by John Cleland
Phoebe, however, began to sift the state and pulses of my heart toward this monster, asking me how I should approve of such a fine gentleman for a husband? (fine gentleman, I suppose she called him, from his being daubed with lace) I answered her very naturally that I had no thoughts of a husband, but that if I was to choose one, it should be among my own degree sure! So much had my aversion to that wretch’s hideous figure indisposed me to all fine gentlemen and confounded my ideas, as if those of that rank had been necessarily cast in the same mould that he was. But Phoebe was not to be put off so, but went on with her endeavours to melt and soften me for the purposes of my reception into that hospitable house: and whilst she talked of the sex in general, she had no reason to despair of a compliance, which more than one reason showed her would be easily enough obtained of me. But then she had too much experience not to discover that my particular fixed aversion to that frightful cousin would be a block not so readily to be removed as suited the consummation of their bargain and sale of me.
Mother Brown had in the meantime agreed the terms with this loquorice old goat, which I afterwards understood were to be fifty guineas peremptory, for the liberty of attempting me, and a hundred more at the complete gratification of his desires in the triumph over my virginity: and as for me, I was to be left entirely at the discretion of his liking and generosity. This unrighteous contract being thus settled, he was so eager to be put in possession that he insisted on being introduced to drink tea with me that afternoon, when we were to be left alone; nor would he hearken to the procuress’s remonstrances, that I was not sufficiently prepared and ripened for such an attack; that I was too green and untamed, having been scarce twenty-four hours in the house: it is the character of lust to be impatient, and his vanity arming him against any supposition of other than the common resistance of a maid on those occasions, made him reject all proposals of a delay, and my dreadful trial was thus fixed, unknown to me, for that very evening.
At dinner, Mrs. Brown and Phoebe did nothing but run riot in praise of this wonderful cousin, and how happy that woman would be that he would favour with his addresses; in short my two gossips exhausted all their rhetoric to persuade me to accept them: that the gentleman was violently smitten with me at first sight—that he would make my fortune if I would be a good girl and not stand in my own light—that I should trust his honour—that I should be made for ever and have a chariot to go abroad in—with all such stuff as was fit to turn the head of such a silly ignorant girl as I then was: but luckily here my aversion had taken already such deep root in me, my heart was so strongly defended from him by my senses, that wanting the art to mask my sentiments, I gave them no hopes of their employer succeeding, at least very easily, with me. The glass too marched pretty quick, with a view, I suppose, to make a friend of the warmth of my constitution in the minutes of the imminent attack.
Thus they kept me pretty long at table, and about six in the evening, after I had retired to my apartment and the tea board was set, enters my venerable mistress, followed close by that satyr, who came in grinning in a way peculiar to him, and by his odious presence, confirmed me in all the sentiments of detestation which his first appearance had given birth to.
He sat down fronting me, and all tea time kept ogling me in a manner that gave me the utmost pain and confusion, all the mark of which he still explained to be my bashfulness and not being used to see company.
Tea over, the commode old lady pleaded urgent business (which indeed was true) to go out, and earnestly desired me to entertain her cousin kindly till she came back, both for my own sake and her’s; and then, with a “Pray, sir, be very good, be very tender to the sweet child,” she went out of the room, leaving me staring, with my mouth open, and unprepared by the suddenness of her departure, to oppose it.
We were now alone; and on that idea a sudden fit of trembling seized me;—I was so afraid, without a precise notion of why, and what I had to fear, that I sat on the settee, by the fire side, motionless and petrified, without life or spirit, not knowing how to look or how to stir.
But long I was not suffered to remain in this state of stupefaction: the monster squatted down by me on the settee, and without farther ceremony or preamble, flings his arms about my neck, and drawing me pretty forcibly towards him, obliged me to receive, in spite of my struggles to disengage from him, his pestilential kisses, which quite overcame me. Finding me then next to senseless and unresisting, he tears off my neck handkerchief and laid all open there, to his eyes and hands: still I endured all without flinching, till emboldened by my sufferance and silence (for I had not the power to speak or cry out) he attempted to lay me down on the settee, and I felt his hand on the lower part of my naked thighs, which were crossed and which he endeavoured to unlock. Oh then! I was roused out of my passive endurance, and springing from him with an activity he was not prepared for, threw myself at his feet and begged him, in the most moving tone, not to be rude, and that he would not hurt me. “Hurt you, my dear?” says the brute, “I intend you no harm—Has not the old lady told you that I love you?—that I shall do handsomely by you?” “She has indeed, sir,” said I, “but I cannot love you, indeed I cannot!—pray let me alone . . . yes! I will love you dearly if you will let me alone and go away . . .” But I was talking to the wind, for whether my tears, my attitude, or the disorder of my dress proved fresh incentives, or whether he was now under the dominion of desires he could not bridle, but snorting and foaming with lust and rage, he renews his attack, seizes me, and again attempts to extend and fix me on the settee; in which he succeeded so far as to lay me along, and even to toss my petticoats over my head, and lay my thighs bare, which I obstinately kept close, nor could he, though he attempted with his knee to force them open, effect it so as to stand fair for being master of the main avenue; he was unbuttoned, both waistcoat and breeches, yet I only felt the weight of his body upon me, whilst I lay struggling with indignation, and dying with terrors; but he stopped all of a sudden, and got off, panting, blowing, cursing, and repeating old and ugly! for so I had very naturally called him in the heat of my defence.
