The Spanking Writers

Autobiographies of gentlemen of a certain age and class can usually be relied upon to describe matters of interest to our readers. John Julius Norwich’s “Trying To Please” doesn’t disappoint – although the staff in Hatchards looked very puzzled as I transcribed the following section from book to Blackberry the other day:

“Up to six strokes of a springy cane can hurt a lot at the time, but the whole thing was over in 20 or 30 seconds and was followed a few minutes later by a rather agreeable warm feeling in the affected area.”

Apparently being caned elicited the sympathy of one’s fellow pupils and was deemed “Infinitely preferable to the possible alternatives – usually staying in all afternoon copying out one of Virgil’s Georgics.”

‘Agreeable warm feelings’, eh? Haron; take down your Georgics!

Haron posted last month about the tale of Heloise and Abailard (or ‘Abelard’ as he’s perhaps more commonly known). I’ve recently been rather enjoying a wonderfully evocative  account of the early days of their relationship, from “Heloise. A biography” by Enid McLeod, published in 1938.

The author manages to describe emotions that those of us lucky enough to have made deep connections with kinky friends will recognise straight away.

She starts by explaining how Heloise’s family had educated her from an early age, even though “to give a girl such an education as Heloise received, or indeed any at all, was [an] unheard-of thing in the twelfth century.”

She moved to Paris, where she came to the attention of the leading teacher of the day:

Heloise had by then left childhood behind and was a young girl of sixteen or seventeen… Her unusual learning and distinction of mind had gradually made her known, and were soon so much talked about that her fame began to spread…

With such reports of her abroad in the land, it was hardly surprising that Abailard, too, heard at last of this astonishing young girl, who had been living so near of him in recent years, and whom he must surely have often seen, though he had never remarked her, in the streets of the Cloister… There is little doubt that, once his thoughts were set on her, he found that she quickly filled them.

So he hatched a cunning plan, involving her uncle, with whom she was living in Paris:

Fulbert doted on his niece, and was ready to do anything that would enable her to progress further in her studies… In his pride and pleasure at securing for Heloise the greatest master in the kingdom, and knowing Abailard’s reputation for continence, [he] at once entrusted his niece entirely to Abailard’s direction, urging him not only to spend with her every hour he could spare from his own work, whether it were by day or by night, but, if she should be idle or careless, to chastise her into obedience.

And so, from one day to the next, Heloise found that instead of being debarred by her sex… from that public participation in Abailard’s instruction to which the least worthy of his students could aspire, she had attained to such a position as his priveleged private pupil as such as not even the most deserving of them enjoyed.

Their interest was mutual:

Abailard soon succeeded in filling the thoughts of this young girl, in the midst of whose secluded life he had suddenly appeared… It was a passion of the body, most certain, but much more of the soul.

Each day, as soon as his work at the school was over, he hurried back to the house in the Rue des Chantres, where Heloise awaited gim with her books open on the table before her… [but] as Abailard himself admits, “Our books lay open… but we spoke more of our love than our reading, and there were more kisses than explanations. Our hands went to each other’s breast more often than to the books….

Sometimes too, he tells us, in order to disarm any possible suspicion on Fulbert’s part, and to make him believe that Abailard was indeed acting as the stern taskmaster that he had been empowered to be, he would beat Heloise so that the sound could be heard. But the blows thus given were given in love, not anger.

Eight hundred years later and it’s still hot. Perhaps we should all play spanking scenes re-enacting one of their tutorials, and report back in the comments?!

Yesterday’s Daily Mail has an article about a mutiny on HMS Hermione, and all the cruelties that led to it in the first place:

Pigot was the cruellest captain in the Royal Navy. On the Success he had ordered 85 floggings — nearly half his crew — in the space of nine months.

Regulations stipulated that a dozen lashes was the maximum any man should receive, but Pigot frequently ignored this, ordering three or four times that number. Two men died from the effects of repeated floggings.

Two incidents tipped the ship’s company from misery into mutiny. Five weeks into the voyage, Pigot ordered midshipman David Casey to be flogged because he had dared to remonstrate with Pigot over his abusive language. It fuelled the men’s loathing for their captain.

On the evening of September 20, a few days after Casey’s flogging, the men were working frantically to reef the sails as a tricky squall sent the tall masts gyrating wildly.

Below, Pigot watched the men on the mizzentop mast with mounting impatience and fury. Through his speaking trumpet he hurled up a chilling threat: ‘I’ll flog the last man down.’

In their panic and haste, three young sailors, one a lad of 16, lost their grip on the yardarm and fell screaming onto the deck 50ft below, one landing on Edward Southcott, the master.

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.

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.

