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diff --git a/old/44570-0.txt b/old/44570-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bbdf5de --- /dev/null +++ b/old/44570-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3837 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sunshade, by Octave Uzanne + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Sunshade + The Glove--The Muff + +Author: Octave Uzanne + +Illustrator: Paul Avril + +Release Date: January 3, 2014 [EBook #44570] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNSHADE *** + + + + +Produced by Chris Curnow, RichardW and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +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/. 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+ margin-left:0; + } + div#toc { + display:none; + } + } + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sunshade, by Octave Uzanne + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Sunshade + The Glove--The Muff + +Author: Octave Uzanne + +Illustrator: Paul Avril + +Release Date: January 3, 2014 [EBook #44570] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNSHADE *** + + + + +Produced by Chris Curnow, RichardW and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg" width="600" + height="800" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div id="toc">Transcriber’s Table of Contents +<ul> +<li><a href="#PREFACE">Preface</a></li> +<li><a href="#The_sunshade">The Sunshade</a></li> +<li><a href="#THE_GLOVE">The Glove</a></li> +<li><a href="#THE_MUFF">The Muff</a></li> +<li><a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li> +<li><a href="#Advertisements">Advertisements</a></li> +</ul> +</div> + +<div class="front"> + +<h1 title="The Sunshade, the Glove, the Muff."> +  </h1> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 564px;" + title="The Sunshade"> + <img src="images/i_003a.jpg" width="564" height="138" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div id="notop"> + <span id="titlesunshade">THE SUNSHADE</span> + THE GLOVE—THE MUFF</div> + +<div class=""><span class="fsize3">BY</span></div> + +<div class=""><span class="fsize2">OCTAVE UZANNE</span></div> + +<div class=""><span class="fsize3"><em class="e000I2">ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL AVRIL</em></span></div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 378px;"> +<img src="images/i_003b.jpg" width="378" height="378" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class=""><span class="fsize3">LONDON</span><br /> +<span class="fsize2red">J. C. NIMMO AND BAIN</span><br /> +<span class="fsize3">14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.</span><br /> +<span class="fsize3">1883</span></div> +</div> + +<h2 title="Preface"><a id="PREFACE"></a> + PREFACE</h2> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img007"> + <div id="i007b1"> </div> + <div id="i007b2"> </div> + <div id="i007b3"> </div> + +<div class="center">PREFACE</div> + +<p class="drop-cap"> +<img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_007cap.jpg" + width="60" height="59" alt="" /> +AFTER <em class="e000I2">the brilliant success which attended, +in the spring of last year, our volume on</em> +The Fan—<em class="e000I2">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</em> Woman’s Ornaments +<em class="e000I2">by a last little work on the protective adornments of +that delicate being, as graceful as she is gracious</em>: +The Sunshade, the Glove, the Muff. <em class="e000I2">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.</em></p> +</div> + +<div class="HandHeld"> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/i_007e.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="center">PREFACE</div> + +<p class="drop-cap"> +<img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_007cap.jpg" width="60" height="59" alt="" /> +AFTER <em class="e000I2">the brilliant success which attended, +in the spring of last year, our volume on</em> +The Fan—<em class="e000I2">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</em> Woman’s Ornaments +<em class="e000I2">by a last little work on the protective adornments of +that delicate being, as graceful as she is gracious</em>: +The Sunshade, the Glove, the Muff. <em class="e000I2">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.</em></p> +</div> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img008"> + <div id="i008b1"> </div> + <div id="i008b2"> </div> + <div id="i008b3"> </div> + +<p><em class="e000I2">In a work printed in this manner, just as in a +theatre, the</em> mise en scène <em class="e000I2">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</em>.</p> + +<p><em class="e000I2">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.</em></p> + +<p><em class="e000I2">Let it be understood, then, that I have no personal +literary pretensions in this work. As the sage Montaigne +says in his</em> Essays, “<em class="e000I2">I have here but collected +a heap of foreign flowers, and brought of my own +only the string which binds them together.</em>”</p> + +<p class="right"><em class="e00SI2">Octave Uzanne.</em></p> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 415px;"> +<img src="images/i_008.jpg" width="415" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p><em class="e000I2">In a work printed in this manner, just as in a +theatre, the</em> mise en scène <em class="e000I2">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</em>.</p> + +<p><em class="e000I2">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.</em></p> + +<p><em class="e000I2">Let it be understood, then, that I have no personal +literary pretensions in this work. As the sage Montaigne +says in his</em> Essays, “<em class="e000I2">I have here but collected +a heap of foreign flowers, and brought of my own +only the string which binds them together.</em>”</p> + +<p class="right"><em class="e00SI2">Octave Uzanne.</em></p> +</div> +<!--**********--> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a id="The_sunshade"></a> +<img src="images/i_009.jpg" width="600" height="400" alt="THE + SUNSHADE THE PARASOL—THE UMBRELLA" /></div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 460px;"> +<img src="images/i_010.jpg" width="460" height="460" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/i_011a.jpg" width="400" height="258" alt="" /> +</div> + +<h2 title="The Sunshade—the Parasol—the Umbrella"> + THE SUNSHADE<br /> + <i>THE PARASOL —— THE UMBRELLA</i></h2> + +<p class="drop-cap"><img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_011b.jpg" +width="52" height="52" alt="" />THE author of a <em +class="e000I2">Dictionary of Inventions</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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, <em class="e000I2">the shelter which +defends from the sun</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>In China they used the Parasol more than two thousand +years before Christ. There is mention of it in the <em +class="e000I2">Thong-sou-wen</em>, under the denomination of <em +class="e000I2">San-Kaï</em>, 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.”</p> + +<p>And Lou-pan, stupefied by his wife’s genius, +then saw the unfolding of the first Parasol.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 496px;"> +<img src="images/i_013.jpg" width="426" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">the Origin of the Sunshade</em>! +graven in pretty legendary letters on the +temple of Memory, not to be contradicted +by any spectacled <em class="e000I2">savant</em> in the world.</p> + +<p>But if no poet, in smart affected style, +has told us in rhyme <em class="e000I2">the Story of the Parasol</em>, +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 <em class="e000I2">De Umbellæ Gestatione</em>, 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 <em class="e000I2">Arcadics</em>, mentions the Sunshade in describing +the festivals of Alea in Argolis, whilst later on, in +the <em class="e000I2">Eleutheria</em>, 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.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 299px;"> +<img src="images/i_015.jpg" width="299" height="135" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 486px;"> +<img src="images/i_016.jpg" width="426" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Knights</em> (Act v. +Scene 2)—“His ears opened and shut +something like a sunshade.”</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img017"> + <div id="i017b1"> </div> + <div id="i017b2"> </div> + <div id="i017b3"> </div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"> <div class="figcenter" style="width: 571px;"> +<img src="images/i_017.jpg" width="571" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> +</div> +<!--**********--> + +<div class="figleft" id="i-017inset"> +<img src="images/i_017inset.jpg" width="129" + height="129" alt="" /></div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Fasti</em> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Birds</em> 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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figleft" style="width:200px;"> +<img src="images/i_018.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>The <em class="e000I2">Θολἱα</em>, or “Sunshade Hat,” +succeeded the Parasol properly so called. It is of these <em +class="e000I2">Θολἱα</em> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">On a Sunshade of vermeil +on a field argent, symbol of power, sovereign authority and true +friendship</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <em +class="e000I2">plaustrum</em> 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 <em +class="e000I2">flabellum</em> 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?</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width:250px;"> + <img src="images/i_020a.jpg" width="250" height="250" alt="" /> + </div> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img020"> + <div id="i020b0"> </div> + <div id="i020b1"> </div> + <div id="i020b2"> </div> + <div id="i020b3"> </div> + <div id="i020b4"> </div> + <div id="i020b5"> </div> + <div id="i020b6"> </div> + <div id="i020b7"> </div> + +<p>The kings or satraps of Persia of the oldest dynasties +were sheltered by the sovereign Parasol. Chardin, in his <em +class="e000I2">Voyages</em>, 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.</p> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 567px;"> +<img src="images/i_020b.jpg" width="567" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>The kings or satraps of Persia of the oldest dynasties +were sheltered by the sovereign Parasol. Chardin, in his <em +class="e000I2">Voyages</em>, 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.</p> +</div> +<!--**********--> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_021.jpg" width="600" height="537" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>In Hindostan the large Parasol is commonly called <em +class="e000I2">Tch’hâtâ</em>, the small ordinary Parasol <em +class="e000I2">Tch’hâtry</em>, and the bearer of the Parasol for +dignitaries <em class="e000I2">tch’hâtâ-wâlâ</em>.</p> + +<p>The Parasol <em class="e000I2">of seven stages</em> (<em +class="e000I2">savetraxat</em>) 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 <em class="e000I2">Râmayana</em> (ch. xxvi. +<em class="e000I2">scloka</em> 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?”