My Secret Life: An Erotic Diary of Victorian London (Signet Classics)

Product Information

tighter than ever, and she positively trembled, saying at each stage of my fingering progress, — "Oh — Oh — don't now — leave off," — in a perfectly modest manner. spent a shower of sperm against the door, kneeling on the bed pillows with my eye to the keyhole as I did it.

isn't it nice? — Tell us how does it feel when it's up you? — It didn't hurt you, did it?" — "It hurts me now," said Molly sullenly. — "Wash it, Molly." — I would not hear of that, — I wanted her as she was, I wanted her as she was, I liked to see the bloody smears on her belly and thighs, and know her cunt was full of my semen. "Don't you want to piddle" — "Yes," said the girl in a whipser. — "Do it then." — "I shan't" The threat of ruination shadows Victorian characters, from Jane Eyre via Lady Audley to Dorian Gray. Yet in ‘literature’ it is never described as plainly as in Rosa Fielding, Victim of Lust, or Madame Birchini’s Dance by ‘Lady Termagent Flaybum’.After that, by the Messageries Imperiale maritime, I went to Italy, and arrived at F**r***e towards the end of September, and found that city sweltering under al-most a midsummer heat. I had not expected this.

Moreover, I had set my mind on the maid, and did not wish all my stiffness taken out of me, by that slim piece of nobility, tho I felt somewhat honored by the distinction she had conferred on me. Then I thought of my friend's remark about her, and began wondering, whether other travelling strangers had been similarly honored, for her husband seemed to be mostly away from her, as far as I could learn. But she would not let me mount her. In vain Betsy coaxed and bullied by turn. — "No — no," — she had altered her mind. — She was frightened — it would hurt, — it would make her bleed. — Then she burst into tears and cried. I desisted, Betsy quieted her, for fear of the people of the house, and when she had done she spoke to her in a subdued voice as nearly as possible thus. The intimate nature of Walter's erotic diaries and his portrayal of himself and his surroundings, place My Secret Life well outside the realms of Victorian pornography as established in publications like 'The Pearl'. Walter's mantra might have been adopted from Jean-Jaques Rousseau in his Confessions: “My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself.' Like Rousseau's Confessions, My Secret Life is also noted for its detailed account of the author's more humiliating and shameful moments.

Add your thoughts

About the third day, I became uneasy about the ending of this affair. I could go out more freely from this house than from the baudy house, and went to my club for letters, but did not wish to be seen much, for I was supposed to be in the country with a friend, and there-fore kept mostly at the lodgings with her. I could not walk out with her either, and did not like her to go out alone, thinking she might disappear, for she was evidently a determined creature. But she didn't seem to care at all about going out. Again a long pause, again I repeated my offer. She eyed me closely, seemed almost to be trying to look through me, her lips moved as if she was speaking, but not a sound came from them. — Tired of this, and people noticing us as we stood together, tho but few passed in the by-street, and thinking now that I was only wasting my time, I said, "Good bye if you won't go home, and won't come with me — I'm going" — and I turned to go. — As I turned round, — "What are you going to do, where are you going?" said she hurriedly. — "Take you to a house where we can talk comfort-ably, for we can't stand here longer." — "I won't — "Good bye then." — A pause. — "I don't care, — said she sullenly — and she stood upright, still looking at me curiously. — "Will you come at once?" "I will."

Yet how to hear their authentic voices? Their secrets, free from censorious moralising? To hear “those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries which are at our own doors” (Henry James, praising Wilkie Collins). not for Joseph. But I'll get you a man easy enough if you mean it." — "I do," said I — suddenly thinking I should. — "Well, there are plenty of them" — "But in your room." — "Impossible, you and the sod too, would not stop in it five minutes." When I told her those wants, I didn't mean what I said, but at a subsequent meeting she suggested them, and it ended in my arranging to meet her with a man, and we were to go to his rooms together two or three days after, for she had stimulated my curiosity. This is the complete eleven volumes of My Secret Life, the memoir of a gentleman known only as 'Walter'. It was first published around 1888 and details very explicitly the author's sexual encounters throughout his life. Despite the fact the text is rather repetitive and disorganised, it is recognised as a valuable document in regard to the information it gives about Victorian London, especially on Victorian houses of prostitution.a b Bullough, Vern L (2000). "Who wrote my secret life? An evaluation of possibilities and a tentative suggestion" (PDF). Sexuality and Culture. 4 (1): 37–60. doi: 10.1007/s12119-000-1011-y. S2CID 144830385 . Retrieved 4 April 2015. My poor girl, you shall. In five minutes I'll give you some food." — Directly after, I got out at a shop, bought some ham, beef, and rolls, and at *** a bottle of good sherry. In five minutes we were at J***s St., and in the room in which I first had Sarah Mavis. — It was not a busy hour there. How many times have I had fresh women in that room, I almost seem to have a property in it.

We left next day. I hired two rooms for a week for two pounds, at a fairly respectable eating house, and paid down. — They didn't seem to like my companion when they saw her. I got decent food there, and the girl was out of harm's way. My difficulty now was to know what to do with her. She said resolutely that she would never go home again, but at last she told me she had a relative at A*i**d*n and she would go there if they would let her. If not she would go on the streets, or drown herself, and she certainly meant one or the other.I have always thought that she really wanted me to go, that it was the last struggle against her lewedness.