My Secret Life

Kitty's antecedents. • The fishmonger's. • Jim the shopman. • Betty the maid. • Females in bed. • Mutual curiosity. • Letchery and frigging. • Educated in coition. • Against the kitchen-wall. • Jim in bed. • Betty's cunt washed out. • A look in the basin. • Cousin Grace, and cousin Bob. • Bob on the spree. • A scuffle. • Topsy-turvy. • Arsyversy. • Bob's semen. • A masturbating duet. • Caught in the act • Kicked out.

I questioned her many a time, and put together here consecutively what she said. She was as much pleased to gossip about it as I was.

She was the daughter of a carpenter, had been kept at home to help her mother, till six months previously to my meeting her, when growing restive, and I dare say her animal vigor inciting her to go forth into the world, she went into a situation at a fishmonger's who wanted some girl to nurse a little child, his wife being ill.

I believed she had told me most things about her-self from the time the doodle had first penetrated her: yet why had not such a big girl been put to earn her living? she said that her mother was always in the family way, or a child was ill, so she being the biggest helped at home.

But she had been in service, about all of which she told me one hot afternoon. Ice was then a luxury, they charged two pence extra for a bottle of gingerbeer iced. She was fond of gingerbeer, we had some iced with sherry, and lay on the bed drinking it as she told me her story bit by bit. This is an account of my doings, and not of tales told me by others, but I must tell her tale, for I believed every bit of it, and it is almost part of my own, and this is how it came out.

“If you never spent with a man till you did with me, you had frigged yourself.” “I never did till the gal at the fishmonger's did it to me, — we slept to-gether.” “Then you had been in service?” “Only two months, I went to mind a little child.”

The fishmonger was a little struggling tradesman, in a house with a shop on the ground-floor, and a little back-parlour, and kitchens, and a cellar below where they kept fish-baskets.

Over the shop were two rooms, one was the fish-monger's bed-room, and two bed-rooms above. The wife was confined to her bed, and her husband slept alone in the back-room which was usually the female servant's; so the servant was put into a bed on the top-floor. This maid cooked, cleaned, did everything, and had an eye as well to the shop if her Mistress was ill, and when Master and his man were out; but she could not mind the child as well. The fishmonger asked the carpenter if he knew of a strong steady lass, the carpenter named his own girl, and Kitty went for grub, lodging, and one and six a week. She was to sleep with the maid on the top-floor over the rooms where Master and Mistress slept. The servant's name was Betty.

The fishmonger drank. A young man named Jim went with him to market, and sometimes without him if he had been very drunk over night. Jim opened the shop, harnessed the horse and cart, and every night when the Master went to bed, Jim went to the under-ground kitchen, opened a cupboard, pulled down some-thing called a bed, and slept there.

Jim was up first, and to bed but last, could not go to bed till the maid-of-all-work was out of the kitchen. Jim pissed in the sink, and made his own bed every morning as soon as he got up, which was done by turning it up somehow into the cupboard, and then he called up his Master and the maid. The privy was in the yard.

Kitty took charge of the child, and the first night as she was going to bed and took her things off Betty said, “Where is your night-gown?” “I ain't got none”, said Kitty, “I sleep in my shemmy.” Betty tossed up her head. Kitty cried. “Father's a poor man”, said she, “but he's respectable, and though I sleeps in my shemmy I am very clean, I washes all over every day, —look at my legs and my neck, — but with my first week's wages I'll buy a night-gown.”

“Never mind”, said Betty, “you are clean, and you're fat, — your dad gives you lots of grub, — don't cry, I only said, 'where's your night-gown?'—Lord you are fat for your age !—how old did you say you were ? — why what a big bum you've got for your age!”