</p> + +<p>We read also in the <em class="e000I2">Mahâbârata</em> (<em +class="e000I2">sclokas</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Sunshade</em>; 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, <em +class="e000I2">white Sunshades</em>, and splendid robes.”</p> + +<p>The Mahratta princes who reigned in Punah +and Sattara held the title of <em class="e000I2">Tch’hâtâ pati</em>, “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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img024"> + <div id="i024b1"> </div> + <div id="i024b2"> </div> + <div id="i024b3"> </div> + <div id="i024b4"> </div> + <div id="i024b5"> </div> + <div id="i024b6"> </div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">the private Sunshade for each +person</em> established itself by degrees on those days when, on +account of the wind, the Velarium could not be used. Martial says in +his <em class="e000I2">Epigrams</em> (Book IV.):</p> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 424px;"> +<img src="images/i_024.jpg" width="424" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">the private Sunshade for each +person</em> established itself by degrees on those days when, on +account of the wind, the Velarium could not be used. Martial says in +his <em class="e000I2">Epigrams</em> (Book IV.):</p> +</div> +<!--**********--> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0"><em class="e000I2">Accipe quæ nimios vincant umbracula + soles</em></p> +<p class="pi1"><em class="e000I2">Sit licet et ventus, te tua vela + tegent.</em></p></div> + +<p>People used the Sunshade not only at theatres, +but also at battles, and above all in the promenade. +Ovid, in his <em class="e000I2">Fasti</em>, shows us Hercules +protecting his well-beloved Omphale by means +of a Sunshade from the sun’s rays:</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0"><em class="e000I2">Aurea pellebant tepidos umbracula +soles</em></p> +<p class="pi1"><em class="e000I2">Quæ tamen Herculeæ sustinuere +manus.</em></p> +</div> + +<p>This image of Hercules carrying a light Parasol would surely +be worthy to replace the used-up theme of the distaff?</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_025.jpg" width="600" height="560" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">umbelliferæ</em> 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.</p> + +<p>In the train which accompanied a matron on the Appian +Way, if we can believe the historian of <em class="e000I2">Rome in the age of +Augustus</em>, two slaves were obligatory: the fan-bearer (<em class="e000I2">flabellifera</em>) +and the follower (<em class="e000I2">pedis sequa</em>). 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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0"><em class="e000I2">Ingrediare viam cœlo licet usque + sereno;</em></p> +<p class="pi1"><em class="e000I2">Ad subitas nunquam scortea desit + aquas.</em></p> +</div> + +<p>This “leather cloth” was assuredly an Umbrella, +which, except perhaps in weight, need have envied +nothing of our own.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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—<em class="e000I2">the hair of women so +arranged as to supply the place of a Sunshade</em>.</p> + +<p>Singular headdress or singular Parasol!</p> + +<p>Juvenal speaks of a green Sunshade sent with +some yellow amber to a friend to celebrate her +birthday and the return of spring.</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0"><em class="e000I2">En cui tu viridem umbellam, cui succina mittas</em></p> +<p class="pi0"><em class="e000I2">Grandia, natalis quoties redit, aut madidum ver</em> + <em class="e000I2">Incipit.</em></p></div> + +<p>And with regard to this <em class="e000I2">green</em> Sunshade, apropos +of the <em class="e000I2">viridem</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>Let us, if you please, leave Rome, without entering +into these idle dissertations.</p> + +<p>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 +<em class="e000I2">entrées</em>; 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Procession of the Doge</em>, as well +as at the pictures of Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, +Tiepolo, and the greater number of the charming +Venetian painters of the eighteenth century.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">encas</em> +(in case). They feared not then assuredly +either sun or rain; they dreamed +of nought but <em class="e000I2">batailloles</em> (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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 494px;"> +<img src="images/i_028.jpg" width="432" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 490px;"> +<img src="images/i_029.jpg" width="429" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>Let us come now to China, to find +there Parasols and Umbrellas in +great honour, since the beginning of +the dynasty <em class="e000I2">Tchéou</em> (eleventh century +before Christ).</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“After the <em class="e000I2">Thong-ya</em>, it is only under +the first Wei (<em class="e00S02">A.D.</em> 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 +<em class="e000I2">Life of Hiouen thsang</em>—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.</p> + +<p>“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 <em class="e000I2">Essay on the Umbrella, the +Walking-stick, and their Manufacture</em>.—‘Every +Chinese of a superior order is followed by his +slave, who carries his Parasol extended over him.’</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img032"> + <div id="i032b1"> </div> + <div id="i032b2"> </div> + <div id="i032b2a"> </div> + <div id="i032b3"> </div> + <div id="i032b4"> </div> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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?</p> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 435px;"> +<img src="images/i_032.jpg" width="435" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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?</p> +</div> +<!--**********--> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img033"> + <div id="i033b1"> </div> + <div id="i033b2"> </div> + <div id="i033b3"> </div> + <div id="i033b4"> </div> + + <p>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 <em class="e000I2">Voyage +de Ricord</em>, 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 <em +class="e000I2">Feuilletons de Lundiste</em>. 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!</p> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 428px;"> +<img src="images/i_033.jpg" width="428" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Voyage +de Ricord</em>, 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 <em +class="e000I2">Feuilletons de Lundiste</em>. 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!</p></div> +<!--**********--> + +<p>In the tea-houses of Tokio, the pretty <em class="e000I2">Geishas</em> +often employ, to mimic an expressive dance, the +Fan and the little paper Parasol.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Globe-trotter</em> gives an +account of its leading idea and character:—</p> + +<p>“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 <em class="e000I2">samouraï</em> of the +town.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“A burst of thunder occasioned by the <em class="e000I2">Samisen</em> +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.”</p> + +<p>What a series of pantomimes, in which the Sunshade +must assume in the hands of the charming +<em class="e000I2">Geishas</em> the most seductive positions!</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img036"> + <div id="i036b1"> </div> + <div id="i036b2"> </div> + <div id="i036b3"> </div> + <div id="i036b4"> </div> + <div id="i036b5"> </div> + +<p>“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 <em class="e000I2">Umbrellas, Parasols, +and Walking-sticks</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Madalla</em> 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 +<em class="e000I2">Madallas</em> as a mark of their independence. +In Morocco the Emperor alone and his family have the privilege of +the Parasol. In the <em class="e000I2">Voyages of Aly Bey</em> 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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Parnassiculet Contemporain</em>, +a sonnet terminating with +the verses:—</p> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 488px;"> +<img src="images/i_036.jpg" width="488" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>“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 <em class="e000I2">Umbrellas, Parasols, +and Walking-sticks</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Madalla</em> 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 +<em class="e000I2">Madallas</em> as a mark of their independence. +In Morocco the Emperor alone and his family have the privilege of +the Parasol. In the <em class="e000I2">Voyages of Aly Bey</em> 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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Parnassiculet Contemporain</em>, +a sonnet terminating with +the verses:—</p> +</div> +<!--**********--> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">What then is strange about this desert’s pride,</p> +<p class="pi0">Who in the desert without thee had died?</p> +<p class="pi0">Bétani answered, “Child of open mien,</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="pi0">Where on board ship he comes, I tell you that</p> +<p class="pi0">For full court-dress, this half-blood wears a hat</p> +<p class="pi0">Of an old shako, trimmed with tufts of green!”</p> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img037"> + <div id="i037b1"> </div> + <div id="i037b2"> </div> + <div id="i037b3"> </div> + <div id="i037b4"> </div> + <div id="i037b5"> </div> + <div id="i037b6"> </div> + +<p>To return to France, many writers, romancists or dramatic +authors, having greater care of the splendour of the <em +class="e000I2">mise-en-scène</em> 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.</p> + +<p>We found truly a mention of the Parasol in the <em +class="e000I2">Description of the Isle of the Hermaphrodites</em>; +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.</p> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 534px;"> +<img src="images/i_037.jpg" width="534" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>To return to France, many writers, romancists or dramatic +authors, having greater care of the splendour of the <em +class="e000I2">mise-en-scène</em> 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.</p> + +<p>We found truly a mention of the Parasol in the <em +class="e000I2">Description of the Isle of the Hermaphrodites</em>; +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.</p> +</div> +<!