Anonymous

The Romances Of Blanche La Mare

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

This is an important occasion, this beginning of another volume of a remarkable Memoir; and Gladys seems to appreciate its full significance. She has a new dress, or rather costume, for the draped confection that dots not at all conceal the exquisite curves of her body, undresses rather than dresses her- You must understand what I mean. She would rather have been far less indelicate stark naked, than in this mazy, fluffy cloud which by its half hearted attempt to conceal anything, accentuates the charm of everything.

Delicious arms and legs has Gladys, and the rosy flesh gleams through the transparent drapery; nipples as carmine as her lips, and a waist rounded cleanly as her throat. The gauze ceases at her knees; thence is a dress of black silk stockings and natty patent leather shoes.

Her little fingers, bedecked with costly rings, (we have had more than one wealthy visitor since the beginning of the book) — hover over the keys of the machine. A brimming glass of champagne stands at the elbow of each of us, cigarettes are to hand; in fact, it only needs the word for “Blanche La Mare” to start the second lap of her redoubtable career.

I never expected George Reynolds to come back. I knew I was done, and my chances of seeing him again about as remote as the likelihood of recovering the two five pounds notes he had borrowed. As a matter of fact, I minded losing my husband less than the money; his conduct and letter had shown him up a bit too much. I could only damn my own folly in trusting him at all. I was cold and tired there, and the grey dawn accentuated my loneliness. I had hungered for man's society and protection, a man's arms round inc. and a man's breast to nestle against; also I had been more than a bit curious to discover what the absolute act of love really was. Many girls in my position would have done the same. That I should have wished to get married puzzled me, for the thought of a life-long bondage had always terrified me. I suppose in the depths of every woman's heart there is an elemental store of puritan-ism that leads her at times to covet the plain gold ring that can cover such a multitude of sins. Also there is undoubtedly a fascination in the term of husband; to be able to introduce my husband to a yet unwed friend is a privilege for which I am quite sure many a girl has taken the plunge and risked the cares of a household and the misery of children. Well, I had taken the plunge, and had soused myself beyond any possibility of ever getting dry again. Here I was, wedded and yet unwedded, with the world ahead of me, a big black mark against my name for a start, and no maidenhead.

Meanwhile breakfast made its appearance, and with the warm tea and ham and eggs, confidence came to me, and I began to seriously consider the future and the career I was to adopt. There were very few open to me. I scanned the “Situations Vacant” columns in the Daily Telegraph, but there wasn't a thing that could possibly suit. That first haven of the homeless girl, governessing, was effectually closed to me.

To begin with I had no references, and secondly I should have undoubtedly succumbed to the amatory advances of one or other of the male members of whatever family I found myself in, and so taken the mistress's shameful order and the push out. I canvassed the idea of a lady typewriter, but the probable drudgery terrified me; also I should have to learn to type, and very likely buy a machine, which wouldn't have left much of my 25 pounds. Besides I had heard a typewriter's position in this great metropolis entailed a good deal of sitting on the knees of elderly employers, what time the trousers of the said employers were not at all in their proper decorum. If I was going to lead an immoral career I judged it better to do it on the stage. I had all the advantages of youth and health and one of the best figures in London, so I presumed there ought not be to much difficulty in obtaining a living wage, and so, by the time I had finished a really excellent breakfast, I had decided for the dramatic profession; there were agents I knew who arranged these matters, and these agents I determined to seek out and impress.

My first business was to get my check cashed, and then find a room. I couldn't stay in this hotel as a married lady whose husband had brought her at seven o'clock on a winter's morning and deserted her before the day was five hours older. George had settled the bill, an act of generosity at which, now, I rather wondered. Luckily I had a few shillings in my pocket with which to pay the necessary tips. That done, I put on my hat and set out without further delay for the bank on which Sir Thomas Lothmere had drawn his check. It was pretty close by, in the Piccadilly District, and I walked.

