We soon arrived at my lodgings, which, though not as elegantly furnished or showy as those I’d left, were fully as convenient and at half the price, though on the first floor. My trunks were safely delivered and stored in my rooms, where my neighbor and now guardian, Mrs. Cole, was ready with my landlord to receive me. She took care to present me in the most favorable light to him, as one from whom there was every reason to expect regular payment of rent. All the virtues attributed to me wouldn’t have had half the weight of that recommendation alone.

I was now settled in lodgings of my own, left to my own management and turned loose on the town to sink or swim as I could navigate its currents. What the consequences were, together with the number of adventures that befell me in the exercise of my new profession, will form the matter of another letter, for surely it’s high time to end this one.

I am,

Madam,

Yours, etc., etc., etc.

THE END OF THE FIRST LETTER

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About a month after our first encounter, one fatal morning (a time Mr. H— rarely or never visited me), I was in my dressing room where my vanity table stood, wearing nothing but my shift, a dressing gown, and an underskirt. Will was with me, and both of us were always too eager to miss an opportunity.

For my part, a whim, a playful impulse had just taken me, and I’d challenged my man to act on it immediately. He didn’t hesitate to comply with my mood. I was positioned in the armchair, my shift and petticoat raised, my thighs spread wide and hooked over the arms of the chair, presenting the perfect target to Will’s drawn weapon, which he stood poised to plunge into me.

Having neglected to lock the bedroom door, and with the dressing room door standing ajar, Mr. H— crept in on us before either was aware and saw us in precisely these incriminating positions.

I gave a loud scream and dropped my petticoat. The thunderstruck lad stood trembling and pale, awaiting his death sentence. Mr. H— looked sometimes at one, sometimes at the other, with a mixture of outrage and contempt. Without saying a word, he spun on his heel and left.

Confused as I was, I heard him very distinctly turn the key and lock the bedroom door on us, so there was no escape except through the dining room where he himself was pacing with agitated strides, stamping in great anger and doubtless debating what to do with us.

Meanwhile, poor William was frightened out of his wits, and as much as I needed courage myself, I had to use it all to keep his spirits somewhat up. The misfortune I’d now brought upon him made him dearer to me, and I could have gladly suffered any punishment he didn’t share. I bathed with my tears the face of the frightened youth who sat, not having the strength to stand, as cold and lifeless as a statue.

Soon Mr. H—— came back to us and made us go before him into the dining room. Trembling and dreading the outcome, we stood while Mr. H— sat in a chair like criminals under examination.

Beginning with me, he asked in an even, firm tone of voice—neither gentle nor harsh but cruelly indifferent—what I could say for myself for having abused him so unworthily, with his own servant no less, and how he’d deserved this from me.

Without adding to the guilt of my infidelity that of a bold defense of it in the old style of a common kept woman, my answer was modest and often interrupted by tears. In substance, it was this: I’d never had a single thought of wronging him (which was true) until I’d seen him taking the greatest liberties with my servant girl (here he colored tremendously). My resentment at that, which I’d been too intimidated to express through complaints or confrontation with him, had driven me to a course I didn’t pretend to justify.

But as for the young man, he was entirely blameless, for in my plan to make him the instrument of my revenge, I’d outright seduced him to what he’d done. Therefore, I hoped that whatever he decided about me, he’d distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. For the rest, I was entirely at his mercy.

Mr. H—, hearing what I said, hung his head briefly but instantly recovered himself. He said to me, as nearly as I can remember, the following:

“Madam, I owe myself shame and confess you’ve fairly turned the tables on me. It’s not with one of your backgrounds and feelings that I should argue, though I’d claim great difference in the provocations. Suffice it to say, I must admit your reproach has merit enough to have changed my resolution somewhat, and I acknowledge too that your clearing that scoundrel there is fair and honest of you.

“Resume our relationship, I cannot—the offense is too grave. I give you a week’s notice to leave these lodgings. Whatever I’ve given you remains yours. As I never intend to see you again, the landlord will pay you fifty guineas on my account, with which, and with every debt paid, I hope you’ll acknowledge I don’t leave you in worse condition than I found you in, or than you deserve from me. Blame only yourself that it’s no better.”

Then, without giving me time to reply, he addressed the young man:

“For you, boy, I’ll for your father’s sake take care of you. The town is no place for such an easy fool as you are. Tomorrow you’ll leave under the supervision of one of my men, well recommended in my name to your father, with instructions not to let you return and be corrupted here.”

With these words, he left, after I vainly attempted to stop him by throwing myself at his feet. He shook me off, though he seemed greatly moved, and took Will away with him, who I’m certain thought himself very lightly punished.

I was now once more adrift and left to my own devices by a gentleman I certainly didn’t deserve. All the letters, schemes, intermediaries, and pleas I employed during the week’s grace in my lodgings could never persuade him so much as to see me again. He’d irrevocably pronounced my fate, and submission to it was my only option.

Soon after, he married a lady of good birth and fortune, to whom I’ve heard he proved an irreproachable husband.

As for poor Will, he was immediately sent down to the country to his father, who was a comfortable farmer. He wasn’t there four months before a buxom young innkeeper’s widow with very good assets in both money and business, having noticed—and perhaps having prior knowledge of—his secret excellences, married him. I’m sure there was at least one good foundation for their living happily together.

Though I’d have been delighted to see him before he left, such measures were taken by Mr. H—’s orders that it was impossible. Otherwise, I’d certainly have tried to keep him in town and would have spared neither offers nor expense to secure the satisfaction of keeping him with me. He had such a powerful hold on my inclinations as were not easily shaken off or replaced. As for my heart, that was quite out of the question. I was glad from my soul, however, that nothing worse—and as things turned out, nothing better—could have happened to him.

As for Mr. H—, though considerations of convenience made me at first try hard to regain his affection, I was giddy and thoughtless enough to be much more easily reconciled to my failure than I should have been. But as I’d never loved him, and his leaving me gave me a sort of freedom I’d often longed for, I was soon comforted. Flattering myself that the stock of youth and beauty I was going to trade with could hardly fail to provide me a living, I saw myself under the necessity of trying my fortune with them rather with pleasure and cheerfulness than with the least idea of despair.

Meanwhile, several of my acquaintances among the sisterhood, having soon gotten wind of my misfortune, flocked to torment me with their malicious condolences. Most of them had long envied the wealth and splendor I’d been kept in. Though there was scarcely one of them who didn’t at least deserve to be in my situation and would probably sooner or later come to it, it was easy to notice, even in their affected pity, their secret pleasure at seeing me thus discarded and their secret disappointment that it wasn’t worse for me.

Inexplicable malice of the human heart—and which isn’t confined to the class of life they belonged to!

But as the time approached for me to decide how to manage myself, and I was considering where to relocate, Mrs. Cole, a middle-aged, discreet sort of woman who’d been introduced to my acquaintance by one of the women who visited me, upon learning my situation, came to offer her sincere advice and help. As I’d always taken to her more than to any of my female acquaintances, I listened more readily to her proposals.

As it happened, I couldn’t have put myself into worse or into better hands in all of London. Into worse because, keeping a house of convenience, there were no depths of lewdness she wouldn’t advise me to pursue to satisfy her customers, no schemes of pleasure or even unbounded debauchery she didn’t take delight in promoting.

Into better because, nobody having had more experience of the wicked part of town than she had, she was better qualified to advise and protect one against the worst dangers of our profession. What was rare to find in those of her trade, she contented herself with moderate profit from her efforts and good services and had nothing of their greedy, rapacious nature.

She was actually a gentlewoman born and bred, but through a series of misfortunes, reduced to this course, which she pursued partly from necessity, partly from choice. No woman delighted more in encouraging brisk circulation of the trade for the trade’s own sake or better understood all its mysteries and refinements than she did. She was supremely at the top of her profession and dealt only with distinguished customers. To meet their demands, she kept an adequate number of her daughters in constant supply (so she called those whose youth and personal charms recommended them to her adoption and management, several of whom, through her guidance and instruction, succeeded very well in the world).

This useful woman, on whose protection I now placed myself, having her political reasons regarding Mr. H— for not appearing too involved in the matter herself, sent a friend of hers on the day appointed for my move to escort me to my new lodgings at a brushmaker’s in E—— Street, Covent Garden, right next door to her own house, where she had no room to lodge me herself.

These lodgings, having been for several successive tenancies occupied by ladies of pleasure, had a landlord familiarized to their ways. Provided the rent was paid, everything else was as easy and accommodating as one could desire.

The fifty guineas promised me by Mr. H— at parting, having been duly paid, all my clothes and belongings packed up (which were worth at least two hundred pounds), I had them loaded into a coach where I soon followed them after taking civil leave of the landlord and his family, with whom I’d never lived intimately enough to regret leaving. Still, the very fact of it being a departure drew tears from me.

I left too a letter of thanks for Mr. H—, from whom I considered myself, as I truly was, irrevocably separated.

I’d discharged my maid the day before, not only because I’d gotten her through Mr. H— but because I suspected her of having somehow been the means of his discovering me, perhaps in revenge for my not having confided in her about him.

Editor’s Notes:

This chapter represents the catastrophic unraveling of Fanny’s comfortably kept arrangement and her abrupt ejection back into economic precarity, as Mr. H— discovers her affair with Will in the most damning circumstances possible—caught literally in flagrante delicto with his own servant. The scene’s bitter irony lies in Mr. H—’s self-aware hypocrisy; he acknowledges that Fanny’s provocation matches his own, yet masculine pride and class anxiety make forgiveness impossible despite his obvious lingering affection. This rupture forces Fanny into the professional sex trade under Mrs. Cole’s management, transforming her from kept mistress of one man into a high-class prostitute available to multiple clients—a descent in respectability but, paradoxically, a step toward the economic independence and female solidarity that will eventually secure her future.

Points of Interest

• “One fatal morning” - The catastrophe occurs during unusual hours when Mr. H— “rarely or never” visited, emphasizing how random chance rather than inevitable consequence triggers discovery; Fanny’s carelessness about timing proves decisive.

• The unlocked door - This seemingly minor detail becomes the mechanical hinge of disaster; Fanny’s sexual excitement made her forget basic precautions, demonstrating how pleasure overrides professional caution even for increasingly experienced practitioners.

• Dressing room tableau - Fanny positioned in her chair with “shift and petticoat thrown up, thighs spread and mounted over the arms” creates a pornographic display of female sexual agency that’s far more threatening to Mr. H— than passive submission would be; her visible pleasure compounds the betrayal.

• Mr. H—’s locked-door response - Trapping them in the bedroom while he paces in the dining room demonstrates calculated control rather than violence; his restraint shows gentleman’s self-command while the locked door asserts absolute power over their fates.

• Fanny’s defense strategy - Her refusal to “add to the guilt of my infidelity that of a bold defense” shows a sophisticated understanding of gender scripts; contrition and feminine weakness serve her better than asserting the moral equivalence she privately believes.

• “Here he colored tremendously” - Mr. H—’s visible shame when confronted with his own infidelity proves he recognizes the hypocrisy; his final judgment balances acknowledgment of equal provocation with masculine prerogative to punish regardless.

• Class anxiety about servants - Mr. H—’s outrage centers on Will’s status (”with his own servant”) rather than just the infidelity itself; upper-class sexual prerogative flowed downward but reversal threatened social hierarchy, making Fanny’s choice particularly unforgivable.

• Week’s notice and fifty guineas - The settlement combines formal propriety (standard week’s notice to quit lodgings) with calculated generosity; fifty guineas plus possessions and paid debts represents roughly two years’ comfortable living, preventing destitution while ending the relationship absolutely.

• “Blame yourself that it is no better” - Mr. H—’s final judgment balances fairness with finality; he admits her cause while reasserting his authority, demonstrating the limited justice available to women in transactional sexual relationships.

• Will’s banishment to his father - The different punishments reflect class and gender hierarchies; Will faces exile but returns to security (comfortable farmer, eventual marriage to a prosperous widow), while Fanny faces London’s sexual marketplace without protection.

• Mr. H—’s marriage to “a lady of birth and fortune” - His immediate respectable marriage proves the affair’s finite nature; kept mistresses occupied a separate sphere that could be abandoned without consequence when advantageous marriages materialized, emphasizing women’s precarity.

• Fanny’s “giddy and thoughtless” response - Her surprisingly rapid recovery (”much easier reconciled to my failure than I should have been”) reveals emotional detachment; without love, the relationship was purely economic, making its loss a business setback rather than heartbreak.

• “Sisterhood” and malicious visits - Fellow kept women’s “malicious condolences” and barely concealed pleasure at Fanny’s downfall expose the competitive rather than solidary nature of most prostitute relationships; survival depends on securing clients other women want.

• Mrs. Cole’s dual nature - The extended characterization balancing “worst” (promoting unlimited debauchery) and “best” (experience, fair dealing, moderate profit) hands establishes her as Fanny’s most important mentor; this relationship will define the novel’s second act.

• E—— Street, Covent Garden - The location (likely Essex Street or a similar thoroughfare) in the theatre and market district places Fanny in London’s demi-monde center, where prostitution, entertainment, and commerce overlapped; proximity to Mrs. Cole enables professional management.

• Two hundred pounds in possessions - The substantial value of clothing and belongings accumulated during the kept arrangement represents professional capital; a courtesan’s wardrobe was a business investment essential for attracting wealthy clients.

• Hannah’s suspected betrayal - Fanny’s belief that her maid “had somehow been the means of his discovering me, perhaps in revenge” closes the circle; the woman whose sexual exploitation triggered Fanny’s revenge becomes the instrument of her downfall, demonstrating how patriarchal systems pit women against each other rather than enabling solidarity.

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I’d now lived nearly seven months with Mr. H— when one day, returning to my lodgings from a visit in the neighborhood where I’d stayed longer than usual, I found the street door open and the housemaid standing at it talking with some of her friends. I came in without knocking, and as I passed, she told me Mr. H— was upstairs.

I went up to my own bedroom, with no other thought than to remove my hat and then wait for him in the dining room, which my bedroom opened into, as is common enough. While I was untying my hat strings, I thought I heard my maid Hannah’s voice and a scuffle, which piqued my curiosity. I crept softly to the door where a knot in the wood had fallen out, affording a very commanding peephole to the scene then in progress. The participants had been too earnestly occupied to hear me opening my door from the landing of the stairs into my bedroom.

The first sight that struck me was Mr. H— pulling and hauling this coarse country wench toward a couch that stood in a corner of…

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The landlady had all this while officiously providing and seeing that I wanted for nothing. As soon as she saw me restored to a condition of serving her purpose, one day after we’d dined together, she congratulated me on my recovery (the credit for which she took entirely to herself) and all this by way of introduction to a most terrible and vicious conclusion.

“You are now, Miss Fanny, tolerably well, and you’re very welcome to stay in these lodgings as long as you please. You see, I’ve asked you for nothing all this time, but truly I have an urgent need to raise a sum of money which must be met.”

With that, she presented me with a bill of arrears for rent, meals, medicine, nursing, etc.—total: twenty-three pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence. Toward paying this, I had nothing in the world (which she well knew) except seven guineas left by chance from my dear Charles’s funds with me. At the same time, she asked me what payment plan I had.

