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diff --git a/44570-0.txt b/44570-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e6e43b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/44570-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3449 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44570 *** + +THE SUNSHADE + +THE GLOVE--THE MUFF + + + + + THE SUNSHADE + + THE GLOVE--THE MUFF + + BY + + OCTAVE UZANNE + + /ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL AVRIL/ + + LONDON + J. C. NIMMO AND BAIN + 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. + 1883 + + + + +PREFACE + + +After /the brilliant success which attended, in the spring of last +year, our volume on/ The Fan--/a success which was the result, as +I cannot conceal from myself, much more of the original conception +and decorative execution of that work of luxe than of its literary +interest--I have determined to close this series of/ Woman's +Ornaments /by a last little work on the protective adornments of +that delicate being, as graceful as she is gracious/: The Sunshade, +the Glove, the Muff. /This collection, therefore, of feminine toys +will be limited to two volumes, a collection which at first sight +appeared to us so complex and heavy that a dozen volumes at least +would have been required to contain its principal elements. This, +doubtless, on the one hand, would have tried our own constancy, and +on the other, would have failed in fixing more surely the inconstancy +of our female readers. The spirit has its freaks of independence, and +the unforeseen of life ought to be carefully economised. Moreover, +to tell the whole truth, the decorative elegance of a book like +the present hides very often beneath its prints the torture of an +intellectual thumbscrew. The unhappy author is obliged to confine his +exuberant ideas in a sort of strait-jacket in order to slip them more +easily through the varied combinations of pictorial design, which +here rules, an inexorable Mentor, over the text./ + +/In a work printed in this manner, just as in a theatre, the/ mise +en scène /is often detrimental to the piece; the one murders the +other--it cannot be otherwise--the public applauds, but the writer +who has the worship of his art sorrowfully resigns himself, and +inwardly protests against the condescension of which he has had +experience/. + +/Two volumes, then, under a form which thus imprisons the strolling, +sauntering, inventive, and paradoxical spirit, will be sufficient for +my lady readers. Very soon we shall meet again in books with vaster +horizons, and "ceilings not so low," to employ an expression which +well describes the moral imprisonment in which I am enveloped by the +graces and exquisite talent of my collaborateur, Paul Avril/. + +/Let it be understood, then, that I have no personal literary +pretensions in this work. As the sage Montaigne says in his/ Essays, +"/I have here but collected a heap of foreign flowers, and brought of +my own only the string which binds them together./" + + /OCTAVE UZANNE./ + + + + +THE SUNSHADE + +/THE PARASOL ---- THE UMBRELLA/ + + +The author of a /Dictionary of Inventions/, after having proved the +use of the Parasol in France about 1680, openly gives up any attempt +to determine its precise original conception, which indeed seems to +be completely concealed in the night of time. + +It would evidently be childish to attempt to assign a date to the +invention of Parasols; it would be better to go back to Genesis at +once. A biblical expression, /the shelter which defends from the +sun/, would almost suffice to demonstrate the Oriental origin of +the Parasol, if it did not appear everywhere in the most remote +antiquity--as well in the Nineveh sculptures, discovered and +described by M. Layard; as on the bas-reliefs of the palaces or +frescoes of the tombs of Thebes and Memphis. + +In China they used the Parasol more than two thousand years before +Christ. There is mention of it in the /Thong-sou-wen/, under the +denomination of /San-Kaï/, in the time of the first dynasties, and a +Chinese legend attributes the invention of it to the wife of Lou-pan, +a celebrated carpenter of antiquity. "Sir," said this incomparable +spouse to her husband, "you make with extreme cleverness houses for +men, but it is impossible to make them move, whilst the object which +I am framing for their private use can be carried to any distance, +beyond even a thousand leagues." + +And Lou-pan, stupefied by his wife's genius, then saw the unfolding +of the first Parasol. + +Interesting as these legends may be, handed down by tradition to the +peoples of the East, they have no more historical credit than our +delicate fables of mythology: they preserve in themselves less of +the poetic quintessence, and above all seem less connected with that +mysterious charm with which Greek paganism drowned that charming +Olympus wherefrom the very origins of art appear to descend. + +Let the three Graces be represented burned by Apollo, tired of +flying through the shadows, where Fauns and Ægipans lie in ambush, +or let these three fair ones be painted in despair at the fiery +sensation of sunburning which brands their epidermis; let them invoke +Venus, and let the Loves appear immediately, bearers of unknown +instruments, busily occupied in working the little hidden springs, +ingeniously showing their different uses and salutary effects; let +a poet--a Voltaire, a Dorat, a Meunier de Querlon, or an Imbert +of the time--be kind enough to forge some rhymes of gold on this +fable; let him, in fine, inspired by these goddesses, compose an +incontestable master-piece, and behold /the Origin of the Sunshade/! +graven in pretty legendary letters on the temple of Memory, not to be +contradicted by any spectacled /savant/ in the world. + +But if no poet, in smart affected style, has told us in rhyme /the +Story of the Parasol/, many poets of all times have recalled the use +of it in precious verses, which appear to serve as landmarks for +history, and as references to discoveries of archæology. In ancient +Greece, in the time of the festivals of Bacchus, it was the custom, +not then confounded with fashion, to carry a Sunshade, not so much +to extenuate the ardour of the sun, but as a sort of religious +ceremonial. Paciaudi, in his treatise /De Umbellæ Gestatione/, +shows us on the carriage on which the statue of Bacchus is placed a +youth seated, the bearer of a Sunshade, a sign of divine majesty. +Pausanias, in his /Arcadics/, mentions the Sunshade in describing the +festivals of Alea in Argolis, whilst later on, in the /Eleutheria/, +we see the Parasol also. Lastly, after having painted for us, in a +marvellous description of Alexandria on a holiday, the hierophants, +bearers of emblems and the mystic vase, the Monads covered with ivy, +the Bassarids with scattered hair wielding their thyrsus, Athenæus +suddenly shows us the magnificent chariot of Bacchus, where the +statue of the god, six cubits high, all in gold, with a purple robe +falling to his heels, had over his head a Sunshade ornamented with +gold. Bacchus alone, of all the gods, had the privilege of the +Sunshade, if we rely on the evidence of ancient monuments, earthen +vases, and graven stones drawn from the museums of Stosch and other +archæologists. + +As a result of their frequent relations with the Greeks after the +death of Alexander the Great, the Jews appear to have borrowed from +the Gentiles, in the celebration of their Feast of Tabernacles, +the use of the Sunshade. The subjoined medal of Agrippa the Old, +struck by the Hellenised Jews, in some sort supports this, although +Spanheim, in a passage relating to this medal, says he has hesitated +a long while as to the signification of the symbols which it +represents. Do the ears of corn mark the fertility of the governed +provinces, or do they refer to the Feast of Tabernacles? As for +the tent on the obverse, it is little probable that it represents +a tabernacle according to Moses' rite, since the roofs of these +tabernacles, far from being pointed, were flat and cloven in the +midst, so as to allow rain, sun, and starlight to pass through. It +must then be the Sunshade, the emblem of royalty; this at least seems +probable. + +The Parasol played among the Greeks a very important part, as well in +the sacred and funeral ceremonies as in the great holidays of nature, +and even in the private life of the noble ladies of Athens. + +The Parasol in its elegant form may be seen drawn on the majority of +Greek vases, either painted with straight or arched branches, concave +or convex, or in the shape of a hemisphere or a tortoise's back. But +the Sunshade with movable rods, opening or shutting, existed at that +time, as is sufficiently indicated by the phrase of Aristophanes in +the /Knights/ (Act v. Scene 2)--"His ears opened and shut something +like a sunshade." + +An archæologist might amuse himself with writing a special work on +the rôle of the Sunshade in Greece; documents would not fail him; +nay, the book would soon grow big, and might bristle with notes from +all quarters, abounding in the margins, after the example of those +good solid volumes of the sixteenth century, which none but a hermit +would have the leisure to read conscientiously to-day. Such is not +our business in this light chapter. + +One cannot exactly say for what motive the Sunshade was carried +by young virgins in all the processions in the Thesmophoria, the +festivals of Eleusis, and the Panathenæa. Aristophanes calls the +baskets and the white Sunshades "symbolic instruments, destined to +recall to human beings the acts of Ceres and Proserpine." + +Perhaps it is not necessary to search beyond this Aristophanic +definition, which may on the whole entirely satisfy us. Moreover, +these Sunshades were white, not, say they, because the statue erected +by Theseus to Minerva was of that colour, but because white marked +the liveliest joy and pomp according to Ovid, who recommends very +carefully in his /Fasti/ the wearing in sign of rejoicings white +tunics worthy of pleasing Ceres, in whose cult both the priestesses +and the things they used ought to be entirely white. + +In a man, according to Anacreon, the carrying a Parasol was the mark +of a libertine and effeminate life; one might draw an analogous +conclusion from a scene in the /Birds/ of Aristophanes, in which +Prometheus, through fear of Jupiter, cries to his slave, before +abandoning himself to a sweet passion for Venus only, "Quick, take +this sunshade, and hold it over me, in order that the gods may not +see me." + +It is also doubtless for the same reason, which virtually interdicted +the use of the Parasol to men, that the daughters of the Metœci, +or strangers domiciled at Athens, carried, according to Ælian, +the sunshade of the Athenian women in the spectacles and public +ceremonies, whilst the fathers carried the vases destined for the +sacrifices. + +The Θολἱα, or "Sunshade Hat," succeeded the Parasol properly so +called. It is of these Θολἱα that Theocritus speaks in several +places; it is also this hat, and not a Sunshade, which we must see in +the curious medal above, stamped by the Ætolians, which represents +Apollo bearing this strange hat, in the style of Yokohama, hanging on +his back. + +From the most distant epochs the Sunshade has been considered, so +far as it is the attribute of gods and sovereigns, as the ensign +of omnipotence. We see it playing this supreme rôle, not only by +right of an emblem of blazonry, in the curious dissertation of the +Chevalier Beatianus /On a Sunshade of vermeil on a field argent, +symbol of power, sovereign authority and true friendship/, but also +we see it universally adopted as a sign of the highest distinction by +Oriental peoples, to be displayed over the head of the king in time +of peace, and occasionally in time of war. + +It is thus that it may be contemplated on the sculptures of ancient +Egypt, where its usage was not exclusively indeed reserved to the +Pharaohs, but sometimes also to the great dignitaries, but to +these only. There is to be seen in Wilkinson a strange engraving +representing an Æthiopian princess seated on a /plaustrum/ or +carriage drawn by oxen, and having behind her a vague personage armed +with a large Parasol of an undecided form, something between the +screen and the /flabellum/ in the segment of a circle. Is it not also +in sign of adoration that it was the custom to put above the heads of +divine statues crescents, Sunshades, little spheres, which served not +only to guarantee these august heads against the injuries of time and +the ordures of birds, but also to set their physiognomy in relief as +by a nimbus or crown of paganism? + +The kings or satraps of Persia of the oldest dynasties were sheltered +by the sovereign Parasol. Chardin, in his /Voyages/, describes +bas-reliefs of a time long before that of Alexander the Great, +in which the king of Persia is frequently represented sometimes +just about to mount his horse, at others surrounded by young +slave-girls--beautiful as day, as a poet might write for sake of +a simile--among whom one inclines a Sunshade, while another uses +a flyflap made of a horse's silky tail. Other bas-reliefs, again, +represent the Persian monarch on a throne, at the conclusion of a +victorious battle, whilst the rebels are being crucified, and writhe +under the punishment, and prisoners brought up, one after the other, +make humble submission. Here the Sunshade has the floating appearance +of a glorious standard. It symbolised also the power of life and +death, vested in the savage conqueror over the unfortunate conquered, +delivered up wholly to his mercy. + +In ancient India, the cradle of the human race, as it is said, the +Parasol in every time, and more than anywhere else, is unfolded in +its splendour and the grace of its contexture, as an immutable symbol +of royal majesty. It seems really that it was under the deep azure +of the admirable Indian sky that the coquettish instrument, of which +we are exposing here by literary zigzags the historic summary, was +invented. It must have been born there first as a fragile buckler to +oppose the ardour of the sun; afterwards, doubtless, it developed, +little by little, into a large dome, carried in the arms of slaves, +or on the back of an elephant, showing the sparkle of its colours, +the originality of its form, the richness of its tissues, all +overloaded with fine gold and silver filigree, making its spangles +and jewels scintillate in the full leaping light, in the slow +oscillation given to it by the march of its bearers, or the swayings +of a heavy pachyderm, in the midst of magic powers, of dancers and +enchantments without number among the most bizarre palaces of the +world. + +In Hindostan the large Parasol is commonly called /Tch'hâtâ/, the +small ordinary Parasol /Tch'hâtry/, and the bearer of the Parasol for +dignitaries /tch'hâtâ-wâlâ/. + +The Parasol /of seven stages/ (/savetraxat/) is the first ensign of +royalty: it is found graven on the royal seal. The mythology and +literature of the Hindoos are, so to speak, confusedly peopled with +Parasols. In his fifth incarnation, Vishnu descends to Hades with a +Parasol in his hand. On the other hand, from the seventh century, +Hiouen Thsang has remarked, according to the rites of the kingdom of +Kapitha, Brâhma and Indra were represented holding in their hand, one +a flyflap, the other a Parasol. In the /Râmayana/ (ch. xxvi. /scloka/ +12), Sitâ, speaking of Râma, whose beautiful eyes resemble the petals +of the lotus, expresses herself thus--"Covered with the Parasol +striped with a hundred rays, and such as the entire orb of the moon, +why do I not see thy most charming face shining beneath it?" + +We read also in the /Mahâbârata/ (/sclokas/ 4941-4943)--"The litter +on which was placed the inanimate body of the monarch Pândou was +adorned with a flyflap, a fan, and a white /Sunshade/; at the sound +of all the instruments of music, men by hundreds offered, in honour +of the extinguished shoot of Kourou, a crowd of flyflaps, /white +Sunshades/, and splendid robes." + +The Mahratta princes who reigned in Punah and Sattara held the title +of /Tch'hâtâ pati/, "Lord of the Parasol;" and we are told that one +of the most esteemed titles of the monarch of Ava was also that +of "King of the White Elephant, and Lord of the Four-and-twenty +Parasols." + +When, in 1877, the Prince of Wales, future inheritor of the throne of +England, undertook his famous voyage into India, it was absolutely +necessary--says Dr. W. H. Russell, the scrupulous historian of that +princely expedition--in order to make him known to the natives, to +set the Prince upon an elephant, and to hold over his head the golden +Sunshade, symbol of his sovereignty. + +There may be seen to-day in the South Kensington Museum, in the +admirable Indian gallery which has just been installed, some score +of the Parasols brought back by the Prince from his voyage, of which +each particular type deserves a description which cannot, alas! to +our sincere regret, find its place here. One may admire there the +state Umbrella of Indore, in the form of a mushroom; the Sunshade of +the Queen of Lucknow, in blue satin stitched with gold and covered +with fine pearls; next the Parasols of gilt paper, others woven of +different materials, some entirely covered with ravishing feathers of +rare birds, all with long handles in gold or silver, damascened, in +painted wood, in carved ivory, of a richness and an execution not to +be forgotten. + +Let us tear ourselves away, as in duty bound, from Hindustan, to meet +again with the Parasol on more classic ground in ancient Rome, in the +middle of the Forum and of the games of the Circus. The Sunshade is +found very frequently in the most ancient paintings, on stones and +vases of Etruria, a long while even before the Roman era. According +to Pliny and Valerius Maximus, it is from Campania that the Velarium +comes, which is destined to defend the spectators from the sun. The +use of /the private Sunshade for each person/ established itself by +degrees on those days when, on account of the wind, the Velarium +could not be used. Martial says in his /Epigrams/ (Book IV.): + + /Accipe quæ nimios vincant umbracula soles + Sit licet et ventus, te tua vela tegent./ + +People used the Sunshade not only at theatres, but also at battles, +and above all in the promenade. Ovid, in his /Fasti/, shows us +Hercules protecting his well-beloved Omphale by means of a Sunshade +from the sun's rays: + + /Aurea pellebant tepidos umbracula soles + Quæ tamen Herculeæ sustinuere manus./ + +This image of Hercules carrying a light Parasol would surely be +worthy to replace the used-up theme of the distaff? + +The ancient Romans brought to the decoration of their Parasols a +magnificence unknown in our days. They borrowed from the East its +stuffs, its jewels, its ornamental style, to enrich in the best +manner possible these pretty portable tents. When Heliogabalus, +forgetting his sex, after the example of the priests of Atys, +appeared on his car clothed with the long dress and all the gewgaws +that women wear; when he caused himself to be drawn along surrounded +by legions of nude slave-girls, he carried a fan in the guise of a +sceptre; and not only was there a golden Parasol in the form of a +dais stretched over his head, but also at each side two /umbelliferæ/ +held light Sunshades of silk, covered with diamonds, mounted on +Indian bamboo, or on a stem of gold carved and encrusted with the +most wondrous jewels. + +In the train which accompanied a matron on the Appian Way, if we can +believe the historian of /Rome in the age of Augustus/, two slaves +were obligatory: the fan-bearer (/flabellifera/) and the follower +(/pedis sequa/). The latter carried an elegant Parasol of linen +stretched over light rods at the extremity of a very long reed, so +that, at the least sign of her mistress, she might direct over her +the shadow of this movable defence. + +The Roman Umbrella seems to have been nothing but a simple morsel of +leather, according to these verses, which Martial wrote by way of +advice: + + /Ingrediare viam cœlo licet usque sereno; + Ad subitas nunquam scortea desit aquas./ + +This "leather cloth" was assuredly an Umbrella, which, except perhaps +in weight, need have envied nothing of our own. + +At Rome, as at Athens, the Sunshade appears to have hidden people +from the looks of the gods, for, according to Montfauçon, even the +Triclinia were covered with a sort of Sunshade, that folk might +deliver themselves more mysteriously to orgies of every kind and to +the pleasures of Venus. + +The material used in the manufacture of Sunshades was originally, +according to Pliny, leaves of palm divided into two, or the tresses +of the osier; afterwards they were made in silk, in purple, in +Eastern stuffs, in gold, in silver; they were adorned with Indian +ivory; they were starred with trinkets and jewels. One author tells +us even of Sunshades made out of women's hair--/the hair of women so +arranged as to supply the place of a Sunshade/. + +Singular headdress or singular Parasol! + +Juvenal speaks of a green Sunshade sent with some yellow amber to a +friend to celebrate her birthday and the return of spring. + + /En cui tu viridem umbellam, cui succina mittas + Grandia, natalis quoties redit, aut madidum ver + Incipit./ + +And with regard to this /green/ Sunshade, apropos of the /viridem/, +all the commentators enter into the field, and make a deafening noise +to explain that the epithet had no reference to the colour of the +Sunshade, but to the spring. + +Let us, if you please, leave Rome, without entering into these idle +dissertations. + +It would be difficult for us to find in the Middle Ages numerous +manifestations of the Sunshade in private life; it was evidently +adopted in the ceremonies of the Christian Church and in the royal +/entrées/; but it was especially the privilege of the great, and +never appeared save on solemn days in the processions, as later on +the dais, reserved for kings and ecclesiastical nobles. + +At Venice the Doge had already his celebrated Sunshade in 1176. +The Pope Alexander III. had accorded to the Venetian chiefs the +right to carry the Sunshade in the processions. Under the reign of +the Doge Giovanni Dandolo (1288) it was ordered that the pretty +golden statuette of the Annunciation should be added, which is seen +represented at the top of the Sunshade of the Venetian dogate. + +One can get some idea of this marvellous Sunshade, all of gold +brocade, and of a pompous and original shape, by looking at most of +the prints of the time, and particularly at the celebrated engraving +of the /Procession of the Doge/, as well as at the pictures of +Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Tiepolo, and the greater number of the +charming Venetian painters of the eighteenth century. + +It seems evident that the Roman Gauls knew the use of the Parasol, +but it would not be easy to demonstrate its existence logically in +the martial and Gothic epochs. One can scarcely imagine these men +of arms, these gentle pages, and these noble damsels, with their +lofty head-gear and long dress, defended by a frail silken /encas/ +(in case). They feared not then assuredly either sun or rain; they +dreamed of nought but /batailloles/ (little battles), according +to the language of that day; everything was done in honour of the +ladies, after the laws of the good King René, and the ladies would +certainly never have wished at the hour of the glorious tournaments +to shelter themselves at the approaches of the lists, against a sun +which sparkled on the breastplate of their brave knights with as much +brightness as the hope which shone in their eyes. + +Let us come now to China, to find there Parasols and Umbrellas in +great honour, since the beginning of the dynasty /Tchéou/ (eleventh +century before Christ). + +"The Umbrellas of that time," says M. Natalis Rondot, "resembled +ours; the mounting was composed of twenty-eight curved branches, and +covered with silken stuff. The Parasols were of feathers. + +"After the /Thong-ya/, it is only under the first Wei (A.D. 220-264) +that gentlemen began the use of Parasols; these Parasols were most +frequently made of little rods of bamboo and oiled paper; pedestrians +never made use of them before the second Wei (386-554). Parasols +figure ordinarily in processions and funerals since the seventh +century. Thus, in 648, at the time of the inauguration of the +Convent of the Grand Beneficence, at Si-ngan-Fou, one counted--says +the historian of the /Life of Hiouen thsang/--only in the procession +three hundred Parasols of precious stuffs. The Parasol in China, as +in India, has always been a sign of elevated rank, although it has +not been exclusively used by emperors and mandarins. Formerly, it +seems, four-and-twenty Parasols were carried before the Emperor when +his Majesty went to the chase. + +"A Chinese of a rank at all elevated, such as a mandarin, a bonze, +or a priest, never goes out without a Parasol, according to M. +Marie Cazal, a Sunshade manufacturer, who, about the year 1844, +wrote a small /Essay on the Umbrella, the Walking-stick, and their +Manufacture/.