Memoirs of Fanny Hill
him, had driven me to a course that I did not pretend to justify; but
that as to the young man, he was entirely faultless; for that, in the
view of making him the instrument of my revenge, I had down right
seduced him to what he had done; and therefore hoped, whatever he
determined about me, he would distinguish between the guilty and the
innocent; and that; for the rest, I was entirely at his mercy.”
Mr. H.... on hearing what I said, hung his head a little; but instantly
recovering himself, he said to me, as near as I can retain, to the
following purpose:
“Madam, I owe shame to myself, and confess you have fairly turned the
tables upon me. It is not with one of your cast of breeding and
sentiments, that I allow you so much reason on your side, as great
difference of the provocations: be it sufficient that I should enter
into a discussion of the very to have changed my resolution, in
consideration of what you reproach me with; and I own, too, that your
clearing that rascal there, is fair and honest in you. Renew with you I
cannot: the affront is too gross. I give you a week’s warning to get
out of these lodgings; whatever I have given you, remains to you; and
as I never intend to see you more, the landlord will pay you fifty
pieces on my account, with which, and every debt paid, I hope you will
own I do not leave you in a worse condition than what I took you up in,
or that you deserve of me. Blame yourself only that it is no better.”
Then, without giving me time to reply, he addressed himself to the
young fellow:
“For you, spark, I shall, for your father’s sake, take care of you: the
town is no place for such an easy fool as thou art; and to-morrow you
shall set out, under the charge of one of my men, well recommended, in
my name, to your father, not to let you return and be spoil’d here.”
At these words he went out, after my vainly attempting to stop him, by
throwing myself at his feet. He shook me off, though he seemed greatly
moved too, and took Will away with him, who, I dare swear, thought
himself very cheaply off.
I was now once more a-drift, and left upon my own hands, by a gentleman
whom I certainly did not deserve. And all the letters, arts, friends,
entreaties that I employed within the week of grace in my lodging,
could never win on him so much as to see me again. He had irrevocably
pronounced my doom, and submission to it was my only part. Soon after
he married a lady of birth and fortune, to whom, I have heard he proved
an irreproachable husband.
As for poor Will, he was immediately sent down to the country to his
father, who was an easy farmer, where he was not four months before an
inn-keepers’ buxom young widow, with a very good stock, both in money
and trade, fancied, and perhaps pre-acquainted with his secret
excellencies, married him: and I am sure there was, at least, one good
foundation for their living happily together.
Though I should have been charmed to see him before he went, such
measures were taken, by Mr. H....’s orders, that it was impossible;
otherwise I should certainly have endeavoured to detain him in town,
and would have spared neither offers nor expense to have procured
myself the satisfaction of keeping him with me. He had such powerful
holds upon my inclinations as were not easily to be shaken off, or
replaced; as to my heart, it was quite out of the question: glad,
however, I was from my soul, that nothing worse, and as things turned
out, nothing better could have happened to him.
As to Mr. H..., though views of conveniency made me, at first, exert
myself to regain his affection, I was giddy and thoughtless enough to
be much easier reconciled to my failure than I ought to have been; but
as I never had loved him, and his leaving me gave me a sort of liberty
that I had often longed for, I was soon comforted; and flattering
myself, that the stock of youth and beauty I was going to trade with,
could hardly fail of procuring me a maintenance, I saw myself under the
necessity of trying my fortune with them, rather, with pleasure and
gaiety, than with the least idea of despondency.
In the mean time, several of my acquaintances among the sisterhood, who
had soon got wind of my misfortune, flocked to insult me with their
malicious consolations. Most of them had long envied me the affluence
and splendour I had been maintained in; and though there was scarce one
of them that did not at least deserve to be in my case, and would
probably, sooner or later, come to it, it was equally easy to remark,
even in their affected pity, their secret pleasure at seeing me thus
discarded, and their secret grief that it was no worse with me.
Unaccountable malice of the human heart! and which is not confined to
the class of life they were of.
But as the time approached for me to come to some resolution how to
dispose of myself, and I was considering, round where to shift my
quarters to, Mrs. Cole, a middle aged discreet sort of woman, who had
been brought into my acquaintance by one of the misses that visited me,
upon learning my situation, came to offer her cordial advice and
service to me; and as I had always taken to her more than to any of my
female acquaintances, I listened the easier to her proposals. And, as
it happened, I could not have put myself into worse, or into better
hands in all London: into worse, because keeping a house of
conveniency, there were no lengths in lewdness she would not advise me
to go, in compliance with her customers; no schemes, or pleasure, or
even unbounded debauchery, she did not take even a delight in
promoting: into a better, because nobody having had more experience of
the wicked part of the town than she had, was fitter to advise and
guard one against the worst dangers of our profession; and what was
rare to be met with in those of her’s, she contented herself with a
moderate living profit upon her industry and good offices, and had
nothing of their greedy rapacious turn. She was really too a
gentlewoman born and bred, but through a train of accidents reduced to
this course, which she pursued, partly through necessity, partly
through choice, as never woman delighted more in encouraging a brisk
circulation of the trade, for the sake of the trade itself, or better
understood all the mysteries and refinements of it, than she did; so
that she was consummately at the top of her profession, and dealt only
with customers of distinction: to answer the demands of whom she kept a
competent number of her daughters in constant recruit (so she called
those whom their youth and personal charms recommended to her adoption
and management: several of whom, by her means, and through her tuition
and instructions, succeeded very well in the world).
