WILMOT ON THE RAMPAGE. " BEDS I HAVE SLEPT IN."

Observer, Volume 4, Issue 99, 5 August 1882, Page 328

WILMOT ON THE RAMPAGE. " BEDS I HAVE SLEPT IN."

No. 2. — " A woman's fire years' experience in colonial life — a publication of thrilling interest, containing astounding revelations,, exposing the haunts of vice, crime, and cruelty." The irrepressible Lotti has now issued the second number of the above lively publication, a copy o£ which has been sent to us with a request to review it. In her preface to this number, the versatile authoress thanks the public for their appreciation of her monthly serial, and promises to print a second edition of the first number. Those members of the Press who have treated her book " with silent contempt," she pities and forgives. Magnanimous Lotti ! Chapter six is entitled, " Melbourne by day, and Melbourne by night.'' A great portion <of the number is occupied with extracts and criticisms hashed up from various colonial papers, and distributed throughout the pamphlet, often haphazard, and without much sequence or connection with the contiguous matter. She opens the battle with a salvo of artillery at the priests and nouveau j riche of the colonies. She denounces an aristocracy without blue-blood, but with wealth and exclusiveness ; while she condemns the prevailing religion as being " kept down, like a fashion in ' vogue of keeping lap-dogs down in stature by administering daily doses of ardent spirits." Women (says Lotti) are kept still as dolls and milliners' dummies. " They are moulded like wax. Research, which woidd bo considered among men meritorious, is forbidden to women as immodest'; thereby leaving them at the mercy of the authors of unscrupulous and obscene secret literature " — oh, fie, Lotti! Do you mean to insinuate, you abandoned old sinner, that ladies ever read naughty literature, such as the Decameron ? Gro and tell that story to the marines. We happen to know that our girls never read anything but the Bible, Sunday-school tracts, fashion and cookerybooks. You are a base traduccr of the sex, Lotti. Contrasting the " pious frauds " of Melbourne with the absence of means of intellectual recreation on the Sabbath, she pronounces Melbourne and Sydney, of all cities in the world, the most besottted in their drinking habits ; "there was nothing but drink, drink, drink, shout, shout, shout all day long." She describes the girls who prowl " on the block," like sharks on the lookout for matrimonial prizes ; an economical beau who made one pair of gloves last as long as two by wearing each one alternately ; slates the police and the 400 or 500 bookmakers and betting gentiy, " bedizened in jewellery, with rosy cheeks and rosier noses ;" describes a visit to '* The Saddling Paddock," and other equally interesting features of high and low life in Melbourne. OUR MABUIED BAKES is the subject of the next chapter, which opens with a denunciation of " half -cured imbeciles" who propagate children, and deplores the birth of so many female children, — a large percentage of Avhom^must, in the absence of polygamy, become degraded, — •" while," says Lotti, " the old men, the diseased and. malformed, survive to perpetuate the race of orthodoxy and siTbmission to a few tyrants, Avho swell, feast, and laugh at the dupes who tire led by the nose." This is what one may call strong language. She attended a discussion on the subject by the Eclectic Society of Melbourne, where one of the members (a Malthusian of the extreme type) suggested that for a few years all female infants should be drowned — Chinese fashion at birth. We are not told whether or not tli is man is married, or lias a bald head. Another gentleman (?) thought it would be an honoured and lawful custom to put to a painless and easy death all very aged people, cripples, and insane persons. Wo presume this was a y<ii'y young sort of person, and not at present a cripple, though there is no telling how soon the public advocacy of his peculiar theories might not render him one. She refers to Ireland and its " virtuous, prolific peasantry " — prolific in more ways than one. A LOTEB'S STRATAGEM. Next to persecution from the clergy, Lotti's bete nolr was some troublesome lover. According to her own story, she was constantly being importuned with offers of one sort and another ; her fatal beauty acted like a spell ; she was a perfect Helen of Troy ; no man could look on her face and forget. " A gentleman well-known (by the police, perhaps) and much respected (by all who did not know him) wrote her many love letters, which she, pure soul, left unaswered ; but her tormentor adopted an ingenious expedient to secure an introduction. He folloAved her home, waited patiently until all was quiet, and then commenced to howl piteously outside her garden gate. When she opened the door, he asked for a glass of water, and pretended that he had a broken leg. She gave him some water and removed his boot, and then, to his disgust, hailed a cab, and got the driver to lift him in and take him home. Next day she observed him walking up Collins-street as spry as a squirrel. She merely asked him, "how are your poor feet?" The wretch was a married man. SLOPS FOB CIIINIQUX. Lotti goes, without gloves, for the " apostate priest." She describes him as " a bandy-legged, coarse featured man, about 70 years of age, whose smile revealed to any person of discernment his utter contempt for his dupes." She then launches out in this st3'le : '" Filthy books, purporting to have been written by the ex-priest, of his own unhallowed life, were freely sold to the outward religious class, who gloated over the beastly details of his prurient imagination. The same cluss of people who carp and quibble over the length, of a ballet-dancer's skirts, seemed to have taken this opportunity to give vent to the worst passions of the human race. Mothers took their daughters to be instructed by this minister into all the particulars of a wanton's life and the ■lowest forms of unnatural excess. Psalms were sung, money freelj gathered in, books sold ; and each evening after the lecture, mature, respect-able-looking women were seen smiling into the ex-priest's anxious, lustful face, as they partedwith their florins fora bundle of "mental poison," and cheap slanders of their sisters in the Christian •religion." ."Further on she remarks that "middleaged men, who in the fire and vigor of 'their lives were renowned for. their debaucheries, seemed to

