better paid, or better treated, during their reign, than the mistress
of those who, enervate by nature, debaucheries, or age, have the least
employment for the sex: sensible that a woman must be satisfied some
way, they ply her with a thousand little tender attentions, presents,
caresses, confidences, and exhaust their inventions in means and
devices to make up for the capital deficiency; and even towards
lessening that, what arts, what modes, what refinements of pleasure
have they not recourse to, to raise their languid powers, and press
nature into the service of their sensuality? But here is their
misfortune, that when by a course of teasing, worrying, handling,
wanton postures, lascivious motions, they have at length accomplished a
flashy enervate enjoyment, they at the same time light up a flame in
the object of their passion, that, not having the means themselves to
quench, drives her for relief into the next person’s arms, who can
finish their work; and thus they become bawds to some favourite, tried
and approved of, for a more vigorous and satisfactory execution; for
with women, of our turn especially, however well our hearts may be
disposed, there is a controlling part, or queen-seat in us, that
governs itself by its own maxims of state, amongst which not one is
stronger, in practice with it, than, in the matter of is dues, never to
accept the will for the deed.
Mr. Norbert, who was much in this ungracious case, though he professed
to like me extremely, could but seldom consummate the main-joy itself
with me, without such a length and variety of preparations, as were at
once wearisome and inflammatory.
Sometimes he would strip me stark naked on a carpet, by a good fire,
when he would contemplate me almost by the hour, disposing me in all
the figures and attitudes of body that it was susceptible of being
viewed in; kissing me in every part, the most secret and critical one
so far from excepted that it received most of that branch of homage.
Then his touches were so exquisitely wanton, so luxuriously diffused
and penetrative at times, that he had made me perfectly rage with
titillating fires, when, after all, and much ado, he had gained a
short-lived erection, he would perhaps melt it away in a washy sweat,
or a premature abortive effusion, that provokingly mocked my eager
desires: or, if carried home, how faultered and unnervous the
execution! how insufficient the sprinkle of a few heat-drops to
extinguish all the flames he had kindled!
One evening, I cannot help remembering, that returning home from him,
with a spirit he had raised in a circle his wand had proved too weak to
lay, as I turned the corner of a street, I was overtaken by a young
sailor, I was then in that spruce, neat, plain dress, which I ever
affected and perhaps might have, in my trip, a certain air of
restlessness unknown to the composure of cooler thoughts. However, he
seized me as a prize, and without farther ceremony threw his arms round
my neck, and kissed me boisterously and sweetly. I looked at him with a
beginning of anger and indignation at his rudeness, that softened away
into other sentiments as I viewed him: for he was tall, manly
carriaged, handsome of body and face, so that I ended my stare, with
asking him, in a tone turned to tenderness, what he meant; at which,
with the same frankness and vivacity as he had begun with me, he
proposed treating me with a glass of wine. Now, certain it is, that had
I been in a calmer state of blood than I was, had I not been under the
dominion of unappeased irritation; but I do not know how it was, my
pressing calls, his figure, the occasion, and if you will, the powerful
combination of all these, with a start of curiosity to see the end of
an adventure, so novel too as being treated like a common street-plyer,
made me give a silent consent; in short, it was not my head that I now
obeyed, I suffered myself to be towed along as it were by this
man-of-war, who took me under his arm as familialry as if he had known
me all his lifetime, and led me into the next convenient tavern, where
we were shown into a little room on one side of the passage. Here,
scarce allowing himself patient till the drawer brought in the wine
called for, he fell directly on board me: when, untucking my
handkerchief, and giving me a snatching buss, he laid my breasts bare
at once, which he handled with that keenness of gust that abridges a
ceremonial evermore tiresome than pleasing on such pressing occasions;
and now, hurrying towards the main point, we found no conveniency to
our purpose, two or three disabled chairs, and a rickety table,
composing the whole furniture of the room. Without more ado, he plans
me with my back standing against the wall, and my petticoats up; and
coming out with a splitter indeed, made it shine, as he brandished it,
in my eyes; and going to work with an impetuosity and eagerness, bred
very likely by a long fast at seat, went to give me a taste of it. I
straddled, I humoured my posture, and did my best in short to buckle to
it; I took part of it in, but still things did not go to his thorough
liking; changing them in a trice his system of battery, he leads me to
the table and with a master-hand lays my head down on the edge of it,
and, with the other canting up my petticoats and shift, bares my naked
posteriors to his blind and furious guide; it forces its way between
them, and I feeling pretty sensibly that it was not going by the right
door, and knocking desperately at the wrong one, I told him of
it:—“Pooh!” says he, “my dear, any port in a storm.” Altering, however,
directly his course, and lowering his point, he fixed it right, and
driving it up with a delicious stiffness, made all foam again, and gave
me the tout with such fire and spirit, that in the fine disposition I
was in when I submitted to him and stirred up so fiercely as I was, I
got the start of him, and went away into the melting swoon, and
squeezing him, whilst in the convulsive grasp of it, drew from him such
a plenteous bedewal, as pointed to my own effusion, perfectly floated
those parts, and drowned in a deluge all my raging conflagration of
desire.
