The Spanking Writers

In “English Girlhood at School” Dorothy Gardiner quotes some ancient rules for the behaviour of young ladies:

Clement of Alexandria [wrote]: “In conditions of luxury and excess, Christians must be distinguished by moderation and self-control… Even immoderate laughter is a snare to young girls; it distorts their faces, and may easily win them a bad name; a smile is all that is permissible.”

The ideal picture of a Christian maid’s deportment is borrowed from Zeno of Citium: “She must be pure of countenance, neither her brows downcast nor her eyes uplifted, her head not poked forward, much less hanging down dejectedly, her limbs not lounging but held tense and erect.”

These rules are so perfectly horrendous, I would greatly enjoy being in a school or convent where they were enforced – just so that I could rebel, and pay the price.

There is something about strict, unreasonable regimes that makes me squirm. Perhaps, it’s that I want to see how long I would last if I tried to outwit the authorities. Or maybe it’s that earning punishment is so easy that I would never have to be particularly naughty: simply laughing out loud would be enough.

I like that.

We bought a new brush yesterday. It was my own fault, really: I saw its beautiful square back, and couldn’t resist stroking it. Abel noticed, and five minutes later the brush was ours.

We tried it as soon as we got to our hotel room: Abel pushed me over an arm-chair, and proceeded to wallop me with the new brush with extraordinary force.

My reaction was maybe a little rude: “Ow! Oww! Owww! What part of “oww” don’t you understand?”

Abel didn’t mind, though. He simply laughed and told me that he understood perfectly, and that “oww” was actually the best part.

Hmm. Next time I’ll admire nice brushes from far away, or when Abel isn’t there in the first place.

Bored, on a station, killing time before a train, browsing the magazines in WH Smith. And what a choice! ‘The World of Cross-Stitching’, ‘Practical Fishkeeping’, ‘Tattoo’, ‘What Plasma & LCD TV’ – and, this being Scotland, ‘Tawse Monthly’.

I browsed the contents of the last of these with particular interest. A photographic feature showed the interior of John J Dick’s Lochgelly shop. The ‘Reminiscenes’ column featured one Aileen McStuart, still full of remorse at her visit to the Headmaster for three strokes on each hand for smoking in the early 80s.

‘Tried and Tested’ reviewed the latest reproduction XHs available on eBay. Advice on caring for your strap appeared in the ‘Hints and Tips’ pages. Letters debated the use of the tawse at home – several young ladies describing strict regimes under the tutelage of Edinburgh governesses. And the Fiction section comprised a marvellous short story, in which   poor Caitrin found herself bent over the end of her bed for a sound thrashing from her father.

Sadly for me, a rather pretty young lass wearing a tartan skirt pushed past me and snatched the last copy from before my very eyes, as I reached for my wallet to make a purchase. I can only assume that her father had given her strict instruction that morning to make sure she picked up his monthly copy on her way home from school. Had he found out about her rudeness, I dread to think what fate might have befallen her later that evening.

So, the fortunate of you out there spent yesterday exchanging Valentine’s cards with your lover(s), right?

Sorry to say, but if you’re one of us kinky folks, I think you chose the wrong day. For, historically, Valentine’s Day is more accurately associated with the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia.

Each year, on 15th February, two patrician youths “ran through the streets with lashes and whipped the girls gathered there to ensure their fertility.” And, as part of the festival:

There was a custom of young unmarried women putting their names written on scraps of paper into a container from which the young men would extract them. The chosen girl would become the young man’s lover for a year and this may have been the root of Valentine messages.

Oh, to have been born a Roman patrician…

Interestingly, these “young men were called, the Februa and it is from this name that we get the name for the month of February”. So do enjoy the rest of Whipped-ry, as I think the second month of the year should henceforth be known. Meanwhile, I’m off to run through the streets lashing any passing girls. (“But, your honour, it’s traditional…”)

A long time ago, when I was an innocent(ish) girl of fifteen, I became obsessed by the story of Abelard and Heloise, the legendary and yet very real 12th century lovers. I first came across them in the film “Stealing Heaven” with Derek de Lint, whom I madly fancied.

This was before I was consciously aware of my sexuality, but the story made me realise that there was nothing that gave me sweeter fantasies than the story of this mediaeval teacher and his student becoming lovers. I chose to disregard the unhappy ending. In my mind they were frozen in time, playing out over and over the scenes where he taught and seduced her.

Obviously, as far as I was concerned, he spanked her as well. Little did I know at the time that in the lives of the real Abelard and Heloise spanking was very much part of how they came to become lovers.

Here’s how M.T.Clancy describes it in “Abelard: a Medieval Life“:

“Heloise, ‘supreme in the abundance of letters’, was a real-life incarnation of… the goddess Minerva, and her medieval personifications as Lady Grammar or Lady Philology…

Lady Grammar was usually depicted as matronly and severe. At the western entrance of Chartres cathedral she is shown (in a sculpture dating from the mid-twelfth century) grasping a huge bunch of birch-rods in her right hand and an open book in her left; at her feet cower two boys, one ready stripped for beating and the other keeping his head down…

Learning Latin was a traumatic rite of passage from the nursery to the male-dominated adult world. … Abelard is explicit about the bestial and sadistic element in grammar teaching. When Fulbert hired him as Heloise’s master, ‘he was giving me total licence to do anything I wanted with her, and also the opportunity to do it even if we did not want to, as I could make her bend with threats and blows if I did not succeed with caresses.’ He claims that he hit Heloise as a way to avert suspicion; Fulbert would attribute any screams to the normal process of Latin teaching. Abelard ascribes his violence not to himself but to his ‘love and affection’, which gave Heloise blows ‘surpassing the sweetness of all ointments’. ‘No step in love-making was omitted and if love could think up anything out of the ordinary, it got added in as well.’

