by John Cleland
On the landing place of the first pair of stairs, we were met by a young gentleman, extremely well dressed, and a very pretty figure, to whom I was to be indebted for the first essay of the pleasures of the house. He saluted me with great gallantry, and handed me into the drawing room, the floor of which was overspread with a Turkey carpet, and all its furniture voluptuously adapted to every demand of the most studied luxury; now too it was, by means of a profuse illumination, enlivened by a light scarce inferior, and perhaps more favourable to joy, more tenderly pleasing, than that of broad sunshine.
On my entrance into the room, I had the satisfaction! to hear a buzz of approbation run through the whole company, which now consisted of four gentlemen, including my particular (this was the cant term of the house for one’s gallant for the time), the three young-women, in a neat flowing dishabille, the mistress of the academy, and myself. I was welcomed and saluted by a kiss all round, in which, however, it was easy to-discover, in the superior warmth of that of the men, the distinction of the sexes.
Awed, and confounded as I was, at seeing myself surrounded, caressed, and made court to by so many strangers, I could not immediately familiarize myself to all that air of gaiety and joy, which dictated their compliments, and animated their caresses. They assured me that I was so perfectly to their taste, as to have but one fault against me, which I might easily be cured of, and that was my modesty: this, they observed, might pass for a beauty the more with those who wanted it for a heightener; but their maxim was, that it was an impertinent mixture, and dashed the cup so as to spoil the sincere draught of pleasure; they considered it accordingly as their mortal enemy, and gave it no quarter wherever they met with it. This was a prologue not unworthy of the revels that ensued.
In the midst of all the frolic and wantonness, which this joyous band had presently, and all naturally, run into, an elegant supper was served in, and we sat down to it, my spark elect placing himself next to me, and the other couples without order or ceremony. The delicate cheer and good wine soon banished all reserve; the conversation grew as lively as could be wished, without taking too loose a turn: these professors of pleasure knew too well, how to stale impressions of it, or evaporate the imagination of words, before the time of action. Kisses however were snatched at times, or where a handkerchief round the neck interposed its feeble barrier, it was not extremely respected: the hands of the men went to work with their usual petulance, till the provocation on both sides rose to such a pitch, that my particular’s proposal for beginning the country dances was received with instant assent: for, as he laughingly added, he fancied the instruments were in tune. This was a signal for preparation, that the complaisant Mrs. Cole, who understood life, took for her cue of disappearing; no longer so fit for personal service herself, and content with having settled the order of battle, she left us the field, to fight it out at discretion.
As soon as she was gone, the table was removed from the middle, and became a sideboard; a couch was brought into its place, of which when I whisperingly inquired the reason, of my particular, he told me, that as it was chiefly on my account that his convention was met, the parties intended at once to humour their taste of variety in pleasures, and by an open public enjoyment, to see me broke of any taint of reserve or modesty, which they looked on as the poison of joy; that though they occasionally preached pleasure, and lived up to the text, they did not enthusiastically set up for missionaries, and only indulged themselves in the delights of a practical instruction of all the pretty women they liked well enough to bestow it upon, and who fell properly in the way of it; but that as such a proposal might be too violent, too shocking for a young beginner, the old standers were to set an example, which he hoped I would not be averse to follow, since it was to him I was devolved in favour of the first experiment; but that still I was perfectly at my liberty to refuse the party, which being in its nature one of pleasure, supposed an exclusion of all force or constraint.
My countenance expressed, no doubt, my surprise as my silence did my acquiescence. I was now embarked, and thoroughly determined on any voyage the company would take me on.
