Simon Arrow (1907)
It had been a long vigil, and the three sisters – thinking it may be over much of love – had grown a little languid in waiting for the Royal lover.
Lucy, hidden in the softness of a thousand frills, trembled ever so slightly, with fear or with longing as may be, at the thought of approaching possibilities.
Mrs Birchman, raising the lid from a large ointment jar, commenced to rouge her lips and breasts heavily, smiling approval into a small hand-mirror upon the lavish use of the pigment.
Moll loosened her bodice, and laying aside for a moment the copy of Love And Louisa which she was reading, expressed her impatience in gestures which were frankly sensual. Poor Moll, she had once been a very gallant lady indeed! And even now, when youth’s lilies were faded, she was adorned with the esoteric blossoms of unguentarian art, and Moll still had a certain success among the Mashers and the Beaux.
It was twilight, and the pale acacias, stirred by a fitful breeze, seemed to weep that the day had died so soon, covering the green lawns with the purity of their summer snows and lending to the surroundings an indefinable air of chastity.
Mrs Birchman perceived this and took it as a delicate compliment, puffing out her breasts, and pluming herself, in a manner that was attractive enough, the very moths growing careless of nature and abandoning the flowers to hover in the fragrance of the scented rouge.
A cuckoo that had solved the problem of poverty passed on its way to rest, and already the fire-flies could be seen gleaming in the shadows; a love-bird in a neighbouring coppice was in the midst of one of the most amorous little thrills imaginable, when – Count Fanny was seen to be approaching.
There was a veritable flutter in the dove-cot, and I should blush were I to relate the astonishing stratagems to which Mrs Birchman was put in order to conceal the telltale jar!
Nor would it be easy to describe the ravishing appearance of the adorable Count, for the exquisite Marquis de Parabère himself might have paled with envy at the sight of such preciosity, and surely Monsieur Racinet would have added yet another chapter to his already exhaustive work upon La Costume Historique, had he been so fortunate as to have beheld the delicate indiscretion of Count Fanny’s pantaloons!
He wore canary kid boots – with fourteen buttons and the most fascinating little heels – silk stockings, a false bust, and – Ave Maria! the tiniest little purple moustache in the world, this last the object of many a jeu d’esprit on the part of Monsieur Beau de Monde who, holding nothing sacred, would rally the Count – Pansy or Miss Nancy as he playfully called him – with astounding witticisms.
‘A pretty day to come a wooing,’ murmured Count Fanny, treading delicately upon the flower-strewn lawn which at first terrified him a little with the unnatural softness of its broken blossoms; however he was soon reassured, and recalling a hundred soft phrases and extravagant similes from De Arti Amandi and other books of love, he advanced with a series of the daintiest bows and most elegant gestures, his cheeks flushing prettily with passion.
Cupid himself had come courting!
Penelope might have trembled for her virtue; the Vestals have turned a trifle pale!
He hesitated only for a moment while Erotion advanced with the presents which were of astonishing richness and variety.
There was a cage of silk-worms that wove strange tapestries in two colours.
There were some curious drawings from Les Oeuvres Erotiques of Monsieur Felicien Rops.
There was a Rosary of false jet.
There were books – a copy of Voltaire’s La Pucelle which had belonged to the master himself; Les Fleurs du Mal, flowers ‘beautiful in their sublime decay’; a rare pamphlet attributed to the Marquis de Sade upon the cover of which dwarfs engaged in unthinkable pleasantries; Les Aphrodisiaques – Recueil de Romans Libres, described in the catalogues as curious; the paradoxical Frissons des Vierges, and a dozen others.
There were amber beads upon which cupids played the most indelicate frolics, and beads of pale jade.
There was a pair of frail drawers, woven in one piece, broidered in pink thread with a design of horned satyrs, and said to be possessed of curious properties.
There were some roses that had come from an island where it was always summer and whose infrequent petals, of almost transparent whiteness, glowed with the fragile beauty of anæmic virgins.
Never before, thought Count Fanny, had he beheld such an entrancing creature as the youngest of the three sisters. He fell in love at once, ‘head over ears’, Mrs Birchman declared, and brought a perfect fusillade of amorous sighs and love-ladened glances to bear upon the fortifications of her slumbering virginity, practised a dozen nice deceits of the curious art of love, and even offered her a cachou from his crystal bonbonière in the most accomplished manner possible.
Lucy was of course not so immodest as to love the Count upon so short an acquaintance, but at the same time she felt that she respected him very much.
Ah, how sweet she was! The Madonna-like features had grown a little restless under the Count’s assault and she glowed now with a new beauty – a St Teresa that had wearied of prayer! There were strange enchantments in Count Fanny’s love-making.
It was an exquisite torment to look at her. Her cunningly crimpled hair, which was vaguely reminiscent of the parfumeries had been enticed into the most disquieting curls, and clustered upon the crown, where the comb had been bolder in its ravishment, were the sweetest little puffs.
Puffs that were like poems; curls as feverish as Sapphic song!
Her eyes, vague, expectant, and filled with dreams, nestled under damp, nervous lids which closed from time to time in delicious vandalism. She had little hands that were like prayers, and such restless lips, moist, and scarlet as adultery, they seemed to quiver as though oppressed by the burden of unkissed kisses and were surely a thousand times more potent than all the hateful coctions of Canidia that compelled love.
