The Ups & Downs of a Gentleman Rotter - Edward Sellon 1867

Enjoy non stop 19th century sexcapades with Queen Victoria's most prolific swordsman and erotic wordsmith - Edward Sellon.
Its a shameless tale of peeping, pooping, penile stamina and pistols.

• Why should ladies refrain from playing hide and seek with him?
• How many 'affairs' could he conduct at any one time?
• What's the worst thing that can happen when cleaning a sailing ship?
• Should he have been allowed anywhere near a girls boarding school?

The answers to these and equally sleazy questions can all be found in episode 32 of Rogues Gallery Uncovered - The podcast of bad behaviour in period costume.

 A titan of erotic literature, the soldier, adventurer, and infamous British army officer combined a less than stellar military career with some of the biggest scandals of the Victorian era. If you're a fan of erotica, erotic literature, military history, sexual exploration, the British Empire or smut then you'll find something to arouse you in this episode.

Thanks for listening. Stay Roguish!
Email: simon@roguesgalleryonline.com   
Visit the website and become a 'Rogue with Benefits'
 
 

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Transcript

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Rogues Gallery Uncovered

Bad behaviour in period costume 

A non-judgmental grope into the scandalous lives of history’s greatest libertines’ lotharios and complete bastards  

This podcast contains very adult themes, more than a touch of colourful language and scenes of sexual bragg a doe she oh , sleazy hide and seek and nautical defecation.

If you think this may offend you then to be honest I’m not surprised but as you’re grownups that doesn’t mean to say that you shouldn’t listen.

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF A GENTLEMAN ROTTER.

 Shagging for her majesty 

With Queen Victoria’s most disreputable army officer

Edward Sellon.

Before we start, a scandalous shout out to Lovable Rogue Dottie Hubbard who dropped me a line at simon@roguesgalleryonline.com -  address is in the show notes – to ask me about the Flashman novels of George Macdonald Fraser that I was waxing lyrical about in the last episode – and which have inspired this one.

I hope my reply answered some of your queries Dottie and thanks for getting in touch.

Id also like to mention Twitter rogues, RA Poe, Second Glance History and Rach A alongside Facebook rogues Edward Cutic, Nicholas Saunders, Mad Matt Coyne, Nectar Vam and Chimp Saven. 

I can be found on facebook, twitter and instrgram

Its also been nice to see some new names signing up to be Lovable Rogues at the website roguesgalleryuncovered.com – link is unsurprisingly in the show notes too. 

The website has some extra roguish content and as an LR you get an infrequent but fun packed newsletter.

Tell your friends

Short notice Shout out to Franklin who got in touch via the website this morning with more kind words , cheers Franklin.

Right this is going to be a bawdy one so pay attention.

The following tale is written in the present tense of the period in which its set…. and as such, may contain attitudes and opinions of the protagonists and their times which would today be considered unacceptable. 

As I’m NOT a raging nineteenth century onanist with some very questionable views on sexual equality, those attitudes and opinions are OBVIOUSLY not mine.  

 London 1867 

Have you heard? Edward Sellon’s bloody topped himself.

One of the finest writers of “Gentleman’s Erotica” that this country has ever seen – and a former Queens officer to boot – the fellow took a room at Webb's Hotel in Piccadilly and before the maid could even turn down the bedspread…. blew his brains out with a service revolver.

Apart from being jolly poor form, its left me in a bit of a bind.

I’d often retire early for the night you see with a copy of one of his books – perhaps “The New Epicurean: The delights of sex, Facetiously and Philosophically Considered, in Graphic Letters Addressed to Young Ladies of Quality” or the simply unputdownable “The New Ladies' Tickler, or Adventures of Lady Lovesport and the Audacious Harry.”

Now I’ll have to make do with Charles bloody Dickens and there’s precious little fucking in Great Expectations, let me tell you.

Fortunately, Captain Sellon has left a short but colourful description of his career in the arousingly autobiographical “The Ups and Downs of Life” which I purchased from a specialist bookseller just a few short weeks ago.

Common sense tells me that much of this account is exaggerated or just plain fiction but when my blood is up, the curtains drawn and my study door firmly bolted I would swear on the life of Her Majesty that every word was the gospel truth.

