Contentment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Wild (2012)

  I believed I was going to Golden Oak Springs, but by seven o’clock it was still nowhere in sight. I didn’t care. Too tired to be hungry, I skipped dinner again, thus saving the water I’d have used to make it, and found a spot flat enough to pitch my tent. The tiny thermometer that dangled from the side of my pack said it was 42 degrees. I peeled off my sweaty clothes and draped them over a bush to dry before I crawled into my tent. In the morning, I had to force them on. Rigid as boards, they’d frozen overnight. I reached Golden Oak Springs a few hours into my third day on the trail. The sight of the square concrete pool lifted my spirits enormously, not only because at the springs there was water, but also because humans had so clearly constructed it. I put my hands in the water, disturbing a few bugs that swam across its surface. I took out my purifier and placed its intake tube into the water and began to pump the way I’d practiced in my kitchen sink in Minneapolis. It was harder to do than I remembered it being, perhaps because when I’d practiced I’d only pumped a few times. Now it seemed to take more muscle to compress the pump. And when I did manage to pump, the intake tube floated up to the surface, so it took in only air. I pumped and pumped until I couldn’t pump anymore and I had to take a break; then I pumped again, finally refilling both my bottles and the dromedary bag. It took me nearly an hour, but it had to be done. My next water source was a daunting nineteen miles away. I had every intention of hiking on that day, but instead I sat in my camp chair near the spring. It had warmed up at last, the sun shining on my bare arms and legs. I took off my shirt, pulled my shorts down low, and lay with my eyes closed, hoping the sun would soothe the patches of skin on my torso that had been worn raw by my pack. When I opened my eyes, I saw a small lizard on a nearby rock. He seemed to be doing push-ups. “Hello, lizard,” I said, and he stopped his push-ups and held perfectly still before disappearing in a flash.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  He chuckled and stopped for breath on the first landing, taking off his flowerpot the better to mop his brow. Then he hung downwards, sagging as he always did when he was thinking seriously as if the very weight of the thought itself bore down upon him. He sighed. ‘The thing’ he said slowly, and with the air of a man who wishes at all costs to be explicit, to formulate an idea as clearly as lies within his power, ‘the thing is about Tendencies — you only realize it when you’re not a hot-blooded young sprig any more.’ He sighed again. ‘It’s the lack of tenderness, old man. It all depends on cunning somehow, you get lonely. Now Abdul is a true friend.’ He chuckled and cheered up once more. ‘I call him the Bul Bul Emir. I set him up in his business, just out of friendly affection. Bought him everything: his shop, his little wife. Never laid a finger on him nor ever could, because I love the man. I’m glad I did now, because though I’m getting on, I still have a true friend. I pop in every day to see them. It’s uncanny how happy it makes me. I really do enjoy their happiness, old man. They are like son and daughter to me, the poor perishing coons. I can’t hardly bear to hear them quarrel. It makes me anxious about their kids. I think Abdul is jealous of her, and not without cause, mark you. She looks flirty to me. But then, sex is so powerful in this heat — a spoonful goes a long way as we used to say about rum in the Merchant Navy. You lie and dream about it like ice-cream, sex, not rum. And these Moslem girls — old boy — they circumcise them. It’s cruel. Really cruel. It only makes them harp on the subject. I tried to get her to learn knitting or crewel-work, but she’s so stupid she didn’t understand. They made a joke of it. Not that I mind. I was only trying to help. Two hundred pounds it took me to set Abdul up — all my savings. But he’s doing well now — yes, very well.’ The monologue had had the effect of allowing him to muster his energies for the final assault. We addressed the last ten stairs at a comfortable pace and Scobie unlocked the door of his rooms. Originally he had only been able to rent one — but with his new salary he had rented the whole shabby floor.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  The dusk has settled as we come to the shores of the lake. The old hydroplane whimpers and roars as it waits for us. It is piled high with decoys. Nessim assembles a couple of tall duck-guns and tripods before joining us in the shallow punt to set off across the reed-fringed wilderness of the lake to the desolate lodge where we are to spend the night. All horizons have been abruptly cut off now as we skirt the darkening channels in our noisy craft, disturbing the visitants of the lake with the roar of our engines; the reeds tower over us, and everywhere the sedge hassocks of islands rise out of the water with their promise of cover. Once or twice a long vista of water opens before us and we catch sight of the flurry of birds rising — mallard trailing their webs across the still surface. Nearer at hand the hither-and-thithering cormorants keep a curiosity-shop with their long slave-to-appetite beaks choked with sedge. All round us now, out of sight the teeming colonies of the lake are settling down for the night. When the engines of the hydroplane are turned off the silence is suddenly filled with groaning and gnatting of duck. A faint green wind springs up and ruffles the water round the little wooden hut on the balcony of which sit the loaders waiting for us. Darkness has suddenly fallen, and the voices of the boatmen sound hard, sparkling, gay. The loaders are a wild crew; they scamper from island to island with shrill cries, their galdbeahs tucked up round their waists, impervious to the cold. They seem black and huge, as if carved from the darkness. They pull us up to the balcony one by one and then set off in shallow punts to lay their armfuls of decoys while we turn to the inner room where paraffin lamps have already been lit. From the little kitchen comes the encouraging smell of food which we sniff appreciatively as we divest ourselves of our guns and bandoliers, and kick off our boots. Now the sportsmen fall to backgammon or tric-trac and bag-and-shot talk, the most delightful and absorbing masculine conversation in the world. Ralli is rubbing pigs fat into his old much-darned boots. The stew is excellent and the red wine has put everyone in a good humour.