It is not surprising, then, that I did not at once enter London’s ‘gilded haunts of vice10.’ It took me a little time to discover them, and, to be truthful11, I am still looking for them. Indeed, I can say that I have employed a considerable portion of the last eighteen years in search of vice, and it may be that I must blame a Parisian education for my disappointment. I thought I had found vice the first time I saw a couple publicly embrace, opposite Marble Arch, never having seen anything so indecent in a Continental12 city; but this was an illusion, just like another illusion when, for the first time, I heard a speaker in the Park state his true opinion78 of the Royal Family: I thought this was the beginning of the revolution, and could not understand why the police looked so bored. I do now, for I suppose that meetings have been going on for several generations. But when it came to vice, when I explained to my new and fast English friends that I was looking for vice, when they took me to the old Empire Promenade13, when they bade me be shocked at the condition of Regent Street, between Vigo Street and Piccadilly Circus, when they took me to Earl’s Court to ogle14 and to drink milk-coffee, when they drew my attention to the chorus girls performing what they called orgies in the punts near Maidenhead, a certain melancholy15 crept over me. English vice was overrated. Indeed, to this day, I am sure that there is very little vice in England, that the Londoner, particularly, is a flighty creature, who kills virtue with his mouth, who tells unpleasant stories about the deeds of other people, and paints the town red with the assistance of his fancy socks. They are cowards, really, and most of them, when they slip at all, seem to slip ignobly16 into the rare satisfaction of a purely18 animal instinct; also, to do this, they need drink. Nero would not have understood them at all.
Since those days much time has passed, and now and then, here and there, I have come a little closer to those strange and secret depravities of which, according to the Continent, London holds the monopoly. The newspapers are helpful; for they have occasional fits of virtue and begin to expose something, thus, at last, giving it an advertisement; or the police intervene and shut up a restaurant, thus focusing all eyes upon its proprietor19 and making him so famous that when he opens another restaurant next door he is assured of custom. And so I have known dreadful places, manicure shops where hands were held longer than filing demands, tea shops where the depraved waitresses call you ‘old dear,’ and demonstrate that in a chair when there is room for one there is room for two. It is perfectly20 appalling21. I have been to the old Continental and to the old Globe Restaurant to spend considerable sums on not very satisfactory meals, to see a number of ladies manifest a little more clearly than is the custom the liberalism of their mind. I don’t know why it strikes the79 Puritan faction17 as so terrible that the women whom they call lost should congregate22 in a particular place; it cannot be because thus they can be found, for the Puritans must know that there is no street in central London, no tube, no omnibus, which does not hold as much temptation and as much opportunity as a small room in a quiet restaurant. I suppose it is the openness of the thing shocks them, the fact that they cannot cover it up and, therefore, pretend it is not there. But if that is vice, if that is ‘the smirch on our fair escutcheon,’ then, indeed, must English prudery be easily offended. It must be a sensitive prudery, for it cried out against night-clubs, against the Cave of the Golden Calf23, where a few people did drink too much, against the excessive dancing at poor Ciro’s, which for a time fell among Y.M.C.A.’s.
Also, during the war, a great fuss was raised in the newspapers over the flappers in the Strand24. I do not think anybody would have bothered much about the flappers if, at that time, we had not had among us a number of Anzacs who, as everybody knows, are the gentlest and most guileless of men. These unfortunate young soldiers, finding themselves lonely in a town such as ours, where no man needs go lonely along a street if he has a little determination, lacking all the home comforts which are implied in the possession of aunts, made their acquaintances where they could. The flappers in the Strand who, to my knowledge, have always been in the Strand, particularly on Saturday afternoon and on Saturday night, when they descend25 upon Villiers Street and the bandstand, coming from Aldgate and alighting at Charing26 Cross, naturally welcomed them. Now, in the old days the flappers attached themselves to any young man they met; sometimes he was a soldier in a red coat, sometimes just a civilian27, and nobody bothered, because in those days it was not evident that anything unusual existed in the association. Common sense revealed to all of us that these friendships had been formed round the bandstand, but nobody was compelled to know that they did not arise out of engagements of five years’ standing28. On the other hand, the Anzacs, with their beautiful bodies, their bronzed faces and their squash hats, were noticeable;80 a Puritan, after having, in the course of Saturday afternoon, seen several hundred Anzacs accompanied by pretty girls, was compelled to realise that there could not be so many Anzacs united by engagements of five years’ standing, to the flappers in the Strand. The Puritan hates realising, because when he realises he has to do something energetic, write to a paper, or form a committee, or something. He does not mind writing to a paper or forming a committee, but the whole thing upsets him; he cannot cover it up, and he runs about with wild eyes, terrified because the thing which is generally covered up has got loose.
