From the Top Shelf - The Pearl Revisited

This is without a doubt my favorite passage from the Victorian underground magazine, The Pearl. Taken from the serialized novel called Miss Coote's Confession, it features such a fun image that I wish I were talented enough to draw it.

I devoted myself to promoting a Ladies' Club exclusively for the admirers of Birch Discipline. The meetings were to be held at my house, where my servants would be sworn to secrecy, and to act as sub-members.

The rules specially enjoined secrecy on every member, so that novices had not the slightest inkling of the ordeal they would have to undergo when initiated into the mysteries of Lady Rodney's Club, as it was called, our object being to make our seances for the receiving of new members the means of affording us the most exquisite enjoyment, by bringing out all their modest bashfulness, and studying their distress at finding themselves stripped and exposed for flagellation before all the sisters of the rod.

The sister of one of the members wishes to join the club, and she is brought to the meeting. She is astonished to discover that she will be birched.

Lucretia is silent, but her scarlet face and nervous twitchings of the corners of her mouth attest how she feels about the approaching taste of the rod. Her eyes are cast down in shame, and presently nothing but her drawers, chemise, boots and stockings on, they lead her to a ladder, the president and all ladies rising and clustering round the victim.


Miss Coote (the president) says, "have the ladder nearly upright, with her wrists secured high up, and let her toes only just touch the floor. Woe to her bum if she dares to step on the bottom rung of the ladder without orders."

The victim with tears of shame and apprehension protests... as she feels her chemise rolled up and fastened under her armpits, and her unbuttoned drawers pulled down to her knees.

The president says, "Don't show the white feather, young lady; we're going to initiate you into a most delightful society," taking from Jane a very elegantly tied-up rod, ornamented with blue and gold ribbons, then just lightly switching the victim's bare bottom. "Now ask me to birch you properly, and beg pardon for your frivolous objections."

Lucretia, in a tremor of fear, and with a faltering voice, cries, "Oh! Is there no getting off? Why must I be cruelly whipped?"

The President, with a smart cut across her beautiful buttocks, which at once brings the roses to the surface, declares, "There, that's a slight taste. I can't waste more time, there, there, there," giving three more sharp cuts in succession, each leaving their respective long red marks.

The birching continues in a similar, repetitive vein, stops, then unexpectedly resumes, so that our victim cries out:

"Oh! Ah! How cruel! Just as I thought it was all over, and began to feel a delicious warmth in my posteriors."

And now the focus of the narrative shifts to the assembled club members. Their reaction is nothing short of remarkable.

The ladies at first watched the scene with rapt attention, but gradually the blood courses in warm excitement through their veins, mantling their cheeks with a flesh-like bloom; their eyes sparkle with unusual animation, and at last, by a common impulse the eight ladies, with Jane and Mary, each take a fine long light rod of green twigs; they form a circle round the President as she continues to flagellate the victim; each raises her skirts under her arms so as to leave all exposed from the waist downward.

For a moment there is a lovely scene of plump white buttocks and thighs, fascinating legs encased in silk stockings, pretty garters and attractive, elegant shoes, set off with jewelled buckles... Then all is in motion, the birch rods soon put a rosy polish on the pretty bums, each one doing her best to repay on the bottom in front of her the smarting cut she feels behind.

Laughter, shrieks, and ejaculations fill the apartment, and their motions are so rapid as to make quite a rainbow of excited peris round the central figures.

But this luscious scene only lasts three or four minutes. The victim, under the president's rod, gets exhausted, her shrieks sink into sobs, and at last she sighs lower and lower, then fairly faints, with her head hanging helplessly back...

The president, throwing aside her broken and used-up rod, says, "There ladies, stop your game and all help to bring her round, she'll soon recover. How pretty your rosy bottoms look; I shall join in the next ring that's formed."

It would be wonderful to see a drawing or picture of that birching ring. Are any of my readers talented enough to create such an image? If so, please share your efforts with me.