_Kalyms_, which is to be paid for every woman. This price varies in
amount, from five or six sheep, and occasionally less among the poor,
to 200 or 500 or even 1000 horses among the rich. To these are added
different household effects, with, on rare occasions, a few slaves,
male or female. Out of these payments a considerable share goes to the
Mohammedan Moolahs who frequent the steppes, and who are attracted
thither no less by their profitable occupation of marrying the people
than by religious zeal. The Kalym increases with the number of wives.
The second costs more than the first, and the third than the second,
and so forth, which enables none but a very wealthy man to keep a
harem. The khan of the Little Horde, who was lord over nearly 1,000,000
men, had sixteen or seventeen wives, besides fifteen concubines, whose
offspring, however, were all on an equality. This patriarch had 42 sons
and about 34 daughters. Young men usually take their first wife not
according to their own choice, but under their father’s direction. As
to girls they are always under their parents’ control, and many are
affianced during infancy.
The first arrangement made when a marriage is in contemplation is to
fix the amount of the _kalym_, and the date on which it is to be paid.
These preliminaries concluded, the Moolah consecrates the transaction
by asking three times of the parents of the bride and those of the
bridegroom, “Do you consent to the union of your children?” and
reading prayers for the happiness of the married couple. Witnesses and
arbitrators are then chosen, who may decide future disputes, should
any such arise, and the nuptials are terminated by a feast and various
kinds of merry-making. The man then begins to pay a kalym, or else his
father does this on his behalf; and the parents of the girl occupy
themselves with getting ready a trousseau for their daughter--among
the articles of which it is essentially requisite to include the tent
which the bride is to occupy when she is finally delivered over to her
husband. While the kalym remains unpaid the marriage is suspended;
though the bridegroom may pay visits to the maiden he has chosen, and
even live with her, provided he engages not to take away her chastity.
Among some tribes these preliminary meetings are conducted with much
ceremony; in all they are often the first interviews which the husband
has with the woman who is to be his wife. When once, however, a part
of the required amount is paid, neither can retract without disgrace.
Ruptures, indeed, rarely, if ever, take place; partly because no young
girl dare to assert a will of her own, and partly because the man does
not care to rebel against a union which he is free to break when he
desires.
Frequently, however, the bride and bridegroom, during their preliminary
visits, anticipate the final nuptial ceremony; in which case this is
usually hastened, though the whole amount of kalym may not have been
paid. They are led, richly clothed if possible, into a tent, where
various rites are performed. The husband then departs, but immediately
comes again on horseback and demands his wife. Her parents refuse to
yield her, when he enters, bears her off by force, places her across
his saddle, and gallops away to his tent, which during many hours after
is sacred against all intruders. This custom, however, is not universal.
If a man finds his wife not to be a virgin, he may disgrace her, send
her home, and demand from her father the restitution of the kalym, or
one of his other daughters who happens to be chaste, without payment.
As every woman brings with her dowry a new tent, so each wife, when
a man has more than one, dwells in a separate habitation. The first
is styled the “rich wife,” and exercises superior authority over all
the rest. Though she may have disgusted her husband, he is bound to
distinguish her by respect; while the others, entirely equal among
themselves, remain always in a certain dependence on her. Prudent
husbands divide even the flocks belonging to the different women, that
the children of each may justly inherit her property. The chief wife
may quit her husband, if she can show any grave cause for separation,
and return to her parents, but the others have not that privilege.
The manners of the Kirghiz women are in general simple and courteous;
and the conduct of the men towards them, though often rude, gross, and
contemptuous, is frequently also polite and deferential. The love songs
of the desert are some of them exceedingly poetical; and the pictures
drawn by Tartar improvisatori of their mistresses are full of passion
and adulation.
A man may kill his wife if he find her actually committing adultery,
but not otherwise. A fine is the usual punishment of the adulterer;
while the woman may be divorced, or chastised in various ways.
