“Motus doceri gaudet IonicosMatura Virgo;”
“Motus doceri gaudet IonicosMatura Virgo;”
“Motus doceri gaudet IonicosMatura Virgo;”
not gross absolutely, but indecency could not easily conceal herself under a thinner covering. Ladies do not venture here for the world, unless sometimes for mere curiosity, and well masked, as the Pagan deities used to travel about in mortal disguises to see the iniquities of men.
Near this place we descended into an immense room under ground. Here were trulls in visors, and scavengers in lily-tinctured cravats. It was the rabble in its court dresses. At thefarthest end of the room rushed out a savage upon a stage and puffed upon twenty instruments; beat furiously a range of drums with his toes, hands, head, heels, &c. to the infinite delight of the merry spectators. Don’t think, gentlemen, you have all the fun at the Tuileries.—My companions did not think it safe to abide long in this place. “We are not concerned for ourselves,” said they, “but we are afraid you might be mistaken for a gentleman;” and we set out for Porte St. Martin.
Here we introduced ourselves to the Masked Balls. It was near morning and the common world had danced itself into languors. The dance here isunique; every motion of the limbs is an eloquent and pathetic language, especially thegallopade. You would go a long way to see a French woman of the Porte St. Martingallop. The gray hairs, too, of both sexes, dance here.
Every here and there we saw an old thing of a woman, whose follies long ago have gone to seed, tricked out in all the magnificence of ribbons, and kindling her last efforts in the dance. In the private rooms, many, fagged out by the labours of the week, were strewed about upon chairs and sofas, or upon the floor, either faint and languishing, or wrapped in sleep. One, abeautiful woman, lay outstretched, her petticoats dishevelled, her head upon the crossed-legs of her beau, a half sloven, half fop in silk breeches and a dirty shirt, who slept upright upon a chair; another supine, her mouth open, snored towards Heaven; and every where were plenty of legs, arms and bosoms, disdaining any other covering than the sky.—They are gloriously jolly at thePorte St. Martin, of aMardigras, that’s certain.
About daylight we arrived at the “Descente de la Courtille.” This is the blackguard rendezvous outside the gate so celebrated. All the élite of the Parisian ragamuffins was here.—“Stand out of the way, you fellow without a shirt.”—“Stand out of the way yourself, you sloven. When you die they’ll not think it necessary to bury you. You can’t smell worse.”
We got through this crowd with long struggles in a close carriage; for the custom is to bespatter with filth any one appearing in a decent garb. Paris furnishes for her general parades the most genteel rabble in the world, and I was not aware she could rake together such an ungodly multitude for this occasion.
I went from the street into some of their retired places of revelry. Here many a one hadlost his “upright shape,” and was sprawling, male and female, about the rooms and entries; brawny men and weather beatenpoissardes, half covered with rags. In the streets were various entertaining sights. One (a sober man by some miracle) was running after his tipsy wife, and as unhappy about her as a hen that has hatched a duck.
Another had come to an equilibrium, and was struggling forward, yet standing still, as one in a night-mare, or as a weather-cock taking resolutions against the wind; and another was rendering up to Bacchus an account of the night’s debauch. Finally, there was one administering a kicking to a retreating enemy, which seemed quite a novelty in Paris, and excited great interest. I was glad to see that the French, when they do resort to violence, prefer that which alone is founded on principles of humanity.
This is the “Descente de la Courtille.” It is one of the places where one sees the nearest approach of our race to the lower animals; it is the connecting link.
We returned home at eight, the fashionable hour. To go to bed at night, or rise in the morning, is all out of fashion. The sun was madefor the rabble....Carnivalmeans, farewell to flesh, and indeed there will be not much flesh on my bones when it is over.Lentmeans quiet and rest, and comes very properly immediately after it.
It is to-day the birth-day of Washington, and you are no doubt honouring it with wine and mirth and festivity. I have paid also my tribute to its sacred memory; and who knows but this humble respect, in the “Rue Neuve des Maturins,” is as welcome to his great spirit, which is now above the reach of human vanities, as the pomp of your national festivals.
It is purity of heart that makes devotion acceptable in Heaven, and not the magnificence of the worship. I told my two French convives at table (their glasses being filled) it was Washington’sfête, and they stood up instinctively and drank to his memory, pronouncing his name only, in looking towards Heaven.—To Heaven he has gone by the general consent of mankind. “Not as Mahomet, for he needed not the fiction of a miracle to make him immortal; nor as Elijah, since recorded time has not pointed out the being upon whom his mantle may descend; but (in humble imitation) as the Great Architectfrom created universe, to contemplate the stupendous monument his wisdom had erected.” After this I may leave the rest of this page blank. I bid you affectionately good night.
Evening Parties at the Duchess d’Abrantes’.—Mode of admission.—The Weather.—Suicides.—Madame le Norman the Sibyl.—Parisian Réunions.—Manners of Frenchwomen.—American Soirées.—Furniture.—Hints on Etiquette.—Manners in Parisian High Life.—Conversation.—Dress.—Qualifications for an Exquisite.—Smoking.—Rules for dinner.
