I began these memoirs when about twenty-five years old, having from
youth kept a diary of some sort, which perhaps from habit made me think
of recording my inner and secret life.
When I began it, I had scarcely read a baudy book, none of which
excepting "Fanny Hill" appeared to me to be truthful, that did, and
it does so still; the others telling of recherche eroticisms, or
of inordinate copulative powers, of the strange twists, tricks, and
fancies, of matured voluptuousness, and philosophical lewedness, seemed
to my comparative ignorance, as baudy imaginings, or lying inventions,
not worthy of belief; although I now know by experience, that they may
be true enough, however eccentric, and improbable, they may appear to
the uninitiated.
Fanny Hill was a woman's experience. Written perhaps by a woman, where
was a man's, written with equal truth? That book has no baudy word
in it; but baudy acts need the baudy ejaculations; the erotic, full
flavored expressions, which even the chastest indulge in, when lust, or
love, is in its full tide of performance. So I determined to write my
private life freely as to fact, and in the spirit of the lustful acts
done by me, or witnessed; it is written therefore with absolute truth,
and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency.
Decency and voluptuousness in its fullest acceptance, cannot exist
together, one would kill the other; the poetry of copulation I have only
experienced with a few women, which however neither prevented them, nor
me from calling a spade, a spade.
I began it for my amusement; when many years had been chronicled I tired
of it and ceased. Some ten years afterwards I met a woman, with whom,
or with those she helped me do; I did, said, saw, and heard, well nigh
everything a man and woman could do with their genitals, and began to
narrate those events, when quite fresh in my memory, a great variety of
incidents extending over four years or more. Then I lost sight of her,
and my amorous amusements for a while were simpler, but that part of my
history was complete.
After a little while, I set to work to describe the events of the
intervening years of my youth, and early middle age; which included most
of my gallant intrigues and adventures of a frisky order; but not the
more lascivious ones of later years. Then an illness caused me to think
seriously of burning the whole. But not liking to destroy my labor, I
laid it aside again for a couple of years. Then another illness gave
me long uninterrupted leisure; I read my manuscript, and filled in some
occurrences which I had forgotten, but which my diary enabled me to
place in their proper order. This will account for the difference in
style in places, which I now observe; and a very needless repetition,
of voluptuous descriptions, which I had forgotten, had been before
described; that however is inevitable, for human copulation, vary the
incidents leading up to it as you may, is, and must be, at all times,
much the same affair.
Then for the first time, I thought I would print my work that had been
commenced more than twenty years before, but hesitated. I then had
entered my maturity, and on to the most lascivious portion of my life,
the events were disjointed, and fragmentary and my amusement was to
describe them just after they occurred. Most frequently the next day I
wrote all down with much prolixity, since, I have much abbreviated it.
I had from youth an excellent memory, but about sexual matters a
wonderful one. Women were the pleasure of my life. I loved cunt, but
also she who had it; I like the woman I fucked and not simply the cunt
I fucked, and therein is a great difference. I recollect even now in a
degree which astonishes me, the face, color, stature, thighs, backside,
and cunt, of well nigh every woman I have had, who was not a mere
casual; and even of some who were. The clothes they wore, the houses and
rooms in which I had them, were before me mentally, as I wrote, the way
the bed, and furniture were placed, the side of the room the windows
were on, I remembered perfectly; and all the important events I can fix
as to time, sufficiently nearly by reference to my diary, in which the
contemporaneous circumstances of my life are recorded.
I recollect also largely what we said, and did, and generally our baudy
amusements. Where I fail to have done so, I have left description blank,
rather than attempt to make a story coherent by inserting what was
merely probable. I could not now account for my course of action, nor
why I did this, or said that, my conduct seems strange, foolish, absurd,
very frequently, that of some women, equally so, but I can but state
what did occur.
In a few cases, I have for what even seems to me very strange, suggested
reasons, or causes, but only where the facts seem by themselves to be
very improbable, but have not exaggerated anything willingly. When I
have named the number of times I have fucked a woman in my youth, I may
occasionally be in error, it is difficult to be quite accurate on such
points after a lapse of time. But as before said in many cases the
incidents were written down a few weeks and often within a few
days after they occurred. I do not attempt to pose as a Hercules in
copulation, there are quite sufficient braggarts on that head, much
intercourse with gay women, and doctors, makes me doubt the wonderful
feats in coition, some men tell of.
I have one fear about publicity, it is that of having done a few things
by curiosity and impulse (temporary abberations), which even professed
libertines may cry fie on. There are plenty who will cry fie who have
done all and worse than I have and habitually, but crying out at the
sins of others was always a way of hiding one's own iniquity. Yet from
that cause perhaps no mortal eye but mine, will see this history. The
christian name of the servants mentioned are generally the true ones,
the other names mostly false, the phonetically resembling the true
ones. Initials nearly always the true ones. In most cases the woman they
represent are dead or lost to me. Streets and baudy houses named are
nearly always correct. Most of the houses named are now closed or pulled
down; but any middle aged man about town would recognize them. Where a
road, house, room, or garden is described, the description is exactly
true; even to the situation of a tree, chair, bed, sofa, pisspot. The
district is sometimes given wrongly; but it matters little whether
Brompton be substituted for Hackney, or Camden Town for Walworth. Where
however owing to the incidents it is needful, the places of amusement
are given correctly. The Tower, and Argyle rooms, for example. All this
is done to prevent giving pain to some, perhaps still living, for I have
no malice to gratify.
I have mystified family affairs, but if I say I had ten cousins, when I
had but six, or that one aunt's house was in Surrey instead of Kent, or
in Lancashire; it breaks the clue and cannot matter to the reader.
But my doings with man and woman are as true as gospel. If I say that
I saw, or did, that with a cousin male, or female, it was with a cousin
and no mere acquaintance; if with a servant, it was with a servant; if
with a casual acquaintance, it is equally true. Nor if I say I had that
woman, and did this or that with her, or felt or did aught else with a
man, is there a word of untruth excepting as to the place at which the
incidents occurred. But even those are mostly correctly given, this is
intended to be a true history, and not a lie.