“Assuredly she is a strumpet. I saw her talking to the curate of St. Paul’s, who had promised his rector to be discreet, and run no more after the wenches, or at least that he would abstain during Easter week. But Lord! he hadn’t the patience, and on Easter Monday he spoke to his woman, and the parson saw him. When they met he told him of it, saying: ‘I saw thee speaking to a wench. Where is thy shame? Canst not refrain, at least during the holy season?’ ‘Pardon,’ he replied, ‘I did but make an appointment for next week.’”[125]
We have quoted sufficiently to show that amid this welter of words there is fruit worth the plucking. The general tone of the work, however, is coarse; if the canon desired to refer to what is not usually mentioned in the most Catholic of assemblies, he did so in the crudest language. To our age the grossness of his obscenity seems unnecessary; out of place; unpardonable. Is it so? The conversational atmosphere of a present-day smoking-room would have made de Verville blush. The old canon wrote as men in those times spoke; we of to-day write not as we speak, but as we think we ought to speak. It is this pitiful hypocrisy which blinds us to the fact that in Le Moyen de Parvenir we have some of the brightest tales and sayings ever penned by human hand.
HERE ENDS THE FIRST VOLUME
OF ANTHOLOGICA RARISSIMA:
THE WAY OF A VIRGIN:
PRINTED IN LONDON
FOR MEMBERS OF
THE BROVAN
SOCIETY IN
MCMXXII.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Schurig, in the 17th century, notes a case of this kind. C.f. his Gynæcologia, where he speaks of a girl being pregnant without losing her virginity. Vide note, p. 100 post, where further details of the life and works of this erudite physician will be found.
[2] Sir Richard Burton, (The Thousand Nights and a Night), describes how he measured in Somaliland a negro’s penis, which, when quiescent, was six inches long; this organ, however, would not increase proportionately when in erection.
[3] A celebrated Parisian courtesan used to boast, according to Mantegazza, that she had “sold her virginity” on 82 different occasions! Vide Curious Bypaths of History: Carrington: Paris, 1898, for further details on this subject.—Note by Dr. Jacobus X—.
[4] C.f. The Thousand Nights and a Night, (Sir Richard F. Burton; the privately printed and uncastrated editions), where the expression is common. “ ... He found her a pearl unpierced.” Again: “ ... went in unto the Princess and found her jewel which had been hidden, an union pearl unthridden, and a filly that none but he had ridden....” Compare, also, the French erotic slang percer (to pierce), signifying the act of sexual intercourse. (Farmer: Slang and its Analogues, p. 25, vol. 6; Vocabula Amatoria, etc.)
[5] “The Chinese ... have discovered a way of forming a new virginity when by some accident that object has gone astray. The method consists in astringent lotions applied to the parts, the effect of which so draws them together that a certain amount of vigour is required in order to pass through, the husband—on a nuptial night—being convinced that he has overcome the usual barrier. To make the illusion more complete, a leech-bite is made just inside the critical part, and the little wound is plugged with a minute pellet of vegetable tinder, with the result that the effort made by the husband to overcome the difficulty displaces the pellet and a slight flow of blood ensues.” (Curious Bypaths of History, op. cit. sup.) That this method is by no means peculiar to the Chinese is instanced by Brantôme in his Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies (Paris: Carrington, 1901: first English translation), where the genial old soldier-philosopher says:—“How clever these doctors be! for they do give women remedies to make them appear virgin and intact as they were afore.... One such especially I learned of a quack these last few days. Take leeches and apply to the privy parts, getting them to drain and suck the blood in that region. Now the leeches, in sucking, do engender and leave behind little blebs or blisters full of blood. Then when the gallant bridegroom cometh on his marriage night to give assault, he doth burst these same blisters and the blood discharging from them; the thing is all bathed in gore, to the great satisfaction of both the twain; for so ‘the honour of the citadel is saved.’”