Evening Parties at the Duchess d’Abrantes’.—Mode of admission.—The Weather.—Suicides.—Madame le Norman the Sibyl.—Parisian Réunions.—Manners of Frenchwomen.—American Soirées.—Furniture.—Hints on Etiquette.—Manners in Parisian High Life.—Conversation.—Dress.—Qualifications for an Exquisite.—Smoking.—Rules for dinner.
Paris, April 15th, 1836.
Whatshall I put in this letter? I have not thought of a thing, and here is only a day between me and the mail, and not wit enough in my head to “stop the eye of Helen’s needle.” I will tell you two words of the Duchess d’Abrantes, an old acquaintance of yours, and her evening parties to begin with; and leave the rest to chance.
Parties, here, are not very exclusive. The Romans used to allow an invited guest to bringa friend along, as his “shadow;” so it is in Paris, only that you are allowed sometimes two or three shadows, according to your intimacy or favour. It is usual, if you know a friend going to a party, to sue, through his interest, for the privilege of a ticket. It is usual to say, Mr. S.—if you wish to go to M. Thiers’ to-morrow night I have a ticket for you. In this way without knowing any thing of the hostess, you are admitted to her saloon.
M. Le Baron de B——, whose acquaintance I owe altogether to my own merits, unlocks the doors of this upper story of the world to me as often as I please to accept his politeness, which I do sparingly. The Duchess is the centre of a literary circle which meets regularly at her house, once a week, for conversation. They do not eat themselves into a reputation for polite learning here, as with us. The old lady has come down from the anti-revolutionary times, and is, no doubt, a good sample of the ancient French.
And how do these upper sort of folks conduct asoirée? Suppose yourself a Duchess, and I will tell you.—Your servants in livery will introduce your guests from the ante-chamber, calling out their names; and they, on entering, will make you bows and grimaces by the dozen. You also must go through your exercise. If a Duke, stand up straight, if a Marquis half way up, if a Count a little way up, if a Baron, just bend a little the hinges of your knees; and as for a mere gentleman, why any common week-day inclination of the head will suffice.
Your servants too will be drilled.—Monsieur le Prince de Talleyrand!—This must be pronounced with a loud and distinct voice, banging open both the folding doors; and the buzz for a while must cease through the saloon. (vive sensation!)—And the note of dignity must be observed down through the subordinate visitors; till you hear in a soft soprano, on G flat, just audible,Monsieur Gentigolard!Then you will see squeezing in by the door a little ajar, an individual with his cloak by the tip end, and his knees encouraging each other—blinking something like an owl introduced to the day-light. (Léger mouvement à gauche.)
It was my luck to be born in a little nook of the backwoods, by the side of a hoar hill of the Tuscarora, where the eagle builds its eyrie, and the wild cat rears its kittens; it was not my choice, but my mother, who had the wholearrangement of the matter, would have it so; and I had never seen a Duchess. In coming up the stairs I had to work myself up into a fit of aristocracy. “Mr. John,” said I, “you are a good looking man, and fashionably dressed; your father was a soldier in the Revolution—a major at St. Clair’s defeat; besides, you are yourself of rather a noble descent, your wife’s grandmother was the daughter of James Blakely, admiral ——.” With these encouragements I stepped from the Broad Mountain into the saloon of the Duchess.
However, I was not greatly divertedchèz madame la Duchesse. I did not feel any of my faculties much tickled except curiosity, and the flutter of novelty is soon over; one soon gets used to be surprised. I had a kind of hum-drum talk with an old general, who fought me the Revolution over again, beginning with the Bastille. I might have been numbered among its victims, but I fortunately thought of abon-motof Aristotle: I wonder any one has ears to hear you, who has legs to run away from you—so I ran home to bed and dreamt of the battle of Waterloo.
The French in high life have become a more grave and thinking people than formerly, but Ibelieve they cannot substitute any qualities without injury, in the place of their natural levity and cheerfulness. They cannot make themselves more amiable than they were in the reign of Madame du Deffand and Madame Geoffrin. The proportion of ladies in the saloon of the Duchess was quite scanty. This ought to be the case where a woman is the centre of attraction, but it is not to my taste. If I had run foul of a woman this evening, instead of thisvieille moustache, I should not have had a night-mare of Lord Wellington.
And now, what shall I do with these two sheets, since I have done with the Duchess? I will talk about the weather. Hezekiah would have made no kind of figure here with his dial. Mothers feed their children on the fog with a spoon, as you do them on pap. What a litter of idiots these vapours will breed! I just swim about in them in a kind of unconscious imbecility of intellect. I intend to try some, one of these days, if I can count four. As for the streets, one cannot put a foot upon them, without being splashed half way up to the chin, with every kind of immundicity.
No one ever thinks of going into “Jean Jaques Rousseau,” except in a fit of despair, as I dowhen I expect your letters. Why, there was a man, who went through the streets a few days ago, to put a letter in the office, and he sunk three leagues in the mud; he has not been heard of since. The French remedy for such weather is charcoal; to beasphyxiedis a natural death here.
