Now, what if I am a prostitute, what business has so-ciety to abuse me? Have I received any favors at the hands of society? If I am a hideous cancer in society, are not the causes of the disease to be sought in the rottenness of the carcass? Am I not its legitimate child; no bastard, Sir
From a letter in The Times (February 24th
The substance of this famous and massively sarcastic letter, al-legedly written by a successful prostitute, but more probably by some-one like Henry Mayhew, may be read in Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age.
Milk punch and champagne may not seem a very profound philosophical conclusion to such soul-searching; but they had been perennially prescribed at Cambridge as a solution to all known problems, and though Charles had learned a good deal more about the problems since leaving the university he had not bettered the solution. Fortunately his club, like so many English gentlemen’s clubs, was founded on the very simple and profitable presumption that a man’s student days are his best. It had all the amenities of a rich college without any of its superfluous irritations (such as dons, deans and examinations). It pandered, in short, to the adolescent in man. It also provided excellent milk punch.
It so happened that the first two fellow members Charles set eyes on when he entered the smoking room had also been his fellow students; one was the younger son of a bishop and a famous disgrace to his father. The other was what Charles had until recently expected to be: a baronet. Born with a large lump of Northumberland in his pocket, Sir Thomas Burgh had proved far too firm a rock for history to move. The immemorial pursuits of his ancestors had been hunting, shooting, drinking and whoring; and he still pursued them with a proper sense of tradition. He had in fact been a leader of the fast set into which Charles had drifted during his time at Cambridge. His escapades, of both the Mytton and the Casanova kind, were notorious. There had been several moves to get him ejected from the club; but since he provided its coal from one of his mines, and at a rate that virtually made a present of it, wiser counsels always pre-vailed. Besides, there was something honest about his manner of life. He sinned without shame, but also without hypocrisy. He was generous to a fault; half the younger members of the club had at one time or another been in his debt—and his loans were a gentleman’s loans, indefinitely prolongable and without interest. He was always the first to start a book when there was something to bet on; and in a way he reminded all but the most irredeemably sober members of their less sober days. He was stocky, short, perpetually flushed by wine and weather; and his eyes had that splendid innocence, that opaque blue candor of the satanically fallen. These eyes crinkled when they saw Charles enter.
Charley! Now what the devil are you doing out of the matrimonial lock up
Charles smiled, not without a certain sense of wan foolish-ness. “Good evening, Tom. Nathaniel, how are you?” Eternal cigar in mouth, the thorn in the unlucky bishop’s side raised a languid hand. Charles turned back to the baronet. “On parole, you know. The dear girl’s down in Dorset taking the waters.
Tom winked. “While you take spirit—and spirits, eh? But I hear she’s the rose of the season. Nat says. He’s green, y’know. Demmed Charley, he says. Best girl and best match— ain’t fair, is it, Nat?” The bishop’s son was notoriously short of money and Charles guessed it was not Ernestina’s looks he was envied. Nine times out of ten he would at this point have moved on to the newspapers or joined some less iniquitous acquaintance. But today he stayed where he was. Would they “discuss” a punch and bubbly? They would. And so he sat with them.
And how’s the esteemed uncle, Charles?” Sir Tom winked again, but in a way so endemic to his nature that it was impossible to take offense. Charles murmured that he was in the best of health.
How goes he for hounds? Ask him if he needs a brace of the best Northumberland. Real angels, though I says it wot bred ‘em. Tornado—you recall Tornado? His grandpups.” Tornado had spent a clandestine term in Sir Tom’s rooms one summer at Cambridge.
I recall him. So do my ankles.
Sir Tom grinned broadly. “Aye, he took a fancy to you. Always bit what he loved. Dear old Tornado—God rest his soul.” And he downed his tumbler of punch with a sadness that made his two companions laugh. Which was cruel, since the sadness was perfectly genuine.
