In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity

by Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd

The Frenchwoman has a form of the mania less virulent than that which has attacked the Frenchman. She may go in for le sport, may do violence to her inclinations and her Louis XV heels by walking,—or as she calls it, "footing,"—may employ an English maid and interlard her conversation with English phrases; but she draws the line at English clothes, while the French dandy's ultimate ambition is to be mistaken for an Englishman, and to that end he employs London tailors, cultivates English habits, and succeeds in being as much like a Londoner as the Place de la Concorde is like Trafalgar Square.

Five o'clock tea is a matter-of-course necessity in London. In Paris it is a fad, and to "five-o'-clocker" is one of the unfailing diversions of the smart Parisienne, whether mondaine or demi-mondaine.

Naturally, being a social fad instead of a personal comfort, afternoon tea is seldom served to Madame when she is alone in boudoir or salon.

If one is at home to one's friends, and there is an appreciative audience for a tea-gown of rare merit, then there is good reason to five-o'-clocker under one's own roof; but, on the whole, the Parisienne loves better to make a toilette worthy of applause and sally forth to drink her tea under the eyes of her world.

Columbin's was the first of the fashionable tea-rooms. Just why the little pâtisserie on the Rue Cambon leaped into fame, it is hard to say. Anglomania was rife, the Parisienne needed new amusement. A shrewd pâtissier combined the psychical moment with superior-toasted currant muffins and cakes and tea and a convenient rendezvous. All the smart Parisian set flocked to Columbin's, the narrow Rue Cambon was crowded with imposing equipages, the curb was lined with dapper grooms, and in the little tea-rooms, between five and six, there was one of the most impressive fashion shows of the fashion-making city.

There is no need of putting the story in the past tense. The crowd and the fashion show are still to be seen in the Rue Cambon, though Columbin's has spread over more space and rival tea-rooms have sprung up like mushrooms all over Paris. On almost any corner one may now get a good cup of tea, but among the multitude of tea-rooms only a few have caught the fancy of the fashionable Parisiennes.

Rumpelmayer's on the Rue de Rivoli is one of the few, and is perhaps the most successful rival of Columbin's among the Parisian mondaines; but tea hour at the Ritz is vastly entertaining, if less exclusive, and more cosmopolitan, while at the Elysées there is music and things are excessively gay. "Too gay," says Madame of the chic Parisian set, with an expressive shrug of her shoulders, but one goes to the Elysées all the same.

Possibly a pretty woman is prettier in ball or dinner toilette than in any other dress,—though one might take issue even with that theory; but surely individuality and distinctive elegance count for more in street costumes of the handsome type than in any other item of a woman's wardrobe. The tea-hour crowd at—say Columbin's, on a winter afternoon, diffuses an atmosphere of luxury, elegance, richness, that even Paris would find it hard to surpass. She is so coquette in her velvets and broadcloth and furs, this dear Parisienne. She steps from her carriage and passes through the door which her groom hurries to open. Inside is a murmur of many voices, a ripple of laughter, a rustle of silken stuffs, a scent of violets. Madame looks about her and smiles—an inclusive smile, for she recognizes so many of the women who are grouped about the little tables. Then she trails her chiffons forward in the manner habitual with Ouida's heroines, and she stops to choose just the little cakes she will have with her tea. The little cakes of Paris merit consideration. She turns her back upon the tea drinkers as she deliberates, my lady chez Columbin. It requires supreme confidence in one's figure and one's dressmaker to turn one's back gracefully, carelessly, upon one's most merciless critics, but Madame does it with nonchalance, and when she has settled the weighty question of cakes she finds her way to a table, stopping here and there to exchange greetings and jests with friends. She is perfectly gowned, wrapped in superb and becoming furs, smiling under the shadowing brim and nodding plumes of her great hat or under the tip-tilted absurdity of her tiny toque. And all around her are women of the same type, exotic products of a society highly artificial, sensuously material. Some of them are beautiful, some are homely, all are extravagantly dressed, and all have made that effort to appear beautiful which is with the Parisienne—more than with any other woman of the world—an absorbing passion.

It is this determined spirit of coquetry which leads the mondaine of Paris to make up in a fashion which in other cities is relegated chiefly to the class without the social gates. The Parisienne makes up frankly, conscientiously, with thought only of the effect obtained and with no effort to attribute to nature the results of her maid's skill or her own. Her cosmetics are as much a part of her toilette as her frock or her hat, and her French audience applauds her make-up instead of criticising. It is coquette, this artificiality, it shows that desire to please which is the fundamental principle of French femininity. If one is beautiful—that is excellent. If one is not beautiful, but makes a heroic effort to appear so,—that too is excellent. The French public forgives all save indifference to the true feminine metier.