The Hellfire Club(85)
Later in life, Temple would seek to fill in the blanks of his memories of the events there. It was from this attempt at a narrative that Sheryl Ann Bernstein now read, a fifteen-page description Temple Franklin had written recounting the experience, a mini-memoir. Charlie listened with rapt attention and Margaret took notes.
Benjamin Franklin, Temple’s grandfather, had first met Dashwood through letters, literally and figuratively. As postmaster of the colonies, Franklin corresponded regularly with Dashwood, the postmaster general in London. After a few formal exchanges, as each learned more about the other, they began letting their guards down. Dashwood knew that Franklin was a Renaissance man and a font of innovation; Franklin knew that Dashwood was a man of great influence and power. Moreover, rumors had made their way across the pond about Dashwood’s embrace of a life of debauchery and his secret club of the well-connected, where every desire was indulged. This was the group that Dashwood called the Friars of St. Francis Wycombe, or the Medmenham Monks—what some in the upper classes referred to in whispers as the Hellfire Club.
Their friendship blossomed during Franklin’s visits to England, first in 1757, when he arrived as a diplomat representing the Pennsylvania General Assembly, then in 1764, when he came to petition the king to make Pennsylvania a royal commonwealth, though his stay stretched for years.
Temple Franklin had memories of Dashwood greeting them all at the docks in June 1772 and informing them of the secret society’s password: “Do what thou wilt.” Afterward, Dashwood escorted him and his grandfather around the ornate grounds of what was once Medmenham Abbey but now had been converted into something quite ungodly. A meticulously maintained garden revealed itself to be, from the top of a tower, an enormous representation of a naked woman, with milky water spurting from the red flowers on the tips of two mounds, and water pouring from a shrub carved into a triangle. Ten-year-old Temple Franklin laughed heartily at that one, as did his grandfather, a brilliant man who nonetheless found humor in the ribald and scatological.
Other areas on the grounds hovered in Temple’s fainter memories, ones that he later investigated as an adult. Dashwood had, in fact, had a cavern carved out of a hill; he jokingly called it the Cave of Trophonius, the architect of Apollo’s temple, whose legendary mythical grotto was a place of nightmares. The den and everything about the estate was designed to provide pleasure, lust, and laughter, not fear; the garden grounds were crowded with sculptures of gods such as Venus and Hermes, with exaggerated emphasis on their more private parts.
Over the entrance of the former abbey, the Medmenham Monks—as they called themselves—carved their password in French: Fais ce que voudras. On one side of the entrance stood a stone statue of the Roman goddess of silence, Angerona, while the Egyptian god of silence, Harpocrates, stood on the other side. Both held their fingers to their lips, urging visitors to keep all the secrets that they would soon witness and partake of.
Inside the atrium hung twelve stained-glass windows depicting the apostles in various obscene poses; in the opulent living room, a pornographic fresco had been painted on the ceiling. Hospes negare, si potes, quod offerat, announced the carving above the entrance to the Roman Room: “Stranger, refuse, if you can, what we have to offer.” That room was crowded with silk-upholstered couches and decorated with paintings of naked fornicating couples, many of them kings of England disporting with notable contemporary prostitutes. Adjacent was a library devoted solely to books about either faith or copulation, from the Queen Anne Book of Common Prayer and Psalter to Fanny Hill, from the Koran to the Kama Sutra. Downstairs, a vast wine cellar abutted a pantry stocked with fine meats and freshly baked desserts.
During his childhood visit, Temple Franklin was shipped off to the main Wyndham estate a few miles away with a teenage girl hired to mind him so he could be sheltered from the activities within the abbey. Only later in his personal investigations did he learn what his grandfather must have experienced.
There were officially only twelve Friars of St. Francis Wycombe, plus Dashwood, who in their mock religion was the Christ to their Apostles. The abbot of the day selected the wines, arranged for the catering of the meals, and had first pick of the “nuns” available for coitus. As a guest, Franklin joined the fifty or so lesser members of the club who were permitted to participate in the revelry though not the ceremony.
The night that Temple Franklin missed, he later learned from one monk, was particularly drunken and debauched—an evening of pure urge and indulgence without restraint—not to mention blasphemous: A chapel ceremony was a dark and obscene parody of a Latin Mass, with a toast to Satan and the powers of the world beneath. With incense burning and black candles casting a purplish light, cultists had approached the body of a lovely nude young woman spread out on the altar and drunk sacrificial wine from her abdomen.
From there, everyone proceeded to the Roman Room, where Medmenham Monks and friars could have their pick of various masked women dressed in nuns’ habits. The women came from all over—there were prostitutes from London, of course, but friars and monks brought mistresses and girlfriends and even wives and sisters, and once a monk brought his stepmother. Local women would also join in the fun, enjoying the naughtiness under the cloak of anonymity and appreciating the opportunity to share intimacies with the elite and possibly even a member of the royal family. Couples or larger groups would use the couches, individual rooms, spots in the garden, and, of course, the Trophonius cave.