LADIES’ LETTER FROM PARIS.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 14, 16 June 1874, Page 3

LADIES’ LETTER FROM PARIS.

[FROM a CORRESPONDENT. 1 April 18th

Sigh no more ladies. The most piquant piece of gossip is the fact, that more vncontirmed old bachelors and club-life gentlemen have been married in Paris for the three monthsending the 31st March than ordinarily takes place throughout the twelve, and that officers in the army, as well as officers out of it, have been the foremost as ever to prove that none but the brave deserve the fair—and the rich into the bargain, for no doubt patriotism has influenced the bride in her choice, as well as paterfamilias in his consent to encourage the bold soldier boys. Aware that all marriages are said to be made in heaven, there are occasionally exceptions, for as in fighting, so in matrimony, there is a furia francese. The only draw-back to French unions is, that the high contracting parties know very little of each other beforehand ; there is no courtship properly said, the romance at once treads on the kibes of reality, and have perhaps that long train of evils, which furnish the threads for thousands of feuilletons, ond the pivots of dramas, from the naughty subtilties of Dumas junior, to the fee-faw-fum plays of the Arnbigu and other theatres of the Boulevard, We have had doctors despite themselves, if history is to be credited, and really I often think there are persons married in France according to the same principle, for the interested are allowed no opportunities of testing compatibility of disposition ; it is on both sides a buying of a cat in a bag, according to one of their own proverbs ; and hence, it is not extraordinary that the law courts are occupied in determining so many cases of conjugal clawings. Since the war, a decided resolution has set in on the part of numerous families to give their daughters an education of a more practical character, who incline to send them less to convents and more to boarding schools, where the assistants, if not the principals, shall be English.

Spring develops its proverbial vitality in hail, rain, and dust-storms, in new peas and new bonnets, new potatoes and new toilettes, old swallows have returned and old faces from hybernating retreats have reappeared. Paris is not a city but a world wrote Francis I. to Charles V. ; it would be more correct to call it a collection of worlds, where the end of several arrives in due season, much to the relief of both saints and sinners, as may be seen in the joy felt at the close of the musical season. Within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, and there is a Nestor within our walls rapidly approaching his six score of summers, and without the aid of life pills, no such season for music in chamber as well as out of chamber was ever witnessed, the very streets seemed to have an increase of barrel-organs and hurdy-gurdies. Talk of music being the food of love to persons who have been subjected to a regimen of it for the last five months, and rendered incapable of enjoying a symphony from Beethoven, a minuet from Handel, or forty winks over a reverie from Schumann ; we have had quartettes from England, quintettes from Scandinavia, solos from Russia, duos from Spain, but alas ! nothing from Italy, As a change, the open air concerts are on the point of recommencing, where we can turn the back to first fiddlers" and wonderful horn-blowers for a stroll under green trees, to admire, if poetical, the stars through their branches, or eloquent nothings around their trunks; Newlymarried people are expected to give lawn parties next month, a kind of dejeuner-diner, after which dancing will be kept up till an “ early” hour. The experiment is to be tried of grandes dames appearing as village belles, ringing out elegant mirth. All this does not look like dancing on a volcano, but downright confidence in the Septennate, if not for seven years at least for three hours. Relative to that same Septennate, our claimant-A\s\\, ministers have performed an act of charitw in threatening to fine all editors GOOOfr and an imprisonment for five years if they presume to discuss it, for the nation was rapidly succumbing to Septennate on the brain, and this irritation was less justifiable since there were so many other important matters to dispute about, such as the weather, the price of butcher’s meat, the capability of mankind to swallow fonts, table cutlery in general, and the contents of a bodkin-case, as well as making the voyage through the Suez canal without pilots, and the drawbacks of extinguished lighthouses. Every politician was rapidly degenerating into a Prophet of Jerusalem, with his eternal “ woes to everything,” the cataclysm was so imminent that it was not worth while re-stitching a shirtbutton, or better, making no complaints about it ; and as a further proof that the end of the world was near, there was Rochefort loose again with all the forced emigrants of New Caledonia at his heels, and a battalion of the aborigines to combat in favor of the rights of man and the universal Republic. The members of the Permanent Commission, a selection of the' most_ Argus-eyed deputies appointed to give the alarm in case any person makes away with the Government while the Assembly is in vacation, are reported to go to bed in top boots and Ulster coats, with an untaxed chimney-pot hat for a nightcap, and a red, white, and blue umbrella across their breasts as wand of office. All these terrors are now allayed for certain till the 12th proximo, when the deputies will return to school.

The mundane life of Paris is rapidly becoming what it was under the Restoration and the Monarchy of July, no matter for the fact of our being in a Leah-Rachel apprenticeship for the Republic, and this is the consequence of society politics to deputies with a call, and to editors with a hobby, and if these two castes were decreed the monopoly of political knowledge, good, bad, or indifferent, France would be relieved from a terrible incubus. The salons are becoming positively interesting—they have less of a ball character and more really of an “ at home” ; the invited are friends and acquaintances ; the conversation is anything but insipid, and the Lady Teazles are decidedly at a discount ; for those who like art, literature, science, &c., there are opportunities to enjoy these pleasures without the inconvenience of pedantry ; the restaurants arc as seductive as good cheer, well cooked and remembered in bill, can make them. French ladies are not equal to the grass-plat game of croquet, they prefer field sports ; shooting when it is lawful to bring down a pheasant or a partridge, and this season passed, pigeons serve to keep in their hands ; the Baroness de Rothschild contemplates pigeon-shooting matches for ladies, so that it will not be surprising at this rate of progress if the fair sex arrive at a mild indulgence in the noble art of self-defence; in the ponds

