Memoirs of Fanny Hill
Mr. Norbert, that he never once perceived that she did not want him to
resort to her house, lest he might in time discover certain
inconsistencies with the character she had set out with to him: besides
that this plan greatly flattered his own ease, and views of liberty.
Leaving me then to my much wanted rest, he got up, and Mrs. Cole, after
settling with him all points relating to me, got him undiscovered out
of the house. After which, as I was awake, she came in, and gave me due
praises for my success. Behaving too with her usual moderation and
disinterestedness, she refused any share of the sum I had thus earned,
and put me into such a secure and easy way of disposing of my affairs,
which now amounted to a kind of little fortune, that a child of ten
years old might have kept the account and property of them safe in its
hands.
I was now restored again to my former state of a kept mistress, and
used punctually to wait on Mr. Norbert at his chambers whenever he sent
a messenger for me, which I constantly took care to be in the way of,
and managed with so much caution, that he never once penetrated the
nature of my connections with Mrs. Cole; but indolently given up to
ease and the town dissipations, the perpetual hurry of them hindered
him from looking into his own affairs, much less to mine.
In the mean time, if I may judge from my own experience, none are
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