THE
BOOK
OF THE
BOUDOIR.
BY
LADY MORGAN.
“Je n’enseigne pas; je raconte.”
MONTAIGNE.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1829.
LONDON:
SHACKELL AND BAYLIS, JOHNSON’S-COURT, FLEET-STREET.
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
Page
Religious Austerity 1
Liberal Illiberality 18
Poets’ Loves 21
Fans 24
No one’s Enemy but his own 31
Vulgarity 32
Human Parrots 37
Cats 38
Trades, Professions and Sciences 44
Mr. Owen’s Tunic 60
Odd Conjunctions 65
Princess Borghese 67
The Counsellor 69
Ridicule 74
Legislative Literature 87
Vice Regal Progresses 90
Bad Books 96
Drawing Characters 113
Picture Frames 115
Aristocracy 119
Temper 122
Ignorance 124
Beaux of Old 125
Methodism and Molière 126
The Flying-Fish 127
Toleration 130
Old-Fashioned Friends 131
Irish Beggars 133
Obsoletisms 138
A Character 149
The Délaissé 150
Taverns ib.
Solemn Blockheads 152
Catholic Petitions 153
Laughing and Crying 153
Expectation 155
The Devotee 156
Helen Maria Williams 158
No Popery 174
Martinus Scriblerus 175
Exercise ib.
Bombazeen 176
Law 177
Riches 178
Truth 179
Woman’s Love 180
Malthus 181
Paternal Benedictions 183
Sentiment 184
Presents 185
Per Contra 187
Education 189
Temperament 190
Infant Baptism 192
Logic of Fine Writers 193
Philosophy 195
Corregio and Johanna of Placentia 197
The Cap of Liberty 211
Providence 213
Taking a Shower Bath 215
Views of the Catholic Question 216
Viragos 217
Female Perseverance 218
Opinion 220
Wives of Fools 221
Les Rochers de Mad. de Sévigné 223
Strawberry Hill 252
Arts and Artists 306
“No one a Prophet in his own Country” 309
Patrick’s Day 316
THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.
RELIGIOUS AUSTERITY.
It is quite deplorable to see how many rational creatures (or, at least,
who are thought so) mistake suffering for sanctity, and think a sad face
and a gloomy habit of mind, propitious offerings to that deity, whose
works are all light, and lustre, and harmony, and loveliness.
I have just had a visit from a pair of papistical pietists, in such
a state of attenuation, that they look as if they had escaped from a
besieged town after a month’s famine. They had been keeping _black lent_
(a fast, I believe, now peculiar to Ireland) which it would be difficult
to persuade a Roman cardinal to observe. I began to quote Swift’s well
known stanza—
“Who can believe, with common sense,
That bacon fried gives God offence?
Or that a herring has a charm,
Almighty anger to disarm?
Wrapped up in majesty divine,
Does he regard on what we dine?”
This was an impertinent interference; and they answered me very sensibly,
by alleging that a special providence is a dogma in all religions; and
that, at all events, they were bound to obey their church, or leave
it! They had made their election. As they took their leave, Mrs. ——
came in from early service, with her prayer book in her hand, and all
the anathemas of exclusive perfection in her sour face. Mrs. —— is a
high-church-evangelical protestant-ascendancy lady—once well known in
the caste of Dublin gaiety, though now no less distinguished in the
_album sanctorum_ of “the serious.” What a look she cast on my poor
little papists, as they passed her! Excommunication by bell, book, and
candle-light, and death without benefit of clergy, in every scowling
lineament.
“I did not know these little bigots visited you,” said the good Mrs. ——;
“you are such a notorious heretic, to say the least.”
“O! I assure you the Catholic saints are much more tolerant than you
Protestant saints. My attacks on Catholicism, as I found it restored in
Italy by the holy alliance, have not lost me a single Catholic friend in
Ireland.”
“Because, after all, the papists don’t care for their religion _as a
religion_. Theirs is a church without a religion, you know.”
“I don’t answer for their zeal,” (I said carelessly, for I hate religious
discussions) “but I do for their sincerity, which the appearance of those
poor girls attests; they are worn to shadows by this hard lent: they do
not even eat eggs or butter.”
“What absurdity!” said my petulant and well-fed evangelical; “I have no
patience with it.”
“But you rigid protestants fast sometimes, when your church bids you?”
“Oh! that is a different thing.”
“No further different, than that you fast only to draw down divine
vengeance on your political enemies, while they mortify their bodies for
the sake of their own souls. How Buonaparte’s victories must have raised
the price of salt fish! Do you remember what a number of general fasts
we had during the war? I have often thought that we owed our success at
Waterloo as much to dried ling, as to Wellington.”
“Oh! Lady M——! how can you joke on such solemn subjects?”
“Joke! why, if we are ordered to eat fish for the purpose of abating the
pride and assuaging the malice of our enemies, there must, I suppose,
be some efficacy in cockle sauce, and oyster _pâtés_—or why is meat
proscribed?”
“The intention of fasts is mortification, and we should abstain on such
occasions from everything that administers to our appetites.”
“Then you come back to the black fasts of my poor half starved little
friends, which you deem an absurdity.”
