dear friend,' said she, 'you can now go to Baden-Baden, and drink the waters for a year, at the end of which time, return my old acquaintance, and if you are restored to vigour, you will find me the same.'
Thus we parted. Now what shall I say? The saints and hypocrites who will read this will exclaim, 'What a miscreant this man is.' Read thus far, did I say? Oh! fie! do saints and hypocrites read naughty books? Aye! marry do they, and go home and frig themselves, the beasts, or bugger their footmen. Don't abuse me, you blasted humbugs, members of the Society for the Suppression of Vice!
forsooth! Look at home, most worthy religious people! How long is it since one of your Reverend Members was collared by a bobby for assaulting a common, dirty porter boy in the urinal of a railway station, and sentenced to penal servitude for life? Answer me that? A clergyman of the Established Church, too! fie, fie! Gentlemen, I leave such illicit pleasures to the clergy; as for me, I'm a mere fuckster. I like women, and I have them. Go along, you damned, old sodomitical buggerers, and have your boys; but in common honesty, leave honest men to fuck their women in peace, and be damned to you!
'There you go again,' says some captious fellow, who is reading this veritable history,
'digressing again. Damn your old eyes, mind your fucking!'
'It's all very well, sir,' say I, 'but please to consider the tyranny of these people. And all they want is to turn a penny; damn them, they live by their virtue, such as it is.'
Pardon me, gentle, fair, or angry reader, whichever you be, for this digression, but I am a man of spirit, and bite when I'm trod upon. To resume:
And whose fault was it, that I committed these adulteries? Surely my wife's. Had I not been faithful to her for three years! had I not let slip many chances during that time? Venus, thou art a goddess, thou knowest all things! Say how many divine creatures I neglected during that time? for though buried in the depths of the New Forest —
Full many a flower (there) is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
So saith the poet, and true it is.
And the baby she idolised and loved so well, he grew into boyhood, and she spoiled him, and he grew to man's estate, and became a curse and a disappointment. Go to! now ye fond mothers, who drive your children. What profit have ye? Go to, I say.
But in six months this woman began to feel certain motions of nature, which told her there were other joys besides the pleasure of spoiling her breasts to give suck to her brat, and she wanted to see her sposo again. She was virtuous was this woman, so ought to have been 'a crown to her husband'. God knows it has been 'a crown of thorns', but let that pass.
She came up to town, and called on the earl. She was all pathos and meekness, of course. She told her 'sad tale'. My relative was moved, a 'woman in tears' is more eloquent with some people, than
'the woman in white'! I received from my relative a very peremptory letter. I had some expectations from this man; it would not do to offend him; I consented to live with her again.
I smothered my resentment at being coerced into the reunion, and with her I went back to Hampshire, but my erotic readers would only feel bored with a narrative of the family squabbles which ensued, so I pass on to more interesting events.
About a mile from our cottage, was a handsome house surrounded by extensive pleasure grounds. This house was occupied by two ladies, who kept an establishment for young ladies. The front of the premises faced the road, while the plantation at the back abutted on an extensive rabbit warren, the property of my friend, the squire.
One day, having nothing better to do, I took my gun and, whistling to my dogs, sallied out to see if I could knock over a rabbit or two. I was creeping along the quickset hedge, which was a very high one, when I became aware that some of the merry girls were diverting themselves with a swing, and not being aware that one of the masculine gender was so near, made no scruple, in mere frolic, as it seemed, to show their dainty legs, and something more!
In those days drawers had not come generally into fashion and for one girl that wore them, ten did not. I thus had an unrestrained view, and the sight had such an effect on me, that I was obliged to pull out my truncheon to cool him in the summer breeze. I could see them very plainly through the hedge, but whether they could see me, remained to be ascertained. They had not yet chanced to look at the hedge.
