In his novel "The Sapphic Academy of Madame Zuleika"1, American author Charles Lubbock displays a wealth of imagination and invention, devising and describing new and bizarre erotic devices and situations on virtually every other page. Madame Zuleika is a whip-cracking Amazonian dominatrix of the classic type, her distinguishing feature being the zigzag flash of white in her black hair. She is the proprietor of an educational establishment of unconventional type, where young ladies of "an unruly disposition" are despatched for "correction" and (but of course!) "the very strictest discipline". The place is not unexpectedly a hotbed of lesbian lust presided over by the ever-inventive Zuleika (whose last name we never learn, though it is revealed at one point that her lace-trimmed unmentionables have the initials "Z.Z." embroidered on them).
Our heroine is the innocent twenty-one year old Sabrina, consigned to Madame Zuleika's dubious establishment for reasons which are never disclosed, and we can only assume the author was too eager to get to the interesting stuff to bother with irrelevancies like motivation and background. Sabrina's first introduction to Madame Zuleika's unconventional methods comes when she is summoned to Madame's study and informed that "new guests are always required to wear this special costume", and the hapless young damsel is promptly encased in "a skintight suit all of gleaming black vulcanized rubber, firmly secured by nickel-plated fastenings" before Zuleika proceeds to inflict all the usual flagellations and chastisements expected by English readers of the time2.
In a later chapter after much tedious toing-and-froing and Sapphic sideplay, Lubbock again unleashes his facility for fantastical invention when the unfortunate Sabrina, by now the not completely unwilling plaything of the exotic Zuleika, is sewn inescapably into a deer costume complete with tail and hooves3, again fashioned entirely from shiny black rubber4. She is then obliged to flee through the woods by the light of a gibbous moon in a fine state of erotic terror with Zuleika and her Sapphic cohorts (all dressed as she-wolves) in hot pursuit, literally howling with lust5.
From that point onwards, Lubbock abandons all truck with the humdrum conventions of contemporary pornography and plunges headlong into his own world of bizarre practices, such as the peculiar sequence in which he has Sabrina imprisoned in a diving suit, brass helmet and all, describing the fastening of the suit in sufficiently tedious detail as to make the reader wonder whether he is some kind of buckle fetishist. Sabrina is then submerged in a disused well and left for a chapter or two while Zuleika and her intimates retire to indulge in some more or less conventional sexual gymnastics, notable only for the variety of bizarre rubber implements6 brought into play.
The novel ends on a fairly unusual note for the time; Sabrina at last tires of being the submissive partner in Madame Zuleika's eccentric pursuits and turns the tables on her nominal mistress. The last we see of the peculiar pair, Zuleika is quivering with excitement as Sabrina buckles her into the black vulcanized rubber suit...
1. Published in Paris by Editions Fiske in 1901, 500 copies printed. This is thought to be the "work of unparalleled depravity" mentioned by anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock in his book Imperiled Innocents.
2. Flagellation was once described as "the English disease", whereas American erotica of the time had a fascination for bondage; Lubbock favoured both pastimes.
3. See also this panel from a 1940s issue of "Wonder Woman", written by William Moulton Marsters
4. Whose shininess is described in such elaborate detail, employing every known synonym for such, as to leave one in no doubt whatsoever as to where the author's particular interests lay.
5. Immortalised in a portfolio of engravings by M. Verdugo, a sometime collaborator of Lubbock's; a partial reproduction can be found in Erotic Illustrations of the Edwardian Period by D.H. Mattingley (London, Villebart & Son, 1965).
6. Yes, the rubber is of course both black and shiny in each and every case.
Dr. Kilmarnock's Obscure World of Victorian Erotica
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