“But these Catholics,” said Mrs. —— with true lady’s logic, “abstain from
no pleasure that comes in their way, even on Sundays. I hear they attend
your Sunday evening parties.”
“I give no Sunday evening parties, my dear Mrs. ——; but when the duties
of the day are over, and every one has been at mass, church, or meeting,
as opinion may lead them, I surround myself with the members of my own
dear family; and if some kind and intimate friend drop in to enjoy a
pleasant, rational conversation, he is sure of a place at my cheerful
hearth amongst its affectionate _habitués_.”
“But the sabbath is appointed to be kept holy.”
“And is it not to keep the sabbath holy, to cultivate the kindliest
affections, and to encourage those genial sensations which lead us to
live in peace with all mankind? He, whose first divine manifestation was
at a wedding feast, and whose last was at the supper of the disciples he
loved, has left us this, not more as a precept than a command.”
“Aye, but what are your poor servants doing below stairs?”
“Precisely what their masters are doing above—enjoying innocently, and
soberly, round a good fire, the rest which the sabbath brings with
it—reaping the fruits of their industry in the comforts it provides them,
and neither driven to a sectarian meeting nor a public house, to pass
their Sunday evenings in making bile or drinking whisky.”
My saint sneered, and shook her head.
“I will not argue with _you_, Lady M——, but I will tell you what the
world says;” and so having proved to me that I was considered by all the
“really religious” people of Dublin as no better than one of the wicked,
she made her exit, with a new accession of gall circulating through her
system, and more than ever convinced, that to be happy is to be wicked!
It is strange that man, who suffers so severely from the violence of the
elements, “who hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery,”
should go so far out of his way to multiply uneasy sensations, and should
so often dash aside the enjoyment which reason sanctifies, to court the
privation which nature rejects. In strong defiance of animal instinct,
there has existed, at all times, a marked disposition to make a merit of
self-denial and mortification, and to consider it a virtue to outrage
those senses, and sadden that imagination, which were bestowed on man by
the Deity, for the promotion of his happiness.
This absurd and cruel fanaticism has succeeded in masking itself alike
beneath the cowl of religion, and the mantle of philosophy; and it has
allied itself, with equal plausibility, to the pride of the stoic, and to
the humility of the saint. After all that we talk of the march of mind,
the world has made but little progress in moral philosophy. In all ages
it has been “_par les mêmes propos le même jargon_;” and it is curious to
find, in Lucian’s treatise on dancing, (which is a defence of theatrical
exhibitions against some _sour-craut_ Prynne of the Porch,) precisely the
same war between pleasure and pride, between nature and opinion, as is at
this day waged in the conventicles of the sectarian zealots.
That the same practical errors, which proceeded from the self-abasement
of the ascetics in the desert, should have flowed also from the stoic’s
lofty conceptions of human nature, is, however, more startling than
unnatural. The fanaticism of honour and virtue is not less fanaticism,
than that of religion; it is not less exaggeration and irrationality. In
both alike, temperament is more influential than argument, feeling more
concerned than opinion; and both are alike founded on ignorance of the
real nature of man, his organization, and his destiny.
In the earlier epochs of civilization, when the aspect of nature is rude
and forbidding, and when social intercourse is replete with jealousies
and dissensions, the conservative principle of life—aroused by the rough
excitement to a proportionate resistance—arms itself with a corresponding
insensibility to the attacks of externals. Wherever suffering habitually
outweighs enjoyment, an effeminate susceptibility to trifling sensations
is destroyed by the frequency of heavier miseries: and necessity develops
in the mind a conscious superiority to fortune, founded on the pride
of opposition, and on an intimate conviction of its own energies. The
incessant warfare of savage life renders the contempt of pain and
death an indispensable virtue; and by a sophistry familiar under all
circumstances, the animal forms for himself a system of notions, which
strengthens him in the disposition congenial to the position of the
moment. The philosophy of savages is stern, as their religion is gloomy:
and education and example are both brought to bear upon this desired
case-hardening of the soul. The qualities which school-boys are taught to
admire in the heroes of Roman story, exist in greater intensity among the
red tribes of North America, than in the descendants of the wolf-suckled
Romulus.
In the history of a campaign in Canada, mention is made of a tribe,
called _The Devoted_, whose ultra-stoical notions would gain credit for
the story of a Scævola or a Regulus. One of this tribe, to prove to
the British officers his contempt for pain, cut a large piece from his
own flesh, and flung it to the dogs. Yet these men were in the lowest
condition of barbarism and social rudeness.
The external circumstances, which, by opposing man to natural evils,
elevate and exalt his character, produce a very contrary effect, when
they act through his misconceptions of their mysterious causes. Of
physical evil the senses can judge with precision; and the individual,
measuring his sufferings by his powers of resistance, acquires courage
through the conviction of internal strength. But between man, and the
intangible and inscrutable agents with which fear and ignorance people
the universe, to “ride the whirlwind and direct the storm,” there is no
measurement, no comparison. An intimate feeling of feebleness debases
and degrades him; and there is nothing so absurd and revolting that he
will not attempt, in the anguish of his despair, to appease the phantom
with which he cannot contend. Confidence in the wisdom and benevolence
of the Godhead is the slow growth of developed civilization, and
habitual security and ease. The divinities of barbarians are ever cruel,
vindictive, and capricious; and sanguinary and painful expiations, both
personal and vicarious, are adopted, to purchase from heaven a reluctant
abandonment of its threatened severity.[1] The religion of savages,
under whatever specious names it is covered, has ever been essentially
and practically a pure diabolism. The Scandinavians alone have been able
to ally the belief in powerful and malignant deities, with the courage
to oppose their wrath, by an heroic daring in acting and in suffering,
boundless as the power with which it ventured to dispute.
