Jonathan Richardson
Confessions Of An English Traveler
Prologue
Looking back over my Life-it has not been a long one and I like to think I am still in my prime-I find it hard to say just when the thought of leaving England first arose in my mind. I only know that when I acquired new lodgings for the third time in two years my restlessness had become acute and could not have been cured.
The new lodgings were neither better nor worse than the ones I had occupied for several months previously. But I had grown morose from looking at the same faces and the same rows of brick-walled houses week after week, and moving about had become a necessity for me. If anything had been needed to add fuel to my discontent, the episode which I have just related had supplied it, and only a drastic break with the past remained as a means of improving my lot.
I had very nearly paid for my recklessness with my life and what had I gained from an encounter behind drawn blinds in the small hours that differed from a hundred others I had enjoyed in recent months? What had I gained that I could look back on as different, as wildly exciting?
True, no two women are alike. But when you have explored all of the possibilities resident in the delectable sex in a city such as London, when you have endured needless bickerings and the striking of bargains in disreputable taverns and poverty-blighted streets your thoughts turn to what might be accomplished in a happier climate under brighter skies.
I had spent most of the morning unpacking. There was an eight-foot-high book cabinet which could be swung out from the wall far enough to flood the shelves with sunlight from the window opposite and I could read the title of each book as I set it down.
Most of the books it would have been unwise to place in the hands of the very young. But few men of learning and wide experience would have thought my collection in any way outrageous, for I have a preference for classic volumes which have stood the test of time, and survived the unjustified attacks so often made upon great literature of a bold and candid nature by narrow-minded Servants of the Crown.
As I placed the books, one by one, on the cabinet's two upper shelves I paused to admire the fine gold-and- leather binding of JUSTINE, and found myself idly flipping a dozen or more pages I had memorized almost line for line.
What a hypocrite De Sade had been, pretending to be morally outraged by practices in which he had himself so frequently indulged that his last years had been spent on a mat of straw in a stone-walled asylum, for offenses which Napoleon had refused to condone, despite the presentation copy which the author had made bold to send him. Yet what a superb intellect the man had possessed, how marvellously he had illuminated the darkest recesses of the human mind!
I had closed JUSTINE with a snap and was chuckling, for the hundredth time, over a passage in Petronius, in which two dissolute wights, fleeing for their lives, take refuge in Roman Bath, and observe there a man whose organ was so huge that his body seemed like a tiny, dangling appendage attached to it-I was chuckling, as I say, over what is perhaps the most amusing passage in the whole of Roman literature when I heard a gentle tapping at the door.
It wasn't the first time that my new landlady had announced her presence in that way. But it was barely eight o'clock and the thought crossed my mind that only a matter of some importance would have brought her to my door at so early an hour.
I walked to the door and opened it and she slipped quickly into the room.
“This letter just came,” she said, extending an envelope bearing a small black postal stamp in its upper right hand corner, and looking at me almost guiltily, as if half-suspecting that I would be somewhat puzzled by her promptness in delivering a letter that might not be of the least importance.
Bless the hearts of all new landladies, and bless them again for the curious interest which they display toward every newcomer to the field of combat most dear to their hearts. They take it for granted that no man-be he young or old, or hobbling about on crutches-will find himself incapable of a truly prodigious performance when the shades are drawn and he is given a proper degree of encouragement.
I, for one, have never needed encouragement in that respect. But if women were not so amiably disposed for the most part when a newcomer arrives on the field of battle even the boldest of us might experience qualms and hesitate to exhibit a corresponding degree of audacity.
It is so false, so completely contrary to what I have myself observed all of my life to believe that women must invariably be coaxed and flattered and pursued with tireless persistence to yield to a man intent on seduction! No more than a knowing and ardent glance is needed to break down all of their defenses. Whatever remains after that is pretense solely, and one can shatter pretense as though it were a feather. And if there are a few women who are capable of remaining icily contemptuous and unyielding, one can be sure they are not women a man of parts would choose as a partner in bed-chamber delights.
“I was expecting this letter,” I said, to put her at her ease. “It was kind of you to bring it to me the instant it arrived.”
For a moment she just stood looking at me, as if she did not quite know what to say in reply. She could not have been more than twenty-five and was quite possibly three or four years younger. She had beautiful hair, a dark, silky brown and it descended to her shoulders. But what I liked most about her were her sturdy legs, ample bosom and fresh complexion, which gave her the look of a country girl, wholesome and unspoiled.
Her bodice was loosened and her chemise was parted just above the twin mounds of her breasts. But though I could not see more than the upper part of their swelling curvature I was almost sure that the nipples would be rosy-pink and would stiffen the instant I touched them.
The first move is always crucial, for there are women who prefer a quick thrust bosomward by an impetuously exploring hand, and others the tit-illation of a hand somewhat more audacious moving quickly upwards from knee to thigh to the enchanted circle itself.
The elaborate and voluptuous variations which follow success may take many forms. But that does not diminish the importance of the first bold move in paving the way for a complete conquest.
I decided to be less bold than I might have been if I had been entirely sure that she had tapped on my door with only one thought in mind-to find out if the new lodger was amorously inclined. Perhaps she had delivered the letter solely out of kindness, and I was not so base as to repay an act of kindness with lovemaking, inflamed by bawdy thoughts, that might come as a rude shock to her.
If I had put my hand immediately beneath her clothes and refused to remove it a struggle might have ensued. But at least-if I had proceeded thus quickly to intimacies which would have resolved all doubt-I would have known where I stood and the chances were high that I would have been conducted, by moans of pleasure and many grateful sighs, into a garden of delight, ringed around with the loveliest of flowering plants.
Still-I decided for once to shun all rudeness and a too abrupt attempt to find out if her inclinations were as I had pictured them, if only because she had looked at me so trustingly when I had taken the letter from her hand.
“Won't you sit down for a moment?” I said, drawing a chair toward her, and removing from it three books which I found myself wishing she could have read.
“It seems a pity,” I went on earnestly, “that so much work should be required of you when an older woman, with her youth already spent, would not find housekeeping tasks half as burdensome. Such tasks make the young and gay of heart feel that they are being cheated of happiness, and rightly so. Could not your father afford to employ a housekeeper, to assist you at least? With five lodgers-”
She sat down and shook her head, a look of sadness coming into her eyes.
“My father is quite poor,” she said. “Did you not know that? It is true we own this house. But it is heavily mortgaged and he has been out of work for several months.”
I drew close to her and let my hand rest lightly on her shoulder, feeling that the time for boldness had
