MODES & MANNERS
OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
rights reserved
Gallery of fashion, London,
MODES e? MANNERS
• /
OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
AS REPRESENTED IN THE PICTURES
AND ENGRAVINGS OF THE TIME
BY
DR, OSKAR FISCHEL AND
MAX YON BOEHN
TRANSLATED BY M. EDWARDES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY GRACE RHYS
I790 1817
IN
THREE VOLS.
VOL. I
LONDON: J. M. DENT 6? CO. : ALDINE HOUSE
NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1909
V
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
INTRODUCTION
THE North American Indian is perhaps the person who
has most thoroughly realised the possible significance of
dress. To him dress was not so much a covering worn for
the sake of convenience and fashion as a symbol of his state
of mind. I have been told that a Red Indian prepared for
the war-path, shaven, feathered, and chalked, is the most
hideous emblem of the horrors of war that the artifice of
man has ever produced. To test its success one need only
glance at the mass of literature that has grown up round the
subject.
It is to the passions of the primitive man and their trans-
lation into dress and ornament that we owe a considerable
amount of our local colour in costume ; but there is another
source from which much charm is still derived — the reflec-
tion of natural conditions in dress, hardened into custom.
How wonderfully do the garish colours of the gipsy's clothes
still suggest the oriental suns ; how do the thirty embroidered
petticoats of the Bulgarian young woman suggest the ac-
cumulated weight of custom, the lonely valleys, the wide
coffer, and the still house ; how empty of pleasure would
our children's books be without the reindeer-skins of the
Esquimaux, the Japanese umbrella, the turban of Arabia !
It is of no use to grieve over the inevitable, over the sweep
of universal law as it comes rapidly into action ; but what a
lament might be raised over the imminent disappearance of
local art in dress. In the British Isles the destruction is all
but complete ; within the last ten years, the last native Welsh
costume has mouldered away in the farmhouse chest ; the
Irish maiden has discarded the head-shawl from beneath
INTRODUCTION
which she used to smile so sweetly; and the Highland girl
has learned to import the fashions by post from Manchester.
And this process is going on all the world over ; so rapid is
it and so sudden that it is as yet all but unobserved.
To European dress and its changes, we must look not for
the charm and interest of primitive custom and feeling, but
for the large expression of a social history common to all
men. Fashion in dress follows behind the human catas-
trophes and triumphs, as Harlequin and Columbine follow
with their tricks the serious actors on the stage.
No trait can better illustrate the frenzy of luxury that
possessed the wealthy and powerful classes of Europe than a
study of eighteenth-century dress. At a time when black
bread and wild herbs were the food of the people, national
property was wasted in the riot of personal splendour. How
clear a prophecy this seems to us now of the French Revolu-
tion and the shaken thrones of Europe. Take for instance
such a description as this of the wedding-dress of Frederick
the Great's daughter in the early years of the century.
"The jewels worn by the bride were valued at four
millions of dollars. She had a coronet, set with diamonds
and pear-shaped pearls, which alone was estimated at one
million ; her train was borne by six maids of honour, who,
on account of the great weight of the precious stones with
which it was garnished, had two pages to assist them. The
total weight of the bridal attire is said to have been nearly a
hundred pounds."
So much suffices for the princess ; the great gentleman of
Paris was not far behind her in expense. Madame de Sevigne
gives a charming account of the wedding toilet of the Prince
de Conde. " Let me tell you the finest, the most extraordi-
nary piece of news in the world," says she, in her delightful
way. " Here it is ; yesterday the prince was shaved ! This
is no illusion, neither is it a bit of gossip ; it is the solemn
truth : the whole court was witness of the ceremony, and
Madame de Langeron, seizing the moment when he had his
paws crossed like a lion, slipped upon him a waistcoat with
vi
INTRODUCTION
Gainsboro ugh
MRS. SIDDONS
Vll
INTRODUCTION
diamond buttons. A valet de chambre, abusing his patience,
frizzed him, powdered him, and at last reduced him to the
condition of the handsomest courtier imaginable, with a
head of hair that easily extinguished all the wigs. These are
the prodigies of the wedding. His suit was inestimably
lovely ; it was embroidered in very large diamonds, following
the lines of a black pattern, on a straw-coloured velvet
ground. They say that the straw colour was not effective,
and that Madame de Langeron, who is the soul of all the
splendours of the Hotel de Conde, was quite upset: and
truly, such misfortunes are the most grievous in life. . . .
But, indeed, I was forgetting the best of all, which is that
the Prince's sword had a handle of diamonds. The lining
of his mantle was of black satin sewn with diamonds." So
did the great gallants " carry a manor on their backs " ; and
the great ladies a farm or two tied to their fan-strings, or a
whole village round their necks.
Up to the very year of the Revolution, 1789, gentlemen's
clothes were exceedingly smart. From Hogarth an excellent
idea of English dress of the day may be had ; always re-
membering that his day was the earlier eighteenth century,
and that dress became more absurd afterwards. Although
Hogarth was first and foremost a prophet, as daring and
savage in his denunciations of wickedness as any character
in the Old Testament, yet such is his delicacy and perfection
as an artist that his creations are still as vivid as any living
creature of to-day. Take, for example, the singer in the
drawing-room scene of " Marriage a la Mode " ; what a con-
summate picture of able-bodied foppery ! Then we have
the knee-breeches, the long-flapped waistcoat, the gold-laced
coat with the huge and gorgeously embroidered cuffs, the
absurd bows, brooches, and earrings, so cleverly matched to
an inimitable folly of countenance.
It was the Revolution that sounded the knell of masculine
gaiety of dress. The follies of women's costuming were not
at all affected ; the fashions for women merely altered, and
in fact became to the full as absurd and extravagant in
viii
PORTRAITS OF MR AND MRS LINDOW ROMNEY
INTRODUCTION
another mode. But the day of the fine gentleman was over ;
no more were seen the superb wigs, the long queue, the
powder, the painted face, the gaily coloured clothes, the
bright coat, the embroidered waistcoat, the striped silk panta-
loons, the two watches, the immense chains, the innumerable
seals.
" My friend," says a lady, writing at that day, " wears such
a collection of charms attached to his two huge watch-
chains that when I miss hearing the accustomed noise of
himself and his horse, the rattling and clanking of his seals
sufficiently advertise the fact of his arrival."
France had for some time been giving the law in fashion,
so that the London gallant's dress of this date differed
very little from that of the Frenchman. In the year 1772
the Macaroni Club was founded in contradistinction to
the Beefsteak Club. The Macaroni Club introduced the
Italian style, and its members became famous for their
cultivated and Italianised extravagance. A Macaroni became
a byword. He wore an enormous toupee, great side-curls,
a huge club or knot that rested on the back of his neck
like a porter's knot ; a very small hat, a short coat, tight
breeches of striped and spotted silk, the inevitable two
watches, and enormous bunches of strings at the knee.
" Sixteen-string Jack" was a noble and admired figure of
this period.
The women of this date were not to be outdone by the
men. They powdered too ; they used quantities of pomatum,
and with this double ingredient the hair was stiffened out
into large curls ; or being drawn back from the forehead,
was swelled out into a chignon. " False hair was very generally
worn, and every variety of coiffure ; French curls that re-
sembled eggs strung on a wire ; Italian curls, done back from
the face, and often called scallop shells; and German curls,
which were a mixture of Italian and French. Behind, the
hair was curled all over and called a tete de jnouton." Powder
and pomatum were used in such quantities to build up these
erections (which indeed often attained the height of a foot
ix
INTRODUCTION
and a half), that it was impossible to dress a lady's hair every
day. Often the coiffure was left untouched and perfect for
a week, a fortnight, or even more. Here we have a complete
approximation to the ideals and practice of Fiji. One amiable
writer of the period remarks : " I consent, also, to the present
fashion of curling the hair, so that it may stand a month
without combing ; though I must confess that I think three
weeks or a fortnight might be a sufficient time. But I bar
every application to those foreign artists, who advertise that
they have the secret of making up a lady's head for a quarter
of a year."
Such portentous vanities as these are not altogether out
of the way : one can even admire a certain wild and savage
art in these erections ; I have been told that a free negro
king of central Africa, with his hair permanently dressed into
a black tower a foot and a half high, and hung with ornaments
of barbaric gold, is a magnificent object when seen among
tropical surroundings. Similarly, a beautiful white woman,
fantastically dressed, her fair face surmounted by a white
tower of hair, is an interesting specimen of a certain kind
of art.
But what can be said of the capriole, that last expression
of folly, from whose appearance in society one might augur
not one but many revolutions ?
A poet of the day thus describes it : —
" Here, on a fair one's head-dress, sparkling sticks,
Swinging on silver springs, a coach and six ;
There, on a sprig or slop'd pourpon, you see
A chariot, sulky, chaise, or vis-a-vis"
Here is another couplet from the same production : —
" Nelly ! where is the creature fled ?
Put my post-chaise upon my head."
It is almost incredible that such a preposterous idea could
have occurred to any society, but its public appearance is
a fact. A writer of the day gives an account of this invention.
INTRODUCTION
The vehicle itself was constructed of gold threads, and was
drawn by six dapple greys of blown glass, with a coachman,
postilion, and gentleman within of the same brittle manu-
facture. . . . Those heads which are not able to bear a coach
and six (for vehicles of this sort are very apt to crack the
brain) so far act consistently as to make the use of a post-
chariot, or a single horse chaise with a beau perching in the
middle." Not only the post-chaise and horses were worn,
but models of sedan-chairs and attendant chairmen were also
used as a head-dress.
Close upon such feats of the toilet as these followed the
grim realities of the French Revolution. We have been
fortunate in our Thomas Carlyle, a writer who deals with this
event both in its least and its greatest exhibition. In his
"French Revolution" and in "Sartor Resartus " he has spent
immense pains to show both the significance and the in-
significance of dress ; — its significance taken as a sign of the
times and the general temper of men ; its insignificance in
the catalogue of human worth. He can treat of a diamond
necklace till his reader sees, not the mere string of stones
sparkling enough to please easy or innocent eyes, but a symbol
of man's greed. He can divine nobility under a peasant's
rags, or stupidity even though dressed in gold tissue. How
fearful is his double portrait of Marie-Antoinette, first young,
beautiful, gorgeous ; then stripped, broken, and grey !
It is little to be wondered at if such a social upheaval had
astonishing consequences as far as dress was concerned. As
we have already seen, the insouciant gaiety of men's dress
disappeared never to return. As for women, away went
powder, hoops, and brocades. The ideal of life that worked
in men's minds beneath all the horror of that time was
freshly translated into dress. Having got rid of the tyranny
of the aristocracy, all luxury, folly, and artificiality were to
be done away with. The Athenian costume was chosen as
best expressing the thought of the day. The astonishing
apparition of the sans-culotte, or the Parisian dressed in
tunic and mantle, began to be seen. The Parisian woman
xi
INTRODUCTION
of as much fashion as was left appeared no longer dressed,
but draped and filleted.
Such doings in Paris had of course an immense effect
on English dress : those who favoured the French Revolutioi
in this country endeavoured to show their opposition t<
aristocracy by ignoring all the distinctions hitherto observe(
between the dress of a nobleman or man of fashion am
the ordinary citizen. The leader of this movement was Fi
who was no doubt glad to pass off his natural untidiness
zeal for a noble cause. Carelessness of dress — studied care-
lessness in most cases — now became the fashion, and Fo:
startled Parliament by appearing in top-boots and a great-
coat at a sitting in the House where hitherto the Court dres
had always been worn. It was he who proposed the taxinj
of powder to Pitt, and after this powdered wigs or "heads"
were seldom heard of. The rough-cropped head called
Brutus became fashionable, and every brawler could no
show a sound classical reason for his dishevelment.
curious anecdote is told of the revolution in Naples at th<
beginning of the nineteenth century which illustrates thel
possible political significance of the coiffure. "The royalists,"
says a writer of the day, " seized all those whom they sus
pected of being inimical to their party, but instead of
questioning their captives they adopted a novel and summan
way of discovering their political sentiments — they merel1
looked whether their heads gloried in queues or not. II
they possessed this appendage, which was considered
strictly loyal, they were instantly liberated ; but woe to thos
whose love of French modes had persuaded them to droj
their pigtails ! Words, entreaties, prayers were unavailing
the test of loyalty was not there, and the queueless Neapoli-
tans fell victims to their adoption of the new fashion, am
met the death of traitors, rebels, and insurgents. So deepb
did those who had been saved by their coiffure feel the obliga-
tion, and also the safeguard it had proved to them, that man;
are said to have concealed the queue under their coat-collan
years after all fear of revolutions had been banished."
xii
INTRODUCTION
Although the French Revolution provided a check to the
luxury and absurdity of men's costumes, that of women
soon became as preposterous and extravagant as ever. The
Empress Josephine appeared at Court in a dress of tissue of
gold embroidered in large emeralds enlivened by rivulets of
diamonds, with a tiara, combs, earrings, and necklace of
emeralds. As for the coiffure, the year 1840 saw some fine
inventions, to the full as absurd as the black owl head-dress
that Madame de Se"vigne describes so delightfully. The giraffe
now appeared, a tower of bows, ribands, combs, and feathers,
and the casque head-dress was not far behind it in the race
for monstrosity.
Curiously enough, the zeal for the natural and simple first
developed by the French after the Revolution gave rise to
a mischievous convention. It became fashionable for women
to go about lightly draped in thin muslins. The dress of a
young lady in January snows consisted of a scanty muslin
frock open at the neck, diaphanous white stockings, and slight
thin slippers. Consumption became fashionable ; it was called
decline, and considered poetic. Fainting and hysterics were
studied, as a fine art. Eating became a vulgar indulgence
as far as women were concerned, and appetites were furtively
satisfied behind the scenes. Even when the slim white
muslins disappeared, giving way before the prodigious crino-
line, the theory of the ethereal nature of woman remained in
full force, and hysteria became the unlucky mistress of many
a household.
Great events have curious lateral consequences : as the
French Revolution became the unlikely parent of white
muslin and feminine collapse, so the sudden effusion of
scientific thought in the seventies and eighties fathered a
rapid movement in the direction of natural and healthful
dress. Science made the discovery of hygiene, and some-
thing like a revolution in the household quickly followed.
As a direct consequence we have now a new force amongst
us, «i strong current of public opinion in favour of national
health, and good sense in clothes and domestic manners.
xiii
INTRODUCTION
Side by side with the hygienic movement there has arisen
another ; the seventies in London saw the birth of what
has been called aestheticism. This effort in a fresh directioi
was simply a conscious reaction in art against the unconscious
increase of ugliness in human life. The cunning of men ii
circumventing the laws of nature (which demand beaut^
Cruikshank
MONSTROSITIES OF 1822
everywhere) for their own private advantage, had become
quite newly developed in the middle-Victorian years. In
order that the minority should enjoy a hundred times their
share of the beauty of the world, a quite new measure of
ugliness was forced on the majority. Architectural hideous-
ness became a national sin. Picturesqueness and gaiety
vanished from ordinary town and country life ; there was
no time left for them. English cottage loveliness was stolen
xiv
INTRODUCTION
away to provide for the upspringing of innumerable villas.
This new development was met by the sudden invention of
new combinations of colour and form in dress and domestic
arrangement, a movement which, beginning in a high class
of society, is now rapidly spreading downward and influencing
manufacture.
Another force which will have untold effect on the dress
of the twentieth century is the Socialist tendency. The lower
ranks of society are being levelled up ; distinctions in dress
are being done away with ; the present state of men's costume
is a most curious one, the whole of the male adults of the
Western race being restricted by custom to two or three
identical uniforms. There are symptoms that a like process
is at work in women's dress. It is interesting to try and fore-
cast how these three tendencies will act upon each other in
the future. There are already signs that the empire of Paris
over the world's dress is shaken ; a greater originality of ideas
obtains in England ; the less judicious public opinion of
Paris has of late attempted to introduce fashions which have
been totally refused. Such was the French fashion in
bicycling costumes, which the good sense of Englishwomen
declined. The French are remarkable for the tasteless
dressing of children ; although in neatness and smartness
they are still supreme, it does not seem as though ideas for
the dress of the future would proceed from Paris.
In the days of the " Spectator " a half-serious proposal was
made by that censor of manners that a female parliament
should sit on all matters connected with women's dress.
Such an arrangement may very well come about in the near
future ; when state committees of artists, thinkers, and
practical experts concern themselves with these national
matters, we may look for very delightful results indeed.
Lately when climbing on a remote Welsh mountain side
I saw higher up among the heather two moving spots of
colour, one a peculiar poppy-red, and one a light green that
consorted well with the bracken. Coming nearer, I found
these moving creatures were two beautiful young girls, both
xv
INTRODUCTION
fair-haired and fair-complexioned, of pure English type,
healthful and robust. They were dressed in gowns fashioned
after the model of an Arab dress first brought to London,
dusty and blood-stained, after the Soudan war. How
narrow the world's limits are growing when Saxon maidens
in Arab dress can be found straying by a Celtic fastness !
Here we have a distinct indication of the lines on which the
dress of the future is likely to develop. " What work nobler,"
says Carlyle, "than transplanting foreign thought into the
domestic soil ; except indeed planting thought of your own,
which the fewest are privileged to do ? Wild as it looks, this
Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning,,
promises to reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments
and already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal
History."
GRACE RHYS.
xvi
MODES 8f MANNERS
OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I
ON the i/j.th July, 1789, the Bastille was stormed by the
populace of Paris ; it was the first " act " of the Revolution,
and the herald of a new era. The ideas which prepared the
way for the French Revolution can be traced back to the
beginning of the eighteenth century, and as early as 1713
were confronted by the papal anathema against Modernism ;
but Clement XL's famous Bull " Unigenitus " had no more
deterrent effect on Jansenism than the verdict of the French
Parliament fifty years later on Rousseau's writings. Any fresh
and suggestive idea rescued by the speculative philosophers
from the theological controversy rapidly became the common
property of all thinking people. Voltaire's elegant cynicism
proved to the more frivolous-minded the unnaturalness and
artificiality of existing conditions ; Rousseau demonstrated to
the more thoughtful the possibility of a better state of things
founded on the rights of nature. With every succeeding
year of the century the opposition of the new ideas, the
longing after nature and reason, became more active, as it
became, at the same time, constantly more evident that the
continuance of the outward and lifeless forms under which
the European nations dragged on their political existence
were no longer possible. More enlightened monarchs, such
as the Emperor Joseph and Charles III. of Spain, endeavoured
to bring about a reformation by the better education of the
MODES & MANNERS OF
Isat-ey NAPOLKON BONAPARTE
by their attack on
the
people ; in vain, for the ne\
ideas could gain no foothol
in a feudal state.
The discontent grew apace
v and with it an ardent longing
i but as yet the general desir
had merely been expressed i
; theory and had found uttci
ance only in literature and line
speeches, when suddenly, on this
famous day of July, the Parisians
made open display of tlieii
demands in the streets of theii
city, and gave the signal f(
the fall of a \vhole social sysU
Bastille. Feudalism, and with
Monarchy, fell, and contemporaries looked on with amaz<
ment at the rapid annihilation of conditions, the age-loii|
existence of which alone had made them questionable.
Ideas which had hitherto pleasantly served to occupy tl
fancy of the aristocrats in their hours of ease, had becoi
facts of life ; the ideals of Rousseau's doctrine of the natun
rights of man now strove to fit themselves to realities ; th<
citizen class, that had dwelt till now in gloomy hopelessness,
saw the dark sky illumined as with fire-balls, by the magic
and heart-stirring words, " Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."
To-day, as we look back on
that time and see it in con-
nection with what went before
and after, and know as we
do how little the events that
followed fulfilled its enthusiastic
hopes; to-day, when the con-
viction is forced upon us, "que
jamais le penple ne verm le lever
du soleil," we can but smile at
the wild excesses of the exultant
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Schadow
PKINCE
1794
multitude ; but the effect at the time of what happened in
Paris was beyond conception widespread and overpower-
ing. In their enthusiasm for the French Revolution, the
aged Klopstock and the youthful Schiller met on equal
terms ; Fichte welcomed it as the dawn of a new age ;
Hegel as the rising of the sun on a magnificent epoch of the
world. Schlozer, whose official Gazette was known as the
scourge of the lesser princes of the German Empire, thought
he now heard the angels in heaven singing a Te Deum ;
Johannes von Miiller, George Forster, Gentz, Campe,
Gorres, and Posselt, saw the approaching fulfilment of
3
MODES & MANNERS OF
their most daring dreams ; the
sentimental Sophie la Roch<
compiled books for hersel
of Mirabeau's speeches. Tl
movement, however, did n<
confine itself to the circl<
of literati and scholars, f(
Heinrich Steffens relates froi
personal knowledge that tl
excitement over the u
heard - of things that wei
taking place penetrated into the homes of the humbl<
subjects.
The gospel of freedom acted like an intoxicant 01
high and low alike : a German prince, Karl Konstantin
Hesse, became, as Citizen Hesse, a furious partisan of tl
Jacobins ; the Princess Rosalie Lubomirska's excited syi
pathy would not allow her to remain on her Polish estat*
and she hastened to Paris — to find her death on the scaffoh
her tragic fate being shared by Friedrich von der Trend
another victim of despotism.