With an improvement in the destinies of the species, a change occurs
both in the philosophical and the religious sentiments of nations. Upon
the immense influx of wealth into Rome, which followed the conquest of
Greece and Asia, vast amelioration ensued in the social condition of
the people. The usurpation of Augustus was followed by a long period of
peace; and the sterner virtues became unfashionable, because they were no
longer compatible with external circumstances. A sudden revulsion took
place in popular feeling; and the Epicurean philosophy alone found favour
in the eyes of those who had the means and the leisure for enjoyment.
“Thessalian portents” ceased to alarm; the Augur laughed openly in the
face of his brother impostor; and the clumsy state deities gave place, in
the private creed of nobler spirits, to a speculative theism; while the
corrupt and the vicious (misunderstanding the language of Epicurus) were,
upon system, what the vicious and corrupt have been, and ever will be,
“upon instinct.”[2]
This connexion of cause and effect triumphs even over the permanence of
dogma: and a practical relaxation of morose and austere discipline has
uniformly attended the improvement of the social condition, even under
the prevalence of the most rigorous creeds. Christianity, emerging from
the deserts of the Thebaid, to take its place on the thrones of emperors,
was no more the same austere and forbidding rule, than it was the simple
Spencean democracy of its first Essenian proselytes; and the sturdy
Calvinist of the north, in our own times, is a “boon companion” and a
“good fellow,” in comparison with his fanatical ancestors of the third
generation.
The susceptibility of individuals to these external causes is, however,
exceedingly various. In the most relaxed, and even corrupt, periods
of moral sentiment and religious indifference, there have always been
found persons, whose organization of mind has alone been satisfied by an
indulgence of the most gloomy views of Nature and Providence. Fanaticism
is very frequently a constitutional disease. An unknown and undefined,
but a very sensible impediment in the play of the more intimate functions
of life, deprives the individual of that “pleased alacrity and cheer
of mind” which renders the bare state of existence delightful. There
is a general insusceptibility to the minor pleasures of sense; and the
imagination is less excited by the innocent and amiable enjoyments of
life. A mind thus constituted, ill at ease within itself, looks out on
the world for objects congenial with its own feelings. Fear and disgust
are its predominating sentiments; and while it fabricates its deity in
its own image, it is pained by the aspect of enjoyments in which it
cannot participate. The hopes of another world can alone compensate
for the miseries such beings inflict on themselves in this: and while
their speculative diabolism finds its account in self-tormenting, their
misanthropy is indulged by imposing a similar austerity of manners, under
the notion of strictness in religion, upon those who are more happily
framed by nature for cheerfulness and enjoyment.
In England and Germany the prevalent disposition in religion is to
gloom and mysticism; while no effort can inoculate the French with
a deep sentiment on the subject. The Irish differ, also, materially
from the English in this respect. Notwithstanding the strong influence
of political degradation, and the example of rigour exhibited by the
prevailing methodism of the Saxon population, the Irish catholics are,
for the most part, devoid of austerity of temper, though not always
indisposed to needless self-denial; and this circumstance doubtless
contributes to render the people more catholic, and to indispose them for
the reception of the gloomy, abstract idealism of the “new reformation.”
Temperament operates widely and decidedly in preventing an uniform
sentiment respecting the boundary between innocent and vicious
indulgence; and if that point were susceptible of a precise
determination, the naturally morose would still continue to make inroads
upon the liberty of their gayer compatriots, for no other reason than
because it is their will and pleasure to do so. The most rigorous
sectarians, indeed, are not consistent on this point, but are prone to
relaxation in behalf of their own favourite indulgences. Those among
them who are for “tenderness framed,” have a patient indulgence for
weaknesses, which are almost redeemed by the orthodoxy of their object;
and all excesses in the pleasures of the table, short of shameless
inebriety, are permitted to the elect: while the uncharitableness
preached in the pulpit does not the less find its way to the tea-table,
and calumny and invective against all uncongenial offences, are doled out
under the guise of zeal for uniformity of doctrine.
In England, the theoretical morality of the saints is so far above
concert pitch, that humanity cannot sustain it in practice: and the
result is, despair of acting up to duty, a consequent indifference to
slight aberrations, and a proneness to take refuge in the pre-eminence
of faith and the worthlessness and nothingness of all works.
An undue severity of life is much encouraged by the doctrine, that
the intellectual pleasures are alone conducive to happiness, and that
reason and religion alike require the submission and mortification of
the senses. The intellectual pleasures do not lie sufficiently within
the reach of all mankind, to render them a common object of ambition
and cultivation; and it is not fair in the educated and refined to
draw conclusions from their own conceptions, applicable to those of
their fellow-creatures who are less fortunately situated. To the mere
labouring classes, and to many who fill a higher part in the drama of
society, the pleasures of sense are the great resources against _ennui_;
and even the most fanciful sentimentalists, in enhancing the value of
intellectual delights, always _understand_ (as the grammarians phrase it)
an abundant table, warm clothing, and comfortable dwellings, which form
no inconsiderable part of those pleasures of sense, which they who preach
take care to enjoy.
