It depends how you define "libertine." Charles Kingsley (who was certainly an earnest fellow) and his fiancee Fanny Grenfell engaged in some mighty heavy petting before marriage (in the 1840s), apparently without any sort of guilt. "My hands are perfumed with her delicious limbs, and I cannot wash off the scent. And every moment the thought comes across me of those mysterious recesses of beauty where my hands have been wandering, and my heart sinks with a sweet faintness and my blood tingles through every limb." Fanny was just as enthusiastic, from all accounts.
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Date: 2011-10-16 02:15 am (UTC)