Fanny Hill

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 advantage. 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 apprehensions, so terror-struck, that I had not power to sit up, or hardly to give answers to the questions with which the curious Martha ply’d and perplex’d 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 injur’d; a mistake which you will not think so strange on distinguishing that neither virtue or principles had the least share in the defence I had made, but only the particular aversion I had conceiv’d against the first brutal and frightful invader of my tender innocence.

I pass’d then the time till Mrs Brown’s return 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 receiv’d 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 upstairs, and seeing me pale, my face bloody, and all the marks of the most thorough dejection, they employed themselves more to comfort and reinspirit 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Mrs Brown withdrawn, Phoebe came presently to bed with me, and half with the answers she drew from me, half with her own method of palpably satisfying herself, she soon discovered that I had been more frighted than hurt; upon which I suppose, being herself seiz’d with sleep, and reserving her lectures and instructions till the next morning, she left me, properly speaking, to my unrest; for, after tossing and turning the greatest part of the night, and tormenting myself with the falsest notions and apprehensions of things, I fell, through sheer 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 oblig’d to my undoers 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 mov’d 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 near 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, advanc’d 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 observ’d my temper to be perfectly tractable and conformable to their views, all the girls that compos’d 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 their 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, all, in short, contributed in that house to corrupt my native purity, which had taken no root in education; whilst now the inflammable principle 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 turn’d out to starve.

I was soon pretty well recover’d, and at certain hours allow’d 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 afford 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 destination.

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 dream’d 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 provok’d an itch of florid warm-spirited blood through every vein; but above all, my bedfellow Phoebe, whose pupil I more immediately was, exerted her talents in giving me the first tinctures of pleasure; whilst nature, now warm’d and wantoned with discoveries so interesting, piqu’d a curiosity which Phoebe artfully whetted, and leading me from question to question of her own suggestion, explain’d to me all the mysteries of Venus. But I could not long remain in such a house as that without being an eyewitness of more than I could conceive from her descriptions.

One day, about twelve at noon, being thoroughly recover’d of my fever, I happen’d to be in Mrs Brown’s dark closet, where I had not been half an hour, resting upon the maid’s settee-bed, before I heard a rustling in the bedchamber, 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-grenadier, 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 so 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 hers 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, disengag’d them from her stays, in scorn of whose confinement they broke loose and swagged 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 neck-beef eater seem’d to paw them with a most uninvitable 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 blush’d with nothing but brandy.

As he stood on one side, for a minute or so, 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-mouth’d gap, overshaded with a grizzly 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 engross’d them.

Her sturdy stallion had now unbutton’d, 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 star’d at with all the eyes I had: however, my senses were too much flurried, too much concentred 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; 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 ingulph’d for granted by the directions he mov’d 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 thrill’d 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 Phoebe’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 all on fire, seized, and yet more inflamed that centre of all my senses; my heart palpitated, as if it would force its way through my bosom; I breath’d with pain; I twisted my thighs, squeezed, and compressed the lips of that virgin slit, and following mechanically the example of Phoebe’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 recover’d coolness enough to observe the rest of the transaction between this happy pair.

The young fellow had just dismounted, when the old lady immediately sprang 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 receiv’d with an air of indifference and coolness, that show’d 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 sat herself down upon the same place, at the bed’s foot; and the young fellow standing sideway by her, she, with the greatest effrontery imaginable, unbuttons his breeches, and removing his shirt, draws out his affair, so shrunk and diminish’d that I could not but remember the difference, now crestfallen, or just faintly lifting its head: but our experienc’d 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 roots 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 finish’d, 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 secrete me, lest he might not have had patience to wait for my lord’s arrival, but have insisted on being the 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 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 downstairs, I stole up softly to my own room, out of which I had luckily not been miss’d; there I began to breathe freer, and to give loose rein to those warm emotions which the sight of such an encounter had raised in me. I laid me down on the bed and stretched myself out, 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 grasp’d in my waking dream, and not finding it, could have cry’d for vexation; every part of me glowing with stimulating 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, tho’ they procured me a slight satisfaction for the present, started an apprehension about which I could not be easy till I had communicated to Phoebe, and received her explanations upon it.

The opportunity, however, did not offer itself till next morning, for Phoebe 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 being our lie-a-bed chat to land on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the love scene I had thus, by chance, been spectatress of, serv’d for a preface.

Phoebe 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 inspir’d me with, I told her at the same time that one remark had perplex’d 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 does not appear, at least to my fearful imagination, less than my wrist, and at least three of my handfuls long, to that of the tender small part of me which was framed to receive it, I cannot conceive that it is possible to effect the entrance without dying, perhaps in the greatest pain, since you well know that even a finger thrust in there hurts me beyond bearing…As to my mistress’s and yours, I can 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 promis’d pleasure may be, I am afraid of the pain of the experiment.’

