indelicate and shameful thing, and bad for health.
This last idea
was held as a solemn fact by all my boy friends.
Gradually
religion began to exert an influence over my sexual nature,
obtaining as years passed a greater and greater restraining
power. It is simply impossible for me to write a history of my
sexual development without also describing the action which
Christianity has had in determining its growth. The two have been
so intimately bound together that my life history would not be a
faithful record of facts if I left religion out of it.
At school I took part, with great keenness, in cricket and
foot-ball, and was very ambitious to excel in everything in which
I took an interest, but I always had other tastes as well, which
were more precious to me, for example, the love for science,
history, and poetry. Until I was past 16 years my desire was
simply for coitus, girls and women attracted me only as affording
the means of gratifying this desire; but when I was nearly 17 I
began to regard girls as beautiful objects, apart from this, and
to desire their love and companionship. At the same time it
dawned upon me that life held much of joy in the love of women
and in domestic life--so henceforth I regarded them in a higher
and purer light, and apart from sexual gratification. In fact,
from this period till I was over 20, this idea so dominated my
whole being that the lower side of my nature was entirely held in
subjection and abeyance by it. It was rather repulsive to think
of girls as objects of lust. This state of mind was not brought
about by any romantic attachment or through any acquaintance or
through circumstances. I was living in great seclusion and had no
girl friends. After this period the lower side of my nature woke
up as a giant refreshed with wine, and I underwent for many years
a constant struggle with my nature, in which religion always
triumphed in the end. I never fell into fornication, though
sometimes into the vice of masturbation. These outbursts of
desire were periodic, about ten or fourteen days apart, and would
last several days. I must record also the fact that from the time
this awakening took place my ideal views of woman no longer
seemed incompatible with sexual relations. I noticed that at
about 27 there was a lessening of the desire, but that may have
been due to overwork and consequent nervous exhaustion. I had a
good deal of worry and studied daily for about eight hours. In
any case the impulse was strongest during the years above
mentioned. A little later in life, for a time, I became attached
to a girl, and eventually engaged. I then observed, greatly to my
sorrow and annoyance, that whenever I met this lady, or even
thought of her, erections took place. This was particularly
painful to me, as my thoughts were not of a lustful or impure
character. Sometimes sitting by her at a religious service this
would occur, when certainly my mind was far away from anything of
the kind. That was the first woman ever kissed by me, except of
course members of my immediate family circle. Later on my
thoughts turned to marriage, and there was a great longing at
times for this event to take place. However, as this attachment
afterward became the great sorrow of my life for years, it needs
no more comment. This closes one chapter of my history, and at
present I do not propose to add another, as in a great measure it
is only partly written. It may be well here to state that there
has never been in me the slightest homosexual desire; in fact it
has always appeared as a thing utterly inconceivable and
disgustingly loathsome. I am fond of the society of both men and
women, but on the whole prefer the latter. I have had several
warm and intimate though platonic friendships, and get on
exceedingly well with the other sex, although not a good-looking
man. I have always been attracted to women by their spiritual or
mental qualities, rather than by physical beauty, and feel
strongly that the latter alone would never cause me to desire
coitus. Unless there was an attraction other than that of the
flesh, I should feel that I was following simply a brute
instinct, and it would jar with my higher nature and cause
revulsion. This was not the case in my earlier years to the same
extent. I have often wondered whether the sexual impulse was
strong in me or not, but if not, there is nothing in my physical
state or family history to account for it. I am fairly cognizant
with the lives of my ancestors, being descended from two old
families. The sexual instinct was certainly not weak or abnormal
in them. Personally, I am tall and healthy, well built, but
sensitive and highly strung. Smell has never played any part in
my life as a stimulant of sexual desire, and the mere thought of
body odors would have a very decided effect in the opposite
direction. Touch and sight appeal to me strongly, and of the two
the former most.
I am convinced, after many years careful thought, that sexual
vice and perversion could be greatly reduced if the young were
instructed in the elements of physiology as they bear on this
question. Personally, had I been thus enlightened much sin would
have been avoided in my schoolboy days, and a perverted view of
sexual matters would never have arisen in my mind.
It took years
to overcome the feeling that all such things were unclean and
defiling. Eventually light came to me through reading a passage
in a tractate on the Creed by Rufinus. He was defending the
doctrine, of the Incarnation against the pagan objection that it
was an unclean and disgusting idea that God should enter the
world through the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and he meets
it by showing that God created the sexual organs, therefore the
objection is invalid--otherwise God would not be clean or pure,
having Himself designed them and their functions.
