I went first into the streets near a large well-known tavern at a spot where several big thoroughfares meet, and where there is a large traffic, and picked up my cheap women there. But the women, their chemises and petticoats, and their rooms shocked me more than they used, and kept me chaster than I otherwise might have been.
One night I went home with a tall straight woman who would not take my fee. “No”, said she, “I've got two nice little rooms of my own.” If you get a woman for five shillings you have to pay for the room besides, and ten shillings is only a small sum; so I went with her for ten shillings, and saw her at intervals for a few months.
She was about five feet nine high, was not stout, was as straight as a lath, yet not thin, had very firm but quite small breasts, and a biggish burn. She had Mulatto blood in her veins she told me, and was brown- skinned, had a large mouth and very thick lips, the Negro blood showed there plainly; her hair was dark, and so were her eyes; her cunt was a pouter: it was small, but the lips pouted out more thickly I think than those of any woman I ever yet saw, yet they were not flabby, but protruded largely like two halves of a sausage; the hair was black, short, and intensely crisp and curly; it felt like curled horse-hair. I used to think her a plain woman, one of the plainest, but she was a glorious fuckster; her cunt was tight inside, and yet so elastic as not to hurt or pinch (and I was at that time when just at spunking point as often said before tender-pricked). The hair of her head was coarse yet straight, her large mouth was filled with teeth of a splendid whiteness, and when she smiled she showed the whole set. It was seeing her large white teeth that first attracted me before I could distinguish any other feature of her face; you could see them at night right across a road, they were dazzling, and al-most made one forget the great thick-lipped orifice which opened to expose them. I have before told of women who attracted me by their teeth, and particularly of a Creole.
This Mulatto as I called her, amused me with her letcherous postures; she was as lithe as a willow branch, and was willing to please. I was fond of making her kneel on the bed with bum towards me, and her legs nearly close together, and then the backward pout of her cunt was charming to me, so much so that I took to poking her dog fashion.
One night when I was full of sperm I made her remain in the exact posture until all my spunk had run out of her cunt, and sat holding a candle towards her rump till I was satisfied with the sight; and more than once I kept her in that position, looking at the gruelly lips until I fucked her a second time.
She had such a very remarkable steady walk that she scarcely seemed to move, she glided; her feet were so nicely carried forward, and her body so evenly balanced from her hips. In this respect she resembled a tall dark woman named Fletcher, whom I knew quite recently. There must have been something in the arrangement of their thighs and hips which caused this. Women who are accustomed to carry heavy loads on their heads always walk straight, and never roll from side to side as most people more or less do; but I don't know that either of the women named had carried baskets on their heads, — I knew the walk of that class of women, having been born in the neighbour-hood where they worked.
She I imagine had a liking for my doing it naked with her, for she was always suggesting that we should strip; but she could not bear my fucking her dog-fashion. When I stripped and got into her on her belly, she would twist her legs right into mine in quite a snaky fashion, and sometimes lift her legs up till her heels were almost up to my blade-bones. She also like a few others I have poked seemed to have the power of holding my prick in her cunt quite tightly after I had spent, — perhaps because she had not spent herself, for about her pleasures in the copulation I am not sure, though she always impressed me as being a hot-cunted one.
After I had once been to J. . .s Street again I went more and more frequently. Hannah was always nearly screwed, — champagne or brandy pleased her best. When she was so, she would at times gradually let out much that she knew, — and this is what she let out one day.
“Bah ! her husband indeed !—she is not married, — he's got a wife besides, and Sarah knows it, — he's blackened his wife's eyes more than once when she has been annoying them; but that don't pay, for she is his lawful wife; so he allows her something, and it keeps her quiet, and she won't last long, for she is drunk from daybreak till night. Sarah's a real good one to keep the lazy beggar, — she keeps them all poor thing, ever since he could not get any engagement; there's she, and their children, and her sister, who lives with them, and then there is her old mother who she keeps, and his wife as well, — she has enough to do poor thing.” This came out one day after Hannah had dined; I had brought her a bottle of specially fine brandy, and we were sitting in the parlour drinking it together mixed with water.
I had long been getting into Hannah's good graces. I stood wine and brandy, was always respectful to her and the gay ladies I met in her parlour, and never used coarse, rude language to them, nor in speaking of them or of ladies of their class. Hannah told me I was a great favorite with several of them, as indeed I found to be the case. I may say that all my life I never spoke disrespectfully to, or of gay ladies, so long as they behaved themselves; they have been mostly throughout my life, kind and true to me after their fashion, they gave me pleasure, and I treated them as if I was grateful for it.
But I was moreover serviceable to Hannah. Once or twice as told she had brought me some figures to cast up, and when Sarah had left, she brought me others on various little scraps of paper. She asked me never to mention my having done so to her sister, and I did not. I became curious at finding the items were all in five shillings, seven and sixpence, ten and twenty shillings; at last it struck me what it was, and taxing her with it found it was the takings of the baudy house, she told me so with a laugh. She could not write herself.
The takings were put on slips of paper by the servants, and by some process of her own which she could not explain, she got a rough sort of check on the servants to prevent them robbing her. She had to account to the real owner of the house, — and how she did it she alone knows. This is certain (she once admitted it), that from the takings she put a pound a day into her own pocket. Whether she robbed the owner to that extent, or whether it was her admitted share I never knew. She was well dressed, had excellent food, allowed her Guardsman money, her sister's husband money, and others too I rather think. But after she'd taken her three or four hundred pounds a year, there was a splendid income handed over to some one. This house had but eight rooms, and two more closets to let out for fucking; they often took twenty pounds a day, and sometimes much more.
I did this arithmetic pretty regularly, and she be-came my fast friend. She told me all about Sarah that she knew (what Sarah at a future day told me agreed with it), and much about the habits of other loose ladies which will be partially narrated in due time, and a good deal about baudy house management.
And now more about Sarah's antecedents. A new species of entertainment had sprung into existence a few years before this time, called “Poses plastiques”, in which men and women covered with silk fitting tightly to their naked limbs and made quite white, placed themselves on stages in classical groups to the sound of music. Women and men of great physical beauty formed these groups, they were in fact actors of that class. Madame W. . .t.n known as a splendid model first got them up; her husband was a splendid man, Sarah was her niece, and also had a beautiful form which ran in the family; she was poor, and Madame W. . .t . n took her to live with them, and at seventeen years of age she appeared as Venus.