--**********--> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Fan</em>, and other objects so much in +favour with Catherine de Medici, it was brought into France out +of Italy. Henri Estienne, in his <em class="e000I2">Dialogues +of the new French Language Italianised</em>, 1578, makes one +of his interlocutors called Celtophile say: “ . . . . and <em +class="e000I2">à propos</em> 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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Italian Mysteries</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>In the <em class="e000I2">Journal and Voyage of Montaigne</em> 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.</p> + +<p>“No season,” says also elsewhere this charming +epicurean essayist, “is so much my enemy as the +sharp heat of sunshine, for the <em class="e000I2">Sunshades</em>, which are +used in Italy since the time of the ancient Romans, +charge the arms more than they discharge from the +head.”</p> + +<p>So, too, Thomas Coryat, an English tourist of that time, in his +<em class="e000I2">Crudities</em> (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 <em class="e000I2">Umbrellæs</em>, 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 <em class="e000I2">Umbrella</em> 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.”</p> + +<p>Fabri, in his useful and remarkable work, <em class="e000I2">Diversarum Nationum +Ornatus</em> (additio) confirms this fact from 1593, in +taking care to represent a noble Italian, travelling on horseback with +a Parasol in his hand: “<em class="e000I2">Nobilis Italus ruri +ambulans tempore æstatis</em>.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>And how many sonorous and unforeseen titles are there of +which we have been deprived by this fact of our ignorance: +<em class="e000I2">The Knights of the Sunshade</em>—<em class="e000I2">The Heroic Parasol</em>—<em class="e000I2">The State +Courier</em>, or <em class="e000I2">the Sunshade Recovered</em>! . . . . and who can say +how many more!</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_040.jpg" width="600" height="623" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>The Arsenal, the old Hotel de Sully, preserved for a +long time one of those Parasols, which librarians named +the <em class="e000I2">Pepin</em> (seed-fruit) <em class="e000I2">of Henri IV.</em> 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.</p> + +<p>Daniel Defoe, who published his <em class="e000I2">Robinson Crusoe</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Friday</em> 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:</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_041.jpg" width="600" height="663" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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: “<em class="e000I2">May they, these white turtle doves I send +you, shelter you like Parasols under their wings in +every sort of weather.</em>”</p> + +<p>In the relation of his <em class="e000I2">Voyage in France</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">marquises</em> were as nothing. This +ingenious fabricator made a considerable fortune; +but if we are to believe the <em class="e000I2">Improvisateur François</em>, +his invention was rapidly imitated and much improved +in Paris. Why has it not been preserved +to our own days?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Ménage tells us in his <em class="e000I2">Ménagiana</em>, 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.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_044.jpg" width="600" height="436" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em +class="e000I2">Questions Tabariniques</em>, cited by that useful +author, the late M. Édouard Fournier, in <em class="e000I2">The Old +and the New</em>, we read these lines about the famous felt hat of +Tabarin:—</p> + +<p>“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 <em class="e000I2">Parapluyes</em> (Umbrellas) and <em +class="e000I2">Garde-Collet</em> (collar guards), for they are used +as much in winter against the rain as in summer against the sun.”</p> + +<p>The most ancient engraving or <em class="e000I2">documentary</em> image of +French manners in which we see a Parasol is dated 1620. +It is the frontispiece of a Collection of Saint Igny, <em class="e000I2">The +French Nobility at Church</em>.</p> + +<p>Parasols, however, were still very little used in the seventeenth +century; the <em class="e000I2">Précieuses</em> who, instead of saying “It +rains,” cried out, “<em class="e000I2">The third element falls!</em>” +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 <em class="e000I2">Philamintes</em> and <em class="e000I2">Calpurnies</em> 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_045.jpg" width="600" height="418" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Obstacles and Bustle of Paris</em>; and +the <em class="e000I2">Cries of the Town</em> which have come down to us do +not indicate that in the seventeenth century any man with +“<em class="e000I2">’Brella-a-a-a-s to sell!</em>” had contributed his mournful +melopæa to the lagging cries of the street.</p> + +<p>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 +<em class="e000I2">Diary and Correspondence of Evelyn</em>, about 1650, +they affected in some degree the form of metal +dish-covers.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">à la Grecque</em>, +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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Letters</em> of Madame de Sévigné, the gossip of +Tallemant, the <em class="e000I2">Conversations</em> of Mademoiselle de +Scudéry, the <em class="e000I2">Anecdotes</em> of Ménage, the poetical collections, +the different <em class="e000I2">Chats</em>, the <em class="e000I2">Medleys</em>—it is but +a library overturned to no purpose, a headache +gained without the slightest profit.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p><em class="e000I2">Parasol</em>, 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 <em class="e000I2">parapluie</em> +(umbrella).</p></div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_048.jpg" width="600" height="620" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_049.jpg" width="600" height="623" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 +<em class="e000I2">Leanders</em> and <em class="e000I2">Isabellas</em>, which Watteau often composed with so +rare an art of refinement.</p> + +<p>From the middle of the last century the Umbrella of taffety +became the fashion at Paris. Caraccioli, in his <em class="e000I2">Picturesque +and Sententious Dictionary</em>, 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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Journal of a Citizen</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>We must, however, believe that the common +folk of Paris did not yet dare to purchase Parasols, +since Bachaumont, in the <em class="e000I2">Secret Memoirs</em>, dated +6th September 1769, records the following enterprise:—</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img052"> + <div id="i052b1"> </div> + <div id="i052b2"> </div> + <div id="i052b3"> </div> + <div id="i052b4"> </div> + <div id="i052b5"> </div> + <div id="i052b6"> </div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Aline</em>, 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.</p></div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 406px;"> +<img src="images/i_052.jpg" width="406" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Aline</em>, 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.</p></div> +<!--**********--> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Prints of Moreau the Younger +intended to serve as a Companion to the History of Fashions and +Customs in France</em>, in the <em class="e000I2">Crossing the River</em>, after Gamier, in +public festivals, as well as amidst the hubbub of the crowds, +which Moreau shows us in the <em class="e000I2">Great Court Carriages in</em> 1782, +as in the minor popular rejoicings, like <em class="e000I2">The Ascension of a +Fire-balloon</em>, after the engravings of the period. The Sunshade +introduces also a little touch of gaiety into the large pictures +of Joseph Vernet; in his <em class="e000I2">View of Antibes</em> and his <em class="e000I2">Port of +Marseille</em> 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!”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_053.jpg" width="600" height="654" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Tatler</em>, 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:</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,</p> +<p class="pi0">While streams run down her oiled Umbrella’s sides.</p> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">protégé</em>.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_056.jpg" width="600" height="348" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>About the time when Jonas Hanway died, Roland de la +Platière made, in his <em class="e000I2">Manufactures, Arts, and Trades</em>, 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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Liégeoise</em>, smote her in the +face, lashed her everywhere, scanning as it were with their +strokes the odious cries of “<em class="e000I2">Ah! +the Brissotine!</em>” and +provoking in the unhappy revolutionary Amazon the madness +of which she died so sadly at the Salpêtrière.</p> + +<p>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. <em +class="e000I2">Ma paole supême</em>, 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 <em class="e000I2">à l’Omphale</em>, <em class="e000I2">à +la Flore</em>, <em class="e000I2">à la Diane</em>, appearing in +a swiftly driven carriage, above a jacket <em class="e000I2">à +la Galatée</em>, or a tunic <em class="e000I2">au Lever de +l’aurore</em>, amidst egrets, plumes, tufts of ribbons, and every +kind of feminine adornment.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> <img +src="images/i_057.jpg" width="600" height="331" alt="" /> </div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">stifled sighs</em>, and garnished with <em +class="e000I2">useless regrets</em>, others adorned with ribbons <em +class="e000I2">aux soupirs de Vénus</em> (Venus’ sighs), whilst the +fashion exacted by turns such colours as <em class="e000I2">coxcombs’ +bowels</em>, <em class="e000I2">Paris mud</em>, <em +class="e000I2">Carmelite</em>, <em class="e000I2">flea’s thigh</em>, +<em class="e000I2">king’s eye</em>, <em class="e000I2">queen’s +hair</em>, <em class="e000I2">goose dung</em>, <em +class="e000I2">dauphin’s dirt</em>, <em class="e000I2">opera +flame</em>, <em class="e000I2">agitated nymph’s thigh</em>, and other +names which were the singular qualificatives of particular shades, +the rage and infatuation of the hour.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">A Journey +from Paris to Saint-Cloud by Sea and by Land</em> writes, before +embarking at Pont-Royal: “I kept for my personal carriage only +my repeater, my pocket-flask full of <em class="e000I2">sans +pareille</em> 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 +<em class="e000I2">Almanacks serving as Guides for Travellers</em>, +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Sunshade</em> and <em class="e000I2">Umbrella</em> in the more +general word <em class="e000I2">Parasol</em>: 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_060.jpg" width="600" height="673" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 599px;"> +<img src="images/i_061.jpg" width="599" height="305" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Mauve</em>(?), the <em class="e000I2">Riflard</em>, the +<em class="e000I2">Pépin</em>, the <em class="e000I2">Robinson</em>. 