/THE FUR./
The Muff! The very name has something about it delicate, downy, and
voluptuous. From that little warm satin nest, where pretty chilly
little hands ensconce themselves in silk, carrying with them a lace
handkerchief, a box of lozenges, a bouquet of Parma violets, or a
tender loving /billet-doux/, a thousand trifles spring up to please
us, like a swarm of souvenirs and caressing thoughts of our first
years passed at home, and of our first roving loves.
In childhood, we delight to play with the large maternal Muff, to
pass our hands over it the wrong way to excite the electricity of
the long hair, to plunge our faces in the pungent heady odour of its
down, and to make use of this furred sack in inconceivable tricks, in
playing at hide-and-seek with small objects, or in burying therein
the familiar cat, who becomes lazy in its warmth.
Then, later on, at the hour of the first rendezvous, during one of
those icy winters which Ronsard dreaded for his darling, when we see
our so much desired mistress appear veiled and all imprisoned in
furs, we become almost jealous of the pretty and coquettish Muff, in
which she buries her roguish little nose, which the glacial breeze
has lashed and reddened, and we plunge then with a sweet brutality
our own hands into the silky cylinder, there to find, and there
passionately to press the pretty idle fingers, which we are for so
generously thawing, by covering them with long kisses like gloves.
When the Muff returns from exile with the first hoar frosts of
November, it causes, as soon as it appears on the boulevards, a
sensation, intimate and delicious, to all true /feminists/, to the
Dilettanti of woman--to all those who perceive in their most delicate
shades the graces of which a naive or coquettish woman can avail
herself, whether in handling the Fan or the Sunshade, or in tucking
up a corner of a spring petticoat, or in passing along radiant in
a long furry pelisse, or more passive in letting herself glide
languishingly in a sledge over the ice of the lake, making eyes at
her darling who skates by her side, and pushes forward her coquettish
equipage. It seems that woman, that exquisite and delicate flower,
blossoms in fur, as those white gardenias of the conservatory which
half open and develop themselves in a nest of perfumed wadding.
The more she hides, muffles up, deadens, so to speak, her beauty, the
more woman--a creature of Hades who makes us dream of paradise--is
bewitching in the diabolicity of her graces. When Love, who is
represented blind, sets a mask on Venus-coquette, one might think the
trickster boy was for burning the universe, for behind those yawning
apertures of the black velvet mask, behind those murderous loopholes,
two woman's eyes are lying in ambush, pitiless, turn by turn
laughing, burning, blazing, drowned in pleasure, charged, in a word,
as with grape-shot, with all the shafts of the Cupidonian quiver.
Thus, out of the midst of furs, woman, that mignonette plant, that
/mimosa pudica/, throws off beauty more mysterious, more warm, more
full of promise, more enveloped and more enveloping, as if from the
electricity of that peltry, there was spread in the ambient air of
the provoking daughter of Eve an attractive sensuality, like a subtle
caress, which rustles against our senses in its passage.
The ancients had perhaps great reason to attach, as they did, certain
excellences and prerogatives to fur: a master furrier, Charrier,
wrote on this subject, in 1634, remarks and moral considerations as
naïve as curious: "Our kings, whether they are consecrated, crowned,
or married, divest themselves of the splendour of embroideries and
of diamonds, to take their royal mantle hedged about with lilies and
lined with ermine.
"The mantles of the chevaliers, dukes, and peers of France are lined
with lynx, marten, and ermine; the chancellors, keepers of the seals,
who are the guardians of our laws, wear the most exquisite furs.
"Bachelors and doctors, emperors and physicians clothe themselves
with furs which represent the mysteries of theology, the maxims of
politics, the secrets of medicine. Furs cure people of headaches and
disordered stomachs; attacks of gout which triumph over the most
potent remedies, are vanquished by the skins of cats, lambs, and
hares."
In fine, the good Charrier proves with pride that of all the
ornaments which luxury has invented there is none so glorious, so
august, so precious, as furs, and that the privileges of peltry
merchants rightly surpass those of all others.
The masters and wardens of the peltry merchandise had for their arms
a paschal lamb on an azure field. Two ermines supported the shield
crested with the ducal crown, with this device in exergue--very like
that of Brittany--/Malo mori quam fœdari/.