In such talk did two hours pass—and two more bottles of champagne, and another bowl of punch, and sundry chops and kidneys (the three gentlemen moved on to the dining room) which required a copious washing-down of claret, which in turn needed purging by a decanter or two of port.
Sir Tom and the bishop’s son were professional drinkers and took more than Charles. Outwardly they seemed by the end of the second decanter more drunk than he. But in fact his facade was sobriety, while theirs was drunkenness, exact-ly the reverse of the true comparative state, as became clear when they wandered out of the dining room for what Sir Tom called vaguely “a little drive round town.” Charles was the one who was unsteady on his feet. He was not too far gone not to feel embarrassed; somehow he saw Mr. Freeman’s gray assessing eyes on him, though no one as closely connected with trade as Mr. Freeman would ever have been allowed in that club.
He was helped into his cape and handed his hat, gloves, and cane; and then he found himself in the keen outside air—the promised fog had not materialized, though the mist remained—staring with an intense concentration at the coat of arms on the door of Sir Tom’s town brougham. Winsyatt meanly stabbed him again, but then the coat of arms swayed towards him. His arms were taken, and a moment later he found himself sitting beside Sir Tom and facing the bishop’s son. He was not too drunk to note an exchanged wink between his two friends; but too drunk to ask what it meant. He told himself he did not care. He was glad he was drunk, that everything swam a little, that everything past and to come was profoundly unimportant. He had a great desire to tell them both about Mrs. Bella Tomkins and Winsyatt; but he was not drunk enough for that, either. A gentleman remains a gentleman, even in his cups. He turned to Tom.
Tom ... Tom, dear old fellow, you’re a damn’ lucky fellow.
So are you, my Charley boy. We’re all damn lucky fellows.
Where we going
Where damn lucky fellows always go of a jolly night. Eh, Nat, ain’t that so
There was a silence then, as Charles tried dimly to make out in which direction they were heading. This time he did not see the second wink exchanged. The key words in Sir Tom’s last sentence slowly registered. He turned solemnly.
Jolly night
We’re going to old Ma Terpsichore’s, Charles. Worship at the muses’ shrine, don’t y’know
Charles stared at the smiling face of the bishop’s son.
Shrine
So to speak, Charles.
Metonymia. Venus for puella,” put in the bishop’s son.
Charles stared at them, then abruptly smiled. “Excellent idea.” But then he resumed his rather solemn stare out of the window. He felt he ought to stop the carriage and say good night to them. He remembered, in a brief flash of proportion, what their reputation was. Then there came out of nowhere Sarah’s face; that face with its closed eyes tended to his, the kiss ... so much fuss about nothing. He saw what all his troubles were caused by: he needed a woman, he needed intercourse. He needed a last debauch, as he sometimes needed a purge. He looked round at Sir Tom and the bishop’s son. The first was sprawled back in his corner, the second had put his legs up across his seat. The top hats of both were cocked at flyly dissolute angles. This time the wink went among all three.
Soon they were in the press of carriages heading for that area of Victorian London we have rather mysteriously—since it was central in more ways than one—dropped from our picture of the age: an area of casinos (meeting places rather than gaming rooms), assembly cafes, cigar “divans” in its more public parts (the Haymarket and Regent Street) and very nearly unrelieved brothel in all the adjoining back streets. They passed the famous Oyster Shop in the Haymar-ket (“Lobsters, Oysters, Pickled and Kippered Salmon”) and the no less celebrated Royal Albert Potato Can, run by the Khan, khan indeed of the baked-potato sellers of London, behind a great scarlet-and-brass stand that dominated and proclaimed the vista. They passed (and the bishop’s son took his lorgnette out of its shagreen case) the crowded daughters of folly, the great whores in their carriages, the lesser ones in their sidewalk droves ... from demure little milky-faced millinery girls to brandy-cheeked viragoes. A torrent of color —of fashion, for here unimaginable things were allowed. Women dressed as Parisian bargees, in bowler and trousers, as sailors, as se?oritas, as Sicilian peasant girls; as if the entire casts of the countless neighboring penny-gaffs had poured out into the street. Far duller the customers—the numerically equal male sex, who, stick in hand and “weed” in mouth, eyed the evening’s talent. And Charles, though he wished he had not drunk so much, and so had to see every-thing twice over, found it delicious, gay, animated, and above all, unFreemanish.
