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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
[oe] represents the oe-ligature.
IN VANITY FAIR
[Illustration: The Return from the Grand Prix]
IN VANITY FAIR
A Tale of Frocks and Femininity
by
ELEANOR HOYT BRAINERD
Author of "The Misdemeanors of Nancy"
New York
Moffat, Yard & Company
1906
Copyright, 1906, by
Moffat, Yard & Company
New York
Published, March, 1906
The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
PREFACE
The Parisienne, in her subtler phases, is a theme for a feminist of
genius; and this little book does not venture upon the psychological
deep seas.
Grave issues are tangled in the game of fashion-making; but the world
through which My Lady of the Chiffons dances lightly to gay music reeks
of frivolity, and the story of the fashionable Parisienne and of the
haunts in which she obtains and displays her incomparable frocks must
needs be a story of folly and extravagance, best told, perhaps, by
snap-shots of the inner courts of Vanity Fair.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
IN VANITY FAIR
CHAPTER I
PAGE
FROCKS AND FEMININITY 15
The Frenchwoman's creed; the science of being gay; feminine
types in French society; the demi-monde of Paris; Parisian
salons.
CHAPTER II
THE TYRANTS OF THE RUE DE LA PAIX 28
Paris and the art of dress; Worth and the old masters; Paquin
and the new school; the clientèles of the great men.
CHAPTER III
THE FAMOUS ATELIERS 47
How the work is done; the saleswomen; the mannequins; the
ouvrières; the system; the launching of the modes.
CHAPTER IV
FIFI AND THE DUCHESS ON THE TURF 64
Racing near Paris; round the braziers of Auteuil; the day of
the Grand Prix.
CHAPTER V
LE SPORT IN PARIS 78
Motor mania; Parisian golf and French golfers; fashion and
tennis at Puteaux; the motor-boat fad.
CHAPTER VI
THE FINE ART OF DINING 97
Al fresco dining in the Bois; with le Roi galant at the Henri
Quatre; where the Pompadour held sway; the restaurants of
the town; Frederic, "King of the Ducks."
CHAPTER VII
IN NORMANDY WITH MADAME 118
Gay Trouville and chic Deauville; at the tables of the Hôtel
de Paris; in the Casino; some inns and the motor.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND 140
Winter in Paris; five o'clock tea and chiffons; the theatres of
Paris; the Palais de Glace and its crowd; spring fêtes and
follies.
CHAPTER IX
THE HUNTING SEASON 163
The Frenchman and la chasse; at the châteaux; venery new
and old; with the hounds of the Duchesse d'Uzes.
CHAPTER X
UNDER SOUTHERN SKIES 182
Cannes and the world; Nice and the flesh; Monte Carlo and
the devil.
CHAPTER XI
LES AMERICAINES 210
The French frock and the American woman; American buyers;
feminine extravagance in America; some famous orders; the
ready-made costume and its effect upon dress.
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE RETURN FROM THE GRAND PRIX _Frontispiece_
PAGE
PLAYING AT COUNTRY LIFE 20
DOEUILLET PASSES JUDGMENT 40
BEER AND HIS MANNEQUINS 52
THE DAY OF THE DRAGS 66
AT LONGCHAMPS 72
THE FIRST SPORTSWOMAN OF FRANCE 84
FASHION'S FERRY 90
THE LATEST PLAYTHING OF THE DUCHESSE D'UZES 98
"GOSSIP STREET" AT TROUVILLE 120
IN THE CLUB GROUNDS AT DEAUVILLE 130
AT A ROTHSCHILD GARDEN PARTY 154
BARONNE HENRI DE ROTHSCHILD AT THE MEET 166
THE BLESSING OF THE HOUNDS AT BONNELLES 178
THE PALACE OF FOLLY--MONTE CARLO 186
THE CROWD AT MONTE CARLO 196
IN VANITY FAIR
IN VANITY FAIR
CHAPTER I
FROCKS AND FEMININITY
Clothes and the woman we sing! Given the themes, Paris is obviously
the only appropriate setting. Nowhere else do the kindred cults of
frocks and femininity kindle such ardent devotion. Nowhere else are
women so enthusiastically decorative. There are women more beautiful
than the Parisiennes, there are women who spend as much money upon
their clothes. Pouf! What is beauty unadorned? What is beauty
adorned--provided it is not chic.