I burst into floods of tears and told her my situation: I’d sell what few clothes I had and pay her the rest as soon as possible. But my distress, being favorable to her scheme, only hardened her more.

She told me very coldly that she was indeed sorry for my misfortunes, but she had to protect her own interests, though it would break her heart to send such a tender young creature to prison.

At the word “prison,” every drop of my blood froze, and my fright acted so strongly on me that, turning as pale and faint as a criminal at first sight of the execution ground, I was on the point of fainting. My landlady, who only wanted to terrify me to a certain point and not throw me into a state incompatible with her designs on me, began to soothe me again.

She told me in a tone affected with more pity and gentleness that it would be my own fault if she was forced to proceed to such extremes, but she believed a friend could be found in the world who’d settle matters to both our satisfactions, and she’d bring him to take tea with us that very afternoon, when she hoped we’d come to a proper understanding about our affairs.

To all this, not a word of answer. I sat mute, confounded, terrified.

Mrs. Jones, however, judging rightly that it was time to strike while the impressions were so strong on me, left me to myself and to all the terrors of an imagination wounded to death by the idea of prison, and from a principle of self-preservation, grasping at every glimmer of rescue from it.

In this state, I sat nearly half an hour, swallowed up in grief and despair, when my landlady came in. Observing a deathlike dejection on my face, she still pursued her plan and put on false pity, telling me to be of good cheer. Things, she said, would turn out well if I were my own friend. She closed by telling me she’d brought a very honorable gentleman to take tea with me who’d give me the best advice on how to get rid of all my troubles.

Upon which, without waiting for a reply, she went out and returned with this very honorable gentleman, whose very honorable procuress she’d been on this as well as other occasions.

The gentleman, upon entering the room, made me a very civil bow, which I had scarcely strength or presence of mind enough to return with a curtsy, when the landlady, taking it upon herself to perform all the courtesies of this first meeting (for I’d never, that I remember, seen the gentleman before), set a chair for him and another for herself. All this while not a word on either side. A stupid stare was all the expression I could manage for this strange visit.

Tea was made, and the landlady, unwilling, I suppose, to waste time, observing my silence and shyness before this complete stranger, said in a coarse, familiar style and tone of authority, “Come, Miss Fanny, hold up your head, child, and don’t let sorrow spoil that pretty face of yours. Sorrows are only temporary. Come, be open. Here’s a worthy gentleman who’s heard of your misfortunes and is willing to help you. You must get better acquainted with him. Don’t stand on ceremony and quibble, but make your deal while you can.”

At this delicate and eloquent speech, the gentleman, who saw I looked frightened and confused and indeed incapable of answering, chided her for introducing things so abruptly in a manner more likely to shock than incline me to accept the good he intended for me.

Then, addressing himself to me, he told me he was perfectly acquainted with my whole story and every circumstance of my distress, which he acknowledged was a cruel situation for one of my youth and beauty to fall into. He’d long taken a liking to my person, for which he appealed to Mrs. Jones there present, but finding me so deeply committed to another, he’d lost all hope of success until he heard of the sudden reversal of fortune that had happened to me. Upon this, he’d given particular orders to my landlady to see that I should want for nothing, and had he not been forced abroad to The Hague on business, he couldn’t refuse; he would himself have attended me during my illness.

Upon his return, which was the day before, having learned of my recovery, he’d requested my landlady’s good offices to introduce him to me and was at least as shocked as I was at the manner in which she’d handled obtaining that privilege for him. But to show me how much he despised her approach and how far he was from taking any ungenerous advantage of my situation or demanding any security for my gratitude, he would, before my face, that instant, discharge my entire debt to my landlady and give me her receipt in full. After which I’d be at liberty either to reject or accept his suit, as he was far above forcing my inclinations.

While he was explaining his feelings to me, I ventured to look up at him and observed his appearance, which was that of a very good-looking gentleman, well-made, about forty, dressed in a suit of plain clothes with a large diamond ring on one of his fingers. Its luster caught my eye as he waved his hand while talking, and raised my sense of his importance. In short, he might pass for what’s commonly called a handsome dark-haired man with an air of distinction natural to his birth and position.

To all his speeches, however, I answered only with tears that flowed plentifully to my relief and, choking up my voice, excused me from speaking—very fortunately, for I wouldn’t have known what to say.

The sight, however, moved him, as he later told me, irresistibly. By way of giving me reason to be less distressed, he drew out his purse and, calling for pen and ink (which the landlady had ready), paid her every penny of her demand, plus a liberal gratuity unknown to me. Taking a receipt in full, he very tenderly forced me to secure it by guiding my hand, which he’d thrust it into, so as to make me passively put it in my pocket.

Still, I remained in a state of numbness or melancholic despair, as my spirits couldn’t yet recover from the violent shocks they’d received. The accommodating landlady had actually left the room, leaving me alone with this strange gentleman, before I’d noticed, and when I did notice, it was without alarm, for I was now lifeless and indifferent to everything.

The gentleman, however, no novice in affairs of this sort, drew near me. Under the pretense of comforting me, he first dried my tears with his handkerchief as they ran down my cheeks. Soon, he ventured to kiss me. On my part, neither resistance nor compliance—I sat stock-still, now looking on myself as bought by the payment transacted before me.

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I’d now been eleven months with this life of my life, which had passed in one continuous, rapid stream of delight. But nothing so intense was ever made to last.

I was about three months pregnant with his child—a circumstance that would have added to his tenderness had he ever left me room to believe it could receive addition—when the fatal, unexpected blow of separation fell upon us. I’ll rush through the particulars, which I still shudder to think of and cannot to this moment reconcile myself to how or by what means I survived.

Two long days I’d suffered through without hearing from him—I who breathed, who existed only in him and had never yet seen twenty-four hours pass without seeing or hearing from him. The third day, my impatience was so strong, my alarm so severe, that I became physically ill with them. Unable to bear the shock any longer, I collapsed onto the bed and rang for Mrs. Jones. She, who had far from comforted me in my anxiety, came up, and I had scarcely breath and spirit enough to find words to beg her, if she would save my life, to find some means immediately of discovering what had become of its only support and comfort.

She pitied me in a way that rather sharpened my distress than eased it, and went out on this errand.

She had only to go to Charles’s house, which was at an easy distance in one of the streets leading into Covent Garden. There she went into a pub and from there sent for a maidservant whose name I’d given her as the most likely to inform her.

The maid readily came and, when Mrs. Jones asked what had become of Mr. Charles or whether he’d gone out of town, readily told her about the disposal of her master’s son, which the very next day was no secret to the servants. Such thorough measures had the father taken for the cruelest punishment of his son for having more favor with his grandmother than he had, though he used a plausible enough pretext to get rid of him in this secret, abrupt manner. He feared her fondness might interfere with his leaving England and proceeding on a voyage he’d arranged for him.

The pretext was that it was absolutely necessary to secure a considerable inheritance that had come to him through the death of a rich merchant (his own brother) at one of the trading posts in the South Seas, of which he’d lately received notice along with a copy of the will.

In consequence of this decision to send away his son, he’d, unknown to Charles, made all necessary preparations for outfitting him, struck a deal with a ship’s captain whose punctual execution of orders he’d secured through his influence with the principal owners and patron. In short, he’d arranged his plans so secretly and effectively that while the son thought he was going down to the river for what would take a few hours, he was detained on board a ship, prevented from writing, and watched more strictly than a state criminal.

Thus was the idol of my soul torn from me and forced on a long voyage without taking leave of one friend or receiving one line of comfort except a dry explanation and instructions from his father on how to proceed when he reached his destination port, enclosing some letters of recommendation to an agent there. I didn’t learn all these details precisely until some time later.

The maid at the same time added that she was sure this treatment of her sweet young master would be the death of his grandmother—as indeed it proved, for the old lady, upon hearing it, didn’t survive the news a whole month. As her fortune consisted of an annuity from which she’d saved no reserves, she left nothing worth mentioning to her so fatally envied darling but absolutely refused to see his father before she died.

When Mrs. Jones returned, and I observed her expression, she seemed so unconcerned and even almost pleased that I half-convinced myself she was going to set my tortured heart at ease by bringing good news. But this was indeed a cruel delusion of hope. The barbarian, with all the coldness imaginable, stabbed me to the heart by telling me tersely that he’d been sent away on at least a four-year voyage (here she stretched it maliciously) and that I couldn’t reasonably expect ever to see him again—and all this with such convincing circumstances that I couldn’t escape believing them, as they were indeed too true!

She’d hardly finished her report before I fainted. After several successive fits, all the while wild and senseless, I miscarried the dear pledge of my Charles’s love. But the wretched never die when it would be best they should, and women are notoriously hard to kill.

The cruel, self-interested care taken to revive me saved an odious life which, instead of the happiness and joy it had overflowed with, suddenly presented no view before me of anything but the depths of misery, horror, and the sharpest affliction.

Thus, I lay six weeks in the struggle of youth and constitution against the friendly efforts of death, which I constantly invoked for my relief and deliverance, but which proved too weak for my wish. I recovered at length, but into a state of numbness and despair that threatened me with the loss of my senses and commitment to an asylum.

Time, however, that great healer, began to ease the violence of my suffering and numb my feelings. My health returned to me, though I still retained an air of grief, dejection, and languor which, taking away from the ruddiness of my country complexion, rendered it rather more delicate and affecting.

Editor’s Notes:

This chapter delivers the catastrophic blow that transforms Fanny’s story from romantic idyll to tale of survival, as Charles is forcibly shanghaied onto a merchant vessel by his vengeful father and sent on a four-year voyage to the South Seas. The abrupt separation—compounded by Fanny’s miscarriage of their child and her near-fatal illness—destroys the fantasy that love alone can protect a woman without legal or economic standing, forcing her back into the world of prostitution she’d briefly escaped. This trauma establishes the pattern that will define Fanny’s life: she can experience genuine love and pleasure, but without marriage or independent wealth, she remains perpetually vulnerable to forces beyond her control.

Points of Interest

• Eleven months together - The extended timeframe establishes this as a genuine domestic partnership rather than a brief affair; Fanny’s three-month pregnancy confirms their sexual relationship’s fertility and her potential future as a mother.

• Three days without contact - Charles’s sudden silence is unprecedented in their relationship, where daily contact was standard; Fanny’s physical collapse from anxiety shows her complete emotional and economic dependence on him.

• Covent Garden location - Charles’s family home in streets near this central market and theatre district places them in respectable but not aristocratic London; the proximity allowed frequent visits to Fanny’s lodgings in St. James’s.

• The pub as an intelligence network - Mrs. Jones’s use of a public house to discreetly contact Charles’s household servant demonstrates how information circulated through servant networks; maids were crucial sources of intelligence about their employers’ private affairs.

• Impressed onto a ship - Though the father uses the pretext of inheritance, the forcible detention, prevention of writing, and surveillance “more strictly than a state criminal” parallels naval impressment, the legal kidnapping of men for military service.

• South Seas trading voyage - A journey to Pacific trading posts (likely India, Southeast Asia, or China) would indeed take at least 4 years for a round-trip passage and commercial business; the distance made communication nearly impossible.

• The father’s double motivation - Jealousy over the grandmother’s favoritism combines with the plausible excuse of securing an inheritance; this mixture of genuine business reason and personal malice makes the action legally unassailable.

• Annuity with no reserves - The grandmother’s income died with her, leaving Charles nothing; annuities provided lifetime income but couldn’t be inherited or saved, explaining why she had no fortune to bequeath despite a comfortable living.

• Miscarriage from shock - Fanny’s loss of “the dear pledge of my Charles’s love” following emotional trauma was medically understood as caused by extreme distress; the miscarriage eliminates any claim she might have had on Charles’s family through an illegitimate child.

• “The wretched never die when it would be best” - This bitter observation reflects the cruel reality that Fanny’s youth and health save her despite her suicidal despair; working-class women’s physical resilience often prolongs suffering rather than ending it.

• Six weeks’ recovery - The extended illness, nearly resulting in madness and asylum commitment, shows the severity of Fanny’s breakdown; “numbness and despair” and threatened “loss of my senses” indicate what we’d now recognize as severe clinical depression and trauma.

• Changed complexion - Loss of “ruddiness” in favor of “delicate and affecting” paleness transforms Fanny’s healthy country appearance into fashionable urban fragility; paradoxically, grief makes her more marketable to clients who prefer delicate, melancholy beauty to robust health.

  ---

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My bosom was now bare and rising in the warmest throbs, presenting to his sight and touch the firm, hard swell of a pair of young breasts such as might be imagined of a girl not sixteen, fresh from the country and never before handled. But even their pride, whiteness, shape, and pleasing resistance to touch couldn’t keep his restless hands from roving. Giving them freedom, my petticoats and shift were soon lifted, and their stronger center of attraction lay open to their eager invasion.

My fears, however, made me mechanically close my thighs, but the very touch of his hand, insinuating between them, parted them and opened a way for the main attack.

Meanwhile, I lay fairly exposed to the examination of his eyes and hands, quiet and unresisting, which confirmed him in the assumption he’d proceeded so boldly upon: that I was no novice in these matters, since he’d taken me from a common brothel. I hadn’t said anything to suggest I was a virgin, and if I had, he’d sooner have believed I took him for a fool who’d swallow such an improbability than that I was still mistress of that darling treasure, that hidden prize so eagerly sought by men and which they never pursue except to destroy.

Being now too aroused to bear delay, he unbuttoned and, drawing out the engine of love’s assaults, drove it directly, as at a ready-made breach.

Then, for the first time, I felt that stiff, horn-hard rod battering against the tender part. But imagine his surprise when, after several vigorous pushes that hurt me extremely, he found that he had made not the least progress.

I complained, but tenderly: “I cannot bear it... indeed you’re hurting me!”

Still, he thought no more than that, being so young, the largeness of his instrument (for few men could rival his size) created all the difficulty, and possibly I hadn’t been enjoyed by anyone as advantageously made in that part as himself. That my virgin flower was yet untouched never entered his head, and he’d have thought it a waste of time and words to question me about it.

He tried again—still no entry, still no penetration, but he hurt me even more, while my extreme love made me bear extreme pain almost without a groan.

At length, after repeated fruitless attempts, he lay down panting beside me, kissed my falling tears, and asked me tenderly what the meaning was of so much suffering, and if I hadn’t borne it better from others than from him.

I answered with a simplicity designed to persuade that he was the first man who’d ever treated me so.

Truth is powerful, and we don’t always disbelieve what we eagerly wish to believe.

Charles, already disposed by the evidence of his senses to think my claims to virginity not entirely false, smothered me with kisses and begged me, in the name of love, to have a little patience. He’d be as careful of hurting me as he would be of himself.

Alas, it was enough that I knew his pleasure to submit joyfully to him, whatever pain I foresaw it would cost me.

