This eBook was produced by Dagny,
and David Widger,
IT had, when I first went to town, just become the fashion for young menof fortune to keep house, and to give their bachelor establishments theimportance hitherto reserved for the household of a Benedict.
Let the reader figure to himself a suite of apartments, magnificentlyfurnished, in the vicinity of the court. An anteroom is crowded withdivers persons, all messengers in the various negotiations of pleasure.There, a French valet,—that inestimable valet, Jean Desmarais,—sittingover a small fire, was watching the operations of a coffee-pot, andconversing, in a mutilated attempt at the language of our nation, thoughwith the enviable fluency of his own, with the various loiterers whowere beguiling the hours they were obliged to wait for an audience ofthe master himself, by laughing at the master's Gallic representative.There stood a tailor with his books of patterns just imported fromParis,—that modern Prometheus, who makes a man what he is! Next to hima tall, gaunt fellow, in a coat covered with tarnished lace, a night-capwig, and a large whip in his hands, comes to vouch for the pedigree andexcellence of the three horses he intends to dispose of, out of purelove and amity for the buyer. By the window stood a thin starvelingpoet, who, like the grammarian of Cos, might have put lead in hispockets to prevent being blown away, had he not, with a more paternalprecaution, put so much in his works that he had left none to spare.Excellent trick of the times, when ten guineas can purchase every virtueunder the sun, and when an author thinks to vindicate the sins of hisbook by proving the admirable qualities of the paragon to whom it isdedicated.* There with an air of supercilious contempt upon his smoothcheeks, a page, in purple and silver, sat upon the table, swinging hislegs to and fro, and big with all the reflected importance of a/billet-doux/. There stood the pert haberdasher, with his box ofsilver-fringed gloves, and lace which Diana might have worn. At thattime there was indeed no enemy to female chastity like the formerarticle of man-millinery: the delicate whiteness of the glove, thestarry splendour of the fringe, were irresistible, and the fair Adorna,in poor Lee's tragedy of "Caesar Borgia," is far from the only lady whohas been killed by a pair of gloves.
* Thank Heaven, for the honour of literature, /nous avons change toutcela!—ED.
Next to the haberdasher, dingy and dull of aspect, a book-hunter bentbeneath the load of old works gathered from stall and shed, and about tobe re-sold according to the price exacted from all literary gallants whoaffect to unite the fine gentleman with the profound scholar. A littlegirl, whose brazen face and voluble tongue betrayed the growth of herintellectual faculties, leaned against the wainscot, and repeated, inthe anteroom, the tart repartees which her mistress (the most celebratedactress of the day) uttered on the stage; while a stout, sturdy,bull-headed gentleman, in a gray surtout and a black wig, mingled withthe various voices of the motley group the gentle phrases ofHockley-in-the-Hole, from which place of polite merriment he camecharged with a message of invitation. While such were the inmates ofthe anteroom, what picture shall we draw of the /salon/