Naturally, the above classification does not include all varieties of modern prostitution, which exhibits many other modes of activity. Most of these others, however, have some sort of relationship to the varieties already described, and it is, therefore, unnecessary to deal with them all at length. Prostitution can, of course, be practised anywhere; and its allurements are found in all places in which great numbers of human beings come together.
APPENDIX
THE HALF-WORLD
To prostitution in the wider sense of the term belongs also the “half-world” (“demi-monde”), under which name, first used by the younger Dumas, we include the various categories of “mistresses,” femmes soutenues (kept women), lorettes, cocottes, and fast women.
Alexandre Dumas, in the celebrated passage of his play “Demi-Monde” (Act II., Scene 9), gives by the mouth of Olivier de Jalin the following definition of the half-world:
“All these women have made a false step in their past; they have a small black spot upon their name, and they go in company as much as possible, so that the spot may be less conspicuous. They have the same origin, the same appearance, the same prejudices as good society; but they no longer belong to it, and they form that which we call the half-world (demi-monde), which floats like an island upon the ocean of Paris, and draws towards itself, assumes, and recognizes, everything which falls from the firm land, or which wanders out or runs away from the firm land, without counting the foreign shipwrecked individuals who come no man knows whence.
“Since the married men, under the protection of the legal code, have had the right to banish from the bosom of the family a woman who has forgotten her duty, the morals of married life have undergone a revolution which has created a new world—for what becomes of all these expelled, compromised women? The first of them who found herself shown the door, bewailed her fault, and hid her shame in retirement; but—the second? She sought the first one out, and as soon as there were two of them, they called the fault a misfortune, the crime a mistake, and began to make excuses for one another mutually. Having become three, they asked one another to dinner; having become four—they danced a quadrille. Now round these women there grouped themselves young girls also who had begun their life with a false step; false widows; women who bore the name of the lovers with whom they lived; some of those rapid ‘marriages’ which had lasted as liaisons of many years’ duration; finally, all the women who wished people to believe that they were something else than they really were, and did not wish to appear in their true colours. At the present day this irregular world is in full bloom, and its bastard society is greatly loved by young men. For here love is less difficult than in circles above—and not so expensive as in circles below.”
From the last sentence we see that the original idea of the “half-world” was not so wide as that of the present day; above all, the former notion did not, as it does at present, include the idea of prostitution. The ladies of the half-world of Dumas were “not so expensive” as ordinary prostitutes. Our modern demi-mondaines are characterized by the fact that their price is high. They are prostitutes for the upper ten thousand. And yet they have this in common with the other demi-monde—that they do not, like prostitutes properly speaking, give themselves indifferently to anyone able to pay the price, but they lay stress on the social position of their lover for the time being, and upon his character as a “gentleman.” They can even exhibit something of the nature of love. The modern half-world can most aptly be compared with the Greek hetairism. It forms a characteristic constituent of modern “high life.” Whether this especially manifests itself on the racecourse, at first nights at the theatre, in great charitable bazaars, at masked balls, at fashionable seaside resorts, at Monte Carlo, at floral festivals, and the like, there also we encounter the half-world; and its members, in respect of beauty, toilet, distinguished appearance, cultivation, and conversation, are in no way to be distinguished from the ladies of high society. Certain types of the demi-monde realize, in fact, the ideal of the Greek hetairæ; but even more than these, the modern demi-mondaine represents elaborated enjoyment. These women are thoroughly cultivated, the true law-givers of fashion, the arbiters in every question of taste. Mondaines and demi-mondaines are in outward appearance hardly to be distinguished one from the other; at least, this is the case in Paris, where a witty writer defined the distinction between them in this way—that the former received their lovers only in the daytime, the latter also by night.[310] It is only the connoisseur who is able to detect the “half-world aroma,” that indefinable quality which gives the demi-mondaine such an exceptional value in the eyes of the jeunesse dorée.
From what circles do the recruits of the half-world come? The ladies of the theatre, the stars of the variety stage and of the ballet, send their contingent; the aristocracy is also represented in their ranks; but many a distinguished lorette or “fille de marbre” is of low origin, and yet understands admirably how to adapt herself rapidly to all the demands of high life, to drive her dog-cart as smartly as the most genuine Countess, and in Longchamps, Karlshorst, Ostend, or Trouville, to play the part of the fine lady.
The one distinction between them—and it is the distinction of half a world—is the fact that this fashionable life of the demi-monde is not provided out of their own means, but out of the pockets of one, or more often of several, rich galants.