attached to some chateaux , ladies engage in boat races. Horae racing is however more generally patronised. The 'lrive to the course is exciting, and the outi g invig 'taling ; one can see, and what is n portanr, 0c seen better, especially if the running t ik>‘s place at our Epsom in the bois de Boulogne. Leaving the horses to occupy the gentlemen, we look at each other's toilettes, and note that generally they are this spring of remarkable simplicity, and not at all what the fashionplates depict; better even simplicity than exaggerated fantasy. There is to be observed at the weekly meets a want of harmony between the plainness of the robe and the richness of the hats, the latter being being crowded with flowers, while the dress may be in serge. Taste exacts that the style of the robe should be in harmony with the coiffure. The Leopold-Robert hat was very generally worn. The famous garlands of grapes have given way to wreaths of cherries and a mixture of apple-blossoms or mixed flowers. Several robes were made up in cashmere, color, reseda or violet. One costume was particularly remarkable : it was composed of a black velvet jupe, the robe being in light blue silk, the tunic in varied silk, to show off the shoulders; tha hat was of the sombrero fashion, ornamented with apple and hawthorn blossoms. A Russian princess and her daughter appeared in the new cloche costume, the material being maroon faille. The style is short and plain. The scarf was much patronised. Another phase of fashionable life is for its members to give, in a theatre hired for the occasion, a kind of half private and half public entertainment, limited to light comedy and a variety of vocal and piano music. The essential of this joint-stoch drawing-room being that the spectators belong to the right set, can exchange visits during the evening, and give and take violettes in crystalised sugar. This is an anxious time for mothers, who have to prepare their boys and girls for confirmation. It would seem that not the least important part of the solemn ceremony is the providing of the outfit. The lads demand a white vest, neck tie, and white gloves, together with a gilt prayer-book, and a wax taper, if possible, taller than themselves. However, it is on the daughter that combined effort is concentrated ; she is the bride without the orange blossoms, the union of innocence and hope with faith. I have often wondered how the children of the positively necessitous manage to secure an outfit in every respect faultless ; hiring the toilette will not explain it, as tulle is not like a dress-coat or a black silk. The friends of the family make a whip to raise the sum required, as the work, among other claims, has that of piety. Indeed some mothers commence from the day of the birth of their children to lay aside a few sous, pending twelve years to meet the auspicious occasion, an instance of maternal tact and patience that only mothers know. There are establishments that will give credit for the outfit, just as they would for a layette or a sewingmachine ; but this plan is only borrowing at cent percent, and the French have no marked inclination for roads to ruin—they prefer to save even out of their necessities, in order to rest free.

Next month the Fine Arts Exhibition will’ open, one of the most delightful rendezvous that Paris provides for citizens and visitors, for this capital is still the centre of art and refined luxury, producing more pictures and selling more, to say nothing of other artistic treasures, than any other city —it is a workshop and a market. A sensible innovation will be made at the coming Exhibition respecting the portraits of gentlemen ; each portrait, instead of adopting the M. or N, name from the Catechism, will give in full the address of the Adonis. A work by Gustave Dore is much spoken of, representing a beggar reclining on a stone seat, endeavoring to warm her baby between her arms, the stars of a winter night shining above her head ; the mother is a wreck of elegance, a lace bonnet shading famine-worn cheeks, a silk dress, hunger on the lips, despair in the eyes, a sort of bluish light enveloping all. The group represents civilised misery . In the way of plays, there is nothing to eclipsja the Sj)hinx, or rather the way Mile. Croizette, the actrice who does the dying scene, displays the white of her eyes, forces the blood to her face, and rehearses the orthodox strychnine twists and turns ; and yet the most delicate ladies can sit out this stage of horrors, who would not pass within a league of the Morgue, or permit for the world an unmannerly corpse to come between the wind and their nobility. Yet this “ emetic” representation, and the young man who swallowed a plated fork, are the ruling phenomena, superior to the prodigies exhibited in the il-legitimate dramas at the Ginger-bread' fair. One shop is making a fortune from having advertised it was there that was purchased the fork swallowed by the wonderful shop-boy, and the house that the latter belongs to has, in consequence of the notoriety of the catastrophe, been able to dispense with its annual spring custom of presenting a bouquet of violets to every purchaser. That ugly question of “ future cemeteries" comes home to our business and bosoms. The Archbishop of Paris asserts, having to travel by train to a cemetery will affect our reverence for the dead, by disinclining us to visit their remains; on the contrary the railway companies promise to run, not so much excursion, as trains d'affection ; the entourage will be in keeping ; the carriages are to be black, with linings to match ; the guards will be in deeper mourning than croqucmorts —no change will be necessary in the habitual toilettes of the drivers and stokers ; as for the cremation project, the desire is rather to save the living from being burned, than calcining the dead. When the Septenoate governs as well as rules, attention may be given to the matter. The public, however, cares very little about converting graveyards into ash-pits. The English bakeries in Paris, that deal in nothing but Freneh bread, have, since the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, taken to selling Russian loaves ; which ars slabs of bread of the deepest ginger-bread brown, and having the appearance of being quarried out of the oven, and to be sold by the hundred weight rather than the pound. Then, as a proof that Thiers has not been altogether overlooked, or is coming back to the memory, his name has been given to an “exquisite perfume,” an extract from flowers grown in Alsace. This it seems, must have vexed General Trochu, as he has published another section of his Iliad of the Siege of Paris ; proving that he alone was right and everybody else wrong. A man never writes a book to describe himself a fool. But the flood of retrospective political literature that the wrecked statesmen of the ex-empire are now deluging France with to demonstrate their ability, is lamentable evidence of how little is the wisdom with which many rulers are endowed.