into a deep sleep from which I did not wake until almost ten o'clock. As I washed and shaved it occurred to me that I had really been foolish to fuck with my footman and chambermaid. I might be able to trust Mary but as the old saying goes, no man is a hero to his valet, though it would be shockingly unfair to dismiss Edwards who had done nothing dishonourable. Well, it would all depend on his behaviour when I sat down to breakfast. Would he be arch? Would he be familiar? Or would he put on airs? Perhaps he wouldn't even come in with the newspaper and the post. But thank goodness, all my worries were unfounded, for Edwards greeted me with his usual deferential 'good- morning, sir,' as he passed me the Daily News and the single letter which had arrived earlier in the morning.
A lucky escape, nevertheless, I mused, and resolved never to repeat the mistake as I read the short note addressed to me by Henry Bascombe-Thomas, an old chum from St Lionel's Academy, who I had not seen for a year-since after leaving Cambridge University, he had decided to cross the Atlantic and spend a year in America, studying modern art under Professor Sidney Cohen of New York University.
Henry was an artistic cove, much given to writing occasionally good verse, painting some rather rum pictures and wearing his hair far too long for our headmaster, Dr Keeleigh's taste. Some foolish fellows at St Lionel's wrongly assumed that Henry was a woofter and soon found out that though of an eminently peaceful disposition, if pushed too far, Henry could also deliver an uppercut to the jaw, though like myself, he abhorred physical violence and refused (again like myself) to be considered for the school boxing team. I should add that like a surprising number of very clever chaps, Henry was terribly absent-minded-which explained why his letter to me arrived a full two days after he had posted it from Southampton as he had addressed it to Bedford Street instead of Bedford Square. However, no harm had come from the delay as you will see, dear reader, from this copy of his message which I had deciphered with no little difficulty from his unreadable scrawl. It read as follows:
Dear Rupert, I returned to England last week on the SS Shmockle, the flagship of the Hanseatic Line owned by Count Gewirtz of Galicia who happened to be on board. The weather was inclement for the first two days but all in all I had a most enjoyable journey which I'll tell you about when we meet.
Could we lunch on October 29 at the Jim Jam? I'm on my way to Chichester this afternoon to see my parents but I'll be coming up to town tomorrow evening and staying at the Jim Jam for a week till I find myself some rooms. Unless I hear from you (you can telegraph me at The Old Vicarage, Mackswell Avenue, Kendall, Near Chichester), I'll assume you can make it. Shall we say one o'clock in the first floor bar? Looking forward immensely to seeing you again, Henry Now I had planned a semi-artistic kind of day myself.
This would have started with a brisk stroll down to Holywell Street to see the new prints from Paris at the Birmingham Gallery where Mr.
Malcolm Campbell owns the largest selection of erotic pictures in the country, kept under lock and key away from the general public and shown only for viewing by selected customers. Afterwards, I would have hailed a cab to Pall Mall to take luncheon followed by an afternoon snooze at The National Reform, one of my more respectable clubs.
However, even though I had spent some time at the Jim Jam the previous evening with Mary, I wanted to see Henry again and hear all his news. So I decided to postpone my visit to the Birmingham Gallery to another day and instead I thought I would spend a quiet morning browsing amongst Colonel Wright's bookshelves as my landlord was an avid reader and collector of first editions. There was little of interest in the newspaper, so after demolishing a bowl of porridge, a full plate of bacon, eggs, sausages and five slices of buttered toast, I took my third cup of tea into the library and scoured the shelves for something interesting to read. By pure chance I pulled out a book titled Modern Women and opening it to the title page I read that this leather bound tome was of 'conversations with various girls in Belgravia and Mayfair' by a Mr. Oliver Dunstable, an author whose writing was hitherto unknown to me. There was, however, a preface written by none other than Sir Rodney Burbeck, one of the gayest Lotharios in London. He had written: 'This fresh and original book gives us an excellent verbal picture of what today's men and women are thinking and what they want from their counterparts. There is a perception and a sense of humour in his writing which makes Mr.