When this was over, how to make my retreat was my concern; for, though
I had been so extremely pleased with the difficult between this warm
broadside, poured so briskly into me, and the tiresome pawing and
toying to which I had owed the unappeased flames that had driven me
into this step, now I was cooler, I began to apprehend the danger of
contracting an acquaintance with this, however agreeable stranger; who,
on his side, spoke of passing the evening with me and continuing our
intimacy, with an air of determination that made me afraid of its being
not so easy to get away from him as I could wish. In the mean time I
carefully concealed my uneasiness, and readily pretended to consent to
stay with him, telling him I should only step to my lodgings to leave a
necessary direction, and then instantly return. This he very glibly
swallowed, on the notion of my being one of those unhappy
street-errants, who devote themselves to the pleasure of the first
ruffian that will stoop to pick them up, and of course, that I would
scarce bilk myself of the hire, by not returning make the most of the
job. Thus he parted with me, not before, however, he had ordered in my
hearing a supper, which I had the barbarity to disappoint him of my
company too.
But when I got home, and told Mrs. Cole my adventure, she represented
so strongly to me the nature and dangerous consequences of my folly,
particularly the risks to my health, in being so openlegged and free,
that I not only took resolutions never to venture so rashly again,
which I inviolably preserved, but passed a good many days in continual
uneasiness, lest I should have met with other reasons, besides the
pleasure of that rencounter, to remember it; but these fears wronged my
pretty sailor, for which I gladly make him this reparation.
I had now lived with Mr. Norbert near a quarter of a year, in which
space I circulated my time very pleasantly, between my amusements at
Mrs. Cole’s, and a proper attendance on that gentleman, who paid me
profusely for the unlimited complaisance with which I passively
humoured every caprice of pleasure, and which had won upon him so
greatly, that finding, as he said, all that variety in me alone, which
he had sought for in a number of women, I had made him lose his taste
for inconstancy, and new faces. But what was yet at least agreeable, as
well as more flattering, the love I had inspired him with, bred a
deference to me, that was of great service to his health: for having by
degrees, and with much pathetic representations brought him to some
husbandry of it, and to insure the duration of his pleasures by
moderating their use, and correcting those excesses in them he was so
addicted to, and which had shattered his constitution and destroyed his
powers of life in the very point for which he seemed desirous to live,
he was grown more delicate, more temperate, and in course more healthy;
his gratitude for which was taking a turn very favourable for my
fortune, when once more the caprice of it dashed the cup from my lips.
His sister, lady L..., for whom he had a great affection, desiring him
to accompany her down to Bath for her health, he could not refuse her
such a favour; and accordingly, though he counted on staying away from
me no more than a week at farthest, he took his leave of me with an
ominous heaviness of heart, and left me a sum far above the state of
his fortune, and very inconsistent with the intended shortness of his
journey; but it ended in the longest that can be, and is never but once
taken: for, arrived at Bath, he was not there two days before he fell
into a debauch of drinking with some gentlemen, that threw him into a
high fever, and carried him off in four days’ time, never once out of a
delirium. Had he been in his senses to make a will, perhaps he might
have made favourable mention of me in it. Thus, however, I lost him;
and as no condition of life is more subject to revolutions than that of
a woman of pleasure, I soon recovered my cheerfulness, and now beheld
myself once more struck off the list of kept mistresses, and returned
into the bosom of the community, from which I had been in some manner
taken.
