(The Duchess of Abrantes, in her recently published Memoirs, gives a
striking picture of the difference in the fashions and habits of living
which has resulted from the old French Revolution.)
Transported from Corsica to Paris at the close of the reign of Louis
XV., my mother had imbibed a second nature in the midst of the luxuries
and excellencies of that period. We flatter ourselves that we have
gained much by our changes in that particular; but we are quite wrong.
Forty thousand livres a-year fifty years ago, would have commanded more
luxury than two hundred thousand now. The elegancies that at that period
surrounded a woman of fashion cannot be numbered; a profusion of
luxuries were in common use, of which even the name is now forgotten.
The furniture of her sleeping apartment--the bath in daily use--the
ample folds of silk and velvet which covered the windows--the perfumes
which filled the room--the rich laces and dresses which adorned the
wardrobe, were widely different from the ephemeral and insufficient
articles by which they have been replaced. My opinion is daily receiving
confirmation, for every thing belonging to the last age is daily coming
again into fashion, and I hope soon to see totally expelled all those
fashions of Greece and Rome, which did admirably well under the climate
of Rome or Messina, but are ill adapted for our _vent du bize_ and
cloudy atmosphere. A piece of muslin suspended on a gilt rod, is really
of no other use but to let a spectator see that he is behind the
curtain. It is the same with the imitation tapestry--the walls six
inches thick, which neither keep out the heat in summer, nor the cold in
winter. All the other parts of modern dress and furniture are comprised
in my anathema, and will always continue to be so.
It is said that every thing is simplified and brought down to the reach
of the most moderate fortunes. That is true in one sense; that is to
say, our confectioner has muslin curtains and gilt rods at his windows,
and his wife has a silk cloak as well as ourselves, because it is become
so thin that it is indeed accessible to every one, but it keeps no one
warm. It is the same with all the other stuffs. We must not deceive
ourselves; we have gained nothing by all these changes. Do not say, "So
much the better, this is equality." By no means; equality is not to be
found here, any more than it is in England, or America, or anywhere,
since it cannot exist. The consequence of attempting it is, that you
will have bad silks, bad satins, bad velvets, and that is all.
The throne of fashion has encountered during the Revolution another
throne, and it has been shattered in consequence. The French people,
amidst their dreams of equality, have lost their own hands. The large
and soft arm-chairs, the full and ample draperies, the cushions of eider
down, all the other delicacies which we alone understood of all the
European family, led only to the imprisonment of their possessors; and
if you had the misfortune to inhabit a spacious hotel, within a court,
to avoid the odious noise and smells of the street, you had your throat
cut. That mode of treating elegant manners put them out of fashion; they
were speedily abandoned, and the barbarity of their successors still so
lingers amongst us, that every day you see put into the lumber-room an
elegant Grecian chair which has broken your arm, and canopies which
smell of the stable, because they are stuffed with hay.
At that time, (1801,) the habits of good company were not yet extinct in
Paris; of the _old_ company of France, and not of what is _now_ termed
good company, and which prevailed 30 years ago only among postilions and
stable-boys. At that period, men of good birth _did not smoke in the
apartments of their wives_, because they felt it to be a dirty and
disgusting practice; they _generally washed their hands_; when they went
out to dine, or to pass the evening in a house of their acquaintance,
they _bowed to the lady at its head in entering and retiring_, and did
not appear so abstracted in their thoughts as to behave as they would
have done in an hotel. They were then careful _not to turn their back on
those with whom they conversed_, so as to show only an ear or the point
of a nose to those whom they addressed. They spoke of something else,
besides those eternal politics on which no two can ever agree, and which
give occasion only to the interchange of bitter expressions. There has
sprung from these endless disputes, disunion in families, the
dissolution of the oldest friendships, and the growth of hatred which
will continue till the grave. Experience proves that in these contests
no one is ever convinced, and that each goes away more than ever
persuaded of the truth of his own opinions.
The customs of the world now give me nothing but pain. From the bosom of
the retirement where I have been secluded for these 15 years, I can
judge, without prepossession, of the extraordinary revolution in manners
which has lately taken place. Old impressions are replaced, it is said,
by new ones; that is all. Are, then, the new ones superior? I cannot
believe it. Morality itself is rapidly undergoing dissolution--every
character is contaminated, and no one knows from whence the poison is
inhaled. Young men now lounge away their evenings in the box of a
theatre, or the Boulevards, or carry on elegant conversation with a fair
seller of gloves and perfumery, make compliments on her lily and
vermilion cheeks, and present her with a _cheap_ ring, accompanied with
a gross and indelicate compliment. Society is so disunited, that it is
daily becoming more vulgar, in the literal sense of the word. Whence any
improvement is to arise, God only knows.
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