Paris and the Parisians in 1835 (Vol. 2)

by Frances Milton Trollope

If, however, these same minute records can be wholly trusted, I should say that no proportionate change has taken place among the women. I often fancy I can trace the same "genre d'esprit" amongst them with which Madame du Deffand has made us so well acquainted. Fashions must change—and their fashions have changed, not merely in dress perhaps, but in some things which appear to go deeper into character, or at least into manners; but the essentials are all the same. A petite maîtresse is a petite maîtresse still; and female wit—female French wit—continues to be the same dazzling, playful, and powerful thing that it ever was. I really do not believe that if Madame de Sévigné herself were permitted to revisit the scene of her earthly brightness, and to find herself in the midst of a Paris soirée to-morrow, that she would find any difficulty in joining the conversation of those she would find there, in the same tone and style that she enjoyed so keenly in days of yore with Madame de la Fayette, Mademoiselle Scuderie, or any other sister sparkler of that glorious via lactea—provided indeed that she did not talk politics,—on that subject she might not perhaps be well understood.

Ladies still write romances, and still write verses. They write memoirs too, and are moreover quite as keen critics as ever they were; and if they had not left off giving petits soupers, where they doomed the poets of the day to oblivion or immortality according to their will, I should say, that in no good gifts either of nature or of art had they degenerated from their admired great-grandmothers.

It can hardly, I think, be accounted a change in their character, that where they used to converse respecting a new comedy of Molière, they now discuss the project of a new law about to be passed in the Chamber. The reason for this is obvious: there is no longer a Molière, but there is a Chamber; there are no longer any new comedies greatly worth talking about, but there are abundance of new laws instead.

In short, though the subjects are changed, they are canvassed in the same spirit; and however much the marquis may be merged in the doctrinaire, the ladies at least have not left off being light, bright, witty, and gay, in order to become advocates for the "positif," in opposition to the "idéal." They still keep faithful to their vocation of charming; and I trust they may contrive so far to combat this growing passion for the "positif" in their countrymen, as to prevent their turning every salon—as they have already turned the Boulevards before Tortoni's—into a little Bourse.

I was so much struck by the truth and elegance of "a thought" apropos to this subject, which I found the other day in turning over the leaves of a French lady's album, that I transcribed it:—

"Proscrire les arts agréables, et ne vouloir que ceux qui sont absolument utiles, c'est blâmer la Nature, qui produit les fleurs, les roses, les jasmins, comme elle produit des fruits."

This sentiment, however, simple and natural as it is, appears in some danger of being lost sight of while the mind is kept upon such a forced march as it is at present: but the unnatural oblivion cannot fall upon France while her women remain what they are. The graces of life will never be sacrificed by them to the pretended pursuit of science; nor will a purblind examination of political economy be ever accepted in Paris as a beautiful specimen of light reading, and a first-rate effort of female genius.

Yet nowhere are the higher efforts of the female mind more honoured than in France. The memory of Madame de Staël seems enshrined in every woman's heart, and the glory she has brought to her country appears to shed its beams upon every female in it. I have heard, too, the name of Mrs. Somerville pronounced with admiration and reverence by many who confessed themselves unable to appreciate, or at least to follow, the efforts of her extraordinary mind.

In speaking of the women of Paris, however, I must not confine myself to the higher classes only; for, as we all know but too well, "les dames de la Halle," or, as they are more familiarly styled, "les poissardes," have made themselves important personages in the history of Paris. It is not, however, to the hideous part which they took in the revolution of Ninety-three that I would allude; the doing so would be equally disagreeable and unnecessary, for the deeds of Alexander are hardly better known than their infernal acts;—it is rather to the singular sort of respect paid to them in less stormy times that I would call your attention, because we have nothing analogous to it with us. Upon all great public occasions, such as the accession of a king, his restoration, or the like, these women are permitted to approach the throne by a deputation, and kings and queens have accepted their bouquets and listened to their harangues. The newspapers in recording these ceremonious visitings never name these poissardes by any lesser title than "les dames de la Halle;" a phrase which could only be rendered into English by "the ladies of Billingsgate."

These ladies have, too, a literature of their own, and have found troubadours among the beaux-esprits of France to chronicle their bons-mots and give immortality to their adventures in that singular species of composition known by the name of "Chansons Grivoises."