--- title: Section Twelve Metadescription: Will examines Fanny by daylight and has her again, and after a bath and a night's sleep she finds herself unaltered and sends for him. book: Fanny Hill author: John Cleland section: 12 of 28 canonical: https://fourhandspress.co.uk/books/fanny-hill/section-12 previous: https://fourhandspress.co.uk/books/fanny-hill/section-11 next: https://fourhandspress.co.uk/books/fanny-hill/section-13 --- Token estimate: ~6,000 # Section Twelve When our mutual trance was a little over, and the young fellow had withdrawn that delicious stretcher, with which he had most plentifully drowned all thoughts of revenge, in the sense of actual pleasure, the widened wounded passage refunded a stream of pearly liquids, which flowed down my thighs, mixed with streaks of blood, the marks of the ravage of that monstrous machine of his, which had now triumphed over a kind of second maidenhead. I stole, however, my handkerchief to those parts, and wiped them as dry as I could, whilst he was re-adjusting and buttoning up. I made him sit down by me, and as he had gathered courage from such extreme intimacy, he gave me an aftercourse of pleasure, in a natural burst of tender gratitude and joy, at the new scenes of bliss I had opened to him: scenes positively new, as he had never before had the least acquaintance with that mysterious mark, the cloven stamp of female distinction, though nobody better qualified than he to penetrate into its deepest recesses, or do it nobler justice. But when, by certain motions, certain unquietness of his hands, that wandered not without design, I found he languished for satisfying a curiosity, natural enough, to view and handle those parts which attract and concenter the warmest force of imagination, charmed, as I was, to have any occasion of obliging and humouring his young desires, I suffered him to proceed as he pleased, without check or control, to the satisfaction of them. Easily, then, reading in my eyes the full permission of myself to all his wishes, he scarce pleased himself more than me; when, having insinuated his hand under my petticoat and shift, he presently removed those bars to the sight, by slily lifting them upwards, under favour of a thousand kisses, which he thought, perhaps, necessary to divert my attention from what he was about. All my drapery being now rolled up to my waist, I threw myself into such a posture upon the couch, as gave up to him, in full view, the whole region of delight, and all the luxurious landscape around it. The transported youth devoured every thing with his eyes, and tried, with his fingers, to lay more open to his sight the secrets of that dark and delicious deep: he opens the folding lips, the softness of which, yielding entry to any thing of a hard body, close round it, and oppose the sight; and feeling further, meets with, and wonder at, a soft fleshy excrescence, which, limber and relaxed after the late enjoyment, now grew, under the touch and examination of his fiery fingers, more and more stiff and considerable, till the titillating ardours of that so sensible part made me sigh, as if he had hurt me; on which he withdrew his curious probing fingers, asking me pardon, as it were, in a kiss that rather increased the flame there. Novelty ever makes the strongest impressions, and in pleasures, especially; no wonder then, that he was swallowed up in raptures of admiration of things so interesting by their nature, and now seen and handled for the first time. On my part, I was richly overpaid for the pleasure I gave him, in that of examining the power of those objects thus abandoned to him, naked and free to his loosest wish, over the artless, natural stripling: his eyes streaming fire, his cheeks glowing with a florid red, his fervid frequent sighs, whilst his hands convulsively squeezed, opened, pressed together again the lips and sides of that deep flesh wound, or gently twitched the over-growing moss; and all proclaimed the excess, the riot of joys, in having his wantonness thus humoured. But he did not long abuse my patience, for the objects before him had now put him by all his, and, coming out with that formidable machine of his, he lets the fury loose, and pointing it directly to the pouting-lip mouth, that bid him sweet defiance in dumb shew, squeezes in his head, and, driving with refreshed rage, breaks in, and plugs up the whole passage of that soft pleasure-conduit pipe, where he makes all shake again, and put, once more, all within me into such an uproar, as nothing could still, but a fresh inundation from the very engine of those flames, as well as from all the springs with which nature floats that reservoir of joy, when risen to its floodmark. I was now so bruised, so battered, so spent