Memoirs of Fanny Hill
tide serving my lover, lavish of his stores, and pleasure-milked, he
over-flowed me once more from the fulness of his oval reservoirs of the
genial emulsion: whilst, on my side, a convulsive grasp, in the instant
of my giving down the liquid contribution, rendered me sweetly
subservient at once to the increase of joy, and to its effusions:
moving me so, as to make me exert all those springs of the compressive
exsuction, with which the sensitive mechanism of that part thirstily
draws and drains the nipple of Love; with much such an instinctive
eagerness and attachment, as to compare great with less, kind nature
engages infants at the breasts, by the pleasure they find in the motion
of their little mouths and cheeks, to extract the milky stream prepared
for their nourishment.
But still there was no end of his vigour: this double discharge had so
far from extinguished his desires, for that time, that it had not even
calmed them; and at his age, desires are power. He was proceeding then
amazingly to push it to a third triumph, still without uncasing, if a
tenderness, natural to true love, had not inspired me with self-denial
enough to spare, and not over-strain him: and accordingly, entreating
him to give himself and me quarter, I obtained, at length, a short
suspension of arms, but not before he had exultingly satisfied me that
he gave out standing.
The remainder of the night, with what we borrowed upon the day, we
employed with unwearied fervour in celebrating thus the festival of our
remeeting; and got up pretty late in the morning, gay, brisk and alert,
though rest had been a stranger to us: but the pleasures of love had
been to us, what the joy of victory is to an army: repose, refreshment,
every thing.
The journey into the country being now entirely out of the question,
and orders having been given overnight for turning the horses’ heads
towards London, we left the inn as soon as we had breakfasted, not
without a liberal distribution of the tokens of my grateful sense of
the happiness I had met with in it.
Charles and I were in my coach; the captain and my companion in a
chaise hired purposely for them, to leave us the conveniency of a
_tête-à-tête_.
Here, on the road, as the tumult of my senses was tolerably composed, I
had command enough of head to break properly to his the course of life
that the consequences of my separation from him had driven me into:
which, at the same time that he tenderly deplored with me, he was the
less shocked at; as, on reflecting how he had left me circumstances, he
could not be entirely unprepared for it.
But when I opened the state of my fortune to him, and with that
sincerity which, from me to him, was so much a nature in me, I beged of
him his acceptance of it, on his own terms. I should appear to you
perhaps too partial to my passion, were I to attempt the doing his
delicacy justice, I shall content myself then with assuring you, that
after his flatly refusing the unreserved, unconditional donation that I
long persecuted him in vain to accept, it was at length, in obedience
to his serious commands (for I stood out unaffectedly, till he exerted
the sovereign authority which love had given him over me), that I
yielded my consent to waive the remonstrance I did not fail of making
strongly to him, against his degrading himself, and incurring the
reflection, however unjust, of having, for respects of fortune,
bartered his honour for infamy and prostitution, in making one his
wife, who thought herself too much honoured in being but his mistress.
The plea of love then over-ruling all objections, for him, which he
could not but read the sincerity of in a heart ever open to him,
obliged me to receive his hand, by which means I was in pass, among
other innumerable blessings, to bestow a legal parentage on those fine
children you have seen by this happiest of matches.
Thus, at length, I got snug into port, where, in the bosom of virtue, I
gathered the only uncorrupt sweets: where, looking back on the course
of vice I had run, and comparing its infamous blandishments with the
infinitely superior joys of innocence, I could not help pitying, even
in point of taste, those who, immersed in gross sensuality, are
insensible to the so delicate charms of VIRTUE, than which even
PLEASURE has not a greater friend, nor VICE a greater enemy. Thus
temperance makes men lords over those pleasures that intemperance
enslaves them to: the one, parent of health, vigour fertility
cheerfulness, and every other desirable good of life; the other, of
diseases, debility, barrenness, self-loathing, with only every evil
incident to human nature.
You laugh, perhaps, at this tail-piece of morality, extracted from me
by the force of truth, resulting from compared experiences: you think
it, no doubt, out of character; possibly too you may look on it as the
paultry finesse of one who seeks to mask a devotee to vice under a rag
of a veil, impudently smuggled from the shrine of Virtue: just as if
one was to fancy one’s self completely disguised at a masquerade, with
no other change of dress than turning one’s shoes into slippers; or, as
if a writer should think to shield a treasonable libel, by concluding
it with a formal prayer for the King. But, independent of my flattering
myself that you have a juster opinion of my sense and sincerity, give
me leave to represent to you, that such a supposition is even more
injurious to Virtue than to me: since, consistently with candour and
good nature, it san have no foundation but in the falsest of fears,
that its pleasures cannot stand in comparison with those of Vice; but
let truth dare to hold it up in its most alluring light: then mark, how
spurious, how low of taste, how comparatively inferior its joys are to
those which Virtue gives sanction to, and whose sentiments are not
above making even a sauce for the senses, but a sauce of the highest
relish; whilst Vices are the harpies that infect and foul the feast.
The paths of Vice are sometimes strewed with roses, but then they are
for ever infamous for many a thorn, for many a cankerworm: those of
Virtue are strewed with roses purely, and those eternally unfading
ones.
If you do me then justice, you will esteem me perfectly consistent in
the incense I burn to Virtue. If I have painted Vice in all its gayest
colours, if I have decked it with flowers, it has been solely in order
to make the worthier, the solemner sacrifice of it to Virtue.
You know Mr. C*** O***, you know his estate, his worth, and good sense:
can you, will you pronounce it ill meant, at least of him, when anxious
for his son’s morals, with a view to form him to virtue, and inspire
him with a fixed, a rational contempt for vice, he condescended to be
his master of the ceremonies, and led him by the hand through the most
noted bawdy-houses in town, where he took care he should be
familiarized with all those scenes of debauchery, so fit to nauseate a
good taste? The experiment, you will cry, is dangerous. True, on a
fool: but are fools worth so much attention.
I shall see you soon, and in the mean time think candidly of me, and
believe me ever,
MADAM,
Yours, etc., etc., etc.
X X X
THE END