Chapter Forty-Six About silk stockings
So you think it strange that Pickleherring wants to be a young whore's stockings as she's putting them on?
There have been stranger desires at the Court of Queen Venus.
King James I (of England) and VI (of Scotland) used to come off paddling naked in the entrails of just-slaughtered stags.
Veronica Juliana, a nun, beatified by Pope Pius II, always slept with a lamb, kissing it and letting it suckle on her breasts.
The philosopher Aristotle liked to be ridden by a courtesan of Athens with nothing on his person but a saddle and bridle.
Philip Massinger, the playwright, once told me that the only interesting part of a woman was her shoe. Laced boots with high black heels especially charmed him.
Guy Fawkes collected girls' handkerchiefs.
Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, perished in the act of intercourse with a hen. He had stuffed its little love-hole full of snow.
Some of these people had excuses.
The nun, for instance, claimed that she took the lamb to bed in memory of Jesus. And Bacon's genitals were very small.
Pickleherring's excuse would be that this is the price he has to pay for all the women's parts he's had to play. He fell in love with the clothes he wore to do it.
His real name as he has told you is Nicholas Nemo. Nobody can say what Nobody is capable of.
But perhaps there was always much of a woman in my own innermost nature. And Mr Shakespeare saw that right from the start.
So he re-named me, and my name has been:
Portia Juliet Ophelia Hermione Silvia Cordelia Cleopatra Jessica Desdemona Rosalind Beatrice Cressida
My many parts. So many a time I ended with an A. Why I don't know. You'd have to ask him, and I doubt if he could answer. Perhaps because A stands for Anne. And now I've an Anne of my own.
But I need no excuses. Silk stockings are very nice and sweet and voluptuous, and no justification should be required for their worship.
It was the Virgin Queen herself who set the fashion. In the second year of her reign, her silk woman, Mrs Montague, presented Elizabeth with a pair of black silk stockings for a new-year's gift. They say that wearing those silk stockings pleased the Queen so much that she sent for Mrs Montague, and asked her where she had these silk stockings from, and if she could help her to any more of the lovely things.
'I made them very carefully for your Majesty,' said the silk woman, 'and of purpose only for your Majesty. But seeing these silk stockings please you so well, I will presently set more in hand.'
'Do so,' quoth the Queen, 'for indeed I like silk stockings so well, because they are pleasant, fine, and delicate, that henceforth I will wear no other stockings.'
And from that time to her death Queen Elizabeth wore only silk stockings. No doubt she was wearing them at the time of her revels at Kenilworth. And perhaps at her earlier revels in the Forest of Arden.
(I don't always cite my sources, any more than a good cook will give you his recipes, since the craft is in the cooking not the ingredients. But in this case - just to prevent you from discrediting yourself with the suspicion that I might be making it all up to justify or aggrandise my own passion - I advise you to consult John Stow's Chronicle, the 1631 edition being the one I have open before me, and look at page 887.)
I confess I like silk stockings linking Queen Elizabeth and my little tart Anne. Confess it, now, all you lechers: Any woman wearing a pair of silk stockings is much more desirable than one with nothing on. I think even your most hardened modern rake - that young Earl of Rochester, say - would agree with Pickleherring in this matter.
As for me, when I was in female costume for my parts, crossing my legs or walking in silk stockings was always the sweetest of pleasures, what with the little intimate sounds your legs make, rubbing and rasping, kissing each other through the webs of silk.
And no, madam, I did not mock at women thus. On the contrary, I worshipped Woman.
With my silk stockings on, the very word WOMAN would bring my young man to attention.
Thereby hangs, as the bishop used to say, another tale. But it's not time for that yet. It's time to ponder the 'lost years' of William Shakespeare.