As noted last month, Pauline, The Prima Donna c. 1868 and 1875 is one of the most famous and continually popular volumes of German erotica. Purported to be the genuine sexual memoirs of the famous nineteenth century diva Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, it is potentially one of the most important primary documents on Victorian female sexuality we have, a female analog to My Secret Life. The question to be begged is whether Pauline is in fact authentic. The available English translations of the text certainly indicate it to be a well-written, sincere, and plausible account of psychosexual development in a nineteenth century woman artist. However, a reading of the entire German original indicates otherwise.
One of the earliest reviews of Pauline was by H.S. Ashbee in his 1877 Index Liborum Prohibitorum. Obviously working from the German originals, he noted that the two volumes were extremely dissimilar in style, content and physical printing. While not confirming the authorship, or noting how the attribution came about, he indicated that the book was the affirmed memoirs of “the celebrated and notorious Frau Schroeder-Devrient. “
Ashbee noted that the autobiography was constructed from letters by the author sent to her old friend, a doctor. After the doctor’s death, his nephew found the letters, edited them and then sold them for publication. Episodes from the singer’s life were included but it was her romantic and sexual experiences not her musical career that were the focus of these epistles, with her physical and emotional development exposed in the greatest of detail. “The book is certainly as much a psychological study as it is a collection of the most lascivious episodes,” stated Ashbee. He deemed the book fairly well-written and thoroughly readable. Ashbee summarized the contents of the complete German text as follows: Volume one followed her life until her she lost her virginity, and accepted an engagement in Frankfort one year after her debut in Vienna . Volume two took her to Pest where she seduced a young gentleman and then formed a liaison with a woman familiar with the myriad of debaucheries available in that capitol of Hungary. She commenced a life of lesbian encounters, complete with episodes exploring the most extreme sensations and unconventional orgies straight out of de Sade’s novel Justine. Rekindling an amorous interest in men she engaged in scenes of group sex, sodomy, sacrilege, vampirism, and prostitution, all prior to being orphaned at age twenty-seven! She continued with various lovers, including an English lord who willed her a tidy sum upon his death. At this juncture, Pauline abruptly ends the memoirs, indicating that she has told all that transpired prior to her meeting the doctor to whom these letters were sent.
The burning question is: can these memoirs be genuine? Those with access to the complete German text do not seem to be of that opinion. Ashbee notes that, given the accuracy of many of the details given including those of locations no longer existing at the time of the book’s publication , the book had to have been written a great deal from personal observation. But Ashbee adds that “blunders” abounded as well, as did scenes that seemed lifted directly from the novel Justine.
In Clowe’s 1884 bibliography, Bibliotheca Arcana, the memoirs, described as the “pretended autobiography” of Schroeder-Devrient, are said to bear a strong resemblance to the works of de Sade. The German bibliographer Hayn notes the work to be of the utmost lewdness, with “masses” of folly, exaggeration and lies.
The greatest research on the background and authorship of Pauline was done in the 1920s by Dr. Paul Englisch. His research showed conclusively that the two volumes of Pauline could not be the exclusive work of Schroeder-Devrient. Using internal evidence, such as her stated ages at given times and the duration of visits to various cities, he found inconsistencies with the known facts about Schroeder-Devrient’s life. For example, the introduction to the first volume is dated Dresden, February 7,1851 and gives Pauline’s age at that time as thirty-six. This Pauline would have been born in 1815 the real diva was born in 1804. In addition, the genuine diva had spent 1851 in Russia not Dresden. In another instance, the author states that her mother was twenty years older than she Sophie Schroeder Wilhelmine’s mother, and an actress herself with a notorious sex life was born in 1781 now making Pauline’s birth year 1801! The real Wilhelmine lost her father in 1818, and was outlived by her mother for eight years, making it impossible for the heroine to declare herself orphaned at age twenty-seven. Many more chronological errors can be found.
More telling, of course, is the inclusion of episodes that occurred after the alleged author’s death in 1860. As noted before, it is simply impossible for many of the more outrageous and perverted episodes related in the second part of the book to have occurred as written. These scenes seem to be lifted directly from other novels, including Justine, Gamiani and Fanny Hill. One particular orgy scene has been identified as having been taken nearly word for word from another German pornographic novel of the era.
These incongruities are overpowering. Yet there are still a great number of accurate facts in Pauline, details that could have only come from first hand observation or participation. It is known from letters written to C.G. Carus 1789-1869 a doctor in Dresden and a long time intimate friend of the diva, that the two had discussed the writing of a memoir. Wilhelmine even mentioned that she was putting her papers in order to this end. Despite this, it was Dr. Englisch’s educated and considered opinion that the autobiography was not genuine, and that the true author of at least part of the first volume was the publisher of the book, August Prinz, who specialized in producing this type of erotica. The second volume was judged the work of a different hand, very likely one of Prinz’s house porno authors.
Is Pauline, The Prima Donna a complete work of fiction a roman clef with great liberties taken a genuine manuscript that was misread in spots and continued by a second hand or is it the autobiography of someone other than Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient? The complete truth will never be known. It seems most likely, however, that August Prinz created an erotic novel based loosely on the life of the famous opera singer. He either wrote it himself or commissioned another author, perhaps a woman. He could have been motivated by the success of a pornographic novel c. 1862 about her, and may even have had access to her papers and the letters written to the Dresden doctor. Mixing fact with fiction would have made it easier to imply a famous authoress to promote sales. The great success of the first volume probably induced Prinz to commission a continuation. This second volume borrowed heavily from the most popular erotic fiction of the day, accounting for its obscene nature and style distinct from the sexual insights to be found in the first volume.
It is sad to realize that so potentially valuable a piece of “erotic realism” is, at the very least, partially bogus. Although the bubble is burst, that is no reason not to enjoy the entertainment to be afforded by Pauline and her friends. Here is an excerpt from the life of the narrator’s close girlhood friend, Marguerite, a recitation that does not suffer from suspicions that Pauline, The Prima Donna is not an authentic autobiography. C.J. Scheiner, M.D.
Marguerite entered and went about her business in the small sitting room she packed the things for the return journey, and finally laid the breakfast. Now followed the sign of Marguerite for the Count to open his bedroom door and to enter the bedroom at the Baroness.
The latter was terrified to see him enter, but he heeded not he threw himself on the bed and covered the Baroness with the most amorous kisses.
She was not able to utter a word about this rash and foolhardy proceeding, but she pointed to the door of the sitting room, where Marguerite could be heard fumbling about. The Count took the hint he got up, went to the door and pretended to put the bolt on he then returned to the bed and begged the Baroness to let him have once more, before her departure, the greatest favor she could bestow on him. She had been so very nice the previous night he was beside himself with the desire to have her once more, and a refusal would make him ill.
Whilst saying this, he was busy uncovering her his member was ready, covered with the skin, in order not to lose time, and the Countess, anxious to get rid of her unexpected visitor, at once opened her thighs and led the point of the iron rod to the entrance of her charming grotto.
At first the Count worked silently. Then came a deep sigh, a sign for Marguerite to enter through the door which the Count had not bolted.
Marguerite appeared dumbfounded, speechless, when her eyes fell staring at the spectacle on the bed the Baroness, her thighs high up, the finely shaped legs across the shoulders of the Count, who seemed in full possession of the much coveted trench.
She could not possibly feign so much fright, with all her acting, as the Baroness experienced in reality, for her honor, her position, her very existence was at stake.
Professedly enraged, the Count jumped up and ejaculated some curse in Russian, at the same time telling the Baroness they both would be lost it he did murder Marguerite, and thus silence her forever, adding, “She must not leave this room before we are safe.”
Marguerite professed to be frightened, and as if ready to fly for her life. The Count, however, stopped her, by putting his back against the door, and ordering her to remain. With all this the Baroness was more dead than alive. Suddenly the Count seemed to have an idea, that there was only one way of silencing this girl without proceeding to extremes: she must be made a willing helper between them. “Pardon me, Baroness, whatever I may be doing, I do for your sake and your safety,” and saying so, he clutched Marguerite round the waist and carried her to the bed, where he laid her down beside the Baroness, who was still lying with her thighs bare. The Count raised Marguerite’s clothes, and as she happened to have no drawers on, the whole of her charms were at once in full view.
“Look at me, Baroness,” he said, “how I shall pierce this maiden cunt,” and with one jump he was on the top of her, and brought his fleshy stiletto to the mouth of the grotto.
Marguerite acted, as well as she could, as if to frustrate his plans, and yet she brought her cunt into such a position so as to facilitate the ingress, and seeing the prick covered with the skinny bag, she apparently gave way, overpowered by the strength of a man, and though begging the Baroness to assist her against the rude thrusts of the Count, she experienced the most delicate sensations in this encounter. There were two reasons why she felt so jolly: first, because she had outdone the Baroness, who was obliged to see her maid receive on her own bed what had been destined for her cunt, and second, because the Count fucked her most gently and lovingly.
Not satisfied to have the Baroness a looker-on, he insisted on her assistance. He begged her to comfort the girl to tell her not to make so much noise, to lay down quietly, to open her thighs wide, and when once the knob had gone in an inch, assured her that the other six inches would not hurt so much.
The Baroness did all this, and more. With one hand she held apart the thighs, and with the other she got hold of the Count’s prick, and every time this was withdrawn to give a fresh fuck, the Baroness guided it to the mouth of the hairy grotto. At last there was an opening, the point stuck in this hairy heaven. The Baroness became excited, and begging the girl not to resist anymore, she encouraged the Count by saying, “Fuck her, my beloved draw her virgin blood, and let me see how you pierce this maiden cunt.”
The Count could not keep it in any longer, one more violent effort and his prick disappeared within the depth of Marguerite’s belly, who also felt the excess of delight of which she gave unmistakable signs by heaving her bottom upwards and by those funny contortions of the body which can only be brought about by the most lustful sensations.
When all was over, the girl lay down exhausted, and closing her eyes seemed asleep. The Count had gotten up, and after dressing himself he knelt down before the Baroness, hugging and kissing her and telling her that he had only demeaned himself in fucking Marguerite for their own safety, that he had made a great sacrifice in doing so, for her sake, more than his own, and now, once such an intimacy established, she should do her best to gain the full confidence of the girl.
Fondly embracing the Baroness, and throwing a stolen glance at the still nude figure of Marguerite, the Count retired to his own apartment.
The Baroness approached the bed of the lass, who just then opened her eyes, and asking her whether she felt better, she begged permission to withdraw the skinny bag from her cunt, and on holding it up she told her that she might be proud. The Count must have felt very happy only once had she seen the bag so full of cream that was when he for the first time fucked her. The discharge had never been so copious since, in fact she believed that this bag’s contents surpassed her own first, but then, she told the girl, “You were a maid, a virgin an hour ago that may have added to the Count’s pleasure, whereas with me, the road was made.”
It was a moment of triumph for Marguerite, when the Baroness condescended to wipe the blood from her thighs with a fine Balosle handkerchief, and with a sponge, which she used to wash her face with, she washed the maid’s cunt.
The Baroness, having everything to lose, tried her best to win the good graces of her maid. She confessed to the whole of the intrigue between the Count and herself. She promised to provide for her, she begged her pardon for the rudeness and violence of the Count, she craved for her indulgence, and painted the future in such glowing colors, until Marguerite at last seemed pacified she forgave the Count’s behavior, and now, as things were as they were, and could not be altered, she had made up her mind to assist as much as possible in this little love affair.
With this promise, the ice was broken, and with it a curious relationship arose amongst these three people. The Count had no idea of the previous intimacy of these two women, but he had experienced so much pleasure in his connection with Marguerite, her fresh and youthful form, and the tightness of her maiden cunt, that he preferred fucking her to the Baroness, of which he gave ample proof when he chanced to be alone with her. On the other hand, Marguerite professed great dislike for the Count, and declared if she was made to take part in the lustful performances of the Baroness and her lover, she would only do that to heighten the pleasure of her mistress.
The latter had no idea of the secret understanding that existed between them, and considered it a great act of devotion that Marguerite promised to assist her, and for this she was grateful. She loaded her with presents, she treated her as her best friend and even promised her that if she should ever get rid of her aversion for the Count, she would do her best to persuade the Count to fuck her, if she ever felt any longing for his prick.
The last few days at Morges passed as usual, and then followed the visit to Geneva for shopping purposes. Marguerite was the first to find an opportunity to slip into the Count’s bedroom, and there to receive the first fruits of their labors.
Then evening came, and at an early hour the Count appeared before the Baroness, this time in Marguerite’s presence. The meeting was most cordial the Baroness sat on the Count’s lap, and whilst kissing each other, the Baroness touched the sausage-shaped appearance of his trousers, whilst the Count groped below the petticoats behind. This was kind of hors-d’oeuvres, to sharpen the appetite.
The Count then gently laid the Baroness on her back, and without any further ceremony, entered her lustful sanctum, his prick well covered, and after a few fucks, he discharged his ammunition, uttering the most endearing terms.
Marguerite could not cease telling me what a pleasure it was, when more than two persons became intimate with each other, especially as was the case with her, where the Baroness was hard worked by being made to believe that her maid was only the passive partner in the business.
The two understood each other. As often as the Baroness went to Geneva, so often did Marguerite visit the Count, who became more and more enamored of her, and who became her lover, as he was passionate, not only because she was a fine made, well-educated young woman, but also because he had had the privilege of being the first to ascend the throne at her virginity. He tried hard to persuade her to allow him to have his pleasure in full he drew a glowing picture of the extreme bliss it would be for both, if she would allow him to discharge his marrow at the height of the crisis within the folds of her heavenly charm with a prick uncovered, what a blissful sensation it would be for her, to feel the warm flow of sperm moisten the innermost parts of her recess. But in spite of all persuasion and all promises that he would provide for the child, if such a contingency should arise, Marguerite resisted all temptation, and she told him that she felt quite satisfied, when she felt the spurting of this wonderful sap, without tasting its moisture entering her womb. When in the afternoon they had thus, undisturbed, enjoyed themselves, then came in the evening the little play in the rooms of the Baroness, who felt particular pleasure in having Marguerite as spectator. They tried their gambols in every possible way.
Marguerite had to lie across the Baroness in such a manner that her arse was elevated, and showed her cunt from behind. The Count would then mount the Baroness, and after lodging his prick in her hairy grotto, would bring his face into contact with Marguerite’s lovely buttocks, then putting his tongue into her mossy crevice he would suck her one way, whilst the Baroness was busy sucking the virgin nipples of the youthful breast that were hanging like ivory balls over her face.
She gave me a most lively description of the blissful sensations she experienced when the crisis came, how she felt a stream of nectar ooze out of her queen of charms, which the Count sipped with smacking lips, and then finally discharged his own essence of love into the craving gorge of the lustful Baroness. Marguerite further described to me how, on other occasions, the Count would have her sit by the bed, whilst he made the most elaborate preparations to fuck the Baroness.
Destitute of all clothing himself, like a statue of Hercules his prick sticking out horizontally like a rod of iron, his large balls showing from below in a firm bag well covered with long hair he would lift the Baroness in his arms, then lay her down gently and undress her so carefully as if she had been made of Biscuit China, until he came to the last covering, a chemise of the finest linen, with the most costly embroidery, and lifting this artfully, he would peep under and call to Marguerite. “See here the cunt of your mistress, how firm the hairy lips, how they are parted, as if they want to speak the language of love, what a beautiful crimson, how longing they look, behold the eyes of Venus, swimming in a fluid of lust.”
Marguerite then set to work. She fiddled with one or both hands amongst the hair of that greedy slot she then rubbed the prick of the Count, fondling the balls. Then grasping the rod and opening the lips, she would put it in gently, and whilst the Count kept on putting it in and drawing it out, she would rudely clutch it, and moist and slippery as it was, she would suck it and return it to the yawning gap.
All this she described to me as causing her immense pleasure. The snow-white surging alabaster hemispheres the fair hair thighs of the Baroness issuing from the sacred temple this mount longing for the olives the fiery redness of the officiating priest, craving to bring his sacrifice into this holy temple the black hair of the priest mingling with the fair hair of the goddess, and to see all this, to see how with every second the pleasure increased, to hear, how first the Count eulogized his darling’s tight and hairy cunt, and how the Baroness admired the swollen prick, which appeared more swollen on account of her own swollen cunt, and when finally they poured forth their elixir of love simultaneously verily it was a time of bliss not easily forgotten, in fact, the description of it to me now gave her pleasure. I had put my hand between her thighs, and I felt distinctly a fluid moistening the palm of my hand.
As is mostly the case, when one had too much of a good thing, one gets tired of it so it happened with the Count, being able to revel between two lusty women who could not get enough prick, he got cooler and cooler the cock refused to stand, and at last he disappeared without any particular leave-taking.
From this moment the Baroness tried to shake Marguerite off, the latter took the hint, and the two ladies separated.
Marguerite had some money given to her by the Count and the Baroness and with this she went to live with a relation who instructed her in the Russian language, her object being to go to that country and take a place as governess.
But the change of life had been too sudden, and she could not feel happy. Having been used to the intercourse with the Count and to the manipulations of the Baroness, now missing both caused her sleepless nights and exciting dreams.
The remedy which she tried with her own hands was but a poor substitute, and in vain did she look for a friend who would have acted to her with the same precaution as the Count.
A girl will not admit the knowledge of things which might degrade her in the eyes of a man. She kept quiet, and for a whole twelve months, she subdued her feelings amongst books and maps, whilst at night the most voluptuous dreams replaced the fucks of reality.
At last she had an opportunity to become intimately acquainted with several young ladies at some baths great friendship sprang up between them, then came confidential whispering between two, then another was taken into the secret, and finally the fourth was made acquainted with the naughty whisperings of the lot. Everyone of them wanted to know and to learn, though one knew quite as much as the other.
They looked upon Marguerite as their pupil whilst she knew more than all of them together, this was one way of satisfying her desires, but she longed for more and she succeeded in getting it.
She became acquainted with a brother of one of the young ladies, a handsome young man of high birth, in fact, a perfect gentleman. From the first moment he set eyes on Marguerite, he did all he could to get into her good graces.
This young admirer, whose name was Charles, had received his education in the house of a country pastor. He was a most moral young man there was modesty in every word and action but he soon felt the companionship with Marguerite giving him a peculiar pleasure. As regards Marguerite herself, she was delighted with the prospect of having the gradual development of her admirer’s manifestations of love, and she, in her turn, felt the first signs of love in her heart.
No wonder then, when, for the first time he pressed his lips to hers, she felt the lips of her womanly treasure expand she felt all power of resistance had flown and the timid embraces of her lover drove her to frenzy. She could not help showing signs of encouragement and the innocent young man soon found out, by natural instinct, that the acme of bliss was not reached with a nice kiss
Marguerite, who had had so many experiences, derived particular pleasure from the maneuvers of her lover. For her it was especially piquant to see the young man fumble about to reach the goal of his smoldering desires. He took her on his knees, he kissed her and hugged her, and inadvertently he would place his hands on her round bosoms, then place them In her lap, giving a gentle push as if by accident, and finish up by looking at her high-buttoned boots and admiring her ankle. He would then press her against himself, and Marguerite could feel the throbbing of his prick, and when he did let go, the indication of moisture was plainly visible on the outside of his light trousers.
But at every meeting Charles became more daring, and when the next time they met, he had the audacity to put his hands under her petticoats and pat her lovely thighs. Marguerite, instead of resisting this rude attack, rather encouraged it by giving him a lovely kiss. This served as a signal for the assault, like lightning his hand grasped the mount in an instant he had his trousers down, and putting Marguerite flat on her back, he raised her petticoats, looked at the haven of bliss, and brought his point to the brink of the trench.
Marguerite, forgetting all danger in the excitement of blissful sensations, did all she could to guide the prick into her cunt, and once it was in she felt the full force of the discharge of hot semen, which caused her to disgorge her own fluid of love, to the indescribable pleasure of both.
Entirely carried away by her feelings, she forgot herself entirely like an electric shock, she felt the powerful jet of a hot stream penetrate to the farthest end of her womb, and mingling her seed with the sperm of her lover, the mischief was done.
Her womb had sucked it all in, and in vain did she resist the repetition of this blissful operation.
Her monthly flower did not appear to the world her honor had fled, her future was spoiled but from the moment she was certain of her condition, she allowed her lover all the privileges of marriage to his heart’s content.
For three months she herself enjoyed these carnal connections, but then came a chapter of misfortunes. Her guardian, who had the custody of her money, became bankrupt and fled to America her lover, Charles, became ill and died she was turned away when her condition became known, and after two years of misery she lost her child. It was soon after that she got a situation as governess.
German erotic literature has a stereotype for being mainly sadomasochistic. It also has a reputation for being cold, morose and pathologically obsessive in sexual temperament. There is a happy exception to this generally depressing pattern in German erotica. Imagine crossing the delicately feminine style of An is Nin Delta of Venus, Little Birds, White Stains with the frank, insightful, descriptive pedanticism of “Walter” My Secret Life . The result might well be something very similar to the book we know as Pauline, The Prima Donna or Memoirs of an Opera Singer. This is the most famous and beloved original German erotic novel of all time. Pauline is to the Germans what Fanny Hill is to the English, Aretino’s Sonnets are to the Italians and Gamiani is to the French a national literary erotic classic.
The first volume of the first edition of this two volume work appeared in 1868 with an introduction dated “Dresden, 1851.” The book was the handiwork of notorious pornography publisher August Prinz, of Verlagsbureau in Altona, Germany. A second volume was issued by the same publisher seven years later.
The book was an instant success no doubt in part to the allegation that it was the actual sexual autobiography of one of Europe’s great nineteenth century opera divas, Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient!
The first English translation dated 1898 was sadly incomplete, mainly containing episodes from only the first of the original volumes. C.R. Dawes stated that the work, entitled Pauline, The Prima Donna Or Memoirs of an Opera Singer, was actually a translation from a greatly abridged earlier French translation of the book, and not from the original German.
A fuller, but still not complete translation was commissioned and issued by the Olympia Press in Paris in 1960, as The Prima Donna, with an introduction signed “Jacques Sternberg” but no attribution as to the translator or source of the text. This second translation is more poetic than the first, and less American in idiom. It also eschews the simple and direct use of “obscene” words, in favor of descriptive phrases. While this does not make the book any less erotic, it does decrease the temperature of the prose.
Poor as these translations are, they are sufficient to let English readers see what all the fuss was about. Here are the frank and candid sexual memoirs of a nineteenth century woman, recounting, at the request of an old friend a doctor who had done her a great personal service the deepest and most secret sexual thoughts and feelings and motives she has experienced in her life, so as to “fathom the secret motives which become the cause of some many and varied actions of us women, for which even the most enlightened of men in vain seek for an explanation.”
The alleged author, Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient was born in 1804 and died in 1860. She was a charismatic and celebrated artist during her lifetime, and not a little controversial. Kearney, in his History of Erotic Literature, describes the diva as a mercurial singer who dazzled Beethoven with her performance of Leonore in the composer’s Fidelio 1822 . She knew Goethe, who wrote poems to her. She took an active role in the 1848 German Revolution. Her love affairs, marital break-ups, and sharp tongue were notorious.
It is not unreasonable to think that an opera star could live the rapacious sexual life described in Pauline. Rather it is to be expected. One need only consider the tempestuous existence of Maria Callas, and her celebrated affairs, most notably with Aristotle Onassis, to realize this.
The Prima Donna is written with a definite female touch. The heroine presents herself as a clever woman, thirsting for knowledge. Highly amorous by nature, she also has enough self-control to curb her passions and attain her ultimate goals of personal freedom, recognition and professional success in her chosen field. Ever cognizant of the pitfalls unique to her gender in a society that is male oriented and dominated, she nevertheless succeeds. For the author sex is beautiful, sex is without shame, sex is a pleasantry.
Sex for Pauline is to be engaged in with tenderness and caring and expressions of sentiment.
In addition to romance, this book explores the themes of voyeurism, lesbianism as an effortless extension of female friendship, the importance of a career for a woman and contraception. This latter theme is returned to more often than in any other erotic autobiography, and merits several extended excursus on the various techniques and appliances available in the nineteenth century for both women and men.
The reader easily believes that these are the true thoughts and feelings of a vibrant and artistic woman. It would of course take a woman to know if the presented facts on female sexual physiology, psychology, curiosity, and emotional development are true. For example, is Pauline correct when she says that feminine modesty is not a natural phenomena, but must be taught? Is female masturbation as prevalent and pleasurable as she says? One would like to believe that this is a real account, but one cannot be sure whether Pauline, The Prima Donna is the real thing: a candid sexual autobiography.
That question will be answered next month in the second part of this article. In the meanwhile, here is an excerpt from Pauline’s life, in which her amorous temperament gets the better of her with her music instructor. C.J. Scheiner, MD
I had lots of opportunities to make gentlemen friends. I was just at my best and being considered good-looking, there were plenty of young men who longed to pay their respects to me. But I had sense and my ambition was to become an artist first before I gave myself up to the enjoyment of life. I therefore refused all overtures of admirers, and my old chaperon was delighted with my morality and virtue.
She had no notion that I could enjoy myself secretly, and I only partook of my secret pleasures in moderation. I forgot to tell you that Marguerite made me a present of the book which I saw her reading that night when I watched her through the peephole. Its title was Felicie, ou mes Fredaines.
This book would have been sufficient to teach me what really is the center, the axis of the whole human existence, if I had not had practical and tangible illustrations.
I derived great pleasure from reading it, but once very narrowly escaped in being seen by my musical instructor.
He had arrived rather sooner than expected that day, and as I left my seat on the sofa to greet him, his eye caught sight of the volume partly hidden by my pocket-handkerchief.
“Ah, Mademoiselle Pauline,” he remarked, “what book are you studying may I glance at it?” stepping towards the sofa
“No, indeed, you may not, Signor it is only for ladies, and lent to me by a friend.”
He was too polite and gallant a gentleman to seem curious, but a certain twinkle of his eyes told me he made a shrewd guess as to its nature.
I have said that he was a very charming man, this instructor of mine, but I did not want his love or any gallantry on his part. My soul was filled with aspiration of proficiency in the career I had marked out for myself. I wanted him to inspire me with his genius success might bring love and gratitude on my part, but at present no!
However, we may propose, but cannot always dispose of what is to be. His manner appeared gradually to change towards me. There seemed such tenderness and pathos in his voice as we sang together. One day he startled me by exclaiming, “Mademoiselle Pauline, could I but throw my soul into yours, what progress we should make, and what fame it would bring us both, as pupil and master: one day you will be a Queen of the Stage, but it is slow, so slow, when there is no union in our souls.
“My heart is drawn to you, Pauline only give me a little hope, and let the love of your musical art be a closer bond between us than that of pupil and teacher.”
My eyes fell, and my head drooped on his shoulder presently his quivering hands drew my face to his, and he imprinted long luscious kisses on my passive lips but the fire coursed through my veins. I had expected, and yet dreaded, the love of this fine, handsome man as great in his profession as he was well-made and good-looking.