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  There was no father.The second portrait was a picture-postcard photograph: it had been placed in the edge of the large picture’s frame, but its corner curled a little, showing a loop of faded writing on the back. The subject of the portrait was a woman - a heavybrowed woman with untidy dark hair: she seemed to be sitting very squarely, and her gaze was rather grave. I thought she might be the sister from the family group, grown up; or she might be a friend of Florence’s, or a cousin, or - well, anybody. I leaned over to try to read the handwriting that showed where the card curled over; but it was hidden, and I didn’t like to pluck it free - it wasn’t that intriguing. Then I caught the bubbling of the pan of water I had set upon the stove, and hurried out to see to it.I found a little tin bowl to wash in, and a block of green kitchen soap; and then - since there was no towel, and I didn’t think it really polite to use the dish-cloth - I danced about before the range until I was dry enough to climb back into my dirty petticoats. I thought, with a little sigh, of Diana’s handsome bathroom - of that cabinet of unguents that I had liked to sample for hours at a time. Even so, it was marvellous to be clean again, and when I had combed my hair and tended my face (I rubbed a bit of vinegar into the bruise, and then a bit of flour); when I had thumped the filth from my skirts and pressed them flat and put them on again, I felt fit and warm and quite unreasonably gay. I walked back into the parlour - it was a matter of some ten steps or so - stood for a second there, then returned to the kitchen. It was, I thought, a very pleasant house; as I had already begun to notice, however, it was not a very clean one. The rugs, I saw, all badly wanted beating. The skirting-boards were scuffed and streaked with mud. Every shelf and picture was as dusty as the sooty mantelpiece. If this was my house, I thought, I would keep it smart as a new pin.Then I had a rather wonderful idea. I ran back into the parlour and looked at the clock. Less than an hour had passed since Florence’s departure, and neither she nor Ralph, I guessed, would be home much before five. That gave me about eight whole hours - slightly less, I supposed, if I wanted to be sure of finding myself a room in some lodging-house or hostel while it was still light.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Sometimes,” I said. “But not as much as you’d think.” My wet hair dripped onto my dirty shirt at the shoulders. I was conscious that my clothes stank, though beneath them I felt cleaner than I’d ever been. The shower had been an almost holy experience after days of sweating in the cold beneath my clothes, the hot water and soap scorching me clean. I noticed a few books scattered on the far end of the table—Norman Rush’s Mating, A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, and The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx. They were books I’d read and loved, their covers like familiar faces to me, the mere sight of them making me feel as if I was somewhere like home. Perhaps Jeff and Christine would let me stay here with them, I thought nonsensically. I could be like one of their daughters, reading magazines while getting a tan on the deck. If they’d offered, I’d have said yes. “Do you like to read?” Christine asked. “That’s what we do when we come up here. That’s our idea of relaxation.” “Reading’s my reward at the end of the day,” I said. “The book I have right now is Flannery O’Connor’s Complete Stories.” I still had the entire book in my pack. I’d not burned it page by page as I went along, mindful that with the snow and the changes in my itinerary I didn’t know how long it’d be before I reached my next resupply box. I’d already read the whole thing and started back in on page one the night before. “Well, you’re welcome to one of these,” said Jeff, rising to take Mating in his hand. “We’re done with them. Or if that’s not your taste, you could probably take this one,” he said, and disappeared into the bedroom off the kitchen. He returned a moment later with a fat paperback by James Michener that he set near my now-empty plate. I looked at the book. It was called The Novel, which I’d never heard of or read, though James Michener had been my mother’s favorite author. It wasn’t until I’d gone off to college that I learned there was anything wrong with that. An entertainer for the masses, one of my professors had scoffed after inquiring what books I’d read. Michener, he advised me, was not the kind of writer I should bother with if I truly wanted to be a writer myself. I felt like a fool. All those years as a teen, I’d thought myself sophisticated when I’d been absorbed in Poland and The Drifters, Space and Sayonara. In my first month at college, I quickly learned that I knew nothing about who was important and who was not. “You know that isn’t a real book,” I’d said disdainfully to my mother when someone had given her Michener’s Texas as a Christmas gift later that year. “Real?” My mother looked at me, quizzical and amused.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Blonde, large-boned Queen Caroline of England certainly followed the pudding-and-turnip trend. Rather than nobly suffering her husband’s infidelities as a crown of thorns on the head of a martyred queen, Caroline once told a courtier that, as regards her husband’s mistresses, “She was sorry for the scandal it gave others, but for herself she minded it no more than his going to the close stool [toilet].”14 While still prince of Hanover, Caroline’s husband, the future George II of England, took as his first mistress thirty-year-old Henrietta Howard, pretty, pleasant, and discreet. One courtier described Henrietta as “civil to everybody, friendly to many, and unjust to none.”15 Caroline was relieved at George’s choice. While the typical wife bore the greatest malice toward her husband’s first mistress, sensible Caroline knew that Henrietta would not plunder the treasury, snub her when she became queen, angle for political power, or sow disruptive intrigues at court. As Queen Caroline’s friend Lord Hervey described it, “The Queen, knowing the vanity of her husband’s temper, and that he must have some woman for the world to believe he lay with, wisely suffered one to remain in that situation whom she despised and had got the better of, for fear of making room for a successor whom he might really love, and that might get the better of her.”16 Like most other royal mistresses, Henrietta became a lady-in-waiting to the queen. Unlike others, however, Henrietta’s position was not especially envied. Plump, red-faced George, renowned for tearing off his wig and kicking it across the floor when angry, bucked the trend by loving his wife