Memoirs of Fanny Hill
Charles, however, thus returned to my longing arms, tender, faithful,
and in health, was already a blessing too mighty for my conception: but
Charles in distress!... Charles reduced, and broken down to his naked
personal merit, was such a circumstance, in favour of the sentiments I
had for him, as exceeded my utmost desire; and accordingly I seemed so
visibly charmed, so out of time and measure pleased at his mention of
his ruined fortune, that he could account for it no way, but that the
joy of seeing him again had swallowed up every other sense of concern.
In the mean time, my woman had taken, all possible care of Charles’s
travelling companion; and as supper was coming in, he was introduced to
me, when I received him as became my regard for all of Charles’s
acquaintance or friends.
We four then supped together, in the style of joy, congratulation, and
pleasing disorder that you may guess. For my part, though all these
agitations had left me not the least stomach, but for that uncloying
feast, the sight of my adored youth, I endeavoured to force it, by way
of example for him, who I conjectured must want such a recruit after
riding; and, indeed, he; ate like a traveller, but gazed at, and
addressed me all the time like a lover.
After the cloth was taken away, and the hour of repose came on, Charles
and I were, without further ceremony, in quality of man and wife, shown
up together to a very handsome apartment, and, all in course, the bed,
they said, the best in the inn.
And here, Decency, forgive me! if once more I violate thy laws and
keeping the curtains undrawn, sacrifice thee for the last time to that
confidence, without reserve, with which I engaged to recount to you the
most striking circumstances of my youthful disorders.
As soon, then, as we were in the room together, left to ourselves, the
sight of the bed starving the remembrance of our first joys, and the
thought of my being instantly to share it with the dear possessor of my
virgin heart, moved me so strongly, that it was well I leaned upon him,
or I must have fainted again under the overpowering sweet alarm.
Charles saw into my confusion, and forgot his own, that was scarce
less, to apply himself to the removal of mine.
But now the true refining passion had regained throughout possession of
me, with all its train of symptoms: a sweet sensibility, a tender
timidity, love-sick yearnings tempered with diffidence and modesty, all
held me in a subjection of soul, incomparably dearer to me than the
liberty of heart which I had been long, too long! the mistress of, in
the course of those grosser gallantries, the consciousness of which now
made me sigh with a virtuous confusion and regret. No real virgin, in
short, in view of the nuptial bed, could give more bashful blushes to
unblemished innocence, than I did to a sense of guilt; and indeed I
loved Charles too truly not to feel severely that I did not deserve
him.
As I kept hesitating and disconcerted under this soft distraction,
Charles, with a fond impatience, took the pains to undress me; and all
I can remember amidst the nutter and discomposure of my senses, was,
some flattering exclamation of joy and admiration, more specially at
the feel of my breasts, now set at liberty from my stays, and which
panting and rising in tumultous throbs, swelled upon his dear touch,
and gave it the welcome pleasure of finding them well formed, and
un-failed in firmness.
I was soon laid in bed, and scarce languished an instant for the
darling partner of it, before he was undressed and got between the
sheets, with his arms clasped round me, giving and taking, with gust
inexpressible, a kiss of welcome, that my heart rising to my lips
stamped with its warmest impression, concurring to my bliss, with that
delicate and voluptuous emotion which Charles alone had the secret to
excite, and which constitutes the very life, the essence of pleasure.
Mean while, two candles lighted on a side-table near us, and a joyous
wood fire, threw a light into the bed, that took from one sense, of
great importance to our joys, all pretext for complaining of its being
shut out of its share of them; and, indeed, the sight of my idolized
youth was alone, from the ardour with which I had wished for it,
without other circumstance, a pleasure to die of.
But as action was now a necessity to desires so much on edge as ours,
Charles, after a very short prelusive dalliance, lifting up my linen
and his own, laid the broad treasures of his manly chest close to my
bosom, both beating with the tenderest alarms: when now, the sense of
his glowing body, in naked touch with mine, took all power over my
thoughts out of my own disposal, and delivered up every faculty of the
soul to the sensiblest of joys, that affecting me infinitely more with
my distinction of the person, than of the sex, now brought my heart
deliriously into play: my heart, which, eternally constant to Charles,
had never taken any part in my original sacrifices to the calls of
constitution, complaisance, or interest. But ah! what became of me,
when as the powers of solid pleasure thickened upon me, I could not
help feeling the stiff stake that had been adorned with the trophies of
my despoiled virginity, bearing hard and inflexible against one of my
thighs, which I had not yet opened, from a true principle of modesty,
revived by a passion too sincere to suffer any aiming at the false
merit of difficulty, or my putting on an impertinent mock coyness.
