ALBERT R, MANN 
 LIBRARY 
 
 New York State Colleges 
 
 OF 
 
 Agriculture and Home Economics 
 
 Cornell University 
 
 The fan, 
 
 3 1924 014 461 895 
 
'¥>< 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this bool< is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014461895 
 
THE FAN, 
 
 ' The Fan of a fair lady is (lie world's sceptre." 
 
 Sylvain Marechai.. 
 
HE 
 
 AN 
 
 BY 
 
 OCTAVE UZANNE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL AVRIL 
 
 LONDON 
 
 J. C. NIMMO AND BAIN 
 
 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. 
 
 1884 
 
180702 
 
PREFACE. 
 
lik^ 
 
 ■in-i 
 
 1 
 
 mists, nymphs, half fairy, half muse, have facili- 
 tated his task in keeping him sweet company, 
 and by inspiring him with ardour, constancy, and 
 good fortune. The Graces themselves, so forsaken 
 since the last century, have surely brought him 
 one, the magic plume torn from the bird of 
 Cyprus ; another the encyclopedic fan, which can 
 tell its own story like the pretty toys of fable ; 
 whilst a third has distilled into the perfumed ink 
 of his standish the poetic essence of flowers from 
 the double hill. Thus the writer, thoroughly 
 charmed with himself, was never more beaming 
 or better disposed to make his advances towards 
 the reader, with hand stretched out and face good- 
 humouredly rounded into that expression which 
 seems to say, "Sit, and let us chat." 
 
 Let us chat, then, if you please, with that familiar 
 talk which is known by a term rather impure than 
 improper, as the unbuttoned (dcboutonne) in con- 
 versation, which, by the way, does not at all imply 
 the unsewn i^dtcousu). 
 
 This Fan, then, of which the text runs or winds 
 across the coloured prints of the volume, is not by 
 any means a work of mighty wisdom and erudition, 
 such as to set good-sized spectacles on the noses 
 of the magistcrs and eminent savants of Christen- 
 dom — men whom I hold in the profoundest respect 
 and esteem, but would never pardon myself for 
 having disturbed them for a banquet so little 
 
?^=i^if 
 
 irs5^ii^is52»!i!5ri^' 
 
 ( 3 ) 
 
 abundant as mine in wondrous arcliKoIogical 
 discoveries. I address myself not, understand 
 me, to those positivist gentlemen of exact docu- 
 ments, to those patient searchers of the past, to 
 those exhumators of dead letters, whom a disciple 
 of Buffon would long to classify in the natural 
 kingdom among mammifera;, catalogued under the 
 name of citgi;ers, and to set in the domain of those 
 subterraneous chimney-sweepers who erect their 
 liyriform hillocks in the midst of pleasure gardens. 
 
 To beget a work of vast science, to turn over 
 voluminous folios, to call to one's aid linguistics, 
 orientaUsm, archjeology in all its branches, the 
 fathers of the Church, the pedants in us of Ger- 
 many, and all the square caps of the Dutch 
 savants, to register notes, to affect literary patches, 
 to bury oneself under hills of justificative pieces, 
 of varied reproductions, to analyse the biblio- 
 graphic bibliography of works written about the 
 Fan — all this in connection with that delicious 
 feminine trinket which our spiritual ancestors con- 
 tented themselves with singing or wrapping up 
 in amiable Uttle verses, would have been in our 
 opinion an act of heavy and gross stupidity, 
 attaching, as it were, a formidable weight to the 
 delicate antennae of a dragon-fly. 
 
 A pretty woman, says an Oriental proverb, is 
 born with a crown of roses and pretty playthings 
 in her cradle ; everything blossoms around her ; 
 
 i^ 
 

 \ 
 
 her, deserves to be deified, and it 
 was in dreaming of the publication of many 
 
 volumes, under the collective title of IVoman's 
 Orjiamenis, that I set myself to write The Fan, which 
 opens the series of these little books for the boudoir. 
 
 In their turn will follow the Parasol and the Um- 
 brella, the little objects of the toilet, and the Muff, 
 that pretty wadded sheath, furred and perfumed, into 
 which chilly Uttle fingers slip, like gentle doves re- 
 turning to their nest. From the Muff, which was not 
 always the unique appanage of the fair sex, but could 
 be seen in the public walks suspended by a ribbon 
 round the necks of the pctits-iiiaitres and gallant abbe's 
 of bygone days, balancing itself on their satin waist- 
 coats or velvet coats in the midst of winter's bitter 
 cold — from the Muff, an external ornament, I shall 
 conduct the reader to the Shoe, to the bewitching 
 little slipper, the tiny rogue which hides its silken or 
 morocco muzzle under a wave of lace, which Fragonard 
 has shown us in his Dangers of the Swing, cast prettily 
 into the air, flying rather than falling to the ground. 
 
Vt_jt"— ^ ^ 
 
 -■'-*" .^ 
 
 4) 
 
 presented with 
 a certain esprit 
 and voluptuous- 
 ness of composition, which are no 
 longer found save in the paintings 
 of the Cytheras of old. Would it 
 not be charming to indulge oneself 
 in the history of those coquettish 
 ^'ti ■ ' feminine Shoes which have always 
 .' . had their fanatic admirers, and in- 
 spired Restif de la Bretonne with his romance 
 of Fanchette^s Foot, beginning like a canto of 
 an epic poem, / am the veracmis historian of the brilliant 
 co?iqicests of the little foot of a fair woman ? 
 
 May I next hope for permission to approach the 
 Glove, that supple guardian of the rosy white and 
 velvet hand, and to describe it, from the gloves of 
 wrought leather, to the silk gloves, the perfumed gloves 
 of Spain, till I come to the dandy gloves with their long 
 sheaths of buckskin which imprison to-day so dcliciously 
 the plump arms up to and beyond the laughing dimples 
 
 !« 
 
 «l 
 
 

 
 ^Tr^^-^^^O^i^^i**^^ OJ^^>^tN#^.i^V ^tfi^^#r|%%% 
 
 ( 6 ) 
 
 of the elbows of our coquette of taste ? The 
 Stocking may too have its turn, but will stop 
 short at the Garter ; last of all, the Diamonds 
 will cast their Bres as the consummation of this 
 monograph of Woman's Ornaments, written for 
 woman, and destined to woman, to present her 
 with that enviable pillow-library, where so many 
 modern authors hope in their dreams to find their 
 works, bound in heavenly blue morocco or smooth 
 shagreen. 
 
 Amidst all these jewels of feminine ornamenta- 
 tion the Fan ought to have the priority, for in the 
 land of grace and esprit it shines yet in the first 
 rank. It is with regard to the playing of the Fan 
 that a lady, a friend of Madame de Staal-Delaunay, 
 wrote under the Regency the judicious and dis- 
 criminating sentence which follows; "Let us sup- 
 pose a woman delightfully amiable, magnificently 
 adorned, wholly made up of graces and pretty 
 ways, who complains of baths because they are 
 too damp, of ices because they are so cold, of 
 vinegar because it is a trifle sour, and of fire 
 because it is too hot — a woman, in fine, who 
 possesses all these prerogatives, and who is con- 
 sequently a woman of the best to7i. I tell you 
 that this same woman, in spite of all these ad- 
 vantages, will meet with nothing but banter if 
 she knows not how to manage her Fan. So 
 many ways are there of playing with this pietty 
 
 
 [A 
 
 
 (9 
 

 
 
 CJ 
 
 ^ 
 
 w 
 
 trinket, that a blow of the Fan is sufficient by 
 it-self to distinguish between a princess and a 
 countess, a marchioness and a plebeian. Besides, 
 what grace does the Fan not give to a lady who 
 knows how to avail herself of it. It winds and 
 flutters, shuts and opens, rises and falls according 
 to circumstances. Truly, I would lay a wager that 
 in all the gear of all the best-adorned women of 
 gallantry, there is not a single ornament from 
 which they can obtain so great an advantage as 
 from their Fans." 
 
 It is an old and stereotyped observation in our 
 newspapers, which tells us, // ivould be a curious 
 history to write, that of the Fan. 
 
 Have I in some measure realised this desideratum 
 which seemed wholly ideal ? I know not, for I 
 have already patient predecessors who have written 
 special books — perhaps a little too technical — on 
 this subject. Their works, to which I have had 
 sometimes recourse, are to the present work as 
 autonr is to alentour, in the precise definition 
 indicated by our language. I have rather pilfered 
 from the literary history of the Fan than from the 
 general history of Fans, seeking, in an historic 
 study of our manners, the side of grace and 
 esprit, the ingenious paraphrases made in all 
 times on this screen of bashfulness, fanciful in 
 my individuality, passing from grave to gay, and 
 bringing for my own part some views and inedited 
 
 ■SH 
 
 f 
 
 !l^l 
 
( 8 ) 
 
 documents, of which it is not my business to be vain. 
 I address myself to a dilettante public, which loves often 
 a paradox better than a cold logical dilemmx It is of 
 the world of letters and men of letters that I claim the 
 sympathetic suffrage and inward approbation on the 
 form of the book, its special contexture, its originality 
 of illustration, of which I fear not to claim the con- 
 ception ; on its text, which runs like the spirit of the 
 author across the breaknecks of its different composi- 
 tions ; on the whole, in a word, of a very special work, 
 of which it would perhaps be for me a little mortifying 
 to hear any one say (supposing the opinion not formu- 
 lated by an envious man or a fool) that the author, who 
 now retires and bows in conclusion, has wrecked his 
 literary bark, and that he saves himself solely by passing 
 from plate to plate, from one vignette to another, after 
 the example of those pale and insipid gentlemen, Dorat 
 and Baculard d'Arnaud, whom one forgets to forget, 
 thanks to Eisen, to Choffard, and to Moreau the 
 younger, the immortal artists of the Academy of 
 Graces, who have attached their signatures to Fans 
 
 only too few. 
 
 O. U. 
 

 y^3r» 
 
 
 DEDICATORY EPISTLE 
 
 TO MADAME LOUISE * * * 
 
 To Cyprus once the apple was decreed ; 
 My fan too, like that apple, is the meed 
 Of rarest beauty. — Milon. 
 
 V i-.i- 
 
 ■r 
 
 ADAME,— 77/^ Epistle Dedicatory soon 
 passed azvay after the aut/iors of t/ie school 
 of Marivaux, the gentle poets of the art of 
 love, the coquettish abbes, the frolicsome niai chionesses, 
 with their private levees, and, above all, their most 
 ?nighty serene highnesses met beneath the avalanche 
 of last year's snoivs the sweet and lively sovereigns 
 of the anciejit days, and all the brave knights of 
 the i?nmortal ballads of Master Villon. This poor 
 dedicatory epistle, which was, if not a base flattery 
 at so much a line, the most exquisite courtesy of the 
 honourable writer and his most polite salutation, this 
 expressive epistle, which had such grace and such pretty 
 manners of style, has noiv rejoined the antiquated usages 
 of the knightly H'atch, and assumes every day a form more 
 rococo and old-fashioned, 'which ivill very soon bring about 
 its foundering once and for ever in that solution so 
 piteously progressive of the positivists of our time. 
 
 But in the meamiihile, Madame, permit me, in spite of 
 all equivocal smiles and public remarks, to profess to-day. 
 
in the old affuicd style ajid hi your favour, the 
 worship of the gallantries of another age, and to 
 offer you here the Itomage of this little iwluine, more 
 literary than learned, rather storied than historic, 
 in the academic sense of the word, yet written with 
 the feeling of ease, and all the charm wliich a charm- 
 ijig theme produces, on which fancy tnay yet sew her 
 embroidery in patterns of arabesque. 
 
 Had 1 listened to the counsels of a fanciful ima- 
 gination, I had been glad to offer you the work 
 with more gallantry, to equip myself as a fortune- 
 hunter, and in the style of the lovers of IVatteau and 
 the tender suitors of Pater or of Lancret. Dressed 
 as a roue of the Regency in velvet and in silk, I 
 should have been pleased to pirouette on a red hee', 
 and to shake the powder of ambergris or of Cyprus 
 from my flaxen wig, and I should have loved to 
 surprise you 171 some vague reverie, under a shady 
 walk more mysterious than the ancient cradles of 
 Sylvia, in order to accentuate my ceremonial, and 
 to recite to you some pretty madrigal for the occasion, 
 which had surely sumtnoned your adorable blushes, 
 and made you play your Fan with the grace of an 
 exquisite just ready to die away. 
 
 Is any toy more coquettish than this Fan 1 any 
 plaything more chartningi any ornament more ex- 
 pressive in the hands of a queen of esprit like your- 
 self 2 IVhen you liaudle it in the coquetries of your 
 intimate receptions, it becomes in turn the interpreter 
 
iff 
 
 ti^s^, 
 
 ^^'^'V^^Bm:^^-- 
 
 of your hidden sciiiiiiienls, the viagic waitd of fairy 
 surprises, the defensive armour against amorous 
 enterprise, the screen of sudden haslfulness — in a 
 ivord, the sceptre of your perplexiiig beauty. Whether 
 it flit softly over the heavi?ig satin circles of the b. due, 
 like some giafit butterfly intent on. pillaging thefloivers, 
 whetker it point the irony of an epigram or accentuate 
 the mocking babble of denuire maiden roguishness, 
 -iC'hether it half conceal the insolence of a yawn born 
 of tedious talk, or shadow discreetly the burning roses 
 kindled on the cheek by the brusque avowal of love, 
 the Fan in your case is the most adorable ornament 
 of woman, that which sets in relief most cleverly her 
 refined manners, her native elegance, her esprit, and 
 her enchanting graces. 
 
 Whether you be inconstant, or fond of tiltle-tattle, 
 capricious, curious, nervous, voluptuous, haughty, 
 puritanical, coaxing, or morose, the Fan will al- 
 ways assume the form and expression of your moral 
 state: disquieted, you will hold it a long while motion- 
 less ; undecided, you will fold it feverishly ; jealous, 
 you will go so far as to mark it with your pretly 
 teeth of ivory ; deceived, you ivill let it fall in a fit 
 of prostration ; aiigiy, you will rind it into pieces, 
 and cast it to the wind. In all solitude, in every 
 despair, it will remain your confidant, and it is io 
 it, to your Fan, Madame, that I owe to-day the 
 happiness of dedicating this book to you. 
 
 It is to that trifling trinket I owe the writing 
 
 Sl -#- fe 
 
( 12 ) 
 
 ('/ this literary sketch ; others have chanted it in alexan- 
 drines, invoking the inspiring Muses, the favourable in- 
 habitants of Parnassus, and t/iose learned sisters who dole 
 out their charity in so scanty measure to poor wretclied 
 poets. I, for my part, liave summoned nothing but your 
 remembrance, that golden sun which traverses the grey 
 mists of my memory, and banishes with the radiance of 
 its smile the spectacled old maid pedantry and the heavy 
 erudition, of which the lovers are but feeble clerks in the 
 offces of ancient letters. 
 
 Receive, tJien, my volume, Madame, as a favourite, and 
 guard it faithfully : it bears on it tlie ex dono of one of 
 your admirers, who is also a fervent knight of hope. If 
 I express here but cold sentiments, it is becatise I have 
 learnt at my expense never again to sound too loudly 
 the blast of the heart's ambitions, knowing that womeji 
 love mystery, and that the loves for their gatne at Blind- 
 man's Buff ask sometimes ?iothing but the downy iiest of 
 a muff, into whicli a tender billet-doux has slily stolen, 
 a billet which, in opposition to the poor lover of Tasso's 
 Sophronia, demands little, but hopes for much. 
 

 u- 
 
 
 *-;" 
 
 r 
 
 ^*toia;^'^>'' 
 
 
Chr ^^1 y-v 
 
 
 X. -i A^ 
 
 THE FAN 
 
 
 HAT is the best paraphrase of the word Fan ? 
 The gentlemen of the Academy define it a 
 small piece of turiuhcre which serves to set the 
 air in motion. Richelet and Furetit^re prefer an air- 
 producing instrument, and give the word no proper sex, 
 maintaining that the best authors may make it masculine 
 or feminine at their will. Littre, more concise, declares 
 it to be masculine, and gives us perhaps the most exact 
 definition in his vague paraphrase, a sort of portable 
 screen icnth wliicJi ladies fati themselves. It is a simple 
 word, and yet a field of controversy, a subject for the 
 arguments of every Menage and Balzac of this century, 
 and for long dissertations, which yet would never de- 
 finitely settle whether it was a small piece of furiiiluie 
 or a small inslrtiment. 
 
 "« 
 
 "■-y- 
 
 iP^l' ., 
 
( ,6 ) 
 
 The origin of the Fan remains to this day a most im- 
 penetrable archaeological mystery ; in vain have learned 
 pens sounded the depths of vast ink-bottles, and written 
 ingenious compilations, curiously supported by precious 
 documents, and by quotations in all languages. The 
 note of interrogation still remains firmly upright, like 
 some diabolical mark of hieroglyphics upon which the 
 erudition of the archaeologists is doing battle. 
 
 The invention of the Fan has been the cause of the 
 writing of more chapters and refutations than you would 
 easily credit. Nougaret, under the title which was so 
 often taken in the eighteenth century, The Origin of tlie 
 Fan, has made a tale of it in his Fond du sac, where he 
 cries ironically — 
 
 The Fan ! who is its maker ? who its sire ? 
 
 Who is he? answer Muse of History 1 
 Tell me ! in you I trust, of you inquire ; 
 
 Out of your folios give me reply. 
 Ah, cursed repeitories, searched in vain ! 
 One into China brings, one out of Spain, 
 
 And shows me this same Fan at every door ; 
 But when ? how ? where ? that is the point ! explain ! 
 
 Another brings of folded leaves a score, 
 And then I dream of Eastern palms in pain ; 
 I close my doors, to books apply my brain. 
 
 But for my many crowns I get no more 
 
 Than my old Richelet told me before. 
 
 ,,ff.^ 
 
^WV>^ 
 
 Witli liope of wealth I seavch the mine again ; 
 
 Alas ! the Abbe Tiublet steals my store. 
 In such a case one can but entertain 
 One's fancy. Come then, Love; witliout thy tiain 
 
 Of joys on Fans I would no longer pore ! 
 
 We are indebted to Nougaret for a charming fable, 
 resembling in its imagination those legends which lend 
 to the Fan a curious origin in some seraglio of the 
 East, where the jealous Sultana gives her rival, who 
 insults her beneath the eyes of her master, a savage 
 blow with this servant of the zephyrs, whilst the eunuch, 
 like a sombre drama, approaches, seizes the disobedient 
 but beautiful slave, and would cut at command her neck 
 of alabaster, if love stayed not his cruelty at the pathetic 
 moment of beheading her. All the gracious stories, 
 which we shall find here and there on our way, 
 deserve no belief; as that little historj which 
 makes China the Fan's birthplace 
 long before the Christian era, in the 
 course of which we are shown the 
 fair Lam-si, daughter 
 
 of a very powerftil 
 and venerable man- 
 darin, suffocated by 
 the heat at a 
 public festival,, 
 so far forget- 
 ting herself as 
 to withdraw 
 the mask ■ 
 
^^ 
 
 :^- 
 
 
 
 ( IS ) 
 
 which concealed her beautiful features from the 
 crowd, and setting herself to wave it so prettily, 
 in order to give herself air, that the people, de- 
 lighted, imitated at once the dazzling daughter of 
 the skies, and invented and perfected the Fan 
 for their daily use from that moment. Another 
 tradition teaches us that about the year 670, 
 under the Emperor Tenji, a native of Tamba, 
 seeing the bats folding and unfolding their wings, 
 conceived the idea of making fans of leaves, which 
 bore at that epoch the name of Kjiwahori (bats). 
 But our concern, or rather the concern of the 
 learned flabdliograpJicrs or fangraphers, is these 
 two distinct phases in the history of the Fan ; 
 its invention in the inmost East under the form 
 of a rigid screen, later on improved into a folding 
 screen, having the cockade as a transition mark, 
 and its introduction into Europe so strongly dis- 
 puted, according to various attributions, which 
 give the initiative of this importation to more 
 than ten different peoples. 
 
 In ancient India, writes M. S. Blondel, in his 
 History of the Fans of all Times and Nations, in 
 that country which one with reason considers the 
 cradle of the human race, the Fan, made first of 
 all of the leaves of the lotus or the palm-tree, of 
 the banana or the reed, was an instrument of 
 utility as well as an object of adornment. Its 
 name in Hindustan is fdnlc'/ia. The Sanscrit 
 
 ii.ci 
 
 .'^Sv^pl^^??''!,^?'!,^^*^^!?* 
 
■'(^""^V.N-- 
 
 
 ^r^T^i^^-^^ 
 
 ( ^9 ) 
 
 1 oc'lS speak of it in their descriptions, and the 
 Hindoo statuary has preserved for us the ]iarticuhir 
 forms which it assumed. "This rich htter, on 
 which was lain the monarch Pandore, was after- 
 wards ornamented with a fan, a fiy-flai), and an 
 umbrella," says Krishna- Dwapayana, author of the 
 poim hlaliii Citarata, which tells in another place 
 how the King Nila had a young daughter endowed 
 with extreme beauty. This princess attended con- 
 stantly the divine fire, with a view to increasing 
 the prosperity of her father. "But, it is told, the 
 young girl might fan the fire as much as she chose, 
 it never burst into flame, save only when she stirred 
 it with the breath issuing from her charming lips. 
 The holy fire was overcome widi love of this young 
 damsel of wondrous beauty." 
 
 In all the legends which hold so great a place 
 in the literature of India, in all the tales which 
 the Buddhists have borrowed from the Brahmanic 
 writings, there is mention of the Fan, and we find 
 lovely princesses who answer to such sweet names 
 as Lotus- Flower or Dewdrop, playing the idiamara 
 or sometimes the fly-flap (tchaoiinry) with a perfect 
 grace, either on issuing from their bath scented 
 with essence of rose, or in a voluptuous attitude 
 of repose on carpets of silk, whiling away tlie 
 mornings of the month of Vesatha. 
 
 The tchainara v.-as a fan in Mosaic of feathers, 
 •with a handle of jade enriched with precious ston-s, 
 
 4> 
 
 A 
 i 
 
( 
 
 ^yhich was fastened to a long stick when it was borne 
 on occasions of ceremony, as the grand annual fetes 
 of Juggernauth, during which was brought out the statue 
 of Siva, the third person of the Indian Trinity, the god 
 of destiny and death, who kills to renew, solemnly borne 
 on an immense waggon, drawn by an elephant, under the 
 wheels of which fanatics threw themselves down, to be 
 crushed and ground with a strange resignation to the 
 inflexible law of transmigration, according to all the 
 rules and precepts oi Pratimdklia. 
 
 On the coast of Malabar, when the principal idol 
 comes out in public, carried on the back of an elephant 
 magnificently adorned, it is accompanied by several 
 naires or nobles of the country, whose business it is 
 to drive away the flies from their idol with fans, which 
 are attached to the extremities of very long canes. 
 
