The lady most concerned maintained a discreet silence, and various were opinions as to the identity. In course of time, however, she seems herself to have cleared up the mystery by one of the prettiest possible and most practical of confessions. As this is a question of evidence, I think it better to let my witness speak rather than myself condense the testimony, and here is the deposition—ce dont il s’agit. I have only first to premise that it is given by Madame Colmache in one of those pleasant Paris letters which used to appear in the ‘Atlas,’ to the great amusement and edification of the readers. The following is a portion of a letter which appeared in February, 1851.
“Rachel’s hôtel in the Rue Trudon is gradually growing into the most exquisite little palace in the world. The long-talked of fête, which was to have been given by the Tragedian upon the occasion of the Mardi Gras, and to which all Paris was intriguing and disputing to get invited, has been postponed sine die, and a literary and poetical festival was offered to her friends instead, on Sunday last. The inauguration of the hôtel took place under the most brilliant auspices. The vast number of rooms contained in the hôtel excited some surprise; the more so as it is formally announced that the fair owner intends for the future to reside entirely alone. ‘By whom will all these apartments be occupied?’ said Alexandre Dumas to Viennet, as they strolled through the long suite of saloons and boudoirs. ‘By the owner’s souvenirs, of course,’ replied the latter. ‘Oh! then I fear they will be terribly crowded,’ replied Alexandre laughing. To those who complain of the sadness of the times and of the sad neglect of art manifested by the public of our own day, a walk through that exquisitely adorned temple, which certainly may rival, both in elegance and richness, the dwelling of Aspasia and the villa of Lais, would be productive of an immediate change of opinion. No expense has been spared upon the decoration of the hôtel; some of the artists who stand highest have not disdained to furnish some of the designs for the moulding; the ceilings are all painted by the greatest masters; and the rich draperies which conceal the walls have all been taught to hang, according to the strictest rules of symmetry, by the great master hand.”
The fête, says the writer, was concluded by an epilogue of great interest; and it is this epilogue which connects the Tragédienne of the “Français,” with the little Thespian of the Champs Elysées. The epilogue is truly described as one displaying a strange and singular aspect of the human heart.
“The soirée had been accepted as one of a purely literary character, and every celebrity appertaining to every branch of literature came, of course. The fair hostess recited in costume every one of her principal tirades, from all the great tragedies wherein she has acquired undying fame, and then withdrew amid the hearty applause and unfeigned expressions of delight of the whole company. Presently she returned before them in a new character to them, but of an old one to herself,—that of a street-singer, her head bound by a Madras handkerchief, her shoulders enveloped in an old Tartan shawl, a cotton petticoat descending just below the knee, and an old guitar slung across her bosom. Her appearance caused an almost painful interest. There was poetry in the whole scene—in the very clatter of her sabots as she passed up the splendid gallery, all hung with looking-glass, and adorned with gilt tripods—in the wooden bowl with the sou at the bottom, which she rattled as she stepped forward with a melancholy smile. She walked straight to the head of the gallery, and standing motionless for a moment, began the ballad which she had sung the last of all before she was summoned from the street to the stage, from rags and poverty, to glory, influence, and riches. By a singular coincidence, this ballad happened to be the same formerly sung in ‘Fanchon la Veilleuse,’—‘Elle a quitté,’—relating how Fanchon had left her humble home for wealth and grandeur, and how she was gradually pining amidst the splendour of her lot for the love and liberty she had once enjoyed. The voice of the singer, perhaps from fatigue, perhaps from emotion, was low and faltering, and produced an effect such as not the most powerful of her tirades from Racine or Corneille has ever been able to produce,—tears from her audience. This incident will long be remembered by those who witnessed it.”
No doubt; and the writer might have added a closing incident which is said to have followed the song, namely, that the singer, or reciter, for even her songs were recited, as every one will remember who has witnessed her ‘Lycisca’ in the high-coloured tragedy of ‘Valeria,’—having terminated her song, carried round the little cup or bowl, as of yore, only this time intimating to those to whom her trembling hand extended it—“It is for the poor!” But to revert to older, as well as odder fashions.
