The Memphis Appeal

WOMEN AS SEDUCERS.

THE WORDING OF AN OLD NEW JERSEY STATUTE.

Which Attaches Pains and Penalties to Women Who Used Cosmetics, Washes, Paints, Artificial Teeth, False Hair or High-Heeled Shoes.

From the London Telegraph.

It is a matter of just pride to Englishmen that one of their compatriots should have attained to the position of a high authority on the laws and political institutions of the United States of America. That position, however, may perhaps be found to entail responsibilities which Mr. Bryce can never have contemplated in the composition of his monumental work. We sincerely trust that he will not be called upon by an army of American correspondents of, let us say, the more ornamental sex, to determine what is the amount of legal validity inherent in an old colonial statute still unrepealed, which has just been discovered among the archives of the State of New Jersey. How delicate a question this would be for the accomplished jurist to answer will appear even from the most cursory glance at the enactment to which we refer. It provides—and with a directness which puts many of our modern statutes to shame—that "all women of whatever age, profession or rank, whether maids or widows, who shall after this act impose upon, seduce or betray into matrimony any of his Majesty's subjects by virtue of scents, cosmetics, washes, paints, artificial teeth, false hair or high-heeled shoes shall incur the penalty now in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanors." We shall not be far wrong, we think, in saying that this statute speaks for itself; and we may, perhaps, be justified in adding that, if still operative, it would be worth while to publish it in some popular form in New Jersey, under the heading of "Important to Ladies." On the question of its continuing legal validity we pronounce no opinion. It may be argued that as witchcraft has ceased to be an offense at common law, and as there are no "like misdemeanors"—unless, indeed, we so describe the attempted witcheries aimed at in this very statute—no punishment is prescribed for the prohibited feminine practices. To this, however, it may be answered that no punishment need be expressly described—inasmuch as the penalties "now in force" that is, at the date of the act—remain still applicable; whence it would follow that a lady of New Jersey might be burned at the stake upon due conviction of having worn high-heeled shoes. Perhaps it is safe to assume that the law would not nowadays be enforced in its full rigor; but it must be a comfort to all of us to reflect that this is not the only or most conclusive reason for anticipating no such painful incident. The offense itself has become extinct. We survey the list of forbidden artifices from scents down to high-heeled shoes and with the possible exception of first and last we find none of which the use has not been forever discarded by every member of the female sex. Cosmetics, washes, paints are unknown. The arts of the dentist and the perruquier are never called into requisition in these days; and we have no doubt at all—or, at any rate, we dare not express a doubt—that if a new Hopkins the Witchfinder were directed to make perquisition of witchcraft in all the ladies' dressing-rooms, not only in New Jersey, but throughout the whole world—that is, the whole civilized world, for female savages, to their shame be it spoken, notoriously "get themselves up"—he would return empty handed from his quest, and without a single rouge-pot or powder-puff to bless himself with.

Occasionally, it is true, we come across examples of a tendency on the part of the decorative sex to relapse into its old weakness for undue self-adornment. Thus, for instance, it has been recently found necessary by the Bishop of Rochester to issue a protest against the "overdressing" of girls who offer themselves for confirmation. "Mock pearls in the humbler class," he says, "and white satin shoes in the higher," should be gently but firmly discouraged. "Nothing," he goes on to add, "would distress me more than to have to send a candidate back for showy or tawdry apparel; but for example's sake it may be necessary for me to do it." Perhaps, if the excesses in attire do not go beyond those described by the Bishop, it might be as well if he were to extend to them his fatherly indulgence. The Hebrew prophet, after all, had a longer indictment to bring against the wardrobes and toilet tables of the "daughters of Zion, walking and mincing as they go." He had to threaten them with the taking away of "the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings, the rings and nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods and the veils." What would the right reverend prelate have said to that for an outfit? It is undoubtedly monstrous, and we can only rejoice that in point of simplicity the ladies of the present day have as much the advantage of the daughters of Zion as of the witches of New Jersey. Their state is the more gracious, because no one certainly can say that they have run to the other extreme and that they err on the side of excessive austerity in the matter of attire. It has been their triumph, in short, to have practiced the art of self-adornment without provoking repressive legislation, pulpit anathemas, or a general insurrection of husbands. Neither the Hebrew nor the Roman ladies succeeded in hitting on the golden mean with so nice an exactitude; for the former, as we have seen, subjected themselves to a prophetic denunciation, while the latter brought down upon themselves the enactment of a sumptuary law, which was, perhaps, the severest blow sustained by the millinery industry in the whole course of recorded history. The disuse of sumptuary legislation as applied to the female sex has been attributed, it is true, by some cynics to the tardy recognition of the impossibility of setting bounds to women's ingenuity in discovering new objects of expenditure; but the question is just one of those on which cynicism—a form of philosophy which has never stood high in feminine favor—is least entitled to a hearing. And it is only common justice to remember that this same great State of the ancient world which most severely repressed the extravagances of female self-adornment dealt not less sternly with the shortcomings of that sex which is indirectly responsible for such excesses. Let it never be forgotten that the primary object of the Lex Papia Poppaea was the promotion of marriage, and that it came down—'instar acervi milliarii laterum,' as the Roman historian puts it—upon the incorrigible bachelors.

Here it is that the old colonial statute of New Jersey appears to us to be somewhat lacking in legislative equity. There is nothing to show that it was supplemented by any enactment imposing upon the male sex any duty correlative to the restriction prescribed to women. What the Puritan Fathers of the State appear to have been thinking of was not so much the improvement and elevation of the woman as the commercial protection of the man. The statute is, in fact, in the nature of an adulteration act. Women were to be prevented from obtaining husbands under false pretenses, whether of hair, height, complexion, or what not; and the successful hoisting upon the unwary male person of "beauties" which turned out not to be the genuine article was made a capital offense. This being so, it would only have been fair to encourage the possessors of natural and unmanufactured personal attractions by legislating smartly against masculine celibacy. The old colonial statute, however, being passed, like the laws so bitterly denounced on female suffrage platforms, by men alone, and not by women, the injustice was, of course, left unredressed. How the statute succeeded in this one-sided operation we shall now probably never know. We entertain, nevertheless a very shrewd suspicion that the number of "His Majesty's subjects seduced or betrayed into matrimony after the act" showed no material reduction on the number of His Majesty's subjects who had experienced the fate in question. The excellent legislators of New Jersey had yet to learn what legislation could do and what it could not, and assuredly they would have found that the task of restraining the blandishments of the female sex belonged most distinctly to the latter category. If, moreover, they had studied human nature in either sex a little more closely, they would have declined the legislative attempt in question; not merely because it was impossible, but because it was superfluous. It is not more idle to forbid women to set off their natural attractions to the best advantage than it is unnecessary to prohibit them from carrying this process beyond the point at which art overbalances nature. For to do this is to defeat their own object and to repel those whom they would attract. In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird, and few, indeed, and too weak minded to be worth the legislator's attention, must be the birds who are caught by such openly spread nets as the "old time" ladies of New Jersey would appear to have disposed in front of their intended victims. Let us again congratulate ourselves on the improved methods of procedure which prevails at the present day, when, if nature does not oust art altogether, she is simulated by it so successfully as to be herself deceived. The difference, moral and physical, between this and reality is so infinitesimal as to disappear—especially by candle light.