I heard them then talking, and laughing loudly, thru the partition.
"They are talking about me, oh if they tell mamma, oh! what did I do it
for?" Trembling with fear, I jumped out of bed, opened my door, and
went to theirs listening; theirs was ajar,--heard: "right up between my
thighs, felt it! he must have felt it; ah! ah! ah! would you ever
have thought the little beast would have done such a thing." They both
laughed heartily. "Did you see his little thing?" said one. "Shut the
door, it's not shut;"--breathless I got back to my room, and into bed,
and laying there, heard them through the partition roaring with laughter
again.
That is the first time in my life, I recollect passing an all but
sleepless night. The dread of being told about, and dread at what I
had done, kept me awake. I heard the two women talking for a long time.
Mixed with my dread was a wonder at the hair, and the soft, moist feel,
I had had for an instant, on some part of my hand. I knew I had felt the
hidden part of a female, where the piddle came from, and that is all
I did think about it, that I know of, I have no recollection of a lewd
sensation, but of a curious sort of delight only.
It must have been from this time, that my curiosity about the female
form strengthened, but there was nothing sensual in it. I was fond of
kissing, for my mother remarked it; when a female cousin, or any female
kissed me, I would throw my arms round them, and keep on kissing. My
aunts used to laugh, my mother corrected me, and told me it was rude. I
used to say to the servants, kiss me. One day I heard my godfather say:
"Walter knows a pretty girl from an ugly one doesn't he?"
I had a dread of meeting the governess, at breakfast, watched her, and
saw her laugh at her sister, I watched my mother for some days after,
and at length said to the governess, who had punished me for something.
"Don't tell mamma." "I have nothing to tell about, Walter," she
replied, "and don't know what you mean." I began to tell her what was on
my mind. "What's the child talking about, you are dreaming, some stupid
boy has been putting things into your head, your papa will thrash
you, if you talk like that." "Why you came and tickled me," said I. "I
tickled you a little when I put your light out," said she, "be quiet."
I felt stupified, and suppose the affair must have passed away from
my mind for a time, but I told my cousin Fred about it afterwards. He
thought I must have been dreaming, and I began to wonder if it really
had occurred, I never thought much about it until I began to recall my
childhood for this history.
I must have been twelve years old, when I went to an uncle's in Surrey,
and became a close friend of my cousin Fred, a very devil from his
cradle, and of whom much more will be told: before then I had only seen
him at intervals. We were then allowed, and it seems to me not before
that time, to go out by ourselves. We talked boyish baudiness. "Ain't
you green," said he, "a girl's hole isn't called a cock, it's a cunt,
they fuck with it," and then he told me all he knew. I don't think I had
heard that before, but can't be sure.
From that time a new train of ideas came into my head. I had a vague
idea, though not a belief, that a cock and cunt, were not made for
pissing only. Fred treated me as a simpleton in these matters, and was
always calling me an ass; I have quite a painful recollection of my
inferiority to him, in such things, and of begging him to instruct me.
"They make children that way," said Fred. "You come up and we will ask
the old nurse, where children come from, and she'll say 'out of the
parsley-bed,' but it's all a lie." We went and asked her in a casual
sort of way. She replied, "the parsley-bed," and laughed. The nurse at
my house told me the same, when I asked afterwards about my mother's
last baby. "Ain't they liars?" Fred remarked to me, "it comes out of
their cunts, and it's made by fucking."
We both desired to see women piddling, though both must have before seen
them at it often enough. Walking near the market-town with him just at
the outskirts, and looking up a side-road, we saw a pedler woman
squat down and piss. We stopped short and looked at her: she was a
short-petticoated, thick-legged, middle-aged woman; the piss ran off in
a copious stream, and there we stood grinning. "Be off, be off, what are
you standing grinning at, yer dam'd young fools," cried the woman, "be
off, or I'll heave a stone at yer," and she pissed on. We moved a few
steps back, but keeping our face towards her, Fred stooped, and put his
head down. "I can see it coming," said he jeeringly. He was rude from
his infancy, bold in baudiness to the utmost, had the impudence of the
devil. The stream ceased, the woman rose up swearing, took up a big
flint and threw it at us. "I'll tell on yer," she cried. "I know yer,
wait till I see yer again." She had a large basket of crockery for sale,
it was put down in the main-road at the angle; she had just turned round
into the side lane to piss. We ran off, and when well away, turned
round and shouted at her, "I saw your cunt," Fred bawled out;--she
flung another stone. Fred took up one, threw it, and it crashed into the
crockery, the woman began to chase us, off we bolted across the fields
home. She could not follow us that way; it was an eventful day for us.
