This story is just a diversion from transcribing my earlier works.
I sit here I the twilight of both this day and my life as I write. My dear wife passed away some years ago and now I am caught between my wish to join her and my zest for living. My thoughts take years off my true age and, as I sit here writing, my thought has the power to transport me to a time when I was full of vigour and enthusiasm for my chosen vocation.
I need only to look upon yonder valley to see the School and the memories come flooding back. Years of achievement, of watching the generations grow, fail, succeed seem almost to converge upon the most delightful aspects of those years and I now admit to my true nature where the power to control the lives of young, enthusiastic and maturing young men brought me so much joy. Please do not misunderstand. I never once exhibited the emotions that that power raised within me to any boy. No, I sated my lust with my wife who was known to say on quite a few occasions after we had spent some part of the evening enjoying our intimacy: "Dear Robert, I think you caned more than your fair share of boys today". My darling Elizabeth knew and would show pity towards the boys who endured at my hands without implying even once that my motives might have been less than objective. Indeed, I hope and believe that my judgement was always objective and dispassionate. But it is the delightful and the delectable that remain in my memories.
Let me perhaps describe the setting for then you will appreciate the atmosphere. My study was large and beautifully panelled with oak, which had seen many decades before I occupied the room. My desk was set at the furthest end from the door and thus gave a sense of an execution setting as a hapless youth walked the ten or so paces to his doom.
Thick carpet muffled the sound of the movements of both the doomed and the executioner and the panelling served to muffle both the sounds of anguish and their cause.
Being an ancient building - a proper setting for the schooling of the sons of the rich and powerful - sun streamed through the windows much of the time and motes danced in the pale sunlight and gave a sort of ethereal ambience to the rituals.
My instruments of tradition and choice were the strap, the cane and the birch. Of these I had a variety at my disposal varying in weight and thus power so that a just balance might be struck between the offence, the offender and the punishment. The boys new exactly what options were available and I know from their whisperings and gossip that they could differentiate between them despite the attempts of the floor and walls to conceal the events as they unfolded. To my practiced ear, I could judge by the sound of an implement swinging through the air if I had inadvertently made a poor selection.
For the boys, the choice of implement was determined by my infinite wisdom and the only other consideration that they had to take into account was the state of their dress during their well-deserved chastisement. Generally, there were three options - fully dressed, underwear or bare. These options applied where the strap or cane were employed. With the rare use of the birch rod, there was not option - nakedness was mandatory.
My need to chastise was often imposed upon me by some complaint or order from the staff and only on occasions would I be the instigator of any action. When I left my study to attend to my teaching duties or to some other matter, there seemed to be an immediate cessation of activities that might earn a boy a visit to my study. Mind you, their telegraph was not perfect and there were occasions when I inadvertently stumbled upon some activity or other for which a visit to my study was obligatory.
My own sons were members of our community for a period but they enjoyed no immunity from the consequences of their actions. Elizabeth suggested that perhaps I reacted to their transgressions with more efficiency than might have been appropriate but I feel at ease with my belief that they received no more and no less punishment than was warranted.
The necessity for various beatings that come often to my mind as I look across at the School in the distance often fails to escape my recollection but the boys remain quite clearly. I know that there were ghastly thin or unattractive or flabby boys to whom I dispensed justice, but their details never come to mind.
One of my favourites in the discipline department was young Glasson who had an unhappy knack of finding trouble. Young Glasson matured during his years at School from being a handsome young boy to an unnaturally beautiful young man. He first came to my attention when he entered the Senior School. My Deputy advised me one day during Lent Term that he had had occasion to cane this young man and during an inspection tour of one of the buildings pointed out this creature.