 H ndoo miniatures preserved in the Cabinet dcs 
 Esfainpes or at the Museum of the Louvre repre- 
 sent different forms of fans in peacocks' feathers ; 
 fly flaps, of which the plumes, white as snow, are 
 furnished by the tails of buffaloes of Thibet, and 
 screens of reed woven in different colours. 
 The Orientalist Langles, in his Ancient 
 and Moderti Monuments of Hindustan, 
 describes a bas-relief of the pagoda 
 of Elephanta, where, 
 behind the repre- 
 sentation of Brahma 
 
( 31 ) 
 
 and Indra, a slave waves in each hand two long fly- 
 flaps, the attribute of royalty, as the Fan and the 
 parasol of seven stages are to-day in the kingdom of 
 Si am. 
 
 We are well content to allow the origin of the Fan 
 to be in India, in the country of legend and of dream, 
 in the land of the Thousand and One Nigkls, in the 
 sunny Orient, where all things speak to the imagination, 
 from the thirty-six thousand incarnations of Buddha to 
 the sparkling bizarreries of an architecture unique in its 
 decorative richness. There we see the Fan handled by 
 languid dancing-girls in their splendid vestments, where 
 the sun darts his golden rays, as through a multiplying 
 prism, on the whiteness of the marble minarets, or on 
 the domes of enamelled porcelain, on the varnished 
 pottery of the fagades, or on fairy processions, where 
 the silken habit is united with the magic twinkUng 
 
 ^,. of armour, with equipments constellated 
 
 /^J' ^';/'^^ with jewels, and with gilded palanquins, 
 
 ^«=?^ carved and incrusted with mother-of-pearl, 
 
 ivory, and precious stones. 
 
 / n w'^^-i ^"^^ of the greatest pleasures reserved 
 
 for the faithful Indian in Calaya, which 
 
 us one of his five paradises, is to refresh 
 
 Ixora, the presiding deity, by moving 
 
 mighty Fans before him unceasingly. In 
 
 the dramatic c/wf-d'auvre of Kalidaga, 
 
 Jily the fair and delicate Sakountala, by whom 
 
 king, DoiisJmianta, is stricken with 
 
 love, carries in her walks through the 
 
 forest a Fan of lotus-leaves : " Dear 
 
 Sakountala," cry her two companions, 
 
 busied in fanning her tenderly, "Dear 
 
 Sakountala, does this wind of the lotus- 
 
 \ leaves please you ? " " My friends," re- 
 
 \ plies the daughter of the nymph 
 

 mm: 
 
 G^^^ 
 
 (' 
 
 
 
 ;#%.£^'^"'^' 
 
 5r:»>*: 
 
 <q 
 
 I ii 
 
 ( 22 ) 
 
 Menaha, in the last state of languor, " what is the 
 use of your fanning me ? " 
 
 Everywhere, in a word, whither we are con- 
 ducted by literary memories in the gallant India, 
 which so many writers have sung with astonish- 
 ment at its mystic and half-seen charms, every- 
 where we find the Fan as a symbol, charming 
 and eternal, of woman and the Divinity. 
 
 Before quitting India, we must say a little of 
 those vast frames covered with stuff or muslin, a 
 sort of movable screens, ventilators suspended 
 from the ceilings of houses, and called panKhas, 
 which panK ha-berdar or special servants move, 
 without ceasing, to refresh the air in the rooms, 
 during the sleep or siesta of their rich owners, 
 and to obtain for them that intense aeration which 
 made Guez de Balzac in the seventeenth century 
 write this curious note, showing us that already 
 under Louis XIII. these .^iolians were employed : 
 " I have a Fan which carries a wind into my 
 room sufficient to bring about a shipwreck in 
 open sea." 
 
 Let us pass on to China and Japan, that father- 
 land of the Fan, by one of those ethnologic and 
 ethnographic cock-and-bull transitions to which 
 we arc condemned by this hasty history of the 
 Utile instrument cherished by the ladies. Accord- 
 
 
 ^^ 
 

 \ 
 
 
 
 ^1 
 
 ^2Ma 
 
 u 
 
 LJ 
 
 m 
 
 ( 
 
 ing to M. Blondel, and after a piece of verse of 
 the poet Lo-ki, the inveniioa of Fans in Cliina 
 mounts up to the Emperor Wonwang, founder 
 of the dynasty of Tcheou (1134 i;.c.) Tliesc 
 primitive screens, according to a passage of Fc'i- 
 ki-yu-lin, served in war for a standard or rallying- 
 point, and the general Tchou-ko-liang commanded 
 his three army corps with a Fan in his hand 
 made of white feathers. The first Fans were 
 certainly constructed of leaves of bamboo or 
 feathers ; afterwards they were made of white 
 silk and embroidered silk tissue, for, according 
 to Hai-Tsee, quoted by the missionaries in their 
 Memoir on Silk, after all that the industrial genius 
 could imagine had been exhausted, men betook 
 themselves to introducing on the screens feathers 
 of birds, of a hue as brilliant and changing as the 
 rainbow, and pearls fine and small enough to lend 
 themselves to the most delicate tissue. 
 
 The first Chinese screens had originally a square 
 form ; afterwards they assumed the shape of the 
 large leaves of the nenuphar. Fans of bamboo 
 reach to the days of the Emperor Houan-ti of 
 the dynasty of the Han (147-167 B.a); one or 
 two centuries after we find them under the Tsin, 
 and the Li-tchao-han-lin-tchi tells us that the 
 emperor gave to the members of the Imperial 
 
 S%^ 
 
 
 
 -M, 
 
 
 :^ 
 
 i 
 
 m 
 
 M 
 
 11 
 
.-";.^' 
 
 A 
 
 
 UM/c 
 
 Academy, on 
 of the fifth 
 round screen 
 
 blue. 
 
 the fifth day 
 month, a large 
 of bamboo 
 
 .V painted in 
 
 To give a special history of the Fan in Japan and 
 China would require many pages, and a superabundance 
 of technologic detail. We should have to consider the 
 screen of leaves plain and the reverse, the folding Fan 
 e/i cocarde (like a cockade), the Fan a gouttilre (or chan- 
 nelled), of vi^hich the leaf could not be completely de- 
 veloped ; and then to analyse the tissues, the plumage, 
 and the wood employed for the manufacture of all these 
 objects of art. There would be no end of dissertations 
 on the primitive Fan and the folding screen, on the 
 sUding plaits of the lamels of the leaf or sheet, on the 
 Hindoo system, properly called Byzantine or Chinese ; 
 all which is but dry tedious labour, meriting the interest 
 indeed of antiquaries, but labour which we ourselves 
 desire to escape, out of respect to literature, and from a 
 sense of courtesy due to our amiable lady readers. 
 
 In Japan, as A well as China, 
 
 the Fan forms \-^._^^ \,^ ^y an integral part of _ 
 
 LA 
 
 I, 
 
 
 %^ 
 
( ^5 
 
 costume, and seems to serve every purpose ; it is handled 
 familiarly in sign of salutation ; folded and stretched out, 
 it becomes the sign of command. " The dandies who 
 have neither canes nor whips," says M. Achillc Pous- 
 sielgue, in the relation of the Voyage in China 
 of M. de Bourboulon, " move their Fan ,^::ff'^^^ ^ I \ 
 
 with an air of pretentious conceit ; the 
 evolutions which the young girls prac- 
 tise with it form a dumb language, yet fully significant ; 
 inotliers use it to send tiieir cliildrcn io sleep in ilie cradle ; 
 schoolmasters to punish recalcitrant scholars ; pedes- 
 trians to escape the mosquitoes which pursue them ; 
 workmen, who carry their Fans in the collars of their 
 coats, fan themselves with one hand and work with the 
 other; soldiers flirt their Fans under the enemy's fire 
 with inconceivable coolness. 
 
 " There are Fans of two forms, open or folding : the 
 former are made of lamels of ivory or paper, and serve 
 for autographic albums. It is on a Fan of white paper 
 that a Chinese begs his friend to trace a sentence of 
 
 writing, or a drawing, which may act as 
 
 a sort of souvenir. -^tt^ These album^ 
 
 Fans, on which /a are set the 
 
 

 
 % 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ji. 
 
 4 
 
 
 ( -'6 ) 
 seals of illustrious men or great personages, acquire 
 a large value." 
 
 One might make a curious little work with the 
 anal)'tical and picturesque history of the Fan in 
 China and Japan, by summoning the aid of poesy, 
 mythologic allegories, romances, and comedies of 
 character of Asiatic literature, by setting in relief 
 legends such as those which place tiie Fan in the 
 hand of Tossito-ku, god of prosperity in Japan, 
 or by reproducing little poems like the Au'iiinn 
 Song of the poet Thou-fuu, who sees wafted through 
 his dreams " Fans of pheasants' feathers like light 
 clouds." We should have in such a work comic, 
 poetic, dramatic, and even heroic feeling : for the 
 heavy Fan of command in carved iron would find 
 its place in some great and magnificent cpopie, 
 analogous to our remaikable romances of mediaeval 
 chivalry. 
 
 In this little work too there would be mention 
 of gallant gifts, such as those which in the period 
 Chun-hi of the Soung (ii 74-1 190) the Emperor 
 gave to the Empress of China, under the form of 
 four screens of white jade, with handles of odori- 
 ferous amber. There would be mention also of 
 those marvellous artists of ancient China, at the 
 commencement of the Christian era, of Chi-ki-long, 
 who had acquired a brilliant reputation in the 
 
 
^l 
 
 
 
 \'^ 
 
 W^ 
 
 
 ( -7 ) 
 fabrication of screens, called Kin-po-mou-nan, who 
 beat gold into lamels, fine as the wing of a cicada, 
 applied them to the two surfaces of tlie screen, 
 varnished them and painted extraordinary birds 
 and rare animals upon them, and glued over all 
 delicate transparent leaves of mica. 
 
 We might also write a great deal in such a 
 special history of the Fan in China and Jajjan 
 about the different kinds of plicated Fans and 
 hand-screens, of those rirade of lac or painted 
 feathers, of folding Fans made of filigree, of silver, 
 of S3ndal-wood, of mother-of-pearl, of ivory, of 
 screens of tails of argus-pheasants, of those of 
 em: roidtred marceline, and of all the marvels of 
 modern Asiatic industrj', of which M. Natalis 
 Rondot was the learned and ingenious analyst 
 at the time of our Exhibition in 1851. 
 
 If we now pass over suddenly to the peoples 
 of ancient Egypt we find the pedum ox flabdluin ; 
 hut we agree with a German writer that a rabbin 
 would be better able than ourselves to decide with 
 certainty, by the aid of his Mishna, if this bouquet 
 of papyrus {Cyperus papyrus) was really in the 
 hands of Pharaoh's amiable daughter when, walk- 
 in" by the borders of the Nile, she found the little 
 Hebrew Moses in a basket of reeds. 
 
 The lamented JN'Iariette Bey found at Abydos a 
 
r 
 
 
 
 ■,>^;>S 
 
 M, 
 
 Juneral slele, whicli is now in the 
 museum of Bulak, representing 
 Osiris seated on Jus throne, having 
 
 \ behind him a flabellifer of the king named Tioii, and 
 his wife Roy, ivho offers homage prostrated at his feet. 
 
 ^ The divine and voluptuous Cleopatra, that daughter 
 of kings and gods, brought up by the priestesses of 
 Isis, and initiated into the mysteries by the magi of 
 Memnon and Osiris, that mistress of Mark Anton)', 
 fair as Dian, supple as a Nereid, more burning with 
 love's fire tban an ardent Thyad, did not disdain, when 
 she threw herself into the arms of one of her lovers^'^ 
 the Nubian Pharam, placed on the stage by Jules de 
 Saint Felix, or Meiamoun, son of., Mandonschopss 
 so well established in a celebrated noveil of Gautiei 
 Cleopatra disdained not, in her nights of orgies; to 
 cause herself to be fanned by favourite slaves, armed 
 with screens or feathers of the Ibis, impregnated with 
 odours, whilst on the tripods smoked slowly the balm 
 of Judea, the sweet-scented powdered orris root, and 
 the incense of Medes and the urns of Syrian wine 
 were ready for libations favourable to lovers. 
 
 In the Egyptian cosmogony, as M. Blondel tells us, 
 the Fan was the emblem of happiness and heavenly 
 repose ; one can understand then for what reason in 
 triumphal processions the cars or palanquins are repre- 
 sented environed with Fans or flowery branches. A 
 large number of monuments indicate the form and 
 ornamentation of these flabella. Let us refer first to 
 the mural paintings of Beni-Hassan, where a woman 
 
 chopsdi^ 
 iautie^ 
 
( 29 
 
 standing waves a square Fan behind a female harpist. The frescoes 
 of the palace of Medinet-Abou at Thebes show in like manner the 
 Pharaoh Rameses III., called the Great (1235 B.C.), whose attten- 
 dants bear elegant screens of a semicircular shape, painted in 
 brilliant colours, admirably disposed, less ornamented, however, 
 than those representing the triumph of the king, Horus (1557 
 B.C.), where can be seen two Fan-bearers refreshing the monarch 
 
 with two flahella, each having a 
 long handle twisted or parti-coloured. 
 The Fan then held the place of the 
 standard, and was carried only by 
 royal princes or by dignitaries of 
 approved bravery, 
 who had at- 
 tained the 
 rank of 
 general. 
 

 In the Romance cf the R[utnniy, Theophile 
 Gautier, that marvellous evoker of ancient Egypt, 
 represents Pharaoh on a tlirone of gold, surrounded 
 by his oeris and his flabelllfers, in an enormous 
 hall, with a background of paintings recalling the 
 noble feats of his ancestors and relations. Fair 
 naked slaves, whose beautiful slender bodies show 
 the gracious passage from infancy to adolescence, 
 their haunches circled with a delicate girdle, and 
 cups of alabaster in their hands, flock about this 
 same Pharaoh, pouring palm-oil over his shoul- 
 ders, his arms and his whole body polished like 
 jasper, whilst other servants wave around his 
 head large Fans of painted ostrich feathers, fas- 
 tened to handles of ivory or sandal-wood, which, 
 warmed by their litde fingers, throw off a delicious 
 perfume. 
 
 Again we see the Fan among the Assyrians, 
 Medes, and Persians, where it affects the square 
 form, sometimes the semicircular; but it is at 
 Ps^ome, especially the Rome of the age of Augus- 
 tus, that we love to behold the Fan on the 
 Appian Way, outside the Capena gate, in the 
 noise of chariots and litters borne on the backs 
 of six or eight lecticarii, near the majestic equipage 
 of a matron accompanied by her two slaves : one, 
 the follower, carrying a parasol of linen stretched 
 
 
 ^r 
 
t 
 
 
 ( 31 ) 
 out by large sticks, the other the Fan-bairer {flabd- 
 lifira), holding a sort of pahn or peacock's feather, 
 which she waves before the lady, in order to give 
 her fresh air, and avoid the annoyance of im- 
 portunate flies, whilst four black Indian or African 
 runners precede the litter, and two white Libur- 
 nians march behind the chair, a sort of footmen 
 ready at the matron's slightest signal to set down 
 the footstool, to assist her in her descent from her 
 silky bed. 
 
 It is certain that, supposing the Roman ladies 
 did not ply the Fan themselves, the use of it was 
 known to them. The poet Nomsus makes fre- 
 quent mention of it: it was upon the slaves and 
 the gallants that the duty of refreshing these lovely 
 lazy ones was imposed. Ovid, speaking of the 
 attentions which young men ought to pay to 
 seduce women, recommends the playing of the 
 Fan ; we find, moreover. Fans on different stones, 
 where they are used to waft away the insects, 
 or to procure fresh breezes for the children of 
 pleasure stretched on beds of repose. 
 
 These ladies of antiquity, surrounded by slaves 
 who sought to spare every movement of the hand 
 of their gracious mistresses, made them carry Fans 
 at their sides, and so defended themselves from 
 the heat of the sun by the aid of slaves sjiecially 
 
 QZ^ 
 
 
 -Z,^-^- 
 
 ■I yr~ 
 
( 32 ) 
 
 destined to this service, to whom Plautus had al- 
 . ready given the particular name of flabellifera before 
 mentioned. There were little baskets too, made ex- 
 pressly, wherein the slaves carried these Fans, as it 
 were in parade, when they were not in use. 
 
 The Latins also made use of the Fan of feathers 
 or the screen to keep up or raise the fire in their 
 sacrifices, and we find on several antique vases Vestals, 
 seated near the altar, with a Fan in their hand, in a 
 languid and dreamy attitude, which evokes the idea 
 of inward flames kindled by the arrows of the little 
 god Cupid, rather than the chaste ardours of the sacred 
 mysteries to which the female guardians of the Pal- 
 ladium were condemned. 
 
 Some Greek poets have compared the Fan to a 
 zephyr, or i^ohis, god of winds, when they show us. 
 
 >'„,•;,:.: 
 
 ~^^^:>-.-'--''-'^-' 
 
 
under the green 
 
 boughs, the daughters 
 
 of Lesbos bathing in 
 
 the twilight of the 
 
 hot days, then coming 
 
 from the wave, and, naked 
 
 upon the bank, moving 
 
 to and fro before their 
 
 bosom a branch of myrtle 
 
 foliage with the grace of an 
 
 unmodesty which ignores itself 
 
 Athen£eus,Eubulus, Hesychius, 
 
 Menander, Lucian, all the Greek pornographers, Bar- 
 
 thelemy in the Voyage of the Young Aitacharsts, and the 
 
 learned Pauw in his liechenhes sur les Grecs, mention 
 
 the Fan, which was then made of feathers of birds 
 
 placed on a long stem of wood in form of a lotus, 
 
 and spreading from a common centre around which 
 
 they radiated. 
 
 Branches of myrtle, of acacia, and the proud leaves 
 
 thrice indented of the platane of Oriental countries, 
 
 were also beyond contradiction the Fans and the fly- 
 
 c 
 
'^ 
 
 
 (-"tK 
 
 s_ 
 
 
 
 ( 34 ) 
 flaps most used by ancient Greece, as Bottiger 
 remarks, and those which they originally employed. 
 We have every reason to believe that the thyrsi 
 so voluptuously wreathed with ivy and vine-leaf, 
 which we see so frequently on the ancient monu- 
 ments in the hands of the Bacchants and other 
 companions of the god of the vintages, beyond 
 their solemn destination in the festivals and pro- 
 cessions of Bacchus, had also the accidental ad- 
 vantage of obtaining fresh breeze and shadow for 
 his adorers warmed by running and games. It 
 was not long before the natural leaves of trees 
 were imitated by art. These Fans are found 
 often on the artistic bas-reliefs of ancient monu- 
 ments, to which some interpreters have given very 
 extraordinary significations indeed. We find them, 
 for instance, in Montfaugon, in the pictures of the 
 Noces Aldohrandines, and on an engraved stone in 
 the collection of the Due d'Orleans with peacocks, 
 which were not known in Greece properly so called 
 before the fifth century B.C. The Greek ladies re- 
 ceived the tail of the peacock as a new and brilliant 
 species of Fan from the inhabitants of the coasts 
 of Asia Minor, who loved luxury and magnificence, 
 and especially from Phrygia. A Phrygian eunuch 
 tells, in one of the tragedies of Euripides which 
 remain to us, that according to the fashion in 
 
P^J^^^P^PMg 
 
 
 
 
 ( 35 ) 
 Phrygia, he had cooled the curls and cheeks of 
 Helen with a tail garnished round wiih feathers ; 
 and these peacocks' tails return so often in the 
 later Greek and Roman authors, that mention is 
 almost always made of them in any subject con- 
 nected with feminine adornment. 
 
 It appears, however, that of all kinds of ancient 
 Fans, those which were composed of peacocks' 
 feathers, interlaced and set one upon another, 
 forming a round bouquet, or a semicircle of little 
 thickness, were the most frequent, and continued 
 the longest in use. Upon the wings of these Fans 
 we return to the Western Orient, to the Arab people, 
 who did not adopt the Fan properly so called till 
 the first century of our Christian era. 
 
 Farazdak, a very ancient Arabic poet, has left 
 us the following poetry, quoted by M. Blondel : — 
 
 " The charming young girl who reposes beneath 
 a tent agitated by the breeze, is like the tender 
 gazelle, or the pearl, object of the vows of the 
 diver; when she advances, she appears a shining 
 mist. 
 
 " How pleasant to my eyes is her slender shape; 
 how much more agreeable than the massive plump- 
 ness of that woman who swims in her perspiration 
 as soon as the Fans have ceased to cool the air 
 around her." 
 
 ■i^B^fSi.'^ 
 
36 
 
 In the 257th night of the Thousand and One Nights, 
 The Sleeper Awakened, Abou-Hassan, believing himself 
 Commander of the Faithful, enters a splendid banquet 
 hall, seats himself on a carpet, and orders refreshments. 
 Immediately seven young girls, fair as dreams, hasten 
 with their Fans about the new Caliph, and tell him 
 their names in order : Alabaster Neck, Coral Lips, Sun- 
 shine, Moonface, Heart's-delight, Eyebright, and Sugar 
 Cane, what time they wave over his head, with charming 
 undulations of their bodies, ostrich or pea- . • ' 
 cock feathers, and screens of esparto matting. C.^ > . ' 
 tale, full of fantasy and /' "' 
 marvel, buried, if our / 
 memory fail us not, in ' ff fK-M^-^'^ 
 the heavy lumber of \ ■- 
 Xhz Cabinet des Fees, , :■ • :A 
 a king of Africa, to 
 
 :j 
 
 
 whom all good fortune '■""': 
 ^ -''^'i \ in fight seems obstinately opposed, 
 
 is plunged into a gloomy despair, ^'- ,ri .,-.^„^.r, 
 and loses all hope of saving his f' \k,^\^'s%^'^ 
 
 1%M ■ 
 
 '?v- 
 
 little realm, menaced by his foes, 
 
 when a charitable genie informed 
 
 him that in the country of the 
 
 Azure Grottos may be found, under 
 
 the guardianship of a cruel old 
 
 fairy, an enchanted Fan, made 
 
 ; entirely of the feathers of the *jm, 
 
 k . . . "^ 
 
 Phoenix, in the midst of 
 
 ■a. 
 
 which shines a 2 
 
 'A\ 
 
 it-v 
 
 
 ^>^-l\. 
 
 1^: 
 
 \^, 
 
 ■>: 
 
 ■^ -"JH^ 
 
 -^' 
 
 ^^ 
 
( 37 ) 
 sparkling sun of precious stones. If, adds the genie, 
 the king can manage to get hold of the magic Fan, 
 which has often decided the fate of battles in the 
 barbarous ages of his ancestors, victory sudden and 
 complete will surely come to him. The African prince 
 at this news sets all his soldiers in marching order, 
 with the credulity of the kings in fairyland, and the 
 pretty old wives' tale conducts us through most astound- 
 ing adventures to the last chapter, where we find the 
 famous Fan won by the prince, and carried by the 
 daughter of a sovereign of a neighbouring kingdom, 
 whom the fortunate monarch, henceforth glorious, re- 
 ceives in the throne-hall loit/i splendid pomp, and offers 
 her, as a sort of denouement and a pledge of gratitude, 
 his hand, his treasures, and his heart. 
 
 All antiquity presents us with examples of the 
 use of the Fan : Heliogabalus, that Sardanapalus 
 of Rome, son of Caracalla, a man so refined in 
 luxury that he brought to Rome, along a road 
 :' _ covered with gold dust, the black stone of 
 •,;;' Emere (representing the God of the Sun) 
 ||> on a chariot drawn by six white horses, to 
 set it in a magnificent temple built on the 
 Palatine : Heliogabalus, who had pre- 
 served the traditions of the East, 
 used ordmanly, m place of a 
 sceptre, a Fan ornamented 
 and 'littenns; with 
 
s.->! 
 
