“LA MODE” IN HER BIRTH-PLACE.
Chacun à sa mode, et les ânes à l’ancienne.—Modish Proverb.
The Honourable James Howard, in the year 1764, wrote a sprightly comedy, entitled ‘The English Monsieur.’ The hero is an individual who sees nothing English that is not execrable. An English meal is poison, and an English coat degradation. He once challenged a tasteless individual who had praised an English dinner; and, says the English Monsieur, “I ran him through his mistaken palate, which made me think the hand of justice guided my sword.” He can tell whether English or French ladies have passed along the moist road before him, by the impressions that they leave.
“I have often,” he remarks, “in France, observed in gardens, when the company used to walk after a small shower of rain, the impression of the French ladies’ feet. I have seen such bonne mine in their footsteps, that the King of France’s maître de danse could not have found fault with any one tread amongst them all. In this walk,” he adds, “I find the toes of English ladies ready to tread upon one another.”
Subsequently our “English Monsieur” quarrels with a friend, because he had found fault with “a pair of French tops” worn by the Philogallist, and which were so noisy when the wearer moved in them, that the other’s mistress could not hear a word of the love made to her. The wearer justifies the noise as a fashionable French noise; “for look you, Sir, a French noise is agreeable to the air, and therefore not unagreeable, and therefore not prejudicial to the hearing; that is to say, to a person who has seen the world.” The slave of Gallomania even finds comfort, when his own mistress rejects him, in the thought that “’twas a denial with a French tone of voice, so that ’twas agreeable!” and when she bids him a final adieu, he remarks to a friend, “Do you see, Sir, how she leaves us? she walks away with a French step.”
Such was the early allegiance rendered even in this country to the authority of France in the matters of “Mode,” of that ever-variable queen, of whom a French writer himself has despairingly said, that she is the despot of ladies and fops; “La mode est le tyran des femmes et des fats.”
But Paris is the focus of insurrection, and Fashion itself has had to endure many a rebellious assault. Never was rebellion more determined than that carried on against towering plumes.
In Paris, feathers and head-dress extended so outrageously, both in a vertical and a horizontal direction, that a row of ladies in the pit stalls, or in the front row of the boxes, effectually barred the “spectacle” from an entire audience in the rear. The fashion was suppressed by a Swiss, who was as well known in the Paris theatres as the celebrated critical trunk-maker once was in our own galleries. The Swiss used to attend, armed with a pair of scissors; and when he found his view obstructed by the head-dresses in front, he made a demonstration of cutting away all the superfluous portions of the head-dresses which interfered with his enjoyment. At first, the result was that the ladies made way for him, and he obtained a front place; but overcome by his obstinate warfare they at length hauled down their top-knots, and by yielding defeated the Swiss,—for he never got a front place afterwards.
I will take the liberty of adding here, that the fans used by Queen Elizabeth were usually made of feathers, and were as large as a modern hand fire-screen, with all sorts of devices thereon, such as would have singularly delighted an astronomical Chinese philosopher. Sir Francis Drake gave her one of this description, and she used to leave fans of a similar description at country houses as memorials of her visits; as, for instance, when she left Hawsted Hall, she dropped her silver-handled fan into the moat. Happy of course was the lucky man who got it thence. But to get back to France.
Carlin, the famous French harlequin, once excited universal laughter by appearing on the stage, not with the usual rabbit’s tail in his harlequin’s cap, but with a peacock’s feather, and that of such length, that the stage was hardly high enough for him. If the laughter however was universal, there was not wanting something of indignation, for lofty feathers formed a fashion in which Marie Antoinette very much rejoiced, and old royalists thought that Carlin ought to be sent to prison for his impertinence; but Carlin had not ventured on the caricature but by superior order, and the King would not consent to his being molested.
The fashion deserved to be caricatured, for feathers and head-dresses had raised themselves to such an outrageous elevation, when Mdlle. Bertin, the milliner, and Marie Antoinette set a fashion between them which ruined many a family, that they who followed the mode to the extreme were compelled, as they rode in carriages, either to hang their heads out at the door, or to set on the floor of the vehicle.
When Hardicanute lived at the house of Osgod Clappa, the Clapham district, which took its name from the chief, was not half so obsequious in copying the costume and carriage of the royal dandy, as all France was in transforming themselves into multiplied copies of the consort of Louis XVI.