This passage is
slight in itself, but gave birth to a line of thought which has
influenced me profoundly. I no longer regard sexual matters as
disgusting and unholy, but as intensely sacred, being the outcome
of the Divine Mind. Further, the Incarnation of the Saviour has
not only sanctioned motherhood and all that is implied by it, but
has eternally sanctified it as the means chosen for the
manifestation of God to the world. I should not obtrude my
theological conceptions, but for the fact that they have
determined my life-history in that aspect.
HISTORY IV.--When I was 9 years old a boy at the preparatory
school, which I attended, showed me the act of masturbation,
which he said he had practiced for a long time, and which he
urged me to imitate, if I wished to become a father when I grew
up, and married! Boy-like I believed him and tried, but the
sensation obtained was not a pleasant one (I suppose that I was
too rough with myself) and I desisted.
When I was about 12 years old, a schoolfellow told me that he had
seen his nurse copulating with the groom, and he and I used to
haunt the woods in the hope that we might see an amorous couple
so engaged, but without success. We often talked of the act, as
to how it was done. Neither he nor I had any clear ideas on the
subject, save as to the organs involved. I was about 15 when a
maidservant of the house in which I was a boarder, came to my
bedroom one night and taught me how to masturbate her. She said
that this was a good thing for me to do, and warned me never to
"play with myself" as it would kill me, or drive me mad. I told
her that I had tried it, but could not bring on a pleasurable
feeling, so she did it to me, and although I did not have an
emission, I derived great pleasure from the act. She told me that
it never did a boy any harm to let a girl play with his parts,
and promised that if I would keep the secret, she would often do
this for me. Naturally I promised to say nothing, and she often
came up to my room. Later on she used to insert my penis into her
vulva, while she was rubbing it, at the same time giving me a
pigeon kiss. This _modus operandi_ was much appreciated by me.
One night, after we had been together thus, I dreamt of her and
her maneuvers and had my first emission. I was very proud of
this, as I considered that I had at last attained to man's
estate, and told her of it. She never allowed me to insert my
penis into her vulva after that, alleging that she did not want
to have a baby.
I was about 16½ years old when I had my first real coitus, my
partner in the act being a girl some two years older than I, who
lived near us. I enjoyed the act very much, as she permitted, nay
insisted on, emission _intra vaginam_, and told her that this was
much nicer than my amours with the maidservant which of course I
had confided to her. She laughed, and said: "Of course." We often
copulated, as long as I was at home, and then I lost sight of
her. Of all the women with whom I have had to do, save one, she
had the most copious secretion of mucus, which in those days I
believed was the woman's semen. Her thighs used to be wet with
it.
At the University I had regular relations with women of all
sorts, rarely missing a week. Two of them were married women, one
the wife of a solicitor, the other of a doctor. How proud I felt
of my first intrigue with a married woman! I felt that I was
really a man of the world now!
But though my friends used to tell me all about their love
affairs, and I longed to confide in them, I did not do so. This
was because when I went up to the University, my uncle said that
he would give me a word of advice and hoped that I would follow
it--never to give away a woman, and never to refuse to respond to
a woman's advances, whoever she were. To neglect this advice
would, he said, be foolish, and to break the rules
"damned
ungentlemanly." I wish I had always followed advice proffered, as
closely as I have followed this. One night, when I was somewhat
disguised in liquor, as our grandfathers would have put it, I
picked up a girl, who was a private prostitute, if the phrase be
permissible. She declined copulation, and proposed other means of
satisfaction. I insisted, being stubborn in my cups.
Had I been
sober I should have done as she suggested, for I have always made
it a point to allow the woman to choose the method of
gratification, and not to demand, or even suggest, anything
myself. I like to please women, and I have always been curious as
to their wants and desires, as revealed, without outside
influence, by themselves. The result of my refusing all methods
of gratification save the most ordinary was that the girl, who
must have known that she was not all right, but shrank from
saying so in so many words, gave me a gonorrhoea, which lasted
nine weeks and much interfered with my amours, as I naturally
declined to run the risk of infecting my partner, a risk which to
my certain knowledge many a young fellow has run, with disastrous
consequence to the confiding woman. As it was due to my tipsy
obstinacy, I could not blame the girl, but resolved never to
drink too much again, a resolve which I have kept, save once,
unbroken. In those days we youngsters thought that it was manly
to be able to carry one's liquor well, and did all in our power
to attain to the seasoned head; but I considered that the risks
entailed were too serious to be neglected.