The enthusiasm aroused in Germany, especially amoi
the educated citizen class, by the French Revolution, is not
surprising if we take into consideration the prevailing condi-
tions of the country at the close of the eighteenth century.
German society then, even more than it is to-day, was ruled
by caste, and the upper and middle classes were separated by
an insuperable barrier. Position and influence, honours and
revenues, fell to the nobility alone ; the commoner, however
wealthy or clever he might be, was ip so facto a second-class
person, and as such shut out from all the higher posts in
government and army ; a principle of Government which acts
as injuriously as effectually when put into practice. The
novels and plays of this period chose for their favourite
theme the troubled tale of lovers of unequal birth, the tragedy
of which we can hardly appreciate nowadays when equality
and inequality depend entirely on money. At that time the
4
Journal des Dames,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
marriage of a nobleman with one of lower class meant
exclusion, not only for himself, but also for his descendants,
from numerous privileges which were conditional on the
preservation of the family tree from any contamination ; he
risked the loss of his rights of primogeniture and feudal
lordship, of ecclesiastical preferment and admission to the
Teutonic order, without taking into account the constant social
humiliations to which he and his were subjected. We may
Moses
Le beau Monde
From "Costumes Modernes"
quote, for examples of this state of things, that only those of
the nobility who could certify their descent through sixteen
generations were admitted to the assemblies in the Redouten-
haus at Mainz ; that at the weekly entertainment given by the
Elector, officers of the citizen class were admitted, it is true —
but they had to remain standing bolt upright, while their
more aristocratic colleagues were allowed to sit ! At Mann-
heim the citizens, though paying the same for their entrance,
were only permitted to occupy the back seats at the theatre,
and at Linz the performances were not begun until the
nobility had all taken their places. In the academy where
Schiller was educated, the nobles and the commoners ate at
separate tables, and in Berlin a woman of the middle-classes
5
MODES & MANNERS OF
Debucourt
was forced, should she chance to meet a countess in any
public place, to seat herself at least six chairs away from her£
Only the nobility danced at the balls given at the Baths of
Pyrmont ; men and women of the- inferior class, although
equally part of the society of the establishment, had to be
contented with looking on. It went further still at Freienwald,
where in 1798 the young nobles of Pomerania and the Mark
bound themselves by word of honour not to dance with any
woman beneath them in rank ! The Saxon saloon at Karlsbad
was reserved for the nobility, but here at least the lesser worth
of the more humbly born visitor was taken into account in
the fee for the baths, which was two florins for the aristocratic
bather and one for the ordinary.
Endless accounts of the insulting and overbearing be-
haviour of the officers of high family to those beneath them
6
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
l-'rom " Promenade in the Palais Royal"
1792
reach us, especially from Prussia, about this time, but their
arrogance was not confined to North Germany. At Stutt-
gart, for example, in 1786, a Lieutenant von Boehn had a
Counsellor of the Exchequer, a man of the citizen class, taken
in charge and fined five-and-twenty pounds for not having,
as he considered, shown sufficient respect in saluting him ! —
a pretence for getting money which no doubt was of assist-
ance to him in his career. The author of " The Robbers " was
obliged to get himself ennobled before his wife could be ad-
mitted to Court, and Goethe, Herder, Johannes von Muller,
had to thank, not their literary eminence, but circumstances
of a similar character for the addition of " von " to their
names. The middle-classes were subjected to daily insults
and humiliations, purely on account of their inferiority of
birth, and although every man among them did not take his
7
MODES & MANNERS OF
Tischbein QUEEN LUISE AND HER SISTER FREDERIKA
treatment so much to heart as young Jerusalem, who shot
himself at Wetzlar because he was excluded from the high
and noble society assembled for the tea-parties at Count
8
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Bassenheim's, we can understand from this to what a pitch
of hatred and bitterness those men were wrought who were
self-conscious enough to know the value of their self-acquired
worth in comparison with the advantages of fortune. In the
literature, including letters and diaries, of that day we fre-
quently come across the expression that this person or that
is a man in the noblest sense," in spite of his aristocratic
birth. It is true that some high-born men, such as Ftirsten-
berg, Reventlow, Galitzin, Moltke, Bernstorff, Nesselrode,
Stollberg, Dalberg, and others, all men of high intellect,
extended their friendship to those beneath them who were
their equals or superiors in mental ability ; but the instant
one of the latter forgot that he was only admitted on suffer-
ance into the higher circle, or wished to become a member
of a superior family — as Gerhard Kiigelgen, for instance,
who wooed Lilla von Manteuffel— he was immediately made
aware of the insuperable barriers that excluded him, and
innumerable difficulties were placed in the way of the
lovers.
It is not to be wondered at, that under such circumstances
Germany joined in the general rejoicing, seeing in the begin-
ning of happier conditions in France a promise of better
things for herself. All the more convinced was everybody
that France had done well to rid herself of such baggage
when floods of emigrants, all privileges and prerogatives
having been swept away in the first years of the Revolution,
came pouring into Germany, England, and Russia. As in
process of time the radical element got the upper hand
among the Jacobins, threatening the annihilation of every
existing thing in France, the sympathy of the propertied
classes became less pronounced, and the awakening anxiety
of the Governments of Europe led them to put a check if
possible on revolutionary ideas. The Prussian Minister,
Wollner, had as far back as 1788 put a peremptory stop
to any propaganda tending to enlighten the people ; the
Government of Austria, in 1793, forbade families to engage
French masters, governesses, or servants, and when the
9
MODES & MANNERS OF
Gerard
MMK. L.M/nriA BONAPARTE
Polish nobility, shortly before the fall of the Republic in
1793, gave the serfs their freedom, Prussia, Austria, and
Russia joined in indignant protests against this humane
measure which they looked upon as the result of French
influence, and made it an excuse for dividing all that re-
mained of Poland amon£ themselves. But where is the I
o
police to control the spirit of man !
To turn to the French : an overmastering moral idea was |
the chief force on their side. The thought of freedom which !
led them on was a stronger weapon than the arms of the I
10
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Prudhoi
THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE
unpractised, undisciplined, and ragged army of the Revolu-
tionaries. The Revolution was the triumph of the Idea ;
before it states fell in ruins to the ground, and the very world
itself seemed to have lost its balance with their collapse.
ii
MODES & MANNERS OF
LA POLITICOMANE
Empire and popedom, constitutions that had stood f(
centuries and seemed warranted to last for ever, cai
toppling down like colossal statues resting on feet of cl«
burying in their fall all that remained of the Middle
— the Venetian Republic and the Order of the Knights
Malta. A very weapon of God, a fate from which none coul(
escape, such to all men appeared the little Corsican general,
whose unexampled career of victory on victory kept the whole
of Europe in a state of unrest for a period of nearly ten
years. Feared as a destroying power that it was impossible
to resist, he was yet looked up to as a heroic being whose
genius and incredible deeds far surpassed any merely mortal
capacity. Napoleon, so gigantically endowed by nature,
found none strong enough to oppose him in his work
of destruction; the old order of society went down before
his arms ; he stood at the beginning of a new order of
things, which arose independently of him, a man for the
world to wonder at, but not to understand. To his fellow-
creatures and what concerned them, he was totally indifferent,
and ready to sacrifice the lives of millions in cold blood ;—
12
Journal des Dames,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
whole countries laid waste and cities burnt to the ground pre-
served a blood-stained memory of the conqueror. In spite of
the personal hate and fear he inspired in his contemporaries,
the latter could not abstain from the admiration due to his
supernatural abilities.
Napoleon awoke neither the love nor the loyalty of
his fellows, and when at last his part was played out
13
MODES & MANNERS OF
and he lay disarmed and helpless, Europe, delivered from the
weight of his oppressive personality, drew a sigh of relief,
and left the man, before whom it had so lately trembled, to
die lonely and forgotten in a forsaken corner of the world.
Many of the great ones of the earth fell under his spell ;
know what Goethe thought of Napoleon, and that Beethov(
dedicated his " Eroica " to him ; the Jacobin David and tl
democrat Johannes von M tiller were among his enthusiastic
followers ; and even when he was a fugitive after his defeat
at Leipzig, the Queen of Saxony showered reproaches upon
Metternich because the Allies had dared to join in arms
against Napoleon, whose cause was God's cause.
The princes of the Confederation of the Rhine were n<
the only ones who thought differently to this lady ; inde<
their opinion was shared by the majority of mankind.
When Napoleon first appeared among the chaotic coi
fusion of the Republic, and the eyes of foreign powers beg«
to be attracted towards him, when he successfully accoi
plished what had been deemed impossible and brought ord(
into the affairs of France, there were many true patriots evi
in Germany who looked hopefully in his direction, and a
party in the country still awaited their deliverance from hii
even after Austria and Prussia had suffered defeat and th<
Confederation of the Rhine and the kingdom of Westphalia
had been already established. These mistaken men have
been .accused of a lack of patriotism ; the accusation is as
misplaced as the similar aspersion so frequently made by
contending politicians to conceal their own motives or to
throw suspicion on those of their adversaries. What we now
understand by patriotism was at that time unknown. The
French and Germans were guided in their feelings not by
a sense of nationality but by their preference for certain
political methods ; while one side still clung to the older
ideas, the other was the friend of progress, and the latter
naturally rejoiced when its party won the victory, even
though it had wrung something from the French at the ex-
pense of the Germans. The French celebrated Frederick Il.'s
14
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
victory at Rossbach over the forces of the hated Pompa-
:lour and her creatures, and the same French in 1814-15
3pened their arms to the armies of the Allies that had
delivered them from Napoleon.
The Germans have Napoleon to thank for the awakening
:)f their national consciousness ; it was reserved for him, who
did everything he could to crush those feelings of national
individuality which were the most dangerous obstacle to his
world-monarchy, to bring the nations that he found disunited
into union, as a protection against his unbearable policy, and
he was the first to evoke the' idea of a common fatherland
among the hundred small states into which Germany was
hen divided. In the same \vay, the idea of unity was
iwakened among the Italians when he brought the whole of
heir country under his sceptre. Poland acquired fresh
itrength, and to him was due the fact that the Spaniards, the
^atalonians and Portuguese, forgot for years their racial hatred,
joethe's cosmopolitan conception of a Fatherland, and
^chiller's similar view as expressed in his letters to Korner
ire too well known to repeat here. The left bank of the
Rhine afterwards became French, and French armies ravaged
South Germany, while the people of Thuringia, Saxony, and
Prussia looked on as if it was no affair of theirs. When the
loly Roman Empire of the German nation fell to pieces,
Josef Gorres pronounced a mocking funeral oration over it ;
\ustria was beaten and humiliated at Austerlitz, whereupon
Fichte expressed it as his opinion that " the fatherland of
Europeans was Europe." News of the catastrophe at Jena
was received with unrestrained and malicious joy in South
jermany, where there was not one but rejoiced at the
humiliation of the swaggering Prussians, who, as we know
from only reading Sethe's recollections of his stay in
Minister, made themselves hated wherever they intruded.
Napoleon's hand had weighed heavily on Germany for many
years when, in 1809, Austria's last drop of blood seemed to
have been drained in fighting with her oppressor, and
Germany awoke to a sense of general brotherhood. The
'5
MODES & MANNERS OF
immense sacrifices of life and property due to foreign
domination contributed not a little to this awakening.
Europe had been called upon to pay the enormous
debts which the old French monarchy left as a legacy to
the young Republic, forcing the latter to fall back on pap
money, to set forty-seven milliard assignats in circulati
and leading in 1797 to the final bankruptcy of the sta
The systematic plundering which went on from 1792, when
in October of that year Custine extorted a million guldens
from Worms and the same from Frankfort, was not confined
to Germany alone. Italy paid Napoleon 120 millions in ready
money in the course of two years ; Brune emptied the
treasury of Berne of 5 millions in cash and 18 millions in
paper money ; Austria had to raise 140 millions after Austerlitz
and another 85 millions in 1809 ; Prussia was drained of 159
millions after Jena, and of another 300 millions after 1807.
Thus were the nations forced to pay for their hostility t
the French — and their friendship proved not less cos
to them : all the public moneys in the provinces on t
left bank of the Rhine were converted into assignats, an
Westphalia paid a sum of 26 millions for her elevation into
a kingdom, and lost her domains into the bargain. The
states of the Rhenish Confederation were not spared : in
Bavaria government bonds fell about 60 per cent. ; there was
not sufficient ready money to pay officials their salaries, and
these were forced to accept bills of exchange which did not
fall due for weeks or months ; in Wiirtemberg the taxes
became so heavy that only a fifth of their income remained
to the landowners. And all these immense sums had to be
raised during a period of commercial depression. In 1799
the Bank at Hamburg failed, bringing ruin to 136 other
houses and causing a loss of 36 million mark banco. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century 300 vessels were lying
up in the harbour there, and the insurance companies testified
to a loss of 20 millions in three years ; and yet Bourriennc
and Daconet extorted another 140 millions from this unfortu-
nate town between the dates of November 1806 and May 1814.
16
i<>
!;;,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Anonymous QUEEN LUISE AT HER WRITING-TABLE Silhouette
MODES & MANNERS OF
Ternite QUEEN LUISE IN HER RIDING-HABIT
Nuremberg, the centre of commerce in South Germany, was in
debt to the amount of 12 millions when it passed to Bavaria,
and had for long past paid not a penny to its creditors.
The commercial policy whereby Napoleon hoped to
destroy England was in reality the stepping-stone to her
world-wide supremacy and unquestionable lordship of the sea.
It was otherwise on the Continent, where thousands were
ruined by the Berlin decree of a continental blockade, in
1806, while the universal devastation caused by the war
resulted in unparalleled distress owing to the lack or excessive
price of food. Well-to-do people, like the Kugelgens in
Dresden, lived for weeks on commissariat bread and black
sausage ; Perthe's family in Holstein were for eighteen weeks
without meat or white bread ; Humboldt's in Rome could
18
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
not buy sufficient bread for their daily consumption for
1 8 groschen. In Dalmatia the host allowed his guest to
choose which cat he would like best for his dinner, and poor
people like the parents of Ludwig Adrian Richter never
tasted meat unless one of their neighbours had the good
fortune to steal a cow. Even a large landowner, such as was
Achim von Arnim, had to depend on the 30 thalers he
received as editor of the Prussian correspondence for his
means of livelihood. The enormous rise in prices occasioned
a riot in London in 1800, and the soldiers had to be called
out to suppress it. It was this dearth of the bare necessities
of food which first brought the potato, since so universally
familiar, into consideration ; at that time it wras a stranger
to the table, and French cooks were at such a loss to know
how to deal with it, that it was decided in all seriousness in
Paris, in 1795, that to make the potato eatable it must be
dried as fruits are dried.
But as if extortion and famine were not enough, con-
scription also claimed its victims. Napoleon, who exclaimed
to Metternich, "What - - do I care for the lives of a
million men ? " impressed into his service the flower of the
youth of Europe, even boys of fifteen and sixteen years of
age, to be ruthlessly slaughtered on his fields of battle. By
1813, one million four hundred thousand men had been
levied in France alone. Between 1805-15, the army of
Wiirtemberg was thrice entirely re-manned ; and finally, in
Bavaria, natives and foreigners of the best families were
seized in the streets, in order to make up the required con-
tingents. In Austria the villages had to be surrounded at
night by soldiers, and the conscripts carried off manacled
like prisoners. The army, so composed, lived on the plun-
der of the enemy's territory, and the whole Continent from
Cadiz to Moscow was a prey to every horror incident to a
barbarously conducted campaign, the wanton devastation of
cultivated lands and the looting of defenceless towns being
mere everyday occurrences. Eye-witnesses of the two
terrible days of Jena and Weimar supply evidence of the
MODES & MANNERS OF
Nettling, after Ha mpe
PRIEDRICH WlLHELM III. AND LU1SE
I798
hideous scenes that took place. Fran von Stein was one of
many who lost the whole of her property ; and the pen
refuses to transcribe the barbarities related by Schepeler,
of which the French were guilty at Evora, Leiria, Segovia,
and Tarragona. The exploits of the French army were
organised brigandage. Brokers who had advanced money
followed the armies, and indemnified themselves with the
private as well as the public property found within the cap-
tured towns ; in this way art treasures of priceless value
were dispersed. Richard Duppa, writing from Rome, reports
that the whole of the Raffaele cartoons could be bought for
20
Journal des Dames, 1791
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Ddhling
1807
FRIEDKICH WILHRLM III. AND HIS FAMILY
1250 thalers ; while in Spain, in return for a few hundred
francs, silver art work was melted down worth a hundred
times that value. The Gallic barbarians brought their lust
for devastation and destruction along with them from their
home, and in the same spirit with which they had furiously
sought to destroy everything in France in the tumultuous
desire for freedom, they afterwards fell upon the monuments
of the past in Italy, France, and Germany. The fate of the
royal tombs at St. Denis was shared by those in the Escurial,
in Lugo and Alcobaca ; at Monte Cassino the spot may still
be recognised where the treasures of the convent were burnt,
21
MODES & MANNERS OF
and not a church stands in Spain but bears the traces of
its ruthless treatment at the hands of the French. The
military commanders set the example of robbery and pillage.
Napoleon's marshals systematically undertook the despolia-
tion of Spain, Sebastiani looted Murcia, Suchet Arrant m,
Massena Portugal, Augereau Catalonia ; Dupont's overthrow
near Baylen was brought about entirely through the avarice
of those in command who were anxious not to forsake their
booty. Every officer, every official, made up his mind to
enrich himself in the enemy's country, and it may be safely
said that no French functionary left the Rhinelands or West-
phalia with his pockets empty. Nobody was sure of their
own property ; even the Pope had the rings torn from his
fingers and the snuff-box from his hand by Rudolf Emantiel
von Haller. It was looked upon as a mark of unheard-of
generosity in those days that Bernadotte when in Hanover,
and General Chabran when in Barcelona, did not carry off
their hosts' silver plate.
And the same people, who did not know from one day
another to what country they belonged, whether they we
Prussians, Westphalians, or French, who were forced to lo
on helplessly at the loss of their goods and chattels, and t
destruction of their landed property, were equally liable
any moment to be deprived of their personal liberty if by
evil chance they had aroused Napoleon's ill-will towards
them. It is only too well known how the Due d'Enghien
and the bookseller Palm were shot without even a show of
justice, how Rudolf Zacharias Becker was imprisoned at
Magdeburg, and to what persecution the Freiherr von Stein,
Friedrich von Gentz, Pozzo di Borgo, and others were sub-
jected by his implacable hate. Apart from the instability of
the political conditions there was a feeling of public in-
security which neither police or law-courts had power to
allay.
During the last decade of the eighteenth century all
semblance of order had disappeared in France ; robber
bands, 200, 300, and even 800 strong, roamed the country,
22
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
LaMe FRIEDRICH VI. OF DENM
VRK AND FAMILY
1810
23
MODES & MANNERS OF
and the ill-famed chauffeurs used torture to force confessions
from their victims, reminding us of Swedish horrors during
the Thirty Years' War. Knights of the road had a high time
of it in Italy, and even in England highwaymen again became
a terror to travellers as in the former days of Queen Anne and
George I. In Germany, Schinderhannes collected his band
of sixty-five on the Hunsruck, and became the scourge of th
country for miles around ; the more mountainous district
were beset with robbers, while Damian Hessel and Fetzer i
the Cologne district, Hans of Constance in Baden, the much-
dreaded robber-chief Karasek in Bohemia, and Johann Dah-
men of Crefeld in Westphalia, went openly about with thei
armed followers. The prisons in Russia grew so overcrowded
that the convicts after 1802 began to be deported to Siberia.
Side by side with these robber bands who carried on their
profession in great style, were swindlers who flourished
more in the shade. From 1802-4 there lived in Heidelberg
one Carl Grandisson, who was both rich and respected, until
it came to light that he derived his income from robbing
the post-office; in 1815 in Liibeck, during a shooting-match,
the contents of the city treasury were quietly carried off.
The affair, however, which created the greatest sensation at
this time was the murder at Perleberg of the English envoy,
Lord Bathurst ; some imagined Napoleon to have been the
instigator of the crime, but the affair remains a mystery.
Piracy, which had been the privilege of the Barbary States,
along the Mediterranean, was now openly carried on by
English traders, and men speculated in privateers on the
London Stock Exchange. Many an honourable merchant of
Stettin, Hamburg, and Bremen was ruined by these licensed
sea-robbers, for the affair was not so entertaining for the
victims as Captain Marryat makes it out to be in his novels.
Where thousands were reduced to poverty, others again,
less well off before, now became rich ; and it was during
this period, when everything was changing hands, that the
Torlonias, the Rothschilds, the Hopes, Eichthals, and others
first began to make their fortunes.
cl
I
;
I,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
In this tottering state of general affairs the individual was
often reduced to an adventurous style of existence. Europe in
the course of thirty years had seen princes of ancient lineage
deprived of their crowns, murdered or executed, fleeing or
in prison ; the proudest nobles of France were forced to
beg their bread in foreign lands, or to eke out a penurious
Ddhling
DEATH OF QUEEN LUISE ~
1811
existence by making use of their talents. Dukes, counts, and
marquises, well trained in all the arts required for hanging
about a court, carried their French culture abroad into
England or Germany, as cooks, hairdressers, or fencing-
masters. The Duke of Chartres, a prince of the blood, exer-
cised the duties of a schoolmaster, in preparation for a future
as king.
