By Governess
liviaarbuthnot1@gmail.com
Copyright 2026 by Governess, all rights reserved
[4,152 words]´
* * * * *FROM THE JOURNAL OF EUGENIA STRANG
FRANCES AND HELENA
My next
appointment was a marked contrast to that at the Haywards'. Instead of
one child to govern, I now had two; and both were girls. Frances the
older was ten and her younger sister had just turned seven. And their
mother was very different from Elaine Hayward. Whereas Mrs Hayward was
robust in her approach to her son’s upbringing, Mrs Carter was anything
but. Her husband was undoubtedly the paterfamilias, but did not
consider day-to-day domestic matters, including the raising of his
children any part of his bailiwick other than in extremis. So, from an
early age the girls had been placed under a series of governesses.
Unfortunately, Mrs Carter had tended to appoint women who shared her
predilection of raising children with the minimum of confrontation and
where ‘guidance’ rather than ‘discipline’ was the ruling principle. As
a consequence, her husband became increasingly exasperated at his
daughters’ progress and decided to take matters into his own hands and
appoint a governess with a more robust approach.
Most of my
appointments have arisen from responses to my own advertising, but this
was an exception. Mr Carter placed an advert in the Educational Journal
which, by good fortune, I chanced to see, for I rarely perused the
‘Vacancies’ section. relying rather on my own insertion in the column
for ‘Appointments Wanted'. And on reading it, I found it immediately
compelling.
Governess required for two girls, aged seven
and ten. Both in need of firm discipline. Apply to Charles Carter c/o
Boodles, 28 St James's Street, London SW1
Two weeks had
passed before I received a reply to my application. I had taken the
trouble to write a full letter to Mr Carter setting out my credentials
and emphasising my commitment to firm discipline, expressed if
necessary, through a sound spanking.. His reply was encouraging.
My Dear Miss Strang,
Thank you so much for your application. You may be wondering why it is
their father rather than their mother who is taking the lead in
appointing a governess for their daughters. After my wife’s appointing
a series of governesses that have lamentably failed to rise to the
challenge, I have taken matters into my own hands.
There have
been seven applications including your own for this post. Apart from a
reasonable level of educational attainment, I am looking for a woman in
her late twenties or early thirties to whom the girls can relate; and
who is unambiguously committed, when necessary, to the use of corporal
punishment. Of the seven applications, only yours made such a
declaration. Consequently, I should like to meet and discuss with you
the possibility of your being appointed.
I set out for
my interview with some trepidation. It seemed strange and rather
unnatural to be discussing an application for such a post with the
children's father, particularly when those children were two young
girls. However, Mr Carter immediately put me at my ease and explained
that he and his wife had different approaches to child-rearing. She
wished to be guided by compassion and understanding. And while he
regarded both as essential, for him understanding meant understanding
the child’s need for discipline, the withholding of which was not an
expression of compassion but rather of cruelty. He was very open and
spoke at some length about his own upbringing.
“My sisters and
I had a mother who understood the necessity of discipline and appointed
nannies and later governesses who were instructed to spank us at the
first hint of disobedience or ill-will. I had an older and a younger
sister, and both were regularly bared in my presence and spanked with
the back of a hard wooden hairbrush. And I was treated no differently.
My instruction to you, Miss Strang, is to treat Frances and Helena with
the same thoroughness and consistency. They are spirited girls whose
wills need to be broken, and you must have no hesitation in doing that.
Their discipline has been sorely neglected and for the first month or
two I would expect you to be spanking them most days of the week. If
necessary, you may refer them to me, although I should be disappointed
were you to do so. From your references and having now met you, I am
confident that you will be able to provide exactly what the girls need.”
After further discussion, he offered me the post which I immediately accepted.