That crisp little monosyllable is sadly abused by our Anglo-Saxon
saleswomen, but it is a master word for all that, a great word holding
in solution the quintessence of things Parisian. It means a subtle
something before which mere beauty is humble, and mere luxury is banal.
It means coquetry, audacity, charm. It means a thing evanescent,
impalpable, unmistakable, absurd, adorable, a thing deliciously
feminine, a thing essentially of the world worldly.
That the word should be a French word with no exact equivalent in
another tongue is as it should be. The Parisienne is the true "femme
chic." She has the secret and she realizes its value, makes a fetich
of it, devotes herself to it with a zeal that could flourish nowhere
outside of Paris. There are charming women all over the world, but
nowhere is femininity so conscientiously occupied in being charming as
it is in Paris.
Your true Parisienne begins her creed with, "I believe in coquetry";
and by coquetry she means not merely embryonic flirtation, but all
that goes to make sophisticated charm. She is coquette from her cradle
to her grave, from her first communion frock to her last cap and
shawl. She does not depend upon her natural advantages, she is not
unconscious, not simple. She is deliberately, insistently charming, and
to gain that end she shows the infinite capacity for taking trouble
which amounts to genius. The ill-natured call the result artificiality,
and they are right; but the fine art of the artificiality is a thing
to conjure with, and through its aid the Frenchwoman retains her
charm long after youth and its bloom are fled. Wit wears better than
complexion, and tact outlasts figure. Incidentally, much may be done to
patch up complexion and figure if wit and tact are on hand to carry off
the counterfeit.
To be sure there is something a trifle depressing about the faded
ghosts of Parisian youth, the old ladies of Paris who refuse to admit
defeat, and, painted, bejewelled, vivacious, defy the years.
Yes, there's a sadness in the struggle, a gentle melancholy such
as serves poets for rondels and villanelles, but they are not sad,
themselves, those old ladies of Paris. Bless your heart, no! They are
gay, excessively gay. They flutter their fans and toss their curled
heads and scatter wrinkled smiles and unwrinkled bon mots, and succeed,
after a fashion, in their aim; for they are delightful, these faded,
worldly belles. They keep their youthful hearts, their keen wits, their
absorbing interest in men and things. They have not forgotten how to
be amusing; and, under their cleverly applied rouge and powder and
false hair and general artificiality, they are still sympathetic, still
witty, still wise. Not one's ideal of placid old age, not, perhaps,
the grandmothers one would choose for the family tree, but delightful
companions still; coquettes who have outlived their youth but not their
finesse.
Perhaps the cult of coquetry which is the pervasive spirit of French
society would be impossible outside the atmosphere in which it
flourishes. It is a part of Parisian tradition, it colours Parisian
values, determines Parisian standards. Insensibly the woman who lives
in Paris surrenders to this spirit though she may have come of Puritan
stock or of Roundhead ancestry. It is in the air of Paris. If one
cannot breathe the air and assimilate the germs, one departs. That is
all. One returns to Boston or Kansas City or Glasgow or Tewkesbury.
Doubtless those women who flee from the insidious assault lead lives
more estimable than those who succumb, but they do not learn the gentle
art of coquetry in its Parisian form. So much the better for the
quietude of Boston and Kansas City and Glasgow and Tewkesbury.
It is probable, highly probable, that the foreigner who recklessly
remains in Paris and invites the spirit of the place will show her
inevitable lapse from Puritanical grace first in her underwear. French
lingerie is the sign and symbol of French femininity. It is the
refinement of luxury, the quintessence of coquetry.
To wear a fortune in a gown is something, but to wear a fortune in
lace and handwork and cobweb linen hidden away under a frock demurely
simple is more, and the Parisienne adores "le dessous." Jewels she may
lack--though not for want of conscientious effort to obtain them--but
dainty petticoats she will have, and, having them, she will wear them,
and wearing them, she will show them. Why not contribute to the sum of
humanity's simple joys?