Fortune, who was now dealing so hardly with her former
favourites, filled their vacant places with the worst of par-
venus. Peasants, ostlers, clerks, became marshals, princes,
and dukes ; a waiter was made King of Naples, a clerk
25
MODES & MANNERS OF
King of Sweden — for the Corsican played with crowns and
kingdoms as a juggler with oranges. Great and small alike
were subjected to ups and downs of fortune. A man in a
high government post in Prussia was reduced to wandering
about as director of a company of strolling players, until on
the bursting of the great soap-bubble, he was set on his feet
again and became Counsellor of the Exchequer.
The world must have felt as if awaking from a wild
dream, when after such a prolonged period of unrest the
noise and glare of the Napoleonic Empire died away like the
crackling of fireworks. Everything was again as it had been
before, and kings and states hastened to assure themselves
that what had happened was but a passing delusion. At the
Vienna Congress, as centuries before at Minister and Osna-
briick, strangers settled the affairs of Germany. Russia saved
Baden's independence and France Saxony's ; Greek orthodox
Russia and Protestant Prussia the existence of the ecclesi-
astical State.
Those now in power tried to stifle the aspirations of the
people under the weight of their various agreements ; but
the idea of freedom was stronger than any force exercised
by kings and princes, and was not to be finally crushed,
though it might be checked, by judges, soldiers, censors, or
police. Nothing could stem the tide of democracy, and those
it threatened could only save themselves from the overflowing
waters by continually climbing to higher ground ; and so
the governing class, as its actual prerogative grew less, en-
deavoured to maintain its hold by the assumption of higher
titles, and dukes became grand-dukes, electors kings ; but then
what was to happen when every Freiherr became a count,
and all the counts princes, and all the common louts barons ?
What fresh title was there left for those in jeopardy to lift
them above the devouring flood ?
" When everybody's somebody
Then no one's anybody."
The middle-classes, after fighting so long for freedom, saw
26
Gallery of fashion, London, 179 5
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
their hopes destroyed ; one thing alone that they had won
remained theirs — for this even the hand of reaction dared not
touch — the ribbon of an order ! Before the Revolution, orders
of knighthood, as the name signified, were exclusive clubs for
the aristocracy alone, but Napoleon, who understood the
French better for not being one himself, in founding his Legion
of Honour in 1802, made it possible for even the low-born
citizen to have something which distinguished him among his
fellows. This master-stroke of the man of genius who knew
human nature so well, although he despised it, inspired other
potentates to follow his example, and orders for the recognition
of the virtues and services of the middle-classes were founded
in Baden 1803, in Bavaria 1806, in Saxony, Wurtemberg, and
Hesse in 1807, in Austria 1808, and in Prussia 1810. They
were concessions to the growing spirit of the age and fruitful
of good results, for that state stands firmly on its foundations
which recognises and justly rewards the merits of all classes
from the highest to the lowest.
PRINCE METTERNICH
27
MODES & MANNERS OF
Kamberg
TEMPTATION
II
THE outbreak of the French Revolution was not only a poli-
tical turning-point in the life of the nations ; it wrought a
social change as well, and was followed by the rise of a new
order of society, of which the raison d'etre was the growing
importance of the middle-classes. The society of the Rococo
period was aristocratic and exclusive ; it ignored everything
which lay outside its immediate circle, and assimilated en-
tirely wThatever it chose to take up ; its aim was to enjoy to
the full the life which its riches and culture made so worth
having.
The new society, on the contrary, was not at all exclusive,
for it did not set out with the idea of mere pleasure. It was
not the enjoyment of sensual gratification cultivated to the
highest pitch of refinement that it sought, but the intellectual
28
Gallery of fashion, London,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Komney
SERENA
1799
and spiritual enlightenment of heart and mind ; it led the way
with loud protestations against existing manners of life, but
as regards its own style it was free neither from extravagance
nor pedantry. The unrestrained arbitrariness of the Rococo
style had at last produced a lack of ease, which led, after
Caylus and Winckelmann had drawn attention to the antique,
to the gradual introduction of classic forms into art.
While Louis XV. was still on the throne, the sinuous curves
and bold crossets began to grow more like straight lines and
ordinary angles, and scrolls and palm leaves were introduced
into ornamentation ; flat surfaces became smooth, and the out-
lines straighten This slowly developing style reached its
most attractive period under Louis XVI., only to abandon all
pretence to grace under the Empire, when it attained to
29
MODES & MANNERS OF
+"1 fa rgiterite Gi'ra rd
L'KNFANT CHIiRI
a severity of form which can only be accounted for by the
pedantic intentions of its creators.
Hitherto this style had been confined to the fine arts, but
now its rules were to be applied to every surrounding of life ;
the new society was determined to be classic to the very
nucleus of its being. Rousseau's ideal of a return to nature
and to simplicity of life had encouraged this desire ; the more
natural mode of life of the middle-classes seemed allied to
that of the ancients — therefore everybody wished to be classic
in the belief that they would then be natural. Antiquity was
taken as a model, and rules and regulations laid down ac-
cordingly, to which men and women slavishly conformed.
Orators who gave long rodomontades in the French National
Assembly about the liberty and greatness of ancient times, the
bureaucrats who altered the calendar to make it antiquated,
the artists who copied ancient statues and arranged classic
30
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
MODES & MANNERS OF
entertainments, the statesmen who gave ancient titles to the
ephemeral republics they started, and the women who clad
themselves in classic gowns — all acted in full assurance of
faith, and cheerfully obeyed the stringent laws which they had
imposed upon themselves, and which gave the society of this
time its peculiar style. It may rightly be described as the
last society to boast of a style of its own, owing to the perfect
correspondence between its aims, ideas, and character, and
Moses From " Cos fumes Modern es"
their outward manifestations. It set itself an almost impossible
task in the endeavour to bring modern life into conformity
with the style of the past ; and we who are now chiefly con-
cerned with the utilitarian side of life and have lost the
longing for style, can hardly understand how men and women
a hundred years ago were such slaves to aestheticism even in
connection with the most trivial and everyday affairs. Even
an ordinary piece of bedroom furniture was not allowed to be
merely such ; it was an altar dedicated to the god of sleep,
and for long retained the appellation thus conferred upon it.
The wash-stand — of all unpretentious articles of furniture-
was an altar to the god of cleanliness, the stove an altar to
the god of winter.
There was danger of society becoming utterly absurd in
its absorption with this one idea, but fortunately women came
to the rescue and put a check to the exaggerated classicism
32
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
33
MODES & MANNERS OF
which was becoming a part of daily life. It was not until the
close of the eighteenth century that women began to take a
leading part in society ; they were the propagators of Un-
sentimental ideal, and virtually gave its character to the new
Bovi
SISTERS DANCING
society. They endeavoured to combine the learning of the
middle-classes with the refinement of life and manners of the
old regime ; they brought the lighter influence of their many-
sided culture to bear on the heaviness of more solid attain-
ments ; they set the heart above the head, and as a result an
elegant superficiality was the prevailing tone of the society
they ruled.
Instead of the usual heavy folios and quartos, ornamental
34
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE SWING
From "La Mesangcre"
almanacks and pocket-books, dealing with every branch of
knowledge, were now published. Women were incapable of
taking learning seriously, and preferred to play with it ; they
Attended lectures and bought ready-made collections of
35
MODES & MANNERS OF
Boilly
From " The Arrival of the Mail-coach"
natural curiosities, philosophical instruments, and botanica
specimens ; their ideal of education was to know a little o
everything and nothing thoroughly. They were anxious
above all things to cultivate their own imaginative and sensi
tive personality, as a natural reaction against the intellectua
tendency of the age which was bringing everything down U
a dry level of prose by its unrelenting rationalism ; and sc
36
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Bosio
BLINDMAN'S-BUFF
From ' ' Le bon Gen re '
the staidest years of enlightenment corresponded to those
of the most exuberant sentimentalism. The more aesthetic
spirits revelled in the luxury of their emotions, and the whole
of their intercourse was permeated with sentiment, till they lost
sight of the actual in an ecstatic ideal. Every individual
feeling or shade of emotion was carefully noted and transferred
to a diary of the heart, that it might be preserved for friends.
Even weeping was a matter of training, for it was thought
becoming to fall into floods of tears on every occasion. It
was considered good tone to be sentimental and high-strung,
and to give unrestrained expression to the emotions ; and much
in the literature of that time which strikes us as affected was
merely the backward swing of the pendulum from the social
conventionality then in vogue. The snob of to-day poses
as a sceptic ; the snob of that day posed as a man of feeling.
Karoline von Dacheroden writes of herself to her betrothed,
" Carry her with compassionate love in the sanctuary of thy
soul," and Wilhelm von Humboldt answers, " Silently adoring,
37
MODES & MANNERS OF
I feel your presence in the depth of my soul " ; but this high-
flown mode of expression did not prevent either of them, a
few lines farther on, from discussing in the coolest and most
practical manner the behaviour of papa and mamma, the cook,
flat-irons, linen, and other domestic matters. Moreover, their
sentimentality did not hinder the women of that age from
From " Le bon Genre'
becoming excellent wives and mothers, and, when senti-
mentality became no longer de rigueur, from writing letters
full of genuine feeling and of a fine power of observation.
This over-refinement of feeling served occasionally as a
mask for heartlessness. Kotzebue, for example, stopping at
Weimar on his way to Paris and finding his wife dangerously
ill, continues his journey on being told by the doctor that she
will die, for it would break his heart to be present at the death
of the beloved one. Sentimentality again was a cloak for
frivolity, when Karoline von Schelling, born Michaelis, one of
the most elegant and enchanting women of the day, who had
38
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
39
MODES & MANNERS OF
Marguerite Gerard MATRIMONIAL HAPPINESS (Cir. 1805)
been separated from Schlegel, missed marrying Forster and
been left a widow by Boehme, wrote to a friend, when living
happily with her fourth husband, " Ah ! I was born to be
constant ! " Karoline von Lengefeld held the same opinion
40
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
of herself perhaps, after having married Beulwitz, then fallen
rapturously in love first with Schiller and afterwards with
Dalberg, and finally separating from her husband — in order
to marry Wolzogen.
This affected sensibility expressed itself in still more
peculiar ways in the intercourse between the sexes. One
hardly knows what to think of the singular connections and
tender relations that arose. Every variety of sentiment and
idea, of physical and spiritual attachment, played its part in
these impossible friendships between man and woman.
There is only need to refer in this connection to the extra-
ordinary mingling of platonic and sensual love in the
relations between Holderlin and Susette Gontard, Creutzer
and Giinderode, Schleiermacher and Henrietta Herz, Tiedge
and Elise von der Kecke, Alfieri and the Countess of Albany.
Some came to grief, others grew old without any troubling
of conscience. The moral ideas of the period were exceed-
ingly liberal ; love, not marriage, was looked upon as the
bond. In France the sacrament of adultery was spoken of in
perfect seriousness. Six thousand marriages were dissolved
during the first year after divorce had been legalised in 1791.
" Tel est notre bon plaisir " was considered quite sufficient
ground for a separation in France, and so we find the
beautiful Therese de Cabarrus making a change of husbands
because it pleased her to do so. When, however, Germans
like Therese Heyne-Forster-Huber, Dorothea Mendelssohn-
Veit - Schlegel, Sophie Schubert - Mereau - Brentano, and
others, did the like — probably because the more genuine
of them preferred in their hearts to act uprightly — they
argued and philosophised over the matter until they worked
themselves into such an exalted state of mind that all sense
of becomingness was lost.
It was not the greater writers alone, as Schlegel in
" Lucinde," Achim von Arnim in " Hollin," Goethe in his
" Elective Affinities," who preached the gospel of free love ;
the minor romancers dealt with it in a still spicier manner, and
the more reckless practised it as a matter of course. Goethe's
41
MODES & MANNERS OF
relations with Christine Vulpius were considered blameworthy
only by the jealous Frau von Stein. The poet's mother liked
and approved of them. The triple alliance between the re-
nowned poisoner Sophie Ursinus, her husband, and Captain
Ragay went on for years, both men concerned being
perfectly aware of the state of affairs.
The period of the Napoleonic wars was one of accelerated
vitality and drove men irresistibly to seek their pleasure. We
have sufficient evidence of this in the entertaining reminis-
cences of the Hessian officer whose campaigns gave him the
opportunity of taking a pleasant run of nuptial experience
through all the nations of Europe. He tells us that there was
no time anywhere for lengthy consideration, and so evidently
thought Fraulein Bethmann when she allowed herself to be
shut up for the night in the guard-house at Frankfort with
Count Flavigny, in order to oblige her family to consent to
the marriage. So also thought Auguste Buszmann when
Clemens Brentano carried her off in 1807 ; and further proof
of the laxity of morals is given by Davoust's astonished
exclamation when a German princess introduced her
children to him : " On voit bien que vous demeurez a la
campagne, tous vos enfants se ressemblent."
Feeling and sensibility took the place in this generation of
religion, all connection with the Church having been entirely
given up. The views of the English deists had been pro-
claimed throughout Europe by Voltaire's famous "ecrasez,
1'infame," and with such success that the unbelief of the
better classes began to penetrate to those below and to be
considered by these also as the fashionable way of thinking.
The higher clergy themselves were often unbelievers. The
last Elector of Mainz was a pronounced freethinker ; Count
Trautson, Archbishop of Vienna, was reported to be a
dissenter at heart. Canons and prebendaries replaced the
images of the Virgin in their homes by busts of Voltaire and
Rousseau — and among the people in general all understand-
ing of the faith had so completely been wiped out that it \v;is
seriously suggested to open a church combining every variety
Gallery of fashion, London,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
43
MODES & MANNERS OF
of creed with Napoleon as bishop ! The more cultured set no
value on any particular belief. Wilhelm von Humboldt
allowed his children to be baptized as Lutherans, Anglicans,
or Catholics, as suited the convenience of the moment. The
Savignys left their sons unbaptized that when grown to an
age of understanding they might choose their own religion.
One of them became a Catholic, for the sufficient reason that
in Berlin every noodle was a Protestant !
The tolerance of the clergy kept pace with the indifference
of the laity ; theologians disputed so hotly against all miracles
and mysteries of faith, that the doctrine of expediency was
the only one left to Christendom. The Bible became as
little prized as dogma ; the preacher Hufnagel in Frankfort
took his texts from Hermann and Dorothea ; other preachers
used the occasion of Christmas to speak of the advantage of
stall-feeding. The marriage of Kiigelgen and Lilla was as
improvised as that of Voss's Luise ; the funeral rites of
George, Duke of Meiningen, in 1804, were celebrated by
nymphs and genii surrounding flower-decked altars : the pro-
gramme of religious instruction seems to have been carefully
drawn up for the cultivation of indifference in the young.
Romanticism, which was opposed in its tendency to the
style of the time, reacted on the pseudo-enlightenment, on the
dry commonplaces and purely utilitarian aim of Rationalism.
Men and women were living under the yoke of fixed rules
borrowed from the ancients, and they longed for the courage
to shake off the bondage of their self-established laws. As
a result of this they sought what was lacking in freedom and
independence to the arbitrary style they had adopted, in the
Gothic architecture and the chivalry of the Middle Ages,
finding in these the mystery and charm which they had so
successfully eliminated from their daily life. The classic
ideal still held sway and no one dared oppose it, but beside it
the Gothic, like a caprice of fancy, still managed to flourish,
giving some little opportunity for the play of imagination
which had been banished from officially accepted art. The
Landgrave built the Lowenburg for himself in Cassel ; the
44
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Duke of Worlitz his Gothic house ; Queen Luise's Gothic ruins
arose on the Pfaueninsel ; the Austrian court erected the
Franzenshurg in the Laxenburg Park ; at Monrepos, near
Ludwigsbtirg, the horrors of the subterranean chapel in the
lake were heightened by twelve wax figures of Knights
Templars who held a chapter there. Parks were now filled
with Gothic ruins and castles, as queer and antiquated in
their way as the Gothic romances and plays of knights,
robbers, ghosts, and other terrifying subjects which came
from the pens of Spiesz, Vulpius, Jiinger, Naubert, and later
of Lewis and the boy Shelley, and encouraged the growing
taste. It was after the descriptions given in these that
knightly tournaments began to be held — one in 1793 by the
court when at Rudolstadt ; another in 1800 in honour of
Queen Luise by Count Hochberg at Fiirstenstein ; while in
1807, in Vienna, Count Zichy gathered a large assembly of
knights at his house, who dressed and jousted in regular old
German style. When genuine poets arose to disclose to
Germany the real wonders and beauties of the olden times,
then this childish play turned to earnest. Clemens Brentano,
Achim von Arnim, gave back to their country its ancient
songs and legends ; Josef Gorres, Hagen, Jakob and Wilhelm
Grimm its heroic saga ; Sulpiz and Melchior Boisseree its art ;
—they had come upon the springs of German thought and
habit, and set flowing a fresh flood of influence which for
a whole generation determined the direction of life and
culture. The Romanticists and Germanists who were gathered
at Heidelberg in the beginning of the nineteenth century
awoke their fellow-countrymen — whom Fichte looked upon
as stupid and ignorant, cowardly, idle, and subservient, and of
whom Gorres expected nothing that was clever or brave —
to a sense of their own nationality, and with it to renewed
strength and dignity. Into the aroused soul of the people
they instilled a trust in the greatness of the past, which gave
men and women courage to dare all for the sake of future
greatness and inspired them to exchange the unsubstan-
tial idealism of dreams for the imperative reality of duty.
45
MODES & MANNERS OF
Raeburn HANNAH MORE
III
THE style which is familiar to us by its name of " Empire,"
and which prevailed for about thirty years from the middle
of the eighties of the eighteenth century, did not, as already
stated, spring all at once into fashion, but gradually came into
vogue owing to the influence of more than one favourable
circumstance. The " Rococo " was still flourishing, when an
unknown German scholar, a native of that same Dresden
where Poppelheim dreamed of his rich and fantastic Zwinger
palace, began proclaiming an entirely new gospel of art : the
unconditional imitation of ancient models. Further weight
was given to the teaching of Winckelmann — who was soon
to win a world-wide reputation for himself — by the discovery
of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and by the archaeological ex-
peditions into Sicily, lower Italy and Greece, which were just
46
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
at this time drawing the attention of the cultivated public to
the remains of antiquity.
The paradoxical idea that art could only hope to produce
inimitable works by a close imitation of the works of the past,
spread from Paris throughout the civilised world and became
the dogma of aesthetes and critics, the laity being all the more
ready to adopt the creed as it provided them with a convenient
standard of judgment and was quite beyond the comprehen-
sion of the less enlightened. Artists like Mengs constituted
themselves interpreters of the new idea, which insisted on
ideal beauty in place of coarse and commonplace nature, and
on the prolonged study of ancient sculpture which it alone
considered a worthy model. So, beautiful and classic had
become synonymous terms long before pre-revolutionary ideas
had made the latter word synonymous with virtuous, or before
it was held an equivalent for democratic by the generation
living in 1789. The men of the Revolution in their passionate
terrorism wished to break not only with tradition but with
the whole civilised past, in order that a free people might
found their culture on ground which no monarchical govern-
ment had soiled. Moreover they found no counterpart to
the greatness of their own heroism except in classic times,
and so they associated the ideas of country, freedom, and
duty, as they were represented by the modern French re-
publicans, with those of the heroic period of the Roman
republic.
Art as such they would willingly have left to itself, had it
not served as a means to the end, and had not a man of
powerful personality arisen who succeeded in assuring a right
place to art as such, and further procured for his own
particular style the recognition of being the only one entirely
republican in tone and worthy of consideration. This man
was Jacques Louis David, whose works were the true ex-
pression of his convictions, and whom an enthusiastic
admiration of classic times converted into a fanatical re-
publican. His fame was assured to him after 1784, when in
his " Oath of the Horatii " he gave formal expression to the
47
MODES & MANNERS OF
longing of his contemporaries after virtue and heroic greatness,
and put as it were their thoughts into words. The picture of
the thirty-six-year-old painter was in subject, in severity of
line and crudeness of colouring, a loud protest against the
David
COMTESSE DE SOKCY
1790
ways of life of the governing classes, to which it stood in
such strongly emphasized contrast, that it pilloried them as
effectually as did Beaumarchais' "Barber of Seville." While-
art in general, and artists who had hitherto remained exclu-
sively in the service of the nobles and clergy, fell accordingly
into supreme contempt among the Jacobins, David could
without hesitation point to his own works and promise the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Boilly
THE PETS
49
MODES & MANNERS OF
Raeburn
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST'S WIFE
Convention that art from henceforth should be no slave of
the despot, but should deal with subjects worthy to be
looked upon by the eyes of a free people.
He went even further than that. His paintings of the
murdered Marat, and of the heroic death of the youthful Barra,
were flaming manifestoes of republican sentiment ; while in
his " Oath in the Ballroom " we feel the exaggerated pathos of
this period of excitement, which was ready to sacrifice every-
thing, even reason itself, to its theories. David, the -Jacobin,
the regicide, confesses in his works to the same wild ideas as his
friend Robespierre from the rostrum ; the natural fanaticism
of the republican masters even his artistic spirit, and the
50
Gallery of fashion, London,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Miss MAKCH
lover of the classic forgets all his rules and falls back entirely
on nature and truth.
