Paris is by no means more depraved than Berlin and London; but, whilst the latter hushes up the scandal, Frenchmen do not: hence we see a more copious account of it submitted to the public. For France of the xviith century consult the “Histoire de la Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde,” and “La Prance devenue Italienne,” a treatise which generally follows“L’Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules” by Bussy, Comte de Rabutin.[FN#422] The headquarters of male prostitution were then in the Champ Flory, i.e., Champ de Flore, the privileged rendezvous of low courtesans. In the xviiith century, “quand le Francais a tête folle,” as Voltaire sings, invented the term “Péché philosophique,” there was a temporary recrudescence; and, after the death of Pidauzet de Mairobert (March, 1779), his “Apologie de la Secte Anandryne” was published in L’Espion Anglais. In those days the Allée des Veuves in the Champs Elysees had a “fief reservé des Ebugors”[FN#423]—“veuve” in the language of Sodom being the maîtresse en titre, the favourite youth.
At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition Mirabeau[FN#424] declares that pederasty was reglementée and adds, Le goût des pédérastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps de Henri III. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le règne desquel les hommes se provoquaient mutuellement[FN#425] sous les portiques du Louvre, fait des progrès considérables. On salt que cette ville (Paris) est un chef-d’uvre de police; en conséquence, il y a des lieux publics autorisés à cet effet. Les jeunes yens qui se destinent à la professign, vent soigneusement enclassés; car les systèmes réglementaires s’étendent jusques-là. On les examine; ceux qui peuvent être agents et patients, qui vent beaux, vermeils, bien faits, potelés, sont réservés pour les grands seigneurs, ou se font payer très-cher par les évêques et les financiers. Ceux qui vent privés de leurs testicules, ou en termes de l’art (car notre langue est plus chaste qui nos murs), qui n’ont pas le poids du tisserand, mais qui donnent et reçoivent, forment la seconde classe; ils vent encore chers, parceque les femmes en usent tandis qu’ils servent aux hommes. Ceux qui ne sont plus susceptibles d’érection tant ils sont usés, quoiqu’ils aient tous ces organes nécessaires au plaisir, s’inscrivent comme patiens purs, et composent la troisième classe: mais celle qui prèside à ces plaisirs, vérifie leur impuissance. Pour cet effet, on les place tout nus sur un matelas ouvert par la moitié inférieure; deux filles les caressent de leur mieux, pendant qu’une troisieme frappe doucement avec desorties naissantes le siège des désire vénériens. Après un quart d’heure de cet essai, on leur introduit dans l’anus un poivre long rouge qui cause une irritation considérable; on pose sur les échauboulures produites par les orties, de la moutarde fine de Caudebec, et l’on passe le gland au camphre. Ceux qui résistent à ces épreuves et ne donnent aucun signe d’érection, servent comme patiens à un tiers de paie seulement.[FN#426]
The Restoration and the Empire made the police more vigilant in matters of politics than of morals. The favourite club, which had its mot de passe, was in the Rue Doyenne, old quarter St Thomas de Louvre; and the house was a hotel of the xviith century. Two street-doors, on the right for the male gynæceum and the left for the female, opened at 4 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer. A decoy-lad, charmingly dressed in women’s clothes, with big haunches and small waist, promenaded outside; and this continued till 1826 when the police put down the house.
Under Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algiers had evil results, according to the Marquis de Boissy. He complained without ambages of murs Arabes in French regiments, and declared that the result of the African wars was an éffrayable débordement pédérastique, even as the vérole resulted from the Italian campaigns of that age of passion, the xvith century. From the military the fléau spread to civilian society and the Vice took such expansion and intensity that it may be said to have been democratised in cities and large towns; at least so we gather from the Dossier des Agissements des Pédérastes. A general gathering of “La Sainte Congregation des glorieux Pádárastes” was held in the old Petite Rue des Marais where, after the theatre, many resorted under pretext of making water. They ranged themselves along the walls of a vast garden and exposed their podices: bourgeois, richards and nobles came with full purses, touched the part which most attracted them and were duly followed by it. At the Allée des Veuves the crowd was dangerous from 7 to 8 p.m.: no policeman or ronde de nun’ dared venture in it; cords were stretched from tree to tree and armed guards drove away strangers amongst whom, they say, was once Victor Hugo. This nuisance was at length suppressed by the municipal administration.