and tolerating his mistress. Although he believed Caroline to be the most beautiful, intelligent, and charming woman in the world, he also considered a mistress to be an indispensable accessory of a monarch, along with the crown and scepter. George pointedly visited Henrietta every evening for several hours and locked the door. Courtiers speculated crudely about their sex life—one wit compared George to a mill horse plodding around its unending track—and most agreed that they usually spent the time playing cards. By 1722, in her early forties, Henrietta was growing prematurely deaf. As she had primarily pleased George by being a good audience, he now began to grow impatient with her disability. For Henrietta, however, her deafness may have been a blessing, relieving the daily monotony of listening to George. George became so irritated with his mistress that on one occasion, as Henrietta tied a kerchief around Caroline’s neck, George snatched it off. “Because you have an ugly neck yourself you love to hide the Queen’s,” he raged.17

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  What to Do with Your TimeMaking To Do lists, breaking activities into their smallest parts, and planning leisure activities should help you start developing a tolerance for "empty time." Each person has different needs in this area. Some may need to fill time with activities that will help them socialize again, build interpersonal skills, and restore confidence. Others may need to reduce compulsive social behavior, and learn to enjoy time alone. Find something that makes sense for you, fits with your personality, and evokes good feelings. It might be spending Sunday afternoons with a beer and a bowl of popcorn while watching sports on television, or taking long walks with your dog. Think about the kinds of places you liked to visit before you joined the cult, such as museums, libraries, arts and crafts fairs, film festivals, the zoo, the beach, parks, or nature areas. Reconnect with activities you enjoyed; it might be going for long walks, riding a bike, hanging out at coffeehouses, playing chess, participating in sports, playing music, or taking evening classes. Be alert to what feels good to you now. [image file=img/page0175_0000.svg] Try things, but don't push yourself. For example, you may want to start writing, yet you may not want the discipline of a class, or of having to be somewhere at a certain time and responsible for a product. Start casually and work toward goals. Most of all, remember: no pressure, no "shoulds," and no guilt. Learn to relax, take time off, and enjoy life again. It may not come easy, but it will come. Having OpinionsBecome a good, sympathetic, and compassionate friend to yourself. Typically cult members learn to mistrust their own thoughts and feelings. You can reverse this negative habit now because you are free to perceive the universe through your own eyes and interpret it through your own mind. Being a good friend to yourself means being a good and trustworthy listener. Part of the process of building trust is to learn to listen to your own heart and mind. Some former members describe breaking into a cold sweat whenever someone asks their opinion about something-a meal, a movie, a current event in the news. Because they believed for so long that they were dead right about everything, they are often ashamed to admit they don't know what they think, or fear they may be coming across like a know-it-all, as they did in the cult. It may take time to find the right balance. In Chapter 14, Nancy Miquelon writes about the joy she felt at realizing she had her own opinion about a particular color. What a telling example of the kind of mental tentativeness one feels after leaving the controlled world of a cult! You may be troubled by cult-related thoughts and reactions, or confused about which thoughts are truly yours and which were instilled by the cult. You may find that you have to work at discovering which beliefs are yours and which are alien to you.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  • Seeing a therapist overly eager to prescribe drugs. I wanted to have my feelings after ten years of repressing them. • Seeing therapists who wanted to try hypnosis or other weird techniques. It was okay if they could hear me react and respected that immediately, but not if they tried to convince me. • Having people tell me to "get over it." It takes a long time to get over long-term abuse. The Third Stage: Longer-Term IssuesEight years after leavingthe cult, some significant issues remain to be dealt with. Primarily, these have to do with triggers, career, geography, and relationships. Triggers and flashbacks trouble me from time to time. I think that this will be a lifelong issue, but one that can be handled as long as I can identify that I am being triggered, and then deal with it on that level. I am still trying to make a career transition. I continue to work at a career chosen for me by the cult leader and I continue to resent that. However, I am more at peace with it as the years go by and as I develop as a writer and open up new doors for myself in the field of social psychology. I still live in Minnesota, which is not a place I'd have chosen; yet I feel I have to stay here until my children are grown. I have a sense of rootlessness that predates the cult. However, I have gotten better at deciding to "be here now," and I am active and involved in my community. As a single woman with a complicated history, I find that trying to enter the dating world has been daunting. This is normal for many women my age, but the addition of the cult experience makes it even more difficult. When do you break the news? I'm still trying to learn different ways to answer the seemingly innocent question, "And what brought you to Minnesota?" On the positive side, I can say the following: I know myself well now, and I use that knowledge to direct my activities. I am assertive about not doingthings I don't wish to do. I'm adept at recognizing abuses of power and I'm not afraid to call them what they are. I recognize when I am triggered and I can name it and move on. I have a strong, supportive, and diverse community of friends. I'm no longer in therapy, although it is important to me that I can call my therapist for a tune-up if I need it (I have done that a few times over the past several years). My children (now ten and twelve) are doing well. Their father and I have a cooperative parenting relationship. I feel I've been honest with them, and they understand a good deal about cults and power abuse. I feel I've been successful in taking that abusive experience and making it something useful to me, but most importantly, to others.

