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 gonorrhœa, 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.