His pictures carry conviction by the unstudied sincerity
of their execution ; they move us like a passionate cry, as if
something of the exalted enthusiasm of that terrible time
was mingled with their colouring, as the low murmur in
an empty shell reminds us of the distant surge. These
works which show us David as the great realist, together
with his portraits, remain yet young and fresh, while
those in which he believed he had most distinguished himself
and shown himself a genuine old Roman by his acquaintance
with everything to do with antiquity, are now quite out of
51
MODES & MANNERS OF
date. The Horatii, the Death of Seneca, the Rape of the
Sabines and others, in their cold, over-refined style, are in
contrast to his other
works like a prospectus
carefully drawn up at
the study table to the
spontaneous oratory of
a popular speaker. But
to the artist himself,
who submitted to the
dictatorship of the pre-
vailing taste of his time,
whose pupils numbered
hundreds, and whose
influence extended over
the civilised world, and
who as court painter to
the Emperor had to
portray all the chief
events of that startling
age — to him the anti-
quated and mechanical
style of painting seemed
the only one entitled to consideration. He writes in 1820,
when in his seventies, scolding Gros for having given up
painting in his grander style, " Vite, vite, feuilletez votre
Plutarque." And the latter, who had for long been pro-
ducing his finest pictures and using his brush on nobler
subjects than ever Plutarch described, gives more credence
to the renowned master than to his own individual inspira-
tion, and stung with remorse for having set such a bad
example by his impressive pictures of daily life and facts, so
full of movement and colour, returns to dream of mythology
and ancient history and perishes sadly while engaged on
work of this kind.
Another of David's pupils bewailed his whole life long
that fate had not allowed him to devote himself to the grander
52
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
German Miniature
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
\XD SON
style of art, but had forced him — fortunately for us — to stick
to portrait-painting. Posterity sets Gerard's portraits far
above his mythological confectionery. His famous picture
of Psyche, after the exhibition of which none of the ladies
would wear anything but white in order that they might look
equally ethereal, is sufficient evidence of his readiness to sacri-
fice corporeality, life, and truth, when it was a question of
being ideal, while in his portraits he clings more faithfully to
reality. He knew how to interpret the spirit and intelligence
of his models and to give charm to his portraits ; and this,
added to the taste and delicacy of his execution, and his rich
and excellent colouring, render them \vorks of great attraction.
53
MODES & MANNERS OF
David
MME. V1G&E-L.EBRUN
We can give no better example of the characteristic dif-
ference between Gerard's soft and charming style and David's
severe and more virile manner of painting than their respec-
tive portraits of the beautiful Juliette Recamier. With David
she is a vestal, cold and unapproachable ; with Gerard, yield-
ing, irresistible, wholly and entirely fascinating. We are not
surprised to hear that the latter was a fashionable painter,
much sought after not only during the Empire but for many
years later ; fortune favoured him to the end, as it did Sir
Thomas Lawrence and Madame Vigee-Lebrun, with whom he
shared the patronage of the world.
Lawrence, who succeeded in England to the fame and the
54
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
clientele of Reynolds, was not known on the Continent until
after Napoleon's fall, when he wras making a collection for
Windsor Castle, as
George Dawe for the
Hermitage, of the por-
traits of all the rival
monarchs and com-
manders, who in face
of a common enemy
had sunk their per-
sonal quarrels as long
as the latter still re-
mained to be fought
with.
The contemptuous
verdict of the Hum-
boldts on the " rosy-
cheeked " portrait of
their father, echoed
a reproach earned
by the generality of
painters, who, parti-
cularly in their mas-
culine portraits, made
their flesh tints too pink. The excellent taste of Reynolds
and Gainsborough degenerated under the skilful hand of
the last of the great English painters into a certain un-
distinguished elegance, to which his brilliant palette gives a
vexatious touch of sincerity.
Madame Vigee-Lebrun, although only thirty-four years of
age at the outbreak of the Revolution, was already a celebrated
artist. She was one of the first to emigrate, and during
the twelve years of her wanderings, spent in turns at all the
courts between Naples and Petersburg, her brush was busy
painting the most beautiful women and the most charming
children then alive. Among her more renowned portraits
are those of Marie Antoinette, which she left behind her in
55
Ingres
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
MODES & MANNERS OF
Gtrard
MME. R£CAMIEK
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
France, of Queen
Luise and the Em-
press of Russia,
and of Austrian
archduchesses and
Russian grand-
duchesses. They
are all rendered
alike by the same
quality of charm
and elegance, of
simplicity and
grace ; and if we
may trust her own
portrait of herself,
the artist must have
been as fascinating
as her art.
The French art-
ist was a woman of
the world of fash-
ion ; the ''good "
Angelica Kauff-
mann, on the con-
trary, a regular
blue-stocking. In her historical pictures, as for example
Hermann the Cheruscan, she is positively unbearable in her
formality, whereas in her portraits — the renowned Lady
Hamilton and the universally beloved Princess Maria of
Courland as a vestal, to take only two — there is a mingling
of seductive beauty and feeling, and a pleasing lightness,
noticed long ago by Goethe, both in form and colouring,
and in design and treatment, which makes her work irre-
sistibly attractive.
She appears like a living anachronism in that age, even as
did Fragonard and Greuze, whose once highly-prized art is
now pitilessly condemned as " a disgrace to the French
57
Gtrard
MME. VISCONTI
MODES & MANNERS OF
people." But those who looked on the Rococo style of art as
fantastic and vicious, quite overlooked the fact that Prudhon,
the painter-poet so highly extolled, had also brought his
artistic skill over with him from the eighteenth century. All
From the " lierlinerischen Damen-Kalender"
1803
that is tender and lovable in his art, and just that which is
attractive in the false tones of his palette, belongs to the
Rococo, as does his peculiarly playful lightness of invention
and soft tastefulness of form. David did homage to the
Muses, Prudhon to the Graces. David earnestly strove for
the laurel of ancient virtue, the roguish Prudhon for the
roses of youthful love.
The " classic marble bride," as Muther felicitously ex-
presses it, appeared at the same time to the Germans, and
stifled painting in her deathlike embrace; drawing became
of more importance than colour, and Asm us Carstens started
the cartoon period. High art did not venture to seek for
beauty except in the far-away regions of antiquity. At the
58
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
59
MODES & MANNERS OF
head of those who longed to pursue her in this promised
land was the aged Goethe, who was only too delighted to
win for the circle of " Weimar friends of art," or more
correctly speaking for himself and Kunscht-Meyer, a leading
position in the artistic world of Germany. The prize subjects
offered by him during a long series of years for general com-
petition were, it need hardly be said, taken exclusively from
the Greek heroic period — as Paris and Helen, Hector's fare-
well to Andromeda, Achilles on Skyros, Perseus and Andro-
meda ; and it is amusing to hear the old Weimar Olympian
delivering his formal oracle at the exhibitions.
Beside the barren and classic school of art encouraged
by its friends at Weimar and elsewhere, there existed another,
overlooked and little prized, of a more naturalistic tendency,
that occupied itself with subjects within the boundaries of
daily life. It gave promise of a wholesome future for the false
ideal that was being so forcibly fitted to the procrustean bed,
and turning its back on the strutting and theatrical figures
Greeks and Romans, led the way into the lighter regions
life and reality. So the aged Chodowiecki worked on at Berlin
in his good old way at pictures inspired by the time and place
he lived in, and in his laboriously mechanical and skilful art
foreshadowed that of his future disciples Kriiger and Menzel,
who were to follow Carstens ; while the aged Graff of Leipzig
continued to paint his unpretentious and matter-of-fact por-
traits, and Friedrich of Dresden painted a landscape, which
being quite incomprehensible to those of his own period, re-
ceived its due appreciation a century too late. Beside these
we have Runge of Hamburg, Edlinger of Munich, in their
retired studios, carrying on the same good tradition.
But the artist to be chiefly noted in this connection is Goya.
During a period when art was heavily bound by rules and
formulae he remained undisturbed by all this dead parapher-
nalia, and devoted his art and energy to the problems of air,
light, and movement, which he was the first to discover ; and
in spite of the pseudo-Romans and Greeks who confronted
him on every side, he remained what he was, a genuine
60
Gallery of fashion, London, 1797
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Spaniard. And to us looking back, he appears in his solitary
randeur like the shining beacon that makes the surrounding
night yet darker by its brilliant light.
As David among painters, so Canova led the way among
Ingres
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
sculptors. The coquettish elegance of his facilely inspired
figures was enthusiastically admired by his contemporaries ;
his Perseus was ranked as a companion to the Belvedere
Apollo. Emperor and Pope fought for possession of the
artist, who appeared to them to excel the ancient sculptors
in the animation he imparted to the marble. His influence
was felt throughout the world : Thorwaldsen the Dane, Alvarez
the Spaniard, Flaxman the Englishman, and Ranch the
61
MODES & MANNERS OF
Goya
THE DUCHESS OF ALBA AND GOYA
German, imbibed his spirit, and were the apostles of his
gospel.
Architecture had at that time comparatively little oppor-
tunity of leaving works behind as monuments of its efforts ;
time and money are required for building, and both were
then lacking to individuals and governments. It retained
the classical style for nearly another hundred years, but
during neither the Republic nor the Empire were circum-
stances favourable to the carrying out of large designs. The
Pantheon was indeed finished when the National Assembly
decided its destiny, but in spite of its splendid proportions,
the lack of harmony in its frescoes and of repose in its
62
Gallery of fashion, London,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
structure produce the impression of a dismantled church.
There is an irony of fate in the indefaceable character of a
Christian house of God given to this building which served
Romney
LADY HAMILTON
at one time as a pagan temple of fame ; and when it once
more returned to its former use, after having been conse-
crated to the memory of Napoleon's grande annee, fate's
finger seemed pointed in mockery to its first and final
purpose : there was no getting rid of the church.
When, however, some gifted architect was enabled to
carry out his ideas, we find in his work an unmistakable
element of grandeur, as for example in the Brandenburg
Gate erected in 1788-91 by Langerhans, with which Berlin
had nothing equal to show in her monumental buildings for
over another century, during which period she had become
the capital of the country.
63
MODES & MANNERS OF
It was during this
period that the value
of iron as a material
became appreciated,
though as yet there was
no style expended on
its handling. Experts,
as well as the general
public, looked on with
astonishment at the
first erection of iron
buildings in England ;
in 1803 Paris had her
first iron bridge, the
Pont des Arts ; Ger-
many had possessed
one since 1796, in which
year Count Burghausz
had sent for English
engineers to put up an
iron bridge over the Striegauer, near Laasan in Silesia, for
which he paid 7700 thalers.
The architectonic style of the day was not so perceptible in
architecture itself as in the internal decoration of the houses,
the more easily manipulated materials for which enabled the
craftsman to keep pace with current ideas. In contrast to
the Louis XVI. style, which developed an extreme grace and
elegance in its independent treatment of the antique elements
of which it was exclusively composed, the style of this period
laid a pedantically exaggerated value on symmetry, its severity
degenerating almost into insipidity. Large unbroken wall
spaces, meagre outlines, straight lines, and a complete re-
nunciation of colour in favour of white and gold — the whole
conveying an impression of solemn grandeur, but at the same
time inexpressibly monotonous ; and not until the close of
the nineteenth century did this objection to colour show signs
of waning. The arrangement of the house in those days, as
64
Ingres
LADY WITH A FAX
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Game rev
A ROOM IN THE AUSTRIAN EMBASSY IN PARIS
also the dress, was as good as a confession of creed ; so much
was desired to be expressed by it that at last an obtrusive use
was made of allegory, which presupposing a knowledge of
the thousand and one mythological references required for
its appreciation, produced a depressing effect and degenerated
more and more into dull routine. The higher consecration
of life after which the enfranchised citizen was striving
communicated a pathetic value even to his dwelling-rooms,
and he disposed these according to a certain programme
apart from all consideration of ease and comfort. All
absolutely necessary articles were thrust into the background ;
the needs of man were things to be ashamed of and to be
hidden from sight as far as possible, for the citizen would
have liked best to convert every room in his house into
a temple. Among the rooms the " temple of sleep " was the
most important, for it was here that receptions were held.
The bed stood out from the wall and was surrounded by
altars decked with sacrificial vessels. Odiot the painter's
bedroom represented a woodland temple to Diana ; that of
I. E 65
MODES & MANNERS OF
AN INTERIOR (< ir. 1800)
Vivant Denon an Egyptian temple exactly copied from one
at Thebes ; Baron Blumner's castle at Frohburg was arranged
according to a double design picturing the four seasons and
the four ages of man. The artists set the example, chief
among them being David, who had his studio redecorated
by Georges Jacob after designs of his own, an event which
caused a great sensation and gave quite a revolutionary
impulse to the new and severer style. The furniture of the
day, in logical accordance with the latter, was constructed
on purely architectonic principles ; the columns which are
so freely associated with the cupboards, chairs, and tables of
that date gave to these a monumental character of immovable
stability.
The use of mahogany superseded that of all other woods,
and the lavish addition of gilt bronze ornaments while
heightening the effect of heavy splendour ended by fatiguing
the eye with the repetition of its conventional wreaths, palm
leaves, lyres, &c. Furniture of a magnificent, but not less
66
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE EMPRESS MAKIE LOUISE IN CHILDBED
heavy style, modelled on late Roman types, became the
fashion, of which we have some idea in that of the National
Convention constructed by George Jacob in 1793, or in the
ornamental cupboard belonging to the Empress Marie Louise,
which cost Napoleon 55,000 francs. Jacob Desmalter, the
maker of it, was one of the most famous cabinetmakers of
MODES & MANNERS OF
Isabey
BAPTISM OF THE KING OK ROME
that day ; other works of his are the fittings of the Imperial
palaces at Malmaison, Mainz, Antwerp, Rome, Florence,
Venice, &c., and the bed of the Empress Marie Louise, which
was garnished with lace worth 120,000 francs. He had in
stock chests of drawers worth 4000, writing-tables worth
350 to 3000, tea-tables from 300 to 2000 francs.
Artists like Girodet designed the furniture for Compiegne,
and Prudhon the magnificent fittings for the dressing-room
of the Empress Marie Louise, which were a present to her
from the city of Paris ; they were made entirely of massive
silver gilt and in 1832 were melted down ! The cradle of the
King of Rome was the work of Thomire ; the Court archi-
tects Percier and Fontaine were the two, however, who
exercised most influence on the arts and crafts, and gave
68
•
Court-dress
Gallery of fashion, London, 1798
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
artistic impulse to a whole generation of workers. They
carried out the buildings tinder Napoleon, arranged his enter-
tainments, designed his furniture, and finally prepared the
model for the china factory at Sevres. The Convention gave
out that no porcelain found in the royal palaces was worth
preserving unless it conformed to the severity and simplicity
of Etruscan vases ; the existence of the factory at Sevres was
thereby imperilled, when Napoleon stepped in with his word
of command and procured it a fresh lease of glory. The
costliness of the china, which became once more an article
of luxury during the Empire, may best be appreciated by the
prices that were given for it — as for instance, 500 francs for
a cup painted by Mme. Jaquotot ; for vases painted by Swe-
bach, Bergeret, or Isabey 6000, 10,000, 15,000, in some cases
50,000 francs. French taste predominated throughout all
countries : Desmalter arranged the Hermitage at St. Peters-
burg and the Imperial Castle at Rio de Janeiro ; Percier and
Fontaine drew the designs for Cassel ; Moreau furnished
Count Johann Palffy's castle in the Wallnergasse at Vienna,
and constructed the Apollo room, the famous centre of
amusement for the elite, the entrance fee to which was five
florins, and dinner for one without wine the same price.
The internal decorations and furniture of the Empire
period when carried out in grand style, even if somewhat
stiff, gave an air of magnificence to the rooms ; but when
called upon to meet the wants of the citizen's house, they
refused to accommodate themselves. The aesthetic taste of
the time, which insisted on imitating every particular of the
classic life of ancient Rome, found itself in difficulty when
face to face with the requirements of everyday household
furniture. We have referred above to the means sought by
the shamefaced citizen to meet the difficulty and to mask his
ordinary needs in our previous mention of articles of bed-
room furniture, and these were not the only unlucky pieces
over which aesthetes and craftsmen exercised the ingenuity of
their brains.
The stove, for instance, was quite indispensable in a
69
MODES & MANNERS OF
Kerstinq LADY AT HER EMBROIDERY FRAME
northern climate, but where in the whole of antiquity was
any reference to be found to a tiled stove ? The universal
altar had again to be called into service. At Wdrlitz, for
example, the stove was named the altar of winter, or else was
converted into some kind of monument ; Isabey hid the
stove in his house in Paris under the figure of Minerva ; the
firm of Hohler in Berlin sold stoves which imitated every
kind of marble in colour and ancient monuments in shape.
At Wels, in Upper Austria, a stove was found by Karl Julius
Weber which looked like a bookcase filled with the works of
Luther, Zwinglius, and Calvin, whose heretical writings were
seemingly therefore burnt afresh every day.
70
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Drolling
THE DINING-ROOM
This constant and exhausting conflict between aestheticism
and necessity naturally led to a protest against the prevail-
ing and uncomfortable style of the day, and the reaction
was most happily and successfully represented in English
furniture. In opposition to the continental striving after
conformity to the antique and the forcing of conventional
forms to inappropriate purposes, the English thought first
of comfort and convenience. Their furniture was fitted to
the use required of it, solidly made and sparsely decorated ;
and this combination of excellent qualities found its way on
to the Continent in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The style introduced into English furniture from the time of
Sheraton and Hepplewhite, an animated revival of the mingled
MODES & MANNERS OF
elements of Chippendale, rococo, old Gothic, and pseudo-
classic forms, exercised fully as strong an influence on the
furniture of those who wished to be thought in the fashion
during the next period as the Empire style itself. The
Gerard
TALLEYRAND
scanty supply of furniture of the middle-class house was
enriched by several important additions. The " Psyche," a
pier-glass swinging loosely in a standing frame, the idea of
which had only been possible since technique had dis-
covered how to cut sheets of glass of sufficient size for it,
was one extra article ; another being the washstand, that
owed its existence to the newly arisen desire for cleanliness.
72
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The slight value attached to cleanliness during the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries is well known ; in Spain
the bath was forbidden as a heathen abomination. The re-
nowned Queen Margaret of Navarre, of courtly life, washed
herself at the oftenest once a week, and then only her hands.
The roi soleil never washed himself ; and the single bathing-
tub to be found in his time at Versailles — the bath-room
being considered a superfluity, and therefore devoted to other
purposes than washing — was not discovered, and then quite
accidentally, before the days of the Pompadour, and was then
placed in the garden for a fountain. Such being the habits
of the time, it will be understood with what disapprobation
it was said of Napoleon, that he washed too much ! They
explain Mercier's astonishment in 1800 at finding that soap
had become an article of general use in Paris and Reichardt's
surprise that the French in 1804 were so much cleaner than
he had known them twenty years previously. Reports from
England, however, do not entirely corroborate these state-
ments ; according to these the French were very charming
to look at, but it was as well not to go too near them !
In Spain the permission given to a lover to search for
the vermin upon her \vas considered one of the greatest
marks of favour from the fair one ; and Klinger relates how
on one occasion he was showing a microscope to his officers
in St. Petersburg and had put a certain small insect under
it for demonstration, whereupon the audience immediately
offered him so many more objects of a similar kind that he
became quite embarrassed.
An article by Huf eland, who in 1790 started a regular
campaign against uncleanliness, reads most amusingly. It is
not right, he says for example, to let children go so long
without washing, and to let them go longer still without
changing their under linen ; this is most unhealthy — and so
year after year he goes on preaching to his contemporaries on
the most elementary rules concerning the care of the body.
In Munich, which numbered 40,000 inhabitants, there
were seventeen convents, and only five bathing establish-
73
MODES & MANNERS OF
1789
ments, with alto-
gether not more
than one hundred
and thirty baths.
Frankfort on the
Main, through the
instrumentality of
Dr. Kohl, had its
first floating bath in
1800; and Berlin,
through that of
General von Pfuel,
its first river bath-
ing some time after
1813.
The washstand
made its appearance
with this growing
desire for cleanli-
ness ; it was of very
modest proportions at first, generally a tripod holding a
diminutive jug and basin.
The great love of flowers among the English gave us the
flower-stand, and the sentimental preference for certain of
Flora's offspring over others was accompanied by the costly
delight in show that spent itself on plants and blossoms that
were out of season. In Paris this love of flowers was first
displayed after the Reign of Terror, and was brought more
especially into fashion by the Empress Josephine, who was
passionately fond of them ; we have to thank her for the
introduction of the Hortensia into our gardens. Even in
those days flowers were ordered in winter from Nice and
Genoa. Napoleon himself paid 600 francs a year to Mine.
Bernard for a fresh bouquet to be sent him every day.
As regards the decoration of the inner walls, the Empire
style, which preferred either a plain wash of colour or lightly
figured papers, made a virtue of necessity. Wainscoted walls,
74
Bartolozzi, after Wheat ley
WINTER
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
which had hitherto been the general fashion, had, on account
of the continued cutting down of woods and consequent in-
crease in the price of timber, which had already necessitated
the introduction of economical grates and stoves, given way
to hangings of various material, either of Gobelin tapestry,
woven silk, or printed calico.
