Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book II

I should not dare to speak so freely and boldly on this matter, were it not that I look back ever so sadly, and see nineteen years-nearly half my life-of the same companionship. But I was not fated to find the rest and peace that you will now enjoy, combined with the sweet sense of gratitude, of which you will reap the benefit.

I always envied you, I confess that fault, every time I saw you in your pretty villa, and now I envy you still more, as I think of what might have been, and how I lived for years, trembling lest the secret confided to me by the doctors should reach the ears of my Lilian, and powerless to arrest the sure progress of a relentless malady.

Nobody ever knew. But I purposely cease writing on this subject, as I do not possess the necessary talent to describe my sad existence, and even if I did, I do not think I could summon up courage to put my thoughts on paper. And besides, why should I come and throw a shadow of gloom over your happy household just at this festive period of the year?

I thank you for your good wishes expressed for Xmas, and am deputed by all my family to wish you the same, continued far into the next century. To make us quits, I personally return your Xmas greetings with my best hopes for your felicity, good health and prosperity during the new year: “00,” which I hope will not turn out a “naughty” one for you. You terminated your beautiful letter by saying that you feared to weary me, but I wished it had been much longer, as I can learn from you. I have met no man knowing the wiles of women as you do, and you have also the power to set forth your ideas in polished style, which I try in vain to imitate.

You must not be offended if I now take the liberty to put a question to you; and I tell you frankly that I shall not mind if you do not answer it. Do as you think best; whatever you do will be well done.

You write that “your more recent experiences prove that there is no fool like an old fool,” and I fully agree with you, taking the lesson for myself, and accepting it as I have accepted other deserved strictures, with the pleasant thought that you take a kindly, friendly interest in me and are writing to me for my good. But it seems to me, and perhaps I am wrong, that you reproach yourself, and one or two sentences are ambiguous and might apply to the writer as well as to the receiver.

To sum up: what are those recent experiences? That is my audacious question.

I now give you my humble opinion of erotic recollections in print, but I fear this letter is far too long. I must ask you, if you take in Le Journal, to cast your eye over the feuilleton: Le Partage du Coeur, 9 where you will find a good model of psychological writing, where the author seeks to penetrate into the innermost souls of his sensual characters and show the motives, desires, jealousies, etc., that sway them. The adventures should be presented so as to demonstrate the peculiarities of passion, and the downright filthy part only becomes readable when it falls naturally into its place as the outcome of circumstances previously sketched, and which should be out of the common, as rapid sordid encounters and swiftly-ended passages with prostitutes are not of the slightest value. Mere meetings of men and women and descriptions of what they do, even if true, are of no use. Those who can throw a light upon the workings of the female mind, when under the influence of lust, real or feigned; or show us what a man feels, thinks, and does when “in the net of the fowler”; or becomes crafty, fights, escapes; or mayhap enjoys the humiliation of his captivity; will be rendering a service to all students of sexuality, surfeited with impossible tales of artificial amours, written to order.

I have just left at your bureau, rue Vissot, a litre of my best eau de Cologne, as a most trifling wedding present for Madame, and also to prove that whatever my faults, I possess, at least, the reconnaissance de l'estomac.

Faithfully yours,

JACKY.

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. December 27, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

Many thanks for your nice long letter and for all the good wishes which I most heartily reciprocate. I hope that the year about to commence will be a happy and prosperous one for you and yours, and that the healing hand of time will efface from your memory all those pains and sorrows which weigh at the moment so heavily upon you.

Mrs. Grundy still holds a certain sway in society, and compelled us both to legitimize those ties which have bound us so close for many years past. Each act is weighed in a certain social balance, and though bell, candle, and book were not required to cast any halo about a union based on mutual inclination, we thought it best to place things on their proper social footing, so that when I have passed over the river on to the other shore, what I may leave will rightly be claimed by the woman who gave herself to me. What I have done was due to the woman who gave up her fair name for me. I am deputed by Mrs. Arvel to offer you her sincere thanks for your present, and to tell you that she has no faults to bring to your door, save the one that you are more happy in the giving than in the getting.

Now to your “audacious query.” I do not read any feuilleton. I lack the necessary patience to await the suite à demain. I told you that any attempt to write the biography of any man as you would have it with the heart laid bare, and the “Sixth Sense” analyzed, would raise the cry of “Rats” and “Chestnuts.” Every line written would come home to you, and the words inscribed upon the wall at the feast of Belshazzar would haunt your eye for ever more. The recent experiences I allude to are those of later years, the outcome of observation, and of the sayings and doings of those we find on every side, in a world where women discount the vanity and self-assurance of the man, who is about to double the cape of platonic affection. Surely you have analyzed the furtive glances of the trottin, and the frôlements of the woman by your side as you gazed in the shop of jeweler and bonnet-maker? You have not been without knowing how with looks and implied promises the “Sixth Sense” has been cultivated to the highest degree of tension, and then how bitter has seemed the deception which has followed. You may have found the “Sixth Sense” so over strung by doubts and apprehensions that even when the promised fruit falls ripe to your lips, you close them, not to give admission to the foul thing which will be more sorrowful to the heart and more bitter to the taste than the apple which drove Adam from Paradise. Is there anything new under the sun? Is it not always the old, old story, and what divine hands will ever weave the crown of golden myrtle, which shall adorn the head of the man who can conquer himself, who in the burst of youth can control his passions, and remember how Solomon warned us against the lips of the strange woman and that end which was bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword? Have you never studied the philosophy in the old German ballad “Die Handschuh,” where the knight courts death to please his lady-love, and then indignant at the peril he has been exposed to at the mere whim of a woman, refuses the reward the proud Cunegonde had in store for him.

Have you been at the cockles?” Why do you see any stricture in what I write of past and present experience? You do not know what each year will bring forth, and how the human mind becomes more and more as an open book, as age creeps on and desire is fanned to sleep. The time will come for you when each day will bring its lesson, and then you will say with me, not from the experience of the hour, that there is “no fool like the old fool,” but from the experience brought about by that spirit of comparison which never deserts us? Who has not been fooled has never sought. The seeking is mere lust; a simple satisfaction of the amour-propre, aroused by the wiles of woman, who is in her heart of hearts a much better judge of humanity than you or I are inclined to believe. How she delights in bringing out the weaknesses of the “idiot” who calls her “the weaker vessel,” as though her capacity for giving pleasure did not long outlast that of the man for imparting it. The older the man the more susceptible he becomes to the charms of a sex, which has given him so many pleasant souvenirs in the store-room of his mind. He is easier beguiled; he thinks that Spring and Autumn can be linked together, and when the “Sixth Sense" has been roused, prudence and most of the other virtues are cast to the winds so that the passion of the hour may be indulged in.