• From Less (2017)

  Less awakens to a feeling of peace and triumph: “Stiamo iniziando la discesa verso Torino. We are beginning our descent into Turin.” His seatmate seems to have moved across the aisle. He removes his eye mask and smiles at the Alps below, an optical illusion making them into craters and not mountains, and then he sees the city itself. They land serenely, and a woman in the back applauds—he is reminded of landing in Mexico. He recalls smoking on an airplane once when he was young, checks his armrest, and finds an ashtray in it still. Charming or alarming? A chime rings, passengers stand up. Passport, wallet, phone. Less has manned his way through the crisis; he no longer feels mickeyed or dull. His bag is the first to arrive on the luggage roller coaster: a dog eager to greet its master. No passport control. Just an exit, and here, wonderfully, a young man in an old man’s mustache, holding a sign lettered SR. ESS. Less raises his hand, and the man takes his luggage. Inside the sleek black car, Less finds his driver speaks no English. Fantastico, he thinks as he closes his eyes again. Has he been to Italy before? He has, twice. Once when he was twelve, on a family trip that took the path of a Pachinko game by beginning in Rome, shooting up to London, and falling back and forth among various countries until they landed, at last, in Italy’s slot. Of Rome, all he remembers (in his childish exhaustion) are the stone buildings stained as if hauled from the ocean, the heart-stopping traffic, his father lugging old-fashioned suitcases (including his mother’s mysterious makeup kit) across the cobblestones, and the nighttime click-click-click of the yellow window shade as it flirted with the Roman wind. His mother, in her final years, often tried to coax other memories from Less (sitting bedside): “Don’t you remember the landlady with the wig that kept falling off? The handsome waiter who offered to drive us to his mother’s house for lasagna? The man at the Vatican who wanted to charge you for an adult ticket because you were so tall?” There with her head wrapped in a scarf with white seashells. “Yes,” he said every time, just as he always did with his agent, pretending to read books he had never even heard of. The wig! Lasagna! The Vatican!

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Two centuries later Nicholas von Kiss, the dashing but ineffectual husband of Katharina Schratt, mistress of emperor Franz Josef of Austria, was invited by the emperor to join the diplomatic service—a request he dare not refuse. When Nicholas complained of boredom in one locale, Katharina would ask the emperor to transfer him to another. Nicholas periodically visited his wife in Vienna to stuff his pockets with her money before going abroad once more. The Rewards of ComplianceIn 1855 the compliant husband of Napoleon III’s mistress Virginie di Castiglione summed up the traditional role of king’s cuckold when he said, “I am a model husband. I never see or hear anything.”1 And indeed, many a man was willing to lay down his wife for the good of his country. In the 1670s, the princesse de Soubise enjoyed a brief liaison with Louis XIV with the aid of her husband the prince. One evening the king’s valet, Bontemps, knocked on the princess’s apartment door to summon her to her rendezvous with the king. All the while, the prince pretended to snore loudly. Although the affair was brief, the prince found himself the object of uproarious ridicule at court. But the betrayed husband laughed at courtiers’ disdain all the way to the bank. “Never was so prodigious a family fortune founded so speedily,” wrote the duc de Saint-Simon.2 The Hôtel de Soubise became the grandest house in Paris and today serves as the home of the French national archives. It is clear why so many courtiers encouraged their wives to sleep with the king—the wages of sin were high. In the 1820s King George IV flirted with his mistress Lady Conyngham in the presence of her obliging husband. The king held her hand beneath the table and never drank from his glass unless he touched her glass with it first. He had the appalling habit of taking snuff from her generous bosom. During these displays of affection Lord Conyngham often sat next to the happy couple, quite contentedly drinking. He must have relished the riches his family reaped so quickly. The king nominated this compliant gentleman as lord chamberlain of the household, a nomination that was quickly shot down by his morally outraged cabinet. The fate of Polish count Anastase Walewski—who pushed his wife Maria into the eager arms of Napoleon Bonaparte—was not as happy. The wealthy count had married Maria when she was sixteen and he sixty-eight. It was an excellent bargain for the bride’s family, whose fortunes had recently failed as the result of war and partition. Poland was no longer a sovereign nation, having lost its territory starting in 1786 to Russia, Prussia, and Austria, in a kind of international gang rape.

