sixty is twenty times three

Casanova claimed in his autobiography that he seduced thousands of women, though he names just 116 of them. But he wasn’t the only writer who was preoccupied with sex…

Casanova found here

*Alexandre Dumas was said to have fathered dozens of illegitimate children. He was once reproached for holding a young actress on his lap while two others rumpled his hair. “Sixty is twenty times three” he replied “which makes me twenty years old for each of these three young ladies”.

Dumas found here

James Boswell told anyone who would listen that he once made love five times in a row, and contracted gonorrhea seventeen times over a period of thirty years. Frank Harris had Lloyd’s of London insure his card file of the 2,000 women he had bedded. He also invented a pornographic card game called “Dirty Banshee” complete with playing cards depicting satyrs and goddesses in sexual acts.

image found here

Robert Burns seduced women without compunction and is known to have sired no fewer than 14 children, nine of them out of wedlock. His daughter Elizabeth, by Anna Park, and his legitimate daughter of the same name were born within a month of each other, and Jean Armour, his wife, suckled them both as uncomplainingly as though they were her own third set of twins.

Incognito Robert Burns found here

Women writers seem to have been more reluctant to brag or lie about their love affairs and have left fewer records of them. But a French actress/author, Mademoiselle Dubois, would appear to be the champion of both sexes; in her memoirs she claimed her affairs totalled 16,527 over a twenty year period, or about three a day.

Mark  Sam Rosenthal as Blanche Dubois found here

*Excerpt from The Literary Life by Robert Hendrickson