The brute had, it seems, as I afterwards understood, brought on, by his eagerness and struggle, the ultimate period of his hot fit of lust, which his power was too short-lived to carry him through the full execution of; of which my thighs and linen received the effusion.
When it was over he bid me, with a tone of displeasure, get up, saying that he would not do me the honour to think of me anymore . . . that the old b—h might look out for another cully . . . that he would not be fooled so by ever a country mock modesty in England . . . that he supposed I had left my maidenhead with some hobnail in the country, and was come to dispose of my skim-milk in town” with a volley of the like abuse; which I listened to with more pleasure than ever fond woman did to protestations of love from her darling minion: for, incapable as I was of receiving any addition to my perfect hatred and aversion to him, I looked on this railing as my security against his renewing his most odious caress.
Yet, plain as Mrs. Brown’s views were now come out, I had not the heart or spirit to open my eyes to them: still I could not part with my dependence on that beldam, so much did I think myself hers, soul and body: or rather, I sought to deceive myself with the continuation of my good opinion of her, and chose to wait the worst at her hands, sooner than be turned out to starve in the streets, without a penny of money or a friend to apply to these fears were my folly.
While this confusion of ideas was passing in my head, and I sat pensively by the fire, with my eyes brimming with tears, my neck still bare, and my cap fallen off in the struggle, so that my hair was in the disorder you may guess, the villain’s lust began, I suppose, to be again in flow, at the sight of all that bloom of youth which presented itself to his view, a bloom yet unenjoyed and of course not yet indifferent to him.
After some pause, he asked me with a tone of voice mightily softened, whether I would make it up with him before the old lady returned,
and all should be well; he would restore me to his affections, at the same time offering to kiss me and feel my breasts. But now my extreme aversion, my fears, my indignation, all acting upon me, gave me a spirit not natural to me, so that breaking loose from him, I ran to the bell and rang it with such violence and effect as to bring up the maid to know what was the matter, or whether the gentleman wanted anything? And before he could proceed to greater extremities, she bounced into the room, and seeing me stretched on the floor, my hair all dishevelled, my nose gushing out blood (which did not a little tragedize the scene) and my odious persecutor still intent of pushing his brutal point, unmoved by all my cries and distress, she was herself confounded and did not know what to do.
As much, however, as Martha might be prepared and hardened to transactions of this sort, all womanhood must have been out of her heart, could she have seen this unmoved. Besides that, on the face of things, she imagined that matters had gone greater lengths than they really had, and that the courtesy of the house had been actually consummated on me, and flung me into the condition I was in: in this notion she instantly took my part and advised the gentleman to go down and leave me to recover myself, and that all would be soon over with me—that when Mrs. Brown and Phoebe, who were gone out, were returned, they would take order for everything to his satisfaction—that nothing would be lost by a little patience with the poor tender thing—that for her part she was frightened—she could not tell what to say to such doings—but that she would stay by me till my mistress came home. As the wench said all this in a resolute tone, and the monster himself began to perceive that things would not mend by his staying, he took his hat and went out of the room murmuring and pitting his brows like an old ape, so that I was delivered from the horrors of his detestable presence.
As soon as he was gone, Martha very tenderly offered me her assistance in anything, and would have got me some hartshorn drops and put me to bed; which last I at first positively refused, in the fear that the monster might return and take me at that disadvantage. However, with much persuasion and assurances that I should not be molested that night she prevailed on me to lie down; and indeed I was so weakened by my struggles, so dejected by my fearful apprehension, so terror-struck, that I had not power to sit up or hardly to give answers to the questions with which the curious Martha plied and perplexed me.
Such too, and so cruel was my fate, that I dreaded the sight of Mrs. Brown as if I had been the criminal and she the person injured, a mistake which you will not think so strange on distinguishing that neither virtue nor principles had the least share in the defence I had made, but only the particular aversion I had conceived against this first brutal and frightful invader of my tender innocence.
I passed then the time till Mrs. Brown came home, under all the agitations of fear and despair that may easily be guessed.
About eleven at night my two ladies came home, and having received rather a favourable account from Martha, who had run down to let them in (for Mr. Crofts, that was the name of my brute, was gone out of the house) after waiting till he had tired his patience for Mrs. Brown’s return, they came thundering up stairs, and seeing me pale, my face bloody, and all the marks of the most thorough dejection, they employed themselves more to comfort and re-inspirit me than in making me the reproaches I was weak enough to fear, I who had so many juster and stronger to retort upon them.
Mrs. Brown withdrawn, Phoebe came presently to bed to me, and what with the answers she drew from me, what with her own method of palpably satisfying herself, she soon discovered that I had been more frightened than hurt; upon which, I suppose being herself seized with sleep and reserving her lectures and instructions till the next morning, she left me, properly speaking, to my unrest: for, later tossing and turning the greatest part of the night, and tormenting myself with the falsest notions and apprehensions of things, I fell, through mere fatigue into a kind of delirious doze, out of which I waked late in the morning, in a violent fever; a circumstance which was extremely critical to reprieve me, at least for a time, from the attacks of a wretch infinitely more terrible to me than death itself.