“Oh, Signor, you unnerve me, it is so sudden! Besides, you are married.”
“Bah! That IS nothing in this city. Every Viennese lady has her liaison besides we can have our fill of love without risk to your position or reputation. Prudence prudence! That is all we require.”
“Ah, Signor, then you must teach me what prudence is,” I said, bashfully looking down, and pretending to be unable to look him in the face.
“We shall progress rapidly with twelve or eighteen months you will make your debut, and your fame will be my reward, but love shall stimulate us as nothing else will.”
He sank upon the sofa and drew me upon his lap I appeared passive in his hands, which caressed first my face and then found their way to my bosom.
“What glorious globes!” as he pulled aside the slight muslin which hid them from his view “I must kiss those beautiful strawberry nipples your agitation tells me too truly what a voluptuous girl you are how I love you, dearest Pauline! Queen of my heart! I will kiss you all over, even the most sacred parts, you must refuse me nothing.”
My face was crimson I caught a glimpse of it in the mirror opposite to us. “Oh, spare me, Signor, I can refuse you nothing, but let me first tell you my secret, two years ago I was raped by my cousin, so I am not a virgin, as you might expect. I’ve never seen him since. It was a dreadful outrage, and I hated him for it.”
“Never mind, my darling, it will only make my love greater for you but we must be prudent then we can feast on love, with safety. It is only the rough animal-like lover who does mischief you will find me like a bee, gathering the honey without spoiling the flower.”
His invading hands were now transferred to a lower region. Gently placing me on the sofa, he knelt by my side, raising my skirts little by little, and dwelling on each charm as displayed to view:
“What a pretty foot my Pauline has got!” caressing and kissing the calves of my legs “your silk stockings, garters and pretty lace-trimmed drawers, all tell me of your refined nature. Nothing so enchants a lover as to find the approaches to the temple of Venus hidden by delicate lingerie this is indeed a scented garden, but the real aroma of the center of love drives me wild with desire I can’t stop I I I burst! Oh, Pauline, darling, pity me!”
I knew well enough what had happened to him, but resolved that he should teach me and think me comparatively innocent. Presently his trembling fingers found the spot gently parting the silky hair which curtained the longing gap. His touch was electric, squeezing and softly rubbing the sensitive clitty, and passing along the stiff, cord-like connection between that and the entrance to my longing cunt, which was swimming in spend. His slow approach had so worked up the intensity of my excitement, it was quite impossible to restrain myself.
“Ah, love! How delicious I must have every drop of the cream of life, which you cannot keep back, and the more you give way to pleasure the better I shall love you.”
His lips were glued to my gushing fanny and one arm was passed beneath my bottom so as to present the object of his ardent attentions more readily to his warm lips, the touches of which and the darting of his tongue thrilled every nerve in my body.
I threw my legs around his neck and nipped him between them in the intensity of my emotion the very essence of my life seemed to gush from me in constant spasmodic emissions his mustache and beard being drowned by the copiousness of my long pent-up vitality. How eagerly he sucked every drop of “Love’s nectar,” as he called it.
Pressing my hands on his dear head, I kept his lips to the charmed grotto, until his furiously amorous sucking fairly exhausted me and I lay in a motionless lethargy of dreamy bliss. Presently his hot kisses covered my face, every part, forehead, eyes and lips, as he called me every endearing name he could think of, such as, “My queen, my pet, my love, my own Pauline!”
Then, “Have I made you taste the true pleasure, did your very soul seem to flow out to me?”
“Indeed, you have, Signor. I never felt such heavenly feelings before and is that indeed, love?”
“Yes, my pet but you have yet greater ecstasies to experience, and it shall be my pleasure to impart them to you.”
“But, dearest,” I said, “did you have the same blissful sensations, did your soul mingle with mine?”
“Not exactly, darling I was too intent on giving you pleasure. But next time, perhaps.”
“Ah! You have not then felt the same as I did. What can I do for you, to make you feel the same? It is not love, unless the pleasure is equal. Tell me tell me, what can I do? I must make you happy! Now now, not another time,” throwing my arms round his neck and covering his face with kisses, as amorous as his had been. “I could kiss you all over, to make you feel the same delirium of pleasure as you gave to me.”
Our tongues met in fiery osculations, and I sucked his quite into my mouth, to his evident delight.
One of his hands guided my impatient fingers till they touched his torch, which he had already released from his trousers. Nervously grasping the thick, firm, soft-skinned column, which throbbed under my pressure, he guided my hand to move up and down upon it, making it swell bigger and bigger every moment, till, parting my willing thighs, he introduced the head of his instrument between the burning lips of my cunt, and giving a suppressed sigh. I felt it glide slowly up up up till I had him to the roots of his hair.
The sense of possession was delicious beyond expression, especially as it was the first time I had felt the real live article actually within me the folds of the innermost recesses of my cunt clung convulsively and tenaciously around the jewel of love. He was only still for a moment or two, then gently withdrawing a little, he thrust in again till the head of his affair seemed wedged right up at the top of my womb. My floodgates opened again, and ravished his throbbing prick, by another effusive emission of love’s creamy essence.
What an epicure he was. His motions were so slow, the gentle in and out action drove me wild with lust. I longed to scream out, “Faster, quicker! Fuck me well now, you darling!” as my dear Marguerite had taught me was the true way of spurring on one’s lover.
“How lovely that feels, dearest,” I sighed softly, as if I was dreaming.
‘Wait a bit, darling, till I go quicker, then you will experience the very acme of voluptuous delight. I move gently to prolong the pleasure presently I shall get so fiercely excited, it will make me work like steam engine, till we both die away in a delirium of ecstasy. But we must be careful you may dissolve and melt away as often as you can, it only gives me greater enjoyment. But if only a drop or two of the male seed spurts from me within you, your womb may suck it up, and our mingled juices might create a baby, and bring disgrace on my darling love, so I have to be careful, and withdraw at the critical moment, in order to avoid that fearful risk. Only a brute would gratify himself to such a dangerous extent.”
Gradually working up the speed, I was presently fucked to my hearts content. Responding with all my energy, clasping his body to mine with all the strength of my nervous arms, we both heaved and writhed with erotic passion, and a final emission made me fairly squeal, so intense was the pleasure. It was almost an agony of delight more in fact than I could endure for a moment longer, so that I actually pushed him off me and as he afterwards said, only just in time to save impregnation, as he was quite lost to every sense of the prudence, which he had been dilating upon to me , receiving his spurting emission all over my belly, as it shot almost up to the globes of my bosom.
“Now, darling,” he said, as we recovered our composure, and rearranged our dress, “it is useless to think of pursuing your studies today, our hearts are in too much of a tumult for that, so I shall content myself with merely indicating what you are to read and practice till I see you again.”
Thus for a while he sat by my side, turning over the leaves in a listless fashion, and I could see that his thoughts as well as my own were thoroughly distrait. Every now and then he would imprint warm kisses on my lips, and I could see his prick was bursting and rampant in its confinement.
“Do you suffer, dearest?” I said, almost under my breath. “Is the poor darling hard again? Do you know, I should so like yes, like, but I blush to say so.”
“My pet, what is it? You need not blush for anything you say to me everything, words or actions, should be free and unrestrained between us. What is it, darling?”
“Only a kiss, a little kiss,”. I said, blushing deeply.
“But surely you don’t blush like that for thinking of a simple kiss.”
“Not on your face or lips, my love. You know you have kissed, sucked and swallowed the essence of my life. I must do the same to you, or you won’t believe I love you, and, unless you surrender that to me to fondle and do as I like with it you don’t love me as I should like to be loved.” I placed my hand on the swelling object, and proceeded to unbutton his trousers.
He passively allowed me to have my way, as, with burning cheeks, I was really so ashamed of my precocity, but led away by intense lust for further enjoyment, could not restrain myself.
When the proud object of my wishes presently stood up between my grasping fingers in all its glory, the sight made me beside myself, quivering all over. My cunt gave down a copious discharge, which it was impossible to keep back.
“Kiss it, darling, I know how you feel, let me have the soft bites of your pearly teeth, whilst one hand gently caresses and plays with the bag below, which is the reservoir of my vitality.”
Sinking on my knees before him as he sat on the sofa, I buried my face in his lap, fondling the dear object by the side of my burning cheeks, nibbling the white soft-skinned column with my lips, and now and then putting the head in my mouth, where I molded it with my tongue, and sucked a little, but not too fast, as I wished to prolong my pleasure as long as possible. All the while my own thighs were deluged by continuous emissions, so worked up were my feelings that it seemed as if nothing would stop it.
“Now, darling, suck quick and fast, take it all in and don’t lose a drop,” as he thrust it right up to my tonsils, and a sudden spasm which I could feel originated in his precious balls , distended his prick to an enormous size, quite filling my mouth, whilst a veritable flood of sperm was elected down my throat or frothed about my eager lips, as I sucked and swallowed all I could get, till he sank back quite exhausted on the sofa.
“Now I know we truly love each other, Pauline. Nothing but real abandon would nerve you to do that, which is the sincerest proof a woman can bestow on her lover.”
“And have I made you taste the uttermost delight, my Felix, my own dearest man? Love me always as you have today and see how true I shall be to you.”
He left me after many endearments,. but sleep was banished from my eyelids for that night it was the first experience I had had of the real thing, which had troubled my mind for years past.
I tossed about, opening my thighs and feeling if there was any perceptible difference in the parts his affair had visited, and I thrilled alternately hot and cold, as I dwelt on all the incidents of the delightful afternoon, never to be forgotten as long as I should live.
When he came again on the third day, my duenna was out of the way, and I arranged we should thoroughly enjoy ourselves. It was an early spring day, almost as warm as summer, so I received him en dishabille, my blonde hair falling over my shoulders, with only a dressing gown of dark blue silk, secured by a sash, and underneath a simple chemise, drawers, stockings and garters, with my feet in delicate Indian slippers.
“Felix, how I longed for your coming! Come to my arms, you dearest of men,” as I opened my dressing gown and clasped him to my almost naked body, and could feel his stiff prick as he pressed against my bell. “Ah! Is it so with you, my love?” as my hand felt outside his trousers. “Off with everything today, there is no fear we shall be disturbed for an hour or two, but first take a glass of wine, it will do us good for, what what do you call it, Felix?”
“My dear, it is a very rude word, but not between real lovers such as we are. ‘Fucking’ is the name when I put it into you, gamahuching when we suck each other do you like those words, Pauline? I think we ought to use them to each other, they add zest to our conjunction, and spur us on to our utmost endeavors. You should know mine is called prick, whilst your darling slit is a cunt do you love to feel my prick in your cunt, isn’t it nice when we both shoot out the essence of our being? Let us do everything today, fucking, gamahuching and tonguing, every part of us is for love but let us be careful and prudent, then we shall have nothing to blame ourselves for, and this delightful liaison is likely to last. What do you say my dear?”
“Anything to add to our transports, whatever you teach me, you will find a willing pupil, and I now pledge you in this glass of sparkling wine to even outdo you in rude ideas, now we are for each other.”
“Well done, dearest pet, here’s long life and happiness to your cunt, may it never live to want a good prick!”
I almost tore off his coat, vest and pants. “There,” he said, “we shall do now it is a little too rude to be quite naked, don’t you think so?” as I threw off my dressing gown. “A little clothing especially delicate and refined lingerie adds a piquancy to enjoyment. When one has a lady quite naked, it is a little too sensual she ought only to be a rustic or a maid-servant. Still, sometimes I will admit that after considerable preliminaries, a final tableau of naked charms is very agreeable.”
I hugged him again to my bosom, and he carried me to the ever convenient sofa what tales such articles of furniture could tell .
Roiling up my chemise right under my chin, he stood with his standing prick in his hand, contemplating the beauties of my person, gently frigging himself as he gazed on me.
“Felix, darling, don’t keep me in suspense like that, when you know I am burning for you to possess me again. Come, sir, do your duty, fuck my cunt without further delay!” I exclaimed impatiently.
Leaning over me, he buried his face between the marble globes of my bosom, kissing me between them, then quickly transferring his lips to each of my nipples, one after the other, then again to the center of my bosom: it made me wriggle with a delightful thrilling sensation, and I was raging with desire, as he still tantalized me by letting the head of his rampant engine just touch the panting lips of my cunny.
“Oh, oh! Let me have it quick, you excite me so, how you fire my blood from tip to toe!” as I tried my best to catch hold of Mr. Cock, but he drew back, and went on driving me filled with his dalliance, until I had spent over and over again, and he shot his sperm all about my belly, making my bush quite clotted with the thick creamy essence of his manhood.
He had scarcely uttered a word during this play, although all the time I was calling him every endearing name I could think of and begging him to fuck me.
“Now, love,” he at last said, when our emotions had subsided a little, “we shall be safer. The first fuck is always dangerous the man, in fact both, are so eager for it that the precaution of withdrawing is likely to be forgotten, especially as the female always holds him as tight as possible at the ecstatic moment.
“When she has once had a good spend, there is not much risk afterwards. Now I am going to show you what I call the lazy style of enjoyment.”
Then getting between my legs he lay over me rather on my right side, and with my left thigh between his, gently inserted his still glowing prick into my eager cunt, so that his balls were squeezed against my thigh, proceeding to fuck with long-drawn in-and-out slow strokes, and however much he excited and made me spend, and inundate his prick with my love juice, he prolonged his own pleasure indefinitely, till he thought fit to give me the coup-de-grace by a few rapid movements, which made me heave with delight.
“Felix! Felix! I have never felt such sensations before, don’t withdraw, let me experience the heavenly joy once more, then I feel as if I could die in your arms.”
Twice more did he shoot his very life into me and after that we discarded every vestige of clothing, and he showed me how to ride “a la St. George,” impaling myself on his stiff weapon, as he lay on his back.
Riding up and down on it, till a rapturous emission, I fell forward on his body, quite exhausted for the time.
He visited me regularly three times every week, and I advanced rapidly in proficiency.
Love spurred me on, and most of the time I had to myself I studied assiduously. He was very careful in his intercourse with me, always insisting upon using a French Letter, as he called it, for every first fuck, fearing prudence might be forgotten in our too ardent enjoyment.
The warmth of my temperament seemed to increase every time he had connection with me, and the lustfulness of my nature developed daily.
He was not enough for me, especially as after a little while his prudent carefulness would not allow him to go to such extremes, as we had at first, and he would only really spend inside me after using the thin skinny safeguard, which I did not like, as the shooting of his hot sperm up me gave the most intense pleasure.
Then as a wind-up I had always to ride St. George, as he said that no girl could be impregnated that way, as she must lay on her back for the womb properly to receive the male seed.
The six hundred-eleven pages of Romance of Lust or Early Experiences was first printed in four stout volumes in London from 1873 to 1876. It was published by a mysterious man known at the time as D. Cameron, a pseudonym meant as a pun. It was printed in only one hundred-fifty sets, most of which were destroyed about 1879, upon the death of the man for whom the novel had been privately printed.
The great Victorian bibliographer and preeminent erotic authority H.S. Ashbee knew this erotic book well, writing in his 1885 bibliography of erotica, Catena Librorum Tacendorum, that it was far better written than most books of its ilk. But, said Ashbee, its contents were “pungent” and the language never moderate, for the most part employing the grossest words wherever possible. The hero, Ashbee reported, performed feats of sexual endurance in a superhuman fashion, and had from the beginning of his sexual career the ability to be “every moment ready for the fray.” The themes of the novel included incest, sodomy and flagellation. In addition the novel contained “scenes not surpassed by the most libidinous chapters of Justine by the Marquis de Sade .”
The author of Romance of Lust was left unidentified. However, Ashbee indicated that the novel was a collective work, and as such was as “orient pearls at random strung, woven into a connective narrative by a gentleman.” The identity of the culprit was made all too easy to discover. He was described as a well-known collector of erotic pictures and bric-a-brac who composed Romance of Lust while on a trip to Japan. In addition, this gentleman had spent the period of December 1875 through April 1876 in India, and had died in Catania on January 16, 1879, at the ripe age of seventy-four years old.
Ashbee, in the introduction to Catena, kindly supplied the biography of one William S. Potter, who was born in 1805.
Future bibliographers and critics of erotica were not content to let Ashbee’s critique remain unammended. C.R. Dawes, who inherited Ashbee’s mantle as doyen of English erotica, added in his unpublished A Study of Erotic Literature in England, 1943 that characterization was not Romance of Lust‘s strong point. Henry Miles in Forbidden Fruit: A Study of Incest In Forbidden Literature London, Luxor Press, 1973 , noted that Potter’s characters recognized no social prohibitions, and hence transgressed all the boundaries of sexual priority that are generally recognized by society.
The most adroit analysis of this novel is by Professor Steven Marcus in his 1964 book, The Other Victorians. This scholar describes the book’s plot as a constant “juxtaposition of human bodies, parts of bodies, limbs and organs” rather than the presentation of any real relationships between human beings. The novel, he notes, is clearly a fantasy.
Is this praise or damnation? Incest, sodomy, homosexuality, voyeurism, flagellation, scenes totally devoid of morality, beyond, even, the excesses of Justine certainly we must be speaking of one of the most repulsive, horrific novels of all time, a literary creation too disgusting to read, a work that would turn the reader’s stomach at every page.
Not so. In the works of de Sade we are horrified and revolted because the “sinning” is expressly exercised for the outrage it evokes from the victims and society at large. In Justine the actors seek to specifically violate what they recognize as the code of human moral conduct. The characters in Romance of Lust neither acknowledge, nor, even, recognize any moral boundaries. It is hence an amoral work, simply an expression of the primal urge of polymorphous perverse sexuality.
One can wonder what William Potter was trying to achieve with Romance of Lust. It was certainly not written for any commercial success, what with only one hundred-fifty sets printed, and those apparently not for general sale. Was the book for his private amusement, and that of a few like-thinking friends, such as those who contributed to its prose? Was it simply catharsis for impulses or fantasies he knew could not be acted out by a man of his station? Or was it Potter’s attempt to play out every possible sexual combination, much as de Sade’s 120 Days Of Sodom was an attempt to describe actually catalogue all the sadistic perversions rampaging in the infamous Marquis’ libido? This we will never know. The book, however, stands on its own. Here, then, is an excerpt from it. C.J. Scheiner, M.D.
I concluded my last volume by saying that I had taken lodgings in Norfolk Street, Strand, for the convenience of being near Kings College. It was at the house of a Mrs. Nichols: tall, powerfully built, masculine but a kind and motherly looking widow of fifty-two an attentive and bustling landlady, looking herself to the better cooking and having a plain cook, who was also a general servant, to help her downstairs, and two nieces to do the waiting and attendance on her lodgers upstairs. The younger was there alone when I entered the lodgings her elder sister had had what they called a “misfortune,” and was then in the country until she could be unburdened of it. She was expected back in about six weeks. Meanwhile, as winter was not the season, I was the only lodger, and the younger had only me to attend to. Her name was Jane and she was but a little thing but very well made, good bubbles and bottom, which I soon discovered were firm and hard, projecting fully on both sides. She was fairly good-looking but with a singular innocent manner of freedom about her that made me imagine she had as yet had no chance of a “misfortune.” In a week we became intimate, and after often praising her pretty face and figure. I snatched a kiss now and then which at first she resented with an attractive yet innocent sort of sauciness. It was in her struggles on these occasions that I became aware of the firm and hard bosom.
Up to this time my flirtations were without ulterior object, but the reality of the attractions of these hidden charms raised my lustful passions. I gradually increased my flatteries and caresses, and squeezed her bubbies, when I sometimes drew her on my knee and was kissing her, and as at first she resisted my drawing her to my knee. I took occasion to lay hold of her buttocks, which I found more developed than I could have supposed. Gradually her resistance to these little liberties ceased and she would quietly sit on my knee and return the kiss I gave. Her dress would be a little open in front, so from feeling her bubbies outside, I gradually got to feeling their naked beauty inside. I now thought I could attempt greater familiarities, so one day when seated on my knee with one arm round her waist, I pressed her to my lips, and while so engaged, whipped my free arm up her petticoats, and before she had become aware of the movement, had got my hand upon her mount, a very nicely haired one. She started up to a standing position, but as I held her close, clasped round the waist, she could not get away, and her new position enabled me the easier to get my hand between her thighs and thus to feel her charming, pouting little cunt. I began attempting to frig her clitoris, but, stooping, she drew her cunt away, and looking at me with a droll, innocent expression of alarm, and with a perfect unconsciousness of the import of her words, cried, “Oh! Take care what you are at. You don’t know how a lodger this last summer suffered for seizing me in that way and hurting me very much. I screamed out, aunt came up, and, do you know, he had fifty pounds to pay for his impudence.”
I could not but smile at the extraordinary innocence of the girl.
“But I do not hurt you, dear Jane.” Said I, “and don’t mean to do so.”
“That was what he said, but he went on in a most horrible way, and not only hurt me very much, but made me bleed.”
“It would not be with his hand, you see I only gently press this soft hairy little thing. I am sure that doesn’t hurt you.”
“Oh, no! If that was all I should not mind it, it was when he pushed me on the sofa, and pressed upon me, that he hurt me terribly, and you must take care what you are about, or you, too, will have to pay fifty pounds.”
There was a curious air of innocence in all this. It was evident to me the fellow had got into her, and broken her hymen with violence, and then her screams had prevented his finishing his work. Her manner convinced me that she was really not aware of the consequences, or rather had not as yet really had her sexual passions aroused.
“Well, my dear Jane, I neither intend to hurt you nor make myself liable to pay fifty pounds, but you will not refuse me the pleasure of feeling this nice little hairy nest. You see how gentle I am.”
“Well, if you will do me no more hurt than that I shan’t refuse you, because you are a nice, kind young gentleman and very different from the other rough fellow who never chattered with me and made me laugh as you do. But you must not push your fingers up there. It was something he pushed up there that hurt me so
I withdrew my finger, and as, at my request, she had opened her thighs a little, I felt and caressed her very nice little cunt, and with a finger pressed externally above her clitoris. I could see that she flushed and shivered on feeling me there. However, I did no more than gently press and feel all her hairy mount and fat, pouting cunt she said I must let her go, or her aunt would be coming up.
The first step was now gained. Gradually I progressed further and further, felt her charming bare arse as she stood before me, got her to let me see the beautiful curls she had got on her cunt, then came to kissing it, until at last she opened her thighs and let me tongue it, to her most exquisite delight. I made her spend for the first time in her life, and soon she came to me for it.
I had gradually introduced a finger up her cunt while licking her clitoris and exciting her so much that she was unconscious of my doing it then two fingers, and after she had spent deliciously, I made them perform an imitation of a throb, which made her jump and ask what I was doing. I asked if she did not feel that my fingers were inside of her sweet cunt.
“You don’t say so. It was there I was so hurt.”
“But I do not hurt you, dear Jane?”
“Oh, dear no, it makes me feel queer, but it is very nice.”
“Well, now you know that I have two fingers inside, I will use my tongue again against your charming little clitoris, and work the fingers in and out.”
I did so, and she soon spent in an agony of delight, pressing my head down hard on her cunt, and crying, “Oh! Oh! It is too great a pleasure!” and then dying off, half insensible. Another time I repeated this she told me not to forget to use my fingers. Having made her spend twice, I took her on my knee and told her that I possessed an instrument that would give her far more pleasure than tongue or finger ever possibly could.
“Indeed?’ said she. “Where is it? I should so like to see it.”
“You won’t tell?”
“Oh, no!”
So, pulling out my stiff-standing prick, she stared in amazement. She had really never seen a prick, although it was evidently a prick that had deflowered her, for with my fingers I had explored her cunt, and found no hymen there. I put her hand upon it she involuntarily grasped it firmly.
“This enormous thing could never get into my body. Look, it is thicker than all your fingers put together, and only two fingers feel so tight.”
“Yes, darling, but this dear little thing stretches, and was made to receive this big thing.”
As I was exciting her clitoris with my finger, she grew evidently lasciviously inclined, so I said, “Just let me try, and if it hurts you I will stop you know I am always gentle with you.”
“So you are, my dear fellow, but take care not to hurt me.”
She lay down on the bed, as I desired, with feet up and knees laid open. I spat on my prick, and wetted the knob and upper shaft well, then, bringing it to her cunt, well moistened by my saliva in gamahuching her, I held open the lips with the fingers of my left hand, and half buried its knob before getting to the real entrance underneath.
“Don’t flinch, dearest I shall not hurt.” And I got it well over the knob, and buried it one inch further.
“Stop!” she cried, “it seems as if it would burst me open, it so stretches me.”
”But it does not hurt you, dearest?” I had immediately stopped before asking the question.
“No, not exactly, but I feel as if something was in my throat.”
“Rest a little, and that will go off.” I slipped a finger down on her clitoris, and as I frigged it she grew more and more excited, giving delicious cunt pressures on my prick, until it gradually made its way by the gentle pushing I continued to make without other movements. It was more than half in when she spent. This not only lubricated the interior, but, the inner muscles relaxing, a gentle shove forward housed it to the hilt, and then I lay quiet until she recovered from the half fainting state her last discharge had produced. Soon the increased pressures of the inner folds showed that her passions were awakening afresh. She opened her eyes, and looking lovingly, said I had given her great pleasure, but she felt as if something enormous was stretching her inside to the utmost. Had I got it all in?
“Yes, dearest, and now it will be able to give you greater pleasure than before.” I began a slow withdrawal and return, frigging her clitoris at the same time, for I was standing between her legs. She soon grew wild with excitement, and, nature prompting her, her arse rose and fell almost as well as if she was mistress of the art. The novel combination of prick and finger quickly brought on the crisis. I, too, was wild with lust, and we spent together, ending in an annihilation of all our senses by the extreme ecstasy of the final overpowering crisis. We lay panting for some time in all the afterjoys. Dear Jane begged me to give her some water, as she felt quite faint. I withdrew, still almost in a spending state, got her some water, helped her up, seated her on the sofa and kissed her lovingly as I thanked her for the exquisite joy she had given me. She threw her arms round my neck, and with tears in her eyes told me I had taught her the joys of heaven, and she should always love me, and I must always love her, for now she could not live without me. I kissed and dried her eyes, and told her we should in future enjoy it even more when she got accustomed to it.
“Let me see the dear thing that gave me such pleasure.”
I pulled it out, but it was no longer at the stand, and this surprised her. I explained the necessity of its being so, but said she would quickly see it rise and swell to the former size if she continued to handle it so nicely. It rose almost before I could say as much. She fondled it, and even stooped and kissed its ruby head. We should quickly have got to another bout of fucking if the ringing of the call bell had not brought us to a sense of its imprudence so after arranging her hair and dress, she hastily descended with some of the breakfast things.
Of course so good a beginning led to constant renewals and Jane quickly became extremely amorous, and under my instruction a first-rate fucker.
A month after I had taken up my residence at Mrs. Nichol’s, Jane’s sister arrived. Ann was a much finer woman than Jane, broad-shouldered, with a widespread bosom, which, in after-days, I found had not suffered by her “misfortune,” but then she had not suckled it. Her hips were widely projected, and she was grand and magnificent in her arse. Naturally of a very hot temperament, when once she had tasted the magnificent weapon I was possessed of, she grew most lasciviously lustful, and was one of the best fuckers I ever met with. Jane was fair, Ann was dark, with black locks and black hairy cunt a very long cunt, with a small tight hole in it, and above it a wide-spread projecting mount, splendidly furnished with hair. Her clitoris was hard and thick.
On her first arrival Jane was much afraid Ann would discover our connection and we took every precaution, although I, in my heart, wished this might occur, for as she occasionally waited on me. I grew lecherous upon one whose charms, even covered, excited me greatly. One morning I overheard Mrs. Nichols tell Jane to put on her bonnet and go to Oxford Street on some errand I knew thus that Ann would attend on me, and there would be no chance of interruption from Jane, so I determined to come at once to the point. We had become on friendly, chatty terms, and when she had laid breakfast I asked her to help me on with my coat, which done, I thanked her and with one arm round her waist drew her to me and kissed her. “Hallo!” said she, “that is something new,” but did not attempt to withdraw. So giving her another kiss, I told her what a glorious woman she was, and how she excited me just see. I held one of her hands, and before she was aware, placed it on my huge prick, that bulged out of my trousers as if it would burst its way through.
She could not help squeezing it, while she cried, “Goodness, gracious! What an enormous thing you have got!”
Her face flushed, her eyes sparkled with the fire of lust that stirred her whole soul. She tried to grasp it.
“Stop,” said I, “and I will put it in its natural state into your hand.”
So pulling it out, she seized it at once, and most lasciviously gazed upon it, pressing it gently. She evidently was growing lewder and lewder, so I at once proposed to fuck her, and thinking it best to be frank and put her at her ease, I told her that I knew she had had a “misfortune,” but if she would let me fuck her I should be on honor to withdraw before spending, and thus avoid all chance of putting her belly up.
She had become so randy that she felt, as she afterwards told me, she could not refuse so splendid a prick of a size she had often dreamed of, and longed for.
“Can I trust you?” said she.
“Safely, my dear.”
“Then you may have me let me embrace that dear object.”
Stooping, she kissed it most voluptuously, shivering at the same time in the ecstasy of a spend produced by the mere sight and touch. She gave one or two “oh’s,” and drawing me to the bed by my prick threw herself back, pulling her petticoats up at the same time. Then I beheld her splendid cunt in all its magnificence of size and hairiness, I sank on my knees and glued my lips to the oozing entrance, for she was one who spent most profusely, her cunt had the true delicious odor, and her spunk was thick and gluttonous for a woman.
I tongued her clitoris, driving her voluptuously wild. So she cried, “Oh! Do put that glorious prick into me, but remember your promise.”
I brought it up to that wide-spread, large-lipped, immense cunt. I fully expected that, big as I was, I should slip in over head and shoulders with the greatest ease. So you may imagine my surprise to find the tightest and smallest of entrances to the inner vagina I almost ever met with. It was really with greater difficulty I effected an entrance than I had with her little sister, whose cunt presented no such voluptuous grandeur. It was as tight a fit as Jane’s was to me on our first coition. Tight as it was it gave her nothing but the most exquisite pleasure. She was thoroughly up to her work, and was really one of the most voluptuous and lascivious fuckers I have ever met with, excellent as my experience has been. I made her, with fucking and frigging, spend six times before I suddenly withdrew my prick, and pressing its shaft against her wet lips, and my own belly spent deliciously outside. Shortly after it rose again, and this time after making her spend as often as before, for she was most voluptuously lustful, when I withdrew she suddenly got from under me, and seizing its shaft with one hand, stooped and took its knob between her lips, and quickly made me pour a flood of sperm into her mouth, which she eagerly swallowed and sucked on, to my great delight.
We should have had a third bout but for the necessity of her going down to her aunt.
I breakfasted, then rang to take away. Again we had a delicious fuck, and a fourth when she came to make the bed and empty the slops. This fourth time I begged her to kneel on the sofa, and let me see her gloriously grand arse, and when I had to retire I would show her a way that would continue both our pleasure. So after fucking her from behind, and making her spend far oftener than me, I withdrew, and pushing it up between the lips over the clitoris, with my hand round her waist, I pressed it tightly against her cunt and clitoris, and continued to wriggle my arse, making her spend again as I poured a flood all up over her belly. She declared it was almost as good as if inside of her cunt.
It soon happened that both sisters knew of the other enjoying me, and it ended in their slipping down separately, from their attic, where both slept, to my room, and we had the most delicious fucking and gamahuching sessions ever.
Ann was by far the finest and the most lascivious fuck, but little Jane had a certain charm of youth and also of freshness, which got her a fair share of my favors.
We carried this on for several weeks until use made us careless and noisy
The aunt, when no lodgers occupied the room, slept overhead, and, probably being sleepless one morning, when it was early daylight, heard our voices, came down and surprised me in the very act of gamahuching Jane, who stood above me and presented her cunt to my lecherous tongue. A loud exclamation from her aunt roused us up at once.
“Get to bed, you dreadful hussy.”
She fled without a moment’s hesitation.
Mrs. Nichols then began to remonstrate with me on the infamy of my conduct. I approached the door to get my shirt, for I was stark naked. But Mrs. Nichols, who had only her short shirt on, which not only allowed the full display of very fine, firm and ample bubbies, but not falling below the middle of her thighs, showed remarkably well-made legs and small knees, with the swelling of immense thighs just indicated, turned and kissed me with vigor.
My stiff-standing prick in full vigor, and if anything, still more stimulated by the unexpected beauties shown by Mrs. Nichols, I was yet more surprised when she turned upon me and, seizing me round the waist, pushed herself forward, and before I could recover, she had hauled up her “cutty sark,” revealing a most magnificent arse, and placed me into her cunt before I could recover from the surprise of the attack.
There was no one who could hear but the girls, and they knew better than to interrupt me. I kept fucking away and passing an arm round her body, with my finger I got to her clitoris, which sprang out into considerable proportions. My big prick and the frigging of her clitoris produced their natural result. She grew even more full of lust. I felt her cunt pressures and knew how her passions were rising. Speedily, she began to cry, “Oh, oh,” and breathe hard, and then most gloriously wriggled her splendid arse, and as I spent she too was taken in the delicious ecstasy of the final crisis. She lay throbbing on my delighted prick until it stood as stiff as before. I began a slow movement, and she made no resistance, except crying out, “Oh! Dear. Oh! Dear,” as if in spite of regrets she could not help enjoying it indeed, at last she said, “Oh! What a man you are, Mr. Roberts it is very wrong of me to do this, but I cannot resist enjoying myself. It is years since I did such a thing, but as you have done it, it makes me wish you should do it again. Let us change position and carryon.”
“Very well, but you must throw off this tiresome chemise, or I won’t withdraw.”
As her lust was so excited, she made no objection, so withdrawing we stood up. She drew her shirt over her head, and displayed a far more splendid form, with an exquisitely fair and dimpled skin, than I could have thought possible
“My dear Mrs. Nichols, what a fine perfect form you have got. Let me embrace you in my arms.”
She was nothing loath, flattered by my praise. She laid hold of my cock with one hand, and closely clasped me with the other arm, while I threw an arm and hand round her truly magnificent arse, and with my other hand pressed on a wonderful pair of bubbies as hard and firm as any maid of eighteen. Our mouths met in a loving kiss, our tongues exchanged endearments in each other’s mouths.
She said, “You have made me very wicked. Let me have this enormous and dear fellow again.”
I said I must first gaze on all her beauties, especially on her gorgeous and enormous bottom. She turned herself round in every way, delighted to find that I so ardently admired her.
She then lay down on her back, and spread wide her legs, and called to me to mount and put it in.
“First I must kiss this beautiful cunt, and suck this superb clitoris.”
Her mount was covered with closely curled brown, silky locks her cunt was large with grand, thick lips and well-haired sides. Her clitoris stood out quite three inches, red and stiff. I took it in my mouth, sucked it, and frigged her cunt with two fingers, which went in with the greatest ease, but were nipped tightly the moment the entrance was gained, and I frigged and sucked until she spent madly with absolute screams of delight. I continued to suck and excite her, which quickly made her cry out. “Oh, darling boy, come and shove your glorious prick into my longing cunt.”
I sprang up and buried it until our two hairs were crushed between us. She held me tight for a minute without moving, then went off like a wild bacchante, and uttered voluptuous, bawdy expressions: “Shove your delicious prick further and harder. Oh, you are killing me with delight. Harder! Harder!”
She was a perfect mistress of the art, gave me exquisite pleasure, and, I may add, proved afterwards a woman of infinite variety, and became one of my most devoted admirers. Our intrigue continued for years, while her age, as is the case with good wine, only appeared to improve her. Her husband was not a bad fucker, but having only a small prick, had never stimulated her lust as my big splitter had just done.
We had on this first occasion three other good fucks, which she seemed to enjoy more and more.
As I had previously fucked the girls pretty well, my prick at last refused to rise and perform. We had to stop fucking, but I gamahuched her once more after again posing her and admiring her really wonderfully well-made and well-preserved body. She had a good suck at my cock, without bringing him up again.
At last we separated, but not before she made a promise that she would sleep with me that night, and a glorious night we had. I had the more difficult task of reconciling her to my having her nieces. I used to have them one night, and sleep with her the next.
This month’s excerpt is from the first volume of the Nemesis Hunt trilogy. The language is sexually explicit, the scenes full of erotically realistic detail. Much is made of the traumatic maturation of a woman growing up in late Victorian times. There is lust, to be sure, but the more mundane as well: the sweat and smells of the late nineteenth century.
Those familiar with turn-of-the-century London will discover that many of the characters in the Nemesis Hunt series seem oddly familiar, as though they were caricatures of well-known people in the worlds of art, the theater and publishing. In fact, this is very likely the case. Purveyors of the early-twentieth-century English erotica trade authors, publishers, printers, translators, artists seem to turn up throughout the trilogy, especially in a scene set in the office of The Dial magazine. Here are veiled descriptions of the real-life publishing partners H.S. Nichols assiduous printer and Leonard Smithers wealthy, dapper lawyer both from Manchester and responsible for the famous art and literary magazines The Yellow Book and The Savoy, as well as the sexual fare of the Erotica Biblion Society. Also appearing are Ernest Dawson the unkempt poet and translator , Aubrey Beardsley fin de si cle art-nouveau illustrator and the journalists Cyril Ranger Gull, John Poole Kirkwood and George Reginald Bacchus.
This is the first novel to mention the use of a typewriter to compose erotica, to mention telephones, “vaseline,” and to give the etymology of the then-new term “flapper.” The word, although coined to describe a woman of loose virtue, originated as British slang for “young duck.”
A delightfully readable work, Confessions has charm and humor, and although it was probably never intended to be an authentic source of information about the sexual and social life of the time, it turns out now to indeed be a novel imitating life, rather than merely fictionalizing it. Here then is an episode from the fabricated life of the retired actress Nemesis Hunt, using her “real” name, Marie Carey, as she dictates her memoirs to her typist, Gladys. C.J. Scheiner, M.D.
“I yearned to go to see my lover again, but I was frightened. I was always feeling those queer yet delightful sensations, and I was possessed with a great longing to know more about the secrets of life.
“At last, at the end of the term, I felt that I must see him. In another day school would have broken up, and for all I knew he might be leaving. I had an excellent opportunity as I had to go to his house to see my music master. It was the day of the annual football match between the school and the alumni, and my boyfriend had been chosen for the first time to play in the school fifteen. I knew he would be awfully proud, and I felt proud of him. It was a great honor at his age, and if he distinguished himself he would get his cap. I slipped into his room just as I had been used to doing and found him sitting in his football clothes his white knees were bare, and his arms uncovered below the elbow…”
Lord, it’s funny for me, the Marie Carey of today, to look back on those days when I was innocent. I feel I must have a little rest in the dictation. “Gladys,” I say to my typewriter, “How do you think the story’s going?”
“Beautifully, you dear,” she answers. “I’m fully interested. I feel that you’re going to tell something dreadful now. Do go on.”
“Wait a minute, you’re getting the privilege of hearing the story firsthand and without having to pay for the book. Likewise, you’re getting paid for your work happy Gladys.”
“It makes me feel so naughty, dear,” she said plaintively.
Then a knock comes at the door. Gladys starts. “Shall we see anyone?” she asks.
My confidential maid enters and gives me a card. “Oh, it’s only the Baron,” I say, tossing the card into her lap. “We’ll see him, Edwards.”
The old Baron comes in and gives a little start of pleasure as he sees that neither of us, and Gladys in particular, is at all fully dressed.
“This is indeed a pleasure,” he says, kissing my hand and then Gladys’s. “And what are you two doing?”
I tell him that I am writing the story of my life quite fully. “You’ll figure in it, Baron,” I say.
He starts again and lifts the hands that had been resting on Gladys’s naked shoulders. “Oh dear! Heaven forbid!” he says.
“I reassure him and we chat over whiskeys and sodas. I notice that the Baron drops a little tablet into his drink. “What’s that for?” I ask.
“Oh, a wonderful preparation, dear,” he answers, a wrinkled grin coming over his old face.
“It makes me feel thirty years younger,” he continues, putting down the empty glass.
“And what do you want to feel thirty for?” I ask. Then I notice him looking amorously at Gladys. “Well, do you want me to leave the room?”
“Oh no,” says Gladys quickly.
“I’ve brought you each a little present,” says the old man, fumbling with his pockets. He produces two cases and there, on their plush beds, glitter two beautiful diamond brooches.
“It’s good of you, Baron,” I say, “but understand I’m not going to do anything for it. I’ve given that up. Besides, I’m in the middle of a literary work. Still, I think Gladys ought to. I’ll take myself off.”
“Oh no, don’t,” says the old man pleadingly.
“No, don’t go, Marie,” says Gladys. “Your story made me feel so wicked. I don’t care what I do.”
“Very well, then,” I say, settling myself into an armchair. “Give me a cigarette and I’ll play a very up-to-the-date gooseberry.”
Little Gladys jumps up from her chair at the typewriter and whips the tulle from her shoulders. She is naked to the waist now. Below that, a pair of Parisian drawers, large and full, with beautiful lacework at their nether extremities. Below these again, silk, openwork stockings encase a pair of perfectly shaped legs.
Gladys has a beautiful figure. Her skin is white as ivory, and her arms, neck and shoulders are perfectly rounded. Dark chestnut hair falls round her oval face. Her eyes are wide open and gleaming, and her lips are half-parted.
“Now, let’s see what your medicine will do for you, Baron,” she says. “Do you want me to take anything more off?”
“Oh no,” says the old man. “I love those pretty drawers.” And dropping to his knees he kisses the lace hem. Then he quickly begins to unfasten the fly of his trousers.
Alas! The thing that comes forth does not look at all like the cock of a man of thirty. It is wrinkled and it droops. Gladys looks disappointed, and I laugh aloud.
“But I feel awfully wicked,” says the Baron, plaintively.
“Yes, but you’ll never get that wrinkle in,” I say. “Gladys, you must work him up.”
Gladys fingers the incompetent penis daintily, touching it dexterously, and it brightens up a little. “I think I can manage now,” says the old man.
But the moment her fingers leave his cock, it relapses. She drops on her knees and, raising it to her lips, begins to kiss it. I call to the Baron to turn round so that I can see when the veins swell. “You’ll have to jump on him quickly and ride him,” I say to Gladys while the Baron edges backward till he is sitting on the chair.
She takes me at my word, but the instant she takes her lips from the swollen bulb, the penis becomes flaccid again. The skin wrinkles up towards the top, and the Baron looks the picture of despair.
“I did my best, Marie,” says Gladys.
“Oh, I see I shall have to look to this,” I say with a laugh. “Get up on the table, Gladys, so that the Baron can have you standing up. I’ll bring him up to the scratch.”
Gladys puts a great soft cushion on the table, climbs upon it and lies down, opening her legs wide and drawing her knees up till the red lips of her cunt can be plainly seen through the opening of her drawers. The Baron looks at the dear woman’s little cunt longingly, but despairingly.
I make him stand quite close to her, then go down on my knees before him and lick his penis with my lips and tongue as only I, Marie, know how. I run my tongue over the string which holds up his foreskin, and sweep it round beneath the bulb. I let my teeth press ever so daintily upon his cock, and I feel it swelling in my mouth. I push my mouth over it till the end touches my uvula, and all the time I stroke his balls gently. I feel his thighs wriggling against my head, and then I hear him say, “That’ll do, Marie. That’ll do!”
As I withdraw my lips from the cock, which is now a cock for a man of any age to be proud of, Gladys’s waiting fingers clutch it and guide it into her cunt. When I get up I see the old Baron working into her like a much younger man.
After a few thrusts he begins to scream, a sort of falsetto neigh, like a horse, and I know the longed-for end is near. His feet are doing a sort of double shuffle as he pushes feverishly. With a sigh, he falls onto her breast and I can see his shoulders heave as he comes.
“Oh, Baron,” murmurs Gladys, “you are spending!”
I see his tongue darting into her mouth, his fingers clutching at her shoulders and, as I realize how the old man is enjoying himself, I feel quite proud of my share in his action.
He pulls it out at last, all dripping, and sinks back into a chair. I give him the whiskey and soda which I had prepared in readiness.
I throw Gladys a handkerchief. She stands up and wipes her cunt. Well, you see what sort of interruptions I am liable to get during the telling of my tale. I have written in the foregoing account of the doings of Gladys and the Baron while she has been lying exhausted in a chair. “God, Marie, I am tired,” she says, throwing her cigarette end into the fire. “The old man fucks like a young one.”
So we split a bottle of champagne and sit on the sofa with our arms around each of her, sipping it, leaving the scene with my lover in his study till the next chapter. We’re going out to dinner at Princess and I know I shall come home in a gay mood.
Gladys and your humble servant, the authoress, slip out of our dinner gowns and get out of our corsets. It’s quite early in the evening but, though the dinner was genial, we wanted to get home to our work. My little boudoir is delightfully warm and cozy. The firelight glitters on the cut-glass decanters, and the bubbles sparkle in the syphons. Gladys pushes her typewriting table up close to the fire and waits for the dictation:
Well, I am in my lover’s study, bending over him with my lips on his, so pleased to be with him again. Attention readers!
He fondled me lovingly and pulled me onto his knee. “Why haven’t you been to see me?” he asked.
“Because of what you did before.”
“It wasn’t anything serious,” he said, and I felt his hand slipping up my legs again. This time I didn’t resist. He got it up till his fingers were tickling my pussy I wore open drawers even then it was economy old ones of my mother . “Isn’t it nice?” he whispered in my ear.
“Yes, it is nice, but I don’t understand why it is!” I answered.
“This is real love, Marie what people do when they’re married.”
I don’t know how the impulse came to me, but I was impelled to put my hand between his thighs. I felt something hard under his thin football trousers, and instantly the remembrance of the great piece of flesh that had come out of another’s trousers when he lay on top of the maidservant came back to me. I felt a burning desire to see if he had the same thing too. He had both hands up my clothes now. One was feeling the cheeks of my bottom, and the other finger had entered, ever so little, into my pussy. I felt a sudden thrill, and then I felt that I was all wet down there. How I remember that day! It was the thirteenth of December never mind the year and it was the first time that I had come. I didn’t know what it was then. How many times have I come since then, I wonder?
Convulsively I gripped the hard flesh that I felt within his trousers.
“Oh, Marie,” he said suddenly. “I mustn’t get naughty today. I’ve got to play football.”
I gripped it all the tighter. I hadn’t any idea what he meant by feeling naughty and how was I to know that such a feeling would hurt his football playing? At the same time I pressed my lips on his and kissed him again and again.
As I kissed, I shifted my position till I was sitting astride his knees, and then worked myself forward till the upper part of my body was quite close to his. I wore very short skirts, only just to my knees, so of course they came up easily, leaving my thin drawers next to his football pants. But the opening at the head of the drawers let the bare flesh of my pussy press against him, and it touched exactly that spot where he had swollen so. I clutched him round the neck and wriggled delightedly.
Charley that was his name did not know very much about the arts of wickedness at that time. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that he could have a woman or make an attempt to do so, in the position that I was in then, sitting astride him. At any rate he never attempted to take his member out of his trousers.
“What is it, Charley, that’s swelling up in your trousers?” I asked.
He seemed to hesitate, and then said, rather shyly, “It’s what men have, and women haven’t. It’s the difference between men and women.” I am reminded as I write this of the women’s-rights meetings, when an austere old crow from Griton announced: “After all, the difference between men and women is only a little one,” upon which a rude man shouted out, “Three cheers for the little difference!” But I digress.
“What do you call it, dear?” I asked. It was funny that although he seemed rather timid, it never occurred to me to be shy. Of course I hardly realized the enormity of what we were doing.
“We call it a cock,” he said in an attempt to be blunt.
I was possessed with a longing to see the thing. I slipped off Charley’s lap and stood looking down at him. There was a blush on his handsome face.
“Charley,” I said, “Have you much time before the match?”
“Yes, about half an hour.”
“And no one’s likely to come in here?”
“Oh no, everyone’s at ‘call over.’ I’ve got leave off.”
“Then take your clothes off, will you? I I want to see you naked.”
“My word, Marie,” breaks in Gladys. “You had a pretty fair cheek when you were younger.”
“Well you see, I hardly knew it was wrong,” I answered. “I had been brought up entirely by men, and had had no one to tell me anything.”
“Then go on dear,” says Gladys. “Only I know that for myself I always thought that a man had a fig leaf between his thighs till I was nineteen.”
The boy seemed to hesitate. “I’ll take off mine too, if you will,” I said. “I want to see the difference!”
Without another word the dear fellow stood upright and, running his fingers down the front of his football trousers, undid the buttons and let the trousers slip down to his knees. Another little shuffle and they were at his ankles. A couple of kicks and they lay tumbled and discarded upon the floor. He stood upright now in only his boots, stockings and his jersey, which reached barely to the middle of his stomach. Another quick motion disembarrassed him of the striped jersey, and he was upright before me, stark naked save for the yellow football boots and the thick woolen stockings.
He was blushing furiously, but he stood manfully up to my curious gaze. My eyes stared straight at his cock, as he called it, which started out from the pit of his stomach. It was not very large not nearly so large as the one I had seen put into the maidservant but it was of a delicious ivory whiteness and oh, so stiff! It was about as big around as an ordinary school ruler, and four inches or so long. At its base grew great little tufts of curly brown hair, and below the delightful thing hung a little round bag of tight skin, pinky-white in color. I reached my hand out and touched it. It was very hot to the touch and quivered under my fingers.
Charley started as my hand lay on his cock. “It’s your turn now,” he cried. “Off with your clothes. You promised you would.”
I did not hesitate it was curious that I had not the slightest feeling of modest hesitation and tore off my little jacket. I wore no corsets, and the undoing of a few strings set all my things loose. To jump out of my petticoat and drawers and get my chemise over my head was the work of a moment. Then, save for my shoes and stockings, I stood as naked as he. I stood straight up, my legs a little apart, and let him look at me. My long, dark hair hung down over my shoulders, but that was my only garment. Not a blush came into my face.
We stood for a moment, staring at each other. A goodly couple we made. My figure was as nearly perfect as might be, and Charley well, he was as perfectly modeled as a statue. The muscles swelled up on his arms and legs, and upon his shoulders and chest, and above them that delicious white skin was stretching as tight as the parchment covering of a drum.
Then he rushed forward and pulled me into his arms, pressing my hot and palpitating belly to his. All my veins seemed full of a coursing blood that was charged with a madly delicious sensation. I was supremely unconscious of what the legitimate conclusion of our embrace should be. I only felt certain there must be something more some entrancing culmination.
His swelling cock thrust against my stomach, burning like a bar of heated iron, and both his hands were kneading the soft flesh of my bottom. My arms were round his shoulders, and my fingers played with the curly hair that fell on the nape of his neck. We kissed once, but he shyly drew his lips away and I felt his hot breath in my ear.
He pulled me down to sit beside him on the big armchair. He bent down so that his arm was underneath me. I could feel the two cheeks of my bottom closing upon his wrist, and his hand between my thighs. Charley’s finger his middle finger this time worked in between the lips of my pussy and began to push in and out. The sensation was glorious when I got used to it.
“Will you put your hand on my cock,” he asked, taking my fingers and twining them around the swollen piece of flesh, “and rub it up and down?”
I obeyed him without hesitation and we two sat silent, each one working at the other. I was in a dream of bliss, and I could see from the expression in his eyes, whenever I looked into his face, that he was as happy as I.
I remember that I was noticing a coincidence in the action of our knees. They were both opening and shutting quickly in time with the movement of our hands. And then I heard the door open and looked up to find someone else in the room.
A big enormous, it seemed to me then figure in football clothes stood with his back to the closed door. I recognized him at once. It was Benger, the captain of the school fifteen quite the biggest and the most important boy in the school. He was a monitor, and had about the same authority in his own house as a master.
Instinctively I ducked my head and turned it so that my hair shook over my face. I felt Charley’s finger slip from my cunt, and I could hear him shuffling his feet.
“Good God!” came in brutal tones.
“Oh, get out, Benger,” I heard Charley saying. “Please, get out of here.”
A sort of desperate courage came into my heart, and I held my head up to look him in the face. A hot flush surged up into my cheeks, and my whole body tingled as if on fire. But I still looked him straight in the face.
I could see his eyes flaming as mine stared into them. Then he slipped his hand under my arm and lifted me to my feet. I could feel his great fingers quivering on my soft flesh, and the pleasant sensation which it produced partially took away joy, fear and shame.
“Well, what have you been doing to her?” he said, speaking to Charley but still keeping his eyes on me.
“Nothing really, Benger. Nothing, I swear. Oh, do clear out and leave the poor woman alone. You can do what you like to me afterwards.”
But the great lout of a boy took no heed. He drew me close to him till my naked body pressed against his jacket. “My word, you’re a well-formed woman,” he said with a coarse chuckle. His fingers had slipped down till they were touching my breasts.
“I suppose you know this is an expulsion job, Tremlett?” the monitor said, rubbing me against him all the time. Somehow I did not feel inclined to struggle, but as I turned to look at poor Charley I was surprised to see that his little cock had lost all its stiffness and now simply hung there, limp.
“Surely you wouldn’t make a scandal of it. You can lick me afterwards, but let her…and why don’t you take your hands off her yourself? I swear I haven’t done anything serious to her. We were only playing about.”