A French girl being crossed in love the other day, and killing herself the usual charcoal way, kept a journal of her sensations:—“At twelve, difficulty of respiration and cold sweat; at twelve and a quarter, violent pain in the chest, &c.”—Speaking of suicide, here are some curious statistics:—for love, two and a half women to one man; for reverses of fortune, three men to a woman; and five men to a woman for baffled ambition. Of the men, the greater number from thirty-five to forty-five; of women, from twenty-five to thirty-five; and twice as many girls as boys before the age of fifteen—so say Talset’s Tables. Two women to a man for love, implies that either men have the greater attractions, or women the greater sensibility—which is it? I will finish this paragraph with an adventure of a few days ago, which comes in apropos enough, talking about charcoal.
There lives in the Rue de Tournon an oldSibyl calledMadame le Norman, whom all persons of sense or nonsense, who are curious about the future, visit. She can spell the stars, and she reads the destinies, as I do theJournal des Debats, and she acquired such a fame by predicting the overthrow of Napoleon, that her house has been literally beset ever since by petitioners. You have to bespeak her a week a-head. A great comfort she is to the young gentlemen, whose fathers won’t die, and she gives hopes to married ladies, who have old husbands.
Well, this prophetic old woman told Doctor C.—he had a wife and two children in a foreign land pining after him, which proves she can see behind as well as before; and that he would make acquaintance this week with a noble lady—all true! Then she held my hand, and cast a peering look upon it, and thrice shook her head. Alas! she saw in my face a great many “drowning marks.”
So you see there is no chance in the world, unless your prayers shall reverse the fates, of my ever getting home. I will tell you why I was induced to go on this expedition to Delphos, for which I am sorry now, for I think, like Julius Cæsar, that the mind of man should beignorant of its fate—it was to accompany your old acquaintance, ——, who has fallen desperately in love with a Frenchwoman—Mais, ma chère, vous n’en avez pas l’idée!
In fine, he is so in love, that he has serious thoughts of leaving off chewing tobacco. It was to gratify him that I went, as he wanted to see the end of this Frenchwoman. And now, with this fortune-teller, and the suicides, the bad weather, and a Virginia doctor, I have got rid of a whole page of blank paper, and, ’pon honour, I had no other motive for calling them to your notice.
I will go back to my original text, and try to be sensible. I did wish to decline to-day all that required reflection; I am also no great professor in this kind of lore, but I find no other subject.—Evening visits and gossipings have now taken place of the tipsy rompings of the carnival. The midnight orgies are hushed, and the blazing tapers and glittering gems are quenched until the return of a new year. Society has put on a light, easy, and decorous garb, which it will wear for the rest of the season; fashion rigorously forbidding any departure from its chaste simplicity.
Conversation is now the main object of socialintercourse, and every thing is made to contribute to its enjoyment. It is admitted by those who are best able to judge, that the Paris “Réunions” of this season, form the very best school that is known of colloquial accomplishment; and that they have a charm which other nations have not found the secret of communicating to such pastimes. The largest share of this praise is, of course, due to the women. Whether it be the language, better suited than ours to conversation, or a constitutional gaiety, or vanity, which is so much more amiable than pride, I know not; but a well bred Frenchwoman is certainly the most agreeable creature of which the world has any example.
I have often seen between me and the heaven of a fine woman’s face in America, an impracticable distance—a bright star in the firmament, which one must be content to worship, without the hope of ever reaching its elevation. I have often been confounded so, in my tenderer years, by the awfulness of American dignity, as to be afraid of my own voice; and I have often felt in the presence of a lady—as if made by a carpenter.
Such a feeling, in the humanity and gentleness of French affability, is unknown. Youbreathe freely, and retain the natural use of your faculties, physical and intellectual. A Frenchwoman’s politeness levels every distinction; the modest man is relieved of his diffidence, and the humble raised to self-esteem, by her gracious civilities; and a lady of elevated rank always strips herself, before an ordinary mortal, of her rays, that he may approach her without being consumed. Nor does the Frenchwoman lose anything of her dignity in this familiarity; she speaks with kindness, and even affection to her servants, and yet is secure of their respect and obedience.
I have come into the opinion that a lady has no occasion to bristle up her crest in defence of her quality, or bring around it the protection of reserve or haughtiness; and that her honour, unless the garrison is corrupt, is safe in its natural defences.—It is not necessary to say that under such good instruction the French gentlemen are also highly polished and amiable. There is not one of them who does not set apart some portion of the twenty-four hours for social amusement, and it is the evening, when the mind is weary of business or study, that most requires such relaxations.
In the evening, then, all the world is abroad;and it is reasonable to suppose that wit must have attained its highest degree of pungency, and style every ingredient of perfection, with such advantages. A Frenchman’s ambition is to shine, and he comes armed at all points, exactlycap-a-piefor the occasion; above all, he takes care that the stimulus of ardent liquors, and a heavy indigestible meal at the dinner table, may not for the rest of the day blunt the edge of his vivacity and enjoyment.
