“Besides, her husband always went to something or other that he belonged to on Sunday night—yes, I know it was very bad form from a salon standpoint to consider him at all; but you see she didn’t want it to look as if she had picked out the night when he had to be away. And the Samedis did sound well. The first Samedi was a great success. Mrs. Brotcher wore a light mauve princess dress that was made for the occasion. She got together fifteen or twenty men somehow, and an elderly French woman, a rather lively widow with a sense of humor that would have been useful to Mrs. Brotcher, gave some admirable assistance in managing the crowd. By a happy stroke the French professor brought with him a young Frenchman who called himself the Comte de Trouvel, or something of that sort. Ed Tranton, who was there, and who didn’t miss anything, said that it was killing to see Mrs. Brotcher, who remained seated, motion the count to a seat on the fauteuil beside her. Her plan for sitting like a sovereign was really quite wise for her. She is a trifle heavy, and her awkwardness has the finish that comes with a little Delsarte. Her method of sitting down always makes me think of a hotel bus backing to a carriage block. You never could appreciate the fun of this unless I gave you some of these details.”
“You are living up to your notion of it as history.”
“If you are not very appreciative the historian—”
“I am listening.”
“Ed Tranton says that more of the men talked to the lively French widow than seemed to him to be exactly symmetrical, but Mrs. Brotcher did not appear to care so long as she had the count. When Ed Tranton got into the Brotcher group, Mrs. Brotcher was saying to the count with a flip of her fan—I can just see it!—that she didn’t consider his behavior quite propre. The count roared and cast a longing glance toward the widow as if he couldn’t wait the chance to tell her. Poor Mrs. Brotcher meant convenable or comme il faut, of course. I doubt whether she ever knew why the count seemed so much amused. To her the evening was a brilliant, an epoch-making occasion. During the following week she greatly elaborated her plan. Her sister-in-law says that she felt the need of having one or two stars every night, like the count, who had enthusiastically promised to come again on the following Saturday. Mrs. Brotcher had cried over Mme. Roland and made up her mind to keep out of politics, though I fancy she did not see any immediate danger in any politics that was at all possible to her salon. Her idea was to go in for as much literary effect as she could get with a sprinkling of counts, colonels, professors, and judges. Naturally things couldn’t be as picturesque as when women wore high-waisted gowns and men imitated Napoleon. It was too bad not to have an abbé. I’m sure she wanted an abbé, in a circle of beaux esprits. A petit souper was planned for the second Saturday,—they had plain refreshments the first night. Well, the second Samedi came and with it the Professor, who apologized for the indisposition of the count, and little Dawlin of the Dynamo, who was to read some vers de société. That was all. The heart-breaking thing was that Brotcher, who had found it impossible to be present on the first occasion, appeared at the second Samedi to see what sort of an affair a salon was. Mrs. Brotcher wilted; but she revived somehow and appears to have expected great things of the third Samedi, which came with the Professor again, and Dawlin, and a Judge Troot, who had been asked alone, but who brought his wife. It was pitiful. Brotcher grinned over it, and told Mrs. Brotcher, it seems, that he thought she had better give up trying to be ‘saloon-keeper.’ But Mrs. Brotcher was hard to crush. She complained that so many of the nice men were married, and that you couldn’t get them very well without their wives, who quite plainly were impossible to a salon. On the other hand, the single men who were worth having seemed to be wedded to clubs. Even petits soupers would not fetch them. It was not for two or three months that Mrs. Brotcher gave up her dream. I believe the failure was a real grief to her, and she has thrown herself into clubs as if to blot out the past.”
When Women Wore High-waisted Gowns
