embracing all China, Turkistan and Japan. The Chinese, as far as we know
them in the great cities, are omnivorous and omnifutuentes: they are the
chosen people of debauchery and their systematic bestiality with ducks,
goats, and other animals is equalled only by their pederasty. Kæmpfer
and Orlof Torée (Voyage en Chine) notice the public houses for boys and
youths in China and Japan. Mirabeau (L’Anandryne) describes the
tribadism of their women in hammocks. When Pekin was plundered the
Harems contained a number of balls a little larger than the old
musket-bullet, made of thin silver with a loose pellet of brass inside
somewhat like a grelot[406]: these articles were placed by the women
between the labia and an up-and-down movement on the bed gave a pleasant
titillation when nothing better was to be procured. They have every
artifice of luxury, aphrodisiacs, erotic perfumes and singular
applications. Such are the pills which, dissolved in water and applied
to the glans penis, cause it to throb and swell: so according to Amerigo
Vespucci American women could artificially increase the size of their
husbands’ parts.[407] The Chinese bracelet of caoutchouc studded with
points now takes the place of the Herisson, or Annulus hirsutus,[408]
which was bound between the glans and prepuce. Of the penis succedaneus,
that imitation of the Arbor vitæ or Soter Kosmou, which the Latins
called phallus and fascinum,[409] the French godemiché and the Italians
passatempo and diletto (whence our “dildo”), every kind abounds, varying
from a stuffed “French letter” to a cone of ribbed horn which looks like
an instrument of torture. For the use of men they have the
“merkin,”[410] a heart-shaped article of thin skin stuffed with cotton
and slit with an artificial vagina: two tapes at the top and one below
lash it to the back of a chair. The erotic literature of the Chinese and
Japanese is highly developed and their illustrations are often facetious
as well as obscene. All are familiar with that of the strong man who by
a blow with his enormous phallus shivers a copper pot; and the ludicrous
contrast of the huge-membered wights who land in the Isle of Women and
presently escape from it, wrinkled and shrivelled, true Domine
Dolittles. Of Turkistan we know little, but what we know confirms my
statement. Mr. Schuyler in his Turkistan (i. 132) offers an illustration
of a “Batchah” (Pers. bachcheh = catamite), “or singing-boy surrounded
by his admirers.” Of the Tartars Master Purchas laconically says (v.
419), “They are addicted to Sodomie or Buggerie.” The learned casuist
Dr. Thomas Sanchez the Spaniard had (says Mirabeau in Kadhésch) to
decide a difficult question concerning the sinfulness of a peculiar
erotic perversion. The Jesuits brought home from Manilla a tailed man
whose moveable prolongation of the os coccygis measured from 7 to 10
inches: he had placed himself between two women, enjoying one naturally
while the other used his tail as a penis succedaneus. The verdict was
incomplete sodomy and simple fornication. For the islands north of
Japan, the “Sodomitical Sea,” and the “nayle of tynne” thrust through
the prepuce to prevent sodomy, see Lib. ii. chap. 4 of Master Thomas
Caudish’s Circumnavigation, and vol. vi. of Pinkerton’s Geography
translated by Walckenaer.
Passing over to America we find that the Sotadic Zone contains the whole
hemisphere from Behring’s Straits to Magellan’s. This prevalence of
“mollities” astonishes the anthropologist, who is apt to consider
pederasty the growth of luxury and the especial product of great and
civilised cities, unnecessary and therefore unknown to simple savagery
where the births of both sexes are about equal and female infanticide is
not practised. In many parts of the New World this perversion was
accompanied by another depravity of taste—confirmed cannibalism.[411]
The forests and campos abounded in game from the deer to the
pheasant-like penelope, and the seas and rivers produced an unfailing
supply of excellent fish and shell-fish[412]; yet the Brazilian Tupis
preferred the meat of man to every other food.
A glance at Mr. Bancroft[413] proves the abnormal development of sodomy
amongst the savages and barbarians of the New World. Even his
half-frozen Hyperboreans “possess all the passions which are supposed to
develop most freely under a milder temperature” (i. 58). “The
voluptuousness and polygamy of the North American Indians, under a
temperature of almost perpetual winter is far greater than that of the
most sensual tropical nations” (Martin’s Brit. Colonies iii. 524). I can
quote only a few of the most remarkable instances. Of the Koniagas of
Kadiak Island and the Thinkleets we read (i. 81–82), “The most repugnant
of all their practices is that of male concubinage. A Kadiak mother will
select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear him as
a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at women’s work,
associating him with women and girls, in order to render his effeminacy
complete. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he is married to
some wealthy man who regards such a companion as a great acquisition.