I have seen a few of these parties, enough to judge of the rest. Each house is “at home,” at least once a-week, and the invitations are general for the season, or occasional, and the regular guests have the privilege of bringing a friend. I went last night to Civiale’s, the eminent surgeon’s. One room was filled with miscellaneous company, another with gentlemen only, at billiards, &c.
All was in a buzz of merriment, and without any show of ceremonious restraint—all was “fortuitous elegance, and unstudied grace,” and this is one of Johnson’s definitions of happiness. “Come to-morrow night,” said C——, “and you will hear one of your countrywomen play; her talent is not second to any lady’s of Paris.”—Who is she? from Boston.—I havesaid nothing of the American “soirées” here, which are nearly as at home, but more lively; I suppose from the contagious example, and from the natural warmth of a friendly meeting in a foreign country. To a stranger who arrives, they are at once a consolation and an enjoyment; and it is to be hoped that a vicious emulation of sumptuousness, every day increasing, may not disturb their frequency and cordiality.
The furniture of fashionable rooms here is more tasteful, and usually more elegant than in our richest houses. The propriety of colours, and the harmony of arrangement, and such things are with many persons the study of a whole life. Richness is the praise of the English dames, and chasteness and concinnity of the French.
In England where primogeniture preserves property indivisible, a house is furnished from a remote antiquity, and there is encouragement to taste and expense; but what motive is there to furnish in our country, where Joseph has as much as Reuben, and where the next day after the owner’s decease, the furniture encounters the auctioneer’s hammer; and where fashion, too, turns a house wrong side out every six years. Besides, what serves it to put costlyyears. Besides, what serves it to put costly sums upon what is destined to be scraped and cut up by one’s dozen of spoilt children, or to be carved into notches by one’s cousins of Kentucky?
Now with what shall I fill this immense space which remains?—Oh, I will give you all the precepts and aphorisms I can think of, of Paris good breeding. They will be so useful to you in the “coal region.”
You may give your arm to a gentleman in public, but don’t give him both your arms.
Keep on your gloves at church; take them off when you go to bed.
Don’t lick your plate, but imbibe the sauce with a little bread in the left hand; holding a silver fork in your right.
When you dine out, you may blow your nose with the table-cloth, if they don’t give you napkins; otherwise it would be thought improper. Don’t use the tail of your frock; this gives offence to refined people, generally speaking.
Don’t ask for theankleof a chicken; ladies saylegnow at table without impropriety.
When full tilt in the street, bow, and don’t curtsey. Just do you try how inconvenient it is to curtsey in the operation of fast walking; besides, your frock gets in the mud.
If you cannot go to the “Trinity” to prayers, don’t forget to send your card.
If you meet a lady on the Boulevards of Pottsville, or other public promenade, don’t salute her, unless she first gives you some token of recognition; if you meet her in Mann and William’s Mine two miles under ground, you may. This invisibility gives a lady a chance of doing in public what she chooses;—of carrying some tripe, or a leg of mutton home to dinner. If you see a lady at her door or window in dishabille, to salute her is inexcusable. If you espy her straying with a gentleman amongst romantic shades of the wizard Mill Creek, or by the wild cliff which overhangs the Tumbling Run, tapestried with honeysuckles, you must whistle Yankee Doodle, so as to leave her the impression that she is unobserved.
If you take a walk on Guinea Hill, and Black Bill uncovers, take off your hat also; if hiscurvature vertebralebe forty-five degrees, yours must be forty-six; it won’t do to be outdone by Congo negroes.
Never write a catalogue of your linen for the washer-woman. He is a filthy man, who knows the number of his shirts. And get them made at Formin’s of the Rue Richelieu. He makesshirtsà ravir; see advertisement; “Une chemise bien faite a été jusqu’ici un phenomène, &c.” Whatever position you may give your body, his shirts remained unruffled: many a man’s skin don’t fit half so perfectly.
If you meet a lady in public with a strange gentleman, return her salute with your hat in your left hand, and walk on; or if she stop you, bow to the gentleman also, and respect his rights. I walked through the Tuileries the other day with a lady, and met—I am sorry it was an American, who, intervening,bummedme out of the lady’s acquaintance, without noticing me. This is excessively ill-bred, and an insult to the lady. I have not forgotten him, and I don’t know that I shall.
A Parisian lady possesses greater moral, as well as physical strength than the lady of our cities. In Philadelphia, she cannot, for her little soul, venture out into a public place without a life guard, no more than Louis Philippe; and even then she is shy, and picks her steps, trembling in her knees and heart.—“Pa, don’t you go that way, there’s a man!” Now a Frenchwoman does not care to go out of the way of a man—any more than the French army out of the way of the Bedouins. She justtakes hold of hercanichein one hand, and walks out without caring for the king.—Oh my! and what’s acaniche?—A little curly dog: she holds it by a string, and it walks alongside of her, and with the protection only of this little shaggy animal she feels herself impregnably fortified against the whole sex.