Terpsichore, I suspect, would hardly have bestowed her patronage on the audience of whom our three in some ten minutes formed part; for they were not alone. Some six or seven other young men, and a couple of old ones, one of whom Charles recognized as a pillar of the House of Lords, sat in the large salon, appointed in the best Parisian taste, and reached through a narrow and noisome alley off a street some little way from the top of the Haymarket. At one end of the chandeliered room was a small stage hidden by deep red curtains, on which were embroidered in gold two pairs of satyrs and nymphs. One showed himself eminently in a state to take possession of his shepherdess; and the other had already been received. In black letters on a gilt cartouche above the curtains was written Carmina Priapea XLIV
Velle quid hanc dicas, quamvis sim ligneus, hastam, oscula dat medio si qua puella mihi
augure non opus est: “in me,” mihi credite, dixit, “utetur veris viribus hasta rudis.
It is the god Priapus who speaks: small wooden images of him with erect phallus, both to frighten away thieves and bring fertility, were common features of the Roman orchard. “You’d like to know why the girl kisses this spear of mine, even though I’m made of wood? You don’t need to be clairvoyant to work that one out. ‘Let’s hope,’ she’s thinking, ‘that men will use this spear on me—and brutally.
The copulatory theme was repeated in various folio prints in gilt frames that hung between the curtained windows. Already a loose-haired girl in Camargo petticoats was serving the waiting gentlemen with Roederer’s champagne. In the background a much rouged but more seemingly dressed lady of some fifty years of age cast a quiet eye over her clientele. In spite of her very different profession she had very much the mind of Mrs. Endicott down in Exeter, albeit her assess-ments were made in guineas rather than shillings.
Such scenes as that which followed have probably changed less in the course of history than those of any other human activity; what was done before Charles that night was done in the same way before Heliogabalus—and no doubt before Agamemnon as well; and is done today in countless Soho dives. What particularly pleases me about the unchangingness of this ancient and time-honored form of entertainment is that it allows one to borrow from someone else’s imagina-tion. I was nosing recently round the best kind of secondhand bookseller’s—a careless one. Set quietly under “Medicine,” between an Introduction to Hepatology and a Diseases of the Bronchial System, was the even duller title The History of the Human Heart. It is in fact the very far from dull history of a lively human penis. It was originally published in 1749, the same year as Cleland’s masterpiece in the genre, Fanny Hill. The author lacks his skill, but he will do.
The first House they entered was a noted Bagnio, where they met with a Covey of Town Partridges, which Camillo liked better than all he had ever drawn a Net over in the Country, and amongst them Miss M., the famous Posture Girl, whose Presence put our Company of Ramblers upon the Crochet of shewing their new Associate a Scene, of which he had never so much as dreamed before.
They were showed a large Room, Wine was brought in, the Drawer dismissed, and after a Bumper the Ladies were ordered to prepare. They immediately stripped stark naked, and mounted themselves on the middle of the Table. Camillo was greatly surprised at this Apparatus, and not less puzzled in guessing for what Purpose the Girls had posted themselves on that Eminence. They were clean limbed, fresh complec-tioned, and had Skins as white as the driven Snow, which was heightened by the jet-black Color of their Hair. They had very good Faces, and the natural Blush which glowed on their Cheeks rendered them in Camillo’s Mind, finished Beau-ties, and fit to rival Venus herself. From viewing their Faces, he bashfully cast his Eyes on the Altar of Love, which he had never had so fair a View of as this present Time...
