“Gaunt all at once and hideously little.”
In Paris, a mantua-maker is a _bel esprit_, and does not follow rigidly
but studies to soften a little the tyranny and caprices of fashion, and
she knows the value of the natural appearances in the constitution of
beauty. The fashions have, to be sure, their general feature, but the
shades of differences are infinite. The woman and the frock, though not
indissolubly united, seem made for each other. The French lead fashion;
we follow it: their genius is brought out by invention; ours quenched by
imitation. I looked on upon this ball with all the gaze of young
astonishment. Staring is an expression of countenance you will never see
among savages and well-bred people; I am somewhere between the two.
Your husband dived into the crowd, to try to discover some pearl of
French beauty; ineffectually. One is at a loss, he says, for a
temptation. He is so anatomical! he would like better Helen’s skeleton
than Helen herself. We don’t see the same thing in a woman by a great
deal--or in anything else. Travellers don’t see the same things in
Paris. Baron Rothschild and Sir Humphrey saw not the same thing in a
guinea; and how many things did not Phidias see in his Venus, which
neither you nor I will ever see in it.
The French women are nearer ugliness than beauty; but what women in the
world can so dispense with beauty? Their cavaliers are handsomer, yet
the exquisite creatures are loved just the same. I wonder if the peacock
loves less his hen for the inferiority of her plumage, or she him the
more for the elegance of his? The principal charm of a woman is not in
the features; a lesson useful to be learnt. A turn-up nose once
overturned the Harem, so says Marmontelle; Madame Cottin was an ugly
thing, and yet killed two of her lovers; there are on record the
examples of two women with only an eye each, who made the conquest of a
king; La Vallière supplanted all her rivals, with a crooked foot. Ninon
was not handsome, but who knows not the number of her victims?
Self-flattery and the flatteries of admirers spoil pretty women, till at
last, like sovereigns, they receive your homage as a tribute that is
due, and enjoins no acknowledgment, and thereby they counteract the
influence of their charms.--“But as I was saying--Pray, my dear, what
was I saying?”--I will think of it to-morrow.
January 27th.
I cannot afford to give you all these sweetmeats at a single meal; I
must serve you up a small portion for the dessert of each day. Ball the
second. This was one of the most splendid and fashionable of the season;
also a _bal de charité_--given at the theatre Ventadour a few nights
ago. A great number of Carlist nobles having lost their pensions and
places, by the disaster of Charles X., have become poor, and this was to
comfort them with a little cash. The parterre and stage formed an area
for the dancing, and an array of mirrors at the furthest end doubled to
the eye its dimensions, and the number of the dancers.
It was a vast surface waving like the sea gently troubled; and the
boxes, filled with ladies, exhibited the usual display of snowy necks,
and glittering ornaments overhead. The saloon and lobbies too, adorned
with little groves of shrubbery, had their full share of the multitude.
Here was the late Speaker of the Commons, Sutton, now better named for a
ball-room, my Lord Canterbury, and my Lady Canterbury; and here was
Bulwer, brother of Bulwer; and Sir Sydney Smith and other knights from
afar; and all the _bel air_ of the Paris fashionables; not the old swarm
of St. Germain, the Condés and Turennes, the Rochefoucaulds,
Montausiers, Beauvilliers and Montespans; but all that Paris has now
the most elegant and aristocratic.
Here was Madame la Duchesse de Guiche, and who can be more beautiful?
And the Duchesse de Plaisance, airy and light as Taglioni; and the
prettiest of all Belgian ambassadresses, Madame le Hon--_coiffé à
ravir_. And the night went round in the dance, or in circulating through
the room, or in sitting retired upon couches among the oranges and
laurels, where sage philosophy looked on, and beauty bound the willing
listeners in its spell. The music was loud and most exhilarating. In
some parts of the house were all the comforts of elbowings, shufflings,
crammings and squeezings, and on the outside all the racket that was
possible of screaming women, and wrangling coachmen, from miles of
carriages through every avenue. Some were arriving towards morning, and
others have not arrived yet. This is the ball of the Ventadour.
We reached home just as Aurora was opening her curtains with her rosy
fingers, and we crept into bed. The tickets were at twenty francs; ices,
_eau d’orgéat_, and _eau sucrée_, were the amount of refreshments.
I have just room for a word of the Court Balls; and they are so much
prettier than any thing else in the world, I am glad they come in last
to your notice. They are held at the king’s palace, the Tuileries; where
a long suite of rooms are opened into one, and filled with a stream of
light so thick and transparent, that the men and women seem to swim in
it as fish in their liquid element. Between three and four thousand
persons are exposed to a single coup-d’œil; the men gorgeously attired
in their court-dresses; the women in all the sweetness of the toilet.
It is impossible to look in here without recognising at once the justice
of Parisian claims upon the empire of fashion. Here is the throne and
sceptre of the many-coloured goddess; and here from every corner of the
earth her courtiers come to do her homage.
