“Ah! how painful it is to us when we are regarded as debauchees or as sick persons!”
I must say that the above account, given to me by a much respected medical colleague, one whose nature is characterized alike by intellectual power and ideal sensibility, has made the deepest impression upon me, and has been an important influence in confirming my views regarding the nature of original homosexuality. Similar oral communications have been received by me from other physicians who have been homosexual from childhood onwards, one a neurologist and the other an alienist, and I attribute the greatest importance to the account given by this colleague of mine, who has a twofold understanding of the matter in question—as physician and as homosexual. It is also important to note that uranian physicians declare the majority of homosexuals to be physically and mentally healthy, a fact which I myself had not previously doubted, and that they contest the general validity of the degeneration theory.
Whilst in the smaller provincial towns and in the country homosexuals are for the most part thrust back into themselves, compelled to conceal their nature, or at most able to communicate only with isolated individuals of like nature with themselves, in the larger towns from early days the homosexuals have been able to get into touch with one another. Certain meeting-places—places of rendezvous for urnings only—have been formed; in certain streets and squares there have been formed urning-clubs, boarding-houses, and restaurants, and even urning-balls, while certain health resorts are to a degree monopolized by them. Moreover, the individual social groups of the homosexuals form unions. Thus, for example, Hirschfeld[541] reports the existence of an evening association consisting exclusively of homosexual princes, counts, and barons. Such pæderastic meeting-places and unions existed in the eighteenth century in Paris. From this time until about 1840 certain dark lateral alleys of the Champs Elysées, the thickets from the Place de la Concorde to the Allée des Veuves, between the Grand Avenue des Champs Elysées and the Cour de la Reine, served from the commencement of twilight for the rendezvous of homosexuals, not simply as a place of masculine prostitution, but as a meeting-place of urnings in general, who here in the dark sought and found love. The central point of this evening activity was the Allée des Veuves (now known as the Avenue Montaigne), the “Widow’s Alley”—“widow” was at that time the term used to denote the passive pæderast. This region of the Champs Elysées was to a certain extent monopolized by the homosexuals. They would not tolerate here the presence of any heterosexuals; they closed the entrances with cords, and placed guards at the openings of the alleys, who demanded a pass-word from every comer. Even the police did not venture into this dark region.
“Victor Hugo, who in the year 1831 lived in the Rue Jean Goujon in this neighbourhood, often accompanied his friends who had been visiting him part of the way home at a late hour of the night. They walked in groups, talking of literature and art as far as the Place de la Concorde. There the celebrated poet parted from his guests and returned alone homewards, composing new verses by the way. He often noticed individuals who, as he passed the entrance to the Rue des Veuves, watched him from afar off without speaking to him. He could not believe that these people were thieves, and asked himself what could be the cause of their always waiting in this lonely place; but notwithstanding the frequent occurrence of these scenes, he made no further inquiry into the matter. But once in the midst of his poetical reverie he was disturbed by a man who stepped forward from the darkness of a thicket, and with a polite greeting said to him: ‘Sir, we beg you not to wait any longer in this place. We know who you are, and we should not wish that any one of us who does not know you should cause you any uneasiness.’ ‘What are you doing there, then?’ answered Victor Hugo. ‘Every evening I see people walking about here, and disappearing among the trees.’ ‘Don’t concern yourself about it, sir,’ was the brisk answer; ‘we disturb no one and do no one any harm, but we shall not permit anyone to disturb us or to do us any harm; we are here in our own grounds.’ Victor Hugo understood, bowed, and pursued his way. As on another evening, walking with his friends, he wished to pass through another alley running parallel to the Allée des Veuves, he found that this was closed by a number of chairs, which were fastened together with cords. ‘There is no thoroughfare,’ called out a threatening voice; but another, speaking more quietly, added: ‘We beg Monsieur Victor Hugo on this occasion to pass along the other side of the Avenue des Champs Elysées.’”[542]