“Well, perhaps I won’t make a scandal about it. But ” He let go of me, walked back to the door, turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket “But you aren’t going to have all the picnic to yourself.” He ran his finger down the front of his football trousers, as Charley had done, and in a moment an enormous cock was displayed before my startled eyes. It seemed about a foot long and as big around as my wrist. In a minute he had hold of me in his strong arms, on the floor beneath him. With one hand he pushed my legs apart and then I felt his tremendous cock pressing between my thighs.
“Oh, stop it, Benger!” I heard Charley say. “She could never take that enormous cock of yours.”
“We’ll see about that,” the big boy grunted. “And don’t try to interfere. Also, I’ll kick you out of the football team. I won’t hurt her.”
He got the end of his cock a tiny way within the lips of my cunt, and gave a push.
“It’s no good, I told you,” said Charley in a hushed voice, and I felt Benger pulled from me.
He made no resistance and got up. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, breathing heavily. “Don’t make a noise,”
“You’ll never get that great thing into me,” I said. “Do leave me alone.”
“Well, what did Tremlett do?” he said very gruffly.
“He only only put his finger a little way in.”
Benger looked around at Charley and my eyes followed his. I noticed that the boy’s cock was stiff again now.
“I must work it off somehow,” he said roughly.
“No, no. Think of the football, Benger,” said Charley. “Leave her alone.” The big boy had his fingers upon the tip of his cock and was agitating the end of his great thing.
All this time I experienced a delicious sense of physical pleasure from looking at the great swollen thing. I had risen to my feet and, acting on impulse, I took it in my hand and began to work it as I had worked Charley’s. He clutched one arm round me. “That’s right, dear, go on!” he said. He kissed me hotly upon the lips, and then did a thing that surprised me at that time.
Charley was standing quite close to us. Benger stretched out his free arm and pulled the boy up to him, so that their bodies touched. “You put your hand on it, too,” he said to Charley. “I want you both to toss me off together.”
Then he kissed Charley on the lips, just as he had kissed mine. It astounded me that two boys should kiss each other, but I was too excited to think. And the feeling of Charley’s hand by mine, working on the great cock, excited me more and more.
Benger had an arm round each of us now, pressing us to his sides. Between us was that great cock, with both our hands working in unison on it.
It seemed a long time but I do not suppose that it was, in all, more than a couple of minutes before the palpitating, fleshy thing gave several tremendous throbs. It stiffened till it seemed like a red-hot rod of steel in my hand and then, from the little mouth in the middle of its end, a jet of liquid stuff shot out.
“Oh, he’s spent at last, has he?” says Gladys, leaning back in her chair. “Marie, my dear, if you’re going to deal with all your amatory experiences in the same lengthy style, the Encyclopedia Britannica won’t have anything over The Confessions of Marie Carey.”
“Dear,” I answered, a little vexed for the telling of this first experience of anything really sensual in my life had excited me and I disliked the interruption “everything must have its beginning. Which do you consider the most important event in a woman’s life: her first fuck or her last?”
“I’m not at all sure,” she answers, “nor shall I be able to tell you till I come to my last which I sincerely trust will not be for a deal of years to come yet. Besides, begging your pardon, there hasn’t been much fuck about this charming episode in the study up to now. Am I to infer that…?” she bent over the machine again.
“Certainly not,” I said. “There was no fuck, as you coarsely put it, on this occasion. It’s a sentimental memory.”
“Sentimental funny name isn’t it, you and a boy frigging a great lout for all you were worth!”
“Haven’t you ever tossed a man off?”
“Of course,” answered Gladys. “But only when I was unwell and he couldn’t do anything better to me. I’d have had one of those footballers in me, Marie.”
“‘Well,’ I continued, severely ignoring the interruption, ‘Benger’s cock flung fluid all over the place.’”
Last month’s The Romances of Blanche La Mare, is part of a longer work, The Confessions of Nemesis Hunt, which is a genuine show business memoir, of sorts. The entire Nemesis Hunt story was first published in three volumes, appearing in 1902, 1903, and 1906 Blanche La Mare was the middle volume. The books emanated from a secret press in London, operated by a “Gerald N.”, according to the autobiography of Jack Smithers, son of a famous Victorian publisher of “lewd” books. The original printings are genuinely rare, and known more by reputation and legend than from actual reading. There are no sets in any of the great libraries of Europe, and to date there has been only one complete reprint, that a now scarce, three-volume illustrated version done in America around 1935, but issued with unrelated titles for each of the volumes. There have additionally been a number of incomplete and partial reprints by several erotica publishers over the last eighty years.
C.R. Dawes, in his 1934 unpublished history of English erotica, notes the publisher of Nemesis Hunt to state, “This book marks a new departure in English erotic literature. It has definite and interesting plot, and is told in able and easy language, with a distinct literary style, and whilst being free from the banalities of the ordinary English erotic book, it possesses a raciness and an intensely amusing and chatty manner, which places it far above the level of any modern work of that kind in our language.”
The author of the entire Nemesis Hunt series was most likely George Reginald Bacchus 1873-1945 , an Oxford-educated journalist who also translated foreign erotica at the same time he wrote pieces for religious weeklies. The initial background for Nemesis Hunt could well have come from his wife, the actress Isa Bowman, one of the famous Bowman Sisters of English stage fame, whom he married in 1899. His own personal experiences in the worlds of the English theater and subrosa publishing would have contributed the balance. This theory is bolstered by manuscript notes made in an unpublished erotica catalog by Lawrence Forster and from title page information that Bacchus was also responsible for three other Edwardian erotic classics: Pleasure Bound, Pleasure Bound Ashore and Maudie.
Here is an excerpt from the last of Nemesis Hunt, recounting some of the further “adventures in love and lust of a pleasurable woman on the English stage,” who has now taken the professional name of Nemesis Hunt, as a star of Restall’s Traveling Players. C.J. Scheiner, M.D.
We were playing at Liverpool and in the audience was a very august personage who, of course, must be nameless. The party came to the theatre late. As luck would have it, I was playing a principal part that night and I was rattling through in particularly good form. The theatre was crammed, everything merry and bright, and everyone complimented me on my appearance.
I noticed that I came in for a lot of attention from the box whose occupants were supposed to be incognito it was quite a fusillade of opera glasses, and when the curtain fell for the last time I saw two of the said occupants standing in the wings. Restall touched my shoulder as I was leaving the stage.
“I want you to come out to supper with me tonight, child,” he said, “with . . .” and he whispered, “but of course you must forget it afterwards.”
I was a little doubtful and told Jean. “Go! I should think you ought to go,” was his decision, “you don’t get a chance of hobnobbing with folk like that every day. Put on your nicest things, I’ll wait up.”
Restall fetched me from my room. “You haven’t told any of the girls?” he queried.
“Not one.”
“That’s a good little girl. Now this is a great compliment. He thinks a lot of you, and has sent some very complimentary messages.”
The august party occupied a suite of rooms in a big hotel, entrance to which was gained through a private door in a side street. Restall and I were met in an anteroom by two young-old men, who were with Restall, and very polite to me.
We had sherry and in a moment or two a door opened and the august personage appeared, and made himself promptly very pleasant. He spoke English with a great deal of difficulty and seemed very pleased that I spoke French. I was very nervous and frankly glad when a lady joined us.
Who she was, I did not know, but she was English and pleasant and pretty, though obviously verging on middle age. Her complexion was still fresh and the extreme d colletage of her dress showed to their fullest advantage a pair of breasts, firm, round and upstanding. The nipples were barely concealed, and she wore no shoulder straps. It was one of those dresses which was kept up with “tact and luck,” and necessitated shaving under the armpits. She soon made me feel at home.
Supper was bright and decorous Restall was amusing and I content to look nice. I suppose I succeeded for the Hereditary Grand Duke of . . . you see, readers, it was quite whom you expected never took his eyes off me, and if I know anything about glances, those eyes were telegraphic communication with a stiffly standing prick underneath to the tablecloth.
Supper over, Madame took me into an adjoining room, a cozy sort of room with subdued lights and delicate perfumes. She sank with a swish of her skirts into the corner of a luxurious divan, and lay there, showing her stockings to the garters, while she lazily lit a cigarette. I tumbled to the game in a minute when she began to pump me about my morals.
From “I suppose actresses have a great many admirers?” came a delicately graded series of questions, and more than one hint that there was expensive jewelry in the air of this particular room for any pretty, if improper, little girl who chose to go the right way about earning it. At last I surprised her by my bluntness.
“I quite understand,” I said. “His Highness wants me, and your job is to find out whether I’ll let him…well…I will.”
“You are a little angel, to save me so much trouble,” she cooed, delightedly rising to her feet and crossing to me. “His Highness is mad for you and my life has been a burden, I can tell you. Thank Heaven, this party is arranged at last. No one will ever know, and his Highness, you may be sure, will not be mean.”
“It isn’t that…” I began.
“No, no, I dare say not, my dear but valuable presents of jewelry are always acceptable to the most moral of us, and especially when they come from Royal Dukes “
“But I mustn’t say ” I interrupted.
“Oh, yes, you may…If I know Henri, you will find some little inscription about your art that will make the display of your present quite all right. Henri is no novice…but seriously, he is a great deal in love with you and stop me if I anger you if I were you, I would let him get me with child. If the result is anything like its royal father, you may find yourself mother of a Duke. Things like that still happen in southeastern Europe.”
I laughed and blushed but the idea commended itself to me.
“Well, dear, don’t think of me only as procuress,” whispered Madame, kissing me lovingly. “You won’t regret this, and Henri is no mean performer either I can vouch for that. You’ll find the bedroom through these curtains.” And with a laugh, she slipped from the room.
In the bedroom I found everything the most fastidious woman might want. I came into the sitting room. Whether I was expected to undress and wait in bed, I do not know, but at any rate I did not. Royal Highness or not, he must make some kind of a bluff at lovemaking before he got me.
A huge mirror confronted the corner of the divan that Madame had just vacated, and there I arranged myself not too suggestively but with an air of comfortable naughtiness which should tell a man that his evening was not going to be wasted.
The divan was covered with an immense bear skin and my flesh showed very white against the dead black of the fur. I drank two glasses of cr me de menthe and lit a perfumed cigarette. When in the bedroom I had withdrawn most of the pins from my head, so that very little disarrangement would allow my hair to fall in all its glory. Thus I waited.
He was a long time and my cunt moistened with anticipation. That I did not wish and I had only finished wiping it dry again, when the door opened to admit his Highness.
“At last I may tell you, adorable little English girl, how I have admired your acting at the theater,” he murmured, his lips almost touching my ear and his hot breath causing a delicious excitement to my naked throat.
“Your praise is “
I was interrupted again. His Highness put his arm around my waist while his other hand began to toy with my breasts. I made no resistance and his lips pursued mine, which were instantly joined in a long, luscious kiss. I slipped further and further on my back and was almost in a horizontal position when the kiss came to an end.
My legs were opened wide and I was ready to be fucked, but he pulled me back in a sifting posture, knelt by my side and for the first time I had a sight of the royal prick, and a very decent-size one it was. He had guided my hands to it, throwing back his head with a faraway look in his eyes, and as my fingers played with it, his whole body quivered. Then, with a touch of his hand, he bent my head down. I took the hint, and my lips and tongue were soon busy with the throbbing gland.
He seemed to go mad with pleasure his fingers feverishly toyed with my hair his body twisted in every direction. He moaned, almost screamed. His prick stiffened till it seemed like cast iron.
“Suck it!” he cried.
I did.
“Harder! Harder!”
I sucked it as hard as I could, never for a moment relaxing the lightning movements of my tongue. His fingers left my hair and played with my ears, my cheeks, the corners of my lips, even as they quivered round his burning penis. At last they caught my breasts and each little hard, standing nipple was caressed by his fingers. His prick stiffened to such an alarming extent that I knew the end was near. A violent convulsion of the body, an upward jerk of the prick and my mouth was filled with spurt after spurt of semen.
As for me, I wanted to be fucked, willing enough as I was to play the gamahuche game, but my cunt actually ached for relief. I had no thought whatever for Jean during the evening.
Anybody could have fucked me at that moment, but particularly did I want the royal member now, alas, dangling rather weakly against his trousers.
His Highness crossed to a little table, filled two brimming glasses of champagne from an open bottle, which I had not perceived. Was it possible that someone, Madame for instance, had entered while I was sucking him?
We talked very little. I fondled his hair and face while his hands wandered nervously over my calves. Occasionally I let my fingers fall on his inert cock and a little flicker rewarded me.
But I was too hot for dalliance. I flung my body over his, thrust my tongue into his mouth, and at the same time violently frigged his shrunken prick. It had the desired result. He stiffened and thrust me from him.
“Undress, my adorable little darling!” he whispered.
Standing before him, I did so, slowly and deliberately, allowing his lustful eyes to gloat severally over the varied charms that came to view.
I showed my breasts first as I flung the corsets and stood with only a transparent chemise around me, and as that slipped to my feet, he stood up, his cock rampant, and pressed my naked body to him.
I pulled his tie undone and jerked the collar from its studs. Presently I felt his trousers slipping and I pulled them eagerly to his ankles, lifted his feet and got rid of the tiresome things. To ease him of the rest of his things did not take long, and there we were, both naked.
In a moment he was fucking me in the usual way, flat on my back, with my legs twisted around his calves, his arms around my back, mine around his, his cock banged in up to the hilt, his tongue in my mouth, working for all he knew.
It was a short, sharp fuck, a strong animal feeling pervading it from start to finish no brain excitement purely pleasure, the fuck that means children as a rule. We both spent together and, remembering Madame’s injunction about getting in the family way, I was anxious lest he carry me into the bedroom and introduce me to the syringe so I feigned faintness and fell back helplessly on the couch.
My exalted lover was most concerned he bathed my forehead with brandy, and began to get nervous, so I judged it best to recover, lest he summon Madame to his aid. With a sigh and a nicely spoken “Where am I?” I gently came to.
After that we went to bed. His Highness assured me that no one would know of my staying there for the night, which meant, I suppose, that everyone would know, but no one would dare say anything. There was no more fucking. The room was deliciously warmed and we slept naked, clasped in each other’s arms, but barring a prolonged kissing of my body, which included a short journey of his tongue up my cunt, there was no more sexual familiarity.
When I awoke, a stray beam of light through the shutter illumined the clock face and showed that it was mid-day. I sat up with a start, disengaging myself from the bare arms that were still around me. My royal lover came to his senses with a grunt.
“I must go!” I said.
“But you must have breakfast…” as I seemed to be about to leave the bed. I was really rather scared of Jean, now that I had come to my proper senses, and wanted to be back and explaining. “No, no, my dearest precious one you shall not go till it is full time for the theatre to begin once more. No, it is useless to protest.”
I let myself be pulled back on his naked hairy breast and kissed lovingly. I suffered his vagrant hand to play with my cunt, which did not feel particularly saucy it wasn’t awake at present, but I
suffered him to draw my hand to his prick, which was swollen to a considerably greater extent than the night before. I resigned myself to the morning fuck but nothing more happened.
“We must have tea and things,” he said, “but I cannot summon my man.”
“I’ll get up and go,” I volunteered.
“No, no, darling,” he answered, “I have not begun to enjoy you yet.”
“Well, I will hide in the bathroom, while you ring for your man.”
“No, no,” he pressed me to him and his prick seemed so stiff that I thought it would stab into my stomach. “Would you mind, darling, if Madame Kahn…she suspects, you may guess if Madame were to come?”
“Of course, I know she knows,” I laughed, “Madame has to find you all your little delights, is it not so?”
“Ah, Madame, she collects for me the spectacle of young ladies who cuddle each other, till 1 spend at the sight, young ladies who toy with each other’s naked bodies. . . but enough, I excite myself too much. If you wish, Madame shall find a spectacle which you shall see also.”
I was possessed of a feeling of lazy naughtiness by this time. I thought it would be very nice to see the spectacle, but kept my modesty. “Oh, no,” I whispered, breathing hotly into his ear, “but I don’t mind if she comes in here.”
There was a little telephone at the side of the bed and a momentary conversation elicited the fact that Madame Kahn would be with us in a moment.
His Highness would not allow me to put anything on and we were both stark naked when she came in. We sipped and nibbled. At last he finished, and to my surprise, got up from the bed and walked naked, his penis rampant, across to the table where the champagne bottle was.
“Serge,” cried Madame, “but you are marvelously fit this morning.”
“It is what you have brought me that has done it,” he answered, and coming to the bedside he flung off the clothes and showing me all bare, pressed a hot kiss to my cunt.
As I lay there quivering, all on fire for filth, Madame toyed with me, her dexterous fingers running all over my body.
His Highness pulled her from me, and dragged off her bodice from her, exposing too her naked breasts, not such a good sight as mine but very tempting. She flung herself on the bed by my side and grappled me the contact of her warm flesh sent flames of desire all through me. The Prince came back to the bed and between them rolled me from side to side, kissing me everywhere, licking my flesh. I think that Madame thrust her tongue further down my cunt than anyone ever had before.
It was glorious I panted for lust my hands flew over their bodies, now gripping his throbbing cock now dipping into her sweltering cunt. His Highness pressed two of my fingers together and pushed them into her cunt, then licked the moisture from it. Occasionally a drop appeared at the end of his penis, which I kissed away, but he would delay the fuck. For myself, I could scarcely count the number of times I had spent the moisture was streaming down my legs, and Madame was in a like plight.
At last he freed himself from me.
“Put the cushions under her!” he said huskily to Madame.
She waited while she undressed altogether, and then lifted my willing body and piled the cushions beneath me till my arse was lifted high above my head.
Then she sat herself behind me and I felt her warm body supporting mine, her knees around my waist, her arms clutched about me, her wet cunt oozing against a cheek of my bottom. It was a delicious position. She was herself backed up with pillows so that she half reclined with my body resting on her stomach, and his Highness, his cock almost at bursting point, stood and surveyed us
It could not last long. I put my hands behind me and drove two fingers into her cunt for very wickedness. My legs were opened wide and I felt as if my whole body were one great gasping cunt.
His Highness lit a cigar even in my anger at further delay, I could not help noticing the wonderful aroma. He blew the perfumed smoke over our bodies, while his hands slowly caressed me. He straddled over my expectant body, pressing his taut cock against my belly while he kissed the face of the woman behind me. Her hands were now messing with my cunt, and the smell of the escaping semen mingled with that of the cigar, and the delicate breath of the perfumes with which Madame’s body was covered. Would he never come to the point, I thought. I would not ask, but all my quivering body begged for fucking, and he knew it!
He then lay upon me his legs between mine and discussed with Madame the many beauties of my body, and well, at last he had me. We spent mutually. Madame then took me to the bathroom and bathed my tired body in scented water till new life glowed in it.
In another hour I was dressed. A caviar sandwich and a cocktail and Madam espirited me to the coach. His Highness, she said, would meet us at the L and N.W.R. Hotel presently.
His Highness picked me up and we had a bracing drive, only just returning in time for me to go straight to the theatre. I met Jean in the passage.
“Well,” he said, “what happened? You didn’t come home I waited up.”
“I wasn’t well,” I answered, “and thought it better to stop over for the night.”
“That means that you slept with the Prince?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Come into my room.”
When we were alone, he pulled me on his knee and slid his hand up my clothes suddenly. “Those are not your drawers,” and he drew my skirt up.
I had forgotten, they were some that Madame Kahn had given me and what was worse they had a coronet embroidered on them.
“You did sleep with him?”
“Oh, well, if you must know: Yes, I did! One doesn’t get the chance of sleeping with royal princes every day and it doesn’t make any difference to my love for you, Jean.”
“Oh, I don’t mind, it’s all in the business what did he give you?”
“Nothing.”
“You damned little fool do you mean to say you slept with a Prince and got nothing nothing?”
That nettled me and I left in a temper I was beginning to find Jean out.
I had no chance to speak to Restall during the first act but he glanced quizzically at me. Going to my room in the interval, the hall keeper said there was a Commissaire to see me. The man wore the livery of a London hotel. “I’ve come from London to bring you this, Miss,” he said. “Will you give me a receipt, Miss?”
I gave him a receipt, and opened the parcel and found a velvet case which I opened. A collar of pearls, black and white intermixed and obviously of enormous value. The clasp was a medallion of blue enamel, heavily set with diamonds and inscribed in small but very white diamonds: “To N.H. in remembrance of her delightful performance.” It was a magnificent present and the double entendre of the inscription pleased me.
Halfway through Act Two, I changed to a prince’s costume. With that I could wear the collar. The prince, Madame Kahn and a young man were in the box, and I longed to wear it. There was a general gasp of astonishment in the dressing room when I put it on.
“Wherever did you get that? Why, it must be worth thousands.”
I said an old admirer had sent it from London. As I was waiting in the wings for my cue, Restall bustled up to me. “Well, dear,” he whispered, “how did it go?” I pointed to my collar and at that instant a shaft of light from the opposite side illuminated the beautiful jewels. “Good God, child, it is worth a fortune whatever did you do to him?”
“If I show you, will you take it as payment of a commission?”
“Rather, tonight?”
“No, wait till Sunday night, when we are not tired,” and I pinched his thigh.
Presently a little note came from His Highness.
“Dear Child:
“The trifle becomes you well. I leave tonight for London. Send your permanent address to the Legation. We must not lose sight of each other.”
When I next went on the stage, the box was empty. As the curtain fell, Restall stopped me. “You mustn’t take that thing home, child it’s dangerous. Meet me in the bar and we’ll put it in the theatre safe till you are back in London.”
From Liverpool we were to cross to Doyglas, another sea voyage. “Going to be a dirty night, I’m afraid,” said one of our comedians.
“Speak for yourself,” was the answer: “I’m going to sleep alone.”
“No actors need apply.” Not many people today can remember when this type of notice was common in front of apartment buildings and rooming houses. The sad fact is that in this country and around most of the world, up until the twentieth century, professional actors, entertainers, “show folk,” and all others of the same ilk who “tripped the boards” were for the most part regarded with extreme suspicion, and held in very low esteem.
Entertainers men and women , especially those associated with traveling circuses and carnivals, were equated with con artists at times with justification . Actresses were placed on the same par as prostitutes and indeed, some did perform that function between theatrical engagements. It also did not help that many actual “working girls” then and now would refer to themselves as actresses when asked their occupation.
No wonder then that entertainers have been the subject of so many well known erotic books. The Loves of a Musical Student, The Memoirs of Pauline the Prima Donna, Crissie: A Music Hall Sketch and Aurora Trill are just a few examples which “justify” the moral prejudice against actors and singers. To these we can add The Romances of Blanche La Mare, a turn-of-the-twentieth-century “autobiography” of an actress.
The Romances of Blanche La Mare is actually part of a trilogy entitled The Confessions of Nemesis Hunt, but more about that next month. Here then is an excerpt, in which the author, having assumed the stage name of Blanche La Mare, recounts an episode that demonstrates why entertainers had such an unsavory reputation at the time. C.J. Scheiner, M.D.
Theatrical folks, one of whom I now propose to be, inhabited principally, I had heard, strange and unknown lands across the water, called Kennington and Camberwell and Brixton. I had never been on the Surrey side of the Thames in my life, and had no intention of going there now. So, possibly very extravagantly, I determined to set myself up in the West End. My little costumiere, Eloise’s friend, who had so kindly given me credit, lived close by in Jermyn Street, and it occurred to me that I might get a room there.
I will skip all further details of my life in London till the Herbert Restall Company got away on tour. We were to open at Oxford and the “train call” was for Paddington, eleven-thirty one Sunday morning. I turned up early, unaccompanied, for Madame Karl had gone out to supper the night before, and had not returned perhaps as a little revenge for my absences.
Still, I was not the first on the platform, and I soon got to learn that the habit of theatrical companies was to arrive very early at the station, and exhibit their best frocks. I had my best frock on, and I’m certain it was the best in the company. Herbert Restall cast an admiring glance at me when he arrived. He did not speak to me, and I noted the reason: his wife, an angular lady past fifty, and of forbidding and nonconformist type of countenance, followed him everywhere.
Annesley found me the train, and he found me also the acting manager, who was engaged in gumming labels on the carriage windows labels indicative of the compartments to be occupied by various members of the company. I was not put to travel with the chorus ladies, but with the two “Sisters Knock,” the dancers, to whom also Annesley introduced me. We all repaired to the bar together, in which pleasant spot were assembled the majority of the company, some seventy all told.
When we arrived at Oxford I was undecided where to stay. Being quite in ignorance of theatrical tours and living arrangements, I had intended to go to a hotel. Certainly my salary was only thirty-five shillings a week, but I had a little spare cash. The genial sisters Knock, however, quickly disabused me of that. “Come and stop with us, old dear,” they said, “don’t go putting up at hotels and making folks think you’re a tart before they can prove it.” And so I went.
The rooms were rather a shock, small and meanly furnished. The mural decorations consisted of a religious tract and lithographs, and the landlady was as dirty as she was familiar. But the sisters seemed to think they were in clover. “Old Ma Osborne’s a bit of all right,” explained one of them. “Doesn’t mind who we have in, or what we do, and that’s saying something in a place like Oxford.”
When the question of dinner was mooted, old Ma Osborne grinned, “Well, me dears,” she said, “I haven’t worried about getting you any dinners, because, knowing your like and your habits, I’ve took the liberty of telling Lord Hingley of the house, which is Christ Church College, me dear, that he might be at liberty to call. And Lord Hingley, me dears, will see as how you have a better dinner than I might be able to offer to you here.”
I was inclined to be annoyed, but held my peace.
Maude Knock the one with the mole became businesslike at once.
“Many thanks, Mrs. Osborne,” she said, “but who is Lord Hingley? He’s not on my visiting list.”
“Is he all right?” chipped in the moleless sister. “None of your courtesy title paupers, eh, what?”
“All right that I would say he is. Ten thousand a year he has, as I should know, dearies, my husband being his scout for nigh on two years in college, and as generous a gentleman as ever was.”
The sisters Knock nodded assent, and Ma Osborne retired, beaming.
The highly recommended Lord Hlngley presently made his appearance accompanied by his friend, Mr. Charles Latimer apparently they had only reckoned on two, and I saw breakers ahead, for, without conceit, I knew well enough that neither of the sisters could hold a candle to me in looks, or in any sort of attraction.
We were conveyed in cabs to Mr. Latimer’s room. Mr. Latimer was a rich young gentleman, son of the famous brewer of that name, and he occupied the most elegant apartments. He was plain but well groomed, and very well dressed. Despite his origin he was a gentleman. Lord Hingley was nice looking, if rather stupid, and obviously rather too fond of drink. They were both scrupulously polite to us girls. We had a most admirable dinner, cooked and served in a style which would not have disgraced a smart West End restaurant, and we all of us drank rather too much champagne, to say nothing of subsequent liquors. Still nothing happened, and the men made no attempt at lovemaking. The sisters obliged at the piano, and so did I, and after I had done so, Lord Hingley contrived to get me alone in a corner.
