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