 
 %• 
 
 ^^i.:)^^ <^ "> 'Sji-^f^ 
 
 
 K 
 
 EI 
 
 -as: 
 
 1"a 
 
 :«\s 
 
 ( 38 ) 
 
 precious stones, and gold leaf, and feathers painted 
 with infinite art. 
 
 In a manuscript of the British Museum (addi- 
 tional MS., Brit. Mus., 19,352), in a kind of 
 Greek psalter exceedingly rare, which we were 
 allowed to look at lately in London, we found, 
 on an exquisite miniature, the image of David 
 sleeping, and fanned by an angel with a curious 
 long flabellum. 
 
 The kings of Persia used to carry into the field 
 a fire which they called the sacred fire. This fire 
 was borne on a magnificent chariot drawn by four 
 white horses, and followed by three hundred and 
 sixty-five young men dressed in yellow. No one 
 was allowed to cast into this fire anything impure, 
 and it was honoured to such an extent that, not 
 daring to blow it with their breath, they nourished 
 it solely with a Fan. 
 
 The ancient iconologists, in fine, to terminate 
 these digressions, give to the month of August, 
 among other attributes, a sort of Fan made of 
 peacocks' tails. On a picture of the antiquities 
 of Herculaneum may be seen a young man carrying 
 one of these peacock's tails ; and in the figures of 
 the twelve months, such as the learned Ubrarian 
 LambiJcin has given us after an old calendar, 
 may be seen, in like manner, one of these pea- 
 
 >^'^ 
 

 (39 ) J'iiW 
 
 cocks' tails suspended by the side of the genius —^ 
 of the month of August. I'hese Fans of pea- 
 cocks' tails were much sought after at Rome. ..,_ 
 " We must have," says Propertius, " Fans like the 
 superb tail of the peacock ; " and Tertullian, in his 
 Treatise on the Cloak, thus describes the plumage 
 of the bird of Juno : " Feathers serve the peacock 
 in place of a dress, and of a very rich one. What 
 do I say ? The purple of his neck is more shining 
 than that of the rarest shellfish ; the gold of his 
 back is more dazzling than all the stars in the 
 world ; his tail sweeps the ground with more pomp 
 than the longest cymar : a mixture of an infinite 
 number of colours, shot and shaded, his adorn- 
 ment, which is never the same, seems always 
 different, though when it appears different it is 
 always the same ; it changes, in a word, as often 
 as it moves." 
 
 In the Etruscan paintings, especially on ancient 
 vases. Fans appear in great number, and affect 
 very numerous and curious forms ; they are, how- 
 ever, always composed of a handle and a flat 
 disc, as our modern Japanese screens. They 
 may be found in abundance on the Italo-Greek 
 potteries of the Museum of the Louvre. The 
 Etruscans had transmitted to the Romans the 
 exceeding luxury of the Orient, with that special 
 
 W^ 
 
 R,^. 
 
 1 1 
 
 m 
 
 ^^'^^/ 
 
'' speaks in his elegy of tlie Games of the Circus, 
 4, in the third book of his Ainores, when he ex- 
 si^j\ claims, "Wouldst thou that an agreeable zephyr 
 should approach thee to caress thy face ? Here 
 then is my tablet, which will procure for thee 
 that pleasure by the movement which I shall 
 impart to it, unless indeed the flame which burns 
 thee is nourished more by my love than by any 
 heat of day, in which case it can never be ex- 
 tinguished save by our own proper fire and mutual 
 pleasures." 
 
 We leave at last the antiquity of India, China, 
 Greece, and Rome to approach the Middle Ages, 
 and without disturbing ourselves as to whether — 
 as certain archaeologists have pretended — the real 
 introduction of the Fan into Europe was brought 
 about in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese 
 of Goa, we consider it a settled point that the 
 Christian Church used the Fan as an instrument 
 of cult, in giving it, according to Saint Jerome, 
 a mystic sense of continence, of which we shall 
 not search into the origin, but will only remark 
 that the Apostle Saint James, according to Re- 
 ligious Ceremonies and Customs (1723, t. i. p. 68), 
 recommends the use of the sacred Fan in his 
 Liturgy. 
 
 Beyond all doubt the Crusaders and pilgrims, 
 
 
 t 
 

 5i<& 
 
 ( 43 ) 
 on their return from the East, spread abroad 
 various customs and usages, and these would 
 be very interesting points of history to develop. 
 The flahelluin has remained, however that may 
 be, one of the principal insignia of the Papacy, 
 and served in the holy sacrifice to preserve the 
 officiating priest from flies and sunbeams till the 
 end of the thirteenth century. Moreri, in his 
 Dictionary (edit. 1759), relates that in the cele- 
 brated Abbey of Saint Philibert of Tournus, and 
 in the monastery of Prouisse, of the Order of 
 Saint Dominic (ninth century), there was to be 
 seen a singular Fan, which was once used by 
 the deacons to prevent the flies precipitating them- 
 selves into the chalice. Durant speaks of it in 
 his book De Ritibus Ecclesiasticis, and assures us 
 that two deacons held it on either side of the 
 altar. This Fan had, it seems, a round form, 
 very much the same as the Fan known in our 
 days as the Fan i cocarde, but with this difference, 
 that the handle was much longer, and the Fan 
 itself of greater extent. Around that which is 
 kept in the Abbey of Tournus, and which was 
 shown in the Museum of the History of Labour in 
 the Exhibition of 1867, may be read in large 
 characters on both sides a long Latin inscription, 
 which we will not inflict upon the reader. Round 
 
 ^:1 
 
 
 Sir 
 
 'ifv 
 
the Fan above the inscription 
 are represented saints with the 
 following names: SanctaLnda, 
 Sa?icta Ag?ies, Sancta Cmcilia, 
 Sancta Maria, Sanctus Paulus, 
 Sanctus Petrus, Saiictus An- 
 dreas. Above these figures 
 again we read Index Sandns 
 Maiiricius, Sanctus Dionysius, 
 Sanctus Philibei-tus, Sanctus 
 Hilarius, Sanctus Martinus 
 Levita. 
 
 This Fan, ornamented with 
 
ir- 
 
 
 
 ap 
 
 figures, having 
 halos of gold, of 
 '■^■^ . - saints male and fe- 
 , male, whose names are 
 writ in uncials of the ninth 
 century, in the midst of 
 boughs of Byzantine foliage, 
 intermixed with monsters 
 and animals, is an article 
 unique for its rarity, about 
 which Mabillon, Father Mar- 
 fenne, Canon Juenin, and 
 M. du Sommerard, in the 
 Arts in the Middle Ages, have 
 spoken at great length, and 
 \ \ with much enthusiasm, and is 
 
 likely to remain as celebrated as the famous Fan of the Queen 
 Theodelinde (sixth century), preserved in the treasury of the king, 
 Monza, of which M. Barbier de Montaud, a Dominican priest, has 
 given a description. 
 
 One interesting form of the Fan is that which we meet with in 
 Spain about 1430. It is a sort of round abanico, made of rice 
 paper, or garnished with feathers. We may imagine that, fortified 
 
^m 
 
 ( 46 ) 
 
 with such a coquettish screen as this, the fair 
 Spanish girls of the fifteenth century applauded 
 at the toros the elegant chiilo, moulded in his 
 tight robes of delicious ton, tlie bandenllo, the 
 Espad.i, and all tlie gracious toreros of that time ; 
 who t'nemselves also carried the Fan, as if the 
 better to mock the fury of the indomitable beast. 
 
 As a souvenir of this chivalric epoch, one may 
 evoke the romance of Amadis of Gaul, where it is 
 said (Book iv.) that ApoUidon had not only em- 
 bellished his gardens with all that Europe had 
 produced most pleasing and most rare, but that 
 he had ransacked the Isle of Serendib and the 
 Indian peninsula of the costliest treasures they 
 possessed. The Phenix, attracted by the per- 
 fumes which exhaled from that firm island, stayed 
 long enough in the isle to moult. 
 
 Apollidon gave himself the trouble of collecting 
 the superb feathers of gold and purple which 
 covered its wings, and caused a Fan to be made 
 thereof, fastened by a diamond and a carbuncle. 
 This Fan preserved all who used it from every 
 kind of poison ; it was the first present that Oriana 
 received from Amadis, at the moment of her 
 arrival in the firm island. 
 
 In Italy, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, 
 remarks M. Natalis Rondot, people carried Fans 
 of feathers in a tuft, of that kind which figures in 
 the portrait by Van Dyck of Maria Luisa de Tassis ; 
 
 Oil 
 
 'sll 
 
 ^ 
 
 i. 
 
 J}. 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 n 
 
 
 Mi 
 
 If- 
 
 m 
 
 f^r^ 
 
 m^"^^ 
 
^&s; 
 
 ,i~\.- 
 
 ^^ h..^ >4.\ .VI -■v-.X-^Si^^' 
 
 
 
 ( 47 ) 
 
 these Fans had handles of ivory, or even of gold 
 much ornamented, and sometimes enriched with 
 jewels. "They employed feathers of the ostrich, 
 the peacock, the raven of India, the parrot, and 
 other birds of striking plumage. Ladies attached 
 these Fans to a little chain, hooked on the large 
 golden chain which served them for a girdle," a 
 fashion which endured long after. 
 
 AVe should observe that the csmouchoir or 
 fly flap was already in use in France in the thir- 
 teenth century. Proofs of its use are found in 
 the private life of the fourteenth century. The 
 Countess Mahaut d'Artois had a fly-flap with a 
 silver handle, and Queen Clemence " a fly-flap 
 of broidered silk." In the inventory of King 
 Charles V. (1380), we find "a round folding fly- 
 flap in ivory, with the arms of France and Navarre, 
 and a handle of ebony." These fly-flaps were 
 made of lamels of ivory, slight and movable. 
 
 It is perhaps worthy of mention that Rabelais 
 writes indifferently csveniior and esventador for 
 the bearer of the Fan, whilst Brantome is perhaps 
 the first who makes use of the word eventail 
 (Fan), when he speaks in his Memoirs of the 
 Fan which the Queen Marguerite gave as a 
 new year's present to the queen, Louise de 
 Lorraine. This Fan is represented as being 
 made of mother-of-pearl and pearls, and so 
 beautiful and so rich "that it was spoken of 
 
 
( 4S ) 
 
 as a chef-d'xHvre, and valued at more than 1200 
 crowns." 
 
 Catherine de Medici was the first to bring into fashion 
 in France Itahan Fans surrounded with feathers, which 
 were made by all the perfumers whom she had brought 
 over with her in her retinue, and sold by them to the 
 ladies and all the young lords of the court. 
 
 Some drawings of the day represent the queen-mother 
 receiving in a haughty manner the salutations of her 
 courtiers, whilst with one hand she wafts a large folding 
 Fan before her bosom. The Fan seems to us to have 
 had in her eyes a particular charm, for Brantome further 
 tells us in his Memoirs that after the death of the king, her 
 husband, the gorgeous Florentine had caused to be placed 
 round her device broken mir- 
 rors, Fans, and shattered ; 
 plumes, "the whole," adds 
 the great jester and piquant 
 
 historiographer of the Dames ^ 
 
 Galantes, " as a manifest sign 
 of her having left all the 
 junketings of the world " 
 
 Henri Estienne, in his Tn'o 
 Dialogues of the New 
 French Tongue Italian- 
 ised and Otherwise 
 Disguised, ^': 
 omits not 
 to remark : 
 
( 49 
 
 "Our French dames owe to those of Italy this invention 
 of Fans ; those of Italy to those of ancient Rome those 
 
 of Rome to those of Greece Many ladies 
 
 love them so well," he goes on to say, " that they 
 cannot away with them, as they are made in the 
 present fashion, in winter time ; on the contrary, 
 as they used them during summer to give them- 
 selves air, and as defences against the heat of 
 the sun, so in the winter they use them as 
 defences against the heat of the fire." 
 
 The king, Henry TIL, that depraved, efienii- 
 nate man, who wore gloves and masks lined 
 with cosmetics and emollient pastes to soften 
 the skin, often went out into the forest stir- 
 rounded by Ids favourites, his pages, aiid his 
 falconers icith a Fan in his liand, which he 
 ..played with languid gesture and feminine 
 flexibility. Pierre de I'Estoile (in 
 \ ■ "■ the Isle of the Hermaphrodites, j 
 
 15SS), speaking of that man- 
 '■'uiii^litlt'jfe- ■ woman, who decked himse 
 
 ft. 
 
 
 ^«' 
 
 w 
 
 ^"::X!^'^^#r.»"'*"'^'?^*? 
 
 with necklaces of pearls, w ith 
 rm^s withcirrm^s -.'"« '^ 
 with T ads of 
 
 elvet and av 
 
f;.w. 
 
 M 
 
 >l\((^)-- 
 ^W 
 
 ( so ) 
 
 locks, which curled about his temples, says on 
 this subject : "In the king's right hand was placed 
 an instrument which folded and unfolded at a tap 
 of the finger — what we call here a Fan ; it was of 
 vellum, cut out as delicately as could be, with lace 
 round it of the same stuff. It was of a good size, 
 since it was intended to serve as a parasol to pre- 
 vent his becoming sunburnt, and to give some cool- 
 ness to his delicate complexion. . . . All those I was 
 able to see in the rest of the rooms had likewise 
 Fans of the same kind, or else made of taffetas, 
 with lace of gold or silver for a border." 
 
 It is apparently also of the Fan that Agrippa 
 d'Aubigne means to speak under the term of 
 parasol, which he uses when he cries in one of 
 the vehement and superb apostrophes of his 
 Tragiques : 
 
 tfe 
 
 " Make through the streets your way with dainty mien ; 
 
 Be swift to see, that you too may be seen ; 
 . Look to be looked at, deftly move your head, 
 
 Well smirch your face with Spanish white and red ; 
 
 Let hand and bosom take their share of grace, 
 
 In sun 1 7n€r screen with parasol your face. 
 
 Scream like some frightened woman in a crowd, 
 
 Then with a traitor's smile your terror shrouil ; 
 
 Affect a weary lisp, a soft voice try. 
 
 Open a languishing and heavy eye ; 
 
 
 

 liSe pen^i\'e, coy, uureelinLj, shy, am] culd, 
 
 ^liui be a chamber favourite — be bold ; 
 
 I'lit leave outside the door God, shame, and heart. 
 
 Or I in vain have taui^lit you thus your part." 
 
 The Fans then in use in this reahn of starched 
 and plaited ruffs, and of all the effeminate ex- 
 travagances of adornment, were the Evenlail ct 
 touffe, or Fan with a tuft of feathers, extremely 
 elegant, of a convex shape, and with a handle 
 of wood or of precious metal; \.\\& Eveniail plisse, 
 or plicated Fan, called also the Fan of Ferrara, 
 which affected the form of a goose's foot, very 
 curious, with a round handle hanging to a chain 
 of gold attached to the girdle, like those chains 
 called Jeanne d' Arc which were the fashion some 
 years ago ; and the Eventail girouette (or weather- 
 cock Fan), a Fan in form of a flag, which was made 
 of cloth of gold or silken stuff, a sample of which 
 may be seen in the Femme du Titien, that chef- 
 d'ccuvre which is preserved in the Museum of Dres- 
 den, and made popular by means of engravings. 
 
 It is in Italy, above all, that we find this Fan in 
 the hands of all the noble ladies of Florence, 
 Venice, Verona, Naples, and Mantua, towards the 
 end of the sixteenth century. 
 
 It is in this poetic Italy, which still supplies to 
 
 
 
:ar»""**. 
 
 the romantic 
 fancy of 
 modern Fan- 
 painters all 
 those pretty 
 scenes of love 
 in amhiish, 
 those dramatic 
 
 moonliglits, ill which we see 
 Juliet hanging on Romeo's 
 an?i, those water-colours, 
 blue or tender lilac on satin, and 
 those exquisite cameos which the 
 talent of artists in water-colours 
 has scattered on the vellum or Flemish_/a/7/« of Fans 
 which aspire to a luxurious and coquettish frame. 
 
 It is in Italy that the weathercock Fan received 
 its greatest development. In that time people 
 frequently wore, instead of scarfs and girdles, 
 gold chains of great price and of open work, to 
 which the ladies suspended keys cunningly made, or 
 other toys sacred or profane. 
 
 Hence it is, says the author of the Armoire aux Even- 
 tails, that these trinkets had very frequently the honour of 
 being attached to the hips of a pretty woman with a small 
 chain, part of that which encircled the waist. For this 
 reason it is that we find a large ring at the end of the 
 handle of the Fan. " Both men and women carry Fans," 
 writes the traveller Coryat from Italy ; " nearly all of them 
 are pretty and elegant. The frame is composed of a little 
 piece of painted paper and a small handle of wood ; the 
 paper glued on this is on both sides adorned with excellent 
 paintings or love-scenes, with Italian verses written beneath." 
 
{ S3 ) 
 
 One of these paintings of the Itahan Fan, wliich we have 
 seen in the rich collection of an amateur, represents a scene 
 which one would imagine drawn from the RagionanieJiti 
 iT Amore of Firenzuola, or escaped from some novel of Ban- 
 dello, Boccaccio, or Batacchi. It is the women bathing, 
 who are playing on the greensward without dreaming that 
 the curious eye of an enamoured gentleman is watch- 
 ing them through the foliage. 
 
 "In F'rance," remarks M. Natalis Ron- . > 
 
 dot, "the use of Fans had become, under ' 
 
 Henry IV,, sufficiently extensive to admit 
 of a trade which had acquired some im- ^ 
 
 ijortance. The right of following this was 
 claimed by four or five bodies of work- 
 men, and notably by the master leather- 
 gilJer.^, who founded their right on the 
 
 twelfth article of their 
 
 statutes, ordained in 
 
 December 1594 : 
 
 " JNIay furnish .... 
 
 Fans made with outer 
 
 lamb's skin, taffety, or 
 kid enriched or em- 
 

 j£ 
 
 
 ^_.. 
 
 
 
 
 
 ?!| 
 
 ( 54 ) 
 
 hellish ed, as it may please the merchant and lord 
 to command." 
 
 The Fan appears in French poetry, in Ronsard 
 and Du Bartas, who speak of the Ivins of air when 
 they wish to designate the refreshing zephyrs ; but 
 it is assuredly in Remy Belleau, in the rremihe 
 Journee of his Bergerie, printed in 1572, that we 
 find the most ancient and the most charming 
 mention of the Fan, under the form of a song. 
 A loving shepherd surprises three nymphs beneath 
 the shade of a large long-haired elm, pays his 
 reverence to them, and offers them three bundles 
 of feathers, accompanied with "a little writing, 
 in which were these little verses : " 
 
 " Ob, happy bundles, fly ; 
 Hie to rny s\^'eethea^ts, hie ; 
 SaUite them with good grace ; 
 Then softly kiss their hands. 
 Prefer then your demands, 
 'Us in your bosoms place.' 
 
 " So that if Love's hot darts 
 Shall ever burn their hearts, 
 That Love which me consumes, 
 You may make ihem content 
 With breezes gently sent 
 From your soft downy plumes. 
 
 " Ijelieve me, on my word. 
 These are no plumes of bird ; 
 Love his light feathers brings, 
 Who never more will fly, 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 '^^ 
 
 K 
 
 
'■*',■-: 
 
 ^£r^0^m^^ t^^^^' 
 
 
 
 mmL 
 
 'd 
 
 m 
 
 u 
 
 f^ 
 
 i^ 
 
 ii 
 
 ( 55 ) 
 
 Leaving you, with a sigh, 
 For captives, his two wings. 
 
 " Dear ladies, fear not Love 
 Will ever truant prove. 
 As bird of passage light ; 
 The bondage he loves best 
 Lies in your hand's arrest 
 Of his too speedy flight." 
 
 But it is no longer principally in the woods of 
 mytholog)', where Pan, the mighty hunter, the 
 Satyrs, Sylvans, Dryads, Hamadryads, and other 
 deities so highly honoured by the poets of the 
 Pleiad, are mingled in pastorals and sugared idyls, 
 that we find the Fan fifty years later. In the 
 seventeenth century it acquired the rights of 
 citizenship in French literature ; it glides not only 
 into the pastorals of L' Astree, into the Cytherce or 
 the romance oi Ariane, into Endymion, Fohxa/idre, 
 or La Caritee, into the little honey-sweet madrigals, 
 into the witticisms and bouts-n'ina, into the disser- 
 tations of the Menages, the Balzacs, the Pellissons, 
 and the Conrarts, into the letters of Voiture, of 
 Scudery, and even of Madame de Sevigne ; but 
 more than all this, it enters triumphantly upon 
 tlie stage in the Hotel de Rambouillet, where 
 the Zephyrs (as Fans were called in the style of 
 the precieux) play before the face of the Marquise 
 de Rambouillet, of the fair Julie d'Angenncs, her 
 daughter, or of Mademoiselle Paulet; it is found 
 
 :Mfcs 
 
 ii)' 
 
everywhere in the memoirs and pleasant anecdotes of 
 Tallemant des Reaux ; it attains even an exceptional 
 importance at last, when it supplements the play of 
 the actors, and confirms their talk in the marvellous 
 comedies of the great Moliere. 
 
 Can the Prccieiises Ridiailes or the FeitDiics Savanies 
 be represented without the clever " needful " which 
 flutters, assures the gesture, and identifies itself with 
 the action ? Can we see, for example, in the first of 
 these pieces, Cathos and Madelon deprived of the 
 pretty bauble which is unfurled so opportunely in their 
 bands, with the rustling of the wings of timid turtle- 
 doves, where Mascarille, setting his hand without cere- 
 mony on the button of his breeches, dares to cry out 
 grossly, like the lackey he is — 
 
 " And now I show to you a big fierce wound ! . . ." 
 
 Can we conceive again in the Feimnes Savantes Belise, 
 Armande, and Philaminte without the long Fan of the 
 period, when the three Blue-stockings of the Grand 
 Siecle analyse in their turns, half fainting away, the 
 ovcrwliehiting beauties of the famous Sonnet to the Princess 
 Uranie on Jier Fever ? 
 
 " Your prudence is asleep 
 To treat your enemy 
 With so great courtesy, 
 Her in such state to keep." 
 
 Here is the very triumph of Fan-playing, and that 
 
astonishing second scene of the third act of the Feiitmes 
 Savantcs would lose on the stage a great part of its 
 success and of its charming spirit if there were with- 
 drawn from it the particular and piquant accents given 
 to the exclamations of Belise or Philaminte; the 
 tumbles, the summersaults, the fulness, the febrile 
 action of the Fans handled, opened, shut, abandoned, 
 caught up again with the most lively expression of 
 enthusiasm, of languor, of fainting, or of delirium. 
 The Fan is in this terrible scene bristling with diffi- 
 culties for the actress, like a balancing -pole for a 
 tight-rope dancer ; without it all assurance fails. A 
 general deprived of his sword of command would be 
 less embarrassed than an Armande without her Fan, 
 and Trissotin would see himself with a very abashed 
 face if the celebrated 
 
 "Dismiss lier ; let them talk," 
 
 was not punctuated, taken up again by his three lady 
 admirers, paraphrased and scanned very slowly by the 
 seeSaw gear and malicious click of the Fans. 
 
