Possibly the gay lady may come to the “bitter end” some day, but at present, except from the moral point of view, she is not an object for commiseration. She at least has all that she deliberately bargains for—fine clothes, rich food, plenty of money, a carriage to ride in, the slave-like obedience of her “inferiors,” and the fulsome adulation of those who deal with her for her worth. Very often (though under the circumstances it is doubtful if from any aspect this is an advantage) she finds a fool with money who is willing to marry her; but whether she is content to accept the decent change, and to abide by it, of course depends on her nature. Whether her husband adheres to his rash bargain is a question that time only can solve. He at least, if he be a vicious man as well as a fool, may argue that she will be little the worse than when he found her if he leaves her; while possibly she may gather consolation from the same method of argument.
Anyway, she has a long way to descend before she may be branded as “common.” At present she is not even included in the police-returns. Any blue-coated guardian of the peace, in humble hope of earning a sixpence, would be only too eager to touch his hat to her and open her carriage-door to-morrow, and that even at the door of her genteel residence, which is in a neighbourhood much too respectable to permit it to be stigmatised as a “brothel.”
The police-report just quoted specifies that the 8600 prostitutes infesting the metropolis include 921 well-dressed and living in houses of ill-fame. This on the face of it, however, is significant of how very little the police really know of the matter they venture to report on. The women here alluded to are of the unobtrusive and orderly sort, the mainstay of whose occupation is to pass as respectable persons. They would be the last to resort for permanent lodging at houses whose fame was so ill that the greenest policeman on beat could point them out. It is altogether too hard to fasten the imputation of infamous on the holders of the houses in which this class of unfortunate seeks lodging. In very many cases the women are actuated by a twofold reason in gaining admission to the house of a householder who does not suspect her real character. In the first place, and as already stated, she wishes to pass in the immediate neighbourhood as respectable; and in the next place she not unnaturally seeks to evade payment of the monstrously high rate of rent that the common brothel-keeper would impose on her. Moreover, the peculiar branch of the terrible business she essays prospers under such management, where it would not if it were otherwise conducted. As a body, the women in question must be regarded as human creatures who have not gone _altogether_ to the bad; and though in grim truth it may be in the highest degree absurd for anyone to cast herself deliberately into a sea of abomination, and then to affect a mincing manner of seriousness, much allowance should be made for the possibility that the fatal leap was not taken with cool forethought, or that the urging to it was due to some devilish genius whom there was no resisting. Anyhow, it would be hard on them, poor wretches, to compel them to give up their endeavours to conceal their degradation if, apart from mercenary motives, they are heartily desirous of concealing it.
