, that modesty seemed
to retire downward, and seek shelter between two plump fleshy thighs:
the curling hair that overspread its delightful front, clothed it with
the richest sable fur in the universe: in short, she was evidently a
subject for the painters to court her, sitting to them for a pattern
female beauty, in all the true pride and pomp of nakedness.

The young Italian (still in his shirt) stood gazing and transported at
the sight of beauties that might have fired a dying hermit; his eager
eyes devoured her, as she shifted attitudes at his discretion: neither
were his hands excluded their share of the high feast, but wandered, on
the hunt of pleasure, over every part and inch of her body, so
qualified to afford the most exquisite sense of it.

In the mean time time, one could not help observing the swell of his
shirt before, that bolstered out, and pointed out the condition of
things behind the curtain: but he soon removed it, by slipping his
shirt over his head; and now, as to nakedness, they had nothing to
reproach one another.

The young gentleman, by Phœbe’s guess, was about two and twenty; tall
and well limbed. His body was finely formed, and of a most vigorous
make, square shouldered, and broad chested: his face was not remarkable
any way, but for a nose inclining to the Roman, eyes large, black, and
sparkling, and a ruddiness in his cheeks that was the more a grace; for
his complexion was of the brownest, not of that dusky dun colour which
excludes, the idea of freshness, but of that clear, olive gloss, which
glowing with life, dazzles perhaps less than fairness, and yet pleases
more, when it pleases at all. His hair being too short to tie fell no
lower than his neck, in short easy curls; and he had a few sprigs about
his paps, that garnished his chest in a style of strength and
manliness. Then his grand movement, which seemed to rise out of a
thicket of curling hair, that spread from the root all over his thighs
and belly up to the navel, stood stiff and upright, but of a size to
frighten me, by sympathy for the small tender part which was the object
of its fury, and which now lay exposed to my fairest view; for he had,
immediately on stoppings off his shirt, gently pushed her down on the
couch, which stood conveniently to break her willing fall. Her thighs
were spread out to their utmost extention, and discovered between them
the mark of the sex, the red-centered cleft of flesh, whose lips
vermillioning inwards, expressed a small ruby line in sweet miniature,
such as Guide’s touch or colouring: could never attain to the life or
delicacy of.

Phœbe, at this, gave me a gentle jog, to prepare me for a whisper
question: “Whether I thought my little maiden-head was much less?” But
my attention was too much engrossed, too much inwrapped with all I saw,
to be able to give her any answer.

By this time the young gentelman had changed her posture from lying
breadth to length-wise on the coach: but her thighs were still spread,
and the mark lay fair for him, who now kneeling between them, displayed
to us a side view of that fierce erect machine of his, which threatened
no less than splitting the tender victim, who lay smiling at the
uplifted stroke, nor seemed to decline it. He looked upon his weapon
himself with some pleasure, and guiding it with his hand to the
inviting; slit, drew aside the lips, and lodged it (after some thrusts,
which Polly seemed even to assist) about half way; but there it stuck,
I suppose from its growing thickness: he draws it again, and just
wetting it with spittle, re-enters, and with ease sheathed it now up to
the hilt, at which Polly gave a deep sigh, which was quite another tone
than one of pain; he thrusts, she heaves, at first gently, and in a
regular cadence; but presently the transport began to be too violent to
observe any order or measure; their motions were too rapid, their
kisses too fierce’ and fervent for nature to support such fury long:
both seemed to me out of themselves: their eyes darted fires: “Oh! oh!
I can’t bear it. It is too much. I die. I am going,” were Polly’s
expressions of extasy: his joys were more silent: but soon broken
murmurs, sighs heart-fetched, and at length a dispatching thrust, as if
he would have forced himself up her body, and then the motionless
languor of all his limbs, all shewed that the die-away moment was come
upon him; which she gave signs of joining with by, the wild throwing of
her hands about, closing her eyes, and giving a deep sob, in which she
seemed to expire in an agony of bliss.

When he had finished his stroke, and got from off her, she lay still
without the least motion, breathless, as it should seem, with pleasure.
He replaced her again breadth-wise on the couch, unable to sit up, with
her thighs open, between which I could observe a kind of white liquid,
like froth, hanging about the outward lips of that recently opened
wound, which now glowed with a deeper red. Presently she gets up, and
throwing her arms round him, seemed far undelighted with the trial he
had put her to, to judge, at least by the fondness with which she eyed,
and hung upon him.

For my part, I will not pretend to describe what I felt over me during
this scene; but from that instant, adieu all fears of what man can do
unto me! they were now changed into such ardent desires, such
ungovernable longings, that I could have by the sleeve, and offered him
the bauble, which I now imagined the loss of would be a gain I could
not too soon procure myself.

Phœbe, who had more experience, and to whom such sights were not so
new, could not however, be unmoved at so warm a scene; and drawing me
away softly from the peeping hole, for fear of being overheard, guided
me as the door as possible, all passive and obedient to her least
signals.

Here was no room either to sit or lie, but making me stand with my back
towards the door, she lifted up my petticoats, and with her busy
fingers fell to visit and explore that part of me, where I was
perfectly sick and ready to die with desire; that the bare touch of her
finger, in that critical place, had the effect of a fire to a train,
and her hand instantly made her sensible to what a pitch I was wound
up, and melted by the sight she had thus procured me. Satisfied then
with her success, in allaying a heat that would have made me impatient
of seeing the continuation of the transactions between our amourous
couple, she brought me again to the crevice, so favourable to our
curiosity.

We had certainly been but a few instants away from it, and yet on our
return we saw everything in good forwardness for recommencing the
tender hostilities.

The young foreigner was sitting down, fronting us, on the coach, with
Polly upon one knee, who had her arms round his neck, whilst the
extreme whiteness of her skin was not undelightfully contrasted by the
smooth glossy brown of her lover’s.

But who could count the fierce, unnumbered kisses given and taken? In
which I could often discover their mouths were double tongued, and
seemed to favour the mutual insertion with the greatest gust and
delight.

In the meantime, his red-headed champion, that had so lately fled the
pit, quelled and abashed, was now recovered to the top of his
condition, perked and crested up between Polly’s thighs, who was not
wanting, on her part, to coax and keep it in good humour, stroking it,
with her head down, and receiving even its velvet tip between the lips
of not its proper mouth: whether it was to render it more glib and easy
of entrance, I could not tell; but it had such an effect, that the
young gentleman seemed by his eyes, that sparkled with more excited
lustre, and his inflamed countenance, to receive increase of pleasure.
He got up, and taking Polly in his arms, embraced her, and said
something too softly for me to hear, leading her withal to the foot of
the couch, and taking delight to slap her thighs and posteriors with
that stiff sinew of his, which hit them with a spring that he gave it
with his hand, and made them resound again, but her about as much as he
meant to hurt her, for she seemed to have as frolic a taste as himself.

But guess my surprise, when I saw the lazy young rogue lie down on his
back, and gently pull down Polly upon him, who giving way to his
humour, stradled, and with her hands conducted her blind favourite to
the right place; and following her impulse, ran directly upon the
flaming point of this weapon of pleasure, which she staked herself
upon, up pierced, and infixed to the extremest hair breadth of it: thus
she sat on him a few instants, enjoying and relishing her situation,
whilst he toyed with her provoking breasts. Sometimes she would stoop
to meet his kiss: but presently the sting of pleasure spurred them up
to fiercer action; then began the storm of heaves, which, from the
undermost combatant, were thrust at the same time, he crossing his
hands over her, and drawing her home to him with a sweet violence: the
inverted strokes of anvil over hammer soon brought on the critical
period, in which all the signs of a close conspiring extasy informed us
of the point they were at.

For me, I could bear to see no more; I was so overcome, so inflamed at
the second part of the same play, that, mad to an intolerable degree, I
hugged, I clasped Phœbe, as if she had wherewithal to relieve me.
Pleased however with, and pitying the taking she could feel me in, she
drew towards the door, and opening it softly as she could, we both got
off undiscovered, and reconducted me to my own room, where, unable to
keep my legs, in the agitation I was in, I instantly threw myself down
on the bed, where I lay transported, though ashamed at what I felt.

