London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

Introductory.

Pursuing our inquiries among the northern races, to the very extreme of Polar cold, we discover many interesting peculiarities. Perhaps, however, the most important result of our research is the establishment of the fact, that the popular idea is in great measure erroneous, of hot countries having the most licentious population. Climate, indeed, may by fine degrees influence the temperament of men; but the conspicuous truth evolved from all our investigations has been that the manners of nations are regulated by their moral education, and not by the thermometer.

In Egypt, India, Persia, and the other hot regions of the African and Asiatic continents, there prevails a voluptuous spirit; but in Russia, in Siberia, among the Greenlanders, and the tribes of the snowy deserts in the utmost north, equal sensuality is to be discovered. In the warm and happy plains of Arabia, in the sultry champagnes of various parts of the East, we find shepherd communities with manners most pure and simple, and we find the same among many roving nations in the cold of Tartary and Siberia. The languor and indolence engendered by a fervent climate may, indeed, induce a thirst for exciting pleasure; but the rigour and inclemency of the north appear equally to dispose men to take refuge in sensual gratification. Ispahan was never more licentious than St. Petersburgh 50 years ago; nor are the debauchees in the burning atmosphere of Africa more gross and indiscriminate in their pursuit of animal delights than many tribes of Esquimaux, buried though they be among the frosts of an eternal winter.

Thus climate appears to exert, at least, far less influence than is popularly imagined. The horrible orgies of the Areois, in the voluptuous islands of the Pacific, were rivalled and surpassed by the Physical Societies of Moscow; nor are the revels of Southern India more profligate than those enacted among the snowy solitudes of Siberia. Indeed, among the Hindus, we have never found perpetrated, even by the lowest class, depravities more vile than those we have discovered among tribes in Kamschatka and other parts of the Arctic regions.

One circumstance, however, appears to be undeniable. The temperament of Asiatics is more easily inflamed than that of northern races. Their mind is more active, their fancy more busy, their imagination more creative. They give even to their vices a picturesque colour, quality, and configuration, whereas the voluptuaries of cold countries are dull and drowsy sensualists, without a tinge of poetry in their composition. For this reason the ardent passions of the East have been celebrated in romance and history, while the slothful sensuality of the North has been neglected and forgotten. The world consequently has heard much of the one, and little or nothing of the other; and in course of time, by a very natural process, has imagined that the burning climates of Asia represent the passions of its inhabitants, while the snows of the opposite regions of Polar cold are characteristic of their purity and freedom from the dross of vice.

This idea, which we confess we once shared with the rest of the public, has been dissipated in our minds by the inquiries we have made. The sensuality of the East is more striking, more conspicuous, more celebrated, because it has been dressed by history and fable in more attractive forms, while that of the North is forgotten, because it has presented no theme for declamation or romance. But the people of the one resemble very much the people of the other; and even in the South, among the old and decaying nations of Europe, the same truth is discovered. Spain and Italy are supposed to be the cradles of voluptuous sentiment; but history shows how they have, in the manners of their people, passed from gradation to gradation, from variety to variety, while their climate has remained perpetually the same. Nature alters in nothing, but civilization is in continual change; and Rome, which was the sanctuary of female virtue in the heroic times of the Republic, is now, like Babylon, a city where adultery is licensed, and profligacy has the encouragement of the law.

Manners in Russia appear also to have passed through a considerable change since the days of the Empress Catherine. When it becomes civilized, it will, probably, improve still further. Its manners are now gross and profligate in the extreme, which in servile populations is invariably the case; but they have undergone considerable ameliorations since the close of the last century. In the neighbouring and kindred regions of Siberia, alterations appear only in those parts where a congregation of tribes has taken place, and the ruder are giving way to the more refined forms of society. Throughout the North, indeed, as much variety appears as in the East, and communities dwelling under the same temperature, present a perfect contrast in their morals and customs.

In Finland a very extraordinary state of manners still prevails. A recent traveller affords a curious illustration of this, showing how the ideas of decency in various countries are modified by habit. He went to a bath, and when conducted into a private chamber, found to his astonishment a tall handsome girl ready to attend him. She exhibited the utmost coolness and indifference, stripped off all his clothes, and rubbed him with herbs from head to foot as though he had been a mere log of wood, bathed him, laid him on his face, scourged him with a bundle of twigs, until he broke out into copious perspiration, dried him with towels, and all the while appeared utterly unconscious that her task was inconsistent with modesty or decent manners. In many parts of the North it is customary, as in some places in the East, and in the heroic ages in Greece, for the maidens of the house to attend a guest to his bedchamber, and assist in disposing him in comfort for the night. These practices do not in all countries, and at all times, illustrate the same national characteristics. They belong on the contrary to two extremes of social development. They indicate either a perfect simplicity or a total corruption of manners. It was genuine purity of mind and unsuspecting innocence of character that is represented in the virgin who attended Ulysses to the bath; but it was the vilest sensuality and brutality of manners that allowed the Roman Emperor of later days to be bathed and dressed by women.

Consequently in passing from the semi-civilized nations, through the races of the North, to the educated communities of Christendom, we proceed without the theory of measuring a country’s manners by its geographical position. If it be civilized, it will be moral; but civilization is a false name when it is applied to a corrupt and enervated society. Art and luxury are not its highest evidences; but virtue and obedience to the exalted maxims of ethical philosophy.