"My sisters and I were all violently argumentative, but our quarrels were all on abstract subjects. We saw little of other children and made no friendships, preferring each other's society to that of outsiders. When I was about 10 a girl of the same age came to stay with us for a few days. When we went to bed the first night she asked me if I ever played with myself, whereupon I took a great dislike to her. No sexual ideas or feelings were excited. When still quite a child, however, I had feelings of excitement which I now recognize as sexual. Such feelings always came to me in bed (at least I cannot remember them at any other time) and were generally accompanied by a gradually increasing desire to make water. For a long time I would not dare to get out of bed for fear of being scolded for staying awake, and only did so at last when actually compelled. In the mean time the sexual excitement increased also, and I believe I thought the latter was the result of the former, or, perhaps, rather, that both were the same thing. (This was when I was about 7 or 8 years old.) So far as I can recollect, the excitement did not recur when the desire to make water had been gratified. I seemed to remember wondering why thinking of certain things (I can't remember what these were) should make one want to urinate. (In later life I have found that, if the bladder is not emptied before coitus, pleasure is often more intense.) There were also feelings, which I now recognize as sexual, in connection with ideas of whipping.
"As a child and girl I had very strong religious feelings (I should have now if I could believe in the reality of religion), which were absent in my sisters. These feelings were much the same as I experienced later sexually; I felt toward God what I imagined I should like to feel to my husband if I married. This, I fancy, is what usually occurs. At 14 I went to a boarding-school where there were seventy girls between 7 and 19. I think it goes to show that there is but very little sexual precocity among English girls that during the three years I stayed there I never heard a word the strictest mother would have objected to. One or two of the older girls were occasionally a little sentimental, but on no occasion did I hear the physical side of things touched upon. I think this is partly due to the amount of exercise we took. When picturing my childhood I always see myself racing about, jumping walls, climbing trees. In France and Italy I have been struck by the greater sedateness of Continental children. Our idea of naughtiness consisted chiefly in having suppers in our bedrooms and sliding down the banisters after being sent to bed. The first gratified our natural appetite, while the second supplied the necessary thrill in the fear of being caught.
"I made no violent friendships with the other girls, but I became much attached to the French governess. She was 30, and a born teacher, very strict with all of us, and doubly so with me for fear of showing favoritism. But she was never unjust, and I was rather proud of her severity and took a certain pleasure in being punished by her, the punishment always taking the form of learning by heart, which I rather liked doing. So I had my thrill, excitement, I don't quite know what to call it, without any very great inconvenience to myself. Just before we left school the sexual instinct began to show itself in enthusiasm for art with a capital A, Ouida's novels being mainly responsible. My sister and I agreed that we would spend our lives traveling about France, Italy, and the Continent, generally _à la Tricotrin_, with a violin in one pocket and an Atravante Dante in the other. To do this satisfactorily to ourselves we must be artists, and I resolved to go in for music and become a second Liszt. When my father offered to take us to Italy, the artist's Mecca, for a couple of years, we were wild with delight. We went, and disillusionment began. It may perhaps seem absurd, but we suffered acutely that first summer. Our villa was quite on the beach, the lowest of its flight of steps being washed by the Mediterranean. At the back were grounds which seemed a paradise.
Long alleys covered over with vines and carpeted with long grass and poppies, grassy slopes dotted with olives and ilex, roses everywhere, and almost every flower in profusion, with, at night, the fireflies and the heavy scents of syringa and orange blossoms. In the midst of every possible excitement to the senses there was one thing wanting, and we did not know what that was.
"We attributed our restlessness and dissatisfaction to the slow progress in our artistic education, and consoled ourselves by thinking when once we had mastered the technical difficulties we should feel all right. And of course we did derive a very real pleasure from all the beauties of art and nature with which Italy abounds.
"It seems to me, however, that the art craze is one of the modern phases of woman's sexual life. When we were in Italy the great centers of the country were simply overrun with girls studying art, most of whom had very little talent, but who had mistaken the restlessness due to the first awakening of the sexual instinct for the divine flame of genius. In our case it did not matter, as we were not dependent upon our own exertions. But it must have been terribly hard for girls who had burned their boats and chosen art as a career, to have added to the repression of their natural desires the bitterness of knowing that in their chosen walk of life they were failures. The results as far as work goes might not be so bad if the passions, as in men, were occasionally gratified. It is the constant drudgery combined with the disappointment and finding that art alone does not satisfy which is so paralyzing. Besides, sexual gratification is always followed by exaltation of the mental faculties, with, in my experience, no depressing reaction such as follows pleasure excited by mental causes alone.
