Memoirs of Fanny Hill
bush, seemed held out like a beggar’s wallet for its provision.
But I soon had my eyes called off by a more striking object that
entirely engrossed them.
Her sturdy stallion had now unbuttoned, and produced naked, stiff and
erect, that wonderful machine, which I had never seen before, and
which, for the interest my own seat of pleasure began to take furiously
in it, I stared at with all the eyes I had: however, my senses were too
much flurried, too much concentered in that now burning spot of mine,
to observe anything more than in general the make and turn of that
instrument; from which the instinct of nature, yet more than all I had
heard of it, now strongly informed me, I was to expect that supreme
pleasure which she had placed in the meeting of those parts so
admirably fitted for each other.
Long, however, the young spark did not remain before giving it two or
three shakes, by way of brandishing it, he threw himself upon her, and
his back being now towards me, I could only take his being ingulphed
for granted, by the directions he moved in, and the impossibility of
missing so staring a mark; and now the bed shook, the curtains rattled
so that I could scarce hear the sighs and murmurs, the heaves and
pantings that accompanied the action, from the beginning to the end;
the sound and sight of which thrilled to the very soul of me, and made
every vein of my body circulate liquid fires: the emotion grew so
violent that it almost intercepted my respiration.
Prepared then, and disposed as I was by the discourse of my companions,
and Phœbe’s minute detail of everything, no wonder that such a sight
gave the last dying blow to my native innocence.
Whilst they were in the heat of the action, guided by nature only, I
stole my hand up my petticoats, and with fingers on fire, seized and
yet more inflamed that center of all my senses: my heart palpitated, as
if it would force its way through my bosom: I breathed with pain; I
twisted my thighs, squeezed and compressed the lips of that virgin
slit, and following mechanically the example of Phœbe’s manual
operation on it, as far as I could find admission, brought on at last
the critical ecstasy, the melting flow, into which nature, spent with
excess of pleasure, dissolves and dies away.
After which, my senses recovered coolness enough to observe the rest of
the transaction between this happy pair.
The young fellow had just dismounted, when the old lady immediately
sprung up, with all the vigour of youth, derived, no doubt, from her
late refreshment; and making him sit down, began in her turn to kiss
him, to pat and pinch his cheeks, and play with his hair: all which he
received with an air of indifference and coolness that showed him to be
much altered from what he was when he first went on to the breach.
My pious governess, however, not being above calling in auxiliaries,
unlocks a little case of cordials that stood near the bed, and made him
pledge her in a very plentiful dram: after which, and a little amorous
parley, Madam set herself down upon the same place, at the bed’s foot;
and the young fellow standing sidewise by her, she, with the greatest
effrontery imaginable, unbuttons his breeches, and removing his shirt,
draws out his affair, so shrunk and diminished, that I could not but
remember the difference, now crest-fallen, or just faintly lifting its
head: but our experience matron very soon, by chaffing it with her
hands, brought it to swell to that size and erection I had before seen
it up to.
I admired then, upon a fresh account, and with a nicer survey, the
texture of that capital part of man: the flaming red head as it stood
uncapt, the whiteness of the shaft, and the shrub growth of curling
hair that embrowned the foots of it, the roundish bag that dangled down
from it, all exacted my eager attention, and renewed my flame. But, as
the main affair was now at the point the industrious dame had laboured
to bring it to, she was not in the humour to put off the payment of her
pains, but laying herself down, drew him gently upon her, and thus they
finished, in the same manner as before, the old last act.
This over, they both went out lovingly together, the old lady having
first made him a present, as near as I could observe, of three or four
pieces; he being not only her particular favourite on account of his
performances, but a retainer to the house; from whose sight she had
taken great care hitherto to secret me, lest he might not have had
patience to wait for my lord’s arrival, but have insisted on being his
taster, which the old lady was under too much subjection to him to dare
dispute with him; for every girl of the house fell to him in course,
and the old lady only now and then got her turn, in consideration of
the maintenance he had, and which he could scarce be accused of not
earning from her.
As soon as I heard them go down-stairs, I stole up softly to my own
room, out of which I had luckily not been missed; there I began to
breathe more free, and to give a loose to those warm emotions which the
sight of such an encounter had raised in me, I laid me down on the bed,
stretched myself out, joining and ardently wishing, and requiring any
means to divert or allay the rekindled rage and tumult of my desires,
which all pointed strongly to their pole: man. I felt about the bed as
if I sought for something that I grasped in my waking dream, and not
finding it, could have cried for vexation; every part of me plowing
with simulated fires. At length, I resorted to the only present remedy,
that of vain attempts at digitation, where the smallness of the theatre
did not yet afford room enough for action, and where the pain my
fingers gave me, in striving for admission, though they procured me a
slight satisfaction for the present, started an apprehension which I
could not be easy till I had communicated to Phœbe and received her
explanations upon it.