The interested care that was taken of me during my illness, in order to restore me to a condition of making good the bawd’s engagements or of enduring further trials, had, however, such an effect on my grateful disposition that I even thought myself obliged to my un-doers for their attention to promote my recovery, and, above all, for the keeping out of my sight of that brutal ravisher, the author of my disorder, on their finding I was too strongly moved at the bare mention of his name.
Youth is soon raised; and a few days were sufficient to conquer the fury of my fever; but what contributed most to my perfect recovery and to my reconciliation with life was the timely news that Mr. Crofts, who was a merchant of considerable dealings, was arrested at the King’s suit, for nearly forty thousand pounds, on account of his driving a certain contraband trade, and that his affairs were so desperate, that even were it in his inclination, it would not be in his power to renew his designs upon me: for he was instantly thrown into a prison, which it was not likely he would get out of in haste.
Mrs. Brown, who had touched his fifty guineas, advanced to so little purpose, and lost all hopes of the remaining hundred, began to look upon my treatment of him with a more favourable eye; and as they had observed my temper to be perfectly tractable and conformable to their views, all the girls that composed her flock were suffered to visit me and had their cue to dispose me, by their conversation, to a perfect resignation of myself to Mrs. Brown’s direction.
Accordingly they were let in upon me, and all that frolic and thoughtless gaiety in which those giddy creatures consume either leisure made me envy a condition of which I only saw the fair side; insomuch, that the being one of them became even my ambition: a disposition which they all carefully cultivated; and I wanted now nothing but to restore my health, that I might be able to undergo the ceremony of the initiation.
Conversation, example, all, in short, contributed in that house to corrupt my native parity, which had taken no root in education, whilst now the inflammable principal of pleasure, so easily fired at my age, made strange work within me, and all the modesty I was brought up in the habit (not the instruction) of, began to melt away, like dew before the sun’s heat; not to mention that I made a vice of necessity, from the constant fears I had of being turned out to starve.
I was soon pretty well recovered, and at certain hours allowed to range all over the house, but cautiously kept from seeing any company till the arrival of Lord B——, from Bath, to whom Mrs. Brown, in respect to his experienced generosity on such occasions, proposed to offer the perusal of that trinket of mine, which bears so great an imaginary value; and his lordship being expected in town in less than a fortnight, Mrs. Brown judged I would be entirely renewed in beauty and freshness by that time, and afforded her the chance of a better bargain than she had driven with Mr. Crofts.
In the meantime, I was so thoroughly, as they call it, brought over, so tame to their whistle, that, had my cage door been set open, I had no idea that I ought to fly anywhere, sooner than stay where I was; nor had I the least sense of regretting my condition, but waited very quietly for whatever Mrs. Brown should order concerning me; who on her side, by herself and her agents, took more than the necessary precautions to lull and lay asleep all just reflections on my destiny.
Preachments of morality over the left shoulder, a life of joy painted in the gayest colours; caresses, promises, indulgent treatment; nothing, in short, was wanting to domesticate me entirely and to prevent my going out anywhere to get better advice; alas! I dreamed of no such thing.
Hitherto I had been indebted only to the girls of the house for the corruption of my innocence: their luscious talk, in which modesty was far from respected, their description of their engagements with men, had given me a tolerable insight into the nature and mysteries of their profession, at the same time that they highly provoked an itch of florid warm-spir
ited blood through every vein; but above all, my bed fellow Phoebe, whose pupil I more immediately was, exerted her talents in giving me the first tinctures of pleasure: whilst nature, now warmed and wantoned with discoveries so interesting, piqued a curiosity which Phoebe artfully whetted, and leading me from question to question of her own suggestion, explained to me all the mysteries of Venus. But I could not long remain in such a house as that, without being an eye-witness of more than I could conceive from her descriptions.
One day, about twelve at noon, being thoroughly recovered of my fever, I happened to be in Mrs. Brown’s dark closet, where I had not been half an hour, resting upon the maid’s bed, before I heard a rustling in the bed-chamber, separated from the closet only by two sash doors, before the glasses of which were drawn two yellow damask curtains, but not so close as to exclude the full view of the room from any person in the closet.
I instantly crept softly and posted myself so, that seeing everything minutely, I could not myself be seen; and who should come in but the venerable mother Abbess herself! handed in by a tall, brawny young Horse-grenadiers, moulded in the Hercules style: in fine, the choice of the most experienced dame, in those affairs, in all London.
Oh! how still and hush did I keep at my stand, lest any noise should baulk my curiosity, or bring Madam into the closet!
But I had not much reason to fear either, for she was entirely taken up with her present great concern, that she had no sense of attention to spare to anything else.
Droll was it to see that clumsy fat figure of her’s flop down on the foot of the bed, opposite to the closet door so that I had a full front view of all her charms.