--'Every Chinese of a superior order is followed by his +slave, who carries his Parasol extended over him.' + +"The Umbrella in China is destined to the same use as the Parasol, +says M. Cazal: it belongs to all. Never, when the weather is the +least degree doubtful, does a Chinese go out of doors without his +Umbrella. Even horses are sheltered, as well as elephants, by +Parasols or Umbrellas fastened to branches of bamboo. Their drivers +take very good care not to illtreat them; imbued as they are, like +every good Chinaman, with the doctrines of metempsychosis, they +fear to torture the soul of their father or their grandfather, +reduced, in order to expiate his faults, to animate the body of these +quadrupeds." + +The Umbrellas and Parasols which are most common in China resemble +very much those which are imported into Europe; they are made +entirely of stalks of bamboo, disposed with enormous art, and covered +with oiled, tarred, or lacquered paper. Some are coloured, and have +printed on them religious allegories or sentences of Confucius. + +All the voyages in China and around the world are filled with details +of the Chinese Parasol. "The Chinese women, whose feet have been +compressed from infancy," remarks M. Charles Lavollée, "can scarcely +walk, and are obliged to support themselves on the handle of their +Parasol, which serves them for a walking-stick." + +The Parasol and the Fan in China play a rôle so considerable, that it +would be necessary to write a special monograph on each of these two +objects in order to consider properly their importance in the history +of the country and its current manners. In a general and summary +sketch like the present, must we not skim through, rather than sew +together documents collected with difficulty, or found within reach, +and leave aside the more bulky bundles, under pain of foundering in +the folio form of heavy dictionaries? + +Everywhere on the exquisite decorative combinations of Japan, +we see a large Parasol opened amidst delicate peach-blossoms, +gracious flights of strange birds, indented leaves, and rosy +ibises. Sometimes, on the inimitable paintings of the enamelled +vases, the Japanese Sunshade shelters a king's daughter, escorted +by her followers, who makes her chaste preparations for entering +the bath; sometimes, on a thin gauze, the Parasol half hides women, +promenading on the margin of some vast blue lake, full of ideal +dreams. Sometimes, in fine, in a fantastic sketch of an album, which +one reads as a riot of the imagination, is perceived some human +being excited to a singular degree, with hair tossed by the wind, +and haggard eye, floating at the will of the tumultuous waves on a +Parasol turned upside down, to the handle of which he clings with +the energy of despair. The plates of the /Voyage de Ricord/, and +especially the old Japanese albums, are useful to consult in order +to understand better the varieties of forms of the Sunshade in +Japan. We gain a bizarre notion of the effects and services which a +Japanese can obtain from a common Parasol of his country by looking +at the games of the acrobats who come to us occasionally from Tokio, +Yedo, or Yokohama. Théophile Gautier, who was highly astonished, and +not without reason, at the quickness, grace, and daring of these +marvellous equilibrists, has left us on this matter the fairest +pages, perhaps, of his /Feuilletons de Lundiste/. The worthy Théo, +that Gallic Rajah borrowed from these clowns, astonishing in their +lightness, an enthusiasm which put on his palette as a colourist +the most vibrating tones and the finest shades. The Sunshade and +the Fan are in fact presented by these magicians of the East with +particular graces in the jugglery of the most varied exercises. Here +it is a ball of ivory which rolls with the bickering of a babbling +stream over the lamels or ribs of the Sunshade; there it is a Parasol +held in equilibrium on the blade of a dagger, and a thousand other +astonishing inventions. All these fascinating feats of skill cannot +be described save in the manner of Gautier, in other words, by +veritable pen-pictures. Admirable interpretation of things glimpsed +at! + +In the tea-houses of Tokio, the pretty /Geishas/ often employ, to +mimic an expressive dance, the Fan and the little paper Parasol. + +One of the most usual of their dances, managed something like our +ballets, is called the Rain-dance. This is the way in which a +/Globe-trotter/ gives an account of its leading idea and character:-- + +"Some young girls prepare to leave their homes, and to pose as +beauties in the streets of Yedo. They admire each other in playing +their fans, they are dressed in superb toilets--they are sure of +turning the heads of all the young /samouraï/ of the town. + +"Scarcely have they got out of doors when a thick cloud appears. +Great disquietude! They open their Parasol, and make a thousand +pretty grimaces, to show how sadly they fear the ruin of their +charming dresses. . . . A few drops of rain begin to fall: they +quicken their steps on their way home again. + +"A burst of thunder occasioned by the /Samisen/ and the drums, is +heard, which announces a terrible downpour. Then our four dancers +catch their robes with both hands, and throw them with one sweep +under their arms, and suddenly turning, take to their heels, showing +us a row of little . . . . frightened faces, saving themselves at the +full speed of their legs." + +What a series of pantomimes, in which the Sunshade must assume in the +hands of the charming /Geishas/ the most seductive positions! + +"Among the Arabs the Parasol was a mark of distinction" (as we learn +from M. O. S., the English reporter of a commission which published a +small notice on /Umbrellas, Parasols, and Walking-sticks/ in London +about 1871). There is the same importance attached to it among +certain blacks of Western Africa, who have probably borrowed it from +the Arabs. Niebuhr, in the description of the procession of the Imam +of Sanah, tells us that the Imam, and every one of the princes of +his numerous family, had carried by their side a /Madalla/ or large +Parasol. It is in that country a privilege of princes of the blood. +The same writer relates that many independent chiefs of Yemen bear +/Madallas/ as a mark of their independence. In Morocco the Emperor +alone and his family have the privilege of the Parasol. In the +/Voyages of Aly Bey/ we read in fact:--"The retinue of the Sultan +was composed of a troop of from fifteen to twenty gentlemen as the +vanguard; behind them, some hundred paces, came the Sultan, mounted +on a mule, having beside him, also mounted on a mule, an officer +carrying the Imperial Parasol. The Parasol is the distinctive sign of +the sovereign of Morocco. No one but he would dare to use it." + +In certain tribes of central Africa explorers speak of having +encountered, amidst the tribes of the desert, kings half-dressed in +European old clothes, taken or exchanged no one knows where; and, +strangely enough, on the top of an old silk hat, half-knocked in, one +of these negro kings, says a traveller, held with a sort of grotesque +majesty an old torn Umbrella of which the whalebone appeared to be +half-broken. This Robert Macaire of the desert, does he not recall +that pleasant equatorial fantasy of the /Parnassiculet Contemporain/, +a sonnet terminating with the verses:-- + + What then is strange about this desert's pride, + Who in the desert without thee had died? + Bétani answered, "Child of open mien, + + Where on board ship he comes, I tell you that + For full court-dress, this half-blood wears a hat + Of an old shako, trimmed with tufts of green!" + +This fantasy might serve as a theme for a dissertation on the +subject, "Whither do worn-out things go?--what becomes of the old +umbrellas?" It would be a ballad full of colour for a Villon of the +present time. + +To return to France, many writers, romancists or dramatic authors, +having greater care of the splendour of the /mise-en-scène/ than +of absolute historic truth, have presented us with some hunting +parties of the time of Henri II. and Henri III., in which the noble +huntresses followed the deer on horses magnificently harnessed, +holding in their hands hexagonal Sunshades fringed with gold and +enriched with pearls. + +We found truly a mention of the Parasol in the /Description of the +Isle of the Hermaphrodites/; but it was then very rare in France, +and what is more, very heavy, and handled with such ceremonies that +a strong lackey must have had considerable difficulty in holding it +up. From this to place light Sunshades of silk between the dainty +fingers of "fair and gentle dames" of that time, especially for a +hunt through the woods, there is, it seems to us, a departure which +good sense alone, not to mention historic science, is quite enough to +point out. + +The Parasol was still very little known in France, even in the second +half of the sixteenth century. It is fairly certain that, like the +/Fan/, and other objects so much in favour with Catherine de Medici, +it was brought into France out of Italy. Henri Estienne, in his +/Dialogues of the new French Language Italianised/, 1578, makes one +of his interlocutors called Celtophile say: " . . . . and /à propos/ +of pavilion, have you ever seen what some of the lords in Spain or +Italy carry or cause to be carried about in the country, to defend +themselves, not so much from the flies, as from the sun? It is +supported by a stick, and so made that being folded up and occupying +very little space, it can when necessary be opened immediately and +stretched out in a circle so as to cover three or four persons." And +Philausone answers: "I have never seen one; but I have heard talk of +them often; and if our ladies were to see them carrying these things, +they would perhaps tax them with too great delicacy." + +In Italy it is little probable that since the Romans the inhabitants +of the higher classes have ever unlearned the pleasant use of +Parasols. The majority of travellers notice them in all epochs, and +in the /Italian Mysteries/, played in the fourteenth and fifteenth +centuries, it is nearly certain that at the moment of their naïve +representation of the Deluge, the Deity appeared on the stage with an +Umbrella in his hand. + +In the /Journal and Voyage of Montaigne/ in Italy, the good +philosopher, who teaches us so few matters beyond his own personal +sufferings, deigns, nevertheless, to aver that the supreme good taste +of the women of Lucca was to have incessantly a Parasol in their +hands. + +"No season," says also elsewhere this charming epicurean essayist, +"is so much my enemy as the sharp heat of sunshine, for the +/Sunshades/, which are used in Italy since the time of the ancient +Romans, charge the arms more than they discharge from the head." + +So, too, Thomas Coryat, an English tourist of that time, in his +/Crudities/ (1611), speaks of the Italian Parasols, after having +noticed the presence of Fans in the towns through which he had +travelled: "Many Italians," he says, "do carry other fine things of a +far greater price, that will cost at the least a ducat (about seven +francs), which they commonly call in the Italian tongue /Umbrellæs/, +that is, things that minister shadow unto them for shelter against +the scorching heat of the sun. These are made of leather, something +answerable to the form of a little canopy, and hooped in the inside +with divers little wooden hoops, that extend the /Umbrella/ in a +pretty large compass. They are used especially by horsemen, who carry +them in their hands when they ride, fastening the end of the handle +upon one of their thighs, and they impart so large a shadow unto them +that it keepeth the heat of the sun from the upper parts of their +body." + +Fabri, in his useful and remarkable work, /Diversarum Nationum +Ornatus/ (additio) confirms this fact from 1593, in taking care to +represent a noble Italian, travelling on horseback with a Parasol in +his hand: "/Nobilis Italus ruri ambulans tempore æstatis/." + +What variety this simple detail, more propagated or rather better +vulgarised among our romancists, would have thrown into the great +romances of adventure! We should have seen the protecting Sunshade +marking from a distance, by its colour and elevated shape, the +presence of the rich traveller to be robbed, in the mountains of +Tuscany, while the brigands of the time kept their watch in the +folds of the rocks; then, too, we should surely have witnessed, +in passionate recitals of heroic combats, the buckler Parasol, +already full of holes, torn into shreds, yet still serving to +parry victoriously the blows of the ferocious cut-throats and +cloak-snatchers. + +And how many sonorous and unforeseen titles are there of which we +have been deprived by this fact of our ignorance: /The Knights of +the Sunshade/--/The Heroic Parasol/--/The State Courier/, or /the +Sunshade Recovered/! . . . . and who can say how many more! + +The Arsenal, the old Hotel de Sully, preserved for a long time one +of those Parasols, which librarians named the /Pepin/ (seed-fruit) +/of Henri IV./ It was very big, and entirely covered with blue +silk, with long and distinctly precious flowers of the golden lily +scattered over it. This Parasol, ministerial or royal, is doubtless +lost, and we speak of it only after the description which the learned +bibliophile Jacob has given us. + +Daniel Defoe, who published his /Robinson Crusoe/ in 1719, was +one of the first to mention to any extent the Parasol in England. +Before him, as we shall see farther on, it had been named only very +summarily in literary works. So firmly fixed in our imaginations as +men, the children of yesterday, is the great Umbrella of Crusoe, and +his dreadful alarm on seeing the print of a man's foot on the shore, +as well as his walks with his dog and /Friday/ the good Caribbee; +it presents itself, moreover, so clearly in our first literary +remembrances, that we will reproduce the passage of the journal where +it is mentioned: + +"After this," says Crusoe, "I spent a deal of time and pains to make +me an Umbrella. I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great +mind to make one. I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they +are very useful in the great heats which are there; and I felt the +heats every jot as great here, and greater too...; besides, as I was +obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well +for the rains as the heats. I took a world of pains at it, and was a +great while before I could make anything likely to hold; nay, after I +thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one +to my mind; but at last I made one that answered indifferently well; +the main difficulty, I found, was to make it to let down: I could +make it to spread, but if it did not let down too, and draw in, it +would not be portable for me any way, but just over my head, which +would not do. However, at last, as I said, I made one to answer; I +covered it with skins, the hair upward, so that it cast off the rain +like a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could +walk out in the hottest of the weather, with greater advantage than +I could before in the coolest; and when I had no need of it, I could +close it and carry it under my arm." + +And this Parasol, for a century and a half, has been popularised by +the engraver, with its dome of hair and rude manufacture; and so all +the poor little prisoners at school invoke it, and dream often that +they carry it in some desert isle, for it represents to their eyes a +life of open air and liberty. + + * * * * * + +Before Daniel Defoe, Ben Jonson had already mentioned the Parasol in +England in a comedy played in 1616; and Drayton, sending some doves +to his mistress in 1620--a delicious lover's fancy--formulated in his +passioned verses the following desire: "/May they, these white turtle +doves I send you, shelter you like Parasols under their wings in +every sort of weather./" + +In the relation of his /Voyage in France/ in 1675, Locke, speaking +of Sunshades, says: "These are little articles and very light, which +women use here, to defend themselves from the sun, and they seem +to us very convenient." Afterwards the English ladies desired to +possess these pretty Parasols, although, by reason of their climate, +such things could hardly be of any use to them. It was not, however, +till the eighteenth century that a London manufacturer bethought +himself of inventing the Sunshade-Fan, compared with which it appears +the French folding /marquises/ were as nothing. This ingenious +fabricator made a considerable fortune; but if we are to believe the +/Improvisateur François/, his invention was rapidly imitated and much +improved in Paris. Why has it not been preserved to our own days? + +But let us linger in this seventeenth century, and remain awhile +in France, where the Parasol was not in use, save at court among +the great ladies. Men never used it to shelter themselves from the +rain--the cloak and sword were still alone in fashion. + +Ménage tells us in his /Ménagiana/, that being with M. de Beautru, +about 1685, in the midst of a pouring rain at the door of the Hôtel +de Bourgogne, up came a Gascon gentleman, without a cloak, and nearly +wet through; the Gascon, seeing himself stared at, cried out, "I +would lay a wager now my people have forgotten to give me my cloak." +To which M. de Beautru quickly replied, "I go halves with you." + +The silk Sunshade, however, properly so called, appeared in the hands +of women of quality, at the promenade, on the race-course, or in the +vast alleys of the royal park of Versailles, towards the middle of +the reign of Louis XIV. The Umbrella of that time was an instrument +astonishingly heavy and very coarse in appearance, which it seemed +almost ridiculous to hold in the hand. In 1622 it was in some measure +a novelty in Paris, since in the /Questions Tabariniques/, cited by +that useful author, the late M. Édouard Fournier, in /The Old and the +New/, we read these lines about the famous felt hat of Tabarin:-- + +"It was from this hat that the invention of Parasols was drawn, which +are now so common in France that they are no longer called Parasols, +but /Parapluyes/ (Umbrellas) and /Garde-Collet/ (collar guards), for +they are used as much in winter against the rain as in summer against +the sun." + +The most ancient engraving or /documentary/ image of French manners +in which we see a Parasol is dated 1620. It is the frontispiece of a +Collection of Saint Igny, /The French Nobility at Church/. + +Parasols, however, were still very little used in the seventeenth +century; the /Précieuses/ who, instead of saying "It rains," cried +out, "/The third element falls!/" would never have missed finding +some amiable qualificative to designate this necessary article +invented against Phœbus and Saint Swithin. But Saumaise reveals to us +nought on this subject, and one would be almost tempted to believe +that the /Philamintes/ and /Calpurnies/ attached no importance to +this "rustic and movable Pavilion." What, however, is clearly shown +by the ancient prints is the employment of the Parasol in the form +of a small round canopy which ladies of quality had borne by their +valets when walking in the primly arranged gardens of their lordly +residences, whilst the gentlemen marched before, wrapt in their +cloaks, with the felt hat inclined over one eye. + +Parasols were then of so coarse a form, and their weight made them so +difficult to be carried, that they could not be easily utilised by +ordinary people; they are never found in any of those very curious +engravings which give a confused idea of the rumblings and mobs of +the streets under Louis XIV. Boileau and François Colletet have not +mentioned them amidst the /Obstacles and Bustle of Paris/; and the +/Cries of the Town/ which have come down to us do not indicate that +in the seventeenth century any man with "/'Brella-a-a-a-s to sell!