Generally the morals of the Kirghiz Kazaks are good. Chastity in their
women is highly prized--its loss entailing disgrace; but as numbers of
the men are extremely sensual, many prostitutes may usually be found
in each camp, though not so many as some appear to imagine. They live
usually in companies, resembling the class of suttlers in European
armies; though some of superior fortune inhabit separate tents, and
live in ease and plenty.
Among the Nogay Tartars, who are also nomades, the custom prevails of
a man serving his father-in-law for a certain number of years. With
them the weaker is absolutely the property of the stronger sex, and
all contracts are transactions of sale. The father sells his daughter,
the brother his sister, and girls are considered part of an inheritance
as much as flocks and herds, and are equally divided among the sons.
The value of a woman is measured in cows; five being the cost of an
inferior, and thirty of a superior one. The man, however, though
obliged to buy, is not allowed to sell his wife. If she transgress
beyond his patience he turns her out of the dwelling, and she returns
to her parents, who seldom fail to receive her kindly. Divorce is
permitted, but is so costly that few resort to it. When a wife leaves
her husband against his consent he may demand her back; but if she
meanwhile commit adultery or theft, her parents must restore the kalym
which was originally paid for her, and she becomes so infamous that
only the poorest man will buy her.
The rich are polygamists; and as the sexes are about equal in point of
numbers, many of the poor cannot get a wife of any kind. The woman is
not allowed to eat with her husband; and if she expect paradise, it
is with the understanding that she is to dwell there as a servitor.
Marriages are not fruitful, and the population is regularly decreasing.
The Russians have introduced into the country certain virulent
diseases, which aid rapidly to thin the people, who themselves have
lost much in morality. Wherever they have large encampments, and settle
for the winter, numbers of prostitutes spring up among them, not
indeed entirely addicted and altogether destined to that calling, but
employing it as a means of gain, and living on its wages for a shorter
or a longer period.
Prostitution, which is unknown among the pastoral tribes of Arabia,
is, in fact, very prevalent among some of the shepherd communities
inhabiting the Tartar steppes. There are two classes of women who
betake themselves to it--widows and divorced women--who, having no
independent means of subsistence, hire out their persons under a sort
of necessity, and linger through a miserable remnant of life, in dirt,
rags, and contempt; and a few who addict themselves to prostitution
simply under the impulse of a profligate disposition. On the whole,
however, the morality of Tartars is of a superior character[83].
OF THE MIXED NORTHERN NATIONS.
INTRODUCTORY.
Pursuing our inquiries among the northern races, to the very extreme
of Polar cold, we discover many interesting peculiarities. Perhaps,
however, the most important result of our research is the establishment
of the fact, that the popular idea is in great measure erroneous,
of hot countries having the most licentious population. Climate,
indeed, may by fine degrees influence the temperament of men; but the
conspicuous truth evolved from all our investigations has been that the
manners of nations are regulated by their moral education, and not by
the thermometer.
In Egypt, India, Persia, and the other hot regions of the African and
Asiatic continents, there prevails a voluptuous spirit; but in Russia,
in Siberia, among the Greenlanders, and the tribes of the snowy deserts
in the utmost north, equal sensuality is to be discovered. In the warm
and happy plains of Arabia, in the sultry champagnes of various parts
of the East, we find shepherd communities with manners most pure and
simple, and we find the same among many roving nations in the cold of
Tartary and Siberia. The languor and indolence engendered by a fervent
climate may, indeed, induce a thirst for exciting pleasure; but the
rigour and inclemency of the north appear equally to dispose men to
take refuge in sensual gratification. Ispahan was never more licentious
than St. Petersburgh 50 years ago; nor are the debauchees in the
burning atmosphere of Africa more gross and indiscriminate in their
pursuit of animal delights than many tribes of Esquimaux, buried though
they be among the frosts of an eternal winter.
Thus climate appears to exert, at least, far less influence than
is popularly imagined. The horrible orgies of the Areois, in the
voluptuous islands of the Pacific, were rivalled and surpassed by
the Physical Societies of Moscow; nor are the revels of Southern
India more profligate than those enacted among the snowy solitudes of
Siberia. Indeed, among the Hindus, we have never found perpetrated,
even by the lowest class, depravities more vile than those we have
discovered among tribes in Kamschatka and other parts of the Arctic
regions.