The walls had to be as cold and neutral as possible, as a
background to the altars, monuments, and pillared temples
with which the new style now filled the rooms, and to the
spindle-legged chairs, and all the classical paraphernalia of
sphinxes, griffins, lion heads, caryatides, &c. They were
merely white, set off with coloured borders, the woodwork
being also varnished with white, and the paperhangings being
of light colours with faint tracings of patterns upon them.
In Paris in 1796, it was reckoned that to redecorate a single
middle-sized room with certain required hangings, even if
done in the most economical way, would necessitate the
changing of twenty-four francs of ready money into assignats
of the nominal value of 45,000 francs.
The exclusive preference for white, owing to the presumed
colourlessness of all ancient temples and statues, led to a
plain glaring surface being alone permissible according to the
taste of the aesthetes, and caused the painted frescoes, in which
their predecessors had delighted, in many churches and dwell-
ing-houses, to be whitewashed over. Oil paintings again did
not suit with the flat cold walls of the citizen's dwelling, their
pronounced effects of perspective and heavy frames would
have been quite out of keeping with the lightness of the re-
maining decoration, and so these lost their value and were for
a long time replaced by engravings or even coloured prints.
Similar experiments to those of the nineteenth century
with coloured photography were made in the eighteenth
with coloured engravings. Jacob Christophe Le Blon, the
child of French refugees settled in Frankfort, discovered the
art of printing the latter ; a number of French artists worked
at improving the process, in every way a laborious one, and
the more so that the actual engraver who was responsible
75
MODES & MANNERS OF
for the general effect of his plate had nothing to do with the
one who coloured and printed it. Gautier d'Agoty produce*
large-sized anatomical pictures, Alix charming portraits, whil
Debucourt and Janinet gave their attention to pictures
fashion and manners, thereby preserving to us the mo;
singular pictures of contemporary society which readily lak
itself open to caricature.
Coloured engraving did not reach the perfection of \vhicl
it was capable until the English set to work to improve th<
process ; as in the same way it remained for English artists t(
master the art of mezzotint, which was discovered by tl
Germans. It was they \vho brought out all the possibility
which were limited, of grace and effect in the coloured engrai
ing, and we have appropriately soft tones and broken deli
cate colours in the copies of elegant professional beauties
after Reynolds and Gainsborough, while the charm of Clarissa
Harlowe and Caroline Lichfield, and the seductiveness of
Lovelace and Grandison, denizens of the world of romance,
are more fittingly portrayed in rose and blue. There is an
exceptional attractiveness in everything told us of English life
at that time by Hoppner, Singleton, Morland, Smith, Ward,
White, and the anglicised Bartolozzi, Cipriani, Schiavonetti,
and others.
They introduce us to everything that is best and most
perfect in creation : everybody is pretty, well-dressed, and
healthy. We meet with delightful puppy dogs, sweet children,
and exemplary parents ; pleasure awaits us at every turn, and
every dream of happiness has become a reality. The addi-
tion to all this of a perfection of technique and of consider-
able taste brought the art into great and lasting favour,
and even Goethe championed it in the Propylden ,• such fav-
ourite examples as George Morland's Laetitia series, which
first appeared in 1789, were republished in 1811 with the
figures reclad in more modern clothing.
A further artistic production was brought over to the
Continent from England — the panorama — which produced a
delightful optical illusion, and was soon greatly sought after
76
'GOOD-BYE TILL THIS EVENING"
LA MESANG&RE, Paris
(about 1800)
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
77
MODES & MANNERS OF
as an entertainment. The first painter of a panorama was
Robert Barker of London, who in 1793 exhibited at his house
in Leicester Square a view of Portsmouth with the English
fleet, which was followed in 1795 by a panorama of Lord
Howe's naval victory over the French, and in 1799 by one of
the battle of Aboukir. These were afterwards exhibited in
Hamburg and at the Leipzig fair. As characteristic of the
difference between English and German national taste, we
may add that the first panorama exhibited in Berlin, painted
by Tielker and Breysig, was a view of Rome !
The diorama by Gropius, for which Schinkel prepared tin
sketches, was a brilliant success when established in Berlin,
sometime after 1811 ; its scenes included the burning of
Moscow, shown at Christmas 1812, only three months after
the actual event had taken place, when many sad spectators
may have comforted themselves with the hopes of better
times. Munich had its first panorama in 1809, the people
being given the opportunity of admiring the goal of their
desires — Vienna.
Art has to thank the Revolution for the acquisition of public
museums, which were generously showered upon the nation,
and, by the increased knowledge of art which they afforded,
were in great measure responsible for the perversion of artistic
taste. The general public had previously had as little under-
standing of their contents as they had right of entrance to
the valuable collections belonging to the rich and great, who
for pride's sake, or because of a genuine personal appreciation
of art, had filled their houses with treasures. We are even
told that before the Revolution, Barthelemy, the custodian
of the royal collection of antiquities in Paris, carried the
key away with him in his pocket when he took a journey to
Italy. The Revolution altered all this, not so much because
it cared about art, as because it wished to educate the people
and prepare them for the enjoyment of liberty. Those of the
art collections of the several royal palaces which fulfilled this
purpose were brought to the Louvre in 1792. Pictures which
were considered immodest, as those by Boucher, or others
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
79
MODES & MANNERS OF
Smith
THE WIDOW'S TALK
1789
which had the misfortune to remind the public in any way of
the hated conditions of royalty which had been pitilessly
swept away, or again those like the productions of the Flemish
painters which were not in accordance with idealistic art,
were ruthlessly condemned to destruction, and only a certain
number escaped by being bought up at an absurdly low
price, chiefly by foreigners.
The French, we may add, did not stand alone in their
ignorance as regards the older works of art. At Prague the
head of a Trojan, which had been thrown into the ditch of the
Hradschin, was used to make knobs for sticks ; while the
volumes bound in morocco, which had belonged to Prince
80
THE TIMID PUPIL" LA M&ANG&RE, Pans (about 1800)
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
81
MODES & MANNERS OF
Eugen, were turned out of the court library at Vienna and
replaced by others bound in boards ; and so on.
In 1793 the auctions held for the sale of the confiscated
property of the emigrants, which included the costly furniture
from the royal palaces — bronzes, porcelain, tapestries, &c. —
that was now bought and scattered over all parts of the
world, only brought the French government a lot of worthless
assignats, while priceless treasures were either destroyed or
lost to the nation for ever. From remains which Alexandre
Lenoir gathered together from old lumber-rooms he founded
the first historical museum, and for many years he laboured
with untiring care and self-sacrifice to enlarge his collection,
until it was dispersed during the Restoration period by the
shortsighted and ignorant policy of those in power. Under
the Empire the Musee Napoleon, formed of the art treasures
of which Italy, Spain, and Germany had been despoiled, was
the finest collection of the kind known, and between 1803-5,
some twenty provincial museums in France were founded to
receive the overflow of its riches. This example was not lost
upon other countries, and was systematically folio "ed by
Germany some years later. England as usual stood alone,
and on a higher plane, as regarded matters of culture ; the
first foundation of the British Museum dates back to 1752.
82
Hamburger Journal der Moden und Eleganz, 1801
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
CHODOWIECKI'S DESIGNS FOR REFORM IN DRESS
Prom " Frauenzimiuer-Aimanach"
1786
IV
ROUSSEAU'S appeal to society to return to the simpler con-
ditions of natural life inaugurated a reformation in dress, and
the old stiff, affected mode of attire was replaced by a healthier
and more reasonable style, more fitted to the purpose for
which it was intended. The general longing after new forms
of life found expression in this altered dress long before
the petrified state of age-old society had given way before
the overwhelming force of the awakened consciousness of
humanity. That this was so need not surprise us, for the
striving of the individual after beauty and harmony, after some
reconciliation between character and appearance, naturally
finds vent in the style of dress. The new ideas concerning
nature and liberty began to make themselves felt by their
opposition to court costume, and the Revolution started
with a revolt against corsets, hooped petticoats, and high-
heeled shoes. Children were the first to profit by the change ;
the development and care of their physical condition preceded
the pedagogic reform which did away with the old routine
83
MODES & MANNERS OF
Mal%o, after Hickel
PRINCESSE LAMBALLE
of teaching that aimed principally at training the memory.
Now the development of the will and understanding was made
a part of their education, and a whole line of reformers —
Basedow, Salzmann, von Rochow, Campe, and later Pestalozzi
and Niemeyer — introduced systems of education which took
into consideration the natural character of the child.
Up to about 1780, children had been dressed like grown-
up people ; the boys curled and powdered like the father,
the girls tight-laced like the mother, and their clothes were
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
made of the same stuff
and cut in the same way
as those of their elders.
We have only to look
at any of the pictures
by Chardin, Chodo-
wiecki, and others, to
see how quaint and
decorous they appear,
and how stiffly they
hold themselves in their
uncomfortable and
unyielding attire. Sud-
denly all this under-
went a change ; a sen-
sible dress fitted to the
childish figure was im-
ported from England.
There was no longer
any swathing of the
infant's body, and all
confining strings wrere
done away with. Many
of the older children
were even allowed to
run about with bare head and feet ; and mothers visiting
England could not sufficiently admire the freedom of dress
enjoyed by the children of that country and their healthful
appearance. The efforts of the health promoters led to the
adoption of the English mode of dress for children, who
already in 1793 began to be reasonably attired, Gutsmuth
being allowed even to open his gymnasium for them.
From England, whence salvation had reached the children,
came deliverance also for adults ; the less courtly manner of
life of the English, who preferred to dwell in the country,
necessitated a different, simpler, and more convenient style
of costume to the court dress of the continental frequenters
Bartolozzi, after Cos-way
MARIA COSWAY
MODES & MANNERS OF
David
MMK. SERI/IAT
of salons. The doctors of the day upheld English fashions,
organising a regular campaign against the injurious style of
men and women's dress. The famous anatomist Sommering,
in 1788, addressed the "German women who really were
86
Hamburger Journal der Moden und Eleganz, 1801
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Gallery of Fashion
T794
German at heart," appealing to their consciences against
corsets ; and the equally renowned Camper attacked high
heels, a whole list of lesser celebrities joining in the chorus
— among them Josef Frank and Walter Vaughan, who highly
disapproved of the tight trousers worn by men. The stress
laid on the "German" in Sommering's address shows that
the efforts to introduce a more reasonable style of dress
were ipso facto in opposition to French modes, and therefore
had acquired a national significance.
Bertuch, as early as 1786, propounded the question, " Is
it necessary and possible to introduce a national German
costume ? " but without result, while the more practically
minded editor of the Frauenzimmer-Almanach, Franz Ehren-
berg of Leipzig, and Daniel Chodowiecki in 1785, started
87
MODES & MANNERS OF
Russian Artist
A GIRL
designs for a "reformed dress for German women." The
dresses, it should be added, designed by the artist, after
Greek models, for home wear, visits, and ceremonies, had
nothing to do with this "reform dress," which was a
melancholy compromise between a nightgown and an artist's
Coverall — and those shuddered who saw it — a flopping sort of
banner under which the wretched devotees gathered, sworn
to envious combat with all that was graceful and chic.
This overruling idea of a reformed and national dress
was never wholly put aside, and in the course of these pages
we shall come across accounts of continued efforts, in France
as well as in Germany, during periods of political unrest,
towards the introduction of a " patriotic" or "national"
costume. In distinction to the secondary importance at-
tached nowadays to dress, we become aware in these move-
ments, however unsuccessful they may have been, of the
88
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
psychological value which unconsciously resides in dress. In
earlier epochs it was brought more into notice by the regula-
tions concerning the dress of the separate classes ; not only
were the clergy and soldiers distinguishable, but noblemen
were differently dressed to the citizens — a woman of rank to
a merchant's wife, and the artisan's wife to a woman of the
serving class. So it remained until the Revolution, at least
on the Continent, for previous to this foreigners in England
had remarked on the fact that there was no distinction of
dress among the classes in that country, and that those of
higher rank did not suffer any loss of dignity in consequence.
What happened in France in May 1789, when all the classes
came together, would have been impossible in England.
Gallery of Fashion
1795
MODES & MANNERS OF
__
Desrais
Ox THE BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS
1797
Dreux de Breze, the master of the ceremonies, fell back upon
the court ceremonial of 1614, and with peculiarly happy tact on
his part prescribed a dress for the members of the Assembly
whereby the tiers-etat found themselves clothed in a costume
which was distasteful to them by the very reason of its lack
of colour and ornament. This master-stroke of the elegant
courtier put the Assembly from the beginning in a bad humour,
and produced a feeling of irritation which was evident in its
proceedings. It gave Mirabeau a good opportunity for his
first violent tirade against the inequality of dress ; and con-
sequently one of the first acts of the National Assembly was
the abolition by solemn decree of all distinction in the dresses
of the classes. The noblemen who had selfishly usurped the
wearing of feathers, embroideries, and red heels, &c., had to
look on while the citizens declared that they laid no value on
such insignificant trifles, but left them gladly to the use of
90
Hamburger Journal der Moden und Eleganz, 1801
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Smith
WHAT YOU WILL "
1791
lackeys. It was significant of the victory of the lower class
all along the line ; the first of the accustomed privileges of
the upper class had gone, and the others were to follow with
painful rapidity.
The result to us has been that all the variety and splendour
of men's dress before 1789 have completely disappeared ; they
91
MODES & MANNERS OF
Gallery of Fashion
1795
fell into discredit as reminiscent of a hated class, and every
effort on Napoleon's part to revive them failed to check the
universal introduction of black for men's wear. A clever
master of the ceremonies had had the idea of ordering black
clothing for the despised citizens in order to snub them—
they were now, in face of cringing courtiers, going to make
it a dress of honour. The democratic tendency which was
then gaining power, the plebeian sentiment of equality, has so
far carried the day that now when another century has
92
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
passed over our heads, not only has man's dress attained to
an uncompromising uniformity, but women's dress also has
been forced to give up any peculiarity indicative of rank or
station. In England this change in dress took place naturally
and without fuss : it was not so in France, where it was
accomplished with full stage effect ; and the Continent, de-
ceived by the glare and noise, imagined it was imitating
France, when in truth it was only following the lead of
England. As the doctrines of the English deists were propa-
gated by Voltaire, so English fashions only became generally
known after they had received names and recognition in
Paris. To this day the long trousers, a chief characteristic of
modern attire, is thought to have been a novelty introduced
in France, whereas it was nothing more than the English
Magasin des Modes, 1790
Gallery of Fashion, 1795
93
MODES & MANNERS OF
Gallery of Fashion
1796
sailor's breeches, and the name of "pantalon " was borrowed
from the familiar figure in Italian comedy, the pantaloon,
whom Callot as early as the beginning of the seventeenth
century represented with his legs clad in this article of dress.
The French undoubtedly furthered the adoption of foreign
ideas, and cleverly and ostentatiously made use of them, but
we shall see later that even the so-called Greek dress of the
Revolution originally came from England.
The costume of the women in vogue when the Revolution
broke out dated from 1780. It had given up the hooped
petticoat and the high dressing of the hair ; but fashion would
not have satisfied its love of exaggeration if it had not given
94
Hamburger Journal der Moden nnd Ehganz, 1802
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
prominence to sor ic other part of the figure to make up for
lessening the colossal width of hip produced by the extensive
hoop, over which the full dresses had been tightly strained.
Fashion chose the bosom. The dresses continued to be full
and long, but now hung in clinging folds, as we see them in
their most becoming style in pictures by Reynolds and Gains-
borough ; the sleeves of the caraco, or bodice, were half-
length, the neck open, and the waist very high, which gave
prominence to the figure. Fichus were worn, or the open
neck was filled up with some light material, at first only intro-
duced in puffs but afterwards drawn up higher, and worn
continually fuller, until as trompeuse it reached the chin and
had to be supported by
gorges postiches made of
satin.
The gigantic erec-
tions of hair, which at
last reached such a height
that it was said of a lady
of fashion that her face
was in the middle of her
body, were now no longer
seen. According to a
current anecdote, Marie
Antoinette lost so much
hair at the time of the
birth of the first Dau-
phin, that the old style of
hairdressing became im-
possible to her. In place
of these towering coif-
fures, thick curls now
hung down to the waist ;
ladies continued to pow-
der, but the ribbons,
laces, flowers, feathers,
aigrettes, &c., which had
MODES & MANNERS OF
i796
taken the hairdresser hours to arrange, were entirely put aside.
Not to be without compensation for this loss, all these magni-
ficent trappings were transferred to the hat, which in size and
trimmings equalled in extravagance the former mode of hair-
dressing ; the simpler and plainer the dress became the more
fanciful and overweighted became the head covering. Other
names were now given to colours ; they were no longer called
Caca Dauphin, Voniissement de la Reine, Cardinal sur la paille,
but received appellations more in accordance with the times,
as a la Republicaine, a V £galite} a la Carmagnole. Every one
wore the national cockade — since it was dangerous not to do
so. The dresses grew gradually narrower, and the waists
96
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
higher, until about 1793 every woman looked as if she had
a wen.
The most striking difference was in the materials used.
Owing to silk and satin being now too expensive for the re-
duced means of the people, they were replaced by printed
calico and cotton ; and the French fashion being followed to
some extent by other countries, the silk industry in France
was completely ruined.
And now for a while fashion seemed to stand still, for the
ladies who had set the fashion in Paris were either too busy
since they had thrown themselves into politics to trouble
about it, or, having emigrated, were without the money and
the opportunity.
As early as June 1790, some one wrote from Paris that an
unheard-of thing had occurred : no new fashion had appeared
MODES & MANNERS OF
Gallery of Fashion
1796
for the last six months ! Le Brim's Journal de la Mode ct du
Gofit managed to drag out an existence up till January 1793,
when it was obliged to cease ; the Terror had swamped every-
thing. Even the chief tailor and dressmaker had emigrated ;
the famous Mile. Bertin, Marie Antoinette's modiste, left for
Mainz in 1792, was sent for to Vienna by the Empress, and
finally went over to England, where she remained. So the
setting of the fashions devolved upon the democracy, as first
result of which was the introduction of ready-made clothes,
which were stocked to suit all tastes.
Since 1791 there had been shops for ready-made clothes
in Paris. Quenin the younger supplied the wants of the
citizen, and Mme. Teillard those of the citizen's wife. Both
Hamburger Journal der Moden und Eleganz, 1802
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Gallery of Fashion
1798
sent out printed lists of prices, and as early as 1799 found
imitators in Hamburg, where Korn and Hosstrup kept
ready-made wardrobes in stock for gentlemen.
Fashion now set up her throne in England ; in this country,
so out-and-out conservative, the new fashion in imitation of
classic dress was first started. The story of its origin is ex-
tremely comic. When in 1793 the well-beloved Duchess of
York \vas in an interesting condition, both girls and adult
99
MODES & MANNERS OF
Lauer
FRAULEIN VON KNOBELSDOKF
women of fashion went about wearing little cushions under
the waistband ; they were known in England as pads, in
Germany as venires posticJies. This peculiar fashion was the
beginning of the short waist, which after 1794 was the general
style in England, and found its way quickly on to the Con-
tinent, the bodice finishing immediately under the bosom
in front and under the shoulder-blades behind. First known
as an " English " fashion, it was eagerly adopted in Paris,
whence it spread abroad rapidly after the fall of the leaders
of the Terror in 1795, when the beautiful Madame Tallien,
generally known as " Notre Dame du Thermidor," ascended
the vacant throne of fashion. Released from the rule of the
100
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Gallery of Fashion
1797
Terror, the Parisian ladies, who had been forced for so long
to forbear the pleasure of dress, now carried the new fashion
to an extravagant excess; under the pretence of wishing to
appear classical, the " English " was soon more correctly to be
designated the " naked " fashion. Not only did corsets and
under-petticoats disappear, but further garments were also
discarded — the lady of society wore rings on her bare feet,
while silk tights and a transparent chemise open to the knee
composed the remainder of her costume. The more fashion-
able of these half-insane women strove as to which of them
101
MODES & MANNERS OF
Debvcourt
YOUNG GIRL
1799
should put on the least clothing. No one now spoke of any
one as " well dressed," but as " well undressed," and it became
an amusement in society to weigh a lady's garments ; her
whole clothing, including shoes and ornaments, was not
allowed in 1800 to weigh over eight ounces. Mme. Hamelin,
the beautiful wife of a rich Swiss banker, went the length of
walking in the garden of the Tuileries clad only in a gauze
veil, until the obtrusive behaviour of the public obliged her to
return home. Mile. Saulnier, however, beat the record by
appearing naked as Venus in a ballet of the " Judgment of
Paris."
