‘Pray, ladies, copy Abington;
Observe the breeding in her air:
There’s nothing of the actress there!
Assume her fashion if you can
And catch the graces of her fan.’
This at once recalls the saying of Northcote, who, although reluctantly compelled to admit Queen Charlotte’s excessive plainness, an elegant and not a vulgar plainness—she had a beautifully shaped arm, and was fond of exhibiting it—exclaimed, ‘She had a fan in her hand. Lord! how she held that fan!’[6]
Madame D’Arblay, in one of her most delightful letters, records a conversation between herself and Mr. Fairly (Col. Stephen Digby), who, upon the occasion of a visit to her, ‘finding she entered into nothing,’ took up a fan which lay on the table and began playing off various imitative airs with it, exclaiming, ‘How thoroughly useless a toy!’
‘“No,” I said, “on the contrary, taken as an ornament, it was the most useful of any belonging to full dress; occupying the hands, giving the eyes something to look at, and taking away stiffness and formality from the figure and deportment.”
‘“Men have no fans,” cried he, “and how do they do?”
‘“Worse,” quoth I plumply.