with this overmatch, that I could hardly stir, or raise myself, but lay palpitating, till the ferment of my senses subsiding by degrees, and the hour striking at which I was obliged to dispatch my young man, I tenderly advised him of the necessity there was for parting; at which I felt so much displeasure as he could do, who seemed eagerly disposed to keep the field, and to enter on a fresh action. But the danger was too great, and after some hearty kisses of leave, and recommendations of secrecy and discretion, I forced myself to send him away, not without assurances of seeing him again, to the same purpose, as soon as possible, and thrust a guinea into his hands: not more, less, being too flush of money, a suspicion or discovery might arise from thence; having everything to fear from the dangerous indiscretion of that age in which young fellows would be too irresistible, too charming, if we had not that terrible fault to guard against. Giddy and intoxicated as I was with such satiating draughts of pleasure, I still lay on the couch, supinely stretched out, in a delicious languor diffused over all my limbs, hugging myself for being thus revenged to my heart’s content, and that in a manner so precisely alike, and on the identical spot in which I had received the supposed injury. No reflections on the consequences ever once perplexed me, nor did I make myself one single reproach for having, by this step, completely entered myself into a profession more decried than disused. I should have held it ingratitude to the pleasure I had received, to have repented of it; and since I was now over the bar, I thought, by plunging head and ears into the stream I was hurried away by, to drown all sense of shame or reflection. Whilst I was thus making these laudable dispositions, and whispering to myself a kind of tacit vow of incontinency, enters Mr. H... The consciousness of what I had been doing deepened yet the glowing of my cheeks, flushed with the warmth of the late action, which, joined to the piquant air of my dishabile, drew from Mr. H.... a compliment on my looks, which he was proceeding to bask the sincerity of with proofs, and that with so brisk an action, as made me tremble for fear of a discovery from the condition those parts were left in from their late severe handling: the orifice dilated and inflamed, the lips swollen with their uncommon distension, the ringlets pressed down, crushed and uncurled with the over flowing moisture that had wet everything round it; in short, the different feel and state of things would hardly have passed upon one of Mr. H.....’s nicety and experience unaccounted for but by the real cause. But here the woman saved me: I pretended a violent disorder of my head, and a feverish heat, that indisposed me too much to receive his embraces. He gave in to this, and good naturedly desisted. Soon after, an old lady coming in made a third, very apropos for the confusion I was in, and Mr. H...., after bidding me take care of myself, and recommending me to my repose, left me much at ease and relieved by his absence. In the close of the evening, I took care to have prepared for me a warm bath of aromatik and sweet herbs; in which having fully laved and solaced myself, I came out voluptuously refreshed in body and spirit. The next morning waking pretty early, after a night’s perfect rest and composure, it was not without some dread and uneasiness that I thought of what innovation that tender soft system of mine might have sustained, from the shock of a machine so sized for its destruction. Struck with this apprehension, I scarce dared to carry my hand thither, to inform myself of the state and posture of things. But I was soon agreeably cured of my fears. The silky hair that covered round the borders, now smoothed and re-pruned, had resumed its wonted curl and trimness; the fleshy pouting lips that had stood the brunt of the engagement, were no longer swollen or moisture-drenched; and neither they, nor the passage into which they opened, that had suffered so great a dilation, betrayed any the least alteration, outwardly or inwardly, to the most curious research, notwithstanding the laxity that naturally follows the warm bath. This continuation of that grateful stricture which is in us, to the men, the very jet of their pleasure, I owed, it seems, to a happy habit of body, juicy, plump and furnished, towards the texture of those parts, with a fullness of soft springy flesh, that yielding sufficiently, as it does, to almost any distension soon recovers itself so as to re-tighten that strict compression of its mantlings and folds, which form the sides of the passage, wherewith it so tenderly embraces and closely clips any foreign body introduced into it, such as my exploring