Introduction

Summary

Miss Bland, Wardour Street, Soho.

‘This is a gay volatile girl; very genteel in her person; and has an extraordinary titillation in all her members; which she is very fond of increasing, by making use of provocatives for that purpose such as pullets, pigs, veal, new-laid eggs, oysters, crabs, prawns, eringoes, electuaries, &c. &c. – She is reported to have a kind of savage joy in her embraces, and sometimes leaves the marks of her penetrating teeth on her paramour's cheeks.’

Harris's list of Covent Garden ladies (1764)

‘Wallington “made a covenant with my eyes that I would not look upon a maid.” However, his imagination and appetite were a greater threat, and these he attempted to tame by collecting scriptural passages that condemned “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, wantonness” and the seductions of “strong women,” by working hard at his calling, by fasting and arising “betimes in the morning,” and by “abstaining from divers meats as eggs and oysters and wine and many other things which I loved very well”.’

Paul Seaver, Wallington's world (1985)

‘When he came home She gave him Kisses,

and Sack-Posset very good:

Caudles too, she never misses,

for they warm, and heat the Blood.

Such things will Create desire,

and new kindle Cupid's fire,

These things made him kiss his Wife,

And to call her Love and Life.’

The London cuckold (1685-8)

These diverse quotations exemplify the many surprising and socially complex ways in which aphrodisiacs were understood in early modern England.