Anonymous
The Oyster, Volume III
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.
The Private and Unexpurgated Memoirs of a Medical Gentleman in Great Britain and the New World
Part I
Author's Introduction
Dear reader, I earnestly hope you derive pleasure from this set of memoirs culled from my memories of many glorious years spent in perfecting l'art de faire l'amour. Many readers of this distinguished journal are members of Society, so my name will not be unknown to them. After all, Doctor Edward Marmaduke DuCane Parsifal, Member of the Royal College of Physicians, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and Sometime Visiting Professor at the Universities of Washington and Bombay, is a name with whom the very highest in the land have been well acquainted. Not that I am one to stand upon ceremony, you understand. I far prefer the simple sobriquet of Doctor Teddy than any other mode of address. I hope to entertain you with the recall of some of the bizarre, intimate incidents of my younger days, already recorded in a secret journal, but which the editor of The Oyster, whose name must never be mentioned for fear of police informants, and my dear old friends Doctor Jonathan Arkley and Sir Clive Freedman, have persuaded me are worthy of a wider readership amongst the cognoscenti. So the time has come to share my most exciting experiences of a personal nature, and I must warn readers of a delicate disposition that, unfashionable though it be in this age of euphemism, I insist on calling a spade a spade and refuse to mince words for the benefit of mealy-mouthed hypocrites who wish to bowdlerise our good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon vulgarities. I doubt, however, that there are many such personages amongst the readership of this robust journal! So settle down and enjoy my jottings, and may I take this opportunity of wishing you all, ladies and gentlemen, a Happy New Year of licking and lapping, sucking and fucking in 1887.
Doctor Teddy Parsifal Ford Manor Sussex, December 1886 My Early Days As my old friend Lady Pokingham has written, the natural instinct of the ancients was that copulation was the direct and most acceptable form of worship they could offer to their deities.
I am convinced that there cannot be any great sin in giving way to natural desires and enjoying to the utmost those delicious sensations with which the Creator has endowed us. So no apology will be forthcoming for the unashamed voluptuousness of this memoir and without further ado, let me begin my narrative. My earliest years were spent in Canada and India as my Papa was attached to the Diplomatic Service. I shall not bore you with the details but until the age of ten I had hardly lived in this sceptred isle of Albion more than six months or so. But on my eleventh birthday I was sent to school in England where my elder brother, Cecil (more of him will appear later in this tale), was already a student, though we returned home to Mama and Papa in the holidays wherever they happened to be living at the time. Even at this tender age I evinced a taste for the fair sex and I will never forget our governess, Mrs. Radlett, who proudly displayed what appeared to my young eyes an enormous pair of breasts in the tightest of bodices, creating a cleavage that caused many a visitor to make excuses to visit the nursery, the avowed purpose being to see the youngsters, but in reality to see Mrs.