Studies in the psychology of sex, volume 4 (of 6) by Havelock Ellis. - HTML preview

the habit of sitting down on the sofa when alone and kissing

steadily for ten minutes or more at a time. She was excited

without knowing what was the matter with her--but I knew. And one

day when our mouths were together I drew her to me and commenced

to stroke her legs gently down. She trembled like a string bow,

and allowed my hand to go farther. And then she was frightened

and ashamed and commenced to laugh and cry together.

She had

these hysterical attacks several times and they always frightened

me. It ended in my seducing her. She broke off her engagement,

and then was sorry; but soon she thought only of me.... One day

Alice and I were nearly caught. I had just left her on the sofa

and had commenced drawing at a table with my back to her when

suddenly her mother came in without her shoes, while Alice had

one hand up her clothes arranging her underclothing.

The mother

stopped dead and shot me one glance I shall never forget. 'Why,

Alice, you frighten me!' she said. I feigned surprise and asked

'What is the matter?' Alice, although she was frightened out of

her wits, managed to stammer: 'He couldn't see me--

you couldn't

see me, could you?' appealing to me. But I had managed to collect

my senses a bit and although still under that maternal eye I

asked,--at last turning slowly around to Alice:

'See? What do you

mean? See what?' And I looked so mystified that the mother was

deceived, and contented herself with scolding Alice and telling

her to run no risks of that sort. I breathed again.

"But I was near the end of my tether. Alice and I talked about

everything now. She told me about her life at boarding school and

the strange ideas some of the girls had about men and marriage.

After leaving school she had been sent to a large millinery or

drapery establishment to learn sewing and dressmaking. Here, she

said, the talk was awful at times, and one girl had a book with

pictures of men's organs of generation, which was passed around

and excited their curiosity to the highest pitch.

"I had days of tenderness and contrition, and even told her I

would get on and marry her. Then the tears would come into her

eyes and she would say: 'I seem to feel as if you were my husband

now.' ...

"I had to see a man on business and went to his cottage. The door

was opened by his wife, a handsome, dark-eyed young woman, who

looked as if butter would not melt in her mouth.

After leaving a

message I went on talking to her on other subjects.

She piqued my

vanity in some way, and made me feel curious and restless. I

found myself thinking of her after I left and looking back I saw

she was still looking at me.

"To make a long story short, she encouraged me. It ended by my

leaving the S. family and going to board with them.

T.D., the

husband, was glad of my company and my money. They had a little

boy--whose father T. was not. I soon understood her inviting

looks at me. For she was a general lover, and an old man, in a

good government billet, visited her often when T.D.

was away: I

will call him Silenus. There was also a dark, handsome man who

built organs. The latter came one day and sent for some beer. I

was working in my room, and it so happened that before he knocked

she had been going further than usual in her talk with me; in

fact, as good as giving me the word. When her friend was admitted

he had to pass my open door and he gave me a look with his black

eyes and I gave him a look which told each what the other's game

was. It is wonderful what a lot can be learned from a single

glance of the eyes. When I saw the little boy bringing in the

beer I felt that he had bested me. But she brought me in a glass

first, and putting her down on the sofa I scored first. It was

done so suddenly, so brutally, that, accustomed as she must have

been to such scenes she turned red and bit her under lip. But she

sent the other man away in a few minutes. After that she was

insatiable; it was every day and sometimes twice in one day. I

commenced to be gloomy and miserable again. And there was not

even a pretense of love. There was no deception about her; she

even introduced me to Silenus and we made excursions together,

for which he paid, as he had plenty of money. We were always

drinking, until at last I could eat nothing unless I had two or

three whiskies. I became very thin, my horizon seemed black and

all things at an end. (But T.D. enjoyed his meals and was really

fond of his wife and her boy and his work; life was pleasant to

him.) She would go up to town with me and to a certain hotel;

after drinking she would leave me waiting while she retired with

the handsome young landlord for a short time. She told me when

she came back that he was a great favorite with married women.

"She told me that Silenus visited a woman who practiced

_fellatio_ on him. Mrs. D. thought such practices abominable and

could not imagine how a woman could like doing such a thing.

"When she was out walking with me one day T.D.'s name came up and

she said in a slightly altered voice: 'He told me he loved me!'

It was a word seldom used by her except in jest. I threw a

startled look at her and caught an inquisitive and apologetic

look in return, such a strange and touching glance that I saw I

had not yet understood her,--there was an enigma somewhere. When,

bit by bit, she told me her life, I understood, or thought I

understood, that strange childlike glance in this young woman

steeped to her eyes in sin. No one had ever made love to her or

spoken to her of love in her life.

