The charming hostess was mistress of the art. There is
a delightful description of her dancing in Corinne. It was she who originated the shawl-dancing with which many other beauties, notably Lady Hamilton, used to enchant all be- holders. The shawl played a great part in the fashions of the day ; no wonder, considering how chilly they were. Shawls were worn indoors and out, and great attention was paid to their graceful manipulation. They fetched enormous prices, for every lady who respected herself had at least two or three real Turkish shawls, divines eachentires, as they called them. With the Restoration waists began to lengthen and stays to be worn. The best cost as much as five louis a pair :—
" The chief attention of the leaders of Fashion seems to have been applied to the arrangement of the hair, and there was an incessant variety of head coverings. A good 10,000 different shapes for hats, bonnets, and caps appeared between 1815 and 1830. It is hard to believe that these whimsical inventions, these warlike headpieces, these bassinets, these wondrous helmets and astounding morions, should ever have sheltered the dainty head and laughing face of any ancestress of ours' The licen- tious habits of the Directory, which had been transformed into a decency enforced by a strong hand, were now followed by a sort of prudishness affecting both dress and thought. Every one sought to exemplify correct and absolute good taste, the very acme of distinction, by the discreetest and most quiet means.
Women would accept no homage but that which was most respectful. The bold, despotic manners of the military epoch disappeared, to be replaced by the beneficent influence of men gifted in literature and art La.martine was the reigning star; the political, the poetic and literary woman sat supreme Amidst all the gay doings which enlivened the reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. there sounded a note struck by the fair sex, of melancholy, of lost illusions, of sadness, which made all earthly pleasures hollow. What sighs they had heaved, what secret tears they had wept ! Dinners and balls had almost worn them out, and what a hateful thing to be obliged to spend four hours a day over one's dreQs .. It must be confessed that the French woman of 1815 lost something of her charm. She had none of the charm of the Empire beauty, and gave no promise of the mighty seduction wielded by the belles of the Romantic period."
The woman of thirty summers of whom we read in the pages of Balzan and the much more diverting novels of Charles de Bernard was the type most admired in the reign of Louis Philippe. She does not seem, in spite of M. Uzanne, to have differed much from her sister under the Restoration; she had the same sentimentality and feverish love of excite- ment, which she gratified by gambling on the Bourse and running after St. Simon, the sittings of Parliament and the Academy, besides every species of more frivolous amusement. She was refined to a degree, ate hardly anything, and sighed away her soul in day-dreams when not racing after pleasure. Her dress was singularly like the fashion of 1885, the hideous balloon sleeves, not quite so frightful as those of our own day, for shoulders were not made to rise up to and beyond the ears, and the skirt was fuller, so that the wearers did not look quite so short, square, and top-heavy as they did two years ago. She was followed by the " Lionne," who brought in a more healthy animalism, and thought herself quite English. She rode and smoked, loved horses and dogs and patronised the turf. The " Lionne " was succeeded by the " Tapageuse" and the " Mysterietne." Each affected a peculiar style of dress. The former wore their feathers upright, the latter drooping like weeping willows.
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