It was the February of 1834 and Sellon was sixteen when he joined the 4th Regiment of the East India Company Madras Infantry as a junior officer. 

You must remember that the 30s were right at the very end of the so-called Regency – the great days of the Plunger, the Dandy and the Corinthian – before hymn singing queen Victoria came to the throne and imposed her tedious “Morality” on the Empire.

He writes that on arriving in Portsmouth to take ship he was told that bad weather had delayed his sailing and he had at least a week to idle away before setting off. 

An elderly major, returning to his regiment on the same vessel, offered the young man a room at his lodgings - which he was sharing with his three nieces. 

Gratefully accepting the offer and then exploring the city, Sellon met a roguish fellow in the tap room of a public house who was himself bound for military service in Spain. 

The two heartily drank each other’s health before enjoying a night at the theatre. 

Upon leaving, they were accosted by the usual gaggle of painted strumpets who prey upon men of sport, and in the surprisingly well-appointed rooms of a filthy garret hovel, Sellon was relieved of his virginity by an accommodating prostitute by the name of Polly. 

Sellon claims that he found the experience so invigorating that he fucked Polly three more times and then two of her friends twice a piece -  before downing two bottles of champagne and returning to his lodgings at five in the morning, with his prick “as raw as a carrot.”

Having tasted the intoxicating fruit of Venus, it wasn’t long before Sellon says he turned his attentions to the majors’ three nieces – who, while suitably enamoured of his boyish charms, initially rejected his advances. 

He had better luck however with the chambermaid, Mary, who he proceeded to enjoy on three occasions. 

At the end of their third tryst, Mary admitted that she sometimes spied on couples in the adjoining room through a small hole in the wall and invited Sellon to join her.

Sellon’s neighbours were a bluff sea captain and his young wife and as he pressed his beady eye to the spy hole, Sellon was outraged to witness the drunk seaman attempting to take his wife roughly up the windward passage, despite her most heartfelt protests. 

Unable to contain himself Sellon bellowed, 'I can't stand this, that old scoundrel ought to be taken out and shot!' At which point the shocked sea captain, on hearing the voice of censure coming, apparently, from thin air, packed his things and hurried straight to his ship – despite it wallowing in a severe gale.

Presenting his complements to the wife, it should come as no surprise to learn that Sellon had soon taken the husbands place in the marital bed – without any of that continental nonsense.

The chambermaid, while jealous accepted Sellons explanation that he was only doing the poor woman a kindness.

Turning his attentions once more towards the three nieces, a playful Sellon started taking them out for long walks, enjoying the effect the high winds had in moulding their cotton dresses to the contours of their bodies. 

He suggested a game of hide and seek and artfully arranged it so that he was not only found lurking behind a tree by all three of them at the same time, but that he was holding his prick in his hand when they did - giving them all a proper eyeful.

Two of the nieces were virtuously appalled, but the youngest, Lucy was intrigued and he began to dally with her when her uncle fell asleep after dinner – all the while continuing to rendezvous with Mary the chambermaid and the Captains wife. 

When Mary told him that the hot-blooded Lucy was also being pleasured by an older woman who was sharing their lodgings – she saw them through a spyhole - a furious Sellon refused to have anything more to do with her. 

He then talked Mary out of entering a life of prostitution and into marrying a respectable tradesman of her acquaintance, and then – at her request mind you - putting on his army uniform and letting him fuck her one last time. The deed done Sellon says he then sent her out to fetch some cold ham, before visiting the captain’s wife and fucking her as well.

Sellon assures the reader at this point that this is by no means the fevered imaginings of a middle-aged man but that it actually happened - and I for one believe him.

Finally, out at sea and en route to India, Sellon began to visit Lucy in the niece’s cabin – despite his reservations- by lowering himself through the deck above their water closet. 

During the course of the voyage he managed to deflower not only her but also her older sister – who had been driven to distraction watching him with Lucy. 

The oldest sister however was very disapproving and suspected Sellon’s intentions were far from honourable because of his often-flushed appearance.