thoroughly enjoy, vrith their faded appetites^ the _- relation of^ the ex-priest's experiences." Lotti , concludes with some very sulfcry remarks on. Chiniquy, with the following significant questions : — "If Ohiniquy was right, and all the ladies of the Catholic ijaith wantons, Chiniquy's mother must have been a . And who was Chiniquy's ' father ?" THE SOTTIS OP ANXtfALS. From the contemplation of Pastor- Chiniquy's shocking depravity, our authoress turns with touching and poetic tenderness to weep over the death of a favourite hound, which she hopes " may also be blessed with the hew progressive life, and pass through infinite space to future happiness in meeting with those he loved and left." As to this doctrine of the " soul of things," which teaches that animals are immortal and will be domesticated, with man in the happy hunting grounds, we don't like it at all! We prefer Gr. A. Brown's conditional immortality to the theories of Denton and Lotti Wilmot. It' would not be pleasant, for instance, to encounter lions and tigers in the spirit-land. Howden would hardly care to have Plumley's bear resurrected after he • had the satisfaction of hearing that it was defunct. We say nothing of the smaller parasites which proceed cul hijinxtum. " ENVY, MALICE, AND OPPOSITION." This is the title of chapter IX, the rest of the pamphlet being taken up with a record of the dire persecutions to which this innocent creature was subjected by envious and narrow-minded enemies— the Press, and particularly by a certain man, " whose very appearance was the embodiment of sensuality, who boasted of his success over the weaker sex, and was currently, reported to possess the secret of an Egyptian Love philter" (" filter," Lotti calls it) . This aged Lothario was smitten with Lotti's charms, and being repelled with that scorn and indignation, of which madame always had a plentiful stock on hand for all emergencies, notwithstanding the frequent calls on it — began to persecute her. Goaded by an article in the Town and Country Journal, accusing her of " dividing the swag" with Chiniqiiy, she. brought an action for libel, laying damages at £2000 ; and in the meantime she started lecturing on " Forbidden Fruit " and other equally piquant topics. At Newcastle she was persecuted by the police fox; Sunday-trading, by charging for admittance to her Sabbath evening lectures. The case was dismissed, after a very exciting ; trial, in which Lotti distinguished herself as a crossexamining barrister. Next came her libel action, in which she recovered £150 damages. During her examination she neatly tripped up the counsel for the defence. He insisted on knowing what she had sold in her cigar shop. She pretended to be ' bothered,' and the learned gentleman became more determined. Then, in a beautiful soft voice, Lotti said: — "You are wasting the time of the Court ; you know every article in that shop ; you were always hanging about it." In her next number she promises to describe Dunedin,- Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland.