My Secret Life

At the extreme end of our village were a few little houses; one stood with its side entrance up a road only partially formed, and without thoroughfare; its owner was a pew-opener, her daughter a dressmaker, who worked for servants and such like; they cut out things for servants, who in those days largely made their own dresses. Charlotte had things made there. At a fair held every year near us, of which I shall have to tell more, my fast friend, who had put me up to so much and who, I forgot to say, tried to get hold of Charlotte, I saw with the dressmaker's daughter. Said he, talking to me next day, she is jolly ugly, but she's good enough for a feel. I felt her cunt last night and think she has been fucked (he thought that of every girl); her mother is a rum old gal too, she will let you meet a girl at her cottage, not whores, you know, but if they are respectable. Is it a baudy house?” I asked. “Oh, no, it's quite respectable, but if you walk in with a lady, she leaves you in the room together, and, when you come out, if you just give her half a crown, she drops a curtsy, just as she does when she opens the pew-doors and anyone gives her six pence, but she is quite respectable, the clergyman goes to see her sometimes.”

Charlotte asked to go out to a dressmaker, I met her as if by chance at the door, the old pew-opener asked if I would like to walk in and wait. I did. Charlotte came in after she had arranged about her dress. There was a sofa in the room, and she was soon on it; we left together, I gave two or three shillings (money went much further then), and the pew-opener said, “You can always wait here when your young lady comes to see my daughter.”

When we went a second time, she asked me if I went to St. Mary's Chapel (her chapel). We went to her house in the day that time. When we were going away, she said, “Perhaps you won't mind always going out first, for neighbours are so ill-natured.” The old woman was really a pew-opener, her daughter really a dressmaker, but she was glad to earn a few shilling by letting her house be used for assignations of a quiet sort; she would not have let gay women in, from what I heard. She had lived for years in the parish and was thought respectable. She had not much use of her house in that way, wealthy people going to town for their frolics, - town only being an hour's journey - and no gay women being in the village that I knew of.

At this house, I spent Charlotte's third holiday with her, in a comfortable bedroom. We stopped from eleven in the morning, till nine at night, having mutton chops and ale, and being as jolly as we could be. We did nothing the whole day long but look at each other's privates, kiss, fuck, and sleep outside the bed. It was there she expressed curiosity about male emissions. I told her how the sperm spurted out, then discussing women's, she told me of the pleasure I had given her when fingering her in the manner described already: we completed our explanations by my frigging myself to show her, and then my doing the same to her with my finger. I bungled at that, and think I hear her now saying, “No, just where you were is nicest.” “Does it give you pleasure?” “Oh, yes, but I don't like it that way, Oh! - Oh! - I am doing it - Oh!” I had no money that day, Charlotte had her wages, and paid for everything, giving me her money to do so.

One day we laughed at having nearly been caught fucking in the privy. “She must have a big bum, must Mary,” said I, “to sit on that little seat at the privy.” Said Charlotte, “She is a big woman, twice as big as me, her bottom would cover the whole seat.” This set us talking about the cook, and as what I then heard affected me much at a future day, I will tell all Charlotte said, as nearly as I can recollect.

“Of course I have seen her naked bit by bit - when two women are together they can't help it, why should they mind - if you sit down to pee, you show your legs, and if you put on your stockings you show your thighs, then we-both wash down to our waists, and if you slip off your chemise or night-gown you show yourself all over. Mary's beautiful from head to foot; one morning in the summer, we sleeping in the same bed, were very hot. I got out to pee, we had kicked all the clothes off, Mary was laying on her back with night-clothes above her waist fast asleep, I could not help looking at her thighs, which were so large and white - white as snow.” “Had she much hair on her cunt?” said I. “What's that to you?” said she, laughing, but went on: “Oh! twice as much as I have, and of a light brown.” “I suppose her cunt is bigger than yours?” said I reflectively. “Well, perhaps it is,” said Charlotte, “she is a much bigger woman than me, what do you think?” I inclined to the opinion it must be, but had no experience to guide me; on the whole we agreed that it was likely to be bigger.