When a gentleman escorts a lady to dinner he must not stick his elbows into her ribs, and hang her to him, as his mantle to a post. Politeness requires him to move exactly two feet and a half behind her, and a little to the left. The gait is not a light matter in feminine graces; it is, indeed, one of the attributes by which a woman is most admired. The Pious Æneas did not recognise his mother as a goddess, until she had turned tail to him in this manner; and when Juno said, “Iwalkthe queen of Heaven,” do you think she had Jupiter by the arm? French etiquette allows a lady every chance of striking out a beauty—even to giving her the black men at the chess-board to show off her white and tapering fingers.
Never look at your glove when you take it off to shake hands.—You only want to show that Walker made it, or draw attention to the gem that sparkles under it. The grand rule is in bringing out a grace, that the intention beconcealed—besides, your attention is due to the individual to whom you have proffered your civilities.
If you come to Paris, you are to have but one child—babies are going out of fashion.—And you must call it “Emile” (after Rousseau’s) and then put it out to nurse.
I intreat you to remember there is no cooing over one’s little wife here; it looks uxorious, which is a great scandal. It is not reputable to either party, implying either that the husband is jealous, (and he would rather be hanged,) or that the wife is a disagreeable thing, (and she would rather be crucified,) and cannot get a beau.
I have seen ladies here often obliged—not having any thing at hand but their husbands—to forego the pleasure of the finest fêtes and parties. I have often had wives thrown in my face on such occasions. This custom has an exhilarating effect upon social vivacity. There is nothing so stupid in nature as one’s husband generally speaking. He has travelled his wife’s mind over and over, and what can he have to say?—andvice versa; in his neighbour’s he has a new and unexplored territory; and a stranger suggests new attentions, and gives a new tone of feeling. Besides a littlemixture of evil seems necessary with every good. The conjugal feelings are pure, honest and domestic, but like all the benevolent affections, are rather unentertaining, it is known that nothing gives wit so abundantly as a little malice.
The Parisian public does not suffer a fine woman to be monopolised; she has social as well as domestic duties; and if the husband wants her company, why go abroad with her? Somebody’s lordship once said that a married woman was nothing but an appropriated girl. His lordship had not travelled on the Continent. I know that in your town, where a married couple grow together like Juno’s swans, or like those “two cherries” in Shakspeare, such a custom must seem abominable.
Ladies kiss and don’t shake hands in Paris. Gentlemen kiss too, but only on great occasions. I was kissed the other day by a man for the first time. It was one of the most trying situations of my life. I felt like that personage who was strangled by Hercules.—See the picture in the mythology.
In Parisian high life, husbands and wives do not lodge conjointly. They visit at New-Years; they send also to inquire about eachother’s health, and they meet out occasionally at parties. Even among the less fashionable, they occupy separate chambers, which has this inconvenience, that that great court of Chancery, the “Curtain Lectures,” leaves many important cases untried.—Recollect, however, that the husband meeting the wife accidentally in company, always treats her with marked attentions; he stops at the end of every five words to say “My dear,” and then he needs not speak to her till they meet again at the next party.
Ladies here never gossip of one another’s demerits, which goes well nigh to make them all honest. Also a lady having “an affair,” makes no parade of it. Her lover is the very last person in the community who runs any risk of being suspected; and her gallantries, if known, bring no ridicule upon her husband, or tarnish in the least his reputation among other ladies. In all nature I know of nothing so unsuspicious as the French husbands. They have got, each one, nearly into the state of that most unbelieving Greek, who doubted of every thing, and at last doubted that he doubted. I will tell you a story which made me laugh this morning.
A gentleman called at the Hotel and askedthe porter; “Where does M. O. V. T. live?” “Sir, there are three of that name in Paris.” “I allude to the physician.” “They are all three physicians.” “I mean the physician to the Royal family.” “Sir, they are all three.” “Que diable! je veux dire celui qui est cocu.” “Ah, Monsieur, ils le sont tous les trois!”
I tell you this only for its pleasantry, and not to hint the frequency of such cases. I have, indeed, heard of one French husband, who was jealous a little while. He flew at his wife’s lover with a knife, and perhaps would have killed him, but she rushed between, and seizing his arm, exclaimed: “Arrête, malheureux, tu vas tuer le père de tes enfans!” and the knife fell from his paternal hands.
In conversation there is a language of prudery, and a language of grossness.—These are the extremes, and propriety is somewhere about the middle. Human nature, especially in large cities, does not bear exquisite refinement. To refine, is to be indelicate; to hide, is to discover. In America, we get, in some places, into the very wantonness of delicacy, and decency herself becomes absolutely indecent. There are two sorts of persons affected in this way; the modest woman just stepping into theworld, and the woman, who has been in it too much. The latter “adds to the bloom of her cheek in exact proportion to the diminution of her modesty.”
