On Sex, Sex Toys & Naughty Books
Dildos, Godermiches, Consolateurs or Bijoux Indescets:
Dildos are ancient…one found made of stone dates back 26,000 years! Today they carry a titillating aura of the naughty and are certainly not available in your corner shop. Well, unless you live in New York or San Francisco. My home state, Texas, has an arcane law on the books that makes it illegal to own more than seven. Wow.
However, in the England of the late 1700s and early 1800s, dildos could be bought openly in London shops. The variety most commonly sold were made of leather over wood—sometimes with horse hair or sawdust stuffing—or simply polished wood. They came in a variety of sizes and varying degrees of realism. Some dildos were equipped with testicles and hair! And don’t get me started on the hair. Women could buy hairpieces for their pubic areas. Apparently one of the treatments for syphilis made one’s hair fall out and unlike today, being hairless “down there” was not considered desirable. So “merkins” were developed to disguise the lack. I have to wonder at how the prostitutes or their clients thought they could pull it off without being discovered?
The more exotic dildos were made of polished stone, sometimes precious, like jade or ivory. Here is an example from the late 1800’s of a traveling set of dildos that recently sold at auction for £3,600.
“Lot Number: 340. Erotica. An extraordinary and exceptionally rare ‘Travel Godermiche’ being a pair of wooden phallus contained within a fitted kid leather covered Treen case with strap fleurs-de-lys decoration, one phallus 10 inches and with testicles and the other 11 inches and without testicles. The case, although having a re-lined interior appears to have age commensurate with those of the phallus and both are thought to date from the late 18th century and are probably French.”
In addition to dildos, penis extenders and strap-ons (an entire chapter devoted to them in the Kama Sutra), ben-wa balls (originally used by men until women discovered them), anal plugs (though they were marketed as “dilators” and touted to be a cure for hemorrhoids and constipation),
penis rings or cock rings (the Chinese thought them necessary for conception), and sex dolls (French sailors used them when women weren’t available, and they were made of oiled cloth) were readily available in the 1800s. The various offerings to be found in the bookstore where Miles met Eleanor and Lady Florence would not have been out of the ordinary. The fact that Miles met her at Chesterton’s would be viewed as uncommon.
As Eleanor comments on the night of her deflowering, she owes much to the ladies that came before her. They passed their frank, unabashed enjoyment of sex on to Miles and indirectly, the attitude that “good” women were capable of lust and enjoyed sexual intercourse just as much as men. For his day, he had a remarkably modern attitude about women and their ability to derive pleasure from physical intimacy, but then in 1814 where our story is set, the evangelicals and the moralists had yet to put the stranglehold on British mores they would achieve in 1837 (Queen Victoria) and after. London in 1814 was still under the influence of the much more liberal attitude toward all bodily functions (sex included) that had persisted from the 1700s on. An excellent example of some of the bawdy and outright pornographic prints that could be readily obtained during this period were those of Thomas Rowland:
In spite of what most historical romances would lead you to believe, the majority of “good” women from the mid-1800s on, were told nothing of sex—zero, zip, nada—and were not expected to enjoy it. For women, sex as a recreational pastime simply for pleasure was nonexistent. For a woman, sex was strictly for procreation and performed only in the missionary position. Contraception was considered immoral and in Great Britain was illegal. The condom was used to protect men from disease—not women from conception. If wives did enjoy conjugal relations, if they sought sexual relations from their husbands, many “proper” British males viewed them with disapproval and suspicion, seeing them as being “unnaturally” lustful, licentious and in need of moral correction while the same men happily kept multiple mistresses and frequented whorehouses to relieve their “natural” urges. No joke. This hypocritical behavior is still in evidence today with society’s attitude toward women who have many sex partners versus men who have many sex partners. For the male, multiple lovers provide evidence of his virility and masculine prowess and society awards him a wink and a half-hearted shake of the finger. For a woman, such behavior brands her as promiscuous, a slut, a whore, and society sneers and berates her. Even today in 2017, it’s permissible for a man to want sex for pleasure’s sake because men “need” sex. Not so for women. A woman has to be married—or at least in a “committed” relationship for her desire for sexual gratification to be considered “appropriate”. After all, women don’t “need” sex. Yeah. Okay, off my soapbox.
The chastity belt was not a medieval invention. It was Victorian. Sex was not to be enjoyed outside of the marital bed and “good” women only “accommodated” their husbands to obtain children.
The first real chastity belts weren’t created until the *1800s, and they weren’t for keeping women from straying sexually. The first chastity belts appear to have been crude devices designed to keep children from masturbating. ~ Paul Joannides Psy.D.; Psychology Today
*PAK’s emphasis
Eleanor knows only the most basic rudiments of sexual relations between a male and a female; a male puts his “breeding” organ into a female. That she has even this information is because she lives on a breeding farm and has seen a stallion with a mare. She couldn’t have given you the anatomical names for the sexual parts of her own body and at the ripe age of thirty, had never seen a man with so much as his shirt off. While she has had an unconventional education in many areas, she is as ignorant as any woman of her time when it comes to matters pertaining to sex.
The Earl of Rutledge, the Countess of Rutledge and the Dowager Duchess of Chelsony, indeed all of Miles’ patronesses, grew up in the bawdy and licentious Georgian period, a vastly different environment with a vastly different attitude toward women than that of the late Regency. If you are interested in some fascinating sexual romps, read some of the biographies of the more promiscuous men and women (especially the women!) of the Georgian era.
Happy reading!
Patricia