Fanny (2 page)

XIV
Containing Anne Bonny’s Legacy to our Heroine; better Reasons for Female Pyracy than for Male; a very tragical Incident; and the Beginning of the Conclusion of our History—(but do not fear, we shall not leave our Reader without many more Epilogues, Appendices, and Farewells).

XV
In which we draw nearer and nearer to our Conclusion, and certain Omens presage the Future of our Heroine, Hero, and their Beloved Babe.

XVI
Drawing still nearer to the End.

Epilogue
In which our Author explains the curious Chain of Events which led to the Writing of this History.

Afterword

A Biography of Erica Jong

In which Fanny is introduced…

It is raining at Merriman Park. The green is the green that exists nowhere but in England. Even the tree trunks are green, being kissed with moss. And the steps leading to the little Greek temple are slippery with the same green moss. Across the ha-ha, at the end of the avenue of rain-drenched chestnut trees, cows are grazing, heads down, oblivious of the rain. They are English cows.

A brown and white spaniel with muddy paws bounds into the house, races across the black and white marble floor of the main hall, wholly indifferent to the assemblage of gods and goddesses on the painted ceiling, the scenes from the
Aeneid
on the walls, the reclining marble figures of Poetry, Music, Geography, Astronomy, Geometry, and Sculpture on the pediments above the stately doors. The dog has been eating grass and she stops momentarily to vomit on the parquet floor of the library, then races up the great stairs to her mistress’ bedchamber, where she leaps (with muddy paws) upon her silk-dressing-gown-covered knees (marking the rose-pink watered silk with paw prints), vomits some more grass, and in short thoroughly distracts her from what she has been writing. Her mistress puts down her goose quill (now blunt anyway from so much writing) and rises from the walnut writing bureau to chastise the dog, whose name, we now learn, is Chloe.

But who is this lady and what has she been writing? She is too beautiful a lady for us not to inquire. Her hair is the color of autumn. Her eyes are as brown and liquid as her dog’s eyes. Her face betrays no years but those required to make a girl into a woman. Perhaps she is thirty, perhaps forty, perhaps thirty-five forever. She is Fanny to her friends, Frances on official documents, and Fannikins to lovers besotted with her charms. There have been plenty of those. She has also been called poetic names like Lindamira, Indamora, Zephalinda, Lesbia, Flavia, Sappho, Candida, by many of her literary lovers (who wrote her into their poems and plays). But no matter. No woman of character ever reaches Fanny’s age (whatever it may be) without being ridiculed by some as irrationally as she is praised by others.

So, if she has been called a woman of the town, a tart, a bawd, a wanton, a bawdy-basket, a bird-of-the-game, a bit of stuff, a buttered bun, a cockatrice, a cock-chafer, a cow, a crack, a cunt, a daughter of Eve, a gay-girl, a gobble-prick, a high-flyer, a high-roller, a hussy, a hurry-whore, a jill, a jude, a judy, a jug, laced mutton, lift-skirts, light o’ love, merry legs, minx, moll, moonlighter, morsel, mutton-broker, mount, nestcock, night-bird, night-piece, night-walker, nymph of darkness, nymph of the pavement, petticoat, pick-up, piece, pillow-mate, pinch-prick, pole-climber, prancer, quail, quiet mouse, or even Queen—it is not surprising. A woman of lively parts is as likely to be slandered as she is to be praised.

“Chloe—look what you’ve done to my gown,” she says (not really angrily) to the slobbering spaniel; and the two of them leave the vicinity of the writing bureau, the walnut chair (with its ball-claw cabriole legs and its scallop-shell carvings), and proceed to the washstand where the dog will be dried and brushed as lovingly as if it were a child. This enables us to peek at what Fanny has been writing. We do so with only enough guilt to make it more piquant….

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

(In Order of Appearance)

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

The Introduction to the Work or Bill of Fare to the Feast.

I
, FANNY HACKABOUT-JONES
, having been blest with long Life, which makes e’en the Harshest Events of Youth pale to Insignificance or, i’faith, appear as Comedies, do write this History of my Life and Adventures as a Testament for my only Daughter, Belinda.

I have, in other Documents, left this most Excellent Young Woman my Houses, my Lands, my Jewels, the Care of my Dogs, Horses, and Domestick Animals, and yet I am convinced that the ensuing History shall have more Value to her than all the Riches I have acquir’d in my Life, either by my Pen or by my Person. For tho’ ’tis no easy Thing to be born a Man in this Vale of Tears, ’tis more difficult still to be born a Woman. Yet I believe I have prosper’d despite this Capricious Destiny, or e’en because of it, and what better Legacy can I give to my beloved Belinda than a full and true Account of that very Life which hath been so oft’ distorted, slander’d, or us’d to inspire scandalous Novels, lascivious Plays, and wanton Odes?

If these Pages oft’ tell of Debauchery and Vice, ’tis not in any wise because their Author wishes to condone Wickedness, but rather because Truth, Stark-Naked Truth, demands that she write with all possible Candour, so that the Inheritor of this Testament shall learn how to avoid Wickedness or indeed transform it into Goodness.

All possible Care hath been taken to give no deliberate Offence to Modesty or Chastity; yet the Author avows that Truth is a sterner Goddess than Modesty, and where there hath been made necessary a Choyce betwixt the Former and the Latter, Truth hath, quite rightly, triumph’d.

If some of the Episodes in the ensuing History offend the gentler Sensibilities of an Age less lusty than that which gave me birth, let the Reader put it down to the Excesses of my Epoch, the doubtless impoverish’d Origins of my poor Natural Parents, the Lack of Formal Education occasion’d by my Sex, and the Circumstances of my Life, which caus’d me to make my Living by my Wits, my Pen, and my Beauty.

The World is so taken up of late with Histories and Romances in which Vice fore’er perishes and Virtue triumphs, that the intended Reader may wonder why Vice is not always punish’d and Virtue not always rewarded in these Pages, as in the Histories of Mr. Fielding and Mr. Richardson; to which your Humble Author can only reply that ’tis Truth we serve here, not Morality, and with howe’er much Regret we affirm it, ne’ertheless we must affirm that Truth and Morality do not always, alas, sleep in the same Bed.

’Tis a trite but true Observation that Examples work more forcibly upon the Mind than Precepts; yet whilst the Male Sex hath had no Derth of Examples of Greatness from Jesus of Nazareth to William Shakespeare, the Bard of Stratford, the Members of the Female Sex search in vain for Great Women on whom to model their perilous Destinies.