 The reign of the Fan on the stage had, however, 
 begun before Moliere ; and in the mythologic entrees of 
 the Ballets composed specially for the private amuse- 
 ment of his Majesty, who played or danced his part 
 in them with great willingness, the goddess, the nymph, 
 or the shepherdess in the scene appeared in the accoutre- 
 ment of her bizarre costume furnished with, a long 
 

 
 % .-.. 
 
 
 -^^.^s^aa 
 
 ( 58 ) 
 
 fashionable Fan, which served her as a support 
 in the pas which she had to execute. In the 
 comedies and tragi-comedies of the first half of 
 the century, the chief actresses feared not to 
 unfurl their big leather Fan. So in the Cleopalre 
 or the Iphis et lante of Benserade, in the Mari- 
 anne of Tristan I'Herniite, in Cyminde or Les 
 Deux Vidimes of Colletet, the heroine fanned 
 lerself in the midst of the most pompous tirades, 
 without respect for the archaism or the majesty 
 of the most knotty Alexandrines. 
 
 The history of the Fan on the stage would by 
 itself form a curious chapter of theatrical fashions 
 and costumes ; for in this art of the comedian, 
 where the gesture names some object, or the 
 attitude depends sometimes on an accessory, or 
 the deportment demands a nothing to act as an 
 equilibrium and give assurance to the manners, 
 the Fan has always been that agreeable nothing 
 preferred by great comic actresses, who have 
 discovered a whole system of special tactics in 
 the infinite ways of using it. 
 
 The form of the Fan in the seventeenth 
 century has been preserved for us by the re- 
 productions of Saint-Igny, the Brothers de Bry, 
 and, above all, by Callot, whose engraving of 
 the Fan called Evenfail de Callot, is so legiti- 
 mately sought for today by iconophilists. The 
 mount of the stocks of the Fan was then of 
 
 

 "feG> 
 
 ( 59 ) 
 leather, outer lamb's skin, perfumed frangipane, 
 paper, or taffety, and the frames were made of "^V""^ 
 
 ivory, gold, silver, mother-of-pearl, and wood of V^r 
 
 calemberre (cakmhoiir), for which Hugo, in Kuy 
 Bias, has made so rich a rhyme, and, as it seemed, 
 so original in this verse : 
 
 " To my good sire, Elector of Neubouri;." 
 
 The Fans of the seventeenth century are not 
 rare ; very pretty specimens may be found in the 
 collections of great amateurs, and those which 
 Madame de Sevigne sent to Madame de Grignan 
 are still piously preserved in Provence as historic 
 objects. 
 
 Amongst the romances of the time, enriched A'" 
 
 with copperplate engravings or vignettes on ^^ 
 
 wood, we find over and over again the Fan in '"'X 
 
 the hands of ladies of noble lineage. In the A] 
 
 illustrations of Nanteuil, of Chauveau, of Fe- \ 
 
 pautre, above all, in the graven work of Sebastien --^'s- 
 
 Le Clerc, the Fan is represented as the indispens- •'-Tci- 
 
 able complement of costume, as well as in the r-,;- 
 
 pomp of some Duchess of high rank as in the j> 
 
 more modest toilet of some honest citizen's wife. B 
 
 Sometimes it is shut, held negligently in the c''; 
 
 abandon of a half-bare arm, heightening the j^ 
 
 delicacy and whiteness of tlie hand which is ^ 
 
 stretched out to it ; sometimes it lies half-open 
 Oil the breast, sometimes it is cast on the ground, 
 
 -w-c:S^^[i!i!i;---^- 
 
-r 
 
 emerging 
 from a walking toilet 
 out of a confused mass of 
 lace, or from the draperies 
 of a large fashionable 
 mantle. 
 
 When we consider atten- 
 tively the beautiful collec- 
 tion of costumes of the 
 seventeenth century of S^bastien Le 
 
 Clerc, we are struck with the importance which this artist, 
 more than any other, has given to the Fan, and with the 
 variety of modes he has introduced of managing this lovely 
 indispensable. 
 
 In the language of the riielles, the Fan was surnamed the 
 screen of modesty or the nseful zcp/iyr, just as the screen 
 became the useful countenance of ladies when they are before 
 the combustible element. When a Precieuse was assailed by a 
 Hamilcar, who had, as was then said, " ten thousand francs 
 a year in real wit, which no creditor could seize on or arrest," 
 she threw herself backward on a seat, and expressed all her 
 inmost sensations by the butterfly flutter of her Fan, to show 
 how deeply she was penetrated by sentiments so prettily 
 dictated. 
 
 When Doralise or Florelinde betook themselves to that 
 Empire of Oglings, also called The Rock of Liberties, they were 
 in the greatest care not to forget the precious Fan, which 
 
( 6i ) 
 
 served to such good purpose when they met those out-and-out 
 gallants who might make pretty speeches to them, and stiijf lliciii 
 witli the latest sweet. 
 
 It is in the promenade that we must see the Fan in tlic time 
 of La Fronde, when straw- was the rallying sign ; a fragment of 
 the Couleiir du Parti gives us an idea of it. 
 
 "At the end of a few minutes," says the his- .' -v .-' 
 
 torian, autlior of this pamphlet, "we entered the ^--. ^ 
 
 promenade, and saw in the midst of the great allee 1_ >,^ ' \ ' 
 a prodigious crowd assembled in groups, applaud- < 
 
 ing with enthusiasm, and crying, ' Long live the 
 King and the Princes! No Mazarin!' We ap- 
 proached. Frontenac, attached to ]\Iademoiselle, 
 came to tell us that this tumultuous joy was excited 
 by Mademoiselle, who was taking her walk, holding 
 a Fan to which was attached a bouquet of straw 
 bound with a blue ribbon." 
 
 In these few lines we see the first appearance of 
 the political Fan, which we shall find later on in a 
 period more profoundly troubled than that of La 
 Fronde, under the great Revolution. 
 
 How many gracious little verses, enigmas, epi- 
 grams, and sonnets, were inspired by the Fan at 
 this epoch ! Here, first, is the madrigal of a 
 poetic lady's man, of a vwurant (dier) of that 
 day, of the young sworded Abbe Mathieu de 
 
 il f' 
 
 -1^-1^^ 
 
 )A 
 
 .yM 
 
 .V 
 
 

 V 
 
 ^J'n 
 
 ^n. 
 
 '^3=^.-^ 
 
 1" 
 
 v3f 
 
 ( 6-^ ) 
 
 Montreuil, who languidly excuses himself in re- 
 turning her Fan to a lady, after having robbed 
 her of it for an instant. 
 
 Let us hear the delicate impromptu : 
 
 '* Pray be not angry, Ma'am, with me, 
 Because your Fan I once withdrew ; 
 I burn Avi(h love, Ma'am, so you see 
 I need its cool much more than you." 
 
 Is it not adorably coquettish and full of roguish 
 charm? 
 
 The Recueil de Sercy contains this other piece, 
 signed A. L. D., initials which reveal to us none 
 of the poets of that time : 
 
 " This little wind which flies 
 To cool your face, Belise, 
 This wind does but increase 
 The fire within your eyes. 
 
 ** Thus oft my hope, I find. 
 Which soothes my soul's desire, 
 Only augments the fire. 
 Since that hope is but wind." 
 
 This is more quintessenced, more enlabyrinthed. 
 Sappho would have applauded the ragout of senti- 
 ments to be found in these verses, but the delicate 
 editors of the Gazette dii 2endre might perhaps 
 have slightly criticised them. 
 
 Here comes the Abb^ Cotin, the unfortunate 
 victim of Boileau and of Moliere, who, in his 
 Recueil d'E?iig>nes, has preserved this on the Fan 
 screen, which was then only used in winter: 
 
 -m. 
 
 <3t 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 ft 
 
 i 
 
 '-1 .'v 
 
 -aT^-. 
 
 
 
 «f 
 
 )/ 
 
 

 
 ^^"^^^ 
 
 ^j 
 
 " They paint me and expose me to the llames ; 
 They paint my body of a diverse hue ; 
 My value to my services is due 
 In stopping Vulcan fiom attacl-;ing dames. 
 
 I come to lielp you, wlien you aid invoke, 
 
 To moderate the Ireat's tyrannic power ; 
 
 Most kind to lovers, I preserve the flower 
 
 And shrine of grace which holds their hearts in yoke. 
 
 " I'm held as though a sceptre, night and day. 
 In town and country I am used alway. 
 And those who give me worth are flame and ice» 
 
 When cruel winter holds the world in chains, 
 
 They set my value at the highest price ; 
 
 When summer comes, no friend to me remains." 
 
 Not SO bad, in truth, for the poor Trissotm- 
 Cothi ! But enigmas rain fast in the cresme dcs 
 bans vers or the elite of the poems of the 
 time. 
 
 Here is another riddle, an anonymous sonnet 
 on the Fan, dated 1659 : 
 
 " Brave am I, small, fair, delicate, and wise. 
 Court-loved, where many a lady fair and free, 
 A mortal goddess, holds me on her knee, 
 And calls the great ones and hears all their cries. 
 
 " This pretty dear can't move, or sit, or rise, 
 Unless she first derives support from me ; 
 Sometimes my fashions fill her soul with glee ; 
 Sometimes I but receive her windy sighs. 
 
 " I kiss her, closely cleave to her, fast bound ; 
 Press, when fate wills, her breasts' delicious round. 
 Which the most favoured cannot even touch. 
 
( H ) 
 
 And tliis is my amusement eveiy da)'. 
 
 To fly-flap all their faces, while, though much 
 
 They hate me, none of them dare say me nay." 
 
 All these madrigals, which might be 
 
 gathered ad infinitum in the little flowery 
 
 paths of the Fayiiasscs of the time, 
 
 indicate that the Fan was always mixed 
 
 up with affairs of lOve and gallantry, 
 
 and that in the youthful court of Louis 
 
 J XIV. it served as well for a pretext 
 
 to tender declarations as to ward off 
 
 too brusque avowals. 
 
 In the first amours of the King with 
 Mdlle. de Mancini — amours excjuisite 
 and pure in the morning of his great 
 reign — an anecdotist represents for us 
 the veritable sane de cJiasse, afterwards 
 set on the stage by clever artists. The 
 two lovers have wandered like two 
 turtle-doves under the branches, and 
 ride side by side in . a pretty copse, 
 joyously resonant with the warbling of 
 birds. Mazarin's niece dreainily lets her 
 white pony fall into a walk, and the 
 young prince compliments her softly 
 on her grace in holding in one hand 
 her Fan and her silken rein. 
 
 This version, so different from that 
 
 which shows us the interview under 
 
 an aged elm during a storm, deserves 
 
 to be recorded. Here the Fan plays 
 
 again the historic role ; uncertain 
 
 Love, not knowing on what subject 
 
 to pronounce its first murmurs, has 
 
 , chosen the Fan, like an un- 
 
 "'^^ ■ -- ■-?^1-:S!ZS-; -? a^i^"^^''"' '".'."' ZLt ti i i e t p d bird which perches on 
 
 - •« ..':« jiaalSsr'"*'^ »■'>- '^'*"*=S:-a?*- «' the first little branch he 
 
 finds within his ran^e. 
 
^^-r^ 
 
 This was the 
 time in which the veri- 
 er' rts dors of Fans first began to 
 have painted on the stuff or 
 silk mounts, flowers, birds, landscapes, 
 mythologic scenes, all that decorative art could find 
 in the domain of the Graces and the Loves. In 1678 
 some gilders, having joined the workmen exercising the 
 profession of Fan-makers, demanded and obtained of 
 the King permission to make themselves into a parti- 
 cular community, under the title of Alaster Fan-i?iakcrs, 
 by letters patent of the 15th January and 15th February 
 of that same year 1678. 
 
 D'Alembert credits the Queen of Sweden with a 
 brutal sally, which contributed not a little, it appears, 
 to bring Fans again into great fashion at court during 
 all seasons. In his Reflections and Anecdotes about the 
 Queen of Siceden he relates, that during his abode at 
 the court in 1656, many ladies of high rank, ignorant 
 of the profound antipathy which the daughter of 
 Gustavus Adolphus had for all feminine usages and 
 proceedings, consulted her to know whether the custom 
 of carrying the Fan ought to be adopted in winter as 
 well as in summer. " I think not," Christina is said 
 to have replied rudely. "You are sulTicienily tvcntees 
 (fanned or giddy) already." 
 
 It was an injury of which the women of the seven- 
 

 teenth century willed to avenge themselves, and 
 thence that mania for carrying Fans in all seasons 
 which subsists to the present day. This brusque 
 repartee of Christina calls to our recollection a 
 second anecdote which shows the ridiculous con- 
 tempt of that Queen for the coquetry of tl-.e Fan. 
 
 When Michel Dahl, a Swedish painter, took 
 the portrait of her Sovereign Highness at Rome, 
 he respectfully proposed to her that she should 
 hold in her hand a Fan. At this word Christina 
 gave a bound. " What's that ? " she cried. " A 
 Fan ! — never ! Give me a lion ; it is the sole 
 attribute which suits a Queen like me." In the 
 Mctamo7-phoses Francoises we gather this pretty 
 sonnet, which sufficiently indicates by its esprit 
 that the Fan was then the synonym of the light 
 and inconstant : — 
 
 ■ This light Fan was a young inconstant lad, 
 
 Whom many a fond givl was prepared to bless ; 
 But since liis nature constancy forbad, 
 His lot was windy promises to press. 
 
 Now gay and open, and now close and sad, 
 .Sometimes he uses fraud, sometimes address ; 
 
 And even then, where love would make him glad. 
 Becomes insensible to love's caress. 
 
 Spoiling at night what he at morn began. 
 That fickle boy at last became a Fan, 
 And thus his lightness is for ever known. 
 
 No woman's power yet has made him staid ; 
 
 But he makes others' fate what was his own. 
 And pays with wind, with whicli Iiimself was jiaid. 
 
:j?3^ 
 
 -£&;—- 
 
 
 
 ( 67 ) 
 
 Fans were very varied, the frames were nf 
 ivory, tortoise-shell, or mother-of-pearl carved so 
 as to produce the finest lace. The moimts of 
 the Fan in satin or vellum were painted with 
 water-colours, and many scented leathers were 
 also used, which generally came from the per- 
 fumeries of Grasse. It is thus that Mdlle. de 
 Montpensier in her Manoires quotes this character- 
 is'iic fact, which recalls the terrible sorrows and 
 devouring evil of the Queen Anne of Austria : — 
 
 " Although the Queen-Mother held always in 
 1-er hands a Fan of perfumed Spanish leather, 
 this did not prevent one from discovering her 
 disease." 
 
 There were, besides Fans of scented leather, 
 Feather Fans and Opera-Glass Fans, through 
 which the prudes looked a little indiscreetly, if 
 we may believe this note of the Mhiagiaim : — 
 
 " The open-work Fans which the women carry 
 when they go to the Porte Saint-Bernard to 
 breathe the fresh air on the bank of the river, 
 and occasionally to look at the bathers, are called 
 lorgnettes (opera-glasses)." This time of bathing 
 is called in certain almanacs Cidaisoii. — {Canicule 
 even is better than this vrllanous word). 
 
 At the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. 
 ribbons flourished everywhere, on dresses, knee- 
 breeches, and all the minor articles of the toilet. 
 
 The Fan, too, had its ribbon, which was called 
 
 i 
 
 
( 68 ) 
 
 Badin (playful). An anecdote gives to this qualification 
 of the ribbon of the Fan an origin which reaches up to 
 the Cardinal Richelieu, whose kittens playing mad pranks 
 among his sombre meditations, set themselves one day 
 for a frolic to tear in their gambols the ribbon of the 
 Fan of Anne of Austria, then in conference with the 
 great minister. 
 
 How many memories have been left by the Fan in 
 the royal lives and the romantic anecdotes which seem 
 to tear the pages of history ! 
 
 Madame de Genlis, in the Duchesse de la ValUh-e, 
 shows us Madame and the mistress of the young King 
 in an ingenious chapter, from which we will detach this 
 fragment : — 
 
 " The two following days, as Madame only received 
 her particular friends, Mademoiselle de la Valliere did 
 not pay her a visit, but on the morrow, which 
 was a grand levee, she came. She knew that 
 the King would not be there, and for the 
 hrst time she adorned herself with the splen- 
 did bracelets she had received from him, 
 which up to that day she had never 
 dared to put on. Mademoiselle 
 de la Valliere had hands and 
 arms of incomparable beauty, 
 and these dazzhng jewels ren- 
 dered them still more remaikable. 
 She wore gloves, and to avoid 
 all appearance of affectation she 
 deternimeJ not to take them 
 off except on 
 
{ 69 ) 
 
 approaching the card-table. IJut chance oflered her anotlicr 
 occasion more naturally. Mailame, just as they were arrang- 
 ing the card-tables, passed through the circle to speak to the 
 ladies who were paying their court to her. She let her Fan 
 fall. Mdlle. de la Valliere, who at that moment was within 
 two steps of her, advances, stoops, takes off her glove, 
 according to etiquette, in order to present to her the Fan, 
 which she piicks up and offers to her. The sight of the 
 magnificent bracelet, of which she had kept so lively a 
 remembrance, made on Madame so disagreeable an imjjres- 
 
 sion that she 
 suade herself 
 from such a 
 on Mdlle. de la 
 sparkling with 
 telling her to 
 table. ^Idlle. 
 without any 
 Bussy Rabu- 
 similar anecdotes, 
 sown them 
 Fan, held 
 French 
 
 could not [ler- 
 to take her Fan 
 hand. She cast 
 Valliere a look 
 spite and anger, while 
 la}- the Fan up;in a 
 de la A'alliere obeyed 
 motion of concern." 
 tin abounds with 
 and Saint Simon has 
 among his Mcmoires. Everywhere the 
 by love, plays its part in the history of 
 polished society, and in the annals of 
 
 ^ 
 
 gallantry. 
 
 .In one off the great festivals celebrated at Marly, Louis 
 XIV. paid pomage to the Dachesse de Bourgogne with a 
 Chinese Fan, adding to it — amiable madrigalist that he was — 
 this decastich, conaposed doubtless " by order," according to 
 the King^s taste : — 
 
 " Tu cliase iu summer time the busy llie^, 
 
 To keirp fiom cold when suns too quicklv fade, 
 Cliina, Princess, here offers you its aid 
 
 In very gallant wise ! 
 It fain had offered gifts of other sort, 
 To cljase all flattering dull fools from the court, 
 
 vSuch present had outslnned 
 
 The rest ; but this, the crown 
 
 Of gifts, most worth renown, 
 
 It seeks but cannot And/' 
 

 ¥W^ 
 
 
 <a 
 
 fa) 
 
 ( 70 ) 
 
 Louis XIV. was not yet acquainted with the 
 device of the Academy of Filiponi, lovers of 
 labour, of the Faenza, who had set on the medal 
 of their society a wing placed like a Fan, with 
 which a hand chases away the flies, with this 
 exergue, Fugantur desides : Let the sluggards be 
 put to flight. 
 
 The Fan was as much used in England as in 
 France in the seventeenth century, and, to travel 
 backwards, we see it employed in this country 
 from the time of Queen Elizabeth. As it was 
 framed in gold and silver, and ordinarily adorned 
 with jewels, a Fan was a lucky find for the pick- 
 pockets of that time; which explains a passage 
 of the Merry Wives of Windsor, in which Falstaff 
 says to Pistol, his companion in knavery, "And 
 when Mistress Bridget lost tlie handle of her Fan, 
 I took't upon mine honour thou hadst it not." 
 Steevens, one of the most erudite commentators of 
 Shakespeare, remarks, in interpreting a passage in 
 the Satires of Mars/on, that in the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth a Fan of this kind, with other trifles, 
 cost more than ^40 sterling (1000 francs), that 
 is, about 5000 francs of present French money. 
 
 In 1628 appeared a book called L'Eventail 
 Satyrique, by the new Theophile, which we have 
 read in the Vari'et'es Historiques et LiUeraires of 
 the lamented Edouard Fournier, to whom it 
 occurred to reprint this interesting little work in 
 
 (9 
 
.M.iM 
 
 §^^^^ 
 
 There is no question of the Fan, rz; — '^^'' 
 
 his collection 
 
 and we quote this little book only from memory. 
 The first piece is a very lively satire against 
 women's luxury. 
 
 The second piece, which is in prose, has for 
 its title ^n Apology for Satire. The author 
 congratulates himself for having contributed, as 
 far as in him lay, to the reformation of luxury. 
 The third and last piece, in verse, is a consolation 
 addressed to ladies on the reformation of lace and 
 dress prescribed by an edict of tlie King. This 
 piece is very inferior to the first, which has much 
 energy and cynicism of expression. 
 
 It would be difficult to quote these stanzas, 
 which have a vigour of swing and boldness which 
 would beyond all question scandalise our age. 
 These are lines to be inscribed in the superb 
 satirical Parnassus of the seventeenth century, in 
 company with the poetic chefs-d'oeuvre of Motin, 
 Berthelot, Regnier, Sigogne, and all that merry 
 band whom nothing daunts, who iinswaddle 
 cleverly the preciotis terms, to remain true and 
 powerful in their maleness as writers. 
 
 The superb engravings of Abraham Bosse, so 
 precious for the history of costume in France of 
 the seventeenth century, give us a complete idea 
 of the fashion in which women held their Fans 
 at court or ball. A print of this celebrated en- 
 graver presents us even with the Galcrie du Palais, 
 
 
 
 
 '0 
 
 
 lif 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 \ 
 
 ii! 
 
 i 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
72 
 
 where fashionable society prcteiiiied to buy its Fans in 
 
 order to put people on the wrong scent when they arranged 
 
 a meeting : — 
 
 " liere seeming simply, in the world's broad sight, 
 To buy gloves, ribbons, Fans^ and laces rare. 
 The clever courtiers whisper, ' Love, to-night 
 
 Meet me ; for love's sake meet me, you knou" wliere.' " 
 
 In the drawings and portraits of Huret, Le Blond, Saint 
 Jean, Bonnard and Trouvain, of Sandrart or of Arnould, we 
 see, finely engraved with the graver or drawn with Italian 
 stone, ladies of quality with peaked waists — the famous wasp 
 waists of the seventeenth century — 
 short sleeves, and ample petticoats 
 tucked over others more narrow. 
 
 All hold the Fan in one hand, either 
 shut in the pose of meditation at 
 church, or half open in the reception 
 by day, or stretched wide on the fur- 
 belowed dress on the promenade, or 
 simply displayed to the height of the 
 fontaiige, or lastly, at the play, in the 
 hall of the comedians of the Marais, or 
 in that of the Hotel de Bourgogne. 
 At tlie theatre, as in our days, it 
 flitted softly over the 
 disturbed bosoms of the 
 ladies, and we might 
 hear its charming dry 
 sound, the rustle of 
 its crumpled silk, and 
 the clashing of its frame 
 of gold or ivory, whilst 
 the candles were 
 being lighted, and 
 the spectators were 
 arrangingtheir seats 
 with a great clatter, 
 and during the act- 
 ing of the piece 
 
'£"ii»A 
 
 
 T 
 
 itself, when the marquises and all the great 
 personages encumbered the sides of the pro- 
 scenium. 
 
