HISTORICAL FANS.*
THE greater number of the fans and fan-leaves represented in the second volume of Lady Charlotte Schreiber's handsome but inconvenient work belong to the period of French history which preceded the grand smash of the Revolution, and several of them illustrate certain features of the society of that time, its whims, its crazes, and its sentiments, in a very curious way. The series begins with fans by Loire, an Academician, painted in commemoration of the marriage of Louis XIV., and the birth of "Le grand Dauphin." The designs are stiff and ugly, and the pompons verses in which the wishes (destined to prove so empty) of an enraptured nation are con- veyed, are very poor. Then cornea a curious " piece of con- viction " of a popular folly in the shape of a " cabriolet fan " (cotemporary with cabriole chair and table legs, which are again coming into fashion), covered with devices in which the cabriolet is introduced in a surprising variety of humorous ways. The cabriolet, invented by Josiah Child, brother of the Earl of Taney, survives now only in Pickwick, as associated with the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Raddles at Mrs. Bardell's on the occasion of the famous party ; but it had an astonishing • Fans and Fan-Leaves (Foreign). Collected and Described by Lady Charlotte Schreiber. London : John Murray.
vogue in 1755, in that capricious city which has just con- demned the hansom-cab as a barbarous British invention and banished it from its streets. Horace Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann --
" All we hear from Prance is that a new madness reigns there, as strong as that of the Pantins was (mechanical toys which everybody played with, and which survived in England under the name of dancing-masters' far into this century). This is la fureur des cabriolets; AnglicS one-horse chaise ; they not only go in them but wear them ; that is, everything is to be en cabriolet ; the men paint them on their waistcoats and have them em- broidered for clocks to their stockings ; and the women, who have gone all the winter without anything on their heads, are now muffled up in great caps, with round sides, in the form of and scarce less in size than the wheels of chaises."
In old fashion-plates, these hideous " hoods " are to be found, and the present writer has seen a " cabriolet " brooch and waist-clasp in a private collection, which included also such
baleful bibelots as a guillotine pendant for a necklace, and two little Bastilles as ear-rings.
The most interesting of the fan-leaves belong to what may be called the Marie Antoinette period; we may read in them., as in a book, the story of the time, the false prosperity, the hollow loyalty, the gathering of the clouds, the bursting of the storm, the wreck and ruin, the brief reign of a spurious classicism, and exaggerated sentiment of all kinds. To this series belong two fine vignettes, admirably expressive, and far better reproduced than any of the larger designs ; these are " Le Retour du Roi," in which we see the really captive King brought back to Paris from Versailles, and an ingenious allegory of the Tiers Etat. The asking in marriage of the young Austrian Archduchess is the design of the first fan of this series. The design is simple ; the Empress-Queen sits among her children, the envoys stand before her, the bride-elect has just risen from her spinnet ; it is a pretty picture, and the " mount " is delicate and graceful. A brise fan displays a portrait of Louis XVI., with his maternally-derived Saxon characteristics strongly marked. Then comes the American War period, with France exultant and Great Britain humiliated, with bales of " Tee" being tumbled into Boston Harbour, and a helpless lion having its fore-paws hacked off by the victorious Colonials, while the Great Nation looks on in the person of her representatives ; a very clever piece of spite. There was a brisk demand for this fan ; it fluttered by hundreds at Versailles, and in the Paris salons and theatres. The birth of the first (and fortunate) Dauphin, the public " Homage " to the joyful mother, and the idolised child, form designs which lack artistic grace, but have historic value. Then comes "Mal- brouk " (sung by Marie Antoinette in 1782), which had a " rage " like the cabriolet, so that head-dresses and all sorts of things were called after it ; and presently a fan which caricatured the first was devised, and the Malbrouk pour rire outdid its predecessor in popularity. Indeed, in all this time the fan is the very type of elegant frivolity charged with tragedy ; and the second " Malbrouk " motto, Une folie chaise l'autre, grows more and more appropriate. Marking the march of events, we find the Cagliostro fan, with its appeal to popular sympathy on behalf of the arch-impostor ; the Diamond Necklace fan, with its insidious hint of the Queen's real guilt and the wrongs of the Cardinal, Jeanne de Valois, and the lower creatures of the fraud ; the Figaro fan, with the Queen as Suzanne upon the Versailles stage; the fans which signify the public excitement at the calling of the States- General, and faithfully chronicle the growing discontent.