• From Less (2017)

  If asked about Carlos, Less always calls him “one of my oldest friends.” The date of their first encounter can be pinpointed precisely: Memorial Day, 1987. Less can even remember what each of them wore: he, a green Speedo, Carlos, the same in bright banana. Each with a white-wine spritzer in hand, like a pistol, eyeing the other from across the deck. A song was playing, Whitney Houston wanting to dance with somebody. Shadow of a sequoia falling between them. With somebody who loved her. Oh, to have a time machine and a video camera! To capture thin pink-gold Arthur Less and brawny nut-brown Carlos Pelu in their youth, when your narrator was only a child! But who needs a camera? Surely, for each of them, that scene replays itself whenever the other’s name is mentioned. Memorial Day, spritzer, sequoia, somebody. And each smiles and says the other is “one of my oldest friends.” When of course they hated each other on sight. Let us take that time machine after all, but to a destination almost twenty years later. Let us land ourselves in mid-2000s San Francisco, a house in the hills, on Saturn Street. One of those creatures on stilts, a glass wall revealing a never-used grand piano and a crowd of mostly men celebrating one of a dozen fortieth-birthday parties that year. Among them: a thicker Carlos, whose longtime lover left him real estate when he died, and who turned those few lots into a property empire, including far-flung holdings in Vietnam, Thailand, even some ridiculous resort Less heard about in India. Carlos: same dignified profile, but no trace anymore of that muscled young man in a banana Speedo. It was an easy walk for Arthur Less, from his little shack on the Vulcan Steps, where he now lived alone. A party; why not? He chose a Lessian costume—jeans and a cowboy shirt, only slightly wrong—and made his way south along the hillside, toward the house. Meanwhile, imagine Carlos, enthroned in a peacock chair and holding court. Beside him, twenty-five years old, in black jeans, T-shirt, and round tortoiseshell glasses, with dark curly hair: his son. My son, I recall Carlos telling everyone when the boy first appeared, then barely in his teens. But he was not his son—he was an orphaned nephew, shipped off to his next of kin in San Francisco. How do I describe him? Big eyed, with brown sun-streaked hair and a truculent demeanor in those days, he refused to eat vegetables or to call Carlos anything but Carlos. His name was Federico (Mexican mother), but everybody called him Freddy.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  On a snowy day, one year after Guy started his therapy, he walks into my office, nods, and says softly, “I think I’m getting used to this weather.” He takes off his coat and smiles. We both notice the difference. 11THE UNEXAMINED LIFEAlice looks younger than her age. Maybe it’s her long black hair, or maybe it’s the sweatpants and sneakers she wears to our first session that make me think of her as a girl. She comes to see me right after celebrating her forty-fourth birthday. Very quickly her age becomes a topic. Alice was in her late thirties when she met Art, I learn. It was right after she got divorced, and she was worried that she might be too old to have children. “I don’t care about marriage,” she tells me in that first session. “My parents separated when I was five years old. They had a messy divorce and after my father officially remarried, he was not in the picture anymore.” I ask her what she means by “officially remarried.” Alice rolls her eyes. “It’s not why I came to therapy, but I guess it’s all relevant to what I’m dealing with,” she says. “I had a shitty childhood. Again, it’s not why I’m here.” “Why are you here?” I ask. “We are about to have a child,” Alice says, and I’m a bit surprised because she doesn’t look pregnant at all. “We tried to get pregnant for years. Between you and me, from our first week together we knew that we wanted to have children, but I couldn’t get pregnant. I tried everything. Many cycles of IVF.” She turns to me. “Do you know how expensive that is? Our whole family helped us financially. My mother and her husband gave us their savings. Art’s sister gave us money too. I’m embarrassed to tell you how much. You sit in the clinic’s waiting room, you look around, and you think, ‘All those privileged people; I guess I’m one of them now.’ So you can imagine how awful it was when it didn’t work. Not only could I not get pregnant; I couldn’t even make it happen by paying a fortune. That’s what I call bad genes.” “Just a second.” I try to slow her down to make sure I follow her. “So you were married in your twenties and didn’t have children; then in your thirties you got divorced and met Art and tried to get pregnant right away—” “Exactly,” she cuts me off. “Art and I were both married before, but our love was like nothing we had ever experienced. It was very intense from the first day we met. I’ll tell you about it one day.” “And you are here because you are about to have a child,” I say. “Exactly,” Alice confirms. “Another woman is about to give birth to my child.” “A surrogate mother?” I assume.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Frigidity is, of course, a great disadvantage to a mistress. To compensate for her poor performance at night, during the day Madame de Pompadour devoted every moment to amusing a monarch who quickly grew bored. Louis escaped the stiff etiquette of Versailles by fleeing to her apartments and barring the door. There he found an entire world created for his personal comfort. His mistress decorated her rooms in colors and fabrics that he found relaxing. She filled them with sweetly scented flowers from the palace greenhouses, even in winter. She ordered dishes and wines that pleased the royal palate. Madame de Pompadour became an avid student of the king’s moods, his every facial expression, the cadence of his words. She knew when he was hiding boredom, anger, or frustration behind his mask of royal calmness. The twitch of an eyelid, the lilt of a syllable, would tell her the behavior necessary to please him. Did he want a comfortable silence? Should she recount an amusing story, play a somber tune on the harpsichord, stand up and perform a monologue? Louis must have climbed the secret spiral staircase leading from his apartments to hers with great anticipation. What would she discuss