Lunch With Walter

In 1903 as the existence of My Secret Life began to emerge on the clandestine erotica market, I met with the book’s author, Walter, in London’s oldest restaurant, Rules in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. My mission was to explore the diary keeping methods that he used in order to write My Secret Life. It was a convivial luncheon, during which Walter took great pleasure in talking about his extraordinary life’s work. (He had been dead for some years and it would be another sixty years before I was born.)

*Walter’s responses are as written by him in My Secret Life. The italics in Walter’s answers are my own additions.

Q. How did My Secret Life come into being?

A. I began these memoirs when about twenty-five years old, having from youth kept a diary of some sort, which perhaps from habit made me think of recording my inner and secret life.

Q. A distinctive element throughout your diaries, even with events from your early childhood, is your attention to detail.

A. I had from youth an excellent memory, but about sexual matters a wonderful one…women were the pleasure of my life…the clothes they wore, the houses and rooms in which I had them were before me mentally as I wrote, the way the bed and furniture were placed, the side of the room the windows were on, I remembered perfectly. I recollect largely what was said and did…where I fail to have done so I have left description blank, rather than attempt to make a story coherent by inserting what was merely probable…this is intended to be a true history and not a lie.

Q. Which brings me to my next question. To what extent did you really stick to the script of your life?  Or are there moments in your diaries when you ’embellished’ what actually happened or conversely felt the need to censor what you did?

A. I determined to write my private life freely as to fact, and in the spirit of the lustful acts done by me or witnessed, it is written therefore with absolute truth and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency. This is a history of my private life which deals with facts alone, and not with conjectures.

Q. But there are certain facts that you say you obscured. For example you didn’t always name people or places correctly?

A. That’s true, I have mystified my family affairs, but if I say I had ten cousins when I had but six, or that one aunt’s house was in Surrey instead of Kent…it breaks the clue (to my identity) and cannot matter to the reader.

The wine waiter arrives and Walter suggests a bottle of Pol Roger champagne.

Q. The diaries are very extensive, was there ever a time when your enthusiasm for keeping them began to wain?

A. I began it for my amusement, when many years had had been chronicled I tired of it and ceased. Ten years afterwards I met a woman with whom I did well nigh everything a man and woman could do with their genitals…and began to narrate those events, when quite fresh in my memory, a great variety of incidents extending over four years or more.

Q. So what about the gap period in your diary keeping you have mentioned and your earlier youth and childhood?

A. After those four years (spent largely with a woman called Sarah Frasier), I set to work to describe the events of the intervening years of my youth and early middle age. Then an illness caused me to think seriously of burning the whole.

Q. What stopped you doing that?

A. Not liking to destroy my labour, I laid it aside again for a couple of years. Then another illness gave me long uninterrupted leisure; I read my manuscript and filled in some occurrences which I had forgotten but which my diary enabled me to place in their proper order.

Q. Having amassed what must have been a fairly vast amount of manuscript by this stage, did it ever occur to you to publish it?

At this point the rumble and clatter of a heavy carriage passing outside interrupts the flow of our conversation. We resume to an accompaniment of an excellent tureen of turtle.

Q. You were filling in some of the occurrences that you had forgotten by using your diaries as an aide memoire.

A. It was then, for the first time, I thought I would print my work that had been commenced more than twenty years before, but hesitated, I had then entered my maturity, and on to the most lascivious portion of my life, the events were disjointed and fragmentary and my amusement was to describe them just after they occurred.

Q. At what point exactly after an ‘erotic encounter’ did you usually make your diary entries?

A. Most frequently the next day I wrote all down with much prolixity; since, I have much abbreviated it. In the intervals of my enjoyment of female society, I amused myself by making notes, or writing the narratives fully.

Q.  To what extent do your memoirs contain your original diary entries, ones that were left exactly as you wrote them at the time? 

A. Very seldom can I say, “This following paragraph I leave exactly as I then wrote it.” I found by rough perusal of manuscript not yet touched,  a freshness which is not in some of that revised. But mostly I wrote many years after from very copious memoranda so that at the end of two years I would have a very large mass of manuscript, which I would abbreviate soon after. The description of a girl, which might have run to seven pages of foolscap when I first wrote it, I would try to abbreviate as much as possible, in fact my pen would run through the greater part of it.

Q. I know that you have led a double life, one that many of your acquaintances, perhaps even friends, will know nothing of…particularly if they are women?  But, is there also an element of you having lived your life twice, once in the doing and once in the retelling of?

A.  It was written for my secret pleasure, and I revelled in the detail as I wrote it, for in doing so I almost had my sexual treats over again. It mattered not to me whether similar pleasure had been mine before or not, whether the erotic whims and fancies, amorous frolics, voluptuous eccentricities, were identical or not. I described them as they had occurred at the time, and the pleasure of doing so was nearly the same, even had I done them twenty times, and described them twenty times.