I was well on in my 26th year when I met a widow with whom I fell
in love, with the result that I married her. She is a most
sensible woman, and it was her intellectual gifts which were the
attraction to me. In my amours intellect has never played a part.
She has all along been cognizant of, and lenient to, my
polygamous tendencies; for she recognizes the fact that whatever
_fredaine_ I may have on hand makes not the slightest difference
in my love and respect for her. Were she a more sensual woman,
perhaps things would be different.
In all I have had to do with 81 other women, of whose special
characteristics I kept a careful note at the time.
Twenty-six
were normal women with whom my _liasons_ have lasted long, so I
know more about them than I do about the other fifty-five, who
were prostitutes, and with some of whom my dealings were but for
an afternoon.
The races represented have been these, for I have seen a bit of
the world: English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, French, German,
Italian, Greek, Danish, Hungarian, Roumanian, Indian, and
Japanese. Taking them all round, the only difference that I found
between old and young women is that the older ones are less
selfish, and more complaisant, and less inclined to resent one's
being unable to attain to the height of their desire, for from
time to time I have been unable to "come up to the scratch" after
a heavy night's labor, or when I was afraid of being caught in
the act of coition, a fear which, in my experience, acts as a
stimulus to desire in women, unlike its action in men. Of all the
women with whom I have had to do the nicest in every way have
been the French women. The English women of the town drink too
much, and are far too keen on getting as much money as they can
for as little as they can, to please me. Were the London girls to
recognize that men do not like a tipsy woman, and that where
there is so much competition the person who is most skillful and
most polite gets the most custom, the alien invasion in Regent
street would soon come to an end.
Of the fifty-five prostitutes: eighteen informed me that they
were in the habit of masturbating; eight of their own free will,
without asking for reward, did _fellatio_; six asked me to do
_cunnilingus_, which I naturally declined to do; three proposed
anal coitus. Of those who did _fellatio_, two (one French and one
German) told me that they had taken to it because they had heard
that human semen was an excellent remedy against consumption,
which disease had carried off some of their relatives, and that
they had gradually come to like doing it. All who told me that
they masturbated, asked me whether I did so too, and two desired
me to show them the act, one alleging that she liked to see a man
do it; she had been married late in life, after a
"stormy youth"
and had had, she said, a large experience of the male sex. They
all seemed to think that however much the practice of
self-excitement might hurt a man, and all thought that it would
hurt him, a woman might masturbate as often as she liked, failing
better means of satisfaction, as she had no such loss of
substance as a man.
Of the twenty-six normal women, whom I knew more intimately than
I did the fifty-five prostitutes, thirteen, without being
questioned by me, blurted out the fact that they were habitual
masturbators, apparently all required to think of the loved
person to obtain full satisfaction. _Fellatio_ was proposed, and
fully performed, by nine, of whom three experienced the orgasm as
soon as they perceived that I had attained to it.
All were more
or less excited while doing it. One proposed anal coitus, "just
to see what it was like;" and three proposed _cunnilingus_, one
having been initiated by a girl friend, and one by her husband.
The third had, I believe, evolved the act out of her own inner
consciousness in her desire to experience pleasure with me. My
relations with one of the twenty-six were confined to my
masturbation of her, the while she did _fellatio_, as she said
that she "had no feeling inside down there."
With two exceptions my partings from these normal women have not
been tragic and all whom I have met in after life (seven) have
been very ready to resume relations with me, four of them having
made the proposal themselves.
One thing has struck me, and that is the, often great, difference
that exists between what a woman's looks lead one to think she
is, and what she is when one becomes her lover; the most sensual
woman that I have met might have sat for her portrait as the
Madonna, and she was the only one who took pleasure in hearing
and relating "smoking-room stories," a form of amusement which,
perhaps from their want of appreciation of humor and wit, women
do not indulge in--at least in my experience.
HISTORY V.--(A continuation of History III in Appendix B to the
previous volume.)
As I became better I commenced to dream of true love. I wondered,
too, if my horrible past really could be lived down and a young
woman come to love _me_. I took pleasure in reading love poems,
especially Browning's, and illustrated some with little
water-colors....
I was sitting in the stalls one night seeing a performance by a
company of English actors when one of them played so badly that I
thought to myself: "Why, hang it, I could play it better myself!"
The next minute another thought followed: "Why not try?" I came
out of the stalls the proverbial stage-struck youth.
I was
sitting in the same place another night when the young man next
to me entered into conversation. By a strange coincidence he knew
a few young men, amateurs, who were going to form a company, give
up their situations and travel, if they could induce a few more
to join them and put a little money in. I made an appointment for
the following evening....