"It had commenced at school. She must have been a particularly

fine and handsome girl, judging from her photographs. She had

seen boys playing with girls' privates under the form and felt

jealous that they did not play with her's. She had no mother to

look after her and she soon found plenty of boys to play with

her, and young men, too, as she grew older. She took it as she

took her meals. She had been really fond of her child's father,

but as he had shown no tenderness for her, nothing but a craving

for sensual gratification, she would rather have died than let

him know. She soon tired of her attachments, she told me. She did

not like T.D. He was not the complacent husband; he was spirited

enough, but he believed everything she told him. One day he came

home unexpectedly when we were together on the bare palliass in

her room. It was a critical moment when his knocks were heard,

and in the hurry and excitement some moisture was left on the

bed. The knocks became louder, but she was calmer than I, and

bade me run down to the closet. I could hear her cheerful and

chaffing voice greeting him. When I walked in back to my own room

she called out: 'Here's T. home!' I learned afterward that he had

been surly and suspicious, and had seen the moisture on the bed,

and asked about it, whereupon she had turned the tables upon him

completely; he ought to be ashamed of himself; she knew what he

meant by his insinuations; if he must know how that moisture come

on the bed, why she put the soap there in a hurry to catch a

flea. He believed her and brought her a present next day in

atonement for his suspicions.

"During her monthly periods, when I could not touch her, she

would come in and play with me until emissions occurred, and my

feelings had become so perverted that I even preferred this to

coitus. The orgasm would occur twice in her to once in me, and

though her eyes were rather hard and her mouth too, she always

looked well and cheerful, while I was gloomy and depressed. In

her side, however, was a hard lump, which pained her at times,

and which, doubtless, was waiting its time....

"One day I felt so low in health that I proposed to T.D. that we

should take a boat and sail out in the bay for a day or two. The

sea, the change, the open air revived me, and I even made

sketches of the black sailor as he steered the boat.

One day when

I was left alone in charge of the boat, as I felt the time

hanging on my hands, for the sea, the blue sky, the lovely day

gave me no real pleasure, I remember abusing myself, the old

habit reasserting itself as soon as I was alone and idle. When

T.D. came back he brought Mrs. D. with him, laughing and jolly as

usual. She was surprised when lying next to me under the deck on

our return I did not respond to her advances. It would have

pleased her, with her husband only a few feet away.

After that I

spent a night with her, but she was getting tired of me. I did

not care for her, but it hurt my vanity and I made a few attempts

to be impertinent. She looked at me coldly and threatened to

complain to T....

"I want to relate an impression I received one night about this

time when with several friends we called at a brothel. I forget

my companion, but I remember two faces. It was winter, and great

depression prevailed in Adelaide. We had been talking to the

mistress as we drank some beer and were pretending to be jolly

fellows, although we were wet, cold, and had not enjoyed

ourselves (at least, I had not), and she was speaking harshly and

jeeringly about two girls she had now who had not earned a penny

for the past week. Just then we heard footsteps and she said in a

lower tone: 'Here they are,' They came in, unattended, having

ascertained which the brothel-keeper snorted and turned her back

to them. The faces of the girls, who were quite young, looked so

miserable that even I pitied them. The look on the face of one of

those girls as she stood by the hearth drawing off her gloves

lives in my memory. Too deep for tears was its sorrow, shame, and

hopelessness....

"I had given up drink and was living in the bush. To anyone with

normal nerves it would have been a happy time of quiet, rustic

peace, beauty, and relief from city life. With me it was restless

vanity amounting to madness. In every relation, action, or

possible event in which I figured or might figure in the future,

I always instantaneously called up an imaginary audience. And

then this imaginary audience admired everything I did or might

do, and put the most heroic, gallant, and romantic construction

on my acts, appearance, lineage, and breeding.

Suppose I saw a

pretty girl on a bush road. Instead of thinking

'There is a

pretty girl; I should like to know her or kiss her,'

as I suppose

a healthy, normal young man would think, I thought after this

fashion: 'There is a pretty girl; now, as I pass her she will

think I am a handsome and aristocratic-looking stranger, and, as

I carry a sketch-book, an artist--"A landscape painter! How

romantic!" she will say, and then she will fall in love with me,'

etc. This preoccupation with what other people might think or

would think so engrossed all my time that I had no means of

enjoying the presence, thought, or favor of the divine creatures

I met, and I must have appeared 'cracked' to them with my

reticence, pride, and silly airs.

"I met girls as foolish as myself sometimes. Once at a _table

d'hôte_ I met a young girl who went for a walk with me and let me

know her carnally although she was little more than a schoolgirl.