A magnificent of haunch of venison is now served, along with a bottle of 1900 Chateau Margaux.

Q. Reading My Secret Life it’s impossible to tell how your original diary notes might have looked, could you recall an example for me?

A. Certainly, this is what I wrote at the time with a girl called Amelia. It is better left as it is, than put into narrative form like the rest.

“Licked Amelia’s cunt last night, did I want to do it or did she want me to do to her? I have done it to her several times, now don’t like doing it, yet I do it. She seems to like it so. — Her frame as far as I can judge, lying under her cunt as I do, and seeing nothing, and only able to clasp her bum or her thighs, seems to thrill with a higher enjoyment than when she is fucked, and I like giving her pleasure for she deserves it, and she is so beautiful. But I want to wash my mouth and moustache directly after; whilst she says after a moment’s repose only, “Go on, dear.” But I don’t like the taste, and eject my saliva both whilst doing it, and after it, till it runs down over my chin and I long to wash my mouth. Yet last night I gamahuched her long without ejecting. But I do it as it seems to me through her talking about it. It is she who always begins talking about it first. I wonder whether Mrs. A*t*n did it to her. I half suspect it. I’ll ask again. But why shouldn’t she if they both like that fun?”

Q. This is a fascinating passage. The idea that you might not actually enjoy certain aspects of having sex is a surprising revelation and presents you in a slightly different light. I’m intrigued, are there any other examples of your original diary entries that spring to mind?

A. Here from my manuscript are two extracts illustrative of my notes as written almost day by day at that period, many and many a page there was of them. All were amusing, and writing them pleased me immensely at the time. Indeed I think that I had more pleasure in writing my narrative at this period than at any other, though I had far less to write about. Of these temporary infidelities I destroy the remaining notes now, excepting one or two curious ones told further on.

“Had a woman named Susan * * * * * seemed twenty-five, a fat arsed, though she didn’t look so in her dress. — Discontented with what I’d agreed to give her, said I give no more, — where on she said. — “All right” and seemed quite satisfied. — Dark hair and eyes, plenty on her cunt, fucked well and, I think, spent; told her so. “Yes I nearly always spend with my first man if he’s nice, perhaps I mayn’t get another tonight.” — She hated frigging herself. — No woman should touch her own cunt, she thought. — A funny one.

21st  January. — A funny little bitch about four feet six high, thin. — A modest looking juvenile cunt. — One of the smallest I ever put into — quite tight as I pushed my penis up it — hurt me as I pulled prick out quite stiff — I’d spent, tho I feared — washed. — “You’re in a hurry,” said she light haired, squinny face.

23rd March — A hairy arsed, low, she. — Wonder I poked her, glad to get away — ten and six — dirty rooms.

A German — long nosed — big — spoke good English, said another woman was in house — would I see her — offered five shillings. — German laughed scornfully so I dropped the subject. — Soon after said she’d go and see — and it ended in having a plump little whore, whose cunt I looked at, whilst I fucked the German, and for five shillings.

Q. That’s a wonderful glimpse of the origins of My Secret Life. You wrote so much about your experiences, did anyone ever notice what you were up to? (Walter seems amused.)

A. That reminds me of an incident with a young girl I held up with for a few days…’I got her a novel to read, a love story — and she devoured it. I got writing paper, and amused myself by writing down the incidents of this piece of my luck. I noted down what she said — not at the moment, but directly after, when she was reading. But my writing made her suspicious. Was I writing to her father, was her first anxiety. I told her I was only writing about my affairs. But after a while — “You’re writing some-thing about me I’m sure, now do tell me.” — “What makes you think that?” — “Because you keep looking at me so.” I suppose I did, but was not conscious of doing so. However I set her mind at rest by some bouncing lies.’

A trolley of desserts is wheeled ceremoniously up to the table, the plum pudding looks particularly tempting, but we are both replete and decline in favour of Chateau de Laubade Armagnac & cigars. 

Q. Quite apart from the extent of your sexual experiences, and the Herculean task of writing about them, I’m amazed that you have actually managed to collate all your hand written notes. There must have been literally tens of thousands of pages to store somewhere & to sift through? That’s an extraordinary feat of organisation in it own right. Surely editing what you had written must have been an even harder task for you than writing it? Were you often torn between abbreviating or destroying passages?

 A. This was very much my dilemma: much as I have abbreviated and omitted, what a quantity of manuscript still remains. Alas! a casual look through it, reveals the fact that, like much of that written just before this period of my history, it is prolix and copious in detail. More so even than that preceding it which I shortened with so much trouble. Yet on glancing through the remaining manuscript, now in my maturity, the repetition seems a little wearisome. What is to be done, abbreviate or destroy, which?Abbreviation is laborious, and emasculates ,the freshness of the writing is gone, nice shades lost. But destruction saves all future trouble.