The music-fans are very interesting. They record the fleeting fashion in public amusements, and a fine example has illus- trated airs from Salieri's Tarare, with its libretto by Beau- marchais. An ill-drawn, ugly fan bears the picture of a great Court reception, with several members of the Austrian. Imperial family present; and closely following this in date is one which probably did a great deal of harm to the Queen. It is prettily drawn, and shows Marie Antoinette at a silk- mercer's, choosing stuffs, while the Abbe Vermond, as adviser and flatterer, hovers about her with preposterous gestures of counsel and admiration. Then we have the Necker fan, with Necker as Minerva, and the King's phrase, " Je veux faire le
bien," enclosing in a riband the portraits of Louis and the Minister ; the Trois Etats and Heureuse Union fans ; and the ominous taking of the Bastille (the work of a good artist),.
" dedicated to the nation "! And after this it is all the Nation,. never the Kingdom any more,--as we turn over leaf after leaf,.
and see a Chenier fan, with its pictures from the poet's Charles Neuf ; fans with portraits of Bailly, Louis, and Lafayette, the Duc d'Orblians at a peasant christening, the Fête of the Federation, and an exceedingly carious fan-leaf which the collector has failed to understand, called Contri- bution. Coming from opposite sides and meeting at the top of a poplar-bordered road, with a sign-post in the distance, are two wheeled vehicles ; in one are seated a lady and gentleman, with a heavy bag of money, labelled with the amount contained in it (this is the " contribution " in coin) ; in the other are seated a man and woman of the peasant class, and from the man's pocket a strip of paper hangs out, "bear- ing the word Pon," says Lady Charlotte Schreiber, and leaves it there. But the word is the first syllable of " Poulet," and ought to have been easy to interpret, for a fine fat fowl shows quite distinctly on the other side of the man, forming the " contribution " in kind. The series goes on : there is the fan of the Oath of Liberty, of the Civic Oath, the fans which commemorate Mirabeau, and 'Voltaire's Brutus, and the glory of Pethion as Mayor of Paris (without a vision of the night, the plains, or the wolves, any more than Bailly foresaw the long-drawn agony of his double death when the mob insisted on the shifting of the guillotine to the bank of the Seine) ; the Marat and Le Peletier fans, those of the Republic, and Phoebus trampling on the Lilies ; those of the Assignats, and the grand melee of all the symbols of Liberty. And among these we find a few which have a pathetic effect, for they bear Royalist designs, and may have been the social sceptres of fair women who were "hair-dressed by Charlot," before they " sneezed into the basket." At all events, the pretty things must have been kept well out of sight for many a year, for the pictures on them are from Cceurr de Lion, with its brave "Lathe qui t'abandonne," the Will of Louis XVI. (twice repeated), and the famous, fatal " Soiree des Poignards." After all these, there is some- thing tame and commonplace about the fans of the Directoire and the Consulat ; while those of the Empire period are few and uninteresting. One or two comic designs are very amusing, especially an omnipresent fly which torments every- body under all circumstances. This is a sort of travesty of the " Dance of Death " idea. A fan which commemorates the Nouvelle Poste de Paris has historic interest, and several leaves which set forth the especially silly games, conundrums, and puzzles that were in vogue in the first quarter of this century, the lottery, the Recreation honnete, the " Five senses and five seasons," gratify the curiosity we feel about the so-called amusements of our forbears. Were these things much more stupid than our own dumb-crambo, or quite so vulgar as modern bear-fighting and the current practical jokes P
The Italian fans are not very interesting ; but there is one, with a design called " Rustic Dancing," which possesses ex- traordinary grace. A small number of Spanish and German fans and leaves have some artistic and historical value, but these do not approach the French examples in interest.
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