“I say,” he stammered, “you’re a lady, aren’t you?”
“I’m certainly not a man.”
“But don’t joke you aren’t like the others. How did you come to be living with Maude and Mabel?”
“Because they are my friends.”
The poor boy became very nervous, so I explained, “I am a lady by birth, but who I am and how I came to be here, I don’t care to have anybody know. If I told you my father’s name, you would probably know.”
But he squeezed my hand, not as a man would squeeze the hand of a chorus girl tart, and I knew that he was in love, the first young man of title who had loved me. He likewise made an appointment for the following day, to meet at the Queen’s Restaurant for lunch, a drive, and a hasty little dinner at his own rooms to follow he lived out of college .
I went down to the theatre on the following morning the first time I had entered a theatre as a member of a theatrical company. Early as I was, several of the girls were there before me, and the best places in the dressing room, which was to contain six of us, were taken.
There were the twin sisters Knock Lily Legrand, a show lady of more or less mature age, but undeniable charm of figure and little Bertha Vere, Restall’s mistress, who was not, however, allowed any special privileges in the company because of her relationship to the “Guvnor.” I had to hang my clothes up in the middle of the room, and do without a looking glass. My brand new makeup box occasioned great joy among the other girls, who all appeared to have come with the tiniest remnants of the necessary powders and pigments.
My first day in Oxford also my first day on tour was fairly uneventful. I went out to lunch with my lordling friend, but he treated me with extreme courtesy, to say nothing of a very good lunch, I found out afterwards that Oxford boys, while always delighted to get to know any actress on the road, expect little in return for their hospitality. My young man did not even attempt to kiss me, though we sat for a long time in his rooms after lunch I think that he was even rather shocked that I smoked.
When I got back to my lodging I found the sisters Knock there, back also from a luncheon party. They had brought on my letters from the theatre. One of them was from the poet, and of a distinctly improper nature. Its pretty indelicate imagery, and a most sensual drawing by an artist friend which was enclosed, brought so much moisture on my legs that I had to get upstairs and wash before I dared face the semi-public undressing of the theatre dressing room.
As the majority of the company had appeared in The Drum Major before, we had no dress rehearsal, and I had not even seen my costumes till I got to the theatre that night. The Drum Major was a “tights play,” and all the girls in our room wore those fascinating garments. I was rather anxious to see how the legs of the other girls looked. Mine, I knew, were all right, a little on the small side perhaps, but quite perfectly modeled. I could submit to the difficult task of inserting a three-penny piece between my naked thighs when placed together, and keeping it there, I had also silk tights, a present from Mr. Annesley, who had informed me that the management considered cotton good enough for the chorus. He had found out the color of my dresses, and had these made for me.
The girls in the room displayed little delicacy. Maude undressed stark naked, and walked about the room rubbing herself down with a towel. Her figure was good. Shapely legs, if perhaps a little too muscular to satisfy the artist who takes his ideal from the ancient Greek statues, but that was the fault of her dancing training. A firm, rather brownish skin, but without wrinkles, and round breasts with scarlet nipples. Her arms were also muscular, and she had the hair under her armpits shaved off, though a great abundance of dark luxurious hair curled round the lips of her cunt and blossomed up onto her stomach.
Lilly Legrand kept her vest on while putting on her tights, not omitting, however, to show the hair on the lower portion of her body, and the sexual organ underneath Mabel Knock stripped boldly to the buff, and displayed a figure which was almost an exact counterpart of her sister’s, but she was more modest, and turned her back on us while she hurriedly slipped into her tights. Little Bertha, Restall’s mistress, was far more discreet, and got into her leg attire under cover of other garments. The reason for that was, I afterward discovered, that she padded. I was also as modest as might be, and immediately aroused the suspicion of the eldest Knock girl that I had come to the theatre with my pads on, a common enough practice with some chorus girls who are ashamed of letting their companion tarts know that nature had not been altogether kind to them. She took me by surprise, and ran her hand all over my legs. “Genuine,” she pronounced, with a laugh, and Bertha looked envious.
I was one of the officers. It was a military play, and I had to open the show with five others, headed by our captain, a very dapper little lady who was the principal boy of the play. When I first walked onto the stage, I could hardly see for fear luckily I was placed last . I felt practically naked as the music surged in my ears, and it was only when I heard the other girls break into the surging melody of the song that I regained enough self-possession to join them. However, in half an hour I was all right, and got the brace of lines allotted to me off swimmingly.
The piece went well Restall was in great form, and was ably backed up by his leading lady, a well known exponent of soubrette parts. In the third act he was at his very best, but I had an awkward moment when he selected me as the other half of an impromptu gag scene. To his great surprise, I answered him back and got a big laugh for myself. When the show was over, and he had taken numerous calls, he stopped me on the stage. “Clever little girl,” was the comment. “We’ll do that again tomorrow. Come up to my room when you’re dressed, and we’ll have a little drink and a little rehearsal.”
I was naturally elated, but the other girls laughed and more than hinted that I was wanted for something very different from a business chat.
However, he began in a businesslike enough manner, complimented me on the way I had made his gag go, and in his quiet, incisive, clever way, suggested the necessary outlines of working it up.
Then he asked me to sit down and gave me a whiskey and soda. I noticed that his eye was devouring my charms with a hungry gleam. He began to let his conversation get rather frisky, and then boldly praised various portions of my body, my legs, my waist, and my breasts even. I finished my drink quickly and got up to go, but as I rose he followed me and clasped me in his arms before I had moved a step. I felt a passionate kiss on my throat, and his hand pressed roughly against the lower part of my stomach.
I protested and struggled, for I had no wish to make myself cheap in his eyes by an easy surrender. However, nothing was of any avail. He did not prolong the struggle, but calmly locked the door and proceeded to talk the matter over.
His arguments were pretty matter of fact. He was altogether carried away by my beauty, he said, and was mad to enjoy me, “What harm was done?” he argued, and he added that he could be a very good friend to me.
Of course, in the end I surrendered, and then came a very improper piece of business. Restall’s costume necessitated skin-tights, without any trunks, and, in case of any untoward swelling, he had his penis bound to his stomach. So, when he had slipped off his tights, this curious arrangement met my astonished eyes and he made me undo the wrapping till a fine stalwart member sprang from its bounds. I was surprised at its size and condition, for Restall was a man of over fifty who had lived every day of his life. His position had brought him into contact with thousands of girls who were only too ready to submit to overtures, and, if rumor was to be trusted, he had availed himself of every opportunity. Also he was a drunkard I don’t suppose he had gone to bed sober any night for the last twenty-five years.
When once we got to business I was randy enough. There was no sofa, and the floor looked rather dirty, so he had me straddlewise across his knees, easing me down onto him till I had his penis within me right up to its hairy hilt. He grabbed me frightfully tight to him and fucked me quite fiercely, but there was something in his savagery which delighted me. When it was over he drained a tremendously stiff whiskey and soda and then sat back in the only big chair in the room, “Well, you’d better be back to your room,” he said after a minute. “The girls will be suspicious.”
“I thought as much,” I answered rather angrily. “You’ve had all you want from me, and want to get rid of me.”
He became quite tender on the instant, and assured me that he meant nothing of the kind, only he was nervous lest I should be suspected of overfamiliarity with him. In fact he became so tenderly solicitous that he took me in his arms and kissed me. He became naughty again, and the dirty beast fucked me again.
Nothing much of great interest happened during our three-day stay at Oxford we were only allowed half a week by the university authorities, in accordance with the wise regulation that more than three days of the society of any particular set of musical comedy sirens is bad for the peace of mind of the undergraduates. I went out to all meals, some with my lordling, and some with the friends of Miss Sarel, the leading lady, who had graciously deigned to take me up. She was a bright, pretty little thing, quite passably clever, of a naughty temperament, and very much on the make, as the theatrical saying goes she came out of Oxford with one or two valuable presents in the jewelry line.
I was always stared at in the street, but the stare was not the sensual glance of the man-about-town, who feels his cock raised at the appearance of an attractive female, but the simple admiration of a healthy young mind. Not that everything of a sensual nature was absent from our little stay to say nothing of that already recounted scene in Restall’s dressing room for I experienced the beginning of a love affair.
One night the sisters Knock brought home the tenor of the company to supper. Jean Messel was a strikingly handsome man, about thirty-five or so, I supposed, whose dark features betrayed a foreign origin. He had often eyed me at the theatre, but we had never spoken till this party. On this occasion, however, he found courage to press my hand, and, later, to snatch a kiss. That kiss set me on fire. I had known well enough before the delights of a sensual feeling, but never a sensual feeling coupled with love. I dreamed of him all night, and the next morning when we met at the station, and exchanged some commonplace greeting, I experienced the sensation known as blushing all over.
I did not continue in lodgings with the sisters Knock. Some little unpleasantness over my intimacy with the young Lord had arisen, to say nothing of my obvious attraction for Jean Messel, so at our next stop, which was Manchester, I chummed with a Miss Letty Ross, who played the third principal part. Miss Ross had many acquaintances among the wealthy manufacturers of the north: fat, jolly, middle-aged men, with any amount of money, which they enjoyed spending, and a great deal of which found its way into the pockets of the pretty little tarts of the various wandering companies. They wanted very little for their money, and I was glad for it, for my passion for the tenor produced a longing in my heart to remain quite chaste. Still one cannot exactly accept a diamond bangle for nothing, and more than once little Blanche suffered herself to be extended on the sofa of a private hotel room, her dainty clothes elevated till the exposure of her naked charms caused some great Lancashire cock to crow lustily with anticipation. How hard they fucked, those north country merchants, and what quantities of sperm they spent, but they spent quantities of money, too, bless their enlarged hearts. At the time I grew very frightened of getting in the family way those lusty devils were just the sort of men to get me caught, and I could not help a reciprocal spend when they came.
At Edinburgh, we boldly went to one of the best hotels, trusting to our fortune to find a mug to settle our bills, and sure enough we did find one, in the guise of a well-known whiskey distiller. He was staying in the same hotel and took on the two of us, first Letty and then myself. I was not jealous, for it gave me a rest, and I was really sweet to him on my nights. He swore his cock had never, never felt such pleasure. He was nearly sixty, but he had never been sucked off, so I cleaned his cock up one night, and taught him that. He nearly went off his head with joy.
On the Saturday night after an uncommonly good supper, and too many liquors, the old man falteringly asked if we two would mind his coming to bed with both of us. He had done so well during the week that we had not the heart to say no. We arranged for him to come to our bedroom in half an hour, when we should be undressed, but our door was barely closed behind us when in he slipped blushing like a schoolboy detected in a fault, begging to undress us himself.
He went for me first I was wearing a three-quarter-length frock that night, and the dear old gentleman got excited over it. I didn’t raise a hand to help him, and he stripped me right to the buff. After he got me out of my bodice, his frenzied cock was nearly bursting his trousers, and when he had got me down to my drawers and vest, the poor panting thing had to be relaxed. I gave it just one pat with my hand and the spend flew all over me, covering my body right up to my neck. He was disconsolate, and Letty was angry and said it was unfair to start so soon. But Blanche was equal to the occasion, I sponged myself clean, did the same to his cock, told Letty to tongue his mouth, and we very soon had him stiff. Then he finished my undressing, till I sat in all my naked beauty on the bed before him.
He was so randy that he would have liked to fuck me again, then and there, but Letty naturally interfered. There was such a beautiful fire in the room that we both lay naked on the bed while our old friend tore off his clothes as if he was undressing for a swimming race against time. Funnily enough, though I often slept with Letty, not till that moment had I the least physical desire for her, but the filthiness of the whole scene overpowered me. I rolled over on the top of her, feverishly fingered her pretty body and covered her lips with hot kisses, which she returned in no halfhearted spirit. In a trice I had a finger up her cunt, so that ingress was barred to the old man. Next moment, however, he was up me from behind, his arms gripping both our bodies, and he came in me while my lips were glued to Letty’s and all my lust was for her. Still, he must have had a good fuck, for I was wriggling my stomach against hers like a fury. Even when he had finished I was filthily randy. I drew my finger, all covered with spend from Letty’s cunt, and made him lick it clean, an innovation in sin which he thoroughly enjoyed.
Subsequently he fucked Letty and myself once more, and that finished him. He shambled back to his bedroom, while Letty and I, after a hot bath together, had one delicious bout of mutual cunt-sucking, then fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Next morning when the bill was presented, our old friend had something of a shock, but he could not, after the events of the previous night, make any complaint. I fancy the one hundred and two whiskies and sodas worried him. Of course, we didn’t give it away that we had had all our friends in during the daytime, while he was at his business, and he thoroughly believed we had slipped all that intolerable deal of liquor down our own fairy throats. He paid us the compliment of remarking that there wasn’t a bonnie lass from Maidenkierk to John of Groats that could have done the like.
All this time I barely had an opportunity of seeing my dark-eyed Jean Messel. His wife, who figured in the bills as Miss Henden, became suspicious and never let him out of her sight. She wasn’t a bad little woman, and on the stage she looked very nice, but what a fake. To begin with, she wore lifters to give her an added inch in height. When she went on the stage her legs were entirely encased in shapes, and even in ordinary walking dress she sported hip pads. Her bust well, one night I got wet coming to the theatre and wanted a change of stockings, and every available stocking had that woman stuffed into her bodice. She even padded her arms, for she wore tightly-fitting, transparent sleeves, and the flesh-colored pads that showed through had the appearance of the most fascinating rounded arms. She wore a yard of false hair, and what she had of her own was dyed. Her teeth, I need scarcely add, were removable at desire. Some of the girls used to question whether she had a false cunt or not.
One night Jean and I got a chance to walk home from the theatre together, while she was at home ill. We came by a shortcut through a mean street, lit only by an occasional lamp, and towered over by gaunt, stark walls. We were quite alone, for it was late and very dark, and the neighborhood had a dangerous reputation. There was no noise save a taint flip-flop of water, and presently we came to a place where the river was lazily licking a flight of stone steps. It was an eerie place, and I started nervously, brushing my shoulder against my companion. The next moment his arms were gripping me to him, and my lips had sought his. I was willing enough to have let him have me, there and then, but presently he pushed me from him.
“Little Darling.” he said, “next week my wife will not be with us. Shall we live in the same house?”
I said, “Yes,” with a kiss he saw me to my hotel door, and we parted.
In 1778, Fanny Burney published Evelina, a quickly popular novel which told the tale of its eponymous heroine and her search for happiness in eighteenth century London. Like the French novel of the same era, Les Liaisons Dangereuses more familiar, perhaps, to modern audiences as the film Dangerous Liaisons , Evelina was told in the epistolary style common at that time, using a series of letters to and from the heroine to propel the plot. Burney recounted a Cinderella story of poverty, peril and eventual rescue by a loving, gentle and wealthy suitor. As the novel ended, Evelina and her Prince Charming were married.
Author Aphra Behn picks up the story where the original left off and faithfully mimics Burney’s style as she details the adorably innocent Evelina’s defloration by her worldly, adoring groom. Utterly ignorant of and unprepared for the demands of the marital bed, the Evelina we meet here is a fast learner with an eager tutor. Thanks to the subtle skill and patience of her new husband, Evelina soon learns that performing a wife’s “duty” can provide blissful pleasures of the spirit and the flesh that she had never dreamed were possible. We join the newly married pair as they travel to spend their honeymoon at the home of the worthy clergyman who reared the penniless orphan from infancy. E. McK.
LETTER XXV
Lady Orville to Miss Mirvan
Berry Hill, October 18
My sweet Maria cannot know, cannot imagine from what an abundance of happiness I write. If only she were with me, nay, if only she were wedded to a man as dear to her heart as my darling Orville is to mine, my happiness would be complete.
You saw how overcome with feeling I was during our last breakfast together at Clifton Hill, and you know the cause: so few days allowed to pass between Lord Orville’s declaration and the moment when I became his bride, and those few days compassing also the hour of my first meeting with my father! Could I be other than overcome? Without the tender attentions of my dearest Orville, I don’t know how I would have borne it, but, oh Maria, was there ever a man so attentive and so good!
When he handed me into the chaise I was in the greatest confusion. To be alone in a coach with a man, and that man my Lord Orville, and he my husband and the entire possessor of my heart I no more knew where to put my eyes than what to say. But he, while seeming to take no notice of my extreme confusion, talked in the mildest way about the weather and the road we had the curtains open for the day was mild so that I entirely forgot myself in the pleasure of his conversation. In all the intimacy of our long ride in the chaise, he took none of those liberties which he might have done, save only to hold my hand in his, calling it the most precious gift ever bestowed on a man. My Lord Orville, never mentioning the fact that I neither breakfasted this morning nor dined yesterday from a too-great agitation that quite overpowered my appetite, soon I signaled his man to stop at an inn. Seated with Lord Orville at a table he had them place in a little garden, I found that I could almost eat as he wished me to do, and I was more composed as we reentered the chaise for the second leg of our journey.
It was not very late when we stopped at an inn to dine. Lord Orville gave them some particular instructions, then invited me to join him in a short walk while our meat was dressed, saying that the village was very pretty. Don’t laugh at me, my darling Maria, when I avow that it may have been the prettiest village in Somerset but I know nothing of it. I had eyes only for my Lord Orville, ears only for his voice.
Upon regaining the inn we were shown up to a private parlor where a fire was lit and a table laid. But, Maria, you may well believe that my appetite quite forsook me when, soon after we were seated, my Lord avowed his intention of stopping the night at this inn. Oh, Maria, the prospect of my wedding night would have seemed awful even in familiar surroundings imagine, then, how frightened I was, how I longed to be at Berry Hill, or at Howard Grove, where I could have been supported through the evening by dear Mrs. Mirvan and Lady Howard, who are always so good to me. I believe I trembled.
“Does my darling Evelina,” said he, “repent the haste in which she has become my bride?”
“How can I repent what was deemed right by your Lordship and by my father?” I answered, not able to meet his eyes.
Then for the first time I felt his arms close around me as I was drawn onto his lap and into his embrace. He kissed me. Oh Maria, no words can describe the sweetness of a husband’s kiss. It is sweeter than honey and more transporting than the most beautiful dream. I scarce knew how to breathe when he took me in his arms and kissed me, and could no more have dared look into his face than have braved a raging bull. Lord Orville took my chin in his hand, turning it so I must look up at him, but I lowered my eyes until they almost closed, too abashed to meet his. He took this as consent and his lips met mine in another kiss. His kisses do not stop, Maria! They continue on, deeper and wider, his tongue plays over my lips, probes me as I open to receive his advance until lips, tongues and the very beating of our hearts mingle leaving me breathless with confusion.
When I finally dared open my eyes, I found that his smile met my gaze, and sighed in contentment.
“Now that my darling Evelina has had her first kiss, can she still regret becoming so soon my own?”
“Oh, but your Lordship has kissed me before!” I cried, absurdly eager to assert some shred of self-possession.
“Have I indeed?”
“Yes, you…you kissed my cheek, in the arbor at Clifton Hill.” He quizzed me by pretending not to remember, but you know he did kiss me, the morning after Mr. Villars sent his blessing to our marriage.
“Then your Ladyship will not object if I kiss you again?”
I colored hotly in the most painful confusion. How could I answer such a question? But he did not wait my answer. Bending his head over mine, he kissed me over and again, kisses that made my head spin as though I had drunk a glass of wine. But my head was not so light as to make me insensible. Imagine my confusion when I discovered that he had introduced his hand beneath my handkerchief! I gasped and sat quickly up, both hands flying to the spot where his effected the breech. I regarded him with the utmost astonishment. Yet how much greater was my confusion when I realized that, far from appearing chagrined, he returned my gaze with astonishment equal to my own! Only then did I stop to think that perhaps the privileges of a husband include even such a freedom as this. My hands flew up to cover my face. “Oh, my Lord!” cried I, not knowing what more to say.
My Lord Orville, still retaining me on his lap, tucked the disarrayed handkerchief into my bosom with a respectful freedom that taught me better than words could have done that there is no place where a husband’s hands cannot properly attend his bride. I was now very ashamed of my foolish outcry, yet I knew not how to speak.
“My sweet Evelina, can you forgive my precipitate freedom? I fear I have frightened you.”
“Forgive you?” cried I. “If only your Lordship can forgive me!”
“Forgive you? Oh my angel, such innocence calls not for forgiveness, but for every tenderness, and, perhaps, for the gentlest of instruction. For forgiveness there can be no call. My sweet darling, I rejoice to find your mind as pure as your heart, and if you will forgive me, I will take care not to startle my innocent darling again.”
“If only your Lordship will forgive me! Perhaps I ought not to have…Indeed, I hardly know how I ought to behave,” cried I, venturing then to look into his face. My eyes were met by the kindest, most loving of smiles. My Lord Orville took my hand and said, “You once condescended to allow me to address you as a brother. I thought then that it was the most delightful honor I had ever received. I would think so still if you had not conferred upon me this morning an honor that is greater still. I am only too sensible that your Ladyship has been led to the altar without the consoling presence of a mother or father, sister or brother, indeed of any friend who might advise her on her wedding day. Will she allow me to fill that office? Will you allow me, once again, to speak to you as a brother?”
“I am sure I will always follow your Lordship’s advice.”
“But will you hear me as a brother?”
I nodded mutely.
“As your brother, then, I must tell you how it pleases me to bestow my sister’s hand on a man who, though he can never deserve her, loves her as dearly as his own soul.”
“Oh, but your Lordship promised to speak as a brother!”
“And so I do!” cried he. “As a brother who loves you and whose fondest wish is for his sister’s happiness. My darling sister must be happy with a husband who loves her because it will be his constant study to secure her happiness.”
“But my brother has promised to advise me as to what my behavior ought to be toward my husband.”
“And I will, but first, as your brother, I must tax your Ladyship’s patience with a question.” He took my hand in his, and spoke in tones of earnest softness. “May I ask my darling sister if her hand was freely given this morning, or if, as I greatly fear may have been the case, she was perhaps overpersuaded by a too-ardent lover into voicing a consent her heart was not yet prepared to grant?”
I blushed, but answered with the candor his politeness demanded. “It was freely given,” I whispered.
I could not then have looked on his face for the world. He lifted my hand to his lips and said, “Speaking still as your brother, madam, I avow that all your husband’s love can never repay this sweet condescension, this endearing generosity.” We were both silent then.
“But I have my dear sister’s question yet to answer. I must tell my sister first of all that no liberty taken by a husband can be an improper liberty.” I blushed and hid my face at this confirmation that the caress I shrank from was one my Lord was entitled to bestow. “I think the nature of these liberties a subject more fitted to the tongue of a lover than a brother, but I will presume to tell my sister that all her husband’s study will be to ensure her comfort and happiness. Can my sister lift her face and show me that she forgives the frankness of my advice?”
I could, though it was a face hot with confusion.
“My sweet sister, I ought to think of a way to repay your indulgence in listening to me for so long, but instead I wish to offer one further piece of advice. Can you have the patience to hear it?”
I nodded.
“It is this: If you would make your husband happy, you must offer your person to him as freely as you gave him your hand this morning.”
“My…person?”
“You are very beautiful, Evelina.” He concluded his sentence with a kiss.
“Your Lordship does not speak as a brother.”
“As a lover, my darling Evelina. I love you dearly, and it is my love that makes me wish to hold you in my arms tonight, to caress you and admire your beauty. But I cannot hold you if I fear you may be made reluctant or frightened by my embrace.”
“I think, my Lord, that you cannot prevent me from being frightened, at least somewhat frightened, but if your Lordship thinks me unwilling to place myself in his hands, he is wrong.”
“Am I, Evelina?”
“I am yours, my Lord, entirely.”
“Oh my darling Evelina!” He embraced me eagerly, kissing my lips and cheeks. “By this sweet complaisance you have made me happier than you know.”
He then insisted that I eat of the roast they brought us, which I assayed with faint success, and pressed me to drink of the wine, which was so grateful to me that I drank several glasses. When we had dined, Lord Orville took my hand to lead me from the table, saying in the most respectful way that the adjoining chamber was fitted up for our use, and might he lead me into it? I consented, little expecting that the door he opened would let directly into a bedchamber! I faltered and endeavored to hide my confusion, for had I not consented to this? Still, I had little expected to find myself led in to bed so early in the evening, when the sun itself had scarcely retired.
Lord Orville saw my distress and led me to a seat. Saying that the chamber was warm, he brought me a glass of water. My Lord then suggested that once my clothing was loosened, I would very likely be less affected by the heat. I thought I should faint at the suggestion! I know my breath stopped. He was sweetly attentive while I recovered.
“My darling Evelina, you are so very beautiful that you can hardly wonder at my eagerness to admire you. Yet I cannot bear to part with you this evening, not even to resign you to the ministrations of a servant. Will you allow me to act as your servant tonight?”
“Sir?” I quavered, unsure of his meaning.
“Madame will find me the quickest, most attentive, most devoted servant she has ever employed. Only permit me to demonstrate my skill.” To my great astonishment, Lord Orville dropped to one knee and, lifting the hem of my skirt to draw out my foot, began unloosing the laces of my boot.
He continued as he had begun, enough not as quickly as he had advertised, for nothing that he undressed escaped his caress, and nothing that he caressed escaped his praise.
I was too overcome by the strangeness of my situation and the wine to attempt to stop him even had I thought myself possessed of the authority to do so, but I could not think that I was. Had he not instructed me that no liberty taken by a husband was improper, and had I not given my person into his hands, first by becoming his bride, and then by my own spoken consent? Oh, but when I spoke I knew not what liberties he would take!
I half feared that after setting the boots aside, my Lord would remove the stockings. Instead, he rose and, drawing me onto his lap, alternately kissed me and expressed his gratitude for my complaisance. Without asking again a consent I was scarcely capable of giving, he removed the white kerchief that covered my breast, exposing to his eye and hand all that lay beneath. Confused beyond words or thought, I sought to hide my shame by pressing my face against his neck, a recourse he pretended to take for an endearment, caressing my cheek and neck where they rested, thanking me for the favor I thus showed him and calling me by every sweet, endearing name.
His gently voiced gratitude and approval of my compliance reconciled me to myself. So sweetly did he address me that I began to feel easy in his embrace. I then discovered, to my inexpressible confusion, that the freedom with which he touched me where my bosom rose above my stays was grateful to me, was, indeed, the pleasantest of sensations. Lifting my face from its hiding place for the briefest moment, I placed a shy kiss on his manly cheek, instantly appalled by my freedom. But he was not.
“Oh my sweet, my darling Evelina must ever use me with such charming freedom. Why does she hide her face? Such sweet condescension ought surely to be repaid one hundred fold.” Tender hands drew me from my refuge and supported me while my blushing cheeks were covered with many kisses more than the hundred he promised.
“Come, my love,” said he, lifting me to my feet, “I have offered my services as tiring-woman, and I have made a poor showing at it.” Talking extravagant nonsense about the perfections of my complexion and figure too little creditable to his usual good sense to bear recording, he removed my petticoat and panniers with surprising quickness, and lifted me off my feet.