I beheld a boy of medium height with sun-bleached hair, a classically beautiful face and, when he turned away from us, a proudly prominent backside. I recall being immediately struck by the boy's confident manner and a mischievous glint in his eye. Glasson Junior had an elder brother at School whom I knew by sight. The elder lad was perhaps not quite as handsome as his younger sibling but the differences were marginal at best. Indeed, as it turned out, the younger of the two would surpass his brother by growing slightly taller and being slightly more prominent in the posterior.
I asked my Deputy why he had caned the young lad and was advised that he tended to be disruptive in class, always playing the fool although of high intellectual capacity. He had been sent to the Deputy to be caned by his Mathematics teacher I think and three strokes later had been returned to his class.
I filed this information in my head and looked forward to the day when Glasson Junior and I would meet in circumstances to my liking.
In the year that Glasson Junior came to my attention, his brother visited my study, having been found smoking in the old gymnasium building down by the rugby fields. When I was advised that he would be before me. I thought of his younger sibling immediately and looked forward to our meeting.
After the last period of the day, miscreants who were so required, lined up outside my Study where they suffered the embarrassment of passing innocents and the painful loneliness of waiting for their fate to be determined. As a matter of principle, I gave such lads at least fifteen minutes in which to ponder their crimes before opening my door and summoning the first in line to join me.
I know that Glasson Senior was not the first to be disciplined that day because I can recall the sense of anticipation that I had when he entered my room. His face was framed by straight blond hair, which seemed to flow like silk as he moved, and his blue eyes and high cheekbones and flawless skin almost took my breath away. He was handsome to say the least.
I went through the process of confirming his guilt and determined that he had not earned more that a caning from one or so of the prefects during his three years in the Senior School. Although smoking was a most serious crime, I tended to be lenient with boys on their first visit to my Study and advised him that he would receive eight strokes of the cane.
Being in the Third Form, his crime warranted a medium weight cane, which I duly selected. Upon my direction, he removed his coat and walked past me with some trepidation to my desk. His prominent buttocks held my gaze as he moved into position, riding smoothly up and down under the rather tight material of his trousers. He was obviously still growing faster than his parents were supplying new clothes.
He removed his jacket and bent over with his hands clinging to the desk. At my request, he spread his legs so that his feet were slightly wider apart than his shoulder width, which caused the material of his trousers to be stretched to its limits. The sight was magnificent - the horizontal stripes of his trousers nicely defining the target to which I duly applied the instrument of correction.
Glasson Senior was a strong willed young man for he took the first two strokes without even flinching. The third and fourth, which were targeted lower on his posterior, caused him to clench his buttocks - giving me a signal that I was getting through to him. The following four strokes caused the young man to let out increasingly vocal evidence of his inconvenience and, when my task was completed, he took some time to rise from his position. I put the cane away in its cupboard and returned to see his standing with his hands clutching his well-striped backside and with a tear or two wending itself down his flushed cheeks. For an instant I wanted to hold his and comfort him, for he looked so young and charming but my common sense prevailed and I shook his hand and let him depart without comment.
As I think now of the Glasson brothers, I realise that my memory is firmer in the detail with the younger boy because he was so much more vocal than his elder brother when he first endured a caning from me, although I must admit that his elder brother was suitably demonstrative when he visited my Study for the second time in that year.
Glasson Senior had been caught smoking again although on this occasion he was spied in the town and not on School property. This, of course, made the offence far more serious since the students were expected to set standards of behaviour in the surrounding community. I had no option but to punish him with appropriate severity.
Even now, I feel a stirring in my loins as I reflect upon the sight of this strong and handsome young man divesting himself of his clothing - that tentative moment when the fingers go to the elastic which holds the briefs in place - before uncovering the firm prominent buttocks upon which the error of his ways would be soon explained. There is something quite moving about the humiliation that such vulnerability imparts upon a young man and Glasson Senior showed all the signs of the embarrassment, which the occasion required. He flushed markedly as he assumed the required position and trembled as he waited for the rod to fall.