The cushioned softness of the tiny breasts, things of ivory and coral that would mould themselves exquisitely to the lover’s hand, peeped slyly over the batiste frills which fell away on either side as though shamed with the thought that they should conceal such loveliness, and just for an instant the ruched petticoat graciously permitted a glimpse -fleeting as the virtues – of a single shoe of grey pearl which could only have been fashioned in Arcadia; a shoe that would have caused even Princes to dally and have made common people very unhappy indeed!
It must not be supposed, however, that Count Fanny was so ungallant as to altogether neglect the other sisters.
On the contrary, he complimented Moll upon the courageous chymistry of her hair and the unblenchable suavity of her manner, and whispered some astonishing passage into Mrs Birchman’s ear which sent her into fits of laughter. She made a dignified attempt to blush -even the moon passed for a moment behind a cloud.
‘How sentimental the Count is,’ she chortled, ‘quite the old gentleman,’ and she wiped away the tears that in their passage over her cheeks had graven quaint tortuous ruts through the powder and the rouge.
Presently Count Fanny taking Lucy by the hand led her gently away into the shadow of the wood.
Mrs Birchman played with Erotion, the little page.
The Moon quite unable to conceal her curiosity peeped round the edge of the coppice. It was a pretty sight she saw!
She was pale and swollen and seemed to hover quite near the earth, like some monstrous powder-puff suspended in the sky, or like one of the great arc-lamps that illuminate the Embankment, thought the Count.
‘And hardly less beautiful,’ he mused.
How romantic it all was!
Inside the wood it was quite dark.
Hours later when Count Fanny drove away Mrs Birchman was repairing her raddled features in the moonlight, while Etelin, with noiseless footsteps and immutable features, carried away the sorrowful remnants of an Arcadian repast – the emptied bottles of Liebfraumilch – the crumpled linen – the broken glass.
It was late next morning when Count Fanny awoke. His slumbers had been exquisitely troubled, and, in the first delicious moments which followed his awakening, the propitious happenings of the night before mingled themselves with his dreams.
He closed his eyes for a moment, seeking to prolong the illusion, and it was not until he caught sight of the broken flowers, which he had ravished the night before from Lucy’s bosom, that he was reassured.
He picked them up and fondled them, and noting the faint odour of patchouli which they exhaled, found them infinitely sweet. He kissed those places where the little beads of moisture emanating from her skin had stained them or washed away the bloom.
How delicious they were! There was a subtle charm about the slightly artificial fragrance of the blossoms, that appealed to Count Fanny’s temperament and filled him with vague, ungenerous hopes, unformed, transitory emotions such as stir within us at the memory of an early love, or at the thought of an illicit pleasure. He remembered to have read somewhere that Henri Valois was for seven years possessed by a passion which was inspired and nurtured only by the perspiration of a glove, and again that the Curé Gaufridy had intoxicated all women with the fragrance of his breath, and it seemed to him that certain perfumes must be possessed at times of all the properties of aphrodisiacs.
Armande, when he entered to perform the toilet, grew very droll over the Count’s extravagances.
Were I to tell you of the care and ingenuity that were lavished upon his person I feel sure that I should be accused of exaggeration! The Love-birds of the Babylonian marshes will, we are told, in their bridal dances stain their breasts and practise all the cunning arts of prostitution, and though Count Fanny did not go to these extremes, he lingered many hours before his looking glass, time after time changing a scarf, dissatisfied with the choice of rings or the position of a patch, quarrelling with Armande over the crimping of his hair, or at times even musing a little upon his own perfection.
Such are the nice vanities of lovers!
‘C’est vraiment de bon ton,’ exclaimed Armande, when the Count was at length ready to appear upon the Town, handing him at the same time a tiny handkerchief, sewn with lace, and as frail and perishable as lovers’ vows.
He lingered for a moment lovingly before a mirror, then, drawing on his long white kid gloves, he stepped into the coupé.
London was crowded, Mashers, Fops, Rastaquoueres, Dandies, Charlatans, Cocottes, Souteneurs, Countesses, Dwarfs, Gomeurs, Tarts and Beaux jostling each other in the arcades, everybody was there. Monsieur de L’Amorbleu the well-known Parisian gomeur, his hair curling so naturally that people quite thought it was crimped; poor Tombletino, the clown, looking sad because Lord Judas had stolen his columbine away; Prince Piere of the Embassy who had lost a fortune at ‘Bilbocquet’; the Countess Lilee, whose beauty was of that rare type that is embellished by the use of pigment, and, last but not least, Madame Plumsein, an odd old thing, with that air of depraved girlishness and cultivated innocence with which we are told kings have at times been fascinated and even priests and roués. Her appearance was somewhat surprising, the little old face, the voluptuous droop of her lips and abandoned prominence of her breasts giving the lie to the childish innocence suggested by the loose unfashioned hair, the ingenuous brevity of the skirts, the protruding lace of the pantalons.
Everybody was a little unhappy at the Count’s news.
The young men frowned, a trifle jealous perhaps, the veillards sighed regretfully.
The Roués were weeping a little in the Row; the cocottes had painted their faces to conceal their sorrow; only lovers, seated in amorous familiarity, were quite happy.
Mashers had gone in for macquillage, and with their sticks of coral lip-salve had reddened their lips where disappointment had blanched them or envy had turned them pale.
