THE BASIS OF JOY

The Little God Who Perpetuates
 our Youth, Applauds our Follies,
 Picks our Pockets, Makes
 Havoc of our Reputations,
 and Holds

 our Griefs

 at Bay.

 A DISQUISITION ON LOVE.

(By Nancy O'Dell.)
No. VIII.

 MODESTY AND HYPOCRISY.

Modesty, at least in so far as it is artificial and conventional, is a by-product of hypocrisy. In women it is everywhere regulated by the prevailing fashion, as I hope to show more fully later on. In the meantime, the more conclusively to clinch this chapter, hear the evidence of the great Clement of Alexandria. "Women will scarce strip naked before their own husbands, affecting a plausible pretence of modesty, but any others who wish may see them at home shut up in their own baths. For they are not ashamed to strip before spectators, as if exposing their persons for sale. The baths are opened promiscuously to men and women; and there they strip for licentious indulgence (for from looking men get to loving), as if their modesty had been washed away in the bath. Those who have not become utterly destitute of modesty shut out strangers, but bathe with their own servants, and strip naked before their slaves, and are robbed by them, giving to the crouching menial liberty to lust, by permitting fearless handling. For those who are introduced before their naked mistress while in the bath, study to strip themselves in order to audacity in lust, casting off fear in consequence of the wicked custom." Clement, be it noted, is rebuking Alexandrian Christians. Cyprian rebuked even virgins vowed to chastity for indulging in the same practice. Ergo, modesty is not invariable in the religious. We shall see.

 RELIGION, AND MODESTY.

 The Christian Church, while frequently condoning, and even pandering to the vices of its more powerful patrons, has ever set a high value on the modesty of women. Clement of Alexandria bitterly rebuked the easy Christian women of his time—in whom physical modesty seems, indeed, to have been honored rather in the breach than the observance. Clement was a terrible stickler for appearances, advocating the extension of modesty well over the limits of prudishness. He tells the women, for instance, that they "should not seek to be graceful by avoiding broad drinking vessels that oblige them to stretch their mouths, in order to drink from narrow alabaster that cause them indecently to throw back the head, revealing to men their necks and breasts. The mere thought of what she is ought to inspire a woman with modesty." There is a tradition that, in the fourth century, James Bishop,of Nisibis, was passing a fountain, at which certain girls were washing their linen. As they worked they revealed sufficient of their bodies to shock the bishop, who thereupon cursed the fountain, which at once dried up, and changed the color of the girls' hair from black to red. " Here you have a miracle sufficiently insensate and ludicrous to delight all superstitious marvel-mongers. But, again, in this matter of modesty, Christian piety was ever busiest on the lip. There is abundant and nauseating proof that in many of the monasteries and nunneries of mediaeval Europe orgies of the most lascivious and immodest character were frequently indulged in. It was not for nothing that the novelists of an essentially religions age, concerned themselves chiefly with the loose amours of monks and nuns. The age was as libidinous as it was religious. These converts were a product of the age, and to offer them as proofs toward the condemnation of Christianity and the Catholic Church is the height of absurdity. Bandello, the naughtiest novelist of that naughty day, was a priest who died a bishop. Sasanova's friend, so skilful and lovely in the debauching of lovely Venetian nuns, became a cardinal.

 WOMAN AND MODESTY.

 I come to a question I needs must answer. Is woman naturally modest ? No ; she is naturally fashionable. What fashion dictates she does; what fashion prohibits she refrains from doing, declaring it " immodest." For years she bares her breasts, but will not show her calves ; and then the cycling craze sets in. Fashion adapts itself, bloomers replace skirts, and lovely woman shows her calves in perfect modesty. If fashion veered still further, and demanded absolute nudity as the latest thing in evening dress, lovely woman would adopt the custom more easily, and with fewer real blushes, than lordly man. Among naked savages (on the Upper Amazon, for instance) it is, remarked that the naked women expose themselves to the stranger's scrutiny more willingly than the naked men do. For whatever modesty may be worth, man (in the state of nature) has more of it than woman has. It was Adam, believe me, who first suggested those aprons of fig-leaves.

