By Governess
liviaarbuthnot1@gmail.com
Copyright 2024 by Governess, all rights reserved
[3,301 words]´
* * * * *Chapter 68
“Well, that she found
spanking them satisfying doesn’t surprise me, Diana. Both of us have
found it one of the most fulfilling aspects of motherhood. Despite her
later preference for the birch, I am sure taking a hard smooth-backed
hairbrush to a small wriggling bottom was as satisfying for her as it
was for us.”
“Yes, in fact she writes about that in the book,
she wrote in retirement after she moved to Italy, to Mantua. James and
I visited her there once or twice before she died. Mantua of course was
the birthplace of Vergil and I think that is why she chose it. Vergil
was always her great love.”
“And that’s the book she inscribed and sent to James?”
“Yes. If you wait a moment, I run across and fetch it. I am sure you’ll
find it as engaging as I do. Laura Ravenscourt was a very remarkable
woman.”
When Diana returned she sat and thumbed through the book.
“Look at that lovely binding? It was, of course, privately printed in Italy. I suspect in either Florence or Siena.”
She found the page she was looking for.
“Sit down and read this. I’m afraid I’m going to have to go back to the
house for a while. Mary is having some problems with David and needs my
support.”
And so, Cordelia sat and read from where Diana had indicated.
By
the age of eighteen, I had completed my studies with my father and was
now proficient in Latin and Greek and fluent in German. It was at that
age that I began to tutor my two half-brothers, Marius and Torquil. I
adopted my father’s pattern of instruction, providing clear explanation
followed by a test at the end of the day. And as had my father, I
expected every question to be answered correctly, with mistakes being
routinely punished.
My father had commenced my tuition at
the age of seven and had no hesitation in birching me just as he would
any boy of that age. But Marius and Torquil were several years younger.
I was reluctant to birch them at so young an age and decided to spank
them until I judged them ready for the birch. I had on my bedroom
dressing table an oval wooden-backed hairbrush and for the next few
years that was put to good use both in and out of the schoolroom. It
might seem over-severe to punish a four- and five-year-old for mistakes
in their schoolwork, but my own experience was that the threat of
punishment is a potent aid to concentration and memory. And so it
proved for Marius and Torquil. The tariff was one smack of the
hairbrush for each of the first two mistakes and two smacks for every
mistake in excess of two. Most days both boys received anything between
two and ten strokes across their bare little bottoms. And I have to
say, as a consequence, they made good progress in their studies.
However, for what might be termed moral rather than academic failure,
the penalty was more severe. For untruthfulness, disobedience, and
disrespect, I spanked particularly soundly. I never gave a tariff for
such offences but spanked until I was satisfied that the lesson had
been well learned with the boy sobbing and broken. When I had finished,
the back of the hairbrush would be warm to the touch and his bottom
hot, red and smarting.
From the outset, I regarded spanking
as a lower rung on the ladder of punishment. As a boy increases in age,
his punishment has progressively to become more painful. And there
comes a moment when the hairbrush has to be set aside, and birching
begin. That for me was when my education commenced around the age of
seven. Before that my discipline had been sparse and I was rarely, if
ever, spanked, although the girl who looked after me in my early years
had been encouraged to do so. I remember rather despising her at the
time for not taking the opportunity of disciplining me. And looking
back, I can only express surprise at her reluctance.
I
myself found a deep visceral pleasure in spanking Marius and Torquil.
The hairbrush sat on my schoolroom desk. and was used exclusively for
their punishment. There was a long mirror in the schoolroom, and I
would place the spanking chair in front of it, with the boy across my
lap, so that I could enjoy the reflection as I applied the back of the
hairbrush to the round protuberant flesh of his buttocks.
As
they increased in age, so did the severity of their punishment. Later,
for egregious wrongdoing, such as wilful disobedience, I would strip
and spank the boy completely naked, and afterwards made him stand
exposed and sobbing in the corner. For poor schoolwork, spankings were
always given with the boy restrained over my knee; and by the time they
were six, they had to stand uncomplainingly in shame facing the
schoolroom wall. This I regarded as an important first step toward a
willing acceptance of correction. After another year, I would sometimes
make them kneel naked on a long-padded stool, their head pressed
against the seat with their buttocks raised. Again, I saw this as a
training for the position they would soon have to adopt and maintain
when birched.
It was during this period that I began to
think deeply about my undoubted pleasure and satisfaction in punishing
them. I recognised punishment as necessary and as opening the path to
forgiveness. But although I rejoiced in their contrition and their
subsequent good behaviour, I found as much pleasure in exercising a
complete authority over them and having the freedom to discipline them
in whatever way I chose. I shamelessly relished turning them over my
knee, and spanking them until their small buttocks were a smarting red.
And I savoured their protests and their helpless writhing as they
screamed and struggled against the remorseless smack of the hairbrush
as I provided the discipline they needed.
Cordelia
paused, rather breathless at the vivid narrative and at the evident
enjoyment that Laura Ravenscourt had taken in punishing her two
half-brothers. Fascinated she read on.
But the time came
when the hairbrush was set aside, and the birch introduced. The move
from spanking to birching marks a significant stage in a boy’s
development. The independence a boy begins to feel around the age of
seven or eight must be respected, both in the greater demands made upon
him, and in the way he is disciplined. And the move to birching
achieves that in a number of ways. There is no doubt that spanking,
painful though it is, reflects in some measure the warmth and safety of
the womb as he is held firmly over the knee to be disciplined.. And
where that early mothering love is reflected in the choice of an
implement whose original purpose was to untangle the tresses of his
mother’s hair. However, a birch is different. It has no purpose other
than to raise throbbing weals on a boy’s flesh; and it is bound up for
that singular purpose. And when administered, the boy is not held in a
warm loving embrace but made to kneel and offer his body willingly to
the rod.
This transition can be difficult, both for the boy
who may lack the self-control to accept his punishment, and for the one
who has to discipline him. And at first some restraint may prove
necessary. I expected both boys to kneel on the upholstered stool and
to bend forward, offering their soft little buttocks to the birch. But
at first, there was no question of my expecting them to stay in
position without some help. I would first place a large bolster on the
stool to support the boy as he knelt. With his resting over this, I
would run a restraining strap under the stool and over his body
fastening it in the small of his back. Once this routine had been
established for some time, I would ask the boy whether he had the
courage to remain still without having a strap around him. If he
agreed, and usually the boys hated being bound to the stool, I would
remove the restraint, warning him that if he moved or resisted in any
way, he would be again bound to the stool and receive an additional
punishment for his lack of effort. Then, once he had mastered
sufficient self-control to receive his punishment without restraint, I
would continue with that regime for several months, always taking care
to praise his fortitude. The next move was to remove the support and
comfort of resting on the bolster and make him kneel with his head
forward and pressed against the stool, and his buttocks raised. Again,
at first, I provided some support for this next step, by making him
lift up his bottom so that I could insert the bolster between his legs
and thighs. This kept his bottom raised for the birch without his
having to make the effort to keep it raised himself. And last after a
further period of training, I removed the bolster and required him to
offer his bottom for flogging willingly and without complaint, and to
continue to do so for the duration of his punishment.
At the
beginning of this period of training, when the birch was first
introduced, Marius accepted the new regime without too much fuss.
Torquil, however, would regularly oppose me, stiffening his body in
non-compliance and refusing to kneel on the stool. I would then take
him by the ear, twisting it and digging my nails into the lobe, and
lead him to the spanking chair. This chair had remained a prominent
feature of the schoolroom, for although birching was now the punishment
for all ill-discipline, the hairbrush was still retained for the
correction of errors in schoolwork, for I confess that I was reluctant
to relinquish altogether the pleasure of spanking them. So, when
Torquil refused to mount the birching stool, I would provide a
preliminary and through spanking to break his will. Sobbing and
clutching at his bottom, he would then be led back to clamber onto the
stool, to bend forward, and allow me to fasten the restraining around
him, I would then birch him already inflamed flesh.
I then saw that there was chapter simply entitled The Birch. And I read on.
Although
I was not birched until my father commenced tutoring me around the age
of seven, I was already familiar with its use, having seen my father
punish the younger members of the household whose conduct fell short of
his expectations.
When I was around the age of six, I had
found in the scullery several rods steeping in a pail of water. As a
small inquisitive child, I examined them, curious as to what they might
be, and I recall taking one out of the pail and feeling nervous as the
water ran off onto the stone floor. I quickly replaced it and scampered
guiltily away. It was not long after, that I again wandered into the
scullery to find Mary, one of the house parlour maids, kneeling on a
wooden stool and bending forward over the scullery table. My father was
standing over her holding a birch still wet and dripping. And I
remember watching from the doorway, as he slowly raised the dripping
rod and brought it swishing down across the girl’s flesh. And I recall
the strange splashy sound it made against the bareness of her soft
round bottom. At the first stroke, she gasped, her breath driven from
her by the sudden sting of the supple twigs. Stroke followed stroke,
given unhurriedly, in a way with which I was soon to become all too
familiar. Before long the girl was screaming and pleading, tensing and
writhing, but she knew better than to put back her hands to protect
herself or even to attempt to rise. I crept away flushed and quite
unsettled.
As I grew up, I became aware that the birch was my
father’s preferred method of exercising his authority throughout the
household; and a week would rarely go by without at least one of the
maids being disciplined. Most of the girls in our service were as young
as ten and had been placed with us from the orphanage for a fixed term.
Although Mary had been birched over the scullery table, that was far
from usual. The normal routine was for Mrs Marchant, the housekeeper,
to send them to the schoolroom where I was being taught. When I heard a
knock at the door, I would feel my body tense in anticipation hopeful
of witnessing a flogging. Watching such punishments made me acutely
aware of my own exposure when birched.
There was also a boy
who helped in the garden whose widowed mother worked in the kitchen. As
she struggled to provide the discipline a boy of that age needs, my
father undertook to take him in hand. And clear instructions were given
that any misbehaviour was always to be reported There was a general,
feeling that the boy was seriously delinquent and therefore there was
no reluctance to comply. My father took his responsibilities seriously
and at the outset the boy was being birched several times a week. I had
no idea that in ten years’ time, I, too, would be providing such
discipline to two small boys as yet unborn.
