/THE MITTEN/
/To M^{me.} H. de N./
Well, my dear friend, here I am, faithful as you see to my
appointment; I am come deliberately to fulfil my promise, which I so
imprudently gave on a certain day last season, upon a Breton strand,
you remember, while contemplating one of your rosy little hands,
which was whipping its sister with a long Swedish glove, in a sort
of angry pet, and gave to you an appearance of wild and exquisite
bluster?
How did you manage, O Enchantress, to induce me to give my loyal word
that I would write for you the /History of the Glove/? How! . . . who
can ever say? When a pair of pretty eyes envelop you, and bathe you
with their radiance, when a smile puts honey into your heart, and a
tiny little hand is stretched out with open palm, seeming to say,
"Take me," every kind of will melts quickly away, consent mounts
delightedly to the lips, and we promise at once everything, before we
know well what we are asked.
Ah, unhappy me! it is the Glove of Nessus which you have placed upon
my hand! The History of the Glove! why, it is the history of the
world; and I should be very ill-advised if I pretended /avoir les
Gants/ to be the first to tell that history, as ancient as it is
universal.
Haunted by this debt of honour, contracted to please you, I
went lately to see a learned old friend of mine, a venerable
Benedictine--better than a well of science; an ocean of
indulgence--to whom I exposed my foolish enterprise of the Glove and
the Mitten.
Ah, my friend, I only wish you could have seen him all at once leap
from his seat, look at me with compassion, examine me profoundly with
his eye, and murmur three times in a tone of ineffable astonishment
and sadness, as though he believed me mad--
"The Glove!--the Glove!!--the Glove!!!--
" . . . And so it is the Glove," he went on, when he had become a
little calmer, "it is the history of this offensive and defensive
ornament, of this object so complex, of which the origin is so
obscure and so troublesome, it is a monograph of the Glove that you
desire to write! . . . My dear child, allow me to believe that you
have not reflected on what you have engaged yourself to do, let
me think that you have brought more lightness than reason to the
conception of this enterprise. The Glove!--Why, with the history of
the Shoe, it is the most formidable work that a learned man could
dare to dream of executing. Look," he sighed, dragging forth a
voluminous manuscript, "in the /Bibliography of Words/, a colossal
work, which I have commenced, but, alas! shall never end, I see at
the word GLOVE more than fifteen hundred different works, Latin,
Greek, Italian, German, Spanish, English, and French, which treat of
this matter, and even this is but the rudest sketch. We must consider
the use of the Glove amongst the ancient Hebrews, the Babylonians,
the Armenians, the Syrians, the Phœnicians, the Sidonians, the
Parthians, the Lydians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, &c.
"It would be necessary to divide the work into different Books,
subdivided into innumerable Chapters; thus for the etymology alone of
/the word Glove/, in the different dialects, must be reserved a long
notice of comparative philology; it would be necessary to determine
if the Glove which was used by the young nude girls, who wrestled
together in Lacedæmon, after Lycurgus had installed there his Lyceums
and public games--if this Glove, I say, ought to be classed among the
fighting mufflers or the leathern gauntlets--and how many matters
besides!" And my dear old friend became still more and more excited,
ever widening the question, as if, it seemed to me, it were a case of
establishing a complete Encyclopedia. Diderot and d'Alembert would
have grown pale before that imperturbable science, which showed
mountains of folios to be cleared away, and unknown precipices to be
sounded.
"But," I hazarded in a little confusion, "I only think of writing a
light treatise, a thin volume of a few pages, one of those nothings
carried off by the wind, which pass for a second, like an anecdote or
tale, into a pretty feminine cerebellum; I wish to give hardly a line
to other countries than France, just to graze incidentally the Glove
of challenge, to speak only from memory of the pontifical Gloves,
to neglect the side of manufacture, the art of preparing the skins,
of removing the outside skin, and so on. I only desire in one word
to chat for a few instants, disconnectedly and in fits and starts,
on that portion of clothing which the ancients called /Chirothecæ/,
/Gannus/, /Gantus/, /Guantus/, /Wanto/, and /Wantus/, if I may trust
the /Glossary/ of Du Cange."