Fops as they congratulated him played nervously with their ruffles.
Exquisites and dilettanti, wearing un bel air de paleu r, had touched their costumes with a note of mauve.
The Marquis de Joliemain had been seen stealing out of Floris’s where he had been buying ‘Antirides for Wrinkles’ that had grown in a night, La Bella Giambetta was confined to her room, and Madame Pomeroy’s was crowded.
Monsieur Beau de Monde alone seemed entirely delighted and he and Count Fanny passed together down the Colonnades, quizzing the passers by. They spent an hour pleasantly enough watching the lapidaries seated in their windows graving gems, or the chemists, who had abandoned all their less important duties and were busy mixing cosmetics. Then the unguentarians had to be consulted about some secret of the toilet and they watched them for a time as they worked at their mysterious labours with shining test-tubes and phials of coloured liquids, iridescent, opalescent and opaque, brewing potions that would inspire passion, crushing cantharides in coloured crucibles, grinding down strange herbs to make love philtres and treating them according to the curious recipes contained in the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, or handling in the most loving manner their pomades, creams, essential oils and essences, poudre-de-riz and psingthium, powder puffs, lip-salves, false busts, pads, coral sticks, patches, plumpers and powder of three colours, blanc, naturelle, and Rachel. There was a rare assortment!
The Count and Monsieur Beau de Monde had a dozen subjects to discuss. Marriage, of course, which Monsieur Beau de Monde declared added ‘such a piquancy to our infidelities’. Mr Tree’s latest astonishing representation, which the critics quaintly enough described as Shakespearean drama. The dancing of Mdlle Genée, who pirouetted with such grace at the Empire that the Roués sighed, and even wept a little, as they recalled their vanished youth and the days when Taglioni and Carlotta Grisi took the town by storm and the clowns languished in the Harlequinade because they dare not tell their love. She was wholly divine and with the double exception perhaps of Yvette Guilbert and Eleanore Duse ranked as the one woman of genius that the nineteenth century had produced. An ephemereal figure that had drifted for a moment from another world! Some strange, exotic flower that had matured in the Arcadian sunshine of the footlights, they declared growing extravagant in their praise!
They talked of the new Turners. ‘Turner,’ said Count Fanny, ‘set nature an impossible task; Sir Napier Hemy has avenged her.’
Of the Manet exhibition.
Of the hats and flowers that made the window of Jay’s one of the most pastoral scenes in the South of England.
Of some gloves of white kid which they saw in the Burlington Arcade, and which were sewn with delicious pink nails and were surely the most unnatural things in the world!
Of Lord Henry who had just published his little volume of erotic distichs – like any other dilettante.
Of the flowers at Goodyear’s: far finer than anything that could be grown in the country, and almost too beautiful to be real!
Of some mysterious creatures with lecherous faces and wanton gestures who had been seen creeping up Bond Street at dusk.
Of Mr Saltus’ latest delightful volume; of the pragmatic philosophy; of themselves; and in fact of everything of importance.
Presently they passed down Regent Street, noted the quality of its lines and grandeur of its conception, which embodied the whole spirit of Greek culture, and made it at once not only the one Street of any architectural importance in London but also one of the finest in the world; looked in at Hatchard’s, spent a pleasant hour turning over the leaves of the books -which afforded them a curious joy – and then to Perruzi’s to see the jewels.
Perruzi was a romantic old thing with a flatulent manner. He was always delighted to see Count Fanny and he quickly produced some rare specimens, shoe buckles with the most loving clasps, some heavy gilt earrings carved by dwarfs with images of forbidden pleasures, a pair of gold garters with a long history and the quaintest mottoes, and amorous with gilded loves that must have been possessed of the most curious knowledge, some pearls, and peridots cut in three manners, briolette, rose recoupée, and en cabochon.
But what Count Fanny liked most were the unset stones. How they glittered!
There were corals as pink as his own palms, chrysophrases and chrysoberyls, and agates that had been stained in honey to increase their colour. There were aquamarines in whose green depths were hidden all the secrets of the sea, heliotropes, chalcedony, sard and jade, amethysts – pale, and purple as secret sorrows -and opals as fierce and unquenchable as stifled passions. There were ambers dyed different colours, moonstones that waned with the moon, alexandrites so enamoured of fire that they blushed when they saw the sun, topazes from the Serpent Isles of the Arabian Sea, and turquoises that Perruzi, leering amorously, vowed would only fade when he wearied of loving.
There were stones from Pegu, Bohemia, Arabia, and the Rue de la Paix, blue beryls and dull jasper, zircons, jargoons, jacinths, pale chrysolites and tourmalines, and some so rare that Anselmus de Boot had omitted to mention them.
Delicious temptations that would have made the most virtuous meditate a little!
Perruzi however, had not yet produced his greatest treasure, keeping it to the last – perhaps a little loath to part with so precious a jewel. Be that as it may, the entreaties of the Count – who flattered the old creature outrageously – prevailed, and, vowing that it was impossible to deny so noble a patron, he bowed with obsequious flattery, and excusing himself for a moment returned with a necklet of jet crystals. Handling it lovingly, he held it up to the light and allowed it to trickle in glittering cascades through his fingers, its thousand facets reflecting the features of his visitors in the most grotesque manner.