An old lady from a little Missouri town strayed from a Cook's party
one day, at the entrance to the Louvre; and, some hours later, a young
countrywoman of hers found her occupying one of the Champs Elysées
chairs and watching with fearful joy the stream of French womanhood
picking its way along walks still wet from an all-night rain.
The old lady clutched the arm of her fellow American and turned a
puzzled face away from the passing show.
"My dear, just look at those petticoats and stockings!" she gasped.
"The creatures haven't any idea of hiding them. I've been watching for
two mortal hours and there hasn't been a let-up yet. Some are finer
than others, that's all. But they're all showy, and every single woman
has her dress tucked up so you can't miss them. When I saw the first
ones I thought I'd struck the French women you read about,--the ones
who aren't proper, you know, and I was so interested; but then they
kept coming so steadily that I got all mixed up. Hundreds have gone
by, all holding their skirts like that and every one of them swishing
silk or lace ruffles and showing silk stockings,--and it isn't humanly
possible, even in Paris, that they're all bad, now is it?"
Bad? Not the least in the world. They were merely French. The petticoat
of Pleasantville, Missouri, and the petticoat of Paris are two separate
and distinct things, and the old lady had vaguely grasped an important
fact not down upon the Cook's party schedule of information. The
Parisienne is Paris. Incidentally there are picture galleries and
museums.
The amount of money spent on the "dessous" by a Parisian woman of
fashion is madly extravagant and entirely characteristic. It is but
a detail of that religion of luxury whose high priests centre in the
Rue de la Paix. The average Frenchwoman has a thrifty and frugal side,
but the extravagant Frenchwoman spends her money with a light-hearted
gaiety and a maximum of picturesque effect. The most prodigal patrons
of the great dressmakers and jewellers in the Rue de la Paix are
Americans, but the most brilliant figures in the fashionable Parisian
world are French. The born Parisienne is the supreme coquette. She
wears her clothes with an incomparable air. There is a touch of the
actress in her, and in the matter of feminine fashion art can give
points to nature, so the Frenchwoman wears with artfully artless grace
and naturalness creations whose audacity would reduce a woman of any
other nationality to an awkward self-consciousness that would ruin the
effectiveness of the costume.
Even could one conceive of all the great French dressmakers
transplanted to another land, only in Paris could the modes be
successfully launched, for only there can monsieur find the women
who are ready and able to carry off triumphantly even the most
revolutionary of creations, who have the courage and confidence to
exploit models strikingly novel--always provided those models have
beauty and cachet to commend them. It is the Parisienne, too, who is
willing to buy the most extravagantly fragile and perishable of frocks
and who will wear them regardless of consequences; who will, moreover,
smile most cheerfully when, having fulfilled its mission, the costly
frock is crushed, drabbled, ruined.
"It had _un succès fou_, M'sieu!" she says blithely to the maker
when she sees him next. That is quite enough. A great success on one
occasion justifies any extravagance, and why allow a spoiled frock to
obscure an agreeable memory?
[Illustration: Playing at Country Life]
King Alfonso attended one of the famous race meetings near Paris one
day last summer, and all the smart Parisian world turned out to do him
honour. The display of frocks and millinery was a notable one. The
pesage was crowded with women in the airiest and most elaborate of
summer toilettes and, suddenly, the heavens opened and a torrent of
rain poured down. Such a scurrying and twittering; such little moans
and shrieks; such laughter and jesting! Bad temper? Not a bit of it.
Things were quite bad enough without losing one's temper. So they
chatted and joked and achieved bon mots that almost reconciled them to
the facts that their rouge was streaked and their plumes were drabbled
and their curls were straggling and their frocks were limp. The sun
came out and the demoralized toilettes emerged from under cover, mere
wrecks of their former beauty; but the wearers carried the situation
off with a good-natured vivacity to which no other women would
have been equal. The afternoon was a particularly gay one, and the
prevailing philosophy was voiced by one little countess who was heard
to say to a friend as they stood waiting for their automobiles:
"The frocks are spoiled, absolutely spoiled. C'est dommage,--but, ma
chère, what an opportunity for the petticoats and the feet, n'est-ce
pas? Me,--I found much consolation in the real lace in my white
stockings and in my new shoe buckles,--Va! One sees, every day, the
frocks. To-day, for the first time, I know intimately the ankles of all
my friends."
