Part 4

Anglomania had not yet penetrated, as in the present day, into French manners; and the dandyism of 1830, which pretended that the carrying of a walking-stick required a particular skill, repelled the Umbrella as contrary to veritable elegance. The Umbrella was countrified, the property of gaffer and gammer; it was tolerable only in the hands of one who had long renounced all pretensions to any charm, and dreamed no more of setting off in the promenade the haughty profile of a conqueror. In the cross ways, in every public place in Paris, the large Parasol, red, or the colour of wine-lees, had become, as it were, the ensign of the strolling singer who retailed Béranger to the crowd; it served as a shelter for acrobats in the open air; it surmounted the improvised trestles of the sellers of tripoli, of an universal ointment; it ascended even the chariot of the quacks; later on it served as a set-off for the plumed helmet of Mangin, the pencil merchant; and it is still under a copper Parasol, commonly called /Chinese bells/, that the man-orchestra causes an excitement in the court-yards by ringing his little bells.

In the provinces, on market or great fair days, the Umbrellas opened in picturesque confusion above the flat baskets and provisional establishments of the country women; there were red, faded blue or chestnut ones, inexpressible green or old family Umbrellas, heirlooms descended from generation to generation, which protected the little rural tradeswomen, and added a particular character full of colour to these primitive markets of little towns.

The Umbrella! we behold it in the dreams of our school-days. Here is the severe and sombre Umbrella of the headmaster, symbol of his pedantic authority, when he passed us in review in the cold and damp playground. Here is the Riflard of the poor usher, a celebrated /Pépin/, covered with a mottled cotton-stuff, its bill-headed handle polished by his unctuous clasp. And here, above all, is an Umbrella greeted with loud acclaim, a festive Crusoe, which followed us when out walking, as the sutler follows the regiment on the march, the Umbrella of /Mother Sun/, as we used to call it: /Mother Sun!/ an honest jolly wench, with her head in a silk pocket-handkerchief tied under her chin, who installed herself beneath the shelter of her improvised tent about our playtime, to sell to her noisy /children/ cooling lemonade, fruit, barley-sugar, and little white rolls stuffed with hot sausages.

But let us leave these souvenirs, which carry us too far away, and return to the /Sunshade/ between 1830 and 1870. If we wished to show only its transformations during these forty years, we should have to write a volume quite full of coloured vignettes to give a feeble idea of the history which fashion creates in an object of coquetry. About 1834, in the journal called /Le Protée/, we see fashion personified under the traits of a young and pretty woman visiting the finest shops in Paris; she fails not to go to "Verdier, in the Rue Richelieu, for Sunshades," and chooses two--one a full-dress Sunshade, in unbleached silk casing, mounted on a stick of American bindweed, with a top of gold and carved coral; the other in striped wood, having a similar top with a fluted knob, and covered with myrtle green paduasoy, with a satin border.

Let us skip over some hundreds of intermediate varieties to look a dozen years afterwards, under the Second Republic, at the Sunshade described by M. A. Challamel in his /History of Fashion/: "As soon," says this writer, "as the first ray of sunshine appeared, ladies armed themselves for their walks or morning calls with little Sunshades, entirely white, or pink, or green. Sometimes the Sunshades called 'Marquises' were edged with lace, which gave them rather a ragged appearance; or having the shape of little Umbrellas, the Sunshades could serve at need against a sudden storm. Very soon we saw Sunshades /à dispositions/ bordered with a figured garland, or a satin stripe of the same colours, or blue or green on unbleached silk, or violet on white or sulphur."