I recollect feeling full of envy at Fred's having seen her cunt.
Though writing now, and having in my mind's eye, exactly how the woman
squatted, and the way her petticoats hung, I am sure he never did see
it; it was brag when he said he had, but we were always talking about
girls' cunts, the desire to see one was great, and I then believed that
he had seen the pedlar woman's.
Then one of Fred's companions showed us a bawdy picture, it was
coloured. I wondered at the cunt being a long sort of gash, I had an
idea that it was round, like an arse-hole. Fred told his friend I was
an ass, but I could not get the idea of a cunt, not being a round hole
quite out of my head, until I had fucked a woman. We were all anxious
to get the picture, and tossed up for it, but neither I nor Fred got it,
some other boy did.
Soon after that, Fred came to stop with us and our talk was always about
women's privates, our curiosity became intense. I had a little sister
about nine months old, who was in the nursery. Fred incited me to look
at her cunt, if I could manage it. The two nurses came down in turns, to
the servants dinner. I was often in the nursery, and soon after Fred's
suggestion, was there one day, when the oldest nurse said: "Stop here,
master Walter, while I go downstairs, for a couple of minutes, Mary (the
other nurse) will be up directly, and don't make a noise." My little
sister was lying on the bed asleep. "Yes, I'll wait." Down went nurse,
leaving the door open; quick as lightning, I threw up the infant's
clothes, saw her little slit, and put my finger quite gently on it, she
was laying on her back most conveniently. I pulled one leg away to see
better, the child awakened and began crying, I heard footsteps and had
barely time to pull down her clothes, when the under nursemaid came in.
I only had a momentary glimpse, of the outside of the little quim, for
I was not a minute in the room with the child by myself altogether, and
was fearful of being caught all the time I was looking.
There must have been something in my face, for the nursemaid said: "What
it the matter, what have you been doing to the baby?" Nothing. "Yes,
you are coloring up, now tell me." "Nothing. I have done nothing." "You
wakened your sister." "No, I have not." The girl laid hold of me, and
gave me a little shake. "I'll tell your mamma if you don't tell me, what
is it now?" "No, I have done nothing, I was looking out of the window
when she began to cry." "You're telling a story, I see you are," said
the nursemaid; and off I went, after being impudent to her.
I told Fred and he tried the same dodge, but don't recollect whether
he succeeded or not. His sisters were somewhat older, and we began to
scheme how to see their cunts, when I was on a visit to his mother's
(my aunt,) which was to come off in the holidays. The look of the little
child's cunt, as I described it, convinced him that the picture was
correct, and that a cunt was a long slit, and not a round hole. That
cast doubt on males putting their pricks into them, and we clung somehow
to the idea of a round hole, and we quarrelled about it.
It must have been about this time, that I was walking with my father,
and read something that was written with chalk, on the walls. I asked
him what it meant. He said he did not know, that none but low people,
and blackguards wrote on walls; and it was not worth while noticing such
things. I was conscious that I had done wrong somehow, but did not know
exactly what. When I went out, which I was now allowed to do for short
distances by myself, I copied what was on the walls, to tell Fred, it
was foul, baudy language of some sort, but the only thing we understood
at all, was the word cunt.
Just then, being out with some boys, we saw two dogs fucking. I have
no recollection of seeing dogs doing that before. We closed round them,
yelling with delight as they stuck rump to rump, then one boy said that
was what men and women did, and I asked, did they stick together so, a
boy replied that they did; others denied it, and all the remainder of
the day, some of us discussed this; the impression left on my mind is,
that it appeared to be very nasty; but it seemed at the same time to
confirm me in the belief, that men put their pricks up into women's
holes, about which I seemed at that time to have grave doubts.
After this time my recollection of events is clearer, and I can tell not
only what took place, but better what I heard, said, and thought.