He now resumed his attempts more methodically. First, he put one pillow under me to give his target a more favorable angle, and another under my head for comfort. Then, spreading my thighs and positioning himself standing between them, he made them rest upon his. Applying the point of his instrument to the opening into which he sought entrance—it was so small he could barely assure himself it was rightly aimed. He looked, he felt, and satisfied himself. Then, driving forward with force, its tremendous stiffness, thus wedged in, broke through the barrier of those parts and gained him just the insertion of the tip, shallow at first. Being aware of this, he took advantage and, following through with his thrust in a straight line, forcibly deepened his penetration. But it caused me such unbearable pain from the separation of the sides of that soft passage by a hard, thick body that I could have screamed. But unwilling to alarm the house, I held my breath and stuffed my petticoat, which was turned up over my face, into my mouth and bit through it in agony.

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I opened the parlor door and was very surprised to see, beside a half-extinguished fire, a young gentleman in the old lady’s armchair with his legs propped on another, fast asleep. He’d been left there by his thoughtless companions who’d drunk him unconscious and then left with everyone except their mistresses, while he stayed behind by the courtesy of the old matron, who wouldn’t disturb or turn him out in that condition at one in the morning. And beds, it’s more than probable, there were none to spare. On the table still remained the punch bowl and glasses, scattered about in their usual disorder after a drunken party.

But when I drew nearer to view the sleeping stray—heavens, what a sight! No passage of years, no turn of fortune could ever erase the lightning-like impression his appearance made on me. Yes, dearest object of my earliest passion, I preserve forever the memory of your first appearance to my enraptured eyes. It calls you up, present, and I see you now.

Picture to yourself, madam, a fair youth between eighteen and nineteen, with his head reclined on one side of the chair, his hair in disordered curls irregularly shading a face on which all the rosy bloom of youth and all the manly graces conspired to capture my eyes and heart. Even the languor and paleness of his face, in which the momentary triumph of the lily over the rose was due to the excesses of the night, gave inexpressible sweetness to the finest features imaginable. His eyes, closed in sleep, displayed the meeting edges of their lids beautifully bordered with long lashes, over which no artist could have drawn two more regular arches than those that graced his forehead, which was high, perfectly white, and smooth. Then a pair of vermilion lips, pouting and swelling as if a bee had freshly stung them, seemed to challenge me to steal kisses from this lovely sleeper, had not the modesty and respect which in both sexes are inseparable from true passion checked my impulses.

But seeing his shirt collar unbuttoned and a bosom whiter than driven snow, the pleasure of gazing at it couldn’t bribe me to prolong it at the risk of harming a health that had begun to be my life’s concern. Love, which made me timid, also taught me to be tender. With a trembling hand, I took hold of one of his hands and, waking him as gently as possible, he started and, looking at first a little wildly, said with a voice that sent its harmonious sound straight to my heart, “Please, child, what time is it?”

I told him and added that he might catch a cold if he slept longer with his chest exposed in the cool morning air.

At this, he thanked me with a sweetness perfectly matching that of his features and eyes. The latter, now wide open and eagerly surveying me, carried the amorous fire they sparkled with directly to my heart.

It seems that having drunk too freely before going on the town with some of his young companions, he’d put himself out of condition to go through all the activities with them and crown the night by getting a mistress. So seeing me in a loose morning dress, he didn’t doubt I was one of the women of the house sent to make up for his lost time. Though he seized on that notion—a very obvious one—without hesitation, whether my appearance made a more than ordinary impression on him or whether it was his natural politeness, he addressed me in a manner far from rude, though still on the assumption I was one of the house prostitutes come to entertain him. Giving me the first kiss I ever relished from a man in my life, he asked if I could favor him with my company, assuring me he’d make it worth my while. But even newborn love, that true refiner of lust, opposed so sudden a surrender, and the fear of being surprised by the household was a sufficient barrier to my compliance.

I told him then, in a tone set by love itself, that for reasons I had no time to explain, I couldn’t stay with him and might never even see him again—with a sigh at these words that broke from the bottom of my heart.

My conqueror, who, as he later told me, had been struck by my appearance and liked me as much as he could think of liking anyone in my supposed profession, asked me briskly if I’d be kept by him. He’d take lodgings for me immediately and free me from any commitments he presumed I might have to the house.

Rash, sudden, unconsidered, even dangerous as this offer might be from a perfect stranger—and that stranger a reckless boy—the tremendous love I’d been struck with for him had put a charm on every objection. I wasn’t resisting and was blinded to every obstacle. I could at that instant have died for him. Think if I could resist an invitation to live with him! My heart, beating strongly to the proposal, dictated my answer after barely a minute’s pause: I’d accept his offer and escape to him in whatever way he pleased, and I’d be entirely at his disposal, for good or bad.

I’ve often since wondered that such easy compliance didn’t disgust him or make me seem too cheap in his eyes, but my fate had so arranged it that, in his fear of the hazards of the town, he’d been looking for some time for a girl to keep, and my person happening to suit his fancy, it was by one of those miracles reserved to love that we struck the bargain instantly, which we sealed by an exchange of kisses that the hope of more uninterrupted enjoyment persuaded him to be content with for now.

Never, however, did a dear youth carry in his appearance more to justify turning a girl’s head and making her set all consequences at defiance for the sake of following a lover.

Besides all the perfections of manly beauty assembled in his form, he had an air of elegance and gentility, a certain smartness in the carriage and bearing of his head that distinguished him even more. His eyes were lively and full of meaning. His looks had in them something at once sweet and commanding. His complexion outshone the lovely, colored rose, while its inimitable, tender, vivid glow clearly saved it from the reproach of lacking life or being raw and dough-like, which is commonly made of those as extremely fair as he was.

Our little plan was that I should get out about seven the next morning (which I could readily promise, as I knew where to get the key to the street door), and he’d wait at the end of the street with a coach to take me safely away. After which, we’d send someone to clear any debt incurred by my stay at Mrs. Brown’s, who, he rightly judged in general terms, might not care to part with someone he thought so fit to draw customers to the house.

I then just hinted to him not to mention in the house having seen such a person as me, for reasons I’d explain to him more at leisure. And then, for fear of disaster by being seen together, I tore myself from him with a bleeding heart and stole up softly to my room, where I found Phoebe still fast asleep. Hurrying off my few clothes, I lay down beside her with a mixture of joy and anxiety that may be easier imagined than expressed.

The risks of Mrs. Brown discovering my plan, of disappointments, misery, ruin—all vanished before this newly kindled flame. The seeing, the touching, the being, if only for a night, with this idol of my adoring virgin heart, appeared to me a happiness worth more than the purchase of my liberty or life. He might use me badly—let him. He was the master. I’d be happy, too happy, even to receive death at so dear a hand.

Such were my reflections the whole day, every minute of which seemed to me a little eternity. How often did I check the clock! Indeed, I was tempted to advance the tedious hand, as if that would advance the time with it! Had those in the house had the least observation of me, they must have noticed something extraordinary from the agitation I couldn’t help showing, especially when at dinner mention was made of the charming youth having been there and stayed for breakfast. “Oh, he was such a beauty! I should have died for him! They’d fight over him!”—and similar foolishness, which was like throwing oil on a fire I was desperately trying to smother the blaze of.

The fluctuations of my mind the whole day produced one good effect: through mere exhaustion, I slept tolerably well until five in the morning, when I got up. Having dressed myself, I waited under the double tortures of fear and impatience for the appointed hour.

It came at last—the dear, critical, dangerous hour came. Now, supported only by the courage love lent me, I ventured tiptoe downstairs, leaving my box behind for fear of being surprised with it while going out.

I reached the street door, the key to which was always left on the chair by our bedside in Phoebe’s trust. She, having not the least suspicion of my entertaining any plan to leave them (nor indeed had I until the day before), made no effort to hide it from me. I opened the door with great ease. Love emboldened and protected me, too. Now safely in the street, I saw my new guardian angel waiting at a coach door, already open. How I got to him, I don’t know—I suppose I flew—but I was in the coach in an instant, and he beside me, his arms clasped around me, giving me the kiss of welcome. The coachman had his orders and drove accordingly.

My eyes instantly filled with tears, but tears of the most delicious delight. To find myself in the arms of that beautiful youth was a rapture in which my little heart swam. Past or future were equally out of the question for me. The present was as much as all my powers of life were sufficient to bear without fainting. The most tender embraces, the most soothing expressions weren’t lacking on his side to assure me of his love and that I’d never have cause to repent the bold step I’d taken in throwing myself entirely upon his honor and generosity. But alas, this was no merit in me, for I was driven to it by a passion too overpowering for me to resist, and I did what I did because I couldn’t help it.

In an instant—for time was now suspended for me—we arrived at a public house in Chelsea, conveniently accommodating for the reception of private pleasure parties, where a breakfast of chocolate was prepared for us.

An old, jolly innkeeper who ran it and understood life perfectly well breakfasted with us. Leering knowingly at me, he congratulated us both and said we were well matched, by God! Many gentlemen and ladies used his house, but he’d never seen a handsomer couple. He was sure I was fresh goods—I looked so country, so innocent! Well, my husband was a lucky man! All this common landlord’s talk not only pleased and comforted me but helped divert my confusion at being with my new master, whom, as the critical moment approached, I began to fear being alone with—a timidity in which true love had a greater share than even maiden bashfulness.

I wished for him, I adored him, I could have died for him, and yet somehow I dreaded the point which had been the object of my fiercest wishes. My pulse beat with fears amid a flush of the warmest desires. This struggle of passions, this conflict between modesty and lovesick longings, made me burst into tears again, which he took, as he had before, only for the remains of concern and emotion at the suddenness of my change of condition in committing myself to his care. Consequently, he did and said everything he thought would most comfort and encourage me.

After breakfast, Charles (the dear familiar name I must take the liberty henceforth to call my Adonis by), with a smile full of meaning, took me gently by the hand and said, “Come, my dear, I’ll show you a room that has a fine view over some gardens.”

Without waiting for an answer—which extremely relieved me—he led me up into a chamber, airy and bright, where all thought of views was out of the question except that of a bed, which seemed to be the room’s main recommendation to him.

Editor’s Notes:

This chapter marks the true beginning of Fanny’s story as a romantic heroine rather than merely a victim or commodity, introducing Charles as her first love and the man who will redeem her from Mrs. Brown’s brothel.

The intense mutual attraction they experience—based on physical beauty, certainly, but also on genuine emotional connection—transforms the novel from a catalogue of sexual encounters into a love story, establishing the pattern that will recur throughout: Fanny’s choices are guided by passion and feeling rather than economic calculation.

Their impulsive decision to run away together within minutes of meeting demonstrates both the recklessness of youth and the transformative power of love that can override all practical considerations.

• Two days after the closet scene - Fanny’s timeline places this encounter shortly after her voyeuristic education; she’s sexually awakened but still a virgin, making her response to Charles a mixture of desire and genuine romantic feeling.

• The garden at dawn - Fanny’s early rising to take fresh air in the back garden shows her instinctive need to escape confinement; the domestic architecture of brothels typically included private outdoor spaces not visible from the street.

• Abandoned by drinking companions - Charles’s friends left him unconscious in the brothel’s parlor after a night of heavy drinking, a common occurrence; Mrs. Brown’s “courtesy” in letting him sleep rather than ejecting him shows her business acumen with potentially wealthy clients.

• “Fair youth between eighteen and nineteen” - Charles is extremely young, barely older than Fanny herself; their matching youth and inexperience makes this a relationship of equals rather than the usual prostitute-client power dynamic.

• Excessive Petrarchan description - Fanny’s elaborate catalogue of Charles’s beauty (lily versus rose, vermilion lips, lashes, etc.) employs conventional poetic love language, signalling that this encounter follows romantic rather than pornographic conventions.

• “Love, which made me timid, taught me to be tender” - This key distinction separates Fanny’s feelings for Charles from her previous sexual curiosity; genuine love produces care for the other person’s wellbeing, not just desire for pleasure.

• Mistaken for a prostitute - Charles’s assumption that Fanny is “one of the women of the house” is entirely reasonable given the location, yet he treats her with unusual politeness and respect rather than crude entitlement.

• Instant offer of keeping - Charles’s immediate proposal to rent lodgings for Fanny and free her from the house is both rash and conventional; wealthy young men routinely “kept” mistresses in private apartments, a relationship implying exclusivity and ongoing financial support.

• Seven o’clock escape plan - The specific timing depends on Fanny’s knowledge of household routines and access to the street door key kept by Phoebe’s bedside; the logistical details show this isn’t pure romantic fantasy but practical conspiracy.

• Chelsea location - The public house where they breakfast was in a village west of London, conveniently distant from Mrs. Brown’s establishment for privacy while still accessible by coach; Chelsea was known for accommodating discreet assignations.

• The upstairs room with a view - The landlord’s knowing complicity and Charles’s transparent excuse about “gardens” makes clear that the inn routinely facilitates sexual encounters; the chapter ends on the threshold of Fanny’s willing surrender of her virginity to love rather than commerce.

  ---

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Mrs. Brown withdrew, and Phoebe soon came to bed with me. Between the answers she drew from me and her own method of physically examining me, she quickly discovered I’d been more frightened than hurt. Being herself sleepy, I suppose, and reserving her lectures and instructions for the next morning, she left me, properly speaking, to my restlessness. After tossing and turning most of the night and tormenting myself with the most mistaken notions and fears, I fell through sheer exhaustion into a kind of feverish doze, from which I woke late in the morning with a violent fever—a circumstance which was extremely fortunate in giving me at least a temporary reprieve from the attacks of a wretch infinitely more terrible to me than death itself.

The interested care taken of me during my illness—in order to restore me to a condition where I could fulfill the madam’s commitments or endure further trials—had such an effect on my grateful nature that I actually thought myself obliged to my destroyers for their attention in promoting my recovery, and above all for keeping that brutal ravisher, the cause of my illness, out of my sight. They’d found I was too strongly upset at the mere mention of his name.

Youth recovers quickly, and a few days were enough to conquer my fever. But what contributed most to my complete recovery and reconciliation with life was the timely news that Mr. Crofts, who was a merchant with considerable business dealings, had been arrested by the King’s court for nearly forty thousand pounds on account of his involvement in certain illegal trade. His affairs were so desperate that even if he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able to renew his designs on me, for he was immediately thrown into prison, which he wasn’t likely to get out of soon.

Mrs. Brown, who’d received his fifty guineas, advanced to so little purpose, lost all hope of the remaining hundred, and began to look upon my treatment of him more favorably. Having observed my temperament to be perfectly manageable and conformable to their plans, all the girls who made up her flock were allowed to visit me. They’d been instructed to dispose of me, through their conversation, to perfect submission to Mrs. Brown’s direction.

They came in on me, and all that playful, thoughtless gaiety with which those flighty creatures spend their leisure made me envy a condition of which I only saw the attractive side. So much so that being one of them became my ambition—an attitude they all carefully cultivated. I now wanted nothing but to restore my health so I could undergo the ceremony of initiation.

Conversation, example—in short, everything—contributed in that house to corrupt my natural purity, which had taken no root in education. Meanwhile, the easily ignited principle of pleasure, so easily fired at my age, made strange work within me, and all the modesty I’d been raised with, by habit, not instruction, began to melt away like dew before the sun’s heat. Not to mention that I made a virtue of necessity from the constant fear of being turned out to starve.

