Power and the excitement inflicting beatings
The infliction of pain is exciting. As I beat Nutting I was ashamed of myself – sorry, Nutting – and afterwards I never resorted again to the cane – in 1994 old Etonian novelist David Benedictus writes an imaginary letter to Anthony Chenevix-Trench, the Eton headmaster in the 1960s, following revelations about his cane wielding renewed in a just-published book.
I’m writing to you,
although you were never my headmaster, and anyway you’re dead. But perhaps you
get the Independent in heaven, or wherever Eton headmasters go when they
die. My headmaster was ‘Red Robert’ Birley. He was a tall man, looked even
taller in his gown and mortar, and when he flogged a boy, which he did
ritualistically on a traditional block, it was said that the boy stayed
flogged.
Later I corresponded with
him on Amnesty International business when he was fighting apartheid. I couldn’t
understand how he could flog small boys and then fight white supremacists.
Birley taught me not to jump to conclusions. Perhaps I shouldn't with you
either.
Boys and masters flogged at
Eton. ‘Pop-tannings’ were particularly unpleasant. The victims received one
stroke from each member of Pop – 21 strokes if all were present, and I expect
they cancelled previous engagements to be there. Members of house libraries
caned, with The Ride of the Valkyries blaring from the old HMV console.
When I became house captain
I announced that I would not beat boys. My housemaster, ‘Purple’ Parr,
encouraged me but warned that it might not be easy to keep order unless I did.
It wasn’t and in the end I did. The boy was called Nutting, son of the Foreign
Secretary. The infliction of pain is exciting. Like rape, it's more about power
than sex, but sex is a part of it, isn’t it? As I beat Nutting I was ashamed of
myself – sorry, Nutting – and afterwards I never resorted again to the cane.
Curiously, I don’t think Nutting had done much wrong.
I think you took over
shortly after my book The Fourth of June came out in 1962. The novel attacked
Eton on three counts: snobbery, which was rife, homosexuality, which was
inevitable, and beatings, which were not. People said to me: ‘Good book, but
too late – the battles have been won.’ I hoped so.
By the time you took over I
assumed that the boys were treated with dignity as children should be. I should
have realised that headmasters, despite the gowns and mortars, are far from
being saints. Did you hate yourself or those you flogged while you flogged? Did
you love them? – that would have been really sick. Did you believe you were
helping them? Did you play the guilty memories back in your damaged head at
night?
This week I heard a woman
on Radio 5 calling for the return of flogging, for girls as well as for boys.
Most callers agreed with her. One old cretin of 84 wanted parents and
grandparents of offenders flogged. Apparently most Americans are in favour of
young Michael
Fay being brutally flogged in Singapore. Will CNN
cover the event?
And then I thought: they
ban violent videos and shred sex education manuals, but permit their children
to be beaten at school. The way things are going, they'll bring back the cane
in primary schools. If I was asked which would damage a child more, to watch violent
images, or to suffer violent assaults, I know what I would answer.
As published in
The
Independent, 28 April 1994.
Picture credit: Sting Pictures
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