with him that evening? Building, perhaps. Madame de Pompadour had a mania for building palaces and asked the king’s advice on architecture, improvements, and decorations. Perhaps she would have architectural plans laid out for his approval. Or maybe the subject would be botany. His mistress created a botanical garden at the Trianon Palace on the grounds of Versailles where she conducted experiments and grew the first strawberries in France especially for her royal lover. She also had a greenhouse built so that Louis could have fresh oranges and lemons at any time of year. Perhaps she would report on the progress of the farmyard she had created for him on the palace grounds, complete with a dairy and milk cows. Or maybe she would discuss the art of gem cutting she had taken up, or her plans for a porcelain factory. One of Louis’s favorite diversions was to listen to Madame de Pompadour read from the private letters of his courtiers. All letters both into and out of court were opened, read for treacherous intent, and carefully resealed. Madame de Pompadour obtained from the palace police copies of the most amusing missives—which contained the most intimate details—to read to the king. After a hard day’s work Louis roared with laughter as she read him these excerpts in a lively and entertaining manner.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Sex with the KingIn contrast to a prince’s forced performance with his wife, we can imagine his more enjoyable relations with his mistress—the tender foreplay, the artistic technique, the frenzied culmination, the drowsy contented aftermath. Imagine we must, for history has bequeathed us relatively few records of the sex lives of kings and their mistresses. Most sexually suggestive letters written by the enflamed pair were burned in the lifetime of their recipients—sometimes in the last moments of life—or shortly afterward by embarrassed relatives. A few such letters remain to titillate us, as well as numerous stories that shed light on the sexual relationships between kings and mistresses. Barbara, Lady Castlemaine, described her royal lover Charles II as being magnificently endowed, prompting her friend Lord Rochester to write: Nor are his high desires above his strength His scepter and his prick are of a length.18 Hearing this couplet, Louis XIV’s mistress the princesse de Monaco remarked that while Louis’s power was great, his “scepter” was small compared to that of his royal cousin across the English Channel. In the 1540s the future Henri II of France was so enthralled with his strawberry blonde mistress Diane de Poitiers that he had little appetite for his plain brown wife, the dauphine, Catherine de Medici. Studious Catherine was described by one ambassador as a fine woman when her face was veiled, and her face when unveiled resembled nothing so much as a plank of wood. She had been selected as Henri’s bride only because of her close relationship with the pope and a rich dowry including several cities, jewels, horses, and furnishings. In 1542 after nine years of marriage Henri and Catherine had produced no children, not even a pregnancy. Though eighteen years older than her royal lover, Diane kept immaculate care of herself and was far sexier than the dauphine. Slender and athletic, Diane began each day with a bracing ride on horseback for up to three hours. Ever mindful of her clear white skin, she always wore a black velvet mask outside, daily drank a mixture containing gold, and bathed in asses’ milk and cold water. Terrified of wrinkles, Diane slept sitting up on pillows. Her beauty regimen worked. Henri made love to Diane almost every night and left his wife alone in her cold bed. The penalty for a barren princess was often annulment, banishment, and life in a convent. Diane, while no great friend of Catherine’s, was pleased that she was dull and plain and had absolutely no influence over her husband. Diane feared a new alliance, a beautiful foreign princess who would win Henri’s heart away from her. Better, she resolved, to assist Catherine in bearing an heir.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Two days later the king died, and another messenger was sent to Diane to retrieve the crown jewels and the keys to the king’s cabinets and desk. Diane returned a box containing the jewels and keys, as well as an inventory of its contents and a personal letter to the queen asking her pardon. Diane was not permitted to attend Henri’s funeral but watched the procession pass under the window of her Paris house. Then she sat down and waited to be arrested. But the guards never came for her. Diane had ruled France prudently for the twelve years of Henri’s reign and could not be accused of treason. Perhaps more important, she had married her two daughters into families that were powerful allies of the queen. Catherine satisfied herself with claiming Chenonceaux, the fairy-tale castle Henri had given Diane, and defacing the countless “HD” ciphers Henri had placed all over his many châteaus. She either had them removed and burned or hired a wood carver to turn them into an “HC.” Diane retired to the château of Anet, which she had inherited from her long-dead husband. Devoting her last years to good works, she built a hospital and a home for unwed mothers, orphans, and widows. She left money to several convents for Masses to be said for her soul. In 1566, seven years after Henri’s death, she died quietly after a brief illness at the age of sixty-five, still lovely. One courtier wrote, “It is sad that earth should hide that beautiful body.”8 “Let not poor Nelly starve”Unlike most kings, who left behind a single declared mistress on their deaths, Charles II left behind a harem in 1685. His two principal mistresses met with very different fates. As the fifty-five-year-old king lay dying of a stroke, possibly the result of syphilis, it was Louise de Kéroualle who provided Charles with a last great service. One of the few who knew him to be a secret Catholic who, for political reasons, had never officially converted, she wanted him to receive the sacrament and last rites according to the Catholic Church. He had refused the Protestant sacrament on his deathbed, and no one was certain why—except Louise and his brother James. But James was lost in the fog of thought that descends when one is about to become king. Louise felt herself forbidden by decency to visit the king’s chamber, where the unhappy queen kept vigil. She went instead to the French ambassador and requested that he speak with James and find a priest. According to the ambassador, she said, “Go and tell him that I have implored you to warn him to consider what can be done to save the King, his brother’s, soul.”9 James, recollecting his duty, visited Charles at once and asked him if he should send for a priest, to which the king replied, “For God’s sake, brother, do, and lose no time!”10