A fashion, not, it will be allowed, in the very best taste:--Up to 1853 or 1854, we find no innovation worthy of exciting our enthusiasm; it is only in the first days of the Second Empire that we can see a marked change. The straight Sunshades were then abandoned to introduce Sunshades with a folding stick, principally for those made in satin and in moire antique, bordered with trimmings or set off with streamers. These Sunshades were called "/à la Pompadour/," and they were worthy, in a certain degree, of the beauty who personified grace and delicate elegance in the eighteenth century; they were embroidered after the old fashion with gold and silk, and on the richness of the stuffs was cast or "frilled in" Chantilly, point d'Alençon, guipure, or blonde. The folding-sticks were of sculptured ivory, of carved mother-of-pearl, of rhinoceros horn, or of tortoise-shell. It is with this light Sunshade that the Parisian ladies saluted the Empress, caracoling by the side of the Emperor, at the commencement of his reign, on their return from the Wood, in the Champs Elysées, which began to look beautiful, as everything looks beautiful at the spring-tide of years, as well as at the springtime of governments. All in nature has surely its fall of the leaf, after having had the verdure of its blossom!--all tires, all passes, all breaks: men, kings, fashions, and peoples!

The Sunshade is found to-day in the hands of every one, as it should be in this practical and utilitarian age. There is not, at the present hour, any woman or girl of the people, who has not her sunshade or her satin /en-tout-cas/--it seems to be the indispensable complement of the toilet for the promenade; and our modern painters have so well understood this gracious adjunct of feminine costume, that they take very good heed not to forget, in a study of a woman made in a full light, a rosy head with dishevelled hair, on the transparent ground of a Japanese Sunshade, thus producing an exquisite work with all freshness of colouring, and discreet shadows sifted upon sparkling eyes or a laughing mouth. On Sundays and holidays, in the jostlings of the crowd at suburban fêtes, it is like an eddy of Sunshades; such the spectacle of ancient besiegers, who covered themselves with their bucklers and made the "tortoise," so in the shimmer of the summer sun in the great Parisian parish festivals: gingerbread fairs of Saint-Cloud or Vaugirard, the Sunshade is on the trestles and among the promenaders; it protects equally the girl dancing on the tight-rope and the respectable citizen's wife in her Sunday best, who rumples the flounce of her petticoats in these popular gatherings.

Surely the Sunshade adds new graces to woman! It is her outside weapon, which she bears boldly as a volunteer, either at her side, or inclined over her shoulder. It protects her head-dress, in supporting her carriage, it surrounds as with a halo the charms of her face.

"The Sunshade," writes M. Cazal--or rather Marchal, as the so-called Charles de Bussy, who edited, in the name of the manufacturer, the little work already quoted,--"the Sunshade, like a rosy vapour, attenuates and softens the contour of the features, revives the vanished tints, surrounds the physiognomy with its diaphanous reflections. There is the Sunshade of the great lady, of the young person, of the tradesman's wife, of the pretty lorette, of the little workwoman, just as there is the Sunshade of the town, of the country, of the garden, of the bath, of the barouche, and the Sunshade-whip."

"How many volumes," continues the same writer with animation, "would be required to describe in its thousand fantasies the kaleidoscope of feminine thought in the use of the Sunshade? Under its rosy or azure dome, sentiment buds, passion broods or blossoms; at a distance the Sunshade calls and rallies to its colours, near at hand it edifies the curious eye, and disconcerts and repels presumption. How many sweet smiles have played under its corolla! How many charming signs of the head, how many intoxicating and magic looks, has the Sunshade protected from jealousy and indiscretion! How many emotions, how many dramas, has it hidden with its cloud of silk!"

M. Charles Blanc, less dithyrambic, in his /Art in Dress and Ornament/, commences his chapter on the Sunshade--"Do you imagine that women have invented it to preserve their complexion from the heats of the sun? . . . . Certainly, without doubt; but how many resources are furnished them by this need of casting a penumbra over their face, and what a grudge they would have against the sun, if it gave them no pretext for defending themselves against his rays! In that work of art called a woman's toilet, the Sunshade sustains the part of the chiaro-oscuro.

"In the play of colours it is as a glazing. In the play of light it is as a blind."

