There is not the slightest doubt, be the reasons what they may, that the craving for copulation takes hold of the most frigid individuals of both sexes when once they live within the Lutetian walls.
Oliver Sandcross, born and bred in London, was a splendid example of our bold sweeping theory. Here was an English gentleman, well brought up, and a noted engineer, rather pious too-that is the extraordinary part of it all-who developed the most satyr-like tastes when he settled down in Paris, with his wife and only child, a daughter. The capricious fairy, electricity, whose secrets have only been but slightly fathomed in the last few years, had tempted staid Oliver, and he became one of the most ardent seekers after the advantages to be gained in subjugating this new force. Brilliant offers, relating to lighting and tramways, had caused him to take up his residence in Paris, where, originally wealthy, he made more money than he knew what to do with.
Soon after his arrival, his religious habits dropped away from him, and after business hours he found the greatest pleasure and delight in hunting for feminine prey among venal beauties of all ranks. He admitted every specimen to the album of his fancy, from the married woman, met with at friends' houses and received in his own, to the short-skirted, twelve-year-old flower-girl of the Boulevards. Of the intermediate stages on the rungs of the ladder of lust, it would take us too long to talk, although a classification of Paris prostitution would be a tempting task for the student of psychopathy-if indeed it were possible to establish in schematic form the odds and ends of masculine and feminine humanity which go to make up the alluring and ever-changing kaleidoscope of Paris “on the loose”.
Mr. Sandcross had tried everything in turns and nothing long, and his libidinous, almost insensate curiosity had led him to essay what new joys could be found in the depilated arms of effeminate, degenerate lads; some who had proposed themselves to the merry, rich Englishman in good society and others fresh from the workbench, selling their half-starved bodies for pocket-money. In justice to our sturdy Anglo-Saxon, we hasten to state that Socratic vice did not hold him long. His curiosity glutted, he returned to lavish his money on the petticoated little animals who are said to rule the world because their hands rock the cradle. But we think their domination arises from the fact of us men placing our sceptre in their adroit fingers.
Oliver Sandcross confessed to forty-seven years of age when he first came to live in France, a few years ago, and he was a fine specimen of a fifty-year-old rake. He was fair, bald, with a florid complexion and a brown beard rapidly getting white; not too tall; very stout; fine eyes, and a fleshy mouth moist with lechery and full of real sound teeth. In fact, the type of an arthritic, healthy, athletic voluptuary, full of energetic lewdness, with only room in his brain for two hobbies: electricity, with which he obtained gold, and voluptuousness which led him to scatter the yellow coins broadcast.
There was nothing to check him in his lustful career. Moral scruples he had none, remorse and repentance had been left on the threshold of the last church he had frequented, and his wife, luckily for him, never troubled him. She was a pure-minded English gentlewoman, very pretty, and full of love for her husband. She swore by him, adored him, tended him, and he comprised the whole world for her. There was plenty of jealousy in her composition, but it had never been aroused, because nothing could shake her faith in her Oliver. He was the soul of honour in her eyes, incapable of telling a lie or doing a mean action. Had Mrs. Sandcross found her lord in the arms of another woman, she would have turned away from the disgusting sight, merely marvelling at the wonderful resemblance to her husband of the man she had seen. Her good, kind female friends, following the promptings of Christian duty, had tried to perform the mischievous operation known “as opening her eyes”. They had all signally failed, for the simple reason that this confiding helpmate did not really understand their perfidious innuendoes. One and all came to the ultimate conclusion that Mrs. Sandcross was either a born fool, or else she shut her eyes to her husband's “goings-on", and therefore they left her to enjoy a life of felicity in her fool's paradise. She was indeed a most happy woman, bathing in daily delight between the attentions of her kind husband, who was generous to a fault, careful, and thoughtful; grateful at not being troubled by the woman who bore his name and looked after his household, and the unceasing devotion of her handsome daughter.