finger then was. Finding then every thing in due tone and order, I remember my fears, only to make a jest of them to myself. And now, palpably mistress of any size of man, and triumphing in my double achievement of pleasure and revenge, I abandoned myself entirely to the ideas of all the delight I had swam in. I lay stretching out, glowingly alive all over, and tossing with burning impatience for the renewal of joys that had sinned but in a sweet excess; nor did I lose my longing, for about ten in the morning, according to expectation, Will, my new humble sweetheart, came with a message from his master, Mr. H...., to know how I did. I had taken care to send my maid on an errand into the city, that I was sure would take up time enough; and, from the people of the house, I had nothing to fear, as they were plain good sort of folks, and wise enough to mind no more other people’s business than they could well help. All dispositions then made, not forgetting that of lying in bed to receive him, when he was entered the door of my bed chamber, a latch, that I governed by a wire, descended and secured it. I could not but observe that my young minion was as much spruced out as could be expected from one in his condition: a desire of pleasing that could not be indifferent to me, since it proved that I pleased him; which, I assure you, was now a point I was not above having in view. His hair trimly dressed, clean linen, and, above all, a hale, ruddy, wholesome country look, made him out as pretty a piece of woman’s meat as you could see, and I should have thought any one much out of taste, that could not have made a hearty meal of such a morsel as nature seemed to have designed for the highest diet of pleasure. And why should I here suppress the delight I received from this amiable creature, in remarking each artless look, each motion of pure indissembled nature, betrayed by his wanton eyes; or shewing, transparently, the glow and suffusion of blood through his fresh, clear skin, whilst even his stury rustic pressure wanted not their peculiar charm? Oh! but, say you, this was a young fellow of too low a rank of life to deserve so great a display. May be so: but was my condition, strictly considered, one jot more exalted? or, had I really been much above him, did not his capacity of giving such exquisite pleasure sufficiently raise and enoble him, to me, at least? Let who would, for me cherish, respect, and reward the painter’s, the statuary’s, the musician’s art, in proportion to the delight taken in them: but at my age, and with my taste for pleasure, a taste strongly constitutional to me, the talent of pleasing, with which nature has endowed a handsome person, formed to me the greatest of all merits; compared to which, the vulgar prejudices in favour of titles, dignities, honours, and the like, held a very low rank indeed. Nor perhaps would the beauties of the body be so much affected to be held cheap, were they, in their nature, to be bought and delivered. But for me, whose natural philosophy all resided in the favourite center of sense, and who was ruled by its powerful instinct in taking pleasure by its right handle, I could scarce have made a choice more to my purpose. Mr. H....’s loftier qualifications of birth, fortune and sense, laid me under a sort of subjection and constraint, that were far from making harmony in the concert of love; nor had he, perhaps, thought me worth softening that superiority to; but, with this lad, I was more on the level which love delights in. We may say what we please, but those we can be the easiest and freest with, are ever those we like, not to say love the best. With this stripling, all whose art of love was the action of it, I could, without check of awe or restraint, give a loose to jay, and execute every scheme of dalliance my fond fancy might put me on, in which he was, in every sense, a most exquisite companion. And now my great pleasure lay in humouring all the petulances, all the wanton frolic of a raw novice just fledged, and keen on the burning scent of his game, but unbroken to the sport: and, to carry on the figure, who could better read the wood than he, or stand fairer for the heart of the hunt? He advanced then to my bed side, and whilst he faultered out his message, I could observe his colour rise, and his eyes lighten with joy, in seeing me in a situation as favourable to his loosest wishes, as if he had bespoke the play. I smiled, and put out my hand towards him, which he kneeled down to (a politeness taught him by love alone, that great master of it) and greedily kissed. After exchanging a few confused questions and answers, I asked him if he would come to bed to me, for the little time I could venture to detain him. This was just