However low mere sensations may rank in the scale of enjoyment, they are
important from their frequent recurrence, and it is only in a certain
sense that the rigorist despises them. The anchorite, who feeds on roots
and water, stipulates that the former should be well boiled, and the
latter pure; and few are prepared to imitate the monkish fanaticism of
mingling objects of disgust with their food, to mortify the senses.
The great error, then, in comparing the intellectual and the sensitive
pleasures, is the setting the use of the former against the abuse of
the latter. The true sensualist, or Epicurean, is as averse from excess
as the stoic; for he knows that excess is incompatible with health and
with happiness. The senses are the creation of the same power as the
intellect, and they are subservient to ends no less important in the
human economy. To forbid their exercise and enjoyment, is to oppose the
will and intention of Him, who made not man in his own image for the sole
purpose of suffering and privation.
An old Irish woman, walking with her naked feet over some flinty stones
instead of the green-sward, which offered itself to her acceptance, was
asked why she chose this painful path. She replied, “Och! sure, I’d do
more than that for sweet Jasus!” The world is full of such old women.
LIBERAL ILLIBERALITY.
I remarked, with pain, in many of my Italian friends, who have
distinguished themselves by every species of sacrifice in the cause
of liberality, an affected illiberality with respect to the arts. I
have seen them turn with apparent disgust from the finest works of the
greatest masters, when accompanying me to the Brera, the gallery at
Florence, or the Vatican. They used to say, “_There_ is the cause of
our ruin: we have preserved the elegant, at the expense of the useful.
Raphael and Michael Angelo keep us under the Austrian yoke! Had the
Russians loved the enfeebling arts, as we have done, they would never
have burned their Moscow! The Venus de Medicis alone would have saved the
Kremlin!”
Going one day to visit the now greatest sculptor of the age, Chantry, the
gallant and celebrated General P——, having accompanied me to the door,
made his bow, observing, “I have made a vow against the arts—the more
perfect they are, the more mischievous.”
British _utilitarianism_, like Italian patriotism, has sometimes taken
the alarm at the unproductiveness of the arts, and asserted that
they are not physically necessary to our existence. Yet if the arts
do not lessen positive evil, they at least augment the number of our
sensitive enjoyments; and after the first necessaries are supplied,
all improvements in manufactures go but to that. Bread and water will
support life—a hole in the earth will bid defiance to the elements—and a
seal-skin in winter, and a few cockatoo feathers in summer, supply the
coldest and the hottest regions with an adequate toilette. All beyond
this is luxury, or means adopted to increase the sphere of pleasurable
sensation, and to support a greater number of the species.
In this point of view, the fine arts are equally objects of statistic
value with the useful manufactures. Their moral influence is an
additional benefit. All declamation against the arts is folly, simply
because they belong to the organization of man—to his love of pleasure
and his tendency to imitation. He who produces a fine picture, still
produces; and under that utilitarian consideration, his labour is at
least as valuable as that of a goldsmith. These modern utilitarians are
the Calvinists of political economy, and they strip their doctrine of
so many graces, and render it such a “_Praise-God-Barebones_” sort of
thing, that they will soon leave their church without a female disciple:
and woe to the church, or the system, that is deserted by the women!
They who would legislate for the world, must live in the world; and the
best intentions, aided by the best talents, will be found inadequate to
serve the great cause of humanity, if its schemes, though perfect in the
abstract, are inapplicable in practice to the actual state of society.
POETS’ LOVES.
“Never did poet touch a pen to write,
Until his ink were tempered with love’s sighs.”
Poets seldom make good lovers, except on paper: there is no serving
God and mammon. The concentration of thought which goes to the higher
flights of composition, allows the feeling but little play. There has
been much dispute, whether great actors are the dupes of their own art;
but the great actors themselves have honestly avowed that they owe their
successes to their coolness and self possession; and the poets, if they
were equally candid, would own themselves in the same predicament. They
are not, however, often inclined to make the confession. Horace says, “we
must weep ourselves, before we can make our readers weep;” and Pope’s,
“He best can paint them, who shall feel them most,” goes very nearly to
the same tune.
Passion, though eloquent, is not descriptive; and delights not in those
details which make the essence of impressive writing. Dr. Johnson, who
loved, or fancied he loved, _his_ she-bear, and was, therefore, (good
bruin!) the better authority on the subject, has said, that “he who woos
his mistress in verse, deserves to lose her;” and there is no woman of
sense, who would not come to the same conclusion. I have heard an odd,
paradoxical person assign a physiological reason for this. When one great
organ, he says, is much and permanently excited, the development is at
the expense of all the other functions. Head workers in particular, have
uniformly bad digestions; and how can a man be heroically in love with
a feeble stomach? I, who am no physiologist, can only appeal to facts.