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:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>(1.) A patent for invention of an Umbrella walking-stick +with a field-glass;</p> + +<p>(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;</p> + +<p>(3.) A patent for invention of an Umbrella walking-stick, +containing diverse objects for writing or other purposes, and +called <em class="e000I2">Universal Walking-stick</em>;</p> + +<p>(4.) A patent for invention of methods of manufacturing +Umbrellas and Sunshades, opening of themselves, by means +of a mechanism placed inside the handle;</p> + +<p>(5.) A patent for an Umbrella walking-stick, of which +the sheath may be folded at pleasure, and carried in the +pocket.</p></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<em class="e000I2">The Sunshade and the Riflard</em>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img064"> + <div id="i064b1"> </div> + <div id="i064b2"> </div> + <div id="i064b3"> </div> + <div id="i064b4"> </div> + <div id="i064b5"> </div> + <div id="i064b6"> </div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p> . . . . 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:</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>Touching and eternal legend of virtue, not without a +recompense!</p></div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 445px;"> +<img src="images/i_064.jpg" width="445" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p> . . . . 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:</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>Touching and eternal legend of virtue, not without a +recompense!</p></div> +<!--**********--> + +<p>Under Louis Philippe, the Umbrella or Riflard became +<em class="e000I2">patriarchal</em> and <em class="e000I2">constitutional</em>; 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.</p> + +<p>All the independents of Paris, Bohemians, literary men with +flowing manes, and artists chanted in the <em class="e000I2">Rapinéide</em>, all the +hirsute folk of the years 1830 to 1850 rose in insurrection +against the “Pépin” of the burgess. This word <em class="e000I2">Pépin</em> was +then an epigram against Louis Philippe, whose pear-shaped +head was caricatured, and who never left his home without +his Umbrella.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_065.jpg" width="600" height="546" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Chinese bells</em>, that the man-orchestra +causes an excitement in the court-yards by ringing +his little bells.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Pépin</em>, 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 <em class="e000I2">Mother Sun</em>, as we used to call +it: <em class="e000I2">Mother Sun!</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">children</em> cooling lemonade, +fruit, barley-sugar, and little white rolls stuffed with +hot sausages.</p> + +<p>But let us leave these souvenirs, which carry us +too far away, and return to the <em class="e000I2">Sunshade</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Le Protée</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">History of Fashion</em>: +“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 <em class="e000I2">à dispositions</em> 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.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_068.jpg" width="600" height="284" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 “<em class="e000I2">à la Pompadour</em>,” 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!</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">en-tout-cas</em>—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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_069.jpg" width="600" height="464" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>M. Charles Blanc, less dithyrambic, in his <em class="e000I2">Art +in Dress and Ornament</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>“In the play of colours it is as a glazing. In +the play of light it is as a blind.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">paratrombe</em> and +<em class="e000I2">paradéluge</em>, which M. de Balzac, in the <em class="e000I2">Père Goriot</em>, 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 <em class="e000I2">My Wife and My Umbrella</em>, <em class="e000I2">Oscar’s Umbrella</em>, +<em class="e000I2">The Umbrella of Damocles</em>, and <em class="e000I2">the Umbrella</em> +of the poet D’Hervilly. This useful article +has also inspired the realist Champfleury in +a joyous tale, entitled—<em class="e000I2">Above all, don’t forget +your Umbrella!</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Pépin</em> +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 <em class="e000I2">sea +bath</em>; and the sad melopæa of +the French seller of Umbrellas +in the street, whose prolonged +cry of <em class="e000I2">parrrphluie</em> 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 +<em class="e000I2">Physiology of the Umbrella</em>.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_072.jpg" width="600" height="636" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_073.jpg" width="600" height="684" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Two Hackney Coachmen</em>, but it is +nought but the “humbug” of the Umbrella—its <em class="e000I2">Physiology</em> +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.”</p> + +<p>Eugène Scribe has left us a modest quatrain on +the Umbrella, worthy of his operatic muse—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">A friend of mine, new, true, and rare,</p> +<p class="pi1">And all unlike the common form;</p> +<p class="pi0">Who leaves me when my sky is fair,</p> +<p class="pi1">And reappears in days of storm.</p></div> + +<p>This almost equals that other quatrain, more ancient still, signed by +the good abbé Delille—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">This precious, supple instrument, confect</p> +<p class="pi1">Of the whale’s bone, and of the silkworm’s grave,</p> +<p class="pi0">With outstretched wing, my brow will oft protect</p> +<p class="pi1">From the wet onslaught of the pluvial wave.</p></div> + +<p>Have we not here Academic verse well made +for the Umbrellas of the Academicians!</p> + +<p>To come to extremes: among the popular songs, +we hear the song of <em class="e000I2">the Umbrella</em>, “a ditty found +in a whale”—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">The good Umbrella may be sung</p> +<p class="pi1">In many airs and ways;</p> +<p class="pi0">The Umbrella, be we old or young,</p> +<p class="pi1">Will serve us all our days.</p> +<p class="pi0">It keeps true love from getting wet,</p> +<p class="pi1">And catching cold at night;</p> +<p class="pi0">It hides the thief, to business set,</p> +<p class="pi1">From the policeman’s sight.</p> +<p class="pi4">Umbrella!</p> +<p class="pi0">Then buy yourself, for fear of rain,</p> +<p class="pi0">A solid, useful, good, and plain</p> +<p class="pi4">Umbrella!</p> +<p class="pi0">In fact, for rain we cannot sell a</p> +<p class="pi0">Much better thing than our Umbrella!</p></div> + +<p>This funny song is well worth the tiresome verse +sung at present—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">He has not an Umbrella, well</p> +<p class="pi1">It is no matter, while it’s fine;</p> +<p class="pi0">But when the rain comes down pell-mell,</p> +<p class="pi1">Why, then he’s wetted to the spine! . . . .</p></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>We write this <em class="e000I2">one ought</em> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">’Tis called a <em class="e000I2">Pépin</em>, +a <em class="e000I2">Riflard</em>,</p> +<p class="pi0">And other viler names there are;</p> +<p class="pi0">Not one of all the Umbrella moves.</p> +<p class="pi0">Wisely it counts them no disgrace;</p> +<p class="pi0">Since—child of April’s art—the loves</p> +<p class="pi0">Oft make their quivers of its case!</p></div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 438px;"> +<img src="images/i_076.jpg" width="438" height="438" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 599px;"> +<a id="THE_GLOVE"></a> +<h2 title="The Glove—The Mitten"> </h2> +<p title="To Mademoiselle H. de N."> </p> +<img src="images/i_077.jpg" width="599" height="446" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_078.jpg" width="600" height="421" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img079"> + <div id="i079b1"> </div> + <div id="i079b2"> </div> + <div id="i079b3"> </div> + +<p class="fsize2 center">THE GLOVE<br /> <em class="e000I2">The +Mitten</em><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="right"> <em class="e000I2">To M<sup>me.</sup> H. de +N.</em></p></div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_079.jpg" width="600" height="469" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p class="fsize2 center">THE GLOVE<br /> <em class="e000I2">The +Mitten</em><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="right"> <em class="e000I2">To M<sup>me.</sup> H. de +N.</em></p></div> +<!--**********--> + +<p class="drop-cap"> +<img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_079cap.jpg" + width="59" height="60" alt="" /> +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? +</p> + +<p>How did you manage, O Enchantress, to induce me to give my loyal +word that I would write for you the <em class="e000I2">History of +the Glove</em>? 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_080.jpg" width="600" height="607" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">avoir les Gants</em> to be the first to +tell that history, as ancient as it is universal.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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—</p> + +<p>“The Glove!—the Glove!!—the Glove!!!—</p> + +<p>“ . . . 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 +<em class="e000I2">Bibliography of Words</em>, 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_081.jpg" width="600" height="361" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>“It would be necessary to divide the work into different Books, +subdivided into innumerable Chapters; thus for the etymology alone of +<em class="e000I2">the word Glove</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>“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 +<em class="e000I2">Chirothecæ</em>, <em class="e000I2">Gannus</em>, +<em class="e000I2">Gantus</em>, <em class="e000I2">Guantus</em>, <em +class="e000I2">Wanto</em>, and <em class="e000I2">Wantus</em>, if I +may trust the <em class="e000I2">Glossary</em> of Du Cange.”</p> + +<p>“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 <em class="e000I2">à peu +près</em> (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 +<em class="e000I2">Eureka!</em>—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.