Читать книгу Sexuality, Magic & Perversion - Francis King - Страница 11

In a later chapter I shall show how Richard Payne Knight and Thomas Wright were responsible for the birth of a dilettante interest in the Priapic worship and sexual magic of ancient and mediaeval Europe; but it was that extraordinary personality Edward Sellon—soldier, coach-driver, fencing-master and pornographer—who first created any widespread interest in the sexual practices of Indian Tantricism. I use the phrase “widespread interest” of course, in only a comparative way; a small minority of English and French scholars seem to have had an interest in the sexual aspects of Indian religion as early as the eighteenth century, and Sellon’s real achievement was to extend this interest and to give both the (admittedly tiny) sexually-emancipated minority of the middle-classes and sexually-orientated occultists some awareness of the sexual-religious-magical tradition of left-handed Tantricism. Sellon’s Annotations Upon the Sacred Writings of the Hindus did not appear until 1865, the year before his death, but his life illustrates so well both the oddness of character and the contempt for the generally accepted nineteenth-century social mores that were probably essential for anyone undertaking a serious study of Tantricism at that period, that I think it worth while recounting it in some detail before examining the Annotations.

Sellon was born in 1818 and was “the son of a gentleman of moderate fortune whom I lost when quite a child”.¹ Sellon adds that as a consequence of this early bereavement he was “designed from the first for the army” and, when still only sixteen years of age, he went to India where, on October 27th, 1834, he was gazetted as an Ensign in the 4th Madras Native Infantry. Sellon seems to have enjoyed his ten years in India, taking a more than average interest in native social, religious, and sexual life—particularly the latter. He wrote:

“I now commenced a regular course of fucking with native women. The usual charge for the general run of them is two rupees. For five, you may have the handsomest Mohammedan girls, and any of the high-caste women who follow the trade of a courtesan. The ‘fivers’ are a very different set of people from their frail sisterhood in European countries; they do not drink, they are scrupulously cleanly in their persons, they are sumptuously dressed, they wear the most costly jewels in profusion, they are well educated and sing sweetly, accompanying their voices on the viol de gamba, a sort of guitar, they generally decorate their hair with clusters of clematis, or the sweet scented bilwa flowers entwined with pearls or diamonds. They understand in perfection all the arts and wiles of love, are capable of gratifying any tastes, and in face and figure they are unsurpassed by any women in the world.

“They have one custom that seems singular to a European, they not only shave the Mons Veneris, but take a clean sweep underneath it, so you glance at their hard, full and enchanting breasts, handsome beyond compare, and fancy you have got hold of some unfledged girl. The Rajpootanee girls pluck out the hairs as they appear with a pair of tweezers, as the ancient Greek women did, and this I think a very preferable process to the shaving.

“It is impossible to describe the enjoyment I experienced in the arms of these syrens. I have had English, French, German and Polish women of all grades of society since, but never, never did they bear a comparison with those salacious, succulent houris of the far East.”

As well as all these commercial sexual transactions Sellon seems to have devoted a considerable amount of effort to seducing such married and unmarried European women as were available and to writing Herbert Breakspear, a sentimental novel with an Indian setting.²

On the whole Sellon seems to have taken pleasure in almost all his Indian experiences—even his duel with a fellow-Englishman, inevitably, over a woman, does not seem to have caused him undue distress—and it is in every way understandable that, when he came home to England on leave in 1843, he was surprised and annoyed to find that his mother had not only selected a suitable prospective bride for him but had more or less arranged the marriage. He seems to have had a healthy Victorian respect for money, however, and cheered up when he discovered that his mother’s choice was not only good looking but the heiress to a fortune, resigned his commission³ and got married.

The first few months of married life were spent in Paris, and seem to have gone well enough, but on the couple’s return to England early in 1845 Sellon was shocked to discover that his wife had very little capital of her own and, still worse, that his parents-in-law were only prepared to make an allowance of a beggarly £400 a year! Feeling thoroughly cheated Sellon abandoned his wife and returned to live with, and no doubt on, his mother at her home in Bruton Street, London. The separation lasted two years, but Sellon kept himself fully occupied by keeping a mistress at “a little suburban villa” and by seducing his mother’s fourteen year old parlour-maid, “a sweet pretty creature” who had “received a pretty good education, and was not at all like a servant, either in manners or appearance”.