Four brisk strides compassed the distance to the bed. As he lay me across the coverlet, I heard his gentle voice speaking words of love above the roaring fear that surged through my ears and choked my organ of speech. As he spoke, he lifted the hem of my chemise, laying all open to his view. His eager hand thrust boldly between my legs, seeking God knows what.
Suddenly he was atop me, clasping me tightly in his arms and bearing down. I cried out but he held me fast. Pain shot through my being. I screamed. He rolled off me and lay still, breathing as heavily as a man who has run a great distance. His eyes were closed and he appeared so insensible that I momentarily feared for his life or his sanity. But in an instant he stirred, sighing deeply and opening his eyes to regard me with a slow smile that spread contentment across his face. Could he be contented? Could a gentleman look pleased with himself after using a lady so? I pushed myself from him, covering my nakedness with the thin cambric skirt of my chemise, and shuddered.
“My darling, what troubles you?”
Covering my face with my hands, I turned my back on Lord Orville and, drawing my legs up close, curled my body tightly into the bed, shutting him out of my world. I suddenly knew the meaning of a word in the Testament that had always been a puzzle to me: I had been humbled. Humbled by a man whom I had thought myself only too honored by. I understood now what Amnon did to Tamar, what Shechem did to Dinah. It was a lowering, tearful, humiliating thought. And to have been so used by a man to whom I had given my heart was the deepest humiliation of all.
“You are cold, my darling.” I felt myself draped by a covering which I later knew to be the handsomely embroidered jacket my Lord wore at our wedding. A gentle hand passed over my cheek and placed a lace handkerchief beside my hand. I heard his footsteps retreat through the door. It was an invitation to tears. Alone and hardly used as I felt, can I be blamed for letting some fall?
I soon collected myself sufficiently to think of the duty I owed my husband, and managed to compose myself somewhat by the time my Lord Orville reentered the room. With the tenderest assiduity, he supported me to sit up and made me drink a goblet of mulled wine before addressing me in serious tones. “I can never apologize sufficiently for the pain my impetuosity has caused you on what ought to have been the happiest of nights. I will not be reconciled with myself until I have received my pardon from your lips.”
I think I must have looked very foolish.
“Not now, my dearest wife,” he placed a finger before my lips to forbid any word I might have uttered. “I will not accept a pardon I have not earned I propose to devote myself to deserving your forgiveness.” He held me in his arms and, perverse creature that I am, I was glad to be there. I felt so grateful to be comforted by him that I was not very startled at his next speech. “My darling cannot be comfortable like this. She will allow me to unlace her.” With sure motions he untied the knots and drew out the laces of my stays so that I rested in his arms, clad only in my chemise and stockings.
“I fear the chamber may grow cold. I will myself add coal to the fire, by your leave.”
I assented by silence.
He rose then and added coal, but he also went through the door to the parlor where we had dined, returning with an ewer of water and linen towels.
“Evelina, surely the sweet concourse that we have enjoyed was not a thing unknown to you?”
“No, that is, yes, I mean, I didn’t know how it would be.” And I pressed myself against him as though hiding my face could relieve my confusion.
“Charming, charming innocence!” said he in tones of transport, then, “But if you did not know, then I have frightened my precious, innocent darling more than I knew. Perhaps you did not expect…I see.” And he caressed me more tenderly than ever. “Will my darling admit me as her teacher?” I nodded. He kissed my forehead as he continued to speak. “A man, my love, is intended to enter his bride in a manner that, when she is no longer a virgin and not frightened, causes the most exquisite pleasure for both. But before a girl is married, the opening that her husband will one day enter is closed by a thin barrier that must be breached and torn asunder by her bridegroom before he can gain entry.” As I absorbed this information, Lord Orville drew off my chemise, poured water from the ewer and began to bathe my leg.
“Oh, my Lord!” cried I “Performing such a service to me!”
“My darling,” said he in the tenderest manner, making me to lie again on the bed, “I regard it as it the most distinguishing honor to be permitted to serve you. Indeed, I am hurt that you can doubt that I take the greatest delight in every service, every small comfort I can render.” He bathed me gently as he spoke. “It you will not allow me to serve you in small ways, how can I demonstrate the love I cherish for you? There, my love, only let me dry you.”
“I, I need a shift.”
“Can you think so? Perhaps you suggest it in mercy to me, for I am so dazzled that I actually believe I am in some danger of being blinded by your radiant beauty.”
I looked down in confusion, yet managed to say, “Your Lordship is dressed.”
“Sweet little innocent, I can hardly suppose that removing my clothing would make you more comfortable just yet, although, if it please you, I am willing to take off my shirt.” At this speech I felt more confused than ever, and was glad to be again taken into his gentle arms where my confusion found refuge against my Lord’s shoulder. “Evelina, why should I bring you a gown when you are the most beautiful vision I have ever beheld? I exalt in your modesty, it is among the brightest lights in the crown of your virtues, but no modesty can be violated by appearing before a husband’s eyes as you now appear. In truth, I find the most exquisite pleasure in looking at you, and if I were allowed to touch, I am sure my happiness would know no bounds.”
With this his hand approached my breast, caressing it while his lips covered mine. Thus he commenced a gentle exploration, murmuring tender compliments as he passed his hands freely over every part of me. I relaxed under the blissful influence of his admiration. But when his wandering hand stopped between my legs, I grew tense with fear.
“Nay, my sweet love, I will not hurt you again. But will you allow me to tell you a secret?”
“A secret, my Lord?”
“A most delightful secret. Do you know that of all the exquisite beauties of your person, of all the charms you have so generously permitted me to admire, the most alluring is the lovely flower between your thighs?”
“Sir?”
“Truly, my love, I am enchanted.” And he kissed me where, I was sure, kisses were never intended to be placed.
“Oh, sir.” I trembled, for he spoke so strangely.
“Make yourself easy, my love, and allow me to praise the beauty of this enchanting flower. It is more charming than any flower that grows in a garden because a man can make it bloom.” What could I say to a man who talked madness? Indeed, I dared not contradict him.
“When this charming flower is tenderly addressed by a lover’s lips, it blooms and pours fourth nectar sweeter than ambrosia.” With this he ceased to speak, and instead I felt his tongue apply the tenderest caress, elicit the most exquisitely trembling response from my confusion. Must I confess all? Truth to tell, hardly had he begun when I began to lose my confusion in the most transporting pleasure. Every foray of his tongue drew from me a quite involuntary tremor until, overcome by delight in the novel sensation, I felt my body grow stiff and arch upward to meet his lips. I shook violently, again and again, overpowered by a rapture quite beyond my knowledge.
When I could again command my senses, I lay clasped in his arms, gasping for breath and wishing only to be drawn tighter, tighter into his embrace.
“My love, my life, my darling angel.”
“Oh my Lord,” I stammered. “What, what was it?”
“Sweet, endearing innocence!” cried he. “It was a lover’s gift, the most selfish of all, for I took more pleasure in giving than I flatter myself that you knew in receiving it”
“Oh, my Lord, tonight your speeches all baffle me.”
“Sweet angel, never do I choose to confound, but only to please my darling, my lovely bride. Will it please her if I flatter myself with the honor of presenting to her again such a gift?”
I blushed in confusion.
“Charming innocence, transporting beauty, allow your humble servant to offer a lover’s tribute to your charms.” With this speech his hands again traveled over my person, which lay at his disposal all exposed and undefended with even greater freedom than he had used before. You may not think it possible for a man to use greater freedom than he had already done, but I assure you, it was. And, oh, Maria, the touch of a husband’s hand, even when used in the freest way, is the source of the most exquisite pleasure. And my Lord Orville is very free!
I know not how long he visited me so before he came again to the spot where the ministrations of his tongue had before sent me into transports of rapture, but scarcely had he again commenced to address me in that manner when I again trembled and felt myself lost in the raptures of love. Yet not so lost that I failed to feel the slight pain as my Lord introduced himself into my person, firmly, as by right. His face close to mine, holding me so that my breasts brushed against his manly chest, he forced me to meet his eye and addressed me in the politest way: “My darling, do I hurt you?” I said no, and with a deep sigh he crushed me to him, my face buried in his dear neck so I could scarce breathe nor wanted to. Urgently then, I felt the forceful motion of love begin as he drove himself into me with a strong, wild rhythm like the beating wings of a drake in flight. Inebriated still from the draught of transporting rapture he had twice held to my lips, I received him at first with languid ease, but I could not long withstand his power. My breath came short as I thrilled to the pulsating rhythm with which he drove me until, carried aloft by his passion, I soared on wings of ecstasy.
Gasping, sighing, dizzy with pleasure I clung to him many minutes passed before I recovered control of my faculties, and when I did I could only think what bliss there is in a husband’s embrace. Perhaps he also took some time to recover himself, for it was long before he spoke, and when he spoke he sighed.
“Does my gentle angel kiss me? Does she love me? Oh, Evelina,” he sighed again and pressed me to him, and there would I happily have stayed forever had my Lord not suggested that we sup. By the politest of attentions he prevented me from doing the least thing for myself, putting my wrapper on for me and even placing my feet in bedroom sandals for he had promised that supper would be the most private imaginable, without even a girl to wait. And, indeed, I was helped to each dish by my own dear Lord. Happily tired and drowsy from a surfeit of meat and wine, I allowed him to lead me to the bed and remove my wrapper.
“My Lord, I must find a chemise.”
“If my beautiful Lady Orville wishes, I will bring her a chemise, but I would be grateful if in compliment to me she would not desire to cover such loveliness with a gown on our wedding night.”
It was deep in the night when I awoke. The featherbed had slipped away and the fireless chamber was very cold. I wrapped myself in bedclothes, but shivered still, and while lying awake and cold I bethought myself of my Lord’s warmth, and moved gently so that I lay against him.
“Evelina?”
“Oh, my Lord, I…it is only that I…I was cold, and I thought that if I lay near you, I would, perhaps, grow warm. But I never intended to wake you!”
“Can you imagine that I could know my darling Evelina cold and not wish to be awakened?” said he, encircling me with his arms. “Only the most negligent of husbands would allow an angel to lie by his side and grow cold. My behavior is unforgivable. Is my sweet darling warmer now?” I said that I was. “Then she shall sleep all night in my arms. But first, my darling must allow me to perform penance for my neglect. I have been negligent in allowing her to become cold. It is therefore my responsibility to now make her warm.” I felt him press against me, breathing hard, and realized that his body had grown tense while mine relaxed. Shaking the sleep from my beclouded mind, I extended an arm to embrace his neck all the encouragement he needed to spring atop me and enter again the portal of wedded love. And yet I think I was even more surprised when, almost as quickly as he had claimed me, he fell again to my side, showering me with sweet names, thanking me, praising me, insisting that I employ his shoulder as a pillow and falling directly to sleep.
What sort of creature is man who can wake in the cold of night, explode with the fire of a volcano and fall so suddenly dormant again! Wakeful and alone, though in my husband’s arms, I tried to puzzle out the strange events of the evening and was surprised to realize by the light filtering into the room that I had fallen back to sleep and must have slept many hours.
My Lord lay still asleep beside me, handsome in repose. Unbidden, my hand stole forth to caress his cheek. At my touch he shifted in his sleep so that the featherbed fell away, exposing his person to the morning light. I stared, turned anxiously to examine his face and, finding him still full asleep, stared again. My unruly hand, drawn by the same object that enthralled my eyes, reached out with the most tentative of touches.
It was small and soft and warm, very smooth to the touch. My fascinated finger felt it round, but the mystery remained. So small and soft an object could not have pierced me in the night, yet nothing else that met my eye offered the least possibility of explanation. I explored it again with my fingers and drew quickly back, for the object had taken on a life of its own. Before my fascinated eyes it moved and began to swell.
I glanced apprehensively at my Lord, but his features were composed in sleep. Reassured by the regular pace of his breathing, I was emboldened to touch it again and was again startled when it grew still more. Like a child entranced by a new toy, I stroked it until it ceased to swell, pleased beyond measure by my discovery and by the soft beauty of the smooth, pink baton that grew under my touch.
“So, this is how angels awaken the mortals they favor.”
I jumped back in terror and confusion. “My Lord must not think…I never intended…oh, what have I done?” Trembling, I buried my blushing face in the pillow.
“Evelina.” The warmth of his tone, the kindness of his embrace brought me to the brink of tears.
“Please forgive me. I never intended to be so bold.”
“Hush, my darling. You have done nothing amiss, except to apologize for the most delightful caress, the most blissful awakening man ever enjoyed. Do I not belong to my Evelina as completely as she belongs to me? Does my darling doubt her dominion over me, or my pleasure in her touch?”
“Oh, my Lord…”
“These little fingers,” cried he, kissing my hand, “can never be at fault. Indeed, I have been very remiss, for I ought to have introduced you sooner.” He carried my hand to the stiff baton it had so recently visited, and continued to speak in the same high good humor. “The politeness of this gentleman you must never doubt: he ever stands in your Ladyship’s presence.”
“But,” I began with renewed courage, recalling how suddenly I had been entered in the night, “will your Lordship not find such politeness sometimes inconvenient?”
“Not if your Ladyship will ever respond with the sweet complaisance, the delightful warmth she exhibited last night.”
“Oh, sir,” cried I blushing and withdrawing my hand, but he replaced it.
“My darling bride must know that my pleasure in her modesty when we are in company cannot be surpassed, can, indeed, only be matched by the pleasure I take in her freedom when we are alone.”
He taught my fingers to glide up and down with a light touch that pleased him, and plainly incited him very soon to lay me on my back and effect that amorous concourse we had known in the night. Truly, Maria, you cannot imagine pleasure until you have received a husband’s embrace in form. The pressing of his weight which is no weight. The invasion by his manhood which is so grateful a visitation. The sweet, insensible transport by which his attentions carry you to rapture.
“Shall I dress now, sir?” I ventured, when we both lay at peace together.
He drew the bedclothes from me by way of answer. “Have I done ought to displease your Ladyship, that she should wish to deprive me of such a vision of loveliness, and on the first morning when I may call her my own?”
“Nothing, my Lord,” cried I.
“Then allow me to admire my lovely bride by the light of morning.”
And he appeared to mean precisely what he said. Turning me over and about, my Lord looked and caressed, praising the whiteness of my skin and the roundness of my buttocks until I grew abashed and begged him stop. I was draped with a quilt and pressed to his heart while his Lordship begged my forgiveness in words of endearing kindness, “My darling Evelina must forgive me if I have caused her even a moment’s embarrassment or I will never forgive myself.”
His eyes sought mine, his hand on the edge of the coverlet, and my eyes have never had the art to deny Lord Orville anything, whatever my lips might be schooled to say. He lifted the covering and expressed his satisfaction. Then, claiming that his lips must touch what his eyes admired, he opened my legs and lavished soft kisses on me, kisses gentle and cunning, wheedling blandishment of lip and tongue that made my heart throb as though it strove to escape from my chest while shimmering stars fell from a warm sky onto the very bed.
My Lord held me tenderly in his arms while I caught my breath, and when he saw that I was again in command of my senses, carried my hand to his lips. He kissed each finger, asking if he were not over bold to solicit a favor at the hands of an angel. With all such tender politeness as he knows better than anyone in the world how to express, he carried my hand whither he listed, and no sooner had my fingers reached their destined object than, like some enchanted staff in a fairy story, it commenced to grow stiff and commanding. At his tender command, I fell back against the pillows, submitting happily to his pleasure.
Dressed and breakfasted, we soon entered the chaise that would bring us by dinner to my native Berry Hill. Did I think his attentions tender and polite yesterday? I knew nothing then of tenderness, nothing of what politeness can be. Though his manners toward me after we had risen from bed exhibited not the least liberty, nor the slightest hint of the intimate manner in which he had so recently used me, yet his whole manner was suffused with a new and delightful tenderness. Every look, every word, ever gesture as he handed me from table and wrapped me in my traveling cloak bespoke a conscious pleasure in his too-happy bride that make my heart swell with grateful joy.
The coach must have flown over the highway, for it seemed mere minutes until we were at Berry Hill, I in the arms of my beloved Mr. Villars, he beaming his pleasure in his happy, grateful Evelina and my darling Lord Orville as he gave us both the blessing we craved. I think that if too-great happiness can overwhelm a person, I must today have been overcome. Indeed, I sighed so often at dinner from sheer, overweening joy that my father so I shall ever regard him, as I ever have revered him and my husband took pity on me and insisted that they should be able to become acquainted only if I would retire to my closet while they sat over their port.
My darling Orville has come to beg that I will descend to pour his tea. What happiness is mine that even so slight a message is not sent by his man but delivered by his own lips, underlined by the tenderest embrace, seconded by the most transporting kisses. He waits as I write, having offered to frank my letter and dispatch it to you directly, so I close by sending you and your dear Mama, and your esteemed grandmama very much love and even more for love I have today in such abundance, my heart quite overflows with it.
Your faithful and loving friend,
Evelina, Lady Orville
Sadopaideia is a true erotic classic of the twentieth century and one of the most famous English language sexual novels of all time. The novel first appeared, in two volumes, in 1907 with the imprint “Edinbourg: G. Ashantee Co.,” although the place of publication was more likely Paris. The authorship has been reliably attributed in the unpublished Catalogus Librorum Prohibitorum, written circa 1913-1923 by Lawrence Foster to John Poole Kirkwood, an Oxford-educated, provincial English actor. It should be noted that authorship of this work had also been ascribed, in print, to the poet Algernon Swinburne and the psychologist Havelock Ellis, based no doubt on the personal interest both of these men had for the particular psychopathia sexualis of this novel.
This book has been praised and condemned because it is the ultimate distillation of the Victorian/Edwardian mania by both men and women for sexual pleasure achieved through the use of physical contact stimulation. Those who censure this book too frequently forget the fact that it is a young woman, a widow, who introduces the protagonist to this world of pleasure. Together they demonstrate that ecstasy, pleasure, and physical stimulation are irrevocably bound in the human species, with all people possessing the capacity to derive erotic stimulation and sexual release from sexual role playing and that the roles may be switched for mutual pleasure.
Where physical sensation becomes uncomfortable or painful is extremely subjective and changes as circumstances change. Historians and general readers alike are aware that, in the extreme, beating has been an integral part of Britannic society for hundreds of years. That this is so, and that it could be the theme of a British novel, should be of no surprise. Corporal punishments in the school, military and penal systems were well documented and commented on frequently in the printed news and journalistic media of the day. This flowed over into literature, and soon flogging for pleasure was recounted in novels such as the 1748 classic Fanny Hill. Continental Europe came to refer to such sexual activity as “the English Vice.”
The passion proper English gentlemen had for this practice was no more acutely demonstrated than in the life of the Victorian author and poet Algernon Swinburne, whose latently erotic works, such as Lesbia Brandon, were paralleled by more sexually explicit ones like The Whipping Papers. Uncensored biographies of his life also recounted his frequent visits to the private whipping parlors that prospered and still do in England at the time. Whatever the etiology of this British passion, the rod and birch had long been utilized to rejuvenate flagging libidos and sexual potency in the absence of more modern technological wonders such as our current hand-held, battery-powered vibrators.
Many stories of the Victorian and Edwardian ages did in fact rely on flagellation and sadomasochistic themes for popular sale. The reason for Sadopaideia‘s repeated reprinting and continued enjoyment is that it is not only well written, but concentrates on the ecstatic pleasures that can be enjoyed equally by all consenting sex participants, regardless of gender, who are not averse to bringing “toys” into their erotic liaisons. The twentieth-century erotica bibliographer C.R. Dawes even described the book as “brightly written, in a lively style…and not so exaggerated and repellent as is only too often the case in such books. As a…book of the milder kind, it is better that most and some parts are not unamusing.”
It is possible to give the reader a taste for the erotic power of this novel by reprinting its opening scene, an episode which starts as an innocent, thoroughly typical heterosexual seduction. C.J. Scheiner, M.D.
I first met Mrs. Harcourt at my college ball, my last term at Oxford. She had come up to chaperone the cousin of one of my chums. Only the blessed ceremony of marriage gave her this right, for she was still well under thirty. I learned from Harry that she was a widow, having married an elderly and somewhat used-up brewer who most considerately died quite soon after marriage having, I have every reason to believe, decidedly shortened his life by vain, though praiseworthy, attempts to satisfy his wife’s insatiable appetite.
She was a little woman, beautifully made, with magnificent red-brown hair, the fairest possible skin, a bust that was abundant without being aggressively large, a neat waist with splendidly curved hips, and in a ball dress discreetly yet alluringly cut she fired my passion at once.
Harry was very pris with his cousin and so was only too glad for me to take Mrs. Harcourt off his hands. We danced one or two dances together. She had the most delightful trick in the Boston of getting her left leg in between mine now and then. At first I thought it was an accident, but it happened so repeatedly that I began to suspect, and my old man began to suggest, that more might be intended. At last I felt what seemed a deliberate pressure of her thigh against my left trouser. John Thomas responded at once, and I, looking down at my partner, caught her eye. There was no mistaking the expression. She gave a little self-conscious laugh and suggested that we should sit out the rest of the dance.
Now, I had helped to superintend the sitting-out arrangement and knew where the coziest nooks were to be found. After one or two unsuccessful attempts, when we were driven back by varying coughs or the sight of couples already installed in one case, a glimpse of white drawers showed that one couple had come to quite a good understanding . I succeeded in finding an unoccupied chesterfield in a very quiet corner of the Cloisters. Here we ensconced ourselves, and without further delay I slipped my arm round my partner’s back, along the top of the couch and, bending down, kissed the bare white shoulder.
“You silly boy,” she murmured.
“Why silly?” said I, putting my other arm round her in front so that my hand rested on her left breast.
She turned towards me to answer, but before she could speak, my lips met hers in a long kiss.
“That’s why,” she said, with a smile, when I drew back. “Kisses were meant for lips. It is silly to waste them on shoulders.”
I needed no further invitation. I pressed her close in my arms and, finding her lips slightly parted, ventured to explore them just a little with my tongue. To my great joy and delight, her tongue met mine. My hand, naturally, was not idle. I stroked and squeezed her breast, outside her frock first, and then tried to slip it inside, but she would not allow that. “You’ll tumble me too much,” she murmured as she gently pushed it away. “I can’t have my frock rumpled. People would notice. Take that naughty hand away.”
As I didn’t obey, she took it away herself and placed it with a dainty little pat on my own leg, above the knee. “There it can’t do any harm,” she added with an adorable smile. She was going to take her own hand away, but I held it tight. I drew her still closer to me and kissed her again and again, my tongue this time boldly caressing her own. She gave a little sigh and let herself sink quite freely into my arms.
By this time the old proverb that “a standing prick has no conscience” proved its truth. My right hand released hers and I took her in my arms my right arm this time encircling her below the waist, with the hand clasping the left cheek of her bottom. Modern dresses do not allow for much underclothing and I could distinctly feel the edge of her drawers through the soft silk of her frock. “Oh, you darling.” I murmured as I kissed her. By taking her close to me, she naturally had to move the hand which had gently held mine. It slid up my leg and at last met John Thomas, for whom my thin evening-dress trousers proved an altogether inadequate disguise. She gave a little gasp, and then her fingers convulsively encircled him and she squeezed him fondly.
That was enough for me. My hand slid down her frock and up again but this time inside. It found a beautifully molded leg ensheathed in silk, dainty lace, the smooth skin of her thigh and, at last, soft curls and the most delightfully pouting lips possible to imagine. My mouth remained glued to hers. Her hand grasped my eager weapon and I was just about to slip down between her knees and consummate my delight, when the lips that I was fondling pouted and contracted. I felt my hand and fingers soaked with her love, and I realized that her imagination had proved too much for her and that, while I was still unsatisfied, she had reached at least a certain height of bliss.
She pulled herself together at once, and just as I was unbuttoning my trousers she stopped me. “No, not here.” she said. “It’s too dangerous, and besides, it would be much too hurried and uncomfortable. Come and see me in town, there’s a darling boy. Now we must go back and dance. This naughty fellow,” she added, playfully patting my trousers, “must wait.” She then got up, arranged her dress and, giving me a lovely kiss with her tongue, led the way back to the ballroom. I followed, but do the best I might, John Thomas took his revenge on me by weeping with disappointment, which made me extremely sticky and uncomfortable. But for Mrs. Harcourt’s invitation to see her in town, my evening would have been spoiled.
I went down the next day, and on my arrival in town lost no time in calling on Mrs. Harcourt at her little house on South Molton Street. When I rang at the door, it was opened by a very neat, I thought, though not particularly pretty, maid. She had, however, an alluring little figure and a perky naughtiness in her face which was, perhaps, even more fascinating than mere beauty.
“Is Mrs. Harcourt at home?”
“I will see, sir. Will you come this way? What name shall I say?” She showed me into a delightfully little morning room, very tastefully furnished, and disappeared.
She did not keep me waiting long, but returned and said, “Will you come this way, sir? Madame is in her boudoir. Shall I take your hat and stick?”
She took them from me and turned to hang the hat on the stand. The pegs were rather high, and in reaching up she showed the delightful line of her breasts and hips and just glimpse of a white petticoat underneath the skirt.
“Is it too high for you? Let me help,” I said.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, smiling up at me.
I took the hat over her shoulder and hung it up. She was between me and the hat stand and could not move until I did. I lowered my arm and drew her toward me. She looked up at me with a provoking smile. I bent down and kissed her lips, while my hand fondled the delightfully plump breast.
“You mustn’t,” she murmured. “What would my mistress say if she knew?”
“But she won’t know,” I answered as my hand went further down to the bottom, which her tight skirt made very apparent.
“She will if I tell her,” she smiled, “you naughty boy,” and playfully patted my trouser leg as she passed me.
“Which, of course, you won’t,” I said lightly as I followed her. She laughed rather maliciously, I thought, though I didn’t pay much attention at the time. I had reason later, though, to remember it.
We went upstairs and I was shown into a lovely room where a log fire was burning, although it was no colder than most June days in this country. There was a splendid, deep, low couch or rather divan, for it had no back facing the fire, covered with cushions, which took my eye at once, and I mentally promised myself what should happen on it. My expectations fell far short of the reality, as will be seen.
Mrs. Harcourt was sitting on a low chair near the couch. She was in a delightfully fitting tea gown, cut fairly low at the neck, with very loose sleeves. It clung to her figure as she rose to greet me, and being made of chiffon with a foundation of pink silk, it gave one the idea at first that she was practically naked.
“Bring up tea please, Juliette,” she said to the maid, who disappeared.
“So you have found your way here,” she said, coming toward me with outstretched hand.
The room was heavily scented with perfume, which I learned came from burning pastilles, and she herself always used a mixture of sandalwood and attar of roses. As she approached me her perfume intoxicated me, and without saying a word I clasped her in my arms and pressed long, hot kisses on her lips. To my intense delight I found she had no corset on, and her supple body bent close to mine so that I could feel every line of it. My hands slipped down and grasped the cheeks of her bottom as I pressed her stomach close against my trousers.