Possibly the countess gave her maid a bad quarter hour after she
reached home; but for the benefit of the public she stood there,
insouciant, smiling, debonair, with her chiffon frock clinging
forlornly to her shapely little figure, with her tulle hat gummed to
a disarranged coiffure and its plumes drooping like funeral emblems
over her left ear, but with her spirits intact. Not for nothing did
she have some of the best blood of France in her veins. It is sporting
blood,--that best blood of France.
Concerning the morals of French womankind, the serious may write,--and
the less they know about Paris--provided they are Anglo-Saxon--the more
fluently they will write; for intimate acquaintance with Parisian life
and sentiment is sadly prejudicial to orthodox Anglo-Saxon standards,
and it is difficult to be severe with the Parisienne if one knows
her. One disapproves of her, in certain of her phases, perhaps, but
one learns the tolerant shoulder shrug of her nation. She is so very
amusing, and Paris is, first of all, "le monde où l'on s'amuse."
One may like Paris or not. One may choose to live in Paris or to live
elsewhere, but one thing the fair-minded will all admit. This capital
city of the kingdom of Vanity Fair is gay. The Parisians have reduced
gaiety to a science, luxury to an art. There may be tragedy behind
the curtain; but, before the public, life goes to a merry tune. It
is quite possible that smart society, the world over, is as rotten
as our novelists, dramatists, and preachers would have us believe;
but, at least, in Paris it is not dull. Where American smart society
is spectacular, French smart society is chic. Even in the half world
the distinction holds. The demi-mondaine of New York--or the nearest
approach to the demi-mondaine which New York furnishes, for our
standards are uncompromising and we recognize no "half world"--is
vulgar. The demi-mondaine of Paris is--one can but have recourse once
more to that untranslatable comprehensive word "chic."
Immorality, we are solemnly assured, is none the less immoral because
it is not banal. Probably it is more deplorable in proportion as it
takes on attractiveness; but we are not moralizing, merely stating
facts, and the fascination of the great Parisian demi-mondaine is a
well-established fact.
To begin with, she is the best dressed woman in the world. Any of the
famous dressmakers of Paris, who are the world's arbiters of fashion,
will tell you that. She has the money and the taste, and with her, even
more than with the Parisienne of the beau monde, being charming is a
metier. She supplements natural attractions with every resource of art.
She is, as a rule, clever, tactful, witty. Often she is brilliant,
and the nearest approach to the famous salons of old France are to
be found to-day in the homes of certain Parisiennes who are frankly
demi-mondaine or dwell in that middle world twixt "beau" and "demi"
where, sometimes, the name "artiste" casts a broad mantle of charity
over irregularity of life. There are countesses and princesses of
the blood who play at salon making in Paris, and who would be in the
seventh heaven could they once call under their roofs the famous men
who flock to certain salons where mesdames of the beau monde may not
follow. Great litterateurs, painters, sculptors, musicians, scientists
gather at certain informal evenings, certain famous little dinners.
And mark you, everything here is comme il faut--yes, indeed. Let the
student of morals who associates the phrase demi-mondaine only with
Tenderloin orgies revise his vocabulary. Orgies of the familiar kind he
can find in Paris. They are easily found; but he will have considerable
difficulty in gaining admittance to the salon of the great artiste
whose life history has been, to put it mildly, unconventional, or to
the salon of the famous demi-mondaine. Once admitted, he will need wit
and worldly wisdom to hold his own. One hears of little dinners where
the quantity of liquor drunk falls far below Tenderloin standards, but
where the poet of the moment composes sonnets to his hostess's eyebrow;
where the famous composer replies to Madame's "A new song, mon chèr. I
must have a song all my own," by sitting down at the piano and working
out a chanson which all Paris will be whistling a few months later;
where the petted tenor from the Opera sings street ballads, and the
great diplomat chats international scandal, and the successful artist
and feminist sketches portraits of his hostess upon the fly-leaf of
the autograph copy of the academician's book which the author has just
presented to her.
Yes; one hears of those happenings in the little house at Neuilly or in
the mansion on the Boulevard Malesherbes, or wherever the rendezvous
may be, and one struggles vainly to adjust one's vision to the Parisian
perspective to understand the Parisian attitude toward life. It is
disturbing to find impropriety so devoid of the lurid light in which
melodrama pictures it. One's moral vertebra softens in Paris.