The Empire did not improve morals. Balls of sodomites were held at No. 8 Place de la Madeleine where, on Jan. 2, ’64, some one hundred and fifty men met, all so well dressed as women that even the landlord did not recognise them. There was also a club for sotadic debauchery called the Cent Gardes and the Dragons de l’Impératrice.[FN#427] They copied the imperial toilette and kept it in the general wardrobe: hence “faire l’Impératrice” meant to be used carnally. The site, a splendid hotel in the Allée des Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-Géneral, who registered all the names; but, as these belonged to not a few senators and dignitaries, the Emperor wisely quashed proceedings. The club was broken up on July 16, ’64. During the same year La Petite Revue, edited by M. Loredan Larchy, son of the General, printed an article, “Les échappés de Sodome”: it discusses the letter of M. Castagnary to the Progrès de Lyons and declares that the Vice had been adopted by plusieurs corps de troupes. For its latest developments as regards the chantage of the tantes (pathics), the reader will consult the last issues of Dr. Tardieu’s well-known Études.[FN#428] He declares that the servant-class is most infected; and that the Vice is commonest between the ages of fifteen and twenty five.
The pederasty of The Nights may briefly be distributed into three categories. The first is the funny form, as the unseemly practical joke of masterful Queen Budúr (vol. iii. 300-306) and the not less hardi jest of the slave-princess Zumurrud (vol. iv. 226). The second is in the grimmest and most earnest phase of the perversion, for instance where Abu Nowas[FN#429] debauches the three youths (vol. v. 64 69); whilst in the third form it is wisely and learnedly discussed, to be severely blamed, by the Shaykhah or Reverend Woman (vol v. 154).
To conclude this part of my subject, the éclaircissement des obscánités. Many readers will regret the absence from The Nights of that modesty which distinguishes “Amadis de Gaul,” whose author, when leaving a man and a maid together says, “And nothing shall be here related; for these and suchlike things which are conformable neither to good conscience nor nature, man ought in reason lightly to pass over, holding them in slight esteem as they deserve.” Nor have we less respect for Palmerin of England who after a risqué scene declares, “Herein is no offence offered to the wise by wanton speeches, or encouragement to the loose by lascivious matter.” But these are not oriental ideas, and we must e’en take the Eastern as we find him. He still holds “Naturalla non sunt turpia,” together with “Mundis omnia munda”; and, as Bacon assures us the mixture of a lie cloth add to pleasure, so the Arab enjoys the startling and lively contrast of extreme virtue and horrible vice placed in juxtaposition.
Those who have read through these ten volumes will agree with me that the proportion of offensive matter bears a very small ratio to the mass of the work. In an age saturated with cant and hypocrisy, here and there a venal pen will mourn over the “Pornography” of The Nights, dwell upon the “Ethics of Dirt” and the “Garbage of the Brothel”; and will lament the “wanton dissemination (!) of ancient and filthy fiction.” This self- constituted Censor morum reads Aristophanes and Plato, Horace and Virgil, perhaps even Martial and Petronius, because “veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language”; he allows men Latinè loqui; but he is scandalised at stumbling-blocks much less important in plain English. To be consistent he must begin by bowdlerising not only the classics, with which boys’ and youths’ minds and memories are soaked and saturated at schools and colleges, but also Boccaccio and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rabelais; Burton, Sterne, Swift, and a long list of works which are yearly reprinted and republished without a word of protest. Lastly, why does not this inconsistent puritan purge the Old Testament of its allusions to human ordure and the pudenda; to carnal copulation and impudent whoredom, to adultery and fornication, to onanism, sodomy and bestiality? But this he will not do, the whited sepulchre! To the interested critic of the Edinburgh Review (No. 335 of July, 1886), I return my warmest thanks for his direct and deliberate falsehoods:—lies are one- legged and short-lived, and venom evaporates.[FN#430] It appears to me that when I show to such men, so “respectable” and so impure, a landscape of magnificent prospects whose vistas are adorned with every charm of nature and art, they point their unclean noses at a little heap of muck here and there lying in a field-corner.
§ V ON THE PROSE-RHYME AND THE POETRY OF THE NIGHTS
A.—The Saj’a.