The presentation of that check was really, I think, one of the most trying moments of my life. The cashier, a vulgar bourgeois man, looked me over with the most insulting deliberation, and I was made to feel at once that he supposed I had come by the check in no respectable fashion. I think old Sir Thomas was fairly good and proper; and even if, in former days, he had had occasion to make money presents to young ladies, I don't suppose he was fool enough to do it by check; so, perhaps, the worthy cashier had never before been called upon to hand over a sum of money to a very pretty girl in a smart hat, who presented a check signed by a widely respectable and elderly scientist. At last I got it; three crisp rivers and ten bright jingling sovereigns; and feeling much happier, and on a sounder footing with the world, I set out on quest number two-lodgings.

Theatrical folk, one of whom I now proposed to be, inhabited principally, I had heard, strange and unknown lands across the water, called Kennington and Camberwell and Brixton. I had never been on the Surrey side of the Thames in my life, and had no intention of going there now. So possibly very extravagantly, I determined to set myself up in the West End. My little costumiere, Eloise's friend, who had so kindly given me credit, lived close by in Jermyn Street, and it occurred to me that I might get a room over her shop.

Madame Karl lived in an old fashioned house in Jermyn Street. On the ground floor was her shop, a tiny magasin de robes, and the rest of the house was used for her own living rooms, and one or two sets of apartments, generally let out to bachelors. I found her in the shop, bowing out a plump lady of important mien.

She was genuinely glad to see me, and laughingly enquired how I had managed to get my bill settled so soon. I made belief a few kisses had been all the price paid by me for the check, but I could see she thought I lied. With a laugh she pinched my cheek. “Well, I wish all my customers were pretty girls,” she said. “Then I should get my accounts settled more regularly.” The lady that just went out owes me over 1000 pounds and on the top of that she's just left an order to execute which I shall have to set aside all other work, and spend goodness knows how much on material. Yet I dare not offend her, for she is the Countess of Alminister, and brings many American ladies here-who do pay. But it is a heavy commission,” and the little woman sighed and shrugged her shoulders.

Madame Karl was not exactly a beauty, but she had a figure that sets off to its best advantage by her perfect gowns, set many a man coveting the charms within. And the charms were worth “having, as I discovered the first night I slept in the Jermyn Street House. She must have been thirty-eight or nine, but her flesh was firm and white and unwrinkled. I helped to rub her down with a soft towel before bed, and when I noticed how she wriggled under my fingers, I knew there was still a volcano of love in that pretty little body.

Our pact was soon sealed. I was to have one of the rooms upstairs, and Madame was very objectionable about my paying rent at present. “That can begin when you get an engagement,” she said.

In the meantime I was to make myself generally useful to her, and I soon gathered that many ways of making useful existed in that establishment.

“I let my chambers very easily to gentlemen,” she told me. “It is so convenient, you know, should a lady call, for there to be a dressmaker's establishment on the ground floor; one may suspect a lady who enters a house let in gentlemen's apartments in Jermyn Street, but who shall question the right of a lady, married or single, to visit her dressmaker.”

So it came to pass that I was to be a sort of generally discreet chaperone. Madame used to give her lady clients tea in the upstairs sitting room. When the lady showed signs of being at all timid, I used to be present at the beginning of the tea, and then be suddenly called away, what time the gentleman accomplished his desire. More than a dozen times my errand did not take me further than the keyhole, and from that point of vantage I witnessed some quite amusing performances. I must say that some of Ma-dame's aristocratic lady clients made no bones about haggling over the price of their bodies, just as if they had been ordinary women of the street.

Certainly the profits of the establishment appeared to be considerable; and one day, after a particularly good lunch, Madame Karl surprised me with her tale of the business done for the day.

“You remember the pretty little girl in the blue costume who came in here this morning,” she said, “the one I left upstairs with you?”

I remembered perfectly well.

“She is Lord Wetlon's daughter. They are not at all well off, but naturally she loves pretty clothes. Well, you recollect the dark little gentleman who came in afterwards, whom you left up there with her. He is Christopher Echsstein, the broker. What she did for it, I don't know, but he ordered 250 pounds worth of dresses for her, and, what is more, gave me a check in advance. He's a true Jew, he wanted the discount.”

Madame had four assistants, all pretty girls, and each one of them hot as they make them. She didn't pay them much, but I reckon they had nothing to complain of about the little extra bits they made out of the husbands of some of her customers.