/" +had contributed his mournful melopæa to the lagging cries of the +street. + +That is easily understood. We see that a Parasol, in the middle of +the grand century, weighed 1600 grammes, that its whalebones had +a length of 80 centimetres, that its handle was of heavy oak, and +that its massive carcass was covered with oilcloth, with barracan, +or with coloured grogram. The whole was held by a copper ring fixed +at the extremity of the whalebones; it was the labour of a porter +to preserve oneself, with an instrument like this, from the pelting +shower! Better still: often these Parasols were made of straw, and, +if we believe the /Diary and Correspondence of Evelyn/, about 1650, +they affected in some degree the form of metal dish-covers. + +However, it is something very like a Sunshade which we find about +1688 in the hands of a woman of quality, dressed in a summer habit +/à la Grecque/, of which N. Arnoult has preserved faithfully for us +the pleasing outline, in a pretty design made common by engravings. +This Parasol has the appearance of a mushroom, well developed and +slightly flattened at its borders; the red velvet which covers it is +divided into ribs or rays, by light girdles of gold, and the handle, +very curiously worked, is like that of a distaff, with swellings and +grooves executed by the turner. Altogether, this coquette's Sunshade +is very graceful, and of great richness. + +In the most varied literary works of the seventeenth century, +memoirs, romances, varieties, dissertations, poems, enigmas, carols, +and songs, there is not a word of allusion to the Parasol, there +is an entire penury of anecdote, nothing whatever on the subject. +It is useless to torture your understanding, to look through a +miserable needle's eye, at the /Letters/ of Madame de Sévigné, the +gossip of Tallemant, the /Conversations/ of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, +the /Anecdotes/ of Ménage, the poetical collections, the different +/Chats/, the /Medleys/--it is but a library overturned to no purpose, +a headache gained without the slightest profit. + +In a MS. collection, written about 1676, which relates the memoirs +of Nicolas Barillon, a comedian, this phrase alone attracts our +attention: "The days being very hot, the lady carried either a mask +or a Parasol of the most precious leather." + +From this mask or Parasol of precious leather no conclusion can be +drawn better than that of the Dictionaries of the Anti-Academician, +Antoine Furetière, or of the learned Richelet, where we find a résumé +of the ideas of the time. Here, then, is the definition of the +first:-- + + /Parasol/, s. m., a small portable piece of furniture, or round + covering, carried in the hand, to defend the head from the great + heats of the sun; it is made of a circle of leather, of taffety, of + oilcloth, &c. It is suspended to the end of a stick; it is folded + or extended by means of some ribs of whalebone which sustain it. It + serves also to defend one from the rain, and then it is called by + some /parapluie/ (umbrella). + +The definition of Richelet is almost the same. He adds, however, +these words: "Only women carry Parasols, and they only in spring, +summer, and autumn." Richelet, it is true, borders upon the +eighteenth century, since he died but a little before the end of +the reign of Louis the Great. This brings us to the aurora of the +Regency, and a renaissance then occurs in feminine coquetry. We are +now about to find our Sunshade in gallant parties, supported by +little turbaned negroes; already we see it decorated with fringes of +gold and trimmings of silk, enhanced with plumes of feathers, mounted +on Indian bamboos, covered with changing silks, embellished in a +thousand and one ways, worthy, in a word, of casting a discreet shade +on those rosy and delicate faces which Pater, Vanloo, Lancret, La +Rosalba, and Latour did their best to reproduce in luminous paintings +or fresh pastels, those enchanting pictures where the coquetry of the +past smiles still. + +Like all objects of adornment in the hands of women, the Sunshade in +the last century became, like the Fan, almost a light and graceful +plaything, serving to punctuate an expression, to round a gesture, +to arm an attitude of charming reverie, in which, guided by pretty +indolent fingers, its point traces vague designs upon the sand. +Before the burning breath of amorous declarations, often the frail +Sunshade escapes from the hands of a beauty, in sign of armistice, +and as an avowal of abandonment. + +Be it open, and daintily held over powdered hair, or shut, and +brushing the brocaded petticoat, it is always the "balancing pole +of the Graces." It gives a value to listlessness on the rustic seat +of the parks, under the vaulted roofs of grottoes, and it adds a +piquancy to the frowardness of the feminine chatterers, who defend +themselves by making fun of libertine attacks. In a word, in the +light amorous allegories of the century, it is worthy to appear in +those love-duets of /Leanders/ and /Isabellas/, which Watteau often +composed with so rare an art of refinement. + +From the middle of the last century the Umbrella of taffety became +the fashion at Paris. Caraccioli, in his /Picturesque and Sententious +Dictionary/, gives us evidence of this: "It has long been the +custom," he says, "not to go out save with one's Umbrella, and to +trouble oneself by carrying it under one's arm. Those who wish not to +be confounded with the vulgar, prefer to run the risk of getting wet +to being regarded as people who walk on foot, for the Umbrella is the +sign of having no carriage." + +The Parasols were made by the purse-makers, and when, by an edict of +August 1776, the manufacturers of gloves, purses, and girdles were +united in one community, an article thus conceived may be read in +their statutes: "They alone also still have the right to make and +manufacture all sorts of Umbrellas and Parasols, in whalebone and in +copper, folding and non-folding, to garnish them atop with stuffs of +silk and linen, to make Umbrellas of oilcloth, and Parasols adorned +and ornamented in all sorts of fashions." According to the /Journal +of a Citizen/, published at the Hague in 1754, the price of folding +Parasols was then from 15 to 22 livres a piece, and the Parasol for +the country from 9 to 14 livres. + +We must, however, believe that the common folk of Paris did not yet +dare to purchase Parasols, since Bachaumont, in the /Secret Memoirs/, +dated 6th September 1769, records the following enterprise:-- + +"A company has lately formed an establishment worthy of the town of +Sybaris. It has obtained an exclusive privilege to have Parasols, +and to furnish them to such as fear being incommoded by the sun +during the crossing of the Pont-Neuf. There are to be offices at +each extremity of the bridge, where the voluptuous dandies who are +unwilling to spoil their complexion, can obtain this useful machine; +they will return it at the office on the other side, so alternately, +at the price of two farthings for each person. This project has +already been put in execution. It is announced that if this invention +succeeds, there is authority to establish like offices in other +places in Paris, where skulls might be affected, such as the Place +Louis XV., &c. It is probable that these profound speculators will +obtain the exclusive privilege of Umbrellas." + +Did this enterprise succeed? We cannot tell. All that is certain is, +that it was tried many times in our own epoch by innovators, who had +no idea that even the letting out of Parasols was not absolutely new +under the sun. + + * * * * * + +A great progress was realised in the eighteenth century in the +manufacture of Sunshades for ladies. The small ordinary Parasols +became exceedingly light, and charmingly decorated. In a picture of +Bonaventure Delord, in the Louvre, we find the exact type of these +coquettish Sunshades of the last century. One, which is held by a +laughing beauty in the midst of a picnic, is mounted on a long stem, +and the top, made of yellow buckskin, appears to have four sides; a +cap of turned copper, and of a very pretty shape, profiles its tiny +Chinese gable on the grass. + +So, too, may be seen in the collection of Madame la Baronne Gustave +de Rothschild, a very curious Sunshade which belonged to Madame de +Pompadour. It is of blue silk superbly decorated with wonderful +Chinese miniatures in mica, and ornaments in paper very finely +cut and affixed to the background. Fortified probably with such a +Sunshade as this, the pretty favourite, at the time of the rage for +pastorals, which followed the appearance of Bouffier's story of +/Aline/, betook herself to the shady walks of the Petit Trianon at +Versailles, with her female friends, to see the white sheep milked, +and to steep the carnation of her lips in the warm milk, of which +the young Abbé De Bernis--who gathered so willingly madrigals and +bouquets for Chloris--compared the whiteness to that of her peerless +bosom. + +Everywhere, in the pictures and engravings of the century we catch +a glimpse of these same light Sunshades or Umbrellas which approach +so nearly those of the present day. We see the one or the other in +the /Prints of Moreau the Younger intended to serve as a Companion +to the History of Fashions and Customs in France/, in the /Crossing +the River/, after Gamier, in public festivals, as well as amidst +the hubbub of the crowds, which Moreau shows us in the /Great Court +Carriages in/ 1782, as in the minor popular rejoicings, like /The +Ascension of a Fire-balloon/, after the engravings of the period. +The Sunshade introduces also a little touch of gaiety into the large +pictures of Joseph Vernet; in his /View of Antibes/ and his /Port of +Marseille/ the painter has placed in the hands of pretty promenaders +adorable little pink Sunshades, through which the light seems to +filtrate, in the silk's transparency. Later on, lastly, before the +royal sitting of 23d June, 1789, the Umbrella plays its historic part +in the Revolution, by protecting the gentlemen of the Third Estate, +left at the door of the Assembly under a pelting rain, not very well +disposed to receive the King's order, "Gentlemen, I command you to +disperse yourselves at once!" + +Strange! at a time when the Parasol was generally adopted in France, +it was yet very little known in England and among the peoples of +the North. At Venice even, where we have made our researches, the +first person who used a Sunshade, about the middle of the eighteenth +century, was Michel Morosini, "a senator of high rank," who, braving +all prejudices, appeared one day in his gondola, bearing a small +green Sunshade, unarched, of a quadrangular form, surmounted by a +tiny copper spire, of very delicate workmanship. The fair ladies of +Venice adopted this "indispensable" after this manifestation of the +noble Michel Morosini, but the Sunshade, nevertheless, appeared not +in all patrician hands in the gondolas of the Great Canal, and on the +Piazza of Saint Mark, till about the year 1760. + +In England, in the first half of the last century, the Parasol and +the Umbrella were hardly ever used; however, in a passage of the +/Tatler/, Swift alludes to one of them in 1760, when he describes for +us a little sempstress, with her petticoats tucked up, and walking +along in a great hurry, whilst the rain trickles down from the +Umbrella: + + The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, + While streams run down her oiled Umbrella's sides. + +Again, there is at Woburn Abbey an admirable portrait, painted about +1730, of the Duchess of Bedford, followed by a little negro, who +holds above her head a sumptuously decorated state Parasol. + +It is right to say that during the first years of the last century +people could not procure Umbrellas in London except in the +coffee-houses, where they were placed in reserve to be let out to +customers during heavy showers of rain. The first English citizen +who really introduced absolutely and unconditionally the Umbrella to +the nation was Jonas Hanway, the founder of the Magdalen Hospital. +This audacious man--for audacious he must have been thus to brave +the prejudices of a people the most prejudiced in the world--this +rash person had the courage never to go out into the streets of +London without his Umbrella from the year of our Lord 1750. Like +the majority of innovators, he was scoffed at, reviled, derided, +caricatured; he had to bear in his daily walks the quips and insults +of the mob, the stones and jostlings of the vagabond boys; but he had +also the honour of triumphing, and of seeing by degrees, after twenty +years of perseverance, his example followed to such an extent that +at the time of his death in 1786 he could declare with pride that, +thanks to him, the Umbrella was for ever implanted in England, an +imperishable institution. + +To-day, our neighbours across the Channel talk of erecting a statue +to Jonas Hanway, as a homage publicly paid to a philanthropist. It +might be asked in what attitude this peaceable humanitarian is to be +represented, whether the Parasol of bronze is to remain shut up in +his right hand, or if it will be opened in all its amplitude over the +head of its protector, thus become its /protégé/. + +About the time when Jonas Hanway died, Roland de la Platière made, +in his /Manufactures, Arts, and Trades/, this curious observation: +"The use of Parasols is to such an extent established in Lyons, that +not only all the women, but even the men, would not cross the street +without their little Parasol in red, white, or some other colour, +garnished with blonde lace, an article which, owing to its lightness, +can be carried with ease." + +At the approach of the Revolution, the Umbrella became popular, and +served as a tent for the fishwomen and other feminine hucksters. +Then first appeared the enormous Umbrella of red serge among the +people of the markets, and the ordinary Umbrella in the hands of +the "Sans-Jupons" (the unpetticoated). Amidst the enthusiasms and +revolts of the streets the Umbrella was frantically waved by the +hands of the women of the people, and when, on the 31st May 1793, +Théroigne de Méricourt undertook her ill-starred defence of Brissot, +in the midst of a multitude of old hags, who cried "Down with the +Brissotins!" Umbrellas were lifted like so many improvised swords +over the /Liégeoise/, smote her in the face, lashed her everywhere, +scanning as it were with their strokes the odious cries of "/Ah! the +Brissotine!/" and provoking in the unhappy revolutionary Amazon the +madness of which she died so sadly at the Salpêtrière. + +The Parasol of the Jacobins for a time made a show of severity, +in opposition to the knotty sticks and coquettish Parasols of the +Muscadins (dandies) and Incroyables (beaux); the Merveilleuses +(feminine exquisites), on the other hand, hoisted vaporous Sunshades +like their vestments of nymphs. Then it was that fashion gave their +due to the rights even of this frail protector of the Graces; every +kind of extravagance was allowed, every stuff accepted, however +dazzling and however precious. In the public gardens of Paris, all +the fashionable beauties displayed unusual luxury in the decoration +of their Sunshades; there were tender greens, figured gold stuffs, +flesh-coloured tints with scarlet fretworks, tender blues trimmed +with silver, Indian cashmeres or tissues, the whole mounted on +handles of affected roughness or of exquisitely delicate work. /Ma +paole supême/, as the exquisite used to say, it must be seen to be +believed. Nothing could be more coquettish than these Parasols, +streaked, striped, pied, fretted, as the complement of a dress /à +l'Omphale/, /à la Flore/, /à la Diane/, appearing in a swiftly driven +carriage, above a jacket /à la Galatée/, or a tunic /au Lever de +l'aurore/, amidst egrets, plumes, tufts of ribbons, and every kind of +feminine adornment. + +Towards the close of the eighteenth century, the Sunshade was always +covered with the most fashionable tints and with stuff of the latest +taste of the time. Parasols were to be seen dressed in /stifled +sighs/, and garnished with /useless regrets/, others adorned with +ribbons /aux soupirs de Vénus/ (Venus' sighs), whilst the fashion +exacted by turns such colours as /coxcombs' bowels/, /Paris mud/, +/Carmelite/, /flea's thigh/, /king's eye/, /queen's hair/, /goose +dung/, /dauphin's dirt/, /opera flame/, /agitated nymph's thigh/, +and other names which were the singular qualificatives of particular +shades, the rage and infatuation of the hour. + +The young priests carried a light violet or lilac Parasol, to remain +in the tone of their general dress--perhaps by episcopal orders. In +the same way, the Roman Cardinals are still followed in their walks +by a deacon, carrying a red Parasol, which makes part--like the +hat--of the ordinary luggage of the "Monsignori." + +This word "luggage," which has just fallen from our pen, would seem +to call the attention to the rôle of the Sunshade or the Umbrella +in the Travels of the last century. Was the Parasol considered as +indispensable luggage before going on any expedition? We cannot +affirm this. The author of /A Journey from Paris to Saint-Cloud by +Sea and by Land/ writes, before embarking at Pont-Royal: "I kept +for my personal carriage only my repeater, my pocket-flask full of +/sans pareille/ water, my gloves, my boots, a whip, my riding-coat, +my pocket pistols, my fox-skin muff, my green taffety Umbrella, and +my big varnished walking-stick." But here we have more of a pretty +conceit of the eighteenth century, a sort of cotquean traveller, +who encumbers himself with useless objects. We have consulted many +/Almanacks serving as Guides for Travellers/, and containing "a +detail of everything which is necessary to travel comfortably, +usefully, and agreeably," from 1760 to 1765: nowhere, however, was +the Umbrella prescribed, either for foot passengers or for those on +horseback; on the contrary, the anonymous editor of those guides +seems sometimes to laugh at the simplicity of the tourist from Paris +to Saint-Cloud, and he adds that a traveller in good health ought to +content himself with strong boots and a cloak of good cloth. Even a +walking-stick, he says, often consoles the walker only in imagination. + +The Umbrella-Walking-stick--who would believe it?--was, however, +known from 1758, and very convenient Parasols were then made, of +which the dimensions could be reduced so as to suit the pocket. A +certain Reynard announced in 1761 Parasols "which fold on themselves +triangularly, and become no thicker or more voluminous than a +crush-hat." These Umbrellas were, it seems, very common about 1770: +the stick was in two pieces, united by a screw, and the ribs were +folded back several times. + +But let us not abandon the chronological order in returning thus +upon our own steps, after the example of a romance writer of 1840. +We have scarcely caught a glimpse of the Sunshade in our passage +through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, in the +desultory speed of this free chat, in which our prose leaps as in a +steeple-chase of charming designs. We have confounded occasionally +the two denominations /Sunshade/ and /Umbrella/ in the more general +word /Parasol/: but if we have travelled a little in every direction, +we have not had the leisure to stop anywhere as a lounger or +analyst. And here we are at the beginning of this century, at the +Empire, but the nation is helmed, the sun of Austerlitz requires +not a Sunshade; woman holds merely the second place in this hour in +which France handles but the costly toys of glory, and if we find +at all an Umbrella, it is in the field, with the general staff of +the army, during some misty night, when it is used to shelter the +commander-in-chief, who studies on his map the plan of battle of the +morn. + +The Sunshade shows more favourably in the hour of peace, during the +Restoration. All the journals of fashion of the time give us curious +and varied specimens of it in their steel engravings, hand-coloured, +which show us, during those days of a lull, languid ladies in the +midst of amusing decorations, in winter amidst snowy country scenes, +in summer in a park of profound distances, on some rustic bridge, +where the mistresses of the manors of that time allowed their +romantic reveries slowly to wander. We can follow in the innumerable +Monitors of elegance, which appeared from 1815 to 1830, from year +to year, from season to season, the variations introduced into the +decoration of the little ladies' Parasols. Look for a moment: here +are Sunshades, covered with coloured crape, or damasked satin, with +checkered silk, streaked, striped, or figured; others enriched with +blonde or lace, embroidered with glass-trinkets, or garnished with +marabou feathers, with gold and silver lace, or silk trimming; +the fashionable shade is then very light or very deep, without +intermediate tones: white, straw yellow, pink or myrtle-green, +chestnut and black, purple-red, or indigo. But a hundred pages would +not suffice us to catalogue these fashions of the Sunshade: let us +pass onward. + +The use of the Umbrella extends itself little by little through all +classes; already in the slang of the people it is known under the +names of the /Mauve/(?), the /Riflard/, the /Pépin/, the /Robinson/. +Umbrella manufactories have, since the beginning of this century, +propagated rapidly in France. Before 1815--this seems scarcely +credible--Paris had no great manufactory of Parasols. But from 1808 +to 1851 alone, we can reckon more than 103 patents for inventions +and improvements relating to Umbrellas and Sunshades. Among the most +extravagant patents, we must quote, after M. Cazal:-- + + (1.) A patent for invention of an Umbrella walking-stick with a + field-glass; + + (2.) A patent for invention of Umbrellas and Sunshades combined + with walking-sticks, shutting up in a copper case, in the form of a + telescope; + + (3.) A patent for invention of an Umbrella walking-stick, containing + diverse objects for writing or other purposes, and called /Universal + Walking-stick/; + + (4.) A patent for invention of methods of manufacturing Umbrellas + and Sunshades, opening of themselves, by means of a mechanism placed + inside the handle; + + (5.) A patent for an Umbrella walking-stick, of which the sheath may + be folded at pleasure, and carried in the pocket. + +In spite of these genially grotesque inventions of +Umbrella-Telescopes and of Parasol-Walking-sticks, we have always +come back to the Umbrella simple, without mechanism, or to a light +stick without any pretensions to defend us from the rain. There are +so many complications in an object intended for many uses, that an +educated mind will always refuse to adopt it. + +But without speaking further of the technology of the Umbrella, we +will relate an anecdote which ran through all the minor journals of +the Restoration, terminating like an apologue. We shall adopt