The use of furs dates back to the origin of the world. Plutarch, in
his /Table Talk/, relates that people dressed themselves in skins
before they became acquainted with stuffs. Tacitus assures us it was
the same with the Teutons, Propertius with the Romans.
Robed in rich silk, the Court you now behold
Was once a folk fur-clad against the cold,
says a poet of the sixteenth century. But without stopping at the
conquest of the Golden Fleece, at Rebekah ordering Jacob to put on
his hands and neck kids' skins, at all the examples of the Bible and
of history, we will only remark that the four noble furs consecrated
by feudality were the ermine, the vair, the sable, and the miniver.
The colours of furs admitted into coats of arms were those of the
sable, the ermine, and the vair.
Charlemagne, who loved, they say, simplicity in his apparel, had,
according to Eginhard, the habit of wearing in summer a mantle of
otter's skin; but in winter he covered himself with a mantle of which
the sleeves were lined with vair and foxes' fur. This is corroborated
by the four following verses of Philippe Mousnes, the poet biographer
of this Emperor:--
But in the days of fallen leaves,
He wore a new surcoat with sleeves
Of furs of foxes and of vair
To shield him from the nipping air.
At the epoch of the Crusades, the luxury of furs was carried to the
highest degree in Western Europe; but to remain absolutely fixed to
the Muff, we must register the first apparition of this little fur
about the end of the sixteenth century. In the inventory of goods
left by the widow of the President Nicolai we read: Item, a Muff of
velvet lined with marten.
In Venice, however, we have in our researches found a vestige of the
Muff at the end of the fifteenth century; celebrated courtezans and
noble ladies at that time carried Muffs, which served for niches to
minuscular dogs; and an engraving represents a scene of an interior,
in which a fair Venetian seems to be showing her lover the infinite
games of her lap-dogs in her Muff.
There were at that time in Venice delicious Muffs made after the
primitive fashion of a single band of velvet, brocade, or silk, lined
with fine fur, rounded in a cylinder, of which the extremities were
closed in different widths by buttons of orient crystal, pearls or
gold.
D'Aubigné, in his /Universal History/, says in the course of a story
of a besieged town:--"The inhabitants descended thirty paces from the
breach, and among the foremost was noticed a woman /with Muffs/, a
halberd in her hand, who mixed with and distinguished herself in this
combat." Under the designation of /Muffs/ we must understand here
spare half-sleeves like those mentioned in the Library of Vauprivas
/à propos/ of Louise Labé. Under Charles IX. the simple citizen
folk were only allowed to wear black Muffs; ladies of the highest
condition had alone a right to sumptuous Muffs of various colours.
In a satiric print of 1634, signed Jaspar Isac, and entitled /The
Squire à la Mode/, we see carried by a woman, who is accompanied on
foot by a Gascon cavalier, the first French Muff having a direct
relation with that which is still in use at the present day. It is a
sheath of stuff or silk bordered on both sides by a thick white fur,
which grows into an enormous roll at the ends.
But it is amongst the precious engravings of Hollar, Abraham Bosse,
Arnoult, Sandrart, Bonnard, and Trouvain that we see the authentic
Muff really born, and find it in the hands of the Parisian matron,
of the lady of quality in her winter dress, of the /Précieuse/, and
the coquetting flirt. An engraving of Bonnard shows us a great lady
with her head dressed à la Fontange, and in court dress, on the point
of going out; a waiting-maid adjusts her mantle, and a gentleman
attends the beauty's good pleasure; the Muff she carries was then
of a moderate size, with a bow in the middle. The Muff was worn for
style, "for grace," and was made of sable-marten for ladies of the
Court, and simply of dogskin or catskin for the small citizens'
wives who could not devote more than fifteen to twenty francs to the
acquisition of this light hand-warmer.
Antoine Furetière, in his /Dictionary/, has condensed in a few lines
all the materials of a Dissertation on the Muff of the seventeenth
century. At the word /Muff/ we read:--
A fur worn in winter, in which to put the hands, to keep them warm.
