The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Volumes One and Two: Written by HerselfWilson, Harriette
General
The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Volumes One and Two: Written by Herself
Wilson, Harriette
Courtesans -- Great Britain -- Biography; Wilson, Harriette, 1786-1846
"On the day previous to his departure for Newcastle, he said he wished
to ask a favour of his kind master's only sister; but feared it might
be deemed impertinent. Being encouraged to proceed--'Why, sir,' said
the lad, 'your great goodness has left me nothing to desire since the
first instant I entered your house; therefore, out of the allowance
of pocket-money you have made me I have saved up eleven pounds, which
I hope your sister will condescend to lay out for me in blankets and
various other articles of comfort, which I am desirous of carrying down
to my poor old parents.' The Jew gladly promised to prevail on his
sister to do whatever he wished, and moreover assured the affectionate
lad that he should be allowed to make a yearly visit to his parents as
long as they lived, and always at his expense. 'Tell your parents that,
though a Jew myself, I have not presumed to interfere with your former
mode of worship; but, on the contrary, have made you regularly attend
the service of the Church of England, ever since you left them.'"
Sophia was very much pleased with the story of the Newcastle
shepherd-boy, and declared that she would go and see him.
Augustus thought he would play Romeo delightfully; but the colonel said
the part of Douglas would suit him best.
I, by this time, conceived I had talked quite enough for one evening. I
therefore endeavoured with all my might to call Sophia out, and draw her
into some kind of conversation.
Berkeley was beginning to think himself trifled with, and, being
naturally a little abrupt in such cases, he told her flatly that if she
meant to refuse him after all, she ought not to have admitted him so
often.
Sophia continued to hint, with proper delicacy and due modest blushes,
that her living with him or not must depend on what his intentions were:
in other words, she gently intimated that as yet she was ignorant what
settlement he meant to make on her. The gay handsome Colonel Berkeley's
vanity being now so deeply wounded, he in his sudden rage entirely lost
sight of what was due to the soft sex, at least to that part of it which
had been so hard upon him.
"Do you fancy me then so humble and so void of taste as to buy with
my money the reluctant embraces of any woman breathing? Do you
think I cannot find friends who have proved their affection by the
sacrifices they have made for me, that I should give my money to buy
the cold-blooded being who calculates at fifteen years of age what the
prostitution of her person ought to sell for?"
Sophia was frightened and shed tears.
"Colonel Berkeley," said I, "we are your visitors and wish to retire
immediately from such unmanly insult as you have offered to us. Will you
procure us some safe conveyance? No matter what."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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