venery

"Out of the ten octaves that make up the human instrument, I can compass perhaps two. Thus, while I may have a certain amount of intelligence, I have no aesthetic sense; while I possess the mathematical faculty, I am wholly without the religious emotions; while I am naturally addicted to venery, I have little ambition and am not at all avaricious."

- Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

"Girls of a more 'primitive' age have sung the praises of their 'deep fringed purse' and mocked the man who tried to plumb them. They could boast of the fury of their venery and the comfort of their lust but the permissive women of our pill-safe age can only allow the Hell's Angels to prove their valour by not vomiting when they suck menstrual blood from them, or wank the boys who walk them to the bus stop, or let them have a fuck without too much palaver."
- 'The Politics Of Female Sexuality', Germaine Greer in Oz, 1970.

"And the traveller Leopold went into the castle for to rest him for a space being sore of limb after many marches environing in divers lands and sometimes venery."
Joyce, Ulysses, 14