After their reconciliation Sellon and his wife continued to live with his mother but soon began to have violent disagreements. The worst of these, which led to Sellon being confined to bed for a month, was precipitated by the young Mrs. Sellon’s discovery of the affair between her husband and Emma, the previously mentioned “sweet pretty creature”. On this occasion it seems to have been Mrs. Sellon who first took refuge in violence, for she gave her husband, as he himself said, “such a tremendous and violent box on my right ear as nearly to knock me out of my chair”. Sellon goes on to record his reactions:

“I very calmly flung the remainder of my cigar under the grate, and seizing both her wrists with a grasp of iron, forced her into an armchair. ‘Now you little devil,’ said I, ‘you sit down there, and I give you my honour, I will hold you thus, till you abjectly and most humbly beg for mercy, and ask my pardon for the gross insult you have inflicted on me.’

“ ‘Insult! think of the insult you have put upon me, you vile wretch, to demean yourself with a little low bred slut like that!’ and struggling violently, she bit the backs of my hands until they were covered with blood, and kicked my shins till she barked them.

“ ‘I say, my dear,’ said I, ‘did you ever see Shakespeare’s play of Taming the Shrew.’

“No answer.

“ ‘Well, my angel, I’m going to tame you.’ She renewed her bites and kicks, and called me all the miscreants and vile scoundrels under the sun. I continued to hold her in a vice of iron. Thus we continued till six o’clock.

“ ‘If it is your will and pleasure to expose yourself to the servants,’ said I, ‘pray do, I have no sort of objection, but I will just observe that John will come in presently to clear away the luncheon and lay the cloth for dinner.’ A torrent of abuse was the only answer.

“ ‘You brute,’ she said, ‘you have bruised my wrists black and blue.’

“ ‘Look at my hands, my precious angel, and my shins are in still worse condition.’

“By and by there was a rap at the door, ‘Come in,’ said I. John appeared—‘Take no notice of us, John, but attend to your business.’

“John cleared away the luncheon and laid the cloth for dinner. Exit John.

“ ‘Oh, Edward, you do hurt my wrists so.’

“ ‘My ear and face are still burning with the blow you gave me, my hands are torn to pieces with your tiger teeth, and will not be fit to be seen for a month, and as to my shins, my drawers are saturated with blood,’ said I.

“ ‘Let me go! let me go directly, wretch!’ and again she bit, kicked and struggled.

“ ‘Listen to me,’ said I, ‘there are 365 days in the year, but by God! if there were 3,605, I hold you till you apologise in the manner and way I told you, and even then, I shall punish you likewise for the infamous way you have behaved.’ She sulked for another half hour, but did not bite or kick anymore. I never relaxed my grasp, or the sternness of my countenance. My hands were streaming with blood, some of the veins were opened, her lap was full of blood, it was a frightful scene.

“At length she said, ‘Edward, I humbly ask your pardon for the shameful way I have treated you, I apologise for the blow I gave you, I forgive you for any injury you have done me, I promise to be docile and humble in future, and I beg—I beg,’ she sobbed, ‘your forgiveness.’

“I released her hands, pulled the bell violently, told John to run immediately for Dr. Monson (the family physician), and fell fainting on the floor. I had lost nearly a pint of blood from the wounds inflicted by the panther. When I recovered my senses, I was lying on the sofa, my hands enveloped in strapping plaister and bandages, as were also my shins. Emma and my wife knelt at my feet crying, while Monson kept pouring port wine down my throat. ‘Could you eat a little,’ said he kindly.

“ ‘Gad, yes,’ said I, ‘I’m awfully hungry, bring dinner, John.’

“They all stared, it was ten o’clock; however, dinner was served, though sadly overdone, having been put back three hours. John had only laid covers for two, presuming my wife and I would dine tête-à-tête. I told him to bring two more. Monson and my wife raised their eyebrows—‘Doctor, stay and dine with us, call it supper if you like; Emma, I desire you to seat yourself.’ She made towards the door. ‘Augusta,’ said I, addressing my wife, ‘persuade Emma to dine with us, I will it.’

“ ‘You had better stay,’ said my wife, with a sweet smile. Emma hesitated a moment, and then came and sat beside me.”

Dinner duly took place—and a very odd dinner it must have been, for Dr. Monson, who seems to have been almost as eccentric a character as his patient, took it upon himself to lecture Mrs. Sellon on the wickedness of losing one’s temper with one’s husband. No doubt neither Mrs. Sellon nor her husband gave Dr. Monson’s discourse the full attention it deserved, for while it was being delivered Sellon was otherwise occupied; he describes himself as having:

“… one of my bandaged hands up Emma’s clothes while he was saying this, and was feeling her lovely young cunny. It was nuts to crack for me. Dr. Monson gone, I rang the bell, ‘John, you and the servants can go to bed,’ said I. John cast an enquiring glance at Madam and Emma, bowed and retired.