No lovelier creature, no more perfect picture of a graceful English virgin could have been seen than Fanny Sandcross, the petted offspring of a lewd father and an indulgent mother. Miss Sandcross was tall-too tall, said hypercritical observers-overtopping her father by an inch or two. But what perfection of form; firm bust; tiny waist; swelling hips; massive spherical posteriors; wee feet and hands; satin, fair skin; masses of auburn hair; a tip-tilted, thoroughly Anglo-Saxon nose; with rose-leaf nostrils palpitating at the least emotion; a small mouth with pulpy red lips, and her father's perfect dentition. Her eyes would have been nearly sufficient to cause her to be adored even were her other charms less overpowering. They were blue, grey, or violet; according to the light, or the ideas of colour of the person who looked at her, but we should say they were of the last-named rare hue. Shaded with long lashes and surmounted by arched brows, they were full of ever-changing expression, but what dominated was a look of almost babyish curiosity. She seemed always as if just born to the world and its mysteries; as if interrogating her interlocutor and begging him to tell her something more; some fact that he might be hiding from her. Fanny gave the impression of perfect innocence and purity, and her portrait when she was fifteen would have formed a model embodiment of unspoiled girlhood.
It is far from wonderful for a maid to conduct herself with all the artlessness of a sweet angelic creature as yet unsullied by the least polluting contact; guarded by vigilant parents from surroundings calculated to tarnish the mirror of her virtue, but what was miraculous in the case of the beautiful Miss Sandcross was that she knew everything that a young girl of fifteen should not know. The more her terrible precocious insight into the secrets of sex increased, the more artless was her bearing. Some ancient Puritan strain must have caused her naturally to be able to touch pitch with an outward semblance of undefiled sinlessness which we may mention at once never left her all her life.
When we say her cognizance of forbidden subjects was peculiar and extensive, it must be understood that she was fully enlightened on all womanly mysteries, and there was no vice of venery which she could not catalogue, but her comprehension of the lascivious list of the hidden vices of humanity was far from being categorically formulated in her budding brain. What she knew, she had heard about and read about, but it had not yet taken a real shape in her mind. She was like a young lad revelling in the perusal of military history and bloody battles, but quite unable to realize the horrors of warfare and its saddening results.
This young damsel had been initiated in a very simple manner. When she came to Paris with her parents, she was fourteen and fresh from an English select academy for young ladies. Her mother, wrapped up in her husband and her own comforts, never troubled about her daughter's inner consciousness. It was true she would not allow her Fanny to be exposed to the contamination of a French school and took care to have her education terminated at home, by the aid of governesses. Miss Sand-cross was exceedingly quick and intelligent, and would soon have been able to teach her teachers. Her English and French were perfection; she had a smattering of German and Italian; and was a natural pianist and a fair singer. But the ladies who came to give her lessons were retained, more as companions for her, or chaperons, as it is an inflexible unwritten law that no single girl can be allowed to go about Paris alone.
The governesses were often changed. They underwent two distinct ordeals. First of all, their sweet young pupil pumped them as dry as she could, never ceasing to ply them with questions relating to tabooed topics: matrimony and kindred matters. Secondly, if they were at all well-favoured and desirous of keeping their situation, they had to submit to Mr. Sandcross's caresses. If
they were virtuous they did not remain long in the rich electrician's flat; being unwilling to answer the daughter's queer queries, and revolting at the father's rudeness.
These intrigues were unknown to the mother, but Fanny, without having any idea that her dear father had really possessed most of her governesses entirely, perceived clearly that he liked to flirt with them. Sand-cross was really very excited over all the girls coming in contact with his daughter. It seemed to increase his enjoyment, when he thought that Fanny was constantly being attended by her father's mistresses. The knowledge that one of these lady companions went out to a matinee or concert with his daughter after a hasty upright encounter in his private den, without having had time to cleanse herself from the final spurt of his lubricity, lifted him far above the ordinary haven of debauchees, and landed him into some celestial unknown space of aphrodisiacal ether.