I soon recovered fairly well and at certain hours was allowed to roam all over the house, but was carefully kept from seeing any customers until the arrival of Lord B—— from Bath. Mrs. Brown, in respect to his experienced generosity on such occasions, proposed to offer him the perusal of that trinket of mine which bears such great imaginary value. His lordship being expected in town in less than two weeks, Mrs. Brown judged I’d be entirely renewed in beauty and freshness by then and would afford her the chance of a better bargain than she’d made with Mr. Crofts.

In the meantime, I was so thoroughly, as they call it, brought over, so tame to their control, that if my cage door had been opened, I had no idea I should fly anywhere sooner than stay where I was. I had no sense of regretting my situation but waited very quietly for whatever Mrs. Brown should order concerning me. She, on her side, along with her agents, took more than necessary precautions to lull and suppress all proper reflection on my destiny.

Moral sermons were hypocritically set aside. A life of pleasure was painted in the gayest colors. Caresses, promises, indulgent treatment—nothing, in short, was lacking to domesticate me entirely and prevent me from going anywhere to get better advice. Alas, I dreamed of no such thing.

Up to now, I’d been indebted only to the girls of the house for the corruption of my innocence. Their lustful talk, in which modesty was far from respected, their descriptions of their encounters with men, had given me a reasonable understanding of the nature and mysteries of their profession, while at the same time highly provoking an itch in my warm-spirited blood. But above all, my bedmate Phoebe, whose student I more immediately was, exerted her talents in giving me the first tastes of pleasure. Nature, now warmed and stimulated by such interesting discoveries, sparked a curiosity which Phoebe artfully whetted, leading me from question to question of her own suggestion and explaining to me all the mysteries of sex. But I couldn’t remain long in such a house without witnessing more than I could conceive from her descriptions.

One day, around noon, being thoroughly recovered from my fever, I happened to be in Mrs. Brown’s dark closet, where I’d been resting on the maid’s bed for not half an hour, when I heard rustling in the bedroom. It was separated from the closet only by two glass doors, before which were drawn two yellow damask curtains, but not closed enough to prevent a full view of the room from anyone in the closet.

I instantly crept softly and positioned myself so that, seeing everything clearly, I couldn’t be seen. And who should come in but the venerable mother abbess herself, led by a tall, brawny young Horse Grenadier, molded in the Hercules style—in short, the choice of the most experienced madam in such affairs in all London.

Oh, how still and quiet I kept at my position, lest any noise should spoil my curiosity or bring Madam into the closet!

But I had little reason to fear either, for she was entirely absorbed in her present business and had no attention to spare for anything else.

It was comical to see that clumsy, fat figure of hers flop down on the foot of the bed, opposite the closet door, so that I had a full front view of all her charms.

Her lover sat down beside her. He seemed to be a man of very few words and a great appetite, for proceeding instantly to essentials, he gave her some hearty kisses and, thrusting his hands into her bodice, freed her breasts from her stays. In scorn of their confinement, they broke loose and sagged down at least to her navel. A more enormous pair my eyes never beheld, nor of a worse color—sagging, soft, and hanging most unappealingly together. Yet, as they were, this great beef-eater seemed to paw them with undeniable lust, seeking in vain to confine or cover one of them with a hand scarcely smaller than a shoulder of mutton. After toying with them thus for some time, as if they’d been worth it, he laid her down fairly briskly and, lifting up her petticoats, made barely a mask of them for her broad red face that blushed with nothing but brandy.

As he stood to one side, unbuttoning his waistcoat and breeches, her fat, muscular thighs hung down, and the whole greasy landscape lay fairly open to my view—a wide, open-mouthed gap, overshaded by grizzled bush, seemed held out like a beggar’s wallet for its provision.

But I soon had my eyes called away by a more striking object that entirely absorbed them.

Her sturdy stallion had now unbuttoned and produced, naked, stiff, and erect, that wonderful machine which I’d never seen before and which, for the interest my own seat of pleasure began to take furiously in it, I stared at with all the eyes I had. However, my senses were too flustered, too concentrated in that now burning spot of mine, to observe anything more than the general make and shape of that instrument. Instinct, more than all I’d heard of it, now strongly informed me I was to expect that supreme pleasure which nature had placed in the meeting of those parts so admirably fitted for each other.

The young man didn’t remain long before, after giving it two or three shakes by way of brandishing it, he threw himself upon her. His back being now toward me, I could only assume he’d entered her by the directions he moved in and the impossibility of missing so obvious a mark. Now the bed shook, the curtains rattled so that I could barely hear the sighs and murmurs, the heaves and gasps that accompanied the action from beginning to end. The sound and sight of which thrilled my very soul and made every vein of my body circulate liquid fire. The excitement grew so violent that it almost stopped my breathing.

Prepared and disposed as I was by my companions’ conversation and Phoebe’s detailed explanations of everything, no wonder such a sight gave the final blow to my native innocence.

While they were in the heat of action, guided by nature alone, I stole my hand up my petticoats and with fingers on fire seized and further inflamed that center of all my senses. My heart palpitated as if it would force its way through my chest. I breathed with difficulty. I twisted my thighs, squeezed and compressed the lips of that virgin opening, and following the example of Phoebe’s manual operation on it mechanically as far as I could manage, brought on at last the critical ecstasy, the melting release into which nature, spent with excess of pleasure, dissolves and fades away.

After which, my senses recovered enough composure to observe the rest of the transaction between this happy pair.

The young fellow had just dismounted when the old lady immediately sprang up with all the vigor of youth, derived no doubt from her recent refreshment. Making him sit down, she began in her turn to kiss him, pat and pinch his cheeks, and play with his hair—all of which he received with an air of indifference and coolness that showed him much changed from when he’d first entered the breach.

My devout governess, however, not being above calling in reinforcements, unlocked a little case of cordials that stood near the bed and made him drink with her very generously. After this and a little amorous conversation, Madam positioned herself on the same spot at the bed’s foot. The young fellow standing sideways by her, she with the greatest shamelessness imaginable unbuttoned his breeches and, removing his shirt, drew out his member—so shrunken and diminished that I couldn’t help remembering the difference from before, now drooping or just faintly lifting its head. But our experienced matron very soon, by rubbing it with her hands, brought it to swell to that size and erection I’d seen it at before.

I admired then, with fresh attention and closer inspection, the structure of that principal part of man: the flaming red head as it stood uncapped, the whiteness of the shaft, the shrub-like growth of curling hair that darkened its base, the roundish sack that dangled from it—all captured my eager attention and renewed my flame. But as the main business was now at the point the industrious dame had worked to bring it to, she wasn’t in the mood to delay the reward for her efforts. Lying herself down, she drew him gently upon her, and they finished in the same manner as before.

This over, they both went out together lovingly, the old lady having first given him a present, as near as I could observe, of three or four coins. He was not only her particular favorite on account of his performances but also employed by the house. From his sight, she’d taken great care until now to hide me, lest he might not have had patience to wait for my lord’s arrival, but insisted on being his taster—something the old lady was under too much obligation to him to dare dispute. Every girl of the house took her turn with him, and the old lady only occasionally got hers, in consideration of the maintenance he had, which he could scarcely be accused of not earning from her.

As soon as I heard them go downstairs, I stole up softly to my own room, from which I’d luckily not been missed. There I began to breathe more freely and give vent to those warm emotions the sight of such an encounter had raised in me. I lay down on the bed, stretched myself out, joining and ardently wishing for any means to divert or relieve the rekindled rage and tumult of my desires, which all pointed strongly to their target: man. I felt about the bed as if seeking something I’d grasped in a waking dream, and not finding it, could have cried from frustration. Every part of me was burning with passionate fires. At length I resorted to the only available remedy—vain attempts at self-pleasure, where the smallness of the passage didn’t yet afford room enough for action, and where the pain my fingers gave me in striving for admission, though they provided slight satisfaction for the moment, raised an apprehension I couldn’t be easy about until I’d communicated it to Phoebe and received her explanation.

The opportunity, however, didn’t present itself until the next morning, for Phoebe didn’t come to bed until long after I’d gone to sleep. As soon as we were both awake, it was natural to bring up in our pillow talk the subject of my uneasiness. A recounting of the love scene I’d accidentally witnessed served as an introduction.

Phoebe couldn’t hear it to the end without multiple interruptions of laughter, and my naive way of relating matters heightened the joke for her considerably.

But when she asked how the sight had affected me, without mincing words or hiding the pleasurable emotions it had inspired in me, I told her that one observation had perplexed me greatly. “Oh?” she said. “What was that?”

“Why,” I replied, “having very carefully and attentively compared the size of that enormous machine, which appeared to my fearful imagination at least as thick as my wrist and at least three handfuls long, to that of the tender, small part of me which was designed to receive it, I couldn’t conceive it being possible to afford it entrance without dying, perhaps in the greatest pain, since you well know that even a finger thrust in there hurt me beyond bearing. As for my mistress’s and yours, I can very plainly distinguish their different dimensions from mine, obvious to both touch and sight. So in short, great as the promised pleasure may be, I’m afraid of the pain of the experiment.”

Phoebe redoubled her laughter and, while I expected a very serious solution to my doubts and fears in this matter, only told me she’d never heard of a fatal wound being given in those parts by that terrible weapon, and that some she knew, younger and as delicately made as myself, had survived the operation. She believed, at worst, I’d take considerable punishment. True, there was great diversity of sizes in those parts, owing to nature, childbearing, and frequent overstretching with unmerciful implements, but at a certain age and physical condition, even the most experienced in such affairs couldn’t well distinguish between virgin and woman, assuming an absence of all artifice in their natural state. But since chance had thrown in my way one sight of that sort, she’d procure me another that would feast my eyes more delightfully and go a great way toward curing my fears from that imaginary disproportion.

She then asked me if I knew Polly Phillips. “Certainly,” I said, “the fair girl who was so kind to me when I was sick and has been, as you told me, only two months in the house.”

“The same,” said Phoebe. “You must know she’s kept by a young Genoese merchant whose uncle is immensely rich and whose darling he is. On the pretense of settling some accounts but really to humor his desire for traveling and seeing the world, he met casually with this Polly in company, and taking a liking to her, made it worth her while to keep exclusively to him. He comes to her here two or three times a week and enjoys her in a manner I suppose peculiar to the customs or perhaps the whims of his own country. I say no more, but tomorrow being his day, you’ll see what passes between them from a place known only to your mistress and me.”

You can be sure, in the mood I was in, I had no objection to the proposal and was rather on tiptoe for its fulfillment.

At five in the evening the next day, Phoebe, punctual to her promise, came to me as I sat alone in my room and beckoned me to follow her.

We went down the back stairs very softly. Opening the door of a dark closet where some old furniture and cases of liquor were kept, she drew me in after her and fastened the door. We had no light except what came through a long crack in the partition between our closet and the adjoining one where the scene would take place. Sitting on low cases, we could with the greatest ease and clarity see all objects, ourselves unseen, simply by putting our eyes close to the crack where the molding of a panel had warped or separated slightly on the other side.

The young gentleman was the first person I saw, with his back directly toward me, looking at a print. Polly hadn’t yet arrived. In less than a minute, though, the door opened, and she came in. At the noise the door made, he turned around and came to meet her with an air of the greatest tenderness and satisfaction.

After greeting her, he led her to a couch facing us, where they both sat down, and the young Genoese helped her to a glass of wine with some Naples biscuits on a plate.

Soon, after they’d exchanged a few kisses and questions in broken English on one side, he began to unbutton and finally stripped to his shirt.

As if this had been the agreed signal for removing all their clothes—a plan the warm season perfectly favored—Polly began to remove her pins. Having no corset to unlace, she was quickly, with her lover’s eager assistance, undressed to nothing but her shift.

When he saw this, his breeches were immediately loosened at the waist and knees and slipped clean off over his ankles. His shirt collar was unbuttoned too. Then, first giving Polly an encouraging kiss, he stole, as it were, the shift off the girl, who being, I suppose, accustomed and familiarized to this practice, blushed indeed but less than I did at the sight of her now standing stark naked, just as she came from the hands of pure nature, with her black hair loose and flowing down her dazzling white neck and shoulders, while the deepened pink of her cheeks gradually faded into the hue of glazed snow—for such were the blended tints and polish of her skin.

This girl couldn’t have been above eighteen. Her face was regular and sweet-featured, her shape exquisite. I couldn’t help envying her two ripe, enchanting breasts, beautifully rounded out in flesh but so firm that they held themselves up in scorn of any support. Their nipples, pointing in different directions, marked their pleasing separation. Below them lay the delicious expanse of her belly, which ended in a barely discernible parting or cleft, that modesty seemed to retreat downward and seek shelter between two plump, fleshy thighs. The curling hair that overspread its delightful front clothed it with the richest dark fur imaginable. In short, she was evidently a subject for painters to court her, sitting for them as a pattern of female beauty in all the true pride and glory of nakedness.

The young Italian, still in his shirt, stood gazing, transported at the sight of beauties that might have fired a dying hermit. His eager eyes devoured her as she shifted positions at his direction. His hands weren’t excluded from their share of the feast either, but wandered in the hunt of pleasure over every part and inch of her body, so well suited to afford the most exquisite sense of it.

Meanwhile, one couldn’t help noticing the swelling of his shirt in front, which bulged out and indicated the condition of things behind the curtain. But he soon removed it by slipping his shirt over his head, and now, as to nakedness, they had nothing to hide from each other.

The young gentleman, by Phoebe’s estimate, was about twenty-two, tall and well-built. His body was finely formed and of a very vigorous build—square-shouldered and broad-chested. His face wasn’t remarkable in any way except for a nose inclining to Roman, large black sparkling eyes, and a ruddiness in his cheeks that was all the more attractive because his complexion was of the brownest—not that dull, dusky color which excludes the idea of freshness, but that clear olive glow which, radiant with life, perhaps dazzles less than fairness yet pleases more when it pleases at all. His hair, being too short to tie, fell no lower than his neck in short, easy curls, and he had a few hairs about his chest that decorated it in a style of strength and manliness.

Then his grand instrument, which seemed to rise out of a thicket of curling hair that spread from its root all over his thighs and belly up to his navel, stood stiff and upright—but of a size to frighten me by sympathy for the small, tender part which was the object of its fury and which now lay exposed to my clearest view. Immediately upon removing his shirt, he’d gently pushed her down on the couch, which stood conveniently to break her willing fall. Her thighs were spread to their utmost extension and revealed between them the mark of her sex—the red-centered cleft of flesh whose lips, reddening inward, showed a small ruby line in sweet miniature such as the finest painter’s touch or coloring could never capture with such life or delicacy.

Phoebe, at this, gave me a gentle nudge to prepare me for a whispered question: “Do you think your little maidenhead is much smaller?”

But my attention was too absorbed, too wrapped up in all I saw, to be able to give her any answer.