The first that stood up, to open the ball, were a cornet of horse, and that sweetest of olive-beauties, the soft and amorous Louisa. He led her to the couch (nothing loth), on which he gave her the fall, and extended her at length with an air of roughness and vigour, relishing high of amorous eagerness and impatience. The girl, spreading herself to the best advantage, with her head upon the pillow, was so concentered in that she was about, that our presence was the least of her care and concern. Her petticoats, thrown up with her shift, discovered to the company the finest turned legs and thighs that could be imagined, and in broad display, that gave us a full view of that delicious cleft of flesh, into which the pleasing hair, grown mount over it, parted and presented a most inviting entrance, between two close hedges, delicately soft and pouting. Her gallant was now ready, having disencumbered himself from his clothes, overloaded with lace, and presently, his shirt removed, showed us his forces at high plight, bandied and ready for action. But giving us no time to consider the dimensions, he threw himself instantly over his charming antagonist who received him as he pushed at once dead at mark, like a heroine, without flinching; for surely never was girl constitutionally truer to the taste of joy, or sincerer in the expressions of its sensations, than she was: we could observe pleasure lighten in her eyes, as he introduced his plenipotentiary instrument into her; till, at length, having indulged her to its utmost reach, its irritations grew so violent, and gave her the spurs so furiously, that collected within herself, and lost to everything but the enjoyment of her favourite feelings, she retarded his thrusts with a just concert of spring heaves, keeping time so exactly with the most pathetic sighs, that one might have numbered the strokes in agitation by their distinct murmurs, whilst her active limbs kept wreathing and intertwisting with his, in convulsive folds: then the turtle-billing kisses, and the poignant painless lovebites, which they both exchanged, in a rage of delight, all conspiring towards the melting period. It soon came on, when Louisa, in the ravings of her pleasure-frenzy, impotent of all restraint, cried out: “Oh Sir!—Good Sir! pray do not spare me! ah! ah! —” All her accents now faultering into heart-fetched sighs, she closed her eyes in the sweet death, in the instant of which we could easily see the signs in the quiet, dying, languid posture of her late so furious driver, who was stopped of a sudden, breathing short, panting, and, for that time, giving up the spirit of pleasure.
As soon as he was dismounted, Louisa sprung up, shook her petticoats, and running up to me, gave me a kiss, and drew me to the sideboard, to which she was herself handed by her gallant, where they made me pledge them in a glass of wine, and toast a droll health of Louisa’s proposal in high frolic: that of “the miraculous thing which wets where it tickles, and tickles where it wets.”
By this time the second couple was ready to enter the lists: which were a young baronet, and that delicatest of charmers, the winning, tender Harriet. My gentle esquire came to acquaint me with it, and brought me back to the scene of action.
And, surely, never did one of her profession accompany her dispositions, for the barefaced part she was engaged to play, with such a peculiar grace of sweetness, modesty and yielding coyness, as she did. All her air and motions breathed only unreserved, unlimited complaisance without the least mixture of impudence, or prostitution. But what was yet more surprising, her spark elect, in the midst of the dissolution of a public open enjoyment, doted on her to distraction, and had, by dint of love and sentiments, touched her heart, though for a while the restraint of their engagement to the house laid him under a kind of necessity of complying with an institution which himself had had the greatest share establishing.
Harriet was then led to the vacant couch by her gallant, blushing as she looked at me, and with eyes made to justify any thing, tenderly bespeaking of me the most favourable construction of the step she was thus irresistibly drawn into.
Her legs still kept the ground; and now, with the tenderest attention not to shock or alarm her too suddenly, he, by degrees, rather stole than rolled up her petticoats; at which, as if a signal had been given, Louisa and Emily took hold of her legs, in pure wantonness, and, in ease to her, kept them stretched wide abroad. Then lay exposed, or, to speak more properly, displayed the greatest parade in nature of female charms. The whole company, who, except myself, had often seen them, seemed as much dazzled, surprised and delighted, as anyone could be who had now beheld them for the first time. Beauties so excessive could not but enjoy the privileges of eternal novelty. Her thighs were so exquisitely fashioned, that either more in, or more out of flesh than they were, they would have declined from that point of perfection they presented. But what infinitely enriched and adorned them, was the sweet intersection formed, where they met, at the bottom of the smoothest, roundest, whitest belly, by that central furrow which nature had sunk there, between the soft relievo of two pouting ridges, and which, in this girl, was in perfect symmetry of delicacy and miniature with the rest of her frame. No! nothing in nature could be of a beautifuller cut; then, the dark umbrage of the downy spring moss that over-arched it, bestowed, on the luxury of the landscape, a touching warmth, a tender finishing, beyond the expression of words, or even the paint of thought.
