The eldest was ten years old; the second eight; and the youngest five. The eldest was of refined and delicate appearance, the second was round and chubby, and the youngest thin and slender. Not one of the three wore a corset when they arrived.
Lady Flayskin imposed this garment upon them from their very first day under her roof. It was not precisely a corset, but a device for moulding the bust to shape, tight-fitting, made of an unyielding material, which did not descend lower than the waist and contained no stiffeners.
In this jacket-corset, the little girls had to get through all their occupations. At nighttime, during their sleep, they were not permitted to take it off. They had to be content with the lacing being just loosened a little by the mistress when they went to bed.
At the end of three months, these embryonic corsets were put aside and replaced by appliances of much more serious appearance and effect. The corsets were now cut much 69
longer, though of the same material, while whalebone stiffeners were employed and the lacing was much more tightly done by the mistress. In the evening, there was no loosening of the lacing whatever. After this garment had been employed for six months, it was replaced by what may be styled an armoured corset, yet longer than the preceding one, of stiff linen overlaid with silk, with stiffeners of steel and whalebone. The laces of plaited silk were drawn very tight. These corsets were employed for a year. They were only, it is true, used during the daytime. At night, the little girls were again dressed in their former corset, which they had worn during the preceding six months. Now, however, it was laced much more tightly and there were inserted in it some fairly yielding whalebones.
Little by little, without the apparent employment of violence, Lady Flayskin had succeeded in lacing the pupils very tightly indeed. Finally, the laces of silk were replaced by leather laces, of the material used for thongs of whips and, that the lacing might be done to perfection, a small capstan was used. The little girls had their breathing impeded and showed signs of becoming asthmatic. They complained of pains in their chests and were frightfully pale.
Lady Flayskin was pitiless. The lacing was never loosened and Nature finished by conforming to the cruelty, and the young bodies lost their pristine beauty.
These girls became exceedingly delicate; their appetite was small and their digestion impaired, while the least walking exercise took away their breath. In fact, all effort was painful.
Their waists were extraordinarily small. The plump one, whose little stomach had formerly been almost prominent, decreased in waist measure, although she had grown from a little girl to a big one. At the age of fifteen, she had chubby cheeks and large limbs, but her waist was only fifteen inches. Lady Flayskin was fond of saying with a laugh that when Miss Jessy reached her thirtieth year, her waist and her calf would measure the same in circumference.
If the ofther young ladies of the school were a little stouter than these three sisters whose training in the matter of corsets had been so methodical, it remained a fact that the waists of the scholars were renowned. They had a reputation which had travelled everywhere within a distance of twenty miles round, and when a young girl of remarkable smallness of waist entered a London drawing-room, the remark did not fail to be made that she must have received her education at the establishment of Lady Flayskin.
We boys were made to submit to equally severe discipline as the girls, in this matter of stays and gloves. In this extraordinary restraint, Lady Flayskin was always inflexibly severe. Sometimes she would pardon a badlywritten exercise, lack of application, or chattering during class-time, but if there was so much as a crease in a glove or if a boy succeeded surreptitiously in loosening his stays to the extent of a quarter of an inch, the rod followed without mercy.
The result of thus living in a state of constraint and fear was to render our wills tractable. We became docile in the extreme, ready to submit in the most abject manner to any demand that was made of us.
We expressed our eagerness to carry out the least desire of a mistress. If Lady Flayskin herself deigned to give us an order, we obeyed with a kind of exaltation or religious terror. We all feared pretty Stella, Mr. Gostock's protegee, for each posterior bore lively recollections of this young lady.
This overwrought and constrained state of mind and body caused by absurd feminine garments, reduced our boyish high spirits to such a degree that we would gladly have played with dolls if we had had any. Instead of thinking of teasing the lassies, we forgot altogether that they were girls and in any way different from ourselves. This resulted from seeing so much of them, from being called by girls' names and from wearing the same clothes as they did. Similarly, when a girl was addressing me as Alice, it was hard for her to remember that I was not a girl. As girls are wont to do, we kissed and caressed one another without any wrong thoughts, yet these caresses would excite our sensibilities. We would then remember the difference of sex, though childlike we understood only vaguely the meaning of the word: sex. Still at such moments a feeling of fear would be aroused, and the pleasure of our sensations would be enhanced by our dread of discovery. It is true that Lady Flayskin and our mistress themselves when dressing us or flogging us would similarly excite our feelings and make us feel strangely confused. But this they never seemed to notice. They unceasingly harangued us regarding decency and morality and Mr. Gostock who took so evident a joy in watching pretty Stella at work whipping a bare posterior, would preach most edifying sermons upon morality and chastity
The girls' and boys' dormitories were separated, but only by a thin partition. At night, those of us boys who were not asleep would hear curious sounds. There were whisperings and kisses and the laughter of girls being tickled. Our curiosity would be awakened and we would follow suit on our side of the wall, and the girls would hear similar sounds coming from us.
It was when one of us had been whipped 74
that the dormitory would be most astir. The others would press round the sufferer and seek to console him. At these times, we behaved like true sisters of charity. Our hands would raise the long nightgown, which as though we had been girls we all wore, and our hands would do their best by their gentle touch, to soothe the pain of the victim.
These nocturnal maraudings had their dangers, as the mistresses would frequently make their rounds. But the danger was an attraction. For – shall I confess it? – while we feared the whip, we grew to desire it. On certain days, whether because the weather was heavy or stormy, or for some other inexplicable reason, we would grow restless and commit faults with the obvious and sole object of being whipped. Sometimes Lady Flayskin, Stella, and all the mistresses were not numerous enough for the flogging which was required – our desires in this direction being always gratified to the best of the abilities of our superiors.
At these times, six boys and perhaps ten girls would be ranged in a kneeling line with drawers down, awaiting the penance of the birch.
Wat a chorus of cries, entreaties, sobs and wails would then be heard!
If the thick walls and the large garden had not deadened these sounds, an astonished passer-by would certainly have thought they proceeded from a madhouse. For never, unless the recollection of early days, similarly passed, had come to him, could he have guessed the truth.
CHAPTER IV
To the extent that formerly I had been playful, high-spirited and always ready to engage in pleasures and employments suited to my age and sex, so now I became reserved, secretive, and timorous. In other days, I was fond of dangerous games, cricket, bird's-nesting and suchlike. Now by chance if I saw a bird's nest at the top of a tree, and absentmindedly would imagine how easy it would be to reach it by climbing along yonder thick branch, lying the while upon my chest, extending a hand as far as this other branch or that, I would suddenly become conscious anew of my clothing.