/Muffs/ were formerly only for women: at the present day they are
carried by men. The finest /Muffs/ are made of marten, . . . . the
common of miniver; . . . . the country /Muffs/ of the cavaliers are
made of otter and of tiger. A woman puts her nose in her /Muff/ to
hide herself. A little /Muff/-dog is a little dog which ladies can
carry in their /Muff/.
Everything we see is summed up in this. Saint-Jean and Bonnard have
preserved for us types of French gentlemen bearing the Muff under
Louis XIV. One, in court dress, carries with much grace a small
spotted Muff, which he holds in one hand, showing a glimpse at
the unoccupied end of the cuff of a fur glove; another, in winter
court-dress, holds with the languor of a /petit-maître/ a pretty
plump otter Muff falling to the hips, giving a gracious curve to the
arm; in the middle of this Muff a vast bow of ribbons or /Galants/,
something like the old trimming called /petite oie/, is displayed
with an excellent effect. In 1680, nothing, according to the /Mercure
Galant/, was to be seen but ribbons purfled with gold, laced,
fringed, wreathed, purled, or embroidered, which were gathered in a
bow in front, of the Muff.
La Fontaine alludes doubtless to the country Muff spoken of by
Furetière when, in the fable of the /Monkey and the Leopard/, he
makes the latter say:--
The king desires me at his Court,
And must have--if I die for't--
A /Muff/, made of my skin, so full of blots
Of colour, and of lines, and dots,
And dappled stains, and chequered spots.
As to the Muff-dog--to finish the registration of the definition
of Furetière--not only has Hollar left us an engraving of it, and
presented it to us under the form of a small Spaniel, but Father du
Cerceau makes his /upholsterer poet/ say--Even the lady's lapdog
barked at me, that ingrate
Cadet, for whom I used to stuff
So many sweets inside my Muff.
The chief hall of the peltry merchants and furriers of the 17th
century, in Paris, was in the Rue de la Tabletterie or Rue des
Fourreurs, which led into the cross-way of the Place aux Chats. The
shops of the retail peltry merchants were nearly all situated in the
City, Rue Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, and Rue de la Juiverie.
"In these places," says Léger, "are to be found very beautiful Muffs
for men and for women, and very fashionable ones . . . there are to
be sold also very beautiful amices of miniver." He adds a word about
the Palatines properly got up, composed of skins of animals, foreign
and native. The /Livre commode des adresses de Paris/ contains some
designations of peltry merchants and furriers towards the end of the
seventeenth century.
Fashion altered the shape of the Muff considerably under Louis XIV.
From the rare documents which we have been able to catalogue, we
have easily found numerous modifications in both form and volume.
Sometimes narrow and long, sometimes broad and short, it would be
impossible to assign to this little chattel an exact type for all
that epoch.
The Muff triumphed already, under Louis XIII., in the empire of
oglings and at the Place Royale, as it reigned later at Versailles,
and showed itself in sedan chairs in the midst of the alleys of
the park at the visiting hour, lending always to woman a charming
countenance and exquisite graces.
Scarron, in his /Poésies Diverses/, has left us in four verses a
pretty picture of manners for any one who could morally develop it.
The poor cripple Scarron certainly had no need of a Muff in his
arm-chair!--
My wife then leaves at once, though she
All perils should divide with me;
She takes her Muff and goes
To see some one she knows. . . .
But let us leave the age of big wigs and Fontange head-dresses,
and penetrate into the age of powder and patches, into the age of
Voltaire, who, /à propos/ of one of his characters in /Micromégas/,
wrote:
"Imagine a very small Muff-dog following a captain of the Guards of
the King of Prussia."
An engraving of the /Encyclopédie/ presents us in the nick of time
with a faithful reproduction of a shop of a furrier of the last
century. Day penetrates through a large glass bow window; all round,
on shelves, are ranged Muffs and different furs; two pleasing
shopwomen offer their customers enormous Muffs of miniver, and a
shop-boy beats with a rod one of those furred mantles which were sent
"to be kept" during the summer, to preserve them from the mites. This
engraving, a precious document which may be attributed to Cochin,
recalls two charming little stories of Restif de la Bretonne in his
/Contemporaines du Commun/: one entitled /La Jolie Fourreuse/, the
other /La Jolie Pelletière/. Professions passed out of sight!