Of course Count Fanny bought it.
Already he could see the sombre depths of its impenetrable beauty reflecting the baptismal purity of Lucy’s throat and breast.
It was night time, long past the hour of Vespers and when all save the moths, night birds, and Roués are at rest and even lovers turn upon their sides and smoothing the crumpled pillows pretend for a while to sleep. Count Fanny had prepared a surprise.
Lucy had wandered far into that mysterious land of enchantments where nymphs and driads play in perfumed shades, and loves are steadfast, and day dreams at length come true.
As she knelt before her prie-Dieu at her devotions, she had folded her little hands and asked for a benediction upon her happiness, unconscious of the quaint paradox in which she called for a blessing from the Virgin upon her approaching abandonment, and she slept now, her joy finding repletion in the approbation of the Benign mother.
Happy, in the awakening consciousness of love’s first embrace, her dreams formed themselves into visions of strange and fantastic ideals, unimaginable refinements of fidelity and impossible renunciations. Hers was the curiously unreal and almost stainless passion of early youth which soon becomes merged in the finer instincts of that pure eroticism, which seeks expression only in romantic loves, curious excursions, passionate experiences, exquisite infidelities, and Lucy was very happy.
A wonderful moonlight streamed through the open casement bathing her in its cold caresses, making her little breasts as pale as leaves of Eucharist lilies and casting upon the walls grotesque and mischievous shadows.
The moths saw her as they flickered by and became in a moment so amorous that they could find pleasure only in fanning her with their wings and desired the stars no longer.
The scent of summer flowers floated in through the window, sweeter far than anything that came from ‘Houbigant’, and all those night noises so infinitely softer than silence itself passed to and fro in the warm air.
Down in the wood a Love-bird was singing of beautiful and impossible things.
Lucy must have been sleeping for a long time when of a sudden she stirred, a little restless, as those will who sleeping lightly dream of joy. A fresh enchantment had stolen into her dreams, and the fairies seemed to be ringing the Canterbury-bells and Aralda blossoms in the garden below.
Presently she awoke and at first was frightened to hear the sound of music at so late an hour. She called to Frou-Frou, her spaniel, who nestled closer, and whined in wonderful felicity.
She listened for a moment to the loving serenade and, with that curious instinct that marches hand in hand with love, soon divined its purport; of course it made her very happy to think that Count Fanny should have flattered her with so amorous an attention. She tried to think of some little thing in which she could please him, and performing only the most hasty of toilets, hurried to the window.
I should be sorry to pry too closely into the secrets of courtship or to profane lightly the solitude in which it has ever been the privilege of lovers to indulge, but Mrs Birchman who wasn’t the least jealous, declared afterwards that Lucy made ‘quite the most discreet Juliet to Count Fanny’s Romeo’! Mrs Birchman had read Shakespeare, though of course only in the bowdlerized editions.
It was a romantic scene! Count Fanny had studied voice production under Marchesi and could get G in the upper octave without clearing his throat.
The musicians played a mysterious accompaniment in soft invisible tones. Erotion was there and Sganarelle, playing upon the castanets, and of course Sporus – the Count’s chief page; the young Marquis Piere Isabella de Pironelle, who laughed immoderately; ‘Little Albert’ who tapped a triangle and the diminutive Pantagruel who was preoccupied with a tuning fork absorbed in an abortive attempt to find absolute pitch.
Monsieur Beau de Monde with little febrile hands performed the elegant offices of clacqueur. Sometimes Erotion and Sganarelle would join in a chorus, but their voices came thin and shrill – like the singing of hermaphrodites heard through glass – and not trained at all.
Somewhere in the Elysian depths behind the open casement a parrot, from time to time, muttered quaint lubricities.
Lucy was extremely sorry when they all drove away; it unsettled her very much and filled her with an instinctive longing for the grace of vanished things. She recalled romantic legends which she had read of medival chivalry and of inconsequent singers of Provençal song, of Raymond de Miraval who had loved the Lady of Azalais, of Bertolomi Corgi the Venetian, and in the extravagance of her passion she pictured Count Fanny as the hero of a hundred romances, mystical and real. She felt restless and feverish with the intoxication of love, and she lay and indulged her thoughts, fugitive images of other lovers drifting across the fleeting phantasmagoria of her meditations. She thought of Marianna Alcaforado, of Giovanni Boccacio’s ‘ninth day’ and of Lucius and Photis from the ‘Golden Ass’ of Apuleius.
Lucy had certainly the most surprising knowledge!
Other loves visited her in her dreams but now they were misshapen and unreal, phantoms distorted by excess of passion, dwarfs made mad by the scent of flowers, and moths that lived in adultery with the stars.
Lucy was pleased when she awoke and escaped such preposterous intrusions. Alceste was soon in attendance with her chocolate and was bubbling with a hundred little confidences, and the two girls laughed and joked together till it was time for the toilet to be performed.
Of course Lucy wore her Sunday frock.
Count Fanny came early. He made a charming lover – pluperfect and full of surprises. He brought Lucy some beads, bijouterie, and sweetmeats emblazoned with endearing mottoes, paid her a hundred little attentions, and flattered her in loving innuendoes.