She was going down to town soon, she said, and would meet me at a

certain hotel (belonging to relations of hers) in Adelaide on a

certain date, some time ahead; if I took a room there she would

come into it during the night. In the meanwhile I had given way

to drink again and abused myself at intervals. I came down to

town, drunk, in the coach, and kept my appointment with the young

girl at the hotel, expecting a night of pleasure; but she merely

stared at me coldly as if she had never seen me before. I abused

myself twice in my solitary room....

"I met a middle-aged schoolteacher (who had once been an officer

in the army) down for his holidays. As he spoke well, and was a

'gentleman,' I cultivated him. One night he asked me to meet a

girl he had an appointment with and tell her he was not well

enough to meet her. He foolishly told me the purpose of their

intended meeting. I went to the trysting-place, at the back of

the hotel, and met the girl. On delivering my message she smiled,

made some joke about her friend, and looked at me as much as to

say: 'You will do as well.' I had been drinking, and in the most

brutal manner I took her into a closet. By some strange chance or

state of nerves she gave me exquisite pleasure, but the orgasm

came with me before it did with her, and in spite of her

disappointment and protests I stood up and pulled her out of the

place for fear some one should find us there. Still protesting

she followed me, but her foot slipped on the paved court, and she

fell down on her face. When she rose I saw that her front teeth

were broken. I looked at her without pity, with impatience, and

abruptly leaving her I went into the hotel to 'the colonel.' I

commenced to tell him lies, when he asked me with a weak laugh

what had been keeping me. I smiled with low cunning and drunken

vanity, evading the question. Then he accused me directly. I only

laughed; but, drunk as I was, I remember the look of the ageing

bachelor as he saw he had been betrayed by a younger man. He had

known her for years....

"I was now living in the home of a woman who was separated from

her husband and kept lodgers. She had a daughter, with whom I

walked out, a pretty girl who drank like a fish, as her mother

also did. There were other lodgers coming and going.

I would lie

down all day and keep myself saturated with beer. I commenced to

get fat and bloated, with the ways of a brothel bully. A

broken-down, drunken old woman who visited the house and had been

a beautiful lady in her youth told me I should end my days on the

gallows trap. The same woman when drunk would lift up her dress,

sardonically, exposing herself. Other old women would congregate

in the neglected and dirty bedrooms and tell fortunes with the

cards. One little woman, an onanist, was like a character out of

Dickens, exaggerated, affected, unnatural, with remains of

gentility and society manners. Amidst all this drunkenness and

abandonment May, the landlady's daughter, preserved her

virginity. Young lodgers would take liberties with her, but at a

certain stage would receive a stinger on the face.

The girl liked

me and would kiss me, but nothing else. And then--

out of this

home of drunkenness and shame--May fell in love with some pretty

boy she met by chance, whom she never asked to her home. She

began to neglect me, even to neglect drink, and to dream,

preoccupied. I felt a restless jealousy, but she would look at

me, without resentment, without recognition, without seeing me,

look me straight in the eyes as I was talking to her, and dream

and dream. This same pretty boy seduced her, I believe. When next

I met her she was 'on the town,' her one dream of spring over....

"About this time I had one of those salutary turns that have

marked epochs in my life, and as a result I left that house and

resolutely abstained from drink.... I was now in a small

up-country town. I commenced to play croquet and to ride out.

Sometimes I was invited to dinner by a young man at the bank,

whose house was kept by his sister. She had a small figure, a

pretty but rather narrow face, and well-bred manners; but there

was a look in her asymmetrical eyes, in the shape of her thin

hands, even in the stoop of her shoulders, that seemed

passionate. One day--when her brother, a fine, sweet-blooded

manly young athlete, was absent--I commenced to pull her about.

She gave me one passionate kiss, but said: 'No! Do you know what

keeps me straight? It is the thought of my brother.'

I refrained

from molesting her further. I met other girls, some pretty and

arrogant, others plain and hungry-eyed; it was a country town

where there were four or five females to every male.

But I could

not speak frankly and candidly to a young woman as the young

banker did....

"I remember that one night, when I was living at the Port, I

slept all night with a prostitute who had taken a fancy to me and

who used to cry on my shoulder, much to my impatience and

annoyance. In the same bed with us, lying beside me, was a girl

aged about 12. On my expressing surprise I was told she was used

to it and noticed nothing. But in the morning I turned my head

and looked at her, and even in the dim light of that dirty

bedroom I could see that her eyes had noticed and understood. She

pressed herself against me and smiled; it was not the smile of an

infant. I could record many instances I have observed of the

precocity of children.

"At one time I made the acquaintance of three young men, two in

the customs, the other in a surveyor's office. At the first

glance you would have said they were ordinary nice young clerks,

but on becoming better acquainted you would notice certain

peculiarities, a looseness of mouth, a restless, nervous

inquietude of manner, an indescribable gleam of the eye. They

were very fond of performing and singing at amateur minstrel

shows and developed a certain comic vein they thought original,

though it reminded me of professional corner-men.

