Hilary Mitchell examines the curious history of X-rated furnishings, from Edward VII’s infamous love seat to Catherine the Great’s collection of erotic furniture
By all accounts, Theresa Berkley was said to run a high-class establishment, frequented by the elite of Georgian society. For behind the elegant facade of one of the stately buildings in London’s Marylebone district was her specialised brothel. Wealthy clients made their way to Hallam Street (which is now overshadowed by the BBC’s New Broadcasting House) so that the famed Mrs Berkley could cater to their particular predilections.
If she was working today, Mrs Berkley would probably be referred to as a dominatrix. She preferred the title of ‘governess’ – much like Mary Poppins. Unlike Mary Poppins, however, this governess built a reputation on her skills in sadomasochistic whipping and ‘chastisement’.
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Flagellation, or le vice anglais in French, had played a prominent role in English sex work from about 1700 onwards, and Mrs Berkley took full advantage of its popularity. The brothel would not outlive her; following her death in 1836, her brother wanted nothing to do with the property upon hearing what went on in there, so it eventually became property of the crown.
The Berkley Whipping Horse
But Mrs Berkley’s real legacy was a piece of furniture, which bears her name. The Berkley Horse, or Berkley Whipping Horse, was a tilted table that made the task of flagellation a little easier, for the one dishing out the punishment, at least.
Henry Spencer Ashbee, a businessman and erotic author of the time, mentions Mrs Berkley in his Index of Forbidden Books, published in 1877. Under the entry for ‘Flagellation’, he writes that she was the inventor of “a notorious machine… capable of being opened to a considerable extent, so as to bring the body to any angle that might be desirable.”
The Berkley Horse is, essentially, a precursor to modern sex furniture, which today includes an array of equipment from sex swings to wedge-shaped pillows, and everything in between.
In fact, beds themselves can be argued to be a form of erotic furniture. The history of beds is intertwined with the history of sex. According to ancient Sumerian belief, it was a sacred duty for the king to marry a priestess each year, so as to make the soil and women fertile. This sacred marriage ritual involved the re-enactment of the union of two deities, usually Ishtar and Tammuz, on a specially decorated marriage bed. Of course, the average Sumerian couple wouldn’t have had such a luxurious setting for the act of procreation, since most slept on the floor.
Speaking of kings, it’s rumoured that George IV himself was a regular visitor to Mrs Berkley’s, where he – like her many other clients – could be “birched, whipped, fustigated, scourged, needle-pricked, half hung, holly brushed […] stinging nettled, curry combed, phlebotomised and tortured,” as the fancy took him. While this is – it should be emphasised – only a rumour, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
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Indeed, Mrs Berkley is believed to have been in touch with a large number of very elite personages at that time. In fact, Ashbee says that her executor “came into possession of her correspondence, several boxes full, which, I am assured by one who examined it, was of the most extraordinary character, containing letters from the highest personages, male and female, in the land.”
As that correspondence, and Mrs Berkley’s lively memoirs, were destroyed, we cannot be sure whether she could count the king amongst her clientele. If he did enjoy spending time on the Berkley Horse, though, he was far from the only royal known to have eclectic sexual appetites.
Albert, Prince of Wales’s multi-levelled love chair
George IV’s descendant, the perpetually pleasure-seeking Albert, Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) was responsible for commissioning arguably one of the most famous pieces of erotic furniture of all time. Known as the ‘siège d’amour’, it epitomized opulence and sensuality, and, most importantly, allowed the overweight king to have sex with two women at the same time without crushing them. His love chair was a surprisingly beautiful piece of furniture, manufactured by Louis Soubrier, a famed cabinetmaker of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
By the time of his coronation in 1902, Edward had a 48-inch waist and was clinically obese, a symptom of a life-long love affair with fine food and alcohol. According to contemporary reports, the playboy Prince of Wales regularly sat down to five meals a day, with these mostly 10-course affairs, all washed down with large volumes of fine wine and champagne.
This is how his siège d’amour, kept at the famed Parisian brothel Le Chabanais, worked. Resembling something like a bunk bed, it was made up of two brocaded seats, as well as bronze stirrups carved in the Neo-Rococo style. The unathletic Bertie would be able to attend one woman on the upper cushioned seat, while a second woman could lie underneath.
The original chair is believed to have been sold at a private auction in the 1990s, but a replica can be seen at the Sex Machines Museum in Prague. Another went on show from 2015–16 at an exhibition ‘Splendour And Misery: Images Of Prostitution 1850-1910’, at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
The love seat wasn’t the only piece of erotic furniture that the king-to-be kept at Le Chabanais. Among his favourite diversions was to carouse with multiple women in a luxurious copper bath decorated with a half woman, half swan figurehead, filled to the brim with champagne.
Catherine the Great’s erotic furniture
Certainly, it wasn’t just male royals that had fun with X-rated furnishings. Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia, is believed to have had an entire room equipped with pornographic chairs and tables.
There is strong evidence to suggest she adorned one special salon with fairly lurid furniture. This cabinet of curiosities was potentially located at the Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near St Petersburg, or possibly Gatchina Palace. Sadly, as both were extensively bombed and ransacked during the Second World War, little physical trace of these items exists. That is, other than photographs allegedly taken by German soldiers, who claim to have found her secret furniture stash. That has led to the building of modern-day recreations.
One of her chairs appears on first glance to be a classic Louis XIV, with a straight back and (like Bertie’s love chair) covered in fine brocade fabric. Upon closer inspection, the classical decorative flourishes are explicit depictions of various sex acts, including oral stimulation by a devil-like figure.
Even less subtle is a classic round table that looks like something you might find in an antique shop. Except the legs have been replaced with large, erect penises, and each sit on a pair of breasts. The edge of the tabletop is decorated with alternating sexual organs.
Whether these items of furniture did belong to Catherine is still open to debate, but it would fit in with what we know about her open-mindedness. Despite facing criticism and scurrilous rumours from conservative circles during her rule (1762-96) – including the infamous lie that she died after attempting to have sex with a horse – she remained unapologetic in her love of sex and sexuality. As such, she left a legacy as a patron of the arts and a proponent of sexual liberation, which we are still benefiting from to this day.
Hilary Mitchell is a journalist with a Masters degree in Classics from Edinburgh University, where she specialised in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age of Greece