‘In the world’, as he confessed to her in the previous letters, he had been violent and exploitative: ‘because you were weaker by nature, I often drove you to consent with threats and whippings, as I was so strongly coupled to you by burning lust and obscenity’. This may be exaggerated, as he was writing with remorse long after his castration, and it is also conceivable that she had liked in that way.”

Of course she did.

‘She says “The lovers’ pleasures which we explored together have been so sweet to me that they cannot displease me and scarcely have they faded from my memory. Wherever I turn they are always before my eyes, bringing with them desires and imaginings which will not even let me sleep.”‘

Do you know what? Me, too.

I wonder, if I’m quick and careful, can I manage to hide Abel’s new strap and hairbrush so well he won’t even miss them, before he comes back to this hotel?

Hmm.

What do you think? Answers on a postcard, please.

An amusing scene in our favourite second-hand bookshop on our most recent visit. A rather distinguished older gentleman was sitting at the table in the middle of the store, browsing a pile of learned tomes. The young woman walking past stopped, the look of recognition on her face quickly followed by a deep blush.

“Hello, Flora. What a pleasant coincidence.”

“Hello, sir.”

It was the “sir” that caught my attention. So why was she blushing? Was she taken straight back to his study at school, recalling his Housemasterly disappointment in her, remembering his sympathetic voice uttering the words she’d been dreading: “I am afraid that you really leave me no choice but to cane you.”

Or did her memories stem from a poor school report – for a girl of her calibre – at the end of her first term in the Lower Sixth: “Flora really must apply more self-discipline if she is to achieve the high standards of which she is capable.” Only… her uncle had decided that self-discipline might not suffice, and had arranged for her to visit a gentleman tutor twice a week.

Was it those Monday and Thursday visits that Flora now recalled in the bookstore, and the methods he had employed? Did her hands smart from the memory of his tawse? Did she picture herself standing before him in her school uniform, in his drawing room? Did she remember the look on his face as he discarded her essay (“B+. Should be more careful.”), wince at the firmly-spoken line: “You may be content with second-rate work, Flora. Your uncle is not, and neither am I. You will remove your skirt, and bend over and touch your toes.”

A fascinating series on Victorian Pornography at the quite wonderful “Grumpy Old Bookman” blog concludes with a discussion of an 1882 publication called ‘The Mysteries of Verbena House’, subtitled ‘Miss Bellasis Birched for Thieving’:

The book was published privately, in a print run of 150 copies. The price was four guineas, a sum which you can probably multiply by 100 to get today’s equivalent price (perhaps US$600). This, of course, placed it far beyond the reach of the vulgar crowd.

The Mysteries of Verbena House is a rare book indeed. I have never seen a copy advertised, though I did once have the offer of a French translation of it. You will not find the book listed in the catalogue of the British Library, which is not surprising, given its nature.

The author is named only as ‘Etonensis’: ” a term which means an Old Etonian, i.e. someone educated at Eton College”.

The first part of the book describes a fashionable Brighton seminary for young ladies, and tells how Miss Bellasis is detected as a thief. Her punishment, of course, is to be stripped naked, tied down, and whipped with the traditional birch.

I want a copy!! Sadly, the usually-reliable Abebooks is unable to oblige.

In his 1948 volume “The education of girls” John Newsom writes:

“A common lament among middle-class correspondents to the national press is the failure of the schools to train girls adequately for domestic service or, indeed, that the schools positively discourage girls from entering that occupation…

Unfortunately, there are still too many people who persist in believing that the economic and social system has been static since the death of Queen Victoria and who cannot imagine why a steady stream of girls willing to enter domestic service has dried up…

Girls seem curiously unappreciative of the peculiar training value of domestic service to fit them for the day when they set up their own homes. It’s clearly the fault of the educational system which produces young women capable of such an error in judgement.”

The writer stops short of suggesting a solution for this difficulty, even though it’s blatantly obvious: there should be a school for maids. Girls would be provided with excellent, free education, on one condition: after they graduate, they must become domestic servants for a specified stretches of time.

The school would be very strict, of course. The girls would be instructed in everything they need to know to serve in their masters’ households, and all their errors would be punished swiftly and painfully. They would also be prepared to accept punishment from their masters upon entering in their service.

This simple educational method would ensure ready availability of well-trained, obedient maids, who would be free to leave the service and pursue other careers after they’d paid off the debt for their schooling. I wonder why nobody actually built a maid school in reality…

I spent pretty much the whole weekend watching CSI: New York, and my dreams provided everything that I think is missing in the actual show.

In the dream I was working in the lab, and got into a heated argument with Danny Messer over some method or another. Mac Taylor marched us both to his office for a paddling.

To my intense pleasure, Danny had to go first, and I got to watch every swat. However, when it was finally my turn, I woke up before I could even bend over. I could have cried with frustration.

It was still a good dream, because all I really want to see on the show is Danny getting into trouble. *wistful sigh*