“I asked Emma for my cigar-case, as for Augusta, I did not notice her. I lit a cigar, and drawing Emma on my knee, sat before the fire and smoked. ‘You can go to bed, Augusta,’ said I, as if she was the servant and Emma the wife, ‘I shall not want you any more.’ The humbled woman took her candle, and wishing us both good night, went to bed.

“ ‘Oh, Edward,’ said poor little Emma, ‘what a dreadful woman she is, she nearly killed you, you nearly bled to death! Dr. Monson said two of the great veins at the back of each hand had been opened by her teeth, and that if she had not given in when she did, you would have bled to death.’

“ ‘But here I am all alive, my sweet.’

“ ‘But you won’t have me tonight, mind.’

“ ‘Won’t I though!’

“ ‘Now, Edward! pray don’t, you are too weak!’

“ ‘Then this will give me strength,’ said I, and I drank at a draught a tumbler of Carbonell’s old Port. I made her drink another glass, and then we lay down on the couch together. I fucked her twice, and then in each other’s arms we fell asleep.

“It was six o’clock the next morning when I woke up. I aroused Emma and told her I thought she had better go to her own room, before the servants were about; my hands were very painful, so arranging with her when and where she should next meet me, I went up stairs to bed. My wife was fast asleep, I held the candle close to the bed and looked at her, she was lying on her back, her hands thrown over her head. She looked so beautiful, and her large, firm breasts rose and fell so voluptuously, that I began to be penetrated with some sentiments of remorse for my infidelities. I crept into bed and lay down beside her. I soon fell asleep. I might have slumbered some two hours, I was aroused by being kissed very lovingly. I was sensible that a pair of milky arms clasped me, and that heaving breast was pressed to mine. I soon became aware of something more than this which was going on under the bed-clothes. I opened my eyes and fixed them upon the ravisher! It was Augusta. She blushed at being caught, but did not release me. I remained passive in her arms. My hands I had lost the use of; inflamation had set in in the night, I felt very feverish, in an hour more I was delirious; I became alarmingly ill.”⁴

Throughout his illness Sellon was nursed by the two women, but upon his recovery he rather ungraciously dismissed the maid and entered upon another brief period of domesticity with Augusta. This ended when, almost inevitably, yet another cast-off mistress reappeared upon the scene. Shortly afterwards Sellon’s personal circumstances became ever more difficult, for his mother’s income was sharply reduced as a consequence of the embezzlement of a large part of her capital by that standby of Victorian novelists, a defaulting solicitor. For the first time in his life Sellon became in real need of money and took a job as driver of the mail-coach that ran between London and Cambridge.⁵ He seems to have been surprisingly successful at his new occupation, earning about three hundred pounds a year and holding down the job until the opening of the London-Cambridge railway made mail-coach and driver alike redundant. Comparatively unworried by this setback Sellon set up as a fencing-master in London—it is clear from contemporary references to this phase of his life that he was a competent, possibly even a brilliant, swordsman.

Somehow or other Sellon’s wife traced him to his fencing-rooms—he could never discover how—and yet another reconciliation took place. Augusta seems to have decided that her husband was better removed from the temptation of London and whisked him away to “a charming cottage she had … in a remote hamlet, not a hundred miles from Winchester” where for three years the couple enjoyed a quiet rural existence. Sellon himself seems to have been puzzled as to how he endured the boredom of country life for so long, but I suspect that he did not greatly care where or how he lived as long as someone else was meeting the bills. In any case Mrs. Sellon took good care to provide for her husband’s needs, both sexual and sporting. He noted approvingly:

“Augusta would strip naked, place herself in any attitude, let me gamahuche⁶ her, would gamahuche in her turn, indulged all my whimsies, followed me about like a faithful dog—obtained good shooting for me in the season, and a good mount if I would hunt.”

