Memoirs of Fanny Hill
itself to his view, a bloom yet unenjoyed, and of course not yet
indifferent to him.
After some pause, he asked me with a tone of voice mightily softer,
whether I would make it up with him before the old lady returned, and
all should be well; he would restore me to his affections, at the same
time offering to kiss me and feel my breasts. But now my extreme
aversion, my fears, my indignation, all acting upon me, gave me a
spirit not natural to me, so that breaking loose from him, I ran to the
bell and rang it, with such violence and effect as to bring up the maid
to know what was the matter, or whether the gentleman wanted anything;
and before he could proceed to greater extremities, she bounced into
the room, and seeing me stretched on the floor, my hair all
dishevelled, my nose gushing out blood, which did not a little
tragedize the scene, and my odious persecutor still intent of pushing
his brutal point, unmoved by all my cries and distress, she was herself
confounded and did not know what to do.
As much, however, as Martha might be prepared and hardened to
transactions of this sort, all womanhood must have been out of her
heart could she have seen this unmoved. Besides that, on the face of
things, she imagined that matters had gone greater lengths than they
really had, and that the courtesy of the house had been actually
consummated on me, and flung: me into the condition I was in: in this
notion she instantly took my part, and advised the gentleman to go down
and leave me to recover myself, and “that all would be soon over with
me; that when Mrs. Brown and Phœbe, who were gone out, were returned,
they would take order for everything to his satisfaction; that nothing
would be lost by a little patience with the poor tender thing; that for
her part she was frightened; she could not tell what to say to such
doings; but that she would stay by me till my mistress came home.” As
the wench said all this in a resolute tone, and the monster himself
began to perceive that things would not mend by his staying, he took
his hat and went out of the room murmuring and pitting his brows like
an old ape, so that I was delivered from the horrors of his detestable
presence.
As soon as he was gone, Martha very tenderly offered me her assistance
in anything, and would have got me some hartshorn drops and put me to
bed; which last I, at first, positively refused, in the fear that the
monster might return and take me at that disadvantage. However, with
much persuasion and assurances that I should not be molested that night
she prevailed on me to lie down; and indeed I was so weakened by my
struggles, so dejected by my fearful apprehension, so terror-struck,
that I had not power to sit up, or hardly to give answers to the
questions with which the curious Martha plied and perplexed me.
Such too, and so cruel was my fate, that I dreaded the sight of Mrs.
Brown, as if I had been the criminal, and she the person injured; a
mistake which you will not think so strange, on distinguishing that
neither virtue nor principles had the least share in the defence I had
made, but only the particular aversion I had conceived against this
first brutal and frightful invader of my tender innocence.
I passed then the time till Mrs. Brown came home, under all the
agitations of fear and despair that may easily be guessed.
About eleven at night my two ladies came home, and having received
rather a favourable account from Martha, who had run down to let them
in, for Mr. Crofts (that was the name of my brute) was gone out of the
house, after waiting till he had tired his patience for Mrs. Brown’s
return, they came thundering up stairs, and seeing me pale, my face
bloody, and all the marks of the most thorough dejection, they employed
themselves more to comfort and re-inspirit me than in making me the
reproaches I was weak enough to fear, I who had so many juster and
stronger to retort upon them.
Mrs. Brown withdrawn, Phœbe came presently to bed to me, and what with
the answers she drew from me, what with her own method of palpably
satisfying herself, she soon discovered that I had been more frightened
than hurt; upon which I suppose, being herself seized with sleep, and
reserving her lectures and instructions till the next morning, she left
me, properly speaking, to my unrest; for, later tossing and turning the
greatest part of the night, and tormenting myself with the falsest
notions and apprehensions of things, I fell, through mere fatigue into
a kind of delirious doze, out of which I waked late in the morning, in
a violent fever: a circumstance which was extremely critical to
reprieve me, at least for a time, from the attacks of a wretch,
infinitely more terrible to me than death itself.
The interested care that was taken of me during my illness, in order to
restore me to a condition of making good the bawd’s engagements, or of
enduring further trials, had, however, such an effect on my grateful
disposition that I even thought myself obliged to my un-doers for their
attention to promote my recovery; and, above all, for the keeping out
of my sight of that brutal ravisher, the author of my disorder, on
their finding I was too strongly moved at the bare mention of his name.
Youth is soon raised, and a few days were sufficient to conquer the
fury of my fever: but, what contributed most to my perfect recovery and
to my reconciliation with life, was the timely news that Mr. Crofts,
who was a merchant of considerable dealings, was arrested at the King’s
suit, for nearly forty thousand pounds, on account of his driving a
certain contraband trade, and that his affairs were so desperate, that
even were it in his inclination, it would not be in his power to renew
his designs upon me: for he was instantly thrown into a prison, which
it was not likely he would get out of in haste.