the +form and style of the time in our narrative of this little historic +story, which should be entitled /The Sunshade and the Riflard/. + +One fair summer afternoon, the promenaders in the Parisian Champs +Elysées might have seen, seated on a chair beside a pretty woman, +whose interesting situation was plainly visible, a peaceable citizen +making an inventory of all his pockets in their turn, without finding +the purse from which he intended to draw the few halfpence which the +chair-proprietress demanded. + +The search is useless; it is impossible for him to pay;--the +proprietress indignant, almost rude, threatening to make a +disturbance, is only satisfied by the gentleman taking from the hands +of his companion a Sunshade of green silk, with fringes, mounted on +a reed, and a yellow glove, and giving them to the irascible lady, +saying to her, "Well, madam, keep this Sunshade as a pledge, and give +it to no one unless he offer you a Glove the fellow of this." + +The pair departed, slowly arrived at the Place de la Révolution, +then at the Boulevard de la Madeleine, when they were surprised +by a violent shower; cabs were not to be had, the rain increased, +they were forced to seek refuge underneath a carriage entrance. The +peaceable citizen had already taken his companion to this shelter, +when a "portier," with an otter-skin cap, came out, beseeching the +lady and gentleman to accept the hospitality of his little room, +where a leathern arm-chair and a stool were immediately, and with +very good grace, offered to the invited pair. The rain still pouring +down, the "portier," more and more affable, took from a corner of his +small lodge a superb Umbrella of green serge, and offered it to his +guests, declaring that all he had was at their service. + +The gentleman, in much confusion, accepted with many thanks the +Umbrella, and sheltering with it the interesting young woman, who had +tucked up her dress in the prettiest style, they both ventured out +into the midst of the deluge. + + . . . . An hour afterwards, a footman in very stylish livery +returned to the honest "portier" cobbler his precious Umbrella, +with four notes for a thousand francs, from the Duke de Berry; next +directing his course to the Champs Elysées, that same footman sought +out the chair-proprietress, and said to her: + +"You recognise this Glove, Madam? Here are four pence, which my lord, +the Duke of Berry, has ordered me to remit to you, to redeem the +Sunshade of the Princess Caroline." + +Touching and eternal legend of virtue, not without a recompense! + +Under Louis Philippe, the Umbrella or Riflard became /patriarchal/ +and /constitutional/; it represented manners austere and citizenlike, +and symbolised the domestic virtues of order and economy. It might be +set in the royal trophy in saltier with the sceptre, and it became +a part in some sort of the national militia, with the attributes of +angling, culinary laurels, and other symbols of Philistine life. + +All the independents of Paris, Bohemians, literary men with flowing +manes, and artists chanted in the /Rapinéide/, all the hirsute folk +of the years 1830 to 1850 rose in insurrection against the "Pépin" +of the burgess. This word /Pépin/ was then an epigram against Louis +Philippe, whose pear-shaped head was caricatured, and who never left +his home without his Umbrella. + +Anglomania had not yet penetrated, as in the present day, into French +manners; and the dandyism of 1830, which pretended that the carrying +of a walking-stick required a particular skill, repelled the Umbrella +as contrary to veritable elegance. The Umbrella was countrified, the +property of gaffer and gammer; it was tolerable only in the hands of +one who had long renounced all pretensions to any charm, and dreamed +no more of setting off in the promenade the haughty profile of a +conqueror. In the cross ways, in every public place in Paris, the +large Parasol, red, or the colour of wine-lees, had become, as it +were, the ensign of the strolling singer who retailed Béranger to +the crowd; it served as a shelter for acrobats in the open air; it +surmounted the improvised trestles of the sellers of tripoli, of an +universal ointment; it ascended even the chariot of the quacks; later +on it served as a set-off for the plumed helmet of Mangin, the pencil +merchant; and it is still under a copper Parasol, commonly called +/Chinese bells/, that the man-orchestra causes an excitement in the +court-yards by ringing his little bells. + +In the provinces, on market or great fair days, the Umbrellas opened +in picturesque confusion above the flat baskets and provisional +establishments of the country women; there were red, faded blue or +chestnut ones, inexpressible green or old family Umbrellas, heirlooms +descended from generation to generation, which protected the little +rural tradeswomen, and added a particular character full of colour to +these primitive markets of little towns. + +The Umbrella! we behold it in the dreams of our school-days. Here +is the severe and sombre Umbrella of the headmaster, symbol of his +pedantic authority, when he passed us in review in the cold and damp +playground. Here is the Riflard of the poor usher, a celebrated +/Pépin/, covered with a mottled cotton-stuff, its bill-headed handle +polished by his unctuous clasp. And here, above all, is an Umbrella +greeted with loud acclaim, a festive Crusoe, which followed us when +out walking, as the sutler follows the regiment on the march, the +Umbrella of /Mother Sun/, as we used to call it: /Mother Sun!/ an +honest jolly wench, with her head in a silk pocket-handkerchief tied +under her chin, who installed herself beneath the shelter of her +improvised tent about our playtime, to sell to her noisy /children/ +cooling lemonade, fruit, barley-sugar, and little white rolls stuffed +with hot sausages. + +But let us leave these souvenirs, which carry us too far away, and +return to the /Sunshade/ between 1830 and 1870. If we wished to show +only its transformations during these forty years, we should have +to write a volume quite full of coloured vignettes to give a feeble +idea of the history which fashion creates in an object of coquetry. +About 1834, in the journal called /Le Protée/, we see fashion +personified under the traits of a young and pretty woman visiting +the finest shops in Paris; she fails not to go to "Verdier, in the +Rue Richelieu, for Sunshades," and chooses two--one a full-dress +Sunshade, in unbleached silk casing, mounted on a stick of American +bindweed, with a top of gold and carved coral; the other in striped +wood, having a similar top with a fluted knob, and covered with +myrtle green paduasoy, with a satin border. + +Let us skip over some hundreds of intermediate varieties to look a +dozen years afterwards, under the Second Republic, at the Sunshade +described by M. A. Challamel in his /History of Fashion/: "As soon," +says this writer, "as the first ray of sunshine appeared, ladies +armed themselves for their walks or morning calls with little +Sunshades, entirely white, or pink, or green. Sometimes the Sunshades +called 'Marquises' were edged with lace, which gave them rather +a ragged appearance; or having the shape of little Umbrellas, the +Sunshades could serve at need against a sudden storm. Very soon we +saw Sunshades /à dispositions/ bordered with a figured garland, or +a satin stripe of the same colours, or blue or green on unbleached +silk, or violet on white or sulphur." + +A fashion, not, it will be allowed, in the very best taste:--Up +to 1853 or 1854, we find no innovation worthy of exciting our +enthusiasm; it is only in the first days of the Second Empire that we +can see a marked change. The straight Sunshades were then abandoned +to introduce Sunshades with a folding stick, principally for those +made in satin and in moire antique, bordered with trimmings or set +off with streamers. These Sunshades were called "/à la Pompadour/," +and they were worthy, in a certain degree, of the beauty who +personified grace and delicate elegance in the eighteenth century; +they were embroidered after the old fashion with gold and silk, and +on the richness of the stuffs was cast or "frilled in" Chantilly, +point d'Alençon, guipure, or blonde. The folding-sticks were of +sculptured ivory, of carved mother-of-pearl, of rhinoceros horn, or +of tortoise-shell. It is with this light Sunshade that the Parisian +ladies saluted the Empress, caracoling by the side of the Emperor, at +the commencement of his reign, on their return from the Wood, in the +Champs Elysées, which began to look beautiful, as everything looks +beautiful at the spring-tide of years, as well as at the springtime +of governments. All in nature has surely its fall of the leaf, after +having had the verdure of its blossom!--all tires, all passes, all +breaks: men, kings, fashions, and peoples! + +The Sunshade is found to-day in the hands of every one, as it +should be in this practical and utilitarian age. There is not, at +the present hour, any woman or girl of the people, who has not her +sunshade or her satin /en-tout-cas/--it seems to be the indispensable +complement of the toilet for the promenade; and our modern painters +have so well understood this gracious adjunct of feminine costume, +that they take very good heed not to forget, in a study of a +woman made in a full light, a rosy head with dishevelled hair, on +the transparent ground of a Japanese Sunshade, thus producing an +exquisite work with all freshness of colouring, and discreet shadows +sifted upon sparkling eyes or a laughing mouth. On Sundays and +holidays, in the jostlings of the crowd at suburban fêtes, it is like +an eddy of Sunshades; such the spectacle of ancient besiegers, who +covered themselves with their bucklers and made the "tortoise," so in +the shimmer of the summer sun in the great Parisian parish festivals: +gingerbread fairs of Saint-Cloud or Vaugirard, the Sunshade is on +the trestles and among the promenaders; it protects equally the girl +dancing on the tight-rope and the respectable citizen's wife in her +Sunday best, who rumples the flounce of her petticoats in these +popular gatherings. + +Surely the Sunshade adds new graces to woman! It is her outside +weapon, which she bears boldly as a volunteer, either at her side, +or inclined over her shoulder. It protects her head-dress, in +supporting her carriage, it surrounds as with a halo the charms of +her face. + +"The Sunshade," writes M. Cazal--or rather Marchal, as the so-called +Charles de Bussy, who edited, in the name of the manufacturer, the +little work already quoted,--"the Sunshade, like a rosy vapour, +attenuates and softens the contour of the features, revives the +vanished tints, surrounds the physiognomy with its diaphanous +reflections. There is the Sunshade of the great lady, of the young +person, of the tradesman's wife, of the pretty lorette, of the little +workwoman, just as there is the Sunshade of the town, of the country, +of the garden, of the bath, of the barouche, and the Sunshade-whip." + +"How many volumes," continues the same writer with animation, "would +be required to describe in its thousand fantasies the kaleidoscope of +feminine thought in the use of the Sunshade? Under its rosy or azure +dome, sentiment buds, passion broods or blossoms; at a distance the +Sunshade calls and rallies to its colours, near at hand it edifies +the curious eye, and disconcerts and repels presumption. How many +sweet smiles have played under its corolla! How many charming signs +of the head, how many intoxicating and magic looks, has the Sunshade +protected from jealousy and indiscretion! How many emotions, how many +dramas, has it hidden with its cloud of silk!" + +M. Charles Blanc, less dithyrambic, in his /Art in Dress and +Ornament/, commences his chapter on the Sunshade--"Do you imagine +that women have invented it to preserve their complexion from the +heats of the sun? . . . . Certainly, without doubt; but how many +resources are furnished them by this need of casting a penumbra over +their face, and what a grudge they would have against the sun, if it +gave them no pretext for defending themselves against his rays! In +that work of art called a woman's toilet, the Sunshade sustains the +part of the chiaro-oscuro. + +"In the play of colours it is as a glazing. In the play of light it +is as a blind." + +For the last dozen years, fashion has varied, with every new season, +the mode and covering of Sunshades. To-day they have become artistic +in all points, and after having been in turns in spotted foulard, +and set off with ribbons or lace, after the Parasol walking-stick, +the maroon or cardinal-red Parasol, have succeeded the checkered +taffetas, the Madras cretonnes, the Pompadour satins, the figured +silks. Their handles are adorned with porcelain of Dresden, of +Sèvres, or of Longwy, with various precious stones, and with jewels +of all sorts; and lately, among some wedding presents, amidst a dozen +Sunshades, one remarkable specimen was entirely covered with point +lace, on a pink ground clouded with white gauze, having a jade handle +with incrustations of precious stones up to its extreme point. A +golden ring gemmed with emeralds and brilliants, attached to a gold +chain, served as a clasp for this inestimable jewel. + +But in this style of hasty conference in which we are running from +the Sunshade to the Umbrella, let us not neglect the latter, whose +last name is /paratrombe/ and /paradéluge/, which M. de Balzac, in +the /Père Goriot/, calls "a bastard descended from a cane and a +walking-stick." The Umbrella has inspired many writers--writers of +vaudevilles, romances, poetry, and humorous pieces; on it little +ingenious monographs have been composed, little sparkling verses, +articles in reviews, very serious from the trade point of view; many +couplets have been rhymed at the Caveau and elsewhere on the Pépin +and the Riflard; on the stage has been interpreted /My Wife and +My Umbrella/, /Oscar's Umbrella/, /The Umbrella of Damocles/, and +/the Umbrella/ of the poet D'Hervilly. This useful article has also +inspired the realist Champfleury in a joyous tale, entitled--/Above +all, don't forget your Umbrella!/ Everywhere, with variations and +unheard-of paraphrases, has the social part of the Umbrella been +shown to us; the meetings occasioned by it on stormy days; the +/Pépin/ gallantly offered to young girls eating apples in distress +whilst it is raining on the Boulevards; we have had described to us +the gentleman who follows the ladies fortified with his Umbrella, +the weapon of his fight, and many tales and novels begin with one +of these Parisian meetings at a street corner on a wet evening. +The utility of the Umbrella in different ways has been insisted +on, of the painter's Umbrella, of the Umbrella for men called /sea +bath/; and the sad melopæa of the French seller of Umbrellas in the +street, whose prolonged cry of /parrrphluie/ has been carefully +annotated. Lastly, there have been too many pictures representing a +coquettish workwoman, whose petticoats have been turned up by the +wind, and whose Parasol has been turned inside out; but that which +has never been written with the humour which such a subject allows, +the master-piece which has never yet been accomplished, is the +/Physiology of the Umbrella/. + +There is no doubt that bibliographers will put under our eyes a thin +book of the lowest character which affects this title, and is edited +by /Two Hackney Coachmen/, but it is nought but the "humbug" of the +Umbrella--its /Physiology/ in its entirety is yet unaccomplished. +Balzac would have found therein matter for an immortal work, for +there is a dash of truth in that fantastic aphorism uttered by some +journalist in distress, "The Umbrella is the man." + +Eugène Scribe has left us a modest quatrain on the Umbrella, worthy +of his operatic muse-- + + A friend of mine, new, true, and rare, + And all unlike the common form; + Who leaves me when my sky is fair, + And reappears in days of storm. + +This almost equals that other quatrain, more ancient still, signed by +the good abbé Delille-- + + This precious, supple instrument, confect + Of the whale's bone, and of the silkworm's grave, + With outstretched wing, my brow will oft protect + From the wet onslaught of the pluvial wave. + +Have we not here Academic verse well made for the Umbrellas of the +Academicians! + +To come to extremes: among the popular songs, we hear the song of +/the Umbrella/, "a ditty found in a whale"-- + + The good Umbrella may be sung + In many airs and ways; + The Umbrella, be we old or young, + Will serve us all our days. + It keeps true love from getting wet, + And catching cold at night; + It hides the thief, to business set, + From the policeman's sight. + Umbrella! + Then buy yourself, for fear of rain, + A solid, useful, good, and plain + Umbrella! + In fact, for rain we cannot sell a + Much better thing than our Umbrella! + +This funny song is well worth the tiresome verse sung at present-- + + He has not an Umbrella, well + It is no matter, while it's fine; + But when the rain comes down pell-mell, + Why, then he's wetted to the spine! . . . . + +Certainly one ought to write a physiological monograph of these black +mushrooms, which to-day protect humanity, just as one ought to rhyme +a poem of the dainty Sunshade, that pretty rosy cupola, which is one +of the most charming coquetries of a Frenchwoman. + +We write this /one ought/ with a vague sadness, with the +discouragement which makes us wish for the future, what we should +have been so glad to bury in the past. In beginning our work, we +experienced a careless joy, we thought the end was near on our very +entry into the field, and that we should quickly attain it, with +the satisfaction of having created a little work, both complete +and altogether graceful; but once on our way, ferreting without +relaxation in all the literary thickets where some Parasol might lie +buried, in the fold of a phrase, in the middle of a story, of an +anecdote, or of a dissertation, of some fact, we have gathered so +ample a harvest, our sheaf has become so large, so very large, that +it was impossible for us to bind our arms about it, after having +co-ordinated its various parts. It is but a few poor strays then +which lie stranded here, the flotsam and jetsam of our hope, sole +vestiges of a project which, like all projects, became Homeric as it +grew great in the workshop of the imagination. + +We end this essay, therefore, with a sentiment of ridicule, in which +we laugh at our own selves, that of having dreamed of making a +perfect monograph, and of having produced nothing more than a little +tumbled fantasy, which ironically steals away out of sight, like +that minuscular mouse, of which the mountain was once upon a time +delivered in much moaning. + +What matter! We must end. Let us hide our melancholy retreat +by humming this last lovely burden of a poet of the school of +Clairville-- + + 'Tis called a /Pépin/, a /Riflard/, + And other viler names there are; + Not one of all the Umbrella moves. + Wisely it counts them no disgrace; + Since--child of April's art--the loves + Oft make their quivers of its case! + + + + + THE GLOVE + + THE MITTEN + + + + +THE GLOVE + +/THE MITTEN/ + +/To M^{me.} H. de N./ + + +Well, my dear friend, here I am, faithful as you see to my +appointment; I am come deliberately to fulfil my promise, which I so +imprudently gave on a certain day last season, upon a Breton strand, +you remember, while contemplating one of your rosy little hands, +which was whipping its sister with a long Swedish glove, in a sort +of angry pet, and gave to you an appearance of wild and exquisite +bluster? + +How did you manage, O Enchantress, to induce me to give my loyal word +that I would write for you the /History of the Glove/? How! . . . who +can ever say? When a pair of pretty eyes envelop you, and bathe you +with their radiance, when a smile puts honey into your heart, and a +tiny little hand is stretched out with open palm, seeming to say, +"Take me," every kind of will melts quickly away, consent mounts +delightedly to the lips, and we promise at once everything, before we +know well what we are asked. + +Ah, unhappy me! it is the Glove of Nessus which you have placed upon +my hand! The History of the Glove! why, it is the history of the +world; and I should be very ill-advised if I pretended /avoir les +Gants/ to be the first to tell that history, as ancient as it is +universal. + +Haunted by this debt of honour, contracted to please you, I +went lately to see a learned old friend of mine, a venerable +Benedictine--better than a well of science; an ocean of +indulgence--to whom I exposed my foolish enterprise of the Glove and +the Mitten. + +Ah, my friend, I only wish you could have seen him all at once leap +from his seat, look at me with compassion, examine me profoundly with +his eye, and murmur three times in a tone of ineffable astonishment +and sadness, as though he believed me mad-- + +"The Glove!--the Glove!!--the Glove!!!-- + +" . . . And so it is the Glove," he went on, when he had become a +little calmer, "it is the history of this offensive and defensive +ornament, of this object so complex, of which the origin is so +obscure and so troublesome, it is a monograph of the Glove that you +desire to write! . . . My dear child, allow me to believe that you +have not reflected on what you have engaged yourself to do, let +me think that you have brought more lightness than reason to the +conception of this enterprise. The Glove!