When the " English " dress with its sleeves and high neck,
which had travelled over the Channel to Paris, returned to its
native country as the " Greek dress," sleeveless and decolletee
102
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
HIDE AND SKEK
From " Le bon Genre "
PUSS IN THE COKNKR
From " Le bon Genre"
I03
MODES
MANNERS OF
to an impossible degree, it did not meet with a welcome recep-
tion. On the occasion of Mrs. Jordan appearing in it on the
boards at Drury Lane, the audience in the stalls threw their
pocket-handkerchiefs at her that she might clothe hersell
therewith, and she was obliged to retire and change her dress
The English ladies kept to this style long after the Continenl
Debucourt
OLD LOVERS
had given it up — Gabriele von Billow remarked on one
occasion that they were so extraordinarily dressed that one
might fancy one's self at a masquerade — but they carried it
out in so decent a fashion that a lady writing from London
remarked that what in England would be considered an entire
absence of clothing would more than suffice for three ladies
in Leipzig or Berlin.
In 1 80 1 a lady in Hanover laid a wager that she would
walk through the streets dressed only in a chemise and a
neckerchief without exciting any particular attention — and
she won her bet easily. It is more difficult still to picture
that in 1799, at a masquerade in Biickeburg, a couple appeared
as Adam and Eve "clothed in nothing but their innocence " !
104
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Decent or indecent, becoming or unbecoming, the fashion
was too new and surprising not to excite lively criticism. In
1794 a Berlin critic, writing of the actress Baranius, accused
her of returning to the habits of the uncivilised world, of
offending morality and decency, and indeed, of awakening
disgust — and this merely because she ventured to appear on
BREAKFAST
From " Le ban Genre"
the stage with bare arms ; and the following year corsets, long
sleeves, and trompeuses had already gone for good, and the
"unclothed" style become the general fashion. At certain
less advanced courts, as that of St. James's, the old state
dress was still to be seen, and even the hooped petticoats,
on festive occasions ; in Berlin, on the contrary, the Queen
and Countess Vosz were clad in 1798 at the ceremony of
taking the oath of allegiance, d la Romaine.
The fashion of women's dress introduced in 1794 under-
went no change for about ten years ; body and skirt were
made of one piece and hung close and straight like an under
garment, so that the dress was not called such, but spoken of
as the chemise. The long close-fitting robe ended in a train,
MODES & MANNERS OF
which gradually attained to the length of six yards for ordinary
wear and walking, and fourteen yards for dress occasions.
The train did not escape severe disapprobation, and, as
here in Germany some few years ago, many laughable and
exaggerated attacks were made upon it. In 1795, at the close
of one term, a student at the Realschule in Berlin recited
"A youth's petition to the beauties of Berlin concerning
trains." The beauties of Berlin were either broader-minded
or more lenient, for we do not hear then, or indeed since,
of their turning the tables on the youths and addressing a
petition to them about smoking.
At any rate the ladies soon accustomed themselves to
106
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Char is
1801
carrying their long trains ; they wound them several times
round the body and then held them by the extreme end, or
else, as for instance when dancing, they threw them over the
nan's shoulder. They were not so difficult to manage as one
night suppose, on account of the light materials used for dress
—muslin, batiste, lawn, &c. — nor was there any additional
weight added by the trimmings, as embroidery and worked
borders were the only ornamentations. But the dressmakers
did not allow even this simplicity of style to be indulged in
without cost ; in Paris, for instance, 2000 francs were paid for
a dress of Indian calico : 6000 to 8000 if embroidered and with
a train ! A dress embroidered with steel beads made for the
Princess of Wiirtemberg cost 3000, an embroidered coat for
the same lady 900 francs. Marie Louise's trousseau included
nany embroidered dresses ; one in gold and silver tinsel cost
107
MODES & MANNERS OF
CENTRAL GROUP FROM DEBUCOURT'S "MODERN PARIS"
1804
7400, one in pink tulle 4500, and one in blonde lace 6oo(
francs.
Among the lighter fabrics lace was naturally the mos
highly esteemed, and the lace dresses of Mile. Lange wen
108
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
W. Bottner
QUEEN LUISE
109
MODES & MANNERS OF
Ingres
MLLE. DE MONTGOLFIEI
particularly noted. As mistress of the deputy Mandrin she
became possessed of all Marie Antoinette's laces. The most
costly were owned later by the Empress Josephine ; these
varied in value from 40,000 to 100,000 francs.
During 1800 the women got tired of the long plain dress,
and the skirt began to be divided. It was either cut open in
front over an under-petticoat of another colour or another
stuff, or else cut up at the back so as to give the appearance
no
The Repository, London, 1810
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
" Ah, quel vent !"
From " La Mdsangere "
f an apron ; this upper skirt being joined to the bodice was
ailed caraco tablier. Again, the upper skirt was sometimes
ut off about the height of the knees, so forming a tunic,
in
MODES & MANNERS OF
which was worn plain!
or gathered. Heavier
materials were used
for the upper skirt-
for smart occasions,
such as velvet, silk, or
satin ; and for court
ceremonies they wen
richly embroidered.
The long train wa-
at the extreme height
of fashion somewhere
about 1804, contem-
porarily with Napo-
leon's coronation l~o-
tival, which according
to his own expres-
command was accom-
panied with the great-
est pomp. His and
the Empress's coro-
nation robes, which
were made by Lercn
and Mme. Raimbaud
alone cost 650,000
francs. Besides this every one of the Empress's ladies-
in-waiting received 10,000 francs for her dress ; and the\
must have easily spent this, for if one of them appeared
at Napoleon's receptions more than once in the same
dress he had a way of looking at them as a Prussian
officer looks at his recruits. Mme. de Remusat tells us
with pride how wonderfully charming they all looked at the
coronation ; and as she says it of her friends can we doubt
her word ?
Occasionally two dresses were worn over one another.
Reichardt relates that he once saw Mme. Recamier at ;i
reception in a splendid velvet dress, and when the dancing
112
THE WALK
From "La Mdsangcre"
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
MODES & MANNERS OF
THE TORMENT OF TRAINS
From ' ' Le ban Genre "
began she slipped this off, underneath it being an embr
dered white silk ball-dress.
The bodice, if we may call it such, still retained its low
neck and short sleeves. The " romantic " element, however,
had wrought a change, for the sleeves were puffed and a high
lace frill or ruff surrounded the neck. Such reminiscences
of mediaeval fashions occur in Berlin as early as 1793, when
the actress Unzelmann set the fashion of
knights' collars ; and again in 1796, when
the ladies of Berlin dressed a la Jane
Grey, with puffed sleeves and peaked cap
still keeping the short waist. England
however, was the first to reintroduce in
1801 the ruffs made of Brabant lace and
known as " Betsies," after Queen Elizabeth,
which in London reached the price of
to £20. These old-fashioned Betsies were
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
sold in Paris as something quite
new under the name of cherusses,
the correct shape of which was
fixed by the famous tailor Leroy,
who had studied old models.
These ruffs increased in size,
while the puffed sleeve gradually
grew longer till it reached the
wrist, and so, although the high
waist still continued, a new style
came in about 1805. The train
was quite done away with, the
dress was still close-fitting but
Grdnicher
1806
A LEIPZIG COOK
Craighley-Kenerley
ENGLISH COSTUME
1807
cut round at the bottom, leaving
the feet free in 1808, and only
reaching to the ankles in 1810. The
dress, as it were, moved upwards, for
what it lost in length below it gained
in height above ; it now covered
the arms and shoulders and was
gathered into a full frill at the neck.
The ethereal nymphs and goddesses
had disappeared, giving place to
grotesquely clothed figures, more
like mandrakes than human beings.
This tasteless style of costume
"5
MODES & MANNERS OF
reached its height in
Vienna in 1817, when
the dress, now entirely
without bodice, started
from the throat and
fell half-way down the
legs only, being cut out
at the bottom in dents
de loup, and allowing
a good length of lace
drawer to be seen be-
fore it ended in an em-
broidered band. T >
this add the former
style of hat, and the
scarecrow is complete.
The most surpris-
ing fact in connec-
tion with this short-
waisted period is that
the ladies were con-
tent to go so long
without corsets, for a
small bodice composed of twenty whalebones hardly served
the same purpose, while the iron framework which repre-
sented the corset in Paris in 1811 was not much patronised,
the less so perhaps because Canova hotly inveighed against
it, than because the wearer found it almost impossible to
move in it.
Women certainly never dressed to less advantage than
during the years between 1811 and 1817. Taking it for
granted that the woman's chief object is to make herself
beautiful and to please, it is incomprehensible that fashions
so highly unbecoming should have lasted so long ; perhaps it
was with the idea of providing an extra enticement to the
men to seek more closely for the jewel that lay hidden in such
a strange and unattractive casket. Anyhow no woman was
116
-
The Repository
1809
ro
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
found at that time to draw the attention of her sisters to the
inharmonious and grotesque appearance she presented ; such
a thing would to-day be impossible, when the active part
taken by women in all matters — literary, artistic, and scientific
—has proved the unfailing forbearance and patience of men.
The preference for lighter stuffs led to these being worn
even in winter — it was the fashion, and unreasonable to do so —
two good reasons against which the warnings of the doctors
were of no avail. The latter called catarrhal complaints
the "muslin disease," and attributed the increase of con-
sumption to the thinness of clothing. When the influenza
broke out in Paris in 1803, as many as 60,000 fell ill daily, this
La belle assemble
1809
MODES & MANNERS OF
Haller v. Hallerstein
THE HATS OF 1810
high number being also put down to the account of muslin.
However, some protection against the inclemency of winter
was necessary, and from 1796 English flannel found a market
on the Continent, the wearing of it being strongly urged by
certain physicians, among them Vaughan. Demands for
waterproof materials from London also began to be made
in 1802.
The objection to hiding the figure led to the discarding
of the cloak but brought the cashmere shawl into general
fashion. This article of dress possessed all the advantages
of which a warm soft material is capable, when it is prettily
shaped, elegantly arranged, and fetches a high price ; it
continued to be worn in various ways for nearly a century.
It appeared first somewhere about 1786 in London in the
shape of a wrap six yards long and two wide, costing ^15
to £30, and so pleased the general taste that it was imitated
in printed cotton for the poorer classes. Even Napoleon
was powerless to check the inroad of the shawl. Heavy
duties had to be paid on English cashmere, but this naturally
only led to its being more in demand, and the Emperor,
118
La Belle Assemblee, London, 1812
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
although he might occasionally destroy them in his anger,
had to give in to Josephine, who was not content with less
than 300 to 400 cashmere shawls, each costing 15,000 to
20,000 francs. Shawls to the value of 1200 to 5000 francs
were also included in Marie Louise's trousseau ; and for
ladies of less exalted rank Corbin had his shop in the Rue de
Richelieu, where pretty shawls could be had for 600 francs.
The rage for the shawl was not only due to the fact that
it was an article of luxury and therefore gave opportunity for
rivalry among ladies of fashion ; there was also an art, and a
very personal art too, in the way of wearing it. The shawl
was not just flung over the shoulders like a cloak — it required
to be draped ; and much individual taste could be displayed
in this draping, for the shawl with its elegant folds was ad-
mirably fitted to betray or to delicately conceal the graces of
The Repository
MODES & MANNERS OF
the figure. No one spoke of a lady as "well dressjed," but as
" beautifully draped." And if a lady wearer was in any doubt
as to the most becoming way of putting on her shawl, she
had only to go to Mme. Gardel, who was ready to instruct
her ; for this artist, besides appearing in public in the shawl-
dance, also gave lessons in the art of posing. It was not
Gillrav
THE GRACES IN A STORM
until 1808 that fur cloaks began to be worn by the Parisians ;
being originally brought from Russia they were known as
Witzschoura. The shawl, however, still held its own, and in
1812 square Turkish shawls were imported from Vienna, for
which 2000 and 3000 florins were paid.
Change in dress was naturally accompanied with a change
in the style of hair-dressing. The hair was now worn flatter
on the head, an attempt being made to copy the old manner
of wearing it as seen in statues ; so by degrees the wild
chevelure a la sauvage of 1796 was tamed down, and the hair
at last was drawn closely round the head and sometimes
1 20
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
enclosed in a net : small flat curls on the forehead, and plaits,
were also introduced. The shape of the head, which had
been previously quite unrecognisable, was now shown as
much as possible. Whereas in 1796 none of the women
possessed as much hair as they required, in 1806 they could
scarcely have too little.
For many years elegance of appearance depended princi-
LES ENNUYJ£ES DE LONGCHAMP
From " L,e bon Genre "
pally on the coiffure ; classic and mediaeval styles of hair-
dressing were studied in order to vary it, and as it was
difficult for the ladies to be continually re-arranging their
own hair according to fresh models, they all took to wearing
wigs. In 1800 it would have been almost impossible to find
a woman who wore her own hair, and the colour of the wig
varied as frequently as the style ; in the morning it might be
light and in the evening dark. Mme. Tallien owned thirty
different wigs, of which each cost ten louis d'or. Hair was
at a premium, and a pound of fair hair could be sold by any
121
MODES & MANNERS OF
one who wished to part with
it for seventy francs. The cus-
tom of powdering the hair was
gradually discontinued during the
nineties of the eighteenth century.
Hats altered their fashion in
accordance with the hair, and for
a while took the shape of old
helmets — casquets d la Minerve
trimmed with laurel wreaths, tilt-
ing-helmets of black velvet with
high ostrich feathers, which led
the way to the coal-scuttle shape,
so long in vogue. The first ap-
pearance of this may be traced
back to 1797, when Demoiselle
Mees came on the stage at Ham-
« La
La belle assembUe
1811
burg in Gretry's opera of
Caravane du Caire " in a coal-
scuttle bonnet. The funnel-
shaped opening of this head-
covering grew horizontally
longer and longer until it
completely concealed the face,
which could be caught sight
of only far back between the
gigantic blinkers, the ladies of
that time being referred to in
comic papers as the " invisible
ones."
These bonnets were made
of straw, drawn tulle, or light
felt, and trimmed with upright
flowers or waving feathers, the
whole being covered with a
large veil. In the summer of
1814 the ladies of Berlin very
122
The Repository
1813
La Belle Assemblce, London, 1813
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
!
123
MODES & MANNERS OF
Eckersberg
THE NATHANSON FAMILY
sensibly adorned their bonnets with palm-branches and lilies.
Beside these monstrosities of millinery, there were toques and
birettas, which gave a certain raciness of appearance when
trimmed with a feather that fell over the right or left eye.
Other shapes in fashion were the inverted flower-pot, and
very high cylindrical forms without a brim. In 1805 Mine.
Belmont as Fanchon introduced the loosely hanging kerchief
for the head, while the Iphigenia veil worn over the hair was
borrowed from the Spanish ladies.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century we find the
hood coming into fashion ; it fitted closely to the head, the
face being encircled with a border of lace, and it met with
such favour, that in 1815 in Berlin even the youngest girl, who
was a long way off the matrimonial coif, insisted on wearing it.
This uniformity of dress, which not only did away with all
distinction of class but also of age, was not pleasing to all
contemporary onlookers. Reichardt for instance writes to
his wife from Paris in 1803, that not only are mother and
124
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
C. Vernet
From " Performing Dogs "
125
MODES & MANNERS OF
daughter clothed in exactly the same cut and colour of dress,
but that he had seen five men of different age and posi-
tion on the stage at once, each dressed precisely in the same
costume.
As there was now no under-petticoat and the dresses were
without pockets, the ladies would have been obliged to carry
their odds and ends in their hands, if they had not preferred
to take them about with them in a reticule. Since the
antiquarians had stated as a fact that the Athenian ladies
made use of similar bags, the Parisians were reconciled to
doing so too. The reticules were preferably shaped like
ancient urns and made of cardboard, lacquered tin, &c., and
ornamented to look like Etruscan vases, so that the elegant
ladies who carried them could quite fancy themselves
priestesses.
The straightness of line and plainness of colour of this
classic style of dress called loudly for
ornament, and jewellery began to be
worn almost to excess. At first cameos
were the chosen ornaments, and the de-
mand for costly old work of the kind
led to whole choice collections of
Italian princes being sent over to Paris,
nominally for the museums in France,
and here they passed through the ex-
travagant Josephine's hands into the
possession of her friends. Bracelets on
wrists and ankles, rings on the fingers
and toes, chains long enough to go six
or seven times round the neck, earrings
with three hanging pendants, innumer-
able combs and diadems were all part of
fashionable adornment.
The Countess Potocka possessed, be-
yond her 300 costly pieces of jewellery,
144 rings at least ; and when the Coun-
The Repository 1813 teSS Schwichelt Stole ;£4O,OOO WOrth of
126
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
127
MODES & MANNERS OF
diamonds from her
friend Frau von Demi-
doff, at a ball, she
only carried off a small
portion of the latter's
stock. At the time
that the Countess Voszi
was noting in her diary
that she had not for i
long seen a single
precious stone at the
Prussian court, the j
jewellery of the ladies
assembled at a court
ball in Paris, which
represented the pro-
cession of the Peru-
vians to the Temple of |
The Repository 1814 the g^ wag estjmated
as worth twenty million francs. Still more indicative of the
taste of the parvenu society at the French court is the fact
that pearls were not much considered, while amethysts were j
highly prized among precious stones, the rich amethyst mines
of Brazil and Russia not having
yet been opened.
When the Prussian women
in 1813 willingly sacrificed to
the Fatherland the little that
had been left them by the
French, they literally gave
gold for iron, for they then
began to wear jewellery made
of iron which the medallist
Loos of Berlin introduced for
sale. It was characteristic of
the time that even ornament
could not wholly escape a
128
I
00
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
/ 'ernrt
MERVEILLEUSES
ouch of pedantry, and so in 1793 the mineralogists of
Dresden, Dr. Gresz and Dr. Titius, introduced the litho-
ogical ring, which consisted of a gold circlet of which the
stone could he changed at pleasure. With thirty various
tssorted stones it cost from 14 to 19 thalers.
A luxury less patent to the eye was the more liberal use of
inder-linen, and here the Imperial couple set a good example
0 their people. Napoleon, to the great astonishment of his
tnmediate surroundings, changed his linen every day, and
Josephine hers three times a day ; and the latter when making
1 present of her trousseau to her niece, Mile. Tacher de la
I. I 129
MODES & MANNERS OF
Pajerie, included in it 25,000 francs' worth of underclothing.
For the snuff-takers there were bright-coloured pocket-hand-
kerchiefs ; in 1812 they were made of Indian calico and
printed with maps ; in 1814 they were of cotton, and had on
them the apotheosis of Wellington or a comic portrait of
Napoleon.
The revolution in men's dress preceded the political over-
throw. Goethe fifteen years previously had described it in his
" Werther " as worn in 1789. The change that took place in it
was less to do with cut than with material and colour. Cloth
and leather were worn instead of silk and velvet ; dark shades
of brown and blue instead of pink, violet, and light green.
MERVEILLEUSES
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Chalon PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES
1816
he original cut of the tail-coat underwent alteration in so
r that it could now be buttoned across the chest and that
e tails were wider ; for nether garments the men still stuck
the closely fitting knee-breeches. The most striking
mnges were the substitution of boots for shoes, of a
>und smooth hat for the gold-edged and befeathered three-
>rnered one, and the wearing of the hair as it grew naturally,
istead of haying it curled and powdered. When the French
evolution further brought the long trouser into general
ear, then everybody felt that the old condition of society
id passed away for ever, for the costumes of the lower
asses had now taken possession of the salons. Only the
try poorest had up till then left their hair unpowdered,
MODES & MANNERS OF
David
M. S£RI/IAT
only carters' men had worn high boots, only common sailors
long trousers and round hats; and with the assumption of
these outward habiliments of the ordinary public the menj
of the upper class altered their bearing. He who goes'
about in fancy shoes, with a dress sword at his side andi
his hair carefully curled and powdered, is bound to carry
himself differently to the man who cares not if the wine
blows his hair about, or if the road is muddy or dry.
Older people looked on with disgust at the new style of
behaviour ; but the stronger the opposition of the conservative
members of society, the more determined was the youngi
generation to carry the day.
132
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The trouser worn by the sans-culotle (a name which signi-
fied without knee-breeches, not without leg covering of any
kind) slowly grew into fashion. In 1791 it had reached the
middle of the calf ; in 1793 it had got as low as the shoe. It
continued to be looked upon as unseemly, but after Frederick
William III. of Prussia appeared in 1797 in long trousers at
the baths of Pyrmont, though still regarded with disfavour,
it was decided that they must be endured. Meanwhile knee-
breeches were not wholly discarded, and they continued to be
preferred by every one who had a well-shaped leg. Bettine
relates charming anecdotes in this connection about old
Jacobi ; but they became more and more confined to elderly
wearers, and after 1815 were never seen again in public.
The trouser was worn sometimes loose, sometimes quite
close-fitting ; in the latter case natural shortcomings were
compensated for by false calves, just as the ladies in 1796
wore false arms under their long gloves (and even false
figures made of wax, according to information sent from
CAVALCADE DE LONGCHAMPS
From " Le bon Genre"
'33
MODES & MANNERS OF
ien,
out
London in 1798).
The vainer men,
who swore by
figure, also \v
corsets just abo
the time when
women were giv-
ing them up. At
the New Year's
ball given at the
Russian Embassy
in Berlin in 1801,
Herr von Dorville
fell down dead
after dancing vio-
lently ; he had in
his vanity literally
laced himself to
death at the knees, |;
waist, and throat.
