Chapter I: Part 1

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!

I have a family on the list of my visiting book, scarcely less curious in their way, than these Picardy relics; fit for the cabinet, and worthy to be preserved as dried specimens of a phasis of society which history will never record.

The painted carriage was unknown in the time of Henry the IVth of France, who tells Sully that he cannot visit him on a certain occasion, because his wife had “_mon carrosse_,” the only carriage belonging to the royal establishment. The fashion of splendidly decorating coaches, began in the middle of Louis the XIVth’s reign, and it ended, in England, in the reign of George the Ist. The most gorgeous carriage on record, was that which the ingenious sycophancy of Bernini painted for Christina of Sweden, on the occasion of her visit to Pope Alexander the VIIth, when she went to Rome, to make a public abjuration of Lutheranism. “She was received,” says a curious old work I picked up on a stall in the Piazza Navona in Rome, “with unspeakable applause;” and among other “_regali_” presented her by the Pope, were a coach, a litter, a sedan chair, and a hackney. The description of these articles is curious, and belongs to times and trades now no more.[6]

Some traces of the expense and magnificence of coach decorations still remain in the state carriage of the Lord Mayor of London, which has survived many more important monuments of the taste and the judgment of our ancestors. Whether the painting of pictures on coach panels was driven out by heraldic pride, or fell merely by the caprice of fashion, I cannot say. It is most probable that the custom was itself an innovation upon armorial bearings, to which it in turn gave place. In the early period of the revolution, when the emblazoning of arms was forbidden, some of the bolder members replaced their escutcheon on their carriages, by the representation of the sun behind a cloud, with the motto—“_ça reparoîtra_.”

Almost in our times, great has been the downfal of wig-makers, who, for more than a century, engrossed so large a portion of the public money. In the time of Queen Anne, thirty guineas was the price of a full fledged perriwig, an enormous sum for those days. As the beaux laid down false hair, the women seem to have adopted its use. Under the names of systems and _têtes_, these filthy appendages maintained their ground in Ireland to a late period. The last “system, _tête_, and peruke-maker,” I saw, was in my childhood, in Connaught, and so I handed him over to the Miss Mac Taafs, for their city of Craiggellan, where he figures in the person of Gil-Duff O’Kirwan. The “system” was a high cushion of horse-hair. I saw it worn by an itinerant schoolmistress, brought into my father’s house, to teach me my letters, and to work a sampler, when I was about four years old. Her figure and system got such a hold of my imagination, that, “not on the book my eyes were fixed, but her.” “That fairy form,” (which was six feet high,) “I have ne’er forgot”—.

The system was a most complicated affair. Men served an apprenticeship to learn its architecture. The cushion was but a scaffolding, on which the superstructure was supported, which rose by the foot; while curls, “_en canon_” massy as rolling stones, were piled on each other, till they made “Ossa like a wart.”

These adscititious monstrosities were beginning to disappear, when Mr. Pitt, by the hair-powder tax, gave a death blow to the trade of hair-dressing. It has been said, I know not with what truth, that the idea of this tax originated with Lewis the actor, and that he was handsomely rewarded for the invention. At this period, the Brutus head, and the close-cropped _tête à la victime_, were adopted as tests of republicanism in France; as the round head was made a mark of covenantism in the English revolution; and this fashion aided and abetted the destruction of the loquacious tribe of tale-bearers.

It is one of the blessed effects of the diffusion of knowledge, to render men less dependent on others; and society seems to have rejoiced in its emancipation from the tyranny of hair-dressing. Formerly the barber’s knock was as well known, and as punctual as the postman’s. His important visage, sagacious look, and his bag of apparatus, belonged as much to the objects of daily vision, as the place in which he was received. There, for one mortal hour at least, and that at the most precious and active period of the day, sat the victim of fashion with its minister, bound tightly up in a white cloth, like a baby in swaddling-clothes, sometimes pulled by the nose, sometimes scored on the cheek, and often in danger of an unlucky cut across the throat;—then again, smoked and smothered with the vapours reeking from the curling iron, which dragged up his hair by the roots; while his drawn-in breath, clenched hands, closed lips, and puffed cheeks, spoke all the torture of his voluntary suffocation. The whole sad scene terminated in a dense cloud of musty powder, discharged from the notable puffing machine into every exposed orifice, filling the ears, ascending the nostrils, and blinding the eyes of the sufferer. Yet the wisdom of our ancestors looked upon this daily martyrdom and perpetual disfiguration as indispensable to the appearance of a gentleman. Even tradesmen gave up their time and persons to this voluntary immolation; and assisted to people the good old times with monsters, and to support trades, which, making no return, diverted industry from more profitable channels.