My Secret Life

All hopes were dashed to the ground. Laura was my consolation till she left. For a year of my life I was needy and discontented, but not so miserable as I was fated to be. I pass over that period, there was not much in the amatory line to tell of. Fucking is a commonplace thing, the prince and the beggar do it the same way, it is only the incidents connected with it that are exciting. Voluptuous, reckless, youth and beauty together, make the vulgar shoving, arse-wagging business poetical for the time, but it is animalism.

Then I committed a more fatal error than spending a fortune in jollity; what it was will be guessed, it is only referred to here to connect my history. I was then in my twenty-sixth year.

I add a few observations which on reading this written many years ago, seems now needful to explain even to myself.

Most of my relatives lived in the provinces, and were wealthy. We visited each other periodically, but distance (there were few railways then) prevented them from entering into my daily life, still less my secret life. Fred's mother was nearest to us, and as the episodes show, she and her family were most mixed up with my affairs. An aunt in London, childless and rich, gave me most money, and afterwards left me a good sum. I cared but little about those living at a distance. With a cousin from the North I had some rousing debauches, which were at the time known to many of my family. He is still alive, but pious, and with a large family, and would not like to know I am writing this. Jolly old Ben, I won't narrate our sprees, for you may live to read this, — who knows?

Chapter XVI

Married, and miserable. • Virtuous intentions. • Consequences. • Mary Davis. • A virtuous child. • Low class fucksters. • A concupiscent landlady. • Reflexions on my career. • On the sizes of pricks.. • My misconception.

My life was now utterly changed; married. I was quite needy, with a yearly income (and that not my own) not more than I used to spend in a month, some-times in a fortnight. Every shilling I had to look at, walked miles where I used to ride, and to save a six pence, amusements were beyond me, my food was the simplest, wine I scarcely tasted, all habits of luxury were gone, but worse than all I was utterly wretched. I tried to make the best of my life and could when by myself be cheerful, even in the recollection of the past fun; but there was that about me now which brought sorrow over to me. The instant I saw her, she checked my smile, sneered at my past, moaned over my future, was a nightmare to me, a very spectre.

I tried to like, to love her. It was impossible. Hateful in day, she was loathsome to me in bed. Long I strove to do my duty, and be faithful, yet to such a pitch did my disgust at length go, that laying by her side, I had wet dreams nightly, sooner than relieve myself in her. I have frigged myself in the streets before entering my house, sooner than fuck her. I loving women, and naturally kind and affectionate to them, ready to be kind and loving to her, was driven to avoid her as I would a corpse. I have followed a woman for miles with my prick stiff, yet went to my wretched home pure, because I had vowed to be chaste. My heart was burning to have an affectionate kiss, a voluptuous sight from some woman, yet I avoided obtaining it. My health began to give way, sleepless nights, weary days made me contemplate suicide. It seemed as if I never could have happiness again, yet my physical forces, or so much of them as lay in my generative organs, seemed unimpaired. I neither drank nor debauched, and my prick stood incessantly; neither random frigs nor night-dreams stopped it.

My only relief from misery was in thinking over the pleasures I had had, yet all seemed such a long time past, that it was She a dream. Then a desire to have other women became invincible. I had no means to get those I had been accustomed to, and seemed to have no idea of going economically to work for my pleasures, but at length began to walk through streets inhabited by very poor gay women, in a neighbourhood I had known in my early youth. Then I found out other poor quarters, and one night with but a few shillings in my pocket, after thinking of throwing myself into a canal, I found myself at a spot where women of a somewhat better class lived in its centre, and on its outskirts very poor harlots.

“I will,-have I the money? — can't help it, — if one won't another will”, and I slunk into a street, half ashamed of entering it. Saw girls standing at doors, never paused for selection, nor to see if one looked nicer than another, it was cunt I wanted. The moment I turned the corner of the street, I cared not who or what, as long as she had a petticoat and what it hid from sight. I took the nearest.