By this time, the young gentleman had changed her position from lying crosswise to lengthwise on the couch, but her thighs were still spread, and the target lay fair for him. Now kneeling between them, he displayed to us a side view of that fierce, erect machine of his, which threatened nothing less than splitting the tender victim who lay smiling at the uplifted stroke and didn’t seem to fear it. He looked at his weapon himself with some pleasure, and guiding it with his hand to the inviting opening, drew aside the lips and lodged it, after some thrusts which Polly seemed even to assist, about halfway. But there it stuck, I suppose from its growing thickness. He drew it out again and, just wetting it with saliva, reentered and, with ease, sheathed it now to the hilt, at which Polly gave a deep sigh that was quite a different tone than one of pain. He thrust, she responded—at first gently and in a regular rhythm, but soon the passion began to be too violent to observe any order or measure. Their motions were too rapid, their kisses too fierce and fervent for nature to sustain such fury long. Both seemed to me beside themselves. Their eyes shot fire. “Oh! Oh! I can’t bear it! It’s too much! I’m dying! I’m going!” was Polly’s expression of ecstasy. His pleasures were more silent but soon broken by murmurs, sighs fetched from deep within, and finally a final thrust as if he would force himself up into her body. Then the motionless languor of all his limbs showed that the climactic moment had come upon him, which she gave signs of sharing by the wild throwing of her hands about, closing her eyes, and giving a deep sob in which she seemed to expire in an agony of bliss.

When he’d finished and gotten off her, she lay still without the least motion, breathless, it seemed, with pleasure. He repositioned her crosswise on the couch, unable to sit up, with her thighs open, between which I could observe a kind of white liquid, like froth, hanging about the outer lips of that recently opened passage, which now glowed with a deeper red.

Soon she got up and, throwing her arms around him, seemed far from displeased with the trial he’d put her to, to judge at least by the fondness with which she gazed at and clung to him.

For my part, I won’t pretend to describe what I felt during this scene, but from that instant, goodbye to all fears of what man could do to me! They were now changed into such ardent desires, such ungovernable longings, that I could have pulled him by the sleeve and offered him the prize which I now imagined the loss of would be a gain I couldn’t obtain too soon.

Phoebe, who had more experience and to whom such sights weren’t so new, couldn’t, however, be unmoved by so warm a scene. Drawing me away softly from the peephole for fear of being overheard, she guided me to the door as quietly as possible, all passive and obedient to her slightest signals.

There was no room either to sit or lie, but making me stand with my back toward the door, she lifted up my petticoats and with her busy fingers began to visit and explore that part of me where I was perfectly sick and ready to die with desire. The bare touch of her finger in that critical place had the effect of fire to gunpowder, and her hand instantly made her aware to what a pitch I was wound up and melted by the sight she’d procured for me. Satisfied with her success in relieving a heat that would have made me impatient to see the continuation of the transactions between our amorous couple, she brought me back to the crack, so favorable to our curiosity.

We’d certainly been away only a few moments, and yet on our return, we saw everything well underway for recommencing the tender hostilities.

The young foreigner was sitting on the couch, facing us, with Polly on one knee, her arms around his neck, while the extreme whiteness of her skin was delightfully contrasted with the smooth, glossy brown of her lover’s.

But who could count the fierce, unnumbered kisses given and taken, in which I could often see their mouths were double-tongued and seemed to savor the mutual insertion with the greatest relish and delight?

Meanwhile, his red-headed champion, which had so recently left the battlefield subdued and humbled, was now recovered to the peak of its condition, perked and raised up between Polly’s thighs. She wasn’t lacking on her part to coax and keep it in good humor, stroking it with her head down and receiving even its velvety tip between the lips of what wasn’t quite its proper mouth. Whether this was to make it more slippery and easier of entrance, I couldn’t tell, but it had such an effect that the young gentleman, as shown by his eyes that sparkled with more excited luster and his flushed face, seemed to receive increased pleasure.

He stood up and, taking Polly in his arms, embraced her and said something too softly for me to hear, leading her to the foot of the couch. He took delight in slapping her thighs and bottom with that stiff rod of his, which hit them with a spring he gave it with his hand and made them ring, but hurt her about as much as he meant to—for she seemed to have as playful a taste as himself.

But imagine my surprise when I saw the lusty young man lie down on his back and gently pull Polly down upon him. Giving way to his whim, she straddled him and with her hands guided her blind favorite to the right place. Following her impulse, she ran directly upon the flaming point of this weapon of pleasure, impaling herself upon it, pierced and filled to the extremest limit. She sat on him for a few moments, enjoying and relishing her situation, while he toyed with her tempting breasts. Sometimes she’d stoop to meet his kiss, but soon the sting of pleasure spurred them to fiercer action. Then began the storm of thrusts which, from the bottom combatant, were met at the same time by her crossing her hands over him and drawing herself down to him with sweet violence. The inverted strokes of hammer on anvil soon brought on the critical period, in which all the signs of a closely coordinated ecstasy informed us they’d reached the peak.

As for me, I could bear to see no more. I was so overcome, so inflamed by the second part of the same performance, that, maddened to an intolerable degree, I hugged and clasped Phoebe as if she had the means to relieve me. Pleased with and pitying the state she could feel me in, she moved toward the door and, opening it as softly as she could, we both got away undiscovered. She led me back to my own room, where, unable to keep my legs in the agitation I was in, I immediately threw myself on the bed, where I lay transported though ashamed at what I felt.

Phoebe lay down beside me and asked me teasingly if, now that I’d seen the enemy and fully considered him, I was still afraid of him, or did I think I could engage him in close combat?

To all this, not a word from me. I sighed and could barely breathe. She took hold of my hand and, having rolled up her own petticoats, forced it half-resistingly toward those parts where, now more knowing, I missed the main object of my wishes. Finding not even the shadow of what I wanted, where everything was so flat or so hollow, in the frustration I felt, I would have withdrawn my hand except for fear of offending her. Abandoning it then entirely to her management, she used it as she thought proper to give herself more the shadow than the substance of any pleasure.

For my part, I now craved more substantial satisfaction and promised myself silently that I wouldn’t be put off much longer with this foolishness of woman with woman if Mrs. Brown didn’t soon provide me with the essential remedy. In short, I had every appearance of being unable to wait for the arrival of my Lord B——, though he was now expected in just a few days. Nor did I wait for him, for love itself took charge of disposing of me, despite self-interest or crude lust.

Editor’s Notes:

This chapter represents Fanny’s complete sexual awakening and the final dissolution of her innocence, not through assault but through observation and curiosity. The voyeuristic scenes she witnesses—first Mrs. Brown with a grenadier, then Polly with her Italian lover—transform her terror of sex into urgent desire, completing her psychological preparation for entering the life of prostitution. Critically, this transformation occurs through her own agency and natural responses rather than force, establishing the novel’s complex position that sexual pleasure itself is natural and desirable even when its commercial exploitation is morally problematic.

• Mr. Crofts’s financial ruin - His arrest for illegal trading (likely smuggling) and debt saves Fanny from further assault; bankruptcy and debtors’ prison were common fates for overextended merchants in this period.

• Lord B—— from Bath - Mrs. Brown’s new plan to sell Fanny’s virginity to an aristocrat returning from the fashionable spa town; titled clients paid premium prices and were considered safer prospects than merchants.

• “Mother abbess” - Standard slang for a brothel madam, drawn from the religious metaphor of the house as a “nunnery” and its women as “sisters”—dark humour common in prostitution argot.

• Horse Grenadier - An elite cavalry soldier, part of the royal guards; these tall, physically imposing men were stationed in London and notorious for their sexual appetites and relationships with prostitutes.

• The closet as viewing station - Voyeurism was a standard feature of high-end brothels; concealed viewing areas allowed clients to watch performances, and Mrs. Brown’s private use of this space shows her personal libertinism.

• Mrs. Brown’s hypocritical participation - Her energetic sexual encounter with the grenadier reveals that her moralistic language to Fanny is purely manipulative; she herself is driven by “brandy” and lust.

• Fanny’s first masturbation - Her instinctive manual stimulation “following the example of Phoebe’s operation” to orgasm marks her body’s awakening independent of moral instruction; “nature” is presented as the true teacher.

• The Genoese merchant’s “peculiar customs” - The face-to-face position with Polly on top was considered exotic or foreign; the “missionary position” with the man dominant was English convention, and variations were attributed to Continental licentiousness.

• Comparative anatomy lesson - Fanny’s detailed observation of the Italian’s penis size and Polly’s anatomy, with Phoebe’s running commentary, provides the sexual education that middle-class girls would never receive, demystifying the mechanics of intercourse.

• “White liquid, like froth” - Fanny’s clinical observation of semen is presented matter-of-factly; her narrator’s voice maintains graphic honesty while using metaphorical language (”froth,” “weapon,” “combat”) to balance explicitness with literary decorum.

• Fanny’s impatience for “substantial satisfaction” - The chapter ends with her actively desiring penetrative sex rather than “foolishness of woman with woman,” rejecting lesbian activity as insufficient and signalling her readiness to enter heterosexual prostitution on her own terms.

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The wine flowed pretty freely too, with a view, I suppose, to make an ally of my warm constitution in the minutes of the imminent attack.

They kept me at the table fairly long, and about six in the evening, after I’d retired to my room and the tea service was set, my venerable mistress entered, followed closely by that satyr, who came in grinning in his peculiar way. His odious presence confirmed me in all the feelings of hatred his first appearance had inspired.

He sat down facing me, and all through tea kept ogling me in a manner that caused me the utmost pain and confusion, all signs of which he still interpreted as my bashfulness and not being used to company.

Tea over, the scheming old lady pleaded urgent business, which was indeed true, and had to go out. She earnestly asked me to entertain her cousin kindly until she returned, for both my own sake and hers. Then, with a “Please, sir, be very good, be very gentle with the sweet child,” she left the room, leaving me staring with my mouth open, unprepared by the suddenness of her departure to object.

We were now alone, and at that realization a sudden fit of trembling seized me. I was afraid, without knowing precisely why or what I had to fear. I sat on the settee by the fireside, motionless and petrified, without life or spirit, not knowing how to look or move.

But I wasn’t allowed to remain in this stupor for long. The monster squatted down beside me on the settee, and without further ceremony or preamble, flung his arms around my neck and drew me forcibly toward him, obliging me to receive, despite my struggles to break free, his pestilential kisses, which quite overcame me.

Finding me nearly senseless and unresisting, he tore off my neck handkerchief and laid everything bare to his eyes and hands. Still, I endured it all without flinching, until emboldened by my patience and silence (for I had no power to speak or cry out), he attempted to lay me down on the settee. I felt his hand on the lower part of my naked thighs, which were crossed, and which he tried to unlock.

Oh, then I was roused from my passive endurance! Springing from him with an energy he wasn’t prepared for, I threw myself at his feet and begged him in the most moving tone not to be rough and not to hurt me.

“Hurt you, my dear?” says the brute. “I intend you no harm. Hasn’t the old lady told you that I love you? That I’ll treat you well?”

“She has indeed, sir,” I said, “but I cannot love you, indeed I cannot! Please leave me alone! Yes, I will love you dearly if you’ll just leave me alone and go away.”

But I was talking to the wind. Whether my tears, my posture, or my disheveled dress proved fresh incentives, or whether he was now under the control of desires he couldn’t restrain—snorting and foaming with lust and rage—he renewed his attack, seized me, and again attempted to stretch me out on the settee. In this, he succeeded enough to lay me flat and even toss my petticoats over my head and bare my thighs, which I obstinately kept closed. Though he tried with his knee to force them open, he couldn’t succeed enough to gain access to the main entrance. He was unbuttoned, both waistcoat and breeches, yet I only felt the weight of his body on me while I lay struggling with outrage and dying with terror.

But he stopped suddenly and got off, panting, gasping, cursing, and repeating “old and ugly!”—for so I’d very naturally called him in the heat of my defense.

The brute had, it seems, as I later understood, brought on by his eagerness and struggle, the climax of his fit of lust, which his power was too short-lived to carry through to completion. My thighs and undergarments received the discharge.

When it was over, he told me in a displeased tone to get up. He wouldn’t do me the honor of thinking of me anymore. The old bitch could look for another fool. He wouldn’t be tricked by any girl from the country. He supposed I’d left my maidenhead with some farm boy and come to peddle my leftovers in town—with a volley of similar abuse, which I listened to with more pleasure than any fond woman ever did to protestations of love from her darling. Incapable as I was of adding to my perfect hatred and aversion to him, I looked on this ranting as my security against his renewing his most odious caresses.

Yet plain as Mrs. Brown’s intentions now were, I didn’t have the heart or spirit to open my eyes to them. Still, I couldn’t part with my dependence on that witch—so much did I think myself hers, body and soul. Or rather, I tried to deceive myself by continuing my good opinion of her, choosing to accept the worst at her hands sooner than be turned out to starve in the streets without a penny or a friend to turn to. These fears were my folly.

While this confusion of thoughts was passing through my head, and I sat sadly by the fire with tears brimming in my eyes, my neck still bare and my cap fallen off in the struggle (my hair was in the disorder you can imagine), the villain’s lust began, I suppose, to rise again at the sight of all that bloom of youth presented to his view—a bloom yet untouched and therefore still appealing to him.

After some pause, he asked me in a much softer tone whether I’d make peace with him before the old lady returned, and all would be well. He’d restore me to his affections, he said, while trying to kiss me and feel my breasts.

But now my extreme aversion, my fears, my outrage, all acting together, gave me a spirit not natural to me. Breaking free from him, I ran to the bell and rang it with such force that I brought the maid up to see what the matter was or whether the gentleman wanted anything. Before he could proceed to greater extremes, she burst into the room and saw me stretched on the floor, my hair all disheveled and my odious persecutor still intent on pursuing his brutal goal, unmoved by all my cries and distress. She was herself confused and didn’t know what to do.

However prepared and hardened Martha might be to transactions of this sort, all womanhood would have had to be out of her heart if she could have seen this unmoved. Besides, from the appearance of things, she imagined matters had gone further than they really had, that the business of the house had actually been consummated on me and left me in the condition I was in.

In this belief, she took my side and advised the gentleman to go downstairs and leave me to recover. All would soon be well with me. When Mrs. Brown and Phoebe, who’d gone out, returned, they’d arrange everything to his satisfaction. Nothing would be lost by a little patience with the poor tender thing. For her part, she was frightened and didn’t know what to say to such goings-on, but she’d stay with me until her mistress came home.

As the woman said all this in a resolute tone, and the monster himself began to see that things wouldn’t improve by his staying, he took his hat and left the room, muttering and furrowing his brow like an old ape. I was delivered from the horror of his detestable presence.

As soon as he was gone, Martha very tenderly offered me her help and would have gotten me some smelling salts and put me to bed. The latter I at first absolutely refused, fearing the monster might return and catch me at that disadvantage. However, with much persuasion and assurances that I wouldn’t be molested that night, she convinced me to lie down. Indeed, I was so weakened by my struggles, so dejected by my fearful apprehension, so terror-struck, that I had no power to sit up or hardly to answer the questions with which curious Martha plied and confused me.

