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
“Here, in tranquillity and innocence, I grew up without any memorable
accident, till one fatal day I had, as I had often done before, left my
aunt asleep, and secure for some hours, after dinner; and resorting to
a kind of ancient summer house, at some distance from the house, I
carried my work with me, and sat over a rivulet, which its door and
window faced upon. Here I fell into a gentle breathing slumber, which
stole upon my senses, as they fainted under the excessive heat of the
season at that hour; a cane couch, with my work basked for a pillow,
were all the conveniences of my short repose; for I was soon awaked and
alarmed by a flounce, and noise of splashing in the water. I got up to
see what was the matter; and what indeed should it be but the son of a
neighbouring gentleman, as I afterwards found (for I had never seen him
before), who had strayed that way with his gun, and heated by his
sport, and the sultriness of the day, had been tempted by the freshness
of the clear stream; so that presently stripping, he jumped into it on
the other side, which bordered on a wood, some trees whereof, inclined
down to the water, formed a pleasing shady recess, commodious to
undress and leave his clothes under.
“My first emotions at the sight of this youth, naked in the water,
were, with all imaginable respect to truth, those of surprise and fear;
and, in course, I should immediately have run out, had not my modesty,
fatally for itself, interposed the objection of the door and window
being so situated, that it was scarce possible to get out, and make my
way along the bank to the house, without his seeing me: which I could
not bear the thought of, so much ashamed and confounded was I at having
seen him. Condemned then to stay till his departure should release me,
I was greatly embarrassed how to dispose of myself: I kept some time
betwixt terror and modesty, even from looking through the window, which
being an old fashioned casement, without any light behind me, could
hardly betray any one’s being there to him from within; then the door
was so secure, that without violence, or my own consent, there was no
opening it from without.
“But now, by my own experience, I found it too true, that objects which
affright us, when we cannot get from them, draw our eyes as forcibly as
those that please us. I could not long withstand that nameless impulse,
which, without any desire of this novel sight, compelled me towards it;
emboldened too by my certainty of being at once unseen and safe, I
ventured by degrees to cast my eyes on an object so terrible and
alarming to my virgin modesty as a naked man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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