 What had become of a woman without lier 
 Fan ? ^^'hat countenance could she put on to 
 mask her shame at certain gushes of old French 
 gaiety, or at the sallies of some farces a little 
 too fast ? Was it not necessary to applaud those 
 adorable Italian buffoons; to mark the measure of I 
 Lulli's country-dances; to brandish the Fan at the fine 
 tirades of Baron ; and to give a little cry, putting the Fan 
 shut on the mouth, when Montfleury entered the scene? 
 
 But, nevertheless, at the end of the century — thanks 
 to the austerity of Madame de Maintenon and her de- 
 clamations against feminine luxury — the Fan followed 
 the fashion, became less large and more modest. The 
 court of the old King put on the cowl of sorrow ; no 
 more did the Fan spread itself across the pretty mouths, 
 joyously opened by the natural laughter of youth ; it 
 foundered for a while with the disappearance of silks and 
 golden stuffs ; it became small to enter the confessional ; 
 and if a gallant gentleman still dared to send a Fan as 
 a present to a lady, he accompjanied it no more with 
 a burning madrigal, with a tender billet, or with a stray 
 declaration, as in the good days of old ; but he devoutly 
 added to it, to get himself pardon for his boldness, 
 some philosophic and moral strophes in the style of these 
 which follow : — 
 
^ 
 
 %^\ 
 
 
 
 ( 74 ) 
 
 " If it be true that fiom all tilings we ought, 
 Finding some good, to live, 
 
 You have a very proper subject for your thought 
 Here in tliis Fan I give. 
 
 Its use will put this query to your mind. 
 What is the world but wind ? 
 What all the joys which seem to make us rich ? 
 What all ive think so gay ? 
 
 What are they? what but painted shadows which 
 
 Pass in a breath away ! 
 
 The Fan is like our life ; it opens wide, 
 
 And then is shut, and then is laid aside, 
 
 To rest unseen, forgotten and alone. 
 
 In it, O fair and sweet sage Sylvia, see 
 
 What at the end of life we all shall be ; 
 
 Nought else, my dear, nought else but skin on bone ! " 
 
 A reverend might have signed this singular 
 and philosophic madrigal. Pascal might have 
 congratulated Jacqueline, the poetess of his family, 
 upon it. But what would you have said, La 
 Valliere, before your repentance, gracious Fon- 
 tange, and burning Montespan ? What would 
 you have said to it, amiable coquettes of the 
 living youth of Louis, but that it were a discourse 
 to make one die — according to the terms of your 
 pretty language — in a frightful fast of delight ? 
 
 With Philippe, grand Duke of Orleans, Re- 
 gent of France, the dawn of new glories rises 
 for pleasure, sprightliness, and frowardness in 
 woman : — 
 

 
 See, there, where often fairest lailies fill 
 The place, comes Love with beautifLil swift feet ; 
 To heap his subjects with new grace, he will 
 Make for them in his court a blest retreat. 
 There often women in disguise become 
 Savage to husbands, but to lovers tame. 
 Thither the deity, from his high home. 
 Invites all hearts to hi? amusing game, " 
 
 In this charming Regency the Fan was re-born ; 
 we might rather say it re-flourished, and became 
 more briUiant in women's hands ; it is held 
 there with more hardihood, more languor, more 
 grace than ever. We might suppose that the 
 ribbon called Badin had been replaced by one 
 of the bells borrowed from the pretty bauble 
 of the time, for folly makes it its attribute ; a 
 troublesome, roguish folly, of which Eisen has 
 personified the image in the midst of his beautiful 
 vignettes, which bring the gaiety and introduce 
 the bare shoulders of the age into a coquette 
 edition of Erasmus's Praise of Folly. 
 
 The fashion of Fans became generalised, after 
 the Regency, with the refinements of luxury and 
 good living ; from that tiine it became the absolute 
 companion of women. It appeared with them 
 even in the orgies of those little suppers, and 
 the intoxications of those breakfasts on the grass ; 
 it rested by their side on sofas and beds of 
 rejiose ; in the deshabille of the morning levee, 
 and in the badinage of gallant talk. 
 
The Abbe Ruccellai. a W Flotentme, founder 
 o{ the order of /efi/s-nuh'/ra '"^^'.^ and one of those 
 who introduced into France ■ the fashion of the 
 
 vapeurs (blue devils), with a luxury which tlie farmers- 
 general Bouret and La Popeliniere did not in later 
 times surpass, went so far as to cause to be served 
 upon the table, in the days when he had his joyous 
 assemblies, great basins of silver-gilt filled with essences, 
 perfumes, gloves, and Fans, which were all at the dis- 
 posal of his musk-perfumed guests. 
 
 The small Fans, which had fluttered too long under 
 the black coifs of Madame de Maintenon, were re- 
 placed by models more elegant, better arranged, of a 
 more happy colour, and of larger spread. 
 
 The Fans of the Indies and of China penetrated 
 France in profusion, and the art of the Parisian Fan- 
 makers acquired a supreme taste, an exquisite grace 
 of ornamentation and of delicacy of work. From China 
 was borrowed the kind of Fan called brise or folding, 
 and on fragile mounts of vellum, on fine paper or 
 muslin, were painted incomparable wonders of surpris- 
 ing skill, of a conception and arrangement almost 
 
always i r r e- 
 iroachable. 
 Every where are f'cks galantcs, 
 scenes from Olympus of a 
 nudity a little too free, azure 
 apotheoses, in which the Graces are multiplied 
 and Love distributes his kisses. Here is 
 Amphitrite, radiant on her shell of motlic-of- 
 pearl ; there Adonis is dying under wanton 
 caresses ; next come the amusing personages of 
 the Italian comedy, in landscapes of an ideal 
 green ; the Mezzetins, the Columbines, the Spa- 
 vento, the Leanders, in languid poses, who seem 
 to be sighing for Isabelles at once passionate and 
 deceitful. Here, again, are country parties, hunts 
 peopled with huntresses, pleasures of the Enchanted 
 Isle, flights of Loves on rosy clouds, garlands of 
 flowers which enshrine delicate medallions, or 
 large cartouche rockwork representing rendezvous 
 in the wood. See here is the lesson on the 
 spinnet, the declaration of love or the billet-doux furtively de- 
 livered; and all this in a freshness of colouring, in a fineness 
 of touch, which shine powerfully in the centre, but die softly 
 away towards tlie extreme portions of the ornamentation. 
 
^^ 
 
 m 
 
 -4k 
 
 4." 
 
 4 
 
 ( 78 ) 
 
 On some Fans we read little gallant verses, 
 such as those signed by Lebrun, which we have 
 seen writ on vellum in the midst of many dainty 
 charms : — 
 
 " Caiite, whose teeth are pearls, whose bright eyes 
 gleam 
 Like stars, whose hps — but why pursue tlie theme? — 
 Complains of summer's heat. Then Love's self brings 
 A dainty Fan to cool her cheeks of cream, 
 M;ide of liis own light wings." 
 
 In the Alercure de France of October 1730 this 
 curious detail is found : — 
 
 " Many Fans are of a very considerable price 
 and excessively large, so that some little folks 
 are not quite twice the height of their own 
 Fans, a circumstance which ought to fill with 
 a due sense of respect the light and too playful 
 cavaliers." 
 
 It was, doubtless, on one of these Fans like 
 giants that Louis de Boissy, the author of the 
 Babilla7-d, wrote these coquettish verses to one 
 of his mistresses : — 
 
 " Become the guardian of my darling's rest, 
 
 Good Fan, I give awhile my rights to you ; 
 And should some daring beau my love molest, 
 Touch her fair hand, or come too near her breast, 
 Good Fan ! do rap his knuckles soundly, do ! " 
 
 Besides the Fans signed by Watteau, Moreau, 
 
.i4.V.K\„ 
 
 
 % 
 
 ( 79 ) 
 Lancret, Pater, Lemoine, Fragonard, or Baudoin, 
 Gravelot, Gillot, or Eisen — besides these marvels 
 of art, there existed cheap Fans at prices from 
 fifteen to twenty denicrs. The frame was of 
 wood incrusted with ivory, and on the mount of 
 coarse paper were thrown, pell-mell, flowers, field 
 trophies, heavy medallions, or cartouches contain- 
 ing songs. 
 
 About the middle of the century there were 
 in Paris 150 master Fan-makers, and according 
 to a curious work, the Journal du Ciioyen, pub- 
 lished at the Hague in 1754, we may very nearly 
 determine the price paid for Fans at that 
 epoch. 
 
 Fans in gold wood cost 9 to 36 livres the 
 dozen; those in palisander wood, only 6 to 18 
 livres. For Fans in wood half ivory — that is, 
 the chief sticks in ivory and the gorge in bone — 
 one had to pay as much as 72 livres; for those 
 entirely made of ivory, 60 livres, and even t,o 
 to 40 pistoles a dozen; the mounts were of 
 perfumed leather or paper, and the frames were 
 often enriched with gold, precious stones, and 
 painted enamels. 
 
 The Fan-makers were united with the toy- 
 dealers and the musical instrument makers by 
 the edict of the nth August 1776, and by the 
 
 iS^-^ 
 
 # 
 
 c-;^ 
 
 4J ,-;- 
 
( So ) 
 
 same edict the painting and varnishing relative to these 
 professions were attributed to them in concurrence with the 
 painter-sculptors. 
 
 We should mention, though not at any length (for the 
 study of Fans of this kind would demand many very 
 abstract pages), the famous varnish, exceeding fine, 
 which the carriage-painter Martin invented for the 
 use of Fans, known under the denomination of 
 Eventails en vernis Mariin, which by their bril- 
 liant tonality rival the most beautiful lacquers 
 of China and Japan. 
 
 It is, above all, in the eighteenth 
 century that the Fan enters nito the 
 physiology of the feminine toilet, with 
 the patch-box, the scent-bottles, the 
 amber-perfumed powders, and all 
 the delicate arms of woman got 
 ready by the Loves, formerly distri- 
 buted by them to the AtXicTA&pefiies- 
 Jlk' '^yHr mattresses a vapeurs, when they re- 
 
 ^W ^^1^^ ceived at their morning toilet 
 
 the arch-abbe, the bearer of 
 madrigals, and the fashionable 
 author, who came to admire the 
 little tumbled air of the beauti- 
 ful divine, or her fresh- 
 ness as a devote 
 
 •t> 
 
In the drawing-rooms 
 
 of this century, where 
 
 the French esprit shone 
 
 still with so bright a 
 flame, in the Hotels de Nevers, de Bouillon, or de 
 Sully at Paris, at the Chateau de Sceaux, at the house 
 of the Duchesse du Maine, in all choice society where 
 politeness, good taste, and talent met together, the 
 Fan unfurled its graces in the hands of pretty women. 
 People fainted less preciously than in the blue drawing- 
 room of Arthenice, but they simpered more ; especially 
 when these ladies made a circle to hear a poem or a 
 tale in verse, which was read by La Fare, Vergier, 
 Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, or the young Abbe de Bernis, 
 whom Fariau de Saint Ange wittily called a Fan- 
 poet. 
 
 The Fan acquired then a charming language ; it 
 underlined the least shades and the most diverse senti- 
 ments. Sometimes it even tumbled to the ground, in 
 sign of despite, when the business in hand was to define 
 a versified enigma, of which itself was the object, such 
 as the following, the most celebrated, we believe, of all 
 those made in that century on the same subject : — 
 
 iWi-' 
 
 ' A skeleton you may my body call, 
 And never aught but skin and bone was mine ; 
 Without repose in company I shine, 
 Through summer's heat I fly to every ball. 
 V 
 

 T 
 
 ( 8. ) 
 
 With little toil I cause a mighty sweet, 
 
 My body is made up of many folds. 
 
 My long thin bones one single sinew holds, 
 
 My bones, which may be parted, but must meet. 
 
 You will not find in me the serpent's wile. 
 
 And yet like him I change both skin and hue, 
 
 And show myself in quite another style. 
 
 So that men know me not, I seem so new." 
 
 Then the whole company gave up guessing, 
 unless an ingenuous petite-ma'iiresse burst out with 
 an EUiJixa, in a cry of joy, and produced her Fan 
 as a solution of the problem. 
 
 Rabener, in his Satyres, in the chapter headed 
 Means to Discover by Exterior Signs Secret Thoughts, 
 has but given a superficial idea of the language of 
 Fans in these few hues which we translate : — 
 
 " A woman who criticises the dress of those 
 of her society has a particular manner of playing 
 her Fan. This implement assumes quite another 
 figure when she who carries it is offended. When 
 a woman agitates her Fan, and smilingly regards 
 her hand and the looking-glass, I consider it a 
 proof that she is thinking of nought, or what is 
 the same thing, that she is thinking only of her- 
 self, or lastly, that she is awaiting with impatience 
 the hour which she has appointed for a rendezvous. 
 When a woman out walking meets one of her 
 
aspirants, and lets her Fan fall, it is an invitation ; 
 if she adds to it a glance of her eye, it is a first 
 step in advance. At the theatre, to applaud by 
 striking the hand with the Fan means, 'This 
 author has read a lecture to me; he has told 
 me I am charming, therefore his piece is good; 
 and those who refrain from applauding it are 
 monsters.' " 
 
 Much more studied is the dissertation of the 
 Baronne de Chapt in the first volume of her 
 CEuvns Plulosopliiques. This learned dowager 
 shows a hundred ways of using a Fan, and re- 
 marks very rightly that a woman of fashion might 
 
 take snuff as agreeably as the Due de , blow 
 
 her nose as artistically as the Comte de , 
 
 laugh as finely as the Marquise de , put 
 
 out her little finger as properly as the Presidente 
 
 de , and yet all these rare talents would 
 
 not be enough, unless she knew how to make 
 a skilful use of her Fan. " It is so pretty," says 
 she, "so convenient, so suited to give countenance 
 to a young girl, and extricate her from embarrass- 
 ment when she presents herself in a circle and 
 blushes, that it cannot be too much exalted. We 
 see it straying over cheeks, bosoms, hands, with 
 an elegance which everywhere produces admirers. 
 
 ^ 
 
 
( 84 ) 
 
 Thus a citizeness sort of person, who is but so-and-so, 
 
 according to the language of the day, in wit and beauty, 
 
 becomes supportable if she knows the different moves of 
 
 . , , the Fan, and can adapt them to the right occasions. 
 
 " Love uses the Fan as an infant a toy, makes 
 
 , .-..it assume all sorts of shapes; breaks it even, and 
 
 ■" -j;^ lets It fall a thousand times to the ground. 
 
 How many Fans has not Love torn ! 
 
 They are the trophies of his glory, 
 
 and the images of the caprices of the 
 
 fair sex ! 
 
 " It is not a matter of indifference 
 a fallen Fan. Such a fall is ordinarily 
 the result of reflection, intended as 
 a test of the ardour and celerity of 
 aspiring suitors They run, they 
 prostrate themselves, 
 and he who picks up 
 the Fan the first, and 
 knows how stealthily 
 to kiss the hand that 
 takes It, carries off the 
 victory The lady is 
 
 'i 
 
 
 
 %'-'- 
 
 
 ^■; .•■^^;i;. '-'-■■" .^isSKl^^v^''-;?^;;;!^^^ 
 
( 85 
 
 obliged for his promptitude, and it is then that the eyes, 
 in sign of gratitude, speak louder even than the mouth." 
 
 What a brilliant role is played by the Fan, this 
 judicious Baronne de Chapt goes on to remark, 
 when it is found at the end of an arm which gesticu- 
 lates and salutes from the depth of a carriage or a 
 garden. It says to him who understands it that she 
 who holds it in her hand is in raptures at seeing him. 
 That is not all. When a woman wishes to procure a 
 visit from a cavalier who she suspects is in love 
 with her, she forgets her Fan ; and this ruse often 
 succeeds, for either the Fan is brought to her by 
 the gallant himself, or it is sent to her with 
 elegant verses, which accompany it, and almost 
 always invite a reply. 
 
 How many times, to please the ladies, has 
 not the Fan been sung in this coquettish 
 eighteenth century ! A thousand 
 tales have been made about its 
 charms, its esprit, its origin. 
 We have already spoken of - ■„ 
 
 the pretty fable of Nougaret ' " !•,, 
 
 on the origin of Fans ; that ,?, 
 
 of the comic poet, Augustin 
 de Piis, equally deserves pre- ' -^-•' 
 
 -\"; 
 
 
 .'*, 
 
 ^i 
 
 
 
%-^^ 
 
 
 s^ 
 
 V 
 
 >J^ 
 
 
 m^ 
 
 EI 
 
 servation among the fugitive poems, in which ease 
 supplies the place of talent, and where the art of 
 pleasing makes us forget the art of poetry. Here 
 is this fable-song, extracted from the Bahioles 
 Litteraires et Critiques, sung formerly to the air 
 of "Tout roule aujourd'hui dans le monde." 
 
 Let us not sing this fable to that old forgotten air, 
 but at least let us introduce it into this collection : 
 
 " One day Dan Cupid, all alone, 
 
 The works of Ovid in his hand, 
 Walked idly through the ways flower-grown 
 
 Of Venus' own most lovely land. 
 Sudden across the trace he comes 
 
 Of six fair feet upon the green, 
 And reckons — he was good at sums — 
 
 The Graces three that way had been. 
 
 Towards them in divine delight 
 
 Cupid directly makes his way ; 
 The girls of course were naked quite, 
 
 How* Cupid dressed, I need not say. 
 But when the fair immortal Three 
 
 Met him whose wounds no herb can cure, 
 Be sure they were surprised, and he. 
 
 This Cupid was entranced, be sure. 
 
 The god, who had not read in vain 
 
 Of Argus and his visual store, 
 Thought he would give his whole domam 
 
 To have as many eyes, and more. 
 Venus' spoilt boy his look allows 
 
 To linger on each modest pose 
 Of maids, who felt upon their brows 
 
 The lily change into the rose. 
 
 With their left hand they veil their eyes. 
 To hide them from that peering elf; 
 
 ^^ 
 

 
 
 '^ 
 
 
 'jprnrM 
 
 i 
 
 ii 
 
 m 
 
 ( s, ) 
 
 What with their right they did, 'tis wise 
 To let men think each for liimself. 
 
 But when they sought with idle force 
 Both eyes with one small hand to hide, 
 
 Tlie poor girls were obliged of course 
 To spread their lingers somewhat wide. 
 
 And soon Dan Cupid was aware 
 
 That though they veiled their eyes, between 
 The fingers of that Trio fair 
 
 Himself was very clearly seen ; 
 On which his curly little head 
 
 Deeply to meditate began. 
 Till from their fair hands thus outspread 
 
 He took his first hint for the Fan. 
 
 Then to that sex wdiich blesses ours 
 
 He kindly gave the new delight, 
 Which in the summer's warmer hours 
 
 Preserves their faces rosy white. 
 The mount may serve to hide the shame 
 
 Which bold talk on their brow may fix. 
 But their bright eyes can, all the same, 
 
 In secret see between the sticks." 
 
 To give the Fan this gracious origin, in which 
 Love surprises the Graces, and is by them sur- 
 prised, is an affabulation well worthy of the last 
 century, and is more to our purpose than all the 
 archceological dissertations, which prove nothing 
 save the ignorance of savants, and the origin of 
 the ennui of which they are the occasioa 
 
 When, after all the little court intrigues, the 
 Comtesse du Barry was at last presented, on the 
 2 2d August 1770, by the Comtesse du Beam, at 
 a return froin the hunt, to the great scandal of 
 
 Ml 
 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 
the Choiseul family, she made a superb entry, holding 
 her head high, covered with jewels, spreading over her 
 bosom a Fan of the most costly kind, which assured her 
 demeanour, and seemed to affirm by her attitude that this 
 set aside every veil, and had humbled to the dust the 
 enemies who were so eager for her destruction. 
 
 The Fan played here also an historical part, of which 
 we shall not develop the importance. Whilst it opened 
 gloriously in the hands of the du Barry, it shut and 
 rustled with rage in the hands of the Duchesse de Gram- 
 mont. Let us, by way of antithesis, invoke only this qua- 
 train, which was registered by Maurepas, and evidently 
 refers to the favourite : 
 
 " If a new odalisque began 
 The art of government to try, 
 In a new song her history 
 Is written clearly on a {•an." 
 
 Is it not opportune to quote here, a propos of all these 
 queens of the left hand, the Demoiselles de Nesles, Madame 
 de Chateauroux, Madame de Pompadour, and of the petite 
 Lange, these ingenious verses of M^rard Saint-Juste ? — 
 
 " In modem times as ancient, now as then, 
 Kings, crowned and sceptred, ruled the mob of men ; 
 The Fan, more potent, ruled these very kings." 
 
 If from the intrigues of the court we pass to the green- 
 room of the comedy or the opera, we shall still meet the 
 

 
 Fan, as well in the hands of 
 Zaire, Elmire, or Roxelane, 
 as in those of the Luciles, Or- 
 phises, Florises, or Lisettes. 
 
 In the actor's green-room, the 
 play of the Fan was to be seen everywhere in the amiable 
 conversations wherein the gentlemen of the chamber took 
 part, who, like Richelieu, knew how to perfume vice, or 
 the frolicsome abbe's who passed from group to group, 
 carrying with them their sallies and roguish flirtations. 
 In 1763, Goldoni produced at the Italian Comedy a piece 
 in three acts entitled T/ie Fan, which obtained a marked 
 success. " There existed at the opera," says M. Adolphe 
 Jullien, in his Histoire du Costume au Theatre, "a singular 
 usage. An actress thought herself bound to hold some- 
 thing in her hand on her entrance on the stage. Thelaire 
 had a handkerchief, Iphigi^nie a Fan, Armide, Mc^dee, 
 every fairy and enchantress, had a golden wand, a figure 
 of her magic power." 
 
 In the comedy interspersed in the ariette Ninette d 
 la Cour of Favart, Fabrice, the confident of the Prince 
 Astolphe, clothes in a magnificent dress the artless maid 
 whom his illustrious master wishes to seduce, and presents 
 her with a Fan, as the complement of the toilet of a great 
 
( 90 ) 
 lady. "What is this for?" asks Ninette prettily, 
 and Fabrice replies : 
 
 " Girl ! 'tis an instrument 
 
 Decorum and delight to keep ; 
 'Tis a most useful prize ! 
 A haven this to which shame flies, 
 A fragile rampart for the eyes, 
 
 Which through it still may peep. 
 
 Between its folds, a slow, sly look 
 
 May safely wing its way. 
 To read a lover like a book. 
 You may seem modest by its aid, 
 
 Hear all, examine all, 
 And laugh at all, and yet seem staid. 
 By its quick clash is wrath displayed, 
 
 Its gentle rustle is Love's call. 
 