They flirted together for a long time and indulged in the most unbridled amatory follies, though of course nothing in the nature of a liberty was permitted. Very different to the precipitous courtship of the Friar Albert and some of the lovers about whom Count Fanny told the most curious stories
in the evening they were all to go to the Grand Ballet. They arrived late and Mrs Birchman was quite cross when she heard that they had missed the vaudevilles and marionettes.
‘How silly of us,’ she said peevishly, however, she was a good natured old creature really, and her resentment soon vanished in a display of excessive fondness.
The box had been embellished especially for the Royal party, and resembled a decorative piece by Boucher.
There were garnishments of real flowers, and the flags, floating gonfalons, rich tiffanies, and tinsels, contrasted pleasantly enough with an effect of Arcadian simplicity produced by festoons of real roses and poppies cut from plush.
Mrs Birchman was quite happy now and hardly looked at the dancing at all, but flirted in the most outrageous manner with Erotion. She allowed her bodice to slip aside with studied carelessness and display the ample zones of her bosom, brushed him with her tresses, sighed and panted in the most amorous way, and brought about slight but voluptuous contacts. When the music dropped, fragments of their endearments and fond speeches could be overheard such as ‘My little mousie’, ‘Pussy’, ‘Tulip’, ‘ Mon cher petit coco en sucre’, or ‘Snippy thing’. They also engaged in such refinements of dumb rhetoric as paddling each others palms, little nods and becks, and made significant gestures with their feet and hands that, in others less virtuous, might have been mistaken for harbingers of even greater happiness.
Lucy was quite absorbed in the novelty of her surroundings, and innocently asked a hundred indiscreet questions which it required all Count Fanny’s ingenuity to answer. The Count, it was noticed, flushed from time to time during the evening and was attacked by fits of sudden perspiration, and indeed displayed all those symptoms of love which we find so eloquently classified in Struthius’ ‘Doctrine of Pulses’.
Moll surveyed the ‘house’ with wanton frankness, while Seraphina and Minette, her two favourites, held each other’s hands in the dark recesses of the box. As the evening progressed they grew more fond and laughed together nervously. The rest of the company behaved appropriately enough.
The curtain rose upon a scene of great felicity in a grotto of the Venus Meretrix and disclosed the Goddess surrounded by her favourites, Hermione, Doto, Hermaphroditus, Priapus, Anteros, Erato, Laomcdia, Spio, and the rest. The stage presented a dishevelled appearance, and was strewn with the tokens of a banquet beside of which the lascivious feast of Tremalcion must have been quite a paltry affair.
Everybody was drunk, with wine, with pleasure, and with love, and dwarfs and satyrs wearing masks fought and struggled with huge half emptied vats – spilling the wine over their clothes – drank from excessive goblets, and committed a hundred absurdities in their efforts to clear away the débris of the feast. Half-nude girls with blonde wigs of long fibrous hair, like seaweed, were preparing for the first figure, while cupids wearing black stockings and carrying Dio mio! not arrows but birches, danced around their divine mistress singing songs of love. All about her, her creatures lolled in conventional attitudes of ease, and shouted, laughed, swore, clapped their hands, blew kisses, threw the dice, and hiccoughed or gave way to obscene talk, fond caresses, and boisterous laughter in the prosecution of their amours.
Boys dressed as doves, as peacocks, as beasts, as insects, and as fishes, footed it in the ring and immolated flowers and fruit upon the altar of love. Huge toads blew out their flanks and roared with drunken laughter, cupids thrashed each other with their birches, frogs and griffins embraced together and danced in mincing measure, creeping things played upon the castanets, while goats, with inverted horns, ravaged birds of impossible plumage and dragged them yelling into the dark recesses of the cave.
It was altogether an astonishing display and of course everybody clapped their hands, shouted encouragements, threw favours, and in fact rendered the claque quite an unnecessary affair.
When the corps de ballet advanced it was soon seen that all the former glories of the Alhambra were to be surpassed, and it would be idle for me to even attempt an adequate description. The magnificence of the scene surpassed all at which the ‘Arabian Nights’ have ever hinted, made the immoderate inventions of Commodus to dispel ennui seem very bourgeois indeed, and even vied with those curious exhibitions which may be seen sometimes at ‘La Festa’ on the hill.
A pretty sight indeed!
The wave-like motions of the dancers produced a peculiar effect of colour, dyes and stuffs, somewhat crude and garish in themselves, mingling together with delightful congruity. The legs of the girls were stained blue, yellow, pink, and three shades of green and vibrated with mechanical regularity, every motion being multiplied a thousand times in mirrors placed at angles upon the walls and ceiling. There were girls in pink trunks with blue tights, and in pink tights with blue trunks, in long black stockings, in trunks trimmed with beads, with tinsel, and with feathers.
There were false busts, bow-legs, stencilled eyebrows, and wigs of all colours, imaginary and real, purple, straw and washing. One creature had a Bavarian chin and hair that was fluffy, like feathers, and not brushed at all, enormous plumpers, and tights that had been torn, and mended only in the most careless manner. Of course she was in the back row and received the smallest salary.
La Tintoretta looked like a goddess and danced quite like a real person. Salome was not more seductive! The Genée herself must look to her laurels!