"At one time when living at the villa I met a man about 45, who took rather a fancy to me. I mention this because it woke me up; no emotion was excited, but I realized for the first time (I must have been nearly 20) that I was no longer a child, and that a man could think of me in connection with love. It was only after this, and not immediately after, either, that men's society began to have an interest for me, and that I began to think a man's love would be a pleasant thing to possess, after all.
"The sexual instinct, at any rate as regards consciousness, thus developed slowly and in what I believe to be a very usual sequence: religion, admiration for an older woman, and art. I am not sure that I have made quite enough of the first, yet I do not know that there is any more to say. There were very strong physical feelings connected with all these which were identical with those now connected with passion, but they were completely satisfied by the mental idea which excited them.
"The first time I can remember feeling keen physical pleasure was when I was between 7 and 8 years old. I can't recollect the cause, but I remember lying quite still in my little cot clasping the iron rails at the top. It may be said that this is hardly slow development, but I mean slow as regards (1) any connection of the idea with a man or (2) any physical means of excitation.
"I have laid stress on my desire for knowledge, as I think my sexual feelings were affected by it. A great part of my feeling for my mother was due to the stores of information she appeared to possess. The omniscience of God was to me his most striking attribute. My French teacher's capacity was her chief attraction. When, as a girl, I thought of marriage, I desired a man who 'could explain things to me.' One learns later to live one's mental and sexual life separately to a great extent. But at 20 I could not have done so; given the opportunity, I should have made the mistake of Dorothea in _Middlemarch_.
"I have spoken of the depressing after-effects of pleasure brought about by a purely mental cause, but I do not think this is the case in childhood and early youth. (Perhaps some women feel no such depression afterward, and this may account for their coldness in regard to men.) This may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that it occurs much more rarely, and also it is perhaps a natural process before the sexual organs fully develop, and so not harmful.
"I always find it difficult in expressing the different degrees of physical excitement even to myself, though I know exactly what I felt. As a child, from the time of the early experience already mentioned (about the age of 7 or 8), and as a young girl, the second stage (secretion of mucus) was always reached. The amount of secretion has always been excessive, but at first secretion only lasted a short time; later it began to last for several hours, or even sometimes the whole night, if the natural gratification has been withheld for a long time (say, three months). I do not remember ever feeling the third stage (complete orgasm) until I saw the first man I fancied I cared for. I do not think that mental causes alone have ever produced more than the first two stages (general diffuse excitement and secretion). I have sometimes wondered whether I could produce the third mechanically, but I have a curious unreasonable repugnance to trying the experiment; it would seem to materialize it too much. As a child and a girl I was contented to arrive at the second stage, possibly because I did not realize that there was any other, and perhaps this is why I have experienced no evil results.
"In dreams the third stage seems to come suddenly without any leading up to it, either mental or physical, of which I am conscious. I do not, however, remember having any such dreams before I was engaged. They came at a later period; even then, when great pleasure was experienced, it came, as a rule, suddenly and sharply, with no dreams leading up to it. The dreams generally take a sad form (an Evangeline and Gabriel business), where one vainly seeks the person who eludes one. I have, however, sometimes had pleasurable dreams of men who were quite indifferent to me and of whom I never thought when awake. The impression on waking is so strong one could almost fancy one's self really in love with them. I can quite understand falling in love with a person by dreaming of him in this way.
"The first time I remember experiencing the third stage in waking moments was at a picnic, when the man, to whom I have before referred as the first that I fancied I cared for, leaned against me accidentally in passing a plate or dish; but I was already in a violent state of excitement at being with him. There was no possibility of anything between us, as he was married. If he guessed my feelings, they were never admitted, as I did my best to hide them. I never experienced this, except at the touch of some one I loved. (I think the saying about the woman 'desiring the desire of the man' is just about as true as most epigrams. It is the man's personality alone which affects me. His feelings toward me are of--I was going to say--indifference, but at any rate quite secondary importance, and the gratification of my own vanity counts as nothing in such relations.)
