After /the brilliant success which attended, in the spring of last
year, our volume on/ The Fan--/a success which was the result, as
I cannot conceal from myself, much more of the original conception
and decorative execution of that work of luxe than of its literary
interest--I have determined to close this series of/ Woman's
Ornaments /by a last little work on the protective adornments of
that delicate being, as graceful as she is gracious/: The Sunshade,
the Glove, the Muff. /This collection, therefore, of feminine toys
will be limited to two volumes, a collection which at first sight
appeared to us so complex and heavy that a dozen volumes at least
would have been required to contain its principal elements. This,
doubtless, on the one hand, would have tried our own constancy, and
on the other, would have failed in fixing more surely the inconstancy
of our female readers. The spirit has its freaks of independence, and
the unforeseen of life ought to be carefully economised. Moreover,
to tell the whole truth, the decorative elegance of a book like
the present hides very often beneath its prints the torture of an
intellectual thumbscrew. The unhappy author is obliged to confine his
exuberant ideas in a sort of strait-jacket in order to slip them more
easily through the varied combinations of pictorial design, which
here rules, an inexorable Mentor, over the text./
/In a work printed in this manner, just as in a theatre, the/ mise
en scène /is often detrimental to the piece; the one murders the
other--it cannot be otherwise--the public applauds, but the writer
who has the worship of his art sorrowfully resigns himself, and
inwardly protests against the condescension of which he has had
experience/.
/Two volumes, then, under a form which thus imprisons the strolling,
sauntering, inventive, and paradoxical spirit, will be sufficient for
my lady readers. Very soon we shall meet again in books with vaster
horizons, and "ceilings not so low," to employ an expression which
well describes the moral imprisonment in which I am enveloped by the
graces and exquisite talent of my collaborateur, Paul Avril/.
/Let it be understood, then, that I have no personal literary
pretensions in this work. As the sage Montaigne says in his/ Essays,
"/I have here but collected a heap of foreign flowers, and brought of
my own only the string which binds them together./"
/OCTAVE UZANNE./