"Furs"--MM. de Goncourt wrote in a note of much study to their book
/La Femme au XVIII^e Siècle/--"were a great luxury of Parisian
ladies, at the time when the fashion was to arrive at the opera
wrapt in the most superb and rarest, and to take them off little
by little with coquettish art." The reputation of the sable, the
ermine, the miniver, the lynx, the otter, is indicated in the
/Étrennes Fourrées dédiées aux jolies Frileuses/, Geneva, 1770.
Muffs have quite a history, from those on which the furrier brought
discredit, in causing one to be worn by the hangman on the execution
day--these were probably Muffs /à la Jésuite/, muffs which were not
of fur, and against which a pleasantry at the commencement of the
century, /A petition presented to the Pope by the master furriers/,
solicits excommunication--up to those of Angora goats' hair, immense
Muffs which reached to the ground, and to the little Muffs at the
end of the century, baptized /little barrels/, as the Palatine was
called /cat/. The fashion of sledges, then very widely spread, added
to the fashion of furs. An etching of Caylus, after a drawing of
Coypel, about the middle of the century, shows us in a sledge set
on dolphins--one of those sledges which cost ten thousand crowns--a
pretty woman dressed entirely in fur, her head-dress a small bonnet
of fur with an egret, carried along in a sledge, which is driven by
a coachman dressed like a Muscovite, and standing at the back. /À
propos/ of furs, the /Palatine/ owes its fortune and its name to the
Duchess of Orléans, mother of the Regent, known under the name of the
Princess Palatine.
Palatines--which were made of fox, of marten, of miniver--were worn
for a long time with /Polonaises/ and /Hongrelines/. Roy, a French
poet of the 18th century, who made acquaintance with the stick
at different intervals--sent some bad verses to a lady on the
subject of her /blue palatine/. The /Almanach des Muses/ of 1772 has
preserved them for us. Here they are:--
That charming colour wear,
The colour of the summer sky above,
The colour Venus sets on every Love,
Which makes the fairest faces yet more fair,
As Venus in her own sweet self can prove:
But the white place where falls the tufted bow
Is nought indeed but lovely nakedness;
Why hide it then? The beauty which men bless
Gains on the whole by losing, don't you know?
Caraccioli remarks that people used Muffs in winter just as much for
elegance as for need. "The form varies continually," he says; "to-day
(1768) men carry small Muffs lined with down, and trimmed with black
or grey satin."
In 1720, women's Muffs were very narrow and long; the crossed hands
filled it exactly; afterwards they became wider, like those we may
see on the hands of the pretty skaters of Lancret. A typical Muff of
the epoch was the ermine Muff, fearfully large, which we find carried
by the Venetian masks of the delicious Pietro Longhi, who seems to
have wished to illustrate by his pictures the /Memoires/ of Jacques
Casanova of Seingalt. In the small engravings of the century relating
to travelling, which show us the stoppages at the inn, or the
packings in the public vehicles, we see everywhere the feminine Muff
delicately pressed against their waists by the pretty adventuresses.
Boucher's skater, who passes like a gracious Parisian little figure
over a background of a Dutch landscape, doubled up but valiant,
appears to make a prow of her Muff, the better to cleave the sharp
cold air. But in the intimacy of private life, in the eighteenth
century as now, the Muff could lend a charm to genre paintings, and
the manufacturers of prints might have composed many /Little posts/
and /Nests for love-letters/, interpreting by their drawing what the
author of the /Dictionnaire des Amoureux/ wished to express, when at
the word /Muff/ he gives this piquant definition: /A Letter-box,
lined with white satin./
The most celebrated and the most delicious picture in which a Muff
figures is assuredly that adorable painting known by the name of /The
Young Girl with the Muff/, by Joshua Reynolds, which formed part of
the beautiful collection of the Marquis of Hertford. Nothing is more
delicate than this painting. That young English-woman seems rather to
walk through the picture than remain fixed in it, so great, one might
say, was the quickness with which the painter has caught that image
in its passage with its movement of walking--the body is inclined a
little forward, the head on one side; the woman's bust, which stops
at the Muff, is so fresh in its composition, so fine in its tonality,
so radiant in its originality of design, that it would be enough
almost by itself to establish the immortal reputation of Reynolds,
who has put into his work a very quintessence of femininity, as an
ideal of the most exquisite English loveliness, and also as a type,
delicate and never to be forgotten, of a chilly beauty.