As the evening progressed the fun became more furious; grease paint melted and ran in little furrows down the face and breast, eye-black, and rouge from the lips, striped the visages in the most grotesque manner, making them almost unsavoury, dishevelled wigs became misplaced, in some cases completely hiding the faces of their owners in damp, sticky curls, or even rolling headless and unheeded on the floor, tights split with the noise of cannon, ungartered hose behaved with the utmost indiscretion, paddings, that had slipped sideways, distorted the figures and adorned them with many an impossible and laughable prominence, and the whole house became filled with a subtle, and not unpleasant odour of mingled patchouli, perspiration, and musk.
Everybody in Count Fanny’s party was delighted with the performance though it was naively agreed that the curtain fell not a moment too soon!
As they passed out they caught sight of Violet, behind the buffet, looking pretty and piquant as ever, and serving the Roués, with impartial good nature, with syrups that shone and glistened with a hundred bright colours. One old creature grew quite loving, and gave her some bonbons in lieu of kisses. Lucy could not help admiring all the smart women who walked about so boldly, laughing, talking, and sipping their cordials and aphrodisiacs with the utmost good fellowship. What pretty clothes they wore!
‘Aye, Madame, and broidered throughout with a coronet on every corner I dare swear,’ volunteered Monsieur Beau de Monde, who always displayed a nice fastidiousness alike in his wine, in his women, and the mode of his address.
‘They must be Duchesses,’ exclaimed Lucy, but Mrs Birchman, with a maturer knowledge, thought that at any rate some of them were only Countesses in their own right.
I feel that I should be accused of cruelty were I to refrain any longer from telling you about the ordering of the trousseau.
I should have shrunk altogether from touching upon a matter, more delicate even, if that were possible, than the very fabrics out of which the delicious garments were engendered, were it not that in doing so I should have laid myself open to the reproaches of a hundred lovers less fortunate than Count Fanny. I must, however, beg for an indulgence in case I should be guilty of any slight indiscretion or betrayal. To proceed, Mrs Birchman, Lucy, and Moll sallied forth together to complete the sacred work.
The three girls were in the best of spirits and overflowing with confidences, secrets, and suggestions. They laughed and chatted together over innocent little scandals and indulged in short, but quite the most wayward, quarrels.
Their first visit was to Madame Troutrou to see the latest modes, lingerie, and foll-lolls and to hear the news of the town. The old gossip smiled lovingly upon the three girls, and regaled them with thinly veiled accounts of the latest indiscretions as she handed them a piece of lace, or toyed with a sample of hose. Moll recalled a former visit upon a similar happy occasion and grew quite sentimental as she turned over the delicate tissues or tested the quality of a silk. Nor is it to be wondered at that Lucy, on beholding of a sudden such an assortment of damasks, embroideries, velvets, cambrics, masks, bargains, fans, ribbands, chevelures and transformations, gave way to astonished ejaculations of delight and pleasure. ‘Oh my!’ ‘So!’ ‘Lala!’
‘Gracious!’ she exclaimed in a breath, while Madame Troutrou patted her hands and sought to calm her with verbose platitudes.
Ah, surely no moths had ever feasted upon more delicious stuffs! The divine Chevalier de Lorraine of the regency can hardly have dreamed of such transparent refinements of linon.
Lucy chose quite a number of pretty things including a rich fan which had little slits, whose sides were sewn with lashes, and through which the eyes might peer in the most coquettish manner. Mrs Birchman, who was happy in the consciousness of new satinette, pronounced this to be ‘the real thing, the pick of the basket, and quite a bargain’.
The first choice fell upon a chemisette, so light and frail, that it was in reality nought but an excuse for the most delicious broidery and inviting trimming.
Then came some cache-corsets, cut en rouleaux and concealing nothing.
A chemise, which was an exact model of the one worn by Marie of Cleves, and which so ravished Henri III at the wedding of Marguerite of Valois.
A pair of the most indiscreet drawers in the world, and a pair with insertions of real lace, and broidered with the most inquisitive cupids!
Nightdresses that were mere cobwebs and surely were thrice blessed.
A petticoat, double sewn, and ruched à la Madame de Pompadour.
A profusion of socks, laces, delicious gloves, sewn with garlands of flowers and scented with musk, or painted with blue veins and made to look like real hands; and the rest that it would be imprudent to mention.
‘And now to the Burlington arcade to buy shoes,’ said Lucy, when the resources of Madame Troutrou had been entirely exhausted, graciously consenting to be lipp’d by the fat old thing who wished her a thousand happy experiences. Afterwards the dresses had to be selected and these were all very handsome, but of course quiet, and in the best of taste – not at all like the rather bizarre costumes of the fast women who trade in love, in pleasure, and in joy.
Of course they visited the parfumeries and indulged in all manner of mingled fragrances, cunning fards, and rare oils. Some of the scents were made from real flowers, others from mysterious unnatural blossoms, whose odours were full of the intoxications of desire. There was jasmine, full of intangible charm, refined and delicate as a Schubert melody; Geranium, curiously reminiscent of withered loves; unblended Ambergris, that had the power to excite the most anæmic virgins; Civet; Saffron; Benzoin; Stephanotis; Kiss-me-quick; Frangipanni; Cul-me-to-you; Bouquet des Amours; Peau d’Espagne; Fleur d’Amour; Jicky; Bouquet Largillerie; Jardin de mon Curé; and Bosom-Caresser.