Phoebe 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 killing; that true it was, there was a great diversity of sizes in those parts, owing to nature, child-bearing, frequent overstretching with unmerciful machines, but that at a certain age and habit of body even the most experienc’d in those affairs could not well distinguish between the maid and the woman, supposing too an absence of all artifice, and things 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 Philips. ‘Un doubtedly,’ say 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 Phoebe. ‘You must know then, she is kept by a young Genoese merchant, whom his uncle, who is immensely rich, and whose darling he is, sent over here with an English merchant, his friend, on a pretext 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 liking 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 tomorrow 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 state that I was now in, I had no objection to the proposal, and was rather on tiptoe for its accomplishment.

At five in the evening, next day, Phoebe, punctual to her promise, came to me as I sat alone in my own room, and beckon’d 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 fastening 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 tho’, the door opened, and she came in; and at the noise the door made he turned about, and came to meet her, with an air of the greatest tenderness and satisfaction.

After saluting her, he led her to a couch that fronted us, where they both sat down, and the young Genoese help’d her to a glass of wine, with some Naples biscuit 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, stripped to 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, undress’d to all but her shift.

When he saw this, his breeches were immediately loosen’d, waist and knee bands, and slipped over his ankles, clean off; his shirt collar was unbuttoned too: then, first giving Polly an encouraging kiss, he stole, as it were, the shift off the girl, who being, I suppose, broke and familiaris’d to this humour, blush’d indeed, but less than I did at the apparition of her, now standing stark naked, just as she came out of the hands of pure nature, with her black hair loose and afloat down her dazzling white neck and shoulders, whilst the deepen’d carnation of her cheeks went off gradually into the hue of glaz’d snow: for such were the blended tints and polish of her skin.

This girl could not be above eighteen: her face regular and sweet-featur’d, her shape exquisite; nor could I help envying her two ripe enchanting breasts, finely plump’d out in flesh, but withal so round, so firm, that they sustain’d themselves, in scorn of any stay: then their nipples, pointing different ways, mark’d their pleasing separation; beneath them lay the delicious tract of the belly, which terminated in a parting or rift scarce discernible, that modestly seem’d to retire downwards, and seek shelter between two plump fleshy thighs; the curling hair that overspread its delightful front, clothed it with the richest sable fur in the universe; in short, she was evidently a subject for the painters to court her sitting to them for a pattern of female beauty, in all the true pride and pomp of nakedness.

The young Italian (still in his shirt) stood gazing and transported at the sight of beauties that might have fir’d a dying hermit; his eager eyes devour’d her, as she shifted attitudes at his discretion; neither were his hands excluded their share of the high feast, but wander’d, on the hunt of pleasure, over every part and inch of her body, so qualified to afford the most exquisite sense of it.

In the meantime, one could not help observing the swell of his shirt before, that bolster’d out, and showed the condition of things behind the curtain: but he soon remov’d it, by slipping his shirt over his head; and now, as to nakedness, they had nothing to reproach one another.

The young gentleman, by Phoebe’s guess, was about two and twenty; tall and well limb’d. His body was finely form’d, and of a most vigorous make, square-shoulder’d, and broad-chested: his face was not remarkable in any way, but for a nose inclining to the Roman, eyes large, black, and sparkling, and a ruddiness in his cheeks that was the more a grace, for his complexion was of the brownest, not of that dusky dun colour which excludes the idea of freshness, but of that clear, olive gloss, which, glowing with life, dazzles perhaps less than fairness, and yet pleases more, when it pleases at all. His hair, being too short to tie, fell no lower than his neck, in short easy curls; and he had a few sprigs about his paps, that garnish’d his chest in a style of strength and manliness. Then his grand movement, which seem’d to rise out of a thicket of curling hair that spread from the root all round thighs and belly up to the navel, stood stiff and upright, but of a size to frighten me, by sympathy, for the small tender part which was the object of its fury, and which now lay expos’d to my fairest view; for he had, immediately on stripping off his shirt, gently push’d her down on the couch, which stood conveniently to break her willing fall. Her thighs were spread out to their utmost extension, and discovered between them the mark of the sex, the red-centred cleft of flesh, whose lips, vermilioning inwards, exprest a small ruby line in sweet miniature, such as Guido’s touch or colouring could never attain to the life or delicacy of.

Phoebe, at this, gave me a gentle jog, to prepare me for a whispered question: whether I thought my little maidenhead was much less? But my attention was too much engross’d, too much enwrapp’d with all I saw, to be able to give her any answer.