Nor must we forget the /Portrait of Mrs. Siddons/, painted by
Gainsborough, in the charm of her twenty-ninth year, in 1784. This
picture, which was exhibited at Manchester in 1857, is now in the
/National Gallery/. The charming lady, dressed in a fresh striped
blue and white robe, with a fawn-coloured shawl half falling from
her shoulders, has on her head a large black felt hat, ornamented
with feathers--one of those hats which have done more for the
vulgarisation of the glory of Gainsborough than all his studies
and portraits. Mrs. Siddons is seated, holding on her lap with her
left hand a comfortable Muff of fox or Siberian wolf, of which she
appears to caress the fur with her right hand, as if to show off the
beauty and whiteness of her spindle-shaped fingers. The mistress of
the works of a master who had, it is only right to say, the most
ravishing face in the world to portray. But, without needing to have
further recourse to the English school, have we not that luminous
portrait of Madame Vigée Lebrun, in which the Muff, raised almost
level with the head, spreads the shine of its hair of tawny gold
like the head of a courtezan of Venice? That astonishing painting
of the end of the eighteenth century appeared in its dazzling
splendour, in the midst of the square saloon of the Museum of the
Louvre, killing, by mere force of freshness and light, the magistral
bituminous pictures of the beginning of the century, which are its
near neighbours.
Under Louis XVI. the frenzy of the toilette reached its most acute
crisis: fashions succeeded one another in a few years with so much
rapidity that we can scarcely follow them; people sought to outstrip
in everything rather than to refine, and the Muffs, carried by men
and women alike, became enormous and exaggerated. Hurtaut, in his
/Dictionnaire de la Ville de Paris/, article /Modes/, makes this
strange remark in the year 1784, "A lady has been seen at the opera
with a /Muff of momentaneous agitation/."
The intellect loses itself in seeking the exact definition of this
qualificative of /momentaneous agitation/!
In 1788 a fashion was Muffs of Siberian wolf. According to the
/Magasin des Modes Nouvelles Françaises et Anglaises/, the young
folks no longer carried their Muff after the peaceable and good
citizen-like fashion /à la papa/ level with the bottom of the
waistcoat; they used it, on the contrary, like a plaything or an
opera hat; they held it in their hand while gesticulating in their
promenades, or carried it under their arms like a portfolio strangled
and crumpled between the elbow and the chest.
The little dogs, the Muff-toy-terriers, which had continued in favour
since the Regency, were more in request now than ever; every woman of
fashion had her pug and her King Charles' pet, like those small dogs
that now come from Havanna.
In the celebrated coloured engraving of Debucourt, /La Galerie de
Bois au Palais-Royal/, in 1787, we see circulating in the midst of
that strange crowd which was called the medley of the Palais-Royal,
extravagant types, among them women holding in their hand beside
their furred cloak those incredible Muffs of an immense size, which
figure also under the arms of the masked gallants of the time, with a
small bow of satin attached to the fur.
Under the Revolution and the Directory the fashion of Muffs was
extremes, either broad as little barrels, or narrow and minuscular;
in other respects the fashion varied infinitely, and we must come to
the Restoration to find the first chinchilla Muffs which harmonised
with the velvet witchouras. Absurd fashions to study! What Muff
would the painter choose who wished, by way of allegory, to show
a grasshopper shivering in the hoar frost and the snow, to whom
charitable Love brings a downy Muff? A pretty subject for a concourse
of an Academy which claimed to be /précieuse/ and refined.
In 1835, Muffs, boas, palatines, cloaks lined with marten or fox,
affected odious and indescribable forms: they used to make for a time
Glove-Muffs, a sort of mittens of marten, which were soldered on to
one another where the hands crossed. The Muff, that accessory of the
toilet, ought to be in harmony with the general tonality and style of
costume. Therefore, to undertake to describe it at that epoch would
be only possible in sketching a complete history of Fashion.