Such too, and so cruel was my fate, that I dreaded the sight of Mrs. Brown as if I’d been the criminal and she the injured person—a mistake you won’t think so strange when you consider that neither virtue nor principles had the least share in the defense I’d made, but only the particular aversion I’d felt toward this first brutal and frightful invader of my tender innocence.

I passed the time until Mrs. Brown came home under all the agitations of fear and despair that can easily be imagined.

Editor’s Notes:

This chapter marks a crucial turning point in Fanny’s story, as her naïve trust in Mrs. Brown is shattered and the true nature of the brothel’s operations becomes violently clear. The attempted assault she endures crystallizes her vulnerability in 18th-century London, where a young woman without means or connections has virtually no protection. Her resistance here—motivated by instinctive revulsion rather than moral principle—establishes the pattern of Fanny’s reliance on her own feelings and physical responses that will guide her throughout the novel.

Points of Interest

• “Cousin” - A common euphemism in brothels for clients; Mrs. Brown’s pretence of family connection is meant to make the transaction seem respectable to the innocent Fanny.

• The wine strategy - Alcohol was routinely used to lower young women’s resistance in such establishments; the narrator’s awareness of this tactic shows her retrospective understanding.

• “Satyr” - A mythological reference to lustful creatures, half-man and half-goat; the comparison emphasizes the client’s animalistic nature and repulsiveness.

• Settee - A long upholstered seat, similar to a modern sofa or couch.

• Petticoats - Multiple underskirts worn beneath the outer dress; tossing them “over my head” was a standard method of sexual assault that also silenced the victim.

• “The climax of his fit of lust” - The elderly client experiences premature ejaculation due to his excitement and physical exertion, preventing the actual rape.

• Fanny’s economic trap - Her fear of being “turned out to starve in the streets” explains why she doesn’t simply flee Mrs. Brown’s house, highlighting the limited options for poor women.

• Martha’s intervention - The maid’s assistance suggests some boundaries existed even in brothels, though her motives may be purely practical (protecting the establishment’s “merchandise”).

• Ringing the bell - An important detail showing that even in her extremity, Fanny has enough presence of mind to summon help using the household’s servant call system.

• Fanny’s “particular aversion” - The narrator’s mature voice notes that her resistance stems from physical disgust rather than virtue, a distinction that will become thematically important as the novel progresses.

In the morning, I woke around ten, perfectly cheerful and refreshed. Phoebe was up before me and asked me in the kindest manner how I was, how I’d slept, and if I was ready for breakfast. She carefully avoided increasing the embarrassment she saw I felt at looking her in the face by making any reference to the night’s activities.

I told her that if she pleased, I’d get up and begin whatever work she’d set me to. She smiled. Soon, the maid brought in the tea service, and I’d just hurriedly dressed when my mistress waddled in. I expected to be scolded for my late rising, but I was most pleasantly surprised by her compliments on my fresh looks. I was “a bud of beauty” (her style), and how vastly all the fine men would admire me! My answers, I can assure you, didn’t contradict my upbringing—they were as simple and silly as they could wish, and doubtless flattered them far more than if I’d proven myself educated and worldly.

We had breakfast, and the tea things were barely cleared when two bundles of linen and clothing were brought in—in short, all the necessities for dressing me up completely, as they called it.

Imagine, madam, how my little vain heart fluttered with joy at the sight of a white silk dress flowered with silver (secondhand indeed, but passed off to me as brand new), a Brussels lace cap, embroidered shoes, and the rest in proportion—all secondhand finery, procured instantly for the occasion by the diligence of good Mrs. Brown, who already had a customer for me in the house. He would inspect the merchandise, for he’d not only insisted on seeing me first but also on immediate possession if he agreed to the terms. He concluded very wisely that a place like this was too risky to trust keeping such a perishable commodity as virginity.

The task of dressing and preparing me for market was left to Phoebe, who performed it to the satisfaction of everyone except my impatience to see myself dressed. When it was done, and I viewed myself in the mirror, I was too natural, too artless, to hide my childish joy at the change—a change in truth for much the worse, since the neat, simple elegance of my country dress suited me far better than the awkward, gaudy finery I couldn’t help feeling strange in.

Phoebe’s compliments, however, in which her own role in dressing me wasn’t forgotten, confirmed the first notions I’d ever entertained about my appearance. Without vanity, I was then tolerable enough to justify attraction to me, and it may not be out of place here to sketch you an honest picture.

I was tall, yet not too tall for my age. My figure was perfectly straight, thin-waisted, light, and graceful without owing anything to corsets. My hair was glossy auburn and as soft as silk, flowing down my neck in natural curls, which set off the whiteness of my smooth skin. My face was rather too rosy, though its features were delicate, and the shape was a roundish oval, except for a dimple on my chin that was far from disagreeable. My eyes were as black as can be imagined, and rather languishing than sparkling, except on certain occasions when I’ve been told they flashed fire fast enough. My teeth, which I’ve always carefully preserved, were small, even, and white. My bosom was nicely raised, and one could see more the promise than the actual development of the round, firm breasts that soon fulfilled that promise.

In short, I had all the points of beauty most universally desired, or at least my vanity forbids me to doubt the judgment of our sovereign judges—men—who all that I ever knew gave the decision highly in my favor. I even met some of my own sex who couldn’t deny me that justice, while others praised me more suspiciously by trying to detract from me in aspects of appearance where I obviously excelled.

This is, I admit, rather strong self-praise, but I’d be ungrateful to nature and to a form to which I owe such singular blessings of pleasure and fortune if I suppressed, through false modesty, the mention of such valuable gifts.

Well, I was dressed, and it never occurred to me that all this fine clothing was nothing more than a decoration for the victim’s sacrifice. I innocently attributed everything to mere friendship and kindness from sweet, good Mrs. Brown, who, I forgot to mention, had gotten from me without the least hesitation, under the pretense of keeping it safe, the small amount of money that remained to me after my journey expenses.

After some time spent very pleasantly before the mirror in self-admiration (though my new dress had much the greatest share in it), I was sent for downstairs to the parlor. The old lady greeted me and congratulated me on my new clothes, which she wasn’t ashamed to say fit me as if I’d worn nothing but the finest all my life. But what wouldn’t she try to make me believe?

At the same time, she presented me to another cousin of her own invention—an elderly gentleman who stood up when I entered. When I dropped a curtsy to him, he kissed me and seemed a bit offended that I’d only offered my cheek. A mistake which, if one, he immediately corrected by pressing his lips to mine with an ardor his appearance hadn’t at all disposed me to thank him for. His appearance, I say, than which nothing could be more shocking or detestable, ugly and disagreeable, were too gentle terms to convey a just idea of it.

Imagine a man past sixty, short and ill-formed, with a yellow, corpse-like complexion and bulging eyes that stared as if he were being strangled. He had a protruding mouth with two teeth more properly called tusks, livid lips, and breath like a sewer. He had a peculiar ghastliness in his grin that made him perfectly frightful, if not dangerous to pregnant women. Yet made as he was in mockery of man, he was so blind to his own glaring deformities that he thought himself born to please and that no woman could see him without being affected. Consequently, he’d lavished great sums on such wretches as could bring themselves to pretend love for his person, while he behaved brutally toward those who didn’t have the art or patience to hide the horror he inspired.

Impotence more than necessity made him seek in variety the stimulation needed to reach the peak of enjoyment, which he too often saw himself denied by the failure of his powers. This always threw him into a rage, which he took out, as far as he dared, on the innocent objects of his momentary desire.

This, then, was the master to whom my conscientious benefactress, who’d long been his supplier in this way, had doomed me and sent for me specifically for his inspection. Accordingly, she made me stand before him, turned me around, unpinned my handkerchief, and remarked to him on the rise and fall, the shape and whiteness of a bosom just beginning to fill. Then she made me walk and even made a selling point of the rusticity of my charms. In short, she omitted no trick of salesmanship, to which he only responded with gracious nods of approval while he leered at me lecherously. I sometimes stole a glance at him, and, encountering his fiery, eager stare, looked away from pure horror and fright, which he characteristically attributed to nothing more than maiden modesty, or at least the pretense of it.

However, I was soon dismissed and led back to my room by Phoebe, who stuck close to me, not leaving me alone with leisure to reflect on what I’d just been through. But to my shame, such was my invincible stupidity, or rather portentous innocence, that I still didn’t see Mrs. Brown’s designs and saw nothing in this supposed cousin of hers but a shockingly hideous person who didn’t concern me at all, except that my gratitude for my benefactress made me extend respect to all her relatives.

Phoebe, however, began to test my feelings toward this monster, asking me how I’d like such a fine gentleman for a husband. (Fine gentleman, I suppose she called him from his being covered with lace.) I answered her very naturally that I had no thoughts of a husband, but if I were to choose one, it would be from my own class, surely! So much had my aversion to that wretch’s hideous appearance put me off all “fine gentlemen” and confused my ideas, as if all men of that rank were necessarily cast in the same mold as he was.

But Phoebe wouldn’t be put off and continued her efforts to soften me for the purposes of my reception into that hospitable house. While she talked of men in general, she had no reason to despair of compliance, which, for more than one reason, she saw would be easily enough obtained from me. But she had too much experience not to discover that my particular fixed aversion to that frightful cousin would be an obstacle not so easily removed as suited the completion of their bargain and sale of me.

Mother Brown had meanwhile agreed on terms with this lecherous old goat, which I later learned were fifty guineas up front for the privilege of attempting me, and a hundred more upon complete satisfaction of his desires in the conquest of my virginity. As for me, I was to be left entirely to the discretion of his generosity.

This corrupt contract being settled, he was so eager to take possession that he insisted on being introduced to drink tea with me that afternoon, when we’d be left alone. He wouldn’t listen to the procuress’s protests that I wasn’t sufficiently prepared for such an attack, that I was too green and untamed, having been in the house barely twenty-four hours. It’s the nature of lust to be impatient, and his vanity, arming him against any thought of anything but the common resistance of a virgin on such occasions, made him reject all proposals of delay. My dreadful trial was thus fixed, unknown to me, for that very evening.

Editor’s Notes:

This chapter completes Fanny’s transformation from innocent victim to saleable commodity, detailing the final preparations for her virginity to be sold to a grotesque elderly customer for 150 guineas. The unflinching examination of the virgin market’s mechanics—the costume, the pricing negotiations, the customer’s inspection of “merchandise”—exposes the brutal economic reality underlying prostitution while maintaining the dramatic irony of Fanny’s continued innocence despite Phoebe’s sexual initiation the previous night.

Points of Interest

• “Bud of beauty” - Mrs. Brown’s flower metaphor is both conventional praise and sexually suggestive; “blooming” and “deflowering” were standard euphemisms for loss of virginity.

• Brussels lace - Europe’s finest and most expensive lace, part of a complete outfit of luxury items (white silk dress, embroidered shoes) all purchased secondhand from the used clothing trade to create an illusion of gentility.

• “Perishable commodity” - The startlingly commercial language strips away euphemism; virginity is explicitly treated as a product with limited shelf life that could spoil if not sold quickly.

• Payment structure: fifty guineas upfront, one hundred upon completion - This sophisticated pricing guaranteed Mrs. Brown’s profit even if the customer failed to achieve penetration (common with elderly or diseased clients), with a completion bonus only upon verified defloration.

• A guinea - Worth 21 shillings (versus a pound’s 20 shillings); 150 guineas represented roughly three years’ wages for a skilled craftsman, showing the premium paid for certified virgins.

• Fanny’s physical self-description - Her remarkably frank catalogue of her body, including explicit mention of developing breasts and recently-grown pubic hair, was extraordinarily bold for 1748.

• The inspection ritual - Having Fanny stand, turn, walk, and having her handkerchief unpinned to display her bosom parallels livestock examination at market, emphasizing her status as merchandise.

• “Impotence more than necessity made him seek in variety” - Erectile dysfunction from age, alcoholism, or venereal disease drove wealthy libertines to pursue virgin girls, believed to provide novel excitement capable of overcoming physical limitations.

• Mrs. Brown as regular supplier - Her established business relationship with this customer demonstrates the organized, ongoing nature of sexual exploitation rather than isolated incidents.

• Taking tea - The customer’s insistence on being “introduced to drink tea” with Fanny makes the arrangement seem like polite courtship, masking the planned assault with genteel social ritual.

  ---

Phoebe laughed and soon placed herself beside me. She was about twenty-five by her highly questionable account—in reality, she must have subtracted at least ten good years. Allowance must also be made for the damage a long career of prostitution and venereal disease had done to her body, which had already brought on the late stage where women in her profession are reduced to recruiting new girls instead of seeing customers themselves.

As soon as this precious substitute for my mistress lay down, she—never one to miss an opportunity for lewdness—turned to me, embraced and kissed me eagerly. This was new, this was odd. But attributing it to nothing but pure kindness, which, for all I knew, might be the London way of expressing such things, I was determined not to be outdone and returned her kiss and embrace with all the warmth that perfect innocence knew.

Encouraged by this, her hands became extremely free and wandered over my whole body with touches, squeezes, and caresses that warmed and surprised me with their novelty more than they shocked or alarmed me.

The flattering praise she mixed with these invasions also helped bribe my passiveness. Knowing no evil, I feared none, especially from someone who had removed all doubt of her womanhood by guiding my hands to a pair of breasts that hung loosely down in a size that sufficiently proved her sex to me—I who had never made any other comparison.

I lay there completely tame and passive as she could wish, while her freedom raised no emotion except a strange, previously unfelt pleasure. Every part of me was open and exposed to her hands, which, like a gentle flame, ran over my whole body, thawing all coldness as they went.

My breasts—if it’s not too bold to call them that, being two hard, firm, rising mounds that had just begun to show themselves and be noticeable to touch—occupied her hands for a while. Then, slipping down lower over smooth skin, she felt the soft, silky down that had appeared just a few months before, decorating that area and promising to provide pleasant shelter over the most exquisitely sensitive spot, which until that instant had been the seat of the most complete innocence. Her fingers played and tried to twine in the young hair that nature had designed for both use and ornament.

But not content with these outer areas, she now attempted the main spot and began to probe, insinuate, and finally force the introduction of a finger into the opening itself. Had she not proceeded by gradual degrees that inflamed me beyond modesty’s power to resist, I would have jumped out of bed and cried for help against such a strange assault.

Instead, her lustful touches had lit a new fire that spread through all my veins but concentrated with intensity in that center nature had appointed. Her hands were now busy feeling, squeezing, compressing the lips, then opening them again with a finger between, until an “Oh!” expressed that she was hurting me where the narrowness of the unbroken passage refused her finger entry to any depth.

Meanwhile, my physical reactions—the stretching of my limbs, languid movements, sighs, and short gasps—all conspired to assure that experienced libertine that I was more pleased than offended by what she was doing. She seasoned it with repeated kisses and exclamations like “Oh, what a charming creature you are! What a happy man will be the one who first makes a woman of you! Oh, that I were a man for your sake!”—along with similar broken expressions, interrupted by kisses as fierce and lustful as any I’d ever received from the opposite sex.