Phœbe lay down by me, and asked me archly, “if, now that I had seen the
enemy, and fully considered him, I was still afraid of him? or did I
think I could come to a close engagement with him?” To all which, not a
word on my side; I sighed, and could scarcely breathe. She takes hold
of my hand, and having rolled up her own petticoats, forced it half
strivingly, towards those parts, where, now grown more knowing, I
missed the main object of my wishes; and finding not even the shadow of
what I wanted, where every thing was so fiat, or so hollow, in the
vexation I was in at it. I should have withdrawn my hand, but for fear
of disobliging her. Abandoning it then entirely to her management, she
made use of it as she thought proper, to procure herself rather the
shadow than the substance of any pleasure. For my part, I now pined for
more solid food, and promised tacitly to myself that I would not be put
off much longer with this foolery of woman to woman, of Mrs. Brown did
not soon provide me with the essential specific. In short, I had all
the air of not being able to wait the arrival of my lord B——, though he
was now expected in a very fews days: nor did I wait for him, for love
itself took charge of the disposal of me, in spite of interest, or
gross lust.

It was now two days after the closet scene, that I got up about six in
the morning, and leaving my bedfellow fast asleep, stole down, with no
other thought than of taking a little fresh air in a small garden,
which our back parlour opened into, and from which my confinement
debarred me, at the times company came to my house; but now sleep and
silence reigned all over it.

I opened the parlour door, and well surprised was I at seeing, by the
side of a fire half-out, a young gentleman in the old lady’s elbow
chair, with his legs laid upon another, fast asleep, and left there by
his thoughtless companions, who had drank him down, and then went off
with every one but his mistress, whilst he stayed behind by the
courtesy of the old matron, who would not disturb or turn him out in
that condition at one in the morning; and beds, it is more than
probable there were none to spare. On the table still remained the
punch bowl and glasses, stewed about in their usual disorder after a
drunken revel.

But when I drew nearer, to view the sleeping estray, heavens! what a
sight! No! term of years, no turn of fortune could ever eraze the
lightninglike impression his form made on me. Yes! dearest object of my
earliest passion, I command for ever the remembrance of thy first
appearance to my ravished eyes, it calls thee up, present; and I see
thee now.

Figure to yourself, Madam, fair stripling between eighteen and
nineteen, with his head reclined on one of the sides of the chair, his
hair disordered curls, irregularly shading a face, on which all the
roseate bloom of youth and all the manly graces conspired to fix my eye
sand heart; even the languour and paleness of his face, in which the
momentary triumph of the lily over the rose was owing to the excesses
of the night, gave an inexpressible sweetness to the finest features
imaginable: his eyes, closed in sleep, displayed the meeting edges of
their lids beautifully bordered with long eye-lashes; over which no
pencil could have described two more regular arches than those that
graced his forehead, which was high, perfectly white and smooth; then a
pair of vermilion lips, pouting and swelling to the touch, as if a bee
had freshly stung them, seemed to challenge me to get the gloves off
this lovely sleeper, had not the modesty and respect, which in both
sexes are inseparable from a true passion, checked my impulses.

But on seeing his shirt collar unbottoned, and bosom whiter than a
drift of snow, the pleasure of considering it could not bribe me to
lengthen it, at the hazard of a health that began to be my life’s
concern. Love, that made me timid, taught me to be tender too: with a
trembling hand I took hold of one of his, and waking him as gently as
possible, he started, and looking, at first a little wildly, said with
a voice that sent its harmonious sound to my heart: “Pray, child,
what-a-clock is it?” I told him, and added that he might catch cold if
he slept longer with his breast open in the cool of the morning air. On
this he thanked me with a sweetness perfectly agreeing with that of his
features and eyes; the last now broad open, and eagerly surveying me,
carried the surightly fires they sparkled with directly to my heart.

It seems, that having drank too freely before he came upon the rake
with some of his young companions, he had put himself out of a
condition to go through all the weapons with them, and crown the night
with a getting a mistress; so that seeing me in a loose undress, he did
not doubt but I was one of the misses of the house, sent in to repair
his loss of time; but though he seized that notion, and a very obvious
one it was, without hesitation, yet, whether my figure made a more than
ordinary impression on him, or whether it was his natural politeness,
he addressed me in a manner far from rude, though still on the foot of
one of the house pliers come to amuse him; and giving me the first kiss
that I ever relished from man in my life, asked me if I could favour
him with my company, assuring me that he would make it worth my while:
but had not even new-born love, that true refiner of lust, opposed so
sudden a surrender, the fear of being surprised by the house was a
sufficient bar to my compliance.

I told him then, in a tone set by love itself, that for reasons I had
not time to explain to him. I could not stay with him, and might even
ever see him again, with a sigh at these words, which broke from the
bottom of my heart. My conqueror, who, as he afterwards told me, had
been struck with my appearance, and liked me as much as he could think
of liking any one in my supposed way of life, asked me briskly at once,
if I would be kept by him, and that he would take a lodging for me
directly, and relieve me from any engagements he presumed I might be
under to the house.

Rash, sudden, undigested, even dangerous as this offer might be from a
perfect stranger, and that stranger a giddy boy, the prodigious love I
was struck with for him, had put a charm into every objection: I not
resisting, and blinded me to every objection; I could, at that instant,
have died for him: think if I could resist an invitation to live with
him! Thus my heart, beating strong to the proposal, dictated my answer,
after scarce a minute’s pause, that I would accept of his offer, and
make my escape to him in what way he pleased, and that I would be
entirely at his disposal, let it be good or bad. I have often since
wondered that so great an easiness did not disgust him, or make me too
cheap in his eyes, but my fate had so appointed it, that in his fears
of the hazzard of the town, he had been some time looking out for a
girl to take into keeping, and my person happening to hit his fancy, it
was by one of those miracles reserved to love, that we struck the
bargain in the instant, which we sealed by an exchange of kisses, that
the hopes of a more uninterrupted enjoyment engaged him to content
himself with.

Never, however, did dear youth carry in his head more wherewith to
justify the turning of a girl’s head, and making her set all
consequences at defiance, for the sake of following a gallant.

For, besides all the perfections of manly beauty which were assembled
in his form, he had an air of neatness and gentility, certain smartness
in the carriage and port of his head, that yet more distinguished him;
his eyes were sprightly and full of meaning; his looks had in them
something at once sweet and commanding; his complexion out-bloomed the
lovely coloured rose, whilst its inimitable tender vivid glow clearly
saved it from the reproach of wanting life, of raw and dough-like,
which is commonly made of those so extremely fair as he was.

Our little plan was, that I should get out about seven the next morning
(which I could readily promise, as I knew where to get the key of the
street door) and he would wait at the end of the street with a coach to
convey me safe off; after which, we would send, and clear any debt
incurred by my stay at Mrs. Brown’s, who, he only judged, in gross,
might not care to part with one, he thought, so fit to draw custom to
the house.

I then just hinted to him not to mention in the house his having seen
such a person as me, for reasons I would explain to him more at
leisure. And then, for fear of miscarrying, by being seen together, I
tore myself from him with a bleeding heart, and stole up softly to my
room, where I found Phœbe still fast asleep, and hurrying off my few
clothes, lay down by her, with a mixture of joy and anxiety, that may
be easier conceived than expressed.

The risks of Mrs. Brown’s discovering my purpose, of disappointments,
misery, ruin, all vanished before this new-kindled flame. The seeing,
the touching, the being, if but for a night, with this idol of my fond
virgin heart, appeared to me a happiness above the purchase of my
liberty or life. He might use me ill, let him: he was the master,
happy, too happy, even to receive death at so dear a hand.

To this purpose were the reflections of the whole day, of which every
minute seemed to me a little eternity. How often did I visit the clock!
nay, was tempted to advance the tedious hand, as if that would have
advanced the time with it! Had those of the house had the least
observations on me, they must have remarked something extraordinary
from the discomposure I could not help betraying; especially when at
dinner mention was made of the charmingest youth having been there, and
stayed breakfast. “Oh! he was such a beauty!... I should have died for
him!... they would pull caps for him!...” and the like fooleries;
which, however, was throwing oil on a fire I was sorely put to it to
smother the blaze of.

The fluctuations of my mind, the whole day, produced one good effect:
which was, that, through mere fatigue, I slept tolerably well till five
in the morning, when I got up, and having dressed myself, waited, under
the double tortures of fear and impatience, for the appointed hour. It
came at last, the dear, critical, dangerous hour came; and now,
supported only by the courage love lent me, I ventured, a tip-toe, down
stairs, leaving my box behind, for fear of being surprized with it in
going out.

I got to the street door, the key whereof was always laid on the chair
by our bed side, in trust with Phœbe, who having not the least
suspicion of my entertaining any design to go from them (nor, indeed,
had I, but the day before), made no reserve or concealment of it from
me. I opened the door with great ease; love, that emboldened, protected
me too: and now, got safe into the street, I saw my new guardian angel
waiting at a coach door, ready open. How I got to him I know not: I
suppose I flew; but I was in the coach in a trice, and he by the side
of me, with his arms clasped round me, and giving me the kiss of
welcome. The coachman had his orders, and drove to them.

My eyes were instantly filled with tears, but tears of the most
delicious delight; to find myself in the arms of that beauteous youth,
was a rapture that my little hear swam in; past or future were equally
out of the question with me; the present was as much as all my powers
of life were sufficient to bear the transport of, without fainting. Nor
were the most tender embraces, the most soothing expressions wanting on
his side, to assure me of his love, and of never giving me cause to
repent the bold step I had taken, in throwing myself thus entirely upon
his honour and generosity. But, alas! this was no merit in me, for I
was drove to it by a passion too impetuous for me to resist, and, I did
what I did, because I could not help it.

In an instant, for time was now annihilated with me, we were landed at
a public house in Chelsea, hospitably commodious for the reception of
duet parties of pleasure, where a breakfast of chocolate was prepared
for us.

An old jolly stager, who kept it, and understood life perfectly well,
breakfasted with us, and leering archly at me, gave us both joy, and
said, “we were well paired, i’ faith! that a great many gentlemen and
ladies used his house, but he had never seen a handsomer couple... he
was sure I was a fresh piece... I looked so country, so innocent! well
my spouse was a lucky man!...” all which, common landlord’s cant, not
only pleased and soothed me, but helped to diver my confusion at being
with my new sovereign, whom, the minute approached, I began to fear to
be alone with: a timidity which true love had a greater share in than
even maiden bashful-ness.

I wished, I doated, I could have died for him; and yet, I know not how,
or why I dreaded the point which had been the object of my fiercest
wishes; my pulses beat fears, amidst a flush of the warmest desires.
This struggle of the passions, however, this conflict betwixt modesty
and lovesick longings, made me burst again into tears; which he took,
as he had done before, only for the remains of concern and emotion at
the suddenness of my change of condition, in committing myself to his
care; and, in consequence of that idea, did and said all that he
thought would most comfort and re-inspirit me.

After breakfast, Charles (the dear familiar name I must take the
liberty henceforward to distinguish my Adonis by), with a smile full of
meaning, took me gently by the hand, and said: “Come, my dear, I will
show you a room that commands a fine prospect over some gardens”; and
without waiting for an answer, in which he relieved me extremely, he
led me up into a chamber, airy and lightsome, where all seeing of
prospects was out of the question, except that of a bed, which had all
the air of recommending the room to him.

Charles had just slipped the bolt of the door, and running, caught me
in his arms, and lifting me from the ground, with his lips glued to
mine, bore me trembling, panting, dying with soft fears and tender
wishes, to the bed; where his impatience would not suffer him to
undress me, more than just unpinning my handkerchief and gowns, and
unlacing my stays.

My bosom was now bare, and rising in the warmest throbs, presented to
his sight and feeling the firm hard swell of a pair of young breast,
such as may be imagined of a girl not sixteen, fresh out of the
country, and never before handled: but even their pride, whiteness,
fashion, pleasing resistance to the touch, could not bribe his restless
hands from roving; but, giving them the loose, my petticoats and shift
were soon taken up, and their stronger center of attraction laid open
to their tender invasion. My fears, however, made me mechanically close
my thighs; but the very touch of his hand insinuated between them,
disclosed them and opened a way for the main attack.

In the mean time, I lay fairly exposed to the examination of his eyes
and hands, quiet and unresisting; which confirmed him the opinion he
proceeded so cavalierly upon, that I was no novice in these matters,
since he had taken me out of a common bawdy house, nor had I said one
thing to prepossess him of my virginity; and if I had, he would sooner
have believed that I took him for a cully that would swallow such an
improbability, than that I was still mistress of that darling treasure,
that hidden mine, so eagerly sought after by the men, and which they
never dig for, but to destroy.

Being now too high wound up to bear a delay, he unbuttoned, and drawing
out the engine of love assaults, drove it currently, as at a ready made
breach... Then! then! for the first time, did I feel that stiff
horn-hard gristle, battering against the tender part; but imagine to
yourself his surprise, when he found, after several vigorous pushes,
which hurt me extremely, that he made not the least impression.

I complained, but tenderly complained: “I could not bear it... indeed
he hurt me!...” Still he thought no more, than that being so young, the
largeness of his machine (for few men could dispute size with him) made
all the difficulty; and that possibly I had not been enjoyed by any so
advantageously made in that part as himself: for still, that my virgin
flower was yet un-cropped, never entered into his head, and he would
have thought it idling with time and words, to have questioned me upon
it.

He tried again, still no admittance, still no penetration; but he had
hurt me yet more, while my extreme love made me bear extreme pain,
almost without a groan. At length, after repeated fruitless trials, he
lay down panting by me, kissed my falling tears, and asked me tenderly
“what was the meaning of so much complaining? and if I had not borne it
better from other than I did from him?” I answered, with a simplicity
framed to persuade, that he was the first mam that ever served me so.
Truth is powerful, and it is not always that we do not believe what we
eagerly wish.

Charles, already disposed by the evidence, of his senses to think my
pretences to virginity not entirely apocryphal, smothers me with
kisses, begs me, in the name of love, to have a little patience, and
that he wilt be as tender of hurting me as he would be of himself..

Alas! it was enough I knew his pleasure to submit joyfully to him,
whatever pain I foresaw it would cost, me.

He now resumes his attempts in more form: first, he put one of the
pillows under me, to give the blank of his aim a more favourable
elevation, and another Under my head, in ease of it; then spreading my
thighs, and placing himself standing betwen them, made them rest upon
his; applying then the point of his machine to the slit, into which he
sought entrance, it was so small, he could scarce assure himself of its
being rightly pointed. He looks, he feels, and satisfies himself: there
driving on with fury, its prodigious stiffness, thus impacted,
wedgelike, breaks the union of those parts, and gained him just the
insertion of the tip of it, lip deep; which being sensible of, he
improved his advantage, and following well his stroke, in a straight
line, forcibly deepens his penetration; but put me to such intolerable
pain, from the separation of the sides of that soft passage by a hard
thick body, I could have screamed out; but, as I was unwilling to alarm
the house, I held in my breath, and crammed my petticoat, which was;
turned up over my face, into my mouth, and bit it through in the agony.
At length, the tender texture of that tract giving way to such fierce
tearing and rending, he pierced something further into me: and now,
outrageous and no longer his own master, but borne headlong away by the
fury and over-mettle of that member, now exerting itself with a kind of
native rage, he breaks in, carries all before him, and one violent
merciless lunge, sent it, imbrued, and reeking with virgin blood, up to
the very hilt in me... Then! then all my resolution deserted me: I
screamed out, and fainted away with the sharpness of the pain; and, as
he told me afterwards, on his drawing out, when emission was over with
him, my thighs were instantly all in a stream of blood, that flowed
from the wounded torn passage.

When I recovered my senses, I found myself undressed and a-bed, in the
arms of the sweet relenting murderer of my virginity, who hung mourning
tenderly over me, and holding in his hand a cordial, which, coming from
the still dear author of so much pain, I could not refuse; my eyes,
however, moistened with tears, and languishingly turned upon him,
seemed to reproach him with his cruelty, and ask him, if such were the
rewards of love. But Charles, to whom I was now infinitely endeared by
his complete triumph over a maidenhead, where he so little expected to
find one, in tenderness to that pain which he had put me to, in
procuring himself the height of pleasure, smothered his exultation, and
employed himself with so much sweetness, so much warmth, to sooth, to
caress, and comfort me in my soft complainings, which breathed, indeed,
more love than resentment, that I presently drowned all sense of pain
in the pleasure of seeing him, of thinking that I belonged to him: he
who was now the absolute disposer of my happiness, and, in one word, my
fate.

The sore was, however, too tender, the wound too bleeding fresh, for
Charles’s good-nature to put my patience presently to another trial;
but as I could not stir, or walk a-cross the room, he ordered the
dinner to be brought to the bed side, where it could not be otherwise
than my getting down the wing of a fowl, and two or three glasses of
wine, since it was my adored youth who both served, and urged them on
me, with that sweet irresistible authority with which love had invested
him over me.

After dinner, and everything but the wine was taken away, Charles very
impudently asks a leave, he might read the grant of in my eyes, to come
to bed to me, and accordingly falls to undressing; which I could not
see the progress of without strange emotions of fear and pleasure.

He is now in bed with me the first time, and in broad day; but when
thrusting up his own shirt and my shift, he laid his naked glowing body
to mine... oh insupportable delight! oh! superhuman rapture! what pain
could stand before a pleasure so transporting? I felt no more the smart
of my wounds below; but, curling round him like the tendril of a vine,
as if I feared any part of him should be untouched or unpressed by me,
I returned his strenuous embraces and kisses with a fervour and gust
only known to true love, and which mere lust never rise to.

Yes, even at this time, that all the tyranny of the passions is fully
over, and that my veins roll no longer but a cold tranquil stream, the
remembrance of those passages that most affected me in my youth, still
cheers and refreshes me; let me proceed then. My beauteous youth was
now glued to me in all the folds and twists that we could make our
bodies meet in; when, no longer able to rein in the fierceness of
refreshed desires, he gives his steed the head, and gently insinuating
his thighs between mine, stopping my mouth with kisses of humid fire,
makes a fresh eruption, and renewing his thrusts, pierces, tears, and
forces his way up the torn tender folds, that yielded him admission
with a smart little less severe that when the breach was first made I
stifled, however, my cries, and bore him with the passive fortitude of
an heroine; soon his thrusts, more and more furious, cheeks flushed
with a deeper scarlet, his eyes turned up in the fervent fit, some
dying sighs, and an agonizing shudder, announced the approaches of that
ecstatic pleasure, I was yet in too much pain to come in for my share
of.

Nor was it till after a few enjoyments had numbed and blunted the sense
of the smart, and given me to feel the titillating inspersion of
balsamic sweets, drew from me the delicious return, and brought down
all my passion, that I arrived at excess of pleasure through excess of
pain. But, when successive engagements had broke and inured me, I began
to enter into the true unalloyed relish of that pleasure of pleasures,
when the warm gush darts through all the ravished inwards; what floods
of bliss! what melting transports! what agonies of delight! too fierce,
too mighty for nature to sustain?... well has she therefore, no doubt
provided the relief of a delicious momentary dissolution, the
approaches of which are intimated by a dear delirium, a sweet thrill,
on the point of emitting those liquid sweets, in which enjoyment itself
is drowned, when one gives the languishing stretch out, and die at the
discharge.

How often, when the rage and tumult of my senses had subsided, after
the melting flow, have I, in a tender meditation, asked myself cooly
the question, if it was in nature for any of its creatures to be so
happy as I was? Or, what were all fears of the consequence, put in the
scale of one night’s enjoyment, of any thing so transcendently the
taste of my eyes and heart, as that delicious, fond, matchless youth.

Thus we spent the whole afternoon, till supper time in a continued
circle of love delights, kissing, turtle-billing, toying, and all the
rest of the feast. At length, supper was served in, before which
Charles had, for I do not know what reason, slipped his clothes on; and
sitting down by the bed side, we made table and tablecloth of the bed
and sheets, whilst he suffered nobody to attend or serve but himself.
He ate with a very good appetite, and seemed charmed to see me eat. For
my part, I was so transported with the comparison of the delights I now
swam in, with the insipidity of all my past scenes of life, that I
thought them sufficiently cheap, at even the price of my ruin, or the
risk of their not lasting. The present possession was all my little
head could find room for.

We lay together that night, when, after playing repeated prizes of
pleasure, nature, overspent and satisfied, gave us up to the arms of
sleep: those of my dear youth encircled me, the consciousness of which
made even that sleep more delicious.

Late in the morning I waked, first; and observing my lover slept
profoundly, softly disengaged myself from his arms, scarcely daring to
breathe, for fear of shortening his repose; my cap, my hair, my shift,
were all in disorder, from the rufflings I had undergone; and I took
this opportunity to adjust and set them as well as I could: whilst,
every now and then, looking at the sleeping youth, with inconceivable
fondness and delight, and reflecting on all the pain he had put me to,
tacitly owned that the pleasure had overpaid me for my sufferings.

It was then broad day. I was sitting up in the bed, the clothes of
which were all tossed, or rolled off, by the unquietness of our
motions, from the sultry heat of the weather; nor could I refuse myself
a pleasure that solicited me so irresistibly, as this fair occasion of
feasting my sight with all those treasures of youthful beauty I had
enjoyed, and which lay now almost entirely naked, his shirt being
trussed up in a perfect wisp, which the warmth of the season and room
made me easy about the consequence of. I hung over him enamoured
indeed! and devoured all his naked charms with only two eyes, when I
could have wished them at least an hundred for the fuller enjoyment of
the gaze.

Oh! could I paint his figure as I see it now, still present to my
transported imagination! a whole length of an all perfect manly beauty
in full view. Think of a face without a fault, glowing with all the
opening bloom and verdant freshness of an age, in which beauty is of
either sex, and which the first down over his upper lip scarce began to
distinguish.

The parting of the double ruby pout of his lips seemed to exhale an air
sweeter and purer than what it drew in: ah! what violence did it not
cost me to refrain the so tempted kiss!

Then a neck exquisitely turned, graved behind and on the sides with
fais hair, playing freely in natural ringlets, connected his head to a
body of the most perfect form, and of the most vigorous contexture, in
which all the strength of manhood was concealed, and softened to
appearance by the delicacy of his complexion, the smoothness of his
skin, and the plumpness of his flesh.

The platform of his snow white bosom, that was laid out in a manly
proportion, presented, on the vermilion summit of each pap, the idea of
a rose about to blow.

Nor did his shirt hinder me from observing the symmetry of his limbs,
that exactness of shape, in the fall of it towards the loins, where the
waist ends and the rounding swell of the hips commences; where the
skin, sleek, smooth, and dazzling white, burnishes on; the stretch-over
firm, plump, ripe flesh, that crimped’ and ran into dimples at the
least pressure, or that the touch could not rest upon, but slid over on
the surface of the most polished ivory.

His thighs, finely fashioned, and with a florid glossy roundness,
gradually tapering away to the knees, seemed pillars worthy to support
that beauteous frame at the bottom of which I could not, without some
remains of terror, some tender emotions too, fix my eyes on that
terrible machine, which had, not long before, with such fury broke
into, torn, and almost ruined those soft, tender parts of mine, that
had not yet done smarting with the effects of its rage; but behold it
now! crest fallen, reclining its half-caped vermilion head over one of
his thighs, quiet, pliant, and to all appearances incapable of the
mischiefs and cruelty it had committed. Then the beautiful growth of
the hair, in short and soft curls round its roots, its whiteness,
branched veins, the supple softness of the shaft, as it lay
foreshortened, rolled and shrunk up into a squat thickness, languid,
and borne up from between his thighs, by its globular appendage, that
wondrous treasure bag of nature’s sweets, which revelled round, and
pursed up in the only wrinkles that are known to please, perfected the
prospect, and altogether formed the most interesting moving picture in
nature, and surely infinitely superior to those nudities furnished by
the painters, statuaries, or any art, which are purchased at immense
prices; whilst the sight of them in actual life is scarce sovereignly
tasted by any but the few whom nature has endowed with a fire of
imagination, warmly pointed by a truth of judgment to the spring-head,
the originals of beauty, of nature’s unequalled composition, above all
the imitations of art, or the reach of wealth to pay their price.