</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img084"> + <div id="i084b1"> </div> + <div id="i084b2"> </div> + <div id="i084b3"> </div> + <div id="i084b4"> </div> + <div id="i084b5"> </div> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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, <em class="e000I2">the +Romance of the Rose</em>, of <em class="e000I2">Rou</em>, or of <em +class="e000I2">Perceforet</em>. 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:—</p></div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 483px;"> +<img src="images/i_084.jpg" width="483" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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, <em class="e000I2">the +Romance of the Rose</em>, of <em class="e000I2">Rou</em>, or of <em +class="e000I2">Perceforet</em>. 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:—</p></div> +<!--**********--> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi00">‘Deign to receive these Gloves with goodly cheer,</p> +<p class="pi0">My true heart’s present of the coming year.’</p> +</div> + +<p>“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.”</p> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_085.jpg" width="600" height="676" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">usual</em> Glove, the <em class="e000I2">falconer’s</em> +Glove, the <em class="e000I2">workman’s</em> Glove, the <em class="e000I2">feminine</em> Glove, +the <em class="e000I2">military</em> Glove, the <em class="e000I2">seignorial</em> Glove, and the +<em class="e000I2">liturgical</em> 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:—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi00">“Rich basinets he ordered to be brought,</p> +<p class="pi0">And Gloves with iron spikes with horror fraught.”</p> +</div> + +<p>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:—</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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, <em class="e000I2">à propos</em> 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.</p> + +<p>That which my old friend had probably neglected +is the Legend, and to that I run.</p> + +<p>A charming poet and a charmer, Jean Godard, +a Parisian, the worthy rival of Ronsard, published +towards 1580 a piece entitled <em class="e000I2">The Glove</em>. 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—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi00">“The young Adonis ever loved the field,</p> +<p class="pi0">Now hunting the swift stag with branching head,</p> +<p class="pi0">And now the tusked wild boar, just cause of dread.</p> +<p class="pi0">Venus, fierce burning with his love alway,</p> +<p class="pi0">Would never leave him neither night nor day,</p> +<p class="pi0">But running after his sweet eyes and face,</p> +<p class="pi0">Sought young Adonis, when he sought the chase:</p> +<p class="pi0">Deep into forests full of gloomy fear,</p> +<p class="pi0">The goddess followed him she held so dear.</p> +<p class="pi0">One day, as she pursued him, bursting through</p> +<p class="pi0">A bramble thicket, which by ill chance grew</p> +<p class="pi0">Athwart her path, a cruel, hardy thorn</p> +<p class="pi0">Pierced her white hand, and lo! the rose was born</p> +<p class="pi0">From her red blood. But Venus, vexed with pain,</p> +<p class="pi0">Lest any hurt should touch her hand again,</p> +<p class="pi0">Bade all at once her unclad Graces sew</p> +<p class="pi0">A leathern shelter for her hand of snow.</p> +<p class="pi0">The lovely Graces, draped in floating hair,</p> +<p class="pi0">No longer left their own hands free and bare,</p> +<p class="pi0">But bound and covered them as Venus did.</p> +<p class="pi0">And now the Glove’s true origin is hid</p> +<p class="pi0">No longer. This is it. Fair girls alone</p> +<p class="pi0">Wore on their hands what now is common grown.</p> +<p class="pi0">Then came the Emperor, and then his court,</p> +<p class="pi0">And then at last the folk of every sort.”</p> +</div> + +<p>Charming in its <em class="e000I2">naïveté</em>, is it not, my +dear friend, this fable which gives the Glove the same origin as the +rose!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>In a manuscript lately published, <em class="e000I2">The Sayings of the +Merchants</em>, a merchant cries, with an engaging air—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi00">“I have pretty little bands,</p> +<p class="pi1">  And for damsels dainty Gloves,</p> +<p class="pi0">Furred to warm their snowy hands,</p> +<p class="pi1">  These I sell to those sweet loves.”</p> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_088.jpg" width="600" height="472" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 358px;"> +<img src="images/i_089a.jpg" width="358" height="348" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Olivier Brusson</em> +of Hoffmann, evoke the famous trial of the Marchioness, the +torture, the various punishments, the burning chamber, up to +the final stake. All this <em class="e000I2">à propos</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">vis-à-vis</em>, 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.</p> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 260px;"> +<img src="images/i_089b.jpg" width="260" height="180" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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:—</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>What think you of this out-and-out gallant, of +this “dying” passionate lover? Here it seems to +me, <em class="e000I2">à propos</em> of scented Gloves, we have a Castilian +gentleman exceedingly well skilled in the delicate +art of offering them to ladies.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">The +Convenient Address Book</em> 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, <em class="e000I2">at +the little St. John</em>, well known for his Gloves of <em +class="e000I2">Fowl-skin</em>; and Richard, Rue Galande, at <em +class="e000I2">the Great King</em>, whose commerce is in doeskin +Gloves.”</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Canepin</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_092.jpg" width="600" height="624" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Gloves <em class="e000I2">à l’occasion</em>, <em class="e000I2">à la Cadenet</em>, <em class="e000I2">à la Phyllis</em>, <em class="e000I2">à la Frangipane</em>, +<em class="e000I2">à la Néroli</em>, Gloves <em class="e000I2">of the last cut</em> worn awhile by the <em class="e000I2">Précieuses</em>, +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.</p> + +<p>Dangeau, in his <em class="e000I2">Memoirs</em>, has written a chapter on the <em class="e000I2">Etiquette +of Gloves and the Ceremonial of Mittens</em>. I refer you to it without +ceremony.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_093.jpg" width="600" height="601" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">petit lever</em>, +after Nattier, +Pater, or +Moreau, +surrounded by their “<em class="e000I2">filles de modes</em>,” 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.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em +class="e000I2">petits-maîtres</em>,” he adds, “never fail to put on, +in the morning, Gloves of rose or <em class="e000I2">jonquil</em>, +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.”</p> + +<p>Madame de Genlis has this curious observation +in her <em class="e000I2">Dictionary of Etiquette</em>: “If you have anything +to present to a princess, and have your Glove +on, you must needs take it off.”</p> + +<p>How many anecdotes, how many literary souvenirs, +the Glove of the eighteenth century summons +to the thought!</p> + +<p>You remember, I am quite sure, that pretty +chapter consecrated by Sterne, in his <em class="e000I2">Sentimental +Journey</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Vie Parisienne</em> +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.</p> + +<p>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:—</p> + +<p>The author of <em class="e000I2">Manners</em> was bathing on the +flowery borders of the Seine, and giving himself +up to skilled <em class="e000I2">hand-over-hand</em>, 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.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_096.jpg" width="600" height="482" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Ladies’ Journal</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Marriageable Maid</em>.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_097.jpg" width="600" height="609" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>There rises on my lips +a song of the time which +the <em class="e000I2">Almanac of the Muses</em> has bequeathed us, to +the air of <em class="e000I2">The Little Sailor</em>. 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: <em class="e000I2">The Gloves</em>.</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">I love the Glove, that covers quite</p> +<p class="pi1">The rounded arm it rests upon;</p> +<p class="pi0">I take it off, with what delight,</p> +<p class="pi1">With what delight I put it on!</p> +<p class="pi0">If true it is through mystery,</p> +<p class="pi1">A lover’s bliss will higher move,</p> +<p class="pi0">How dear that little hand should be</p> +<p class="pi1">Which hides itself beneath a Glove!</p> +<p class="pi0"> </p> +<p class="pi0">But there’s another Glove, whose use</p> +<p class="pi1">Will every swaggerer displease;</p> +<p class="pi0">A Glove correcting all abuse,</p> +<p class="pi1">Which brings the braggart to his knees;</p> +<p class="pi0">How many boasting folk I’ve known,</p> +<p class="pi1">Who would, and wisely, rather prove</p> +<p class="pi0">A flight from out the window thrown,</p> +<p class="pi1">Than see before them that same Glove!</p> +<p class="pi0"> </p> +<p class="pi0">The Gloves are useful when we seek</p> +<p class="pi1">The fair, the great ones, as we know;</p> +<p class="pi0">When unto those with Gloves we speak,</p> +<p class="pi1">Easy at once their favours grow.</p> +<p class="pi0">They for intriguers wealth have won,</p> +<p class="pi1">No fools their uses are above;</p> +<p class="pi0">Of what another man has done</p> +<p class="pi1">They boast, and give themselves the Glove.</p></div> + +<p>One last couplet, I pray you, and the authoress, Madame Perrier, will +bow herself out:—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">The Gloveless man can ne’er afford</p> +<p class="pi1">To dance, no step he makes with grace;</p> +<p class="pi0">The servant wishes that his lord</p> +<p class="pi1">Should put on Gloves in many a case.</p> +<p class="pi0">When the police are wide awake,</p> +<p class="pi1">To cheat those eyes they hardly love,</p> +<p class="pi0">How many thieves will wisely take</p> +<p class="pi1">The greatest care to wear the Glove?</p></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>It was about this epoch, if I mistake not, that +the denunciation of <em class="e000I2">Gant jaune</em> (yellow glove) +became synonymous with <em class="e000I2">petit-maître</em> (dandy). +In London, the disciples of Brummel—of the +most refined elegance—constituted a society, and +formed the Club of the <em class="e000I2">Fringed Glove</em>. This +club no longer existed doubtless in 1839, when +d’Orsay established thus despotically the rules of +the perfect gentleman:</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_100.jpg" width="600" height="428" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>“An English gentleman of fashion,” said he, “ought to +use six pair of Gloves a day:</p> + +<p>“In the morning to drive a britzska to the hunt: Gloves +of reindeer.