"Alas, that is true," cried my old friend, in a sadly modulated tone;
"I am doting, eh? We, of the old school, it is we who are the wet
blankets, the tedious savants. At the present day, when journalism is
to literature what the piano is to music, an instrument upon which
every one strums without any conviction, is it not necessary to cut
matters short, and quickly create eternal /à peu près/ (pretty much
the sames), little light dissertations, notices made on the spur of
the moment, and superficial passion? We were in our time egotists,
fervent solitaries, unreadable and unread, if you will; what does it
matter? When a work had fastened on our mind, we espoused it, after
a legitimate love, with all the joys of generation and paternity. We
wished to endow our labour with all the qualities which it seemed
able to bear, to such an extent, that it became dry, rugged, and
severe. But how many were the delights not to be forgotten, in those
traces followed for whole days, before our utterance of the joyous
/Eureka!/--how many inward intoxications in that slow-brooding
season, in that patient labour!--how many minute investigations
before resolving a historic doubt! We were the exclusives of national
erudition, and thought one work sufficed for one man, when he had fed
it with his life, with his watchings, with his very heart, with all
the tenderness of the creative workman.
"I should like," he continued, "to have twenty years to ride a
hobby-horse, which would make me rest at stopping-places for ten,
fifteen, twenty years, on a thorny work, and offer me splendid runs,
full of adventure, across the highways and secret paths of science.
I would commit the follies of Doctor Faustus, to return to the age
of those first bibliographic loves, which have the future brilliant
and open before them--and this Glove which you disdain, my dear young
friend--this Glove which you dwarf to the ideal of a doll--this
Glove, I would pick it up, hold it carefully, clear off with it like
a cat, and ensconce myself with it in my savant's den, to take a good
long sniff at it, to study it, and to analyse it every day more and
more, until at last I drew from it a serious and lasting work.
"This Glove should not be thrown at the public, like one of those
challenges which recall too distinctly the celebrated Glove which
Charles V. sent to Westminster by a mere scullion--an accentuation
of the insult offered to the King of England--it should be cast more
lovingly, as in our old romances of chivalry, /the Romance of the
Rose/, of /Rou/, or of /Perceforet/. If I were but twenty years old,
I would do with the reader as Petrarch did with Laura, in demanding
of her nothing more than the favour of picking up her Glove; and I
would say to him later on, after the fashion of Marot, poetically, in
offering my work:--
'Deign to receive these Gloves with goodly cheer,
My true heart's present of the coming year.'
"And then I would speak of those Mittens with which Xenophon
reproaches the degenerate Persians, of those Roman finger-stalls
employed in the olive crop, and even of that glutton named Pithyllus,
who carried delicacy so far as to make a Glove of a sheath of skin
for his tongue."
The good old man, kindled by his enthusiasm, became transformed; he
seemed desirous to take upon himself the whole history of the Glove,
which he embroidered at once with fancy and the most varied anecdote
that his wonderful memory could supply. After having distinguished,
in the Middle Ages, many sorts of Gloves, such as the /usual/ Glove,
the /falconer's/ Glove, the /workman's/ Glove, the /feminine/ Glove,
the /military/ Glove, the /seignorial/ Glove, and the /liturgical/
Glove, he attacked with a zest bordering on frenzy the part of the
Glove of the knights and men in armour of the heroic battles of the
past, at a time when individual prowess could still display itself;
he quoted the Chronicles of Du Guesclin and De Guigneville:--
"Rich basinets he ordered to be brought,
And Gloves with iron spikes with horror fraught."
He showed me, without recourse to aught but his own erudition, the
transformation of these iron gauntlets, first into mail, like the
coat, then into movable plates of flat iron, adapted to the movements
of the hand; he explained to me the lining, where the palm was of
leather or stuff, and at last, exhuming the ordinances of 1311, he
made me penetrate into the details of the manufacture:--
"That no one should make Gloves of plates, except the plates are
tinned or varnished, or beaten, or covered with black leather, red
leather, or samite, and that under the head of every nail should be
set a rivet of gold."
