Gynecocracy

To give one instance, a young man of my acquaintance was sent at nine years of age to a fashionable preparatory school for Eton, and was expelled eighteen months afterwards. It was considered futile to send him to another school. Three tutors successively resigned on the ground that he was altogether incorrigible. At a loss what to do, his guardians enquired in all directions, and answered innumerable advertisements of persons professing to devote themselves to the reformation of backward and refractory boys, until, at last, it was suggested by a friend of the family, who had had some German anthropological experiences, that the lad should be taken in hand by a lady. The idea was astounding! A great, rough, strong boy of fifteen who had defied the discipline of private schools and tutors, and of specialists who devoted themselves to such characters, would never yield to a lady. The friend, a person of position and reputation, pledged herself that he would be completely broken in; she had known similar cases in which the plan she advocated had proved successful beyond all possible expectations. After protracted discussion, her suggestions were adopted. A pension was quickly found, The Grafin von- stipulated that the lad should be left absolutely under her control for two years, and at the end of that period he turned out a model of docility and obedience, courtesy, and chivalry, and with remarkable intellectual development and self-possession. His friends acknowledged with wonder and gratitude the marvellous transformation which the pretty demure German Countess had wrought. Naturally, they were curious to ascertain by what magic she had worked this miracle. I do not know whether they succeeded in learning; probably not, as they were English; but having been through the same kind of discipline myself, I possessed the key. When we met, we accordingly compared notes, and he confessed that the magic was wholly feminine. She had impressed him with the subtle and subduing influence of sex, under which he was perpetually kept. She, as I guessed, employed not tutors but maids, who, notwithstanding his age, treated him in all respects as a child. She used female clothing-first a girl's, then a young lady's-and made the use of masculine habiliments, or even the desire for them, an offence of the deepest dye. She subjugated his rude male propensities to her softening womanly influence, to which he was compelled to do perpetual homage. She punished rebellion in the most ignominious manner, with the birch; and the same sharp instructor was used to brighten his wits, teach him his lessons, and enforce her precepts. I remember he made a particular complaint of the fact that, to his shame and disgrace, he was usually punished before girls. This he felt acutely. He described his feelings to me upon the first occasion of his shocking exposure to a bevy of laughing girls. He was held down across an ottoman by a couple of buxom country lasses. The mere narrative made my blood boil and electrified me. He detailed his efforts to repress all expression of his sufferings, in which they revelled and gloried; how he writhed; how, by degrees, his fortitude vanished through stress of pain, whilst consciousness of the youth and sex of his beholders maddened him; how, ultimately, as the cutting strokes administered by the white round arm of a woman continued to fall with cruel regularity, he was obliged to abandon himself absolutely and helplessly. He could no longer withstand the sense of abject humiliation, the necessity for yielding unreservedly to his fair mistress. He spoke of the subjugation and the galling nature of the conviction that they had, despite himself, thoroughly mastered him. But, he added, he could have held out against a man; what sapped his strength was not so much the torture of the punishment as the sorcery of gender. It was the triumph of the petticoat. He could at last have grovelled on the ground before these fair but relentless conquerors, and have begged their permission to breathe.

Enough, however, of his experiences. In the following chapters I purpose narrating my own adventures of like kind.

CHAPTER 2

Downlands Hall, Suffolk

I was what women are fond of describing as a "nice youth": ruddy complexioned, fair, tall, well-made, and rather over fourteen years of age, when it was decided to send me to school.