</p> + +<p>“At the hunt, to follow a fox: Gloves of shammy +leather.</p> + +<p>“To return to London in a Tilbury, after a drive at +Richmond in the morning: Gloves of beaver.</p> + +<p>“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 <em class="e000I2">to offer her your hand in descending from the carriage</em>: +coloured kid Gloves braided.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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!”</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 599px;"> +<img src="images/i_101.jpg" width="599" height="356" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>How many things are there, look you, in a Glove!</p> + +<p>In the novel <em class="e000I2">The Lion in Love</em> 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.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>I stop out of breath: verbs of every kind may +pass into the list.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">hand</em> 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, <em class="e000I2">The Hand: Its Mechanism, +etc.</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_104.jpg" width="600" height="718" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 +<em class="e000I2">Cinderella</em>. 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_105.jpg" width="600" height="600" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Collection +of the Best Riddles of the Time</em>, composed on divers serious +and sprightly subjects by Colletet; on the other, <em class="e000I2">Collection +of Riddles of the Time</em>, 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:</p> + +<p>The first riddle—<em class="e000I2">énigme</em> 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!</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">We’re two or ten, and to a body wed,</p> +<p class="pi1">We once a thing of breathing life were over;</p> +<p class="pi0">Like it we lived, and now, although we’re dead,</p> +<p class="pi1">Another life more excellent we cover.</p></div> + +<p>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:—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">With mortal flesh our five soft mouths we fill,</p> +<p class="pi0">And in the winter to repletion feed;</p> +<p class="pi0">If one of us be lost, the world’s agreed</p> +<p class="pi0">To treat the rest of us exceeding ill;</p> +<p class="pi0">But if we all remain together, then</p> +<p class="pi0">We do almost all that is done by men.</p></div> + +<p>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!”</p> + +<p>I shall abandon the riddles at once. These +two specimens are enough. Another point:</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 406px;"> +<img src="images/i_108b.jpg" width="406" height="222" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 191px;"> +<img src="images/i_108a.jpg" width="191" height="250" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figleft" style="width:236px;"> +<img src="images/i_108d.jpg" width="236" height="236" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width:261px;"> +<img src="images/i_108c.jpg" width="261" height="260" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Young Man with the Glove</em>. +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img109"> + <div id="i109b1"> </div> + <div id="i109b2"> </div> + <div id="i109b3"> </div> + <div id="i109b4"> </div> + <div id="i109b5"> </div> + <div id="i109b6"> </div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">pontifical +Glove</em>, which was worn by bishops and abbés; the Glove which +simple priests had adopted for particular occasions; and lastly, the +<em class="e000I2">prelatic</em> <em class="e000I2">Glove</em>. +On <em class="e000I2">pontifical Gloves</em> alone Monseigneur +X. Barbier de Montault has found means to write in the <em +class="e000I2">Bulletin Monumental</em>, 1876-1877, nearly two +hundred pages of closely packed text, in 8vo: <em class="e000I2">Ab +uno disce omnes</em>. See, my amiable friend, I repeat it—see in +what an inextricable archæological labyrinth I might have set you to +wander, <em class="e000I2">à propos</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Traité de la vie +élégante</em>, when he wrote the following lines, which I had not +sufficiently considered before pledging my word in your society!</p> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_109.jpg" width="600" height="681" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">pontifical +Glove</em>, which was worn by bishops and abbés; the Glove which +simple priests had adopted for particular occasions; and lastly, the +<em class="e000I2">prelatic</em> <em class="e000I2">Glove</em>. +On <em class="e000I2">pontifical Gloves</em> alone Monseigneur +X. Barbier de Montault has found means to write in the <em +class="e000I2">Bulletin Monumental</em>, 1876-1877, nearly two +hundred pages of closely packed text, in 8vo: <em class="e000I2">Ab +uno disce omnes</em>. See, my amiable friend, I repeat it—see in +what an inextricable archæological labyrinth I might have set you to +wander, <em class="e000I2">à propos</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Traité de la vie +élégante</em>, when he wrote the following lines, which I had not +sufficiently considered before pledging my word in your society!</p> +</div> +<!--**********--> + +<p>“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 <em class="e000I2">Gloves</em>, of masks, is to drag a <em class="e000I2">modilogist</em> +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.</p> + +<p>“Things futile in appearance,” continues the author of the <em +class="e000I2">Théorie de la démarche</em>, “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 <em class="e000I2">Vestignomy</em> has +become almost a branch of the art created by Gall and Lavater.”</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Inventaires</em>, +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 <em class="e000I2">esprit</em>, 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 <em class="e000I2">Le Petit Jehan de +Saintre</em> up to Casanova the Venetian, going +through <em class="e000I2">l’ Histoire amoureuse des Gaules</em>.</p> + +<p>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—<em class="e000I2">a +fortiori</em> would it deceive the <em class="e000I2">Gantuographer</em>, if +you will allow me this hideous neologism.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Physiology of the +Glove</em>, 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.”</p> + +<p>I am launched, don’t you see, into theories historic, +philosophic, and, above all, physiognomic, in a study altogether +beside the mark?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Pardon!—indulgent interlocutress!</p> + +<p>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—<em class="e000I2">Friendship allows the +Glove.</em></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/i_112.jpg" width="400" height="400" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<a id="THE_MUFF"></a> +<h2 title="The Muff"> </h2> +<img src="images/i_113.jpg" width="400" height="295" + alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 333px;"> +<img src="images/i_114.jpg" width="333" height="250" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img115"> + <div id="i115b1"> </div> + <div id="i115b2"> </div> + <div id="i115b3"> </div> + +<div class="fsize2 center">THE MUFF +<br /><small><em class="e000I2">THE FUR.</em></small></div> +</div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> + <img src="images/i_115.jpg" width="600" height="417" alt="" /> + </div> +<div class="fsize2 center">THE MUFF + <br /><small><em class="e000I2">THE FUR.</em></small></div> +</div> +<!--**********--> + +<p class="drop-cap"> +<img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_115cap.jpg" width="61" + height="62" alt="" /> +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 <em +class="e000I2">billet-doux</em>, 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.</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img116"> + <div id="i116b1"> </div> + <div id="i116b2"> </div> + <div id="i116b3"> </div> + <div id="i116b4"> </div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em +class="e000I2">feminists</em>, 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.</p></div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 394px;"> +<img src="images/i_116.jpg" width="394" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <em +class="e000I2">feminists</em>, 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.</p></div> +<!--**********--> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="sandbagbox" id="img117"> + <div id="i117b1"> </div> + <div id="i117b2"> </div> + <div id="i117b3"> </div> + <div id="i117b4"> </div> + <div id="i117b5"> </div> + <div id="i117b6"> </div> + <div id="i117b7"> </div> + <div id="i117b8"> </div> + <div id="i117b9"> </div> + +<p>Thus, out of the midst of furs, woman, that mignonette plant, +that <em class="e000I2">mimosa pudica</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p></div> + +<!--**********--> +<div class="HandHeld"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 459px;"> +<img src="images/i_117.jpg" width="459" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> +<p>Thus, out of the midst of furs, woman, that mignonette plant, +that <em class="e000I2">mimosa pudica</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p></div> +<!--**********--> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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—<em class="e000I2">Malo mori +quam fœdari</em>.</p> + +<p>The use of furs dates back to the origin of the +world. Plutarch, in his <em class="e000I2">Table Talk</em>, 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.</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">Robed in rich silk, the Court you now behold</p> +<p class="pi0">Was once a folk fur-clad against the cold,</p> +</div> + +<p class="continue">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.</p> + +<p>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:—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">But in the days of fallen leaves,</p> +<p class="pi0">He wore a new surcoat with sleeves</p> +<p class="pi0">Of furs of foxes and of vair</p> +<p class="pi0">To shield him from the nipping air.