Three days later, I reported for duty at a large house on the outskirts
of London. The housekeeper, Mrs Bertram, showed me to what she
described as the ‘governess suite'. This was situated in the West Wing
of the house, and close to the schoolroom. She said that Mr Carter
would meet me in the library in three quarters of an hour,. The
library, she said, was to be found off the main entrance hall,. Within
a few minutes my luggage was delivered, and I took the next half an
hour arranging my new living quarters; and taking certain items to the
schoolroom where they belonged. I was aware that I had not yet met
Frances and Helena and was surprised that the whole house seemed
strangely quiet. I knocked at the library door and was immediately
invited to enter. Mr Carter rose to greet me. Two girls were seated
quietly on a small chaise longue in front of the large window.
“Welcome, Miss Strang. And girls on your feet, please, and greet Miss Strang. She is to be your new governess”
Both girls rose and curtsied. I thought they seemed, contrary to what
their father had told me, well-behaved and polite. However, my
experience of governing girls was slim at this point in my career, and
I had much to learn. However, although my experience was limited, I was
well aware that appearances could be deceptive, and I had no reason to
doubt their father when he said that both girls needed to be broken to
learning and obedience.
Rather boldly, I decided to go
straight to the point. I have found that speaking openly before
children of their need for punishment and the appropriate method to be
employed is an excellent way of asserting your authority over them. And
I knew that establishing such authority at the outset was of paramount
importance.
“So, Mr Carter, these are Frances and Helena.
Your told me their behaviour is disappointing and that both need to be
taken in hand. They both curtsied very prettily, but is there an inner
spirit that accepts and bows to authority at all times. That is the
question.”
Both girls were looking uncomfortable.
“That is easily answered, Miss Strang. There is not.”
“And how has that been confronted up to now, Mr Carter?”
“Again, that is easily answered, Very inadequately.”
“And what in your view would have been an adequate response?”
“A sound spanking, at the very least.”
By now, both girls were flushed and looking at their feet.
“And by a ‘sound spanking', you mean several dozen strokes across a bare bottom with the back of a hairbrush?”
“I do, Miss Strang.”
“So why has such necessary punishment been withheld?”
“As I have explained, Miss Strang, my wife does not feel able to
provide such discipline; and the girls’ governesses have up to now
failed to measure up to their responsibilities. Which is why I
advertised for a governess with a wholehearted commitment to firm and
effective discipline. And you, Miss Strang, are that governess.”
I felt a shiver run through me as he said this, and I glanced at the
two girls. Both, I think, realised that their lives were about to
change. That the noose of discipline would soon be curtailing their
freedom and at the same time stirring that rebellious spirit latent in
all children.
“Shall I explain to the girls what I expect of
them, Mr Carter; and what the consequences will be if my expectations
are not met?”
“That seems an excellent idea Miss Strang. “
“Stand up, Frances and Helena. From now on, I am about to make your
lives much simpler and more straightforward. And that is because I will
expect complete obedience to my word; complete honesty; complete
commitment to whatever tasks you are set; and politeness and respect to
adults, at all times.”
I paused.
“And if those very reasonable expectations of behaviour and attitude are not met, then . . . “
And again I paused for emphasis.
“ . . . you will be punished.”
I looked at Frances, the ten-year-old.
“Tell me, Frances, how did your last governess punish you?”
“Miss Pugh would stand us in the corner for five minutes. And sometimes
we had to write out twenty times ‘I must be a good girl’.”
I smiled.
“And did that make you into a good girl?”
“Well, we didn’t really mind it very much.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t. So, I doubt whether it changed your behaviour very much.”
“No, Miss Strang. It probably didn’t. “
I nodded.
“So, what would change a naughty girl’s behaviour? Encourage her to be
a good, well-behaved girl? What sort of punishment would do that?”
She looked down.
“Well?”
“I suppose a punishment that she didn’t like . . . very much.”
“And what do you think that would be? “
“I . . . I’m not sure.”
“Would you like me to tell you, how I would punish a girl if she failed
to meet my expectations? If she were disobedient, or untruthful, or
lazy, or rude?”
She nodded dumbly.”
I smiled.
“I would take down her knickers, put her across my knee, and spank her
bare bottom with the back of a hairbrush until it was hot and smarting
and she had to eat her next two meals standing at the table.”
