You might have knocked me down that day,
Poppetina;
I almost fainted right away,
Poppetina.
Amongst the "Belgravian maxims" published in the same year we note two which have not yet entirely lost their force: "We make our money in London, but we spend it in Paris. England gives us meat, and France sends us cooks." Nowadays we still call them "chefs" no matter what their nationality may be. As I write these lines the January sales are in full swing, and the shops of London "ring to the roar of an angel onset." It is interesting, by way of comparison, to give the results of a day's shopping by a middle-class young lady as catalogued in the winter of 1858:—
A TREMENDOUS BAG
Miss Lucy Smith went out shopping the other day, and brought home with her a most tremendous bag. It was so heavy that it was as much as the page could do to bring it into the parlour to be inspected by the ladies. Upon its contents being emptied on to the dining-room table, it was found to contain:—a bottle of Kiss-me-Quick, a pair of white satin shoes, a bulky packet of gloves (cleaned), a dozen rolls of cotton, a paper of pearl buttons (to mend Papa's shirts), a box of cough lozenges, a bundle of violet-powder, a kettle-holder, ten yards of blue ribbon, a pack of club cards, a pair of American overshoes, a pot of bear's grease, a pound of jujubes, a velvet necktie, three cambric pocket-handkerchiefs with "Lucy" embroidered in gay flowers in the corner, a pair of mittens, a small tin can supposed to contain acidulated drops, beads and long pins and gold daggers and imitation coins for the hair, fifteen yards of the best longcloth, a bundle of brushes and small jars of gum for potichomanie work, small curling-irons, several small pots containing perfumes and mysterious volatile essences for the toilette-table, numerous papers of different varieties of Berlin wool with coloured pattern of Brigand for the same, two ounces of shot to sew round the bottom of one's dress, seven yards of edging for night-caps, a set of doll's tea things, two packages of bird-seed for the canary, a bath bun, one Convent Call and Two Fond Hearts, with Ten Thousand a Year. Besides the above, there was concealed inside the longcloth a yellow book that looked suspiciously like a French novel; but as it was hastily snatched up by Miss Lucy, it is perfectly impossible to mention the name of it. Miss Smith was not a little pleased with the results of her day's sport, having brought down every one of the articles enumerated in the bag herself in the space of little more than four hours and a quarter.
Allowing for the exuberance of the satirist, one may still glean a good deal of information from this portentous list as to the tastes of the young person of the period. "Potichomanie" was the fashionable craze for pseudo-oriental decoration by covering the insides of glass vessels with designs on paper or sheet gelatine, so as to imitate Japanese porcelain. Ten Thousand a Year was Sam Warren's once popular novel, one of the first chronicles of the rise of the "bounder"; The Convent Call and Two Fond Hearts represent the appeal of propagandist Romanism and roseate sentimentality. The name of the French novel is withheld; it might perhaps have been one by Eugène Sue. Major Pendennis said that he had not read any other novelist for thirty years besides Paul de Kock, but we can hardly credit Miss Lucy Smith in 1858 with a choice which would be common form for her grand-daughters. Along with frequent references to the ignorance, and extravagance, the frivolity and futility of girls of the upper classes and to the mercenary marriages made in Society, we find an increasing readiness to recognize and welcome the competition of women in the sphere of art. The first Exhibition of Women Artists had been held in 1857; the name of Rosa Bonheur was already so familiar in England that in the summer of 1858 Punch expressed regret that there was "no picture in the Royal Academy of Prince Albert's prize pig by Sir Edwin or Rosa." The Female School of Art and Design at South Kensington is mentioned in 1860, and in 1861 Punch makes a friendly comment on the announcement that a female sculptor, Miss Susan Durant, had "received a commission to execute one of the poetical marbles for the Mansion House, being, so far as one can recollect, the first English lady who has ever obtained a compliment of this particular kind."
Women Artists
In music, women, as singers, had long established their claim to the allegiance of the opera-going world. Their recognition as instrumentalists came later. Punch had missed the first appearance of Mlle. Neruda in 1849, but waxes enthusiastic in 1858 over the performance of Mlle. Humler, a distinguished violinist, "a female Paganini, who pleases as well as astonishes," and in the same year extols native talent in the person of Arabella Goddard, the distinguished pianist who rendered admirable service by introducing the works of Beethoven to British amateurs:—
MR. PUNCH TO MISS GODDARD