Presently, one of them, a pretty little love of about thirteen, said, 'I want to pee!' and holding up her clothes behind, so as to give me full view of her plump white bottom, she squatted down over some stinging nettles, close to the hedge, and performed a very natural libation. The other girls laughed, and told her to 'take care she did not hurt her bottom'. Then the little lady jumped up, and pressing her hand over her clothes between her legs, as I divined to dry certain rosy lips, turned around to see how she had refreshed the stinging nettles. At that moment one of my dogs sneezed, the little girl raised her eyes, and in a moment beheld me from head to foot; my truncheon hard and erect, stood bolt upright, his mushroom-shaped head distended to an enormous size, while I, pretending to be doing what she had just done, stood quite immovable and affected not to see her at all. She stepped softly back to her companions, there was a good deal of whispering and the next instant the swing was deserted and the hedge lined with pretty, eager, blushing faces, like roses on a tree. They one and all looked with all their eyes, and I took care that they should not be balked. Dear little loves, if they wished to gratify their curiosity, why should they not? Now be it observed that I am the last man in the world who would intrude an obscene object before the eye of innocence and modesty; it would be something more than ill-bred and ungentlemanly, it would be cruel — and I am not cruel. I hate cruelty, whether a girl, or a poor cat is the victim, and the other day, taking a short cut through some of the back shims of Seven Dials, I found some young urchins grievously tormenting poor puss.
Whereupon I raised my stick and sent the rascals to the right-about, and lifting the poor little animal in my arms, I took her home to my lodgings, fed her, and retained her with me. Whenever I come home, poor puss comes up to me, purrs a welcome, arches up her back and rubs herself against my legs. She is grateful, and knows her protector, and I am rewarded. Now if I would not tolerate cruelty to so mean a creature as a cat, be sure I would not wilfully be cruel to a young girl. But these girls were evidently neither innocent nor modest. Ergo, I let them look their fill. At length they drew off, so I, taking up my gun, began popping at the rabbits. In about half an hour I had bagged three, so thinking that enough, I thought of going home. I was now at the other side of the plantation, where was a wall, for fruit trees I concluded; it was not very high, but sufficiently so to conceal me. I heard laughter and voices on the other side of this wall, and listened. It was the girls talking over their adventure.
'Well, there is one thing certain,' said one, 'he did not see us, and did not know we were looking at him.'
'Oh! that is evident,' said another, 'if he had seen us he would have gone away.'
'What a handsome man he was,' said a third, 'I hope I may get such a husband.'
'Yes,' said a fourth, 'and what a funny great thing it is! I wonder whether all men are like that.
I'm sure my little slit would never let it in.'
I was highly entertained with this chat, and longed to be amongst them, but it will never do to force matters, so I went home with my rabbits, and thought the matter over. How could I manage to get admitted within the sacred precincts?
After what the girls had said among themselves, it was plain there could be no ill consequences from the past adventure.
I therefore went boldly up to the house the next day, and sent in my card. I was asked into the drawing- room, and the ladies of the establishment appeared. I had expected to see a pair of shrivelled old maids. Imagine my surprise at beholding in the sisters a lovely woman of thirty, a widow, and a sweet creature of about five-and- twenty.
'Really,' said I, 'I feel I have taken an unwarrantable liberty by this intrusion, but I am an enthusiastic gardener [!], and I heard that your grounds were laid out with such exquisite taste — a taste all your own, I am fully aware — that I was most desirous to see them; then I am very fond of a good romp with children, and I flatter myself I can render myself agreeable to your young people.'
'I assure you, Captain S-, we are highly honoured by this visit. It has always been a source of regret to my sister and myself that we were unacquainted with Mrs S- and yourself. My poor husband was an officer in the Indian army, and Indian men are very acceptable society to me, and I have heard so much from the squire and from our worthy rector in your favour that I am delighted, I am sure, to become known to you,' said the pretty widow.
'Alas! madam,' said I, 'it would give me sincere pleasure to see my wife a little more sociable with her neighbours, but I will tell you entre nous, that she always conceives an antipathy for those who like me! She is so
