earthquakes and lots of …bonking

Aftershocks. James Boswell’s infidelities. Henry Fielding. The general social and gaming scene of Georgian England from the royal family down to the masses. It was bawdy, it was bad, and despite the consternations of a William Hogarth it was so pervasive and out of control, chaotic, that it was inevitable that these new leisure classes that capitalism was creating would eventually walk straight into the walk-in fridge known as the Victorian age.Society was violent, sexist, excessive and racist. There was no such thing as political correctness. The justice system was a sham. Yet, there was a raw, nearly pure vitality that helped create an aesthetic of thought which led directly from the goth of Walpole and Fuseli into Blake and Turner and the romantic poets that shattered previous limits…

(see link at end)…But the Church was having none of this scientific mumbo-jumbo. The Bishop of London Thomas Sherlock wrote to all his clergymen calling on them to inform their flocks of the true reason for the earthquakes: pornography. In fact the word had only recently been coined, from Greek roots meaning ‘writing about prostitutes’. Were these quakes not ‘immediately directed’ against London, the sinful city? After all, nowhere else experienced the tremors. Was it not a reflection at the Lord’s wrath at the publication of ‘The Memoirs of Fanny Hill, this vile book, the lewdest thing I ever saw’?

‘Have not the histories of the vilest prostitutes been published?” he bellowed from the pulpit, going on to have a swipe at swearing and blasphemy, the ‘unnatural lewdness’ for which God had destroyed Sodom, and for the constant publication of books which challenged ‘the great truths of religion.’

So there you had it: London was to be punished on Divine instructions. It was obvious to all but the severely stupid, and/or atheists, that come 8 April there would be The Big One, and that it was time to get out of Town fast. And so it came to pass that on 8 April 1750 a large slice of the population of London sought safety by taking to the roads into the countryside. Gridlock ensued – absolute chaos spread upon the face of the land. The overcrowded city, well used to traffic jams, had not seen anything quite like it. Come nightfall, everyone went back home, and no more was heard about earthquake cycles for some time….

..But what of Fanny Hill, the book which sparked off the disquiet? The novel, purportedly an autobiography, was published in two instalments in November 1748 and February 1749. The publisher was described as “G. Fenton”, but this was actually Fenton Griffiths and his brother Ralph. In November 1749, a year after the first installment was published, the Griffiths boys were arrested and charged with “corrupting the King’s subjects.” In court, the author renounced the novel and it was officially withdrawn. However, as the book became popular, more and more pirate editions appeared, so much so that by the end of the Eighteenth Century there were nearly two dozen versions in circulation in English, with over a dozen French translations, as well as editions in German, Italian and Portuguese….

…I will leave it to others to comment on the style and content of the work. Suffice to say it is eye-wateringly graphic, and perpetuates the myth of the ‘happy hooker’ – a fifteen year old girl goes to London, inadvertently finds herself in a brothel, is corrupted by the other girls and then finds that a very good living is to be made doing horizontal athletics… The heroine adores sex in all its many forms, embraces them all with enthusiasm and writes home to tell her friend about her experiences in a series of letters. There is no grinding poverty (but lots of grinding), no nasty diseases, no degradation or cruelty – just lots of bonking and a good time had by all….

Perhaps it should come as no surprise to find that the story of the merry harlot was not in fact written by a woman, but by a man serving time in prison (on account of his debts). The author was John Cleland, born in 1710. He was well educated, and had spent time in the army and then with the East India Company in Bombay. He returned to this country with sizable debts (just under a thousand pounds) and was imprisoned for over a year in the wretched and notorious Fleet Street prison. It was with a view to clearing his debts that he put pen to paper and set down the lurid tale of young Fanny Hill…

Some things don’t add up with the story. The print run of 750 copies was immediately snapped up, at a price of three shillings a copy. The publisher went on to rake in ten thousand pounds but the book only made the author a paltry twenty guineas (the amount for which he sold the copyright – nowhere near enough to have paid off his debts and thus secure his release from jail). And yet he was released from prison just three weeks after the second edition came out, expressed total contrition, and no-one mentioned his debts again. He declined to speak about the book, saying that he was thoroughly ashamed of it, that the print run had finished, and that he did not want to add anything which would give it more publicity. Years later, as an old man, he told the diarist James Bo

l he had written it when he was just a youth, and that many years later had prepared it for publication when he was in prison and desperately needed money. This figures – because there are various references to the name ‘Fanny Hill’ in the years before the book reached the publisher, possibly indicating that the story was being spread by word of mouth or being read in private clubs in manuscript form.

Cleland lived on in poverty at lodgings in Petty France in London until his death aged 79 in 1789.There is no record that he married, or had a mistress, and nothing is known about what was presumably a riotously mis-spent youth. Somewhere along the line he learned rather more than was good for him about life in a brothel, but he never told the world how or where he picked up this knowledge. As an old man, Cleland wrote a guide to good living, a sort of health manual which was very unusual at the time. He sang the praises of fruit and vegetables, and advocated cold baths and exercise. He pointed out that without the ‘control of passion’ his own health had suffered ‘irretrievable damage’ as a result of ‘the most abandoned intemperance’ as a young man. No other clues were given as to the licentious debauchery which he presumably experienced before putting pen to paper.

Fanny Hill is Cleland’s legacy – it has given him a notoriety which has lasted through the centuries, but at the time never made him rich. Fanny goes from strength to strength, but the author is largely forgotten.Read More:http://blog.mikerendell.com/?tag=diary-entries&paged=3