One circumstance, however, appears to be undeniable. The temperament
of Asiatics is more easily inflamed than that of northern races. Their
mind is more active, their fancy more busy, their imagination more
creative. They give even to their vices a picturesque colour, quality,
and configuration, whereas the voluptuaries of cold countries are dull
and drowsy sensualists, without a tinge of poetry in their composition.
For this reason the ardent passions of the East have been celebrated
in romance and history, while the slothful sensuality of the North has
been neglected and forgotten. The world consequently has heard much of
the one, and little or nothing of the other; and in course of time,
by a very natural process, has imagined that the burning climates of
Asia represent the passions of its inhabitants, while the snows of the
opposite regions of Polar cold are characteristic of their purity and
freedom from the dross of vice.
This idea, which we confess we once shared with the rest of the
public, has been dissipated in our minds by the inquiries we have
made. The sensuality of the East is more striking, more conspicuous,
more celebrated, because it has been dressed by history and fable in
more attractive forms, while that of the North is forgotten, because
it has presented no theme for declamation or romance. But the people
of the one resemble very much the people of the other; and even in
the South, among the old and decaying nations of Europe, the same
truth is discovered. Spain and Italy are supposed to be the cradles of
voluptuous sentiment; but history shows how they have, in the manners
of their people, passed from gradation to gradation, from variety to
variety, while their climate has remained perpetually the same. Nature
alters in nothing, but civilization is in continual change; and Rome,
which was the sanctuary of female virtue in the heroic times of the
Republic, is now, like Babylon, a city where adultery is licensed, and
profligacy has the encouragement of the law.
Manners in Russia appear also to have passed through a considerable
change since the days of the Empress Catherine. When it becomes
civilized, it will, probably, improve still further. Its manners are
now gross and profligate in the extreme, which in servile populations
is invariably the case; but they have undergone considerable
ameliorations since the close of the last century. In the neighbouring
and kindred regions of Siberia, alterations appear only in those
parts where a congregation of tribes has taken place, and the ruder
are giving way to the more refined forms of society. Throughout the
North, indeed, as much variety appears as in the East, and communities
dwelling under the same temperature, present a perfect contrast in
their morals and customs.
In Finland a very extraordinary state of manners still prevails. A
recent traveller affords a curious illustration of this, showing how
the ideas of decency in various countries are modified by habit. He
went to a bath, and when conducted into a private chamber, found to his
astonishment a tall handsome girl ready to attend him. She exhibited
the utmost coolness and indifference, stripped off all his clothes,
and rubbed him with herbs from head to foot as though he had been
a mere log of wood, bathed him, laid him on his face, scourged him
with a bundle of twigs, until he broke out into copious perspiration,
dried him with towels, and all the while appeared utterly unconscious
that her task was inconsistent with modesty or decent manners. In
many parts of the North it is customary, as in some places in the
East, and in the heroic ages in Greece, for the maidens of the house
to attend a guest to his bedchamber, and assist in disposing him in
comfort for the night. These practices do not in all countries, and at
all times, illustrate the same national characteristics. They belong
on the contrary to two extremes of social development. They indicate
either a perfect simplicity or a total corruption of manners. It was
genuine purity of mind and unsuspecting innocence of character that is
represented in the virgin who attended Ulysses to the bath; but it was
the vilest sensuality and brutality of manners that allowed the Roman
Emperor of later days to be bathed and dressed by women.
Consequently in passing from the semi-civilized nations, through the
races of the North, to the educated communities of Christendom, we
proceed without the theory of measuring a country’s manners by its
geographical position. If it be civilized, it will be moral; but
civilization is a false name when it is applied to a corrupt and
enervated society. Art and luxury are not its highest evidences; but
virtue and obedience to the exalted maxims of ethical philosophy.