For my part, I was transported, confused, and beside myself. These new feelings were too much for me. My heated and alarmed senses were in such tumult that I couldn’t think clearly. Tears of pleasure gushed from my eyes and somewhat cooled the fire raging through me.

Phoebe herself—the experienced, thoroughly seasoned Phoebe, to whom all modes and devices of pleasure were known and familiar—found, it seems, satisfaction in this exercise through those arbitrary tastes for which there’s no accounting. Not that she hated men or didn’t even prefer them to her own sex, but when she met with such opportunities as this, a satiety of enjoyment in the usual way, perhaps combined with a secret inclination, led her to seek pleasure wherever she could find it, without distinction of sex.

Now well assured that she’d sufficiently aroused me for her purpose, she gently rolled down the bedcovers, and I saw myself stretched naked, my shift turned up to my neck, while I had no power or sense to oppose it. Even my growing blushes expressed more desire than modesty, while the candle—left burning surely not by accident—threw full light on my whole body.

“No,” says Phoebe, “you must not, my sweet girl, think to hide all these treasures from me. My sight must be feasted as well as my touch. I must devour with my eyes this budding bosom. Let me kiss it. I haven’t seen it enough. Let me kiss it once more. What firm, smooth, white flesh! How delicately shaped! And this delicious down! Oh, let me view the small, dear, tender opening! This is too much, I cannot bear it! I must! I must!”

Here she took my hand and in a transport carried it to where you can easily guess. But what a difference in the state of the same thing! A spreading thicket of bushy curls marked the fully grown, mature woman. The cavity to which she guided my hand easily received it, and as soon as she felt it within her, she moved herself back and forth with such rapid friction that I quickly withdrew it, wet and sticky. Instantly, Phoebe grew more composed, after two or three sighs and heartfelt “Oh’s!” Giving me a kiss that seemed to breathe her soul through her lips, she replaced the bedcovers over us.

What pleasure she found I won’t say, but this I know: the first sparks of awakening nature, the first ideas of lust, were caught by me that night. The acquaintance and communication with the corrupt of our own sex is often as fatal to innocence as all the seductions of the other.

But to continue: When Phoebe was restored to that calm which I was far from enjoying myself, she artfully questioned me on all the points necessary to serve my virtuous mistress’s designs on me. From my answers, drawn from pure, undisguised nature, she had every reason to promise herself complete success, depending as it did on my ignorance, compliant nature, and warm constitution.

After sufficient conversation, my bedmate left me to rest. I fell asleep through pure exhaustion from the violent emotions I’d been led into. Nature, which had been too warmly stirred and excited to subside without relief by some means, gave me one of those lustful dreams whose pleasures are barely inferior to those of waking reality.

Editor’s Notes:

“Phoebe’s Seduction” represents the pivotal moment when Fanny’s exploitation becomes inevitable and her sexual education begins. This chapter lays bare the calculated machinery of 18th-century London’s sex trade: the fraudulent employment office, Mrs. Brown’s elaborate performance of gentility, and the systematic isolation of vulnerable girls.

This chapter contains relatively explicit sexual content, though still coded in 18th-century euphemisms (”main spot,” “center nature had appointed,” “unbroken passage”). The same-sex encounter between Phoebe and Fanny was remarkably frank for 1748, though framed as preparation for heterosexual prostitution rather than an end in itself. Cleland’s treatment acknowledges female sexual pleasure and agency while simultaneously demonstrating how these natural responses were manipulated for commercial exploitation within the sex trade.

• “Intelligence office” / “Employment office”: Commercial agencies that matched servants with employers for a fee, but also notorious as recruiting grounds for brothels. The office keeper’s “knowing smiles and shrugs” indicate her complicity—such offices often operated as procurement agencies for the sex trade, receiving fees from both job-seekers and madams like Mrs. Brown who came seeking “fresh goods.”

• “St. Paul’s Churchyard”: A fashionable shopping district surrounding St. Paul’s Cathedral, filled with booksellers, haberdashers, and luxury shops in the 18th century. Mrs. Brown’s token purchase of gloves here serves to establish her performance of respectability and generosity, associating her with a genteel commercial area.

• “Gilt pier mirrors” and “buffet displaying silverware”: Expensive status symbols in 18th-century homes. Pier mirrors were large ornamental mirrors placed between windows, typically in gilded frames. The buffet (sideboard) displaying silver pieces was designed for conspicuous consumption—both items signal wealth and gentility to the inexperienced Fanny, though such ostentation was also associated with new money and questionable sources of wealth.

• “Companion” vs. servant: A “companion” was a genteel position for impoverished but educated women, providing company and light assistance to a lady—vastly superior in status to a servant who performed “household drudgery” (scrubbing, hauling water, emptying chamber pots). Mrs. Brown’s promise that Fanny won’t be doing menial labour is part of the deception, making the position seem respectable and desirable.

• “Cousin”: A convenient fiction used by brothel keepers to explain the presence of multiple young women in the house without arousing suspicion. Claiming family relationships provided a veneer of respectability, allowing madams to present their establishments as private homes rather than commercial sexual venues.

• “Velvet cloak in the middle of summer”: Highly unusual and a subtle indicator of Mrs. Brown’s profession. Prostitutes and madams often dressed ostentatiously, defying practical considerations to display wealth and attract attention. Respectable women would have worn season-appropriate clothing; the velvet cloak signals Mrs. Brown’s disregard for conventional propriety.

• “Venereal disease”: Syphilis and gonorrhoea were epidemic in 18th-century London, particularly among prostitutes and their clients. There was no effective treatment until the 20th century. Phoebe’s description as damaged by “a long career of prostitution and venereal disease” reflects the grim reality that most prostitutes suffered painful, disfiguring, and often fatal diseases, eventually becoming unable to attract clients and reduced to recruiting new girls.

• “Arbitrary tastes for which there’s no accounting”: A euphemism for same-sex desire. The novel presents this as a matter of preference or variety rather than exclusive identity, reflecting 18th-century understanding of sexuality as fluid behaviour rather than fixed orientation. Phoebe is described as preferring men generally but taking pleasure with women when opportunity arises, particularly from “a satiety of enjoyment in the usual way” (boredom with heterosexual sex).

• “The unbroken passage refused her finger entry”: Phoebe’s digital examination verifies Fanny’s virginity by encountering the hymen. This “proof” of virginity was crucial to commanding the premium price—Mrs. Brown needed to assure the customer he was purchasing genuine innocence, not a girl merely pretending to be a virgin (a common fraud in the sex trade).

• “Nature...gave me one of those lustful dreams”: Sexual dreams with orgasmic content, presented as a natural physiological response to arousal without release. The novel treats nocturnal orgasms as morally neutral—the body’s automatic mechanism—thus absolving Fanny of moral culpability for experiencing sexual pleasure. This reflects Enlightenment ideas about natural bodily functions operating beyond conscious moral control.

  ---

But imagine my shock and surprise when we arrived at the inn, and our belongings were unloaded. My fellow traveler and protector, Esther Davis, who had treated me with the utmost tenderness during the journey and given me no warning of the stunning blow I was about to receive, my only friend and support in this strange place, suddenly assumed a strange and cool manner toward me, as if she dreaded my becoming a burden to her.

Instead of offering me the continued assistance I’d relied on and never needed more, she apparently thought herself fully released from any obligation to me by having brought me safely to my destination. Seeing nothing wrong with her behavior, she began to hug me as a way of saying goodbye, while I stood so confused and shocked that I didn’t have the spirit or sense to even mention my hopes or expectations from her experience and knowledge of the place she’d brought me to.

While I stood stupid and silent—which she doubtless attributed to nothing more than sadness at parting—this idea perhaps prompted a slight attempt at consolation in the following speech: Now that we’d arrived safely in London and she was obliged to go to her position, she advised me to get into service as soon as possible. I shouldn’t fear finding a position—there were more positions than parish churches. She advised me to go to an employment office. If she heard of anything available, she’d find me and let me know. In the meantime, I should take a private lodging and tell her where to send messages. She wished me good luck and hoped I’d always have the grace to keep myself honest and not disgrace my parents. With this, she took her leave of me and left me on my own, as lightly as I’d been put into her care.

Left thus alone, absolutely destitute and friendless, I began to feel most bitterly the severity of this separation. The scene had passed in a little room at the inn, and as soon as her back was turned, my distress at my helpless, strange circumstances burst out in a flood of tears, which greatly relieved the weight on my heart. But I remained stunned and completely confused about what to do.

One of the inn servants came in and added to my uncertainty by asking me curtly if I wanted anything. I replied innocently, “No, but could you tell me where I might get lodging for tonight?” He said he’d speak to his mistress, who came and told me drily, without showing the least sympathy for my obvious distress, that I could have a bed for a shilling. Since she supposed I had some friends in town, at which I sighed deeply, in vain, I could make other arrangements in the morning.

It’s incredible what small comforts the human mind will seize in its greatest troubles. The promise of nothing more than a bed to lie on that night calmed my agony. Being ashamed to admit to the innkeeper that I had no friends to apply to in town, I decided to go first thing in the morning to an employment office. Esther had given me written directions on the back of a ballad sheet. There, I counted on getting information about any position a country girl like me might be suited for, somewhere I could find work before my little money ran out.

As for a character reference, Esther had assured me that I could depend on her to provide one. So despite being upset at how she’d left me, I didn’t entirely stop relying on her. I began to think charitably that her behavior was normal procedure, and it was only my ignorance of life that had made me see it negatively at first.

Editor’s Notes:

This chapter depicts Fanny at her most vulnerable—the precise moment when countless young women in 18th-century London were drawn into prostitution. Employment offices were notorious recruiting grounds for brothels, and Fanny’s complete innocence, lack of connections, and dwindling funds make her an ideal target for sexual exploitation.

• “Six horses”: Stagecoaches typically used teams of four or six horses, changed at regular intervals along the route. Six horses suggests either a heavily laden coach or difficult terrain. The journey from northwest England to London could take 2-4 days.

• “Slow vehicle”: Stage coaches rarely exceeded 6-8 miles per hour on 18th-century roads, which were often unpaved, rutted, and muddy. The journey was exhausting and uncomfortable.

• “Summer evening”: The long daylight hours of summer made evening arrivals safer. Travel after dark was dangerous due to poor roads and the threat of highwaymen.

• “Main streets”: London’s principal thoroughfares like Fleet Street, the Strand, or Cheapside—busy commercial arteries lined with shops and businesses.

• “Noise of the coaches”: 18th-century London was notoriously loud—iron-rimmed wheels on cobblestones, street vendors calling their wares, and the constant rumble of traffic created an overwhelming din for country newcomers.

• “Crowds of pedestrians”: London’s population in the mid-18th century was approaching 700,000, making it one of Europe’s largest cities. For someone from a small village, the sheer number of people would have been shocking.

• “Shops and houses”: Unlike rural areas with scattered dwellings, London streets featured continuous rows of buildings, often 3-4 storeys high, with shops on the ground floor.

• “The inn”: Coaching inns were the arrival and departure points for stagecoaches, offering accommodation, meals, and stabling. They ranged from respectable establishments to dangerous, crime-ridden places.

• “A bed for a shilling”: This would likely mean sharing a bed with strangers in a common room, standard practice in cheaper inns. A shilling was a significant sum for someone of Fanny’s limited means (roughly half a day’s wages for a servant).

• “Private lodging”: Rented rooms in boarding houses or private homes, common for single working people in London. These varied greatly in quality and respectability.

• “Service”: Domestic service in a private household—the most common respectable employment for working-class women. Positions ranged from prestigious posts in aristocratic households to drudgery in modest homes.

• “Employment office” / “Intelligence office”: Commercial agencies that matched servants with employers for a fee. These ranged from legitimate businesses to fronts for brothels recruiting naive country girls. Esther’s advice, while seemingly helpful, was potentially directing Fanny into danger.

• “More positions than parish churches”: A proverb suggesting abundant opportunities, though not necessarily safe or respectable ones. London had over 100 parish churches at this time.

• “Character” / “Character reference”: A written testimonial from a previous employer attesting to a servant’s honesty, competence, and moral conduct. Without one, finding respectable employment was nearly impossible.

• “Position” vs “employment”: “Position” (or “place”) was the standard term for domestic service, reflecting the hierarchical nature of household staff.

• “Obliged to go to her position”: Esther’s need to return to work immediately suggests she’s likely a servant herself, with limited freedom of movement and strict employers.

• Sudden coldness: Esther’s abrupt change in manner reflects the transactional nature of many relationships among the working poor. Having fulfilled her paid obligation, she has no further responsibility.

• “Drily”: In an unsympathetic, matter-of-fact manner without warmth or compassion.

• “Ballad sheet”: A single printed sheet containing popular songs or ballads, sold cheaply on the streets. Using the back for written directions indicates both the scarcity of paper and Esther’s modest circumstances.

The most substantive change I have made is to Fanny's age — she has been written as a legal adult throughout, a necessary edit to keep this series available to you here on Substack. The spirit, the voice, and the scandalous heart of the original remain entirely intact.

Finally, at the close of most chapters you will find my own notes placing the text in its historical and social context — because these stories are always richer when you know the world that produced them.

— Skylar Reyes, Editor

Letter One

Madam,

I’m sitting down to write this because you asked me to, and I consider your wishes to be commands I must follow. Even though it’s an uncomfortable task, I’m going to recall the shameful periods of my life—those dark times I eventually escaped to enjoy every blessing that love, health, and fortune could offer. I emerged while still young, not too late to use the comfort and wealth I’d gained to educate myself. My mind was naturally decent, and even during the chaos of my reckless pleasures, I’d observed more about people and society than most in my unfortunate profession. Most women like me see thinking and reflection as their worst enemy—they avoid it at all costs or destroy it without mercy.

I hate long, unnecessary introductions, so I’ll spare you that. My only warning is this: prepare yourself to read about the wild part of my life, written with the same freedom with which I lived it.

Truth—stark, naked truth—is what matters. I won’t even bother wrapping it in a thin veil of decency. I’ll paint situations exactly as they happened to me in real life, not caring about violating standards of propriety that were never meant for the kind of unreserved intimacy we share. You have too much sense and too much knowledge of the real world to act prudishly shocked by these pictures. The greatest men, those with the most refined taste, don’t hesitate to decorate their private rooms with nude art, even if they wouldn’t display such things in their public spaces to avoid offending common prejudices.

With that said—and it’s enough of an introduction—I’ll dive straight into my personal history.

My maiden name was Frances Hill. I was born in a small village near Liverpool, in Lancashire, to parents who were extremely poor and, I truly believe, extremely honest.

My father had suffered an injury to his limbs that prevented him from doing heavy farm work, so he made a meager living by making nets. My mother didn’t add much to our income by keeping a small day school for neighborhood girls. They’d had several children, but none survived to adulthood except me. Nature had given me a perfectly healthy constitution.

My education until past age fourteen was very basic: reading—or rather, spelling in barely legible handwriting—and a little simple needlework. That was the entire system of my learning. My foundation in virtue was nothing more than complete ignorance of vice and the shy timidity common to girls at that tender age, when new things alarm or frighten more by being unfamiliar than for any other reason. But this kind of fear is too often cured at the cost of innocence, when a girl gradually stops seeing men as predatory creatures who will devour her.

My poor mother had divided her time entirely between her students and her small household duties, leaving very little for my instruction. Coming from her own innocence and lack of exposure to evil, she had no thought of protecting me against anything.

I was entering my eighteenth year when the worst tragedy befell me—I lost my loving, tender parents. Both were carried off by smallpox within a few days of each other. My father died first, which hastened my mother’s death. I was left an unhappy, friendless orphan. That cruel disease had seized me too, but with such mild symptoms that I was soon out of danger. What I didn’t know then to value was that it left me completely unmarked by scars.

I’ll skip over the natural grief and pain I felt on this sad occasion. Time and the lightheartedness of youth dissipated my reflections on that irreparable loss too quickly. But nothing reconciled me to it more than the idea immediately put into my head of going to London to look for domestic work. I was promised all assistance and advice from one Esther Davis, a young woman who had been visiting her friends and who, after staying a few days, returned to her position in London.

Since nobody left alive in the village cared enough about what would become of me to object to this plan, and the woman caring for me after my parents’ death actually encouraged it, I quickly decided to launch myself into the wide world by going to London to seek my fortune—a phrase which, by the way, has ruined more adventurers of both sexes from the country than it ever helped.

Esther Davis comforted and inspired me to venture with her by exciting my childish curiosity with tales of the fine sights to be seen in London: the royal tombs, the lions at the Tower, the King, the Royal Family, the fine plays and operas—in short, all the entertainments within her sphere of life. The details of all this perfectly turned my little head.

I can’t help laughing when I remember the innocent admiration, mixed with a bit of envy, with which we poor girls, whose church clothes didn’t rise above cheap cotton shifts and simple wool gowns, stared at Esther’s fine clothes decorated with silver. We imagined all such things grew in London, and this greatly influenced my decision to try to get my share.

The idea of having a townswoman with me was trivial compared to all the motives that convinced Esther to take charge of me during my journey to town. She told me how several country maids had made themselves and all their families prosperous forever—that by preserving their virtue, some had so pleased their masters that they’d married them, and their husbands kept coaches for them, and they lived very grandly and happily. Some even became duchesses. Luck was everything, and why not me as well as another? These and other encouraging tales set me eager to begin this promising journey and leave a place which, though my birthplace, contained no relatives I had reason to miss. It had become unbearable to me since I’d gone from the tenderest treatment to the cold charity with which I was received, even at the only friend’s house where I had any expectation of care and protection.

She was fair enough to manage the sale of the little property that remained to me after debts and burial charges were paid. At my departure, she put my whole fortune into my hands: a very modest wardrobe packed in a portable box, and eight guineas with seventeen shillings in silver, stored in a spring-pouch. This was a greater treasure than I’d ever seen together, and I couldn’t imagine it was possible to run out of such wealth. Indeed, I was so entirely absorbed by the joy of being mistress of such an immense sum that I paid very little attention to all the good advice given me along with it.

Places were then taken for Esther and me in the Chester wagon. I’ll pass over the unimportant scene of leave-taking, where I shed a few tears between grief and joy. For the same reasons, I’ll skip over everything that happened to me on the road—the wagon driver leering at me, the schemes laid for me by some passengers, defeated by my guardian Esther’s vigilance. To do her justice, she took motherly care of me, though she made me pay all our traveling expenses, which I did most cheerfully, thinking myself much obliged to her.

She took great care that we weren’t overcharged or cheated, managing as frugally as possible. Wastefulness wasn’t her vice.

Editor’s Notes:

• Liverpool, Lancashire: A major port city in northwest England. In the 18th century, Liverpool was growing rapidly due to maritime trade, though the surrounding countryside remained largely agricultural and poor.

• Chester wagon: A stagecoach service running between Chester and London. Chester was a significant stopping point on routes from the northwest of England to the capital.

• Tower of London: Historic royal palace and fortress, famous for housing the Crown Jewels and, at this time, a menagerie including lions that were a popular tourist attraction until the 1830s.

• Royal tombs: Likely referring to Westminster Abbey, where English monarchs were (and are) buried.

• Guinea: A gold coin worth 21 shillings (£1.05). Considered a gentleman’s coin and used for luxury goods and professional fees.

• Shilling: Silver coin worth 1/20th of a pound. There were 12 pence to a shilling.

• Eight guineas with seventeen shillings: Approximately £8.85 in 18th-century money—a modest but respectable sum for a poor country girl. In terms of purchasing power, this might sustain basic living expenses for several months if managed carefully.

• Day school: An informal school run from a private home, typically teaching basic literacy and needlework to young girls for a small fee. Not a formal institution.

• Domestic work/service: One of the very few respectable employment options for poor, unmarried women in 18th-century England. Servants lived in their employers’ homes and performed household duties.

• “Made themselves and all their families prosperous forever”: Refers to the rare (but much-mythologised) phenomenon of servants marrying their wealthy employers or making advantageous matches through connections gained in service.

• Coaches: Private carriages were symbols of significant wealth and social status—only the upper classes could afford to maintain them.

• “Maiden name”: A woman’s surname before marriage. The term emphasises the importance of marriage as a life transition for women.

• “Spring-pouch”: A small purse with a metal clasp that snapped shut, used to secure coins.

• “Church clothes”: One’s best clothing, worn to church on Sundays. For the poor, this might be their only set of decent garments.

• “Cotton shifts”: Simple undergarments or dresses made of inexpensive cotton fabric.

• “Simple wool gowns”: Basic outer dresses made from plain woollen cloth, typical wear for working-class women.

• “Places were then taken”: Seats/tickets were reserved and paid for in advance on the stagecoach.

• Smallpox: A highly contagious and deadly disease, epidemic in 18th-century Britain. It killed up to 30% of those infected and often left survivors severely scarred or “pockmarked.” Frances’s escape from scarring would have been considered remarkable good fortune, as physical beauty was crucial to a woman’s marriage prospects and social opportunities.

• High infant mortality: The narrator’s note that all her siblings died before adulthood reflects the grim reality of 18th-century childhood—disease, malnutrition, and poor sanitation meant many children didn’t survive to their teens.

• “Nude art” in private rooms: Refers to the 18th-century practice among wealthy gentlemen of collecting classical sculptures and paintings depicting nudity, considered acceptable as “art” in private spaces but not for public display.

• “Standards of propriety”: The elaborate social codes governing acceptable behaviour and conversation, particularly regarding sexual matters, which were supposedly never discussed openly (though often addressed obliquely).

• “Country maids” going to London: A common pattern that fed public anxiety about moral corruption. Young women from rural areas were considered particularly vulnerable to exploitation, seduction, and prostitution in the anonymous urban environment.

• “Preserving their virtue”: Maintaining virginity until marriage was considered essential to a woman’s value and reputation. Loss of virginity outside marriage typically meant social ruin.

• Orphan vulnerability: Without male relatives to protect her reputation and interests, an orphaned young woman was in a precarious position, with few legal rights and little recourse against exploitation.

  ---

Dear Readers,

I have a treat for you.

Starting this week, I’ll be posting chapters of one of the most infamous, most prosecuted, and most deliciously readable erotic novels ever written — John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, known to history simply as Fanny Hill. I hope you’ll follow along, because this is not just a piece of titillating historical curiosity. This is the book that essentially invented the erotic novel as a literary form — and it is, even by modern standards, a genuinely remarkable piece of writing.

So before we dive in, let me introduce you to Fanny. She deserves a proper entrance.

A Girl from the Country

The year is 1748. A young orphan named Frances Hill — Fanny to everyone who knows her — arrives in London from rural Lancashire with nothing but her looks, her wits, and a letter of introduction to a woman she doesn’t know. Within days, she has been taken in by a brothel madam, lost her innocence, fallen in love, been separated from her lover, and found herself navigating the treacherous world of Georgian sex work.

What follows is Fanny’s account of the next several years of her life — her various lovers and arrangements, her observations on desire and the human body, her friendships with other women in her situation, and her ultimately successful pursuit of happiness on her own terms. The novel is written as a series of letters from the older, wiser, comfortably settled Fanny to an unnamed female correspondent, looking back on her youth with a combination of nostalgia, self-awareness, and absolutely zero apology.

It is, in other words, the original memoir of a woman of pleasure. And it is magnificent.

The Man Who Wrote It — and Why

John Cleland was not, by all accounts, living his best life when he wrote Fanny Hill. Born in 1709 to a reasonably well-connected family, he spent years working for the East India Company in Bombay before returning to London and promptly landing himself in debtor’s prison. It was there, according to the most widely accepted account, that he wrote the novel — reportedly to pay off his debts, reportedly at the suggestion of a publisher who knew exactly what sold.

Whether that origin story is entirely true or has been embellished over the centuries, it has a certain poetic quality that Cleland himself might have appreciated. One of the most influential novels in the history of English literature, written in a cell by a man who needed the money. There’s something very human about that.

Cleland was educated, literary, and clearly possessed both a vivid imagination and an impressive vocabulary. What makes Fanny Hill so unusual — and so enduring — is the quality of the prose. He made a famous decision: the entire novel would be explicit in its content but would never once resort to anatomical vulgarity. Not a single crude term appears anywhere in its pages. Instead, Cleland constructed an elaborate architecture of euphemism and metaphor that is simultaneously coy and unmistakable — throbbing machines, tender folds, the most delicate of feminine recesses. It sounds absurd, but on the page, it works. The effect is somehow more erotic than a straightforward description, because the reader’s imagination is constantly invited to participate.

It was published in two volumes in 1748 and 1749 by Fenton and Ralph Griffiths, and it caused an immediate scandal.

The Arrest, the Suppression, and the Two Centuries of Contraband

Almost immediately after publication, Cleland was summoned before the Privy Council on charges of corrupting the King’s subjects. The publisher was also hauled in. Cleland, perhaps because of his connections or perhaps because the Council simply didn’t quite know what to do with him, largely escaped serious punishment — he was reportedly offered a pension on the condition that he write nothing else of that nature, an offer he seems to have accepted with more grace than one might expect.

The book, however, was another matter. Fanny Hill was suppressed in Britain almost immediately and would remain officially banned there for over two hundred years. In the United States, it was subject to obscenity prosecutions well into the twentieth century. In 1963, a paperback edition published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons triggered a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1966, in A Book Named “John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure” v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, the Supreme Court ruled in the book’s favor, finally and legally establishing its right to exist on American bookshelves after more than two hundred years of being passed hand to hand in plain brown wrappers.

Think about that for a moment. A novel written in 1748 was still being prosecuted in American courts in the 1960s. The Beatles had already released their first album. Men were about to walk on the moon. And the authorities were still trying to keep Fanny Hill out of circulation.

What they were really trying to suppress, of course, was not just explicit content — they were trying to suppress the book’s central argument, which is essentially this: a woman can enjoy sex, seek pleasure on her own terms, and come out the other side not ruined but thriving. For the moral establishments of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, that was the truly dangerous idea.

Why It Matters — Literally and Historically

Fanny Hill occupies a unique position in literary history for several reasons.

First, it is widely considered the first prose erotic novel in the English language. That’s not a small claim. Before Cleland, erotic literature in English existed largely in the form of poetry, plays, pamphlets, and translated continental works. Cleland essentially created the template for the erotic novel — a sustained, first-person narrative voice, a sympathetic and complex protagonist, psychological interiority, and a plot that moves the reader through a series of escalating encounters while also telling a genuine story about a human life.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, Fanny is an extraordinary narrator. She is funny. She is observant. She has opinions. She notices not just what happens to her body but what happens in her mind, what she feels, what she wants. For a novel written in 1748, this is remarkable. The tradition of dismissing women’s sexual experience as either nonexistent or purely passive is a long one, and Cleland’s Fanny upends it entirely. She is a subject, not an object — even when circumstances reduce her to being treated as one, she maintains her inner life with complete, unapologetic wholeness.

She also has genuine relationships with other women. Her friendships, rivalries, and intimacies with the other women in the house are some of the novel’s richest material. The famous scene in which Fanny witnesses two men together — and narrates it with frank curiosity rather than horror — was another flashpoint for censors over the centuries, and another reason why the novel feels, in many ways, more modern than its date suggests.

Third, the novel was enormously influential on the erotic literature that followed. The first-person confessional voice that dominates erotic fiction to this day — that intimate, retrospective “let me tell you what happened to me” address to the reader — owes a great deal to Cleland’s construction of Fanny’s voice. The anonymous Victorian erotica that flourished in the underground presses of London in the nineteenth century was written in its long shadow. The twentieth-century tradition of explicitly literary erotic fiction — Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, and their inheritors — draws on the same vein Cleland opened.

Fanny in Her World

To really appreciate Fanny Hill, it helps to understand the world it was written in and the world it depicts. Georgian London was a city of radical contrasts — extraordinary wealth and grinding poverty, elaborate moral codes and flourishing vice, a publishing culture that was simultaneously censored and impossible to fully suppress.

The sex trade in eighteenth-century London was extensive, visible, and surprisingly documented. There were actual published guides — most famously Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, an annual directory of London prostitutes that listed their names, addresses, specialties, and even reviews — that circulated openly for decades before finally being suppressed in 1795. The world Fanny inhabits was not a fantasy; it was a lightly fictionalized version of a real and complex underworld that thousands of women navigated each year.

Cleland was writing about something he almost certainly had direct knowledge of. His years in London before and after his time in Bombay would have brought him into contact with exactly the world he describes. The details in the novel — the houses, the arrangements, the economics of the trade, the social hierarchies — have the texture of lived observation rather than pure invention.

What Cleland added to that observed reality was Fanny’s consciousness — her ability to process and narrate her experience with intelligence, wit, and emotional complexity. That was the literary transformation that made the novel something more than a period document.

What to Expect When You Read It

I want to be honest with you about what Fanny Hill is and isn’t. It is explicit — there is no question about that, and the euphemistic language doesn’t actually soften the content, it just makes it more literary. But it is also genuinely, surprisingly funny in places. Cleland had a sense of humor, and Fanny does too. There is warmth in the novel, and real feeling — her early love affair with Charles is genuinely touching, and her longing for him gives the rest of the novel an emotional undertow that keeps it from being merely a series of set pieces.

It is also, by contemporary standards, uncomfortable in a few places — there is a scene involving coercion that the novel handles ambiguously, and the class dynamics are very much those of the eighteenth century. Reading historical erotica requires holding two things at once: appreciation for what was radical and progressive about a text in its own time, and clear eyes about where it reflects the assumptions and blind spots of its era. Fanny Hill rewards that kind of reading.

An Invitation

I’ve been wanting to share this novel with you for a long time. It feels like the perfect foundation for a new, Vintage Erotica, section of my Substack — the original, the book that started a tradition I’ve spent my own writing life contributing to in my small way.

Fanny Hill is two hundred and seventy-seven years old, and she’s still, somehow, dangerous enough to have been argued before the Supreme Court within living memory. That tells you everything you need to know about why she matters and why she’s worth your time.

Welcome to her world. I think you’re going to like it here.

— Skylar