Pope, Dryden, Swift, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, were none of them
famous as lovers; they had no ‘great passion,’ and excited none; some
of them were absolutely insensible to female charms, and were sceptics
to their influence. _La Fontaine_, with all his _naïveté_ (which is
generally so indicative of passion) was as cold as an icicle. “_Je
doute_,” says Ninon, his friend, “_qu’il y ait un filtre amoureux pour
La Fontaine. Il n’a guère aimé les femmes._” I have some doubts of the
sensibility even of the divine Petrarch, notwithstanding his thousand
and one sonnets, which made so little impression on Laura. As to Ovid,
his conceits are the antipodes of passion and feeling; and Anacreon was
so mere a _roué_, that I should as soon take Don Juan for a martyr to
the _belle passion_, as he. Cowley, who wrote so much upon love, was an
anchorite. Prior, who wrote so freely on it, was a rake; and Rousseau, a
poet in prose, wrote “Julie,” and lived with Thérèse, who, besides being
an _imbécille_, was neither chaste nor sober, and was “all for love,
and a little for the bottle.” When Doctor de Pruli chided Rousseau, a
few days before his death, for exposing himself, in his weak health,
by going to the cellar, Rousseau, pointing to Thérèse, observed, “_Que
voulez-vous? quand elle y va, elle y reste._”[3]
À propos to St. Preux and his Julie: nobody thought of visiting
Switzerland for its picturesque scenery, till Rousseau brought it into
fashion. Now every body goes to drop a sentimental tear at his “rochers
de Meillerie,” and to visit Mont Blanc. It is well for _les rochers_ that
this lachrymal humour has not the properties of Hannibal’s vinegar! What
would our magazines do but for these visitors to the mountains! I never
see an article headed “Journey to Mont Blanc,” without being tempted to
wish, that its author had done as Thérèse did by the wine cellar.
FANS.
Madame de Genlis, whose general information it would be uncandid to
dispute, (though it be so frequently perverted to substantiate her
favourite doctrine of the optimism of the past), has attributed the
invention of that pretty bauble, the fan, to the excessive modesty of the
French ladies before the revolution! In the happy times which preceded
that terrible event, the times of Agnes Sorrel, Diana of Poitiers,
Montespan, Pompadour, and Du Barry, the fan, it seems, was an object
of solute necessity to screen the blushes of the timid and bashful
innocents who used them. “In times when the ladies often blushed, and
desired to hide their embarrassment and timidity, they carried large
fans. They were at once a veil and a _countenance_.[4] By agitating the
fan the female concealed herself. In the present times ladies blush
but little, and are not at all timid; they have no desire whatever to
conceal themselves, and they carry only invisible fans, (_des éventails
imperceptibles_).”
What a falling off since the times of the Palais Royal, and of the
_petits soupers_ at Monceaux, when the king’s mistresses displaced his
ministers, and made out plans of campaigns with their rouge, and patches
for field marshals; when the de Boufflers and the Luxembourghs, the
highest rank and oldest blood in France, were candidates on the list
of royal concubinage; when nothing was natural but the children, and
nothing moral but that which was past the power of sin. These were the
times, the only times, when Frenchwomen blushed, and used fans: and well
they might! Let Madame de Genlis compare the Orleans family in the time
of Louis the Fourteenth, when the duke poisoned his wife; in the time
of the regency, as reported by the Dowager Duchess of Orleans herself;
in the time of the husband or lover of her aunt, Madame de Montesson,
and in the time of her own friend _Egalité_; and let her compare these
Orleans with the Orleans of the present times, the model of husbands,
fathers, citizens, and princes—schooled, not by the lessons given in
the cloisters of _Belle Chasse_, but by those of the world and of the
circumstances in which he has lived—and then talk of anti-revolutionary
modesty and timidity, and the origin of fans! The fan, like every thing
else, applicable to human use, has its origin in necessity. It is purely
an oriental fashion, and was invented for personal relief and convenience
in those ardent climates, where such portable ventilators and shades
were indispensable. A Chinese dandy would no more be seen without his
fan, than a Chinese belle; and the fan of the Rajah serves far better
purposes, than concealing the blushes and embarrassment of his wives. The
fans of the east are made of feathers. The domestic fans of Spain are
suspended from the ceiling of the apartments over the tables, from which,
during dinner, they keep off insects.
The fan was early introduced into the Roman church,—when the christians
removed from the “cool grots and mossy cells,” in which their pure and
persecuted sect was obliged to celebrate its devotions, to those superb
temples, where the consecrated fans of infallibility, borne before the
pope, still shew that even infallibility is no proof against heat.
The fan, likewise, makes a part of the ceremonies of the Greek church;
and is placed in the hands of the deacon, on the day of his consecration,
in allusion to his office of keeping off the flies from the priests,
while they officiate. This must be a sinecure in Russia; but the form
survives the want; and woe to the infidel, who, in that region of ice,
would propose a _chaufferette_, to replace the fan established by the
church and state, at some glorious and immortal epoch.
