The Underground Victorian Masterpiece

Complete for the first time in an online edition, The Pearl was an 18-issue Victorian magazine, containing erotic stories, bawdy lyrics and several complete novels, printed in the late 1880s.

Vol. 1 includes issues 1-3.

Excerpt:

I never remember my father, the Marquis of Pokingham, but have my doubts as to whether I am really entitled to the honour of claiming him as a parent, as he was a used-up old man, and from papers and letters, which passed privately between him and my mother, I know that he more than suspected he was indebted to his good-looking footman for the pretty baby girl my mother presented to him; as he says in one note, “that he could have forgiven everything if the fruits of her intercourse with James had been a son and heir, so as to keep his hated nephew out of the estates and title, and wished her to let him cultivate her parsley bed for another crop, which might perhaps turn out more in accordance with his wishes.” The poor old fellow died soon after writing that note, and my mother, from whom this dreadful consumption is transmitted to me, also left me an orphan at an early age, leaving me her jointure of £20,000, and an aristocratic title which that amount was quite inadequate to properly support.

My guardians were very saving and careful, as they sent me to school at eight years of age, and only spent about £150 a year for schooling and necessaries, till they thought it was time for me to be brought out in the world, so that I benefited considerably by the accumulated interest of my money.

The first four years of my school passed away uneventfully, and during that time I was only in one serious scrape, which I will relate, as it led to my first taste of a good birch rod.

Miss Birch was rather an indulgent schoolmistress, and only had to resort to personal punishment for very serious offenses, which she considered might materially affect the future character of her pupils, unless thoroughly cut out of them from the first. I was nearly seven years old when I had a sudden fancy for making sketches on my slate in school. One of our governesses, Miss Pennington, was a rather crabbed and severe old girl of five-and-thirty, and particularly evoked my abilities as a caricaturist, and the sketches would be slyly passed from one to the other of us, causing considerable giggling and gross inattention to our lessons. I was infatuated and conceited with what I considered my clever drawings and several admonitions and extra tasks as punishment had no effect in checking my mischievous interruptions, until one afternoon Miss Birch had fallen asleep at her desk, and old Penn was busy with a class, when the sudden inspiration seized me to make a couple of very rude sketches; one of the old girl sitting on a chamber utensil; but the other was a rural idea of her stooping down, with her clothes up to ease herself, in a field. The first girl I showed them to almost burst with laughter, and two others were so anxious to see the cause of her mirth, that they were actually stooping over her shoulder to look at my slate, when, before I could possibly get to it to rub them off, old Penn pounced upon it like an eagle, and carried it in triumph to Miss Birch, who was awakened chagrined by the amused smile which our principal could not repress at first sight of the indecent caricatures.

“My young lady must smart for this, Miss Pennington,” said Miss Birch, with suddenly assumed gravity; “she has been very troublesome lately with these impudent drawings, but this is positively obscene; if she draws one thing she will go to another. Send for Susan to bring my birch rod! I must punish her whilst my blood is warm, as I am too forgiving, and may let her off.”

I threw myself on my knees, and implored for mercy, promising “Never, never to do anything of the kind again.”