Mrs. Cole still continued her friendship, and offered me her assistance
and advice towards another choice; but I was now in ease and affluence
enough to look about me at leisure; and as to any constitutional calls
of pleasure, their pressure, or sensibility, was greatly lessened by a
consciousness of the ease with which they were to be satisfied at Mrs.
Cole’s house, where Louisa and Emily still continued in the old way;
and my great favourite Harriet used often to come and see me, and
entertain me, with her head and heart full of the happiness she enjoyed
with her dear baronet, whom she loved with a tenderness and constancy,
even though he was her keeper, and what is yet more, had made her
independent, by a handsome provision for her and hers. I was then in
this vacancy from any regular employ of my person in my way of
business, when one day, Mrs. Cole, in the course of the constant
confidence we lived in, acquainted me that there was one Mr. Barville,
who used her house, just come to town, whom she was not a little
perplexed about providing a suitable companion for; which was indeed a
point of difficulty, as he was under the tyranny of a cruel taste: that
of an ardent desire, not only of being unmercifully whipped himself,
but of whipping others, in such sort, that though he paid extravagantly
those who had the courage and complaisance to submit to his humour,
there were few, delicate as he was in the choice of his subjects, who
would exchange turns with him so terribly at the expense of their skin.
But, what yet increased the oddity of this strange fancy was the
gentleman being young; whereas it generally attacks, it seems, such as
are, through age, obliged to have recourse to this experiment, for
quickening the circulation of their sluggish juices, and determining a
conflux of the spirits of pleasure towards those flagging shrivelly
parts, that rise to life only by virtue of those titillating ardours
created by the discipline of their opposites, with which they have so
surprising a consent.
This Mrs. Cole could not well acquaint me with, in any expectation of
my offering for service: for, sufficiently easy as I was in my
circumstances, it must have been the temptation of an immense interest
indeed, that could have induced me to embrace such a job, neither had I
ever expressed, nor indeed, felt the least impulse or curiosity to know
more of a taste, that promised so much more pain than pleasure to those
that stood in no need of such violent goads: what then should move me
to subscribe myself voluntarily to a party of pain, foreknowing it
such? Why, to tell the plain truth, it was a sudden caprice, a gust of
fancy for trying a new experiment, mixed with the vanity of approving
my personal courage to Mrs. Cole, that determined me, at all risks, to
propose myself to her and relieve her from any further look-out.
Accordingly, I at once pleased and surprised her, with a frank and
unreserved tender of my person to her and her friend’s absolute
disposal on this occasion.
My good temporal mother was, however, so kind as to use all the
arguments she could imagine to dissuade me: but, as I found they only
turned on a motive of tenderness to me, I persisted in my resolution,
and thereby acquitted my offer of any suspicion of its not having been
sincerely made, or out of compliment only. Acquiescing then thankfully
in it, Mrs. Cole assured me “that bating the pain I should be put to,
she had no scruple to engage me to this party, which she assured me I
should be liberally paid for, and which, the secrecy of the transaction
preserved safe from the ridicule that otherwise vulgarly attended it;
that for her part, she considered pleasure, of one sort or other, as
the universal port of destination, and every wind that blew thither a
good one, provided it blew nobody any harm; that she rather
compassionated, than blamed those unhappy persons, who are under a
subjection they cannot shake off, to those arbitrary tastes that rule
their appetites of pleasures with an unaccountable control: tastes too,
as infinitely diversified, as superior to, and independent of all
reasoning as the different relishes or palates of mankind in their
viands, some delicate stomach nauseating plain meats, and finding no
savour but in highseasoned, luxurious dishes, whilst others again pique
themselves upon detesting them.”
I stood now in no need of this preamble of encouragement, or
justification: my word was given, and I was determined to fulfill my
engagements. Accordingly the night was set, and I had all the necessary
previous instructions how to act and conduct myself. The dining room
was duly prepared and lighted up, and the young gentleman posted there
in waiting, for my introduction to him.
