The French girls are kept under very strict superintendence. They are not allowed to go to parties, or places of public amusement, without being accompanied by some married female relation; and they see their lovers only in the presence of a third person. Marriages are entirely negotiated by parents; and sometimes the wedding day is the second time that a bride and bridegroom see each other. Nothing is more common than to visit a lady, and attend her parties, without knowing her husband by sight; or to visit a gentleman without ever being introduced to his wife. If a married couple were to be seen frequently in each other’s company, they would be deemed extremely ungenteel. After ladies are married, they have unbounded freedom. It is a common practice to receive morning calls from gentlemen, before they have risen from bed; and they talk with as little reserve to such visiters, as they would in the presence of any woman of refinement.
The French are generally slender, active, and well proportioned, with brown complexions and dark eyes and hair. The prevailing expression of their countenances is vivacity, and their manners are characterized by a graceful ease, which, if it be not nature, is the best possible imitation of nature. An artificial state of society is here carried to the utmost point of refinement. In the perpetual invention of beautiful forms more sober nations have toiled after them in vain, scolding all the while about French fashions, and French caprices.
The beautiful Marie Antoinette first introduced the custom of wearing feathers in the hair. Having one day playfully stuck a peacock’s feather among her curls, she was pleased with the effect, and called for some small ostrich plumes. She arranged them so tastefully with jewels, that the king declared he had never seen any thing more beautiful. Feathers immediately brought an extravagant price in France, and the fashion soon prevailed all over Europe.
One day the same queen put on a brown lutestring dress, which the king, with a smile, remarked was couleur de puce. As soon as this was made known, every person of fashion was eager to wear the color of a flea. They distinguished between the various shades of a young and an old flea, and between different parts of the body of the same insect. The dyers could not possibly satisfy the hourly demand. The silk merchants, finding this mania injurious to their trade, presented new satins to her majesty, who having chosen a glossy ash color, the king observed that it was the color of her hair. The uniform of fleas was forthwith discarded, and every body was eager to wear the color of the queen’s hair. Some of her ringlets were obtained by bribery, and sent to Lyons and other manufactories with all haste, that the exact hue might be caught.
French ladies, especially those not young, use a great deal of rouge. A traveller who saw many of them in their opera boxes, says, “I could compare them to nothing but a large bed of peonies.”
After the French revolution, it became the fashion to have every thing in ancient classic style. Loose flowing drapery, naked arms, sandaled feet, and tresses twisted, or braided, à la Diane, or à la Psyche, were the order of the day. The want of pockets, which had previously been worn, was obviated by sticking the fan in the girdle, and confiding the snuff-box and handkerchief to some obsequious beau. The reticule or indispensable was not then invented.
The state of gross immorality that prevailed at this time ought not to be described, if language had the power. The profligacy of Rome in its worst days was comparatively thrown into the shade. Religion and marriage became a mockery, and every form of impure and vindictive passion walked abroad, with the consciousness that public opinion did not require them to assume even a slight disguise. The fish-women of Paris will long retain an unenviable celebrity for the brutal excesses of their rage. The goddess of Reason was worshipped by men, under the form of a living woman entirely devoid of clothing; and in the public streets ladies might be seen who scarcely paid more attention to decorum. Even the courage they evinced during the reign of terror was often oddly mingled with frivolity. A French writer, who went to the house of the minister, to solicit liberty for an imprisoned friend, was struck with always finding a young woman on the spot, who apparently came for the same purpose. “Madam,” said he, “you must have a good deal of energy, to rise every day so early at a season so rigorous.” She replied, “For more than a month I have constantly been here at eight in the morning, to beg my husband’s liberty. It is necessary to rise at seven to arrange my toilet. You may judge how fatiguing this is; for I cannot miss of a ball, and I often come home at five in the morning, after having danced all night.”
But the French revolution abounds with anecdotes of women who evinced a noble forgetfulness of self. Many a one, at the imminent peril of her life, humanely afforded shelter to fugitives whose religious and political opinions differed from her own; and the courage with which they shared the destiny of their friends was truly wonderful. A mother, in order to gain access to the prison where her son was confined, became portress of the jail. One day the brutal jailers loaded her with such an enormous weight that her delicate frame sunk under the burden, and she expired near him she had loved so well. Madame Lefort was one among numerous instances of wives, who effected their husbands’ escape by change of dress. The angry guards exclaimed, “Wretch! what have you done?” “My duty,” she calmly replied; “do yours.” When the marshal de Mouchy was summoned to appear before the tribunal, his wife accompanied him. Being told that no one accused her, she replied, “When my husband is arrested, so am I.” She followed him to prison, and answered objections by saying, “When my husband is sentenced, so am I.” She sat by his side in the cart that conveyed him to the guillotine, and when the executioner told her that no decree of death had been issued against her, she answered, “Since my husband is condemned, so am I.” They were beheaded together.
Madam de Maillé was imprisoned instead of her sister-in-law. She was aware of the mistake, but submitted quietly, that the real victim might escape. When tried, she merely observed that the Christian name they had read did not belong to her. When they insisted upon discovering where the person lived to whom it did belong, she replied, “I am not weary of life, but I had rather die a thousand deaths than save myself at the expense of another. Proceed to the guillotine.” The monsters, for once, spared human life from respect to a noble action.
At this period, people ran wild with the idea that men and women ought to perform the same duties, and that it was gross tyranny not to choose women to command armies, harangue senates, &c. An influential Frenchman, being asked why they did not elect ladies members of the Chamber of Deputies, replied that the law required every member to be forty years old, and he despaired of finding any one who would acknowledge herself of that age.