MODESTY IN GENERAL.

 We see, then, that modesty is primarily not a matter of chastity. Many scantily-clothed people are chaste; many fully-clothed people are unchaste. Among the Moslems, who are generally most scrupulously modest, the stand of sexual morals is low, as it is generally among the Christian nations. In Sparta, where modesty, as we understand it, did not exist, the morals— with some quaint exceptions, solely attributable to national tradition or accepted social precedent—were generally very good. Even in primitive Germany, side by side with exceptional sexual chastity, there was a notorious lack of modesty. The very clothing of the people of Europe during many centuries made scrupulous modesty almost impossible. "The shirt first began to be worn," we are told by a German authority, in the sixteenth century. From this fact, as well as from the custom of public bathing, we reach the remarkable result that for the German people the sight of complete nakedness was the daily rule up to the sixteenth century. Everyone undressed completely before going to bed, and in the vapor baths no covering was used. Again, the dances, both of the peasants and the townspeople, were characterised by very high leaps into the air. It was the chief delight of the dancers for the male to raise his partner as high as possible in the air, so that her dress flew up. That feminine modesty was in this respect very indifferent, we know from countless references made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It must not be forgotten that throughout the middle ages women wore no underclothes, and even in the seventeenth century the wearing of drawers by Italian women was regarded as singular. That with the disappearance of the baths and the use of body linen, a powerful influence was exerted on the creation of modesty, there can be little doubt."

 THAT NECESSARY GARMENT.

 As the remarks I made a week or two ago with reference to the reluctance of Englishwomen to commence the wearing of drawers has provoked some ignorant persons to the profession of unbelief, I cite one of the authorities. I might easily cite scores. Drawers were first worn in Europe by the Italian women, who were not and are not conspicuously chaste, and two centuries elapsed before the chaste daughters of Albion were induced to don the dreadful garment. See Dr. Havelock Ellis : "In England the use of drawers was almost unknown half a century ago, and was considered immodest and unfeminine. Tilt, a distinguished gynecologist of that period, advocated such garments made of fine calico and not to descend below the knee, on hygienic grounds. 'Thus understood,' he added, 'the adoption of drawers will doubtless become more general in this country, as, being worn without the knowledge of the general observer, they will be robbed of the prejudice usually attached to an appendage deemed masculine.'" The objection to drawers, you will notice, was entirely a "modest" objection. That Englishwoman's world of the middle of the nineteenth century was almost insanely prudish, and the dreadful bare-leggedness of it was frequent food for ribald jest. It formed (some little time earlier) the keynote of some of Rowlandson's naughtiest caricatures.


 MODESTY—THE BAIT.

 That modesty is an extremely efficacious sexual lure there can be no doubt, and to that fact its origin may be traced. In the field of sex it serves better than anything else to whet jaded appetites ; hence the tendency of worn-out rakes to mate with callow virgins, and hence the comparative rarity of virgins in lands where the men and women have elevated seduction to a science. On the whole subject I quote, in conclusion, another passage from Dr. Havelock Ellis' learned treatise:—" An interesting testimony to the part played by modesty in effecting the union of the sexes is furnished by the fact—to which attention has often been called—that the special modesty of women usually tends to disappear with the complete gratification of the sexual impulses. Viazzi goes so far as to argue that men are throughout more modest than women, but the points he brings forward, though often just, scarcely justify his conclusion. While the young virgin, however, is more modest and shy than the young man of the same age, the experienced married woman is usually less so than her husband. She has put off a sexual livery that has no longer any part to play in life, and would indeed be inconvenient and harmful, just as a bird loses its sexual plumage when the pairing season is over."

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article207387870 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article207388086
Truth (Perth, WA ) 1904, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article207388488