I was then, by Mrs. Cole, brought in, and presented to him, in a loose
dishabille fitted, by her direction, to the exercise I was to go
through, all in the finest linen and a thorough white uniform: gown,
petticoat, stocking, and satin slippers, like a victim led to
sacrifice; whilst my dark auburn hair, falling in drop-curls over my
neck, created a pleasing distinction of colour from the rest of my
dress.
As soon as Mr. Barville saw me, he got up, with a visible air of
pleasure and surprise, and saluting me, asked Mrs. Cole, if so fine and
delicate a creature would voluntarily submit to such sufferings and
rigours, as were the subject of his assignation. She answered him
properly, and now, reading in his eyes that she could not too soon
leave us together, she went out, after recommending to him to use
moderation with so tender a novice.
But whilst she was employing his attention, mine had been taken up with
examining the figure and person of this unhappy young gentleman, who
was thus unaccountably condemned to have his pleasure lashed into him,
as boys have their learning.
He was exceedingly fair, and, smooth complexioned, and appeared to me
no more than twenty at most, though he was three years older than what
my conjectures gave him; but then he owed this favourable mistake to a
habit of fatness, which spread through a short, squab stature; and a
round, plump, fresh coloured face gave him greatly the look of a
Bacchus, had not an air of austerity, not to say sternness, very
unsuitable even to his shape of face, dashed that character of joy,
necessary to complete the resemblance. His dress was extremely neat,
but plain, and far inferior to the ample fortune he was in full
possession of; this too was a taste in him, and not avarice.
As soon as Mrs. Cole was gone, he seated me near him, when now his face
changed upon me, into an expression of the most pleasing sweetness and
good humour, the most remarkable for its sudden shift from the other
extreme, which I found afterwards, when I knew more of his character,
was owing to a habitual state of conflict with, and dislike of himself,
for being enslaved to so peculiar a lust, by the fatality of a
constitutional ascendant, that rendered him incapable of receiving any
pleasure, till he submitted to these extraordinary means of procuring
it at the hands of pain, whilst the constancy of this repining
consciousness stamped at length that cast of sourness and severity on
his features: which was, in fact, very foreign to the natural sweetness
of his temper.
After a competent preparation by apologies, and encouragement to go
through my part with spirit and constancy, he stood up near the fire,
whilst I went to fetch the instruments of discipline out of a closet
hard by: these were several rods, made each of two or three strong
twigs of birch tied together, which he took, handled, and viewed with
as much pleasure, as I did with a kind of shuddering presage.
Next we took from the side of the room a long broad bench, made easy to
lie at length on by a soft cushion in a callico-cover; and everything
being now ready, he took his coat and waistcoat off; and at his motion
and desire, I unbuttoned his breeches, and rolling up his shirt rather
above his waist, tucked it on securely there; when directing naturally
my eyes to that humoursone master-movement, in whose favour all these
dispositions were making, it seemed almost shrunk into his body, scarce
showing its tip above the sprout of hairy curls that clothed those
parts, as you may have-seen a wren peeping its head out of the grass.
Stooping them to untie his garters, he gave them to me for the use of
tying him down to the legs of the bench: a circumstance no farther
necessary than, as I suppose, it made part of the humour of the thing,
since he prescribed it to himself, amongst the rest of the ceremonial.
I led him then to the bench, and according to my cue, played at forcing
him to lie down: which, after-some little show of reluctance, for
form-sake, he submitted to; he was straightway extended flat upon his:
belly, on the bench, with a pillow under his face; and as he thus
tamely lay, I tied him slightly hand and feet, to the legs of it; which
done, his shirt remaining trussed up over the small of his back, I drew
his breeches quite down to his knees; and now he lay, in all the
fairest, broadest display of that part of the back-view; in which a
pair of chubby, smooth-cheeked and passing white posteriors rose
cushioning upwards from two stout, fleshful thighs, and ending their
cleft, or separation by an union at the small of the back, presented a
bold mark, that swelled, as it were, to meet the scourge.