Fans came into England, with other eastern objects of use, ornament, or
curiosity. The fan with which Queen Elizabeth is said to have graciously
tapped an Irish lord lieutenant, (Sir J. Perrot,) would knock down a
modern courtier. In the time of Charles the Second a French fan was a
fatal gift. That which saved the modesty of Madame de Genlis’s Dianas,
purchased too often the honour of the Maid of Honour of the English
court. The Duchess of Portsmouth, of course, brought over her own fan
from the Palais Royal; from which she was despatched by the Duchess of
Orleans, to rule over the heart and councils of the king of England: and,
above all, to secure the king’s salvation, by enabling him to live and
die “_ferme catholique_” which he did.[5] The zeal and the views are the
same: the form only differs. Other times—other modes.
The fan, however, was not the great rampart thrown up before the citadel
of English modesty, under the Stuarts. The modesty of those times had
a strange habit of going to see plays so immodest, that it was deemed
necessary to cover the face “_pour dissimuler son embarras_;” and the
mask was resorted to, while the fan was simply retained, then, and for a
century afterwards, for the only and innocent purpose of
“Giving coolness to the matchless dame—
To every other breast, a flame.”
The tactics and manœuvres, necessary for the operating of these double
purposes, produced the well known “exercise of the fan,” so delightfully
detailed, for the benefit of posterity, in that treasure of a work, the
Spectator.
At last, in the decadence of manners, (historically marked in the
memoirs of a fan, and its philosophy, as clearly as in the decline and
fall of empires,) this elegant little implement of the coquetry of our
ancestresses fell to be an article of mere utility—returning, as all
things must, to its origin.
Our mothers and aunts appeared, during summer, with a good housewife-like
green fan, to keep off the sun: for “_l’affaire du parasol_,” for
which Louis the Fifteenth was obliged to issue a decree, had not yet
travelled into Great Britain; and the fan of “_ma tante Aurore_” was
the only fan known to our aunt Tabithas. French philosophy, and a
total abandonment of the constitution of 1688, at length banished this
instrument as an indispensable part of the toilette. The parasol was
found more convenient; and the fan, only employed to “_cool the matchless
dame_” after a walk through a quadrille, or a lounge through a waltz,
was reduced to that fairy size to which Madame de Genlis gives the
reproachful title of _éventail imperceptible_. “The history of fashions
is not so frivolous as has been imagined; it is, in fact, the history of
manners,”—and so far, _je suis d’accord_, with the venerable, but not
very veracious, historian of the “_Fan_.”
NO ONE’S ENEMY BUT HIS OWN.
“No man’s enemy but his own” happens generally to be the enemy of every
body with whom he is in relation. The leading quality that goes to make
this character, is a reckless imprudence, and a selfish pursuit of
selfish enjoyments, independent of all consequences. “No one’s enemy
but his own” runs rapidly through his means; calls, in a friendly way,
on his friends, for bonds, bail, and securities; involves his nearest
kin; leaves his wife a beggar; and quarters his orphans upon the public;
and, after having enjoyed himself to his last guinea, entails a life of
dependance on his progeny, and dies in the odour of that ill-understood
reputation of harmless folly, which is more injurious to society, than
some positive crimes. The social chain is so nicely and delicately
constructed, that not a link snaps, rusts, or refuses its proper play,
without the shock being felt like an electric vibration to its utmost
limits.
VULGARITY.
There is nothing so hopeless as vulgarity—genuine vulgarity, arising
from presumption and want of tact, united to the peculiar demonstrative
habits of humble life. The strongest illustration of this species of
vulgarity will be found in Ireland, where the national vanity forces
all qualities into evidence. It is often accompanied by the conscious
possession of some moderate talent, or some serviceable qualification,
which carries the possessor out of his natural orbit, into higher
circles, where he is adopted either as an available agent, or an amusing
ridicule. In this position, vulgarity comes out in its strongest relief;
and if it be not utterly disgusting, by being excessively obtrusive,
it is often very humorous and very absurd. This is the vulgarity which
furnishes mystification to society, and character for novels; supplying
the Lord Charleses with vastly good fun, and such writers as the authors
of “The Absentee” and the “O’Briens,” with their Sir Phelims and
their Captain O’Mealys. Easy assurance; a presuming familiarity, on
the slightest grounds, with persons of superior rank; obtrusiveness,
without reference to time, place, or persons; a clipped but not mitigated
brogue, gesticulation, and a sort of posture-master’s attitude; frequent
reference to “honour,” and “credit;” the dropping of titles when speaking
of the qualified, and an affected condescension when speaking to equals,
are among the generic signs of the incorrigibly vulgar of that country,
where it is the ambition of all to be supremely genteel.
In England, the classes and degrees of society are defined by such strong
lines of demarcation, that there is less play given for pretension to
exhibit its absurdities; and even the vulgarity of cockneyism is less
striking and less humorous, than the vulgarity of the social _parvenus_
of Irish circles. In either instance, confine the patient within the
limits of his own proper and natural sphere, and the vulgarity that
disgusts, or amuses when displaced, loses its sharpness, as engravers
say, for the true and abundant source of all vulgarity is pretension.
Nobody is struck by an apparent vulgarity in the smart young shopman, who
officiates behind the counter of one of the great “_houses_” (formerly
shops) in Waterloo Place or Oxford Street, and who, simply labouring in
his vocation, is as much what he ought to be, as “_comme il faut_,” as
the duchess, who tosses over his crêpes, cachemirs, and merinos, as if
the looms of France, Spain, and India were mounted and worked “solely for
her use.” But take this Dick, the apprentice of Grafton House, or of the
Magazine of Fashion, in his opera hat, at a ball at the Crown and Anchor,
or “playing the fine” at a “great to do” at Mrs. Mango’s, and you have
the delightful Magnus Apollo of Snow Hill,—the “sprightly young man” of
the Miss Brancton’s first floor.