The opportunity, however, did not offer till next morning, for Phœbe
did not come to bed till long after I was gone to sleep. As soon then
as we were both awake, it was but in course to bring our ly-a-bed chat
to hand, on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the
love scene I had thus, by chance, been spectatress of, served for a
preface.
Phœbe could not hear it to the end without more than one interruption
by peals of laughter, and my ingenuous way of relating matters did not
a little heighten the joke to her.
But, on her sounding me how the sight had affected me, without mincing
or hiding the pleasurable emotions it had inspired me with, I told her
at the same time that one remark had perplexed me, and that very
considerably. “Aye!” says she, “what was that?” “Why,” replied I,
“having very curiously and attentively compared the size of that
enormous machine, which did not appear, at least to my fearful
imagination, less than my wrist, and at least three of my hand-fuls
long, to that of the tender small part of me which was framed to
receive it, I could not conceive its being possible to afford it
entrance without dying, perhaps in the greatest pain, since she well
knew that even a finger thrust in there hurt me beyond bearing. As to
my mistress’s and yours, I can very plainly distinguish the different
dimensions of them from mine, palpable to the touch, and visible to the
eye; so that, in short, great as the promised pleasure may be, I am
afraid of the pain of the experiment.”
Phœbe at this redoubled her laugh, and whilst I expected a very serious
solution of my doubts and apprehensions in this matter, only told me
that “she never heard of a mortal wound being given in those parts, by
that terrible weapon, and that some she knew younger, and as delicately
made as myself, had outlived the operation; that she believed, at the
worst, I should take a great deal of liking; that true it was, there
was a great diversity of sizes in those parts, owing to nature,
child-bearing, frequent over-stretching with unmerciful machines, but
that at a certain age and habit of body, even the most experienced in
those affairs could not well distinguish between the maid and the
woman, supposing too an absence of all artifice, in their natural
situation: but that since chance had thrown in my way one sight of that
sort, she would procure me another, that should feast my eyes more
delicately, and go a great way in the cure of my fears from that
imaginary disproportion”.
On this she asked me if I knew Polly Phillips? “Undoubterly,” says I,
“the fair girl which was so tender of me when I was sick, and has been,
as you told me, but two months in the house.” “The same,” says Phœbe.
“You must know then, she is kept by a young Genoes merchant, whom his
uncle, who is immensely rich, and whose darling he is, on a pretex of
settling some accounts, but in reality to humour his inclinations for
travelling, and seeing the world. He met casually with this Polly once
in company, and taking a likning to her, makes it worth her while to
keep entirely to him. He comes to her here twice or thrice a week, and
she receives him in the light closet up one pair of stairs, where he
enjoys her in a taste, I suppose, peculiar to the heat, or perhaps the
caprices of his own country, I say no more, but to-morrow being his
day, you shall see what passes between them, from a place only known to
your mistress and myself.”
You may be sure, in the ply I was now taking, I had no objection to the
proposal, and was rather a tip-toe for its accomplishments.
At five in the evening next day, Phœbe, punctual to her promise, came
to me as I sat alone in my own room, and beckoned me to follow her.
We went down the back stairs very softly, and opening the door of a
dark closet, where there was some old furniture kept, and some cases of
liquor, she drew me in after her, and fastened the door upon us, we had
no light but what came through a long crevice in the partition between
ours and the light closet, where the scene of action lay; so that
sitting on those low cases, we could, with the greatest ease, as well
as clearness, see all objects (ourselves unseen), only by applying our
eyes close to the crevice, where the moulding of a panel had warped, or
started a little on the other side.
The young gentleman was the first person I saw, with his back directly
towards me, looking at a print. Polly was not yet come: in less than a
minute though, the door opened, and she came in; and at the noise the
door made he turned about, and come to meet her, with an air of the
greatest tenderness and satisfaction.
After saluting her, he led her to a coach that fronted us, where they
both sat down, and the young Genoes helped her to a glass of wine, with
some Naples biscuits on a salver.
Presently, when they had exchanged a few kisses, and questions in
broken English on one side, he began to unbutton, and, in fine, stript
unto his shirt.
As if this had been the signal agreed on for pulling off all their
clothes, a scheme which the heat of the season perfectly favoured,
Polly began to draw her pins, and as she had no stays to unlace, she
was in a trice, with her gallant’s officious assistance, undressed to
all but her shift.
When he saw this, his breeches were immediately loosened, waist and
knee bands, and slipped over his ankles, clean off; his shirt collar
was unbottoned too: then, first giving Polly an encouraging kiss, he
stole, as it were, the shift off the girl, who being, I suppose, broke
and familiarized to this humour, blushed indeed, but less than I did at
the apparition of her, now standing stark naked, just as she came ont
of the hands of pure nature, with her black hair loose and a-float down
her dazzling white neck and shoulders, whilst the deepened carnation of