Dunstable not only delightful to read but well worth thinking about afterwards. The illustrations consist of portraits which will be recognised at once by anyone familiar with current members of Society.' This was praise indeed! And from such a source as Sir Rodney, it surely heralded some gallant writing, which always afforded me the greatest enjoyment. So I settled down with a glow of anticipation on my face as I read Mr. Dunstable's account of his interview with Melissa Rotherwick, perhaps the prettiest of all the debutantes who 'came out' in 1905, who I remembered meeting at Lord Bresslaw's Autumn Ball last year. She was one of the most beautiful young women one could wish to see, with gold-dusted light-brown hair, expressive large eyes, rich ruby lips and pearly white teeth. Mr.
Dunstable had had the good fortune to meet her at the splendid country mansion of Stockleigh Hall, her family country seat down in Kent and she talked openly of her belief that further education should be given to young people about matters appertaining to l'art de faire l'amour.
As this book was printed privately, I doubt if many readers will be acquainted with Melissa's frank account of how she and her schoolfriends were forced to kidnap, if this is not too strong a term, a willing young man, so as to find out for themselves the joys of a good fuck. Therefore I propose to bring her words to a wider audience by reproducing them here. The uninhibited young girl was telling Mr.
Dunstable of her years spent at Mrs. Bartholomew's Boarding School For Young Ladies not far from Redstock at the foot of the Mendip Hills.
Melissa Rotherwick told Mr. Dunstable: It will be readily understood, I am sure, that being all of the same sex, we found it most frustrating to be shut up in a friendly but strictly enclosed establishment in the heart of Somerset without a single member of the male species to be found anywhere on the premises with the exception of our chaplain, Reverend Jonathan Crawford, a nice old gentleman of seventy-three who conducted services every Sunday morning in the school chapel. As may be readily imagined, we were forced to explore amongst ourselves, so to speak, for our private pleasures and it was hardly surprising that there were many close, emotional ties which flourished between the young ladies. However by the time my pals and I had reached the dizzy heights of the sixth form, such juvenile 'pashes', as we called these intra-feminine love affairs, had palled and we were ripe for plucking by any lucky young man who might come our way. But we were so strictly chaperoned away from anything masculine (even the school cat was a plump ginger tabby!) that it seemed we would never be able to sample the fruits of sensual passion until we had left Mrs. Bartholomew's custody. Yet despite these restrictions, as the old saw has it, love laughs at locksmiths, and in the course of time a day dawned when some of us were able to put the theoretical knowledge we had gained from the copy of Dr Nigel Andrews'
Fucking For Beginners, which my friend Annabel had smuggled into school after borrowing the copy she found in her brother's room during a Christmas vacation, to a most pleasant practical use. This event happened by a series of fortunate circumstances and involved George Cox, the aptly named young nephew of Reverend Crawford, who was spending a few days down in Somerset visiting his elderly relation.
But first I had better explain that at Mrs. Bartholomew's, one of the benefits of seniority was that on Wednesday afternoons members of the upper sixth form were allowed out of bounds to stroll unaccompanied along the path, through Farmer Trippett's meadow, down to the banks of the small stream which ran between his fields. Well, one fine spring afternoon, during my penultimate term at the school, my friends Annabel and Sheena accompanied me for a walk along this path and we were discussing, some abstruse mathematical problem which had been set that morning by Mrs. Bartholomew herself. I must give my old head teacher due credit at this point and record the fact that science and mathematics played major roles in our curriculum, unlike the majority of similar academies for young ladies where only the arts are studied in any serious way. Anyway, we were deeply engrossed in this rather learned conversation when Annabel suddenly stopped talking and I saw her jaw drop and her mouth hang open as she stood stock still, staring across to the far bank of the stream. Sheena and I followed her gaze and we were also struck dumb by what we saw-for lying flat on his back, fast asleep, was none other than George Cox, who had obviously taken a dip in the river and followed it by a luncheon of sandwiches and the best part of a bottle of white wine which lay beside in an ice-box. This in itself would not have been such an extraordinary sight but for the fact that George had divested himself of his clothes for his swim and had not bothered to put them back on again afterwards, thinking no doubt that as he was on private land, no-one would be coming by! So there he lay, naked as nature intended, and for the first time in our lives, we three girls were given the opportunity to look at a full-sized genuine penis. Frankly, at first sight, this squashed up tube of flesh which protruded out of a growth of mossy pubic hair and lay limp over George's thigh did not impress us.
'It doesn't seem nearly as big as the pricks shown in Fucking for Beginners,' commented Sheena, and
