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
At supper, after a great many arguments used to comfort and reconcile
me to my fate, he told me that his name was H..., brother to the Earl
of L.... and that having, by the suggestions of my landlady, been led
to see me, he had found me perfectly to his taste, and given her a
commission to procure me at any rate, and that at length he had
succeeded, as much to his satisfaction as he passionately wished it
might be to mine adding, withal, some flattering assurances, that I
should have no cause to repent my knowledge of him.
I had now got down at least half a partridge, and three or four glasses
of wine, which he compelled me to drink by way of restoring nature, but
whether there was any thing extraordinary put into the wine, or whether
there wanted no more to revive the natural warmth of my constitution,
and give fire to the old train, I began no longer to look with that
constraint, not to say disguise, on Mr. H...., which I had hitherto
done but, withal, there was not the least grain of love mixed with this
softening of my sentiments: any other man would have been just the same
to me as Mr. H..., that stood in the same circumstances, and had done
for me, and with me, what he had done.
There are not, on earth at least, eternal griefs; mine were, if not at
an end, at least suspended: my heart, which had been so long overloaded
with anguish and vexation, began to dilate and open to the last gleam
of diversion or amusement. I wept a little, and my tears relieved me; I
sighed, and my sighs seemed to lighten me of a load that oppressed me;
my countenance grew, if not cheerful, at least more composed and free.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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