Both girls stared at me with wide-eyed horror.
“And do you think that might make a girl do as she was told and behave?”
Both nodded.
“And if it didn’t? What do you think would happen?”
Both were completely speechless.
“Then, I’ll tell you. That girl would be undressed, turned completely
bare over her schoolroom desk, or over a stool, and caned – caned even
if her bottom was still red and smarting from her earlier punishment.
And that caning would continue until I was satisfied she had learned
the lesson that at no time will I accept disobedient, rude and
dishonest behaviour.”
I smiled.
“I hope that is clear.”
I looked at both girls expectantly.
“Yes, Miss Strang.”
All this time their father had said nothing. But I could see that my
words and the promise of severe punishment should the girls step out of
line had deeply affected him. And this was borne out by what followed.
“May I suggest, Miss Strang, that you show Frances and Helena the implements you will be using to punish them.”
“Certainly, Sir.”
I went straight to the schoolroom and in a few moments returned with
the tools of discipline with which the two girls were to become all too
familiar in the days ahead. I placed them on the library table. Mr
Carter stepped across and picked up the hairbrush.
“ This if
I am not mistaken, Miss Strang, is rosewood. Such a beautiful and
distinctive grain. My own governess had a very similar brush. Some
mistakenly believe the name has some connection with rose bushes. But
it comes from a tree that is native to India. The name comes from the
sweet smell of the freshly cut wood.”
He held the brush and stroked the smooth hard back appreciatively. He smiled.
“A beautiful brush for making beautiful children.”
“Indeed, Mr Carter. Some beautiful objects are just for contemplation,
but this, beautiful though it may be, has a very practical application.”
He picked up the cane. And ran it through his hand.
“ Some people think a punishment cane is a variety of bamboo. But it
comes from a palm – a creeping palm. When I was in Burma, I saw it wild
in the forest and under cultivation. Quite amazing. A great mass of
intertwined lengths, some extending for hundreds of feet.”
He held the cane in both hands and bent it so each end was almost touching the other.
“So wonderfully flexible! At school, I regularly beat junior boys with
a cane such as this. If they were lucky, on the seat of their pyjamas,
but far more often with their pyjamas down and across the bare bottom.
A dozen or more cuts would leave marks to be seen in the changing room,
and in the swimming pool where the juniors swam naked.”
“And what is this, Miss Strang?”
“A length of strap that is used to secure a child who resists
punishment. I have brought it down to make clear to Frances and Helena
that if they need to be restrained they will be. That nothing will
stand in the way of a thorough whipping if that is deserved.”
Mr Carter nodded.
“You have set out the consequences of the girls’ failing to meet your
expectations, Miss Strang, But children only begins to fear the lash
once it has scored their own flesh. I know that in the local girls’
reformatory it is the practice to welcome a girl with a solid whipping
as a warning of what will befall her should she misbehave. Perhaps it
would be appropriate for you to provide Frances and Helena with a
similar welcome to your governance,”
I felt a tightness in my throat and a quickening of my pulse at this suggestion.
“That is an excellent suggestion, Mr Carter. I have been admiring the
chaise longue on which the girls are sitting. What a wonderful green
velvet, almost grass green. However, like the hairbrush which has such
a beautiful and attractive grain, but is also of great practical value
in disciplining children, the chaise longue could be of equal practical
value if used to support a child turned over its scrolled end for a
flogging.”
I glanced at the two girls, and both were shifting uneasily and looking rather pale. Mr Carter smiled.
“You have my permission to use the chaise longue in that way, Miss
Strang. I suggest that Frances as the elder should go over the chaise
longue for the cane; while Helena as a seven year old is spanked with
the hairbrush with your sitting on the chaise longue yourself. “
“I am very happy with that, Mr Carter. It has been my practice with the
boy I have recently governed to strip him completely bare for a
flogging and I see no reason to treat girls any differently. I have
found that a child once deprived of its clothes becomes quiescent and
far more tractable.”
“You must do what you consider best, Miss Strang.”
I turned to Frances and Helena.
