My Secret Life 2

by Henry Spencer Ashbee, Walter

Welcome to the secret world of Walter, a diary of one man's obsession with the opposite sex. A champagne-drinking Victorian traveler, Walter is lascivious, obnoxious, and possessed of an insatiable sexual appetite. Through a bawdy catalog of indecent scenarios with maids, widows, and wenches, he solicits an indulgent exploration of the flesh. His obsessions, fantasies, and voyeuristic tendencies are explored and revealed within this diary—one of the most famous examples of Victorian erotic literature from the decadent era. Only six copies were initially printed in 1888. Attempts to republish the book resulted in the novel being repeatedly banned. This is a dark work of Victorian erotica, and an explicit memoir of unspoken desires in the English class system—encapsulating the joy of hidden sins in an age of moral fervor.

Genres: Erotica

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Henry Spencer Ashbee was a book collector, writer, and bibliographer, notorious for his massive, clandestine three volume bibliography of erotic literature written under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi. He is also speculated to be the author of the erotic novel A Night in a Moorish Harem, written under the pseudonym of Lord George Herbert.

Ashbee was born in Southwark, London. He was by occupation a textile trader, the senior partner in the London branch of the firm of Charles Lavy & Co. He travelled extensively during his life, including Europe, Japan, and San Francisco, collaborating with Alexander Graham on Travels in Tunisia, published in 1887. He was an avid book collector, with perhaps the world's most extensive collections of Cervantes and erotica. Influenced by a friendship with the Belgian diplomat Joseph Octave Delepierre, his erotica collecting proceeded with purchases in Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris.

Ashbee was a part of a loose intellectual fraternity of English gentlemen who discussed sexual matters with a freedom that was at odds with Victorian mores; this fraternity included Richard Francis Burton, Richard Monckton Milnes, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and others. He also amassed thousands of volumes of pornography in several languages. He wrote on sex under the pseudonyms "Fraxinus" (Ash) and "Apis" (Bee), and sometimes combined them as "Pisanus Fraxi".

Ashbee's will left his entire collection to the British Museum, with the condition that the erotic works had to be accepted along with the conventional items. Because the trustees wanted the materials related to Cervantes, they decided to accept the bequest. The trustees were allowed to destroy any of the books if they had a duplicate, but in practice went much further and destroyed six boxes "of offensive matter which is of no value or interest" including cheaply produced Victorian erotica. The remainder of the works formed the core of the Private Case which were kept hidden from readers in the British Library for many years; they include a work by William Simpson Potter.

Ashbee married Elisabeth Lavy in Hamburg, Germany in 1862. They had one son, Charles (the designer Charles Robert Ashbee, born 1863), and three daughters. His family life grew unhappier as he aged. As he became more conservative, his family followed the progressive movement of the era. "The 'excessive education' of his daughters irritated him, his Jewish wife's pro-suffragism infuriated him, and he became tragically estranged from his socialist homosexual son, Charles". Henry and Elisabeth separated in 1893. Henry Spencer Ashbee is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.

Reviews

[Marc]

It's hard to fathom 'Walter's intention when writing these five volumes that document his sexual liaisons over a period of decades. They read as a confessional in many ways, but not one executed so as to purge him of his many indiscretions. That he might have intended them as a document of the social mores of his time is doubtful; he does not have a head for social analysis. He is in the thick of it and swaggers his privilege, both as a man and by virtue of his class, without consideration of the scope of his exploitative nature and that of society as a whole. The girls and women he encounters seem, for the most part, to have been primed for his services, only they do not as yet know it, and he is there to awaken this dormant aspect of their nature. He is a crude seducer, however, and while he does at times demonstrate a degree of tenderness he is rarely repulsed by a no and the objects of his passion are almost invariably trapped, either physically, by locks or doors, or through the compromising nature of his status. He idolises the female body in most of his encounters and even lourds the characters and spirits of his conquests, predominantly when those fall in line with his own, as though their acquiescence might in the end unburden him of shame.
At times the scenarios are ludicrous enough to appear satirical, even funny, and his voyeuristic obsession with peepholes is really quite comical, but these books are not a pretty read, by any means, and his honesty in conveying his thoughts and emotions is shocking from beginning to end, leaving little time for sympathy or affinity, but it is on account of this that the books are so fascinating, as they turn revulsion into a tool with which to gauge the less salutary leanings of man, and the totally corrupting influence of unbalanced power.

[Kerki Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hoogtepunt van de Victorianse erotiek.