I used the tip of the heavier senior cane to lift his shirttails out of the way and delivered the first stroke with full force across the centre of his backside. By comparison with his first, fairly stoical performance, his immediate registering of the pain which was imparted gave me a sense of accomplishment in that the message which the caning was intended to convey was quite clearly being received. For the first few strokes, there was but a stifled cry of "Ow" which soon translated into "Ouch" and finally into "Please Sir, no more".
Pleading never caused me to cease any chastisement although I admit to being moved by a lad's anguish in such circumstances. Nonetheless, punishment earned must be delivered and I never wavered from administering a full measure to any boy. Glasson Senior jumped at the eighth and ninth strokes of the cane and I recall having to wait a moment or two before delivering the tenth parallel stroke across his reddened and swollen backside. As so often happens in such circumstances, I knew that the lad had experienced an orgasm and quickly turned to the cupboard and slowly replaced the cane so that Glasson Senior might have time to use his handkerchief to remove the evidence and to restore his clothing. Upon his departure, I inspected the front of my desk to confirm my suspicion and, sure enough, there was evidence that the lad had indeed spent himself during the latter stages of his chastisement.
I recall that in the same year a rather unruly boy in the Fifth Form, one Shaun Gault, earned the most severe reprobation at the culmination of a series of apparently premeditated excursions onto the wrong side of the rules. The lad was fairly sturdy, perhaps sone five feet and nine inches in height and quite slim. He was a feature of the cricket team with his dark curly hair setting off a refined and handsome face, the most prominent feature upon which were his mischievous dark eyes.
As it transpired, Gault was wagering with his friends as a means of securing a supplementary income and had incurred significant debts by so doing. He met with his creditors, I was later informed, and agreed to pay off his indebtedness wherever possible by accepting the blame for any incidents in which his fellow students were embroiled. This accommodation did not, of course, cover all his creditors, some of whom could not avoid their rightful punishments from time to time, and to those he apparently offered his body as a means of repaying his obligations. (It was not until the following year that I leaned of this sordid arrangement.)
Whenever one of his creditors had erred in terms of the rules of the School, and where there was no immediate evidence of the culprit, Gault would be required to expose his "guilt" on a voluntary basis and, of course, was duly punished. It never occurred to me or to my staff that the frequency of his confessions might have any other explanation and we naturally did not pursue inquiries when an adequate confession was so readily forthcoming.
Now Gault was not forced into this arrangement for, as I have indicated, he quite clearly negotiated it with his creditors. The explanation apparently was that the lad had a high assessment of his capacity to accept punishments and thought that a beating was a far less onerous burden than some other form of repayment. To some extent, this assessment was not without foundation for the first time he earned a visit to my Study he took a full twelve strokes of the cane with no indication of undue discomfort. His sturdy buttocks, prominent, round and firm appeared inured to the effect of the Senior cane as I noted to my frustration when his first visit was completed.
Within seemingly days, Gault again appeared before me on some lesser charge and I directed him to remove his trousers for an appropriate lashing with the strap. I seem to recall that there was only the faintest sign of the stripes that he had earned on his previous visit, which seems to suggest that this second occasion must have been at least a week after the first.
The strap, applied to his uncovered flesh, seemed to be effective in turning his skin a severe shade of red but the lad retained his equanimity throughout and looked at me defiantly as he departed as if to challenge me to elicit from him some evidence of discomfort.
Gault progressed during the first half of the year from routine punishments to more severe ones while I questioned his masters about his abilities. Assured that he had the requisite scholarly attributes to succeed, I preserved in trying to bring out the better side of his nature through the judicious use of the strap and cane. Each time, that look of defiance and challenge caused me to persevere. By the time Michaelmas Term commenced, the point arrived for a showdown and when he inevitably presented himself in the Study I prescribed an appropriate punishment of twelve strokes of the cane but deferred the execution of the sentence. This action provoked almost a gesture of disappointment from young Gault and, had I known the state of his relationship with his creditors, I would have appreciated the gesture.