For the last dozen years, fashion has varied, with every new season, the mode and covering of Sunshades. To-day they have become artistic in all points, and after having been in turns in spotted foulard, and set off with ribbons or lace, after the Parasol walking-stick, the maroon or cardinal-red Parasol, have succeeded the checkered taffetas, the Madras cretonnes, the Pompadour satins, the figured silks. Their handles are adorned with porcelain of Dresden, of Sèvres, or of Longwy, with various precious stones, and with jewels of all sorts; and lately, among some wedding presents, amidst a dozen Sunshades, one remarkable specimen was entirely covered with point lace, on a pink ground clouded with white gauze, having a jade handle with incrustations of precious stones up to its extreme point. A golden ring gemmed with emeralds and brilliants, attached to a gold chain, served as a clasp for this inestimable jewel.

But in this style of hasty conference in which we are running from the Sunshade to the Umbrella, let us not neglect the latter, whose last name is /paratrombe/ and /paradéluge/, which M. de Balzac, in the /Père Goriot/, calls "a bastard descended from a cane and a walking-stick." The Umbrella has inspired many writers--writers of vaudevilles, romances, poetry, and humorous pieces; on it little ingenious monographs have been composed, little sparkling verses, articles in reviews, very serious from the trade point of view; many couplets have been rhymed at the Caveau and elsewhere on the Pépin and the Riflard; on the stage has been interpreted /My Wife and My Umbrella/, /Oscar's Umbrella/, /The Umbrella of Damocles/, and /the Umbrella/ of the poet D'Hervilly. This useful article has also inspired the realist Champfleury in a joyous tale, entitled--/Above all, don't forget your Umbrella!/ Everywhere, with variations and unheard-of paraphrases, has the social part of the Umbrella been shown to us; the meetings occasioned by it on stormy days; the /Pépin/ gallantly offered to young girls eating apples in distress whilst it is raining on the Boulevards; we have had described to us the gentleman who follows the ladies fortified with his Umbrella, the weapon of his fight, and many tales and novels begin with one of these Parisian meetings at a street corner on a wet evening. The utility of the Umbrella in different ways has been insisted on, of the painter's Umbrella, of the Umbrella for men called /sea bath/; and the sad melopæa of the French seller of Umbrellas in the street, whose prolonged cry of /parrrphluie/ has been carefully annotated. Lastly, there have been too many pictures representing a coquettish workwoman, whose petticoats have been turned up by the wind, and whose Parasol has been turned inside out; but that which has never been written with the humour which such a subject allows, the master-piece which has never yet been accomplished, is the /Physiology of the Umbrella/.

There is no doubt that bibliographers will put under our eyes a thin book of the lowest character which affects this title, and is edited by /Two Hackney Coachmen/, but it is nought but the "humbug" of the Umbrella--its /Physiology/ in its entirety is yet unaccomplished. Balzac would have found therein matter for an immortal work, for there is a dash of truth in that fantastic aphorism uttered by some journalist in distress, "The Umbrella is the man."

Eugène Scribe has left us a modest quatrain on the Umbrella, worthy of his operatic muse--

A friend of mine, new, true, and rare, And all unlike the common form; Who leaves me when my sky is fair, And reappears in days of storm.

This almost equals that other quatrain, more ancient still, signed by the good abbé Delille--

This precious, supple instrument, confect Of the whale's bone, and of the silkworm's grave, With outstretched wing, my brow will oft protect From the wet onslaught of the pluvial wave.

Have we not here Academic verse well made for the Umbrellas of the Academicians!

To come to extremes: among the popular songs, we hear the song of /the Umbrella/, "a ditty found in a whale"--

The good Umbrella may be sung In many airs and ways; The Umbrella, be we old or young, Will serve us all our days. It keeps true love from getting wet, And catching cold at night; It hides the thief, to business set, From the policeman's sight. Umbrella! Then buy yourself, for fear of rain, A solid, useful, good, and plain Umbrella! In fact, for rain we cannot sell a Much better thing than our Umbrella!

This funny song is well worth the tiresome verse sung at present--

He has not an Umbrella, well It is no matter, while it's fine; But when the rain comes down pell-mell, Why, then he's wetted to the spine! . . . .

Certainly one ought to write a physiological monograph of these black mushrooms, which to-day protect humanity, just as one ought to rhyme a poem of the dainty Sunshade, that pretty rosy cupola, which is one of the most charming coquetries of a Frenchwoman.