"As a rule, to reach even the second stage the exciting ideas must be associated with some particular person, except in the case of a story, where one identifies one's self with one of the characters. In childhood and early youth it was, in the case of religion, the idea of God and the presence and the personality of God which aroused my feelings and always seemed very vivid to me. In the case of my governess, my feelings were aroused in exactly the same way as later they would be by one's lover. In the art craze I am rather vague as to how it came about, but I think, as a rule, there was rather a craving for pleasure than pleasure itself. I do not remember ever thinking much about the physical feeling. It seemed as natural that a pleasant emotion should produce pleasant physical effects as that a painful one should cause tears. As a child, one takes so much for granted, and later on my mind was so much occupied with worrying about the truth of religion that I hardly thought enough about anything else to analyze it carefully.
"I may summarize my own feelings thus: First, exciting ideas alone produce, as a rule, merely the first stage of sexual excitement. Second, the same ideas connected with a particular person will produce the second stage. Third, the same may be said of the presence of the beloved person. Fourth, actual contact appears necessary for the third stage. If the first stage only be reached, the sensation is not pleasurable in reality, or would not be but for its association. If produced, as I have sometimes found it to be, by a sense of mental incapacity, it is distinctly disagreeable, especially if one feels that the energy which might have been used in coping with the difficulty is being thus dissipated. If it be produced, as it may be, as the result of physical or mental restraint, it is also unpleasant unless the restraint were put upon one by a person one loves. Then, however, the second stage would probably be reached, but this would depend a good deal on one's mood. If the first stage only were reached, I think it would be disagreeable; it would mean a conflict between one's will and sexual feeling. Perhaps women who feel actual repugnance to the sexual act with a man they love have never gone beyond the first stage, when their dislike to it would be quite intelligible to me.
"Some time after the life in Italy had come to an end I became engaged. There was considerable difficulty in the way of marriage, but we saw a good deal of each other. My _fiancé_ often dined with us, and we met every day. The result of seeing him so frequently was that I was kept in a constant state of strong, but suppressed, sexual excitement. This was particularly the case when we met in the evening and wandered about the moonlit garden together. When this had gone on about three months I began to experience a sense of discomfort after each of his visits. The abdomen seemed to swell with a feeling of fullness and congestion; but, though these sensations were closely connected with the physical excitement, they were not sufficiently painful to cause me any alarm or make me endeavor to avoid their pleasurable cause. The symptoms got worse, however, and no longer passed off quickly as at first. The swelling increased; considerable pain and a dragged-down sensation resulted the moment I tried to walk even a short distance. I was troubled with constant indigestion, weight in the chest, pain in the head and eyes, and continual slight diarrhea. This went on for about nine months, and then my _fiancé_ was called away from the neighborhood. After his departure I got a trifle better, but the symptoms remained, though in less acute form. A few months later the engagement was broken off, and for some weeks I was severely ill with influenza and was on my back for several weeks. When I could get about a little, though very weak, all the swelling was gone, but pain returned whenever I tried to walk or stand for long. The indigestion and diarrhea were also very troublesome. I was treated for both by a physician, but without success. Next year I became engaged to my husband and was shortly after married. The indigestion and diarrhea disappeared soon after. The pain and dragging feeling in the abdomen bothered me much in walking or any kind of exercise. One day I came across a medical work, _The Elements of Social Science_, in which I found descriptions of symptoms like those I suffered from ascribed to uterine disease. I again applied to a doctor, telling him I thought there was displacement and possibly congestion. He confirmed my opinion and told me to wear a pessary. He ascribed the displacement to the relaxing climate, and said he did not think I should ever get quite right again. After the pessary had been placed in position every trace of pain, etc., left me. A year later I thought I would try and do without the pessary, and to my great satisfaction none of the old trials came back after its removal, in spite of much trouble, anxiety, sick nursing, and fatigue. I attribute the disorder entirely to violent sexual excitement which was not permitted its natural gratification and relief.
"I have reason to believe that suppression acts very injuriously on a woman's mental capacity. When excitement is naturally relieved the mind turns of its own accord to another subject, but when suppressed it is unable to do this. Personally, in the latter event, I find the greatest difficulty in concentrating my thoughts, and mental effort becomes painful. Other women have complained to me of the same difficulty. I have tried mechanical mental work, such as solving arithmetical or algebraic problems, but it does no good; in fact, it seems only to increase the excitement. (I may remark here that my feelings are always very strong not only before and after the monthly period, but also during the time itself; very unfortunately, as, of course, they cannot then be gratified. This only applies to desire from within, as I am strongly susceptible to influences from without at any time.) There seems nothing to be done but to bow to the storm till it passes over. Anything I do during the time it lasts, even household work, is badly done. The brain seems to become addled for the time being, while after gratification of desire it seems to attain an additional quickness and cleverness. Perhaps this cause contributes to the small amount of intellectual and artistic work done by women, admitting their natural inferiority to men in artistic impulse. A woman whose passions are satisfied generally has her strength sapped by maternity, while her attention is drawn from abstract ideas to her children."
