The History of the Human Heart
Introduction
The History of the Human Heart, or
The Adventures of a Young Gentleman was published
anonymously in 1759, the same year as John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill), and is another high point
in 18th Century erotica. It is set in the same milieu of seduction
and brothels, it is however written from a male point of view. The protagonist
Camillo, like many young men, is led by his penis, and being from a wealthy
family, has the means to go where it leads him. He is not a wicked person, but
he is headstrong, impulsive and thoughtless, and he undergoes sexual adventures
and misadventures which are variously hilarious and horrifying.
It
is not at all as well-known as Cleland's work; in fact the only recent
reference seems to be by John Fowles, who in his
novel The French Lieutenant's Woman, quoted
a passage verbatim as a description of Edward's visit to a brothel, introducing
it as follows:
Such scenes as that which followed
have probably changed less in the course of history than those of any other
human activity; what was done before Charles that night was done in the same
way before Heliogabalus--and no doubt before Agamemnon as well; and is done
today in countless Soho dives. What particularly pleases me about the unchangingness of this ancient and time-honoured form of
entertainment is that it allows one to borrow from someone else's imagination.
I was nosing recently round the best kind of secondhand
bookseller's--a careless one. Set quietly under "Medicine," between
an Introduction to Hepatology and a Diseases of the Bronchial System, was
the even duller title The History of the
Human Heart. It is in fact the very far from dull history of a lively human
penis. It was originally published in 1749, the same year as Cleland's
masterpiece in the genre, Fanny Hill.
There
follows the description of the introduction of Camillo to the Posture Girl in
Chapter V.
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