After Christmas, my sister went back to school, our chances seemed improving, we spent another holiday at the pew-opener's. I had got money, and we were indiscreet enough to go to see some wax-works. Next day her father came to see her, he ordered her to tell where she had been. She refused, he got angry, and made such a noise that mother rang to know what it was. He asked to see her, apologized, and said his daughter had been out several holidays without his knowing where she had been. My mother said it was very improper, and that he ought. A friend was with us in the room, and I sat there reading and trembling. My mother remarked to the lady, “I hope that girl is not going wrong, she is very good looking.” Mother asked me to go out of the room, then had Charlotte up, and lectured her, afterwards Charlotte told me, for the first time, that her father was annoyed because she would not marry a young man.
A young man had called at our house several times to see her; she saw him once and evaded doing so afterwards. He was the son of a well-to-do baker a few miles from Charlotte's home, and wished to marry her; his father was not expected to live, and the young man said he would marry her directly the father died. Her mother was mad at her refusing such a chance. Charlotte showed me his letters, which then came, and we arranged together the replies. She went home, and came back with eyes swollen with crying; some one had written anonymously to say she had been seen at the wax-works with a young man, evidently of position above her, and had been seen walking with a young man.
The mother threatened to have a doctor examine her to see if she had been doing anything wrong; no one seemed to have suspected me; her father would have her home, her mother had had suspicion of her for some time, “The sooner you marry young Brown the better, he will have a good business and keeps a horse and chaise, you will never have such a chance again, and it will prevent you going wrong, even if you have not already gone wrong,” said her mother.
It was a rainy night, I had met her on her return, and we both stood an hour under an umbrella, talking and crying, she saying, “I knew I should be ruined; if I marry he will find me out, if I don't they will lead me such a life; oh! what shall I do!” We fucked twice in the rain against a wall, putting down the umbrella to do it. Afterwards we met at the dressmaker's, talked over our misery, and cried, and fucked, and cried again. Then it was nothing but worry, she crying at her future, I wondering if I should be found out; still, with all our misery, we never failed to fuck if there was a clear five minutes before us. Then her mother wrote to say that old Brown was dead, and her father meant to take her away directly; she refused, the father came, saw my mother, and settled the affair by taking back Charlotte's box of clothes. I had not a farthing; at her age a father had absolute control, and nothing short of running away would have been of use. Me talked of drowning ourselves, or of her taking work in the fields. I projected things equally absurd for myself. I tended in her agreeing to go home, — she could not help that, — but refusing to marry.
Charlotte wrote me almost directly after her return. My mother had reserved the right of opening my letters, although she had ceased to do so. That morning seeing she had one addressed to me, in fear I snatched it out of her hand. She insisted on having it back, I refused, and we had a row. “How dare you, sir, give it me.” “I won't, you shan't open my letter.” “I will, a boy like you!” “I am not a boy, I am a man, if you ever open a letter of mine, I will go for a common soldier, instead of being an officer.” “I will tell your guardian.” “I mean to tell him how shamefully short of money I am; Uncle says it's a shame, so does aunt.” My, mother sank down in tears; it was my last rebellion; she spoke to my guardian, never touched my letters again, and gave me five times the money. I used to have, but, to make sure, I had letters enclosed to a friend, and fetched them.
Charlotte was not allowed to go out alone and was harassed in every way; for all that, I managed to meet her at a local school, one Saturday afternoon when it was empty; some friendly teacher let her in, and she let me in. We fucked on a hard form, in a nearly dark room, about the most difficult poke I ever had, it was a ridiculous posture. But our meeting was full of tears, despondency, and dread of being with child. She told me I had ruined her, even fucking did not cheer her. A week or so afterwards, having no money, I walked all the way to try to see her, and failed. Afterwards, in her letters, she begged me never to tell anyone about what had passed between us. Her father sent her away to his brothers, where she was to help as a servant; for somehow he had got wind that she had met some one at the school-house. There she fell ill and was sent home again. Then she wrote that she should marry, or have no peace, wished I was older, and then she could marry me; she did not write much common sense, although it did not strike me so then. She was coming to London to buy things, would say she would call on my mother on the road, but would meet me instead. How she humbugged the young woman who came to town with her, I don't know, but we met at the baudy house, cried nearly the whole time, but fucked for all that till my cock would stand no longer; then, vowing to see each other after she was married, we parted.
She married soon, my mother told me of it; she lived twelve miles from us, and did not write to me. I went there one day, but, although I lingered long near their shop, I never saw her. I did that a second time, she saw me looking in, and staggered into a back room. I dared not go in for fear of injuring her. Afterwards came a letter not signed, breathing love, but praying me not to injure her, as might be if I was seen near her house. Money, distance, time was all against me; I felt all was over, took to frigging, which, added to my vexation, made me ill. What the doctor thought I don't know; he said I was suffering from nervous exhaustion, asked my mother if I was steady and kept good hours. My mother said I was the quietest and best of sons, as innocent as a child, and that I was suffering from severe study — she had long thought I should; the fact being that for four months I had scarcely looked at a book, excepting when she was near me, and had, when not thinking of Charlotte, spent my time in writing baudy words and sketching cunts and pricks with pen and ink.
Thus I lost my virginity, and took one; thus ended my first love * or lust; which will you call it? I call it love, for I was fond of the girl, and she of me. Some might call it a seduction, but thinking of it after this lapse of years, I do not.
It was only the natural result of two people being thrown together, both young, full of hot blood, and eager to gratify their sexual curiosity; there was Do blame to either, we were made to do it, and did but illustrate the truth of the old song, “Cock and cunt will come together, check them as you may,” and point to the wisdom of never leaving a young male and female alone together, if they were not wanted to copulate.
In all respects we were as much like man and wife as circumstances would let us be. We poked and poked, whenever we got a chance; we divided our money, if I had none, she spent her wages; when I had it, I paid for her boots and clothes, a present in the usual sense of the term I never gave her; our sexual pleasures were of the simplest, the old fashioned way was what we followed, and altogether it was a natural, virtuous, wholesome, connexion, but the world will not agree with me on that point.
One thing strikes me as remarkable now: the audacity with which I went to a baudy house; all the rest seems to have and followed as naturally as possible. What a lovely recollection it isl nothing in my career since is so lovely as our life then was; scarce a trace of what may be called lasciviousness was in it; had the priest blest it by the bands of matrimony, it would have been called the chaste pleasure of love and affection — as the priest had nothing to do with it, it will be called, I suppose, beastly immorality. I have often wondered if her husband found out that she was not a virgin, and, if not, whether it was owing to some skill of hers, or to his ignorance? I heard afterwards that they lived happily.