In a stroke of appalling bad fortune, the next time Sellon lowered himself through the ceiling of the WC, it was this sister who was sat upon it, performing her natural functions and an extremely apologetic Sellon dropped heavily onto her lap.

In the commotion that followed, Sellon dived overboard, was hauled back up on deck half drowned and was subjected to some very harsh words by the captain.

On the subject of natural functions, Sellon goes on to provide a vivid glimpse in to the dangerous life of the seafaring man. 

Becalmed in eastern waters, one of the sailors was lowered over the side astride a wooden plank in order to scrape barnacles from the hull. 

Looking up, he was appalled to see the bare buttocks of one of the other female passengers who was about to take her ease into the ocean below.

Before he could shout “Ahoy” the lady had carelessly defecated into his left eye and he was forced to prod her behind with a boat hook to prevent further bombardments. 

This distasteful incident, Sellon says, meant he could no longer look at the lady in question as an object of affection. 

Arriving in Madras, all three nieces were married to army officers within weeks, but by then Sellon was settling in to life as a company officer.

One of his favourite pastimes in those early days was to sit on the balcony of his new house, sipping a glass of port and smoking a cheroot while gazing over the walls of an Anglo-Indian girls boarding school. 

Supposedly shielded from prying eyes, the young ladies therein would bathe naked, unaware that ensign Sellon was following their every move.

Sellon recounts an unsavoury episode when he instructed his butler -– to offer the woman who ran the school eighty rupees for the opportunity to spend the night with his favourite. 

It turns out that she had been happily accommodating British officers in this manner for some time and brought the girl to Sellon’s rooms one evening, soon after. 

Unfortunately, when a senior officer heard about this, he was furious that the woman had been offering the girl to one of his juniors rather than himself and took the poor thing by force. 

The woman left Madras soon after while the senior officer was charged with rape and transported to a penal colony for seven years.

Sellon – like many officers of his time – was much taken with Indian women, considering them to be more beautiful and sensual than their European counterparts – he wrote 

 “They are scrupulously cleanly in their persons, they are sumptuously dressed, they wear the most costly jewels in profusion, they are well educated, and sing sweetly, accompanying their voices on the viola da gamba, a sort of guitar, they generally decorate their hair with clusters of clematis or the sweet-scented bilwa flowers entwined with pearls or diamonds. They understand in perfection all the arts and wiles of love, are capable of gratifying any tastes, and in face and figure they are unsurpassed by any women in the world.”

He went on to express this admiration by having sexual relations with as many of the local prostitutes as his finances would allow.

This isn’t to say he totally neglected European conquests.

There was “Mrs T” the twenty six year-old wife of a sixty year-old major, whom he spent many weeks pursuing. 

He attended her soirees, turned her music for her when she played the viola, accompanied her on strolls and sat with her on the sofa for many happy hours with his hands up her skirt while she rummaged around inside his britches. 

Her husband was blissfully ignorant, suspecting one “Captain M” of having designs upon his wife but not the boyishly eager Sellon 

When he finally did engage in congress with the wanton Mrs T, Sellon found her to be terrifyingly passionate, using the coarsest of language and sticking her finger up his backside in a burst of wayward enthusiasm.

“Why this woman, said I to myself, is a perfect Messalina.” he commented. 

After pausing for a glass of claret, the couple buckled to again but were disturbed by a furious hammering on the door. 

Thinking it the major, Sellon grabbed his clothes and fled through the window – naked as a jaybird – however it was not the major but Mrs Ts other lover, Captain M.

Unable to make out Sellon’s identity, Captain M fired his musket at the young officer as he rowed himself across the river to safety.

Running naked through the jungle during the hottest part of the day, Sellon was half dead from exhaustion when he arrived home but he knew that a suspicious – and angry – Captain M would soon be at his door. 

He soon was… 

With admirable coolness, Sellon told the dusty and furious man that he had not been out of the house all day as his guts had been playing up following an evening drinking some particularly bad wine.

Offering the murderous fellow, a cigar Sellon pointed to a mirror and said.

“ Look upon me, look upon yourself,' 'would a woman who would choose a stalwart like you, condescend to a mere boy like me?'

Suitably chastised, Captain M apologised profusely and made his exit. 