 The Fan has oft Love's signal been ; 
 
 It shows off well an arm, I ween ; 
 It gives a grace and natural fall 
 
 To every air and tone ; . . . 
 When pretty woman holds it, then 
 'Tis f(jlly's mace, and mortal men 
 
 It governs every one ! " 
 
 Ah 1 but one should see in this scene the 
 charming Ninette Favart, the dear little niece 
 Fardhie, the amiable iounu-tcte of the Abbe' de 
 Voisenon, the ancient Justine Chantilly, under- 
 lining with her Fan her surprise, and her want of 
 skill in managing it. It is to such arch tricks, to 
 
S.<C5 
 
 ( 91 ) 
 
 these prettinesses of the adorable " comedienne," 
 that the victor of Fontenoy gave up his arms. 
 
 The opera-glass Fan, of which we have caught 
 a glimpse in the seventeenth century in a note of 
 the JSIaiagiana, was brought into fashion again 
 towards the latter half of the eighteenth. In a 
 paragraph of the paper called Necessaire for 1759 
 we read in fact : 
 
 " Curiosity being equal in the two sexes, and 
 the ladies loving almost as well as ourselves to 
 draw near to them such objects as appear in- 
 teresting to them, a means of satisfying this desire 
 without wounding modesty has been imagined; 
 an opera-glass is set in the chief sticks of a 
 Fan, of which ladies may make use without com- 
 promising themselves, forming a sort of counter- 
 battery, which they may oppose to the indiscreet 
 opera-glasses of our petits-tncuires." 
 
 This fashion deserves a revival at the present 
 day; but let us give also hospitality to this curious 
 piece of Paris news of the same journal and of 
 the same date : 
 
 " There has just blossomed in the empire of 
 fashion a little phenomenon which may well 
 obtain a success, like so many others of the 
 same kind : a very rich Fan of a form quite 
 different from all others. Its sculpture and pink- 
 
 'v>-'' 
 
( 92 
 
 ing are of a taste altogether new. The most agreeable 
 part of this Fan is perhaps that when it is shut it has 
 the form of a bouquet. Le Sieur Le Tuteur, the inventor 
 a Parisian, appears a man capable of imagining and exe- 
 cuting many things of this kind." 
 
 This Eventail h cocarde, well known in our days, which 
 folds upon itself by means of a ribbon placed in the handle, 
 drawn at will, brings us to the Revolution, where all was 
 cockade. Among the city people we find the Fan, as well 
 in the crowd at the opening of the States-General, where it 
 blossomed in the sun of May, in the windows and balconies 
 of Versailles, amidst precious stuffs, pretty toilets, and 
 flowers, as later, on the 14th July, in the grand movement 
 of Paris, which showed the women of the Faubourg Saint 
 Antoine inciting the citizens to the taking of the Bastille, 
 and seeming to point out by that frail toy the ancient for- 
 tress, the symbol in their eyes of slavery, 
 despotism, and tyranny. 
 
 At the time of the declaration of the 
 
 Rights of Man, the Fan, the only arms 
 
 of woman, applauded the era of liberty, 
 
 as if by a sort of instinct woman had 
 
 ' ' understood that these rights of man 
 
 were in some sort her own, and that 
 
 she ought to flatter the hopes of an 
 
 independence and a new power. 
 
( 93 ) 
 
 the day, became at that instant political — Law, Justice, 
 Reason replaced in its figures the rosy nymphs and 
 coquettish shepherdesses of Watteau under the anckn 
 regime. It was surrounded by the tricolor, it was sown 
 with cockades; and while the revolutionary ,-. 
 Fan was all the rage at Paris in the shaking i; 
 hands of the proud citizeness, the ci-devants ...' 
 carried to a foreign land the ehefs-d'eeuvre of li'^ 
 decoration of monarchical Fans, all the pretty 
 water-colours of those incomparable artists 
 who dreamed only of the Graces and the 
 artistic expression of veritable French ,'ij;f'S 
 genius. ■ 
 
 It is a proven fact, we w^ere told 
 by a great Parisian Fanmaker, that 
 the emigrants carried away nearly 
 all their Fans, with their jewels ^^ 
 and their dressing-cases; 
 all those mar- 
 
 ,>^^s^- 
 
W-, 
 
 ^i 
 
 
 ( 94 ) 
 vellous Fans which we find abroad are the result 
 of this emigration. But at the price of what 
 sorrows, what tears, what mournful memories, 
 must these fair ladies in disgrace have parted 
 with those ornaments, companions of their glorious 
 seducements, when the days came of distress and 
 abandonment ! 
 
 At the commencement of the Revolution, 
 among other political matters painted on mounts 
 of paper or of satin, Fans were made called the 
 States-General, as appears from this passage of a 
 pamphlet of the time, entitled La Fromenade de 
 Province, which has a character sufficiently pretty 
 to be here inserted : — 
 
 III. Conference. — The Abb'e. — You have there 
 a charming Fan, madam; very pretty, on my word. 
 What is the name of these Fans ? 
 
 MiJiii. — I had thought you knew all about that, 
 Abbe. These Fans are called the States-General. 
 {She gives him a rap on the knuckles.') 
 
 Abbe. — Let us see, madam ; yes, the States- 
 General. I know a little about this. This pro- 
 bably is M. Necker on his throne. 
 
 Minii. — Oh, no ; that's the king. 
 
 Abbe. — Ah, yes ; the king. On this side the 
 man in violet represents, of course, religion. 
 
 Mimi, — No; it's a farmer-general. 
 
a^r^^^ 
 
 
 frs/ 
 
 ( 95 ) 
 
 AI>l>L'. — On the left this large woman is probably 
 France thanking her sovereign ? 
 
 Mimi. — Not a bit of, it ! it is Minerva, who 
 presents to him the attributes of glory and wisdom. 
 
 Abbe. — And this great man seated, and this 
 little man standing up with his order of the 
 Holy Ghost, what are they doing ? Ah ! I have 
 it ! they are the bodj'-guards. 
 
 Mimi. — A happy idea ! They are the emblems 
 of the nobility and the clergy who are abdicating 
 their privileges. 
 
 Abbe. — All this is very pretty, very pretty, truly. 
 
 Ali/iii. — You have not seen it all. There is also 
 a song. 
 
 Abbe. — A song? Ah, you know how I love 
 new songs ! It is my weakness these songs. 
 Come, let us see. {He hums between his teeth : 
 re, rt, mi, lit, si, si, si, ut, si, la.) Good, 'tis 
 a mood of six-eighths. I know that air. You 
 shall hear. {He sings: Le roi fait du bien a la 
 France. ) 
 
 Mimi. — Don't sing so loud ; people will hear 
 you. 
 
 Abbe. — What harm? 
 
 Mimi. — Do you want to cause a scene? {Ten- 
 derly.) And will you not have time to sing it 
 to me to-night? 
 
 m^ 
 
 -W 
 
 
( 96 ) 
 
 
 When the Terror began to spread its tyranny over 
 France, these pretty pictures of the Mimis and the 
 young Abbes disappeared, giving place to dramas of 
 blood, to the hideous females of the Revolution, and 
 to the savage tricoteuses. The last women — truly women 
 of the eighteenth century — who appeared, showed them- 
 selves on the fatal tumbrel amidst the roaring wave of 
 the unchained people. They were Madame Roland, 
 the ladies de Maille, de Bussy, de Mouchy, EUza- 
 beth of France, who all went standing upright to their 
 punishment, admirable heroines, who preserved even in 
 that baleful instant the graces of other days, the charm 
 and beauty of that Coquette ct- PEve?itail of Watteau, who 
 had already symbolised all the happy frowardness of 
 their shining youth. 
 
 Only Madame du Barry knew not how to die as 
 graciously as she had held her Fan ; only she clung 
 hard to life, trembling in a fit of cowardice, and 
 crying in her voice like that of a caressing child : 
 " Only one moment, Mr. Executioner ; I beg of you 
 only one moment," 
 
 On the Fans of the Revolution is 
 to be read the 
 

 Republican device, Liberty, Equality, 'Fraternity, 
 or the common cry, Long live the nation ! Some 
 -y of them bear the R.F. and the emblems of 
 equality — the triangle and the Phrygian cap. 
 There were also Fans a la Marat, which summon up 
 the image of Charlotte Corday, such as Hauer represents 
 her by the bath of the Friend of the People, her Fan in 
 one hand, and in the other the knife which has just 
 struck him. 
 
 This Fan of Charlotte Corday is mentioned in the papers 
 of her trial before the Revolutionary tribunal, and it is 
 certain that she abandoned it not when she struck Marai ; 
 she seemed, in the savage beauty of her fanaticism, to 
 desire to preserve the sceptre of woman, while usurping 
 for an instant the power and energy of an historical 
 hero. 
 
 The loth of Thermidor dissipated at length the dreadful 
 darkness of the Terror. " Then," remarks M. Blondel, 
 " all awoke as if recovering from a long lethargy. Tired 
 of barbarity, women carried their aspirations towards the 
 noble follies of luxury, towards prodigalities and festivals. 
 Madame Tallien, surnamed Our Lady of Thermidor, 
 Madame de Beauharnais, the comedienne, Mademoiselle 
 Contat, the hetaire, Mademoiselle Lange, and lastly, 
 Madame Recamier, held one after the other the sceptre 
 
 )^ 
 
 'A 
 
 f\ 
 

 ^3= 
 
 
 fsfe" 
 
 ( 98 ) 
 
 of fashion. What sceptre, in such a case, could 
 dispute it with the Fan ? 
 
 Madame Tallien relates that, under the Direc- 
 tory, women carried Fans of crape with spangles, 
 or of scented cedar-wood, or of gris moucheie 
 (spotted grey) of India. It is Fans of this kind 
 that Bosio, in his Fromenade de Longchamps, 
 placed in the hands of the elegant ladies of the 
 year X. of the Republic. Another engraving of 
 fashion, dated Thermidor in the year VIII., repre- 
 sents a A'lerveilleiise stretched on a divan, occupied 
 in fanning herself with a little Fan of palisander 
 mounted vvith green paper, and crying, according 
 to the pronunciation of the time, "Ah! quil fait 
 saud ! " 
 
 No more sombre songs on the guillotine 
 then ; the Fan might have its turn, and a poet 
 to-day forgotten, Desprez, composed the follow- 
 ing couplets to the air, " Vous m'ordoii?tez de la 
 
 bi'iiler : " — 
 
 I. 
 
 Men sang the Screen in verses fair, 
 
 We sing the Fan to-day, 
 Which brings us when we will the air 
 
 The other kept away. 
 When the sun's mid-day ardour falls 
 
 On us, to give us ease 
 The' Fan a cool wind kindly calls 
 
 And a caressin<z breeze. 
 
.\V 
 
 -■^--^ 
 
 
 
 Zephyr himself at maids' desires 
 
 Into their fair hands fliiii;s, 
 And sighs to cool their virgin fires, 
 
 And gently beats his wings ; 
 And now he lifts a lock of hair, 
 
 And now a handkerchief, 
 And shows a dainty breast half bare, 
 
 But white beyond belief. 
 
 The Fan paints all a woman loves, 
 
 All that her heart can feel, 
 Savs Aye, and Nay, condemns, approves, 
 
 Can all her thoughts reveal. 
 And when her swain's timidity 
 
 Forbids him play his part. 
 She lets her Fan fall suddenly 
 
 To put that wretch in heart. 
 
 When tales are told that in a maid 
 
 Make rosy blushes rise. 
 Her Fan at once gives welcome aid. 
 
 And bi oadens o'er her eyes. 
 Or veil of truth or falsehood, I 
 
 Must deem it full of grace. 
 The Fan which serves pure modesty. 
 
 Or flutters in its place. 
 
 I've seen a factious Fan in bands 
 
 Supporting the wrong side, 
 or pretty treasonable liands 
 
 Unfurl the banner wide. 
 Since party feeling first Ijegan 
 
 To trouble this fair earth, 
 Its fittest standard is the Fan, 
 
 As light as its own worth. 
 
 ^> 
 
 i 
 
 
I The factious Fan, of which the song-writer 
 here speaks, had a great success among the V^^ 
 Merveilleux and the Merveilleuses ; it caused more 
 than one of those terrible frays which are mentioned in the 
 memoirs of the time, when the executive powers of the Mus- 
 cadins had a viry large crow to pluck with the resisting 
 Jacobins. Not yet forgotten is the disturb- 
 ance of the year III. The seditious Fan 
 was perhaps the cause of it, for at that time 
 the play of the Fan had a particular expression, 
 a distinctive sign : on its mounts were painted 
 in the branches of a willow the traits of Louis 
 XVI., of Marie Antoinette, and of the Dauphin; 
 and, as in the QtiesUons, according to the order 
 of the day m 1878, Find the King was not said 
 as we said Find the unfortunate Bulgari in , the 
 Fan was delicatel) half opened in a certain way, 
 so as to show the Bourbon nose of Louis XVI 
 
 3 11 
 
( 
 
 or the high headdress of the Queen. 'Twas a mere 
 nothing, but it was understood. The ornaments of the 
 Fan, the bows, the ribbons in water-colours, remained 
 tricolors for a long while. It was worn at the waist 
 like the Balantine, the name with which the alms-purse 
 was decorated, and the Fan promised yet more smiling 
 alms than the alms-purse ever contained crowns. Every- 
 where was it found, this flirting Fan, a fashionable sabre- 
 tache, which beat against women's knees in all the prome- 
 nades, in all the pleasure gardens, at all the fetes : at 
 Tivoli, at Idalia, at the Elys^es, at the pavilion of Hanover, 
 at Frascati, at Bagatelle, at the petit Coblentz, and in those 
 galleries of the Falais Egalite of which Boilly was, some 
 years later, to fix the physiognomy, with their crawling 
 public of halfclothed nymphs, of handsome conquering 
 military heroes, of frightened citizens, all this world of 
 fiUes d'anwtir, of thieves, and of loungers, the curious 
 mixture of citizens, prostitutes, and soldiers of all arms, 
 which animated those famous galleries of wood during 
 the course of the First Empire. 
 
 It is with Vestris that we must behold the Fan 
 towards the end of the Directory, in all the 
 innumerable balls which took place at Paris, 
 from the Ball of Calypso, the Hotel de la Chine, 
 the Hotel Biron, up to the Ball of the Zephyrs 
 and the famous Ball of the Vietiuis, in which the 
 Fan called also a la Victime slipped to the girdle 
 during the country dances, to be graciously un- 
 furled in the moment of repose, when, all flushed, 
 
m 
 
 M 
 
 <q 
 
 EI 
 
 with pleasure and excitement, the languid dancers 
 fell daintily fainting on their seats, seeming to 
 demand pardon of their cavaliers. 
 
 The Fan entirely carved out, and with its sticks 
 bound together by a favour, became the mode ; it 
 was made of compressed matters which gave designs 
 in relief, or in metal, in ivory, or in horn. Perfumed 
 Fans, it seems, were likewise in great fashion, if we 
 may trust to a note of the journal Ze Menteur, cited 
 by M. Blondel, which tells us that at the famous 
 Feydeau concerts, when the singer Garat, the 
 spoilt child of fortune and the fair, entered on 
 the scene, a sympathetic murmur ran through the 
 room, and. adds the newspaper writer, "at that 
 moment the mobile heads began to wag, the 
 feathers to flutter, and the civel-miisk Fans to 
 whirr." 
 
 When straw was adopted for hats, ribbons, 
 plumes, girdles, and tassels, the Fan was not 
 behind-hand, but was coquettishly made up of 
 it after the taste of the day. " There is nothing 
 now but straw in the impoverished dresses of 
 ladies," say MM. de Goncourt in their Societe 
 Fraiicaise pendant le Directoire; "mob-caps of 
 straw, bonnets of straw, Fans of straw, but as to 
 the proscribed spangles, listen to a song of the 
 time : — 
 
 
 ta 
 

 
 ll 
 
 ^ 
 
 d 
 
 p. 
 
 
 ( 103 ) 
 
 " Spangles from bonnets fall, 
 Shine on the ioqiu's of all, 
 Sparkle on bodice small. 
 And on the headbands fine. 
 And on great hats divine 
 Are spangles ! 
 
 On collars black as night, 
 On shoes of virgin white. 
 
 Are spangles ! 
 Spangles on ribbons glow, 
 And on big turbans, lo I 
 Nothing is here below 
 
 Made without spangles ! " 
 
 In the First Empire we begin to see minuscular 
 Fans called Lilliputian, which were just large 
 enough to mask an indiscreet smile or a sudden 
 blush. The ancient Canoness of Bourbon Lancy, 
 Madame de Genlis, who had seen many revolu- 
 tions of fashion, speaks of this reduction of the 
 Fan with a bitter emphasis in her Dictionary of 
 Etiquette : — 
 
 "In the days when women yet blusheJ," says 
 the authoress of the Annals of Virtue, "in the 
 days when they desired to dissimulate this em- 
 barrassment and timidity, large Fans were the 
 fashion ; they were at once a countenance and 
 a veil. Flirting their Fans, women concealed 
 their faces ; now they blush little, fear not at 
 
 MA 
 
 % 
 
all, have no care to hide themselves, and carry in con- 
 sequence imperceptible Fans." 
 
 These imperceptibles^ nevertheless, whatever the amiable 
 Countess may say, made still a pretty figure in the drawing- 
 rooms of the Rue du Bac, at the Abbaye au Bois, at the 
 house of Madame Recamier, and in all the little assemblies, 
 when they used to play on the harp or the theorbo before 
 the hussars of Augereau, while the poets of the time de- 
 claimed pompously acrostics on the Fan worthy of being 
 inserted in some literary productions like those of the 
 Ecliarpe d'Jris or the Album des Arts. 
 
 A Parnassian, buried hopelessly deep beneath the dust 
 of oblivion, has left us this acrostic, clever enough, about 
 the Fan, to which we accord hospitality, as it marks the 
 form and spirit of that day : — 
 
 Hve knew not all my elegance of plan ; 
 
 <enus imagined me ; Rose, Ellen, Anne 
 
 rrimploy my aid in coach or soft sedan ; 
 
 Zo actress and no odalisque, but can 
 
 Hake help from me, and since my reign began, 
 
 >h ! many a fond and miserable man 
 
 i-<ris by me has set beneath a ban ; 
 
 ["'oved woman's sceptre is indeed the Fan. 
 
 ■--^^ 
 
 Was not this that sentimental epoch in which Fidvee 
 conceived /a Dot de Stizette, and Hyacinthe Gaston wrote 
 this quatrain in the Adolescence on la Boete aux billets- 
 doux ? 
 
" ^V flower falling from a tree, 
 
 A Fan which to the ground is tost, 
 A book, a lace. Love's mystery 
 
 Serves ; nought for happiness is lost.'' 
 
 That Fan of the Empire, which appeared 
 at the dawn of our century, in the midst of 
 a fever of conquests and bloody wars, that 
 Fan which saluted the victories of our 
 soldiers on the balconies of towns in Italy, 
 Germany, and Spain, that Fan which indi- 
 cated such gallant rendezvous to our brilliant 
 officers covered with glory, that Fan, in fine, 
 which saluted courage as it passed, had also 
 to play its part, as in the dramas and military 
 pieces of the ancient circus, on the field of battle, 
 in the hands of a brave canteen-wofnan taking 
 care of the wounded, fanning their faces burnt by the 
 sun, with those attentions, those sweetnesses, that mater- 
 nity almost which remains latent in all women, which make 
 them angels of devotion, admirable sisters of charity. 
 
 In the soirees and modern receptions, the mistress of 
 the house had acquired quite a novel art in the expressive 
 and benevolent use of the Fan. Lady Morgan, the ci- 
 devant Miss Owenson, in her work on France, d propos of 
 a reception at the house of the Duchesse de la Tremouille, 
 makes mention of this particularity when she writes ; — 
 
^->v„ 
 
 
 
 ( io6 ) 
 
 " The manner in which a Frenchwoman receives 
 her female guests is extremely courteous and re- 
 spectful, a little tinctured with formality, but 
 marked by every feature of politeness and of 
 attention. The reception of the male guests is, 
 generally speaking, extremely fascinating, and yet 
 sufficiently dignified. She never rises from her 
 seat, she receives their profound bow with a 
 smile, a nod, a "ion so/r," or " ion jour," or a 
 " comment ala va-t-il ? " or some little mark of 
 distinction, as a tap of the Fan, 7uhich says 
 many things, a hand to kiss, or an expression of 
 pleasant surprise at their unexpected appearance. 
 All this, however, is air and look ; it is " some- 
 thing, nothing," it is quite indescribable, as it is 
 indefinable, and it would be presumption to at- 
 tempt it." 
 
 The mounts of Fans had then for decorative 
 ornaments warlike trophies, casques, cuirasses, 
 crossed cannons, the portrait of Bonaparte with 
 the legendary hat, and the famous grey riding- 
 coat ; others dissimulated a royal escutcheon or 
 a seed - plot of fleius-dc-lis, which painted a 
 desire of the Bourbon restoration ; others again, 
 decorated after the Greek or Roman fashion, 
 offered images of a dreamy Calypso, vague scenes 
 of Hero and Leander, a Cornelia showing her 
 
ls<::5 
 
 jewels, or emblems of antiquity interpreted after 
 a modern style, according to the villanous gout 
 Pompier, resuscitated by David and his disciples. 
 
 Some folding Fans were furnished with taffety, 
 cut out and applied on gauze, whilst others were 
 simply ornamented with steel and copper spangles, 
 after the appearance of the jewels of the Pdit 
 Dimkerque. Victor Etienne de Jouy, the Acade- 
 mician, who compared the bosoms of women to 
 globes of alabaster carved by the Graces, de Jouy, 
 the old soldier, author of the Franc Parleur, re- 
 lates, in the course of the five volumes of his 
 Ermite de la Chaussee-d''Aiittii, that having become 
 a godfather in the month of August i8ii, it was 
 his duty to buy at Tessier's, the perfumer at the 
 Golden Bell, a baptismal present, and he adds 
 that for the modest sum of 420 francs, the young 
 lady behind the counter placed in tlie baptismal 
 basket a bouquet of artificial flowers, some sachets, 
 two bottles of essence of rose, a necklace of pas- 
 tilles du Serail, six d'jzen pairs of gloves, and, 
 finally, izoo Fans, one embroidered in steel, after 
 the fashion, the other in pale tortoise-shell, with 
 an opera-glass. 
 
 It is at this epoch that the curious folding Fan's 
 of asses' skin for the ball made their appearances, 
 on which the ladies used to write, with black 
 
leid or with a silver pin, the 
 mmes ot their cavahers for the 
 valse or quadrille 
 
 Under the Restoration Fans be 
 
 came for a while anagrammatic, that is to 
 
 ^^»ji^ - - say, by means of an ingenious mechanism, 
 
 , '-— 'the legend or word which was written on 
 
 the mount or their sticks changed brusquely 
 
 by the transposition of the letters ; in place 
 
 of Roma, Amor was read, and so on. 
 
 The little verses or madrigals addressed to women, 
 were with equal willingness again received into favour. 
 Louis XVIII., who quoted better and more often than 
 he composed, who was called a poet for his good 
 memory, the ci-devant Monsieur, wrote one day on the 
 ivory blade of a Fan of an unknown lady this pretty 
 quatrain, which has become celebrated : — 
 
 ** Some pleasure I can you afford ; 
 Though in dry heat cicadas sing, 
 Tlie cool sweet zephyrs I can bring ; 
 The Loves come of their own accord.'' 
 