And what a cruel ceremony was the dressing of that same Queen! When Marie Antoinette, in the days of her cumbersome greatness, stood of a morning in the centre of her bed-chamber, awaiting, after her bath, her first article of dress, it was presented to her, or rather it was passed over her royal shoulders by the “dames d’honneur.” Perhaps, at the very moment, a princess of the blood entered the room (for French Queens both dressed and dined in public), the right of putting on the primal garment of her Majesty immediately devolved upon her, but it could not be yielded to her by the “dame d’honneur;” the latter, arresting the chemise de la Reine as it was passing down the royal back, adroitly whipped it off, and, presenting it to the “première dame,” that noble lady transferred it to the princess of the blood. Madame Campan had once to give it up to the Duchess of Orléans, who, solemnly taking the same, was on the point of throwing it over the Queen’s head, when a scratching (it was contrary to etiquette to knock) was heard at the door of the room. Thereupon entered the Countess de Provence, and she being nearer to the throne than the lady of Orléans, the latter made over her office to the new-comer. In the meantime, the Queen stood like Venus as to covering, but shaking with cold, for it was mid-winter, and muttering “what an odious nuisance!” The Countess de Provence entered on the mission which had fallen to her; and this she did so awkwardly, that she entirely demolished a head-dress which had taken three hours to build. The Queen beheld the devastation, and got warm by laughing outright.
As England had its “macaronies,” its “bloods,” its “bucks,” its “dandies,” and its “exquisites,” so France had its “hommes à bonnes fortunes,” its “petits-maîtres,” its “importuns,” its “élégans,” and last of all, its “lions.” With us, variety of names scarcely indicated variety of species; the “macaroni” and the “exquisite” were simply the fast and fashionable men of their respective times; their titles were conferred by the people, not arrogated by themselves.
It was otherwise with our neighbours. The “hommes à bonnes fortunes” assumed the appellation, and therewith became the terror of fathers and husbands. His glory was to create a “scandal”—to be ever mixed up with the coteries of the women, and to be for ever fighting the men. Compared with him, the “importuns,” who took the Duc de Beaufort for their Magnus Apollo, and the “petits-maîtres,” who swore by their great master, the Prince de Condé, were simply harmless fops.
The “elegant” was the first of the butterfly race who exhibited a calmness of bearing. He smiled rather than answered, when spoken to; never gazed at his reflection in a glass, but concentrated his looks upon his own proper person. He was in a continual calm ecstasy at the sight of so charming a doll, so admirably dressed.
“The ‘elegant,’” says Mercier, “pays visits of not more than a quarter of an hour’s duration. He no longer proclaims himself the ‘friend of the duke,’ the ‘lover of the duchess,’ or the ‘indispensable man at little suppers.’ He speaks of the retirement in which he lives, of the chemistry which he studies, of his distaste for the great world. He lets others speak; and while they speak, an almost imperceptible smile of derision flutters on his lips. He is dreaming while he listens to you. He does not noisily leave a room, but glides out of it; and a quarter of an hour after he has quitted you, he writes you a note, as if he had not seen you for months, just to show you that he is an absent man.”
The “elegant” was not without his uses. He brought down superlativeism. Exaggeration of speech and of dress went out as he came in. This change extended to female as well as male society. He rendered social intercourse however a difficulty for intellectual men. The latter had indeed no difficulty in talking of science with the wise, of knowledge with the learned, of war with the soldier, and of dogs and horses with the nobles; but he did find a difficulty in talking about nothing with those fashionable women who cared only for the subject most patronized by the “elegant.”
What dreadful guys were the French children of the middle of the last century! Their monkeys, who danced upon cords, for the edification of the grande nation, were not more ridiculous. Fancy a boy seven years old: his head was powdered profusely, and between his little shoulders hung the wide tie or bag of his hair. Therewith he wore a full-sleeved and broad-skirted coat, immense ruffles, a cocked hat, not on his head,—it was not big enough for that,—but beneath his arm; and upon his tobacco-pipe of a thigh there hung a needle of a sword! And this young old man could hold himself erect, could bow like a judge, and was kept lean by late hours. He had, in the common acceptation of the words, neither wrists, arms, nor legs of his own. He seemed jointless, but he had been taught how to sit down, and how to walk a minuet.
Mercier groans over the contrast between French and English boys of this period. Take, he says, a little Gallic monseigneur to London, and introduce him to the son of a lord, a boy of his own age. What does he see? Clean, fair, and long flowing hair; the skin pure and healthy; the head unmolested by a peruke; the body supple and robust. The little Frenchman might be sulky thereat, but he found consolation in his gold-laced embroidery. He thinks to make an impression on the other boy by his profound bows, at which the English lad laughs; and when, according to the French custom, the little monseigneur advances to embrace the youthful Briton, the latter skips off, with the exclamation, that they wanted to take him in by pretending to introduce him to a playfellow, which proved to be only a monkey.