We write this /one ought/ with a vague sadness, with the discouragement which makes us wish for the future, what we should have been so glad to bury in the past. In beginning our work, we experienced a careless joy, we thought the end was near on our very entry into the field, and that we should quickly attain it, with the satisfaction of having created a little work, both complete and altogether graceful; but once on our way, ferreting without relaxation in all the literary thickets where some Parasol might lie buried, in the fold of a phrase, in the middle of a story, of an anecdote, or of a dissertation, of some fact, we have gathered so ample a harvest, our sheaf has become so large, so very large, that it was impossible for us to bind our arms about it, after having co-ordinated its various parts. It is but a few poor strays then which lie stranded here, the flotsam and jetsam of our hope, sole vestiges of a project which, like all projects, became Homeric as it grew great in the workshop of the imagination.

We end this essay, therefore, with a sentiment of ridicule, in which we laugh at our own selves, that of having dreamed of making a perfect monograph, and of having produced nothing more than a little tumbled fantasy, which ironically steals away out of sight, like that minuscular mouse, of which the mountain was once upon a time delivered in much moaning.

What matter! We must end. Let us hide our melancholy retreat by humming this last lovely burden of a poet of the school of Clairville--

'Tis called a /Pépin/, a /Riflard/, And other viler names there are; Not one of all the Umbrella moves. Wisely it counts them no disgrace; Since--child of April's art--the loves Oft make their quivers of its case!

THE GLOVE

THE MITTEN

THE GLOVE

/THE MITTEN/

/To M^{me.} H. de N./

Well, my dear friend, here I am, faithful as you see to my appointment; I am come deliberately to fulfil my promise, which I so imprudently gave on a certain day last season, upon a Breton strand, you remember, while contemplating one of your rosy little hands, which was whipping its sister with a long Swedish glove, in a sort of angry pet, and gave to you an appearance of wild and exquisite bluster?

How did you manage, O Enchantress, to induce me to give my loyal word that I would write for you the /History of the Glove/? How! . . . who can ever say? When a pair of pretty eyes envelop you, and bathe you with their radiance, when a smile puts honey into your heart, and a tiny little hand is stretched out with open palm, seeming to say, "Take me," every kind of will melts quickly away, consent mounts delightedly to the lips, and we promise at once everything, before we know well what we are asked.

Ah, unhappy me! it is the Glove of Nessus which you have placed upon my hand! The History of the Glove! why, it is the history of the world; and I should be very ill-advised if I pretended /avoir les Gants/ to be the first to tell that history, as ancient as it is universal.

Haunted by this debt of honour, contracted to please you, I went lately to see a learned old friend of mine, a venerable Benedictine--better than a well of science; an ocean of indulgence--to whom I exposed my foolish enterprise of the Glove and the Mitten.

Ah, my friend, I only wish you could have seen him all at once leap from his seat, look at me with compassion, examine me profoundly with his eye, and murmur three times in a tone of ineffable astonishment and sadness, as though he believed me mad--

"The Glove!--the Glove!!--the Glove!!!--

" . . . And so it is the Glove," he went on, when he had become a little calmer, "it is the history of this offensive and defensive ornament, of this object so complex, of which the origin is so obscure and so troublesome, it is a monograph of the Glove that you desire to write! . . . My dear child, allow me to believe that you have not reflected on what you have engaged yourself to do, let me think that you have brought more lightness than reason to the conception of this enterprise. The Glove!--Why, with the history of the Shoe, it is the most formidable work that a learned man could dare to dream of executing. Look," he sighed, dragging forth a voluminous manuscript, "in the /Bibliography of Words/, a colossal work, which I have commenced, but, alas! shall never end, I see at the word GLOVE more than fifteen hundred different works, Latin, Greek, Italian, German, Spanish, English, and French, which treat of this matter, and even this is but the rudest sketch. We must consider the use of the Glove amongst the ancient Hebrews, the Babylonians, the Armenians, the Syrians, the Phœnicians, the Sidonians, the Parthians, the Lydians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, &c.