These male concubines are called Achnutschik or Schopans” (the
authorities quoted being Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing, Choris,
Lisiansky and Marchand). The same is the case in Nutka Sound and the
Aleutian Islands, where “male concubinage obtains throughout, but not to
the same extent as amongst the Koniagas.” The objects of “unnatural”
affection have their beards carefully plucked out as soon as the
face-hair begins to grow, and their chins are tattooed like those of the
women. In California the first missionaries found the same practice, the
youths being called Joya (Bancroft, i. 415 and authorities Palon,
Crespi, Boscana, Mofras, Torquemada, Duflot and Fages). The Comanches
unite incest with sodomy (i. 515). “In New Mexico according to Arlegui,
Ribas, and other authors, male concubinage prevails to a great extent,
these loathsome semblances of humanity, whom to call beastly were a
slander upon beasts, dress themselves in the clothes and perform the
functions of women, the use of weapons being denied them” (i. 585).
Pederasty was systematically practised by the peoples of Cueba, Careta,
and other parts of Central America. The Caciques and some of the headmen
kept harems of youths who, as soon as destined for the unclean office,
were dressed as women. They went by the name of Camayoas, and were hated
and detested by the goodwives (i. 773–74). Of the Nahua nations Father
Pierre de Gand (alias de Musa) writes, “Un certain nombre de prêtres
n’avaient point de femmes, _sed eorum loco pueros quibus abutebantur_.
Ce péché était si commun dans ce pays que, jeunes ou vieux, tous étaient
infectés; ils y étaient si adonnés que mêmes les enfants de six ans s’y
livraient” (Ternaux-Campans, Voyages, Série i. Tom. x. p. 197). Among
the Mayas of Yucatan Las Casas declares that the great prevalence of
“unnatural” lust made parents anxious to see their progeny wedded as
soon as possible (Kingsborough’s Mex. Ant. viii. 135). In Vera Paz a
god, called by some Chin and by others Cavial and Maran, taught it by
committing the act with another god. Some fathers gave their sons a boy
to use as a woman, and if any other approached this pathic he was
treated as an adulterer. In Yucatan images were found by Bernal Diaz
proving the sodomitical propensities of the people (Bancroft v. 198). De
Pauw (Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains, London, 1771) has
much to say about the subject in Mexico generally: in the northern
provinces men married youths who, dressed like women, were forbidden to
carry arms. According to Gomara there were at Tamalipas houses of male
prostitution; and from Diaz and others we gather that the _pecado
nefando_ was the rule. Both in Mexico and in Peru it might have caused,
if it did not justify, the cruelties of the Conquistadores. Pederasty
was also general throughout Nicaragua, and the early explorers found it
amongst the indigenes of Panama.
We have authentic details concerning Le Vice in Peru and its adjacent
lands, beginning with Cieza de Leon, who must be read in the original or
in the translated extracts of Purchas (vol. v. 942, etc.), not in the
cruelly castrated form preferred by the Council of the Hakluyt Society.
Speaking of the New Granada Indians he tells us that “at Old Port (Porto
Viejo) and Puna, the Deuill so farre prevayled in their beastly
Deuotions that there were Boyes consecrated to serue in the Temple; and
at the times of their Sacrifices and Solemne Feasts, the Lords and
principal men abused them to that detestable filthinesse;” _i.e._
performed their peculiar worship. Generally in the hill-countries the
Devil, under the show of holiness, had introduced the practice; for
every temple or chief house of adoration kept one or two men or more
which were attired like women, even from the time of their childhood,
and spake like them, imitating them in everything; with these, under
pretext of holiness and religion, their principal men on principal days
had commerce. Speaking of the arrival of the Giants[414] at Point Santa
Elena, Cieza says (chap. lii.), they were detested by the natives,
because in using their women they killed them, and their men also in
another way. All the natives declare that God brought upon them a
punishment proportioned to the enormity of their offence. When they were
engaged together in their accursed intercourse, a fearful and terrible
fire came down from Heaven with a great noise, out of the midst of which
there issued a shining Angel with a glittering sword, wherewith at one
blow they were all killed and the fire consumed them.[415] There
remained a few bones and skulls which God allowed to bide unconsumed by
the fire, as a memorial of this punishment. In the Hakluyt Society’s
bowdlerisation we read of the Tumbez Islanders being “very vicious, many
of them committing the abominable offence” (p. 24); also, “If by the
advice of the Devil any Indian commit the abominable crime, it is
thought little of and they call him a woman.” In chapters lii. and
lviii. we find exceptions. The Indians of Huancabamba, “although so near
the peoples of Puerto Viejo and Guayaquil, do not commit the abominable
sin;” and the Serranos, or island mountaineers, as sorcerers and
magicians inferior to the coast peoples, were not so much addicted to
sodomy.