Of course, I attracted the attention, to say nothing of the lustful glances, of more than one of Madame's trouser clad customers. Little Blanche was not the sort of beauty to go many days through her career without causing some masculine head to turn, or some masculine sexual members to press against the confining trousers in dumb protest. But the fools dared no more than a passing glance I think they feared offending Madame Karl. Sometimes I was glad of their reticence, yet often again I so boiled over with desire to be made love to that I could have boxed the ears of several nice young men, who when left alone with me, looked their desire, but mad.',' no attempt to express it in more forceful, to say nothing of more pleasant, form. T honestly believe they thought me a virgin, I had looked so young, for you must remember that I was not yet quite out of short frocks. Thai-is to say, I wore a long gown and put up my hair in the evening, but the day time usually found my red-brown tresses gathered into a loose knot at the back of my neck and my ankles delightfully displaced by a short skirt which only journeyed three parts of the way down my calves. In fact, I was still a flapper.

“What's the meaning of that word?” interrupted Gladys. “I know of course its significance, but what's the actual derivation of the expression?”

“Flapper, why the technical term for little ducks, stupid; haven't you ever heard of men going flapper shooting?”

To continue, “A little duck” I certainly looked, especially when I sat down and showed my pretty, rounded calves well up to the knee.

But, as I was saying, I occasionally felt almost uncontrollable pangs of naughtiness, and I am afraid that the fore-finger of my right hand was sometimes put to most improper uses, how I wished it had been a masculine digit. Once when Madame Karl and I were unusually confident (we were sitting over our tea and cigarettes and the fire), I let drop a hint of this- She was asking me about my seduction, and I told her that, although it was not all roses at the time, I would willingly have another try at fornication to relieve my lascivious feelings.

“And so you shall, dear little girl,” she said, coming over to me and kissing me lovingly. “Why nearly all the men who come here have begged of me to approach you on the subject, but I didn't like to.”

And so it was arranged, I was to go wrong with Lord X-.

“A Lord, Tut! tut!” this from Gladys.

“Oh, I've worked through pretty well and all the grades of the peerage in my time,” I answered, “once I had a Viscount and a Duke in the same day.”

“And that reminds me of a story,” says Gladys. “It concerns itself, does this little yarn, with a parson's wife, who by no means got all the pleasure she wanted out of her husband, the anaemic incumbent of a swagger west end parish. And it seems that it came to pass that one fine day Lord “So and So” visited her in the absence of her husband. Hearing someone coming she bade the Lord conceal himself on the top of the ancient four poster. He did so; but it was not her husband, only Sir C-, who had likewise went under the bed like a rabbit. This time it was her husband, come home randy for once in a way (he had been taking a girl's class) and he wanted it, too; and had it. At the conclusion, he remarked to his better-half, “Ah Mary, I sometimes think you have not always been as good a woman as you should have been, but trust in the Lord above, He will look after you-.”

“Oh, will he?” came a voice from above the canopy. “Then what about that bugger of a baronet underneath?”

It was arranged very artistically. I was not going to have it given away that I was a previously consenting party to the affair. Madame Karl, in the course of a casual conversation with Lord X, mentioned me; he declared his desire; she suggested he should go up to my bedroom, enter as if he had made a mistake (she told him that I would be undressing at the time), and it rested on his own initiative to complete the job.

I was undressing, that is to say I was pretty well in Eve's costume. Madame had warned me by speaking tube when he was nearly at the door, and when he entered he found me all stark naked but my chemise, and that fallen to my feet. Of course I uttered the time honored scream, covered my face with one hand and my mons veneris with the other, ran hither and thither about the room as if seeking cover and murmured, “Oh go away; please!”

But he didn't go; he rushed at me, pulled one hand from my face and kissed me on the lips; pulled the other hand from my cunt and felt it, in fact, in about one moment he had got me down on the bed and his prick was well into me, not one single word did he say till I could feel him coming and the first part of the entertainment was over. As I lay back on the bed, panting, while he rather shamefacedly put back his penis into his trousers, I managed to gasp out: “well! What a funny way to make love to a girl! Don't you ever say anything?”