HISTORY III.--B. states that his first sexual thoughts and acts were curiously connected with whipping. At 12 he and another boy used to beat each other with a cricket bat upon the bare nates, and afterward indulge in mutual masturbation. He cannot remember the beginning of his sexual speculation as a child, nor how he learned masturbation. When he was 13 he used to discuss erotic matters with a schoolfellow who was in the habit of engaging in vulvar intercourse with a girl of his own age. The intercourse was practised on the way home from school, and in a standing posture. B. embraced the girl in the same way. He is not interested in the psychological aspects of the sexual emotion. Although his sex passion was early kindled, he never had commerce with prostitutes. He thinks that his youthful experiences had no ill effect upon him morally, mentally, or physically. He practised masturbation in moderation till he married, at the age of 31.
HISTORY IV.--"I can remember" (writes the subject) "trotting away as a youngster about 5 with another boy to 'see a girl's legs'; the idea emanated from the other boy, but I was vaguely interested. How or where we were going to see the object in question I do not remember nor anything further than the intention. When 6 or 7 I remember being put to bed with the nurse girl and feeling her bare arm with undoubted sexual excitement; I remember, too, gradually feeling along the arm very cautiously, fearing the girl would wake and being bitterly disappointed to find it was merely the arm. I am almost certain I had then no idea of sex, but the disappointment was actual.
"These are the only early experiences of the sort I can remember. When about 9 I had others. On the coast of the north of England, which had then very few visitors and seemed to me very remote, I lived in a farm-house and used to assist the girls of the farm in looking after young cattle. These girls certainly instilled sexual ideas, though I did not realize them with precision. They used to talk about things a good many of which, I can now see, I did not then understand as they did. I liked to see these girls wading with their dresses tucked up. About this time I fell passionately in love with a girl cousin, but do not remember having any sensual ideas in regard to her. I cannot say that these early experiences had any influence on my later sexual development so far as I am consciously aware. I have always remembered them vaguely, never with sexual excitement.
"Sexual dreams took place first at about the age of 13; there was then emission and sensation in sleep. These were, however, not much associated with distinctly sexual dreams. All that I recall after them was the sensation, which, however, I did not even then absolutely localize. Masturbation was undoubtedly the direct result of these dreams. It was tried at first tentatively, out of curiosity to determine if the sensation of the dream could be so reproduced. Sexual dreams, such as I have described, occurred frequently, although I cannot say at what interval. I have never experienced the slightest attraction for the same sex."
HISTORY V.--"My maternal grandfather" (writes the subject of this history) "was a small farmer who kept a few beagles and greyhounds for hare-hunting. He had three daughters, one of whom became my mother. One of his sporting companions, a doctor of profligate habits and a drunkard, seduced my mother at the age of 20. When her condition was discovered she had to flee from the violence of her father, and I was born some distance from her home. After my grandfather's death I was reared by my grandmother, and saw nothing of my mother until I was nearly 16; she had left the country in shame and disgrace.
"I believe that in my heredity the transmission comes chiefly from my mother, who is now 58 years old. Although her life has been blameless in every particular since her youthful indiscretion, she has never got over it. I feel in my character a reflection of her overstrung condition during pregnancy.
"I can distinctly remember from the age of 9 years, and am sure that I had no sexual feelings before the age of 13, though always in the company of girls. I had many boyish passions for girls, always older than myself, but these were never accompanied by sexual desires. I deified all my sweethearts, and was satisfied if I got a flower, a handkerchief, or even a shred of clothing of my inamorata for the time being. These things gave me a strange idealistic emotion, but caused no sexual desire or erection.
"At 13 a 26-year-old sister of a boy companion once sat down on a sheaf of corn so as to expose the mons veneris and enticed me to copulate. There was slight erection, and after the act had been continued some time a pleasurable sensation of ejaculation, but without true emission. I had frequent relations with this woman after that.