The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas show that the evil was of a
comparatively modern growth. In the early period of Peruvian history the
people considered the crime “unspeakable:” if a Cuzco Indian, not of
Yncarial blood, angrily addressed the term pederast to another, he was
held infamous for many days. One of the generals having reported to the
Ynca Ccapacc Yupanqui that there were some sodomites, not in all the
valleys, but one here and one there, “nor was it a habit of all the
inhabitants but only of certain persons who practised it privately,” the
ruler ordered that the criminals should be publicly burnt alive and
their houses, crops and trees destroyed: moreover, to show his
abomination, he commanded that the whole village should so be treated if
one man fell into this habit (Lib. iii. cap. 13). Elsewhere we learn,
“There were sodomites in some provinces, though not openly nor
universally, but some particular men and in secret. In some parts they
had them in their temples, because the Devil persuaded them that the
Gods took great delight in such people, and thus the Devil acted as a
traitor to remove the veil of shame that the Gentiles felt for this
crime and to accustom them to commit it in public and in common.”
During the times of the Conquistadores male concubinage had become the
rule throughout Peru. At Cuzco, we are told by Nuno de Guzman in 1530,
“The last which was taken, and which fought most couragiously, was a man
in the habite of a woman, which confessed that from a childe he had
gotten his liuing by that filthinesse, for which I caused him to be
burned.” V. F. Lopez[416] draws a frightful picture of pathologic love
in Peru. Under the reigns which followed that of Inti-Kapak (Ccapacc)
Amauri, the country was attacked by invaders of a giant race coming from
the sea: they practised pederasty after a fashion so shameless that the
conquered tribes were compelled to fly (p. 271). Under the pre-Yncarial
Amauta, or priestly dynasty, Peru had lapsed into savagery and the kings
of Cuzco preserved only the name. “Toutes ces hontes et toutes ces
misères provenaient de deux vices infâmes, la bestialité et la sodomie.
Les femmes surtout étaient offensées de voir la nature frustrée de tous
ses droits. Elles pleuraient ensemble en leurs réunions sur le misérable
état dans lequel elles étaient tombées, sur le mépris avec lequel elles
étaient traitées. * * * * Le monde était renversé, les hommes s’aimaient
et étaient jaloux les uns des autres. * * * Elles cherchaient, mais en
vain, les moyens de remédier au mal; elles employaient des herbes et des
recettes diaboliques qui leur ramenaient bien quelques individus, mais
ne pouvaient arrêter les progrès incessants du vice. Cet état de choses
constitua un véritable moyen âge, qui dura jusqu’à l’établissement du
gouvernement des Incas” (p. 277).
When Sinchi Roko (the xcvth of Montesinos and the xcist of Garcilazo)
became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest ebb. “Ni la prudence de
l’Inca, ni les lois sévères qu’il avait promulguées n’avaient pu
extirper entièrement le péché contre nature. Il reprit avec une nouvelle
violence, et les femmes en furent si jalouses qu’un grand nombre d’elles
tuèrent leurs maris. Les devins et les sorciers passaient leurs journées
à fabriquer, avec certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui
rendaient fous ceux qui en mangeaient, et les femmes en faisaient
prendre, soit dans les aliments, soit dans la chicha, à ceux dont elles
étaient jalouses” (p. 291).
I have remarked that the Tupi races of the Brazil were infamous for
cannibalism and sodomy; nor could the latter be only racial as proved by
the fact that colonists of pure Lusitanian blood followed in the path of
the savages. Sr. Antonio Augusto da Costa Aguiar[417] is outspoken upon
this point. “A crime which in England leads to the gallows, and which is
the very measure of abject depravity, passes with impunity amongst us by
the participating in it of almost all or of many (_de quasi todos, ou de
muitos_). Ah! if the wrath of Heaven were to fall by way of punishing
such crimes (_delictos_), more than one city of this Empire, more than a
dozen, would pass into the category of the Sodoms and Gomorrahs” (p.
30). Till late years pederasty in the Brazil was looked upon as a
peccadillo; the European immigrants following the practice of the wild
men who were naked but not, as Columbus said, “clothed in innocence.”
One of Her Majesty’s Consuls used to tell a tale of the hilarity
provoked in a “fashionable” assembly by the open declaration of a young
gentleman that his mulatto-“patient” had suddenly turned upon him,
insisting upon becoming agent. Now, however, under the influences of
improved education and respect for the public opinion of Europe,
pathologic love amongst the Luso-Brazilians has been reduced to the
normal limits.
