In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity. Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd
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?
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