Part #2
And in the few short intervals of bodily inactivity, her mind is ever busied in
preparing for action. Awake she is ever conceiving in body or soul; and her
very slumbers are so many rough draughts of future embryos. If nevertheless
none of them are brought to maturity, it is not for want of manuring the soil
which should produce them: In this so far from being sparing she is profuse;
for, as the polite Lord Lansdown says of another heroine of the same class, I
may say,
She's mine, or thine, and strolling up and down
Sucks in more Filth than and Sink in Town.
It is true, indeed, that all this extravagant merit in Salacia, entitles her to no
degree of esteem from our sex or her own. Her too eager desire of being
serviceable to the human species renders her useless, nay destructive to it.
What colonies might not the motley nation of foetuses within her have peopled,
if properly dispersed? . . . which are now too busy in struggling for room to
aim at maturity; and too much taken up, in their intestine war, with destroying
each other, to add one perfect individual to the decaying numbers of mankind.
In a word, what esteem can we have for a woman made barren by excess of
fertility, and lavish of the choicest fruits of the creation by an insatiable lust of
monopolizing them?
Clavia, it must be owned has been more cautious, though not less criminal.
Disposed from her cradle to become a common recevoir of human nature, she
took care not to launch out into wholesale lechery, till she furnished the world
with a breeder in her stead. Indeed she makes ample amends in her old age for
the little time she lost in her prime, by converting her house into a public stew,
and making herself the sewer of it. All men are welcome there, if provided with
brawn, though unprovided with breeches, from the tall apothecary to the
luftylimbed porter.
Though neither the purchased roses on her cheeks, nor the borrowed ivory
in her gums would have any power over the most rampant, even of her
powdered, pampered, parti-coloured stallions-in-keeping, if the yellow
charms of all enchanting gold, which the God of waste has lavished upon her,
did not fill up the deep-indented furrows of seventy.
'Tis by this she is empowered, in the last stage of life, to vie with her sex in
the favourite commerce of their youth, and to convince the world, that though
there are some women, whom the whole collection of mankind would be an
equal match for, there are others again of more extensive inclinations, who,
but for the short date of their existence, could unweariedly weary a new
creation of men in the business of enjoyment. Not that she herself is capable
of reaping any thing from fruition but the guilt of it - too old and battered
to produce even a monster, and too inanimate for any sensation, she has
nothing to enjoy but sin.
And this her eager soul has such a talent for, that, like the demon who
inspires her, she can take in an eternity of lust into one single minute.
And multiply one libidinous act into an infinity. Such are the pretty creatures
we are to esteem for the talent of breeding.
The general rule however will admit of some exceptions: and Sprucilla is one.
Formed by Heaven a perfect vehicle of human nature, she has every
qualification requisite to reap the fruits of fruition, and no dislike to the pleasure
of it. The graces have combined to enrich her with every endearment capable
of charming the man she is married to, and making him forget himself, to stoop
to the low but necessary office of rendering her really useful. But pride,
predominant pride, is so prevalent in her, as to make her prefer the empty praise
of a fine shape to that of being a mother of children.
And if, in complying with her husband's wantonness to gratify her own,
she is at any time made a mother before she is aware, so careless is she
of the only good she is fit for, as rather to risk the loss of an heir to his
estate, than to miss an opportunity of gaining new admirers at a ball or a play.
Among the unmarried women, what numberless tribes of useless things are
there not, whose pride, avarice, fickleness or icy constitutions, rob human
nature of the individuals they were intended to bear; and by not answering the
use they were given to him for, become a dead weight upon man?
Indeed, if there are some among them less squeamish than the rest, who
atone out of wedlock for their slowness to engage in it; how few of them is
human nature the better for? How many of them stifle the fruit of their
pleasure before it is ripe?
Not to speak of those disgraces to the soft shape they wear, who only delay
destruction to make it more cruel.
Nor can it be deemed a sufficient amends to the creation for the many particles
of human nature wafted and destroyed in their passage through these
quicksanded, baneful channels, that there are a few married women, fertile
enough to forward the propogation of man, and modest enough to moderate
their pregnative zeal.
Especially if we consider, how dearly their whims, their vanity, their extravagance,
and fantastical humours make us purchase the service they do us. Uberia has
blessed her husband with a numerous offspring, all his own. But she would
scarce be a woman, if she did not take pains to make him sensible how
expensive and troublesome a thing is a fruitful, faithful wife. Every lying-in costs
him more than would make a handsome provision for the infant; besides an
estate spent in the time of her breeding.
Indeed she has economy enough to lose him no time between her bringing
forth one child and preparing him another. The reason is, that there are
two conditions in which her Ladyship can bear no contradiction, that is
before delivery and after.
And therefore she is in the perpetual possession of her own will, because ever
with child or in the straw. However the happy father might be very well content
to sell her a wood for every longing, to mortgage a manor for every lying-in,
and to fell another for every Christening; nay to make her over, by deed of gift,
the everlasting property of her own will, upon the bare condition of her leaving
him the undisturbed possession of his.
But nothing less can reward the prolific merit of this Lady than her husband's
peace. He must not so much as look civilly on any other female. And such a
miser is she of his manhood, that while she takes care to hoard up the
principal to herself, she is as solicitous to secure even the interest.
He must not have even the use of a single smile at his own disposal. His
company must be such only as her Ladyship approves of; and them he must
converse with no longer than his pretty fond thing of a wife can spare him
from her embraces. At home, it is true, he never wants amusement, being
sure in the daytime to be entertained with seeing his children either humoured
into impertinencies, or chastised into faults; and rendered incorrigible
by the folly, passion, and caprice of their fond, fickle, foolish mother; to
contradict whom would cost nothing less than the price of another child.
Then that he may not grow tired with such entertainments by daily repetition,
they are ever succeeded by an evening interlude of vapours, ratasee,
and tears, till bed invites him to repose; where, after he has glutted the kind
creature's fonder fits, he is generally lulled to sleep, and awakened from it,
by the melody of a curtain-serenade. Now can it be denied after all that
Uberia's husband is a happy man; and that all men have reason to esteem the
women for their prolific merit?
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