Her truly enamoured gallant, who had stood absorbed and engrossed by the pleasure of the sight long enough to afford us time to feast ours (no fear of glutting!) addressed himself at length to the materials of enjoyment, and lifting the linen veil that hung between us and his master member of the revels, exhibited one whose eminent size proclaimed the owner a true woman’s hero. He was, besides in every other respect, an accomplished gentleman, and in the bloom and vigour of youth. Standing then between Harriet’s legs, which were supported by her two companions at their widest extension, with one hand he gently disclosed the lips of that luscious mouth of nature, whilst with the other, he stooped his mighty machine to its lure, from the height of his stiff stand-up towards his belly; the lips, kept open by his fingers, received its broad shelving head of coral hue: and when he had nestled it in, he hovered there a little, and the girls then delivered over to his hips the agreeable office of supporting her thighs; and now, as if he meant to spin out his pleasure, and give it the more play for its life, he passed up his instrument so slow that we lost sight of it inch by inch, till at length it was wholly taken into the soft laboratory of love, and the mossy mounts of each fairly met together. In the meantime, we could plainly mark the prodigious effect the progressions of this delightful energy wrought in this delicious girl, gradually heightening her beauty as they heightened her pleasure. Her countenance and whole frame grew more animated; the faint blush of her cheeks, gaining ground on the white, deepened into a florid vivid vermillion glow, her naturally brilliant eyes now sparkled with ten-fold lustre; her languor was vanished, and she appeared quick, spirited and alive all over. He had now fixed, nailed, this tender creature, with his home-driven wedge, so that she lay passive by force, and unable to stir, till beginning to play a strain of arms against this vein of delicacy, as he urged the to-and-fro con-friction, he awakened, roused, and touched her so to the heart, that unable to contain herself, she could not but reply to his motions, as briskly as her nicety of frame would admit of, till the raging stings of the pleasure rising towards the point, made her wild with the intolerable sensations of it, and she now threw her legs and arms about at random, as she lay lost in the sweet transport; which on his side declared itself by quicker, eager thrusts, convulsive gasps, burning sighs, swift laborious breathing, eyes darting humid fires: all faithful tokens of the imminent approaches of the last gasp of joy. It came on at length: the baronet led the ecstasy, which she critically joined in, as she felt the melting symptoms from him, in the nick of which, gluing more ardently than ever his lips to hers, he showed all the signs of that agony of bliss being strong upon him, in which he gave her the finishing titillation; inly thrilled with which, we saw plainly that she answered it down with all effusion of spirit and matter she was mistress of, whilst a general soft shudder ran through all her limbs, which she gave a stretch out, and lay motionless, breathless, dying with dear delight; and in the height of its expression, showing, through the nearly closed lids of her eyes, just the edges of their black, the rest being rolled strongly upwards in their ecstasy; then her sweet mouth appeared languishingly open, with the tip of her tongue leaning negligently towards the lower range of her white teeth, whilst natural ruby colour of her lips glowed with heightened life. Was not this a subject to dwell upon? And accordingly her lover still kept on her, with an abiding delectation, till compressed, squeezed and distilled to the last drop, he took leave with one fervent kiss, expressing satisfied desires, but unextinguished love.
As soon as he was off, I ran to her, and sitting down on the couch by her, raised her head, which she declined gently, and hung on my bosom, to hide her blushes and confusion at what had passed, till by degrees she re-composed herself, and accepted of a restorative glass of wine from my spark, who had left me to fetch it to her, whilst her own was readjusting his affaire and buttoning up; after which he led her, leaning languishingly upon him, to oar stand of view round the couch.
And now Emily’s partner had taken her out for her share in the dance, when this transcendently fair and sweet tempered creature readily stood up; and if a com-extreme pretty features, and that florid health and complexion to put the rose and lily out of countenance, extreme pretty features, and that florid health and bloom for which the country girls are so lovely, might pass her for a beauty, this she certainly was, and one of the most striking of the fair ones.
