Memoirs of Fanny Hill
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