• From Less (2017)

  For a fifty-year-old man, the boredom of lying convalescent in bed is rivaled only by sitting in church. Less is given the Raja Suite and set up in the comfortable bed with a view of the ocean marred only by a thick beekeeper’s veil of mosquito net hanging from the ceiling. It is elegant, cool, well staffed, and stiflingly dull. How Less misses the mongoose. He misses Rupali and the picnickers, the battle of the bands, the pastor and the tailor and Elizabeth the yellow snake; he even misses Jesus Christ Our Savior. His only intrigue is with the porter, Vincent, who stops by every day to check in on our invalid: a clean-shaven tapered face and topaz eyes, the kind of bashful handsome man who has no idea he is handsome, and whenever Vincent pays a visit, Less prays for Jesus Christ Our Savior to extinguish his libido; the last thing he needs is a convalescent crush. So the weeks pass in blank tedium, which turns out—finally—to be the perfect situation for Less, at last, to try to write. It is like pouring water from an old leaking bucket into a shining new one; it feels almost suspiciously easy. He simply takes a gloomy event in the plot—say, a market owner dying of cancer—and inverts it, having Swift, out of pity, accept seven fragrant rounds of cheese, which he will then have to carry around San Francisco, growing more rank, throughout the rest of the chapter. In the sordid scene in which Swift takes a bag of cocaine to the hotel bathroom, cutting out a line on the counter, Less merely adds a motion-activated hand dryer and—whirr! A blizzard of indignity! All it takes is a pail thrown out a window, an open manhole, a banana peel. “Are we losers?” Swift asks of his lover at the end of their ruined vacation, and Less gleefully adds the response: “Well, baby, we sure ain’t winners.” With a joy bordering on sadism, he degloves every humiliation to show its risible lining. What sport! If only one could do this with life! He finds himself awakening at dawn, when the sea is brightening but the sun still struggles in its bedclothes, and sits down to lash his protagonist a few more times with his authorial whip. And somehow, a bittersweet longing starts to appear in the novel that was never there before. It changes, grows kinder. Less, as with a repentant worshipper, begins again to love his subject, and at last, one morning, after an hour sitting with his chin in his hand, watching birds cross the gray haze of the horizon, our benevolent god grants his character the brief benediction of joy.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I asked her.‘Not today. It’s wash-day, and Mother needs me at home to keep the babies out from under her heels.’ All the while she talked to me she kept her eyes fixed on my shorn head. Her own hair was fair, and - much as mine had used to - dribbled down between her jutting shoulder-blades in a long, untidy plait.It was now about half-past three, and when I returned to Florence’s kitchen to wash my filthy hands and arms I found the house had grown quite dark. I removed my apron, and lit a lamp; then I took a few minutes to wander between the rooms, gazing at the transformation I had effected. I thought, like a child, How pleased they will be! How pleased... I was not quite so gay, however, as I had been six hours before. Like the darkening day beyond the parlour window, there was a gloomy knowledge pressing at the edges of my own pleasure-the knowledge that I must go, and find some shelter of my own. I picked up the list that Florence had made for me. Her handwriting was very neat but the ink had stained her fingers, and there was a smudge where she had lain her tired hand upon the sheet.I could not bear the idea of going just yet - of working my way through the list of hostels, of being shown to a bed in another chamber like the one I had slept in with Zena. I would go in an hour; for now, I thought again, determinedly, of how enchanted Ralph and Florence would be, to come home to a tidy house - and then, with more enthusiasm, I thought: And how much more pleased would they be, to come home to their tidy house, and find their supper bubbling on the stove! There was not much food in the cupboards, so far as I could see; but there was, of course, the half-crown that they had left for me ... I didn’t stop to think that I should keep it for my own needs. I picked the coin up - it was just where Florence had placed it, for I had lifted it only to wipe beneath it with a cloth, then put it back again - and hobbled off down Quilter Street, towards the stalls and barrows of the Hackney Road.A half-hour later I was back. I had bought bread, meat and vegetables and - purely on the grounds that it had looked so handsome on the fruit-man’s barrow - a pineapple.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  His presence gave me a licence to be bold and gay and sentimental, as he was; to be able to pretend to worship her - which was almost as good as being able to worship her in earnest.And if I still longed yet feared to hold her - well, as I have said, the fact that Walter felt the same showed that both my reticence and my love were only natural and proper. She was a star - my private star - and I would be content, I thought, like Walter, to fly about her on my stiff and distant orbit, unswervingly, for ever.I could not know how soon we would collide, nor how dramatically. By now it was December - a cold December to match the sweltering August, so cold that the little skylight above our staircase at Ma Dendy’s was thick with ice for days at a time; so cold that when we woke in the mornings our breath showed grey as smoke, and we had to pull our petticoats into bed with us and dress beneath the sheets.At home in Whitstable we hated the cold, because it made the trawler-men’s job so much the harder. I remember my brother Davy sitting at our parlour fire on January evenings, and