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.