During the Second Empire the Allée des Veuves maintained its former position as a place of rendezvous for homosexuals. An urnings’ club, the members of which belonged to the highest classes of society, being persons of the Imperial Court, senators, great financiers, etc., had their meeting-place in a beautifully furnished hotel in the Allée des Veuves, in which soldiers of the Empress’s bodyguard (Dragons de l’Impératrice) and of the Hundred Guard of the Emperor served, in return for valuable presents, as the beloved of the various distinguished urnings, for which function the term “faire l’Impératrice” came into use. In the hotel there also lived from time to time transient unknown persons, who were only admitted after showing a kind of medal bearing a secret inscription. When the police made an examination of the hotel, they found a number of women’s dresses and similar articles, such as those which the Empress Eugénie was accustomed to wear on festival occasions. Numerous letters were also discovered which had been exchanged by the members of the club and their favourites of the Hundred Guard or of the Empress’s guard. A report was made to the Emperor of the results of the examination of this house. When he saw that persons of the highest position, and bearing most celebrated names, were involved in the affair, he at once ordered that the matter should be dismissed, and said to the Procureur-General: “We must spare our people and our country from such a scandal, which would do no one any good, and would do a great deal of harm.” In fact, almost no details of this affair became public.[543] Tardieu gave an account of another urnings’ club of the Second Empire, where there were concealed closets, on the walls of which erotic pictures were displayed. The manner in which the urnings made acquaintance with homosexuals is shown in a police report of July 16, 1864, in which the conduct of a literary homosexual, “un vieux monsieur fort bien et puissamment riche,” is described in the following terms:
“He enters the Café Truffaut, sees a young soldier who pleases him. By the intermediation of the waiter he makes an appointment, and departs without waiting for an answer. If the soldier agrees, he goes to the appointed place of meeting, and never goes alone, because Father C——n (the elderly urning) is well known. As soon as the two have met, other soldiers make their appearance, beat the old man, and compel him to give them all the money which he has about him. He does this willingly, and without ceasing prays for pardon. When he has not a single sou left, and when he has also given up his watch, he goes away weeping, and continually repeating the words, ‘What a miserable man I am!’”
This elderly urning was manifestly also a masochist, and therefore a very suitable victim of blackmailers, whom we here see at their work. In the police report to which we have already referred homosexual orgies are also described, the participants in which assumed women’s names and practised mutual masturbation and fellation, and also carried out obscene practices with a bitch. When Oscar Metenier in his book “Vertus et Vices Allemands” (Paris, 1904) states that Berlin has a monopoly in the matter of urnings’ balls, which, in his opinion, were not possible in Paris, he is unquestionably wrong as regards the time of the Second Empire. In this police report two typical urnings’ balls are mentioned. One of these took place in a house in the Place de la Madeleine, belonging to E. D., a man of business, who gave the ball on January 2, 1864. The second urnings’ ball was given by the Vicomte de M. in the Pavilion Rohan, Rue de Rivoli, on January 16, 1864, at which at least 150 men, many of them in woman’s clothing, took part. In many cases the appearance was so deceptive that even those who had invited the guests were not always able to determine the sex with certainty.
It is doubtless true that there is no other town in which there are so many social unions of homosexuals as there are in Berlin. Hirschfeld records—in addition to private parties—dinners, suppers, evening parties, five o’clock teas, picnics, dances, and summer festivals of homosexuals, which are arranged every winter by urnings, and by female homosexuals or their friends. Moreover, the male and female homosexuals meet in certain restaurants, cafés, eating-houses, and public-houses frequented only by themselves.[544]
Such localities exclusively for the use of urnings exist in Berlin to the number of eighteen to twenty. There are also social literary unions, such as the club “Lohengrin,” the antifeministic “Gesellschaft der Eigenen,” the “Platen-Gemeinschaft,” etc. There are also cabarets (public-houses) for urnings. Hirschfeld, in his book “Berlin’s Third Sex,” written in a popular style, but extremely valuable owing to the clearness of his descriptions, gives an exhaustive account of all these institutions for urnings, and for further details I may refer my readers to this interesting work, the authenticity of which I am able to confirm as the result of my own visits to the above-mentioned places of meeting for urnings.[545]
In Paris there no longer exist places of entertainment frequented solely by urnings. In this respect they are replaced by certain Turkish baths, whose patrons are almost without exception homosexuals—men whose age varies from about twenty years upwards. In the industrial quarter, in the neighbourhood of the Place de la République, there existed a few years ago a Turkish bath, visited almost exclusively by young homosexuals between the ages of fifteen and twenty years. On the great boulevard there is a bath of a very expensive character, visited only by wealthy homosexuals, frequented, among others, by a celebrated French composer.[546]