The wine waiter replenishes our brandy glasses and Walter & I both agree on the excellence of the cigars.

Q. So how did you end up deciding what would and what would not remain? 

A. The manuscript has grown into unmanageable bulk; shall it, can it, be printed?, was a question I would often ask myself.  Perhaps the entire omission of portions will be best, but that will destroy the continuity. In the narrative in its integrity, it is easy to see how in my youth, content with the simplest forms of sexual pleasure, I have gradually with advancing years and experience, been led to strangely erotic whims and devices, and have had the greatest pleasure in acts, and deeds, and thoughts, which in my ignorant youth would have revolted me. To omit much is to destroy this continuity of idea and action. No. It must be abbreviation or total destruction. Abbreviation, or else a full stop here, and nearly twenty years’ narrative go to the flames. 

Another thing, through the suggestions of women, by pondering over those suggestions, by reading works of erotic philosophers, from pictures, curiosity, and opportunity, I have once or twice done what I regret, what in fact is almost a remorse to me, though I really see no harm in it. What a contradiction this, but thus it is. Shall I destroy those chapters, erase those parts, or leave them? Perhaps (for who knows) for some to cry shame. To omit them is to sacrifice the narrative, and the illustration it affords to myself of my sexual idiosyncrasy, if such a phrase may be used. I know not what to do with this antagonism of thought and intention.

It must remain, written by myself and for myself, none probably will ever see it but myself, therefore why cheat myself? Let it remain.

Q. On reading through your finished manuscript, did you have any reflections that you felt you should incorporate into the book? 

A. You will notice that all paragraphs enclosed with brackets thus [ ] have been written since the manuscript of my life was finished, and have been added at this revision, when the narrative is put into form, revised, and much of the manuscript destroyed. The narrative is usually told consecutively but there are times when I find it difficult to arrange the narrative in my usual manner, so much were all the amours intermixed and also mixed in the manuscript. Some are without date, but I should have no difficulty in assigning their places closely, if it were worth the trouble to do so.

The restaurant has now filled with a lively gaggle of cast from the nearby Adelphi theatre. A young actress seems to recognise Walter and waves sweetly. The atmosphere is most convivial.

Q. Were you ever haunted by the thought that you might not live to finish your life’s work? That you would run out of time before putting it all together and having it printed?

A. More than once I said to myself, I wish I had begun this revision earlier, perhaps now I shall never complete it — or complete it only in time to destroy it, before I myself am destroyed. Tempus edax rerum.

Q. Did you have a sense that you had done something extraordinary in your life, and in the recording of your life, that should be preserved? By printing  the diaries were you creating a lasting monument to yourself?

A. Well, I thought it would be sinful to destroy such a history, even if no mortal eye but mine should see it. Its contents are astonishing, marvellous even . Most importantly I believe it is a contribution to psychology. Have all men had the strange letches which late in life have enraptured me, though in early days the idea of them revolted me? I can never know this; my experience, if printed, may enable others to compare as I cannot.

Q. That’s an interesting perspective. Was that a critical sentiment in your decision to publish? 

A. I suspect that what I have done, or perhaps the extent of it, must be unique. Has anybody but myself faithfully made such a record? It would be a sin to burn all this, whatever society may say, it is but a narrative of human life, perhaps the everyday of thousands, if the confession could be had. But on the other hand, what will be said or thought of me, what become of the manuscript if found when I am dead? Better to destroy the whole, it has fulfilled its purpose in amusing me, now let it go to the flames!’ But I couldn’t bring myself to do that and eventually I realised that, spite of all this vacillation, there would be only one possible outcome. Shall it be burnt or printed? How many years have passed in this indecision? why fear? it is for other’s good and not my own if preserved.

Q. That’s a wonderful insight into how the greatest erotic autobiography that there is ever likely to be, came into existence. I don’t know if you were aware that more than the six copies stipulated by you were run off by the printer?

A. I instructed for six copies to be run off and then for the print to be broken up.  Of course I knew exactly where the six copies were going to and that they would all be in safe hands. I suppose the printer wanted to make a market out of me! But by printing more copies than I stipulated, the risk of them falling into the wrong hands increases. I wouldn’t want my memoirs to harm or cause pain to anyone still living as a result. 

There is so much more that I would like to ask Walter, but sadly our time is up. We finish our cigars outside and parting, with a promise of meeting again, I watch Walter as he heads off in the direction of the Lyceum,  gradually fading into the distant yellow light of a winter’s afternoon.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *