Memoirs of Fanny Hill
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: