Fanny Hill. John Cleland

off my handkerchief, and laid all open there to his eyes and hands: still I endur’d all without flinching, till embolden’d by my sufferance and silence, for I had not the power to speak or cry out, he attempted to lay me down on the settee, and I felt his hand on the lower part of my naked thighs, which were cross’d, and which he endeavoured to unlock…Oh then! I was roused out of my passive endurance, and springing from him, with an activity he was not prepar’d for, threw myself at his feet, and begg’d him, in the most moving tone, not to be rude, and that he would not hurt me: – ‘Hurt you, my dear?’ says the brute; ‘I intend you no harm…has not the old lady told you that I love you?…that I shall do handsomely by you?’ ‘She has indeed, sir,’ said I; ‘but I cannot love you, indeed I cannot!…pray let me alone…yes! I will love you dearly if you will let me alone, and go away…’ But I was talking to the wind; for whether my tears, my attitude, or the disorder of my dress prov’d fresh incentives, or whether he was now under the dominion of desires he could not bridle, but snorting and foaming with lust and rage, he renews his attack, seizes me, and again attempts to extend and fix me on the settee: in which he succeeded so far as to lay me along, and even to toss my petticoats over my head, and lay my thighs bare, which I obstinately kept close, nor could he, though he attempted with his knee to force them open, effect it so as to stand fair for being master of the main avenue; he was unbuttoned, both waistcoat and breeches, yet I only felt the weight of his body upon me, whilst I lay struggling with indignation, and dying with terrors; but he stopped all of a sudden, and got off, panting, blowing, cursing, and repeating, ‘old and ugly!’ for so I had very naturally called him in the heat of my defence.

      The brute had, it seems, as I afterwards understood, brought on, by his eagerness and struggle, the ultimate period of his hot fit of lust, which his power was too short-liv’d to carry him through the full execution of; of which my thighs and linen received the effusion.

      When it was over he bid me, with a tone of displeasure, get up, saying that he would not do me the honour to think of me any more…that the old bitch might look out for another cully…that he would not e’er be fool’d so by a country mock modesty in England…that he supposed I had left my maidenhead with some hobnail in the country and was come to dispose of my skim-milk in town, with a volley of the like abuse; which I listened to with more pleasure than ever fond woman did to protestations of love, receiving only an addition to my perfect hatred and aversion to him; I look’d on this railing as my security against his renewing his most odious caresses.

      Yet, plain as Mrs Brown’s views were now come out, I had not the heart or spirit to open my eyes to them: still I could not part with my dependence on that beldam, so much did I think myself hers, soul and body: or rather, I sought to deceive myself with the continuation of my good opinion of her, and chose to wait the worst at her hands, sooner than be turn’d out to starve in the streets, without a penny of money or a friend to apply to: these fears were my folly.

      Whilst this confusion of ideas was passing in my head, and I sat pensive by the fire, with my eyes brimming with tears, my neck still bare, and my cap fall’n off in the struggle, so that my hair was in the disorder you may guess, the villain’s lust began, I suppose, to be again in flow, at the sight of all that bloom of youth which presented itself to his view, a bloom yet unenjoy’d, and of course not yet indifferent to him.

      After some pause, he ask’d me, with a tone of voice mightily softened, whether I would make it up with him before the old lady returned and all should be well; he would restore me his affections, at the same time offering to kiss me and feel my breasts. But now my extreme aversion, my fears, my indignation, all acting upon me, gave me a spirit not natural to me, so that breaking loose from him, I ran to the bell, and rang it, before he was aware, with such violence and effect as brought up the maid to know what was the matter, or whether the gentleman wanted anything; and before he could proceed to greater extremities she bounc’d into the room, and seeing me stretch’d on the floor, my hair all dishevell’d, my nose gushing out blood, which did not a little tragedise the scene, and my odious persecutor still intent of pushing his brutal point, unmoved by all my cries and distress, she was herself confounded and did not know what to say.

      As much, however, as Martha might be prepared and hardened to transactions of this sort, all womanhood must have been out of her heart, could she have seen this unmov’d. Besides that, on the face of things, she imagined that matters had gone greater lengths than they really had, and that the courtesy of the house had been actually consummated on me, and flung me into the condition I was in: in this notion she instantly took my part, and advis’d the gentleman to go down and leave me to recover myself, and said that all would be soon over with me…that when Mrs Brown and Phoebe, who were gone out, were return’d, they would take order for everything to his satisfaction…that nothing would be lost by a little patience with the poor tender thing…that for her part she was frighten’d…she could not tell what to say to such doings…but that she would stay by me till my mistress came home. As the wench said all this in a resolute tone, and the monster himself began to perceive that things would not mend by his staying, he took his hat and went out of the room, murmuring, and pleating his brows like an old ape, so that I was delivered from the horrors of his detestable presence.

      As soon as he was gone, Martha very tenderly offered me her assistance in anything, and would have got me some hartshorn drops, and put me to bed; which last, I at first positively refused, in the fear that the monster might return and take me at that advantage. However, with much persuasion, and assurances that I should not be molested that night she prevailed on me to lie down; and indeed I was so weakened by my struggles, so dejected by my fearful apprehensions, so terror-struck, that I had not power to sit up, or hardly to give answers to the questions with which the curious Martha ply’d and perplex’d me.

      Such too, and so cruel was my fate, that I dreaded the sight of Mrs Brown, as if I had been the criminal, and she the person injur’d; a mistake which you will not think so strange on distinguishing that neither virtue or principles had the least share in the defence I had made, but only the particular aversion I had conceiv’d against the first brutal and frightful invader of my tender innocence.

      I pass’d then the time till Mrs Brown’s return home under all the agitations of fear and despair that may easily be guessed.

      About eleven at night my two ladies came home, and having receiv’d rather a favourable account from Martha, who had run down to let them in, for Mr Crofts (that was the name of my brute) was gone out of the house after waiting till he had tired his patience for Mrs Brown’s return, they came thundering upstairs, and seeing me pale, my face bloody, and all the marks of the most thorough dejection, they employed themselves more to comfort and reinspirit me, than in making me the reproaches I was weak enough to fear, I who had so many juster and stronger to retort upon them.

      Mrs Brown withdrawn, Phoebe came presently to bed with me, and half with the answers she drew from me, half with her own method of palpably satisfying herself, she soon discovered that I had been more frighted than hurt; upon which I suppose, being herself seiz’d with sleep, and reserving her lectures and instructions till the next morning, she left me, properly speaking, to my unrest; for, after tossing and turning the greatest part of the night, and tormenting myself with the falsest notions and apprehensions of things, I fell, through sheer fatigue, into a kind of delirious doze, out of which I waked late in the morning, in a violent fever: a circumstance which was extremely critical to reprieve me, at least for a time, from the attacks of a wretch, infinitely more terrible to me than death itself.

      The interested care that was taken of me during my illness, in order to restore me to a condition of making good the bawd’s engagements, or of enduring further trials, had however such an effect on my grateful disposition, that I even thought myself oblig’d to my undoers for their attention to promote my recovery; and, above all, for the keeping out of my sight of that brutal ravisher, the author of my disorder, on their finding I was too strongly mov’d at the bare mention of his name.

      Youth is soon raised, and a few days were sufficient to conquer the fury of my fever; but what contributed most to my perfect recovery and to my reconciliation with life was the timely news that Mr Crofts, who was a merchant of considerable dealings, was arrested at the King’s suit, for near forty thousand pounds, on account