This rustic idyll—a strange mixture of Ovid and Virgil—was brought to an end by the birth of a son. Sellon was completely devoid of normal paternal feeling and his morbid jealousy of his infant rival was comic in its fury:

“… matters became worse, everything was neglected for the young usurper. My comforts all disappeared and at length I became so disgusted, that I left her … going up to town …”

For some months Sellon enjoyed the delights of London, occupying himself with gambling and a complex series of fornications, but he was then compelled to return to his wife by an elderly relative, a wealthy nobleman, from whom he hoped one day to inherit something. Sellon’s angry description of the circumstances leading up to this forced reconciliation makes extremely amusing reading, although it was clearly not intended to do so! He wrote:

“But in six months this woman began to feel certain motions of nature, which told her there were other joys besides the pleasure of spoiling her breasts to give suck to her brat, and she wanted to see her spouse again. She was virtuous, was this woman, so ought to have been a crown to her husband … but let that pass.

“She came up to Town, and called on the Earl. She was all pathos and meekness, of course. She told her ‘sad tale’. My relative was moved, a ‘woman in tears’ is more eloquent with some people, than ‘the woman in white!’ I received from my relative a very peremptory letter from this man; it would not do to offend him; I consented to live with her again.”

In the circumstances it is, perhaps, not surprising that this, the last attempt at cohabitation did not long endure. The final rupture came when Augusta found her husband engaged in teaching some young school-girls what he chose to call, with untypical coyness, hide-and-seek.

Once more in London Sellon supported himself by teaching fencing, by acting as guide (and, one is inclined to suspect, as pimp) on continental tours, and by writing hack-pornography for Dugdale and Hotten, England’s leading publishers of obscene books and prints. While the literary quality of these last-mentioned effusions is not particularly high it does seem to be a little better than the general run of nineteenth-century pornography. The following extract from The New Epicurean or The Delights of Sex Facetiously and Philosophically Considered in Graphic Letters Addressed to Young Ladies of Quality⁷ is typical:

“But Phoebe was not listening; she had seated herself on a truss of hay, and with her eyes fixed on the again stiffening pizzle of the Stallion, had fallen into a reverie. I guessed what she was thinking about, so seating myself by her side, I stole a hand up her clothes, she trembled, but did not resist, I felt her firm plump thighs, I explored higher, I toucher her feather; soft and silky as a mouses skin was the moss in which I entwined my fingers. I opened the lips, heavens! Could I believe my senses. She was spending, and her shift was quite wet. Whether it was accident or not, I cannot say, but she had dropped one of her hands on my lap.

“My truncheon had long been stiff as iron; this additional aggravation had such an effect that with a start, away flew too material buttons, and Jack sprang out of his box into her hand. At this stage she gave a little scream, and snatching away her own hand, at the same time pushed away mine, and jumping up, began smoothing down her rumpled clothes, and with great vehemence exclaiming: ‘Oh, la, fie, sir: doantee doantee, Oh I’m afeard’ etc., etc.

“But I was not going to lose such a chance, and began to soothe her and talk, until at length we got back to the same position again. I grew more bold, I kissed her eyes, and her bosom; I handled her lovely buttocks; I frigged her clitoris—her eyes sparkled; she seized upon that weapon which had at first so frightened her and the next minute I had flung her back on the hay, and was frigging away at her maidenhead, but she made a terrible outcry and struggled most violently. Fortunately Mrs. Jukes had a convenient attack of deafness, and heard nothing; so that after a good deal of trouble, I found myself in possession of the fortress, up to the hilt. Once in, I knew well how to plant my touches, and ere long a soft languor pervaded all her limbs, pleasure succeeded pain. She no longer repulsed me, but sobbing on my shoulder, stopped now and then to kiss my cheek.

“Her climax came at length, and then she threw all modesty aside; entwined her lovely legs around my back, twisted, wriggled, bit, pinched, and kissing me with ardour, seemed to wake up to the new life she had found.”

As for Sellon’s continental tours, the financial and sexual complexities of the last of them, described in the following letter dated March 4th, 1866, are probably typical of them all:⁸

“You will be very much surprised no doubt to find that I am again in England. But there are so many romances in real life that you will perhaps not be so much astonished at what I am going to relate after all.

“You must know then that on our trip to the continent (Egypt it appears was a hoax of which I was to be the victim), we were to be accompanied by a lady! I did not name this to you at the time, because I was the confidant of my friend.

“On Monday evening I sat for a mortal hour in his brougham near the Wandsworth Road Railway Station waiting for the ‘fair but frail’, who had done me the honour to send me a beautiful little pink note charmingly scented with violets, in which the dear creature begged me to be punctual—and most punctual I was I assure you, but alas! she kept me waiting a whole hour, during which I smoked no end of cigars.