</p> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_120.jpg" width="600" height="600" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>D’Aubigné, in his <em class="e000I2">Universal History</em>, +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 <em class="e000I2">with Muffs</em>, a halberd in her +hand, who mixed with and distinguished herself in this combat.” Under +the designation of <em class="e000I2">Muffs</em> we must understand +here spare half-sleeves like those mentioned in the Library of +Vauprivas <em class="e000I2">à propos</em> 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_121.jpg" width="600" height="272" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>In a satiric print of 1634, signed Jaspar Isac, and entitled +<em class="e000I2">The Squire à la Mode</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Précieuse</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>Antoine Furetière, in his <em class="e000I2">Dictionary</em>, has condensed in a +few lines all the materials of a Dissertation on the Muff +of the seventeenth century. At the word <em class="e000I2">Muff</em> we +read:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A fur worn in winter, in which to put the hands, to keep +them warm. <em class="e000I2">Muffs</em> were formerly only for women: at the +present day they are carried by men. The finest <em class="e000I2">Muffs</em> are +made of marten, . . . . the common of miniver; . . . . +the country <em class="e000I2">Muffs</em> of the cavaliers are made of otter and of +tiger. A woman puts her nose in her <em class="e000I2">Muff</em> to hide herself. +A little <em class="e000I2">Muff</em>-dog is a little dog which ladies can carry in +their <em class="e000I2">Muff</em>.</p></div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">petit-maître</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Galants</em>, something +like the old trimming called <em class="e000I2">petite oie</em>, is displayed +with an excellent effect. In 1680, nothing, according +to the <em class="e000I2">Mercure Galant</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>La Fontaine alludes doubtless to the country +Muff spoken of by Furetière when, in the fable of +the <em class="e000I2">Monkey and the Leopard</em>, he makes the latter +say:—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">The king desires me at his Court,</p> +<p class="pi0">And must have—if I die for’t—</p> +<p class="pi0">A <em class="e000I2">Muff</em>, made of my skin, so full of blots</p> +<p class="pi0">Of colour, and of lines, and dots,</p> +<p class="pi0">And dappled stains, and chequered spots.</p> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">upholsterer poet</em> say—Even the lady’s lapdog +barked at me, that ingrate</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">Cadet, for whom I used to stuff</p> +<p class="pi0">So many sweets inside my Muff.</p> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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 <em class="e000I2">Livre commode des adresses de Paris</em> contains some +designations of peltry merchants and furriers towards the +end of the seventeenth century.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_124.jpg" width="600" height="293" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Scarron, in his <em class="e000I2">Poésies Diverses</em>, 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!—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">My wife then leaves at once, though she</p> +<p class="pi0">All perils should divide with me;</p> +<p class="pi2">She takes her Muff and goes</p> +<p class="pi2">To see some one she knows. . . .</p> +</div> + +<p>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, <em class="e000I2">à propos</em> of one of his +characters in <em class="e000I2">Micromégas</em>, wrote:</p> + +<p>“Imagine a very small Muff-dog following a captain of +the Guards of the King of Prussia.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_125.jpg" width="600" height="392" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>An engraving of the <em class="e000I2">Encyclopédie</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Contemporaines du Commun</em>: one +entitled <em class="e000I2">La Jolie Fourreuse</em>, the other <em class="e000I2">La Jolie Pelletière</em>. +Professions passed out of sight!</p> + +<p>“Furs”—MM. de Goncourt wrote in a note of much study to their book +<em class="e000I2">La Femme au XVIII<sup>e</sup> Siècle</em>—“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 <em class="e000I2">Étrennes Fourrées dédiées aux +jolies Frileuses</em>, 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 +<em class="e000I2">à la Jésuite</em>, muffs which were not of fur, +and against which a pleasantry at the commencement of the century, +<em class="e000I2">A petition presented to the Pope by the master +furriers</em>, 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 <em class="e000I2">little +barrels</em>, as the Palatine was called <em class="e000I2">cat</em>. +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. <em class="e000I2">À +propos</em> of furs, the <em class="e000I2">Palatine</em> owes its +fortune and its name to the Duchess of Orléans, mother of the Regent, +known under the name of the Princess Palatine.</p> + +<p>Palatines—which were made of fox, of marten, +of miniver—were worn for a long time with +<em class="e000I2">Polonaises</em> and <em class="e000I2">Hongrelines</em>. 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 <em class="e000I2">blue palatine</em>. +The <em class="e000I2">Almanach des Muses</em> of 1772 has preserved +them for us. Here they are:—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi4">That charming colour wear,</p> +<p class="pi0">The colour of the summer sky above,</p> +<p class="pi0">The colour Venus sets on every Love,</p> +<p class="pi1">Which makes the fairest faces yet more fair,</p> +<p class="pi0">As Venus in her own sweet self can prove:</p> +<p class="pi0">But the white place where falls the tufted bow</p> +<p class="pi1">Is nought indeed but lovely nakedness;</p> +<p class="pi1">Why hide it then? The beauty which men bless</p> +<p class="pi0">Gains on the whole by losing, don’t you know?</p> +</div> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em +class="e000I2">Memoires</em> 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 <em class="e000I2">Little posts</em> +and <em class="e000I2">Nests for love-letters</em>, interpreting by +their drawing what the author of the <em class="e000I2">Dictionnaire +des Amoureux</em> wished to express, when at the word <em +class="e000I2">Muff</em> he gives this piquant definition: <em +class="e000I2">A Letter-box, lined with white satin.</em></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 547px;"> +<img src="images/i_128.jpg" width="547" height="699" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/i_129.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>The most celebrated and the most delicious picture in which a Muff +figures is assuredly that adorable painting known by the name of <em +class="e000I2">The Young Girl with the Muff</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>Nor must we forget the <em class="e000I2">Portrait of Mrs. +Siddons</em>, 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 <em class="e000I2">National +Gallery</em>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<em class="e000I2">Dictionnaire de la Ville de Paris</em>, article <em class="e000I2">Modes</em>, +makes this strange remark in the year 1784, “A +lady has been seen at the opera with a <em class="e000I2">Muff of +momentaneous agitation</em>.”</p> + +<p>The intellect loses itself in seeking the exact +definition of this qualificative of <em class="e000I2">momentaneous +agitation</em>!</p> + +<p>In 1788 a fashion was Muffs of Siberian wolf. +According to the <em class="e000I2">Magasin des Modes Nouvelles +Françaises et Anglaises</em>, the young folks no longer +carried their Muff after the peaceable and good +citizen-like fashion <em class="e000I2">à la papa</em> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>In the celebrated coloured engraving of Debucourt, +<em class="e000I2">La Galerie de Bois au Palais-Royal</em>, 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 570px;"> +<img src="images/i_132.jpg" width="570" height="700" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">précieuse</em> +and refined.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_133.jpg" width="600" height="483" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">The Muff</em>, which I will quote here, +with the more confidence, since they figure in +the <em class="e000I2">Chansons de Parades</em> collected by that boon +companion, who was at the same time member of +the Caveau and of the Institute:—</p> + +<div class="poembox"> +<p class="pi0">See what it is to be too good!</p> +<p class="pi1">One morning, leaving the warm fold</p> +<p class="pi0">Of home, Simon I saw, who stood</p> +<p class="pi1">And shivered in the nipping cold;</p> +<p class="pi0">He cried, “Come here, you little pearl,</p> +<p class="pi0">I feel so very cold, my girl!”</p> +<p class="pi4">Now warm yourself!</p> +<p class="pi0">Simon, good sir, ensconce yourself!</p> +<p class="pi0">I’ll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!</p> +<p class="pi8">My dear!</p> +<p class="pi0">I’ll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!</p> +<p class="pi0"> </p> +<p class="pi00">“I feel so very cold, my girl!”</p> +<p class="pi1">Ay me! I had my new Muff on.</p> +<p class="pi0">My head was surely in a whirl</p> +<p class="pi1">To lend it to the good Simon.</p> +<p class="pi0">That day my kindness cost me dear;</p> +<p class="pi0">My Muff is spoilt for all the year!</p> +<p class="pi4">Now warm yourself!</p> +<p class="pi0">I’ll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!</p> +<p class="pi8">My dear!</p> +<p class="pi0"> </p> +<p class="pi0">My Muff is spoilt for all the year,</p> +<p class="pi1">For Simon’s ways are rather rough;</p> +<p class="pi0">And he knows nought of doubt or fear,</p> +<p class="pi1">He quite destroyed my poor new Muff!</p> +<p class="pi0">Simon, you’ve ruffled all its fur,</p> +<p class="pi0">Made it too large, you careless sir!</p> +<p class="pi4">Now warm yourself!</p> +<p class="pi0">I’ll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!</p> +<p class="pi8">My dear!</p> +<p class="pi0"> </p> +<p class="pi0">Made it too large, you careless sir!</p> +<p class="pi1">See: it has been entirely spoiled,</p> +<p class="pi0">’Tis metamorphosed, I aver;</p> +<p class="pi1">And seems all rumpled up and soiled.</p> +<p class="pi0">’Tis like my aunt’s Muff, all agape,</p> +<p class="pi0">Quite out of countenance and shape!</p> +<p class="pi4">Now warm yourself!</p> +<p class="pi0">Simon, good sir, ensconce yourself!</p> +<p class="pi0">I’ll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!</p> +<p class="pi8">My dear!</p> +<p class="pi0">I’ll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!</p> +</div> + +<p>What laughter, what shouts, what chokings, in those parties <em +class="e000I2">à la</em> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <em +class="e000I2">Scènes de la Vie de Bohème</em>, 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.</p> + +<p>Francine has been condemned by her doctor, +and <em class="e000I2">hears with her eyes</em> the terrible sentence of the +physician.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_136.jpg" width="600" height="431" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>Then, when Jacques has brought the Muff: “It is very +pretty,” said Francine; “I will carry it in our walk.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“No, no,” she cried, “let it be—we are in winter, it is +cold. Ah my poor Jacques!”