The Spanking Writers

William Shenstone, the C18th poet, is perhaps most famous for coining the word “floccinaucinihilipilification”, recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary as the longest word in the English language. Yet methinks that one of his poems, “The Schoolmistress”, deserves wider fame.

It’s astoundingly long, so I’ve extracted the more interesting verses:

In every village mark’d with little spire,
Embower’d in trees, and hardly known to fame,
There dwells, in lowly shed and mean attire,
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name,
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame;
They grieven sore, in piteous durance pent,
Awed by the power of this relentless dame,
And ofttimes, on vagaries idly bent,
For unkempt hair, or task uuconn’d, are sorely shent.

And all in sight doth rise a birchen tree,
Which Learning near her little dome did stow,
Whilom a twig of small regard to see,
Though now so wide its waving branches flow,
And work the simple vassals mickle woe;
For not a wind might curl the leaves that blew,
But their limbs shudder’d, and their pulse beat low,
And as they look’d they found their horror grew,
And shaped it into rods, and tingled at the view.

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,
Emblem right meet of decency does yield;
Her apron, dyed in grain, as blue, I trow,
As in the harebell that adorns the field;
And in her hand, for scepter, she does wield
Tway birchen sprays; with anxious fear entwined,
With dark distrust, and sad repentance fill’d,
And stedfast hate, and sharp affliction join’d,
And fury uncontroll’d, and chastisement unkind.

Right well she knew each temper to descry,
To thwart the proud, and the submiss to raise;
Some with vile copper prize exalt on high,
And some entice with pittance small of praise;
And other some with baleful sprig she ‘frays:
Even absent, she the reins of power doth hold,
While with quaint arts the giddy crowd she sways;
Forewarn’d, if little bird their pranks behold,
‘Twill whisper in her ear, and all the scene unfold.

Ah! luckless he, and born beneath the beam
Of evil star! it irks me whilst I write!
As erst the bard by Mulla’s silver stream,
Oft as he told of deadly dolorous plight,
Sigh’d as he sung, and did in tears indite;
For brandishing the rod, she doth begin
To loose the brogues, the stripling’s late delight!
And down they drop, appears his dainty skin,
Fair as the furry coat of whitest ermilin.

O ruthful scene! when from a nook obscure
His little sister doth his peril see;
All playful as she sate she grows demure,
She finds full soon her wonted spirits flee;
She meditates a prayer to set him free;
Nor gentle pardon could this dame deny,
(If gentle pardon could with dames agree)
To her sad grief that swells in either eye,
And wrings her so that all for pity she could die.

No longer can she now her shrieks command,
And hardly she forbears, through awful fear,
To rushen forth, and, with presumptuous hand,
To stay harsh justice in its mid career.
On thee she calls, on thee, her parent dear!
(Ah! too remote to ward the shameful blow!)
She sees no kind domestic visage near,
And soon a flood of tears begins to flow,
And gives a loose at last to unavailing woe.

But, ah! what pen his piteous plight may trace?
Or what device his loud laments explain?
The form uncouth of his disguised face?
The pallid hue that dyes his looks amain?
The plenteous shower that does his cheek distain?
When he, in abject wise, implores the dame,
Ne hopeth aught of sweet reprieve to gain;
Or when from high she levels well her aim,
And, through the thatch, his cries each falling stroke proclaim

The other tribe, aghast, with sore dismay,
Attend, and conn their tasks with mickle care;
By turns, astony’d, every twig survey,
And from their fellows’ hateful wounds beware,
Knowing, I wist, how each the same may share;
Till fear has taught them a performance meet,
And to the well-known chest the dame repair,
Whence oft with sugar cates she doth them greet,
And gingerbread y-rare; now, certes, doubly sweet!

See to their seats they hye with merry glee,
And in beseemly order sitten there;
All but the wight of bum y-galled, he
Abhorreth bench, and stool, and fourm, and chair,
(This hand in mouth y-fix’d, that rends his hair;)
And eke with snubs profound, and heaving breast,
Convulsions intermitting! does declare
His grievous wrong, his dame’s unjust behest,
And scorns her offer’d love, and shuns to be caress’d.

His face besprent with liquid crystal shines,
His blooming face, that seems a purple flower,
Which low to earth its drooping head declines,
All smear’d and sully’d by a vernal shower.
O the hard bosoms of despotic Power!
All, all, but she, the author of his shame,
All, all, but she, regret this mournful hour;
Yet hence the youth, and hence the flower shall claim,
If so I deem aright, transcending worth and fame.

Making the girls learn poetry by heart, and recite it, was one of the hottest things for me at our recent 1824 “Yorkshire School” roleplay. I rather think Shenstone’s piece may have to be used at some future scholastic re-creation!

My work partners continue to provide the most bizarre startles. I posted a few weeks back about  my colleague’s discussion of fonts suitable to denote ‘embarrassment’ and ‘shame’. I’ve since had rather startling emails from two of our associates.

The first was titled: “Scenario Role Playing” (!!), and commented:

I liked your idea of doing role-playing as part of team training. Can you share your magic with us or point us in the right direction? I’d really like to include something like this in our course… All input welcome.

OMFG. How to respond sensibly?!

Two hours came the following, in response to an article I’d written describing a site that compares your writing style to that of various famous authors – my business writing being comparable to H.P. Lovecraft, apparently. She wrote that:

I think we may be writing soulmates! I ran my [latest] article published today through their wringer ……. I’m not familiar with H.P Lovecraft, it seems he is my mentor.

