out, 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;[FN#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.[FN#407] The Chinese bracelet of caoutchouc studded with
points now takes the place of the Herisson, or Annulus
hirsutus,[FN#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,[FN#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,”[FN#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 practiced. In many
parts of the New World this perversion was accompanied by another
depravity of taste—confirmed cannibalism.[FN#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;[FN#412] yet the Brazilian Tupis
preferred the meat of man to every other food.
A glance at Mr. Bancroft[FN#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 practiced 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 good wives (i.
733–74). Of the Nahua nations Father Pierre de Gand (alias de
Musa) writes, “Un certain nombre de prâtres 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
ens 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 Americains, 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
Tamalpais 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 principall
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,
principal men on principal days had commerce. Speaking of the
arrival of the Giants[FN#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.[FN#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 magiclans inferior to the coast
peoples, were not so much addicted to sodomy.
The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas shows 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[FN#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 practiced 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. Wiles
pleuraient ensemble en leurs réunions sur le misérable état dans
loquel 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 aura 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 tuerent leurs maris. Les
devins et les sorciers passaient leurs journées à fabriquer, avec
certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui rendaient fous
ceux qui en mangaient, 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[FN#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 Gomorrains” (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
poniarded 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[FN#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[FN#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 justice 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
medicine” (Tardieu). Bayle notices (under “Vayer”) the infamous
book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, “De
laudibus Sodomiæ,”[FN#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 mods 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 Jesuite,
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 invicious 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
devour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion,
manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours. Dr.
Gaspar,[FN#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 personelle, 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 philosopher: 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 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.