“You rough, impetuous bear,” she smiled at me. “Wait till the tea comes up.”
And she disengaged herself from me, playfully touching, as she did so, John Thomas, who was naturally quite ready by this time for anything. “Oh, already!” she said as she felt his condition. “I told this naughty fellow at Oxford that he would have to be patient, and he must learn to obey.”
Tea appeared most daintily served, and on the tray I noticed a delicate Bohemian glass liqueur carafe and two liqueur glasses.
“Do you know cr me de cacao?” asked Mrs. Harcourt. “It’s rather nice.”
She poured out tea and then filled each liqueur glass half-full of the dark liqueur and poured cream on top.
” votre sant ,” she said, touching my glass with hers. Our fingers met and a thrill ran right through me. I drank the liqueur off at a gulp and leaned toward her.
“You greedy thing,” she laughed. “That’s not the way to drink it. No, no, wait till we’ve had tea.”
As I tried to get her in my arms: “Naughty boys must not be impatient,” pushing John Thomas away once again.
I sat back on the couch and drank tea rather gloomily, Mrs. Harcourt watching me teasingly. At last she put her cup down and, reaching for her cigarette box, took one herself and offered me one, and leaned back in her chair looking at me with a smile.
“It’s a shame to tantalize him so, isn’t it?” she said at last.
I did not answer, but jumped up and threw my arms around her, kneeling in front of her and covering her face and neck with kisses. She tossed her cigarette into the grate and undid the silk tie at her gown. It fell back and showed all she had on was a dainty chemise of the finest lawn, and a petticoat. My right hand immediately sought her left breast and, pulling it out, I kissed and sucked the dainty nipple, which responded at once to my caress, stiffening most delightfully. My left hand then reached down to the hem of her petticoat and began to raise it.
I felt her right arm around my waist, and her left hand began to unbutton my fly from the top. Before she had time to undo the last button, John Thomas leapt forth, ready and eager, but she pushed it in again, undid the last button, fumbled for my balls and gently drew them out. I drew back a little from her and lifted her petticoat right up, disclosing the daintiest of black silk, openwork stockings with pale green satin garters, and above them, filmy lawn drawers with beautiful lace and insertion, through which the fair, satin skin at her thighs gleamed most provokingly. At the top there appeared, just between the opening of the drawers, the most fascinating brown curls imaginable.
I feasted my eyes on this lovely sight, undoing my braces and slipping my trousers down. Her hand immediately left my balls and began to fondle my bottom, stroking and pinching the cheeks while she murmured, “You darling boy. Oh, what a lovely bottom.”
I was eager to be in her, but the brown curls fascinated me so much that I could not resist the temptation to stoop down and kiss them. I was rather shy of doing this as I had never done it before, and though I knew it was usual with tarts, I was not sure if it would be welcome here. Judge my surprise, then, when I felt Mrs. Harcourt’s hand on my head, gently pressing it down, and heard her saying, “How did you guess I wanted that?”
She opened her legs wider, disclosing the most adorable pussy, with pouting lips just slightly opening and showing the bright coral inner lips, which seemed to ask for my kisses. I buried my head in the soft curls, and with eager tongue explored every part of her mossy grot. She squirmed and wriggled with pleasure, opening her legs quite wide and twisting them around me.
I followed all her movements, backing away on my knees as she slipped off the chair until, at last, when she drenched my lips with love, she slipped on the hearth rug. Then, as I could scarcely reach her with my tongue in that position and didn’t wish to lose a drop of the maddening juice, I disengaged my legs from hers and knelt down to one side so that my head could dive right between her legs. This naturally presented my naked bottom and thighs to her gaze.
“You rude, naughty boy,” she said, gently, “to show me this bare bottom. I’m shocked at you.”
Her hands again fondled my balls and bottom, and I had all I could do to prevent John Thomas from showing conclusively what he had in store for her.
I had no intention of wasting good material, however, and was just about to change my position so that I could arrive at the desired summit of joy, when I felt her trying to pull my right leg toward her. I let myself go, and she eventually succeeded in lifting it right over so that I was straddling right across her and we were in the position, which I knew quite well from photographs, known as 69.
My heart beat high. Was it possible I was to experience this supreme pleasure of which I had heard so much? I buried my head between her thighs. My tongue redoubled its efforts, searching out every corner and nook it could find. And just as it was rewarded by another flow of warm life I felt round my own weapon, not the fondling of her hand, but something softer, more clinging, and then unmistakably the tip of a velvet tongue from the top right down to the balls and back again. And then I felt the lips close round it and the gentle nip of teeth. This was too much. John Thomas could restrain himself no longer, and as I seized her bottom with both hands and sucked the whole of her pussy into my mouth, he spurted forth with convulsive jerks his hidden treasure. When the spasm was over I collapsed limply on her, my lips still straining her life.
I was aroused quite soon by her pushing me off her chest. “Get up,” she said, “you are crushing me.” We both got up and stood for a moment looking at each other. Then she felt for her handkerchief and wiped her lips. I tried to take her in my arms.
To my surprise she pushed me away. “Go away,” she said harshly. “I don’t like you.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” I asked.
“Matter!” she replied, and she seemed to be working herself up into a temper. “Matter! You horrid, beastly boy, how dare you come in my mouth?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It happened so quickly and I I I thought you wanted it.”
“Wanted it? How dare you!”
I tried again to put my arms round her, but she wouldn’t allow it.
“No, get away, pull your trousers up and go.” And she turned to ring the bell.
I sprang to her. “Don’t send me away,” I said. “I’m sorry and I won’t do it again. Forgive me. Let me stay a little and forgive me.”
“Let you stay!” she laughed. “What’s the use of your staying? Just look at yourself.”
And she pointed to poor John Thomas, very limp and drained dry, and looking very ashamed of himself.
“Oh, he’ll be all right again in a little time,” I said. “Come, darling, let me stay and show you how much I love you.”
I managed to get one arm around her and drew her to me. She let me kiss her but kept her lips quite shut, so that I couldn’t get my tongue into her mouth. Her body was quite stiff, instead of yielding as it had been before. I grew bolder and caressed her breasts and began to pull up her petticoat again. She seemed to take no notice for a minute or so, And then, just as I had uncovered her thighs and was feeling for the soft curls at her mound, she quietly pushed my hand away, detached herself from my arms and said, quite calmly, “Well, if I let you stay, you must be punished for your rudeness. Will you do exactly as I tell you and submit to any punishment I may choose to inflict?”
Now, I knew nothing at that time of flagellation. I had heard of old men needing the birch to excite them, but beyond that I knew nothing. So I said, “Punish me in any way you like, only let me stay and prove to you how sorry I am and how I love you.”
“Very well. Get behind that screen,” she said, pointing to a large Chinese screen that stood in the corner. I obeyed and she rang the bell.
Juliette appeared. “Take the tea things away and bring me my leather case.”
I thought I heard a chuckle from Juliette but was not sure. After a little while I heard her come in again and whisper something to her mistress. “Yes, very,” replied the latter. Then came more whisperings, and I heard Mrs. Harcourt say, “Oh, did he? Well, we shall see.”
She then told me to come out and I obeyed. I must have made rather a ridiculous figure, as my trousers were still down. Mrs. Harcourt, however, did not seem to show any disposition to laugh. In fact she looked very angry indeed. I went toward her, but she stopped me with a gesture and said, “You promised to do everything I tell you.”
“Anything.” I said.
“Very well. Turn your back to me and put your hands behind you.”
I obeyed.
She opened the case and took something out I could not see what and then she came to me. I felt something cold touch my wrists and heard a snap. I tried to move my arms and to my surprise found I could not. She had, in a moment, very deftly handcuffed me. I was too surprised to speak. “Now kneel down,” she said.
“What for?” said I.
“You promised to do everything I told you,” she repeated.
I knelt down awkwardly enough with my hands fastened behind, just in front of the big couch. Then Mrs. Harcourt took a large handkerchief and blindfolded me. I didn’t like the look of things at all, but said nothing.
“Now,” said Mrs. Harcourt to me as I knelt there helpless, “you have been a very rude and dirty boy and you must be punished. Are you sorry?”
I was just about to answer, when something whistled through the air and I felt as if a hundred needles were pricking my bottom. I could not help an involuntary cry.
I heard a sigh of pleasure, and felt a hand on my neck, pressing me forward onto the couch.
“Are you sorry, eh?” she repeated, and again whish! the sharp pain cut across my raw bottom.
I had never been birched in my life. At school a tanning cane was used, but I could easily guess what weapon she was using.
“Will you speak? Are you sorry?” she repeated, and again the rod descended. I tried to escape, but my tied hands hampered me. Although I could and did kick lustily, her hand on my neck managed to prevent me from escaping altogether.
“Keep still,” she said, “or I shall get Juliette to help me. Are you sorry?” At that moment in one of my struggles, the birch just caught my balls, causing excruciating pain.
“Yes, oh yes!” I shouted.
“Will you ever do it again?” Whish!
“No.”
“What was it you did? Confess your fault.”
Silence on my part. I felt too angry and ashamed to say.
“Will you confess?” Whish! Whish! Whish!
“Oh yes, I will.”
“Well, what was it?”
“I came in your mouth.”
“And what else?” Whish! “What else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you say you thought I wanted it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, confess then.”
“I said I thought you wanted it.”
“Ah!” And again the blows fell all over my bottom.
The burning pain got worse and I struggled and wriggled and kicked so that I at last got away from her. I managed to rub the handkerchief away from my eyes and swung around and looked at her.
I never saw such a change in any woman. If she was pretty before, she was lovely now. Her eyes were shining, her cheeks were flushed. The exertion of plying the rod had caused one shoulder strap of her chemise to break, and one breast was just exposed.
I looked at her with adoring eyes. I couldn’t help it. As angry and hurt as I was in my dignity and elsewhere, I could not but feel admiration and, yes, even affection for Mrs. Harcourt. She met my eyes.
“Well,” she said. “why have you turned around? I haven’t finished yet.”
“Isn’t that enough?” I said. “I’ve said I’m sorry and confessed my fault.”
“Well now, haven’t you any other faults to confess?” she asked.
“No!”
She rang the bell.
I exclaimed. “You’re surely not going to let anyone see me like this!”
She made no reply, and the door opened and Juliette appeared.
“Juliette, come here,” she said. “You see this gentleman here. Now repeat before him the accusation you whispered to me just now.”
Juliette looked at me with a malicious smile I remembered that smile and said. “When I was hanging the gentleman’s hat up in the hall, he offered to help me, and then he kissed me and felt my breast and tried to feel my pussy through my skirt.”
“You little cat,” I said.
“Is that true?” asked Mrs. Harcourt. “Answer me’” and the birch fell across my thighs as I lay twisted on the couch. It flicked up my shirttail and exposed John Thomas to the salacious gaze of Juliette. I was too ashamed to speak.
“Will you answer me?” And again and again came the cutting strokes, one of them just catching poor John Thomas nicely.
“Well, if I did, she did as much to me,” I muttered.
“Oh, indeed,” said Mrs. Harcourt as Juliette darted a vicious look at me. “Well, we can investigate that later. Get the bands, Juliette.”
Juliette went to the case and produced a long band of webbing on a loop and, before I knew what she was about, had slipped it round my ankles and drawn it tight. Now I was indeed helpless.
“Now, Juliette,” said her mistress, “as it was you who were insulted, it is only fair for you to punish him.”
They turned me over, face downward, and turned up my shirt.
“Oh, he’s had some already, I see,” said the maid.
“Yes, a little,” said the mistress. “He can do with some more.”
“How many?” asked Juliette, taking up the birch.
“We’ll see.”
Then the pain began again, blow after blow, cut after cut, until my poor bottom felt as if it was on fire. I wriggled as much as I could, but couldn’t do much. My motions, however, must have pleased Mrs. Harcourt, for she said, “Wait a moment, Juliette. We mustn’t be too hard. He shall have some pleasure as well as pain.”
She got round to the other side of the couch, raised my head, which was buried in the cushions, and, bending down, whispered to me, “He’s a naughty boy, but I love him, so he can kiss me if he likes.”
She then pulled up her clothes and presented her pussy backwards to me which I could just reach with my tongue,”
“Now Juliette,” she said, “not too hard, and cleverly.” I did not feel at all anxious to justify her “whishes,” but to my surprise the birch fell now in quite a different way. Instead of the slashing cuts which had made me writhe and smart, the blows simply warmed my bottom. Of course now and then it touched an extra sore place and made me flinch, but for the most part the twigs seemed to caress, and the tips of them, curling in between the cheeks, gave me a delightful sensation.
I felt John Thomas answering in a way that surprised me, I forgot my resentment against Mrs. Harcourt and my tongue roamed about her lovely pussy. I went even higher and caressed the other “fair demesnes that there adjacent lay,” and which presented themselves to my eyes a proceeding which evidently pleased her, for she opened and shut the cheeks of her bottom and, at last, with a quick side twist and a final plunge she forced her pussy right against my mouth and murmured, “That will do, Juliette.” She smothered my mouth and chin with her delicious cream.
She then got up and, with Juliette’s aid, undid my bonds. I lay still, too excited to move. I felt her arm around my neck, while her other caressed my bottom. “Poor boy,” she said. “Did it hurt very much?”
I turned round and kissed her. I couldn’t help it. All my rage and feeling of insult seemed to have disappeared. “That’s right,” she said, nestling close to me. “So the whipping did him good! It didn’t go on too long though, I hope,” she added, quickly pulling up my shirt and looking at my John Thomas, who by this time, after the last part of the birching, was nearly bursting. “No, that’s all right. Come to me, darling.”
“But Juliette…” I said.
“Oh, never mind her. Still, perhaps she had better go,” she added with a peculiar look. “Juliette, you can go. I shall want you in a quarter of an hour.” Juliette looked very disappointed, but had to go.
“Now, darling,” said her mistress, “come to me and love me, and say you forgive your cruel mistress for hurting you.” She unfastened the band of her petticoat and let it fall to the floor.
This month’s Book Bonus, M. Fontaine’s Establishment, describes a fictitious house of pleasure located on a mythical street in Manhattan. This novel was first printed about 1935 and appeared in five small facsimiles, which were later sold as a single bound volume. Neither the title page nor contents gave any clue to the real author.
M. Fontaine’s Establishment well captured the flavor of the day, especially as to the peccadilloes of the idle, bored, and generally jaded wealthy and powerful during the heart of the Depression. From the Irish cop on the beat to the deviant political nabob, here was New York illicitly at play. A liberal-minded foreigner provided the playground, and collected the fees for the meaningless assignations of his clients. The sexual liaisons were discreet and anonymous, and all sexual proclivities between consenting adults were catered to.
Here then is an excerpt where Walsh, the local patrolman, finally investigates the suspicious shop of M. Fontaine, and is admitted through a secret entrance by a gay doorman who calls himself Lucy. C.J. Scheiner, M.D.
Walsh awoke the following day at noon, very impatient to further investigate the strange comings and goings at the establishment of M. Fontaine. He was like a bloodhound on a scent. Suddenly he was struck with the idea of, as he expressed it, “crashing the joint.” He acted immediately on the thought by putting on fine linen, donning a civilian business suit of aristocratic black, topping himself off with a black derby. He also added the touch of a silk handkerchief for the breast pocket and a cane for his wrist. He had found it one night on his beat and he carried it a trifle clumsily, for the technique was rather different from that of the club.
It was almost three o’clock when he idled along the opposite side of the street from Fontaine’s. He was rewarded within a half-hour with the individual appearance of three men and four women, who entered the hallway and made for the rear. The patrolman’s last doubt melted away.
“Here goes,” he said to himself. “I’ll probably make a hash of it, but I can’t lose anything.”
A few minutes after he pushed the button, the lock clicked and he went into the anteroom. He opened the drawers of the cabinet and noticed that there were more masks than he had seen the previous evening.
“That settles that,” he grunted grimly. “They all wear masks when they go in, so this little boy does the same.”
He put on a mask and adjusted it tightly. Then, being a man of little hesitation, he pressed the button and heard the buzzer sound above the vague murmur of voices behind the door. He did not have long to wait. Lucy appeared, fresh as a daisy.
“You wish a lady or a gentleman?” came the astounding question with ingratiating inflection.
Oho, thought Walsh. It’s all coming out now “A lady,” he answered tensely.
“In the usual way or otherwise?”
“The usual way.”
“Very well, sir. You will pay the usual fee.”
Walsh thought fast and took a chance. “Ten dollars, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no! You must have forgotten. Twenty dollars.”
“Oh you,” mumbled the policeman, and he reached for his wallet. He extracted two ten-dollar notes, which almost exhausted his cash, and tendered them to Lucy. The latter opened the door with a key, for it had locked automatically behind her, and inclined her head for Walsh to follow. They entered the room of mystery. The policeman was a bit bewildered by the soft lights and the penetrating perfume. Lucy led him to a vacant room and promised to return soon with a lady.
His eyes became engrossed with the pictures on the walls. He had often seen such pictures, but none as good as these. The policeman’s peter soon began to rise and his tongue became thick in his mouth. When he had exhausted the pictures he listened with amusement to the sounds made by the revelers in the other rooms. Then he started all over on the pictures, noticing little things he hadn’t seen before. The delightfulness of firm, round flesh inflamed his desires so that he was unconscious of the passage of time. He was brought to his senses by the entrance of a masked woman, beautifully dressed and exquisitely formed. She set the automatic lock as she closed the door and turned to Walsh with a dazzling smile, her perfect teeth glistening in a carmine setting and her eyes sparkling through her mask.
“How do you do?” she greeted him with composure.
Walsh’s heart began to pound and he found speech difficult. Licking his lips, he managed to get out a whisper:
“All right. And how are you?”
She came to him, still smiling, and held out her arms for an embrace. Walsh reached mechanically. He crushed her to him, but with a throaty laugh she bent backward, drawing him with her.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.
“How original you are,” she laughed. “Will you help me out of my clothes?”
The officer assisted her with trembling fingers, feeling all parts of her warm and pulsating body her breasts, her waist and buttocks, her perfectly rhymed thighs, and he finally got his hand on the cherished slit between her legs. He smoothed aside the downy herbage around her vulva and inserted his finger. Withdrawing it a little moist, he brought it to his eager nostrils and sniffed, while she laughed intoxicatingly at his antics. She was now naked and wanted to help him off with lightning speed. Then they sat down on the couch and he played with her cunt while she toyed with his penis.
“Stalwart as a soldier, ready for battle, isn’t he?” she murmured languidly. “How ambitious he is. I’m beginning to feel good now, so let’s do it. Are you ready?”
She stretched out on the couch, lifting her lovely legs up and apart as Walsh spread a towel and a pillow under her plump buttocks. Then he mounted to perform his duty. With her help he eased his rigid member into her vagina, which was warm and moist, and she twined her limbs tightly about his. Resting firmly on his knees, he placed one hand under her, while with the other he explored all of her jewels that he was able to. She, on her part, reached her arms around him and gripped the cheeks of his arse with both hands. And gently they moved their buttocks together and apart, drawing away from each other only for the purpose of coming together again. They were well-matched, for the fit was not too tight and yet not too loose, and at every stroke he plunged his sword as far as it would go into its scabbard. His bollicks began to drum a tattoo against her buttocks. She sighed, entranced, and murmured endearments to him.
“You’re wonderful, wonderful.”
“And you’re all right, too,” he replied, being now perfectly at home, and feeling altogether the dominant male.
Faster, faster, they went. The ancient and hallowed rhythm of love. More and more excited they became. Now they were both perspiring and breathing hard, their flesh was on fire all the world was forgotten only the moment of passion mattered. But all things come to an end. Walsh was the first to come. He announced it to her beforehand, regretfully.
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” she told him in a trembling breath. “Ah! Ah! Faster! Faster! Hold me tighter. I’m coming! Ah!”
She melted away before his prick grew soft and they rested in each other’s arms, at peace with all things and completely contented. They had fulfilled themselves, had justified their existence with the universe. A minute thus, and at her unexpressed desire, which he divined instinctively, they separated and washed their parts, chatting gaily the while.
“I feel like a stimulant,” she said. “Shall we ring for some cognac and cigarettes?”
“Sure, of course.”
She rang and Lucy came promptly.
Walsh opened the door a bit and communicated their needs to her. And in doing so he made an error. He forgot to disguise his voice and the attendant immediately recognized him, for she was extremely sensitive to sounds. However, she brought the cognac and cigarettes on a tray which she handed in through the partly opened door.
“I’ll pay you afterwards,” said Walsh.
Lucy was in a panic. She speedily acquainted her employer, who was in the shop, with the condition of affairs.
“We’ll all go to jail now,” she lamented with a sob in her throat.
“You must keep calm,” advised M. Fontaine gently. “Everything will be all right, I assure you. I have foreseen this for some time. I knew something like it would happen sooner or later. Of course I shall have to pay blackmail to him. But I wonder how much. Or rather how little.”
“Oh, what shall I do?” asked Lucy mournfully.
“You must attend to your duties and let me do the worrying,” said M. Fontaine. “You must not forget that most of our patrons are rich and influential. Such people do not go to jail. Everything will be all right, so go back now.”
Lucy returned to her m nage but could not regain her customary confidence.
Meanwhile, the masked lady was sitting in Walsh’s lap, his cock between her legs. They began to play with each other.
He rubbed her slit while she prankishly tipped his rosy cock gently so that it swung from side to side. They kissed and bit each other lightly, thus developing their reviving passion. He also took a great delight in sucking the nipples of her breasts, firm and curved like young cantaloupes. What voluptuous pleasures were theirs the proximity of flesh to flesh, the mingling of two desires into one and the anticipation of the coming action. Soon they were ready, for they were both young. Ah, youth youth is always ready! And so again they traveled the road to Paradise, riding the fiery steeds of love. And again they mounted higher and higher up the steps of heaven until they reached the throne, the brilliant blazing goal of all lovers past, present, and those as yet unborn. After their climax they rested quite a while, his prick still in her vagina, both veiled in a haze of languor. Presently they arose, and with a great calm upon them, they washed and dressed. Walsh attired himself very quickly and, kissing her mischievously on the arse, made ready to leave.
“Au revoir then,” she said. “Perhaps we shall meet here again. I hope so, because you carry such a fine standard with you. I generally come in the afternoon, about two or three times a week. You will not forget?”
“No, I won’t forget,” he promised her, “but let me see your face, won’t you?” He made a move to take off her mask.
“Don’t do that,” she cried angrily, seizing his extended hands.
“Oh, all right!” he said soothingly, “I was only fooling. Goodbye!”
“Goodbye!”
Feeling a little foolish, Walsh let himself out and found himself in the corridor, confronted by Lucy, who was somewhat agitated.
“Well, if it isn’t little Percival!” the officer remarked banteringly.
“I am known as ‘Lucy’,” was the retort.
“Lucy! Well, well, and how’s Lucy today?” raising his voice to a high pitch.
“Very well, sir,” sulkily. “And if you are leaving now I hope you will not forget that you owe me for the liquor and for the cigarettes.”
“Forget about it,” declared Walsh in his ordinary workaday voice. “You’re lucky I don’t pinch you. Right now I want to see your boss. Lead me to him.”
“Very well,” assented Lucy sullenly. “But you must take off the mask.”
The officer did so and he was taken into the shop and into the presence of M. Fontaine. That gentleman gestured to Lucy to return to her charges, and, as the latter disappeared, he turned to Walsh with an affable smile.
“I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself this afternoon, officer,” he ventured.
Walsh, for some reason, had lost a considerable modicum of his confidence. His words and his manner indicated nervousness. He licked his lips repeatedly. M. Fontaine noticed this at once and twisted his mustache with satisfaction, though he was at a loss to account for it.
“Y’know, Mr. Fontaine I, oh, I ain’t got any bad feeling against you for running a place like that,” he jerked his thumb toward the rear room. “That’s your business, and of course anybody who fools with these rich people is going to get into hot water himself. But “
“Ah!” thought the antique dealer. “I shall not have to pay him very much. That is plain.”
Then aloud:
“You paid the attendant twenty dollars, did you not officer?”
“Yeh, I did.”
“I presume you would like it back?”
“Yeh. Sure I would.”
M. Fontaine drew a roll from his pocket, peeled off a twenty and gave it to Walsh, at which it vanished speedily.
“Thanks, Mr. Fontaine. You know I’ll keep mum about your place, but, I, ah, well “
“You?” smilingly.
“Well, it’s this way!” the policeman blurted out. Then his voice dropped to a whisper as he moved very close to the proprietor. “Y’see, I like to suck women’s cunts now and then, but I don’t often get much chance. I’ve been wondering if you’d let me come sometimes for nothing. I can’t afford to throw out twenty bucks. And I’ll keep shut up like a clam.”
An illuminated smile broke out on the face of M. Fontaine.
“Oho! So that’s it, my friend! But you needn’t have been ashamed of it. I sympathize most heartily with you. You know, my friend,” confidentially, “that I, too, often drink from the fountain of joy. Ah, most certainly, officer! Come whenever you like and just tell Lucy what you want.”
Walsh wiped the perspiration from his forehead, looked at his watch, and decided that he must go. He was escorted to the front door and bade the antique dealer adieu.
“We are good friends, then, are we not?” asked M. Fontaine suavely.
“Yeh, sure.”
“And you may come whenever you like and it will cost you not a penny.”
“Thanks! Say! how about right now?”
“Surely, If you wish it,”
They went back to the rear room and consulted the attendant.
“Try room seven,” suggested that functionary, “but I’m not certain.”
In number seven Walsh found a very aristocratic-appearing lady of middle age.
“Hello,” he began nervously.
“Good evening! I’ve been waiting quite a while for someone.”
She scrutinized him carefully through her mask and smiled. Walsh wetted his lips with his tongue in anticipation.
“The attendant, ah, told me you like to do it, ah, different ways.”
“Which way do you wish to do it?”
“I like to suck it,” he answered, his face turning redder than it usually was.
“I’m agreeable,” she said, “but not completely.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you can suck it halfway,” she explained in a strained tone, “And then finish up in the ordinary fashion. I’d like that better.”
“All right! I’m willing.”
They undressed hastily, Walsh all the time feeling ill at ease. His heart played him queer tricks, the blood rushed in his ears and his whole body was possessed by the trembles.
She stretched out on the couch and spread her legs, lifting the knees. Her skin was like alabaster and unblemished, yet Walsh wished that she were plumper and younger. But that left his mind as he gazed centeredly at her foliage-protected nest. He got up on the couch, his cock hard and throbbing, and, resting on his knees, made ready to drive into the source of all masculine joy.
“Not yet,” she protested, “you poor boy. How like an amateur you go at it. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Come here to me.”