He laughed, “I'm glad you're not furious,” he said, “but to tell the truth I was awfully nervous.”

“Nervous.” He need not have been, for I don't mind betting I wanted it even more than he that blessed afternoon. “Nervous.” How many a beautiful chance of exquisite sexual intercourse has been wasted by this wretched nervousness on the part of Mankind. I can call to mind a tale concerning a nervous person who asked another young man how he made small talk at parties, declaring himself always dumb on these occasions. “Oh, I don't worry much about frills in my conversation,” was the answer, “I just get the girl in a quiet corner, squeeze her hand and ask her if she likes fucking.”

“But my dear chap,” was the answer, “what an awful thing to say; I should think you would get yourself badly disliked sometimes and get thrown out of some houses.”

“Well,” admitted the candid one, “I do get disliked sometimes and I have been thrown out of houses, but I get a hell of a lot of fucking.”

MORAL-Oh-Mankind, remember that the woman is as often as not, as keen for it as you are-and don't be NERVOUS.

After that we got on splendidly. He undressed, was soon stiff and in again, and we had a long, glorious, slow grind, exquisite pleasure the whole time, and always that delightful feeling that there was much more ahead, not just a few more strokes and the business completed. Twice was all I would allow him, though he wanted more. I made him sponge me all over with hot scented water, rub me down till I glowed deliciously, and dress me. He was no novice at the game, and the teasing little kisses with which he would accompany all the business of drawing on my stockings, fastening my drawers, getting me into my corsets, etc., nearly made me fall again. When dressed at last, we went downstairs. I just found time to whisper to Madame Karl that it was satisfactorily done, and we got a cab and went off to have tea at Claridge's room among all the ambassadors.

Madame Karl seemed thoroughly pleased when I got back home. She was all over me, and gave me a hat lately arrived from Paris which I had coveted muchly. And as my lordling friend had bought me a diamond brooch at Streeter's, I did fairly well.

The secret of what I had done did not remain a secret-I don't know how it got to the ears of the girls, but after dinner, when we had all together that evening, one of them got me alone in a corner of the drawing room and whispered, “So you've been with Lord X-, this afternoon?” My blush was sufficient answer.

“Come out with me this evening,” she whispered, tickling my hand, “I can promise you a lot of fun.”

Her tone, and the gesture with which she accompanied her invitation, gave me full well to understand that something naughty was in the wind-“Must I ask Madame Karl's permission?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“My dear little Nemmy,” said Madame Karl, when I told her, “of course you can go, but I warn you that this will be something quite out of the common. Nelly knows more than a bit.”

Now you mustn't run away with the idea that Madame Kirl kept a bad house in the sense that her assistants were tarts and nothing else. As far as they were concerned, there was precious little wickedness performed on the premises; but Madame gave them a free hand on their off evenings, just as all the swagger dressmaker's establishment in London and Paris do.

“They all have their latch keys at Gay's, and at Madame Marie's, too,” says Gladys, “I was at the latter for a bit myself and I know.”

Nelly was the youngest of Madame Karl's assistants, a little older than myself, and only just promoted to the dignity of long skirts. She was a pretty blonde, very well favored by nature, with a deliciously plump arm and shoulder, and very well developed breasts. Her legs were perfect; she was one of those few girls who could stand upright in an ordinary position, close her legs and keep a three penny bit between her thighs. She was proud of this and often used to show us the trick.

She was delighted when I said I could come, and insisted on lending me a dress. “Your own evening frock is delightful, my dear,” she explained, “but it isn't quite what we want for this evening.”

She put me into a three quarter length gown, extremely decolette, but filled in about the shoulders with lace (which, as a matter of fact, rather added to the suggestiveness of the confection). It was so low at the back that I had to wear a corset which was little more than a band round the waist, and my nipples almost escaped in front. She, too, put on a three quarter dress, I began to see that this looked like a flapper party.

To cut a long story short, Nelly took me to a house in Cadogan Gardens, a swagger enough place to look at, and explained that it was kept by a woman of good family who added to her own rather diminished income by running it as a meeting place for men and girls. “She's quite the best and nicest procuress in London,” Nelly explained, “She's delightful to all the girls who go there, and you can be perfectly certain of your money.”

That there was money in the air, had never occurred to me when I accepted Nelly's invitation, but I didn't shrink on that account, I could do with a little of the root of all evil just then. Then Nelly told me that the parties varied. On one evening, for instance, our hostess would collect a few married women who were prepared to go astray from their titular lords and masters; sometimes quite young married women, and sometimes ladies who had attained the prime of life without losing their good looks-(these were for men who desired a lot of experience from their bedfellows)-and sometimes young girls.

“That'll be us, this evening,” I said.

“Well, not exactly; we come into the kids party. We are for the men who want very young girls.”

I gathered from Nelly also that our hostess was prepared to find anything. She organized coster girl parties, bringing up pretty little East-enders; and even parties at which very depraved young men could exercise their desire on quite elderly women. “These parties,” said Nelly,” are the most paying of all, for she gets money from both sides, since the old women are under the impression that she has to pay the young men-oh, she's very very clever.”

We were taken to Mrs. Cowper in a large room which was a cross between a very elaborate boudoir and a hot house. That is to say, it was lighted by skylights like a studio, carpeted with some soft material into which one's feet sank almost to the ankles-I found out later that a thin mattress lay underneath the carpet-and was full of flowers and ferns of every kind. From the roof of an alcove depended a vine covered with luscious grapes. A table bearing a glittering tea equipment stood in one corner, various small tables bore wine and spirit decanters. We were ushered in by a large page boy, a dark boy, an octoroon I thought, and exquisitely beautiful, with a kind of girlish loveliness. “Surely it's a girl,” I whispered to Nelly, nodding towards the boy.

“Oh, is he,” said our hostess, rising, “Come here, Claude.”

When the boy came to her, she laid her hand on the front of his trousers, slipped down her fingers and showed us a dear little standing prick. The boy laughed and made his escape.

Then Mrs. Cowper noticed me: “Good Heavens, Nelly,” she cried, “I had no idea you'd brought a stranger; whatever must she think of me, my dear?”

I could not do anything but blush, and Mrs. Cowper continued: “After all, I daresay Nelly has told you we're not very proper here,” and she laid her arms on my shoulders, kissing me lovingly on the lips.

Mrs. Cowper was I suppose about thirty-five, and uncommonly beautiful. Her figure was perfection, and the dress she wore showed off all of its delights. The dress was carried out in a design of ferns. Ferns, quite small at the waist, but gathering size as they fell lower, made the skirt; the bodice was one large bunch of ferns, out of which grew her ivory neck and shoulders; she had ferns in her hair, and two little pearl and diamond ferns for earrings.

I sat by her side sipping a liquor while Nelly briefly told her who and what I was.

“You'll do for me very nicely, dear little girl,” she said, “I think you will just suit a man I've got coming this evening; let me see, are you a virgin?”

I had half framed the word yes, when she suddenly ran her hand up my clothes, and felt my trembling little cunt-“Oh no, you're not,” she said, with a laugh, “and you must not pretend to be. I never deceive my patrons HERE.”

“I've only been wrong with two men,” I said, pouting.

“Well, your third will be young Mr. Robinson, of the Stock Exchange. I shall charge him ten pounds for you, and give you five of it; whatever you get out of him on the top of that is of course your own affair. Here is the fiver,” and she handed me a note.

“And me?” said Nelly.

“A Mr. Reichardt, likewise of the Stock Exchange, a friend of his, they will be here in a moment.”

But before those worthies arrived, a number of other girls were shown in. Some arrived singly, but more often they came in twos or threes. I reckoned there were about fifteen present before a single trousered animal put in an appearance. They were pretty and beautiful though I knew myself to be, I felt I had plenty of rivals on this occasion. Some were very young-wicked as I was I could not help feeling it rather a shame when I saw girls who could not have been more than fourteen-and I don't suppose one there was more than nineteen. All were pretty, often very extravagantly dressed, and I have never since, despite all the varied experience of my life seen such a delightful assemblage of dainty childish shoulders, plump little girlish arms, well moulded calves, generally displayed to the knee, and slim attractive little waists.