Ah, my fair friend, if you could have seen this strange man so
suddenly taken by my subject, you would have regarded me with pity,
for I could not help pouting a little at this old dean, and felt
myself attacked by a sudden cowardice, at the mere announcement of
the formidable researches which were to be undergone.
I took my humble leave of my most learned master, humiliated, floored
by the extent of his knowledge, his laborious zeal, his powerful
faith, his stubborn will. I saw that in giving you my word for a poor
Glove, I had given it to a demon, who showed me a Glove of an immense
shagreen skin, containing the world and its history--fantastic as a
nightmare, which weighed me down. Then I swore to sacrifice a part
for the rest, and not to build a cathedral when a simple cushion
at your feet would suffice me for my heedless chatter. Accept then
favourably this act of contrition, and let me be fully pardoned,
if, /à propos/ of the Glove, I bound along madly like a young kid,
without pity for the history of costume and historic documents, which
I trample under my feet, rather than see myself buried under their
pyramidal bundles.
That which my old friend had probably neglected is the Legend, and to
that I run.
A charming poet and a charmer, Jean Godard, a Parisian, the worthy
rival of Ronsard, published towards 1580 a piece entitled /The
Glove/. This witty nursling of the Muses pretends to show us the
origin of the Glove in the burning passion which Venus cherished for
Adonis. According to our poet--
"The young Adonis ever loved the field,
Now hunting the swift stag with branching head,
And now the tusked wild boar, just cause of dread.
Venus, fierce burning with his love alway,
Would never leave him neither night nor day,
But running after his sweet eyes and face,
Sought young Adonis, when he sought the chase:
Deep into forests full of gloomy fear,
The goddess followed him she held so dear.
One day, as she pursued him, bursting through
A bramble thicket, which by ill chance grew
Athwart her path, a cruel, hardy thorn
Pierced her white hand, and lo! the rose was born
From her red blood. But Venus, vexed with pain,
Lest any hurt should touch her hand again,
Bade all at once her unclad Graces sew
A leathern shelter for her hand of snow.
The lovely Graces, draped in floating hair,
No longer left their own hands free and bare,
But bound and covered them as Venus did.
And now the Glove's true origin is hid
No longer. This is it. Fair girls alone
Wore on their hands what now is common grown.
Then came the Emperor, and then his court,
And then at last the folk of every sort."
Charming in its /naïveté/, is it not, my dear friend, this fable
which gives the Glove the same origin as the rose!
The use of Gloves was widely spread in the Middle Ages. They covered
the wrist entirely, even with women. "The Gloves of the common
people," says M. Charles Louandre, "were of sheep-skin, of doe skin,
or of fur; those of bishops were made in chain-stitch of silk with
gold thread; those of simple priests were of black leather." But what
will surprise you is that, contrary to the present custom, it was
absolutely forbidden to appear gloved before great personages.
In a manuscript lately published, /The Sayings of the Merchants/, a
merchant cries, with an engaging air--
"I have pretty little bands,
And for damsels dainty Gloves,
Furred to warm their snowy hands,
These I sell to those sweet loves."
But what were the furred Gloves of sweet loves or gentle ladies
compared to those which the fair Venetians showed on the grand days
of ceremonies, when the Doge prepared to mount the Bucentaur for
the purpose of espousing the sea? These, according to M. Feuillet
de Conches, were Gloves of silk marvellously embroidered, embossed
with gold and pearls; some of them were of lace of an incomparable
richness, well worthy to be offered as a present, and to figure in
the budget of handsome acknowledgments. But the most wonderful were
the Gloves of painted skin, like the water-colours on Fans.
Here were country scenes, sheepfolds, pictures of ravishing
gallantry, miniatures beyond price. "And even," observes M. Feuillet
de Conches, "the heels of the shoes of dandies were decorated by
Watteau or by Parrocel."
