OUR FOOLISH COUNTRYWOMEN.
I Introduce at this point--its proper date--Miss Carrie Cockayne's
letter to Miss Sharp:--
"Grand Hôtel, Paris.
"DEAREST EMMY--They are all out shopping, so here's a long
letter. I haven't patience with the men. I am sure we have had enough
abuse in our own country, without travelling all the way to Paris for
it; and yet the first paper I take up in the reading saloon of the
hotel, contains a paragraph headed _Le Beau Sexe en Angleterre_. The
paragraph is violent. The writer wants to know what demon possesses the
Englishwomen at this moment. I might have been sure it was translated
from an English paper. The creature wants to know whether the furies
are let loose, and is very clever about Lucretia Borgia, and Mary
Manning, and Mary Newell! One would think English mothers were all going
to boil their children. This is just what has happened about everything
else. In certain English circles slang is talked: therefore women have
become coarse and vulgar. The Divorce Court has been a busy one of late;
and scandals have been 'going round' as the American ladies in this
hotel say; therefore there are to be no more virtuous mothers and
sisters presently. Upon my word, the audacity of this makes my blood
boil. Here the ladies paint, my dear, one and all. Why, the children in
the Tuileries gardens whisk their skirts, and ogle their boy playmates.
Vanity Fair at its height is here--I am not going to dispute it. Nor
will I say papa is quite in the wrong when he cries shame on some of the
costumes one meets on the Boulevards. My dear, short skirts and grey
hair do _not_ go well together. I cannot even bear to think of
grand-mamma showing her ankles and Hessian boots! But what vexes and
enrages me is the injustice of the sudden outcry. Where has the slang
come from? Pray who brought it into the drawing-room? How is it that
girls delight in stable-talk, and imitate men in their dress and
manners? We cannot deny that the domestic virtues have suffered in these
fast days, nor that wife and husband go different ways too much: but are
we to bear all the blame? Did _we_ build the clubs, I wonder? Did you or
I invent racing, and betting, and gambling? Do _you_ like being lonely,
as you are, my dear? When women go wrong, who leads the way? The pace is
very fast now, and we _do_ give more time to dress, and that sort of
thing than our mothers did. I own I'm a heavy hand at pastry, and mamma
is a light one. I couldn't tell you how many shirts papa has. I should
be puzzled to make my own dresses. I hate needlework. But are we
monsters for all this? Papa doesn't grumble _very_ much. He has his
pleasures, I'm sure. He dined out four times the week we came away. He
was at the Casino in the Rue St. Honoré last night, and came home with
such an account of it that I am quite posted up in the manners and
costumes of _ces dames_, yes, and the _lower_ class of them. The mean
creature who has been writing in the _Saturday Review_ gives us no
benefit of clergy. We have driven our brothers out into the night; we
have sent our lovers to Newmarket; we have implored our husbands (that
is, _we_ who have got husbands,) not to come home to dinner, because we
have more agreeable company which we have provided for ourselves. Girls
talk slang, I know--perhaps they taught their brothers! I suppose mamma
taught papa to describe a woman in the _Bois_ as 'no end of a swell,'
and when he is in the least put out to swear at her.
[Illustration: THE INFLEXIBLE "MEESSES ANGLAISES."
_They are not impressionable, but they will stoop to "field sports."_]
"Now, my dear, shall I give you _my_ idea of the mischief? Papa thinks I
go about with my eyes shut; that I observe nothing--except the bonnet
shops. I say the paint, the chignons, the hoops, and the
morals--whatever they may be--start from here. My ears absolutely
tingled the first evening I spent here _en soirée_. Lovers! why the
married ladies hardly take the trouble to disguise their preferences.
"I was at an embassy reception the other night. Papa said it was like a
green-room, only not half so amusing. They talked in one corner as
openly as you might speak of the Prince Imperial, about Mademoiselle
Schneider's child. There were women of the company whose _liaisons_ are
as well known as their faces, and yet they were _parfaitement bien
reçues_! Theresa is to be heard--or was to be heard till she went out of
fashion--in private salons, screaming her vulgar songs among the young
ladies. When I turn the corner just outside the hotel, what do I see in
one of the most fashionable print-shops? Why, three great Mabille prints
of the shockingly indecent description--with ladies and their
daughters looking at them. Those disagreeable pictures in the Burlington
Arcade are, my dearest Emmy, moral prints when compared with them. We
have imported all this. Paris is within ten hours and a half of London,
so we get French ways, as papa says, 'hot and hot.'"
[Illustration: ENGLISH VISITORS TO THE CLOSERIE DE LILAS.--SHOCKING!]
"Who admires domestic women now? Tell an English _crévé_ that Miss Maria
is clever at a custard, and he will sneer at her. No. She must be witty,
pert; able to give him as good as he sends, as people say. Young Dumas
has done a very great deal of this harm; and he has made a fortune by
it. He has brought the Casino into the drawing-room, given _ces dames_ a
position in society, and made hundreds of young men ruin themselves for
the glory of being seen talking to a Cora Pearl. _Now_ what do you think
he has done. He has actually brought out a complete edition of his
pieces, with a preface, in which, Papa tells me, he plays the moralist.
He has unfolded all the vice--crowded the theatres to see a bad woman in
a consumption--painted the _demi-monde--with a purpose_! All the world
has laboured under the idea that the purpose was piles of gold. But now,
the locker being full, and the key turned, and in the young gentleman's
pocket, he dares to put himself in the robe of a professor, to say it
was not the money he cared about--it was the lesson. He is a reformer--a
worshipper of virtue! We shall have the author of _Jack Sheppard_ start
as a penologist soon. My dear, the cowardice of men when dealing with
poor women is bad enough; but it is not by half so repulsive as their
hypocrisy. Ugh!
"Any news of the handsome Mr. Daker? It strikes me, dear Emmy, 'Uncle
Sharp' didn't send him up from Maidstone with a letter of introduction
to his niece for nothing.
"Your affectionate friend,
"CARRIE C."