‘We have done very well,’ decided Mrs Birchman as they talked over their bargains on the way home. Moll was quite cheerful again now, ogling the passers by, jesting with the smart women and foppish fellows who dawdled in the arcades, and claiming no small share of attention from the lovers who crowded round Lucy, eager to offer their sorrowful congratulations. Indeed there were many who preferred her more complex charms, her wider experience, her curious knowledge of gallantry and somewhat abandoned type of beauty, and the Curé François, who it must be admitted was quite the most profligate of the roués, wooed her in a manner that was rather more amorous than discreet.
Mrs Birchman, as she corrected her toilet in the plate-glass window of Madame Elise’s, could not help smiling, and several of the older women of the town, women at the change of life or whose beauty, may be, had been sacrificed early at the shrine of Aphrodite, cast glances of envy, hatred, malice and despair.
Count Fanny’s courtship had now lasted three delicious days and on the morrow his passion was to find consummation.
He had attended at the Confessional, laughed a little with his priest, Father the Reverend Antoine Marie de Confleur, whose virtue, it was rumoured, was even a lighter thing than the penances he imposed, and received absolution for any little sins of which he had been guilty, unknown, mysterious, and often spontaneous excesses, passions lightly conceived and as lightly put aside, curious gratifications, negations, and denials. And now, in these last hours of withering freedom, Count Fanny found himself thinking a little sadly on the future. The phantoms of dead loves, of which he had thought nought remained saving the memory of a few kisses, a few impassioned letters, and a lock or two of hair, rose up before him and lured him with seductive charm. And then there was Sporus, his little favourite, and Monsieur Venus, his new friend, he could hardly hope to see so much of them in the future, and he sighed regretfully at the terrible thought. In the amorous indulgence which he allowed his meditations, anticipation mingled strangely with regret; he shivered, a little terrified, as he recalled some story of strange excesses which had matured upon the marriage bed.
He thought of other lovers. Of the Curé Gaufridy who had intoxicated all women with the fragrance of his breath.
Of the curious impurities of St Teresa, St Angela of Foligno, and of St Catherine Emmcrich, who had abandoned themselves as the brides of Christ.
Of Pope Plus II.
Of the inimitable memoirs of the Cardinal Dubois.
Of forgotten romances of the Hermaphroditus of Antonio Beccatelli; of the erotic discourses of Astyanasisa the tire-woman of Helena; of Gower’s Confessio Amantis; of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ‘wherein all human matters are proved to be no more than a dream’; of Les Marguerites de Marguerite, and of the Satyricon of Petronius.
Of the Seigneur Gilles de Retz, and of the curious cruelties, through the medium of which the Marquis de Sade found expression for his love.
Of Mdlle de Maupin and of the Vestal Virgins.
When Monsieur Beau de Monde arrived he found the Count looking flushed and sad.
On meeting Lucy, however, all his doubts vanished in excess of fondness, and he greeted her with surprising demonstrations of affection, lipping her upon the cheeks and neck, nibbling her ears, and squeezing her damp delicious palms. Monsieur Beau de Monde too grew quite amorous, but Count Fanny was too fond of him to be at all jealous, and the two friends vied with each other in that administration of loving attentions. Lucy was feeling in a romantic mood, so was not at all averse to their twofold attentions. How pretty she looked! She had dressed a little carelessly, knowing that her lover might be expected, and was wearing some real flowers, and a veil to protect her from the sun. Count Fanny vowed that she looked as fresh and dainty as an Elizabethan pastoral!
She invited the Count to come and see the presents which she had received, tokens of love, admiration, and respect. Amongst them were some white peacocks which Count Fanny declared to be ‘more beautiful than Herod’s’; some gold-fish, whose scales were set with jewels; some blue birds that piped of love, and a dwarf dressed in yellow satin. The little fellow had a hairy skin, long broken nails, a halting speech, and was only twenty-seven inches high.
‘Just one inch for every two years of his age,’ Lucy volunteered proudly.
‘What an odd person,’ said Count Fanny, catching sight of the little creature to whom Lucy had become entirely devoted. She lifted him up and fondled him, and encouraged him to behave in the most forward manner. The Count pouted a little, as he pulled off his gloves, and corrected the indiscretions in his cravatte of flowered muslin, and laughed nervously in his efforts to conceal the agitation which the sight of such liberties caused him.
‘Naughty, naughty,’ exclaimed Mrs Birchman, taking the little fellow from Lucy and folding him in her arms. She had some sweetmeats concealed about her person in a manner that surely might have rendered them secure from pilfering hands; however, Gombellino displaying a most precocious knowledge, quickly discovered them, and when Lucy and the Count slipped away into the alluring darkness of the trees, he was feasting upon the delicious fondants, laughing and clapping his hands, and behaving in quite the happiest manner.
Lucy turned before she disappeared into the wood and blew him a dozen kisses, and the absurd creature shrieked with delight. Poor Gombellino, he was a loving creature, but plain – plain as the women one has wearied of loving.
The twilight had now cloaked the garden in a purple veil, and the woods were filled with romantic shadows and mysterious sounds. The moths and creeping things were already awake or stirring in their dreams, eager for the delicious banquet of juice laden poppies, luscious berries, and honey flavoured flowers; some were even already fighting together over the savoury viands. The air was heavy with the damp odours of mosses and of flowers, which bowed under the footsteps of the lovers, surrendering their perfumes which rose and mingled with their full lipped kisses. The moonlight had cast her white shroud over the meadows and made them like pale fields of lilies. In places too it had pierced the dark shadows of the wood and illuminated the mysterious recesses with patches of silver.