Another memoir, another caning episode – this time from the screenwriter Jimmy Perry’s “A Stupid Boy”, which we happened upon in a local second-hand bookstore. He’d been caught bunking off school to go to the local theatre, and failed with his attempts to extricate himself from the situation:

The next morning I presented myself at his study for the obligatory six strokes of the cane. I waited outside with three other boys. They were pale and frightened, but I was determined that no trace of fear would appear on my face. I heard my name shouted from inside… one of the boys whispered, “Good luck, Perry.”

I went in. The assistant headmaster just pointed to the chair and I bent over it.

It’s difficult to describe the searing pain of the first stroke and you think you cannot possibly stand another five, but not a sound came out of me, though my whole being wanted to scream and plead for him to stop.

When it was over I could hardly straighten up for a searing, red-hot pain that racked me from head to toe.

His twisted face growled, “You, Perry, are a liar and a cheat. I’m only allowed to give you six strokes, but if I had my way I’d thrash you until you couldn’t stand… I’m giving you a note to take to your parents, and don’t entertain any thoughts of destroying it: I’ve said I want an acknowledgement.”

Reading this sort of account sparks some interesting questions.

I find myself mentally swap genders for the recipient of the caning, substituting ‘girl’ in place of ‘boy’ throughout as I read. I wonder whether other readers whose interests are confined to anecdotes of females on the receiving end do the same.

And then there’s the fantasy versus real-life debate. This is long enough ago, and the author seems to have survived the experience without any deep psychological damage, that I can somehow park that too as I read. Again, I wonder whether others have that nagging guilt of “should I be finding this hot” – and whether some just simply don’t find that real-life accounts spark any spanko interest.

Today is the feast day of St. Agatha. I know that you’re all expert in the lives of the saints, but thought you might appreciate a brief reminder before you fall to your knees in prayer:

A beautiful Christian girl named Agatha lived in Sicily in the third century. The governor heard of Agatha’s beauty and brought her to his palace. He wanted to make her commit sins against purity, but she was brave and would not give in…

“Sins against purity”. What a nice euphemism!

The governor tried sending Agatha to the house of a wicked woman. Perhaps the girl would change for the worse. But Agatha had great trust in God and prayed all the time. She kept herself pure. She would not listen to the evil suggestions of the woman and her daughters.

After a month, she was brought back to the governor. He tried again to win her….

When he realized that she would not sin, the governor became angry. He had Agatha whipped …

…and then sent to prison. She was later martyred at Catania, Sicily, in the year 250.

The moral of the story? “Be obedient, or be whipped”, perhaps? (Let’s just forget the martyring bit!)

I posted recently about the marvellous production of “Oliver!” that I went to see at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. I speculated then that the musical would have been much improved by a scene featuring the birching of a female pickpocket.

And what do I then uncover? An extract from ‘The Boarding-School: or, the Sham Captain. An Opera’, written by one Charles Coffey. The song goes:

“While she is stripping to get a good whipping,
I’ll away, dance and play,
Yes I will, that I will;
While she is stripping to get a good whipping,
I’ll go and romp with the Girls and the Boys.”

And guess what? It was “Performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane By His Majesty’s Servants. London mdccxxxiii”. (That’s 1733, to save you the trouble!).

Oh for a copy of the play to see whether said stripping and said whipping did happen on stage every night! Do any of our more theatrical readers fancy reviving the production?

On further investigation, Coffey – a schoolmaster by trade – seems to have been an interesting man. Particularly, he and a friend played Henry Higgins-like roles in the success of Peg Woffington, an Irish bricklayer’s daughter who rose to become the leading actress of the day – and mistress of the famous Garrick.

Young Peg caught Coffey’s eye as a fifteen year old when she appeared in one of his plays; he taught her to sing, then took her to London and escorted her, then aged 22, during the 1740 season. Coffey was also responsible for introducing her to a gentleman named Elrington, a theatrical producer:

“who was reluctant given her age and experience but agreed to let her come to rehearsals; Elrington noticed her attention and began to give her lessons; brought her books and encouraged her education; told her that good command of language was essential, she must read and read; she like the plays he lent, incl. Farquhar’s; discovered facility for learning parts quickly, and acted them to him to his delight; told her she must study the real Quality on every occasion”

Oh, the potential for imagining the attractive young actress being taught lessons of a more painful nature by the producer, or by her playwright companion! Anyone else thinking “stripping and whipping”?

Trevor Howard’s biography, discussed in a  previous post, also described life at his English public school between the wars:

“By the end of the first week he was left in no doubt at to the college’s no-nonsense discipline.

Slowness off the mark meant a clipped ear and for more serious misdemeanours – such as telling lies or being impertinent to a member of staff, or stealing, or leaving the college grounds without permission – corporal punishment might be prescribed.

On the other hand, house points were awarded for good behaviour, proven self-discipline, victories on the sports field and so on… it was expected that everyone would do their utmost to secure the highest possible score for their house.”

How *very* Lowewood!