But every thing must have an end. A motion made by this angelic youth,
in the listlessness of goingoff sleep, replaced his shirt and the bed
clothes in a posture that shut up that treasury from longer view.

I lay down then, and carrying my hands to that part of me in which the
objects just seen had begun to raise a mutiny, that prevailed over the
smart of them, my fingers now opened themselves an easy passage; but
long I had not time to consider the wide difference there, between the
maid and the now finished woman, before Charles waked, and turning
towards me, kindly enquired how I had rested? and, scarce giving me
time to answer, imprinted on my lips one of his burning rapture kisses,
which darted a flame to my heart, that from thence radiated to every
part of me; and presently, as if he had proudly meant revenge for the
survey I had smuggled of all his naked beauties, he spurns off the bed
clothes, and trussing up my shift as high as it would go, took his turn
to feast his eyes on all the gifts nature had bestowed on my person;
his busy hands, too, ranged intemperately over every part of me. The
delicious austerity and hardness of my yet unripe budding breasts, the
whiteness and firmness of my flesh, the freshness and regularity of my
features, the harmony of my limbs, all seemed to confirm him in his
satisfaction with his bargain; but when curious to explore the havock
he had made in the centre of his over fierce attack, he not only
directed his hands there, but with a pillow put under, placed me
favourably for his wanton purpose of inspection. Then, who can express
the fire his eyes glistened, his hands glowed with! whilst sighs of
pleasure, and tender broken exclamations, were all the praises he could
utter. By this time his machine, stiffly risen at me, gave me to see it
in its highest state and bravery. He feels it himself, seems pleased at
its condition, and, smiling loves and graces, seizes one of my hands,
and carries it, with gentle compulsion, to this pride of nature, and
its richest master piece.

I, struggling faintly, could not help feeling what I could not grasp, a
column of the whitest ivory, beautifully streaked with blue veins, and
carrying, fully un-capt, a head of the liveliest vermilion: no horn
could be harder or stiffer; yet no velvet more smooth or delicious to
the touch. Presently he guided my hand lower, to that part in which
nature, and pleasure keep their stores in concert, so aptly fastened
and hung on to the root of their first instrument and minister, that
not improperly he might be styled their purse-bearer too: there he made
me feel distinctly, through their soft cover, the contents, a pair of
roundish balls, that seemed to play within, and elude all pressure, but
the tenderest, from without.

But now this visit of my soft, warm hand, in those so sensible parts,
had put every thing into such ungovernable fury, disdaining all further
preluding, and taking advantage of my commodious posture, he made the
storm fall where I scarce patiently expected, and where he was sure to
lay it: presently, then, I felt the stiff intersection betwen the
yielding, divided lips of the wound, now open for life; where the
narrowness no longer put me to intolerable pain, and afforded my lover
no more difficulty than what heightened his pleasure, in the strict
embrace of that tender, warm sheath, round the instrument it was so
delicately adjusted to, and which now cased home, so gorged me with
pleasure, that it perfectly suffocated me and took away my breath; then
the killing thrusts! the unnumbered kisses! every one of which was a
joy inexpressible; and that joy lost in a crowd of yet greater blisses!
But this was a disorder too violent in nature to last long: the
vessels, so stirred and intensely heated, soon boiled over, and for
that time put out the fire; meanwhile all this dalliance and disport
had so far consumed the morning, that it became a kind of necessity to
lay breakfast and dinner into one.

In our calmer intervals Charles gave the following account of himself,
every tittle of which was true. He was the only son of a father, who,
having a small post in the revenue, rather overlived his income, and
had given this young gentleman a very slender education: no profession
had he bred him up to, but designed to provide for him in the army, by
purchasing him an ensign’s commission, that is to say, provided he
could raise the money, or procure it by interest, either of which
clauses was rather to be wished than hoped for by him. On no better a
plan, however, had his improvident father suffered this youth, a youth
of great promise, to run up to the age of manhood, or near it at least,
in next to idleness; and had, besides, taken no sort of pains to give
him even the common premonitions against the vices of the town, and the
dangers of all sorts which wait the unexperienced and unwary in it. He
lived at home, and at discretion with his father, who himself kept a
mistress; and for the rest, provided Charles did not ask him for money,
he was indolently kind to him: he might lie out when he pleased, any
excuse would serve, and even his reprimands were so slight, that they
carried with them rather an air of connivance at the fault, than any
serious control or constraint. But, to supply his calls for money,
Charles, whose mother was dead, had, by her side, a grandmother, who
doated upon him. She had a considerable annuity to live on, and very
regularly parted with every shilling she could spare, to this darling
of her’s, to the no little heart-burn of his father; who was vexed, not
that she, by this means, fed his son’s extravagance, but that she
preferred Charles to himself; and we shall too soon see what a fatal
turn such a mercenary jealousy could operate on the breast of a father.

Charles was, however, by the means of his grandmother’s lavish
fondness, very sufficiently enabled to keep a mistress, so easily
contented as my love made me; and my good fortune, for such I must ever
call it, threw me in his way, in the manner above related, just as he
was on the look-out for one.

As to temper, the even sweetness of it made him seem born for domestic
happiness: tender, naturally polite, and gentle-manner’d; it could
never be his fault, if ever jars, or animosities ruffled a calm he was
so qualified every way to maintain or restore. Without those great or
shining qualities that constitute a genius, or are fit to make a noise
in the world, he had all those humble ones that compose the softer
social merit: plain common sense, set off with every grace of modesty
and good nature, made him, if not admired, what is much happier:
universally beloved and esteemed. But, as nothing but the beauties of
his person had at first attracted my regard and fixed my passion,
neither was I then a judge of the internal merit, which I had
afterwards full occasion to discover, and which, perhaps, in that
season of giddiness and levity, would have touched my heart very
little, had it been lodged in a person less the delight of my eyes, and
idol of my senses. But to return to our situation.

After dinner, which we ate a-bed in most voluptuous disorder, Charles
got up, and taking a passionate leave of me for a few hours, went to
town, where concerting matters with a young sharp lawyer, they went
together to my late venerable mistress’s, from whence I had, but the
day before, made my elopement, and with whom he was determined to
settle accounts, in a manner that should cut off all after reckonings
from that quarter.

Accordingly they went; but by the way, the Templar, his friend, on
thinking over Charles’s information, saw reason to give their visit
another turn, and, instead of offering satisfaction, to demand it.

On being let in, the girls of the house flocked round Charles, whom
they knew, and from the earlyness of my escape, and their perfect
ignorance of his ever having so much as seen me, not having the least
suspicion of his being accessory to my flight, they were, in their way,
making up to him; and as to his companion, they took him probably for a
fresh cully. But the Templar soon checked their forwardness, by
enquiring for the old lady, with whom he said, with a grave-like
countenance, that he had some business to settle.

Madam was immediately sent for down, and the ladies being desired to
clear the room, the lawyer asked her, severely, if she did know, or had
not decoyed, under pretence of hiring as a servant, a young girl, just
come out of the country, called Frances or Fanny Hill, describing me
withal as particularly as he could from Charlie’s description.