 And all the courtiers shouted, Bravo ! though Louis 
 XVIII., far from having conceived the quatrain, had 
 very impudently taken it from the author of the 
 Ejiipire de la Mode, the witty poet and academician, 
 Lemierre, without any warning, and was perfectly satisfied 
 
with its being atj--^*^^^'®**'*^****'-' ■ 
 tributed by every 
 one to himself. 
 
 To this day this fine madrigal is 
 quoted generally as one of the most 
 gracious specimens of the wit of Louis XVIII. Let 
 us render unto Lemierre the things which are Le- 
 mierre's, as the flatterers are no longer here to 
 protest against such restitution. 
 
 The literature of the Restoration had, however, none of 
 the prettinesses and delicate malicious 7?«(?j-.f(? of the eigh- .^ '«-r»^j 
 teenth century. The practical spirit seemed to be ethe- ''rj.-' ^ r* *'~ i.< 
 realised in a tearful sentimentality, and on an azure 
 ideal which mounted to the zenith and confounded 
 itself therewith. The Ge7tie du Chrisiianisme 
 and the Meditations of Lamartine, published 
 later, had carried into men's souls with 
 their harmonious language a mysterious 
 charm of suffering, a troubled sensation ' 
 which got rid of material love, and 
 turned it into a platonism nourished 
 

 »«llo>'^ 
 
 ( no ) 
 
 by chimeras, based on the affinities which Stendhal 
 sought to define by his theory of Crystallisation. 
 Love sobbed and laughed no longer ; in the hand 
 of woman the Fan had taken something of the 
 retiring tinthiti itself, which was the distinctive 
 sign of that bloodless and too sensitive epoch. 
 It expressed prostration, profound melancholy, 
 and sombre neurosis of the brain ; it opened no 
 more with its former recklessness to stifle a laugh 
 or conceal a kiss of the lips ; it remained half 
 open, or rather half shut, raised decently to the 
 height of the throat or the swell of the leg-of- 
 muiton sleeves, or fell alongside the petticoat, 
 sadly after a despairing fashion, like a useless 
 implement before that material coldness of passion. 
 In the romances which appeared at that time in 
 the Valerie of Madame de Kritdner, in Ourika., in 
 Irina, ou ks malheurs d'une jeime orpheline, in 
 Adcle de Senange, in La Jeune fille, ou Malheiir et 
 vertu, in Louise de Seiiancourt, in Malvina — in all the 
 works, shortly, of the blue stockings of the first half 
 of the century, the Fan is visibly neglected. One 
 feels that in the adventures of these whimpering 
 and bashful lovers it has nothing to do, and that 
 it will never be called upon to be broken across 
 the cheeks of a bold fellow who goes straight to 
 the mark like the good Abbe Duportail of the 
 eighteenth century, who fell on the field of 
 
 -A^ 
 
y 
 
 
 HI ) 
 
 honour, for whom this amiable epitaph was 
 
 composed ; — 
 
 *' Here lies Daportail, wretched man. 
 He fell beneath a woman's Fan !" 
 
 We must come to Balzac and the Parents 
 pauvres, to find in that chef-d' ceuvre called le 
 Cousin Pons a charming souvenir of the Fan of 
 Madame de Pompadour, which will remain for 
 ever in the remembrance of delicate minds : — 
 
 "The old fellow, Pons, arrives joyously at the 
 house of the wife of the President of Marville, 
 after having found, at a secondhand dealer's, a 
 gem of a Fan enclosed in a little box of West- 
 India wood, signed by Watteau, and formerly 
 the property of Madame de Pompadour. The 
 old musician bends before his cousin, and offers 
 her the Fan of the ancient favourite, with these 
 words of royal gallantry : — 
 
 "'// is time for that which has served vice to 
 be in tlie hands of virtue. A hundred years will 
 be required to work such a miracle. Be sure that 
 no princess can have anything comparable with 
 this chef-d\vuvre, for it is unhappily in human 
 nature to do more for a Pompadour than for a 
 virtuous queen.' " 
 
 If from romance we pass to reality, we find 
 the Fan acquiring a special historic importance 
 
in our annals, when on the 30th 
 April 1827, Hussein, the Day of 
 Algiers, in a movement of anger, 
 struck or rather caressed M. Deval, 
 the French consul, with the plumes 
 of his Fan, and refused to give honour- 
 able satisfaction for that brutal act, 
 which brought about the conquest of 
 Algiers, and as a result the present voyage in Tunis. 
 
 Barthelemy and Mdry published in the Pandore of 
 the nth November 1827 a sort of heroic-comic poem, 
 the Bacriade, ou la guerre d'' Alger, in five cantos, which 
 commences thus : — 
 
 "... A Dey, replete with arrogance, 
 
 Has dared to smite the cheel-c august of France," 
 
 and ends with these verses, which allude to the causes 
 of the incident, and to the conduct of the French charge 
 d'' affaires : — 
 
 *' Nor Bacry nor my gold . . . Sir, leave my door ! 
 May this Fan's blow destroy you evermore ! 
 The Christian Consul pale with anger grew, 
 And from its sheath his trusty sword half drew ; 
 Then stopped, and, skilled in diplomatic wile, 
 Thanked the good Dey, and left him with a smile. " 
 
 This poem of Barthelemy and Me'ry, albeit somewhat 
 old, is still interesting to read at the present day. 
 
( 113 ) 
 
 It was not, however, a case of sighing now : — 
 
 " The tender zephyrs which from Fans depart, 
 Kindle sometimes a new fire in our heart." 
 
 That sort of fire was no longer in season, but the 
 burning fire of battle, and the rapid events which followed 
 in a chain ; the French marine, under the orders of the 
 Admiral Duperre', blockading Algiers on the 14th June, 
 1830, then the army of the expedition disembarking, and 
 as a result of that famous blow of the Fan, all the fair 
 feats of arms which followed, which we now see as in 
 a panorama : Mazagran, the taking of Constantine, the 
 marvellous retreat of the Commander Changarnier ; Lamo- 
 ricih'e at the head of his intrepid Zouaves ; Cavaignac, the 
 Marshal Bugeaud, a whole epopaeia which lives again in 
 the curious lithographs of Rafifet ; and dominating all 
 these combats, as a Parisian chronicler wrote, the 
 grand figure of Abd-el-Kader, the enemy glori- 
 ous in his defeat. ' > 
 
 \ r 
 
 cf 
 

 ■f:",-i 
 
 
 ( 114 ) 
 
 To allow ourselves to follow these battles and 
 skirmishes in our colony of Africa would be to 
 desert our subject. Let us come back then to 
 Fans, in declaring that at Rome Pope Gregory 
 XVI. never went out in the Holy City, and 
 especially at the time of public solemnities, and 
 the fisfa di catedra, without being accompanied 
 at the side of his litter by two bearers of Fans of 
 peacock feathers, with long ivory handles, which 
 served however only for decorum, and were never 
 moved over the face of the Pontiff. 
 
 In the course of the year 1S28, at the time 
 of the representation of a comic opera entitled 
 Corisandre, as the heat was suffocating, and the 
 youthful dandies fainting languidly in their boxes, 
 it occurred to a manufacturer to sell green paper 
 Fans to the men, and the whole theatre was 
 furnished with them. Fashion adopted this in- 
 novation of masculine Fans, which received the 
 name of Corisandres, but this originality endured 
 not long in Paris, as in Venice, and the principal 
 cities of Italy, where men became familiar with 
 the play of the Fan, and from the winter of 
 1S28-1829, our elegants, or rather our Beaux, 
 abdicated the sceptre of the woman, and re-took, 
 as before, their Malacca canes, or the heavy canes 
 with carved golden knob, which they used with 
 a distinction and a charm, now, alas ! totally 
 forgotten. 
 
( IIS ) 
 
 Fans were then very large, and if feathers had 
 not altogether taken the place of mounts of vellum 
 or satin decorated with water-colours, they were 
 at least in the majority. 
 
 A chronicle of the end of the reign of Charles 
 X., le Lys, contains this note on the fashion of 
 the day : — 
 
 "i\s to the Fans, those of black feathers, 
 painted and gilt, and those in lacquer with 
 Chinese designs in gold, enjoy equal favour ; it 
 is to be observed that in order to get all the 
 suppleness and solidity possible, these last ought 
 to be mounted on bamboo, and we beg our lady 
 readers to remember this when they make use of 
 those Fans." 
 
 There was also the Fan with a looking-glass 
 which flourished for a moment, and the Fan of 
 ostrich feathers and of birds of the West Indies. 
 Lastly, there was a passion for ancient Fans ; they 
 were sought everywhere, and carried off at any 
 price. The taste became so lively, that, remarks 
 M. Natalis Rondot, many Fan - makers betook 
 themselves to imitating the Fans of the days of 
 Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Louis XVI. 
 
 The painters and sculptors were wanting ; but, 
 thanks to M. Desrochers, who put himself at 
 the head of this small branch of industry, works 
 were executed which bore comparison with the 
 chefs ifa'i/vre of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Sm 
 
''■ft.. 
 
 %. 
 
 ( ii6 ) 
 
 The gn'seites and the Mimi-Pinsons of the time, those 
 good-natured and fair girls in their dresses of book muslin 
 or white canezou, sung by the poets who have preceded us, 
 and set in a halo of youth and gaiety amongst the joyous 
 popular romances of Paul de Kock ; the pretty grisettes, 
 before 1850, were content with Fans of paper or humming- 
 bird feathers, light as their bird brains ; when, on Sunday, 
 all these loving, laughing girls went to Romainville, to the 
 Lilas, or to the woods of Montfermeil, in the company of 
 lovers not too particular, of painters without lofty ambitions, 
 of amiable editors of the Corsaire, of good fellows who 
 knew still how to divert themselves with simple pleasures, 
 donkey rides, summary breakfasts under the trees, and, 
 to couple m a word, excitement with youth, and humour 
 •with love How many tumbles, how many vivid dreams 
 were theie under the coppice, how many frank sonorous 
 kisses \\hich one never dreamed of hiding 1 There 
 «. lie buried the sweetest remembrances of our 
 
 fathers, those remembrances which they a, 
 still love to stir, with the super 
 added charm given to them by 
 the past, which lends to 
 , ^iheir illusion. 
 
But we must bestow a 
 glance on Spain, the lin's 
 own country, the land of serenades, of the gentle- 
 men of the blunderbuss, of gypsies, and of fair 
 senoras, from which our romantic generation of 
 1S30 has borrowed so much of its coloured poetry, 
 its novels, and its strangely-woven romance. It 
 is in Spain that we find the famous inanejo de 
 abanico so easily learnt by all the seiioritas of 
 Christendom. To flirt of the Fan is there called 
 abanicar, just as to ogle is called 
 ojear, the one goes not 
 without the other, the 
 two form a whole; the 
 gallant rap of the Fan 
 is accompanied by the 
 burning glance of the 
 eye, which sets you 
 on fire, whence the 
 sageCastilian proverb, 
 {refran) ojos que no 
 ven, corazon que no 
 huiebra. ^ 
 
 '^m~r-_ - -'"ur^t 
 
 --jiUe^ .._. 
 

 
 ;s^iV 
 
 <5 
 
 ( 118 ) 
 
 ThtSophile Gautier, in Tra los Monies, has 
 analysed in a very remarkable manner the im- 
 portance of the Fan in Spain : — 
 
 " The Fan corrects in some measure the pre- 
 tension of the Spaniards to Parisianism. A woman 
 without a Fan is a thing which I have never 
 yet seen in that happy land. I have seen women 
 wearing satin shoes without any stockings, but 
 they had their Fans ; the Fan follows them every- 
 where, even to church, where you meet groups 
 of women of all ages, kneeling or squatting on 
 their hams, praying and fanning themselves with 
 about equal fervour. . . . The manceuvre of the 
 Fan is an art totally unknown in France. The 
 Spanish women excel in it; the Fan opens, shuts, 
 turns about in their hands so quickly, so lightly, 
 that a professor of sleight-of-hand could not 
 manage it better. Some fashionable ladies form 
 collections of Fans of the highest value ; we have 
 seen one numbering more than a hundred dif- 
 ferent styles ; there were Fans of every country 
 and of every epoch ; ivory, tortoise-shell, sandal- 
 wood, spangles, water-colours of the time of Louis 
 XIV. and Louis XV., rice paper of Japan and 
 China ; nothing was wanting. Many of them were 
 starred with rubies, diamonds, and other precious 
 stones ; it is a luxury of good taste, and a charm- 
 ing mania for a pretty woman. Fans which shut 
 and expand produce a little whiz, which repeated 
 
 <0% 
 

 -i\. 
 
 'd 
 
 \ih 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 ^' 
 
 ■uli 
 
 more than a thousand times a minute, casts its 
 note across the confused rumour which floats over 
 the promenade, and has in it something strange 
 for a French ear. When a woman meets any one 
 she knows, she makes him a httle sign with her 
 Fan, and throws him, in passing, the word agier, 
 pronounced agour. " 
 
 To this description of the great colourist, 
 Theophile Gautier, let us add a passage from 
 the statesman-novelist, Benjamin Disraeli, whose 
 Contarini Fleming has given some pretty opinions 
 on the Spanish Fan : — 
 
 "A Spanish lady," says he, "with her Fan 
 might put to shame the tactics of a troop of 
 horse. Now she unfurls it with the slow pomp 
 and conscious elegance of the bird of Juno, now 
 she flutters it with all the languor of a listless 
 beauty, now with all the liveliness of a vivacious 
 one. Now in the midst of a very tornado she 
 closes it with a whirr which makes you start. In 
 the midst of your confusion, Dolores taps you 
 on your elbow, you turn round to listen, and 
 Catalina pokes you in your side. Magical instru- 
 ment ! In this land it speaks a particular language, 
 and gallantry requires no other mode to express 
 its most subtle conceits, or its most unreasonable 
 demands, than this delicate machine." 
 
 Let us pass from Spain to grand and beautiful 
 Paris, where the Fan shone with such splendour 
 
 liH 
 
 \B 
 
 
 P 
 
 ^ 
 
 fr^ 
 
 

 
 -«?A«-''-i{. and magnificence on the orange-red velvet of the i^il 
 
 ^*^^^M| ,%\ baignoires and boxes of the theatre, in the hands .^" j 
 
 U?Wlv|U of the charming fashionable ladies of 1830. If '<iy 
 
 Vi'^) ^'*^ -l*" our Parisian women have less quickness of move- ji 
 
 ment, and less languor in their management of ,'«'f" 
 
 H-v this pretty toy than the burning ladies of Spain, r 
 
 they have, in exchange, more delicacy and natural 
 ^ distinction, more trickery, and, above all, more of 
 
 \,'' \., that _/> ne sais quoi Wtnoh makes the Frenchwoman 
 
 >~N^Ul| //• ,,'the uncontested queen of the entire world. 
 \72^i^..)j^- : Under the good, peaceful reign of Louis-Philippe, 
 r/K'*^" the Fan became, perhaps, a little vulgarised on the 
 big bosoms of the high-coloured gossips, so well 
 sketched by Henri Monnier and caricatured by 
 Daumier ; perhaps in this time of the pretentious 
 national guard it lost a little of its prestige. 
 
 " What matters it," would the citizen of that period 
 
 say, "that such a poet is singular in his humour, 
 
 'i^ such a dandy recherche in his dress, such a coquette 
 
 "* ^^ j^ 3n affected puss ! She may grow red or pale, patch 
 
 x^ '=^) her face, or play the scientist with her lover, with- 
 
 ' ^ ( 
 
 ^ f out encroaching on my property or diminishing 
 
 ^^ ' my commerce. The troublesome whirr of a Fan 
 
 t, - which opens and shuts incessantly, does not 
 
 -J^^""" unsettle our constitutions." 
 
 ' But, in spite of this heavy indifference, 
 
 --.-- the Fan penetrated among the people, and 
 
 became democratic as the umbrella, a 
 
symbol of quiet habits. Tliere is at 
 present no modest workwoman, no humble 
 daughter of the faubotcrg, to whom Love has not 
 paid homage with a bouquet of roses, and a 
 gallant billet-doux, with a Fan adorned with flowers, 
 which she knows how to flirt graciously over her 
 irregular-featured countenance ; this little Parisian, 
 this female Gavroche, satisfied with the slightest 
 morsel of lace or ribbon. 
 
 At the commencement of the last century, if we may 
 believe a satirical paper in the Spectator, a lady established in 
 London an Academy for the training up of young women 
 of all conditions in the exercise of the Fan. This exercise 
 was divided into six portions, and the strange petticoated 
 battalion, ranged in order of battle, were put through 
 their facings twice a-day, and taught to obey the follow- 
 ing words of command : Handle your Fans, Unfurl your 
 Fans, Discharge your Fans, Ground your Fans, Recover your 
 Fans, Flutter your Fans. The fluttering of the Fan was, 
 it appears, the masterpiece of the whole exercise, and 
 the most difficult to be acquired by these singular 
 companies of Riflemen of the Fan. Therefore the colonel- 
 instructress, who directed the operations with a large 
 Marlborough Fan, composed in favour of her scholars 
 a small treatise, very clear and succinct, in which she 
 concentrated all the Art of Love of Ovid; this theory 
 had for its title. The Passions of the Fan, and tended to 
 
( 12^ ) 
 
 make of that flirting implement the most danger- 
 ous weapon in the war of Love. 
 
 The same ingenious instructress had also estab- 
 lished, at particular hours, a special course for 
 men, with the view of teaching young gentlemen 
 the whole art of gallanting a Fan, according to 
 rules which guaranteed success after thirty or 
 forty lessons. 
 
 We know not if this honourable lady turned 
 out from among her pupils brilliant Cehmenes, 
 Arsino^s, and irresistible Don Juans ; but it is 
 interesting to give an explanation of the exercise 
 in the six kinds, taught by that experienced 
 warrioress, as a master in the games of the Graces 
 understood it, who some time ago wrote the 
 geography of woman, under the witty pseudonym 
 of Malte-Blond : — 
 
 " To prepare the Fan" says he, " is to take 
 it shut, holding~it carelessly between t«o fingers, 
 but with ease and in a dignified manner. To 
 unfurl the Fan, is to open it by degrees, again 
 to shut it, and to make it assume coquettish 
 undulations in the process. To discharge the Fan, 
 is to open it all at once, so as to make a little 
 rustling noise, which attracts the attention of 
 those absorbed young men who neglect to ogle 
 you. To ground the Fan, is to set it down, no 
 matter where, while pretending to readjust a curl 
 or a head-band, in order to display a white 
 

 ( 123 ) 
 
 plump arm, and slender rosy fingers. 7o recover 
 ones Fan, is to arm yourself with it anew, and to 
 flutter it with feminine and irresistible evolutions. 
 To flutter the Fan, is to cool the face with it, or, 
 indeed, to translate to him whom it may concern, 
 your agitation, your modesty, your fear, your con- 
 fusion, your sprightliness, your love." 
 
 The art of playing the Fan, in fact, can never 
 be learnt ; it is innate in a woman of family, 
 as are innate in her her least gestures which 
 captivate, her sweet childlike caresses, her speech, 
 her look, her walk. In the arsenal wherein are 
 the arms of feminine coquetry, woman takes 
 naturally the Fan, and knows how to use it from 
 tender childhood, in playing the great lady with 
 her doll. She feels instinctively that all the ruses 
 of love, all the tricks of gallantry, all the grace 
 of yes's or noes, all the accents of sighs are 
 hidden in the folds of her Fan ; she understands 
 that behind this frail rampart she may study the 
 enemy, that in half unmasking herself she may 
 open a terrible loophole, and that, later on, under 
 her Fan unfurled, she may risk furtive avowals, 
 and gather half-words which will penetrate her 
 heart. 
 
 "Whatever the heat of the climate may be," 
 says Charles Blanc in his Art dans la partire et Ic 
 v'ctemeiit, "the Fan is above all things an accessory 
 of the toilet, a means or motive of gracious 
 
 
 
( 124 ) 
 
 movements, under pretext of agitating the air for the 
 sake of coolness. This mobile curtain answers in turn 
 the duty of discovering that which it is wished to hide, 
 and hiding that which it is wished to discover." 
 
 There is not, to our minds, a more just definition of 
 the Fan than this. 
 
 One of the last anecdotes which occur to us in this 
 historic review of the Fan, is that which relates to the 
 ex- King Louis of Bavaria, — the gallant and prodigal adorer 
 of the dancing courtezan, Lola Montes, — whose passion 
 for women was as strong as his taste, as a man of en- 
 lightened erudition, for the fine arts. At one of the 
 balls of his court, a delicious princess having by in- 
 advertence let her Fan fall, the monarch was hastening 
 to kneel and pick it up, in order to place it, with the 
 customary kiss, in the hands of the giddy beauty, 
 when his forehead came into violent contact with 
 that of another gentleman, not less 
 desirous than his highness of seizing 
 this gallant occasion of paying homage 
 to female charms. The shock was so 
 rude, so unexpected, so violent, that 
 King Louis, stunned for the moment, 
 soon after found growing on his fore- 
 
( 1=5 ) 
 
 head that enormous wen, as celebrated as it was unlucky, 
 which was to be seen at Nice in i86g, when the body 
 of the ex-King was exposed there in the chamber where 
 he lay in state, watched by two superb Bavarian life- 
 guards like giants in uni- 
 form. 
 
 To-day, wherever a pretty woman 
 moves and reigns, the Fan appears 
 with its enchantments, its smiles, 
 its exquisite coquetry ; it appears 
 fortified by all the resources, all 
 the varieties of modern art, and 
 also by all the decorative science 
 which we learn every day more to find in the 
 marvellous dispositions of Japanese and Chinese 
 ornaments. In the summer months, at the con- 
 cert, on the boulevards, before the cafes, where 
 the thirsty crowd is pressing, in the railway carriage, 
 on the sea-shore, on the greenswards of great houses, 
 during lawn-tennis or croquet parties, the Fan 
 punctuates its lively note, and its tattoo of brilliant 
 colours. Its see-saw movement seems to cast upon 
 the air sweet feminine emanations, which mount 
 to the brain of the sensitive ; and when we find it 
 again in the winter, tete-a-tete in the midst of the 
 warm atmosphere of the drawing-room, palpitatmg 
 during conversation over the laughing dimples of 
 a pretty face, it possesses a magic charm, as an 
 attractive power towards the pretty creature 
 who flutters it so delicately, whom it seems e 
 to protect after a bantering fashion, 
 as if it were sufficient to unfurl itscU 
 
 I j i 
 " "IB '■■ 4 ■ > 'r'- l*ifl>''^r' r W'!^ v''\. V;:, «.... 
 
 ii} 
 
 k' 
 

 
 -^ 
 
 /i\ 
 
 ( 126 ) 
 
 suddenly with a cold dignity to impose respect 
 on the most temerarious. 
 
 Thanks to the intelligent initiative of such 
 men as Desrochers, Alexandre, Duvelleroy, almost 
 all the great artists of this century have contributed 
 by water-colour compositions to the decoration of 
 the best Fans. Ingres, Horace Vernet, Leon Cog- 
 niet, C^lestin Nanteuil, Eugene Lamy, Rosa Bon- 
 heur, Edouard de Beaumont, H. Baron, Gerome, 
 Vidal, Robert-Fleury, Antigna, Blanchard, Gen- 
 dron, Frangais, Wattier, Vibert, Leloir, Madeleine 
 Lemaire, Hamon, &c., have signed small and 
 great masterpieces, and the modern Fan-makers 
 will not stop short in this era of renovation of 
 the great Fan of art. 
 