From thence to falling madly in love with his own charming offspring was but a step, and he took it boldly, firmly, and resolutely. Fanny was seventeen when he woke up one fine morning and found out while having his bath that if he did not deflower his own flesh and blood, he would be most unhappy. He suddenly saw that he had been in love with her for a very long time, but did not realize his own passion. Now that he felt his bold longing tightly clutching his brain, it may be imagined that he tried in some way or another to try and overcome his unnatural desire, or fought against the criminal passion. Not at all. He never troubled so far, merely meaning to try and enjoy his own girl, if he could; and if he did not succeed-well, it would be time enough then to see what could be done. The fact is, so many women had dropped down before him, ready to place themselves in any posture that best pleased him, that he hardly fancied Fanny would resist him any more than the others. They were strangers. He had no influence over them, and yet their seduction was not difficult. How much more easy to allure and entice his own daughter, fond of pleasure-going, dress, and jewellery? Moreover, he felt sure she loved him, for he had been the best of fathers to her up to the present. At least, so he thought, according to his lights. He had made her his companion to a certain extent. His wife was lazy, fond of good cooking and novel-reading. She could manage a house very well, and keep servants in order, but when her daily task of organizing work and having meals properly cooked and punctually served was over, she was content to sink into an armchair and cry showers of tears over some silly tale of love. She was glad when her husband took Fanny out of an evening, and did not trouble about what time they came home or where they went. Thus it was that Miss Sandcross had gone with the author of her being to all the second-rate theatres where spicy comedies of adultery and salacious intrigue are played. The variety halls had no mysteries for her. She sat unconcerned in the private boxes of the Folies-Decolletees, and her pa told her the latest echoes of the wings, concerning the amours of Juanita la Torticula, the lovely Spanish dancer who had formed a Lesbian liaison with Phyllis de Honiton, a high-kicking goddess starring at the same establishment. Mr. Sandcross did not say so in as many words to his pretty daughter, but when she put up her fan, as if to hide a blush, and nodded as much to say, “Yes, pa, I know!” he felt that his dear little Fanny was au fait. It did not seem strange to him that she should know what a cocotte was, or that she should have heard who kept such and such a notorious prostitute of Paris. His daughter was seventeen, and most girls at that age learnt from their companions what was what, didn't they?
He was not alarmed to see her devour the raciest of modern French pornographical novels, and he himself purchased and took home to her every week the “bluest” and broadest comic papers, where naked bosoms above, and well-filled embroidered drawers below give purchasers of the suggestive pictures scarcely anything to guess at between the lines and legs. The mother's listless-ness allowed Fanny's thoughts to run in a very muddy channel. The young lady was not corrupted, because there was nothing to corrupt. Her perversity was natural, she was born that way, and her licentious predisposition was encouraged, instead of being toned down by proper home life and true womanly aspirations.
After the theatre, dressed in the height of fashion, wearing costly diamond rings and beautiful jewellery, all given to her by her doting father, Fanny, radiant in her tight-fitting frock and picture-hat, would sup tete-a-tete with her papa in the public room of some swell restaurant, where the tziganes played, and high-class painted beauties in society and of the half-world, assembled to carry on the business of selling their bodies to the highest bidder, strictly without reserve.
When next day, Sandcross was complimented by acquaintances on the comeliness of the lovely young girl supping with him the night before, he would, according to his humour, smile and change the subject, or maybe tell his friends it was his daughter. When they refused to believe him, perfectly certain that no self-respecting parent would take his daughter to places which after all were little better than common nighthouses, and chuckling, call him a sly dog, our prodigal father was delighted and would laugh at the joke with Fanny when he got home.
When his carnal craving suddenly arose in his being and he resolved to try and seduce his daughter, he turned the matter over in his mind and saw that he had very little more to do, having unconsciously prepared her for her fall ever since she had attained the age of puberty.
More books for her to read, perhaps a little stronger, if he could obtain anything more tropical without being downright bawdy; a few finer finger rings; a new dress or two; boxes for first nights and suppers at the most brilliant resorts. What more could he do? He would try kisses and sly touches to arouse her passion.
