Madame, seated before her mirror—its frame is carved and gilded—in the dressing-closet with its white Avood panels, moulded and carved in the style called ' rock-work,' has been dressed by her women ; at her ' petit lever ' she has given audience to her admirers and her milliners, to the marquis and the banker, to the poet who extols her charms in the Almanadi des Muscs, to the flippant ' chevalier,' and the gallant Court Abbé.
" What does the Abbé say ? " The Abbé is a person of taste, and his opinion upon everything connected with the freaks of fashion is valuable.
But all these frivolous people have been dismissed, it is the hair-dresser's hour, the serious, the only really important moment of the day.
The artist needs to be alone, lest his inspiration should be put to flight, and besides, the task is long, difficult, and requires much care and preparation to render it successful. He can tolerate one or two waiting-women who understand him at half a word, and hand him everything he requires while he is in the fine frenzy of composition, but no other spectator.
According to the rank of the lady, this hairdresser will be the great artist, who comes in his coach, passing swiftly from hôtel to hotel in the noble Faubourg, and expected at the Tuileries, or by some princess, or else he will be one of the great artist's pupils, operating in a dress-coat, with lace ruffles and a sword by his side.
The inspiration comes, and under the fingers, the comb, and the curling-tongs of the artist an extraordinary structure of natural curls, skilfully mingled with enormous quantities of borrowed hair, is built up in stages, on which are piled bows, ' frizzes,' ' gates,' ' chestnuts,' 'crutches,' &c., for these extraordinary names were given to the inventions of the hair-dressers.
For twenty years this medley of strange constructions under pretence of hair-dressing went on. Folly had taken up its abode on the heads of women. Among the most preposterous inventions, I may enumerate the * Quèsaco/ the ' Monte-au-ciel ' (the name indicates its proportions), the ' Comète,' the ' Hérisson à quatre boucles ' (or ' Hedgehog with four curls,' invented by Marie Antoinette, who outdid the exaggeration of fashion), the 'Parterre galant.' Then we have the Cradle of Love and the Novice of Venus, as names for hats of outrageous size and shape.
Poufs were bewildering things ; the ' pouf au sentiment ' was an absurd arrangement of
A courtesan, after Wille.
flowers and shrubs, witlv birds in the branches, growing on a high hill of hair ; butterflies and Cupids flew about this garden. There were
Court dress.
also the ' pouf à la chanceliere,' or foot-muff pouf, the 'pouf à droite,' and the 'pouf à gauche.'
The ' pouf au sentiment ' allowed great latitude to invention, and the display of feeling and taste. The Duchesse de Chartres, mother of King Louis-Philippe, wore on her pouf a miniature museum of little images, her eldest son in his nurse's arms, a little negro, a parrot nibbling a clierry, and designs executed in the hair of her nearest and dearest kinsfolk.
After the ' garden ' hair-dressing, we find the ' Cascade of Saint-Cloud ' style, consisting of a cataract of powdered ringlets falling from the top of the head, the ' kitchen-garden ' style, with bunches of vegetables hooked in to the side-curls, the ' rural ' style, with landscapes representing a hill-side, windmills which actually turned, a meadow crossed by a silver stream, with a shepherdess tending her sheep, mountains, a forest with a sportsman and his dog in pursuit of game, &c., &c.
Then came the ' Coliseum,' the ' Innocence,' the 'Peal of bells,' the 'Bobwig,' the 'Milkmaid,' the ' Bather,' the ' Kerchief,' the ' Neckerchief,' the ' Oriental,' the ' Circassian,' the ' Minerva's helmet,' the ' Crescent,' the
' Bandeau of Love,' and among hats, the ' Enigma,' the ' Desire to please,' the ' Tiirned-up Calash,' the 'Pilgrim Venus/^ the 'Treasurer of the age,' ' Frivolous Bather/ &c., while hair-curling was done in ' sustained sentiments/ or ' sentiments recalled.'
The full-dress head-gear, a great scafFolding bedecked with feathers and flowers in tufts and garlands, was so large and so heavy, and took up so much space, that ladies, who already found it difficult to get their paniers into their cai'-riages, had to hold their heads down on one side, or even to kneel on the floor of the vehicle.^
Caricatures of the period represent ladies wearing these monstrous head-dresses in Sedan chairs, with the roof taken off to allow the top of the gigantic structure, powdered to an Alpine whiteness, to come through.
The most amazing of all these inventions was the ' Belle-Poule,' so called in honour of
1 Pilgrim Venus apparently means Venus with her cockle-shell, an antique design.
2 See note, Appendix, p. 263.
PARISIENNES 17S9.
the victory of the frigate La Belle Poule over The Arethusa, an English ship, in 1778. Upon the great mass of hair arranged in rolling waves, was placed a frigate in full sail, witli
Head-dress à la Belle Poule.
all its masts, yards, guns, and little sailors. After having composed such a master-piece, Léonard or Da<ïé micjht g;o hano- themselves, they could never beat that.
It was in '89 that the ridiculous head-gear of women reached its utmost absurdity. The highest of them all set the example, Alas ! she had to expiate her fault and her folly ! The head had sinned, the head paid the penalty, and if the loftiest of all fell, it was through the fault of the very person who had tempted her with his eccentric inventions during her prosperous years.
Léonard, the ' illustrious ' hair-dresser to the Queen, was one of the party who went to Varennes. At that terrible moment, in the great shipwreck of tlie monarchy, the object was to secure—what ? The services of the indispensable Léonard. That last weakness of hers turned out ill for the poor Queen, for, it is said, some erroneous information given (quite innocently) to a detachment of the troops commanded by the Marquis de Bouille, by Léonard, who had preceded the royal fugitives, was the cause of the disaster of Varennes, where the expected aid was missing.
When the fashionable lady's hair had been dressed, she hid her face in a large paper bag, While a thick coating of powder was applied to the structure—what a strange fashion it was that shed the snow of years on the heads of
Lirge Pouf.
young and old alike—and then, her cheeks being rouged to the right colour, forming a harsh contrast with the plastered white hair—'rouge,' said Madame de Sévigné, is all the law and the prophets"—she needed only to put on the patches which were intended to bring out certain points of physiognomy, and give piquancy to expression, in order to be quite irresistible.
These patches, which women were careful to place in the most becoming manner, each according to her special style of beauty, bore the following amusing names—
The ' majestic ' was j)laced on the forehead, the ' funny ' at a corner of the mouth, on the lips of a brunette the patch-was 'the roguish,' on the nose it Avas ' the saucy,' in the middle of the cheek ' the gallant,' near the eye, as it rendered the glance either languid or passionate, according to the fair one's intention, it was ' the murderous,' while the fanciful patches, crescents, stars, comets, hearts, etc., were past counting.
But we are coming to the last days of a world about to go to pieces, of a society about to disappear in a sudden catastrophe.
From 1785 the old réo^ime was in a totterinçf state ; the revolution was an accomplished fact —in dress.