However, I

enjoyed their singing and drinking habits and went to their

lodgings several nights to play cards, drink beer, and tell funny

stories. One night they asked me to stay all night and on going

to a room with two beds I was told to have one.

Presently one of

the young men came in and commenced to undress. But before going

to his bed he made a remark which, though I had been drinking,

opened my eyes. I told him to shut up and go to bed, speaking

firmly and rather coldly, and he went reluctantly to his own bed.

But another night when they had shifted their lodgings and were

all sleeping in the same room I was drunk and went to bed with

the same fair-haired young man. On waking up in the night I found

my bedmate tampering with me. The old force came over me and I

abused him, but refused to commit the crime he wanted me to. His

penis was small and pointed. I rose early in the morning,

sobered, suffering, and covered with shame, and went hastily

away, refusing to stay for breakfast. I thought I caught an

amazed and evil smile on the faces of the other two.

Meeting the

three the same evening in the street, I passed them blushing, and

my bedmate of the previous night blushed also....

"I now took cheap lodgings in North Adelaide. Here I had slight

recurrences of the strangeness and fear of going mad which I had

experienced once before. I led such a solitary life and fell into

such a queer state that I turned to religion and attended church

regularly. It was approaching the time for those young men and

women who wished to be confirmed to prepare themselves, and a

struggle now ensued between my pride and my wish to gain rest and

peace of mind in Jesus. I was self-conscious to an incredible

degree, and dreaded exposure or making an exhibition of myself,

but still went to church, hoping the grace of God would descend

on me. I had no other resources. I had no pleasure in life, and

was so shattered and in such misery of dread that I welcomed the

only refuge that seemed open to me. At last, one Sunday, I had

what I thought was a call; I shed a few tears, and although

tingling all down my spine I went up in the cathedral and joined

those who were going to be confirmed. I attended special meetings

and shocked the good bishop very much by telling him I had never

been baptized. I had to be baptized first and went one day to the

cathedral and he baptized me. When the critical awful moment came

the bishop, whose faith even then surprised me somehow, held my

hand in his cold palm, and gave it a pressure, eyeing me,

expectantly, inquisitively, to see any change for the better.

But, it so happened, that morning I was in a horrible temper and

black mood, hard and dry-eyed, and no change came.

Still, I tried

to believe there was a change.

"I was confirmed with others, had a prayer-book given me with

prayers for nearly every hour in the day, and was always kneeling

and praying. I procured a long, white surplice, and assisted at

suburban services, even conducting small ones myself, reading the

sermons out of books. But my mood of rage increased, and one

Sunday I had to walk a long way in a new pair of boots. I shall

never forget that hot Sunday afternoon. My feet commenced to ache

and a murderous humor seized me. I swore and blasphemed one

moment and prayed to God to forgive me the next.

When I reached

the chapel where I had to assist the chaplain I was exhausted

with rage, pain, fear, and religious mania. I thought it probable

I had offended the Holy Ghost. When, next Sunday, I went to try

my hand at Sunday-school teaching I wore a pair of boots so old

that the little boys laughed. I was always talking of my

conversion and the spirit of our Saviour. I do not know what the

clergymen I met thought of me. I thought I should like to be a

minister myself, and questioned a Church of England parson as to

the amount of study necessary. He received my question rather

coldly, I thought, which discouraged me. As my dread gradually

diminished, though I still felt strange, I made excuses for not

conducting services, although I continued to read my Bible and

prayer-book, and really believed I had been 'born again.'

"Surely now, I thought, that I had Christ's aid, I shall be able

to break off my habit of self-abuse that had been the curse of my

youth. What was my horror and dismay to find that, when the mood

came on me next, I went down the same as ever. And after all my

suffering and dread and fear of fits! What could I do? Was I mad,

or what? I was really frightened at my helplessness in the matter

and decided on a course of conduct that ultimately brought me

past this danger to better health and comparative happiness. I

said to myself that there is always a certain amount of

preliminary thought and dalliance before I do this deed;

doubtless this it is that renders me incapable of resisting. I

decided, therefore, never to let my thoughts _commence_ to dwell

on lustful things, but to think of something else on the _first_

intimation of their appearance in my mind. I rigorously followed

this rule; and it proved successful, and I recommend it to others

in the same predicament as myself. After suffering weeks and

months of dread and illness once more, falling away in flesh and

turning yellow, I gradually mended a little. I had a better color

and tone, and was something like other young men, barring a

strange alternate exaltation and depression. Even this gradually