A coincidence? Not really – for on closer inspection, the title of her article, appearing in an entirely vanilla publication, turned out to be… “Six of the best”.

After we posted the picture of canes in the market the other day, RoyT got in touch to send us this photo of a wooden spoon stall in the Krakow market:

I’m accepting your guesses as to what this shopper is thinking. Is she wondering how much it would hurt to be smacked with each one? Or is she picking out the best spoon to use?

We found this charming photo on Flickr – a colourful display of canes in the market in Kuwait.

What particularly made me smile was this exchange in the comments for the photo between a viewer and e photographer:

“This is certainly a large mix of styles and colors. Don’t often see any display of canes these days. Are these made for actual use, or are they directed more for interior decorative elements?”
—
“I’m guessing they are made for use more so than for decoration. Some of the more colorful ones may be used for dancing perhaps although canes aren’t used in any Kuwaiti dances but perhaps like Egyptian dances.”

Not the answer the viewer had been hoping for, I’m sure.

Hands up who likes “Sleeping Beauty”? Actually, I was thinking less of the fairy story than the latest – far darker – movie by that name, entered for the Competition at this month’s Cannes Film Festival, starring Emily Browning:

Here’s the synopsis, transcribed from the promotional website:

Death-haunted, quietly reckless, Lucy is a young university student who takes a job as a Sleeping Beauty. In the sleeping Beauty Chamber old men seek an erotic experience that requires Lucy’s absolute submission. This unsettling task starts to bleed into Lucy’s daily life and she develops an increasing need to know what happens to her when she is asleep.

The site features an evocative trailer (which I would probably class as unsafe for work)! The voiceover is moody, atmospheric – an older woman speaking:

Thank you for coming. Such a pleasure to see such a unique beauty. Let me tell you how I think we should proceed…I’ll describe the job and then, if you’re interested, we’ll discuss particulars.

You will be working with other girls, some of who will have more responsibilities. There is room for promotion.  We rely on mutual trust and discretion. And I am obliged to tell you that there are heavy penalties – very heavy penalties – for any breaches of discretion. Am I clear?

This is clearly edgy stuff. And, it has to be said, it’s been sparking all sorts of fantasies – about the girl’s training; about what’s done to her; about, most of all, about the ‘penalties’.

Here’s a new toy for you: the Dutch airline KLM are using traditional Delft tiles to decorate the planes, and we’re all invited to design our own tiles on this website.

Here’s one Abel came up with:

And here’s mine:

Have fun creating your own version!

So, I was walking along this morning, and suddenly saw a poster ad for a book, with a big ol’ riding crop in the middle of it. The tag line enticingly challenged me to “try keeping this one secret”.

I got all excited about a novel about a scandal involving riding crops, when I noticed that on the book cover the two characters were wearing riding outfits.

Hmm, I guess that would be the other use of a riding crop they had in mind. You know, riding. How disappointing.

Yesterday we explored a lovely Elizabethan country house called Canons Ashby. It’s not big, but it’s full of atmosphere and, I’m sure, ghosts of its inhabitants from the centuries past.

The ghosts of the maids can often be seen rubbing their bottoms with a look of wistfulness on their faces. Because the kitchen holds this wooden item:

I believe the kitchen maids in this house were the best behaved young women for miles around.

Dennis the Menace is famous for having got spanked all the time back in the day. This is the first context in which I learned about him from my British friends: the cartoon character who got spanked a lot.

Well, Dennis is celebrating his 60th birthday this week, and an article in the Scotsman makes a point to mention his regular run-ins with corporal punishment:

For older readers, the memory of Dennis the Menace and how he terrorised Walter the Softie, the bow-tied goodie-two-shoes, is invariably wrapped up with the “slipperings” delivered at the end of the strip by his moustached father. So frequently was Dennis beaten, that the scriptwriters would leave the final panel blank and allow the artists to indulge themselves with seasonal variations, so he was leathered with a cricket bat in summer, a broomstick at Hallowe’en. When it was his granny delivering the punishment, “The Demon Whacker”, made from elephant hide, was used.

The slipper was last wielded in 1980, one of a number of changes to the comic strip over the decades. Maurice Heggie, a former editor of The Dandy and a historian of The Beano says: “When I worked on The Beano in the 1970s every second adventure ended with corporal punishment, but that was what it was like in the schools. One of the great things about Dennis and how we operate is that the scripts are written in-house and week to week so whatever is affecting kids in the UK always influences the scriptwriters and, as corporal punishment was phased out in the school, so it was phased out in the comic.

It seems like a birthday spanking would be most appropriate!

My business partner – whilst having a reasonable idea that Haron and I live a somewhat unconventional lifestyle – is himself entirely vanilla. As a result, he often fires over notes that inadvertently amuse.

Take one at the weekend, in connection with a presentation on which we’ve jointly been working, in which he commented:

We need fonts which indicate -

- Humor

- Sarcasm

- Stress

- Disappointment

- Embarrassment

- Shame

Now, I have not a clue as to which part of our presentation will involve us expressing our ‘disappointment’ in members of the audience, or causing them to feel ‘embarrassment’ at their misconduct, followed later by a sense of ‘shame’. I rather look forward to finding out what he has in store.

Still, the issue of aligning the content of a document with its presentation is a topic with which I wrestle regularly in my professional life – yet it had never occurred to me to consider it in a kinky context. So, how about the following selection of typefaces for the same message in a note to a girl:

I wonder which is the most – and least – appropriate font for setting a suitable tone?