Memoirs of Fanny Hill
I saw myself then in the full bloom and pride of youth (for I was not
yet nineteen), actually at the head of so large a fortune, as it would
have been even the height of impudence in me to have raised my wishes,
much more my hopes to; and that this unexpected elevation did not turn
my head, I owed to the pains my benefactor had taken to form and
prepare me for it, as I owed his opinion of my management of the vast
possessions he left me, to what he had observed of the prudential
economy I had learned under Mrs. Cole, the reserve of which he saw I
had made, was a proof and encouragement to him.
But, alas! how easily in the enjoyment of the greatest sweets in life,
in present possession, poisoned by the regret of an absent one! But my
regret was a mighty and just one, since it had my only truly beloved
Charles for its object.
Given him up I had, indeed, completely, having never once heard from
him since our separation; which, as I found afterwards, had been my
misfortune, and not his neglect, for he wrote me several letters which
had all miscarried; but forgotten him I never had. And amidst all my
personal infidelities, not one had made a pin’s point impression on a
heart impenetrable to the true love passion, but for him.
As soon, however, as I was mistress of this unexpected fortune, I felt
more than ever how dear he was to me, from its insufficiency to make me
happy, whilst he was not to share it with me. My earliest care,
consequently, was to endeavour at getting some account of him; but all
my researches produced me no more light, than that his father had been
dead for some time, not so well as even with the world; and that
Charles had reached his port of destination in the South Seas, where,
finding the estate he was sent to recover, dwindled to a trifle, by the
loss of two ships in which the bulk of his uncle’s fortune lay, he was
come away with the small remainder, and might, perhaps, according to
the best advice, in a few months return to England, from whence he had,
at the time of this my inquiry, been absent two years and seven months.
A little eternity in love!
You cannot conceive with what joy I embraced the hopes thus given me of
seeing the delight of my heart again. But, as the term of months was
assigned it, in order to divert and amuse my impatience for his return,
after settling my affairs with much ease and security, I set out on a
journey for Lancashire, with an equipage suitable to my fortune, and
with a design purely to revisit my place of nativity, for which I could
not help retaining a great tenderness; and might naturally not be sorry
to shew myself there, to the advantage I was now in pass to do, after
the report Esther Davis had spread of my being spirited away to the
plantations; for on no other supposition could she account for the
suppression of myself to her, since her leaving me so abruptly at the
inn. Another favourite intention I had, to look out for my relations,
though I had none but distant ones, and prove a benefactress to them.
Then Mrs. Cole’s place of retirement lying in my way, was not amongst
the least of the pleasures I had proposed to myself in this expedition.
I had taken nobody with me but a discreet decent woman, to figure it as
my companion, besides my servants; and was scarce got into an inn,
about twenty miles from London, where I was to sup and pass the night,
when such a storm of wind and rain come on, as made me congratulate
myself on having got under shelter before it began.
This had continued a good half an hour, when bethinking me of some
directions to be given to the coachman, I sent for him, not caring that
his shoes should soil the very clean parlour, in which the cloth was
laid, I stept into the hall kitchen, where he was, and where, whilst I
was talking to him, I slantingly observed two horsemen driven in by the
weather, and both wringing wet; one of whom was asking if they could
not be assisted with a change, while their clothes were dried. But,
heavens! who can express what I felt at the sound of a voice, ever
present to my heart, and that it now rebounded at! or when pointing my
eyes towards the person it came from, they confirmed its information,
in spite of so long an absence, and of a dress one would have studied
for a disguise: a horseman’s great coat, with a stamp-up cape, and his
hat flapped... but what could escape the alertness of a sense truly
guided by love? A transport then like mine was above all consideration,
or schemes of surprise; and I, that instant, with the rapidity of the
emotions that I felt the spur of, shot into his arms, crying out, as I
threw mine round his neck: “My life!... my soul!... my Charles!..” and
without further power of speech, swooned away, under the pressing
agitation of joy and surprise.
Recovered out of my entrancement, I found myself in my charmer’s arms,
but in the parlour, surrounded by a crowd which this event had gathered
round us, and which immediately, on a signal from the discreet
landlady, who currently took him for my husband, cleared the room, and
desirably left us alone to the raptures of this reunion; my joy at
which had like to have proved, at the expense of my life, its power
superior to that of grief at our fatal separation.
