My Secret Life

I had a dread of meeting the governess at breakfast, watched her and saw her laugh at her sister, I watched my mother for some days after, and at length said to the governess, who had punished me for something, “Don't tell mamma.” “I have nothing to tell about, Walter,” she replied, “and don't know what you mean.” I began to tell her what was on my mind. “What's the child talking about? You are dreaming, some stupid boy has been putting things into your head, your papa will thrash you, if you talk like that – “Why, you came and tickled me,” said I. “I tickled you a little when I put your light out,” said she, “be quiet.” I felt stupefied, and suppose the affair must have passed away from my mind for a time, but I told my cousin Fred about it afterwards. He thought I must have been dreaming, and I began to wonder if it really had occurred; I never thought much about it until I began to recall my childhood for this history.

I must have been twelve years old when I went to an uncle's in Surrey and became a close friend of my cousin Fred, a very devil from his cradle, and of whom much more will he told: before then I had only seen him at intervals. We were then allowed, and it seems to me not before that time, to go out by ourselves. We talked boyish baudiness. 'Ain't you green,” said he, “a girl's hole isn't called a cock, it's a cunt, they fuck with it,” and then he told me all he knew. I dolt think I had heard that before, but can't be sure. From that time a new train of ideas came into my head. I had a vague idea, though not a belief, that a cock and cunt were not made for pissing only. Fred treated me as a simpleton in these matters and was always calling me an ass; I have quite a painful recollection of my inferiority to him in such things, and of begging him to instruct me.

“They make children that way,” said Fred. “You come up and we will ask the old nurse where children come from, and shell say 'out of the parsley-bed,' but it's all a lie.” We went and asked her in a casual sort of way. She replied, 'The parsley-bed,” and laughed. The nurse at my house told me the same when I asked her afterwards about my mother's last baby. “Ain't they liars?” Fred remarked to me. 'It comes out of their cunts, and it's made by fucking.'

We both desired to see women piddling, though both must have before seen them at it often enough. Walking near the market-town with him, just at the outskirts, and looking up a side-road, we saw a pedlar woman squat down and piss. We stopped short and looked at her: she was a short-petticoated, thick-legged, middle-aged woman; the piss ran off in a copious stream, and there we stood, grinning. “Be off, be off, what are you standing grinning at, yer damned young fools,” cried the woman. 'Be off, or Ill heave a stone at yer,' and she pissed on. We moved a few steps back, but, keeping our faces toward her, Fred stooped and put his head down. 'I can see it coming,' said he jeeringly. He was rude from his infancy, hold in handiness to the utmost, had the impudence of the Devil. The stream ceased, the woman rose up swearing, took up a big flint and threw it at us. “I'll tell on yer,” she cried. “I knows yer, wait till I see yer again.” She had a large basket of crockery for sale, it was put down in the main-road at the angle; she had just turned round into the side Lane to piss. We ran off, and, when well away, turned round and shouted at her. “I saw your cunt,” Fred bawled out; she flung another stone. Fred took up one, threw it, and it crashed into the crockery, the woman began to chase us, off we bolted across the fields home. She could not follow us that way; it was an eventful day for us. I recollect feeling full of envy at Fred's having seen her cunt.

Though writing now, and having in my mind's eye exactly how the woman squatted, and the way her petticoats hung, I am sure he never did see it; it was brag when he said he had, but we were always talking about girls' cunts, the desire-to see one was great, and I then believed that he had seen the pedlar woman's.

Then one of Fred's companions chewed us a baudy picture, it was coloured. I wondered at the cunt being a long sort of gash. I had an idea that it was round, like an arse-hole. Fred told his friend I was , an ass, but I could not get the idea of a cunt not being a round hole quite out of my head, until I had fucked a woman. We were all anxious to get the picture, and tossed up for it, but neither I nor Fred got it, some other boy did.