But there are Parisiennes and Parisiennes. There is the aristocrat of
the St. Germain--and even aristocratic virtue is not dull in Paris.
There is the wife of the millionaire tradesman. There are the women
folk of the great banking house. There are the ladies of the diplomatic
circle, there are exiled queens and resident grand duchesses. There are
the Americans. There are the artistes. There are the demi-mondaines,
the cocottes. And there is Mimi. She is not the worst of the group,
this unimportant little Mimi, not the worst, and by no means the least
coquette; but she is not a bird of fine feathers and does not belong in
our story.
The great lady of Paris is grande dame to her finger-tips, whether she
nurses the traditions of the old régime in her exclusive salon in the
Faubourg St. Germain or follows after such new gods as "le sport" and
broadens her visiting list to include the trades and arts,--provided
always that the trade and the art have paid well enough to lift
tradesman and artist above their metiers. France loves genius, but for
social success, in Paris, genius is not enough.
One must have money, wit, and tact to succeed in smart French society
without the prestige of aristocratic birth. If one has the birth in
addition, so much the better.
There are salons to which only those to the nobility born are eligible,
but they are few, and modern French society is prone to go where it
will be most skilfully amused, where it will find the most luxury,
the greatest originality, the most volatile gaiety. The receptions
of the Duchesse de Rohan are impressive, her invitations are in
the nature of patents of nobility, but the Comtesse Pillet-Will's
extravagantly original fêtes are more popular, and the average Parisian
élégante would rather go ballooning with the exceedingly modern young
Duchesse d'Uzes than talk politics in the salon of the Comtesse Jean
de Castellane or listen to the excellent music which the Comtesse de
Bearn provides for her guests. Not that one objects to politics and
music. Music is "très chic" as furnished in the salons of the Comtesse
de Bearn, the Marquise de Castrone, the Vicomtesse de Tredern, and
the other society leaders who are noted for this especial variety of
entertainment; and, though the great political salon is a thing of
yesteryear, the Parisienne always takes an interest in politics. It is
a game, and she adores games, especially games in which men are the
counters. She is a born intrigante, and here is a field for legitimate
intrigue. Moreover, many men are devoted to politics, and is not
sympathy the corner-stone of the foundation of that power over men
which is the breath of the Frenchwoman's nostrils?
So, many of the fair Parisiennes play at politics, but few play so
charmingly as does the Comtesse Jean. Comtesse Boni de Castellane,
too, has political pretensions, and shows a devotion to the royalist
cause all the more vehement because grafted upon democratic birth and
training; but it is when they pay forty thousand dollars for a week-end
house party that the Boni de Castellanes loom large upon the Parisian
horizon. Their salon is not epoch-making.
Parisian society dabbles in politics, music, art, spiritualism,
amateur theatricals, and a host of other things, but it plunges bodily
into racing. The Jockey Club of France, which controls the turf in
France, is a gentleman's club, and its members are, with the exception
of a few rich bourgeois, representatives of the most aristocratic
houses of France. The Duc de Noailles, the Duc de Dondeauville, Prince
d'Arenberg, Duc de Fezensac, Comte Pillet-Will, Vicomte d'Harcourt and
a host of other men as well known are on the list of membership, and it
is natural enough that the great racing events near Paris should bring
out the flower of Parisian society as well as the heterogeneous crowds
common to race tracks.
"Le sport," too, imported from England and conscientiously fostered
for a long time before it showed signs of taking firm root in French
soil, is now a conspicuous feature of Parisian social life; and golf
clubs, tennis clubs, polo clubs, etc., are the chic rendezvous even for
that large percentage of Parisian society which, for all its vivacity,
would not, under any suasion, lend itself to active exercise. One does
not look well when one exercises too violently, and costumes suitable
for golf and tennis are not nearly as fascinating as those that may be
worn by lookers-on. Therefore, since looking one's best is a sacred
duty, and since attractive frock wearing is the Parisienne's religion,
Madame, as a rule, prefers to look on. She has sporting blood, but, as
we have already said, she is, before all else, "coquette."