Mrs. Brown, who had touched his fifty guineas, advanced to so little
purpose, and lost all hopes of the remaining hundred, began to look
upon my treatment of him with a more favourable eye; and as they had
observed my temper to be perfectly tractable and conformable to their
views, all the girls that composed her flock were suffered to visit me,
and had their cue to dispose me, by their conversation, to a perfect
resignation of myself to Mrs. Brown’s direction.
Accordingly they were let in upon me, and all that frolic and
thoughtless gaiety in which those giddy creatures consume either
leisure, made me envy a condition of which I only saw the fair side;
insomuch, that the being one of them became even my ambition: a
disposition which they all carefully cultivated; and I wanted now
nothing but to restore my health, that I might be able to undergo the
ceremony of the initiation.
Conversation, example, in short all, contributed, in that house, to
corrupt my native parity, which had taken no root in education; whilst
now the inflammable principal of pleasure, so easily fired at my age,
made strange work within me, and all the modesty I was brought up in
the habit, not the instruction of, began to melt away like dew before
the sun’s heat; not to mention that I made a vice of necessity, from
the constant fears I had of being turned out to starve.
I was soon pretty well recovered, and at certain hours allowed to range
all over the house, but cautiously kept from seeing any company till
the arrival of Lord B——, from Bath, to whom Mrs. Brown, in respect to
his experienced generosity on such occasions, proposed to offer the
perusal of that trinket of mine, which bears so great an imaginary
value; and his lordship being expected in town in less than a
fortnight, Mrs. Brown judged I would be entirely renewed in beauty and
freshness by that time, and afforded her the chance of a better bargain
than she had driven with Mr. Crofts.
In the meantime, I was so thoroughly, as they call it, brought over, so
tame to their whistle, that, had my cage door been set open, I had no
idea that I ought to fly anywhere, sooner than stay where I was; nor
had I the least sense of regretting my condition, but waited very
quietly for whatever Mrs. Brown should order concerning me; who on her
side, by herself and her agents, took more than the necessary
precautions to lull and lay asleep all just reflections on my destiny.
Preachments of morality over the left shoulder; a life of joy painted
in the gayest colours; caresses, promises, indulgent treatment;
nothing, in short, was wanting to domesticate me entirely and to
prevent my going out anywhere to get better advice. Alas! I dreamed of
no such thing.
Hitherto I had been indebted only to the girls of the house for the
corruption of my innocence: their luscious talk, in which modesty was
far from respected, their description of their engagements with men,
had given me a tolerable insight into the nature and mysteries of their
profession, at the same time that they highly provoked an itch of
florid warm-spirited blood through every vein: but above all, my bed
fellow Phœbe, whose pupil I more immediately was, exerted her talents
in giving me the first tinctures of pleasure: whilst nature, now warmed
and wantoned with discoveries so interesting, piqued a curiosity which
Phœbe artfully whetted, and leading me from question to question of her
own suggestion, explained to me all the mysteries of Venus. But I could
not long remain in such a house as that, without being an eye-witness
of more than I could conceive from her descriptions.
One day, about twelve at noon, being thoroughly recovered of my fever,
I happened to be in Mrs. Brown’s dark closet, where I had not been half
an hour, resting upon the maid’s bed, before I heard a rustling in the
bed-chamber, separated from the closet only by two sash doors, before
the glasses of which were drawn two yellow damask curtains, but not so
close as to exclude the full view of the room from any person in the
closet.
I instantly crept softly and posted myself so, that seeing everything
minutely, I could not myself be seen; and who should come in but the
venerable mother Abbess herself! handed in by a tall, brawny young
Horse-grenadiers, moulded in the Hercules style: in fine, the choice of
the most experienced dame, in those affairs, in all London.
Oh! how still and hush did I keep at my stand, lest any noise should
baulk my curiosity, or bring Madam into the closet!
But I had not much reason to fear either, for she was entirely taken up
with her present great concern, that she had no sense of attention to
spare to anything else.
Droll was it to see that clumsy fat figure of her’s flop down on the
foot of the bed, opposite to the closet door so that I had a full front
view of all her charms.
Her paramour sat down by her: he seemed to be a man of very few words,
and a great stomach; for proceeding instantly to essentials, he gave
her some hearty smacks, and thrusting his hands into her breasts,
disengaged them from her stays, in scorn of whose confinement they
broke loose, and sagged down, navel-low at least. A more enormous pair
did my eyes never behold, nor of a worse colour, flagging, soft, and
most lovingly contiguous: yet such as they were, this great beef-eater
seemed to paw them with a most unenviable lust, seeking in vain to
confine or cover one of them with a hand scarce less than a shoulder of
mutton. After toying with them thus some time, as if they had been
worth it, he laid her down pretty briskly, and canting up her
petticoats, made barely a mask of them to her broad red face, that
blushed with nothing but brandy.
As he stood on one side, unbuttoning his waistcoat and breeches, her
fat brawny thighs hung down, and the whole greasy landscape lay fairly
open to my view; a wide open mouthed gap, overshaded with a grizzly