There were lots of meetings in bedrooms and rehearsals between
the beds, but ultimately I was told a school-room had been
engaged and a professional actress, A.F. I went to the
school-room and found all the boys there, and a young woman with
a pale, rice-powder complexion. On introduction she gazed at me
as if struck dumb. If she had been better-looking (I thought her
vulgar and puffy) I would have been flattered. I was disappointed, but rather frightened (she had a stage presence) of
her professional ability, especially when we commenced to
rehearse. I had to make love to her, too, which embarrassed me.
She had a good profile, I noticed, and would have been better
looking, I thought, if she were in better condition, for she was
young, about my own age, twenty-three or four. We were all
young--enjoyed our rehearsals, and had lots of fun--
but I did not
respond to the advances A. was evidently making to me. Finally we
started on our tour. As the weeks went on A.F., like the others,
improved wonderfully in health and appearance. If we had had
anything like houses it would have been a pleasant trip. My
strangeness did not escape the notice of the boys altogether, for
I was still a bit strange in mind and nerves--and deeply
religious, bowing my head before each meal and reading my little
Bible and prayer-book at odd times. I drank no alcohol. I spent a
good deal of time by myself of with my faithful companion A., who
was nearly always at my side, she and her appealing eyes. I was
surprised to see how quickly she had improved; she looked quite
attractive and ladylike some evenings at meals, but I only
tolerated her. I was selfish and conceited.
Things had been going on like this for a week--
always playing to
empty houses and our money lower and lower--when A.
said to our
other lady, Mrs. T., on a train in my presence: "I shall have to
give him up, I suppose; he will have nothing to do with me." Mrs.
T. said: "You give him up, do you?" and looked at me as if she
were going to try her hand. A. said "Yes," and looked at me,
smiling sadly. I don't know what motive prompted me-
-whether my
vanity was alarmed at her threatened desertion or that she had
really made some impression on me by her love, probably a little
of both--but I said: "No, don't; come and sit down here," making
way for her, and she joyfully came and nestled against me. From
that time I ceased to treat her with ridicule, and kissed her at
other times than when on the stage. I was subject still to black
moods, and would not speak to her for hours sometimes, but she
seemed content to walk with me and was infinitely patient. I had
heard she was living with--if not married to--an actor. I asked
her about him once, and she said she did not love him; she loved
me and had never loved before. Her face had a touching sadness;
her life had been unhappy and stormy, with no love and little
rest in it. Her face, when she had lost her dissipated look and
unhealthy pallor, was exquisite, delicate as a cameo. Love had
improved her manners, too; she was more gentle and refined. I let
things drift without thinking of the future, when one night
after the performance--I was lying on the sofa and A. was sitting
at my side, as usual--I suddenly thought, with the brutality that
characterized me in these matters--"I will ask her to let me
sleep with her." I still fought against any premonitory thought
of self-abuse, but here, I thought to myself, is a chance of
something better that will do me no harm and perhaps good. When
she understood me she turned very red and walked away, shaking
her head. But I let her understand that was the only way of
retaining me, and finally, when they had all gone to bed, she
gave herself to me, reluctantly and sadly; for she, too, had been
drifting on without thinking of anything of this sort (she hated
it at this time), but just living for her love of me, her first
true love.
Before this occurred, I must tell you, I had been so much better
that I sometimes felt capable of doing anything, a sense of power
and grasp of intellect which was combined with delicacy of
feeling and sensitiveness to beauty, to skies and clouds and
flowers. I seemed to be awakening to true manhood, to my true
self. And at meals, it is worth recording, I commenced to have a
distaste for meat.
These glimpses of a better state of things left me on cohabiting
with A., and for a time my gloom and black religious mania came
on me once more. I now thought of my promise at confirmation, and
it seemed to me I had offended beyond pardon. When we came to the
next town, however, I openly slept with A. all night, leaving my
own bed untouched. When we returned to Adelaide one of our party
remarked: "The only man who had any success with the women on the
tour was a Bible-reading, praying, and good, pious, confirmed
Christian."
A.'s nascent beauty and delicacy and improvement were gradually
impaired, too. My own conduct became so morose at times that,
besides increasing her misery, I offended the others, and
bickerings ensued. I heard the other actress say
"He's mad; that
what's the matter." And I was so wrapped up in myself and my
religious mania that I did not mind their thinking so.
After the tour was over A. asked me to come and see her at her
home, and as I missed her very much I went on