Memoirs of Fanny Hill
fitted me as if I had worn nothing but the finest all my life-time; but
what was it she could not see me silly enough to swallow? At the same
time, she presented me to another cousin of her own creation, an
elderly gentleman, who got up, at my entry into the room, and on my
dropping a curtsy to him, saluted me, and seemed a little affronted
that I had only presented my cheek to him: a mistake, which, if one, he
immediately corrected, by gluing his lips to mine, with an ardour which
his figure had not at all disposed me to thank him for: his figure, I
say, than which nothing could be more shocking or detestable: for ugly
and disagreeable were terms too gentle to convey a just idea of it.
Imagine to yourself, a man rather past threescore, short and ill-made,
with a yellow cadaverous hue, great goggle eyes, that stared as if he
was strangled; an out-mouth from two more properly tusks than teeth,
livid lips, and breath like a Jake’s: then he had a peculiar
ghastliness in his grin, that made him perfectly frightful, if not
dangerous to women with child; yet, made as he was thus in mock of man,
he was so blind to his own staring deformities, as to think himself
born to please, and that no woman could see him with impunity: in
consequence of which idea, he had lavished great sums on such wretches
as could gain upon themselves to pretend love to his person, whilst to
those who had not art or patience to dissemble the horror it inspired,
he behaved even brutally. Impotence, more than necessity, made him seek
in variety, the provocative that was wanting to raise him to the pitch
of enjoyment, which he too often saw himself baulked of, by the failure
of his powers: and this always threw him into a fit of rage, which he
wreaked, as far as he durst, on the innocent objects of his fit of
momentary desire.
This then was the master to which my conscientious benefactress, who
had long been his purveyor in this way, had doomed me, and sent for me
down purposely for his examination. Accordingly she made me stand up
before him, turned me round, unpinned my handkerchief, remarked to him
the rise and fall, the turn and whiteness of a bosom just beginning to
fill; then made me walk, and took even a handle from the rusticity of
my charms: in short, she omitted no point of jockeyship; to which he
only answered by gracious nods of approbation, whilst he looked goats
and monkeys at me: for I sometimes stole a corner glance at him, and
encountering his fiery, eager stare, looked another way from pure
horror and affright, which he, characteristically, attributed to
nothing more than maiden modesty, or at least the affectation of it.
However, I was soon dismissed, and reconducted to my room by Phœbe, who
stuck close to me, not leaving me alone, and at leisure to make such
reflections as might naturally rise to any one, not an idiot, on such a
scene as I had just gone through; but to my shame be it confessed, that
just was my invincible stupidity, or rather portentous innocence, that
I did not yet open my eyes to Mrs. Brown’s designs, and saw nothing in
this titular cousin of hers but a shockingly hideous person, which did
not at all concern me, unless that my gratitude for my benefactress
made me extend my respect to all her cousinhood.
Phœbe, however, began to sift the state and pulses of my heart toward
this monster, asking me how I should approve of such a fine gentelman
for a husband. (Fine gentleman, I suppose she called him, from his
being daubed with lace.) I answered her very naturally, that I had no
thoughts of a husband, but that if I was to choose one, it should be
among my own degree, sure! so much had my aversion to that wretch’s
hideous figure indisposed me to all “fine gentlemen,” and confounded my
ideas, as if those of that rank had been necessarily cast in the same
mould that he was. But Phœbe was not to be put off so, but went on with
her endeavours to melt and soften me for the purposes of my reception
into that hospitable house: and whilst she talked of the sex in
general, she had no reason to despair of a compliance, which more than
one reason showed her would be easily enough obtained of me; but then
she had too much experience not to discover that my particular fixed
aversion to that frightful cousin would be a block not so readily to be
removed, as suited the consummation of their bargain, and sale of me.
Mother Brown had in the meantime agreed the terms with this loquorice
old goat, which I afterwards understood were to be fifty guineas
peremptory, for the liberty of attempting me, and a hundred more at the
complete gratification of his desires, in the triumph over my
virginity: and as for me, I was to be left entirely at the discretion
of his liking and generosity. This unrighteous contract being thus
settled, he was so eager to be put in possession, that he insisted on
being introduced to drink tea with me that afternoon, when we were to
be left alone; nor would he hearken to the procuress’s remonstrances,
that I was not sufficiently prepared, and ripened for such an attack;
that I was too green and untamed, having been scarce twenty-four hours
in the house: it is the character of lust to be impatient, and his
vanity arming him against any supposition of other than the common
resistance of a maid on those occasions, made him reject all proposals
of a delay, and my dreadful trial was thus fixed, unknown to me, for
that very evening.