It is peculiar to vice to tremble at the enquiries of justice; and Mrs.
Brown, whose conscience was not entirely clear upon my account, as
knowing as she was of the town as hackneyed as she was in bluffing
through all the dangers of her vocation, could not help being alarmed
at the questions, especially when he went on to talk of a Justice of
peace, Newgate, the Old Bailey, indictments for keeping a disorderly
house, pillory, carting, and the whole process of that nature. She,
who, it is likely, imagined I had lodged an information against her
house, looked extremely blank, and began to make a thousand
protestations and excuses. However, to abridge, they brought away
triumphantly my box of things, which, had she not ben under an awe, she
might have disputed with them; and not only that, but a clearance and
discharge of any demands on the house, at the expense of no more than a
bowl of arrack-punch, the treat of which, together with the choice of
the house conveniences, was offered and not accepted. Charles all the
time acted the chance companion of the lawyer, who had brought him
there, as he knew the house, and appeared in no wise interested in the
issue; but he had the collateral pleasure of hearing all that I told
him verified, as far as the bawd’s fears would give her leave to enter
into my history, which, if one may guess by the composition she so
readily came into, were not small.

Phœbe, my kind tutoress Phœbe, was at the time gone out, perhaps in
search of me, or their cooked-up story had not, it is probable, passed
smoothly.

This negociation had, however, taken up some time, which would have
appeared much longer to me, left as I was, in a strange house, if the
landlady, a motherly sort of a woman, to whom Charles had liberally
recommended me, had not come up and borne me company. We drank tea, and
her chat helped to pass away the time very agreeably, since he was our
theme; but as the evening deepened, and the hour set for his return was
elapsed, I could not dispel the gloom of impatience, and tender fears
which gathered upon me, and which our timid sex are apt to feel in
proportion to their love.

Long, however, I did not suffer: the sight of him over-paid me; and the
soft reproach I had prepared for him, expired before it reached my
lips.

I was still a-bed, yet unable to use my legs otherwise than awkwardly,
and Charles flew to me, catches me in his arms, raised and extending
mine to meet his dear embrace, and gives me an account, interrupted by
many a sweet parenthesis of kisses, of the success of his measures.

I could not help laughing at the fright of the old woman had been put
into, which my ignorance, and indeed my want of innocence, had far from
prepared me from bespeaking. She had, it seems, apprehended that I fled
the shelter to some relation I had recollected in town, on my dislike
of their ways and proceedings towards me, and that this application
came from thence; for, as Charles had rightly judged, not one neighbour
had, at that still hour, seen the circumstance of my escape into the
coach, or, at least, noticed him; neither had any in the house, the
least hint of suspicion of my having spoken to him, much less of my
having clapt up such a sudden bargain with a perfect stranger, thus the
greatest improbability is not always what we should most mistrust.

We supped with all the gaiety of two young giddy creatures at the top
of their desires; and as I had given up to Charles the whole charge of
my future happiness, I thought of nothing beyond the exquisite pleasure
of possessing him.

He came to bed in due time; and this second night, the pain being
pretty well over, I tasted, in full draught, all the transports of
perfect enjoyment: I swam, I bathed in bliss, till both fell asleep,
through the natural consequences of satisfied desires, and appeased
flames; nor did we wake but to renewed raptures.

Thus, making the most of love, and life did we stay in this lodging in
Chelsea about ten days; in which time Charles took care to give his
excursions from home a favourable gloss, and to keep his footing with
his fond indulgent grand-mother, from whom he drew constant and
sufficient supplies for the charge I was to him, and which was very
trifling, in comparison with his former less regular course of
pleasure.

Charles removed me then to a private ready furnished lodging in D....
street, St. James’s, where he paid half a guinea a week for two rooms
and a closet on the second floor, which he had been some time looking
out for, and was more convenient for the frequency of his visits, than
where he had at first placed me, in a house, which I cannot say but I
left with regret, as it was infinitely endeared to me by the first
possession of my Charles, and the circumstance of losing, there, that
jewel, which can never be twice lost. The landlord, however, had no
reason to complain of any thing, but of a procedure in Charles too
liberal not to make him regret the loss of us.

Arrived at our new lodging, I remember I thought them extremely fine,
though ordinary enough, even at that price; but, had it been a dungeon
that Charles had brought me to, his presence would have made a little
Versailles.

The landlady, Mrs. Jones, waited on us to our apartment, and with great
volubility of tongue, explained to us all its conveniences: “that her
own maid should wait on us... that the best of quality had lodged at
her house... that her first floor was let to a foreign secretary of an
embassy, and his lady... that I looked like a very good natured
lady...” At the word lady, I blushed out of flattered vanity: this was
strong for a girl of my condition; for though Charles had the
precaution of dressing me in a less tawdry flaunting style than were
the clothes I escaped to him in, and of passing me for his wife, that
she had secretly married, and kept private (the old story) on account
of his friends, I dare swear this appeared extremely apocryphal to a
woman who knew the town so well as she did; but that was the least of
her concern: it was impossible to be less scruple-ridden than she was;
and the advantage of letting her rooms being her sole object, the truth
itself would have far from scandalized her, or broke her bargain.

A sketch of her picture, and personal history, will dispose you to
account for the part she is to act in my concern.

She was about forty six years old, tall, meagre, red-haired, with one
of those trivial ordinary faces you meet with every where, and go about
unheeded and un-mentioned. In her youth she had been kept by a
gentleman, who, dying, left her forty pounds a year during her life, in
consideration of a daughter he had by her: which daughter, at the age
of seventeen, she sold, for not a very considerable sum neither, to a
gentleman who was going on envoy abroad, and took his purchase with
him, where he used her with the utmost tenderness, and it is thought,
was secretly married to her: but had constantly made a point of her not
keeping up the least correspondence with a mother base enough to make a
market of her own flesh and blood. However, as she had not nature, nor,
indeed, any passion but that of money, this gave her no further
uneasiness, then, as she thereby lost a handle of squeezing presents,
or other after advantages, out of the bargain. Indifferent then, by
nature of constitution, to every other pleasure but that of increasing
the lump, by any means whatever, she commenced a kind of private
procuress, for which she was not amiss fitted, by her grave decent
appearance, and sometimes did a job in the match-making way; in short,
there was, nothing that appeared to her under the shape of gain, that
she would not have undertaken. She knew most of the ways of the town,
having not only herself been upon, but kept up constant intelligences
in promoting a harmony between the two sexes, in private pawn-broking,
and other profitable secrets. She rented the house she lived in, and
made the most of it, by letting it out in lodgings; though she was
worth, at least, near three or four thousand pounds, she would not
allow herself even the necessaries, of life, and pinned her subsistence
entirely on what she could squeeze out of her lodgers.

When she saw such a young pair come under her roof, her immediate
notions, doubtless, were how she should make the most money of us, by
every means that money might be made, and which, she rightly judged,
our situations and inexperience would soon beget her occasions of.

In this hopeful sanctuary, and under the clutches of this harpy, did we
pitch our residence. It will not be might material to you, or very
pleasant to me, to enter into a detail of all the petty cut-throat ways
and means with which she used to fleece us; all which Charles
indolently chose to bear with, rather than take the trouble of
removing, the difference of expense being scarce attended to by a young
gentleman who had no ideas of stint, or even economy, and a raw country
girl who knew nothing of the matter.

Here, however, under the wings of my sovereignly beloved, did the most
delicious hours of my life flow on; my Charles I had, and, in him,
every thing my fond heart could wish or desire. He carried me to plays,
operas, masquerades, and every diversion of the town; all which pleased
me, indeed, but pleased me infinitely the more for his being with me,
and explaining every thing to me, and enjoying perhaps, the natural
impressions of surprise and admiration, which such sights, at the
first, never fail to excite in a country girl, new to the delights of
them; but to me, they sensibly proved the power and dominion of the
sole passion of my heart over me, a passion in which soul and body were
concentered, and left me no room for any other relish of life but love.

As to the men I saw at those places, or at any other, they suffered so
much in the comparison my eyes made of them with my all-perfect Adonis,
that I had not the infidelity even of one wandering thought to reproach
myself with upon his account. He was the universe to me, and all that
was not him, was nothing to me.

My love, in fine, was so excessive, that is arrived at annihilating
every suggestion or kindling spark of jealousy; for, one idea only,
tending that way, gave me such exquisite torment, that my self-love,
and dread of worse than death, made me for ever renounce and defy it:
nor had I, indeed, occasion; for, were I to enter here on the recital
of several instances wherein Charles sacrificed to me women of much
greater importance than I dare hint (which, considering his form, was
no such wonder), I might, indeed, give you full proof of his unshaken
constancy to me; but would not you accuse me of warming up against a
feast, which my vanity ought long ago to have been satisfied with?