--Why, with the history of +the Shoe, it is the most formidable work that a learned man could +dare to dream of executing. Look," he sighed, dragging forth a +voluminous manuscript, "in the /Bibliography of Words/, a colossal +work, which I have commenced, but, alas! shall never end, I see at +the word GLOVE more than fifteen hundred different works, Latin, +Greek, Italian, German, Spanish, English, and French, which treat of +this matter, and even this is but the rudest sketch. We must consider +the use of the Glove amongst the ancient Hebrews, the Babylonians, +the Armenians, the Syrians, the Phœnicians, the Sidonians, the +Parthians, the Lydians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, &c. + +"It would be necessary to divide the work into different Books, +subdivided into innumerable Chapters; thus for the etymology alone of +/the word Glove/, in the different dialects, must be reserved a long +notice of comparative philology; it would be necessary to determine +if the Glove which was used by the young nude girls, who wrestled +together in Lacedæmon, after Lycurgus had installed there his Lyceums +and public games--if this Glove, I say, ought to be classed among the +fighting mufflers or the leathern gauntlets--and how many matters +besides!" And my dear old friend became still more and more excited, +ever widening the question, as if, it seemed to me, it were a case of +establishing a complete Encyclopedia. Diderot and d'Alembert would +have grown pale before that imperturbable science, which showed +mountains of folios to be cleared away, and unknown precipices to be +sounded. + +"But," I hazarded in a little confusion, "I only think of writing a +light treatise, a thin volume of a few pages, one of those nothings +carried off by the wind, which pass for a second, like an anecdote or +tale, into a pretty feminine cerebellum; I wish to give hardly a line +to other countries than France, just to graze incidentally the Glove +of challenge, to speak only from memory of the pontifical Gloves, +to neglect the side of manufacture, the art of preparing the skins, +of removing the outside skin, and so on. I only desire in one word +to chat for a few instants, disconnectedly and in fits and starts, +on that portion of clothing which the ancients called /Chirothecæ/, +/Gannus/, /Gantus/, /Guantus/, /Wanto/, and /Wantus/, if I may trust +the /Glossary/ of Du Cange." + +"Alas, that is true," cried my old friend, in a sadly modulated tone; +"I am doting, eh? We, of the old school, it is we who are the wet +blankets, the tedious savants. At the present day, when journalism is +to literature what the piano is to music, an instrument upon which +every one strums without any conviction, is it not necessary to cut +matters short, and quickly create eternal /à peu près/ (pretty much +the sames), little light dissertations, notices made on the spur of +the moment, and superficial passion? We were in our time egotists, +fervent solitaries, unreadable and unread, if you will; what does it +matter? When a work had fastened on our mind, we espoused it, after +a legitimate love, with all the joys of generation and paternity. We +wished to endow our labour with all the qualities which it seemed +able to bear, to such an extent, that it became dry, rugged, and +severe. But how many were the delights not to be forgotten, in those +traces followed for whole days, before our utterance of the joyous +/Eureka!/--how many inward intoxications in that slow-brooding +season, in that patient labour!--how many minute investigations +before resolving a historic doubt! We were the exclusives of national +erudition, and thought one work sufficed for one man, when he had fed +it with his life, with his watchings, with his very heart, with all +the tenderness of the creative workman. + +"I should like," he continued, "to have twenty years to ride a +hobby-horse, which would make me rest at stopping-places for ten, +fifteen, twenty years, on a thorny work, and offer me splendid runs, +full of adventure, across the highways and secret paths of science. +I would commit the follies of Doctor Faustus, to return to the age +of those first bibliographic loves, which have the future brilliant +and open before them--and this Glove which you disdain, my dear young +friend--this Glove which you dwarf to the ideal of a doll--this +Glove, I would pick it up, hold it carefully, clear off with it like +a cat, and ensconce myself with it in my savant's den, to take a good +long sniff at it, to study it, and to analyse it every day more and +more, until at last I drew from it a serious and lasting work. + +"This Glove should not be thrown at the public, like one of those +challenges which recall too distinctly the celebrated Glove which +Charles V. sent to Westminster by a mere scullion--an accentuation +of the insult offered to the King of England--it should be cast more +lovingly, as in our old romances of chivalry, /the Romance of the +Rose/, of /Rou/, or of /Perceforet/. If I were but twenty years old, +I would do with the reader as Petrarch did with Laura, in demanding +of her nothing more than the favour of picking up her Glove; and I +would say to him later on, after the fashion of Marot, poetically, in +offering my work:-- + + 'Deign to receive these Gloves with goodly cheer, + My true heart's present of the coming year.' + +"And then I would speak of those Mittens with which Xenophon +reproaches the degenerate Persians, of those Roman finger-stalls +employed in the olive crop, and even of that glutton named Pithyllus, +who carried delicacy so far as to make a Glove of a sheath of skin +for his tongue." + +The good old man, kindled by his enthusiasm, became transformed; he +seemed desirous to take upon himself the whole history of the Glove, +which he embroidered at once with fancy and the most varied anecdote +that his wonderful memory could supply. After having distinguished, +in the Middle Ages, many sorts of Gloves, such as the /usual/ Glove, +the /falconer's/ Glove, the /workman's/ Glove, the /feminine/ Glove, +the /military/ Glove, the /seignorial/ Glove, and the /liturgical/ +Glove, he attacked with a zest bordering on frenzy the part of the +Glove of the knights and men in armour of the heroic battles of the +past, at a time when individual prowess could still display itself; +he quoted the Chronicles of Du Guesclin and De Guigneville:-- + + "Rich basinets he ordered to be brought, + And Gloves with iron spikes with horror fraught." + +He showed me, without recourse to aught but his own erudition, the +transformation of these iron gauntlets, first into mail, like the +coat, then into movable plates of flat iron, adapted to the movements +of the hand; he explained to me the lining, where the palm was of +leather or stuff, and at last, exhuming the ordinances of 1311, he +made me penetrate into the details of the manufacture:-- + +"That no one should make Gloves of plates, except the plates are +tinned or varnished, or beaten, or covered with black leather, red +leather, or samite, and that under the head of every nail should be +set a rivet of gold." + +Ah, my fair friend, if you could have seen this strange man so +suddenly taken by my subject, you would have regarded me with pity, +for I could not help pouting a little at this old dean, and felt +myself attacked by a sudden cowardice, at the mere announcement of +the formidable researches which were to be undergone. + +I took my humble leave of my most learned master, humiliated, floored +by the extent of his knowledge, his laborious zeal, his powerful +faith, his stubborn will. I saw that in giving you my word for a poor +Glove, I had given it to a demon, who showed me a Glove of an immense +shagreen skin, containing the world and its history--fantastic as a +nightmare, which weighed me down. Then I swore to sacrifice a part +for the rest, and not to build a cathedral when a simple cushion +at your feet would suffice me for my heedless chatter. Accept then +favourably this act of contrition, and let me be fully pardoned, +if, /à propos/ of the Glove, I bound along madly like a young kid, +without pity for the history of costume and historic documents, which +I trample under my feet, rather than see myself buried under their +pyramidal bundles. + +That which my old friend had probably neglected is the Legend, and to +that I run. + +A charming poet and a charmer, Jean Godard, a Parisian, the worthy +rival of Ronsard, published towards 1580 a piece entitled /The +Glove/. This witty nursling of the Muses pretends to show us the +origin of the Glove in the burning passion which Venus cherished for +Adonis. According to our poet-- + + "The young Adonis ever loved the field, + Now hunting the swift stag with branching head, + And now the tusked wild boar, just cause of dread. + Venus, fierce burning with his love alway, + Would never leave him neither night nor day, + But running after his sweet eyes and face, + Sought young Adonis, when he sought the chase: + Deep into forests full of gloomy fear, + The goddess followed him she held so dear. + One day, as she pursued him, bursting through + A bramble thicket, which by ill chance grew + Athwart her path, a cruel, hardy thorn + Pierced her white hand, and lo! the rose was born + From her red blood. But Venus, vexed with pain, + Lest any hurt should touch her hand again, + Bade all at once her unclad Graces sew + A leathern shelter for her hand of snow. + The lovely Graces, draped in floating hair, + No longer left their own hands free and bare, + But bound and covered them as Venus did. + And now the Glove's true origin is hid + No longer. This is it. Fair girls alone + Wore on their hands what now is common grown. + Then came the Emperor, and then his court, + And then at last the folk of every sort." + +Charming in its /naïveté/, is it not, my dear friend, this fable +which gives the Glove the same origin as the rose! + +The use of Gloves was widely spread in the Middle Ages. They covered +the wrist entirely, even with women. "The Gloves of the common +people," says M. Charles Louandre, "were of sheep-skin, of doe skin, +or of fur; those of bishops were made in chain-stitch of silk with +gold thread; those of simple priests were of black leather." But what +will surprise you is that, contrary to the present custom, it was +absolutely forbidden to appear gloved before great personages. + +In a manuscript lately published, /The Sayings of the Merchants/, a +merchant cries, with an engaging air-- + + "I have pretty little bands, + And for damsels dainty Gloves, + Furred to warm their snowy hands, + These I sell to those sweet loves." + +But what were the furred Gloves of sweet loves or gentle ladies +compared to those which the fair Venetians showed on the grand days +of ceremonies, when the Doge prepared to mount the Bucentaur for +the purpose of espousing the sea? These, according to M. Feuillet +de Conches, were Gloves of silk marvellously embroidered, embossed +with gold and pearls; some of them were of lace of an incomparable +richness, well worthy to be offered as a present, and to figure in +the budget of handsome acknowledgments. But the most wonderful were +the Gloves of painted skin, like the water-colours on Fans. + +Here were country scenes, sheepfolds, pictures of ravishing +gallantry, miniatures beyond price. "And even," observes M. Feuillet +de Conches, "the heels of the shoes of dandies were decorated by +Watteau or by Parrocel." + +The Valois doted, you know, on perfumed Gloves; this taste was fatal +to Jeanne d'Albret, who found her death in trying a pair of Gloves +dexterously prepared by some Italian quack, a friend of the sombre +Catherine. Consider, my friend, that with my romantic instinct, and +my temperament full of love for the drama, I might find here an easy +transition, and tell you, in long excited phrases, of the exploits of +the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, and the grim Gaudin de Sainte-Croix; +show you these sinister poisoners preparing by night their infamous +Glove stock; then in a tale fantastic as the /Olivier Brusson/ of +Hoffmann, evoke the famous trial of the Marchioness, the torture, +the various punishments, the burning chamber, up to the final stake. +All this /à propos/ of the Glove--who can say if such simple history +would not be worth more than all the cock-and-bull stories which I +am about to tell you, by compulsion, concerning the Glove and the +Mittens? In very truth, I would prefer, as your /vis-à-vis/, to +show myself a romancist, not an historian, for I should be sure of +being less of a bore, more personal, and, above all--shall I avow +it?--not in any degree common-place. But, as Miguel de Cervantes +said, "Our desires are extremely seditious servants." I will be then +reactionary, and will close the door against these socialists of +sentiment. + +All this fine rigmarole has made me think of presenting you with a +letter of Antonio Perez to Lady Rich, sister of Lord Essex, who had +asked him for some dogskin Gloves:-- + +"I have experienced," he writes, "so much affliction in not having by +me the dogskin Gloves desired by your ladyship, that, waiting their +arrival, I have resolved to flay a little skin on the most delicate +part of my own body--if, indeed, any delicate part can be found upon +my rude self. Love and devotion to a lady's service may surely make +a man flay himself for her, and cut her a pair of Gloves out of his +own skin. But how can I pride myself on this with your ladyship, when +it is my custom to flay even my very soul for those I love? Could +mine be seen as clearly as my body, it would appear full of tatters, +the most lamentable sort of soul in the world;--the Gloves are of +dog's skin, madam, and yet of my own, for I hold myself as a dog, and +supplicate your ladyship to hold me in like regard, in requital of my +faith and my passion in your service." + +What think you of this out-and-out gallant, of this "dying" +passionate lover? Here it seems to me, /à propos/ of scented Gloves, +we have a Castilian gentleman exceedingly well skilled in the +delicate art of offering them to ladies. + +Spanish Gloves are reproached with too strong a smell; the French +ladies suffer strangely from their too heady odour: Antonio Perez +would certainly have been an excellent manufacturer of perfumed +Gloves--discreet in his scents, distinguished in his form. + +The Gloves most in vogue after the time of La Fronde were the +Gloves of Rome, of Grenoble, of Blois, of Esla, and of Paris. M. de +Chanteloup charged Poussin to buy him Roman Gloves, and the latter +wrote back on 7th October, 1646: "Here are a dozen pairs of Gloves, +half men's, half women's. They cost half-a-pistole a pair, which +makes eighteen crowns for the whole." The 18th October, 1649, another +purchase; but this time they are Gloves scented with Frangipane, +with which Poussin provided himself for M. de Chanteloup; and +these he bought at la Signora Maddelena's, "a woman famous for her +perfumes." In Paris, according to /The Convenient Address Book/ of +Nicolas de Blegny--the Bottin of 1692--there were a certain number of +manufacturers of perfumed Gloves in the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec and the +Rue Saint-Honoré. "There are," says the editor of this commercial +almanac, "Glove-merchants very well stocked; for instance, M. Remy, +opposite Saint-Méderic, who is famous for his excellent buck-skin +Gloves; Arsan, hard by the Abbey Saint-Germain; Richard, Rue +Saint-Denis, /at the little St. John/, well known for his Gloves of +/Fowl-skin/; and Richard, Rue Galande, at /the Great King/, whose +commerce is in doeskin Gloves." + +The name of fowl-skin Glove doubtless astonishes you--another name +was outer lamb skin; they were made for the use of ladies during +the summer. The pretended fowl-skin was nothing but the epidermis of +kid-skin, and the preparation of this epidermis was the real triumph +of the Glove-merchants of Paris and Rome. Gloves of /Canepin/, or +outer lamb's-skin, were made, it is said, so delicate and thin, that +a pair of them could be easily enclosed in a walnut shell. + +The buck-skin or buffalo-skin Glove was specially made for falconers; +it covered the right hand half up the arm, thus completely protecting +it against the claws, or rather the talons, of the bird, falcon, +gerfalcon, or sparrow-hawk, when it came to settle on their fist. + +Hawking existed even under Louis XIII., but it was no longer the +grand and splendid epoch of this aristocratic sport, so profoundly +interesting. In one of his ancient legends, André le Chapelain, +of whom Stendhal wrote a short biographical notice, speaks of a +sparrow-hawk, to gain which the magic Glove was necessary. This Glove +could only be obtained by a victory in the lists over two of the most +formidable champions of Christendom. It was suspended to a golden +column, and very carefully guarded. But when the knight had by his +skill gained the Glove, he saw the beautiful sparrow-hawk so much +desired swoop down immediately upon his fist. + +Up to the age of Louis XIV., the skin Glove was destined rather +for the use of men, and it was only under this Prince that Gloves +mounting a long way up the arm, and long Mittens of silk netting to +set off the hands of women, were generally adopted by them. + +Gloves /à l'occasion/, /à la Cadenet/, /à la Phyllis/, /à la +Frangipane/, /à la Néroli/, Gloves /of the last cut/ worn awhile by +the /Précieuses/, ceased to be fashionable about 1680. The custom, of +which Tallemant speaks, of presenting ladies, after the banquet, with +basins of Spanish Gloves, was only vulgarised in passing from the +Court to the town. + +Dangeau, in his /Memoirs/, has written a chapter on the /Etiquette +of Gloves and the Ceremonial of Mittens/. I refer you to it without +ceremony. + +Under Louis XV., in the eighteenth century, so full of the rustle +of silk, so enchanting that I fear to stop on it in your company, +lest I should never leave it, the wearing of Gloves quickly became +an enormous luxury. All those fair coquettes, whom you have seen +at their toilets, or their /petit lever/, after Nattier, Pater, or +Moreau, surrounded by their "/filles de modes/," caused a greater +massacre of Gloves at the time of trying them on, than our richest +worldlings of to-day. These Gloves were of kid, of thread, and +of silk; the most celebrated came from Vendôme, from Blois, from +Grenoble, and from Paris; they were generally made of white skin, +wretchedly sewn, but the cut was extremely graceful, with its cuff +falling from the wrist over the hand, and small ribbons and fine +rosettes of carnation interlaced on this cuff. + +Gloves sewn after the English fashion were highly appreciated. It +became a proverb, that for a Glove to be good, three realms must have +contributed to it: "Spain to prepare the skin and make it supple, +France to cut it, and England to sew it." + +Caraccioli maintains that a woman of fashion, about the middle of the +eighteenth century, would not dispense with changing her Gloves four +or five times a day. "The /petits-maîtres/," he adds, "never fail to +put on, in the morning, Gloves of rose or /jonquil/, perfumed by the +celebrated Dulac." As to Mittens, the same observer of the century +notices them as specially belonging to women. "Nevertheless," he +says, "in winter the manufacturers make furred Mittens, and men now +wear them when they travel." + +Madame de Genlis has this curious observation in her /Dictionary of +Etiquette/: "If you have anything to present to a princess, and have +your Glove on, you must needs take it off." + +How many anecdotes, how many literary souvenirs, the Glove of the +eighteenth century summons to the thought! + +You remember, I am quite sure, that pretty chapter consecrated by +Sterne, in his /Sentimental Journey/, to the beautiful Grisette who +sold Gloves, into whose shop he entered to ask his way. The pretty +Glove-seller coquets with the stranger, shows herself extremely +complaisant, and the sentimental traveller, to prove his gratitude +for her kindness, asks for some Gloves, and tries on several pairs +without finding one to suit him. But he takes two or three pairs all +the same before he goes. + +The story leaves a fresh feature in the mind: an English artist has +fixed it with much delicacy on a remarkable canvas, which figures in +the National Gallery. The authors of the /Vie Parisienne/ were surely +inspired by it a little later in their joyous libretto, when they +wrote the well-known couplets of the lady who sold Gloves and the +Brazilian. + +Permit me also to relate to you an anecdote, rather slight in +texture, of which Duclos is the hero, and which has all the flavour +of his roguish age:-- + +The author of /Manners/ was bathing on the flowery borders of the +Seine, and giving himself up to skilled /hand-over-hand/, when +he suddenly heard piercing cries of distress. He rushes out of +the water, runs up the bank without taking time to slip on his +"indispensables," and finds a young and charming woman, whose +carriage had just been overturned in a rut. He hastens to beauty +in tears, lying on the ground, and making a gracious bow, in his +academic nudity, "Madam," says he, in offering her his hand to assist +her to rise, "pardon my want of Gloves." + +Here we have at once the expression of a scoffing sceptic, and a +giddy philosopher, full of a particular charm. Do not believe, my +gentle friend, that if I remain in your company so short a time in +the beginning of the eighteenth century--the only one which has, +you cannot deny it, all its perfumed quintessence--do not believe +that I intend to linger in the Revolution, and conduct you to the +house of Mademoiselle Lange, Madame Talien, Madame Récamier, and all +the fashionable drawing-rooms of the First Republic, the Directory, +the Consulate, and the Empire; to take ceremoniously the hand of +the marvellous Beauties, the Nymphs, and Muses of those troubled +times, in order the better to show you what extravagant Gloves, what +prodigious Mittens, were then worn. The /Ladies' Journal/, and all +the small journals of fashion, will surely teach you more about the +Gloves worn by these worldly Calypsos and Eucharises than six hundred +monotonous pages of varied descriptions. There is no Museum, however, +preserving the objects of art which the Revolution marked deeply with +its seal; and this fact will make me insist on a model of a special +Glove, destined for a representative of the people despatched to the +army, of which an erudite archæologist of the Revolution, and at the +same time a remarkable humourist, Champfleury, has been good enough +to communicate to me a design. This Glove of doe-skin, manufactured +according to order, and broidered with arabesques about the slopings +of the thumb, bears on the back of the hand a vignette in the form +of a seal, which represents Liberty holding in her hand the pike, +the Phrygian cap, and the scales of justice--a Liberty, you will +say, by no means at liberty . . . . in her movements:--on the right +is crouched a lion, the sign of force; on the left a cat, a sign of +independence. + +I will not lose my time in paraphrasing for you this symbolic +vignette; and, with a long historic stride, I will conduct you +into the quietude of some chateau, under the Restoration, and, in +the evening twilight, to the terrace before a great park. I will +there show you two lovers warbling a serenade--the timid young girl +touching a guitar, the young man deeply moved, putting a world of +passion into his baritone voice. On the hands of the singer, behold, +pearly grey gloves fastening with a single button; on the dainty +little fingers supporting the guitar, examine those Mittens of black +silk lace, open worked, like those which, according to tradition, are +worn by the heroine of that charming comedy, the /Marriageable Maid/. + +There rises on my lips a song of the time which the /Almanac of +the Muses/ has bequeathed us, to the air of /The Little Sailor/. It +will perhaps add a spice of interest to my story. "Now, listen, my +friend," as they used to say in the noble ages of chivalry. Title of +the song: /The Gloves/. + + I love the Glove, that covers quite + The rounded arm it rests upon; + I take it off, with what delight, + With what delight I put it on! + If true it is through mystery, + A lover's bliss will higher move, + How dear that little hand should be + Which hides itself beneath a Glove! + + But there's another Glove, whose use + Will every swaggerer displease; + A Glove correcting all abuse, + Which brings the braggart to his knees; + How many boasting folk I've known, + Who would, and wisely, rather prove + A flight from out the window thrown, + Than see before them that same Glove! + + The Gloves are useful when we seek + The fair, the great ones, as we know; + When unto those with Gloves we speak, + Easy at once their favours grow. + They for intriguers wealth have won, + No fools their uses are above; + Of what another man has done + They boast, and give themselves the Glove. + +One last couplet, I pray you, and the authoress, Madame Perrier, will +bow herself out:-- + + The Gloveless man can ne'er afford + To dance, no step he makes with grace; + The servant wishes that his lord + Should put on Gloves in many a case. + When the police are wide awake, + To cheat those eyes they hardly love, + How many thieves will wisely take + The greatest care to wear the Glove? + +The song is not so bad, truly; and if the Muse gloves the author a +little tightly, the tone of his strophes is none the less strictly +respectable and proper. + +Under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. long Gloves were very costly; +still, no coquette hesitated to change them every day, for it was +necessary for them to be of extreme freshness of colour, which was +either buff, gridelin, or white. Some years later, the fashion +tended to maize, straw, or nut colour for the evening and morning +toilet, and to palisander, burnt bread, cedar, fawn, for afternoon +visits. Yellow Gloves had an infinite scale of tones, from a soft +and delicate unbleached lawn colour to the glaring yellow of a +stage-coach. White doe-skin was only used by men when riding. + +It was about this epoch, if I mistake not, that the denunciation of +/Gant jaune/ (yellow glove) became synonymous with /petit-maître/ +(dandy). In London, the disciples of Brummel--of the most refined +elegance--constituted a society, and formed the Club of the /Fringed +Glove/. This club no longer existed doubtless in 1839, when d'Orsay +established thus despotically the rules of the perfect gentleman: + +"An English gentleman of fashion," said he, "ought to use six pair of +Gloves a day: + +"In the morning to drive a britzska to the hunt: Gloves of reindeer. + +"At the hunt, to follow a fox: Gloves of shammy leather. + +"To return to London in a Tilbury, after a drive at Richmond in the +morning: Gloves of beaver. + +"To go later for a walk in Hyde Park, or to conduct a lady to pay her +visits or make her purchases in London, and /to offer her your hand +in descending from the carriage/: coloured kid Gloves braided. + +"To go to a dinner-party: yellow dog's skin Gloves--and in the +evening for a ball or rout: Gloves of white lamb-skin embroidered +with silk." + + +What odious tyranny is so exacting a fashion! And how sensible was +Balzac when he wrote: "Dandyism is a heresy of fashion; in making +himself a dandy, a man becomes a piece of furniture of the boudoir, +an extremely ingenious puppet, which can pose on a horse, or on +a sofa, which sucks habitually the end of a walking-stick, but a +reasonable being--never!" + +It is, however, with some dandy of the school of Rubempré and +Rastignac, that often, on quitting the ball, an author shows us a +romantic young lady in love, whose jealousy gnaws at her heart, who +re-reads the letters of old times, and with wandering looks, like +one overwhelmed, nervously tearing with her teeth a finger of her +Glove, sadly dreams that the lover who is no longer all, is nothing, +and that the moralist much deceived himself who wrote: "Woman is a +charming creature, who puts off her love as easily as her Glove." + +How many things are there, look you, in a Glove! + +In the novel /The Lion in Love/ of Frédéric Soulié, Léonce signs the +register of marriages at the mayoralty with a gloved hand; and when +Lise's turn comes, the young girl stops, saying in a voice tinged +with just a touch of mockery, "Pardon me, let me remove my Glove." + +"Léonce understood," then says the author, "that he had signed +with his gloved hand." Sign an act of marriage with a Glove! +Léonce meditated a little, and said to himself: "These people have +certain delicacies. What difference makes a Glove more or less to +the holiness of an oath, or the signature of a document? Nothing +assuredly; and yet it seems that there is more sincerity in a naked +hand, which affixes the signature of a man in testimony of the truth. +It is one of those imperceptible sentiments of which we are unable to +give an exact account, but which nevertheless exist." + +The fact is, that the Glove is not really, as has been said, a +tyrant of which the hand is the slave, but quite the contrary--it +is the hand's servant; and with the hand, as Montaigne wrote, "We +request, promise, call, dismiss, menace, pray, supplicate, deny, +refuse, interrogate, admire, number, confess, repent, fear, shame, +double, instruct, command, incite, encourage, swear, witness, accuse, +condemn, absolve, injure, contemn, distrust, track, flatter, applaud, +bless, humiliate, mock, reconcile, recommend, exalt, feast, rejoice, +complain, sadden, discomfort, despair, astonish, write, suppress," &c. + +I stop out of breath: verbs of every kind may pass into the list. + +With the Egyptians, the hand was a symbol of force; with the Romans, +a symbol of fidelity. We please ourselves in clothing the occult +powers, such as Time, Nature, Destiny, with a human hand: the hand +of Time overthrows empires, and impresses wrinkles on our brows; the +hand of Nature is prodigal to us of gifts, which are ravished from us +by the hand of Death; the hand of Destiny or of Providence, in fine, +conducts us across the paths of life. + +Old stereotyped language, which we use, and shall use always. Are +we not, as Saint Evremond said, in the hands of love, as the balls +in the hands of tennis-players--and the first happiness which love +can give, is it not, according to Stendhal--and all the truly +sensitive--the first pressure of the hand of the woman we love? + +Our ancestors swore by the hand, and read in the hand the mysteries +of the future. On the day of coronation, the hand of justice was +borne before the kings; the hand is used in salutation; we ask for +the /hand/ of the lady we wish to espouse in lawful marriage; we +wash our hands, like Pontius Pilate, of faults which we could not +help committing; and if I were to have to make for you the panegyric +of this organ, I should have, like Scheherazade, to put off the end +of my discourse every day till the morrow. Sir Charles Bell, in +his book, /The Hand: Its Mechanism, etc./, has given a synthesis +of all I could possibly add, and has proved that the human hand is +so admirably formed, possesses a sensibility so exquisite, that +sensibility governs with so much precision all its movements, it +answers so instantaneously to the impulses of the will, that one +might be tempted to believe that it is itself its seat. All its +actions are so energetic, so free, and withal so delicate, that it +appears to have an instinct apart; and neither its complication as +an instrument is ever dreamt of, nor the relations which subject it +to the mind. We avail ourselves of the service of the hand, as we +perform the act of respiration, without thinking of it; and we have +lost all remembrance of its first feeble efforts, as of the slow +exercise which has brought it to perfection. + +The hand, in a word, is the most perfect instrument given by God to +man; but I ought not to forget, my fair friend, that poets seldom +wear gloves, and philosophers never; and that, philosophising as I +am, I remain outside the Glove, and, above all, appear to forget that +axiom of Fontenelle: Had we our hand full of authenticated facts or +truths, we should but half open it, and that after a feeble fashion. + +The Glove is worthy of entering into the legend of a fairy tale, and +remaining there always, as the slipper has entered into the poetry +even of fable, with the theme of /Cinderella/. An ancient King of +France was indeed in love all his life with an unknown woman, only +from having seen her Glove in the midst of a masked ball given +to his court. Could it not easily be conceived according to the +approximative aphorism, "Show me your Glove, I will tell you who you +are." At the opera ball, in the surge of masks and of dominoes, in +the midst of the comings and goings on that staircase so exalted, +it needs but a Glove imprisoning a little hand to allure at once +the passion of a man of delicacy--a long white Glove lovingly glued +to a hand divinely small, a fine delicate wrist, and the exquisite +roundness of the forearm. This is enough to transport a lover of the +fair sex. The Glove appears not only in all festivals where grace and +beauty preside; it is found in all the rudeness and clumsiness of its +origin at the Poles, among the Norwegians, the Laps, and the Fins, +who wear huge Gloves of wool in summer, and thick Gloves of reindeer +skin, with the hair outside, in winter. + +Defended by these Gloves, they sometimes sally bravely from their +huts, in spite of the cruel frosts, to kill the white bear and the +seal, just as the dramatic engravings which illustrate our stories of +voyages to the North Pole represent them to us. + +But methinks your eye is asking me in disquietude about two little +bound books which I have in my reach. Reassure yourself, these are +not recitals of tourists, which are for painting us the manners of +the inhabitants of Karasjok or of the Lofoten Isles: I will read +to you at once, without allowing you to languish any longer, their +titles. Upon one of these works, see for yourself /Collection of the +Best Riddles of the Time/, composed on divers serious and sprightly +subjects by Colletet; on the other, /Collection of Riddles of the +Time/, by the Abbé Cotin. You already divine that I intend to act no +traitor's part towards you, and that I am going to read you some old +charades in verse upon Gloves: + +The first riddle--/énigme/ has been masculine in French at least +since the seventeenth century, in despite of its profound +femininity--the first riddle, in obscure and ambiguous terms, +indicates that the Glove, after having been the natural covering of a +rustic animal, serves to-day as an artificial covering for an animal +more refined: man! + + We're two or ten, and to a body wed, + We once a thing of breathing life were over; + Like it we lived, and now, although we're dead, + Another life more excellent we cover. + +This quatrain riddle is by François Colletet, that poor poet up to +his neck in mud. Listen now to Cotin--the Trissotin of Molière--in +this singular sextain:-- + + With mortal flesh our five soft mouths we fill, + And in the winter to repletion feed; + If one of us be lost, the world's agreed + To treat the rest of us exceeding ill; + But if we all remain together, then + We do almost all that is done by men. + +Mediocre, isn't it; tortured, bombastic, gross, all at once? There is +nothing here to make us fall into an ecstasy, and repeat to satiety, +as some highly refined courtiers used to do, "Ah, with what congruity +of terms are these thoughts expressed!" + +I shall abandon the riddles at once. These two specimens are enough. +Another point: + +Many physiologists affirm that great warriors have been remarkable +for a beautiful hand, which they loved perhaps to adorn with the most +delicate gloves. They instance Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, +and Napoleon. + +According to an historian of the First Empire, some generals +attending Bonaparte one day in his private room, found his big +military Gloves and his little hat on a side-table. Actuated by +curiosity, each one of them tried in turn the Glove and the hat; but +it appears there was not a single hand which could force its entrance +into those big Gloves, and upon those giants' shoulders not a single +head which could fill up the little hat. + +Napoleon was, it is weil known, no less proud of his hand than Byron, +who, his biographer tells us, had a hand so small, that it was out of +all proportion with his face. Byron thought and wrote that nothing +characterised birth more than the hand; it was, according to him, +almost the sole index of aristocracy of blood. + +Since the fifteenth century, we can trace in the museums of France, +Holland, Italy, Spain, and Germany, the interest which painters of +all schools have taken in the study of the hand, and, indeed, of +the Glove. Van Dyck and Rubens were passed masters in this art, and +Titian has left an admirable masterpiece in his /Young Man with +the Glove/. Velasquez almost always makes his powerful models hold +Gloves, nobly folded in their right hand. In Venetian paintings we +see the Glove on the hands of the Doge, of his wife, of ambassadors, +of senators, of residents, and even of merchants. The mere study +of the Gloves in these portraits and these costumes would suffice +for a long pamphlet, for we must consider the Glove in all classes +of society and in all epochs, from the embroidered Gloves of the +Doges to the special Gloves of the merchants, of the rectors of the +university of Padua, and even of the monks of the brotherhood of the +Cross, which were violet on a white ground, &c. + +But it would be madness to endeavour to omit nothing in this +monograph of the Glove, a tentative work, and an unpremeditated +sketch of little pretension. + +Have we not still to consider the stuffed fencing Glove, with the +short shield of red leather, and the giant Glove which swells the +fist of the boxers?--the ordinance Glove of the good Dumanet; that +white cotton Glove which the brave trooper puts on so willingly on +Sunday, coming out of barracks like a conquering hero? Is there +not besides the Glove of the Cuirassier, with its large shield of +buckskin, which this last man of iron places so gallantly on his hip +when he is on express service? + +The history of Gauntlets and of military Gloves from the time of the +Middle Ages would make a mighty volume, like the ladies' Glove and +the work-people's Mitten. The liturgical Glove, yet more important, +is of three kinds: the /pontifical Glove/, which was worn by bishops +and abbés; the Glove which simple priests had adopted for particular +occasions; and lastly, the /prelatic/ /Glove/. On /pontifical +Gloves/ alone Monseigneur X. Barbier de Montault has found means +to write in the /Bulletin Monumental/, 1876-1877, nearly two +hundred pages of closely packed text, in 8vo: /Ab uno disce omnes/. +See, my amiable friend, I repeat it--see in what an inextricable +archæological labyrinth I might have set you to wander, /à propos/ +of all these dear little Gloves, of which I had promised you a +history, but about which it appears to me I am making only a lively +chatter of whipped Glove. I should not have set on the table aught +beyond that which lends grace to woman: Gloves on a champagne glass +or in a shepherdess's hat, roses and a love-letter half opened; such +simple still life had assuredly better inspired my Muse than all the +documents brought together and packed one on another, well calculated +to frighten a mind which is by no means pleased with such barricades +of notes and annotations. Ah, my fair friend, how right was Balzac, +in his brilliant and profound /Traité de la vie élégante/, when he +wrote the following lines, which I had not sufficiently considered +before pledging my word in your society! + +"The learned man, or the elegant man of the world, who would search +out in every epoch the costumes of a people, would compile the most +interesting history and the most rationally true. . . . . To ask +the origin of shoes, of alms-purses, of hoods, of the cockade, of +hoop-petticoats, of farthingales, of /Gloves/, of masks, is to drag +a /modilogist/ into the frightful maze of sumptuary laws, and upon +all the battlefields, where civilisation has triumphed over the gross +manners imported into Europe by the barbarism of the Middle Ages. + +"Things futile in appearance," continues the author of the /Théorie +de la démarche/, "represent either ideas or interests--whether +it be bust, or foot, or head"--he might have said, above all, or +hand--"you will ever see a social progress, a retrograde system, or +some desperate struggle formulating itself by the assistance of some +part or other of the dress. Now the shoe announces a privilege, now +the hat signals a revolution--a piece of embroidery, a scarf, or some +ornament of straw, is the sign of a party. Why should the toilet be +then always the most eloquent of styles, if it was not really the +whole man, the man with his political opinions, the man with the +text of his existence, the hieroglyphic man? To-day /Vestignomy/ has +become almost a branch of the art created by Gall and Lavater." + +I am overwhelmed, O my indulgent friend! I feel that I have been far +inferior to my task, and I fear I have not had that charming art of +saying nothing which often says so many things. I have neglected to +show you the Glove in princely /Inventaires/, in the old chronicles, +and in the delightful tales of Boccaccio, of the Queen of Navarre, of +Straparole, of Bonaventure Desperriers, and even in Brantôme, who has +written a little story, full of old French /esprit/, on a Glove found +in the bed of a fashionable lady. I had a good opportunity of showing +you the anecdotic Glove of ever so many romances and memoirs from /Le +Petit Jehan de Saintre/ up to Casanova the Venetian, going through +/l' Histoire amoureuse des Gaules/. + +But the natural and the unpremeditated is also a French quality, +of which we must sometimes allow the grace, even in recognising +its defects. I left the history of the Glove, I believe, in 1840; +and I do not suppose that I have painted for you all the little +cuffs, festoons, ruches, notchings, indentations, which adorned the +fastenings of the town Gloves of our elegant ladies, nor the long +black mittens which accompanied the blonde bodices, of which in those +modest times people were madly fond. It is of little consequence for +me to follow the fashions from 1840 to the present day: one cannot +be a woman and remain ignorant of these different variations of a +fashion of which all the specimens return periodically to reconquer +a second of celebrity. Open-worked Gloves of Chinese silk, Spanish +Gloves, Beaver Gloves, Swedish Gloves, glacé kid Gloves, musketeers' +Gloves, Colombine, with cuffs--what do I say?--the qualifications are +innumerable; they change still more than the fashion, for the epithet +gives a springtide and deceives the customer--/a fortiori/ would +it deceive the /Gantuographer/, if you will allow me this hideous +neologism. + +That which I have not been able to accomplish, that which you have +not demanded of me, that which nevertheless would have interested you +far more than this sleepy talk, is the /Physiology of the Glove/, +with this epigraph taken from an anonymous but witty author--"The +style is the man; the Glove is the woman; the style sometimes +deceives, but the Glove never." + +I am launched, don't you see, into theories historic, philosophic, +and, above all, physiognomic, in a study altogether beside the mark? + +Allow, my sweet and somnolent one, that if you had permitted me at +first to take this part (which for my slight notice was assuredly +better), I should have been less clumsily stiff, less dull above all, +less pretentious besides; albeit I make no other pretension here than +to do your pleasure. You have thrown me the Glove on the confines of +history; it is thence that I have raised it with more effeminancy +than swagger. + +I could have wished that fancy might have dictated to history; but, +in the present case, it is the most that has been done, if history +has succeeded in warming the amiable fancy, which has not taken +Gloves to make us villainously sulky with each other. + +Pardon!