You have acquitted me fully of this charge of prudery in several of your letters—much obliged. I wish I could be as easily absolved from the opposite offence. All I can say in mitigation, is, that living a whole year in Paris, and describing Parisian manners makes it very difficult not to incur such a blame from you Pottsvillians. I may observe, however, that freedoms are often permitted in one person, which may be very blameable in others, depending entirely upon the comparative innocency of their lives. Is Lafontaine ever taxed with indecency? Yet in words he is a libertine without a rival;—and your baby, too, may kick up its heels and do a good many things that would be very unbecoming in its mother.
When you come to Paris you may talk of the eloquent preacher and the music at St. Roch with raptures; but recollect you cannot do a more silly thing than to make any show of religion. Though you may know your Bible by heart, it will be well sometimes to ask, whoSamuel was, or David, or Moses, by way of recommending your good breeding.
If a coach stops at your door and brings you an acquaintance up the stairs, you must say in a fret; “Here is that sickening thing again; now I shall be teazed with her insipid talk all the morning. Why did they let her in?”—“My dear Caroline I am so rejoiced to see you!” and then you must jump about her neck.—“I was so dull, and just wanted your sweet countenance and wit to enliven me.”—This is only a little fashionable air, and does not mean any thing. The French profess more violent affection before your face and employ more saucy ridicule behind your back, than any other people; but the mass of kindness and benevolence is about as great here as in other countries.—Complimentary phrases are in no country to be taken literally. In Paris, if a man swears he loves you, and will share his last crumb with you, he means of course that you are to pay for it.
In taking leave of a lady, see her to your chamber door, and then hold the door a little ajar, and wait until she has turned round and given you the valedictory smile; then it is an affair finished. You are not to follow to thestreet. You rub your lamp, that is, you ring a bell, and a genius appears to conduct her. This leaves her at liberty with respect to her equipage.
Nothing is so ill-bred as officious assiduities. Good breeding never makes a fuss; it takes good care of a lady when her safety and real comfort are concerned, with kindness, but not officiousness. Anticipate all her wants, gratify all her whims, and overload her with superfluous civilities, and you make her ungrateful, selfish, disagreeable. She will regard your neglects as offences, and your kindnesses as dues that enjoin no acknowledgment. You know what unhappy, disagreeable things spoiled children are, and in their infantine grace and innocence how amiable; their mammas may be spoiled in the same way, and when spoiled are equally detestable.Nota bene: the papas may be spoiled too.
When you pay a visit, go away rather too soon than too late; leave people always a little hungry of your company; unless you are of the class of ladies, who “make hungry where most they satisfy.”
I advise you in your dress not to follow too implicitly the fashions of Europe, and especially not to exaggerate, which is so common with imitators. In bowing with the reverence to French fashions, which is becoming in all womankind, have a decent respect to the human shapes and appearances. Why, I have seen bustles or bishops, or what do you call them, put up even in Chestnut-street by some of you, who, under the Rump Parliament, would have been taken up for a libel.
If you are well dressed, no one meeting you will ask who made your frock. One stares at the woman, and the frock is unseen. Do you believe that any one asks Madame la Hon who made her chapeau; or the pretty Countess de Vaudrueil, or the Duchess de Guiche, who plaited those diamonds, more beautiful than the starry firmament, upon their turbans; or the Duchess de Plaisance who made her shoe? No, no, the heart is full of the little foot, and there is no room there for the shoemakers and mantua-makers.
Don’t do things always the same way. If, for example, you hand a gentleman anything (a bit of anthracite of the “Peacock Vein,” or a joint of the railroad) do it with a graceful simplicity. I know an elegant of your village, polished, to be sure, only with coal-dust, whoalways brings his hand inconveniently to his heart as the starting-place, and then sets off in a beautiful hyperbola, and always with a velocity geometrically progressive. Do you be various; look sometimes beautiful; look sometimes well, and fore Haven’s sake, if you can, look sometimes ugly. She who wears a pretty cap every day, because it is a pretty cap, is “the cap of all the fools.”
In Paris scandal is reduced to a minimum, for two reasons; first, from the variety of events;—a large city swallows at a meal, what would feed your towns for a whole month: and secondly, because what we call breaking three or four of the commandments is here no sin. As for elopements there are none; no occasion to run away.
News and coffee are taken usually together, and both must be hot. It is low breeding to talk of anything which happened three days ago; the news of the last week is the last year’s almanack. A Parisian gentleman never speaks but of great events, and those which are just born; nor does he rashly speak of Racine or Corneille, or such like antiquated authors; it smacks of the Provinces.
To be an exquisite, the qualifications are totalk of the opera and the races, and play at whist, dine at theCercle des Etrangers, make a leg, walk in a quadrille, andavoir la plus jolie maitresse de Paris. It also recommends one greatly to have a pale face, and emaciated shanks; implying a long course of high living; besides it gives a modish languor to one’s air; it is exceedingly genteel. It is understood of course, that one must be a useful man about a woman, and have one’s pocket stuffed with her little conveniences. If she wants a pin, his pincushion is at her service; or a needle, he must have all the numbers from six to a dozen.