Seizing now one of the rods, I stood over him, and according to his
direction, gave him in one breath, ten lashes with much good-will, and
the utmost nerve and vigour of arm that I could put to them, so as to
make those fleshy orbs quiver again under them; whilst he himself
seemed no more concerned, or to mind them, than a lobster would a
flea-bite. In the mean time, I view intently the effect of them, which
to me at last appeared surprisingly cruel: every lash had skimmed the
surface of those white cliffs, which they deeply reddened, and lapping
round the side of the furthermost from me, cut specially, into the
dimple of it, such livid weals, as the blood either spun out from, or
stood in large drops on; and, from some of the cuts, I picked out even
the splinters of the rod that had stuck in the skin. Nor was this raw
work to be wondered at, considering the greenness of the twigs and the
severity of the infliction, whilst the whole surface of the skin was so
smooth-stretched over the hard and firm pulp of flesh that filled it,
as to yield no play, or elusive swagging under the stroke: which
thereby took place the more plump, and cut into the quick.
I was however already so moved at the piteous sight, that I from my
heart repented the undertaking, and would willing had given over,
thinking he had full enough; but, he encouraging and beseeching me
earnestly to proceed, I gave him ten more lashes; and then resting,
surveyed the increase of bloody appearances. And at length, steeled to
the height, by his stoutness in suffering, I continued the discipline,
by intervals, till I observed him wreathing and twisting his body, in a
way that I could plainly perceive was not the effect of pain, but of
some new and powerful sensation: curious to dive into the meaning of
which, in one of my pauses of intermission, I approached, as he still
kept working, and grinding his belly against the cushion under him: and
first stroking the untouched and unhurt side of the flesh-mount next
me, then softly insinuating my hand under his thigh, felt the posture
things were in forwards, which was indeed surprising: for that machine
of him, which I had, by its appearance, taken for an impalpable, or at
least a very diminutive subject, was now, in virtue of all that smart
and havoc of his skin behind, grown not only to a prodigious stiffness
of erection, but to a size that frighted even me: a non-pareil
thickness indeed! the head of it alone filled the utmost capacity of my
grasp. And when, as he heaved and wriggled to and fro, in the agitation
of his strange pleasure, it came into view, it had something of the air
of a round fillet of veal, and like its owner, squab, and short in
proportion to its breadth; but when he felt my hand there, he begged I
would go on briskly with my jerking, or he should never arrive at the
last stage of pleasure.
Resuming then the rode and the exercise of it, I had fairly worn out
three bundles, when, after an increase of struggles and motion, and a
deep sigh or two, I saw him lie still and motionless; and now he
desired me to desist, which I instantly did; and proceeding to untie
him, I could not but be amazed at his passive fortitude, on viewing the
skin of his butchered, mangled posteriors, late so white, smooth and
polished, now all one side of them a confused cut-work of weals, livid
flesh, gashes and gore, insomuch that when he stood up, he could scarce
walk; in short, he was in sweet-briars.
Then I plainly perceived, on the cushion, the marks of a plenteous
effusion, and already had his sluggard member run up to its old
nestling-place, and enforced itself again, as if ashamed to shew its
head; which nothing, it seems, could raise but stripes inflicted on its
opposite neighbours, who were thus constantly obliged to suffer for his
caprice.
My gentleman had now put on his clothes and recomposed himself, when
giving me a kiss, and placing me by him, he sat himself down as
gingerly as possible, with one side off the cushion, which was too sore
for him to bear resting any part of his weight on.
Here he thanked me for the extreme pleasure I had procured him, and
seeing, perhaps, some marks in my countenance of terror and
apprehension of retaliation on my own skin, for what I had been the
instrument of his suffering in his, he assured me, “he was ready to
give up to me any engagement I might deem myself under to stand him, as
he had done me, but that if I proceeding in my consent to it, he would
consider the difference of my sex, its greater delicacy and incapacity
to undergo pain.” Reheartened at which, and piqued in honour, as I
thought, not to flinch so near the trial, especially as I well knew
Mrs. Cole was an eye-witness, from her stand of espial, to the whole of
our transaction, I was now less afraid of my skin, than of his not
furnishing me with an opportunity of signalizing my resolution.
Consonant to this disposition was my answer, but my courage was still
more in my head, than in my heart; and as cowards rush into danger they
fear, in order to be the sooner rid of the pain of that sensation, I
was entirely pleased with his hastening matters into execution.