“You will both undress and each place your clothes on a different
chair. And please fold them neatly. And I want your shoes off, too.”
Their father was watching intently as they disrobed, and I sensed he
was enjoying witnessing their punishment. I wondered whether this was
the first time he had seen his daughters stripped for a whipping. Given
his wife's limp approach to discipline, I thought it probably was. Both
girls had full, soft bottoms, quite different from Frederick's neat
little boy bottom.
“Frances, place yourself over the curved
end of the chaise longue and let your hands drop on the far side. And
you, Helena, stand with your back to the wall. And I want you to count
the strokes aloud as each is given.
Her bottom tightened a
little as she stretched forward, but still retained its sensual,
arousing fulness. I picked up the cane and ran it through my hand.
“So Miss Strang, how many strokes are you proposing to welcome Frances
to your governance and to mark her first acquaintance with the rattan
cane.”
I had thought to myself that I might give her perhaps a
dozen stinging cuts, but the sight of her bottom, and her father’s
obvious wish to see her well flogged, encouraged me.
“Mr
Carter, it’s important that from this first moment, right at the
outset, a clear and firm statement is made of the inevitability and
thoroughness of punishment if my expectations are not met. The girls
need to understand that neither argument, nor pleading nor excuses will
be allowed to mitigate their punishment. And as you said, it is
helpful, too, if they fully understand the nature and intensity of that
punishment, for only then will they fear it. For fear is the bedrock on
which wisdom is founded. Not an abject, cowardly, paralysing fear, but
that respect for authority and for the consequences of our actions and
choices, both for ourselves and for others. So, with that in mind, I
think a minimum of thirty-six strokes of the cane would be appropriate.”
“And the spanking for Helena?”
“That would be of a sufficient number of hard and repeated strokes with
the hairbrush across her bare bottom and the backs of her thighs.
Probably, two dozen should be sufficient. But she needs to understand
that if, in future, her behaviour warrants it, the cane will not be
withheld. So she needs to observe her sister’s flogging, count the
strokes, and learn from that.”
Mr Carter nodded. I was sure
now that not only did he approve of the inauguration of such a robust
disciplinary regime, but was taking great satisfaction in its
realisation.
I studied Frances' bottom. It was indeed very
different from Frederick’s. Both were eminently whippable, but each had
its own specific attractiveness. Frederick was a well-proportioned boy
and, although at his young age he could hardly be described as
well-muscled, there was a leanness and firmness, a solidity about his
body, rarely seen in a girl, and that difference was all too apparent
in his bottom. Its very boyishness invited spanking, for there resided
all a boy’s naughtiness, and self-conceit .
Frances’ bottom,
however, was full and voluptuous and, with its almost translucent skin,
had a perfection that aroused an immediate desire to mark it and render
it less than perfect. Like a beautiful sheet of smooth, pale vellum it
cried out to be written upon. I ran my hand lightly across its surface.
And I remembered how once in a museum I had encountered the statue of a
nude girl. After a glance around the gallery, I had placed my hand on
the girl’s buttocks. They had looked so smooth and soft, but the marble
was cold and hard. So different from Frances' warm little bottom that
would soon be even warmer, inflamed by three dozen cuts of a limber
rattan cane.
Helena watching, felt her stomach contract and
her breathing constrict. Even though she knew that children were
beaten, and had read about such punishment in books, nothing had
prepared her for the reality itself. Suddenly, she remembered she was
to count aloud the strokes as they were given.
ONE . . . TWO . . . THREE . . .
And remorselessly the flogging continued. Before long, Frances was heaving and sobbing, gasping and pleading.
“No . . . No . . . Please, No . . . No . . .”
If I had had any reservation about whipping the girls as a ‘welcome' to
their new disciplinary regime, that soon dissolved in the sheer
exhilaration of caning Frances’ full, soft buttocks. While she was
being scorched in the fires of Purgatory, I was in Paradise. And
glancing at her father, so, too, was he, and showing clear signs of
arousal. Toward the end of the flogging I lessened the intensity of the
strokes for the surface of her bottom was already a deep crimson and
the beaten flesh displaying the tramline markings left by a severe
caning, while on the still pale flesh of her thighs were those little
gaping mouths of agony cut by the tip of the rattan.
