Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in PregnancyEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
If he gets any remnant of hers, a busk-point, a feather of her
fan, a shoe-tie, a lace, a ring, a bracelet of hair, he wears it for a
favor on his arm, in his hat, finger, or next his heart; as Laodamia did
by Protesilaus, when he went to war, sit at home with his picture before
her: a garter or a bracelet of hers is more precious than any Saint's
Relique, he lays it up in his casket (O blessed Relique) and every day
will kiss it: if in her presence his eye is never off her, and drink he
will where she drank, if it be possible, in that very place," etc.[9]
Burton's accuracy in describing the ways of lovers in his century
is shown by a passage in Hamilton's _Mémoires de Gramont_. Miss
Price, one of the beauties of Charles II's court, and Dongan were
tenderly attached to each other; when the latter died he left
behind a casket full of all possible sorts of love-tokens
pertaining to his mistress, including, among other things, "all
kinds of hair." And as regards France, Burton's contemporary,
Howell, wrote in 1627 in his _Familiar Letters_ concerning the
repulse of the English at Rhé: "A captain told me that when they
were rifling the dead bodies of the French gentlemen after the
first invasion they found that many of them had their mistresses'
favors tied about their genitories."
Schurig (_Spermatologia_, p. 357) at the beginning of the
eighteenth century knew a Belgian lady who, when her dearly loved
husband died, secretly cut off his penis and treasured it as a
sacred relic in a silver casket. She eventually powdered it, he
adds, and found it an efficacious medicine for herself and
others. An earlier example, of a lady at the French court who
embalmed and perfumed the genital organs of her dead husband,
always preserving them in a gold casket, is mentioned by
Brantôme. Mantegazza knew a man who kept for many years on his
desk the skull of his dead mistress, making it his dearest
companion. "Some," he remarks, "have slept for months and years
with a book, a garment, a trifle. I once had a friend who would
spend long hours of joy and emotion kissing a thread of silk
which _she_ had held between her fingers, now the only relic of
love." (Mantegazza, _Fisiologia dell' Amore_, cap. X.) In the
same way I knew a lady who in old age still treasured in her
desk, as the one relic of the only man she had ever been
attracted to, a fragment of paper he had casually twisted up in a
conversation with her half a century before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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