Simultaneously
with the trouserl
the coat also in
creased in dim en
sions, and the broad-tailed English riding-coat developec
into the French redingote. The tails grew in breadth anc
length, and in 1791 already reached the ground; with th<.
exaggeration usual in the adoption of foreign fashions, th
men in Hamburg wore their coat-tails so long that they wen
obliged to hold them up when walking, as a lady the trail
of her dress. Then again the tails grew shorter, but stil
retained sufficient breadth to be crossed over in front ; b]
about 1800 the redingote assumed almost its final shape, a
\ve see it represented in Ranch's statuette of the aged Goethe
Fashion was less concerned with the shape of this article o;
attire than with its embellishment ; different coloured collar!
were introduced. In place of the embroidery, which had novj
134
Girard
COUNT FRIES AND FAMILY
La Belle Assemblce, London, 1814
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
entirely disappeared from
everyday apparel, the
men in Berlin for in-
stance had collar and
facings of red to their
dark blue coats. Some-
times several collars fall-
ing over one another
were worn, and these
received the name of
capot a la Polonaise, a
fashion which long re-
mained in use for coach-
men's livery.
The colour of men's
" spencers " grew con-
tinually darker — bottle-
green, brown, grey,
black, or a dirty mix-
ture of pepper and salt,
which was known by an
inelegant name.
From the beginning
of the nineties men
confined the extrava-
gance of their taste for dress to the waistcoat. The old
wide-skirted waistcoat, reaching well over the hips, gradu-
ally gave place to the short vest, which during the period
when ladies wore their dresses so short-waisted barely ex-
tended below the breast. It was therefore provided with
three open flaps, which gave the sham appearance of the
wearer being clad in three vests ; these were of different
colours, a vest of 1791 with flaps of green, yellow, and mother-
of-pearl was considered very chic. The vest was also
furnished with a high standing collar, that rose above the
turnover collar of the coat and was made as decorative as
possible as regards material and pattern. In Berlin, in 1814,
'35
Goya
MARQUIS DE S. ADRIAN
MODES & MANNERS OF
Leffrvre-Ba ubin i
INCROYABLE AND MERVEILLKUSKS
white vests were worn made of pique, stamped with the iron
cross and the name of the men who had been decorated with
the cross of the first order.
While it was the fashion for women to give themselves
a goitre-like appearance with their trompeuses, men wore
monstrously thick neckcloths, which were held in place by
padded silk cushions. In 1793 the neckcloth had risen above
the chin ; over it was wound a muslin cravat, and over that
again a variegated silk handkerchief. With these and the;
iabot and the threefold vest, there was not much to choose
between the men and women's figures. Turning from these
ridiculous exaggerations to the vest, we find it approaching!
its final form in that it was no longer carried below the!
waist. By about 1815 this, and the other two articles of
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Hambtirger Journal der Moden und Eleganz, 1802
attire, the coat and the trousers, were essentially the same as
they are now, all extravagance of style having been discarded.
Cloaks were so little worn by men, that when during the
severe winter of 1809 fur cloaks were introduced into Paris,
the wearers were actually jeered at as they walked along.
The greater simplicity of style in dress did not prevent the
dandies giving as much of their attention to it as formerly.
In Vienna the young puppies, as Carl J. Weber unkindly
calls them, not only changed their dress two or three times
a day, but also entered into contracts with the tailors, who
for 3000 to 4000 florins engaged to supply them every week
or month with fresh outfits in exchange for the old ones.
This same kind of arrangement was carried out in Paris as
early as 1805; and here the men were bound to have their
coats from Catin, their trousers from Acerby, and their
137
MODES & MANNERS OF
vests from Thomassin. It required a particular talent to
arrange the neckcloth and tie the bow in the proper manner.
It will be remembered that Beau Brummers fame with regard
to this achievement was undisputed ; and in Paris in 1804
Etienne Demarelli was so noted for his skill in the tying of
the bow, that he gave courses of instruction of six hours
each, for nine francs an hour.
Although the general dress of this time was plainer as
regards colour and cut, the old richly-embroidered court
dress was still to be seen on state occasions ; it was de rigueur
at the court of St. James for ceremonial wear, and was re-
introduced by Napoleon. Count Metternich, the Austrian
ambassador, when in Frankfort in 1790, spent 36,000 florins
on his servants' livery alone ; the court dress of the Duke of
Bedford at the King's levee in 1791 cost ^500. He had the
compensation, however, of seeing his costume described,
down to the smallest detail, in the London Chronicle. In
1801 Lord Courtenay, on a similar occasion, spent .£50 on
each of his servants' liveries, and ^500 on his own dress.
The accessories of a man's dress, such as hat and boots,
followed English fashion, as did the riding-coat and leathern
riding-breeches ; and like these they were eminently practical
and comfortable. The round sailor-like hat went through
endless transformations before the crown and brim assumed
the shape which was father to our chimney-pot ; so also
did the high boots as worn by Werther. After these had
become the fashion in Paris in 1790 — partly because they
came from England, partly because they were convenient for
the mud of the Parisian streets, and thirdly, because silver
shoe-buckles had to be sacrificed on the country's altar — they
were adopted in other countries, and it appears that in Berlin
the men kept them on all day and even appeared in them in
society. Possibly the importance attached to their exquisite
polish as a criterion of elegance by the English beaux,
Mr. Skeffington and Colonel Matthews, may have had some-
thing to do with this. The best boot-polish, it may be added,
was obtained from England. The hair, which as late as 1789
138
A STYLISH LADY by FERNET (about 1814)
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Boilly
From " Arrival of the Mail-coach "
was still worn by the men in thousands of little crisp curls
standing out from the head, was in 1791 hanging long and
smooth down to the collar, and gathered into a short pigtail
or English bag-wig at the back.
In 1798 it began to be cut quite short by some, while
others wore it in curls, which they fastened up with spangled
combs ; in 1806 it was worn au coup de vent, quite short
at the back and hanging down over the eyes in front ; in 1809
it was again curled in small locks en cherubin. Finally the
short frizzled head of hair gave place to the plain short-cut
hair, the style which offers the least trouble, and is not spoilt
by the wearing of any kind of hat.
139
MODES & MANNERS OF
-
*
.,
Ingres
The young fops of that day displayed their elegance in a
seeming negligence of toilette, whereby they desired to give
proof of their independence of thought, which naturally pro-
voked the censure of their elders who were not disposed to
accept slovenliness for originality. This want of agreement
between the elder portion of society whose taste was for re-
finement of dress and precision of behaviour, and the younger
members, who liked to be as boisterous and as comfortably
clad as they chose, caused fashion and politics to be curiously
mingled.
In Paris, before the events of 1789, any particular style of
dress was merely attributed to the extravagance or affectation
of the wearer, but after that date it assumed a political aspect,
140
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
r
-
t3r% mm •
\ •- *
Ingt
THE STAMATY FAMILY
1818
MODES & MANNERS OF
and rendered the wearer liable to be suspected. To wear long
trousers instead of knee-breeches, high boots instead of shoes,
straight hair instead of powdered curls, was no longer only a
Debucourt
matter of taste, but an open confession of political views, and
as such was not without danger.
No one dared after the Reign of Terror had begun in 1792,
to go about clean or carefully dressed, for fear of calling down
upon themselves the suspicion of the terrorists ; many who
were found wearing the courtly knee-breeches instead of the
long republican trouser paid for what the public considered
their treason on the scaffold. Women came off no better than
the men ; that lady was fortunate who, having by some detail
or other of dress aroused the anger of the fishwives in the
market, escaped with a public chastisement ; a disgraceful
indecency which cost The'roigne de Me"ricourt her reason.
When the Royalists again ventured to show themselves after
the gth Thermidor, and the reactionary youth of the better
class, jeered at by their opponents as "'Muscadins," made
demonstration of their opinions with their powdered hair
and black coat collars, the Jacobins in counter demonstration
142
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
RUSSIAN TOBOGGAN
From " Le bon Genre"
wore their plain hair and red collars. Bloody encounters
took place between the two parties in the streets of Paris ;
when the soldiery took part with the red collars many paid
for their black ones with the loss of liberty, for the govern-
ment then established considered Muscadins and Incroyables
of far less value than soldiers. Later on cropped hair laid its
wearer open to ill-treatment as a Chouan ; and when, after
Napoleon's downfall, the Restoration, full of mistrust and
suspicion, opposed itself to everything that was reminiscent
of the Empire, public prosecutors, judges and police, had
welcome opportunity of showing their loyalty by furious
attacks on " seditious buttons."
In England, under Pitt, the cost of prosecuting the war
with France led to an enormous rise in the taxes, and in
1795 an extra one was laid on the use of powder — £i a year
143
MODES & MANNERS OF
Rudolf 7,achari as Decker
THE REAL GERMAN FULL-DRESS COSTUME
1814
had to be paid for permission to powder one's hair ! There-
after it was considered a mark of loyalty to wear powdered
hair, while the oppositionists, with the Duke of Bedford at
their head, cut their hair short so as to be able to wear it
unpowdered.
The regulations issued by the Paris police in 1797 against
the wearing of long hair found a remarkable echo in St.
Petersburg, where the Emperor Paul I. forbade the wearing
of round hats, as he considered them "hiding-places for the
infamy and .shame of secret Jacobins." And as his unfor-
tunate subjects did not get out of the hiding-places quickly
enough to please him, he issued a fresh ukase in 1798 which
compelled every one to go back to the hat which had been
in fashion in 1775.
All the older and more conservative members of society in
Germany were naturally opposed to the new style of dress,
144
,
A STYLISH LADY by VERNET (about 1814)
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
whereas the younger were equally determined to adopt it,
even those in the royal service of Prussia, until it was noti-
icd to them in 1798 that the wearing of trousers, and their
own hair cut short round the head, was not becoming to
the dignity and gravity of any one in an official post — what
wonder that the bureaucracy have never since cut off their
pigtails ! The Landgrave of Cassel hit on a drastic means of
disgusting his Hessians with the new French fashions ; he
ordered that the chained convicts who swept the streets and
wheeled barrows, as well as the women in the house of cor-
rection, should be dressed in the latest French fashion.
Pius VII. began his reign with similar precautions for the
Dreservation of good manners as his predecessor had observed
at the close of his. As Pius VI. had forbidden the modern
:ight trouser, so Pius VII. condemned wholesale the "modern
icentious mode of dress " ; just as, shortly before, when they
:ook possession of Rome, the French had tried to abolish the
Goya
CARL IV. AND MARIA LUISA OF SPAIN
K
145
MODES & MANNERS OF
laid no claim to Teutonic origin, and we find French puffed
sleeves, Stuart collars, Spanish birettas, &c., introduced as
part of the costume ; even the national dress of the German
men as adopted by the young noblemen of Frankfort in 1815,
had nothing essentially characteristic in its military-like cut,
although the exceedingly scanty item in the way of linen,
apparently confined to a stand-up collar, was suspiciously
suggestive of the wolf hunter.
The old-German fashion lasted only a short time, but adroit
dealers in ready-made clothes were far-sighted enough to
know how to make profit out of it. At Lichtenauer's in
Hanover, bodices might be bought which could immediately
transform any dress into an "old-German" one, just as a
little while ago the kimono was used to give a Japanese ap-
pearance to the costume ; while the firm of Milter in Cassel
advertised ruffs a la Rembrandt, at 3 thalers for men and 2j
for women. Again, the Polish national costume adopted by
the people of Warsaw in 1789, which was, however, only
worn by men — the Polish ladies continued to follow French
fashions — did not, at least as far as the upper classes were
concerned, survive the national enthusiasm incident on the
Polish insurrection under Kosciusko.
Articles of apparel generally worn by any particular
people, such as the Spanish mantilla, give, it is true, a national
character to the dress, which led Frau von Humboldt when
travelling through Spain to think that the women of that
country had a national costume, whereas the short-waisted
bodice she describes was undoubtedly to be traced to French
models. The mantilla alone was what gave the idea of a
general style of dress, and the Spanish ladies have been wise
enough not to abolish this graceful item of their toilette.
Spanish ladies of rank dressed entirely according to French
fashion, Queen Maria Luisa setting the example ; we know
well how the latter looked in the newest style of French
dress, with her hair curled a la fleche, from the many por-
traits extant of her — with her beautiful figure and dissolute
face — by the Spanish artist Goya. The fact that the French
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
had sent her nearest relatives to the scaffold did not prevent
this queen from ordering her dresses exclusively from Paris,
until one of her ladies played her a malicious trick. The
Duchess of Alba, whom Goya has painted as often as the
queen, had managed somehow to get a dress from Paris
of the very newest style and the facsimile of one of the
queen's, and on the occasion of the latter first appearing in
hers, the duchess sent her maid on to the promenade in the
duplicate attire. The duchess after this did not easily regain
the queen's favour. This same queen, whose marriage rela-
tions were curiously three-sided, sent Napoleon a present of
eighteen Andalusian horses from the royal stables in 1800,
and received a present in return of French dresses. Jose-
phine was considerate enough to send her own dressmaker,
citoyenne Minette, with them that she might superintend
the fitting ; and this lady did a little business of her own
at the same time, for instead of ten chests she took twenty-
seven with her, filled with chiffons from Paris, over which the
ladies of Madrid fought with one another in their eagerness
to obtain a share.
149
MODES & MANNERS OF
Jo/is. Melch. Kraus
AN EVENING AT THE DUCHESS ANNA AMALIA'S HOUSE IN WEIMAR
WHEN we picture to ourselves what the condition of Europe
was during the decade of which we are now speaking — the ter-
rible burden pressing upon every nation, and the complete
ruin of all property — we are inclined to imagine that the people
must have lost all joy and pleasure in life and have suc-
cumbed under the weight of the universal trouble and unrest*
But this was by no means the case ; hardly at any time have
men and women lived at a faster rate or been more deter-
mined to amuse themselves than during this period when
they never knew what fresh disaster the morrow might bring
forth. Goethe's mother, writing to her son from Frankfort,
describes the general unrest and uncertainty of life. Rich
people, she says, "wait with their trunks already packed and
their horses in the shafts prepared for flight at any minute ; "
and she herself is so burdened with the continued quartering
Wiener Moden, 1816
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
upon her of the soldiers — "the Prussians bring wife, child, and
servant with them " — that she would sell her beautiful house
for any sum offered in order to get rid of this nuisance ; and.
then follow bits of society gossip and accounts of her visits to
the theatre : the greatest trouble of the old lady after all being
that she can only get her fashion journal sent to her from
Weimar ! The Kiigelgens in Dresden had to sleep on straw
for weeks together, the whole house being taken up by soldiers,
who " exercise considerably more might than right." Perthes
in 1807 had twelve Spaniards quartered on him, and even
Clemens Brentano, who was only living in furnished rooms in
the country, was forced to give lodging to two men and their
horses. Others fled from their homes — Schlosser first to Ans-
bach and then to Eutin ; Jacobi left Pempelfort and went to
Wandsbeck, and Princess Gallitzin removed from Minister to
Holstein. Valuable possessions were buried or hidden away,
and in some cases sent to the care of trustworthy persons.
Goethe had requests from his friends in every direction to
take charge of their treasures. Lilla von Kiigelgen writes :
" Everything is tottering beneath our feet, and in spite of this,
entertainments continue their melancholy course, as Goethe
expresses it ; " so much so that at Frankfort-on-the-Main
in 1807 the entrance-fee to the public masked balls had to
be doubled to prevent the excessive crush. Distraction was
chiefly sought in social gatherings and the theatre, the papers
at that time not being suited to drive away boredom. Only
in England did they run to twelve columns daily ; after 1805
twice daily, following the example of the Times. The Con-
tinent was very much behindhand in this matter ; even
during the exciting days of the years 1812-14, the papers
only appeared three times a week, and the editor was sub-
jected to the most incredible censorship — Naude, the chief
of the police in Berlin, not even allowing the publication of
Bliicher's addresses to his soldiers !
Among the most readable of the political newspapers were,
in Germany, Becker's Imperial Gazette, the Hamburg Correspon-
dent', the National Times, and the Siuabian Mercury ; in France
MODES & MANNERS OF
Watteau, the Younger
PAVILI.ON
the Journal des Debats and the Moniteur. But even their
circulation was limited enough ; the edition of the Moniteur
in 1803 was only 3000 copies, the Journal des Debats, the most
largely read of the French papers, only 6000. Quite a sensa-
tion was caused in Paris in 1803 when the paper offered a
prize for the solution of a riddle ; it was talked about for
weeks, and the editor received no less than 8773 solutions to
his enigma ! .
It was a general complaint of the time that, with the
suppression of rank and position caused by the Revolution,
good manners, delicacy of feeling, and courtesy had also
disappeared ; the bad manners of the newly enriched and
of the parvenus who had risen into power were the theme of
endless ridicule, which did not cease even at the throne.
Napoleon himself, to whom nothing was sacred, to whom
the death of a million men was a matter of indifference, was
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
'53
MODES & MANNERS OF
terribly afraid of the ridicule which became so caustic in
Gillray's mouth. He who stood in awe of no man, fought
shy of the laugh of society. Not knowing the correct manner
in which to address women, he was brusque with them ; not
feeling sure of himself when he had to take part in any
public performance, he studied the speech and action of
Talma : and his anxiety about
etiquette went so far that the
whole court had to go through
a rehearsal in Notre Dame
before his coronation. Mine,
de Remusat thought him un-
dignified ; Talleyrand, who must
have known pretty well all
about him, thought what a pity
it was that so great a man
had been so badly brought up.
This accounts for his uncer-
tainty with regard to all ques-
tions of social tact ; he, the
world conqueror, was forced
to capitulate to etiquette. He
insisted on establishing a new
order of things throughout
Europe, but for the arrange-
ment of his own court he
went back to Carlovingians
and Merovingians, and the ceremony of his marriage with
Marie Louise was conducted in precise imitation of that of
Marie Antoinette.
Society is stronger than the individual, however high and
mighty he may be ; society in the end obliges the parvenus
to conform to the behaviour which it has itself settled to
be the correct one. In Paris, after Thermidor, it was
thought to be good form to mourn — the remainder of the
aristocracy had just been liberated from prison, and looked
pale and emaciated ; and so every woman, even if not a
'54
Cheesmann, after Buck
MRS. MOUNTAIN
The Repository, London, 1816
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Debucourt
DANCING IN THE OPEN AIR
'55
MODES & MANNERS OF
member of the higher class, put on the air of having been
incarcerated and of having to mourn the death of near rela-
tives. When the " Bal des victimes " was given in the Hotel
Richelieu, only those were admitted who had lost parents or
brothers or sisters by the guillotine ; it was not sufficient to
be mourning an uncle or aunt only. The hair was shaved
Bosio
LE MAIN CHAUDE
From " Le bon Genre'
from the nape of the neck, as preparatory to execution ; men
and women greeted one another with a nod, as if their heads
were just falling into the headsman's basket; and the ladies
tied a narrow red ribbon round their necks to show the place
where — it is not necessary to go further ! The society that
succeeded fell into the opposite extreme, and frivolity gave
place to an absurd affectation of sentiment.
At a soiree given by Mme. Tallien, the hostess, wishing
to ask a lady to sing, goes and kneels before her, pleading
with uplifted arms and clasped hands for this favour, and
remains in this charming attitude — her soulful eyes hanging
156
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
on the lips of the singer — until the lady has finished her
song. Every movement and expression of theirs is ecstatic ;
and all who have the courage go and do likewise. It is
a life of pose ; ladies hold receptions lying on their Greek
couches, remain in graceful attitudes, and clothe themselves
in graceful draperies. Everything is done for effect, and
Debucourt
MODERN PARIS
the women seek to make themselves as interesting objects as
possible by faintings, nerve crises, and the like. When Mile.
Kirchgessner plays on the harmonica, the " nerve-shattering
tones" of this instrument so affect the audience that the
ladies have nervous fits ; when Mme. Chevalier sings in
<' Bluebeard," all the ladies swoon ; and Kotzebue's " Misan-
thropy and Repentance " lets loose floods of tears both in
Paris and London.
French society had possessed a style and lost it ; more
eastern countries had yet to find one. It is reported in 1791
from Berlin, the capital of the as yet half-Slavic Prussia, that
when those of higher class were invited out by their social
MODES & MANNERS OF
Debucourt
THE VISITING HOUR
1800
inferiors, they dressed themselves less well than at other
times, the men going without swords, and the ladies not wear-
ing their diamonds and keeping on their hats. Achim von
Arnim writes in 1806 on the occasion of the masked ball, at
which Queen Luise appeared as Titania, that the court party
was very bored, and that the ordinary guests became rude
and churlish, or else remained without speaking. And some
years later Gabriele von Biilow asserts that there is no such
thing in Berlin as pleasant social intercourse, the people
being too heavy and thick-witted ; and he remarks further
on the total absence of formality.
With the change in social relations grew up a correspond-
ing change in social entertainments. The less pretentious
and worthy citizens were not bound by any conventionalities,
and were free to amuse themselves as they chose. They
cared nothing for gallantry, the prevailing element in aristo-
cratic society, and preferred the heavier atmosphere of learn-
ing. When they met together their chief aim was culture,
and reading-clubs grew into fashion. Plays were read aloud,
158
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
LE SERAIL
1800
Lucinde," which had just
Goethe had his Wednes-
each one present taking a character, or else some one read
while the others occupied themselves, the ladies preferably
with needlework. We have a charming picture of the
Weimar circle assembled at the house of the Duchess Anna
Amalia, and Frau Goethe gives us an animated description of
the social gatherings at the house of Bethmann, Schwarzkopf,
and others, at which " Don Carlos " and " Wallenstein " were
read aloud. Clemens Brentano read
appeared, with young girls in Jena,
day meetings, when he lectured to the assembled ladies. A
reading-club met at the Grimms' house in Cassel every
Friday. Henriette Herz collected a circle round her of
kindred aesthetic spirits in Berlin, and in Halle the house of
the choirmaster Reichardt was the centre of a harmless set.