The Valois doted, you know, on perfumed Gloves; this taste was fatal
to Jeanne d'Albret, who found her death in trying a pair of Gloves
dexterously prepared by some Italian quack, a friend of the sombre
Catherine. Consider, my friend, that with my romantic instinct, and
my temperament full of love for the drama, I might find here an easy
transition, and tell you, in long excited phrases, of the exploits of
the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, and the grim Gaudin de Sainte-Croix;
show you these sinister poisoners preparing by night their infamous
Glove stock; then in a tale fantastic as the /Olivier Brusson/ of
Hoffmann, evoke the famous trial of the Marchioness, the torture,
the various punishments, the burning chamber, up to the final stake.
All this /à propos/ of the Glove--who can say if such simple history
would not be worth more than all the cock-and-bull stories which I
am about to tell you, by compulsion, concerning the Glove and the
Mittens? In very truth, I would prefer, as your /vis-à-vis/, to
show myself a romancist, not an historian, for I should be sure of
being less of a bore, more personal, and, above all--shall I avow
it?--not in any degree common-place. But, as Miguel de Cervantes
said, "Our desires are extremely seditious servants." I will be then
reactionary, and will close the door against these socialists of
sentiment.
All this fine rigmarole has made me think of presenting you with a
letter of Antonio Perez to Lady Rich, sister of Lord Essex, who had
asked him for some dogskin Gloves:--
"I have experienced," he writes, "so much affliction in not having by
me the dogskin Gloves desired by your ladyship, that, waiting their
arrival, I have resolved to flay a little skin on the most delicate
part of my own body--if, indeed, any delicate part can be found upon
my rude self. Love and devotion to a lady's service may surely make
a man flay himself for her, and cut her a pair of Gloves out of his
own skin. But how can I pride myself on this with your ladyship, when
it is my custom to flay even my very soul for those I love? Could
mine be seen as clearly as my body, it would appear full of tatters,
the most lamentable sort of soul in the world;--the Gloves are of
dog's skin, madam, and yet of my own, for I hold myself as a dog, and
supplicate your ladyship to hold me in like regard, in requital of my
faith and my passion in your service."
What think you of this out-and-out gallant, of this "dying"
passionate lover? Here it seems to me, /à propos/ of scented Gloves,
we have a Castilian gentleman exceedingly well skilled in the
delicate art of offering them to ladies.
Spanish Gloves are reproached with too strong a smell; the French
ladies suffer strangely from their too heady odour: Antonio Perez
would certainly have been an excellent manufacturer of perfumed
Gloves--discreet in his scents, distinguished in his form.
The Gloves most in vogue after the time of La Fronde were the
Gloves of Rome, of Grenoble, of Blois, of Esla, and of Paris. M. de
Chanteloup charged Poussin to buy him Roman Gloves, and the latter
wrote back on 7th October, 1646: "Here are a dozen pairs of Gloves,
half men's, half women's. They cost half-a-pistole a pair, which
makes eighteen crowns for the whole." The 18th October, 1649, another
purchase; but this time they are Gloves scented with Frangipane,
with which Poussin provided himself for M. de Chanteloup; and
these he bought at la Signora Maddelena's, "a woman famous for her
perfumes." In Paris, according to /The Convenient Address Book/ of
Nicolas de Blegny--the Bottin of 1692--there were a certain number of
manufacturers of perfumed Gloves in the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec and the
Rue Saint-Honoré. "There are," says the editor of this commercial
almanac, "Glove-merchants very well stocked; for instance, M. Remy,
opposite Saint-Méderic, who is famous for his excellent buck-skin
Gloves; Arsan, hard by the Abbey Saint-Germain; Richard, Rue
Saint-Denis, /at the little St. John/, well known for his Gloves of
/Fowl-skin/; and Richard, Rue Galande, at /the Great King/, whose
commerce is in doeskin Gloves."
The name of fowl-skin Glove doubtless astonishes you--another name
was outer lamb skin; they were made for the use of ladies during
the summer. The pretended fowl-skin was nothing but the epidermis of
kid-skin, and the preparation of this epidermis was the real triumph
of the Glove-merchants of Paris and Rome. Gloves of /Canepin/, or
outer lamb's-skin, were made, it is said, so delicate and thin, that
a pair of them could be easily enclosed in a walnut shell.