At dinner, Mrs. Brown and Phœbe did nothing but run riot in praise of
this wonderful cousin, and how happy that woman would be that he would
favour with his addresses; in short my two gossips exhausted all their
rhetoric to persuade me to accept them: “that the gentleman was
violently smitten with me at first sight; that he would make my fortune
if I would be a good girl and not stand in my own light; that I should
trust his honour; that I should be made for ever, and have a chariot to
go abroad in,” with all such stuff as was fit to turn the head of such
a silly ignorant girl as I then was: but luckily here my aversion had
taken already such deep root in me, my heart was so strongly defended
from him by my senses, that wanting the art to mask my sentiments, I
gave them no hopes of their employer succeeding, at least very easily,
with me. The glass too marched pretty quick, with a view, I suppose, to
make a friend of the warmth of my constitution, in the minutes of the
imminent attack.
Thus they kept me pretty long at table, and about six in the evening,
after I had retired to my apartment, and the tea board was set, enters
my venerable mistress, followed close by that satyr, who came in
grinning in a way peculiar to him, and by his odious presence,
confirmed me in all the sentiments of detestation which his first
appearance had given birth to.
He sat down fronting me, and all tea time kept ogling me in a manner
that gave me the utmost pain and confusion, all the mark of which he
still explained to be my bashfulness, and not being used to see
company.
Tea over, the commoding old lady pleady urgent business (which indeed
was true) to go out, and earnestly desired me to entertain her cousin
kindly till she came back, both for my own sake and her; and then, with
a “Pray, sir, be very good, be very tender to the sweet child,” she
went out of the room, leaving me staring, with my mouth open, and
unprepared by the suddenness of her departure, to oppose it.
We were now alone; and on that idea a sudden fit of trembling seized
me. I was so afraid, without a precise notion of why, and what I had to
fear, that I sat on the settee, by the fire side, motionless and
petrified, without life or spirit, not knowing how to look or how to
stir.
But long I was not suffered to remain in this state of stupefaction:
the monster squatted down by me on the settee, and without farther
ceremony or preamble, flings his arms about my neck, and drawing me
pretty forcibly towards him, obliged me to receive, in spite of my
struggles to disengage from him, his pestilential kisses, which quite
overcame me. Finding me then next to senseless, and unresisting, he
tears off my neck handkerchief, and laid all open there, to his eyes
and hands: still I endured all without flinching, till emboldened by my
sufferance and silence, for I had not the power to speak or cry out, he
attempted to lay me down on the settee, and I felt his hand on the
lower part of my naked thighs, which were crossed, and which he
endeavoured to unlock. Oh then! I was roused out of my passive
endurance, and springing from him with an activity he was not prepared
for, threw myself at his feet, and begged him, in the most moving tone,
not to be rude, and that he would not hurt me. “Hurt you, my dear?”
says the brute, “I intend you no harm. Has not the old lady told you
that I love you? that I shall do handsomely by you?”
“She has indeed, sir,” said I, “but I cannot love you, indeed I cannot!
pray let me alone! yes! I will love you dearly if you will let me alone
and go away.” But I was talking to the wind, for whether my tears, my
attitude, or the disorder of my dress proved fresh incentives, or
whether he was now under the dominion of desires he could not bridle,
but snorting and foaming with lust and rage, he renews his attack,
seizes me, and again attempts to extend and fix me on the settee: in
which he succeeded so far as to lay me along, and even to toss my
petticoats over my head, and lay my thighs bare, which I obstinately
kept close, nor could he, though he attempted with his knee to force
them open, effect it so as to stand fair for being master of the main
avenue; he was unbuttoned, both waistcoat and breeches, yet I only felt
the weight of his body upon me, whilst I lay struggling with
indignation, and dying with terrors; but he stopped all of a sudden,
and got off, panting, blowing, cursing, and repeating “old and ugly!”
for so I had very naturally called him in the heat of my defence.
The brute had, it seems, as I afterwards understood, brought on, by his
eagerness and struggle, the ultimate period of his hot fit of lust,
which his power was too short-lived to carry him through the full
execution of; of which my thighs and linen received the effusion.
When it was over he bid me, with a tone of displeasure, get up: “that
he would not do me the honour to think of me any more; that the old
b——h might look out for another cully; that he would not be fooled so
by ever a country mock modesty in England; that he supposed I had left
my maidenhead with some hobnail in the country, and was come to dispose
of my skim-milk in town” with a volley of the like abuse; which I
listened to with more pleasure than ever fond woman did to
protestations of love from her darling minion: for, incapable as I was
of receiving any addition to my perfect hatred and aversion to him, I
looked on this railing, as my security against his renewing his most
odious caress.
Yet, plain as Mrs. Brown’s views were now come out, I had not the
heart, or spirit to open my eyes to them: still I could not part with
my dependence on that beldam, so much did I think myself hers, soul and
body: or rather, I sought to deceive myself with the continuation of my
good opinion of her, and choose to wait the worst at her hands, sooner
than be turned out to starve in the streets, without a penny of money
or a friend to apply to these fears were my folly.
While this confusion of ideas was passing in my head, and I sat
pensively by the fire, with my eyes brimming with tears, my neck still
bare, and my cap fallen off in the struggle, so that my hair was in the
disorder you may guess, the villain’s lust began, I suppose, to be
again in flow, at the sight of all that bloom of youth which presented