I had great difficulty in keeping Esther from knowing too much about me, and used a false name, had letters sent to a post-office, and had to do much lying. The oddest thing was that though so near my mother's house, and though I passed her one day when walking with one of my married sisters, she did not know I was often living there, and close by her home; but she found it out just before I parted with her. She knew quite well that the conversation when sitting on the barrow could only have been heard from one of the garden-walls close by the barrow; but I would not at first tell her which. My real name I don't think she ever knew, though I am not sure of that. .
Curiosity made me call on ex-harlot Sarah, who lived in one room, and whilst talking I put my hand up her petticoats, on to her cunt. She laughed, opened her thighs wide, and said, “I knowed yer would”, and she looked as if a fuck would have gratified her, — but I did not attempt it.
Chapter XII
Preliminary. • My taste for beauty of form. • Sarah Mavis. • Midday in the Quadrant. • No. 13 J...s Street. • A bargain in the hall. • A woman with a will. • Fears about my size. • Muck. • Cold-blooded. • Tyranny. • My temper. • Submission. • A revolt. • A half-gay lady. • Sarah watches me. • A quarrel. • Reconcilliation.
I must go back a year or more before the night when I last had Kitty with the yellow hair and yellow motte, to tell the story of my acquaintance with a woman of whom I have little to tell, considering that she more or less is included in the history of my amours for nearly four years, and who will appear more than once some years after that. A word about my sensuous temperament first.
I had early a taste for beauty of female form. Face had for me of course the usual attraction, for beauty of expression always speaks to the soul of a man first. A woman's eyes speak to him before she opens her mouth, and instinctively (for actual knowledge only comes to him in his maturer years) he reads in them liking, dislike, indifference, voluptuousness, desire, sensuous abandonment, or fierce reckless lust.
All these feelings can be seen in a woman's eyes alone, for they express and move with every feeling, every passion, pure or sensual. They can beget in the male pure love as it is called, which is believed to be so till experience teaches that however pure it may be, it cannot exist without the occasional help of a burning throbbing, stiff prick, up a hot, wide-stretched cunt, and a simultaneous discharge of spermatic juices from both organs. The rest of a woman's body, the breasts and limbs, can move lust unaccompanied by love, and if once admiration of them begins lust follows instantly. A small foot, a round, plump leg and thigh, and a fat backside speak to the prick straight. Form is in fact to most, more enticing, and creates a more enduring attachment in men of mature years, than the sweetest face. A plain woman with fine limbs and bum, and firm, full breasts will (unless her cunt be an ugly gash) draw a man to her where the prettiest-faced Miss will fail. Few men, unless their bellies be very big, or they be very old, will keep long to a bony lady whose skinny buttocks can be held in one hand. I early had a taste for female form, it was born with me. Even when a boy I selected partners for dancing because they were what I called crummy, and admired even at one time a fat-arsed middle-aged woman who sold us bull's eyes, because I had caught her exhibiting large legs when squatting down to piss.
For years I had had at the period named, two friends, one of whom was a sculptor, who alas! drank himself to death; and one a painter still living as I write this. I had been in their studios, seen their naked models, heard their opinions on both male and female beauty, and had the various points of female perfection shown me on the lady-sitters. I had them explained in two instances by the ladies themselves, in private sittings, and with them I had sexual pleasures' which they said the artists had neither got out of them nor given them. I had myself sketched from the nude, and was thought a not bad hand at it, and had therefore by training, instinct, and a most voluptuous temperament become a good judge of beauty of female form.
I did not write the above paragraphs, when I wrote what follows about Sarah Mavis, they are added now many years afterwards, when I am wondering at what I did in those early days, marvelling at my judgment in selection, and seeking the reasons which guided me then in getting for my sexual embraces, as many modes of female beauty of form, as perhaps any one Englishman ever had, — short of a prince.
One Summer's morning about midday, I was in the Quadrant. It had been raining, and the streets were dirty. In front of me I saw a well-grown woman walking with that steady, solid, well-balanced step which I even then knew indicated fleshy limbs, and a fat back-side. She was holding her petticoats well up out of the dirt, the common habit of even respectable women then. With gay ladies the habit was to hold them up just a little higher. I saw a pair of feet in lovely boots which seemed perfection, and calves which were exquisite. I fired directly. Just by Beak Street she stopped, and looked into a shop. “Is she gay?” I thought. “No.” I followed on, passed her, then turned round, and met her eye. She looked at me, but the look was so steady, indifferent, and with so little of the gay woman in her expression, that I could not make up my mind as to whether she was accessible or not.
She turned back and went on without looking round. Crossing Tichborne Street she raised her petticoats higher, it was very muddy there. I then saw more of both legs, my prick stood at the sight of her limbs, and settled me. I followed quickly, saying as I came close, “Will you come with me?” She made no reply, and I fell behind. Soon she stopped again at a shop, and looked in, and again I said, “May I go with you?” “Yes, — where to?” “Where you like, — I will follow you.” Without replying a word, and without looking at me, without hurrying, she walked steadily on till she entered the house No. 13 J. . .s Street, which I entered that day for the first time, but many hundreds of times since. Her composure, and the way she stopped from time to time to look at the shops as she went along astonished me: she seemed in no hurry, nor indeed conscious that I was close at her heels, though she knew it.
Inside the house she stopped at the foot of the staircase, and turning round said in a low tone, “What are you going to give me?” “Ten shillings.” “I won't go upstairs then, so tell you at once.” “What do you want?” “I won't let any one come with me unless they give me a sovereign at least.” “I will give you that.” Then she mounted, nothing more being said. Asking me the question at the foot of the stairs astonished me, I had been asked it in a room often before, and in the street; but at the foot of a staircase, — never.
We entered a handsome bed-room. Turning round after paying for it, and locking the door, I saw her standing with her back to the light (the curtains were down, but the room was nevertheless light), one arm resting on the mantle-piece. She looked at me fixedly, and I did at her. Then I recollect noticing that her mouth was slightly open, and that she looked seemingly vacantly at me (it always was so), that she had a black silk dress on, and a dark-colored bonnet. Then desire impelled; I went close to her, and began to lift her clothes. She pushed them down in a commanding way saying, “Now none of that.”