“At length she appeared, imagine my surprise! I! who had expected some swell mot or other, soon found myself seated beside the most beautiful young lady I ever beheld, so young that I could not help exclaiming, ‘Why my dear you are a mere baby! how old may I be permitted to ask?’ She gave me a box on the ear, exclaiming, ‘Baby indeed! do you know sir, I am fifteen!!’ ‘And you love Mr. Scarsdale very much I suppose?’ said I as a feeler. ‘Oh! comme ça!’ she rejoined. ‘Is he going to marry you at Vienna, or Egypt?’ I asked. ‘Who’s talking of Egypt?’ said she. ‘Why I am I hope my dear, our dear friend invited me to accompany him up to the third Cataract, and this part of the affair, you I mean my dear, never transpired till half-an-hour before I got that pretty little note of yours.’ ‘Stuff!’ she said, ‘he was laughing at you, we go no farther than Vienna!’ ‘Good!’ said I, ‘all’s fair in love and war’ and I gave her a kiss! She made no resistance, so I thrust my hand up her clothes without more ado. ‘Who are you my dear?’ I enquired. ‘The daughter of a merchant in the city who lives at Clapham,’ said she. ‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ I ejaculated. ‘I am coming out next summer,’ said she. ‘That is to say you were coming out next summer,’ said I. ‘Well I shall be married then you know,’ said the innocent. ‘Stuff!’ said I in my turn. ‘How stuff?’ she asked angrily, ‘do you know he has seduced me?’ ‘No my angel, I did not know it, but I thought as much—but don’t be deceived, a man of Mr. Scarsdale’s birth won’t marry a little cit like you.’ She burst into tears. I was silent. ‘Have you known him long?’ she asked. ‘Some years,’ said I. ‘And you really think he won’t marry me?’ ‘Sure of it, my dear child.’ ‘Very well, I’ll be revenged, look here, I like you!’ ‘Do you though! by Jove!’ ‘Yes,’ and,—I give you my word I was into her in a moment! What bliss it was! None who have not entered the seventh heaven can fathom it! But alas! we drew near the station, and I only got one poke complete. She pressed my hand as I helped her out of the Brougham at the Chatham and Dover Station, as much as to say ‘you shall have me again’. Scarsdale was there to receive her. Not to be tedious, off we started by the Mail, and duly reached Dover, went on board the boat, reached Calais, off again by train. Damned a chance did I get till we were within ten or twelve versts of Vienna. Then my dear friend fell asleep, God bless him! The two devils of passengers who had travelled with us all the way from Calais had alighted at the last station—here was a chance!! We lost not an instant. She sat in my lap, her stern towards me! God! what a fuck it was, ‘See Rome and die!’ said I in a rapture. This over we were having what I call a straddle fuck, when lo! Scarsdale woke up! I made a desperate effort to throw her on the opposite seat, but it was no go, he had seen us. A row of course ensued, and we pitched into one another with hearty good will. He called me a rascal for tampering with his fiancée, I called him a scoundrel for seducing so young a girl! and we arrived at Vienna! ‘Damn it,’ said I as I got out of the train with my lip cut and nose bleeding, ‘here’s a cursed piece of business.’ As for Scarsdale who received from me a pretty black eye, he drove off with the sulky fair to a hotel in the Leopoldstadt, while I found a more humble one in the Graben near St. Stephen’s Cathedral, determined, as I had £15 in my pocket to stay a few days and see all I could. But as you will find in Murray a better account of what I did see than I can give you, I will not trouble you with it. I got a nice little note the next day from the fair Julia appointing a meeting the next day at the Volksgarten. How she eluded the vigilance of her gallant I don’t know, but there she was sure enough in a cab—and devilish nice cabs they are in this city of Vienna, I can tell you. So we had a farewell poke and arranged for a rendezvous in England, and the next day I started and here I am, having spent all my money!

1. Drawings of coffer lids which nineteenth-century antiquarians supposed to be evidence of the sexual heresies of the Templars (see chapter 9)

2. The last degeneration of Priapus as the ithyphallic god of the witches (from a seventeenth-century broadsheet, The Merry Pranks of Robin Good-fellow).

“So there’s the finish of my tour up the Nile to the third Cataract, to Nubia, Abu Sinnel (sic), etcetera. It is very wrong I know, I deplore it! but you also know that what’s bred in the bone, &c., so adieu, and believe me