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
“It seems that the circumstance of his going down, or sinking, which in
my extreme ignorance I had mistaken for something very fatal, was no
other than a trick of diving, which I had not ever heard, or at least
attended o, the mention of: and he was so long-breathed at it, that in
the few moments in which I ran out to save him, he had not yet emerged,
before I fell into the swoon, in which, as he rose, seeing me extended
on the bank, his first idea was, that some young woman was upon some
design of frolic or diversion with him, for he knew I could not have
fallen asleep there without his having seen me before: agreebly to
which notion he had ventured to approach, and finding me without sign
of life, and still perplexed as he was what to think of the adventure,
he took me in his arms at all hazards, and carried me into the
summer-house, of which he observed the door open: there he laid me down
on the couch, and tried, as he protested in good faith, by several
means to bring me to myself again, till fired, as he said, beyond all
bearing by the sight and touch of several parts of me, which were
unguardedly exposed to him, he could no longer govern his passion; and
the less, as he was not quite sure that his first idea of this swoon
being a feint, was not the very truth of the case; seduced then by this
flattering notion, and overcome by the present, as he styled them,
super-human temptations, combined with the solitude and seeming
security of the attempt, he was not enough his own master not to make
it. Leaving me then just only whilst he fastened the door, he returned
with redoubled eagerness to his prey: when, finding me still entranced,
he ventured to place me as he pleased, whilst I felt, no more than the
dead, what he was about, till the pain he put me to roused me just in
time enough to be witness of a triumph I was not able to defeat, and
now scarce regretted: for as he talked, the tone of his voice sounded,
methought, so sweetly in my ears, the sensible nearness of so new and
interesting an object to me, wrought so powerfully upon me, that, in
the rising perception of things in a new and pleasing light, I lost all
sense of the past injury. The young gentleman soon discerned the
symptoms of a reconciliation in my softened looks, and hastening to
receive the seal of it from my lips, pressed them tenderly to pass his
pardon in the return of a kiss so melting fiery, that the impression of
it being carried to my heart, and thence to my new discovered sphere of
Venus, I was melted into a softness that could refuse him nothing. When
now he managed his caresses and endearments so artfully, as to
insinuate the most soothing consolations for the past pain and the most
pleasing expectations of future pleasure, but whilst mere modesty kept
my eyes from seeing his and rather declined them, I had a glimpse of
that instrument of mischief which was now, obviously even to me, who
had scarce had snatches of a comparative observation of it, resuming
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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