Anonymous

Letters from a Friend in Paris

LETTER I

Paris, Faubourg St. Honore; the first letter from Harry Hargrove to his friend Charles in England

I promised, my dear fellow, in memory of our old school adventures, that I would tell you all the late singular events that have happened to me. You may rest assured that this letter, and those that follow it, will contain nothing but the simple truth, and that I shall not hesitate to confess my own sins, while I am obliged to give the history of those of my two young friends.

There never was a more singular and piquant affair in all the world, and, as for myself, it suited me exactly.

You know that I am rather fond of this sort of thing. An artist by nature, as well as profession, when I took up photography last year, it was with a secret hope and longing that some sort of adventure might enliven my career in this fashionably patronised art.

Suffice it to say, I shall write just as I thought, felt and acted. No concealment of admiration shall stop my pen; no recollection of my own culpability or rapture shall cause me to suppress the plain facts. You have told me of your wonderful boldness, success and escapes. I will repay in kind.

I won't go over the whole story again of how I became acquainted with that beautiful young lady and her no less charming lover. She, you may remember, debarred from his society except at the awfully stiff parties at home, was steadily going on with her education at the convent school. To please her adorer she had allowed him to ask her, through me, for a series of photographs of her beauteous self. Tom used to rave so much about her beauty and the excess of his own feelings that, as you know, I took a good deal of trouble in the matter, and persuaded her to give him some comfort and relief by somewhat freer poses than the preceding ones, through my camera as a medium.

Louisa had, at last, become quite familiar and friendly with me and, in the end, came to see me unaccompanied by the person who had acted heretofore as a sort of duenna. She saw also what a great admiration I had for Tom himself, and then she knew that Tom came to my nice little studio, a cosy room, shaded red and green, to talk and rave of her. Tom could only come in the afternoon, when his college lectures were over. She, only after breakfast, when the girls were recommended to take open air exercise, and allowed some little liberty of action.

Well, Tom was as simple as a child. I had determined not to play him false, for he trusted me with Louisa to any extent, and indeed he liked me himself so very much-I never could tell why-that anything like jealousy never occurred to his mind.

Well, thus things were when at last I had got so far, as I briefly told you, that I asked her to allow me to take for him a photograph of her with a low dress on, so as to show her breasts quite openly, firmly spreading in opposing directions, with the pink nipples and circles around them fully exposed.