The Parts of the celebrated Posture Girl had something about them which attracted his Attention more than any things he had either felt or seen. The Throne of Love was thickly covered with jet-black Hair, at least a quarter of a Yard long, which she artfully spread asunder, to display the Entrance into the Magic Grotto. The uncommon Figure of this bushy spot afforded a very odd sort of Amusement to Camillo, which was more heightened by the Rest of the Ceremony which these Wantons went through. They each filled a Glass of Wine, and laying themselves in an extended Posture placed their Glasses on the Mount of Venus, every Man in the Company drinking off the Bumper, as it stood on that tempting Protuberance, while the Wenches were not wanting in their lascivious Motions to heighten the Diversion. Then they went thro’ the several Postures and Tricks made use of to raise debilitated Lust when cloyed with natural Enjoyment, and afterwards obliged poor Camillo to shoot the Bridge, and pass under the warm Cataracts, which discom-posed him more than if he had been overset in a Gravesend Wherry. However, tho’ it raised the Laugh of the whole Company, he bore this Frolick with a good deal of patience, as he was told it was necessary for all new Members to be thus initiated into the Mysteries of their Society. Camillo began now to be disgusted at the prodigious Impudence of the Women; he found in himself no more of that uneasy Emotion he felt at their first setting out, and was desirous of the Company’s dismissing them; but his Companions would not part with them, till they had gone through with the whole of their Exercise; the Nymphs, who raised a fresh Contribu-tion on every new Discovery of their impudent Inventions, required no Entreaties to gratify the young Rakes, but pro-ceeded, without the least Sense of Shame, to shew them how far Human Nature could debase itself.
Their last Exploit inflamed these Sons of Debauchery so far that they proposed, as a Conclusion of the Scene, that each Man should chuse his Posture, and go through what they had only seen imitated before. But this was a Step the Nymphs would not comply with, it being the Maxim of these Damsels, never to admit of the Embraces of the Men, for fear of spoiling their Trade. This very much surprised Camil-lo, who from their former Behavior, persuaded himself there could not be invented any Species of Wickedness with which they would not comply for the Sake of Money; and though before this Refusal, their abandoned Obscenity had quite stifled all thoughts of lying with them, yet now his Desires were as strong as if they had been modest Virgins, and he had seen nothing of their Wantonness; so that he became as earnest to oblige them to comply as any Man in the Com-pany.
This gives the general idea of what went on at Ma Terpsi-chore’s, though it omits a particular of difference: the girls of 1867, not so squeamish as those of 1749, were willingly auctioned off in a final tableau.
However, Charles was not there to make a bid. The less obscene preambles he had quite enjoyed. He put on his much-traveled face, he had seen better things in Paris (or so he whispered to Sir Tom), he played the blase young know-all. But as the clothes fell, so did his drunkenness; he glanced at the lecherously parted mouths of the shadowed men beside him, he heard Sir Tom already indicating his pick to the bishop’s son. The white bodies embraced, contorted, mimicked; but it seemed to Charles that there was a despair behind the fixed suggestive smiles of the performers. One was a child who could only just have reached puberty; and there seemed in her assumption of demure innocence something genuinely virginal, still agonized, not fully hardened by her profession.
Yet as he was revolted, so was he sexually irritated. He loathed the public circumstance of this exhibition; but he was enough of an animal to be privately disturbed and excited. Some time before the end he rose and quietly left the room, as if it were to relieve himself. In the anteroom outside the little danseuse who had served the champagne sat by a table with the gentlemen’s cloaks and canes. An artificial smile creased her painted face as she rose. Charles stared a mo-ment at her elaborately disordered ringlets, her bare arms and almost bare bosom. He seemed about to speak, but then changed his mind and brusquely gestured for his things. He threw a half sovereign on the table beside the girl and blundered out.
