My Secret Life

I could not get Esther to stop out again all night, but she met me often enough, and became a baudy little bitch whose cunt much wanted feeding. She told me the awful state of mind she and her sister were in at my first overhearing them with the barrow; they had been talking of fucking all that day, Sarah had begun it. Taking hold of some linen, “Oh ! my”, she said, “look here, ain't they been a doing it !—here is waste.” There was spunk on the linen. I heard a good deal of choice washerwoman's talk from Esther after-wards, and found that it was not an unusual thing for laundresses to joke about the semen they found on the linen of their customers, and that if they found suspicious signs on the man's linen, to give the lady of the house a hint to look after her husband. Many a husband has I am sure been discovered to have had illicit pleasure, or to have the ladies' favor through the hints of an officious laundress.

I made Esther liberal presents, but didn't take her much to Vauxhall or theatres, although she was constantly asking me to do so. I had taken her to Vauxhall one night after I had first had her, and saw some one there whom I should have been sorry to have seen me with Esther. We went to the little snug, quiet accommodation house which had been the scene of the slaughter of her virginity, and there fucked; some-times we walked instead of riding home, and when near the village, turning down a secluded street, or lane, I set her back up against a fence, and had her; then with her cunt buttered home she went alone. I took her once or twice to the theatre, and for fear of being seen had a box; but I could not afford those extravagances. Although not a bad-looking girl, and one who would stir up sensations in a man's ballocks when he looked at her, she was vulgar in appearance; and neither bonnets nor dress made any improvement in her, — she was a washerwoman all over.

After she was well acquainted with two or three baudy houses I grew tired of her, and quarrelled with her. One night I went to my mother's who was ill; and as I passed the end of the lane where Esther lived saw one or two young men and women larking. She and her sister sometimes came to the end of the lane when their work was done, to see the people going along the high-road, and to chat there with neighbours. The men were chivying the girls, and Esther was one of them. I watched them from a safe distance, heard laughing and screeching, and every now and then one of the girls chased by a man darted down the dark lane, and I heard a shriek. There was no light in the lane, and not much even in the high-road from the feeble oil-lamps. I thought also that I saw Esther kissed, she yelled and got away, but it seemed to me she much liked it. For some reason all the wenches suddenly disappeared, and the men, who were of the laboring class, leaned against the railings of the public-house, and talked. I walked slowly by them, and heard one say, “I felt her cunt the other night, so help me Gor.” I did not know who he spoke of, but I made up my mind it was Esther.

I wrote Esther to meet me, and then told her she had let a man feel her cunt, and what I had seen and heard. She denied all cheekily, but got confused when I told her what the man said. “I was in the lane”, said I afterwards, “and quite towards that end where I have felt you often, — I hid, and I know he was feeling you there.” It was a bare-faced lie of mine, be-cause I had gone away; but it was a hit. “He didn't”, said she, “though he tried.” “I heard him say you felt his prick”, said I lying away again, “he went up the lane, and told that tall young man that, 'so help his God', you had.” “He wanted to make me, but I didn't, —he is the greatest liar in the place. It was sneaking of you to be hiding like that, and watching me”, said she. I wanted to fuck her, but she would not let me. She slanged me, said I had deceived her, had said I would keep her, and lots of other things, — and off she went. I took no notice for a fortnight, then went to the lodgings of Sarah, and had a talk with her. Sarah said that Esther was mad with me for not writing nor going to see her, and blamed me for not “behaving hand-some”. “No other man has ever touched Esther”, said she, “you don't seem to care about her, — but there's plenty who do, — there are two or three gents about who would be glad to be in your place.”