Outside the Sotadic Zone, I have said, Le Vice is sporadic, not endemic:
yet the physical and moral effect of great cities where puberty, they
say, is induced earlier than in country sites, has been the same in most
lands, causing modesty to decay and pederasty to flourish. The Badawi
Arab is wholly pure of Le Vice; yet San’á the capital of Al-Yaman and
other centres of population have long been and still are thoroughly
infected. History tells us of Zú Shanátir, tyrant of “Arabia Felix,” in
A.D. 478, who used to entice young men into his palace and cause them
after use to be cast out of the windows: this unkindly ruler was at last
poinarded by the youth Zerash, known from his long ringlets as “Zú
Nowás.” The negro race is mostly untainted by sodomy and tribadism. Yet
Joan dos Sanctos[418] found in Cacongo of West Africa certain “Chibudi,
which are men attyred like women and behaue themselves womanly, ashamed
to be called men; are also married to men, and esteem that vnnaturale
damnation an honor.” Madagascar also delighted in dancing and singing
boys dressed as girls. In the Empire of Dahomey I noted a corps of
prostitutes kept for the use of the Amazon-soldieresses.
North of the Sotadic Zone we find local but notable instances. Master
Christopher Burrough[419] describes on the western side of the Volga “a
very fine stone castle, called by the name Oueak, and adioyning to the
same a Towne called by the _Russes_, _Sodom_, * * * which was swallowed
into the earth by the iustice of God, for the wickednesse of the
people.” Again: although as a rule Christianity has steadily opposed
pathologic love both in writing and preaching, there have been
remarkable exceptions. Perhaps the most curious idea was that of certain
medical writers in the middle ages: “Usus et amplexus pueri, bene
temperatus, salutaris medicina” (Tardieu). Bayle notices (under “Vayer”)
the infamous book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, “De
laudibus Sodomiæ,”[420] vulgarly known as “Capitolo del Forno.” The same
writer refers (under “Sixte iv”) to the report that the Dominican Order,
which systematically decried Le Vice, had presented a request to the
Cardinal di Santa Lucia that sodomy might be lawful during three months
per annum, June to August; and that the Cardinal had underwritten the
petition “Be it done as they demand.” Hence the Fæda Venus of Battista
Mantovano. Bayle rejects the history for a curious reason, venery being
colder in summer than in winter, and quotes the proverb “Aux mois qui
n’ont pas d’ R, peu embrasser et bien boire.” But in the case of a
celibate priesthood such scandals are inevitable: witness the famous
Jesuit epitaph Ci-gît un Jésuite, etc.
In our modern capitals, London, Berlin and Paris for instance, the Vice
seems subject to periodical outbreaks. For many years, also, England
sent her pederasts to Italy, and especially to Naples whence originated
the term “Il vizio Inglese.” It would be invidious to detail the
scandals which of late years have startled the public in London and
Dublin: for these the curious will consult the police reports. Berlin,
despite her strong flavour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in
religion, manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours.
Dr. Gaspar,[421] a well-known authority on the subject, adduces many
interesting cases especially an old Count Cajus and his six accomplices.
Amongst his many correspondents one suggested to him that not only Plato
and Julius Cæsar but also Winckelmann and Platen (?) belonged to the
Society; and he had found it flourishing in Palermo, the Louvre, the
Scottish Highlands and St. Petersburg, to name only a few places.
Frederick the Great is said to have addressed these words to his nephew,
“Je puis vous assurer, par mon expérience personnelle, que ce plaisir
est peu agréable à cultiver.” This suggests the popular anecdote of
Voltaire and the Englishman who agreed upon an “experience” and found it
far from satisfactory. A few days afterwards the latter informed the
Sage of Ferney that he had tried it again and provoked the exclamation,
“Once a philospher: twice a sodomite!” The last revival of the kind in
Germany is a society at Frankfort and its neighbourhood, self-styled Les
Cravates Noires in opposition, I suppose, to Les Cravates Blanches of A.
Belot.
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 France devenue Italienne,” a treatise which generally
follows “L’Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules” by Bussy, Comte de
Rabutin.[422] The head-quarters 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 Français à 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”[423]—“veuve” in the language of
Sodom being the maîtresse en titre, the favourite youth.
At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition Mirabeau[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[425] sous les portiques du Louvre, fait des progrès
considérables. On sait que cette ville (Paris) est un chef-d’œuvre de
police; en conséquence, il y a des lieux publics autorisés à cet effet.
Les jeunes gens qui se destinent à la profession, sont soigneusement
enclassés; car les systèmes réglementaires s’étendent jusques-là. On les
examine; ceux qui peuvent être agents et patients, qui sont 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
sont privés de leurs testicules, ou en termes de l’art (car notre langue
est plus chaste que nos mœurs), qui n’ont pas le _poids du tisserand_,
mais qui donnent et reçoivent, forment la seconde classe; ils sont
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 préside 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
troisième frappe doucement avec des orties naissantes le siège des
désirs 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.[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 des Louvre; and
the house was a hôtel 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
mœurs 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 Congrégation des glorieux Pédérastes” 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 nuit 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.[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 Alleé des Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-Général 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.[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[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).