Nonetheless, Gault was predictably before me within a mater of days on a similar matter and I chose then to get to the seat of the problem - or so I thought. When he was appropriately disrobed and in position, I delivered twelve of the fiercest strokes of the cane, which he had thus far endured, and by the final stroke saw his head bounce up as the cane wrapped itself across the point at which his buttock and thighs joined. With lads of Gault's age, I tended to avoid this area given the danger that some low-slung testicle might find itself into the path of the rod. With Gault however, I soon found that this consideration was not warranted.
The twelve strokes applied, Gault assumed that he was free to go and started to restore his trousers. I immediately reminded him of his earlier transgression and of my intention to address the outstanding punishment. I informed him that he should go and spend some time in the corner of my Study in order to contemplate his errant ways. He stood erect and, as he moved into the far corner, I found that his rather prominent member was also erect. His embarrassment was obvious - I suspect not only because he had been found out but also because I now knew that his regular beatings had a _s_e_x_ual connotation in his mind.
Gault was sporting even greater firmness when I summoned him to resume the punishment - a clear sign of the aphrodisiacal effects that young men derive from this form of punishment. He bend down and thrust his posterior up to receive the caress of the cane. From the first stroke he began to give vocal recognition to the efficacy of his discipline and by the fifth or sixth stroke was muttering pleas for a cessation of his castigation. Although the crossing of certain weals on his damaged buttocks gave a hint of blood, the reality was that by the final stroke there was no broken flesh at all. His writhing and crying might well have been justified in terms of the pain but there was no cause for him to suppose that his admirable backside has incurred any permanent damage.
Michaelmas Term was drawing to a close when Gault made his last appearance in my Study. This was an appalling occasion for me since he had been caught in the act of satisfying one of his creditors by accommodating that boy's member within his back passage. Gault and his companion's fate was sealed the moment one of the more puritanical Masters found them in the cricket pavilion in a position which could not be construed in any alternative manner.
I could not see any great "sin" in this form of _s_e_x_ual activity for although the Bible suggests it is abhorrent, the reality of 800 boys living together makes some activity of this sort inevitable to my mind. I preferred to turn a "blind eye" to such matters for I was aware that a number of prominent boys engaged in some form of _s_e_x_ual activity and suspected that even some of the Masters might have relations with some of the Senior boys. But the matter having been formally brought to my attention, I had no option but to birch both lads and expel them. It was a task I undertook with little relish.
Birching was a rare occurrence during my tenure and of the dozen or so which were administered, I believe this one to be the most unsatisfactory for I had no idea until later of the penance which young Gault was paying. Nonetheless, I informed the two hapless lads of their fate as they stood in the weak winter's light which sneaked into my study and directed them to go and prepare themselves for their punishment and their departure from the School.
While the application of the birch would normally be carried out in front of the entire School, I decided that only the Prefects should bear witness on this occasion and when Gault draped his naked form over the flogging block, only ten of his contemporaries were in attendance.
The birch was wielded by the School's Sargent-at-Arms - a burly man who saw to the management of the School grounds and the routine services required for the boys. I suspect that he enjoyed this aspect of his duties for he went about applying the thick birch to Gault's posterior with unsurpassable vigour. Two dozen strokes were to be administered but within the span of six the lad was in need of assistance to stay in his place upon the block. Held down, he endured the remaining strokes with as much fortitude as one could possibly imagine in the circumstances. His buttocks were bloodied by the time a dozen strokes had been delivered and his cries were indeed piteous. The flogging produced the most unpalatable sight to the observer - firm, proud buttocks reduced to a mass of cut and bloodied flesh. To this day I wonder about the efficacy of suck discipline although, to be fair, young master Gault now speaks in the Commons in defence of the use of the birch and cane in the Army and Navy and in the Schools, and he does so without any suggestion that his own experience left his disadvantaged in any manner.
(To be continued....perhaps). Jamie