In the street at the alley’s end he found several expectant cabs waiting. He took the first, shouted up (such was the cautious Victorian convention) the name of a Kensington street near to the one where he lived, and then threw himself into the seat. He did not feel nobly decent; but as if he had swallowed an insult or funked a duel. His father had lived a life in which such evenings were a commonplace; that he could not stomach them proved he was unnatural. Where now was the traveled man of the world? Shrunk into a miserable coward. And Ernestina, his engagement vows? But to recall them was to be a prisoner waking from a dream that he was free and trying to stand, only to be jerked down by his chains back into the black reality of his cell.
The hansom threaded its way slowly down a narrow street. It was crowded with other hansoms and carriages, for this was still very much in the area of sin. Under each light, in every doorway, stood prostitutes. From the darkness Charles watched them. He felt himself boiling, intolerable. If there had been a sharp spike in front of him he would, echoing Sarah before the thorn tree, have run his hand through it, so strong was his feeling for maceration, punishment, some action that would lance his bile.
A quieter street. And they passed a gaslight under which stood a solitary girl. Perhaps because of the flagrant fre-quency of the women in the street they had left she seemed forlorn, too inexperienced to venture closer. Yet her profes-sion was unmistakable. She wore a dingy pink cotton dress with imitation roses at the breast; a white shawl round her shoulders. A black hat in the new style, small and masculine, perched over a large netted chignon of auburn hair. She stared at the passing hansom; and something about the shade of the hair, the alert dark-shadowed eyes, the vaguely wistful stance, made Charles crane forward and keep her in view through the oval side-window as the hansom passed. He had an intolerable moment, then he seized his stick and knocked hard with it on the roof above him. The driver stopped at once. There were hurried footsteps; and then the face ap-peared, slightly below him, beside the open front of the hansom.
She was not really like Sarah. He saw the hair was too red to be natural; and there was a commonness about her, an artificial boldness in her steady eyes and red-lipped smile; too red, like a gash of blood. But just a tinge—something in the firm eyebrows, perhaps, or the mouth.
You have a room
Yes, sir.
Tell him where to go.
She disappeared from his sight a moment and said some-thing to the driver behind. Then she stepped up, making the hansom rock, and got in beside him, filling the narrow space with cheap perfume. He felt the light cloth of her sleeve and skirt brush him, but they did not touch. The hansom moved on. There was a silence for a hundred yards or more.
Is it for all night, sir
Yes.
I asks ‘cause I adds the price of the fare back if it ain’t.
He nodded, and stared into the darkness ahead of him. They passed another clopping hundred yards in silence. He felt her relax a little, the smallest pressure against his arm.
Terrible cold for the time of year.
Yes.” He glanced at her. “You must notice such things.
I don’t do no work when it snows. Some does. But I don’t.
More silence. This time Charles spoke.
You have been long...
Since I was eighteen, sir. Two years come May.
Ah.
He stole another look at her during the next silence. A horrid mathematics gnawed at Charles’s mind: three hundred and sixty-five, say three hundred “working,” multiply by two ... it was six hundred to one that she did not have some disease. Was there some delicate way he could ask? There was not. He glanced at her again in an advanta-geous moment of outside light. Her complexion seemed unblemished. But he was a fool; as regards syphilis he knew he would have been ten times safer at a luxury establishment like the one he had left. To pick up a mere Cockney streetwalker ... but his fate was sealed. He wished it so. They were heading north, towards the Tottenham Court Road.
Do you wish me to pay you now
I ain’t partickler, sir. Just as you fancy.
Very well. How much
She hesitated. Then: “Normal, sir
He flashed a look at her; nodded.
All night I usual charges ...” and her tiny hesitation was pathetically dishonest, “... a sovereign.
He felt inside his frock coat and passed her the coin.
Thank you, sir.” She put it discreetly away in her reticule. And then she managed an oblique answer to his secret fear. “I only go with gentlemen, sir. You don’t need no worries like that.
In his turn he said, “Thank you.