It was that gave rise to the trouble, and the Puritans, determined29 that the flappers should flap no more, had to manufacture a theoretical Anzac, a young man from Melbourne (but born in the Bush, where no woman had ever been before), a young man extraordinarily30 pure in spirit, but liable to fall into temptation even if he had to cross the road to do so, a young man imbued31 by his past education with a profound reverence32 for womankind, whose feelings of reverence were daily being outraged33 by shameless exhibitions into which he was reluctantly drawn34. It’s queer; this flapper question occupied the Press for months; now and then the controversy35 died down, and then a Bishop36 or a special article writer brought it up again; agents-general were called upon to proclaim that our soldiers feared no foe37 in shining armour38 because their heart was pure, while, in the same column, presidents of watch committees gloomily acknowledged that something seemed to have happened to the purity of those hearts. But all agreed that that purity must at once be restored, that the Anzacs, which includes the Canadians, the South Africans, and other moral weaklings, must be protected. To this day we are protecting men of thirty against girls of fifteen: I never heard anybody talk of protecting the flappers, for it was assumed that, by the time they were fifteen, they had sunk too deep in iniquity39 to deserve better protection than four walls in Holloway. And no one seems to have asked himself whether these young men, cut away from old habits, from their friends and their work, did not desperately40 want feminine companionship; the members of watch81 committees did not ask Colonials to stay with them for the weekend; for a long time they did not even provide them with sufficient sleeping places, but seemed to expect them to make merry all night in the ribald waiting-rooms of Waterloo. Briefly, their virtue was to be its own reward, and certainly we could not take from Nietzsche the aphorism41 that man is for war, woman for the recreation of the warrior42. Above all, we could not let them alone.
Owing to this, my moral sense being aroused by an article in a Sunday paper, I devoted43 a Saturday to a search for vice. Of course, I began in the Strand, where I was told vice reigns44. I saw a great number of soldiers, doubtless viciously employed, but conducting their debauches with singular restraint and dignity. Outside the Corner House stood a number of boudoir ladies from the Government offices, who were deplorably waiting for omnibuses; many of them may have been viciously employed, but as their company was mostly confined to their own sex, they were not sliding very fast down the butter-slide of perdition; mostly, they were eating chocolates, and the fact that chocolates then cost four shillings a pound may be sufficient evidence of undesirable45 conduct, but this seems to me hardly enough to hang even a girl on. I proceeded up the Strand where the East End was slowly beginning to arrive, mostly in twos and threes. Often, indeed, I met the regrettable flapper; certainly she was powdered and lip-salved, and I do not know that this is exceptional, but right up to Temple Bar not a single flapper made an effort to draw me from the straight path. (It is all very well saying that I may not be the sort of person whom the flapper would want to draw from the straight path, but surely vice has no pride, and stoops to all men.) The most vicious thing I saw was two soldiers and two girls walking rudely arm in arm.