--indulgent interlocutress! + +Excuse also, amiable lady readers, ye who read this congealed babble, +and who have yet less reason to be favourable to me, in this sense, +that to you all, alas! I cannot say, as was once said in the polite +world--/Friendship allows the Glove./ + + + + +THE MUFF + +/THE FUR./ + + +The Muff! The very name has something about it delicate, downy, and +voluptuous. From that little warm satin nest, where pretty chilly +little hands ensconce themselves in silk, carrying with them a lace +handkerchief, a box of lozenges, a bouquet of Parma violets, or a +tender loving /billet-doux/, a thousand trifles spring up to please +us, like a swarm of souvenirs and caressing thoughts of our first +years passed at home, and of our first roving loves. + +In childhood, we delight to play with the large maternal Muff, to +pass our hands over it the wrong way to excite the electricity of +the long hair, to plunge our faces in the pungent heady odour of its +down, and to make use of this furred sack in inconceivable tricks, in +playing at hide-and-seek with small objects, or in burying therein +the familiar cat, who becomes lazy in its warmth. + +Then, later on, at the hour of the first rendezvous, during one of +those icy winters which Ronsard dreaded for his darling, when we see +our so much desired mistress appear veiled and all imprisoned in +furs, we become almost jealous of the pretty and coquettish Muff, in +which she buries her roguish little nose, which the glacial breeze +has lashed and reddened, and we plunge then with a sweet brutality +our own hands into the silky cylinder, there to find, and there +passionately to press the pretty idle fingers, which we are for so +generously thawing, by covering them with long kisses like gloves. + +When the Muff returns from exile with the first hoar frosts of +November, it causes, as soon as it appears on the boulevards, a +sensation, intimate and delicious, to all true /feminists/, to the +Dilettanti of woman--to all those who perceive in their most delicate +shades the graces of which a naive or coquettish woman can avail +herself, whether in handling the Fan or the Sunshade, or in tucking +up a corner of a spring petticoat, or in passing along radiant in +a long furry pelisse, or more passive in letting herself glide +languishingly in a sledge over the ice of the lake, making eyes at +her darling who skates by her side, and pushes forward her coquettish +equipage. It seems that woman, that exquisite and delicate flower, +blossoms in fur, as those white gardenias of the conservatory which +half open and develop themselves in a nest of perfumed wadding. + +The more she hides, muffles up, deadens, so to speak, her beauty, the +more woman--a creature of Hades who makes us dream of paradise--is +bewitching in the diabolicity of her graces. When Love, who is +represented blind, sets a mask on Venus-coquette, one might think the +trickster boy was for burning the universe, for behind those yawning +apertures of the black velvet mask, behind those murderous loopholes, +two woman's eyes are lying in ambush, pitiless, turn by turn +laughing, burning, blazing, drowned in pleasure, charged, in a word, +as with grape-shot, with all the shafts of the Cupidonian quiver. + +Thus, out of the midst of furs, woman, that mignonette plant, that +/mimosa pudica/, throws off beauty more mysterious, more warm, more +full of promise, more enveloped and more enveloping, as if from the +electricity of that peltry, there was spread in the ambient air of +the provoking daughter of Eve an attractive sensuality, like a subtle +caress, which rustles against our senses in its passage. + +The ancients had perhaps great reason to attach, as they did, certain +excellences and prerogatives to fur: a master furrier, Charrier, +wrote on this subject, in 1634, remarks and moral considerations as +naïve as curious: "Our kings, whether they are consecrated, crowned, +or married, divest themselves of the splendour of embroideries and +of diamonds, to take their royal mantle hedged about with lilies and +lined with ermine. + +"The mantles of the chevaliers, dukes, and peers of France are lined +with lynx, marten, and ermine; the chancellors, keepers of the seals, +who are the guardians of our laws, wear the most exquisite furs. + +"Bachelors and doctors, emperors and physicians clothe themselves +with furs which represent the mysteries of theology, the maxims of +politics, the secrets of medicine. Furs cure people of headaches and +disordered stomachs; attacks of gout which triumph over the most +potent remedies, are vanquished by the skins of cats, lambs, and +hares." + +In fine, the good Charrier proves with pride that of all the +ornaments which luxury has invented there is none so glorious, so +august, so precious, as furs, and that the privileges of peltry +merchants rightly surpass those of all others. + +The masters and wardens of the peltry merchandise had for their arms +a paschal lamb on an azure field. Two ermines supported the shield +crested with the ducal crown, with this device in exergue--very like +that of Brittany--/Malo mori quam fœdari/. + +The use of furs dates back to the origin of the world. Plutarch, in +his /Table Talk/, relates that people dressed themselves in skins +before they became acquainted with stuffs. Tacitus assures us it was +the same with the Teutons, Propertius with the Romans. + + Robed in rich silk, the Court you now behold + Was once a folk fur-clad against the cold, + +says a poet of the sixteenth century. But without stopping at the +conquest of the Golden Fleece, at Rebekah ordering Jacob to put on +his hands and neck kids' skins, at all the examples of the Bible and +of history, we will only remark that the four noble furs consecrated +by feudality were the ermine, the vair, the sable, and the miniver. +The colours of furs admitted into coats of arms were those of the +sable, the ermine, and the vair. + +Charlemagne, who loved, they say, simplicity in his apparel, had, +according to Eginhard, the habit of wearing in summer a mantle of +otter's skin; but in winter he covered himself with a mantle of which +the sleeves were lined with vair and foxes' fur. This is corroborated +by the four following verses of Philippe Mousnes, the poet biographer +of this Emperor:-- + + But in the days of fallen leaves, + He wore a new surcoat with sleeves + Of furs of foxes and of vair + To shield him from the nipping air. + +At the epoch of the Crusades, the luxury of furs was carried to the +highest degree in Western Europe; but to remain absolutely fixed to +the Muff, we must register the first apparition of this little fur +about the end of the sixteenth century. In the inventory of goods +left by the widow of the President Nicolai we read: Item, a Muff of +velvet lined with marten. + +In Venice, however, we have in our researches found a vestige of the +Muff at the end of the fifteenth century; celebrated courtezans and +noble ladies at that time carried Muffs, which served for niches to +minuscular dogs; and an engraving represents a scene of an interior, +in which a fair Venetian seems to be showing her lover the infinite +games of her lap-dogs in her Muff. + +There were at that time in Venice delicious Muffs made after the +primitive fashion of a single band of velvet, brocade, or silk, lined +with fine fur, rounded in a cylinder, of which the extremities were +closed in different widths by buttons of orient crystal, pearls or +gold. + +D'Aubigné, in his /Universal History/, says in the course of a story +of a besieged town:--"The inhabitants descended thirty paces from the +breach, and among the foremost was noticed a woman /with Muffs/, a +halberd in her hand, who mixed with and distinguished herself in this +combat." Under the designation of /Muffs/ we must understand here +spare half-sleeves like those mentioned in the Library of Vauprivas +/à propos/ of Louise Labé. Under Charles IX. the simple citizen +folk were only allowed to wear black Muffs; ladies of the highest +condition had alone a right to sumptuous Muffs of various colours. + +In a satiric print of 1634, signed Jaspar Isac, and entitled /The +Squire à la Mode/, we see carried by a woman, who is accompanied on +foot by a Gascon cavalier, the first French Muff having a direct +relation with that which is still in use at the present day. It is a +sheath of stuff or silk bordered on both sides by a thick white fur, +which grows into an enormous roll at the ends. + +But it is amongst the precious engravings of Hollar, Abraham Bosse, +Arnoult, Sandrart, Bonnard, and Trouvain that we see the authentic +Muff really born, and find it in the hands of the Parisian matron, +of the lady of quality in her winter dress, of the /Précieuse/, and +the coquetting flirt. An engraving of Bonnard shows us a great lady +with her head dressed à la Fontange, and in court dress, on the point +of going out; a waiting-maid adjusts her mantle, and a gentleman +attends the beauty's good pleasure; the Muff she carries was then +of a moderate size, with a bow in the middle. The Muff was worn for +style, "for grace," and was made of sable-marten for ladies of the +Court, and simply of dogskin or catskin for the small citizens' +wives who could not devote more than fifteen to twenty francs to the +acquisition of this light hand-warmer. + +Antoine Furetière, in his /Dictionary/, has condensed in a few lines +all the materials of a Dissertation on the Muff of the seventeenth +century. At the word /Muff/ we read:-- + + A fur worn in winter, in which to put the hands, to keep them warm. + /Muffs/ were formerly only for women: at the present day they are + carried by men. The finest /Muffs/ are made of marten, . . . . the + common of miniver; . . . . the country /Muffs/ of the cavaliers are + made of otter and of tiger. A woman puts her nose in her /Muff/ to + hide herself. A little /Muff/-dog is a little dog which ladies can + carry in their /Muff/. + +Everything we see is summed up in this. Saint-Jean and Bonnard have +preserved for us types of French gentlemen bearing the Muff under +Louis XIV. One, in court dress, carries with much grace a small +spotted Muff, which he holds in one hand, showing a glimpse at +the unoccupied end of the cuff of a fur glove; another, in winter +court-dress, holds with the languor of a /petit-maître/ a pretty +plump otter Muff falling to the hips, giving a gracious curve to the +arm; in the middle of this Muff a vast bow of ribbons or /Galants/, +something like the old trimming called /petite oie/, is displayed +with an excellent effect. In 1680, nothing, according to the /Mercure +Galant/, was to be seen but ribbons purfled with gold, laced, +fringed, wreathed, purled, or embroidered, which were gathered in a +bow in front, of the Muff. + +La Fontaine alludes doubtless to the country Muff spoken of by +Furetière when, in the fable of the /Monkey and the Leopard/, he +makes the latter say:-- + + The king desires me at his Court, + And must have--if I die for't-- + A /Muff/, made of my skin, so full of blots + Of colour, and of lines, and dots, + And dappled stains, and chequered spots. + +As to the Muff-dog--to finish the registration of the definition +of Furetière--not only has Hollar left us an engraving of it, and +presented it to us under the form of a small Spaniel, but Father du +Cerceau makes his /upholsterer poet/ say--Even the lady's lapdog +barked at me, that ingrate + + Cadet, for whom I used to stuff + So many sweets inside my Muff. + +The chief hall of the peltry merchants and furriers of the 17th +century, in Paris, was in the Rue de la Tabletterie or Rue des +Fourreurs, which led into the cross-way of the Place aux Chats. The +shops of the retail peltry merchants were nearly all situated in the +City, Rue Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, and Rue de la Juiverie. + +"In these places," says Léger, "are to be found very beautiful Muffs +for men and for women, and very fashionable ones . . . there are to +be sold also very beautiful amices of miniver." He adds a word about +the Palatines properly got up, composed of skins of animals, foreign +and native. The /Livre commode des adresses de Paris/ contains some +designations of peltry merchants and furriers towards the end of the +seventeenth century. + +Fashion altered the shape of the Muff considerably under Louis XIV. +From the rare documents which we have been able to catalogue, we +have easily found numerous modifications in both form and volume. +Sometimes narrow and long, sometimes broad and short, it would be +impossible to assign to this little chattel an exact type for all +that epoch. + +The Muff triumphed already, under Louis XIII., in the empire of +oglings and at the Place Royale, as it reigned later at Versailles, +and showed itself in sedan chairs in the midst of the alleys of +the park at the visiting hour, lending always to woman a charming +countenance and exquisite graces. + +Scarron, in his /Poésies Diverses/, has left us in four verses a +pretty picture of manners for any one who could morally develop it. +The poor cripple Scarron certainly had no need of a Muff in his +arm-chair!-- + + My wife then leaves at once, though she + All perils should divide with me; + She takes her Muff and goes + To see some one she knows. . . . + +But let us leave the age of big wigs and Fontange head-dresses, +and penetrate into the age of powder and patches, into the age of +Voltaire, who, /à propos/ of one of his characters in /Micromégas/, +wrote: + +"Imagine a very small Muff-dog following a captain of the Guards of +the King of Prussia." + +An engraving of the /Encyclopédie/ presents us in the nick of time +with a faithful reproduction of a shop of a furrier of the last +century. Day penetrates through a large glass bow window; all round, +on shelves, are ranged Muffs and different furs; two pleasing +shopwomen offer their customers enormous Muffs of miniver, and a +shop-boy beats with a rod one of those furred mantles which were sent +"to be kept" during the summer, to preserve them from the mites. This +engraving, a precious document which may be attributed to Cochin, +recalls two charming little stories of Restif de la Bretonne in his +/Contemporaines du Commun/: one entitled /La Jolie Fourreuse/, the +other /La Jolie Pelletière/. Professions passed out of sight! + +"Furs"--MM. de Goncourt wrote in a note of much study to their book +/La Femme au XVIII^e Siècle/--"were a great luxury of Parisian +ladies, at the time when the fashion was to arrive at the opera +wrapt in the most superb and rarest, and to take them off little +by little with coquettish art." The reputation of the sable, the +ermine, the miniver, the lynx, the otter, is indicated in the +/Étrennes Fourrées dédiées aux jolies Frileuses/, Geneva, 1770. +Muffs have quite a history, from those on which the furrier brought +discredit, in causing one to be worn by the hangman on the execution +day--these were probably Muffs /à la Jésuite/, muffs which were not +of fur, and against which a pleasantry at the commencement of the +century, /A petition presented to the Pope by the master furriers/, +solicits excommunication--up to those of Angora goats' hair, immense +Muffs which reached to the ground, and to the little Muffs at the +end of the century, baptized /little barrels/, as the Palatine was +called /cat/. The fashion of sledges, then very widely spread, added +to the fashion of furs. An etching of Caylus, after a drawing of +Coypel, about the middle of the century, shows us in a sledge set +on dolphins--one of those sledges which cost ten thousand crowns--a +pretty woman dressed entirely in fur, her head-dress a small bonnet +of fur with an egret, carried along in a sledge, which is driven by +a coachman dressed like a Muscovite, and standing at the back. /À +propos/ of furs, the /Palatine/ owes its fortune and its name to the +Duchess of Orléans, mother of the Regent, known under the name of the +Princess Palatine. + +Palatines--which were made of fox, of marten, of miniver--were worn +for a long time with /Polonaises/ and /Hongrelines/. Roy, a French +poet of the 18th century, who made acquaintance with the stick +at different intervals--sent some bad verses to a lady on the +subject of her /blue palatine/. The /Almanach des Muses/ of 1772 has +preserved them for us. Here they are:-- + + That charming colour wear, + The colour of the summer sky above, + The colour Venus sets on every Love, + Which makes the fairest faces yet more fair, + As Venus in her own sweet self can prove: + But the white place where falls the tufted bow + Is nought indeed but lovely nakedness; + Why hide it then? The beauty which men bless + Gains on the whole by losing, don't you know? + +Caraccioli remarks that people used Muffs in winter just as much for +elegance as for need. "The form varies continually," he says; "to-day +(1768) men carry small Muffs lined with down, and trimmed with black +or grey satin." + +In 1720, women's Muffs were very narrow and long; the crossed hands +filled it exactly; afterwards they became wider, like those we may +see on the hands of the pretty skaters of Lancret. A typical Muff of +the epoch was the ermine Muff, fearfully large, which we find carried +by the Venetian masks of the delicious Pietro Longhi, who seems to +have wished to illustrate by his pictures the /Memoires/ of Jacques +Casanova of Seingalt. In the small engravings of the century relating +to travelling, which show us the stoppages at the inn, or the +packings in the public vehicles, we see everywhere the feminine Muff +delicately pressed against their waists by the pretty adventuresses. +Boucher's skater, who passes like a gracious Parisian little figure +over a background of a Dutch landscape, doubled up but valiant, +appears to make a prow of her Muff, the better to cleave the sharp +cold air. But in the intimacy of private life, in the eighteenth +century as now, the Muff could lend a charm to genre paintings, and +the manufacturers of prints might have composed many /Little posts/ +and /Nests for love-letters/, interpreting by their drawing what the +author of the /Dictionnaire des Amoureux/ wished to express, when at +the word /Muff/ he gives this piquant definition: /A Letter-box, +lined with white satin./ + +The most celebrated and the most delicious picture in which a Muff +figures is assuredly that adorable painting known by the name of /The +Young Girl with the Muff/, by Joshua Reynolds, which formed part of +the beautiful collection of the Marquis of Hertford. Nothing is more +delicate than this painting. That young English-woman seems rather to +walk through the picture than remain fixed in it, so great, one might +say, was the quickness with which the painter has caught that image +in its passage with its movement of walking--the body is inclined a +little forward, the head on one side; the woman's bust, which stops +at the Muff, is so fresh in its composition, so fine in its tonality, +so radiant in its originality of design, that it would be enough +almost by itself to establish the immortal reputation of Reynolds, +who has put into his work a very quintessence of femininity, as an +ideal of the most exquisite English loveliness, and also as a type, +delicate and never to be forgotten, of a chilly beauty. + +Nor must we forget the /Portrait of Mrs. Siddons/, painted by +Gainsborough, in the charm of her twenty-ninth year, in 1784. This +picture, which was exhibited at Manchester in 1857, is now in the +/National Gallery/. The charming lady, dressed in a fresh striped +blue and white robe, with a fawn-coloured shawl half falling from +her shoulders, has on her head a large black felt hat, ornamented +with feathers--one of those hats which have done more for the +vulgarisation of the glory of Gainsborough than all his studies +and portraits. Mrs. Siddons is seated, holding on her lap with her +left hand a comfortable Muff of fox or Siberian wolf, of which she +appears to caress the fur with her right hand, as if to show off the +beauty and whiteness of her spindle-shaped fingers. The mistress of +the works of a master who had, it is only right to say, the most +ravishing face in the world to portray. But, without needing to have +further recourse to the English school, have we not that luminous +portrait of Madame Vigée Lebrun, in which the Muff, raised almost +level with the head, spreads the shine of its hair of tawny gold +like the head of a courtezan of Venice? That astonishing painting +of the end of the eighteenth century appeared in its dazzling +splendour, in the midst of the square saloon of the Museum of the +Louvre, killing, by mere force of freshness and light, the magistral +bituminous pictures of the beginning of the century, which are its +near neighbours. + +Under Louis XVI. the frenzy of the toilette reached its most acute +crisis: fashions succeeded one another in a few years with so much +rapidity that we can scarcely follow them; people sought to outstrip +in everything rather than to refine, and the Muffs, carried by men +and women alike, became enormous and exaggerated. Hurtaut, in his +/Dictionnaire de la Ville de Paris/, article /Modes/, makes this +strange remark in the year 1784, "A lady has been seen at the opera +with a /Muff of momentaneous agitation/." + +The intellect loses itself in seeking the exact definition of this +qualificative of /momentaneous agitation/! + +In 1788 a fashion was Muffs of Siberian wolf. According to the +/Magasin des Modes Nouvelles Françaises et Anglaises/, the young +folks no longer carried their Muff after the peaceable and good +citizen-like fashion /à la papa/ level with the bottom of the +waistcoat; they used it, on the contrary, like a plaything or an +opera hat; they held it in their hand while gesticulating in their +promenades, or carried it under their arms like a portfolio strangled +and crumpled between the elbow and the chest. + +The little dogs, the Muff-toy-terriers, which had continued in favour +since the Regency, were more in request now than ever; every woman of +fashion had her pug and her King Charles' pet, like those small dogs +that now come from Havanna. + +In the celebrated coloured engraving of Debucourt, /La Galerie de +Bois au Palais-Royal/, in 1787, we see circulating in the midst of +that strange crowd which was called the medley of the Palais-Royal, +extravagant types, among them women holding in their hand beside +their furred cloak those incredible Muffs of an immense size, which +figure also under the arms of the masked gallants of the time, with a +small bow of satin attached to the fur. + +Under the Revolution and the Directory the fashion of Muffs was +extremes, either broad as little barrels, or narrow and minuscular; +in other respects the fashion varied infinitely, and we must come to +the Restoration to find the first chinchilla Muffs which harmonised +with the velvet witchouras. Absurd fashions to study! What Muff +would the painter choose who wished, by way of allegory, to show +a grasshopper shivering in the hoar frost and the snow, to whom +charitable Love brings a downy Muff? A pretty subject for a concourse +of an Academy which claimed to be /précieuse/ and refined. + +In 1835, Muffs, boas, palatines, cloaks lined with marten or fox, +affected odious and indescribable forms: they used to make for a time +Glove-Muffs, a sort of mittens of marten, which were soldered on to +one another where the hands crossed. The Muff, that accessory of the +toilet, ought to be in harmony with the general tonality and style of +costume. Therefore, to undertake to describe it at that epoch would +be only possible in sketching a complete history of Fashion. + +The picturesque Muff of 1830 to 1850, is assuredly the big Muff +of the Parisian or provincial tradeswomen, those Muffs, larders +and lumber-rooms, which we meet in the deobstruent tales of Paul +de Kock, and see figuring in the primitive tilted spring-carts +driven by the master, in which are packed the mistress and all the +assistant clerks, with a view to exploring some suburban corner on +Sunday, there to laugh with their muffs pressed before their mouths, +and to act a thousand follies of a doubtful taste, and to banquet +plentifully, and to sing during the dessert some free-and-easy ditty, +very jovial, after the fashion of those pleasant couplets of Laujon +on /The Muff/, which I will quote here, with the more confidence, +since they figure in the /Chansons de Parades/ collected by that boon +companion, who was at the same time member of the Caveau and of the +Institute:-- + + See what it is to be too good! + One morning, leaving the warm fold + Of home, Simon I saw, who stood + And shivered in the nipping cold; + He cried, "Come here, you little pearl, + I feel so very cold, my girl!" + Now warm yourself! + Simon, good sir, ensconce yourself! + I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff! + My dear! + I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff! + + "I feel so very cold, my girl!" + Ay me! I had my new Muff on. + My head