A question will arise: “Who are the women that keep these houses?” That they can not have lived as common prostitutes, or been the keepers of houses of prostitution, is evident. In the first place, the acquaintances they would have made in either of those avocations would preclude the possibility of their maintaining the inviolable secrecy necessary in a house of assignation; and, again, no female would enter a place of this description, the keeper of which would be likely to betray her. It is apprehended that some of these houses originate in the following manner; in fact, we know of more than one that did commence so:
A female engaged in an intrigue which she can not carry out at her own residence, and desiring a place of security for her meetings, has an acquaintance with some shrewd woman, possibly one who works for her as seamstress, or in some other capacity, whom she makes partially a confidant. She tells her that she is desirous of seeing a gentleman, whom, for some particular reason, she can not invite to her house, and asks if she will accommodate her with a room in which the interview can take place. It is not likely that a person who felt under any obligation to her employer would refuse such a request, especially for so simple a purpose as a short conversation. The meeting accordingly takes place, and a handsome present is made her. It is frequently repeated, until she becomes suspicious, and finally satisfied that these interviews are for the purpose of sexual intercourse. By this time it has become a question of policy with her. She argues that if she refuses to extend any future accommodation she will lose not only a considerable income from the presents, but also all employment from the lady. She knows that by allowing such meetings she realizes considerably more than she can procure by her daily labor, and self-interest is generally strong enough to overcome her scruples. She goes on extending her accommodations, and enlarging the circle of her visitors, until she becomes mistress of a select house of assignation, which will be always liberally patronized so long as her power of maintaining the requisite secrecy remains unimpeached. Some of these women are from distant cities; entire strangers in New York, except to their immediate customers. If they are widows who have children, these are invariably educated away from home. From the privacy observed it is very difficult to estimate their receipts, which must be large. They sometimes degenerate into keepers of houses of public prostitution, and then become dangerous members of society, on account of the secrets which have been intrusted to them.
Probably some of our ultra-fashionable citizens might be enabled to give more particulars of these houses than are here collected. What has been stated is gathered from authentic sources, and may command implicit belief. Indeed, so trustworthy is the authority that it may be confidently asserted that even Fifth Avenue and Union Square are not exempt from these resorts.
Such houses must be regarded as the connecting link between the licentious excesses of the capitals of Europe and this city of the New World. They are dangerous from their secrecy and exclusiveness. As yet they are rare; and it speaks well for the morals of our upper classes that they are so. It shows that the majority of people in the higher walks of life are untainted. But the course of deterioration has commenced. Will not American good sense and American morality check this base imitation of a foreign custom?
The recently avowed sentiments, or rather the resuscitation of sentiments which were proclaimed years ago respecting the obligations of marriage and the theory of “free love,” have doubtless increased the patrons of houses of assignation among our fashionable novel-reading people, or weak romantic heads made giddy by the sudden acquisition of wealth. For the last fifteen years a loose code of morals has been promulgated among us, the foreign apostles of which—many of them pretending to nobility, but being in truth mere adventurers—have visited us, and by them and through their influence many intrigues have originated. A spice of romance in the American character has induced many to join this movement in search of adventure, while a portion of our female society are ardent admirers of every thing foreign, be it a lord or a lace veil, and these delight in an intrigue because it is an exotic.
The facilities of communication with Europe are now so great that American travel on that continent is largely on the increase, and perhaps there are at this time in the cities of continental Europe more representatives of our society than of any other nation. Many of our people go there with the laudable desire to improve their minds by general culture, or for the study of particular branches of science or art, but it is to be regretted that some come back to our shores with ideas calculated to be any thing but beneficial to their native country in a social or moral point of view. The sons of our staid and “solid men” go to the capital of the French empire to study medicine. Apart from the impropriety of this course when there are the same facilities for study here, where a few seconds of lightning intercourse will place them in immediate communication with their friends, instead of their being separated four thousand miles from parents and guardians, does the end justify the means? What course do these young men frequently pursue? Unable to speak the language intelligibly, they resort to the acquaintance of a grisette, in order to study in her company. The language they acquire by this means is, at best, a vulgar patois; but they also obtain a knowledge of intrigue entirely incompatible with the simplicity and purity of our republican institutions—a species of male and female diplomacy foreign to the character of our people.
Young ladies, too, when they return from a foreign tour, are more fascinated with the charms and successes of the favored mistress of some European prince or potentate than benefited by the useful solid lessons of travel. With them, as with the others, it is all superficiality. Superficial when they started, superficial while traveling, they are still more superficial when they return. There are always weak-minded people in this country who will ape foreign manners, and to this cause must be assigned the gradual approximation of our fashionable society to the vices of the European capitals, their ladylike and gentlemanlike frailties, their genteel peccadilloes and affectations. The effects of foreign travel upon such persons can not but be injurious. It demands a clear head and a sound heart to decide between the vicious frivolities and the positive good submitted to their notice, and with the class mentioned it requires but little judgment to know which will first attract them. They must see Lord A—— or Count B——, no matter what valuable opportunities for instruction they miss. They must become au fait in the observances of courts and the manners of courtiers, no matter what else they leave undone.
As remedial measures for another evil are elsewhere spoken of, this may be an appropriate place to suggest for profound consideration whether it would not be a wise policy to adopt some preventive system for this evil. We might establish a phrenological and psychological bureau, armed with full powers to examine all persons desiring to travel, so as to ascertain whether they may safely make the grand tour, and have sufficient strength of intellect and firmness of principle to resist the vitiating influences and examples which will surround them there, so that they may return only with a knowledge of the good and valuable lessons taught!
But the evils of foreign manners and customs are not imported solely by the traveling class of our own community. The political turmoils of Europe, in the last eight or ten years, have thrown among us numerous refugees who have been reared in the hot-beds of intrigue, and who, styling themselves artistes, depend upon our unexampled prosperity, the increase of our wealth, the improvement of our country, and our known predilections for foreigners, to enable them to make a living, and also to establish the same state of morals and manners existing in the cities whence they came. The United States are now the great harvest-field for art, which, with science, music, and poetry, aids to improve the mind. At the same time these bring with them an excessive devotion to fashion, both in dress and manners, as the low-necked dress and the lascivious waltz, which are so decidedly positive degenerations from our normal state that none but the most superficial will ever copy.
That we are rapidly introducing many of the most absurd follies and worst vices of Europe is a patent fact. Almost every one can specify acts now tolerated in respectable families which, so far from being permitted fifteen years ago, would have been thought by our plain common-sense parents amply sufficient to warrant the exclusion of the offender from the domestic circle; and it is an equally conspicuous fact that our social morality is deteriorating in a direct ratio to the introduction of these habits. Every day makes the system of New York more like that of the most depraved capitals of continental Europe, and it remains for the good innate sense of the bulk of the American people to say how much farther we shall proceed in this frivolous, intriguing, and despicable manner of living; or whether they will not strive to perpetuate the stern morality of the Puritan fathers, our great moral safeguard so far, and thus put an effectual barrier against the inroads of a torrent which must undermine our whole social fabric, and finally crush us beneath the ruins.