"I was at an embassy reception the other night. Papa said it was like a green-room, only not half so amusing. They talked in one corner as openly as you might speak of the Prince Imperial, about Mademoiselle Schneider's child. There were women of the company whose liaisons are as well known as their faces, and yet they were parfaitement bien reçues! Theresa is to be heard—or was to be heard till she went out of fashion—in private salons, screaming her vulgar songs among the young ladies. When I turn the corner just outside the hotel, what do I see in one of the most fashionable print-shops? Why, three great Mabille prints of the shockingly indecent description—with ladies and their daughters looking at them. Those disagreeable pictures in the Burlington Arcade are, my dearest Emmy, moral prints when compared with them. We have imported all this. Paris is within ten hours and a half of London, so we get French ways, as papa says, 'hot and hot.'"
ENGLISH VISITORS TO THE CLOSERIE DE LILAS.—SHOCKING!
"Who admires domestic women now? Tell an English crévé that Miss Maria is clever at a custard, and he will sneer at her. No. She must be witty, pert; able to give him as good as he sends, as people say. Young Dumas has done a very great deal of this harm; and he has made a fortune by it. He has brought the Casino into the drawing-room, given ces dames a position in society, and made hundreds of young men ruin themselves for the glory of being seen talking to a Cora Pearl. Now what do you think he has done. He has actually brought out a complete edition of his pieces, with a preface, in which, Papa tells me, he plays the moralist. He has unfolded all the vice—crowded the theatres to see a bad woman in a consumption—painted the demi-monde—with a purpose! All the world has laboured under the idea that the purpose was piles of gold. But now, the locker being full, and the key turned, and in the young gentleman's pocket, he dares to put himself in the robe of a professor, to say it was not the money he cared about—it was the lesson. He is a reformer—a worshipper of virtue! We shall have the author of Jack Sheppard start as a penologist soon. My dear, the cowardice of men when dealing with poor women is bad enough; but it is not by half so repulsive as their hypocrisy. Ugh!
"Any news of the handsome Mr. Daker? It strikes me, dear Emmy, 'Uncle Sharp' didn't send him up from Maidstone with a letter of introduction to his niece for nothing.
"Your affectionate friend,
"Carrie C."