The consequences of the treaty which the Colophonians made with the Lydians, will serve to show that alliances are not necessarily advantageous to the weaker party. The Colophonians were an austere people. They were the Quakers of antiquity, and Mr. Bright himself might admire them. But no sooner were they united with the Lydians than Colophon became full of Lydian milliners, tailors, jewellers, and hairdressers, and the reign of simplicity was over for ever. Prior to this a Colophonian woman no more thought about her dress than did Maria Theresa, who, on being told that she was a grandmother, rushed into the neighbouring Opera-house, in her flannel nightdress and huge nightcap, in which she looked like Mrs. Gamp, and announced to the ecstatic audience that an heir was born to the greatness of Hapsburg Lorraine.
The Colophonians were once as careless of appearances, but now, men and women, they all adopted Lydian fashions. In one day, a thousand of the former, who had never known what a mantle was before, were seen on the public place, as proud of their jaunty purple cloaks as Rubini of his ‘Almaviva.’ Men and women alike had a gold ornament at the end of every lock of hair; and as for perfume, it was used to such an extent that for miles round the air was full of it, and the Lydian Atkinsons toiled in vain to meet the demand by supply.
Extravagance in dress has brought many a family to two-and-sixpence in the pound, but it ruined Miletus outright. The rich people there not only impoverished themselves by their incredible extravagance in finery, worse than our ancestors at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, who wore whole estates upon their backs, but they despised the poor, who were offensive to them for their homely fashions and rough tongues. Well, these extravagant persons became insolent and helpless, or what we should now call so; and the poor then sued them after the fashion of men who knew not of Bankruptcy Courts. They expelled the old oppressors, but they seized their children; and confining them in different granges, caused them to be trodden to death by the oxen used for treading out the corn. The rich however returned in strength, and seizing the poor men, women, and children, they covered them with pitch and put light to them,—so leaving them to perish. The sacred olive-tree in the Temple was so disgusted at both parties that it set fire to itself, and died of spontaneous combustion. The colour of its crackling leaves became a favourite one with religious persons; and a “robe feuille-morte” was as much in vogue in the district as it more recently was in Paris and the provinces.
There are some very odd “habits” about some of the swarthy potentates of torrid Africa. Of these I can however mention but the following:—The territory of Damagram, in Central Africa, is inhabited by the wildest of the African races. The method of supplying the slave-market there is truly nefarious. If the Sultan of Zinder wants goar nuts for his dessert, or calico to make what the good King Dagobert had so much difficulty in adjusting to his royal person, and if he has no money to purchase them, he sends his officials to a neighbouring village, in open day, to steal two or three families and bring them to the Sultan. These families are immediately exchanged for the goar nuts or the calico, and the swarthy tailor who makes up the royal suit perhaps reflects, as he sews, that the stuff has cost two or three living cousins, whose fate it is to be sent beyond the Atlantic to raise more cotton, that shall find its way again to the African tailors’ hands, after it has been paid for with more human flesh. It is not all the African chiefs that care to be dressed in calico. The Marghi, for instance, give little employment for tailors: their dress consists of a simple band of leather passed between their loins and fixed round their girdle. When this and a profusion of neatly-made rings of iron and ivory are fixed on the arms and legs, the Marghi gentlemen are dressed for the day.
The oddest of fashions or dresses was one which was once adopted by the rich but parsimonious Fountayn Wilson, the wealthy but thrifty landowner of Yorkshire. When loyal gentlemen were raising militia companies during the late war, Mr. Wilson not only followed the fashion, but he bought, at a low rate, a quantity of grey cloth, in the expectation that Government would purchase it at an advanced price, and so put a profit into Fountayn’s pocket. He was disappointed, but he consoled himself by wearing nothing for years but dresses made out of this coarse militia grey. But London once saw him in a stranger dress than this.