Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book II

I have read your letter over and over again, each time with more absorbing interest.

I would be ungracious not to thank you for your offer to try and render me any little service in London, but I have absolutely nothing that I can ask you to do for me.

Before writing any of your erotic recollections, you must read the Memoirs of Casanova.

If you have never done so, I will lend you the work in French or English.

Faithfully yours,

JACKY.

December 8, 1899.

I liked the above letter, because it was a masterpiece of emptiness. I sent it to his hotel in London, but I knew he would not answer until he had seen Lilian. I fancied too, that Lilian had told him how I spoke about publishing the story of my intrigue with her, and that is why he wrote concerning his own autobiography. But I was not to be drawn.

I was musing on these things, on a dark evening about half-past five, as I was slowly going home, passing the St. Lazare railway station, when suddenly I thought I saw a ghost.

It was Trixie tripping gently along, her eyes bent on the ground.

She might not have been alone. Her husband, or a lover, might have been just behind her. I cared not; nothing could have stopped me from speaking to her just then.

I rushed towards her, and I refuse to write the sweet joy of our meeting.

Trixie cried a little, but I soon petted and soothed her, and we had a cup of tea together in a fashionable resort behind the Opéra.

And how she did talk and tell me all that had happened to her since I had last seen her!

Her husband and children had been in mourning for a near relation, and she herself had been in bed with pleurisy all through March and April; and afterwards, she had been away from Paris. during a long convalescence.

Achille was dying. His brain had given way under the strain he had put upon it by his unnatural cravings and curious practices for years, and I began to think that we have to pay dearly for all our excesses in life; be it the bed, the bottle; or even common gluttony.

Over-indulgence with women and the searching after extraordinary pleasures and uncommon delights in the higher grades of sensuality, will lead us eventually to the padded room, while the masturbating Lesbian-a menstruating fiend-who makes such inordinate use of her tender organs; sucking, injecting, checking conception, washing with all kinds of lotions, teasing and tickling, without counting natural coition, must in due course fall beneath the surgeon's knife. The medical Jack the Ripper removes ovaries and the womb itself, and leaves a female eunuch, and thereby partly demented. Lucky will she be, if only the operation is needed and succeeds, and she does not have to sojourn for a short or long period in a private asylum; her plump arms hidden in a straight waistcoat and her luxuriant tresses ruthlessly cut off.

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. December 22, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

When I was over in London, they sent me such a dreadful machine that I had no inclination to sit down and write. Otherwise it would have been my duty to thank you for the papers which followed me to London and your interesting letter of the twenty-ninth ult. which afforded me pleasant reading. I have never read the Memoirs of Casanova, in fact as you may hardly credit, the first obscene book in print ever read by me were the poems ascribed to the Earl of Rochester, among the State Papers in the British Museum, and then after perusing the Ecole des Biches, and Fanny Hill, I have been permitted to fall back on your well-stocked library. Would the Memoirs of Casanova aid me in jotting down from the tablets of memory the old, old story of how man is caught in the snare, like the bird in the net of the fowler, and how neither experience nor age can prevent him imperiling all that he otherwise held most dear and sacred, for what? For what the veriest courtesan in the street can sell him for a mere song, as part of her daily business. Analyze the whole thing and the absolute sameness sickens one from a rational point of view. When the heart beats, and the innermost soul is moved, who can say that the feeling we conjure up under the name of love is reciprocated or exists in either the passionate woman, seeking relief from the heat of animal passion, or in the man who is offering a tribute to his amour-propre by taking possession of a woman, who draws her calculations from the vanity of the man to whom she offers herself, not with the unreserved franchise of the courtesan, but with the mock modesty of the demi-vierge of the XIXth century, decided to take advantage of his weakness. What more can I say than others have said before me in writing their memoirs? I can plead that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, and the only difference is to be defined by the student of the sense of lust. That calculating philosophy and logic which makes a man in close contact with a woman recoil from actual sexual intercourse might be described by those who argue in favor of platonic love. The world taxes all such hesitation with a less polite term and Brown Sequard is advised. This may be correct when we are judged by the standard of youthful desire, but there are few of those over-ardent temperaments, who have not often wished afterwards that they had possessed the same dose of philosophy as the older man, who seeks out the courtesan, and opines that Love has very little to do with the mere connection of two bodies. I might write for a whole year without changing anything or without being able to fathom the depth of the feminine deceit. In woman there lies no truth at the bottom of the well. There are however, close friendships, and women have surrendered themselves to men to whom they have shown the deepest devotion, and for whom they are ready to give up their lives; and when you find such a one, tie her to you with every a reciprocated affection can forge. Were I to write my “erotic” recollections, the cry of “Chestnuts” and “Rats" would be raised, as I wandered through the list of clergymen's daughters, and offspring of officers who have ministered to me carnally, and gradually come to more recent experiences, proving perhaps that “There's no fool like an old fool,” and that however philosophically a man may be inclined, there is the old leaven of vanity which bright eyes, a smile, and youth know how to turn to advantage. Eve was the tempter, and her daughters have been armed to give battle successfully to man.

My dissertation is long and wearying, no doubt, so I will end it and turn to another theme more interesting, by wishing you and all yours a very merry Christmas, and renewed health and prosperity for the coming year, with plenty of health to enjoy everything Providence may send you.

Truly and sincerely yours,

ERIC ARVEL.

This letter contained a lettre de faire part, printed in silver, setting forth that Eric Arvel had married his mistress, Adèle, and had written the word, “Private” upon it.

JACKY TO ERIC ARVEL.

Paris. December 26, 1899.

My dear Mr. Arvel,

That you should enclose in your last letter the announcement of your union, causes a variety of conflicting emotions in me; the principal being the thought that you consider me worthy of being apprised of such a delicate piece of news. I am vain enough to suppose therefore, that you count me among a privileged set of intimes, and if so, I fully appreciate the honor you do me. May I say you both do me? I have learned by my own experience that a mere ceremony, or writing down of signatures, does not constitute a real marriage, and some of the unconsecrated associations are several degrees more perfect than the legitimate ones, because the man, if he is a man at all, tries by untiring devotion and continual solicitude, to make the woman he has chosen to share his joys and troubles, forget the loss of worldly consideration, which she sees vouchsafed to others, who are often wicked shrews or worse, but they are called “respectable” because they have gone through a legal process.