asking a person, dying with hunger, to feast upon the dish on earth the most to his palate. Accordingly, without further reflection, his clothes were off in an instant; when, blushing still more at this new liberty, he got under the bed clothes I held up to receive him, and was now in bed with a woman for the first time in his life. Here began the usual tender preliminaries, as delicious, perhaps, as the crowning act of enjoyment itself; which they often beget an impatience of, that makes pleasure destructive of itself, by hurrying on the final period, and closing that scene of bliss, in which the actors are generally too well pleased with their parts, not to wish them an eternity of duration. When we had sufficiently graduated our advances towards the main point, by toying, kissing, clipping, feeling my breasts, now round and plump, feeling that part of me I might call a furnace mouth, from the prodigious intense heat his fiery touches had rekindled there, my young sportsman, emboldened by the very freedom he could wish, wontonly takes my hand, and carries it to that enormous machine of his, that stood with a stiffness! a hardness! an upward bend of erection! and which, together with it bottom dependence, the inestimable bulse of ladies jewels, formed a grand showout of goods indeed! Then its dimensions, mocking either grasp or span, almost renewed my terrors. I could not conceive how, or by what means I could take, or put such a bulk out of sight. I stroked it gently, on which the mutinous rogue seemed to swell, and gather a new degree of fierceness and insolence; so that finding it grew not to be trifled with any longer, I prepared for rubbers in good earnest. Slipping then a pillow under me, that I might give him the fairest play, I guided officiously with my hand this furious battering ram, whose ruby head, presenting nearest the resemblance of a heart, I applied to its proper mark, which lay as finely elevated as we could wish; my hips being borne up, and my thighs at their utmost extension, the gleamy warmth that shot from it, made him feel that he was at the mouth of the indraught, and driving fore right, the powerfully divided lips of that pleasure-thirsty channel received him. He hesitated a little; then, settled well in the passage, he makes his way up the straights of it, with a difficulty nothing more than pleasing, widening as he went so as to distend and smooth each soft furrow: our pleasure increasing deliciously, in proportion to our points of mutual touch increased in that so vital part of me which I had now taken him, all indriven, and completely sheathed; and which, crammed as it was, stretched splitting ripe, gave it so gratefully straight an accommodation! so strict a fold! a suction so fierce! that gave and took unutterable delight. We had now reached the closest point of union; but when he beckened to come on the fiercer, as if I had ben actuated by a fear of losing him, in the height of my fury, I twist my legs round his naked loins, the flesh of which, so firm, so springy to the touch, quivered again under the pressure; and now I had him every way encircled and begirt; and having drawn him home to me, I kept him fast there, as if I had sought to unite bodies with him at that point. This bred a pause of action, a pleasure stop, whilst that delicate glutton, my nether mouth, as full as it could hold, kept palating, with exquisite relish, the morsel that so deliciously ingorged it. But nature could not long endure a pleasure that it so highly provoked without satisfying it: pursuing then its darling end, the battery recommenced with redoubled exertion; nor lay I inactive on my side, but encountering him with all the impetuosity of motion I was mistress of, the downy cloth of our meeting mount was now of real use to break the violence of the tilt; and soon, indeed! the highwrought agitation, the sweet urgency of this to-and-fro friction, raised the titillation on me to its height; so that finding myself on the point of going, and loath to leave the tender partner of my joys behind me, I employed all the forwarding motions and arts my experience suggested to me, to promote his keeping me company to our journey’s end. I not only then tightened the pleasure-girth round my restless inmate, by a secret spring of friction and compression that obeys the will in those parts, but stole my hand softly to that store bag of nature’s prime sweets, which is so pleasingly attached to its conduit pipe, from which we receive them; there feeling, and most gently indeed, squeezing those tender globular reservoirs, the magic touch took instant effect, quickened, and brought on upon the spur the symptoms of that sweet agony, the melting moment of dissolution, when pleasure dies by