Memoirs of Fanny Hill

LETTER THE FIRSTI sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my considering yourdesires as indispensable orders. Ungracious then as the task may be, Ishall recall to view those scandalous stages of my life, out of which Iemerged, at length, to the enjoyment of every blessing in the power oflove, health and fortune to bestow; whilst yet in the flower of youth,and not too late to employ the leisure afforded me by great ease andaffluence, to cultivate an understanding, naturally not a...
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LETTER THE FIRSTI sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my considering yourdesires as indispensable orders. Ungracious then as the task may be, Ishall recall to view those scandalous stages of my life, out of which Iemerged, at length, to the enjoyment of every blessing in the power oflove, health and fortune to bestow; whilst yet in the flower of youth,and not too late to employ the leisure afforded me by great ease andaffluence, to cultivate an understanding, naturally not a despicableone, and which had, even amidst the whirl of loose pleasures I had beentossed in, exerted more observation on the characters and manners ofthe world than what is common to those of my unhappy profession, who,looking on all though or reflection as their capital enemy, keep it atas great a distance as they can, or destroy it without mercy.Hating, as I mortally do, all long unnecessary prefaces, I shall giveyou good quarter in this, and use no farther apology, than to prepareyou for seeing the loose part of my life, written with the same libertythat I led it.Truth! stark, naked truth, is the word; and I will not so much astake the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze wrapper on it, but paintsituations such as they actually rose to me in nature, careless ofviolating those laws of decency that were never made for such unreservedintimacies as ours; and you have too much sense, too much knowledge ofthe originals, to sniff prudishly and out of character at the picturesof them. The greatest men, those of the first and most leading taste,will not scruple adorning their private closets with nudities, though,in compliance with vulgar prejudices, they may not think them decentdecorations of the staircase, or salon.This, and enough, premised, I go souse into my personal history.My maiden name was Frances Hill. I was born at a small village nearLiverpool, in Lancashire, of parents extremely poor, and, I piouslybelieve, extremely honest.My father, who had received a maim on his limbs, that disabled himfrom following the more laborious branches of country drudgery, got,by making nets, a scanty subsistence, which was not much enlarged by mymother's keeping a little day-school for the girls in her neighborhood.They had had several children; but none lived to any age except myself,who had received from nature a constitution perfectly healthy.My education, till past fourteen, was no better than very vulgar:reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinaryplain work, composed the whole system of it; and then all my foundationin virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shytimidity general to our sex, in the tender age of life, when objectsalarm or frighten more by their novelty than anything else. But then,this is a fear too often cured at the expense of innocence, when Miss,by degrees, begins no longer to look on a man as a creature of prey thatwill eat her.My poor mother had divided her time so entirely between her scholarsand her little domestic cares, that she had spared very little to myinstruction, having, from her own innocence from all ill, no hint orthought of guarding me against any.