Besides this highest and most dramatic order of vulgarity, in which
temperament and circumstances alike combine, there is a sort of
conventional vulgarity, found occasionally in all ranks and classes, and
which is only termed vulgarity, because it does not submit to be wound up
and set, by the great regulator of fashion. This species of vulgarity,
which is in fact no vulgarity at all, though it be a dereliction from the
standard manner of a particular circle, is generally the result of early
associations, and of great animal spirits overleaping the boundaries
prescribed by cold, quiet, still-life _bon ton_; for that style of
manners which has become a doctrine, is but the result of a phlegmatic
temperament, inherited with the old blood of ancient descent.
Pope, with a sort of physiological poetry, has applied the term “creep,”
to the languid circulation of “ancient but ignoble blood.” To be what
is called “_trop prononcé_,” (for the dogmas of modern fashion, like
the old English laws, are all given in French) is a misprision of
vulgarity, frequently detected even in the very highest classes; and no
coronet, however knobbed, can save its wearer from the imputation, if
she is once convicted of the high crime and misdemeanour of being too
“_démonstratif_” of her feelings, prepossessions, humours, or opinions.
I remember hearing one duchess say of another, “She is amusing, but she
is insufferably vulgar.” Both their graces were equally influential at
the head of their respective and particular circles: the more elegant
duchess was by temperament, and by British aristocratic breeding, endowed
“with all her sex’s softness,” and with all that quiet assumption of
dignity, which “comes but by the aid of use.” The more _demonstrative_
grace, with a highland temperament, and spirits bright and elevated as
the region that produced them, was perpetually bounding over the lines
of circumvallation drawn by the _bon ton_ against the inroads of nature.
Betrayed frequently into coarseness, she was still never vulgar—for
assumption, and not pretension, was the failing of the clever, brilliant,
but _trop prononcée_ Duchess of G——.
HUMAN PARROTS.
There are persons deficient in the stuff which makes intellect, just as
there are individuals born without some particular sense. Incapable of
originating ideas, because impenetrable to the impressions whence ideas
come, they have memories instead of minds. They retain words: and, in
giving them utterance, depend upon accident for the justice of their
application.
One of these human parrots was present the other day, when Mr. C—— said,
“Such an one cannot last; his physical force is quite gone.” A few days
afterwards, the parrot, in quoting the observation, remarked, “C. says he
cannot live much longer, for his physic is out.”
It is truly astonishing how little talent suffices to get on in the
world. The instinctive cunning observable in children and animals,
is equal to the wants and desires of the individual; and the unideal
babble and animal vivacity of the parrot, pass for information and
agreeableness: while genius and feeling, obstructed at every step by
dulness and prejudice, or revolted at the meanness and littleness which
thwart them, stop short in the first stage of their route, and recoiling
on themselves, too often live unknown and unbenefited by the world they
enlighten and amuse.
CATS.
In old family portraits, the ladies are painted with birds or animals as
the accessories of the picture. Such playthings were, in fact, the great
resources of our female ancestors, whose uneducated minds, and unsocial
position (when there were neither books nor assemblies) threw them upon
dogs, monkeys, parrots, and cats, as a refuge from _ennui_. Fondness for
animals arises out of the idleness of barbarism, as the tolerance of the
various nuisances they occasion does from its coarseness. It is not,
however, the less true, that the playful kitten, with its pretty little
tigerish gambles, is infinitely more amusing than half the people one is
obliged to live with in the world.
I have observed, that all domestic animals are more amiable and
intelligent on the continent, than with us: it may be they are better
treated; for nothing tames like kindness. The fine breed of Angola cats,
so common in the South of Italy, is a proof of the assertion; they are
much caressed and attended to, and are as intelligent and as attachable
as dogs. The first day we had the honour of dining at the palace of the
Archbishop of Taranto, at Naples, he said to me, “You must pardon my
passion for cats (_la mia passions gattesca_), but I never exclude them
from my dining-room, and you will find they make excellent company.”
Between the first and second course, the door opened, and several
enormously large and beautiful cats were introduced, by the names of
Pantalone, Desdemona, Otello, and other dramatic _cognomina_. They took
their places on chairs near the table, and were as silent, as quiet, as
motionless and as well behaved, as the most _bon-ton_ table in London
could require. On the bishop requesting one of the chaplains to help the
Signora Desdemona to something, the butler stept up to his lordship and
observed, “Desdemona will prefer waiting for the roasts.” After dinner
they were sent to walk on the terrace, and I had the honour of assisting
at their _coucher_, for which a number of comfortable cushions were
prepared in the bishop’s dressing-room. The Archbishop of Taranto, so
well known through Italy as the author of many clever works, has also
produced one on cats, full of ingenuity and pleasantry.