In our cessations from active pleasure, Charles framed himself one, in
instructing me, as far as his own lights reached, in a great many
points of life, that I was, in consequence of my no-education,
perfectly ignorant of: nor did I suffer one word to fall in vain from
the mouth of my lovely teacher: I hung on every syllable he uttered,
and received, as oracles, all he said; whilst kisses were all the
interruption I could not refuse myself the pleasure of admitting, from
lips that breathed more than Arabian sweetness, I was in a little time
enabled, by the progress I had made, to prove the deep regard I had
paid to all that he had said to me: repeating it to him almost word for
word; and to shew that I was not entirely the parrot, but that I
reflected upon, that I entered into it, I joined my own comments, and
asked him questions of explanation.

My country accent, and the rusticity of my gait, manners, and
deportment, began now sensibly to wear off: so quick was my
observation, and so efficacious my desire of growing every day worthier
of his heart.

As to money, though, he brought me constantly all he received, it was
with difficulty he even got me to give it room in my bureau; and what
clothes I had, he could prevail on me to accept of on no other foot,
than that of pleasing him by the greater neatness in my dress, beyond
which I had no ambition. I could have made a pleasure of the greatest
toil, and worked my fingers to the bone, with joy, to have supported
him: guess, then, if I could harbour any idea of being burthensome to
him, and this disinterested turn in me was so unaffected, so much the
dictate of my heart, that Charles could not but feel it: and if he did
not love me as much as I did him (which was the constant and only
matter of sweet contention between us), he managed so, at least, as to
give me the satisfaction of believing it impossible for man to be more
tender, more true, more faithful than he was.

Our landlady, Mrs. Jones, came frequently up to my apartment, from
whence I never stirred on any pretext without Charles; nor was it long
before she wormed out, without much art, the secret of our having
cheated the church of a ceremony, and, in course, of the terms we lived
together upon; a circumstance which far from displeased her,
considering the designs she had upon me, and which, alas! she will have
too soon, room to carry into execution. But in the meantime, her own
experience of life let her see, that any attempt, however indirect or
disguised, to divert or break, at least presently, so strong a cement
of hearts as ours was, could only end in losing two lodgers, of whom
she had made very competent advantages, if either of us came to smoke
her commission, for a commission she had from one of her customers,
either to debauch, or get me away from my keeper at any rate.

But the barbarity of my fate soon saved her the task of disuniting us.
I had now been eleven months with this life of my life, which had
passed in one continued rapid stream of delight: but nothing so violent
was ever made to last. I was about three months gone with a child by
him, a circumstances would have added to his tenderness, had he ever
left me room to believe it could receive an addition, when the mortal,
the unexpected blow of separation fell upon us. I shall gallop
post-over the particulars, which I shudder yet to think of, and cannot;
to this instant, reconcile myself how, or by what means I could
out-live it.

Two live-long days had I lingered through without hearing from him, I
who breathed, who existed but in him, and had never yet seen
twenty-four hours pass without seeing or hearing from him. The third
day my impatience was so strong, my alarms had been so severe, that I
perfectly sickened with them; and being unable to support the shock
longer, I sunk upon the bed, and ringing for Mrs. Jones, who had far
from comforted me under my anxieties, she came up, and I had scarce
breath and spirit enough to find words to beg of her, if she would save
my life, to fall upon some means of finding out, instantly, what was
become of its only prop and comfort. She pitied me in a way that rather
sharpened my affliction than suspended it, and went out upon this
commission.

For she had but to go to Charles’s house, who lived but an easy
distance, in one of the streets that run into Covent Garden. There she
went into a public house, and from thence sent for a mid servant, whose
name I had given her, as the properest to inform her.

The maid readily came, and as readily, when Mrs. Jones enquired of her
what had become of Mr. Charles, or whether he was gone out of town,
acquainted her with the disposal of her master’s son, which, the very
day after, was no secret to the servants. Such sure measures had he
taken, for the most cruel punishment of his child for having more
interest with his grandmother than he had, though he made use of a
pretence, plausible enough, to get rid of him in this secret abrupt
manner, for fear her fondness should have interposed a bar to his
leaving England, and proceeding on a voyage he had concerted for him;
which pretext was, that it was indispensably necessary to secure a
considerable inheritance that devolved to him by the death of a rich
merchant (his own brother) at one of the factories in the South Seas,
of which he had lately received advice, together with a copy of the
will.

In consequence of which resolution, to send away his son, he had,
unknown to him, made the necessary preparations for fitting him out,
struck a bargain with the captain of a ship, whose punctual execution
of his orders he had secured, by his interest with his principal owners
and patron; and, in short, concerted his measures so secretly, and
effectually, that whilst the son thought he was going down to the
river, that would take him a few hours, he was stopt on board of a
ship, debarred from writing, and more strictly watched than a State
criminal.

Thus was the idol of my soul torn from me, and forced on a long voyage,
without taking leave of one friend, or receiving one line of comfort,
except a dry explanation and instructions, from his father, how to
proceed when he should arrive at his destined port, enclosing, withal,
some letters of recommendation to a factor there: all these particulars
I did not learn minutely till some time after.

The maid, at the same time, added, that she was sure this usage of her
sweet young master would be the death of his grand-mamma, as indeed it
proved true; for the old lady, on hearing it, did not survive the news
a whole month, and as her fortune consisted in an annuity, out of which
she had laid up no reserves, she left nothing worth mentioning to her
so fatally envied darling, but absolutely refused to see his father
before she died.

When Mrs. Jones returned, and I observed her looks, they seemed so
unconcerned, and even nearest to pleased, that I half flattered myself
she was going to set my tortured heart at ease, by bringing me good
news; but this, indeed, was a cruel delusion of hope: the barbarian,
with all the coolness imaginable, stabs me to the heart, in telling me,
succinctly, that he was sent away, at least, on a four years’ voyage
(here she stretched maliciously), and that I could not expect, in
reason, ever to see him again: and all this with such pregnant
circumstances, that I could not escape giving them credit, as they
were, indeed, too true!

She had hardly finished her report before I fainted away, and after
several successive fits, all the while wild and senseless, I miscarried
of the dear pledge of my Charles’s love; but the wretched never die
when it is fittest they should die, and women are hard-lived! to a
proverb.

The cruel and interested care taken to recover me, saved an odious
life: which, instead of the happiness and joys it had overflower in,
all of a sudden presented no view before me of any thing but the depth
of misery, horror, and the sharpest affliction.

Thus I lay six weeks, in the struggles of youth and constitution,
against the friendly efforts of death, which I constantly invoked to my
relief and deliverance, but which proved too weak for my wish. I
recovered at length, but into a state of stupefaction and despair, that
threatened me with the loss of my senses, and a mad house.

Time, however, that great comforter in ordinary, began to assuage the
violence of my suffering, and to numb my feeling of them. My health
returned to me, though I still retained an air of grief, dejection, and
languor, which taking off from the ruddiness of my country complexion,
rendered it rather more delicate and affecting.

The landlady had all this while officiously provided, and seen that I
wanted for nothing: and as soon as she saw me retrieved into a
condition of answering her purpose, one day, after we had dined
together, she congratulated me on my recovery, the merit of which she
took entirely to herself, and all this by way of introduction to a most
terrible, and scurvy epilogue: “You are now,” says she, “Miss Fanny,
tolerably well, and you are very welcome to stay in these lodgings as;
long as you please! you see I have asked you for nothing this long
time, but truly I have a call to make up a sum of money, which must be
answered.” And, with that, presents me with a bill of arrears for rent,
diet, apothecaries’ charges, nurse, etc., sum total twenty-three
pounds, seventeen and six-pence: towards discharging of which I had not
in the world (which she well knew) more than seven guineas, left by
chance, of my dear Charles’s common stock, with me. At the same time,
she desired me to tell her what course I would take for payment. I
burst out into a flood of tears, and told her my condition: that I
would sell what few clothes I had, and that, for the rest, would pay
her as soon as possible. But my distress, being favourable to her view,
only stiffened her the more.