I did my best. Indeed, I think I became a regular agent provocateur, but I did not seem able to provoke anybody. So, desperately, I turned back and crossed the river towards Waterloo Road. The reputation of this gray and green commercial track was made by the street arab in Captain Brassbound’s Conversion46, who declared that if he did in Morocco the things he did in82 Waterloo Road he would be hanged. But nothing was happening in Waterloo Road; many people were drinking in many public-houses; I entered a few public-houses, and though I tried as hard as the two houses of convocation put together, I found nothing. I will not weary you with details; it is enough to say that, still guided by my Sunday newspaper, I proceeded on my footsore search. By evening, I was lurking47 round Victoria, watching from the corner of my eyes for the harpies who drug veteran members of the Band of Hope, and after I had loafed about for a while, no doubt I must have conveyed a harpy-like suggestion; I was seen in a picture palace, peering into the dimness of the curtained boxes, which was easy, as they were not dim. That night I was seen in many places, searching the blackness of railway arches, furtively48 peering down the staircases of tubes, hoping to discover the worst; I appeared in the deserted49 City; the back streets of Theobald’s Road, the confidences of a hall porter in Gerrard Street (expensive and uneventful), a long inspection50 of the first floor fronts of Vauxhall Bridge Road, seen from the top of a tram, all these grew familiar to me; and still nothing. As time went on, my legs grew more and more woolly; my mind so obsessed51 and incoherent, that I realised time would soon fit me for membership of the National Vigilance Society. I even entered the Leicester Lounge, where there was hardly anybody, as it was not Boat Race night; then I wondered whether a visit to North Bank, St John’s Wood ... and awoke from my trance, remembering that this would be thirty years late. There is no vice in London; at least, there is nothing deliberate and artistic52, just as there is very little in Paris or Vienna that would justify53 a Welsh elder in taking so long a journey. It is a pity that so fair a bubble should be pricked54.
This does not mean that London is a magnified Exeter Hall. There are, in this town, about half a million bachelors, and that is enough to lower the moral status of any city. There are also rather more married men, which does not mend matters. Observe the bias55 of my mind: I have forgotten to tell you the number, frequently quoted by indignant letter writers to the Press, of83 women who hold forth56 temptation. For it may be true that supply assists demand, but it is much more certain that demand makes supply. During the war, for instance, there was great agitation57 in the Upper House of Convocation, where the Bishop of London revealed that in Cayeux and Havre undesirable houses were frequented by British troops. Canon Burroughs went on to ask for purity patrols, while the Bishop of Oxford58 presented a resolution designed to protect our troops from molestation59 in London. This is all very well, and deserves all sympathy, but the Bishop of London unfortunately read out a protest addressed to the Mayor of the French town by its inhabitants, and this protest referred to ‘crowds of English soldiers waiting outside the houses.’ Does one, then, wait for temptation? Does not temptation steal upon one as a thief in the night, or as a raging lion, seeking whom it may devour60? It is a picturesque61 idea this, of crowds of innocent victims impatiently waiting for an opportunity to degrade their eternal spirit.
Temptation is nonsense. I have spoken to many men about temptation; they are seldom tempted62, and this for very good reasons: men do not fall, they dive. The women who ‘prey on them,’ fulfil a function which will be necessary so long as society is as vilely63 constituted as it is, so long as life is hard and insecure, so long as social relations are false, so long as marriage is expensive and difficult of dissolution, and, especially, so long as the hearts of men are brutish and the hearts of women soft. The class which for centuries has been hunted, has for centuries been maintained by the hunter, just as the fox is bred and protected for the pleasure of the chase. Those women do not seem to me to lead as easy lives as the men who profit by their weakness; they look rather less well-fed, less well-clad; they wear gold of a lesser64 carat; when they die their names do not appear in the newspapers under the final advertisement: ‘To-day’s wills.’ Truly, the wages of sin are low. Should we not conclude that if bread is so dear, and flesh and blood cheap, there is no great inducement for the sale of flesh and blood, except the cost of bread? Perhaps it is the easiest way, but only for those to whom all ways would be easy.