When I
set aside the cane, there was a crescendo of sobbing as she realised
the torment was at an end. And then a struggling for breath as she
fought to regain her composure. But any bitterness and rancour had
passed in the relief that her ordeal had ended.
“I hope,
Frances, you now understand how I deal with girls who fail to meet my
expectations. Stand as you are, with your back to the wall. You may
watch as I deal with your sister.”
Helena was pale and had
clearly been greatly affected by witnessing Frances’ flogging. Her eyes
were dark and fearful and with justification. She had seen that I had
spared her sister nothing and realised that she could not expect to be
spanked other than with the utmost severity.
It would be
Helena’s first encounter with a love and nurturing expressed through
chastisement. There would be an intimacy as she had her clothing
removed and her buttocks bared; and a caring and concern as she was
held lovingly over my lap to be punished. And warmth, too, for in the
closeness, she would feel safe and cossetted despite the terrible
smarting pain of the spanking as the hairbrush repeatedly smacked the
bare sensitive flesh of her bottom and thighs.
I sensed that
she wanted to resist but she was so traumatised by fear that she
allowed me to lift her, without protest, over my lap. Although older
children, such as Frances, often need greater severity and formality
than that provided by a spanking, I have found over the years that even
they benefited from this more juvenile punishment. This was
particularly true of boys for whom a naked spanking over the knee is an
excellent means of taking the swagger and arrogance out of them. And I
confess that the pleasure of giving a spanking for whatever reason, is
as great today as ever it was.
I administered the first half
dozen strokes to Helena’s anxiously twitching bottom with a lighter
force than I would normally use. This, I thought, would encourage her
to settle down while allowing the severity of the spanking to be
steadily increased, until at the end the surface of her seven-year-old
bottom would be a glowing fiery red, burning with an insupportable
agony. As envisaged, I gave her two dozen strokes, and when I set the
hairbrush aside, she was writhing hysterically, twisting and kicking
and screaming in agony. I ordered her off my lap and made her stand
with her back to the wall alongside her sister. I looked at their
father.
“I trust, Mr Carter, that both girls now appreciate what awaits them should they choose to set their will against mine.”
“I’m sure they appreciate it now, Miss Strang. But when the soreness
fades, it is easily forgotten. If that were not so, every child would
need but one sound beating never to sin again. And we know that is not
true.”
I smiled.
“Well, I am certainly not so
sanguine as to think that both girls will never need to be beaten
again. But what, I hope, I have taught them, Mr Carter, is the
inevitability of punishment. That even for the smallest sin, they will
be stripped and beaten. And what defines a sin is defiance, and failing
to live within my rules and my will.”
I looked at the two girls standing with wet tear-stained faces, still sobbing and heaving from their ordeal.
“And, I think, at least for now, they have learned that lesson.”
But over the succeeding months there were many occasions when the cane
was taken from its hook or the hairbrush from its stand. And as those
months stretched on until two years had passed, I discovered a truth
that has been confirmed again and again. That there is a significant
difference in the roots of sinning between boys and girls. And many
years later I was to write about this difference in a little booklet on
The Management of Girls. I summed it up by saying
Boys are
outwardly unruly but have an inner spirit of compliance and a sense of
fairness. Girls, however, while outwardly compliant, are often inwardly
rebellious and despising of authority. Because of this they often
escape punishment even though their outward compliance is all too
frequently a deceitful veneer hiding a deeply rebellious spirit.
Looking
back, I am sure there were numerous occasions when both Frances and
Helena escaped punishment for a rebellious attitude, hidden yet
festering within, and which ought to have been identified and dealt
with by a painful session across my knee or turned over the arm of the
sofa for a sound caning. However, I was a young governess and still had
much to learn.
After two years, I left the Carters'
household and after a month or two commenced governing four children in
a rectory in Shropshire.