"About this time the farm servant of a neighbor taught me masturbation. The mistress of the farm, a thin, willowy, dark woman, the mother of several children, treated me with such familiarity as once to urinate in my presence, so that I saw her very hirsute mons veneris. From that moment I conceived a great passion for her, and used to tremble as soon as I saw her. I had become well developed and virile, but, though I think she was a lustful woman, I never ventured to touch her. I found an extreme ecstasy in masturbating while gazing upon some article of her clothing. This gave me much greater sexual pleasure than actual connection with the ever-willing sister of my schoolfellow. I think I loved the married woman best because the mons veneris was more covered with hair.
"This has always had a peculiar attraction for me. Later, when accosted by prostitutes, I never would go with them unless I was assured the mons veneris was very hirsute. Never much addicted to masturbation, I derived no great enjoyment therefrom unless I had hair or part of the clothing of the woman with whom I was indulging in psychic coitus.
"At 16 I left school and went to a large city to learn a business. At this time the sexual appetite was very strong. I frequently had intercourse with three women in one evening.
"I have had but few lascivious dreams. In these the phantom partner was almost invariably a dead woman. (When about 8 I had seen the dead body of an aunt who died at 24.)
"When 20 I went to London and took all the pleasure which came my way. I cared only for normal coitus. Offers of another type created disgust. I once allowed a woman to exhaust me sexually orally, but felt degraded thereby. Women with whom I had become very intimate often urged me to _cunnilingus_, but I could not do it. I have practised intermammary coitus a very few times.
"At 26 I married a pure, gentle woman, after having for ten months before marriage led a life of celibacy. My wife died when I was 30, and for about eight months I lived a celibate life. Lascivious dreams sometimes occurred, but I invariably awoke before ejaculation. Eventually I gave way to the cravings of my strong sexual nature, but never wished for anything out of the usual except intercourse from behind. A woman with marked development of the nates has great attraction for me. Solitary masturbation has for some time ceased, but a nude woman in the act of masturbation with her back to me gives me great pleasure. I am as strong sexually at 38 as I was at 20, only I never want women unless I am brought into actual contact with them and they are hairy and have large pelvic development. I am in excellent health. Genitals are well developed, and I am clothed with hair from the chin to the genitals. My skull is dolichocephalic. I am violent and tenacious in temper, high-strung, and rapid in thought and action. My digestion is good, but I have a tendency to constipation. Occasionally I have a twinge of pain below the occipital region.
"My early views of women have changed; I no longer deify them, though I study them. I have known very sensual women living at home in respectable middle-class society. One, in particular, a girl of 18, after coitus used to excite me lingually. I have had a sweetheart who remained _virgo intacta_. Had I seduced her, as I could have done, I should have lost all interest in her. I could never bear the presence of naked men, and would never go to a public swimming bath for that reason. I regard myself as a man of abnormally strong, but, on the whole, healthy and wholesome, sexual feelings. As a rule, I have coitus twice or oftener in one week and I practise withdrawal. I am a total abstainer, and never could embrace a woman who smelled of drink."
HISTORY VI.--The writer of the following is a man of letters, married. "Quite early I remember a strange and romantic interest in the feminine. Certainly before I was 9 I had a strong affection for a little girl playmate; our family lost sight of hers, and I saw and heard nothing of her for sixteen years; then, hearing she was coming to town, I experienced quite a flutter of heart, so strong had been the impression caused at even the early age of our acquaintance. Not that I mean to say I never wavered in between! Through the whole of my boyhood I remember persistent romantic interests in girls and women, whose smooth, fair faces and sweet voices exercised ever a subtle attraction over me. Before I was 12 I had picked out my 'future wife' a dozen times at least! (A different one each time of course!) Curiosity as to the physical detail of sex and birth was singularly absent. Possibly this was partly due to the fact that the only younger member of our family was born when I was but 4 years old. Grave, shy, and reserved, I was never taken into the counsels of prurient schoolmates. I was unaware that there was such discussion between them--though it is, I suppose, not probable that our school was exempt. I was a great reader, and when about 12 or 13 I came across a reference to an illegitimate child which puzzled me. Ere long, however, in my random and extensive reading I hit on a book that touched on phallicism, and I learned that there were male and female organs of generation. I had neither shame nor curiosity; I jumped to the conclusion that during close caresses somehow a subtle aroma arose from the man to fertilize the woman; I left the subject at this, satisfied, and had no inkling of the real intimacy of the embrace.