It was not only here that the chief pleasure sought was
music. To enjoy one's self means, with many, only making
one's self heard. Singing was cultivated both in the family
circle and among friends, as we know from the songs that we
MODES & MANNERS OF
find scattered through the novels of Goethe, Arnim, and othei
writers, and which, as soon as these were published, appearec
set to music. Diaries and almanacks also had musical addi-
tions to their contents. The mandoline or the guitar was ir
everybody's hand. Clemens Brentano travels up and doxvi
From the li Berlinischer Damen Kalender"
the Rhine with his, moving the hearts of all the pretty girl:
with his singing, and only a bit put out when, like the Thurin
gian girls in Langensalza, they bestow their unsolicited kissc:
on the dark-haired youth. Caroline von Dacheroden relate:
to her betrothed with pride, how one of -her admirers ha:
sung love songs to her playing on his mandoline. Stringec
instruments were much preferred to the piano, even for hom<
music. The singing school at Berlin originated in thesi
private musical gatherings. It met at first, in 1794, t\vic<
a week, at the house of Frau Voit nee Pappritz, wife of th<
surgeon-general of that name, but later on in the oval salooi
1 60
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
161
MODES & MANNERS OF
of the academy, where the members practised under Zelter
and Fasch ; in 1797 the members numbered as many as
seventy.
Tea-parties now superseded the gossiping coffee-parties ;
during the nineties the tea hour was seven o'clock. The
midday dinners still consisted of a succession of courses, each
of which would now be considered a dinner in itself, seven
or eight dishes — roast meat, fish, poultry, salads, and pies-
all being put on the table together ; while the host himself
served and invited his guests to eat. After the first of these
substantial courses had been two or three times renewed,
a final course was brought to table of all kinds of sweet
dishes. Vegetables and fruits were only prized when out of
season ; during the winter in Petersburg the Duke of Vicenza
paid five roubles each for cherries, and a louis-d'or for every
pear. As the price of food increased luxuries of this kind had
gradually to be forborne ; in 1800 a lady of Hamburg writes
that times are so bad she can only put carp and roast veal
before her guests.
The chief centres of meeting for middle-class society
were establishments which combined reading-room, lending
library, recreation-room, and cafe, to which the name of
FOUR-IN-HAND A LA DAUMONT
The Repository, London, 1816
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Museum was given ; many had already been started in 1802
by Pinther in Dresden, Beygang in Leipzig, Campe in Ham-
burg, and Eszlinger in Frankfort, who allowed the regular
visitors to have a share in the general management of the
institution on the payment of a yearly subscription, which
amounted in Leipzig, in 1796, to 12 thalers. The mania for
classic forms which continued throughout this period was
chiefly manifest on occasion of any festivity. Even before
the Revolution the artist Mme. Vigee-Lebrun had organised
symposia at which all the guests were attired in ancient
costume and lay on couches instead of sitting, beautiful boys
serving, and wine being drunk from vases. This kind of folly
was in great measure encouraged by the pageants arranged
by David in Paris ; and for many years to come there was
no public entertainment given in Paris, Berlin, Pyrmont, and
many other places, without its accompaniment of temples,
priestesses, nymphs, and such like.
The same style prevailed on occasions of private rejoicings.
When the aged Herr von Manteuffel celebrated his birthday
in Courland, his daughters, wishing to do him the highest
honour, planned an artistic grove with an altar, on which they
were to offer themselves as sacrifice ; Goethe and Wolf were
Levachez
FOUR-IN-HAND DRIVEN FROM THE BOX-SEAT
163
MODES & MANNERS OF
crowned with wreaths by young maidens as they sat at table
at Helmstadt ; Prince Borghese, at a ball given by him in 1810
in Paris, had the ball-room and garden paths strewed with
rose leaves in imitation of imperial Rome ; and the fancy
dress processions at the costume-balls, as arranged by Goethe
at Weimar and Councillor Hirt in Berlin, represented whole
series of myths. The exaggerated value set on culture in con-
nection with daily life conveyed a certain pedantic tone even
to the amusements of the time, one of the chief patronised
by society being living pictures, for which the works of famous
masters were taken as models. First introduced in Vienna,
this mode of amusement; especially during the court enter-
tainments given during the Congress in 1814, created quite
a furore, and soon found its way into all circles, to become
the object of attraction to a whole company of spectators.
What a triumph for vanity !
In order to make some distinction between themselves
and the working middle-class, the members of high-class
Debucourt
A RUN WITH THE HOUNDS
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
'65
MODES & MANNERS OF
I^ejevre
PAULINE DUCHAMHJE
society chose the later hours of the day for their social duties
and pleasures. Morning calls could only be made in Paris
in 1803 between the hours of two and five ; guests were invited
to supper by Count Lucchesiniat two o'clock in the morning.
The dinner hour in London was six and seven in the evening ;
indeed, Lady Georgina Gordon would not have hers served
before three o'clock in the morning ! In 1807 Count Palffy
gave a ball in Vienna which began at eleven at night and
ended with a breakfast at eight o'clock the following morning ;
and in accordance with this style of things invitations to
dinner were sent out in Hamburg four weeks beforehand.
Dancing was of course the chief pleasure among the young,
and the waltzer had already won his place in the ball-room.
1 66
00
I
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
L. F. Aubry PORTRAIT MINIATURE
1817
As Goethe had allowed Werther and Lotte to waltz together,
" like two spheres floating round one another," it was per-
missible for everybody to do so. Twenty years later it had
become almost the exclusive dance ; at Munich, in 1810, nine
waltzes were on the ball programmes. Nevertheless it was
not easy for this " ally of consumption and death " wholly to
supplant the minuets, gavottes, and sarabands of the older
generation. Not only was it said to be injurious to the health
—worse still, it undermined morality. Old Sponitzer, who in
1797 inveighed so violently against the quick German waltz,
spoke contemptuously of it as the dance of drunken frenzy.
Dancing, it was thought, should be a kind of rhythmic
167
MODES & MANNERS OF
Opitz SKATING NEAR THK STUBENTOR BRIDGE AT VIENNA
From Leisching, " Der Wiener Kongresz "
moral drama, while the dancer was to give expression in his
movements to the varieties of human passion — and all this
in triple time ! — and he succeeded. There was the dance
of " longing tenderness," of " mirth and pleasure." In 1803
the Fran$atse even in Paris was already forgotten, and to
Reichardt's great astonishment directions had to be called
out to the dancers, as no one at that time knew the figures.
That children were allowed to attend adult balls may
surprise us, but there can be no doubt about it, for we hear
of Mme. Tallien shedding tears of emotion on seeing her
twelve-year-old daughter dancing ; and Frau von Humboldt
in one of her letters speaks of her two daughters, eight and
ten years old respectively, as being the most sought after
among the dancers of the season. At the balls in Paris the
younger people danced from ten to twelve o'clock, and while
they were at supper the elders had their turn. Paris, so
madly fond of dancing that in 1796 it speedily converted the
empty monasteries into public ball-rooms, and gave its zephyr
dances among the tombstones in the churchyard of S. Sulpice,
168
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
held its most brilliant season
during the winter of 1809 to
1810, just immediately before
Napoleon's second marriage.
These roaring festivities were
wound up on July i, 1810, by
the fete given by the Prince
of Schwarzenberg, so vividly
described by Varnhagen and
others. The ball-room caught
fire, and many of the highest-
born ladies met a hideous death,
trampled under foot, suffocated
or burnt, and among them the
prince's wife herself, who rushed back to try and find her
daughter. The latter escaped, to be killed forty years later
by a shot during the riots in Prague.
If we turn over the theatrical programmes at that time,
and bear in mind that Goethe, Schiller, Haydn, and Beet-
hoven were then living, that Lessing had died but a short
time before, and that Mozart was only just dead, we are
surprised to find classic names so seldom associated with the
performances. About 1790 a movement was set on foot to
erect a monument to Lessing ; the performance of " Minna
von Barnhelm," which was given in 1791 in Cassel to help
the funds for this purpose, only brought in 15 thalers and
12 groschen !
In Berlin Goethe's " Iphigenia " and "Tasso" were played
to empty houses. In 1800, at the first per-
formance of the " Iphigenia " in Vienna,
the court party and all the aristocratic por-
tion of the audience left after the second
act ; at the second performance there was
no audience at all, and fifteen years passed
before it was again given. " Don Carlos "
was put on the stage about once every three
years, and Berlin theatre-goers never went
169
MODES & MANNERS OF
to see the " Robbers " unless Iffland was playing. Haydn's
"Creation," given in Paris for the first time in 1 80 1, drew
an overflowing audience, it being something of a fashionable
event, but the interest taken in it was not sufficient to allow
of its being performed more than twice, while the various
parodies of it which appeared on different stages in Paris
Debucourt, after Vernet
SPORT ON THE ICE
filled the houses for weeks. " Fidelio " waited for seven
years to be repeated after its first performance on November
20, 1805. Beethoven was looked upon by contemporary
musicians, such as Reichardt, as a madman, and critics re-
proached him with a lack of " noble simplicity " in his works,
which produced on them "somewhat of the effect of uncut
diamonds." There was, however, a lively amount of theatre-
going ; the six houses in Vienna even in 1813 were filled
daily. In March 1811 as many as sixteen concerts were given
in Berlin, each of which was attended by a crowded audience.
170
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
In Hamburg three theatres — an English, a German, and a
French — were run at the same time. Such was the passion
for acting, that in places where there was no regular theatre,
amateurs played for money, as in Bremen in 1792 and in
Leipzig, where besides the town theatre there were in 1800
five private stages open to the public.
Kiipelweiser SCHUBERT AND HIS FRIENDS
From Leisching, "Der Wiener Kongresz"
Theatre-goers as a rule preferred lighter pieces to a more
classical repertoire, and beside the forgotten names of Spiesz,
Junger, Vulpius, Babo, those of Iffland and Kotzebue are
most often met with on the bills. The last-named knew how
to catch the taste of the day, and his extraordinary fertility
enabled him to supply pieces for many stages both in
rermany and abroad. In Vienna he was paid 60 ducats for
every new play, and in London -£100 ; his "Virgin of the
Sun," " Misanthropy and Repentance," "The Indians in
England," and others, were good-paying pieces during a
171
MODES & MANNERS OF
Debucourt, after Vernet AT FRANCONI'S CIRCUS
course of many years. His farces are still played by strolling
companies, while Iffland's more pathetic works, like "The
Huntsmen," still form part of the repertoire of the larger
theatres. Iffland, after Eckhof's death, was accounted the
best actor in Germany; in 1796 he was engaged for Berlin at
a salary of 3000 thalers : he spent a good many months of
the year, however, in starring. His acting was considered so
wonderful, that a whole series of engravings exist to show
us how he looked in certain parts. As with the great con-
temporary tragedian Talma, effective attitudes and mimic
grimaces had much to do with his acting. German critics
found Talma's declamatory style monotonous, for he was
continually letting his voice drop from the highest pitch to
the lowest — from almost a shriek to a scarcely perceptible
murmur.
The masters of opera during this period were Meluil,
Cherubini, Pae'r, Salieri, Winter, Weigel, and Dittersdorf ; of
the singers we hear much of Mme. Pae'r, who was engaged
172
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Debucourt, after Vernet
AN EQUESTRIAN EPISODE
for Paris in 1806 at a salary of 30,000 francs, and still more
of Angelica Catalani. The old Italian Opera Seria still
dragged on a miserable existence on a few of the dusty old
stages, as in Berlin, where in 1791 the eunuchs Concialini
and Tosoni sang the parts of Darius and Alexander. Here
also, even as late as i8n,the eunuch Tombolino, whose voice
covered a range of three octaves, reaching to the second B
above the stave, was engaged to sing.
Then as now, people went to the theatre to be amused
and to see something pretty, and naturally the managers who
offered the public most of what they wanted had the fullest
cash-boxes. It was so in Paris in 1799, when the Vaude-
ville represented a review ; and in 1809, when Rochus
Pumpernickel trod the boards. But England far exceeded
anything seen or heard elsewhere in the way of scenic display ;
at Drury Lane Theatre, where the iron curtain was first intro-
duced, a piece was given in 1799 in the course of which a
castle on the stage was blown up by a powder-mine.
173
MODES & MANNERS OF
In Munich, where in 1810 the much-admired piece by
Holbein, "Overhaste and Jealousy," was given, the people
could not even get over their astonishment at the natural
way in which running water was represented ; and not until
1812, when Fontenelle's " Hecuba " was given, did Berlin
rival England, the burning of Troy impressing the audience
on that occasion as " horribly realistic."
Encouraged by the interest in theatrical performances,
various attempts were made at new effects. Goethe, for in-
stance, had "Terence" played in Weimar by actors in old
masks, and at the Theatre Feydeau in Paris the movable scenes
were replaced by fixed scenery. Clapping, again, was now
heard for the first time' on the occasion of the rival tragedians
Duchesnois and Georges Weymer appearing on the stage in
Paris in 1804 ; but the public could show its feelings in other
ways, for at Hamburg in 1799 they actually drove an actor
from the scenes by gaping.
Circuses were not generally known on the Continent ; the
Countess Voss went to one in Berlin, the first she had seen, in
1797, whereas in England, the land of riding and racing, they
had for long been familiar entertainments. Astley's famous
circus was already growing pantomimic in character ; in July
1791 it gave a sketch of the flight of the French royal family
to Varennes, which had taken place hardly three weeks before.
Graceful gestures and artistic poses being at that time
much in favour, a new kind of performance was started and
largely patronised, in which mimic art was employed to re-
present certain characters. Lady Emma Hamilton was the
initiator of this entertainment, and she herself posed as
Sophonisba, Iphigenia, a Vestal Virgin, Niobe, Cleopatra,
Mary Magdalene, &c., the beauty of her figure and the feeling
expression in her eyes filling all who saw her — and Goethe
was among these — with rapturous delight. The Viganos, a
dancing couple, then gave public performances of this kind,
and their example had many imitators ; their poses and those
of Lady Hamilton have been preserved to us in the engrav-
ings by Rehberg and Schadow.
The Repository, London, 18 ij
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
In Germany Henriette Hendel-Schiitz and Elise Burger
were famous as classic mimics, until they became too stout
ind could no longer make up for the lack of beauty
and grace by their declamation or artistic arrangement
of drapery. Wilhelm von Kiigelgen wrote a droll account
of the pantomimic exaggerations of Hendel-Schiitz, and
E. Th. A. Hoffmann's dog Berganza gave a satirical and
ifelike sketch of the same.
At Brighton Mrs. Humphries could be seen attitudinising
n the water ; and a Herr von Seckendorf, who performed
most of his mimic acting in Roman costume, usually wound
up his entertainment by appearing'' in an unclothed pose
as Apollo.
There now arose a generation of marvellous children who
carried off the laurels from actors, singers, and artistic posers.
In England the public went mad over the boy actor Betty
Roscius, a tragedian aged twelve ; in Germany Pixis from
Mannheim and Niele from Hanover, violinists, aged respec-
ively ten and eleven, gave concerts ; and the nine-year-old
Kathinka Krebs was heard in bravura songs reaching to the
upper A. But even these prodigies pale before the singer
Karolina Stenz ; this infant artist could not, it is true, give
ong performances, but it must be remembered that she was
only three-and-a-half years old.
Travelling in those days was not an affair of pleasure, and
only those who were compelled to do so went far from
lome. In many German dominions it was looked upon in
he eighteenth century as a prudent device of political
economy to keep the roads in bad condition, for it kept the
latives and their money at home, while foreigners had to
)ay a pretty penny for additional
lorses, repairs, stoppages, &c. So
he roads either purposely or other-
vise were neglected, and although
Napoleon had fine highways made in
many directions, the continual passage
of his artillery waggons and train soon
175
MODES & MANNERS OF
Klein
THE TRAVELLING-CARRIAGE
reduced them again to a state that rendered them dangerous
for travelling-carriages and mail-coaches.
Complaints about the matter occur continually in the
literature of the day, and that accidents to travellers were
frequent is only what might have been expected. Kotzebue
is incensed at the fearful state of the roads between Livonia
and Naples ; and whether it is Queen Luise travelling from
Konigsberg to Warsaw, Bettina with Lulu Jordis from Cassel
to Berlin, Humboldt from Rome to Naples, or Kiigelgen
to Ballenstedt, it is all the same — the carriage of each and
all invariably turns over. The traveller must have thought
himself lucky who escaped unhurt and was not seriously
injured, as was Wieland, whose carriage fell with him over
the Tiefurt mountain.
Again we must mention England as an exception, and
those travelling in that country could hardly conceive what
it was like on the Continent. The English roads were so
splendidly kept that the speed with which the coaches and
carriages flew along did not always please foreigners, as for
instance Campe, who travelled from Yarmouth to London,
176
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Leprince
ARRIVAL OF THE MAIL-COACH
1819
and complained that at the rate they went along he could see
nothing of the country he passed through. Again, there was
no end to the trickery in connection with the tolls and pass-
ports on the Continent. On the Elbe alone there were sixteen
customs-houses between Dresden and Magdeburg ; thirty-two
on the Rhine, and twenty-two between Minden and Bremen
on the Weser ! When in 1812 Ferdinand Grimm wished to
go only from Cassel to Munich, he was obliged to wait a
whole week in Nuremberg because his passport had not been
vise in Cassel by the Bavarian ambassador. The pass-
ports of the brothers Riepenhausen, who in 1802 went from
Gottingen to Rome, were vises about twenty times, each
occasion costing them money and inconvenience. The bad
condition of the roads prolonged the shortest journeys to
an unconscionable extent. It may not be surprising that
it took two months to get from Berlin to Rome, while the
luggage was a year on its way, or that it took a month to
reach the same place from Vienna ; but it is hardly credible
I. M 177
MODES & MANNERS OF
that Sethes, in 1803, was three days travelling from Cleve to
Minister, Wilhelm Grimm, in 1816, four days in a hackney
coach driving from Cassel to Leipzig, while Reichardt thought
himself fortunate to be able, in 1802, to get to Paris from
Frankfort in four days at the cost of 185 thalers.
With the roads in this miserable condition, the chance of
accidents, and the wretched -inns to put up at, it is easy
to understand that everybody who could stayed at home.
Owing to all these drawbacks it was a customary thing in
those days for women to travel in men's dress. The beautiful
and adventurous Mme. Gachet, the original of Goethe's
" Natural Daughter," who was continually moving from place
to place, seldom wore the clothes of her sex ; Bettina and
Lulu Jordis travelled as men, and even the Humboldts put
their four girls into men's trousers when they took them to
Rome. One reads very little of the pleasures of travel at that
time ; even the beauties of the surrounding country were for
long unknown to most people. Carl Julius Weber, who knew
Germany from end to end, heard of the beauty of the Salz-
kammergut for the first time in 1805; Count Stollberg did
not build the Brockenhaus until 1800, and the arrival of
a thousand visitors in the course of the year was considered
something extraordinary.
The fashionable baths were at Pyrmont and Karlsbad ;
Norderney only began to be patronised about 1803. The
Prussians were forbidden in 1799, by an Order in Council, to
seek to restore their health at any baths outside the Prussian
dominions. Pyrmont had a bad name at the end of the
eighteenth century ; everybody agreed that it was dirty and
expensive, and that the nursing and the service were bad.
The Kursaal was not lighted unless some visitor paid for the
candles, but this did not stop the gambling, which was a
perfect rage both with high and low. In 1812 it is reported
that a servant at Pyrmont murdered an innocent boy in order
to cut off his little finger which he believed would bring him
luck at play.
No comfort was to be found either indoors or out. Com-
Repository, London, 1818
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
plaints of the unimaginable filth even in such towns as Rome,
Paris, and London were many and insistent. Merkel drew
up a chart of the smells in Hamburg, and we cannot wonder
at these when we recall the sanitary arrangements of those
times. London had already introduced the more civilised
water system in 1800, and a quarter of the houses there were
fitted accordingly, but the remainder of Europe waited a very
long time before it adopted any such improvement.
Through F. A. Windsor's efforts the lighting by gas was
introduced into London early in the nineteenth century, and
by 1815 most streets and squares were supplied with it, but
the gas-lamp, as invented by Lebon, continued to be rarely
seen on the Continent. People of the better class still used
wax candles, while among the lower the tallow dip and pine-
wood chips were being slowly supplanted by the oil-lamp
fitted with the Argand burner.
The patent washing-machine was invented in England in
1790 ; in 1807 Colonel Wilson sent Queen Luise the first
copying-press ; to a Nuremberg firm is due the first electric
tinder-box and night light, introduced by them in 1800.
Napoleon was given the opportunity of having the first
steamship built for him, but he banished the inventor, and
so Fulton was obliged to retire to New York to build his
vessel, which was completed in 1806.
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Modes & manners of the
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