was surely in a whirl + To lend it to the good Simon. + That day my kindness cost me dear; + My Muff is spoilt for all the year! + Now warm yourself! + I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff! + My dear! + + My Muff is spoilt for all the year, + For Simon's ways are rather rough; + And he knows nought of doubt or fear, + He quite destroyed my poor new Muff! + Simon, you've ruffled all its fur, + Made it too large, you careless sir! + Now warm yourself! + I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff! + My dear! + + Made it too large, you careless sir! + See: it has been entirely spoiled, + 'Tis metamorphosed, I aver; + And seems all rumpled up and soiled. + 'Tis like my aunt's Muff, all agape, + Quite out of countenance and shape! + Now warm yourself! + Simon, good sir, ensconce yourself! + I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff! + My dear! + I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff! + +What laughter, what shouts, what chokings, in those parties /à la/ +Paul de Kock, when an artless maiden--at the time when pleasant +digestion had set its bloom on all faces--sang, one by one, these +ancient couplets, with an air at once of a whimpering girl and of a +woman full of coquettish intelligence. + +The Muff has not always brought tears of laughter to the eyes, and +a physiologist might draw from it many a curious deduction; only to +cite a single instance, in the middle of the /Scènes de la Vie de +Bohème/, in the episode of Francine's Muff, which should remain in +every reader's memory--the tears come into all our eyes resultant +from an emotion at once sincere and profound. + +Francine has been condemned by her doctor, and /hears with her eyes/ +the terrible sentence of the physician. + +"Don't listen to him," says she to her love, "don't listen to him, +Jacques, he is telling stories; we will go out to-morrow, it is All +Hallows Day, it will be cold, . . . go and buy me a Muff, . . . mind +it is a good one, . . . and will last a long while; I am afraid of +having chilblains this winter." + +Then, when Jacques has brought the Muff: "It is very pretty," said +Francine; "I will carry it in our walk." + +The morrow, All Hallows Day, about the time of the Angelus of noon, +she was seized with the death-struggle, and all her body began to +tremble. "My hands are cold, cold," she murmured, "give me my Muff, +dear"--and she plunged her poor little fingers into the fur. + +"It is over," said the doctor to Jacques, "give her a last kiss;" and +Jacques glued his lips to those of his darling. At the last moment, +they wished to take away her Muff, but her hands still clung to it. + +"No, no," she cried, "let it be--we are in winter, it is cold. Ah my +poor Jacques!" + +And so Francine dies, without quitting her Muff. A poignant and +lugubrious story, like the work of Murger in general; the /Muff of +Francine/ will perhaps be the most durable chapter in the /Vie de +Bohème/. We have not been able to set this realistic scene upon +the stage, but a painter, M. Haquette, has displayed it after an +admirable manner in one of his best pictures exhibited in one of the +Paris annual Salons. + +Truly the Muff calls up many sad thoughts for sentimental and +charitable souls; this winter chattel reminds them of the sorrows +of those who are without fire and home and comfortable clothing, +and when the north wind blows without, and the snow falls softly +in sombre silence, more than one dreaming girl, with her elbow +leaning on the window-sill, lets her Muff fall while thinking of +those unfortunates who suffer, of the careless grasshoppers and the +laborious ants, of whom an adverse fortune has deceived the foresight. + +The Muff, the mysterious Muff, hides many distresses: we see it at +the present day on the hands of all the working girls and milliners, +who set out early in the winter mornings from their homes for the +distant workshops; and it is a load upon one's heart to see all these +miserable little Muffs made of rabbit or black cat, out of which +peeps often the golden point of a penny roll and a greasy paper which +envelops a chlorotic piece of pork or an /Arlequin/ (bits of broken +meat) bought in the early market. The Muff which warms so many pretty +hands brave and toiling, seems in winter to be the refuge of virtue, +shivering but victorious. + +How much luxury is there, on the other hand, in the Muffs of the fine +world during the last twenty years! They have been made very small, +of sable tails, and very expensive; but there have been also some +more modest, made with that marten of Australia which took the place +of the Astrakhan, which passed out of fashion in 1860. They have been +manufactured also in velvet plush or in cloth, with borders of fur +or feathers, and a large bow of ribbons in the centre. Some became +veritable scent-bags, perfumed with heliotrope, rose, gardenia, +verbena, violet, or they were powdered inside with orris root or +/poudre à la Maréchale/. + +An elegant and witty lady-correspondent of fashion, who signs with +the word /Étincelle/ the notes full of charming confusion in her +/Carnet d'un Mondain/, lately gave the nomenclature of the Muffs of +the day, painted in water-colours: + +"The Nest-Muff, in satin /coulissé/, lined with black and white lace, +with a whole company of little Indian birds and frightened paroquets +hiding themselves in the satin folds. + +"The Flower-Muff, very small, of ivory plush, rouge cardinal or +marine blue, with bunches of roses, marigolds, camellias, and violets +blossoming in the midst of a great deal of lace. + +"The Watteau-Muff for the evening: a round of Loves painted on white +satin. The Coppée-Muff: sparrows sunk in a sky of black satin. The +Figaro-Muff, in black velvet, entirely covered with a net of black +and gold chenille: three humming-birds in a nest of black lace. The +Duchess Muff: all of Marabout, imitating fur, shaded with little bows +of dead satin. The Castilian, in plush, covered with point noir: an +orange parroquet in the middle standing out in relief on a fan of +black lace. The Minerva, in skunk or sable, with a black satin bow +and the head of a barn-door owl." + +All these fashions of to-day are already fashions of yesterday, so +perpetual is the inconstancy of /la Mode/! To-day the monkey, blue +fox, beaver, swan, and ermine are metamorphosed into Muffs; to-morrow +will come the furs of sable, of otter, of chinchilla, of squirrel, of +marten, of wolf, &c. Women and furs change, and will change, soon and +often. + +Fashion is the everlasting Fairy; whether she take the Sunshade as +a rod at the end of her gloved hand, or the Muff as a surprise-box +or a cornucopia, she is never short of inventions, of prodigies, of +follies, and of ruins; she seems to avenge herself on the moderns +because the ancients gave her not divine honours, nor placed her upon +the summit of their Olympus. Let, then, the head of this new and +great goddess be adorned with a weathercock helmet, of which Love +will furnish the magnetic arrow, and let a statue be raised to that +great first French citizeness, who from Paris governs the world with +so formidable a despotism, against whom none ever dreams of raising a +revolt. + +For us, who, /à propos/ of the Sunshade, the Glove, and the Muff, +have just cast a glance upon the museum of this female ruler, we +are in a state of dread from the inconceivable variety of objects +which were for an hour a woman's pleasure, and, if we have not +conducted our readers before all the glass cases of this national +museum, great as the universe, or "the vastest in the world," as all +large milliners' shops entitle themselves, it is because around the +ornaments of women the fickle Loves will always dance their frenzied +round, which only a madman can ever hope and wish to stop. It has +been said that Fashion is woman's only literature; if, however, our +elegant ladies were condemned to study the special archæology of this +literature, very soon--as in love--would they desert History for +Romance. + + + + +APPENDIX + + +We see sometimes appearing certain light little works connected +either with literary history or ancient poetry, or manners and +customs, which would be nothing but pretty and curious pamphlets, +if the Appendix which follows them were not swelled out of all +proportion with proofs and illustrations, annotated notes, documents +with sidenotes, bibliographic bibliography, considerations and +commentaries of all sorts, which put the reader to the torture. By +this proceeding of an exaggerated literary conscience, an opuscule of +thirty pages arrives sometimes at three hundred: it is in some sense +a case of erudite exaltation, sometimes also a vain-glory of the +investigator, who has a mind to climb up the pyramid of books he has +examined, proudly there to set up his silhouette, as we plant a flag +on a building as soon as it is complete. + +As an epilogue to another volume of this series, /The Fan/, we +published a sketch of documentary bibliography to indicate the +principal works which we had searched for the little materials +necessary for that monograph. You will find there six or eight pages +of titles placed without order, and ending with this phrase of a man +out of breath, and expressing extreme fatigue--/et cœtera/. + +And in this /et cœtera/ we have set now a hundred library shelves in +the shadow--sparing thus our most fastidious readers an extremely +bitter pill, and sparing ourselves also the fatigues of an +interminable catalogue of no great profit to any one, considering +the nature of the work in question, and the fashion in which we have +treated it. + +At the conclusion of the three unpretending pieces of chit-chat which +we have just engaged in about /The Sunshade, the Glove, and the +Muff/, people may expect to see figuring here the lineaments or first +matters of the canvas on which we embroidered our bold arabesques. +People will be deceived. It will please us for this time to hide the +innumerable instruments of our thefts; they are still there by our +sides, making walls and barricades upon our tables and the seats +round about us. But if, on the termination of a task, we love usually +to put back regularly in order a library turned upside down by the +fever of researches, happy in being nourished by the intellectual +juice of old books, sometimes also we are prostrated by that intense +discouragement which "dumfounds a man," according to an every-day +expression. In fact, the result has not answered so great a working +up of material, a picture has been dreamed of too big for the frame, +the artist has been obliged to reduce himself, to resign himself, +and to put in nothing of his own essence; in short, the Mosaic +/littérateur/ looks at the Little Thing he has just finished beside +the Great Matter which he had conceived. + +In like conditions, the /meâ culpâ/ is the sole preventive parade +that can be made in his retreat to questions which become twisted +into a note of interrogation on the smiling lips of the reader. + +To make an inventory of the books we have consulted would be a +torture worse than that of Tantalus, for desire, far from looking +forward with eagerness, would look sadly back, like an old man who +sees again in memory the women of his twentieth year, whom he has +let fly under the willows without profiting in their pursuit by the +vigour of his legs. + +These books--which we serve not up here--are full of documents which +we have not been able to enshrine, and it seems that the crumbs which +fall from the table make a larger volume than the repast which has +just been taken. + +For the rest, a truce to sadness and superfluous regrets! Who knows +whether we are not odiously unjust to ourselves? Who knows whether +the little schoolboy path which we have chosen is not the prettiest, +the least rugged, the most unforeseen--that is to say, the least +painful and the most verdant, and at the same time the shortest? + +Every work, however small it may be, requires distance, a time +of calm and oblivion. The eye of the painter wanders in distress +before one and the same picture for entire days; the brain of an +investigator becomes anchylosed and petrified by dreaming in one and +the same atmosphere of small ideas which remain attached to dress. + +When we shall have unfurnished our skull of those delicate things, +/the Sunshade, Glove, and Muff/, to carry thither a current of more +serious conceptions, we shall perhaps have leisure to read again our +little work as strangers, and not as producers, and thus, doubtless, +we shall reflect with a satisfied smile, that there was much more in +us of wisdom than carelessness in not tarrying too long amongst such +charming trifles! + + + + + /LONDON/, + 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. + /May 1883./ + + IN TWELVE VOLUMES, CROWN 8VO, PARCHMENT BOARDS OR + CLOTH, PER VOLUME, 7S. 6D. + + THE + OLD SPANISH ROMANCES + + /ILLUSTRATED WITH ETCHINGS./ + + + THE HISTORY OF DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA. Translated from the + Spanish of MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA by MOTTEUX. With copious + Notes (including the Spanish Ballads), and an Essay on the Life + and Writings of CERVANTES by JOHN G. LOCKHART. Preceded by a Short + Notice of the Life and Works of PETER ANTHONY MOTTEUX by HENRI VAN + LAUN. Illustrated with Sixteen Original Etchings by R. DE LOS RIOS. + Four Volumes. + + LAZARILLO DE TORMES. By DON DIEGO MENDOZA. Translated by THOMAS + ROSCOE. And GUZMAN D'ALFARACHE. By MATEO ALEMAN. Translated by + BRADY. Illustrated with Eight Original Etchings by R. DE LOS RIOS. + Two Volumes. + + ASMODEUS. By LE SAGE. Translated from the French. Illustrated with + Four Original Etchings by R. DE LOS RIOS. + + THE BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA. By LE SAGE. Translated from the French by + JAMES TOWNSEND. Illustrated with Four Original Etchings by R. DE LOS + RIOS. + + VANILLO GONZALES; or, The Merry Bachelor. By LE SAGE. Translated + from the French. Illustrated with Four Original Etchings by R. DE + LOS RIOS. + + THE ADVENTURES OF GIL BLAS OF SANTILLANE. Translated from the French + of LE SAGE by TOBIAS SMOLLETT. With Biographical and Critical Notice + of LE SAGE by GEORGE SAINTSBURY. New Edition, carefully revised. + Illustrated with Twelve Original Etchings by R. DE LOS RIOS. Three + Volumes. + + + + + IN TWELVE VOLUMES, CROWN 8VO, PARCHMENT BOARDS OR + CLOTH, PER VOLUME, 7S. 6D. + + OLD ENGLISH ROMANCES + + /ILLUSTRATED WITH ETCHINGS./ + + + THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN. By LAURENCE + STERNE. In Two Vols. With Eight Etchings by DAMMAN from Original + Drawings by HARRY FURNISS. + + THE OLD ENGLISH BARON: A GOTHIC STORY. By CLARA REEVE. + + ALSO + + THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO: A GOTHIC STORY. By HORACE WALPOLE. In + One Vol. With Two Portraits and Four Original Drawings by A. H. + TOURRIER, Etched by DAMMAN. + + THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS. In Four Vols. Carefully Revised + and Corrected from the Arabic by JONATHAN SCOTT, LL.D., Oxford. With + Nineteen Original Etchings by AD. LALAUZE. + + THE HISTORY OF THE CALIPH VATHEK. By WM. BECKFORD. With Notes, + Critical and Explanatory. + + ALSO + + RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. By SAMUEL JOHNSON. In One Vol. With + Portrait of BECKFORD, and Four Original Etchings, designed by A. H. + TOURRIER, and Etched by DAMMAN. + + ROBINSON CRUSOE. By DANIEL DEFOE. In Two Vols. With Biographical + Memoir, Illustrative Notes, and Eight Etchings by M. MOUILLERON, and + Portrait by L. FLAMENG. + + GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. By JONATHAN SWIFT. With Five Etchings and + Portrait by AD. LALAUZE. + + A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. By LAURENCE STERNE. + + ALSO + + A TALE OF A TUB. By JONATHAN SWIFT. In One Vol. With Five Etchings + and Portrait by ED. HEDOUIN. + + + + +/SOME PRESS NOTICES./ + + +Daily Telegraph. + +"These editions are noteworthy as containing original etchings by +artists of high repute. Thus nineteen exquisite plates by the French +etcher, M. Lalauze, gives especial attractiveness to the 'Thousand +and One Nights;' and the two fanciful histories of the Caliph Vathek +and Prince Rasselas are illustrated by designs of Mr. A. H. Tourrier, +etched by M. Damman. It is a pleasure to hold a 'Robinson Crusoe' or +the 'Tale of a Tub' in one's hands; it is a positive luxury to read +those masterpieces in a luxurious shape, large print, on good paper, +accompanied by exquisite illustrations." + + +The Scotsman. + +"These volumes will take rank, for beauty of typography and general +excellence of appearance, with any books of the kind that have +recently been published; while the etchings by M. Lalauze are among +some of the finest of his productions. They are full of vigour +and striking originality, and are what they profess to be--good +illustrations of the story to which they relate. There are not many +men of wholesome minds who do not find enjoyment in 'Robinson Crusoe' +whenever they can lay hands on it; and assuredly there is no one +possessing anything in the shape of a library who would not desire to +have a good edition of the work among his books; in short, nothing +but praise can be given to this edition of these books. No one can +pretend to be acquainted with English literature who is ignorant of +any of the works here published." + + +Glasgow Herald. + +"The merits of this new issue lie in exquisite clearness of type, +completeness; notes and biographical notices, short and pithy, and +a number of very fine etchings and portraits. The illustrations of +Gulliver are particularly effective, such as the 'Academy of Laputa' +and the 'Visions of Glubbdubdrib.'" + + +London Figaro. + +"We congratulate the publishers upon the issue of a capital series of +Old English Romances. They will form a most delightful collection." + + +Magazine of Art. + +"The text of the new four volume edition of the 'Thousand and One +Nights' is that revised by Jonathan Scott from the French of Galland. +It is, in fact, the text in which the incomparable 'Arabian Nights' +became in England the classic it is. The etchings are uncommonly +skilful and finished work; they contain some charming figures; they +constitute a true attraction. In another volume of this series +Beckford's wild and gloomy 'Vathek' appears side by side with +Johnson's admirable 'Rasselas.'" + + +The Literary World. + +"A publishers' notice prefixed to each volume states that 'one +thousand copies of this edition have been printed and the type +distributed. No more will be published.' Although some of these works +are now easily obtainable in a cheap form, good editions are rare and +eagerly sought by those who make any pretence of making a library. +Here is an opportunity of securing as choice an edition as can be +desired at a comparatively low price, the value of which will be +enhanced before long by its scarcity." + + +The Times. + +"Prettily printed and prettily illustrated, these attractive volumes +deserve their welcome from all students of seventeenth century +literature." + + +The Daily News. + +"The merit for modern readers of these old stories lies partly in +their inexhaustible wit, their knowledge of human nature, which +never grows stale, and partly in their pictures of the old reckless +life of Spain. A typical example of these novels is the fictitious +autobiography of Guzman d'Alfarache, the Spanish rogue, written by +Matthew Aleman at the beginning of the seventeenth century." + + +Daily Telegraph. + +"A handy and beautiful edition, in twelve volumes, of the works of +the Spanish masters of romance calls for a word of acknowledgment +from all who desire to see the lights of foreign literature fitly +presented to the notice of English readers. We may say of this +edition of the immortal work of Cervantes, that it is most tastefully +and admirably executed, and that it is embellished with a series +of striking etchings from the pen of the Spanish artist, De Los +Rios. . . . Those who have already made acquaintance with these +masterpieces of exotic humour will need no encouragement to send them +once again to a fountain from which such pure enjoyment is to be +derived, and in so acceptable a shape as Messrs. Nimmo & Bain have +provided." + + +The Scotsman. + +"What man of middle age is there, who has been a reader of books, who +does not look back with pleasure to his first acquaintance with 'Don +Quixote' or the 'Adventures of Gil Blas'? If he has been a wise man +of equal mind, he has gone further afield in these romances, and has +made acquaintance with 'Asmodeus,' 'The Bachelor of Salamanca,' and +other works of a like kind. They have been read by many thousands of +British readers, and they will be read by many thousands more. . . . +What the reading public have reason to congratulate themselves +upon is, that so neat, compact, and well-arranged an edition of +romances that can never die is put within their reach. The publishers +have spared no pains with them. It has already been said that Mr. +Saintsbury has written a prefatorial notice of Le Sage; a similar +work has been done by other hands in the case of Cervantes. It is +satisfactory to find publishers turning their attention to the +reproduction, in worthy form, of classic fiction; and the hope may be +entertained that in this case the enterprise will meet with merited +reward." + + +Westminster Review. + +"We notice with warm welcome a new and very handsome illustrated +edition of the original 'Arabian Nights Entertainment,' the 'real +Simon pure,' and never have we seen the fascinating companion of our +youth more 'daintily dight.' Type and paper are both of the finest +quality, while M. Lalauze's graceful and delicate etchings lend +an additional charm to the text. 'The Thousand and One Nights of +Schéhérézade' occupy four goodly volumes, and uniform with them is +Beckford's 'Vathek' and Dr. Johnson's 'Rasselas' in one volume." + + + J. C. NIMMO & BAIN, + 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE + +Original printed spelling and punctuation variations are mostly +retained. This was a profusely illustrated book, but none had +captions or titles, and are therefore not indicated herein. The html +and mobile editions retain most of the illustrations. Small caps +and bolded text have been converted to capital letters. Italics are +indicated /like this/. The carat symbol indicates that the following +phrase or character is superscript, as in "M^{me.}". + +Page 104: "villanously" changed to "villainously". + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sunshade, by Octave Uzanne + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44570 *** |