A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

that they thought about it all the time. But their attitude was somehow more realistic. They regarded
sex as they regarded a good dinner. The first pornographic novel, John Cleland’s Fanny Hill,
appeared in 1749, nine years after Richardson’s Pamela. Cleland’s description of a rape could
hardly be more down-to-earth:
The first sight that struck me was Mr H— pulling and hauling this
coarse country strammel towards a couch that stood in a corner of the
dining room; to which the girl made only a sort of awkward hoidening
resistance, crying out so loud that I, who listened at the door, could
scarcely hear her: Tray, sir, don’t... let me alone... I am not for your
turn... You cannot, sure, demean yourself with such a poor body as I...
Lord, sir, my mistress may come home... I must not indeed... I will cry
out...’ All of which did not hinder her from insensibly suffering herself
to be brought to the foot of the couch, upon which a push of no mighty
violence serv’d to give her a very easy fall, and my gentleman having
got up his hands to the stronghold of her VIRTUE, she, no doubt,
thought it was time to give up the argument, and that all further
defence would be vain; and he, throwing her petticoats over her face,
which was now as red as scarlet, discovered a pair of stout, plump,
substantial thighs, and tolerably white; he mounted them round his
hips, and coming out with his drawn weapon, stuck it in the cloven
spot, where he seemed to find a less difficult entrance than perhaps he
had flattered himself with (for, by the way, this blouse had left her
place in the country, for a bastard), and indeed, all his motions shew’d
he was lodg’d pretty much at large. After he had done, his DEAREE
gets up, drops her petticoats down, and smooths her apron and
hankerchief. Mr H— look’d a little silly, and taking out some money,
gave it her with an air indifferent enough, bidding her be a good girl
and say nothing.
Cleland’s attitude towards sex is the attitude of the eighteenth century: commonsense and earthy.
We find it again in Boswell’s London Journal - written for only his own eyes:
I picked up a girl in the Strand; went into a court with the intention to
enjoy her in armour [contraceptive sheath]. But she had none. I toyed
with her. She wondered at my size, and said if I ever took a girl’s
maidenhead, I would make her squeak. I gave her a shilling, and had
command enough of myself to go without touching her.
This seems to explain why Fanny Hill, in spite of its wide popularity, found no imitators; Boswell’s
contemporaries were less interested in reading about sex than doing it.
Then came the Victorian age. With an eighteen-year-old virgin on the throne - Queen Victoria was
crowned in 1837 - England felt the need to mend its morals - or, at any rate, its public attitudes. In
the early years of Victoria’s reign, men and women still bathed nude at many seaside resorts; all
that soon changed. The undergarment known as drawers (because they could be drawn on) was
soon being referred to as underpants (in the case of the male) and knickers - short for
knickerbockers - in the case of women; the embarrassment, it seemed, was that the word ‘drawers’
might evoke an image of them being drawn off. This kind of thing was, naturally, self-defeating;