The buck-skin or buffalo-skin Glove was specially made for falconers;
it covered the right hand half up the arm, thus completely protecting
it against the claws, or rather the talons, of the bird, falcon,
gerfalcon, or sparrow-hawk, when it came to settle on their fist.
Hawking existed even under Louis XIII., but it was no longer the
grand and splendid epoch of this aristocratic sport, so profoundly
interesting. In one of his ancient legends, André le Chapelain,
of whom Stendhal wrote a short biographical notice, speaks of a
sparrow-hawk, to gain which the magic Glove was necessary. This Glove
could only be obtained by a victory in the lists over two of the most
formidable champions of Christendom. It was suspended to a golden
column, and very carefully guarded. But when the knight had by his
skill gained the Glove, he saw the beautiful sparrow-hawk so much
desired swoop down immediately upon his fist.
Up to the age of Louis XIV., the skin Glove was destined rather
for the use of men, and it was only under this Prince that Gloves
mounting a long way up the arm, and long Mittens of silk netting to
set off the hands of women, were generally adopted by them.
Gloves /à l'occasion/, /à la Cadenet/, /à la Phyllis/, /à la
Frangipane/, /à la Néroli/, Gloves /of the last cut/ worn awhile by
the /Précieuses/, ceased to be fashionable about 1680. The custom, of
which Tallemant speaks, of presenting ladies, after the banquet, with
basins of Spanish Gloves, was only vulgarised in passing from the
Court to the town.
Dangeau, in his /Memoirs/, has written a chapter on the /Etiquette
of Gloves and the Ceremonial of Mittens/. I refer you to it without
ceremony.
Under Louis XV., in the eighteenth century, so full of the rustle
of silk, so enchanting that I fear to stop on it in your company,
lest I should never leave it, the wearing of Gloves quickly became
an enormous luxury. All those fair coquettes, whom you have seen
at their toilets, or their /petit lever/, after Nattier, Pater, or
Moreau, surrounded by their "/filles de modes/," caused a greater
massacre of Gloves at the time of trying them on, than our richest
worldlings of to-day. These Gloves were of kid, of thread, and
of silk; the most celebrated came from Vendôme, from Blois, from
Grenoble, and from Paris; they were generally made of white skin,
wretchedly sewn, but the cut was extremely graceful, with its cuff
falling from the wrist over the hand, and small ribbons and fine
rosettes of carnation interlaced on this cuff.
Gloves sewn after the English fashion were highly appreciated. It
became a proverb, that for a Glove to be good, three realms must have
contributed to it: "Spain to prepare the skin and make it supple,
France to cut it, and England to sew it."
Caraccioli maintains that a woman of fashion, about the middle of the
eighteenth century, would not dispense with changing her Gloves four
or five times a day. "The /petits-maîtres/," he adds, "never fail to
put on, in the morning, Gloves of rose or /jonquil/, perfumed by the
celebrated Dulac." As to Mittens, the same observer of the century
notices them as specially belonging to women. "Nevertheless," he
says, "in winter the manufacturers make furred Mittens, and men now
wear them when they travel."
Madame de Genlis has this curious observation in her /Dictionary of
Etiquette/: "If you have anything to present to a princess, and have
your Glove on, you must needs take it off."
How many anecdotes, how many literary souvenirs, the Glove of the
eighteenth century summons to the thought!
You remember, I am quite sure, that pretty chapter consecrated by
Sterne, in his /Sentimental Journey/, to the beautiful Grisette who
sold Gloves, into whose shop he entered to ask his way. The pretty
Glove-seller coquets with the stranger, shows herself extremely
complaisant, and the sentimental traveller, to prove his gratitude
for her kindness, asks for some Gloves, and tries on several pairs
without finding one to suit him. But he takes two or three pairs all
the same before he goes.
The story leaves a fresh feature in the mind: an English artist has
fixed it with much delicacy on a remarkable canvas, which figures in
the National Gallery. The authors of the /Vie Parisienne/ were surely
inspired by it a little later in their joyous libretto, when they
wrote the well-known couplets of the lady who sold Gloves and the
Brazilian.
