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A superb example of Victorian erotica focusing on flagellation, The Mysteries of Verbena House, by Etonensis [pseud.], was first published as two volumes in one in 1882, probably by William Lazenby in London.

Verbena House is a fashionable school for young ladies in Brighton. Miss Montes, a student from Cuba, is robbed of two golden doubloons. The nominal ‘mystery’ centres on the discovery of the culprit: Miss Catherine Bellasis, the beautiful sixteen year old daughter of a Chancery barrister. During the hunt for the stolen coins, a number of other offences are detected: Miss Hatherton possesses an obscene book, John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, and Miss Hazeltine has hidden a bottle of gin. The girls are condemned to be flogged before the school.

Up until the detection of her students’ misdemeanours, Miss Sinclair, the headmistress, has been averse to corporal punishment. After deciding that the girls’ are to be beaten, she seeks the advice of the school’s spiritual advisor, the Reverend Arthur Calvedon, on the appropriate disciplinary procedure. A devotee of the rod, he becomes Miss Sinclair’s lover. In the process, and during the course of the girls’ chastisement, Miss Sinclair undergoes a remarkable conversion: she is transformed from a “maid-mistress” into a lewd votary, registering “a vow to become a fearless heroine of the birch, and make the sufferings of her pupils minister to her devices.” The book’s title hints at this lascivious metamorphosis: the psycho-spiritual transformation it represents is a deeper ‘mystery’ than the question of who stole Miss Montes’ doubloons.

Whilst the ostensible mystery of Verbena House is soon resolved, a compelling conundrum remains: who wrote it? ‘Etonensis’ simply signifies an old Etonian – that is, someone who has been to Eton College. According to Henry Spencer Ashbee, the great Victorian collector and bibliographer, who was in a good position to know who was responsible for Verbena House, it was written by two authors,

The first part of the work… is attributed… to a gentleman well known in London literary circles as a constant contributor to the daily press, a keen student of London and Parisian life, a pleasant writer of travels, of fiction, and of articles of an ommiscient [sic] and cosmopolitan character, a most versatile genius… Being unable to complete the tale, in spite of his prodigious industry and astonishing facility for work, it was brought to a conclusion by the gentleman whose notes have already enriched this volume. (Catena Librorum Tacendorum,1885: 261)

He doesn’t identify the authors explicitly but his hints have enabled them to be identified, probably correctly, as the popular Victorian journalist George Augustus Sala and James Campbell Reddie, an author and collector of erotica whose collection and notes were purchased by Ashbee in 1877 for ₤300. By the close of the nineteenth century, Sala’s authorial role appears to have been common knowledge: Verbena House is attributed to him directly in another clandestine classic, Raped on the Railway (1894).
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