OF PROSTITUTION IN RUSSIA.
Russia, included by courtesy among civilized states, retains strong
traces of its original barbarism. Resembling China in its system of
government, it resembles it also in manners. What is admirable in its
social characteristics arises from the natural good qualities of the
people, who, notwithstanding a despotism which has wanted no feature to
degrade them, please the traveller by a display of many signs of good
disposition.
Russia resembles Asia in the indolence and apathy of its population.
In the one region nations appear to have been enervated by heat, in
the other benumbed by cold into a torpid submission to power. This is
evident from the state of public manners. In Russia the inquiry is not
what is essentially wrong, but what is wrong according to the police;
and nothing else is condemned. Abject towards their rulers, they assume
towards others the arrogance of slaves, so that a succession of tyrants
may be said to exist from the emperor who tramples down sixty millions,
to the peasant who oppresses his serving-boy.
No more striking proof could be mentioned of the fact that the
condition and character of women form an infallible measure of
civilization, than the state of the sex in Russia. It is true that
our knowledge is very incomplete. Most travellers who have written on
that country complain how difficult it is to describe it well, and
they have generally verified their remark; still we learn enough from
various authorities to enable us to judge in a general way of its
characteristics.
Among the higher classes women affect and study a polish and refinement
of manners, but this relates chiefly to the formalities of life. They
dare not, under their own social code, make an inelegant salutation,
transgress a point of etiquette, ride in an unfashionable equipage, or
converse in a vulgar tone; but they may break the most sacred moral
laws, may speak openly of indecent subjects, and may act and talk in a
way which a modest English lady would blush to think of. The position
they hold in society is in accordance with this view. Formerly marriage
was little more than a bond between master and slave; but the relation
has been, in that respect, improved. Women are to a certain degree
independent, but it is the independence of neglect. They lead, in a
word, a life very nearly resembling that of fashionable persons in our
own metropolis, but their morals are not to be compared.
Little need be said of the marriage contract in Russia, since it is
under the laws of the Christian church. It is, however, necessary to
mention that few engagements occur between persons mutually united by
affection. Interest is the usual tie; and frequently a girl is taken
to the altar, where her appointed husband stands before her, all but
an utter stranger. The ceremony is so theatrical that it wears no
solemnity whatever. It is a drawing-room scene, directed by priests;
so that the very seal of matrimony is of such a kind as to impress the
woman with no idea of a holy union. The wives of the Russian nobles
have accordingly little reputation for fidelity to their husbands;
a characteristic observed by Clarke, long ago, as he travelled, and
confirmed by Mr. Thompson, who wrote a year or two since, as well
as by many other writers. Immorality and intrigue are of universal
prevalence, from the palace to the private house. In a social sense
they are scarcely looked upon as offences. The husband and wife, united
by a bond, not of affection but of policy, look on each other from
the first with coldness and indifference. Gradually each withdraws in
a separate circle of life, and at length one looks without much care
upon the guilt of the other. Before marriage the sexes are divided by
etiquette, after marriage by mutual repulsion. The women, inferior in
personal attractions, but superior in manner and acquirements to the
men, receive from them little respect; and thus society, poisoned in
its very springs, becomes yearly more dissolute and melancholy.
None will require to be reminded that numerous exceptions occur; that
pure and strong family attachments exist in Russia; that young persons
marry sometimes influenced by reciprocal feelings of affection; but
from the accounts of all the writers we know who have described Russia,
no other picture of its society could fairly be drawn. There is in that
state licence for every crime which does not offend the government; and
the more the nation is absorbed in its sensual enjoyments, the less
will it be disposed to weary of servitude.
Among the peasantry sensuality is equally prevalent. They generally
marry very young, but it is by no means essential that the bride should
be a virgin. On the contrary, numbers of women never marry until they
have had an intrigue with some other lover.