At this moment Fanny was seventeen and papa got his wife to imagine that it was she herself who had decided that their daughter needed no governess. She could go out with her music-mistress now and again; with lady friends or her mamma; by herself in the motor-car, or in a taxi, but never on foot-and after all was he not there to take her out with him, if she got dull, now and again? Mrs. Sandcross, as usual, was pleased to find her paragon of a husband good enough to trouble himself about his daughter, until she got married. Mr. Sandcross frowned as he heard the last word, curtly saying he would see all about that in good time, and leaving his better half, he took Fanny out to a music-hall where a very smutty revue was being played. The actresses wore no shoulder-straps to their low-necked costumes, and he liked to see his daughter blush, when the brazen hussies showed the slobbering stallites the black bouquets of their armpits.
It was not the first time by far that the father and daughter had gone to spend the evening at a place of entertainment, but Sandcross had never experienced the sharp pangs of lustful yearning that thrilled him on this occasion. He had indulged in extra wine at dinner at home, and towards the end of the repast had called for a bottle of champagne to be uncorked, of which Fanny had partaken.
In the carriage her sapphire orbs were sparkling with rays of light. She felt jolly and told her father so. He replied by placing his arm round her waist and kissing her cheek. She was not surprised; he often did so. But she did think he was really too affectionate that evening, for he kept his arm behind her all the way to the music-hall, and his face was near her shoulder. He eagerly inhaled the natural, sweet fragrance arising from her full frame, and regretted that the scent which she used so liberally half effaced the true perfume of womankind. Sandcross made remarks on his daughter's dress, criticising the fit of the corsage, enabling him to pass his feverish trembling ringers over her proudly swelling breasts, until she pushed his hand away with a laugh, telling her pa how ticklish she was. It must not be thought that she had the slightest lascivious feelings while her papa tried to tousle her as much as he dared, not wishing to disarrange her toilette in the cramped carriage, for despite all her enlightenment, or perhaps because of her comprehension of sensual secrets, she had as yet never experienced the slightest thrill of melting consciousness in the innermost recesses of her temple of love.
She only thought her father was quite too awfully tender-hearted when he had enjoyed a
good dinner and an extra glass of wine.
All the evening, in the private box, papa sat close behind her. She felt his hot breath on her neck and ears; and his knees pressed into her hard buttocks as they fully covered the seat of her chair. At every obscene joke, his elbow nudged her, or he touched her arm. She smiled at him archly, but would quickly open her fan, or take up her glasses with a vacant air of infantile wonderment.
She was greatly admired, and Sandcross revelled in the atmosphere of admiration environing his offspring. Between the acts, men in faultless evening dress came and stood in front of the box, twisting their moustaches, shooting out their cuffs, and trying to ogle her, some timidly, others with bold, offensive effrontery. Then she was full of joy, as she felt coming towards her the ardent desire of these libidinous men about town. They all wanted her; she knew it and felt it, her pretty little nostrils fluttering as she inhaled the invisible incense of their exasperated manhood. She knew too that they had no thought of pure affection, or devotion in the state of matrimony. Fanny was aware that their eyes were undressing her and the idea that they all longed to see her naked and wanted to get into bed with her to accomplish that mysterious penetration which it appeared was so delightful, made her heart beat with a sensation of great rapture, as she coolly noted the combined effects of her beauty, tasteful dress, and fine eyes. Other feelings, deeper and more intoxicating, would doubtless come soon, once Pygmalion should appear to animate the organs of her sex with the sacred spark of pleasure, but at present all was dormant in her grotto of Venus.
In the motor-car, papa was still more pressing. He talked of the actresses on the stage, of the be-jewelled harlots in the auditorium, and compared their charms with those of his daughter. The leading lady in the obscene play they had just witnessed was not so well made as my darling, Mr. Sandcross remarked. She was too fat here, and not well pulled in there; while as for her thighs, they were as thick almost at the knee as up here, and at every “here” and “there", his hands pinched, pressed and patted the corresponding parts of his own girl's body, but she only languidly pushed his encroaching fingers away with a gesture of impatience.
The Romance of Violette (vintage erotica) Page 9