He bent down and took the nipple of one of her breasts in his mouth and began to suck it. At once she took his prick in her hand and stroked it downward until she reached the sperm-tank underneath. She played with that and talked gently to him.
“You ought to know,” she instructed him, “that a woman always likes to be played with before she gets into action.” He let go of her nipples.
“I think you’re a very nice girl,” he advanced. “I wonder if you’ll let me kiss you?”
“Try it and see,” was her answer.
His lips sought hers and, as her arms linked around his neck, they met in a long, warm kiss. She sighed as their lips parted and they kissed again and again.
“You know how to kiss,” she admitted as his lips traveled downward. He fiercely lipped her throat and breasts and slightly curved abdomen, below the entrancing dimple of her navel.
“I’m ready for your attention lower down,” she said, “but remember, when I tell you to stop, I want you to finish up with your rod. Such a handsome one you have, too.”
“I’ll remember, honey,” he assured her. “And when I get through you won’t be sorry you took me on.” He assumed again the position he had had at first, and in a moment his mouth was tightly pressed against her vulva, and he worked his tongue in and out, exciting her clitoris at every stroke. She clipped her thighs around his head and the feel of the warm flesh spurred his desire and made his fiery member strike against his belly. The taste of her cunt set him in a fever and his nostrils drank in greedily the odor of her organs mingled with the heady perfume she used. Her loving words goaded him into a frenzy. Sucking and mouthing madly, he had only enough control left to keep from biting, a procedure he really would have liked to follow. Suddenly she cried passionately:
“Enough! Enough! Now mount me.” He was not slow in obeying.
“Oh! You dear!” she breathed as his cock drove into her burning cunt. “Oh! You sweet one! How good you are. I’ll take it all back there’s nothing amateurish about you. Push harder! Faster! Deeper! As deep as you can. Oh, you wonderful man.”
Her legs were closed tightly around his hams and she clasped him so wildly around the back that it seemed as though she were afraid he would try to break away. And he rode his maddened charger in and out as hard as he could, while her buttocks heaved and tossed and rolled like waves in a tempest.
Soon she had her orgasm and lost all control of herself and bounced up and down, while she sighed and groaned, her breath coming in rasps. In a few minutes she was quiet, but he, like a raging bull, rammed his tool in and out of her flooded vagina. Suddenly he stopped, for her buttocks were quiet.
“I haven’t come yet,” he panted. “Aren’t you going to help me out?”
“Yes, my dear,” she sighed languidly, “but you must be gentle with me now.”
Very slowly they began moving together and apart in perfect harmony. Walsh received keen enjoyment from this method, but he felt as though he would never come. His desire was to drive furiously, but he wanted to please her. So they carried on thus for a while and she soon became hot again. They began to kiss repeatedly and increased the tempo of their orgy. Faster and faster they moved, faster and faster. She was again as before a prisoner in the grip of a ferocious passion. She soon came to her second climax and his cock began to swim in a boiling sea.
“I’m going to come pretty soon,” he cried enthusiastically. “I feel it. Work with me a little longer, sweetheart.”
“All right, you wonderful lover. Come, come! Oh, please come.” She slapped his back and ass in a frenzy of delight and she made her cunt and legs as tight as possible. His tool worked with the speed and regularity of a piston, and at last the longed-for Stream-of-Eros came, jetting into her womb like liquid fire. They clasped each other tempestuously and kissed as the throbbing of his penis ebbed away. They lay a little while in a daze and then parted.
“Oh, but you were splendid,” she breathed hoarsely.
“I made you come twice, didn’t I,” he chuckled. “And you kidded me about not knowing my business.”
“I was merely chaffing,” she laughed.
He got up and looked in the wardrobe. He found his watch. “Gee! It’s almost six o’clock. I’ve got to go.”
“Oh, surely not,” she cried. “I must have you once more. Don’t go yet, please.”
“But gee,” he remonstrated, “I had two pieces before I came to see you. It would take too long to have another piece.”
“I’ll suck it for you,” she suggested.
“AII right but we’ll have to work fast. I’ve got a lot to do between now and eight”
They washed their privates and she bade him lie on his back. Then she sat beside him, and bending down, took his limp cock in her mouth and gave it a tongue massage. He stared, fascinated at the spectacle of his tool between her lovely red lips, and she was so dainty about it, as though it were the accepted thing to do. Slowly but surely his member began to rise, and to stiffen it further, she moved up and down on it, using her lips as a vulva. At times he could feel the head of it in her throat. During all this he was fingering her cunt very vigorously.
Finally he gave her to know that he was ready for action. She withdrew her lips regretfully and he got up while she assumed her proper position. They fucked again, and a pleasurable bout it was, lasting many minutes, both coming almost as one. They washed, and with arrangements to meet again and endearing kisses, he got his clothes on and left.
The opera Carmen 1875 , by the Frenchman Georges Bizet 1838-75 , is one of the finest and most recognized musical pieces in history. It is based on an 1847 novel by Prosper Merimee 1803-70 . Who doesn’t know its tragic tale of the coquettish, tempestuous gypsy girl who seduces a handsome Spanish military officer, the fancier, and then brings him to total ruination. The theme of man, or woman, destroyed by uncontrollable and unrequited love is as old as history itself, and has been used too many times to list. Each “new” literary genre feels incumbent to incorporate it into its own oeuvre. In relatively modern times, the movie Carmen Jones is one such example. The 1935 Marlene Dietrich film, The Devil Was a Woman based on the 1898 Pierre Louys tale, “Woman and her Puppet” , was another such telling of a people destroyed by devotion to scheming and worthless love objects. Carmen is an intrinsically erotic story, though not explicitly so i.e. sexually graphic . One would expect the sub-rosa, “hard-core” sex genre to have adapted it for its own purposes. While this has not yet happened in the strictest sense, one erotic novel of the 1930s does come close.
La Tarantula: An Erotic Tate of Spain, by Don Luis de V, appeared in print in New York not Seville as indicated on its title page about 1930. Atypical for that day, it was finely printed, on expensive paper, from expertly set and artistically designed type. Its six-by-nine-inch format, printed soft cover, and six full-page illustrations were equally unusual for the underground literature of the time, putting it into the same category as the similarly produced and equally famous Grushenka and The Prodigal Virgin both reputedly published by a traveling bookseller named Percy Shustac . La Tarantula was obviously an expensive production, limited to five hundred copies “privately printed for the Accredited Subscribers of the Sociedad Erotico of Madrid.” Longtime bookmen remember this volume renting for fifty dollars per week at the height of the Depression.
The central character of the novel, La Tarantula, is a sensuous Spanish gypsy girl, born in the same Triana section of Seville that Carmen made infamous. The novel opens with a quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica, “The tarantula is a poisonous spider. It spins no web as a snare but catches its prey because it is fleet of foot. Its home In the ground is lined with silk…” Our namesake heroine is a most talented entertainer. Her fleetness is in the agility of her dancing her silks are the laces and shawls that decorate her home and boudoir. Her “poison,” metaphorically, is that all her lovers, male and female, died unnatural and premature deaths! Perhaps it was magic her birth had been heralded by a fire in a local porcelain factory, a then unknown omen that the pleasures she would afford would be accompanied by pain and death. Lovers, she had many. Her physical beauty, her seductive manner, her tempestuous nature, her grace and skill and fame as a dancer and singer, all attract men and women to her like moths to a candle flame, and with equal results. She herself is of an overly hot-blooded nature, perhaps a true nymphomaniac. Some of her lovers died from physical exertion, some from the consequences of jealous actions, and some just died, victims of a curse she had inherited at birth.
This is obviously an erotic novel like few else in the English language. Elements of de Mussel’s Gamiani 1848 can be found in several of its episodes, as well as its overall misogynistic and morose tone. A similar sullen atmosphere can be found in Alex Trocchi’s Thongs 1956 . While the sex scenes are highly graphic and detailed, there is no true joie de vivre. The reader knows that tragedy is imminent, even if the characters do not. The prose is quite normal and clipped, almost British. The syntax is pedantic, so even the most unbridled and orgiastic scenes remain restrained, bound not by the words and actions, but by invisible psychological boundaries imposed by the author’s style. Humor, when present, is droll, the narrative style incessant and matter-of-fact. Like the opera Carmen, this literary work relishes the sense of desperation and futility that controls its characters. The actors are powerless. They are puppets in the hands of an unseen grand director their actions, unknown to them, are purely mechanical, no matter how mightily they strive for individual self-determination. Not even through sex acts, the venue of liberation for George Orwell’s 1984 victims of totalitarianism, can they alter Fate.
As sophisticated adults know, sexual involvements are not merely fun and games. There are psychological, emotional and physical complications of sexual liaisons, long or short term, which cannot be ignored. Tabloid newspaper headlines sensationally remind us of this daily. Erotic literature is usually escapist in nature when not trying to be instructional . The following excerpt from La Tarantula demonstrates that erotica can on occasion be much more as well. C.J. Scheiner, M.D.
From that day on, the notoriety of La Tarantula was spread over the breadth of Spain. All knew of her talents as a gypsy dancer. Wherever a dancer was required it was she who was called in to supply that part of the entertainment. At the fairs, at benefits, at special performances where the services of Gypsy Ni a de los Peines, the Girl with the High Combs, who was the best singer in all Spain, were required, La Tarantula was called in.
And as her fame grew, La Tarantula became all the more reserved, insofar as men were concerned. Somehow or other, she seemed to sense that the gypsy in her, the wild carefree blood in her, made her the superior of the bu’ne, the ordinary gentiles of Spain. And the more she spurned them, the greater grew their desire for her. When she would dance for them, their eyes would follow her every movement, her every nuance of rhythm, and if she smiled at them, they would boast of the fact to their cronies for weeks afterwards.
But she soon discovered that though the blood in her was gypsy blood, nevertheless it was human blood. The memory of that wild, tumultuous night with the guitarist, Don Juan, remained with her for some time. But she turned all thoughts of fucking away and concentrated on her dancing. From cafet n to cafet n she danced her way up the pathway of success. And in each place, she attracted another string of admirers who sought her favors. Like the swath of a comet they lay behind her as she shot her way upwards to the zenith. But to none of them did she give her cool body. It seemed as though the glorious fuckfest she had experienced that last night with Don Juan had served to tide her over a drought of men.
But this could not go on for any length of time. Hers was hot, southern blood, Spanish blood, Spanish gypsy blood that burned in her veins. That was why, one night, after she had spent a severe evening at the Caf Soledad in Seville on Calle de la Serpiente, the Street of the Serpents, she did as she did.
Lying back on her chaise lounge, her limbs shaking from fatigue, she ruminated on the life she was leading. She looked out of the window that looked down onto the street. Streams of men were winding their way through the street. Men, men, men of all statures and forms and shapes. Men, men, all different yet all the same because all had that with which she had enjoyed herself so immensely and often.
Suddenly, she called out to her personal maid, “Cazuela! Cazuela!”
That person came jogging in. She was an evil-looking thing. Only one eye gleamed out of her face. The other was only a dead black socket. You could not tell from looking at her that, at one time, like her mistress, she had been the leading Spanish gypsy in Spain, that her roughened, toadlike skin had once been as velvet-smooth as La Tarantula’s, that her shapeless limbs and arms had once been as straight and fine as her attractive mistress’.
Years ago, when she had danced, a lover had beat her up and, in doing so, had kicked her eye out with the heel of his boot. She became unwanted from that day on, as a dancer. But she never slept with another man. Them she hated worse than she hated anything else in the world. She became as complete a man-hater as there was, carrying her hatred to the point of lesbianism. She had learned early in life the pleasures of woman love and had practiced it incessantly. La Tarantula had picked her up one night, during the early part of her career. And, from her, she learned of the subtle arts of the dancer. For Cazuela taught her everything that she herself had known about the art of dancing. Everything she taught her except one thing. About the love of woman for woman, she said nothing, She only bided her time until she could feel that her mistress would be most receptive to its practice. Meanwhile she acted as the personal maid of La Tarantula, and taught her all the intricacies of the baile flamenco and the Sevilliana and the baile Malaga, the soleadina and the fandango and the paso doble, until La Tarantula became even more adept at them than had been her teacher. Then it was that she had started on the meteoric rise which landed her finally as the star attraction at Caf de las Flores, the most beautiful caf on the Street of Serpents in Seville, costarred with the greatest romantic tenor of Spain, none other than Se or Don Jos Calor himself, from Lima, Peru.
And that was where we found her at the start of this chapter, in her dressing room upstairs from the caf , resting from her labors after an extremely difficult hour of dancing the paso doble for the customers who had clapped again and again for encores. Next door, in the other dressing room, she heard Se or Don Jos going though his vocal exercises. Then all was quiet. Then it was that she summoned her maid Cazuela.
“Yes, mistress?” she inquired on entering. She saw that the dancer was lying outstretched in the attitude of complete exhaustion.
“I am tired! So tired!” La Tarantula complained.
“Does my mistress desire a massage?” the woman asked, continuing further with, “such as I was taught many years ago by my old dancing teacher Don Ortega?”
“Anything! Anything!” La Tarantula cried. “Anything to take away the terror of the pain in my poor, tired muscles! Oh! why must I dance? Why must I continuously dance for men, filthy men!” And saying this, she turned her face to the pillow and buried it in her arms and wept.
She lay in this fashion for a few minutes, taking pleasure in knowing that she was suffering, as women are apt to do. Then she felt a pair of cool hands settle on her thighs. And the hands began to knead the flesh and muscles to and fro, working the tiredness out of them, flexing the rawness out of them that made them feel as though they had been weighted with lead. All over her body she felt the expert fingers of Cazuela roam, until she felt the tiredness slip away, fall away like a heavy velvet cloak from her shoulders. It seemed as though she were floating on gossamer clouds now, as though her body had left her entirely, and that she was all mind. And that her mind was hovering up above her body like a disembodied spirit and pitying the hulk of a body that lay on the chaise lounge. Lightness, softness, cushiony nothingness was all about her.
Suddenly she felt a slow, intense throb shoot into her.
She opened her eyes wide. There, between her legs, she saw Cazuela, her face pushed in between the joint of her legs as closely as she could get it. But, what was more, she was working her tongue into her mistress’s cunt, like forked lightning, touching the button of the clitoris so that it jerked up in sudden surprise. The jerk of the clitoris caused La Tarantula to open her eyes. For the moment, she thought of ordering the woman away from her. Disgust was the first reaction to what she saw. But, pleasure was the immediate reaction to what she felt. Pleasure, the likes of which she had never before experienced. Pleasure, such as she had felt when she has been fucked by Don Juan, and that she had sedulously kept herself from these last long years. Pleasure, pleasure filling her with an inordinate amount of desire.
In and out she felt the smooth tongue of Cazuela dart, touching, it seemed, the very vital spot in her system, drawing the blood from her throbbing heart to her throbbing clitoris so that it stood up now like a living thing.
Before she could realize it. La Tarantula felt the ominous approach of the orgasm. Just as she had felt it coming on before, with the man, so she felt it rapidly drawing nearer, but with a woman.
“What should I do?” she wailed, “I am coming!”
“Hold it as long as you can!” the maid managed to gasp out between licks as she sank her tongue deeper into La Tarantula’s cunny. “Help me by tickling my button!” and, in order to aid her, she drew herself up closer to her mistress and lifted her dress high above her hips. La Tarantula got the idea immediately, and, as she sucked in her guts and withheld the load that was piling up within her, she reached over and inserted her index finger into the throbbing but enlarged cunt of her maid. The first thought that came to her was a comparative one. She thought of how large Cazuela’s cunt was as compared to her own diminutive one. But this thought remained for only a moment. She had no time to think. Feelings, emotions, crowded her consciousness until they threatened to overflow in one vast, heaving surge of passionate flood tide.
Thus the pair of them worked together, each trying to titillate the other into a blessed orgy of spending their essences for each other. Closer and closer La Tarantula felt her own orgasm approaching as her maid’s tongue darted faster and faster in the overheated box that was her cunt. And under her own fingers she felt the little soldier of Cazuela’s clitoris stiffen to attention. Soon she was panting as though she were winded, as she panted after an unusually exhausting fandango. And she began to throw her loins around as though the prick of a man were ramming itself into her. She heard the same labored breathing of her maid. And she felt the severe thrusts of the woman’s buttocks, jerking nervously in a Saint Vitus’s dance of passion. Faster and faster each tickled the other. Closer and closer came their orgasms. Louder and louder grew the sound of their heavy panting.
Suddenly, La Tarantula heard her maid moan as though she had lost the most precious of things. And over her hand she felt the gushing warmth of a sticky liquid spurting out in hot viscid jets. The moment she felt the wetness she felt the maid’s body exert itself mightily in one grand upheaval. La Tarantula could hold herself no longer. She felt the overflowing in the region of her loins, in the small of her back. Her breath came faster. Her hips vibrated madly. Her tongue clove to the top of her parched mouth. Not knowing what she was doing, she seized hold of Cazuela’s cunt and squeezed it so that the poor maid shrieked. With her other free hand, she dug her fingers into the chaise lounge so that the long fingernails ripped jagged tears in the cloth.
Then she came!
Pouring, spurting out of her abnormally heated cunny came the pearly fluid full into the face of the maid who was still working on the poker-stiffened clitoris. For a while both of them continued to work their bodies jerkily as the intense feeling that swarmed over them remained. But when it started its decline, each fell away from the other, La Tarantula on her back against the chaise lounge, Cazuela on the floor, each gasping from their exhaustion. Completely tired, they remained in those positions, their eyes closed, their arms outspread, a lush feeling of tired warmth creeping over their limbs.
They were suddenly startled by the sound of clapped palms. La Tarantula opened her eyes wildly to see that the clapping was coming from the doorway. And, in the doorway, she saw the immense portly figure of Don Jos Caloro , the South American tenor who was costarring with her that week. She became speechless. Shame crept over her. Her cheeks reddened like an over-bloomed rose.
“Pretty! Pretty! Very pretty!” the tenor said, still clapping his palms together daintily, in derision.
“What do you want here?” La Tarantula demanded.
“I heard the sound of your ardent lovemaking in my rooms,” the tenor continued with a shrug. “The walls are so thin, I thought it my duty to see what I could do in the way of helping you wonderful ladies!”
La Tarantula looked from the tenor to her maid who was reclining on the floor, hatred shooting from her eyes hatred for the man who had interrupted her orgy of lesbianism.
“Don’t be afraid, my dear!” the tenor continued, advancing slowly to the pair near the window. And as he advanced he threw his wide-brimmed sombrero aside and started to take off the velvet pea jacket that he was wearing.
Still, neither La Tarantula nor her maid spoke. Instead they watched the man disrobe, as they were completely hypnotized by his actions. They saw him undo the sash around his great belly, and then slip off his shoes and draw his bellbottomed trousers off. La Tarantula gasped when she saw his enormous prick shoot out from its confining quarters. But the maid sneered and her lips curled in disdain.
When the tenor had disrobed himself completely, he towered over the two shrinking women like an enormous man-mountain, his girth quivering like jelly, his cock sticking out from its bed of dark brown hair like a jousting pole in the arm of a medieval knight.
“Really, ladies!” he said, advancing still closer to them, “you are wasting the charms of two beautiful woman when you attempt to draw pleasure from yourself by yourselves. Woman was made for man’s pleasure. And, likewise man was made for woman’s pleasure. Neither can derive pleasure from themselves. You are women. I am a man. Quite a man,” he continued, stroking his swollen piece for emphasis.
But La Tarantula scarcely heard a word he was saying. Her eyes were for nothing but the projecting prick as big as life, swollen beyond the size of any other penis.
“You like it, eh?” the tenor asked,
La Tarantula nodded her head. Cazuela began to lose some of her disrespect for the man. After all, this was no ordinary man, she reasoned. Any man with a cock like that stood apart from the world in general and man in particular. And she too could look at nothing but that great big bravo toro, that could have done service even for a stud bull.
With a huge, roaring laugh, he eased himself directly over the body of La Tarantula as she lay back on the chaise lounge, wondering what was going to be the outcome of this strange affair with this strange man.
“Spread your legs!” the tenor said imperiously. But he could not see to insert his stiffened prick into her cunt, although she spread her legs as wide as she could. It was his hanging belly. Like all tenors, he ate well and had built up a large-size physique so that he would have great lungs for a powerful voice. And so his belly, hanging over his prick, prevented him from directing it into its proper channel.
Suddenly he turned to where Cazuela was lying on the floor staring wide-eyed at the proceedings, “Help me in with the thing, woman!”
Slowly she arose to a kneeling position and took hold of the rampaging prick. Beneath its skin she felt a pregnancy of power that seemed to be striving mightily to burst the bonds that were holding it. Life coursed through its entire length with the vivacity of a dozen men. The steady throb of blood pumping through it made it seem like a living thing, an entity in itself, as though it were apart from the rest of the body. Tenderly she wrapped her ten fingers around its heft. All hatred for the male sex was driven out of her.
With her right hand she spread apart the lips of La Tarantula’s vagina as wide as she could possibly move them. Then, directing the pulsating phenomenon, she guided it slowly, surely between the parted ruby lips of the quivering quim of La Tarantula, stroking its entire length as the whole of it slid into the awaiting aperture with a succulent sound of suction.
Immediately there arose from La Tarantula a moan such as of a woman going through the travail of childbirth. In her she felt the parting of her body. But it was such sweet pleasure. What was Chato Doble? What was Don Juan? This was a man! Her breath almost left her when she felt the size of the thing pushing its way insistently into her, spreading her apart, touching the very quick of her existence.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” was all she could say as she worked her hips. The inner part of her cunt was well-lubricated with the juice of her spurting brought on by Cazuela’s titillating of her clitoris. Oiled by the pearly fluids, the cock was sinking deeply into her like a machine piston, moving up and back. Each time it moved forward it shoved in a little deeper. And each time it shoved in a little deeper, she cried out, not knowing that she was crying out, knowing only that in her was the greatest thing in the world.
Before she was aware of what was happening, she felt the curious boiling within her. She was coming. Before she had an opportunity to prepare for it, she spurt her fluid. It was the size of his thing that was the reason for it. And so she threw her arms around his enormous belly, clutched the flesh and panted like a wounded hart. And, without a warning, she felt herself let go of herself. But, at the same time, she felt a splashing of fluid within her such as she had never before experienced. There must have been a whole pint in his bulking balls for she felt it streaming in hot gushes all over her cunt and, in a short while, she felt the excess fluid trickling slowly down her leg.
Instead of withdrawing his penis, the tenor allowed it to remain where it had been. “It takes so long for it to come back to its normal shape, you may as well get as much pleasure out of it as you can,” he explained to her. Completely spent, La Tarantula allowed her head to loll over to the side. She saw Cazuela frantically fingering her own clitoris, pitifully trying to bring herself to another climax. And just as La Tarantula turned her way, she managed to bring herself up to the desired climax. Her body went through a series of contortions. She locked her legs together as tightly as she could get them. Her face wrinkled itself in a spasm of passion. Then she came. And her whole body stiffened up into a huge knot.
There they lay, the three of them, La Tarantula exhausted from the severe fucking she had received, the tenor puffing from mere physical exertion of manipulating his prick, and the maid, Cazuela, outstretched on the floor, the fluid issuing from her stretched cunt. For a while, no one spoke a word. The only sounds to be heard were the stertorous breathing of the three of them puffing like winded runners. La Tarantula’s eyes were closed. As she felt the gradual decline of the cock within her, she felt a curious feeling of reluctance go through her, reluctance to let go of that marvelous instrument that had afforded her so much pleasure in such a little time. But she felt it grow smaller and smaller in her. In time it stopped completely. But she continued to rest back, her eyes closed, a delicious sense of well-being enveloping her as the afterfuck settled over her limbs and gave her a feeling of satisfaction.
Again La Tarantula cocked her ears for familiar sounds. In the distance, faintly, she could hear the concerted twang of the string orchestra in the caf , below. Outside, on the street, she heard the cry of an itinerant lottery ticket seller calling, “The winning number! Remember it! Buy now or weep tomorrow!” Gradually, his cry lessened until the street was quiet once again. The rhythmic breathing of her maid came up to her. She had probably fallen asleep after her double spurting of dew. But how about the tenor? Why was he not breathing as heavily as he had done before? Without opening her eyes, she strained her ears to catch a sound of his breathing. But no sound came. For a while, she made nothing of it. But a small doubt insisted on remaining in her mind. Again she tensed herself and listened for the sound of his breathing. But still no sound came. She was afraid to open her eyes. Instead, she lay back, her heart filled with a dread fear, her throat stopped up with an unreleased sob. Then, with all her might, she finally managed to force her eyelids apart. They widened with terror when she gazed at the face of the tenor hovering directly over her. Instead of the jovial countenance that had been there before, there was a horrid purple mask. Tiny red veins seemed to have appeared all over his bloated face. His eyes seemed to have popped out of their sockets. Tiny flakes of slobber driveled out of the corners of his mouth. But worst of all were the great white eyeballs protruding from their holes like a frog’s pop eyes.
La Tarantula shrieked in horror.
Then she realized that her doubts had been correct. On top of her, astride of her in the attitude of fuck, was the hulking body of a dead man. Already she felt what had been warm flesh only a short while ago, rapidly turning cold. Like one gone suddenly berserk, mad, she tried to wriggle herself free from the dead weight of the three-hundred-pound corpse that was imprisoning her. But with her weakened strength considerably lessened by the two orgasms she had just undergone, she was unable to get herself away from under the gruesome cadaver. Her shrieks awakened Cazuela. She too shrieked when she saw the purplish, bloated face of the tenor. Then, when she came to her senses, when she finally realized the predicament her mistress was in, she leaped up, seized hold of La Tarantula’s arms, and dragged her slowly from under the triangle of the man’s spread knees. Immediately, when this was done, the body toppled over to one side, its horrible face upward, its body already stiffened in the throes of rigor mortis.
Later on, at the inquest, the coroner called it heart failure. They did not hold La Tarantula, despite the deaths that had occurred in her presence previously. There had been no doubt as to the cause of death of the tenor. His heart, already overburdened by the enormous weight that he carried around with him, simply buckled under when he went through the terrific exertions of that last fuck with La Tarantula. The coroner called it heart failure. But the old men, sunning themselves in the square, they nodded their heads knowingly and cackled when the news of the inquest was brought around. They cackled because they knew that the Tarantula had struck again. They knew that the death’s head had shown its ugly face and had brought down another victim.
And when the news of the death of Cazuela was delivered, they nodded their heads again. The reports stated that she had mistaken a bottle of poison for a bottle of aguardiente. She had been found lying in the anteroom of La Tarantula’s dressing room. Her face was screwed up into a mass of wrinkles. Bitterness, the bitterness of the wormwood and the gall of the poison was etched in those lines. Her stomach was distended from the virulence of the poison. A stale odor of almonds hung in the air. The coroner called it accidental poisoning. But the old graybeards whispered, “The Tarantula has struck again.”
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