My father was a
skilled workman and took great care to ensure the boy received an
adequate correction. He rarely gave less than two dozen strokes and
those were laid on with a severity that was a strong encouragement to
behave. But the boy was a wayward and wilful child and not easily
subdued. Floggings were sometimes given with the boy kneeling on a
stool and bent over the arm of an armchair. In this position, I could
see his little puckered anus between the soft roundness of his bottom
cheeks. I remember the tightening in my chest as I watched the birch
swished across his bare flesh raising long throbbing weals that left
him roaring in agony.
There were occasions when he foolishly
resisted and then suffered the shame of being horsed for a double
flogging, and I confess that I looked forward to those sessions with
keen anticipation. I loved how he kicked and writhed over a sturdy
house maid’s back helplessly receiving cut after remorseless cut as the lithe tough twigs raised throbbing weals on his flesh.
My own birching started as soon as I entered the schoolroom. Up to that
moment I had been a rather wild child, enjoying the freedom of running
in the meadows, climbing trees and bathing in the stream. Confinement
in the schoolroom was at first far from agreeable. I was restive and
reluctant to learn, needing to be broken in to bit and bridle by
frequent shipping. And my father was more than ready to provide that of
which, up to then, I had been only an observer. In the corner of the
schoolroom there was a pail with several birches in steep. And my
father had no hesitation in lifting my dress peeling down my knickers
and flogging me. At first I howled and resisted, but my struggles only
brought down further fire and brimstone upon me.
And over
time, I came to admire my father’s strength and indomitable resolve.
And the birch with which he governed the whole household became a
potent symbol of his rule. Indeed, I am sure he regarded the rod as a
sacrament given by the Almighty symbolising not just his rule but the
potent means of enforcing it and bringing renewal to a wayward child;
just as the waters of baptism symbolise the cleansing of our souls but
are the very means of effecting that regeneration.
Fortunately, the grounds of the rectory were well endowed with birch
trees, well able to provide an endless supply of rods. The rods were
cut and bound up by Mrs Marchant, the housekeeper, who seemed to relish
the task and prepared the rods with care and dedication. Each rod was
bound for two thirds of its length leaving the end that was of most
interest to the child, springing out into a flexible threatening spray.
Full of sap and swishiness the rods were placed in a pail to steep
until needed. .
In addition to preparing the rods, Mrs
Marchant also took a keen interest in their use. I remember how she
relished the birching of the gardener’s boy whose birching seemed to
give her particular pleasure. Sometimes he would be punished in the
schoolroom, but sometimes, to the delight of Mrs Marchant, his birching
would take place outside in the yard. Then, she would stand in the
doorway and watch as the small eleven-year-old boy screamed and writhed
under the rod. Scarcely a week passed without his trousers and pants
coming down for a much-needed correction. Out in the yard he would be
made to kneel on a low bench with some sacking over it, and bend
forward, and lift his buttocks to receive the rod. But on other
occasions my father would have him horsed and on these occasions Mrs
Marchant, to her great satisfaction, would be invited to take the
half-naked boy over her back. As the schoolroom overlooked the yard, I
was able to watch proceeding from the window.
As I
have said, I never questioned my father’s right to discipline me, even
though he did so unstintingly and never spared the rod even from the
tender age of seven. That his discipline should also extend to the
servants of the household was something I never thought to question. It
seem quite natural; and a week scarcely went by without one of the
parlour maids or a working boy or girl being birched. I confess that
these occasions became an increasing fascination for me, and I
experienced a deep visceral pleasure as I watched my father cut and
lacerate their soft flesh.
For minor infractions, Mrs Marchant
was permitted to take the back of a hairbrush to the younger members of
the household, and this she did with some regularity. There was one
girl, Cecily who worked in the kitchen. She was ten years of age with a
surly and uncooperative disposition, and Mrs Dunnett, the cook, had
referred the girl to Mrs Marchant on a number of occasions but with
little improvement in the girl’s behaviour.
I remember
sitting at my desk, attempting to construe Livy for my father, when
there was a knock at the door. On the command to enter, Mrs Marchant
stepped into the room.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Sir, but Mrs Dunnett is at the end of her tether.’
My father frowned.
‘And why is that, Mrs Marchant?’
‘It’s that new girl, Campbell, Sir. We both think she needs to be
returned to the Orphanage, back where she came from. Her behaviour is
quite impossible, Sir. As I say, Cook’s at the end of her tether with
her.’
My father’s frown deepened.
“And what steps have been taken to bring her into submission?”
“Well, Sir, I've taken the hairbrush to her bare bottom twice this
week, but she’s as bad as ever she was. I really do think she should
go, Sir.”
“Let us not be too hasty, Mrs Marchant. The
hairbrush is an excellent corrective for a small child, but a
recalcitrant ten-year-old may need a more potent encouragement to good
behaviour. Bring her to the library immediately.”
“What now, Sir?”
“Yes, Mrs Marchant. Right away, please. And you, Laura, will accompany me.”
As we walked to the library I felt a shiver run through me.