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Friday
The blog Lit Hub has alerted me to a recent book, Annabelle Hirsch’s A History of Women in 101 Objects, that features an object celebrated by one of British history’s most notorious libertines. The poem is Earl of Rochester John Wilmot’s “Signior Dildo,” and Hirsch obligingly includes a woodcut featuring that item. We see three women and and a man checking out a shop apparently specializing in dildos, with Hirsch reporting,
During the brief wave of libertinism, some high-society ladies did have lovers. But those who found the risk of compromising their reputation and livelihood too great (while men have always been able to cheat to great acclaim, women have not) survived attacks of acute boredom by reaching for objects like this one. The sex-toy business seems to have experienced a small boom in the seventeenth century: dildos were produced in greater numbers and various materials; some could be filled with liquid to simulate ejaculation.
Hirsch reveals that
Venice was in those days what you might call the capital of refined sex. Accordingly, the glass-blowing island of Murano was known not just for its famous chandeliers, candlesticks, glasses, and other pretty objects—but also as a dildo factory. In a well-to-do household, masturbation (if indulged in) was to be aided by the very finest glassware, if you please, despite the fact that onanism was second only to coitus interruptus—which, incidentally, is linked in the Bible to the story of Onan—as the Church’s worst nightmare.
Wilmot was very much in favor of sexually liberated women. In one of my favorite of his poems—“To a Lady in a Letter”—he encourages his mistress to go out sleep with other men while he is boozing it up with his male companions. “For did you love your pleasure less,/ You were no match for me,” he tells her before concluding,
Whilst I my pleasure to pursue,
Whole nights am taking in
The lusty juice of grapes, take you
The juice of lusty men.
Author Aphra Behn, among other women, was inspired by Wilmot, putting him in her play The Rover as Willmore. Protagonist Helena proves more than a match for cavalier.
But here’s the poem that came to my mind as I was reading Hirsch’s excerpt. I think it refers to actual ladies, which means that the upper class circles would have found it particularly titillating, something Charles’s court expected from Wilmot, who served as almost the official jester. The poem itself is repetitive so you may not want to read it in its entirety, but you can have fun imagining the stir it would have caused:
Signior Dildo
By John Wilmot
You ladies of merry England
Who have been to kiss the Duchess’s hand,
Pray, did you not lately observe in the show
A noble Italian called Signior Dildo?
This signior was one of the Duchess’s train
And helped to conduct her over the main;
But now she cries out, ‘To the Duke I will go,
I have no more need for Signior Dildo.’
At the Sign of the Cross in St James’s Street,
When next you go thither to make yourselves sweet
By buying of powder, gloves, essence, or so,
You may chance to get a sight of Signior Dildo.
You would take him at first for no person of note,
Because he appears in a plain leather coat,
But when you his virtuous abilities know,
You’ll fall down and worship Signior Dildo.
My Lady Southesk, heaven prosper her for’t,
First clothed him in satin, then brought him to court;
But his head in the circle he scarcely durst show,
So modest a youth was Signior Dildo.
The good Lady Suffolk, thinking no harm,
Had got this poor stranger hid under her arm.
Lady Betty by chance came the secret to know
And from her own mother stole Signior Dildo.
The Countess of Falmouth, of whom people tell
Her footmen wear shirts of a guinea an ell,
Might save that expense, if she did but know
How lusty a swinger is Signior Dildo.
By the help of this gallant the Countess of Rafe
Against the fierce Harris preserved herself safe;
She stifled him almost beneath her pillow,
So closely she embraced Signior Dildo.
The pattern of virtue, Her Grace of Cleveland,
Has swallowed more pricks than the ocean has sand;
But by rubbing and scrubbing so wide does it grow,
It is fit for just nothing but Signior Dildo.
Our dainty fine duchesses have got a trick
To dote on a fool for the sake of his prick,
The fops were undone did their graces but know
The discretion and vigor of Signior Dildo.
The Duchess of Modena, though she looks so high,
With such a gallant is content to lie,
And for fear that the English her secrets should know,
For her gentleman usher took Signior Dildo.
The Countess o’ th’ Cockpit (who knows not her name?
She’s famous in story for a killing dame),
When all her old lovers forsake her, I trow,
She’ll then be contented with Signior Dildo.
Red Howard, Red Sheldon, and Temple so tall
Complain of his absence so long from Whitehall.
Signior Barnard has promised a journey to go
And bring back his countryman, Signior Dildo.
Doll Howard no longer with His Highness must range,
And therefore is proferred this civil exchange:
Her teeth being rotten, she smells best below,
And needs must be fitted for Signior Dildo.
St Albans with wrinkles and smiles in his face,
Whose kindness to strangers becomes his high place,
In his coach and six horses is gone to Bergo
To take the fresh air with Signior Dildo.
Were this signior but known to the citizen fops,
He’d keep their fine wives from the foremen o’their shops;
But the rascals deserve their horns should still grow
For burning the Pope and his nephew, Dildo.
Tom Killigrew’s wife, that Holland fine flower,
At the sight of this signior did fart and belch sour,
And her Dutch breeding the further to show,
Says, ‘Welcome to England, Mynheer Van Dildo.’
He civilly came to the Cockpit one night,
And proferred his service to fair Madam Knight.
Quoth she, ‘I intrigue with Captain Cazzo;
Your nose in mine arse, good Signior Dildo.’
This signior is sound, safe, ready, and dumb
As ever was candle, carrot, or thumb;
Then away with these nasty devices, and show
How you rate the just merit of Signior Dildo.
Count Cazzo, who carries his nose very high,
In passion he swore his rival should die;
Then shut himself up to let the world know
Flesh and blood could not bear it from Signior Dildo.
A rabble of pricks who were welcome before,
Now finding the porter denied them the door,
Maliciously waited his coming below
And inhumanly fell on Signior Dildo.
Nigh wearied out, the poor stranger did fly,
And along the Pall Mall they followed full cry;
The women concerned from every window
Cried, ‘For heaven’s sake, save Signior Dildo.’
The good Lady Sandys burst into a laughter
To see how the ballocks came wobbling after,
And had not their weight retarded the foe,
Indeed’t had gone hard with Signior Dildo.