This useful gentlewoman upon whose protection I now threw myself,
having her reasons of state, respecting Mr. H...., for not appearing
too much in the thing herself, sent a friend of her’s, on the day
appointed for my removal, to conduct me to my new lodgings at a
brush-maker’s in E—— street, Covent Garden, the very next door to her
own house, where she had no conveniences to lodge me herself: lodgings
that, by having been for several successions tenanted by ladies of
pleasures, the landlord of them was familiarized to their ways; and
provided the rent was paid, every thing else was as easy and commodious
as one could desire.
The fifty guineas promised me by Mr. H...., at his parting with me,
having been duly paid me, all my clothes and moveables chested up,
which were at least of two hundred pounds value, I had them conveyed
into a coach, where I soon followed them, after taking a civil leave of
the landlord and his family, with whom I had never lived in a degree of
familiarity enough to regret the removal; but still, the very
circumstance of its being a removal, drew tears from me. I left, too, a
letter of thanks for Mr. H...., from whom I concluded myself, as I
really was, irretrievably separated.
My maid I had discharged the day before, not only because I had her of
Mr. H...., but that I suspected her of having some how or other been
the occasion of his discovering me, in revenge, perhaps, for my not
having trusted her with him.
We soon got to my lodgings, which, though not so handsomely furnished,
nor so showy as those I left, were to the full as convenient, and at
half price, though on the first floor. My trunks were safely landed,
and stowed in my apartments, where my neighbour, and now gouvernante,
Mrs. Cole, was ready with my landlord to receive me, to whom she took
care to set me out in the most favourable light, that of one from whom
there was the clearest reason to expect the regular payment of his
rent: all the cardinal virtues attributed to me, would not have had
half the weight of that recommendation alone.
I was now settled in lodgings of my own, abandoned to my own conduct,
and turned loose upon the town, to sink or swim, as I could manage with
the current of it; and what were the consequences, together with the
number of adventures which befell me in the exercise of my new
profession, will compose the mater of another letter: for surely it is
high time to put a period! to this.
I am,
MADAM,
Yours, etc., etc., etc.
THE END OF THE FIRST LETTER
LETTER THE SECOND
Madam,
If I have delayed the sequel of my history, it has been purely to allow
myself a little breathing time not without some hopes, that, instead of
pressing me to a continuation, you would have acquitted me of the task
of pursuing a confession, in the course of which my self-esteem has so
many wounds to sustain.
I imagined, indeed, that you would have been cloyed and tired with
uniformity of adventures and expressions, inseparable from a subject of
this sort, whose bottom, or groundwork being, in the nature of things
eternally one and the same, whatever variety of forms and modes the
situations are susceptible of, there is no escaping a repetition of
near the same images, the same figures, the same expressions, with this
further inconvenience added to the disgust it creates, that the words
Joys, Ardours, Transports, Extasies and the rest of those pathetic
terms so congenial to, so received in the Practice of Pleasure, flatten
and lose much of their due spirit and energy by the frequency they
indispensably recur with, in a narrative of which that Practice
professedly composes the whole basis. I must therefore trust to the
candour of your judgment, for your allowing for the disadvantage I am
necessarily under in that respect; and to your imagination and
sensibility, the pleasing taks of repairing it, by their supplements,
where my descriptions flag or fail: the one will readily place the
pictures I present before your eyes; the other give life to the colours
where they are dull, or worn with too frequent handling.
What you say besides, by way of encouragement concerning the extreme
difficulty of continuing so long in one strain, in a mean tempered with
taste, between the revoltingness of gross, rank and vulgar expressions,
and the ridicule of mincing metaphors and affected circumlocutions, is
so sensible, as well as good-natured, that you greatly justify me to
myself for my compliance with a curiosity that is to be satisfied so
extremely at my expense.
Resuming now where I broke off in my last, I am in my way to remark to
you, that it was late in the evening before I arrived at my lodgings,
and Mrs. Cole, after helping me to range and secure my things, spent
the whole evening with me in my apartment, where we supped together, in
giving me the best advice and instruction with regard to the new stage
of my profession I was now to enter upon; and passing thus from a
private devotee to pleasure into a public one, to become a more general