"It would be necessary to divide the work into different Books, subdivided into innumerable Chapters; thus for the etymology alone of /the word Glove/, in the different dialects, must be reserved a long notice of comparative philology; it would be necessary to determine if the Glove which was used by the young nude girls, who wrestled together in Lacedæmon, after Lycurgus had installed there his Lyceums and public games--if this Glove, I say, ought to be classed among the fighting mufflers or the leathern gauntlets--and how many matters besides!" And my dear old friend became still more and more excited, ever widening the question, as if, it seemed to me, it were a case of establishing a complete Encyclopedia. Diderot and d'Alembert would have grown pale before that imperturbable science, which showed mountains of folios to be cleared away, and unknown precipices to be sounded.

"But," I hazarded in a little confusion, "I only think of writing a light treatise, a thin volume of a few pages, one of those nothings carried off by the wind, which pass for a second, like an anecdote or tale, into a pretty feminine cerebellum; I wish to give hardly a line to other countries than France, just to graze incidentally the Glove of challenge, to speak only from memory of the pontifical Gloves, to neglect the side of manufacture, the art of preparing the skins, of removing the outside skin, and so on. I only desire in one word to chat for a few instants, disconnectedly and in fits and starts, on that portion of clothing which the ancients called /Chirothecæ/, /Gannus/, /Gantus/, /Guantus/, /Wanto/, and /Wantus/, if I may trust the /Glossary/ of Du Cange."

"Alas, that is true," cried my old friend, in a sadly modulated tone; "I am doting, eh? We, of the old school, it is we who are the wet blankets, the tedious savants. At the present day, when journalism is to literature what the piano is to music, an instrument upon which every one strums without any conviction, is it not necessary to cut matters short, and quickly create eternal /à peu près/ (pretty much the sames), little light dissertations, notices made on the spur of the moment, and superficial passion? We were in our time egotists, fervent solitaries, unreadable and unread, if you will; what does it matter? When a work had fastened on our mind, we espoused it, after a legitimate love, with all the joys of generation and paternity. We wished to endow our labour with all the qualities which it seemed able to bear, to such an extent, that it became dry, rugged, and severe. But how many were the delights not to be forgotten, in those traces followed for whole days, before our utterance of the joyous /Eureka!/--how many inward intoxications in that slow-brooding season, in that patient labour!--how many minute investigations before resolving a historic doubt! We were the exclusives of national erudition, and thought one work sufficed for one man, when he had fed it with his life, with his watchings, with his very heart, with all the tenderness of the creative workman.

"I should like," he continued, "to have twenty years to ride a hobby-horse, which would make me rest at stopping-places for ten, fifteen, twenty years, on a thorny work, and offer me splendid runs, full of adventure, across the highways and secret paths of science. I would commit the follies of Doctor Faustus, to return to the age of those first bibliographic loves, which have the future brilliant and open before them--and this Glove which you disdain, my dear young friend--this Glove which you dwarf to the ideal of a doll--this Glove, I would pick it up, hold it carefully, clear off with it like a cat, and ensconce myself with it in my savant's den, to take a good long sniff at it, to study it, and to analyse it every day more and more, until at last I drew from it a serious and lasting work.

"This Glove should not be thrown at the public, like one of those challenges which recall too distinctly the celebrated Glove which Charles V. sent to Westminster by a mere scullion--an accentuation of the insult offered to the King of England--it should be cast more lovingly, as in our old romances of chivalry, /the Romance of the Rose/, of /Rou/, or of /Perceforet/. If I were but twenty years old, I would do with the reader as Petrarch did with Laura, in demanding of her nothing more than the favour of picking up her Glove; and I would say to him later on, after the fashion of Marot, poetically, in offering my work:--

'Deign to receive these Gloves with goodly cheer, My true heart's present of the coming year.'

"And then I would speak of those Mittens with which Xenophon reproaches the degenerate Persians, of those Roman finger-stalls employed in the olive crop, and even of that glutton named Pithyllus, who carried delicacy so far as to make a Glove of a sheath of skin for his tongue."