</p> + +<p>And so Francine dies, without quitting her Muff. A +poignant and lugubrious story, like the work of Murger +in general; the <em class="e000I2">Muff of Francine</em> will perhaps be the +most durable chapter in the <em class="e000I2">Vie de Bohème</em>. 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 422px;"> +<img src="images/i_137e.jpg" width="422" height="360" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 144px;"> +<img src="images/i_137e-2.jpg" width="144" height="195" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">Arlequin</em> (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.</p> + +<p>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 <em class="e000I2">poudre à la Maréchale</em>.</p> + +<p>An elegant and witty lady-correspondent of +fashion, who signs with the word <em class="e000I2">Étincelle</em> the +notes full of charming confusion in her <em class="e000I2">Carnet +d’un Mondain</em>, lately gave the nomenclature of the +Muffs of the day, painted in water-colours:</p> + +<p>“The Nest-Muff, in satin <em class="e000I2">coulissé</em>, lined with +black and white lace, with a whole company of +little Indian birds and frightened paroquets hiding +themselves in the satin folds.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>All these fashions of to-day are already fashions +of yesterday, so perpetual is the inconstancy of <em class="e000I2">la +Mode</em>! 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>For us, who, <em class="e000I2">à propos</em> 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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/i_140.jpg" width="500" height="564" alt="" /> +</div> + +<h2 title="Appendix"> + <a id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX</h2> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/i_143e.jpg" width="600" height="292" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p class="fsize2 center">APPENDIX</p> + +<p class="drop-cap"> +<img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_143.jpg" + width="42" height="42" alt="" /> +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.</p> + +<p>As an epilogue to another volume of this series, +<em class="e000I2">The Fan</em>, 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—<em class="e000I2">et cœtera</em>.</p> + +<p>And in this <em class="e000I2">et cœtera</em> 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.</p> + +<p>At the conclusion of the three unpretending +pieces of chit-chat which we have just engaged in +about <em class="e000I2">The Sunshade, the Glove, and the Muff</em>, 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 +<em class="e000I2">littérateur</em> looks at the Little Thing he has just +finished beside the Great Matter which he had +conceived.</p> + +<p>In like conditions, the <em class="e000I2">meâ culpâ</em> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>When we shall have unfurnished our skull of +those delicate things, <em class="e000I2">the Sunshade, Glove, and +Muff</em>, 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!</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 120px;"> +<img src="images/i_146.jpg" width="120" height="134" alt="" /> +</div> + +<div id="endmatter"> +<h2 title="Advertisements"> </h2> +<div id="endmatter01"><a id="Advertisements"></a> +<p class="center"><em class="e000I2">LONDON</em>,</p> +<p class="center"><em class="e00S02">14, King William Street, Strand, W.C.</em></p> +<p class="center"><em class="e000I2">May 1883.</em></p> +</div> + +<div id="endmatter02"> +<div class="center"><em class="e00S02">In Twelve Volumes, Crown 8vo, Parchment Boards or +Cloth, per Volume, 7s. 6d.</em><br /><br /></div> +</div> + +<div id="endmatter03"> +<div class="fsize3 center">THE</div> +<h3 title="The Old Spanish Romances"> + OLD SPANISH ROMANCES</h3> + +<div class="fsize3 center"> + <em class="e000I2">ILLUSTRATED WITH ETCHINGS.</em></div> +</div> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">THE HISTORY OF DON +QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA.</em> Translated from the Spanish of +<em class="e00S02">Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra</em> by <em +class="e00S02">Motteux</em>. With copious Notes (including the +Spanish Ballads), and an Essay on the Life and Writings of +<em class="e00S02">Cervantes</em> by <em class="e00S02">John +G. Lockhart</em>. Preceded by a Short Notice of the Life and +Works of <em class="e00S02">Peter Anthony Motteux</em> by <em +class="e00S02">Henri Van Laun</em>. Illustrated with Sixteen Original +Etchings by <em class="e00S02">R. de Los Rios</em>. Four Volumes.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">LAZARILLO DE TORMES.</em> +By <em class="e00S02">Don Diego Mendoza</em>. Translated by <em +class="e00S02">Thomas Roscoe</em>. And <em class="eB0002">GUZMAN +D’ALFARACHE</em>. By <em class="e00S02">Mateo Aleman</em>. Translated +by <em class="e00S02">Brady</em>. Illustrated with Eight Original +Etchings by <em class="e00S02">R. de Los Rios</em>. Two Volumes.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">ASMODEUS.</em> By <em +class="e00S02">Le Sage</em>. Translated from the French. Illustrated +with Four Original Etchings by <em class="e00S02">R. de Los +Rios</em>.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">THE BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA.</em> +By <em class="e00S02">Le Sage</em>. Translated from the French by <em +class="e00S02">James Townsend</em>. Illustrated with Four Original +Etchings by <em class="e00S02">R. de Los Rios</em>.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">VANILLO GONZALES</em>; or, +The Merry Bachelor. By <em class="e00S02">Le Sage</em>. Translated +from the French. Illustrated with Four Original Etchings by <em +class="e00S02">R. de Los Rios</em>.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">THE ADVENTURES OF GIL BLAS OF +SANTILLANE.</em> Translated from the French of <em class="e00S02">Le +Sage</em> by <em class="e00S02">Tobias Smollett</em>. With +Biographical and Critical Notice of <em class="e00S02">Le Sage</em> +by <em class="e00S02">George Saintsbury</em>. New Edition, +carefully revised. Illustrated with Twelve Original Etchings by <em +class="e00S02">R. de Los Rios</em>. Three Volumes.</p> + +<div id="endmatter04"> +<div class="center"><em class="e00S02">In Twelve Volumes, Crown 8vo, +Parchment Boards or Cloth, per Volume, 7s. 6d.</em><br /><br /></div> + +<h3 title="Old English Romances"> + OLD ENGLISH ROMANCES</h3> + +<div class="fsize3 center"> + <em class="e000I2">ILLUSTRATED WITH ETCHINGS.</em></div> +</div> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF +TRISTRAM SHANDY</em>, <em class="e00S02">Gentleman</em>. By <em +class="e00S02">Laurence Sterne</em>. In Two Vols. With Eight Etchings +by <em class="e00S02">Damman</em> from Original Drawings by <em +class="e00S02">Harry Furniss</em>.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">THE OLD ENGLISH BARON</em>: +<em class="e00S02">A Gothic Story</em>. By <em class="e00S02">Clara +Reeve</em>.</p> + +<p class="center">ALSO</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO</em>: +<em class="e00S02">A Gothic Story</em>. By <em class="e00S02">Horace +Walpole</em>. In One Vol. With Two Portraits and Four Original +Drawings by <em class="e00S02">A. H. Tourrier</em>, Etched by <em +class="e00S02">Damman</em>.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">THE ARABIAN NIGHTS +ENTERTAINMENTS.</em> In Four Vols. Carefully Revised and Corrected +from the Arabic by <em class="e00S02">Jonathan Scott</em>, LL.D., +Oxford. With Nineteen Original Etchings by <em class="e00S02">Ad. +Lalauze</em>.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">THE HISTORY OF THE CALIPH +VATHEK.</em> By <em class="e00S02">Wm. Beckford</em>. With Notes, +Critical and Explanatory.</p> + +<p class="center">ALSO</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">RASSELAS, PRINCE OF +ABYSSINIA.</em> By <em class="e00S02">Samuel Johnson</em>. In +One Vol. With Portrait of <em class="e00S02">Beckford</em>, and +Four Original Etchings, designed by <em class="e00S02">A. H. +Tourrier</em>, and Etched by <em class="e00S02">Damman</em>.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">ROBINSON CRUSOE.</em> +By <em class="e00S02">Daniel Defoe</em>. In Two Vols. With +Biographical Memoir, Illustrative Notes, and Eight Etchings +by <em class="e00S02">M. Mouilleron</em>, and Portrait by <em +class="e00S02">L. Flameng</em>.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">GULLIVER’S TRAVELS.</em> By <em +class="e00S02">Jonathan Swift</em>. With Five Etchings and Portrait +by <em class="e00S02">Ad. Lalauze</em>.</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.</em> By +<em class="e00S02">Laurence Sterne</em>.</p> + +<p class="center">ALSO</p> + +<p class="romance"><em class="eB0002">A TALE OF A TUB.</em> By <em +class="e00S02">Jonathan Swift</em>. In One Vol. With Five Etchings +and Portrait by <em class="e00S02">Ed. Hedouin</em>.</p> + +<div id="endmatter05"> + <h3 title="Some Press Notices"> + <i>SOME PRESS NOTICES.</i></h3> +</div> + +<p class="citation">Daily Telegraph.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p class="citation">The Scotsman.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p class="citation">Glasgow Herald.</p> + +<p>“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.’”</p> + +<p class="citation">London Figaro.</p> + +<p>“We congratulate the publishers upon the issue of a capital +series of Old English Romances. They will form a most delightful +collection.”</p> + +<p class="citation">Magazine of Art.</p> + +<p>“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.’”</p> + +<p class="citation">The Literary World.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p class="citation">The Times.</p> + +<p>“Prettily printed and prettily illustrated, these attractive +volumes deserve their welcome from all students of seventeenth +century literature.”</p> + +<p class="citation">The Daily News.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + + +<p class="citation">Daily Telegraph.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p class="citation">The Scotsman.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p class="citation">Westminster Review.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p class="center"><br /><br />J. C. NIMMO & BAIN,<br /> + 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C.</p> +</div> <!--end of div.endmatter--> + +<div class="transnote"> +TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE + +<p>Original printed spelling and punctuation variations are mostly +retained. Since small caps are not well supported in mobile +formats (e.g. epub), they have been <em class="e00S02">Reinforced +Thus</em> with an underline.</p> + +<p>Page 104: “villanously” changed to “villainously”.</p> +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sunshade, by Octave Uzanne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNSHADE *** + +***** This file should be named 44570-h.htm or 44570-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/5/7/44570/ + +Produced by Chris Curnow, RichardW and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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