One of my favourite pastimes when I have to hang around in town waiting for something, is to go into a public library and browse the biography and memoir shelves for porn. (That is, mentions of spanking.)
I was pinning a lot of hopes on Lord Byron, I really was. He was notoriously ill-behaved in the sexual sense, and so it was reasonable to expect sordid sado-masochistic affairs in his biography.
No such luck: there’s incest, there are orgies, there is lots and lots of garden variety sex – but I haven’t found any whips and chains. Damn.
Moreover, even though he went to Harrow (you know, one of those places where they used to flog people), the regime didn’t make enough of an impression to be mentioned in the biography. It spends more time describing how the boys used to sleep several to a bed.
Either I was reading the wrong biography, or the famous libertine was completely vanilla.
What a disappointment! I liked to think that Lord Byron was a strong candidate. I have always been fascinated by him. Here’s a real McCoy for you – Percy Grainger, famous Australian conductor, pianist and composer. I was browsing in the ABC Bookshop and came across details of his life. Apparently whipped regularly by his mother, he spent much of his spare time as an adult seeking out appropriate female candidates to whip soundly, and whip them he did!! Apparently he spent much of his life in New York, but his early adulthood (19-32 yrs old) was spent in London, where he no doubt perfected his craft. What a co-incidence that you and I should both be interested in biographies and search the index for key words; e.g. whip, cane……
But what to make of the beginning of the Second Canto of Don Juan?:
“OH ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
It mends their morals, never mind the pain…”
Mr Grainger sounds like a most interesting character! His Wikipedia entry even mentions his s&m interests. It also comments that “many of his instruments and scores are located at the Grainger house in White Plains, New York”, although I suspect they have a different type of instrument in mind.
And what a cool quote, M. Of course, this means that either Haron hasn’t been doing her research thoroughly enough, or had chosen a poorly-written biography as the basis of her post. She should be flogged either way, methinks. Byron spent some time in the North-East of England – he married at Seaham Hall, now a hotel, so its grounds should do nicely.
That’s a bit of a coincidence. Didn’t notice the above comment until after I made my apologies for shoddy research re caning and the class system. It must have been intuitive to think that such actions should lead to a beating – but then again, I suppose it was a good guess!!!