In a stroke of appalling bad fortune however Sellon had left his pocket watch – a gift from his beloved papa- in Mrs Ts boudoir and Captain M took possession of it.

All Sellon needed do was keep quiet about his ownership of the watch but because it was such a sentimental trinket, he revealed himself to captain M who – livid at having been gulled AND cuckolded - challenged Sellon to a duel. 

As the challenged party Sellon – who couldn’t hit a barn door at two paces with a pistol – chose to fight with swords, a weapon with which he claimed to be more proficient. 

In the resulting duel, despite his best efforts at merely wounding his opponent, Sellon ran Captain M through the chest and killed him.  A promising life cut short he later mused on account of one woman’s wanton lusts. 

In the years that followed he recounted other amorous adventures on the Indian sub-continent.

On one occasion, Sellon dressed up as young lady to inveigle his way into a bored wife’s bed chamber – the husband poking his head round the door thought he was a girlfriend come to help her dress. 

While still thus attired Sellon was then propositioned by a drunk at a ball and has to defend his honour by punching the impudent mountebank full in the face.

He also took up with yet another married woman, whose husband was, in his words “a 'prig', and an old woman to boot, a little plain mean-looking fellow, with a squeaky voice, who looked like a eunuch”

Sellon however found his wife especially beautiful with one exception – she had bad teeth – a problem he overcame with his usual “sang friod”.

 “As I did not admire bad teeth” he wrote “ I would only poke this woman in one way, and that was en levrette. She made great opposition at first, but soon got to like it, especially as I said to her, 'My love, in this attitude you gain an inch.'

After ten years in India, Sellon says he returned to England and entered into a marriage of convenience to a woman named Sarah Ann Wilds, which had been arranged by his mother.

He honeymooned with his new bride in Paris but was most put out that his over-emotional wife became angry, upset and tearful whenever he looked at, paid a complement to or tried to arrange a rendezvous with any other women.

Moving to a cottage in Devonshire, the couple were jointly disappointed to find out that neither was as wealthy as the other thought they were.

Sellon moved out and went back to living with his mother, conducting two simultaneous affairs to pass the time.

A couple of years later, Sarah returned, but by then he was involved with another woman called Emma and much to Sellon’s annoyance the ladies hated each other on sight. 

Promising to end things with Emma, Sellon feigned a headache but while his wife was at church that Sunday morning, instead of terminating the relationship, he invited Emma to his room and rutted himself into a stupor. 

In fact, he was so transported that he lost track of time and had to hide the girl in a side room when Sarah returned home.

His day got even more vexing when Sarah found Emma’s nightcap in his bed – a situation Sellon could not explain although when she questioned him about the comprehensively stained sheets, he angrily tried to convince her that he had ejaculated during a particularly spectacular wet dream.

In the ensuring argument the two came to blows, Sellon’s wife bit chunks out of the backs of his hands and savagely kicked his shins while he tightly held her wrists and demanded she apologise for her outrageous accusations.

By the time she complied, Sellon had lost over a pint of blood and was confined to bed. As he lay recovering the family doctor took Mrs Sellon to one side and reprimanded her severely 

 'Madam, he warned be careful what you are about; your husband has been shamefully ill-used, and had he died, as I expected he would, you would have been arraigned at a criminal bar for manslaughter. You are a woman of violent passions, learn to restrain them.' 

Sellon watched the exchange and nodded soberly writing 

“I had one of my bandaged hands up Emma's clothes while he was saying this, and was feeling her lovely young cunny. It was nuts to crack for me.”

The Sellons separated again soon after and Edward took to driving the mail coach under an assumed name to make ends meet and opening a short-lived fencing school.

Such are the mysteries of the human heart however that Sarah returned for a third time and the two enjoyed some blissful years of happy married life before Mrs Sellon selfishly fell pregnant and stopped paying attention to her husband and his physical needs.

What was Sellon to do, but begin a liaison with an old flame whom he hadn’t seen in 11 years and who – now widowed – took her pleasures where she may. 

To no doubt give his wife some room to embrace motherhood, he moved into his old flames’ lodgings for a month, visiting her room at night through a secret panel built into connecting wardrobes.