Her gallant began first, as she stood, to disengage, her breasts, and restore them to the liberty of nature, from the easy confinement of no more than a pair of jumps; but on their coming out to view, we thought a new light was added to the room, so superiorly shining was their whiteness; then they rose in so happy a swell as to compose her a well horned fullness of bosom, that had such an effect on the eye as to seem flash hardened into marble, of which it emulated the polished gloss, and far surpassed even the whitest, in the life and lustre of its colours, white veined with blue. Who could refrain from such provoking enticements in reach? he touched her breasts, first lightly, when the glossy smoothness of the skin eluded his hand, and made it slip along the surface; he pressed them, and the springy flesh that filled them, thus pitted by force, rose again reboundingly with his hand, and on the instant defaced the pressure: and alike indeed was the consistence of all those parts of her body throughout, where the fulness of flesh compacts and constitutes all that fine firmness which the touch is so highly attached to. When he had thus largely pleased himself with this branch of dalliance and delight, he trussed up her petticoat and shift, in a wisp to her waist, where being tucked in, she stood fairly naked on every side; a blush at this overspread her lovely face, and her eyes downcast to the ground, seemed to be for
quarter, when she had so great a right to triumph in all the treasures of youth and beauty that she now so victoriously displayed. Her legs were perfectly well shaped and her thighs, which she kept pretty close, showed so white, so round, so substantial and abounding in firm flesh, that nothing could afford a stronger recommendation to the luxury of the touch, which he accordingly did not fail to indulge in. Then gently removing her hand, which in the first emotion of natural modesty, she had carried thither, he gave us rather a glimpse than a view of that soft narrow chink running its little length downwards, and hiding the remains of it between her thighs; but plain was to be seen the fringe of light-brown curls, in beauteous growth over it, that with their silk gloss created a pleasing variety from the surrounding white, whose lustre too, their gentle embrowning shade, considerably raised. Her spark then endeavoured, as she stood, by disclosing her thighs, to gain us a completer sight of that central charm of attraction, but not obtaining it so conveniently in that attitude, he led her to the foot of the couch, and bringing it to one of the pillows gently inclined her head down, so that as she leaned with it over her crossed hands, straddling with her thighs wide spread, and jutting her body out, she presented a full back view of her person, naked to her waist. Her posteriors, plump, smooth, and prominent, formed luxuriant tracts of animated snow, that splendidly filled the eye, till it was commanded down the parting or separation of those exquisitely white cliffs, by their narrow vale, and was there stopped, and attracted by the embowered bottom-cavity, that terminated this delightful vista and stood moderately gaping from the influence of her bended posture, so that the agreeable interior red of the sides of the orifice came into view, and with respect to the white that dazzled round it, gave somewhat the idea of a pink slash in the glossiest white satin. Her gallant, who was a gentleman about thirty, somewhat inclined to a fatness that was in no sort displeasing, improving the hint thus tendered him of this mode of enjoyment, after setting her well in this posture, and encouraging her with kisses and caresses to stand him through, drew out his affair ready erected, and whose extreme length, rather disproportioned to its breadth, was the more surprising, as that excess is not often the case with those of his corpulent habit; making then the right and direct application, he drove it up to the guard, whilst the round bulge of those Turkish beauties of hers, tallying with the hollow made with the bent of his belly and thighs, as he curved inwards, brought all those parts, surely not un-delightfully, into warm touch, and close conjunction; his hands he kept passing round her body, and employed in toying with her enchanting breasts. As soon too as she felt him at home as he could reach, she lifted her head a little from the pillow, and turning her neck, without much straining, but her cheeks glowing with the deepest scarlet, and a smile of the tenderest satisfaction, met the kiss he pressed forward to give her as they were thus close joined together: when leaving him to pursue his delights, she hid again her face and blushes with her hands and pillow, and thus stood passively and as favourably too as she could, whilst he kept laying at her with repeated thrusts and making the meeting flesh on both sides resound again with the violence of them; then ever as he backened from her, we could see between them part of his long white staff foamingly in motion, till, as he went on again and closed with her, the interposing hillocks took it out of sight. Sometimes he took his hands from the semi-globes of her bosom, and transferred the pressure of them to those large ones, the present subjects of his soft blockade, which he squeezed, grasped and played with, till at length in pursuit of driving, so hotly urged, brought on the height of the fit, with such overpowering pleasure, that his fair partner became now necessary to support him, panting, fainting and dying as he discharged; which she no sooner felt the killing sweetness of, than unable to keep her legs, and yielding to the mighty intoxication, she reeled, and falling forward on the couch, made it a necessity for him, if he would preserve the warm-pleasure hold, to fall upon her, where they perfected, in a continued conjunction of body and ecstatic flow, their scheme of joys for that time.