Permit me also to relate to you an anecdote, rather slight in
texture, of which Duclos is the hero, and which has all the flavour
of his roguish age:--
The author of /Manners/ was bathing on the flowery borders of the
Seine, and giving himself up to skilled /hand-over-hand/, when
he suddenly heard piercing cries of distress. He rushes out of
the water, runs up the bank without taking time to slip on his
"indispensables," and finds a young and charming woman, whose
carriage had just been overturned in a rut. He hastens to beauty
in tears, lying on the ground, and making a gracious bow, in his
academic nudity, "Madam," says he, in offering her his hand to assist
her to rise, "pardon my want of Gloves."
Here we have at once the expression of a scoffing sceptic, and a
giddy philosopher, full of a particular charm. Do not believe, my
gentle friend, that if I remain in your company so short a time in
the beginning of the eighteenth century--the only one which has,
you cannot deny it, all its perfumed quintessence--do not believe
that I intend to linger in the Revolution, and conduct you to the
house of Mademoiselle Lange, Madame Talien, Madame Récamier, and all
the fashionable drawing-rooms of the First Republic, the Directory,
the Consulate, and the Empire; to take ceremoniously the hand of
the marvellous Beauties, the Nymphs, and Muses of those troubled
times, in order the better to show you what extravagant Gloves, what
prodigious Mittens, were then worn. The /Ladies' Journal/, and all
the small journals of fashion, will surely teach you more about the
Gloves worn by these worldly Calypsos and Eucharises than six hundred
monotonous pages of varied descriptions. There is no Museum, however,
preserving the objects of art which the Revolution marked deeply with
its seal; and this fact will make me insist on a model of a special
Glove, destined for a representative of the people despatched to the
army, of which an erudite archæologist of the Revolution, and at the
same time a remarkable humourist, Champfleury, has been good enough
to communicate to me a design. This Glove of doe-skin, manufactured
according to order, and broidered with arabesques about the slopings
of the thumb, bears on the back of the hand a vignette in the form
of a seal, which represents Liberty holding in her hand the pike,
the Phrygian cap, and the scales of justice--a Liberty, you will
say, by no means at liberty . . . . in her movements:--on the right
is crouched a lion, the sign of force; on the left a cat, a sign of
independence.
I will not lose my time in paraphrasing for you this symbolic
vignette; and, with a long historic stride, I will conduct you
into the quietude of some chateau, under the Restoration, and, in
the evening twilight, to the terrace before a great park. I will
there show you two lovers warbling a serenade--the timid young girl
touching a guitar, the young man deeply moved, putting a world of
passion into his baritone voice. On the hands of the singer, behold,
pearly grey gloves fastening with a single button; on the dainty
little fingers supporting the guitar, examine those Mittens of black
silk lace, open worked, like those which, according to tradition, are
worn by the heroine of that charming comedy, the /Marriageable Maid/.
There rises on my lips a song of the time which the /Almanac of
the Muses/ has bequeathed us, to the air of /The Little Sailor/. It
will perhaps add a spice of interest to my story. "Now, listen, my
friend," as they used to say in the noble ages of chivalry. Title of
the song: /The Gloves/.
I love the Glove, that covers quite
The rounded arm it rests upon;
I take it off, with what delight,
With what delight I put it on!
If true it is through mystery,
A lover's bliss will higher move,
How dear that little hand should be
Which hides itself beneath a Glove!
But there's another Glove, whose use
Will every swaggerer displease;
A Glove correcting all abuse,
Which brings the braggart to his knees;
How many boasting folk I've known,
Who would, and wisely, rather prove
A flight from out the window thrown,
Than see before them that same Glove!
The Gloves are useful when we seek
The fair, the great ones, as we know;
When unto those with Gloves we speak,
Easy at once their favours grow.
They for intriguers wealth have won,
No fools their uses are above;
Of what another man has done
They boast, and give themselves the Glove.
One last couplet, I pray you, and the authoress, Madame Perrier, will
bow herself out:--
The Gloveless man can ne'er afford
To dance, no step he makes with grace;
The servant wishes that his lord
Should put on Gloves in many a case.