To be a gentleman of thebon ton, it is necessary not to be suspected of any useful employment, or of regulating life by any rule of order or economy; above all, not to be without some intrigue. Three or four persons should always be jealous of one at the same time.
With a moderate pair of whiskers and mustachios, with a little tuft on the inferior lip, and all trimmed like the garden of Versailles, he is a classic; but if you see a grisly monster, with the beard of a Scotch boar, and his hair flowing in all its St. Simonian shagginess about his shoulders, and with the sallow complexion of aquateroon, seated by the side of a smooth and elegant female, of an afternoon in the Tuileries, he is of the romantic school—I wonder you women don’t set your faces against these beards!
Gentlemen smoke now in Europe every where, but chew and spit nowhere. I have observed that the French Exchange, where several thousand persons daily congregate upon a white marble floor, is always pure from the contamination of spitting. The French are, however, often disagreeable, by spitting in their handkerchiefs. The best model, they say, in such matters, is an English gentleman. The ancient Persians were a still better. An Englishman often gets into good, sometimes bad customs, from a pure antigallic opposition, as Lord Burleigh turned out his toes, because Sir Christopher Hatton turned his in.
The Frenchman is hyperbolical, and the Englishman not even emphatic; the one makes loud expressions, the other none; the one spits in his pocket, and the other refuses to spit at all. However, there is no need of national antipathies to dissuade mankind from chewing tobacco, which is certainly one of the most aggravatedindecencies that human nature has been guilty of. How it should exist where there are ladies, I do not conceive, and, least of all, do I conceive how it should exist in Philadelphia, the most gynocratic of all cities.
But I smell the dinner, and since I am in the way of aphorisms, I will give you a few to eat as a dessert, and to fill the rest of this page. In your cookery, avoid all high seasonings, and coarse flavours, they are vulgar. Cayenne, curry, allspice, and walnut pickles, and all such inflammatory dishes, are banished from the French kitchen entirely. If even the butter has a little crumb of salt in it, it is obliged, like the President’s Message, to make an apology for its sauciness. Every thing is served, as far as possible, in its own juices.
Even the ladies have left off aromatics and Eau de Cologne only keeps its place upon the toilet. High seasonings for meat are used only as antiseptics. If you ask a company to dinner, either dine out yourself, or conceal your authority, by mixing, as they do in Paris, undistinguishably with your guests. The guest must feel at his ease. And, take care to observe antipathies and affinities in the distribution of theseats. How many sin against this rule. I have known a lawyer put alongside of a judge!
The French used to place a gentleman by a lady, and both drank from the same cup, and ate from the same plate; sometimes the gentleman would put the bite into the lady’s mouth. I am sorry—sometimes I am glad—that this turtledove way of eating has gone out of fashion.
The table in America presents you the entire meal at a single view—in some houses including the dessert; and while the dishes are lugged fifty yards from the kitchen, and await then the ladies, fixing themselves, what do you think has happened? Why, the jellies are coddled, the drawn-butter has gone intoblanc-mange, the beef gravy to tallow, and the chickens to goose-flesh—in a word, nothing is hot but the butter.
It may be laid down as a rule, that no man can dine who sees his dinner. Pray you observe a succession and analogy of dishes. I entreat you at least that the fish may be hot, and that it may not wait an hour for its sauce. And take care that your waiters have a proper acquaintance with human nature and its wants, and that they be penetrated with a sense of their duties. They must understand congruities,and know the desires and appetites of a guest from his countenance.
I have seen countries, where if one asks for mutton, he has to ask for turnips also! I have seen servants in our country, who, all the while you are in agony for a dish, are standing and gaping at the ceiling—fellows whom Heliogabalus would have crucified immediately after dinner. A French garçon told me he knew a man’s wants—if a gentlemanly eater—by the back of his neck. “I was puzzled,” said he, “the other day by an American—he wanted a glass of milk just after his soup.”
To remove a plate too soon by officiousness, is a monstrous fault; and to make a clatter among the dishes is excessively annoying. What a hurly-burly at an American dinner!—At the Rocher Cancale you would think the servants were bearing along the sacred things of Mother Vesta—their feet are muffled, the dishes are of velvet. In barbarous times, a monstrous baron used to bring the dinner into his hall, by servants on horseback. A good housekeeper now, by placing his dining-room and kitchen in contiguity, and all accessories at the side of their principals, studies that their services may be almost invisible.—A host of a delicate tastenever introduces one, but as they do a ghost at a play, where the occasion is indispensable—nodus nisi vindice dignus. These four words of Latin just saved their distance, and I have only room to add—good night.
The Lap-dog.—The Dame Blanche.—The Beauty in a Gallery.—The Lingère.—Madame Frederic.—Fête de Longchamps.—Parisian Fashions.—Holy Concerts.—Pretty Women.—Empire of Fashion.—Reign of Beauty.—The Fashionable Lady.
