worldly-wise expression.
"Let me tell you something, my dear. I think you are wise enough to take it in good spirit. You must learn that women know very little about men. You take it for granted that a handsome fellow must have a beautiful girl. That may be true of some of them. But not of all. And certainly not of Masham. Look at your dogs and cats. Do the males care about beauty? They do not even care about age. A mastiff will run after any old bitch in heat. You will forgive an elder cousin his plain language. Masham would have the same rapture with you that he would have with a beauty such as Milady Somerset."
I was shocked, but not angered, by his crudeness. There was something of Pandarus in the way the idea of Masham's brutal and indiscriminate masculinity seemed to tickle him. I recalled now that he was always placing his hand on Masham's sleeve or tapping him on the shoulder. But the effect of his words was still devastating. The notion that in submitting to my would-be lover I might be giving as well as receiving pleasure undermined the last pillar of the wobbly pier of my defenses.
Thus it happened that Masham achieved access to my chamber and person. But the reader may still wonder, despite my preamble, why, at the age of twenty-seven, with a reputation for modesty and good character, and having viewed the antics of the great world from a privileged position, I should have succumbed quite so swiftly to the advances of so typical a seducer.
I have stated my sexual inexperience, my plainness and my resignation to the prospect of a life in which I had no hope of enjoying the rites of love. These were elements in my undoing, but they would not in themselves have overcome my character. What did this, I am convinced, was the habit of daydreaming, of erotic fantasizing, which had occupied so many of my idle thoughts during the long hours alone in my chamber, or strolling in the royal gardens, or simply sitting by the Queen while she read or played cards or dozed. It was the fact that Masham happened to fit so neatly into these that enabled him to prevail in the game that I was at all times perfectly aware he was playing.
And there was yet another factor. I loved plays, both tragedies and comedies, and Mr. Congreve was my particular passion. I was fascinated by his heroes, those superb, foppish peacocks, so magnificently virile despite their airs and drawls, who strutted before the hens, declaiming their "worship" with images of "flames" and "sighs" and "deaths." Their love was like their spread tails, a dazzle of color intended to hypnotize the poor hens, who had only their bit of wit to protect them. The female of the species had two choices in the stage world of Congreve, both humiliating: to yield at the altar and become, soon enough, a betrayed spouse, or to yield without sanction of the altar and become a whore.
It was the game of the male to entice his victim into the second alternative. Marriage, unless it was a question of dowry, was only a last resort. The peculiar fascination of the game, to my eyes, was that it was played with such brutal candor. The words of passion were intended to inflame, not to fool. Women were like the captives of ancient Rome, flung into the arena with weapons not quite equal to the fangs and claws of the beasts loosed upon them, with the choice of being killed or surviving only to be made to fight again. The gallant who took a pinch of snuff as he drawled to Amarinta that he was dying in her displeasure was really telling her that she was already a whore in heart who might as well become one in fact. And in my dreams and fantasies I would be seized by the degrading urge to give in, to become a whore,
his
whore, to be trampled upon, used and flung away on the trash heap, where I belonged.
And, indeed, my triumphant lover entered into my fantasy quite as if it had been reality. He treated me as the French monarch might have treated a conquered province in Germany. He never even
"Let me tell you something, my dear. I think you are wise enough to take it in good spirit. You must learn that women know very little about men. You take it for granted that a handsome fellow must have a beautiful girl. That may be true of some of them. But not of all. And certainly not of Masham. Look at your dogs and cats. Do the males care about beauty? They do not even care about age. A mastiff will run after any old bitch in heat. You will forgive an elder cousin his plain language. Masham would have the same rapture with you that he would have with a beauty such as Milady Somerset."
I was shocked, but not angered, by his crudeness. There was something of Pandarus in the way the idea of Masham's brutal and indiscriminate masculinity seemed to tickle him. I recalled now that he was always placing his hand on Masham's sleeve or tapping him on the shoulder. But the effect of his words was still devastating. The notion that in submitting to my would-be lover I might be giving as well as receiving pleasure undermined the last pillar of the wobbly pier of my defenses.
Thus it happened that Masham achieved access to my chamber and person. But the reader may still wonder, despite my preamble, why, at the age of twenty-seven, with a reputation for modesty and good character, and having viewed the antics of the great world from a privileged position, I should have succumbed quite so swiftly to the advances of so typical a seducer.
I have stated my sexual inexperience, my plainness and my resignation to the prospect of a life in which I had no hope of enjoying the rites of love. These were elements in my undoing, but they would not in themselves have overcome my character. What did this, I am convinced, was the habit of daydreaming, of erotic fantasizing, which had occupied so many of my idle thoughts during the long hours alone in my chamber, or strolling in the royal gardens, or simply sitting by the Queen while she read or played cards or dozed. It was the fact that Masham happened to fit so neatly into these that enabled him to prevail in the game that I was at all times perfectly aware he was playing.
And there was yet another factor. I loved plays, both tragedies and comedies, and Mr. Congreve was my particular passion. I was fascinated by his heroes, those superb, foppish peacocks, so magnificently virile despite their airs and drawls, who strutted before the hens, declaiming their "worship" with images of "flames" and "sighs" and "deaths." Their love was like their spread tails, a dazzle of color intended to hypnotize the poor hens, who had only their bit of wit to protect them. The female of the species had two choices in the stage world of Congreve, both humiliating: to yield at the altar and become, soon enough, a betrayed spouse, or to yield without sanction of the altar and become a whore.
It was the game of the male to entice his victim into the second alternative. Marriage, unless it was a question of dowry, was only a last resort. The peculiar fascination of the game, to my eyes, was that it was played with such brutal candor. The words of passion were intended to inflame, not to fool. Women were like the captives of ancient Rome, flung into the arena with weapons not quite equal to the fangs and claws of the beasts loosed upon them, with the choice of being killed or surviving only to be made to fight again. The gallant who took a pinch of snuff as he drawled to Amarinta that he was dying in her displeasure was really telling her that she was already a whore in heart who might as well become one in fact. And in my dreams and fantasies I would be seized by the degrading urge to give in, to become a whore,
his
whore, to be trampled upon, used and flung away on the trash heap, where I belonged.
And, indeed, my triumphant lover entered into my fantasy quite as if it had been reality. He treated me as the French monarch might have treated a conquered province in Germany. He never even
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