She told me, very cooly, that “she was indeed sorry for my misfortunes,
but that she must do herself justice, though it would go to the very
heart of her to send such a tender young creature to prison....” At the
word “prison!” every drop of my blood chilled, and my fright acted so
strongly upon me, that, turning as pale and faint as a criminal at the
first sight of his place of execution, I was on the point of swooning.
My landlady, who wanted only to terrify me to a certain point, and not
to throw me into a state of body inconsistent with her designs upon it,
began to sooth me again, and told me, in a tone composed to more pity
and gentleness, that “it would be my own fault, if she was forced to
proceed to such extremities; but she believed there was a friend to be
found in the world, who would make up matters to both our
satisfactions, and that she would bring him to drink tea with us that
very afternoon, when she hoped we would come to a right understanding
in our affairs.” To all this, not a word of answer; I sat mute,
confounded, terrified.

Mrs. Jones, however, judging rightly that it was time to strike while
the impressions were so strong upon me, left me to myself and to all
the terrors of an imagination, wounded to death by the idea of going to
prison, and, from a principle of self-preservation, snatching at every
glimpse of redemption from it.

In this situation I sat near half an hour, swallowed up in grief and
despair, when my landlady came in, and observing a death-like dejection
in my countenance, still in pursuance of her plan, put on a false pity,
and bidding me be of good heart: “Things,” she said, “would be but my
own friend”; and closed with telling me “she had brought a very
honourable gentleman to drink tea with me, who would give me the best
advice how to get rid of all my troubles.” Upon which, without waiting
for a reply, she goes out, and returns with this very honourable
gentleman, whose very honourable procuress she had been, on this, as
well as other occasions.

The gentleman, on his entering the room, made me a very civil bow,
which I had scarce strength, or presence of mind enough to return a
curtsey to; when the landlady, taking upon her to do all the honours of
the first interview (for I had never, that I remember, seen the
gentleman before), sets a chair for him, another for herself. All this
while not a word on either side; a stupid stare was all the face I
could put on this strange visit.

The tea was made, and the landlady, unwilling, I suppose, to lose any
time, observing my silence and shyness before this entire stranger:
“Come, Miss Fanny,” says she, in a coarse familiar style, and tone of
authority, “hold up your head, child, and do not let sorrow spoil that
pretty face of yours. What! sorrows are only for a time; come, be free,
here is a worthy gentleman who has heard of your misfortunes, and is
willing to serve you; you must be better acquainted with him, do not
you now stand upon your punctilios, and this and that, but make your
market while you may.”

At this so delicate, and eloquent harangue, the gentleman, who saw I
loooked frighted and amazed, and, indeed, incapable of answering, took
her up for breaking things in so abrupt a manner, as rather to shock
than incline me to an acceptance of the good he intended me then,
addressing himself to me, told me “he was perfectly acquainted with my
whole story, and every circumstance of my distress which he owned was a
cruel plunge for one of my youth and beauty to fall into.... that he
had long taken a liking to my person, for which he appealed to Mrs.
Jones, there present; but finding me so deeply engaged to another, he
had lost all hopes of succeeding, till he had heard the sudden reverse
of fortune that had happened to me, on which he had given particular
orders to my landlady to see that I should want for nothing; and that,
had he not been forced abroad to the Hague, on affairs he could not
refuse himself to, he would himself have attended me during my
sickness;... that on his return, which was the day before, he had, on
learning my recovery, desired my landlady’s good offices to introduce
him to me, and was as angry, at least, as I was shocked, at the manner
in which she had conducted herself towards obtaining him that
happiness; but, that to show me how much he disdained her procedure,
and how far he was from taking any ungenerous advantage of my
situation, and from exacting any security for my gratitude, he would
before my face, that instant, discharge my debt entirely to my
landlady, and give me her receipt in full; after which I should be at
liberty either to reject or grant his suit, as he was much above
putting any force upon my inclinations.”

Whilst he was exposing his sentiments to me, I ventured just to look up
to him, and observed his figure, which was that of a very well-looking
gentleman, well made, of about forty, dressed in a suit of plain
clothes, with a large diamond ring on one of his fingers, the lustre of
which played in my eyes as he waved his hand in talking, and raised my
notions of his importance. In short, he might pass for what is commonly
called a comely black man, with an air of distinction natural to his
birth and condition.

To all his speeches, however, I answered only in tears that flower
plentifully to my relief, and choking up my voice, excused me from
speaking, very luckily, for I should not have known what to say.

The sight, however, moved him, as he afterwards told me, irresistibly,
and by way of giving me some reason to be less powerfully afflicted, he
drew out his purse, and calling for pen and ink, which the landlady was
prepared for, paid her every farthing of her demand, independent of a
liberal gratification which was to follow unknown to me, and taking a
receipt in full, very tenderly forced me to secure it, by guiding my
hand, which he had thrust it into, so as to make me passively put it
into my pocket.

Still I continued in a state of stupidity, or melancholic despair, as
my spirits could not yet recover from the violent shocks that they had
received; and the accommodating landlady had actually left the room,
and me alone with this strange gentleman, before I had observed it, and
then I observed it without alarm, for I was now lifeless, and
indifferent to every thing.

The gentleman, however, no novice in affairs of this sort, drew near
me; and, under the pretence of comforting me, first with his
handkerchief dried my tears as they ran down my cheeks: presently he
ventured to kiss me on my part, neither resistance nor compliance. I
sat stock still; and now looking on myself as bought by the payment
that had been transacted before me.

I did not care what became of my wretched body: and wanting life,
spirits, or courage to oppose the least struggle, even that of the
modesty of my sex, I suffered, tamely, whatever the gentleman pleased;
who proceeding insensibly from freedom to freedom, insinuating his hand
between my handkerchief and bosom, which he handled at discretion:
finding thus no repulse, and that every thing favoured, beyond
expectation, the completion of his desires, he took me in his arms, and
bore me, without life or motion, to the bed, on which laying me gently
downed, and having me at what advantage he pleased, I did not so much
as know what he was about, till recovering from a trance of lifeless
insensibility, I found him buried in me, whilst I lay passive and
innocent of the least sensations of pleasure: a death-cold corpse could
scarce have less life or sense in it. As soon as he had thus pacified a
passion which had too little respected the condition I was in, he got
off, and after recomposing the disorder of my clothes, employed himself
with the utmost tenderness to calm the transports of remorse and
madness at myself, with which I was seized, too late, I confess, for
having suffered on that bed, the embraces of an utter stranger I tore
my hair, wrung my hands, and beat my breast like a mad woman. But when
my new master, for in that light I then viewed him, applied himself to
appease me, as my whole rage was levelled at myself, no part of which I
thought myself permitted to aim at him, I begged of him with more
submission than anger, to leave me alone, that I might, at least, enjoy
my affliction in quiet. This he positively refused, for fear, as he
pretended, I should do myself a mischief. Violent passions seldom last
long, and those of women least of any. A dead still calm succeeded this
storm, which ended in a profuse shower of tears.

Had any one, but a few instants before, told me that I should have ever
known any man but Charles, I would have spit in his face or had I been
offered infinitely a greater sum of money than that I saw paid for me,
I had spurned the proposal in cold blood. But our virtues and our vices
depend too much on our circumstances; unexpectedly beset as I was,
betrayed by a mind weakened by a long severe affliction, and stunned
with the terrors of a goal, my defeat will appear the more excusable,
since I certainly was not present at, or a party in any sense to it.
However, as the first enjoyment is decisive, and he was now over the
bar, I thought I had no longer a right to refuse the caresses of one
that had got that advantage over me, no matter how obtained; conforming
myself then to this maxim, I considered myself as so much in his power,
that I endured his kisses and embraces without affecting struggles or
anger; not that he, as yet, gave me any pleasure, or prevailed over the
aversion of my soul, to give myself up to any sensation of that sort;
what I suffered, I suffered out of a kind of gratitude, and as a matter
of course