The final straw for the Sellon marriage came when he convinced the headmaster of a local girls boarding school that he was just the chap to supervise the young ladies on an improving nature ramble. 

Mrs Sellon arrived at the school just in time to see her husband leading a group of teenage girls into the woods for a game of hide and seek, and the separation became final.

With his marriage in tatters, Sellon took to writing pornographic literature as a penny a word man for the publisher William Dugdale – whose work has given me many hours of pleasure.

He also penned some more academic works about the history of eastern snake worship and a Trieste on the Hindu faith but they were not as well received as his more “colourful” pieces.

Sellon was unrepentant at the scorn with which some in society looked upon his erotic penmanship;

 “The saints and hypocrites who will read this will exclaim, 'What a miscreant this man is.' Read thus far, did I say? Oh! fie! do saints and hypocrites read naughty books? Aye! marry do they, and go home and frig themselves, the beasts, or bugger their footmen. Don't abuse me, you blasted humbugs, members of the Society for the Suppression of Vice!”

In an attempt to resurrect his fortunes, Sellon agreed to accompany a fellow “Erotic Enthusiast” on a tour of Egypt. Unfortunately, he only got as far as Vienna before his lustful inclinations got the better of him. 

After seducing his sleeping companion’s teenage mistress in a train carriage, he was further dallying with the girl on his lap when the gentleman woke up.

 ‘I made a desperate effort to throw her on the opposite seat,’ he later wrote ‘but it was no go, he had seen us. A row of course ensued’ 

In the course of the argument, Sellon berated the man for seducing such an innocent girl even though he had been sporting with her himself not ten minutes before. 

He was left in Vienna with fifteen pounds to his name and returned home in an unusually melancholy frame of mind.

Next to Sellon’s body they found a poem addressed to another young lady of his acquaintance it was entitled “No More” and ended with the words – excuse my poor Latin- Vivat Lingam/Non Resurgam’ – ‘Long live cock. I shall not rise again.”

If anybody wants me, I’ll be in the study with a copy of “The Romance of Lust

There is not that much more to say about Edward Sellon or how many of the sexual escapades in his  autobiography are actually true.

It does read in places like Jay from the Inbetweeners – if you’re from the UK 

or The Sherminator from the American Pie Movies – if you’re from the USA. 

“ I had 15 supermodels in one night last week and they were all begging for more…” 

Type of stuff.

But many of the details about Indian army life in  the 1830s and 40s, the unusual perils of ocean travel on a sailing ship and everyday 19th century life in general are fascinating, and who’s to say that Sellon wasn’t the seedy Casanova that he made himself out to be  

As to what it tells us about 19th century moral hypocrisy or the rights and wrongs of colonialism, that’s for another kind of podcast.

Not this one 

I did stumble upon an official report of  Sellons court martial from around the late 1830s on a fascinating site called eroticabibliophile.com.

So unless I read that wrong, Sellon managed to avoid the ignominy of being court marshalled and ended up just being quietly shunted off to another position – on account of temporary insanity. 

That is a very forgiving commander in chief, he should have gone into politics.  

If you fancy checking out the collected works of Edward Sellon then I have the short list here. 

Next time you have a zoom meeting trying having some of these on the bookshelf behind you.

·        Herbert Breakspear, Legend of the Mahratta War 

·        Annotations on the Sacred Writings of the Hindüs 

·        The New Epicurean, or the Delights of Sex, Facetiously and Philosophically considered.

·        Phoebe Kissagen 

·        Adventures of a Schoolboy, or the freaks of youthful passion. 

·        The New Lady's Tickler 

·        The Ups and Downs of Life

 If I can take one thing away from writing this episodes tale its finding out that “en levrette” is French for “ Doggy Style” 

Life is indeed a journey of learning.

 Next time on rogues gallery uncovered 

“WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT!?”

Finding any excuse to have a scrap with 18th century Irelands most quarrelsome troublemaker.

George “ Fighting” Fitzgerald 

 I hope you enjoyed this episode, thanks again for your support and feel free to get in touch via the show notes with your thoughts and suggestions.

 Have a great fortnight , stay roguish and ill see you yesterday.