 And now behold us at the end of our work, 
 quite astonished to find it finished so soon, and 
 seeming to declare with a sigh of regret, as we 
 sit opposite our lady reader, how short the time 
 has appeared to us in these discourses of fits 
 and starts on the feminine sceptre. We have 
 been here and there, without much method, 
 rather like a conversationalist than a minute 
 writer. Around and about the Fan, that butterfly 
 of woman, which caresses her face, envelopes 
 her smile and her look ; around that inconstant 
 toy of inconstancy, we cannot preserve the gravity 
 of a savant who is arguing about an Etruscan 
 
 -^^ 
 
 i 
 
 =5'^ 
 jC 
 
 "€1 
 
 w 
 
 ^^V 
 
 m 
 
 I 
 
 V 
 
 
 r^ 
 

 i^iv'^i^' 
 
 ( 
 
 ) 
 
 "i^ 
 
 vase, or an antique tumulus. So we have played 
 the butterfly as best we could across the fields 
 of history, fixing ourselves nowhere in order the 
 better to settle everywhere. 
 
 Has the author, notwithstanding, succeeded in 
 composing a work of some value, or has the Fan 
 fallen from the hands of the fair, sent to sleep 
 solely by the ennui of its soporific pages ? 
 
 The interest of a book, we must needs confess 
 it, has no real and evident gradation, except in 
 the drama or the romance ; every dissertation, 
 however lightly treated, must have its flavour 
 heightened by the pepper of anecdote, by the 
 stimulant of puns, the sweetness of the madrigal, 
 or the point of the epigram, in order to maintain 
 the same degree of curiosity. Besides there is 
 always something wanting to this class of works, 
 that indefinable trifle which the literary epicure 
 discovers, a certain connection, a drop of comfort- 
 ing cordial, or a pinch of spices which sprinkles 
 the whole; and in addition this whole must be 
 cast into a personal and agreeable mould. 
 
 Shall we ever know whether, in this little 
 book, we have arrived at that cl pat pves which 
 is the satisfecit of every impulsive writer, who 
 cannot pretend to an absolute perfection, too 
 often banished from this world ? 
 
 Stretch out, if you please, amiable and coquettish 
 
 
 >'i' 
 
 
 I'^'Stff' 
 
lady reader mine, your Fan to its full breadth, and behind 
 that discreet screen, without affectation or subterfuge, 
 whisper in confidence to your author, what you think of 
 his idle prattle. 
 
 Alas ! just heaven / Madam, are you not asleep, and 
 the Fan, is it not there, lying on the ground, a couple of 
 paces from your easy-chair, and far from your pretty 
 half-shut eyes? 
 
APPENDIX. 
 

 ^m^-^^^ 
 
 ''& 
 
 \h?f^J F the author of this book on the luin 
 h:<3 could tell its history to the reader, from 
 
 the germ of the first idea, the period of 
 incubation, and the bustle of material execution 
 up to the numerous difficulties of a literary theme, 
 which must be gradually developed, without falling 
 on the one side into an excess of archteologic 
 erudition and a dryness of technical detail, and 
 without slipping on the other side on the agree- 
 able ground of extreme fantasy, it would be readily 
 agreed that it was far from easy to remain more 
 strictly in that just middle, desired in those tem- 
 perate regions of the Uti'/e Dulci, in which the 
 public of our time with good reason takes delight. 
 Conceive for an instant the mass of reading 
 which such a work admits of, the improbable 
 
 €: 
 
 j^^ 
 

 
 i 
 
 v3^ 
 
 ( 132 ) 
 
 number of different literatures catalogued, romances 
 skimmed through, historians consulted, anecdote- 
 mongers glanced at, poets put to contribution, 
 bibliographic collections and miscellanies run 
 through, monographs of costume studied, artistic 
 or manufacturing relations analysed, theatrical 
 pieces rapidly and cursorily surveyed, letter- 
 writers and, in one word, polygraphs, eagerly 
 devoured, all this library turned upside down, 
 aU this superabundance of heaped-up documents, 
 all this juggle of folios and duodecimos, to end 
 in this light literary dissertation, this historic and 
 anecdotic quintessence issuing from the alembic 
 of research, — conceive all this, and you will have 
 in some sort an image analogous to that which 
 might be inspired by a coquettish piece of mosaic 
 agreeably arranged, of which all the little stones 
 are cut from enormous blocks, which the mine 
 has brought up out of the quarries only, but must 
 be cut and polished to please the eye, as the good 
 Fcnelon would have said. 
 
 Add to this, for those who know the art and 
 labours of book-making, the obligation the author 
 was under, in this work of bench-mark, to confine 
 his spirit within the pretty adornments of the 
 margin, the compression of every fantasy of style 
 in an inexorable frame of sketches, placed on 
 copper, and therefore immovable — the necessity, 
 in fine, of keeping his e(inilibrium, and so taking 
 
 
 
-■•> 
 
 ^^ - 
 
 
 f 
 
 
 > 
 
 ( 133 ) 
 
 his spring as to traverse in suitable connection 
 with his text the spirit of the engravings, sown 
 in the track of this boo!:, hlce a female circus- 
 rider who breaks with apparent ease through her 
 paper hoops. Set in opposition to each other the 
 conscience of the literary and learned man and 
 the self-love of the bibliophilist and the artist, 
 and you will rest convinced that this anecdotic 
 and literary history of the Fan could not be 
 better treated in the domain of a literature which 
 might be called left centre, for it proceeds not 
 from the extravagances of an imagination aban- 
 doned to itself, nor from the cold dissertations 
 of an erudition bristling with notes, comments, 
 refutations, and dates ; that is to say, from pedantic 
 bombast. 
 
 But if, in the course of this volume, we have 
 spared our reader the customary references of 
 the learned, we must not carry too far our spirit 
 of independence, and it is our duty to indicate 
 here our sources, under the form of proofs and 
 illustrations, even were it only to put on a breast- 
 plate against the spirit of evil-speaking always on 
 the watch. 
 
 First of all, then, we render homage to two of 
 our most remarkable predecessors, whose serious 
 labours, conceived in a spirit more descriptive 
 and less fantastic than that wliich has guided 
 
 -i^ii:7AV^ 
 
x<^. 
 
 £>• 
 
 vfc 
 
 ^??"l5 
 
 ( 134 ) 
 
 US in this work, have been to us of indisputable 
 utility, to whom we have sometimes had recourse 
 in quoting them. We wish to speak, in the first 
 place, of M. Natalis Rondot, member of Jury 
 XXIX. at the Universal Exhibition of 1S51, who, 
 in his quality of delegate of the Chamber of Com- 
 merce of Lyons, has given a report of very high 
 value on the Articles of Ornament and Fa7icv, 
 among which is the Fan (Labours of the French 
 Commission on the Industry of Nations, pub- 
 lished by order of the Emperor, vol. vii. p. 60 
 to 79 of Jury XXIX.) Paris: Lnperial printing 
 press, 1855 (i vol. Svo). 
 
 In the second place, we have to mention with 
 gratitude the History of Fans, witii a Notice 
 on Tortoisc-siiell, Motlier-of pearl, and Foory, by 
 jM. S. Blondel, who, taldng up the matter of M. 
 Natalis Rondot, has found in it the groundwork 
 of a very estimable and ingenious volume in Svo, 
 published by Renouard in 1S75, a work in which 
 we have discovered certain information usefu 
 for our History of the Fan up to the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 These recent and very careful publications treat 
 of Fans from a point of view absolutely technical 
 and artistic, while we here solely approach the 
 monograph of the Fan across manners, history, 
 and literature ; ours is but a rapid glance, a stolen 
 glimpse, without other pretensions, as we said in 
 
v^.c^ki 
 
 
 
 ( 135 
 
 our preface to this book, than to recreate anJ 
 instruct some of our amiable contemporaries. 
 
 We must cite too a peerless collection in MS. 
 which is from the hand of M. Noel, inspector of 
 the university, of which the sale made some sen- 
 sation a few years ago, by reason of the piquant 
 reunion of erotic works which it contained. The 
 manuscript was part of a collection in twenty 
 volumes, which was bought by a bookseller in 
 1S79. It is now in the library of Earon P . . ., 
 and contains numerous copies of small fugitive 
 pieces on the Fan. 
 
 Let us now give in the order — might we perhaps 
 say in the disorder of our notes ? — the cold nomen- 
 clature of the principal works, in which we have 
 found some information, some particularity, a 
 single word on the subject we had in hand. This 
 list, long as it is, is still not absolutely complete. 
 
 Nougaret ; Ze Fond du Sac. — Galland : Milk d 
 line Niiiis. — Kalidasa : Sakounlala. — Mary Sum- 
 mer : Tales and L-gends of Ancient India. — Idis- 
 tory of Buddiia Sa/::ya-i\fu?ii. — Encyclopedie, vid. 
 Eveniail. — Diclionary of Convc?-saiion, by Duckett. 
 — Comte de Beau voir : Voyage autoiir du Monde. 
 Achille Poussielgue : Voyage en Chine. — J. B. 
 Wilkinson : Manners and Ctistonis of ilie Ancient 
 Egyptians. — Sabine ou Matinee d'une Dame Ro- 
 maine a sa I'oiletfe ci la fin du Premier Steele de 
 I'ere C/iretienne, a translation from Boettiger. — 
 
^,/ 
 
 Montfaucon : Atitiquite Expliquee. — Th(§ophiIe 
 Gautier : Conies et Romajis. — Le Roman de la 
 Momie. — Jules de Saint-Felix : Cleopatre. — Mem- 
 oires et Voyages du Capitaine Basil Hall. — Letires 
 de Giiez de Balzac. — Hisioirc de la Ville de Khotan, 
 translated from the Amiales Chinoises by Remusat. 
 — Li-Kiou : Mctnorial des Rites. — Winckelmann : 
 Description de Picrres Gravees du Baron de Stosch. 
 — Persius : Satires. — Terence : The Eunuch. — Ovid : 
 Loves. — Piroli and Piranesi : Antiquities of Her- 
 culaneutn. — Engravings of Fischbein. — Paciaudi : 
 Syntagm. de Uuibcllce Gestatioue. — Passeri : Pic- 
 turce in Vascidis. — Lewis Nichols : The Progress 
 and Public Processions of Queoi Elizabetli. — De- 
 zobry : Rome au Silcle d'Augttste. — Baudrillart : 
 Histoire du Luxe (passim). — Anthony Rich : Dic- 
 tionary of Rotnan and Greek Antiquities. — Rend 
 Medard : Vie Privee des Anciens. — Ceremonies et 
 Coutumes Religieuses, 1723. — Henri Estienne : 
 Deux Dialogues die Nouveau Laugage Franqois, 
 Ltalianize et Autre??ient Deguize, 1578. — Notice des 
 Eniaux du Louvre. Glossaire et repertoire vid. 
 EsMOUCHOiR. — Nouvclle Histoire de I'Abbaie Royale 
 et Collegiate de Saint- Filibert et de la Ville de Toiir- 
 nus, par un Chanohie de la Meme Abbaie (Pierre 
 Juenin). — Voyage Litteraire de deux Religieux Bene- 
 dictins de la Congregation de Saint-Maur. — Duranti : 
 De Ritu Ecclesiastico. — Bona : De Rebus Liturgicis. 
 — Marquis de Laborde : Glossaire du Moyen Age. 
 
 S".a 
 
•:'*--:^ 
 
 f^ 
 
 ( 137 ) 
 
 — Estienne Boileau : Livre des Mesticrs. — Fabri : 
 JDiversaruiiL Nationiiin Oniaiiis. — Rabelais (pas- 
 sim). — Brantome : Memoires et J'ie des Dames 
 Galantes. — hiveiiiaire des Meublcs de Catherine de 
 lilediiis (1589). — -Journal et Memoires de Pierre 
 de I'Estoile. — Agrippa d'Aubigm^ : Les Tragiques. 
 — L' Eveniail Satirique, by the new Theophile, 
 reprinted by Edouard Fournier in his Varii:tes 
 of the Bihliotlieque Elzevirienne (t. viii.) — Fair- 
 holt : Glossary of Costumes in England. — Lettrcs 
 de Madame de Sh'ignc. — Recueil de Sercy. — Cotin : 
 Recueil des Enigmes de ce Temps. — Metamorplioses 
 Francoises. — Somaize : Dic'ionnaire des Prccieuses. 
 — Moliere: CEuvres. — Colletet: Noiivcau Recueil des 
 plus Beaux Enigmes de ce Temps. — Tallemant des 
 Reaux : Anecdotes. — Madame de Motteville : Me- 
 moires. — Mademoiselle de IMontpensier: Memoires., 
 Paul Lacroix : Dix-septieme Sihle ; Institutions, 
 Usages et Costumes. — Remy Belleau : Bcrgerie. — 
 M. de Montreuil ; Poesies Diverses. — A. de La 
 Chaux et Le Blond : Description des Pierres 
 Gravees du Cabinet du Due d'' Orleans. — Mena- 
 giana. — M. de Vallange : D Art de se Garantir 
 des Incommodites du Chaud, selon Ics Prindpes de 
 la Physique, de la Mcdeeine et de l' Economic. — L. 
 Sim end : Voyage d^ Italic. — Mcrcure de Trance: 
 Eloge Historiquc de Bernard Picard (Decembre 
 1735). — Madame de Genlis ; La Duchesse de La 
 Vallicrc. — Dictionnaire des Etiquettis. — D'Alem- 
 
 i 
 
 

 
 ..-s^^''^^ 
 
 ( 138 ) 
 
 bert : Reflexions et Anecdotes sur la Reine de Suede. 
 — Mereure de France. — Pesselier : Origiiie des Even- 
 fails (1755). — Paris, Versailles, et les Provinces. 
 — Bachaumont : jMcnioires Secrets. — M. Milon : 
 L'Eventail, ou Zamis et Delphire, pofeme en 
 quatre chants, 1780, — Caraccioli : Le Livre des 
 Quatre Coiileurs. — LEvcntail, Comedie Italienne 
 en trois actes, par M. Goldoni, representee aux 
 Italicns en 1763. — Essai Historique et Moral sur 
 r Eventail el les Nueuds, par un capucin, 1764. — 
 L' Evcntail, poeme traduit de I'Anglais (de John 
 Gay), par Coustard de Massy (1768). — La E'euille 
 Nccessaire Contenant Divers Details sur les Lettrcs, 
 les Sciences et les Arts lie.va\\& du 21 Mai 1759). — 
 Esprit des Journaux (De'cembre i^^io).— Almanack 
 Litteraire, 1790. — De Favre : Les Quatre Heicres 
 de la Toilette des Dames (1779)- — Revelations In- 
 diserHes du Dix-huiticme Siecle (18 14). — ISIercure 
 de France (Octobre 1759): Analyse du poeme: 
 L'Eventail, de Gay. — Rabener : (Euvres : Des 
 JJ/oyens de Di:eouvrir a des Signes Ext'erieurs les 
 Sentiments Secrets. — Voyage dans le Boudoir de 
 Paiditie, par L. F. JM. B. L. (an IX. chapitre xiii. ) 
 — The Spectator of Addison. — Duclos : Alemoires 
 Secrets. — Le Mierre : CEirorcs. — Desprez : D Even- 
 tail, chanson (frimaire an VI.) — Lebrun : DEven- 
 lail de Carite. — Alc'rard de Saint-Just : Poesies. — 
 L' Adolescence ou la Boete aux Billets Doux, poeme 
 (d'Hyacinthe Gaston, chant II. Ages de la Femme. 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 
 < L Infill r>n 1,1 
 
 1/ 
 
r-Sfc-' 
 
 :b 
 
 
 4 
 
 < 
 
 9 
 
 ^ ( '39 ) *, 
 
 — Paul Lacroix : DLx-Jiuiiieinc Siccle : Institutions, ','<\''j-'; 
 
 Usans et Costumes. — Balzac : Le Cousin Pons. — '^ -:- 
 
 La BacnaJt, ou ta Guerre eV Al^^er, {.locsie hcroi- vJy' 
 
 ^^-^ comique en cinq chants, par. MM. BarlJieleniy et S^'ji?' 
 
 pieces or poems which bear a title analogous to 
 
 4- - 
 
 jVery; Paris, Dupont, 1S27, 8vo, de 96 pages. ^A5?- 
 
 Jsw — L Album, Journal des Arts, des Modes et des dS'A®^ 
 
 Theatres, iS^i, t. ii. — Charles Blanc : L' Art dans 
 
 la J'arure et dans le Vctement, 1S75. — Adol]jhe r^ir" 
 
 n\;'7 Julhen ; Histoire du Costume an Theatre, iSoo, 4^1% 
 
 £$^? e\:c., &c. Vfe 
 
 vVW \\ estop here m our summary nomenclature of '■ii\.i 
 
 ■^'^V . . . /'^ 
 
 ip'j, bibliography, for since the Revolution up to our /tjja- 
 
 Xsjw time it would require a very large volume to ''■•^l'> 
 
 ^;Ji contain the simple succession of works in which , jtiT 
 
 '•'■ - mention of the Fan is made. The last theatrical 
 
 
 ,Ji, our subject, and are recent productions, here rfef 
 
 ofe follow : — S'l ,., 
 
 IJU L' Eventail, a comedy by 7'«i,^V (/^ i\'('_j'('z, 121110. ~^ 
 
 "^A Paris, 187 1. — L! Eventail, ope'ra-comique, by Jules ^i-W^ 
 
 S ^ Barhier and Michel Carre, music by Boulane'er. •££?! 
 
 '-^'■- . , I 
 
 ■ti Paris, 121110, iS6r. — B Eventail de Gcraldine, <'' 
 
 •r^ comedy-vaude\i!le, by C. Potier, Ernest Mou- i- 11 'V' 
 
 chelet and Edgar Chanu. Paris, 1S59, Svo, played I' 
 
 at tlie theatre of tlie Folies-Dramatiques — Coups '--I'*"*' 
 
 d'Eventail (detached thoughts), by Maelame M 
 
 Claudia Bachi, Paris, Ledoyen, 1S56, 321110. — |< 
 
 Uu etotp eV Eventail, comedy in one act, by - 'I 
 
 Charles Nuitter and Louis Depret, played at the 
 
 
 JN""- 
 

 Gy?niiase in 1869.- 
 Houssaye, 1875. 
 
 If to this list — already too long, and made 
 without regard to the precise and exact formula 
 of bibliography — we had to join the different 
 Statistics of the Industry in France and at Paris, 
 where the art of Fan- making has been long 
 practised, we could not confine ourselves to any 
 reasonable limits. 
 
 We will quote, however, the curious Catalogue 
 of tlie Loan Exhibition of Fans, edited by Strang- 
 ways and Walden, which sums up the great ex- 
 hibition of Fa?is which took place on May 1870 
 at the South Kensington Museum of London, 
 initiated by H.M. Queen Victoria. 
 
 An article published by the Figaro of the 3d 
 July 1S70, under the pseudonym of Montfoie, 
 furnishes us with the following information, not 
 without interest, about this exhibition, which con- 
 tained 413 models of original and superior 
 Fans : — 
 
 The Countess of Paris sent a \&xy beautiful Fan, 
 painted by Eugene Lamy, showing" a Venetian scene. 
 There is, too, the Fan which figured in the corbcille 
 of the Duchess of Orleans, painted by Gigoux, which 
 was given by the Comte de Paris to the Princess 
 Helena, wife of Prince Christian. This Fan, curiously 
 enough, is close beside that given to Queen Victoria by 
 
 

 
 the Emperor and Empress of the French, in memory 
 of her visit to Versailles and Saint-Cloud in 1S55. 
 Beneath is the Fan of the Queen of the Belgians, lent 
 by Queen Victoria, as well as that of Marie-Antoinette 
 in Martin varnish. Then come the Fans of the 
 Princess-Royal of Prussia, with the views of Berlin, 
 Balmoral, Windsor, Coblentz, Buckingham Palace, 
 Babelsberg, and Osborne ; then the Fan of Madame 
 de Pompadour (?), lent by M. Jubinal, of which the 
 subjects are very Ught; that of Madame de Pourtaliis, 
 a present from H.M. the Empress, with a Watteau 
 illustration ; a beautiful Fan in Martin varnish, the 
 toilet of Venus under the features of Madame de 
 Montespan ; an historic Fan, thanks to a letter oi 
 Madame de Sevigne which describes it ; a Fan be- 
 longing to Madame de Nadaillac, painted by Gavarni ; 
 and another to the Duchess de Mouchy, painted by 
 Madame de Nadaillac. Madame la Vicomtesse Agu- 
 ado, Madame de Saulcy, Madames Bourbaki, d'Ar- 
 maill^, the Countess Duchatel, Furtado, Heine, de 
 Rothschild, de Sommerard, are among the exhibitors. 
 It is M. de Sommerard who was marked out by the 
 Empress to assist the English in this Exhibition. 
 
 The Catalogue of the Loan Exhibition of Faiis 
 contains a succinct introduction of six pages by 
 Mr. Samuel Redgrave, and in an appendix the 
 names of the principal rich amateurs who con- 
 tributed to the variety and interest of that Exhibi- 
 tion. This is the golden book of Fan-collectors, 
 among whom, let us say, ladies, as is fitting, are 
 in a majority. 
 
( 142 ) 
 
 It remains for us to thank a youthful amateur 
 of art and a fine connoisseur, M. Germain Bapst, 
 who has kindly offered for our use a packet of 
 notes, collected with a view to a work upon Fans, 
 which our role of literary historian and anecdotist 
 has not allowed us to search into, as we should 
 have done, if our study had been a descriptive 
 monograph and a general history of celebrated 
 Fans. 
 
 We must also render homage to the knowledge 
 and cordial good grace of our fellow-writers and 
 friends, Paul Lacroix, Arsene Houssaye, Jules 
 Claretie, Edmond de Goncourt, Champfleury, 
 Charles INIonselet, and others, who, in the charm 
 and variety of literary conversations, have brought 
 us a piece of information, an anecdote, a pleasant 
 word, though but a detail, all precious httle 
 spangles which glitter like a pretty golden seed- 
 plot on the historic arabesques of our Fans. 
 
 We regret, in conclusion, not to have found 
 a certain Biblioihcque des Evmtaih, which a 
 bibliographer of the eighteenth century, evidently 
 somewhat fanciful, pretends to have met witli 
 in the Ai'iiwire de Pauline. There was — what 
 are we to think of this? — a collection of some 
 small volumes in f2mo, delicate and coquettishly 
 bound in rose satin, and perfumed with the most 
 
 ^SJijc^^-i.-^ 
 
^ 
 
 
 
 ( 143 ) 
 
 exquisite essences. The text, written in sym- 
 pathetic ink, expressed tender overflowings of 
 poetic hearts, and there was to be seen Corydon 
 raising from this terrestrial and nebulous world 
 the Fan of his dear Chloe or of his Amaryllis, 
 to hang It up in the temple of Immortality. 
 
 May the present Fan supply the place of this 
 pretty library ! May it likewise remain attached 
 for some time to the temple of Taste, and receive 
 the homage of women, the only homage which 
 k desires ! 
 
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