The lovers came across such a little island, and the flowers, which but a moment before had been hidden in the darkness stood out clear and crisp as the floral foreground of a Botticelli. The moths were moving from blossom to blossom, flying in fantastic curves, engaging in many an amorous sally, and fighting with each other in the prosecution of their passions. In the trees the night birds warbled softly passionate songs of illicit love.
Romance had come into her kingdom!
The lovers were alone.
The image of Pan, mute upon his ivory pedestal, smiled at the excesses of these wanderers from another world who seemed so happy in the sublime consciousness of solitude of immunity – and of love.
The sun had long since risen upon the nuptial morn, and was shining through the stained glass windows of the little Chapel of the Magdalene, as though inquisitive of the pleasures of the day. And of a truth the scene it discovered was pretty enough, aisles and nave alike being happy with a hundred bright colours, the floral decorations, rich silks, and large hats of the women producing a wholly pastoral effect.
Nor had the altar been neglected, and, from a representation of the Annunciation, the Virgin smiled down upon pale leaves of lilies. It was a curious canvas. It seemed as though the artist had wandered but for a few brief moments, and unwillingly at that, within the confines of the Gallilean, and, faithful ever to Olympus, had portrayed Aphrodite in the Virgin’s garb, the long feverish hands, the moist lips, the drooping lids of the Madonna being the outcome of a wholly Pagan art. The Angels too, who attended upon the Blessed Mother, knew nought of the solemnity of prayer, but danced around, their voluptuous figures swaying to a wanton measure, or reclined on rich stuffs in graceful, if somewhat abandoned, attitudes of ease.
The church was already crowded with guests who awaited nervously the advent of the bride. The women were whispering together, making short exclamations, giggling, recalling episodes, or muttering doubles entendres suitable to the occasion. Moll was full of reminiscences and Mrs Birchman, looking ‘quite the lady’, was talking with Monsieur Beau de Monde in a distant corner. They were discussing the possibility of proving the immaculate conception by the somewhat obscure principle of eliptic functions, and as their arguments became more heated their voices rose, and Mrs Birchman perspired a little even freely.
Of course she was not angry really, for she and Monsieur Beau de Monde were great friends – in fact she hardly spoke to Erotion now.
All the Mashers and rejected lovers were present, nervous, agitated and exquisitely self-conscious as they displayed their rings, wiped away a speck of dust, or readjusted a patch that had become displaced.
There was quite an excitement when Lucy arrived and even Gombellino and ‘Little Albert’ looked up for a moment from their game of dice.
‘How pretty she is,’ they exclaimed as they sighed regretfully.
Lucy was dressed in all her finery, foll-lolls and the rest. She wore a dress of real satin, velvet shoes sewn with pearls, and scarlet stockings with long tapering clocks. She was nervous and pale, and her twin breasts, cruelly concealed as becomes the modesty of a bride, palpitated visibly with suppressed emotion; from time to time she moistened her lips in the most delicious manner.
Count Fanny was dressed in the height of fashion, a little flushed – Armande had hurried him in the fifth hour of the toilet – and accompanied by Sporus who never left him now.
Lucy was made a little unhappy by the somewhat immodest nature of the marriage service but her confusion soon vanished in excess of joy. Ave Maria, but the lovers made a handsome pair! Everybody crowded round them after the ceremony, eager to offer their congratulation, and overwhelm them with good wishes.
‘The pretty dear,’ exclaimed Madame Plumsein, after feeling Lucy all over, and pronouncing her to be ‘plump as a partridge, and full of delights’.
‘The nice creature,’ said Mrs Birchman addressing herself to the Count.
‘Just the man to make a good woman happy,’ said a motherly old creature with a false chin.
As the church emptied, the treble voices of the Castrati rose in an anthem to the Virgin, and with curious paradox hymned the impatience of the bride.
The wedding breakfast was full of delights and lasted far into the night.
‘How greedy they all are,’ exclaimed Count Fanny at length, wearied with the long display of unheard-of dishes and symbolic fruits. Presently accompanied by Lucy, and little Sporus, he left the guests and the feast proceeded as merrily as ever. Wine was upset, glasses were broken, shoes were lost in the strangest manner, décolleté costumes were carelessly cast aside, lovers made impatient gestures, and the couples became most fond.
Outside in the moonlight below Lucy’s casement the roués and rejected lovers were singing their ‘Lament’. The voices of hybrid youths chorused their mournful strains and echoed them far out into the night – sad and sorrowful as broken flowers, as perished ideals, as Hoffmann’s third ‘Tale’, or as women at the change of life.
The peacocks in the wood heard their canticle and cried out in terror; the love-birds shivered and nestled closer; the golden carp in the lake crept under the scarlet water-lilies, or darted across the calm waters and hid themselves from the moon; even the Cantharides flies hovering in the passion-flowers ceased for a moment to think of love. Lucy heard the music.
‘The absurd creatures,’ she exclaimed, and smiled a little cruelly at the extravagance of their grief.
Count Fanny coined a paradox upon the softness of the linen. It was the swan-song of her perishing virginity.