The Curious Tale of a Victorian Dalliance
Alexi stretched out on the couch next to me as I pecked on my laptop. "What are you working on now, Gordon? Researching the light-bulb kings of 1930s France?" Alexi is a novelist; I write obscure academic texts. She's always making fun of that, but it pays the bills.
"Very funny. No, you're always telling me to try my hand at fiction, so I'm having a go at a little short story."
"Really? Let me see," she said, crawling over to look at my screen.
I made a show of pulling the screen away from her view. "It might be offensive to your delicate sensibilities."
"Yah, right. Give it," she said, pulling the laptop around so she could read. A few awkward minutes later: "Oh, my. We are branching out."
"Victorian erotica. Some people are really into this stuff."
"There is this theory that sexual excitement is heightened by repression, and they certainly had that, although not as much as the stereotype. In fact, they were as randy as anyone. However," she said as she kept scanning the screen, "I think you're going off the rails here."
"What? How?"
"Well, if you're going to have the lady of the house boffed by someone other than her husband, in her own house, she's not going to strip down to her birthday suit. Nor would the man. Do you know how long it took them to dress? And the upper class women wore those corsets. Can't get back in those things easily without a servant. On the brighter side, the whipping part is good. They're really into spankings and whippings, like with riding crops. Bondage, humiliation, all that stuff." She paused. "Or so I've heard."
I raised an eyebrow at her. "Go on."
"I have a friend, Amy, who's into Victorian stuff. She might be able to help you with this. Would it be worth a few hundred?"
"I guess so, but she's going to charge a few hundred to talk to me about it?"
"Well, it involves more than talk."
"You interest me strangely, young lady."
"That's the spirit. Here," she said, getting her cell phone and pulling up a name and number. "Call Amy this afternoon. Not before two. I need to call ahead; she doesn't do this stuff for everyone. Well, let me go, dear. I need to get back to my own place. I can't write around here with you distracting me with these dirty stories."
"Don't you want to stay for lunch? You can call her from here."
"Ah. Anxious are we? No worries; she'll be ready for your call at two." She kissed me on the cheek and got up from the couch.
***
I placed the call and talked to Amy that afternoon. I wasn't sure what Alexi had set up, or really what it was all about, so it was a fumbling, awkward sort of conversation:
"I'm Alexi's friend. She called you?"
"Hi, Gordon! Yes she did." She had this matronly, vicar's-wife sort of voice, with an English accent. I swallowed hard before continuing.
"And you can help with my - research?"
"Sure. She told me what it was about. A bit different than our usual fare. We're a bed and breakfast, done up in a bit of a victorian look. But no one will be around tomorrow afternoon. So come on by at two o'clock and I can show you around."
And with that, I had made arrangements. To do what?
***
The following morning, a messenger arrived with a suit of clothes, a bowler hat, and some shoes. It looked like something Sigmund Freud would wear. A note was attached: "Wear this to Amy's. Hopefully I've got your size right. - Alex" A thrill ran through me - apparently there was indeed going to be more to this than a lecture. I began to cast myself as the "hero" of my short story - a bit of a cad who liked to deflower young wives in the parlour, having first punished them for their evil thoughts with a riding crop.
The costume did indeed fit, which was good - if there's anything worse than taking the Metro wearing a costume, it might be taking the Metro wearing an ill-fitting costume. I got a few strange looks, but most people assumed I was doing something related to the many museums and exhibits we have going on in DC at all times. I signed an autograph for one young tourist. - C. Jung.
When I arrived at the place, Amy greeted me at the door. She was wearing a victorian dress, and I immediately saw Alex's point - it would take a long time to get in and out of that completely. "Mr. Wainwright," she said, "I am Mrs. Joseph Browning. Your friend Miss Morgan referred to me as Amy, but as you are here to learn Victorian traditions I trust you will refer to me as 'Mrs. Browning.'"
I tipped my hat to her. "Absolutely, Mrs. Browning." Amy was a bit older than I, and quite attractive, what little I could see of her. The dress made her waist look impossibly small. Her breasts were full. What she might look like below the waist I had no clue, as the skirt was floor-length and flared out immensely. She smiled at me strangely. Had I looked at her chest a bit too long? Alex was always chiding me about that.
Amy took my hat and hung it up on a rack in the foyer. My heart leaped into my throat as I noticed the assortment of riding crops framed and mounted under glass over a couch, but she said nothing about it. She gave me a tour of the place, with its sparse, dark, hard-looking wooden furniture, on the one hand, and fancy, ornate upholstered pieces on the other. She chatted lightly, but in that archaic English dialect with which she met me at the door, as we went through the house. The initial excitement gave way to a general feeling of oppression and nervousness. The place reminded me of my maiden great-aunt's house when I was a child (hardly an erotic thought), and Amy's introduction as "Mrs. Joseph Browning" gave me pause. Was this part of the act? Was there really a "Mr. Browning," and if so was he aware of any special "tours" that "Mrs. Browning" was doing?
I kept waiting for any hint or sign that Amy was going to lead up to the special topic that I was interested in, but the nearest she came to that was giving me a very demure peek at the very bottom of her floor-length underskirts, along with a rather academic lecture about some of the layers there were to her clothing. It was far from being presented as a come-on. Any National Parks docent might have done the same thing, in the same manner.
We arrived at one of the bedrooms, and I thought this might be a good place to broach the subject. I decided to approach it gingerly, in case I had misunderstood what was intended as part of this "tour," or worse, fallen victim to one of Alex's pranks. "Tell me, Mrs. Browning - how did men and women socialize in those days? I hear so much about how regimented everything was; how did they, well, date?"
She let out a little laugh. "Well, Mr. Wainwright, I don't know what you've heard, but it was indeed very regimented, very controlled. If I were your landlady or hostess I might show you to a room, as I am doing now, very briefly, but you will notice the door has been kept open, and we would not be able to stay here very long without exciting remark. Of course, we live in modern times, so I am not telling you that we must leave immediately in actual fact, but those were the values of the time. Unmarried young ladies and gentlemen were not permitted to court without chaperones, and married ladies and gentlemen socialized under very controlled circumstances - either very publicly, or segregated by sex. Ah, here is Mr. Browning," she nodded as a man entered the room wearing modern dress clothes. "Mr. Wainwright, this is Mr. Browning, my husband. Dear, this is Mr. Gordon Wainwright. He's here doing some research about Victorian customs."
"I see," Joseph said, shaking my hand. "I'm sorry I'm not in the correct attire," he said, giving every indication he was not sorry at all. "I'm an attorney, and I'm afraid I have an appointment to keep. But you're in good hands with my wife."