When the police are wide awake,
To cheat those eyes they hardly love,
How many thieves will wisely take
The greatest care to wear the Glove?
The song is not so bad, truly; and if the Muse gloves the author a
little tightly, the tone of his strophes is none the less strictly
respectable and proper.
Under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. long Gloves were very costly;
still, no coquette hesitated to change them every day, for it was
necessary for them to be of extreme freshness of colour, which was
either buff, gridelin, or white. Some years later, the fashion
tended to maize, straw, or nut colour for the evening and morning
toilet, and to palisander, burnt bread, cedar, fawn, for afternoon
visits. Yellow Gloves had an infinite scale of tones, from a soft
and delicate unbleached lawn colour to the glaring yellow of a
stage-coach. White doe-skin was only used by men when riding.
It was about this epoch, if I mistake not, that the denunciation of
/Gant jaune/ (yellow glove) became synonymous with /petit-maître/
(dandy). In London, the disciples of Brummel--of the most refined
elegance--constituted a society, and formed the Club of the /Fringed
Glove/. This club no longer existed doubtless in 1839, when d'Orsay
established thus despotically the rules of the perfect gentleman:
"An English gentleman of fashion," said he, "ought to use six pair of
Gloves a day:
"In the morning to drive a britzska to the hunt: Gloves of reindeer.
"At the hunt, to follow a fox: Gloves of shammy leather.
"To return to London in a Tilbury, after a drive at Richmond in the
morning: Gloves of beaver.
"To go later for a walk in Hyde Park, or to conduct a lady to pay her
visits or make her purchases in London, and /to offer her your hand
in descending from the carriage/: coloured kid Gloves braided.
"To go to a dinner-party: yellow dog's skin Gloves--and in the
evening for a ball or rout: Gloves of white lamb-skin embroidered
with silk."
What odious tyranny is so exacting a fashion! And how sensible was
Balzac when he wrote: "Dandyism is a heresy of fashion; in making
himself a dandy, a man becomes a piece of furniture of the boudoir,
an extremely ingenious puppet, which can pose on a horse, or on
a sofa, which sucks habitually the end of a walking-stick, but a
reasonable being--never!"
It is, however, with some dandy of the school of Rubempré and
Rastignac, that often, on quitting the ball, an author shows us a
romantic young lady in love, whose jealousy gnaws at her heart, who
re-reads the letters of old times, and with wandering looks, like
one overwhelmed, nervously tearing with her teeth a finger of her
Glove, sadly dreams that the lover who is no longer all, is nothing,
and that the moralist much deceived himself who wrote: "Woman is a
charming creature, who puts off her love as easily as her Glove."
How many things are there, look you, in a Glove!
In the novel /The Lion in Love/ of Frédéric Soulié, Léonce signs the
register of marriages at the mayoralty with a gloved hand; and when
Lise's turn comes, the young girl stops, saying in a voice tinged
with just a touch of mockery, "Pardon me, let me remove my Glove."
"Léonce understood," then says the author, "that he had signed
with his gloved hand." Sign an act of marriage with a Glove!
Léonce meditated a little, and said to himself: "These people have
certain delicacies. What difference makes a Glove more or less to
the holiness of an oath, or the signature of a document? Nothing
assuredly; and yet it seems that there is more sincerity in a naked
hand, which affixes the signature of a man in testimony of the truth.
It is one of those imperceptible sentiments of which we are unable to
give an exact account, but which nevertheless exist."
The fact is, that the Glove is not really, as has been said, a
tyrant of which the hand is the slave, but quite the contrary--it
is the hand's servant; and with the hand, as Montaigne wrote, "We
request, promise, call, dismiss, menace, pray, supplicate, deny,
refuse, interrogate, admire, number, confess, repent, fear, shame,
double, instruct, command, incite, encourage, swear, witness, accuse,
condemn, absolve, injure, contemn, distrust, track, flatter, applaud,
bless, humiliate, mock, reconcile, recommend, exalt, feast, rejoice,
complain, sadden, discomfort, despair, astonish, write, suppress," &c.