The king, on entering, repeats nearly the same ceremony as at his
“Reception” of the new year; others of the royal family follow his
example. A pair of cavaliers at length lead out the two princesses, and
the ball begins through the whole area of the rooms.
To see so many persons, elegantly and richly attired at once entangled
in the dance; crossing, pursuing and overtaking each other; now at
rest, now in movement; and seeming to have no other movement than that
communicated by the music; and to see a hundred couples whirling around
in the waltz, with airy feet that seem scarce to kiss the slippery
boards; first flushed and palpitating; then wearying by degrees and
retiring, to the last pair, to the last one--and she the most healthful,
graceful and beautiful of the choir, her partner’s arm sustaining her
taper waist, foot against foot, knee against knee, in simultaneous
movement, turns and turns, till nature at length overcome, she
languishes, she faints, she dies!--A scene of such excitement and
brilliancy, you will easily excuse my modesty for not attempting to
describe.
As an episode to the dancing, there is a supper in the _Salle de Diane_,
where you have a chance of seeing how royal people eat; with a remote
chance of eating something yourself. A thousand or more ladies sit down,
and are served upon the precious metals, or more precious porcelain; the
king and princes standing at the place of honour, and a file of
military-looking gentlemen dressed richly, along the flanks of the
table. What a spectacle! Ladies eating out of gold, and kings to wait
upon them.
I sat opposite the royal ladies, and looked particularly at the little
Princess Amelia, with her pouting lip “as if some bee had stung it
lately.” She just tasted a little of the roast beef, and the fish, and
the capon, and other delicacies of the season; and then a bit of
plum-pudding, and some grapes, and peaches, and apricots, and
strawberries; and then she sipped a glass of port, and when her glass
was out, my Lord Granville with great presence of mind filled her
another; and then she finished off with a little burgundy, champagne,
hermitage, Frontignac, bucella, and old hock--all which she drank with
her own dear little lips.
These delicate creatures do almost every thing else by deputy, but
eating and drinking. After the ladies, we gentlemen were admitted _en
masse_, with not a little scrambling; which was the objectionable part
of the _fête_. I was hungry enough to have sold my birthright, but did
not taste of any thing; it required not only physical strength, but
effrontery, and I have been labouring under the oppression of modesty
all my life. Have you ever been to a dinner at the--“White House?”
that’s like the finale of the king’s supper in the _Salle de Diane_.
In my greener days, I saw the dance in my native Tuscarora, and went to
see it twenty miles of a night upon a fleet horse, my partner behind,
twining around my waist her “marriageable arms.” I have now seen the
balls of the French court, which are called the most splendid in the
world. The difference of dress, of graces, and such particulars, how
vastly in favour of the Tuileries!--but as far as I can recollect and
judge from the outward signs, the enjoyment was as vastly on the side of
the Tuscarora.--Beauty is of every clime, as of every condition. I have
seen Alcina’s foot upon the floors of the Ventadour, and upon a rock of
the Juniatta, and all the varieties of human expression through all the
ranges of human society. I have seen the humble violet upon the hill
top, and the saucy lily in the valley. As for the pure and rapturous
admiration of beauty and female accomplishment--alas, I fear it is not
the growth of the libertine capital.--I am persuaded, that to have lived
much in the country, conversant with natural objects, and subject to the
privations of a country life, is essential to the perfection of the
human character, and of human enjoyments. In a city, the pursuits are
frivolous; they narrow the mind, and are pernicious to its most
delightful faculty--the imagination. The passions are developed there
too early, and worn out by use.--The Tuileries, lighted with its tapers,
and “glittering with the golden coats,” is beautiful; the ladies’ bright
eyes, and the pure gems that sparkle upon their snowy necks too are
beautiful. But I have been at Moon’s Drawing Room upon your “Two Hills,”
and have gathered its pure light from your piny leaves; the stars and
heavenly bodies looking on in their court dresses.
To walk in the Rue Rivoli as the sun descends towards the west is
delightful, and in the Tuileries amidst its marble deities, or upon the
broad eastern terrace, which overlooks its two rows of fashionable
belles.--But I have walked in the lone valleys of the Shamoken, and have
seen the Naiads plunge into their fountains; I have walked upon the
Sharp Mountain top, exhilarated with its pure air and liberty, raised
above the grovelling species, and held communion with the angels--this
is more delightful still. Numa communed with his Egeria in the sacred
grove; Minos with his Nymph under the low-browed rock, and Moses
retired to the mountain to converse with the Almighty. The pleasures of
a city life stale upon the appetite by use; the delights of the country
life “bring to their sweetness no satiety.”
I had intended to put you up the whole of the Paris Balls in this
letter, but the Masquerades remain for another occasion. My time has run
out; the last grain of sand is in the dial. Good night.