pleasure, and the mysterious engine of it overcomes the titillation it has raised in those parts, by plying them with the stream of a warm liquid, that in itself the highest of all titillations, and which they thirstily express and draw in like the hot natured leach, which, to cool itself, tenaciously extracts all the moisture within its sphere of execution. Chiming then to me, with exquisite consent, as I melted away, his oily balsamic injection, mixing deliciously with the sluices in flow from me, sheathed and blunted all the stings of pleasure, whilst a voluptuous languor possest, and still maintained us motionless, and fast locked in one another’s arms. Alas! that these delights should be no longer-lived; for now the point of pleasure, unedged by enjoyment, and all the brisk sensations flattened upon us, resigned us up to the cool cares of insipid life. Disengaging myself then from his embrace, I made him sensible of the reasons there were for his present leaving me; on which, though reluctantly, he put on his clothes, with as little expedition, however, as he could help, wantonly interrupting himself, between whiles, with kisses, touches and embraces I could not refuse myself to. Yet he happily returned to his master before he was missed; but, at taking leave, I forced him (for he had sentiments enough to refuse it) to receive money enough to buy a silver watch, that great article of subaltern finery, which he at length accepted of, as a remembrance he was carefully to preserve of my affections. And here, Madam, I ought, perhaps, to make you an apology for this minute detail of things, that dwelt so strongly upon my memory, after so deep an impression; but, besides that this intrigue bred one great revolution in my life, which historical truth requires I should not sink from you, may I not presume that so exalted a pleasure ought not to be ungratefully forgotten, or suppressed by me, because I found it in a character in low life; where, by the by, it is oftener met with, purer, and more unsophisticated, than among the false, ridiculous refinements with which the great suffer themselves to be so grossly cheated by their pride: the great! than whom, there exist few amongst those they call the vulgar, who are more ignorant of, or who cultivate less, the art of living than they do; they, I say, who for ever mistake things the most foreign to the nature of pleasure itself; whose capital favourite object is enjoyment of beauty, wherever that rare invaluable gift is found, without distinction of birth, or station. As love never had, so now revenge had no longer any share in my commerce in this handsome youth. The sole pleasures of enjoyment were now the link I held to him by: for though nature had done such great maters for him in his outward form, and especially in that superb piece of furniture she had so liberally enriched him with; though he was thus qualified to give the senses their richest feast, still there was something more wanting to create in me, and constitute the passion of love. Yet Will had very good qualities too: gentle, tractable, and, above all, grateful; silentious, even to a fault: he spoke, at any time, very little, but made it up emphatically with action; and, to do him justice, he never gave me the least reason to complain, either of any tendency to encroach upon me for the liberties I allowed him, or of his indiscretion in blabbing them. There is, then, a fatality in love, or have loved him I must; for he was really a treasure, a bit for the Bonne Bouche of a duchess; and, to say the truth, my liking for him was so extreme, that it was distinguishing very nicely to deny that I loved him. --- ## Forthcoming **The Rise of Lucia** by Dan Edwards The nineteen-year-old Emmeline Smith, before she became the formidable Lucia. A prequel to E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series. [Read an extract](https://fourhandspress.co.uk/books/mapp-and-lucia-prequel/chapter-01) ([Markdown](https://fourhandspress.co.uk/books/mapp-and-lucia-prequel/chapter-01.md)) ## Articles - [Writing advice from Jane Austen's teacher](https://fourhandspress.co.uk/articles/writing-advice-from-jane-austens-teacher) ([Markdown](https://fourhandspress.co.uk/articles/writing-advice-from-jane-austens-teacher.md)) - Hugh Blair wrote the composition textbook Jane Austen's generation learned from. His rules for clear, unaffected prose read like a modern style guide. - [The sex scenes from Fanny Hill](https://fourhandspress.co.uk/articles/fanny-hill-sex-scenes) ([Markdown](https://fourhandspress.co.uk/articles/fanny-hill-sex-scenes.md)) - The eleven substantial sex scenes from Fanny Hill (1748), verbatim and in order. Explicit throughout, but Cleland never uses a coarse word. 14,000 words.