The extravagances of fashion were carried to the utmost in France when it was the custom for ladies not only to keep the head powdered and uncleaned, but to wear over it a napkin less clean still. The authors of the period are murderously satirical against a mode which especially prescribes that the napkin should not only seem dirty, but be so. Lady Mary Wortley Montague however thought the idea admirable, and she adopted it with a nasty alacrity.
The fashion nevertheless could not long “obtain,” and soon we find la Mode raised from an art to a science, and women devoting themselves to the study thereof with an intensity worthy of a better cause.
A pretty woman, says Mercier, meaning thereby a pretty Frenchwoman, daily goes twice through the ceremony of the toilet. The first was a mystery, from which lovers were as rigorously banished as the profane from solemn rites in the temples of old. A lover, says Mercier, dare not enter his lady’s tiring-bower but at an appointed hour. You may deceive a woman, but you must never come upon her by surprise: that is the rule; the most favoured and the most liberal of lovers never dares to infringe thereon.
Mercier however seems to have had free admission to the performance of the early ceremony; for he says that thereat mysterious use was made of all the cosmetics whose application beautifies the skin. He only alludes to “other preparations which, among women, form a science apart,—ah! I might say, a whole encyclopædia.”
The second toilet he describes as a game invented by coquetry. If faces be thus made before a glass, it was, he says, with a studied grace. It was not contemplation, but admiration. If the finger was run through the long curls, it was only for effect, for they had already been duly arranged and perfumed. It was at this second toilet that the world was present. The lovers fluttered round the half-dressed object of what they called their love,—and that object was only a quarter dressed, and looking not unlike Anadyomene herself as to form and feature and position, but with a glance in her eyes and a significance in her bearing that bespoke much more the Venus Pandemia than the Venus Ourania. And there too were the abbés, who were permanent lovers wheresoever they were to be found; they were of all sizes and conditions of health, but they were all, without exception, gay, gallant, witty, impudent, and blasphemous beyond all belief, and happily beyond all conception. Reputations were made and unmade at these morning toilets; and as for the detail of the dressing, while the coquet and causerie were going on, it was very like that which Pope has so brilliantly described in the Rape of the Lock, and in which a reputation died at every word.
In modern days France has become more than ever the locality where the Popess Fashion is enthroned, and whose slipper is reverently kissed by a devoted world. Parenthetically may I say that the custom of kissing the Pontiff’s slipper arose from the time when one of the Leos, having been offended by an act of one of his fingers, cut it off, and in his strange humility would no longer permit his hand to be saluted by the faithful. That was a queer cause for a strange fashion; but it rests only on legendary authority. In France causes as strange, sometimes more and sometimes less pleasant, have fixed the fashion of the hour. Last century,—that is to say, during something more than the traditionary “nine days” of that century,—the rage in Paris was for pantaloons made, from aloes, the colour of a lady’s finger-nails, between rosy tint and delicate blue.
France not only gave the fashion for fine dresses, but also prescribed how people should visit in them. It was in Paris, about the year 1770, that was introduced the custom of visiting en blanc, as it was called; that is by leaving a card. The old ladies and gentlemen who loved to show their costume, called this fashion fantastic; but it has its advantages, and, though sometimes anti-social, is perhaps generally less so than it at first sight appears. Society would often gain nothing by the closer contact of individuals.
There was wit however in many of the modish inventions of the Parisians. Here is an instance. La Harpe was the vainest of men, and the most unfortunate of authors. His pieces were invariably failures; but he used to speak of their success with as little regard to truth as the Czar Nicholas and his Muscovite “gentlemen” show, when, being thoroughly well beaten, they go and outrage Heaven with thanks for a victory. La Harpe’s tragedy of “Les Barmécides” was hissed off the stage; but he complacently pottered about its merits. He was one day riding in the Bois de Boulogne with the Duchess de Grammont and another lady, when a man was heard calling for sale “Cannes à la Barmécide.” La Harpe rapturously summoned him to the carriage-door, at the request of the Duchess, who wished to make him a present of a walking-stick à la Barmécide, in celebration of the success achieved by his tragedy. “But why do you call your canes à la Barmécide?” said La Harpe. “I will show you,” said the man; and taking off the ivory head, he pointed to a whistle within, warranted to be shrill of note, and which the vendor pronounced to be very useful to owners of good dogs and hissers of bad tragedies. La Harpe could have shed “tears of bile,” says Beaumarchais; and, what is worse, the story got abroad, and the tailors profited by it, and sporting vests with a little pocket to carry a whistle, were immediately named “vestes à la Barmécide.”
What the Bourse and Royal Exchange are to the magnates of the commercial world, the Temple in Paris is (and Rag Fair and Houndsditch in London are or have been) to the dealers in the cast-off skins, if we may so speak, of glittering metropolitan and other snakes. It is especially at Paris that the commerce of renovated ancient garments (dix-huits, as they are sometimes called, because deux fois neuf) is carried on with eagerness.
The locality of the Temple, where knights displayed a sovereign splendour and the roués of Paris laughed at the philosophers’ splendid wit,—where kings put their plate in pawn, and where the people made prisoners of kings,—was turned to something like base uses when, upon its sacred or classic soil,—soil, at all events, on which flourished a giant crop of varied memories,—was erected the arcaded and pilastered rotunda, beneath which dealers drove bargains in dilapidated habits. The Paris class of such dealers is a class apart, who barter, sell, and re-sell; and through whose hands pass the rejected garments of court and city. There, in old chests, may still be found tarnished lace coats, which once shone brilliantly at the court of Louis XV.; and embroidered robes, whose original wearers sat at the suppers of the Regent, and laughed at Heaven. By the side of the republican carmagnole hangs the red robe of the parliamentary magistrates, or judges rather, with something of the senator annexed,—a little of the legislative with a trifle of the executive, and not very much of either,—and who wore those scarlet robes on days of high rejoicing, when the grand wearers of them were accustomed, as they met at the tribunal, not to bow but to curtsey to each other. The act is not incongruous to the dress; for when the Turkish Ambassador first saw our own judges in their crimson draperies, seated in the House of Lords, he innocently asked who all those old ladies were who were huddled together and looked so uncomfortable. But to return to Paris.
It is to the Temple that the correct comedian runs who would fain discover the proper type of a lost mode of the last century. And this reminds me that the law in France is exceedingly strict, even with respect to the costume of a comedian. It is not many months since that a young French actress, possessed with becoming ideas of decency, refused to put on the extremely minute portion of transparent gauze which was allotted to her as her entire costume, in a fairy piece then about to appear. She averred that to stand so attired, rather undressed than dressed, before the public, would be an insult to the audience and a degradation to herself. The manager, not more modest than those delicate creatures generally are, did not comprehend, and therefore could not respect, the sentiment which influenced the young actress; and he accordingly summoned her to the tribunal of the law. The grave magistrate heard the case, examined the bit of gauze, condemned the poor girl to wear it, and went in the evening to see how she looked. The worthy official of the very blind Astræa repaired to the lady’s “loge” when all was over, and inquired pleasantly how she had felt when greeted by the acclamations of the audience. “I felt as if I were in the pillory,” said the really decens Nympha, “and that every shout was a missile flung at my head.” The solemn villain smiled, tapped her on the cheek, and bade her take courage; “that foolish excess of modesty,” he said, “would soon disappear!” Thus we see that Paris has not improved in this respect since the days when people saw “the Testament turned into melodramas nightly:”—
“Here Daniel in pantomime bids bold defiance
To Nebuchadnezzar and all his stuff’d lions;
While pretty young Israelites dance round the prophet,
In very thin clothing, and but little of it.
Here Begrand, who shines in this scriptural path
As the lovely Susanna, without e’en a relic
Of drapery round her, comes out of the bath
In a manner that, Bob says, is quite Eve-angelic.”
Many a royal garment has been carried off from the Temple to the theatres. The former place is most crowded about eleven in the morning. All the marchands d’habits in Paris assemble there at that hour, laden with the purchases which they have made during the early part of the day; and these purchases are immediately resold to the stationary dealers in the rotunda, who divide the same according to their respective merits and expected customers.
One of the best-dressed men in France under the Empire was General Dorsenne. “Look at Dorsenne,” Napoleon would say, “on the day of battle; he looks like the true type of a French general, while Murat has the air of a rider from Franconi’s.”
Dorsenne was about to set out for the campaign in Prussia. He was the possessor of a tasteful but brilliant uniform, which he was desirous of exhibiting as closely as possible to the enemy, and which he intended to wear at the balls at Berlin. It was duly packed up; and Dorsenne, who was to set out on the morrow, took it into his head to pay a visit in the evening to the Théâtre de la Gaîté, where they play such melancholy melodramas, in order to see the somewhat celebrated actor Tautain in one of his military characters. The first act passed off well enough; but in the second Tautain appeared in the full uniform of a general. Dorsenne was astonished; he put up his glass, recognized his property on Tautain’s back, and, exploding with wrath, he cried to his aide-de-camp:—
“Arrest that rascal; take him to the corps-de-garde; I will be there as soon as you; he has stolen my coat!”
The piece was interrupted: four soldiers escorted Tautain to the neighbouring “poste,” and there stood the General as scarlet as Major Bagstock.
“Where did you steal that coat, you wretched mountebank?” exclaimed Dorsenne.
“I am neither thief nor mountebank,” said Tautain, who was pale with rage and fright; “I bought it not two hours ago at the Temple.”
When the affair was examined into, Dorsenne’s valet turned out to be the thief. The latter was punished as he merited; and the General, leaving his coat, lace, and epaulettes to the comedian, went through the campaign in an old uniform and with his accustomed success.
In this quarter of the Temple takes place the last transformation of the black dress coat, the silk waistcoat, and the polished leather boots. The French feuilletoniste who is known by the name of M. D’Anglemont, has devoted much of his acute observation to the manners of the Temple Exchange. It is from him we learn that when a coat has passed through all its degrees of descent,—when it has been transferred from maker to owner, from the latter to his valet, from the valet to the porter, and from that functionary to the Norman who plies in Paris the vocation which is monopolized in London by sons of ancient Israel,—it soon after arrives at the Temple, the necropolis of Parisian costumes. It is there turned, mended, and re-made; and it has yet a phase to go through before it is ultimately sold to those Paris manufacturers who make “l’engrais de laine,” guano for worn-out clothes. This last phase it owes to the ingenuity of the brothers Meurt-de-Soif.
This name, Meurt-de-Soif, as we are told by M. D’Anglemont, is not a name invented by the Paris wits. The family of Meurt-de-Soif (Die of Thirst) has its residence in the sixth arrondissement. Its especial occupation is the purchase of old garments in huge quantities, which are made temporarily to wear a new aspect, and then sold to the suburban beaux who sun themselves beyond the Barriers.
The traffic carried on by this family takes place at night, by torch-light, and by Dutch auction. There you may see put up a coat from the studio of Humann, a genuine waistcoat from the hand of Blanc, and trousers whose incomparable cut declares them to have proceeded from the genius and shears of Morbach; in a word, the costume complete of a “fashionable” of the first water,—for how much? Three francs!—just half-a-crown!—the pleasantry of the vendor included, without extra charge.
This pleasantry is something like that of our “Cheap Jacks,” whose invention is so facile, and whose power of lying exceeds that of Osten-Sacken and the Czar together.
“Look, gentlemen,” exclaims one of the illustrious house in question; “this coat originally belonged to a Russian prince, and was the means of rendering him irresistible in the eyes of a danseuse of the Grande Chaumière. It subsequently became the admiration of all the inhabitants of the Closerie du Lilas, who saw its effect on the back of a celebrated corn-cutter. By means of this coat the valet of a ‘milord’ carried off a figurante from the little Théâtre des Délassemens, who mistook him for his master. The coat has come to us immediately from this last possessor, the extravagance of whose Dulcinea compelled him to part from it. Well, gentlemen, notwithstanding all these glorious souvenirs, in spite of all the conquests due to it, I give it to you, gentlemen, at three francs! Three francs! there is an opportunity for those accustomed to profit by it!”
The coat put up at three francs has a gradually diminishing value put upon it, until it is at last purchased at thirty sous. Morbach’s trousers go for a franc; and Blanc’s waistcoat for the small price of fifty centimes—fivepence!
The garments thus purchased are often only retained for a single Sunday, some fête day, on which the poor cavalier desires to look splendid, though it be with a second-hand splendour, in the eyes of his “belle.” If the costume holds together through the severe ordeal of a night’s dancing, it is often resold to the Temple merchants, who repair the damage, and again fit it to the back of some ephemeral dandy of the suburbs who wishes but to shine for “a little day.”
“La Mère Moskow” drives her own trade by the side of the Meurt-de-Soifs. She is an ex-vivandière of the Grand Army, who lets out body-linen to poor gentlemen suffering from scarcity. A shirt may be hired of her for a week for the modest price of twopence, the wearer being required merely to leave his old one, by way of a security deposit. Nothing can be more delicate than, not the deposit, but the manner in which the request is made; and a shirt of La Mère Moskow might have been worn, without scruple, at Lord O’Grady’s by the Reverend Ozias Polyglot, or the better-endowed Reverend Obadiah Pringle.
But I shall have more to say hereafter touching Gallic influences incidentally; I will therefore turn from persons and places to things, and, hat in hand, discourse of what I hold.