Since
my retirement I’ve taken to wanderings in places I haven’t been before,
which I have found can be a bit tricky. On one such wander recently I
entered a local Opportunity Shop (second hand shop), and it may sound
cheeky but it was like stepping back in time, for in the dimly lit
interior I had some difficulty in deciding which was content and which
was staff.
I took a look around and found myself amongst a rack of
clothes, mostly feminine. As I sifted through them there was a
movement, sinister almost, as a person of indeterminate age emerged, her
hands fiercely clutching an assortment of bras and skirts, and who
shuffled a few steps in my direction. She stopped, eyeing me silently
with some suspicion for a moment before looking over her shoulder and
nodding in my direction. From behind her appeared several more women of
her vintage, and if you’ve ever gone close to a wasp’s nest, you’ll
understand how I felt when two sidled towards me in a pincer-like
movement. I felt extremely vulnerable being the only male there at the
time and had the little scene been filmed it would have provided an
excellent opener to a horror movie of the Oscar-winning kind. A quick
gulp on my angina puffer had my twinkle toes beating a repaid retreat to
the second-hand book corner, at which point they lost all interest in
me.
My pulse had hardly returned to normal, when leafing through
the tatty pages of an old book I read a few things that had me reaching
for my puffer again. It cost me 50 cents, but within its loose binding
and worm-eaten pages its text promised a wander down old-fashioned
pathways of a sensuous nature. Yes indeed! My puffer came in handy twice
on my way up the street just speculating on what the book might reveal
behind closed doors.
Safely home, I now found that the first
illustration on the right hand page was of a well-dressed couple holding
hands in a garden. The young man is on one knee holding the hand of the
lady as he speaks to her, and the caption reads, ‘Popping the question
in high life’, in what today we’d call a typical Victorian scene.
There’s a similar illustration on the opposite page, but this young
couple are poorly dressed as they walk down a muddy country lane; the
caption reads, ‘Popping the question in love life’.
The first word in the title of the book was missing, it read:
‘… to Health’.
It was volume 2, printed in America in 1889. Now just quietly, I’m
something of a health freak myself, and I’ve always believed that ‘a
little of what you fancy does you good’. I therefore permitted the
introduction to lead me further as I read the words, ‘A guide to
physical vigour and purity in the conjugal relations’, and if that
didn’t grab the reader’s attention enough to purchase it, it boldly
added: ‘A description of the human reproductive organs.’ Well!
I
took a quick glance at the first illustration, which chanced to be a
male and gave me some difficulty. The form’s physical appendages where
hidden behind a length of cloth draped over one shoulder of the
otherwise naked person. Don’t you hate it when they do that? It was a
real let-down for me. Being a male I’d hoped to discover if I was as
normal as he was; this was a book which was supposed to make things
clear, after all. There was considerable doubt in my mind as to whether
the poor chap possessed a set of appendages or not, and as for any
female keen on filling in a gap or two in her knowledge of what the said
equipment looks like, and how it fits into the jig-saw bit she
possesses, she receives no help at all. I began to wonder how folk got
on before bikes and bike-sheds, if this was the standard of conjugal
information available then.
A series of sketches of both male and
female organs was given, but in isolation, one would still be in doubt
as to where these bits fitted into the total picture. For example; what
should have been the most important male drawing contained the
explanation, in brackets, ‘(Parts have been eliminated from the original
drawing to avoid offence’). Now you know where the word ‘con’
originated. Here was the ‘con’ but where was the ‘jugal’? I did wonder
who the offended party might have been; the one supplying the original
parts who’d had them privately removed, or those seeking the jig-saw
bit.
A word of caution here; pages 58-63 was headed: 'The Solitary
Vice’. Now being the possessor of a fertile imagination and believing
it’s never too late to learn, I was drawn to those pages with no further
invitation, and wouldn’t you know it, the book fell open of its own
accord at page 58. I had to blink watering eyes as I scanned through the
sub-headings, such as, ‘A sad subject, exaggerated in some sensational
works’; ‘Condemned by Scripture and most eminent writers’, ‘Signs of the
habit’, ‘A common cause of insanity’, and lastly, ‘When and how to warn
youth’. Most certainly not your average bed-time reading stuff now, but
guaranteed to keep teenagers of those days very definitely on edge.
Eager
to discover something I’ve always wondered about but never knew who to
ask, and with my heart suggesting I keep my puffer handy, I flipped
through the pages and found, ‘The young man entering the state of
marriage is fortunate if he has not already injured himself by yielding
to misled passion’. Not good news for me, if it meant what I thought it
meant, but I read on. ‘The nature of the male is so much more sensual
than that of the female that depletion of virile force is very likely to
have already occurred.’ My stars! I was thankful I was seated. I’d
begun to feel quite pale and wan, and was having difficulty focusing my
eyes again. Not good signs if I recall my parent’s warnings aright.
Now
I understand why Queen Victoria dressed in black for so long. Ideas and
beliefs from her time governed the minds of many folk when I left home
in my late teens. They were rampant in the family where I found board.
The lady of the house was a homely woman and I appreciated her concern
for my welfare when she advised me one day, ‘Now don’t go wasting your
substance, lad’. I knew what she meant without any more being said. It
came to me in a flash; she had a son of her own a few months younger
than me and she guessed that he, like me was more than likely keeping a
check on this virile force stuff mentioned earlier. She was probably
thinking too, that as he had not yet graduated, there was still hope.
I’m
pleased that the pallid light of such Victorian misunderstanding has
for the most part faded with the past, overpowered by the stronger light
of today’s knowledge. And while it’s all very well for us to smile at
the beliefs of our forebears, it is not without some humour that prior
to writing the book to which I have referred, its author was a physician
to a hospital for those of unsound mind.
Dennis Crompton © 1995
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)