On my return from Naples, and during our second happy residence in Milan
(the remembrance of which is now clouded and embittered by the horrible
fate of those superior beings, who were the cause of that return and
that residence), I happened to mention my observation on the sensible
character of the animals of the south of Italy, and of the _douceur_ and
intelligence of the archbishop’s beautiful Desdemona; when the young
and gifted author of “Francesca da Rimini” (who now lies buried in his
living tomb—an Austrian _carcere duro_), related to me the story of a
“_passione gattesca_,” which had recently occurred in a neighbouring
village, perfectly illustrative of my hypothesis—here it is:—
“_Il Gatto del Cimitero._”
THE CAT OF THE CEMETERY.
A beautiful peasant girl of the village of Monte-orsano, in the Brianza,
had obtained a sort of melancholy celebrity by an infliction, which
frequently struck her down to the earth, in the midst of the village
festival, or church ceremony, where her beauty and piety were the
boast and the edification of her village friends. Every physician in
Lombardy, every saint in the calendar, had been applied to, on behalf
of _Clementina_; and vows and offerings had been made in vain, to cure,
what was incurable, a confirmed epilepsy. If the saints, however, were
negligent, Clementina had one friend, whose vigilance never slumbered.
It was her cat; which not only shared her bed and her _polenta_, but
followed her in her walks and devotions, from the vineyard to the altar.
The first time that _Mina_ saw her young mistress fall in a fit, and
wound herself against a tomb in the village cemetery, she exhibited the
most extraordinary emotion. She soon acquired the habit, from a frequent
recurrence of the infirmity, of watching its approach; and at last
seemed to have obtained such a knowledge of the change of countenance
and colour, which preceded the attack, that she was wont, on the first
symptom, to run to the parents of Clementina, and, by dragging their
clothes, scratching at their persons, or mewing in the most melancholy
manner, (“_Miagolando in tuono mesto ed affannoso_,”) she succeeded in
awakening their attention, and trotted out before them, mewing them on to
the spot, where her young mistress lay lifeless. Mina at last obtained
such confidence for her warnings, that, on the first cry of the faithful
cat, the friends of Clementina flew to her assistance before she incurred
any injury from her sudden fall.
At fifteen, the malady of the beautiful Clementina brought her to the
tomb. Her cat walked after her bier, on which she was exposed, (as is the
custom in Italy), and covered with flowers. During the funeral service,
she sat at the head of the bier, gazing with an intent look on the
lifeless features of her young mistress; and when the grave was filling,
she made a vain endeavour to jump in, but was withheld by the bystanders,
who carried home this chief mourner after the melancholy ceremony. Mina,
however, was seen the next morning stretched upon the new made grave,
which she continued to visit daily, until she visited it for the last
time, a few months after her friend’s death; when she was found dead upon
the green mound that covered her remains.
The celebrity of the “_Gatto del Cimitero_,” has not yet passed away
from the village of Monte-orsano. I dedicate this little history of the
faithful _Mina_, to my young friend _Ina_; whose “_passione gattesca_,”
entitles her to the distinction. Kindness to animals is but a form
of sensibility, and in youth is always the harbinger of higher and
deeper-seated feelings. It should not be confounded with the misplaced
instinct of maternity in childless old maids, or the capricious fondness
of adults for the brute creation, which is unaccompanied by any touch of
kindness for their biped dependants, or any manifestation of sympathy for
human misfortune.
TRADES, PROFESSIONS AND SCIENCES.
Trades, professions, manufactures, even the sciences, the divine sciences
themselves, come in and go out of fashion with times and circumstances;
and to talk of permanency, of stopping short at particular epochs
and eras (always so sacred with dullness and ignorance), is to speak
a language utterly inapplicable to truth, nature, and society. Many
of the trades which were in vogue so recently as the time of the two
first Georges, are passed and gone. Fifty years ago, London and Paris
abounded with fan painters. Some of the most noted artists among the
contemporaries of Sir Joshua Reynolds began life in this department of
their profession; and they made more money by sprawling shepherdesses in
bell-hoops, upon banks of roses, attended by squinting shepherds with
bag-wigs and bouquets, than some scores of young painters can now acquire
by copying the works of Titian, or catching the beauties of Raphael.
Then there was the coach-pannel painter, belonging to times when the
visiting chariot of a lady of fashion bore her device and cognizance on
her carriage, like the knight of old on his shield and target: when the
loves and the graces, with turtles, trophies, and wreaths of roses, were
sported in the park and the ring, to the admiration of the pedestrian
multitude, and the substantial comfort of the unambitious and unknown
artist.
I remember having seen one of these antiquated teams of taste of the
good old times, creeping along a cross road in Picardy, on my first
visit to France. How different from a modern “drag” of dash, shaped and
coloured like a mail coach, as strong and as ungainly, and decorated
with pointers and race-horses! It enshrined a dowager anti-revolutionary
beauty, much more freshly painted than her _voiture_ _coupée_, and almost
in as many colours. She bore in her hand a fan _to match_, that was an
historical picture of the court of Louis the XVth; and her hair was
dressed with a _tête_, surmounted by a _petite cornette, qui ne laissait
rien à désirer_, in the eyes of the true virtuoso of highly preserved
antiquities. The carriage, the fan, the _coiffure_, were all alike the
production of arts long now gone by. Oh! how I should have liked to seize
upon the whole set-out, and place it under a glass case!