St. Petersburgh, it is said, is a city of men, there being, in a
population of about 500,000, 100,000 more males than females. The
native Russians are less handsome and sooner faded than the women of
Germany, Finland, Livonia, Esthonia, and Courland--countries which
supply the state with prostitutes. Such are the manners of the city
that no woman may walk out unless accompanied by a man, not even on the
great promenades, in the broad light of day.
In ten years, from 1821 to 1831, the deaths in St. Petersburgh were
61,616, being 24,229 more than the births; and during the same period
there were 11,429 marriages. The native Russian women are remarkable
for the ease with which they bring forth children, while the foreigners
in that country are precisely the reverse. Of the former, 15 in 1000;
and of the latter, 25 is the average of those who die in childbed. The
average of 20 years gives 6 still-born infants out of every 1000.
The foundling hospitals of Russia, magnificent as they are, cannot but
be regarded as a premium upon immorality. Those of St. Petersburgh
alone cost from 600,000,000 to 700,000,000 of rubles annually;
supporting from 25,000 to 30,000 children, who are received at the rate
of 7000 or 8000 a year. They are called “houses of education,” because
a prejudice attaches to their proper name. They are not, however,
intended for infants who are picked up in the streets. There is never
a case of such exposure. Women who have children of which they desire
to be rid, bring them usually in the twilight, and they are taken in
without any questions being asked. No one can tell whether they are
legitimate or illegitimate--whether the offspring of poverty, adultery,
or prostitution. In cases where fear or shame might in other countries
induce a woman to murder or abandon her child, the mothers bring them
to the hospital, and impenetrable obscurity remains over the previous
part of the transaction. It is questionable whether the crimes thus
prevented would make up an amount of evil equal to that caused by the
profligacy to which the licence of impunity and encouragement is thus
afforded.
Violence committed on a woman, married or single, is, in Russia,
punishable by the knout; but this is almost the only check which the
law, written or social, imposes on immorality. It is said that judges
sometimes compound with a female criminal who happens to possess
beauty, and pardon her at the price of her virtue.
When a French writer, many years ago, astonished the civilized
countries of Europe by the description of a private institution in
Russia known as the Physical Club, his report was rejected by the
majority of persons as one of those travellers’ tales which had
their origin in a man’s impudence or credulity. Lyall, however, made
extensive inquiries upon the subject, and found that there did actually
exist at Moscow a society called the Physical Club, the object of which
exhibited, perhaps, more depravity of manners than could be found in
any other part of the world, except among the Areois of the Pacific.
This club was originated by eight men and women of high rank, who
agreed to hold common intercourse with each other, and for that purpose
established a society. Its members all belonged to the nobility, and
they sought to exclude all but beautiful women with the bloom of youth
still upon them. Admittance was very difficult to be procured. A person
before being initiated was sworn to secrecy, so that the names of the
members remained unknown.
At stated intervals the members of the club assembled at a large
house, where, in a magnificent saloon, brilliantly lighted up, they
indulged in every kind of licentious amusements, inflaming themselves
with strong potations, and preparing for the hideous orgies which
were to follow. Suddenly all the candles were put out, each man chose
a companion, and a scene of indescribable debauch ensued. On other
occasions tickets were drawn by lot, and the company paired off to
bedchambers prepared for this libidinous festival. This horrible
institution, transferring its pestilential influence through every
circle of society in Moscow, was abolished by Catherine the Second,
who hated to see the reflection of her own vices--for it is matter of
history that she was a vulgar prostitute herself.
Of the prostitute system in Russia our accounts are the most scanty
possible. They exist in large numbers in every city and almost in
every village; and a traveller remarks that they have the character of
demanding to be paid beforehand, and refusing afterwards to remain with
their companion. They do not form so distinct and conspicuous a class
as in some countries, for the virtue of married women and young girls
in the various ranks of life is not so inaccessible as to distinguish
the professional prostitute so broadly from the other classes, as in
a society whose manners are less corrupt. They are, in the cities,
under the perpetual surveillance of the police. In the rural districts
numbers of young women, belonging to the village populations, addict
themselves to prostitution for gain--some permanently, others only
until they have a chance of marriage.