Cleveland Street affair when the police raided a molly house and prosecuted owner, Mary Anns, and clients, but they had reemerged, it seemed, after a period of keeping their heads well below the parapet. The Hundred Marks on Charlotte Street was still there, for example, and The Crown on Charing Cross Road. Not to mention the dear old Intrepid Fox in Soho.
I had had my first ever full encounter with a gentleman at the Fox and very enjoyable it had been too. It was before I came down from Oxford, I remember. I must have been in Londinium over the Easter break before the Trinity term began. I had been young—eighteen, perhaps—and uncertain of where my impulses were leading me. Of course there had always been an undercurrent at Eton among the boys there, but it had seldom gone the full length, even among those boys most addicted to the traditional vices. My own experiences had been of tussles in a darkened dormitory with the naked body of a prefect rubbing against me while his hands pulled and tugged me to my own release, and taking my turn to do the rubbing when I too achieved the grandeur of the higher forms and a prefect’s badge. But the man I met at the Fox introduced me to the fullest expression of Greek love in an afternoon and night of sheer hedonistic pleasure, and all those odd impulses and feelings clicked into place with such a sense of rightness that I’ve never looked back since.
Oh yes, I had very fond memories of the Fox. It was a pleasant venue to create new ones too. Rather better than some of the newer meeting places.
In my second week home, I visited one of the cheaper molly houses in Soho, a haunt of many of the Piccadilly renters, available for a pound or two. I gave up on it very quickly despite it being the easiest place of all for encounters—no well-appointed bedrooms here, but only dark little booths curtained to shield us from view. I had no objection to a strong young man pushing me back against the wall and falling to his knees before me. It was entirely enjoyable, feeling his hands pull at my clothes and rub against my buttocks while his mouth swallowed me up. That particular Mary Ann was very skilled and worth every penny I paid him for his services.
But I didn’t want more, not in a place like that. If I were to be thoroughly fucked, or wanted to mount another man, I preferred to do so in a decent bed with a comfortable mattress. Bending over a chair back in a dark room with a dozen other men in close proximity is an activity for the young and heedless. I was neither, and if a molly house had been all that was available to me, I’d have given it up for a while and been content with, well, taking myself in hand, so to speak. It was back to the Fox or the Marks for me—I wasn’t literary enough or precious enough for The Crown—with the thought that if I saved up my pennies, I could afford an occasional night of luxury at Margrethe’s.
Perhaps age was catching me up at last, with this desire for creature comfort over sexual adventure. And that was a thought almost as depressing as the state of my eyes.
Chapter 8
“C APTAIN L ANCASTER ! Captain Lancaster, sir!” Phryne skittered down the house steps after me, waving a couple of letters. “Oh sir, I thought p’raps you hadn’t seen your post on the salver on the hall table, sir. They look important.” She blushed such a rosy hue I was positively warmed by it. A man could put his hands to those cheeks and escape frostbite.
I took the letters and rewarded her with a smile. “That’s very kind of you, Phryne. Thank you.”
“Oh no, sir. The missus sent me after you, sir.” Phryne reddened a little more, bobbed me a curtsy, and ran back up the steps with a skip and a jump that served to ruffle her skirt hem and accidentally, I was sure, show off her ankles. The lace at Cousin Agnes’s sitting room window twitched.
I glanced at the letters, expecting one or other of them would be from Beckett or Hugh Peters. Both had
I had had my first ever full encounter with a gentleman at the Fox and very enjoyable it had been too. It was before I came down from Oxford, I remember. I must have been in Londinium over the Easter break before the Trinity term began. I had been young—eighteen, perhaps—and uncertain of where my impulses were leading me. Of course there had always been an undercurrent at Eton among the boys there, but it had seldom gone the full length, even among those boys most addicted to the traditional vices. My own experiences had been of tussles in a darkened dormitory with the naked body of a prefect rubbing against me while his hands pulled and tugged me to my own release, and taking my turn to do the rubbing when I too achieved the grandeur of the higher forms and a prefect’s badge. But the man I met at the Fox introduced me to the fullest expression of Greek love in an afternoon and night of sheer hedonistic pleasure, and all those odd impulses and feelings clicked into place with such a sense of rightness that I’ve never looked back since.
Oh yes, I had very fond memories of the Fox. It was a pleasant venue to create new ones too. Rather better than some of the newer meeting places.
In my second week home, I visited one of the cheaper molly houses in Soho, a haunt of many of the Piccadilly renters, available for a pound or two. I gave up on it very quickly despite it being the easiest place of all for encounters—no well-appointed bedrooms here, but only dark little booths curtained to shield us from view. I had no objection to a strong young man pushing me back against the wall and falling to his knees before me. It was entirely enjoyable, feeling his hands pull at my clothes and rub against my buttocks while his mouth swallowed me up. That particular Mary Ann was very skilled and worth every penny I paid him for his services.
But I didn’t want more, not in a place like that. If I were to be thoroughly fucked, or wanted to mount another man, I preferred to do so in a decent bed with a comfortable mattress. Bending over a chair back in a dark room with a dozen other men in close proximity is an activity for the young and heedless. I was neither, and if a molly house had been all that was available to me, I’d have given it up for a while and been content with, well, taking myself in hand, so to speak. It was back to the Fox or the Marks for me—I wasn’t literary enough or precious enough for The Crown—with the thought that if I saved up my pennies, I could afford an occasional night of luxury at Margrethe’s.
Perhaps age was catching me up at last, with this desire for creature comfort over sexual adventure. And that was a thought almost as depressing as the state of my eyes.
Chapter 8
“C APTAIN L ANCASTER ! Captain Lancaster, sir!” Phryne skittered down the house steps after me, waving a couple of letters. “Oh sir, I thought p’raps you hadn’t seen your post on the salver on the hall table, sir. They look important.” She blushed such a rosy hue I was positively warmed by it. A man could put his hands to those cheeks and escape frostbite.
I took the letters and rewarded her with a smile. “That’s very kind of you, Phryne. Thank you.”
“Oh no, sir. The missus sent me after you, sir.” Phryne reddened a little more, bobbed me a curtsy, and ran back up the steps with a skip and a jump that served to ruffle her skirt hem and accidentally, I was sure, show off her ankles. The lace at Cousin Agnes’s sitting room window twitched.
I glanced at the letters, expecting one or other of them would be from Beckett or Hugh Peters. Both had
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