THE SILKWORM.
"The ideal of the human arts of spinning and weaving,"--said to me one
day a Southerner (a manufacturer, but a man of imagination),--"the
ideal which we always follow is a woman's beautiful hair! Oh, how far
are the softest wools or finest cotton from approaching it! At what an
enormous distance does all, and ever will all, our progress leave us!
We drag ourselves onward, a long, long way in the rear, and enviously
regard that supreme perfection which Nature daily realizes as a mere
matter of pastime.
"That delicate, yet strong and tenacious hair, vibrating with an
exquisite sonority which goes from the ear to the heart, and yet withal
so soft, warm, luminous, and electrical--is the flower of the human
flower.
"Men fruitlessly dispute respecting the merits of colour. What does
it matter? The brilliant black contains and promises the flame; the
blonde displays it with the splendours of the Golden Fleece. The sunny
brown appropriates the very sun, makes use of it, blends it with its
mirages, floats, and undulates, and incessantly varies in its streaming
reflexes, now smiles with light, now deepens into gloom, always
deceives, and, whatever we may say, deceives us most delightfully.
"The principal, the infinite effort of human industry, has combined
all possible means for the improvement of cotton. Between the Vosges
and the Rhine, the rare agreement of capital, machinery, the arts of
design, and the chemical sciences, has produced those splendid Indian
products of Alsace, to which England herself does honour by purchasing
them. Alas! all this cannot disguise the original poverty of the
ungrateful tissue which men have so richly embellished. If the woman
who in her vanity clothes her form in these materials, and thinks
her beauty heightened by them, would loosen her tresses about her,
and unroll their waves over the indigent richness of our most sheeny
cottons, what would occur? How they would be humiliated!
"Sir, we must own the truth; there is only one thing worthy of being
placed side by side with woman's hair. Only one manufacturer can
contend against it. That manufacturer is an insect,--the modest
silkworm."
* * * * *
A peculiar charm attends the labours of the silkworm; it ennobles
everything which surrounds it. In traversing our rudest provinces,
the valleys of the Ardèche, where all is rocky,--where the mulberry
and the chestnut seem to dispense with earth, to live upon air and
pebbles,--where low stone houses sadden the eyes by their gray
tints,--everywhere I saw at the door, under a kind of arcade, two
or three charming brunettes, with ivory teeth, who smiled on the
wayfarer, and continued spinning their silken gold. The wayfarer said
to them in a low voice, as the carriage bore him away:--"What a pity,
innocent fairies, that the gold may not be for you! That instead of
being disguised with a useless colour, and disfigured by art, it does
not retain its natural hue, and shine on the person of its beautiful
spinners! How much better the royal tissue would become you than the
_grandes dames_!"
A mere glance at the silkworm convinces you that it is no more a native
of Europe than any other sweet thing. All that is soft and exquisite
springs from the East. Our West, that hardy soldier, blacksmith,
and miner, is good only to dig. It is good mother Asia, disdained by
her rude son, who has bestowed upon him the treasures which seem to
concentrate the essence of the globe. With the Arab horse and the
nightingale, she has given him coffee, and sugar, and silk,--the
revivifiers of existence and the true ornament of love.
When silk first arrived at Rome, the empresses felt that previously
they had been no better than plebeians. They compared it, as far as its
soft lustre was concerned, to the pearls of the Orient, paying for it,
without haggling, the price of pearls and gold.
China esteemed it of such high value, that, to preserve the monopoly,
she inflicted the penalty of death on any persons who dared to export
the silkworm. It was only at the utmost peril, and by concealing it in
a hollow cane, that men succeeded in carrying it to Byzantium, whence
it passed to the West.
In the Middle Age, the age of indigence and barren disputes, when
wool was the luxury of the rich, and the poor wore serge in winter,
no attention was paid to silk, and its manufacture was exclusively
confined to Italy.
It is the gold of the silkworms of Verona which, in Giorgione, at the
mighty outcome of the Venetian art, and in the strong Titian, the
master of masters, enriches with a ruddy radiance their beautiful
blondes and brunettes, the sovereign beauties of the world.
On the other hand, in an age of decadence, when Spain and Flanders had
waned, the melancholy artist who preferred to paint the beauty which
years had marked,--the fading flower,--the fruit too early pierced
and unnaturally ripened,--Van Dyck, clothed with white silk, like a
consoling beam of moonlight, his languishing and drooping signoras.
Under the soft folds of their satins they still trouble hearts with
vain dreams and regrets.
The woman who possessed the secret of preserving her charms to the
last decline of old age, whose cypher everywhere inscribed teaches
us that Love can conquer Time, Diana de Poitiers, in her profound
art, did exactly the opposite of what our imprudent ladies do, who,
incessantly changing, as if to amuse the passer-by, leave no trace
upon the soul, and produce no permanent impression. She permitted the
Irises to delectate themselves with their fugitive rainbow; but, like
the celestial Dian, always wore the same costume, black or white, and
invariably of silk.
[Illustration]
It was to please her that Henry II. wore the first pair of silk
stockings, and the fine silken close-fitting vest, which indicated
all the gracefulness of a muscular yet slender figure. We know
how ardent an enthusiasm Henry IV., at a later period, showed in
promoting the growth of the silk-manufacture, planting mulberry-trees
everywhere,--along the highways, in the market-places, in the courts of
his palaces, and even in the gardens of the Tuileries. Coloured silks,
for decoration and furniture, and silks with flowered designs, were
soon afterwards manufactured at Lyons, which provided all Europe with
them.
Shall I say it, however? These coloured and ornamented silks do not
by any means produce a great and profound effect. Silk in its natural
state, and not even tinted, is in much more intimate sympathy with
woman and beauty. Amber and pearls, the latter slightly yellow, with
rich falls of lace, the latter not too yellow, are the only suitable
accompaniments of silk.
For silk is a noble and in nowise pretentious attire, which lends
a subdued charm to the exuberant liveliness of youth, and clothes
declining beauty with its most tender and touching radiance.
A genuine mystery attends it which is not without attraction. Colour
or gloss? Cotton has its peculiar gloss, and, when fitly prepared,
often acquires an agreeable freshness. Silk is not properly glossy, but
luminous,--with a soft electrical light, which harmonizes naturally
with the electricity of the woman. A living tissue, it embraces
willingly the living person.
* * * * *
Oriental ladies, before they foolishly adopted our Western customs,
wore but two kinds of stuff: underneath, the real cashmere (of so fine
a texture that a large shawl might be passed through a ring); and
above, a beautiful tunic of silk of a pale blonde, or rather straw
colour, with a gleam or flash of magnetic amber.
These two articles were less garments than friends,--gentle
slaves,--supple and charming flatterers: the cashmere warm, caressing,
and pliant, enfolding the bather lovingly when she emerged from her
bath; the silk tunic, on the contrary, light and aërial, only not too
diaphanous. Its blonde whiteness agreed most admirably with the colour
of her skin; one might indeed have very justly said that it had imbibed
that colour through its constant intimacy and accustomed tenderness.
Inferior to the skin, undoubtedly, yet it seemed related to it; or
rather it became in the end a part of the body, and, as it were, melted
into it, like a dream which informs our whole existence, and cannot be
separated from it.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: VII.--INSTRUMENTS OF THE INSECT.]
[Illustration]