About a dozen men arrived, and we had music-and a good many drinks. Everything was very decorous; Nelly told me that no impropriety went on coram populo, and I flirted in an amiable manner with my Mr. Robinson. An occasional touch of his hand gave me naughty shivers, to say nothing of the frequent discreet comminglings of his trousers with my stockings, and I had begun to wonder when there was going to be any serious by play, when Nelly took me aside “Mrs. Cowper wants me to ask you a favor, Blanche dear,” she said, “It seems there are not quite enough men to go around.

“Shocking mismanagement-!” interrupts Gladys.

“And she doesn't want any of the girls left over.”

“Prudent woman.” the irrepressible typewriter again.

“Wherefore she wants to know whether you and I will go with the same man-it's that old gentleman over there-(pointing to a lean and lanky old sportsman who was doing prodigies with the spirit decanters in a secluded corner, feasting his eyes on the girls at intervals) it'll be another fiver each, she concluded.

I was rather glad. I liked Nelly, and I hadn't much modesty even then. I felt that I should be much less nervous, with her to aid, than alone, so the bargain was struck.

Mrs. Cowper, first giving me the extra fiver, she was extremely business like-sidled us up to our fare; we went with him into another room and had a little stand up supper against a buffet. Then Mrs. Cowper led the conversation round to art, told our old friend that we were art students, said that we were dying to see the Correggio in the pink boudoir, and left him to take us there-it was so tactful and nice.

“But T doubt me not, we shall hear the old buffer got there just the same, as if it had been a farmer's daughter blocked by a country lout in a barn,” said Gladys, “Continue, most elegant and tactful one.”

But the word “barn” puts me off. It reminds me of a story; the story of the couple who were enjoying each other in a loft, when suddenly the loft gave way. Heavily they fell to earth. “Bill” said the fair one below, “Bill, are you hurt?”

“Hurt,” was the reply, “why those is my cock and balls hanging on that nail!”

Our old friend got us into the boudoir in due course, and all the time I was wondering where I had seen his face before. Then I tumbled to the fact that his beard and mustache were false-(I noted that while he was kissing me)-and got it. He was the senior classical master at Rocton, my father's school. At first, came terror that he was likely to recognize me, but I soon saw that he was quite oblivious to my identity-in fact I had changed a bit since he could have seen me last. Then it occurred to me to frighten him-not that any idea of blackmail had ever crossed my mind-no.

“Well, well what did he do?” Gladys again.

He fucked Nelly first-to be blunt; not, I trust, because he didn't think me the nicest, but because it appeared that he had had Nelly before, and was less nervous. There wasn't much art about it at all. I just sat on the edge of the couch and smoked a cigarette while he stripped her naked, kissed her in many places and generally messed her about, till he finally produced a giant weapon, and shoved it up her. The consummation was short. Nelly, seemed frantically randy, wriggled her arse like a tortured soul, and soon had him spending into her for all he was worth.

By that time I, naturally, was naughty too, but I had to wait a bit; that greedy Nelly had got too much, and we had to aid our friend with much manipulation of his person, tickling his balls, stroking of his little stomach, etc., before he had me on the sofa with his lance in me-the rest was easy, and I kept in till the moment I could feel him swelling with rapidity arriving semen, when I said, very quietly, “Whatever would Michael Hunt say if he saw you doing this?”

The man gave one convulsive wriggle, shot about a gallon of fluid into me, then rolled off, pale to the hair roots-“What do you know of Michael Hunt?” he asked.

“Only that you're his senior master at Roc-ton. I know you very well by sight, even if you have a false beard and mustache on. I do hope you've enjoyed this better than to teach at the boys school.”

Now anyone but a fool would have seen the fun of the thing and laughed with us. Nelly told me afterwards he must have known that Mrs. Cowper was a safe enough place, and felt no fear of blackmail-but that silly old thing whacked up fifty pounds for us two to divide, so that we should be mum. I don't say that he didn't have a bit more fun for his money-but fifty is a lot, and I daresay he had paid Mrs. Cowper quite a tidy little sum already.