84 There is no remedy for what the social campaigners call the condition of our streets, except an alteration65 in the mind of the men who walk in them; Christianity cannot help, for Christianity attempts to solve this problem by purging66 sin, instead of realising misfortune. Thus too many Christians67 justify Tacitus: ‘After the burning of Rome, suspicion fell on the Emperor. In order to allay68 them, the Emperor embarked69 on a series of persecutions; among those he persecuted70 was a sect71 that called themselves Christians, who had incurred72 the animosity of the populace owing to their sullen73 hatred74 of mankind.’
Tacitus was wrong, but then he was judging the Christians of his day as agitators75. The streets will alter when the houses along the streets alter, when mankind has found love in the mind, when it is no longer content with the love of the body. The majority of men seem to approach life as pigs do the trough. Visit a West End restaurant, and you will be sure. In that trough are not only curds76 and whey, and truffles, and other suitable dainties; but excessive clothes and jewellery, honours, false social values, irrelevant77 powers; so long as the Gadarene crowd nuzzle and fight about that trough, so long will many of those, who are not Gadarene in the spirit, be infected with envy and desire, so long will they be driven to shrillness78 and self-advertisement, so long drawn by popularity and repelled79 by fame. Meanwhile, it naturally follows that what many call vice should endure, for vice is the satisfaction that dulls the flesh when the spirit aches. Happy men have no vices80; it is only the unhappy, the hungry, fly to them. For my part, if I had to make laws for a new society, I would make few. I should say rather that we will build our new society so that all may be assured security and justice, but no more. If we were to establish justice, we should automatically do away with the curse of the world, which is wealth. It might be a pity. It may be that Anatole France is right when he says: ‘The devil dead, good-bye sin. Maybe beauty, this ally of the devil, will vanish with him. Maybe that we shall not again see the flowers that intoxicate81, and the eyes that slay82.’ Still, one would like to see it tried.
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1
flirt
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| v.调情，挑逗，调戏；n.调情者，卖俏者 | |
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adepts
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| n.专家，能手( adept的名词复数 ) | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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landlady
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| n.女房东，女地主 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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truthful
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| adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的 | |
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continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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promenade
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| n./v.散步 | |
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ogle
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| v.看；送秋波；n.秋波，媚眼 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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ignobly
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| 卑贱地，下流地 | |
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faction
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| n.宗派，小集团；派别；派系斗争 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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congregate
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| v.(使)集合，聚集 | |
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calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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charing
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| n.炭化v.把…烧成炭，把…烧焦( char的现在分词 )；烧成炭，烧焦；做杂役女佣 | |
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civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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imbued
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| v.使（某人/某事）充满或激起（感情等）( imbue的过去式和过去分词 )；使充满；灌输；激发（强烈感情或品质等） | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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iniquity
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| n.邪恶；不公正 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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aphorism
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| n.格言，警语 | |
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warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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reigns
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| n.君主的统治( reign的名词复数 )；君主统治时期；任期；当政期 | |
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45
undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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46
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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47
lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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48
furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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49
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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50
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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52
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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53
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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54
pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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55
bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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56
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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58
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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molestation
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| n.骚扰，干扰，调戏；折磨 | |
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devour
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| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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vilely
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| adv.讨厌地，卑劣地 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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66
purging
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| 清洗； 清除； 净化； 洗炉 | |
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Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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allay
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| v.消除，减轻(恐惧、怀疑等) | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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persecuted
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的过去式和过去分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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incurred
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| [医]招致的，遭受的； incur的过去式 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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75
agitators
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| n.（尤指政治变革的）鼓动者( agitator的名词复数 )；煽动者；搅拌器；搅拌机 | |
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76
curds
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| n.凝乳( curd的名词复数 ) | |
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irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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shrillness
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| 尖锐刺耳 | |
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repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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80
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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intoxicate
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| vt.使喝醉，使陶醉，使欣喜若狂 | |
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slay
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| v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮 | |
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