Review: I Came Up Stairs

I Came Up Stairs: A Victorian Courtesan's Memoirs, 1867 to 1871

By MC Halliday

Published by Eternal Press, 2010

I've read a good deal of Victorian erotica. The heroine of my novel Incognito is a graduate student doing her dissertation on the topic and of course I needed to do my research! In fact, even before I wrote that book, I was fascinated by the paradoxical Victorian era, with its conservative public morality and its private lasciviousness. Sometimes I've speculated that I had a previous incarnation in Victoria's London.

MC Halliday's novel I Came Up Stairs beautifully captures the style of the period. Ms. Halliday's heroine Mae is rescued from incredible degradation and poverty to be trained as a courtesan. Her sponsor Mr. Vickers raises her from her squalor for purely monetary reasons. He somehow recognizes a spark of brilliance in the filthy young girl he adopts and sets about fanning that spark to full flame, expecting her to make his fortune.

He meets more success than he could have dreamed. Mae (originally Mabel Gray, rechristened Marisa Montague) grows into a charming, sensual woman with the manners of a lady and the lusts of a kitchen maid. She attracts the attention of noblemen and princes, catering to their desires and frequently satisfying her own. Her tastes run to women as well as men, and she's never so happy as when she's lounging naked, drinking champagne.

Mae earns her independence from Vickers by becoming a featured dancer in a music hall, where her risqué, “Oriental” gyrations earn her huge acclaim. However, she is subject to the typical risks facing a woman of the period. She becomes pregnant, possibly by the heir to the British throne, and is forced to slip away to France for the period of her confinement. There she meets her true love, but their relationship comes to a tragic end in the heat of war.

I Came Up Stairs feels genuine. The sex scenes are rife with euphemism but still arousing. Actually, it is Mae's enthusiasm that lights up every encounter. She is a true hedonist and as is typical in real Victorian erotica, will eagerly indulge herself with whomever happens to be present—a handsome earl, her buxom maids, or her well-hung gardener.

However, Mae is far more complex and engaging than the women in The Pearl or My Secret Life. Remembering her own origins, she is unfailingly kind and generous to her servants. She acts with a spontaneity that is consistent with her youth. When she loses the love of her life, she descends into a drunken slough of despond. She feels quite real, unlike the cardboard cut-out women in many Victorian tales, who exist mainly as willing orifices.

Ms. Halliday also excels at painting a picture of the rigid, hypocritical, class-oriented society in which Mae exists. Mae herself is in some sense immune, far freer, due to her anomalous history, than any true lady of the time.

The language in I Came Up Stairs is deliberately archaic. Readers who prefer more direct locutions may find it tedious, but I was impressed by its ring of authenticity.

My one complaint about the book relates to what seems like a factual slip. When Mr. Vickers first takes Mae away from her impoverished existence, she comments that she had not yet started to menstruate. Yet after a period of tutelage that is not specified but seems no more than a year or so, she seems to have blossomed into a voluptuous, physically mature young woman. Ms. Halliday is not explicit about the time involved, but there's no suggestion that it involved anything like the time necessary to effect this transformation.

Of course, it is true that modern women reach menarche quite a bit earlier than women a century ago. Furthermore, the malnutrition that Mae likely suffered in her early life would also have affected her physical development. Nevertheless, this nagged at me through the first half of the book.

By the time I reached the middle of I Came Up Stairs, however, Mae had charmed me, just as she did everyone else who met her. I didn't care about her past; I was just concerned about her future.

I Came Up Stairs will delight anyone who enjoys historical fiction, especially from the Victorian period.

An Excerpt from "Domestic Goddess"

It's been a while since I posted any excerpts here at Beyond Romance. So I thought I'd share with you a bit from "Domestic Goddess", one of the stories in Rough Caress, my collection of BDSM erotica published by Eternal Press.

Although I categorize Rough Caress as erotica, many of the stories have romantic elements, featuring couples with committed D/s relationships. "Domestic Goddess" is one of my favorites, a playful exploration of what might happen when a Dom stopped acting so dominant.

The excerpt is R-rated. The story, however, like all in the collection, deserves at least one X.

She's glad to be his slave. She's just not too crazy about being his housekeeper and maid, at least not these days.

When they first moved in together, he used to make her strip before she vacuumed the carpets or washed the floors. He'd watch her, sitting in the wing-backed chair that they bought together at the garage sale, as she strutted around in her collar and high heels, pushing the mop in front of her.

"Arch your back," he'd order. "Stick out your butt."

She'd struggle to keep her balance as she obeyed, her pussy liquefying as it always did at the sound of his voice. She could feel his eyes on her buttocks like a physical caress. He wouldn't miss the signs, the flush on her face, the taut nipples, the musky scent that wafted through the apartment. When he was paying attention, his powers of observation were astounding. Not to mention his powers of seduction.

She loved housework in those early months. Of course, it wasn't often that she got the chance to finish her household tasks. She would get hotter and more frustrated, while he would be increasingly amused. Finally, he would take pity on her.

"Go get the rug-beater, Elizabeth," he'd order, and she'd scamper off to the closet to find that wicked implement of twisted rattan that she both hated and loved. Or else he'd pat his lap and say, "Get your slutty little ass over here" and she'd be there in flash, draped over his knee, shivering in anticipation, triumphant as she felt his hard-on through his trousers.

Since he lost his job, though, household chores were just that. He spent most of his time slumped on the couch watching TV, or at the computer playing video games. He complained about everything she did, it seemed, but not in the old tone of the beneficent, omnipotent Dom chastising his sub. No, he was just whining.

Meanwhile, his formerly prodigious interest in sex had dwindled almost to non-existence. Maybe once a week, he'd wake her in the middle of the night, fuck her, then fall back into near-comatose sleep. He wasn't cruel or rough—she could have borne that, would have welcomed it. It was like a reflex for him, like sneezing or scratching an itch. He might murmur her name as he came, but the old connection just wasn't there.

And he hadn't beaten her or tried out any kinky new ideas, in more than a month. She wanted to cry with frustration.

She tried everything she could think of, to cheer him up, to get his attention. She ordered outrageous costumes from Frederick's and wore them as she worked around the apartment. He barely looked up from the monsters he was blasting on the screen.

She left various paraphernalia lying around suggestively, draping the flogger over the seat of his chair, leaning the crop against his computer monitor, carefully arranging her custom-made leather cuffs and butt plug on his pillow. He simply pushed the toys out of the way with a weary sigh.

She tried directly disobeying his orders. The trouble was, lately he hardly gave her any orders. He walked around like a zombie. The zombie Dom.

More than once, she considered removing her collar. Would he notice that? Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to that point. The collar defined her, defined their intense and magical relationship. She didn't want to repudiate that relationship, not at all. She wanted it back.