The Lap-dog.—The Dame Blanche.—The Beauty in a Gallery.—The Lingère.—Madame Frederic.—Fête de Longchamps.—Parisian Fashions.—Holy Concerts.—Pretty Women.—Empire of Fashion.—Reign of Beauty.—The Fashionable Lady.
May, 1836.
I havejust had yours of the 4th of April, and have seen two of Miss Kitty’s, very acid. Doctor —— let one of them fall in the Seine from the Pont Neuf, and it made lemonade to St. Cloud. Poor Miss Kitty! I wish she had such a husband as her mother, who, instead of going to carnivals, and masquerades, and receptions, and such places, and giving uneasiness to his wife, stays at home and looks cross all the evening, by the fire-side.—I walked out this morning in one of these domestic fits, and kicked a lady’s lap-dog in the Tuileries, andwas called to account for it by a pair of mustachios like the horns of a centipede, and I got off only by making an apology to the lady and the puppy—(smiling to her and patting the dog a little) which I would not have done under the administration of James Madison.
This happened just by the statue of Lucretia, who used to stay at home also in the same way of an evening in spinning; it would have been, perhaps, better for both of us to have mixed a little more in the amusements of the town. The fact is, it puzzles the best of us to know how to behave ourselves. One may fall, like the Roman lady into difficulties at home, and another into temptations abroad. But alas, poor Kitty!—Beware of telling her what I am going to relate to you. You know what a thing jealousy is. Doctor —— has fallen in love with a French woman. To be sure, she is one of the most glorious beauties of Paris, admired by the very first nobility—by the Duke of Orleans, by the Duke of Nemours, and by the Duke of I don’t know what else; and if the truth was known, I believe the king himself is fond of her. If you had only seen her last night at her harp!—a fine woman is dangerous in any shape whatever;but when she adds music to her charms—one surrenders at discretion.
If you had heard her wild notes, as they thrilled upon the wires, and as her fluttering voice softened and expired upon the listening ear, you would not yourself have blamed a little infidelity towards one’s wife, especially all the way to Paris. I hate to keep you in pain, so I will tell you at once her name.—What makes it a little more unhappy perhaps is, that she is a lady of rather a doubtful reputation; and belongs at present to the “Opera Comique:” In fine, if you will absolutely know, it was the “Dame Blanche.”
And now that I am in the chapter of accidents, I may as well tell you that your old acquaintance, D. D—, on Saturday night, was found dead—(say nothing of this to his sister, she will be so afflicted)—he was found dead drunk in thePlace du Carrousel; and on Monday he got up at six in the morning, and went deliberately into a tippling-shop in the neighbourhood, and ran himself through the body—(being mad at his father for not sending him money)—with a pint of rum.
I have now prepared you for a story of amuch more serious import—a story which concerns myself. I would not tell it to you but in obedience to my invariable rule of concealing nothing from you. What a place this Paris is! No virtue is under shelter from its temptations. Solomon had a great deal more wisdom than I can pretend to, and he was seduced away by foreigners, who, I dare say, were not half so tempting as these French.
I was looking out a few days ago to see what kind of weather it was;—there was not a cloud in the firmament; but there was a very beautiful woman standing in a gallery almost opposite; so I left off looking at the heavens just to look at this woman a little, never supposing any harm would come of it. But nothing is so dangerous as this cross-the-street kind of acquaintance. The silent conversation of looks, so much more expressive than words; the mysterious conjectures about what each other’s thoughts may be, and above all, the obstacle of the intervening space—you know what amorous things obstacles are.
If it had not been the wall with the crack in it at Babylon, I dare say Pyramus and Thisbe would not have cared for each othera French sou.—She kept looking and looking (I mean the woman in the gallery) and now and then I looked back at her. And if I have been looking into the looking-glass, more than usual, and if the tailor has just brought me home an entire new suit, which I could not well afford, it is all owing to her. I wish you could have seen the elegant creature this morning, as I did, at her toilette; as she stood like our first mother combing down to her ankles (the prettiest pair but one you ever saw) her long hair, which hung around her as a misty cloud about the full moon.
The little shoe soon embraced her foot and the garter her knee; the maid laced up her corsets, giving graceful folds to herjupe, gracility to her waist, and relief to her tournure; and incased her fair form in a frock, “soft as the dove’s down and as white;”—her glossy tresses having already received their fittest harmony from her nimble and tapering fingers.
And now she sat at her mirror, and perused her elegant features; she looked joyful, then sad, then cruel, then tender, and brought out each sentiment into its most eloquent and dangerous expression; she studied a frown and then put on the magic of a smile.—The fine rhetoric ofthe bosom came next—the rock upon which taste so often is wrecked. Here she meditated and pondered much and inquired of the Graces, how far she might adventure—“how much to the curious eye disclose, how much to fancy leave.”
I walked with her yesterday, amidst the elegant life of the Tuileries, at her return from an airing in the Bois de Boulogne. Unless you see a woman at all her fashionable hours, as well as in all her attitudes and passions, you know nothing of her beauty. She wore a little airy hat,à la Duchesse de la Vallière, the bird of Paradise waving over her stately brow;