I have, I believe, somewhere before remarked, that feel of that
favourite piece of manhood has, in the very nature of it, something
inimitably pathetic. Nothing can be dearer to the touch, nor can affect
it with a more delirious sensation. Think then! as a love thinks, what
must be the consummate transport of that quickest of our senses, in
their central seat too! when, after so long a deprival, it felt itself
re-inflamed under the pressure of that peculiar sceptre-member, which
commands us all: but especially my darling, elect from the face of the
whole earth. And now, at its mightiest point of stiffness, it felt to
me something so subduing so active, so solid and agreeable, that I know
not what name to give its singular impression: but the sentiment of
consciousness of its belonging to my supremely beloved youth, gave me
so pleasing an agitation, and worked so strongly on my soul, that it
sent all its sensitive spirits to that organ of bliss in me, dedicated
to its reception. There, concentering to a point, like rays in a
burning glass, they glowed, they burnt with the intensest heat; the
springs of pleasure were, in short, wound up to such a pitch, I panted
now with so exquisitely keen an appetite for the eminent enjoyment,
that I was even sick with desire, and unequal to support the
combination of two distinct ideas, that delightfully distracted me: for
all the thought I was capable of, was that I was now in touch, at once,
with the instrument of pleasure, and the great seal of love. Ideas
that, mingling streams, poured such an ocean of intoxicating bliss on a
weak vessel, all too narrow to contain it, that I lay overwhelmed,
absorbed, lost in an abyss of joy, and dying of nothing but immoderate
delight.
Charles then roused me somewhat out of this ecstatic distraction, with
a complaint softly murmured, amidst a crowd of kisses, at the position,
not so favourable to his desires, in which I received his urgent
insistance for admission, where that insistance was alone so engrossing
a pleasure, that it made me inconsistently suffer a much dearer one to
be kept out; but how sweet to correct such a mistake! My thighs, now
obedient to the intimations of love and nature, gladly disclose, and
with a ready submission, resign up the soft gateway to the entrance of
pleasure: I see, I feel the delicious velvet tip!... he enters me might
and main, with... oh! my pen drops from here in the extasy now present
to my faithful memory! Description too deserts me, and delivers over a
task, above its strength of wing, to the imagination: but it must be an
imagination exalted by such a flame as mine that can do justice to that
sweetest, noblest of all sensations, that hailed and accompanied the
stiff insinuation all the way up, till it was at the end of its
penetration, sending up, through my eyes, the sparks of the love-fire
that ran all over me and blazed in every vein and every pore of me; a
system incarnate of joy all over.
I had now totally taken in love’s true arrow from the point up to the
feather, in that part, where making no new wound, the lips or the
original one of nature, which had owed its first breathing to this dear
instrument, clung, as if sensible of gratitude, in eager suction round
it, whilst all its inwards embraced it tenderly, with a warmth of gust,
a compressive energy, that gave it, in its way, the heartiest welcome
in nature; every fibre there gathering tight round it, and straining
ambitiously to come in for its share of the blissful touch.
As we were giving them a few moments pause to the the delectations of
the senses, in dwelling with the highest relish on this intimatest
point of re-union, and chewing the cud of enjoyment, the impatience
natural to the pleasure soon drove us into action. Then began the
driving tumult on his side, and the responsive heaves on mine, which
kept me up to him; whilst, as our joys grew too great for utterance,
the organs of our voices, voluptuously intermixing, became organs of
the touch... how delicious!... how poignantly luscious!... And now! now
I felt, to the heart of me! I felt the prodigious keen edge, with which
love, presiding over this act, points the pleasure: love! that may be
styled the Attic salt of enjoyment; and indeed, without it, the joy,
great as it is, is still a vulgar one, whether in a king or a beggar;
for it is, undoubtedly, love alone that refines, ennobles, and exalts
it.
Thus, happy, then, by the heart, happy by the senses, it was beyond all
power, even of thought, to form the conception of a greater delight
than what I now am consummating the fruition of.
Charles, whose whole frame was convulsed with the agitation of his
rapture, whilst the tenderest fires trembled in his eyes, all assured
me of a perfect concord of joy, penetrated me so profoundly, touched me
so vitally, took me so much out of my own possession, whilst he seemed
himself so much in mine, that in a delicious enthusiasm, I imagined
such a transfusion of heart and spirit, as that coalescing, and making
one body and soul with him, I was he, and he me.
But all this pleasure tending, like life from its first instants,
towards its own dissolution, lived too fast not to bring on upon the
spur its delicious moment of mortality; for presently the approach of
the tender agony discovered itself by its usual signals, that were
quickly followed by my dear lover’s emanation of himself, that spun
out, and shot, feelingly indeed! up the ravished indraught: where the
sweetly soothing balmy titillation opened all the juices of joy on my
side, which ecstatically in flow helped to allay the prurient glow, and
drowned our pleasure for a while. Soon, however, to be on float again!
for Charles, true to nature’s laws, in one breath, expiring and
ejaculating, languished not long in the dissolving trance, but
recovering spirit again, soon gave me to feel that the true mettle
spring! of his instrument of pleasure, were, by love, and perhaps, by a
long vacation, wound up too high to be let down by a single explosion:
his stiffnesss till stood my friend. Resuming then the action afresh,
without dislodging, or giving me the trouble of parting from my sweet
tenant, we played over again the same opera, with the same harmony and
concert: our ardours, like our love, knew no remission; and all the