weeping, simply weeping with pain, as the life returned to his split and frozen hands, his chilblained feet. I remember the ache in my own fingers as I handled pail after frigid pail of winter oysters, and transferred fish, endlessly, from icy seawater to steaming soup.At Mrs Dendy’s, however, everybody loved the winter months; and the colder they were, they said, the better. Because frosts, and chill winds, fill theatres. For many Londoners a ticket to the music hall is cheaper than a scuttle of coal - or, if not cheaper, then more fun: why stay in your own miserable parlour stamping and clapping to keep the cold out when you can visit the Star or the Paragon, and stamp and clap along with your neighbours - and with Marie Lloyd as an accompaniment? On the very coldest nights the music halls are full of wailing infants: their mothers bring them to the shows rather than leave them to slumber - perhaps to death - in their damp and draughty cradles.But we didn’t worry much over the frozen babies at Mrs Dendy’s house that winter; we were merely glad and careless, because ticket sales were high and we were all in work and a little richer than before.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The Sappho with the cigar shook her head. ‘I have never heard of such a thing,’ she said.‘Well,’ answered Dickie impressively, ‘you will hear more of it, believe me.’‘Let us hear more of it now!’ cried Maria; and someone else called: ‘Yes, Diana, read it to us, do!’And so more candles were brought, and placed at Diana’s shoulder. The ladies settled themselves into comfortable poses, and the reading began.I cannot remember the words of it now. I know that, as Dickie had promised, they were not at all filthy; indeed, they were rather dry. And yet, her story was lent a kind of lewdness, too, by the very dullness of the prose in which it was told. All the time Diana read, the ladies called out ribald comments. When Dickie’s history was complete, they read another, which was rather lewder. Then they read a very saucy one from the gentlemen’s section. At last the air was thicker and warmer than ever; even I, in my sulkiness, began to feel myself stirred by the doctor’s prim descriptions. The book was passed from lady to lady, while Diana lit herself another cigarette. Then one lady said, ‘You must ask Bo about that: she was seven years amongst the Hindoos’; and Diana called, ‘What? What must she ask?’‘We are reading the story,’ cried the woman in reply, ‘of a lady with a clitoris as big as a little boy’s prick! She claims she caught the malady from an Indian maid. I said, if only Bo Holliday were here, she might confirm it for us, for she was thick with the Hindoos in her years in Hindoostan.’‘It is not true of Indian girls,’ said another lady then. ‘But it is of the Turks. They are bred like it, that they might pleasure themselves in the seraglio.’‘Is that so?’ said Maria, stroking her beard.‘Yes, it is certainly so.’‘But it is true also of our own poor girls!’ said someone else. ‘They are brought up twenty to a bed. The continual frotting makes their clitorises grow. I know that for a fact.’‘What rubbish!’ said the Sappho with the cigar.‘I can assure you it is not rubbish,’ answered the first lady hotly. ‘And if we only had a girl from the slums amongst us now, I would pull her drawers down and show you the proof!’There was laughter at her words, and then the room grew rather quiet. I looked at Diana; and as I did so, she slowly turned her head to gaze at me. ‘I wonder...’ she said thoughtfully, and one or two other ladies began to study me, as she did. My stomach gave a subtle kind of lurch. I thought, She wouldn‘t! And as I thought it, a quite different lady said: ‘But Diana, you have just the creature we need!

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  My mistress had said she wouldn’t care to have me leave the house, unchaperoned - indeed, she had Mrs Hooper lock the great front door: I heard her turn the key each time she stepped to close it. I did not much mind my lack of liberty; as I have said, the warmth, the luxury, the kissing and the sleep made me grow stupid, and lazier than ever. I might drift from room to room, soundless and thoughtless, pausing perhaps to gaze at the paintings on the walls; or at the quiet streets and gardens of St John’s Wood; or at myself, in Diana’s various looking-glasses. I was like a spectre - the ghost, I sometimes imagined, of a handsome youth, who had died in that house and still walked its corridors and chambers, searching, searching, for reminders of the life that he had lost there. ‘What a scare you gave me, miss!’ the maid might say, hand at her heart, after she had come upon me, lingering at a bend in the stair or in the shadows of some curtain or alcove; but when I smiled and asked what work had she to do there? or, did she know if the day were a fine or a dull one? she would only blush and look frightened: ‘I’m sure, miss, I couldn’t say.’ The climax of my day, the event to which my thoughts naturally tended, and which gave direction and meaning to the hours before it, was Diana’s return. There was drama to be had in the choosing of the chamber, and the pose, in which I would arrange myself for her. She might find me smoking in the library, or dozing, with unfastened buttons, in her parlour; I would feign surprise at her entry, or let her rouse me if I pretended sleep. My pleasure at her appearance, however, was real enough. I at once lost that sense of ghostliness, that feeling of waiting in the wing, and grew warm and substantial again before the blaze of her attention. I would light her a cigarette, pour her a drink. If she was weary I would lead her to a chair and stroke her temples; if she was footsore - she wore high black boots, very tightly laced - I would bare her legs and rub the blood back into her toes. If she was amorous - as she frequently was - I would kiss her. She might have me caress her in the library or drawing-room, heedless of the servants who passed beyond the closed door, or who knocked and, at our breathy answering silence, retired unbidden. Or she might send orders that she was not to be disturbed, and lead me to her parlour, to the secret drawer that held the key that unlocked the rosewood trunk. The opening of this still enthralled and excited me, though I had soon grown used to handling its contents. They were, perhaps, mild enough.