Memoirs of Fanny Hill: A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749)Cleland, John
General
Memoirs of Fanny Hill: A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749)
Cleland, John
England -- Fiction; Erotic fiction; Prostitutes -- Fiction
After some little time most agreebly spent before the glass, in scarce
self-admiration, since my new dress had by much the greatest share in
it, I was sent for down to the parlour, where the old lady saluted me,
and wished me joy of my new clothes, which she was not ashamed to say,
fitted me as if I had worn nothing but the finest all my life-time; but
what was it she could not see me silly enough to swallow? At the same
time, she presented me to another cousin of her own creation, an
elderly gentleman, who got up, at my entry into the room, and on my
dropping a curtsy to him, saluted me, and seemed a little affronted
that I had only presented my cheek to him: a mistake, which, if one, he
immediately corrected, by gluing his lips to mine, with an ardour which
his figure had not at all disposed me to thank him for: his figure, I
say, than which nothing could be more shocking or detestable: for ugly
and disagreeable were terms too gentle to convey a just idea of it.
Imagine to yourself, a man rather past threescore, short and ill-made,
with a yellow cadaverous hue, great goggle eyes, that stared as if he
was strangled; an out-mouth from two more properly tusks than teeth,
livid lips, and breath like a Jake’s: then he had a peculiar
ghastliness in his grin, that made him perfectly frightful, if not
dangerous to women with child; yet, made as he was thus in mock of man,
he was so blind to his own staring deformities, as to think himself
born to please, and that no woman could see him with impunity: in
consequence of which idea, he had lavished great sums on such wretches
as could gain upon themselves to pretend love to his person, whilst to
those who had not art or patience to dissemble the horror it inspired,
he behaved even brutally. Impotence, more than necessity, made him seek
in variety, the provocative that was wanting to raise him to the pitch
of enjoyment, which he too often saw himself baulked of, by the failure
of his powers: and this always threw him into a fit of rage, which he
wreaked, as far as he durst, on the innocent objects of his fit of
momentary desire.
This then was the master to which my conscientious benefactress, who
had long been his purveyor in this way, had doomed me, and sent for me
down purposely for his examination. Accordingly she made me stand up
before him, turned me round, unpinned my handkerchief, remarked to him
the rise and fall, the turn and whiteness of a bosom just beginning to
fill; then made me walk, and took even a handle from the rusticity of
my charms: in short, she omitted no point of jockeyship; to which he
only answered by gracious nods of approbation, whilst he looked goats
and monkeys at me: for I sometimes stole a corner glance at him, and
encountering his fiery, eager stare, looked another way from pure
horror and affright, which he, characteristically, attributed to
nothing more than maiden modesty, or at least the affectation of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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