The picturesque Muff of 1830 to 1850, is assuredly the big Muff
of the Parisian or provincial tradeswomen, those Muffs, larders
and lumber-rooms, which we meet in the deobstruent tales of Paul
de Kock, and see figuring in the primitive tilted spring-carts
driven by the master, in which are packed the mistress and all the
assistant clerks, with a view to exploring some suburban corner on
Sunday, there to laugh with their muffs pressed before their mouths,
and to act a thousand follies of a doubtful taste, and to banquet
plentifully, and to sing during the dessert some free-and-easy ditty,
very jovial, after the fashion of those pleasant couplets of Laujon
on /The Muff/, which I will quote here, with the more confidence,
since they figure in the /Chansons de Parades/ collected by that boon
companion, who was at the same time member of the Caveau and of the
Institute:--
See what it is to be too good!
One morning, leaving the warm fold
Of home, Simon I saw, who stood
And shivered in the nipping cold;
He cried, "Come here, you little pearl,
I feel so very cold, my girl!"
Now warm yourself!
Simon, good sir, ensconce yourself!
I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!
My dear!
I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!
"I feel so very cold, my girl!"
Ay me! I had my new Muff on.
My head was surely in a whirl
To lend it to the good Simon.
That day my kindness cost me dear;
My Muff is spoilt for all the year!
Now warm yourself!
I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!
My dear!
My Muff is spoilt for all the year,
For Simon's ways are rather rough;
And he knows nought of doubt or fear,
He quite destroyed my poor new Muff!
Simon, you've ruffled all its fur,
Made it too large, you careless sir!
Now warm yourself!
I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!
My dear!
Made it too large, you careless sir!
See: it has been entirely spoiled,
'Tis metamorphosed, I aver;
And seems all rumpled up and soiled.
'Tis like my aunt's Muff, all agape,
Quite out of countenance and shape!
Now warm yourself!
Simon, good sir, ensconce yourself!
I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!
My dear!
I'll lend you, sir, my bran-new Muff!
What laughter, what shouts, what chokings, in those parties /à la/
Paul de Kock, when an artless maiden--at the time when pleasant
digestion had set its bloom on all faces--sang, one by one, these
ancient couplets, with an air at once of a whimpering girl and of a
woman full of coquettish intelligence.
The Muff has not always brought tears of laughter to the eyes, and
a physiologist might draw from it many a curious deduction; only to
cite a single instance, in the middle of the /Scènes de la Vie de
Bohème/, in the episode of Francine's Muff, which should remain in
every reader's memory--the tears come into all our eyes resultant
from an emotion at once sincere and profound.
Francine has been condemned by her doctor, and /hears with her eyes/
the terrible sentence of the physician.
"Don't listen to him," says she to her love, "don't listen to him,
Jacques, he is telling stories; we will go out to-morrow, it is All
Hallows Day, it will be cold, . . . go and buy me a Muff, . . . mind
it is a good one, . . . and will last a long while; I am afraid of
having chilblains this winter."
Then, when Jacques has brought the Muff: "It is very pretty," said
Francine; "I will carry it in our walk."
The morrow, All Hallows Day, about the time of the Angelus of noon,
she was seized with the death-struggle, and all her body began to
tremble. "My hands are cold, cold," she murmured, "give me my Muff,
dear"--and she plunged her poor little fingers into the fur.
"It is over," said the doctor to Jacques, "give her a last kiss;" and
Jacques glued his lips to those of his darling. At the last moment,
they wished to take away her Muff, but her hands still clung to it.
"No, no," she cried, "let it be--we are in winter, it is cold. Ah my
poor Jacques!"
And so Francine dies, without quitting her Muff. A poignant and
lugubrious story, like the work of Murger in general; the /Muff of
Francine/ will perhaps be the most durable chapter in the /Vie de
Bohème/. We have not been able to set this realistic scene upon
the stage, but a painter, M. Haquette, has displayed it after an
admirable manner in one of his best pictures exhibited in one of the
Paris annual Salons.
Truly the Muff calls up many sad thoughts for sentimental and
charitable souls; this winter chattel reminds them of the sorrows
of those who are without fire and home and comfortable clothing,
and when the north wind blows without, and the snow falls softly
in sombre silence, more than one dreaming girl, with her elbow
leaning on the window-sill, lets her Muff fall while thinking of
those unfortunates who suffer, of the careless grasshoppers and the
laborious ants, of whom an adverse fortune has deceived the foresight.
The Muff, the mysterious Muff, hides many distresses: we see it at
the present day on the hands of all the working girls and milliners,
who set out early in the winter mornings from their homes for the
distant workshops; and it is a load upon one's heart to see all these
miserable little Muffs made of rabbit or black cat, out of which
peeps often the golden point of a penny roll and a greasy paper which
envelops a chlorotic piece of pork or an /Arlequin/ (bits of broken
meat) bought in the early market. The Muff which warms so many pretty
hands brave and toiling, seems in winter to be the refuge of virtue,
shivering but victorious.
How much luxury is there, on the other hand, in the Muffs of the fine
world during the last twenty years! They have been made very small,
of sable tails, and very expensive; but there have been also some
more modest, made with that marten of Australia which took the place
of the Astrakhan, which passed out of fashion in 1860. They have been
manufactured also in velvet plush or in cloth, with borders of fur
or feathers, and a large bow of ribbons in the centre. Some became
veritable scent-bags, perfumed with heliotrope, rose, gardenia,
verbena, violet, or they were powdered inside with orris root or
/poudre à la Maréchale/.
An elegant and witty lady-correspondent of fashion, who signs with
the word /Étincelle/ the notes full of charming confusion in her
/Carnet d'un Mondain/, lately gave the nomenclature of the Muffs of
the day, painted in water-colours:
"The Nest-Muff, in satin /coulissé/, lined with black and white lace,
with a whole company of little Indian birds and frightened paroquets
hiding themselves in the satin folds.
"The Flower-Muff, very small, of ivory plush, rouge cardinal or
marine blue, with bunches of roses, marigolds, camellias, and violets
blossoming in the midst of a great deal of lace.
"The Watteau-Muff for the evening: a round of Loves painted on white
satin. The Coppée-Muff: sparrows sunk in a sky of black satin. The
Figaro-Muff, in black velvet, entirely covered with a net of black
and gold chenille: three humming-birds in a nest of black lace. The
Duchess Muff: all of Marabout, imitating fur, shaded with little bows
of dead satin. The Castilian, in plush, covered with point noir: an
orange parroquet in the middle standing out in relief on a fan of
black lace. The Minerva, in skunk or sable, with a black satin bow
and the head of a barn-door owl."
All these fashions of to-day are already fashions of yesterday, so
perpetual is the inconstancy of /la Mode/! To-day the monkey, blue
fox, beaver, swan, and ermine are metamorphosed into Muffs; to-morrow
will come the furs of sable, of otter, of chinchilla, of squirrel, of
marten, of wolf, &c. Women and furs change, and will change, soon and
often.
Fashion is the everlasting Fairy; whether she take the Sunshade as
a rod at the end of her gloved hand, or the Muff as a surprise-box
or a cornucopia, she is never short of inventions, of prodigies, of
follies, and of ruins; she seems to avenge herself on the moderns
because the ancients gave her not divine honours, nor placed her upon
the summit of their Olympus. Let, then, the head of this new and
great goddess be adorned with a weathercock helmet, of which Love
will furnish the magnetic arrow, and let a statue be raised to that
great first French citizeness, who from Paris governs the world with
so formidable a despotism, against whom none ever dreams of raising a
revolt.
For us, who, /à propos/ of the Sunshade, the Glove, and the Muff,
have just cast a glance upon the museum of this female ruler, we
are in a state of dread from the inconceivable variety of objects
which were for an hour a woman's pleasure, and, if we have not
conducted our readers before all the glass cases of this national
museum, great as the universe, or "the vastest in the world," as all
large milliners' shops entitle themselves, it is because around the
ornaments of women the fickle Loves will always dance their frenzied
round, which only a madman can ever hope and wish to stop. It has
been said that Fashion is woman's only literature; if, however, our
elegant ladies were condemned to study the special archæology of this
literature, very soon--as in love--would they desert History for
Romance.