The first object then, that my eyes opened on, was their supreme idol,
and my supreme wish, Charles, on one knee, holding me fast by the hand
and gazing on me with a transport of fondness. Observing my recovery,
he attempted to speak, and give vent to his patience of hearing my
voice again, to satisfy him once more that it was I; but the mightiness
and suddenness of the surprise continuing to stun him, choked his
utterance: he could only stammer out a few broken, half-formed,
filtering accents, which my ears greedily drinking in, spelt, and put
together, so as to make out their sense: “After so long!... so cruel an
absence!... my dearest Fanny!... can it?... can it be you?...” stifling
me at the time with kisses, that, stopping my opening mouth, at once
prevented the answer that he panted for, and increased the delicious
disorder in which all my senses were rapturously lost. However, amidst
this crowd of ideas, and all blissful ones, there obtruded only one
cruel doubt that poisoned nearly all the transcendant happiness: and
what was it, but my dread of its being too excessive to be real? I
trembled now with my fear of its being no more than a dream, and of
waking out of it into the horrors of finding it one. Under this fond
apprehension, imagining I could not make too much of the present
prodigious joy, before it would vanish and leave me in the desert
again, nor verify its reality too strongly, I clung to him, I clasped
him, as if to hinder him from escaping me again: “Where have you
been?... how could you... could you leave me?... Say you are still
mine... that you still love me... and thus! thus!” (kissing him as if I
would consolidated lips with him) “I forgive you... forgive my hard
fortune in favour of this restoration.”
All these interjections breaking from me, in that wildness of
expression that justly passes for eloquence in love, drew from him all
the returns my fond heart could wish or require. Our caresses, our
questions, our answers, for some time observed no order; all crossing,
or interrupting one another in sweet confusion, whilst we exchanged
hearts at our eyes, and renewed the ratifications of a love unabated by
time or absence: not a breath, not a motion, not a gesture on either
side, but what was strongly impressed with it. Our hands, locked in
each other, repeated the most passionate squeezes, so that their fiery
thrill went to the heart again.
Thus absorbed, and concentered in this unutterable delight, I had not
attended to the sweet author of it being thoroughly wet, and in danger
of catching cold; when, in good time, the landlady, whom the appearance
of my equipage (which, bye the bye Charles knew nothing of) had gained
me an interest in, for me and mine interrupted us by bringing in a
decent shift of linen and clothes; which now, somewhat recovered into a
calmer composure by the coming in of a third person, I pressed him to
take the benefit of, with a tender concern and anxiety that made me
tremble for his health.
The landlady leaving us again, he proceeded to shift; in the act of
which, though he proceeded with all that modesty which became these
first solemner instants of our re-meeting, after so long an absence, I
could not refrain certain snatches of my eyes, lured by the dazzling
discoveries of his naked skin, that escaped him as he changed his
linen, and which I could not observe the unfaded life and complexion of
without emotions of tenderness and joy, that had himself too purely for
their object, to partake of a loose or mis-timed desire.
He was soon dressed in these temporary clothes, which neither fitted
him, nor became the light my passion placed him in, to me at least;
yet, as they were on him, they looked extremely well, in virtue of that
magic charm which love put into every thing that he touched, or had
relation to him: and where, indeed, was that dress that a figure like
his would not give grace to? For now, as I eyed him more in detail, I
could not but observe the even favourable alteration which the time of
his absence had produced in his person.
There were still the requisite lineaments, still the same vivid
vermillion and bloom reigning in his face; but now the roses were more
fully blown; the tan of his travels, and a beard somewhat more
distinguishable, had, at the expense of no more delicacy than what he
could well spare, given it an air of becoming manliness and maturity,
that symmetrized nobly with that air of distinction and empire with
which nature had stamped it, in a rare mixture with the sweetness of
it; still nothing had he lost of that smooth plumpness of flesh, which,
glowing with freshness, blooms florid to the eye, and delicious to the
touch; then his shoulders were grown more square, his shape more
formed, more portly, but still free and airy. In short, his figure
showed riper, greater, and perfecter to the experienced eye, than in
his tender youth; and now he was not much more than two and twenty.
In this interval, however, I picked out of the broken, often pleasingly
interrupted account of himself, that he was, at that instant, actually
on his road to London, in not a very paramount plight or condition,
having been wrecked on the Irish coast for which he had prematurely
embarked, and lost the little all he had brought with him from the
South Seas: so that he had not till after great shifts and hardships,
in the company of his fellow-traveller, the captain, got so far on his
journey; that so it was (having heard of his father’s death and
circumstances,) he had now the world to begin again, on a new account:
a situation, which he assured me, in a vein of sincerity, that flowing
from his heart, penetrated mine, gave him to farther pain, than that he
had not his power to make me as happy as he could wish. My fortune, you
will please to observe, I had not entered upon any overture of,
reserving, to feast myself with the surprise of it to him, in calmer
instants. And, as to my dress, it could give him no idea of the truth,
not only as it was mourning, but likewise in a style of plainness and
simplicity that I had ever kept to with studied art. He pressed me
indeed tenderly to satisfy his ardent curiosity, both with regard to my
past and present state of life, since his being torn away from me: but
I found means to elude his questions, by answers that shewing his
satisfaction at no great distance, won upon him to waive his
impatience, in favour of the thorough confidence he had in my not
delaying it, but for respect I should in good time acquaint him with.