MY SECRET LIFE
gether. There was one, I recollect, who rubbed her lips into mine, till I felt them on my teeth, but of what she was like, I have no recollection, and I did not like her doing that to me.
My curiosity became stronger, I got bolder, told servants I meant to see them wash themselves, and used to wait inside by bed-room, till I heard one of them come up to dress. I knew the time each usually went to her bedroom for that purpose, the person most in my way was the nurse: she after a time left, and mother nursed her own children. “Let’s see your neck; do, there is a dear”, I would say. “Nonsense, what next?” “Do, dear, there is no harm; I only want to see as much as ladies show at balls.” I wheedled one to stand at the door in her petticoats and show her neck across the bedroom lobby. The stays were high and queerly made in those days, the chemises pulled over the top of them like flaps. One or two let me kiss their necks, a girl one day said to my entreaties, “Well, only for a minute”, and easing up one breast, she showed me the nipple, I threw my arms around her, buried my face in her neck and kissed it. “I like the smell of your breast and flesh”, said I. She was a biggish woman, and I dare say I smelt breasts and armpits together; but whatever the compound, it was delicious to me, it seemed to enervate me. The same woman, when I kissed her on the sly afterwards, let me put my nose down her neck to smell her. We were interrupted. “There is someone coming”, said she, moving away.
“What makes ladies smell so nice?” said I to my mother one day. My mother put down her work and laughed to herself. “I don’t know that they smell nice.”
—56—
