11 posts tagged “19th century”
Agustina Otero Iglesias was born in western Spain, into a childhood pocked-marked with poverty and abuse. Her parents - a Greek officer and a Spanish gypsy - gave her an insolent, passionate heart, but little else. Her proud inheritance lept unbidden from them to her mysterious blood, which flowed like rapids to their destiny over the cliffs.
When she was ten - in 1878 - she was working as a servant. In that same year, she was raped. Four years later she ran away with a lover to Lisbon, and began her dancing career in the local taverns and clubs. She was young, charming and careless in those dark and dangerous places, her skin glowing like a lost pearl.
She escaped to France with another lover when she was twenty. Within the year she was free once more, and had reinvented herself as La Belle Otero, swathed in silken shawls hung with silver coins and black roses, her hypnotic feet tracing Spanish patterns on the stages of Marseilles and Paris.
She was very soon the star of the Folies Bergere and one of the most desired courteseans of a generation that devoured beauty with eyes hidden beneath heavy, lavender colored lids.
Her "followers" were legion. Stories of madness and desire flashed above her like lightning sparking above a velvet landscape. The suicides of the men she had turned away. The duel that was fought over her. The cupolas of the Carlton Hotel , modeled after her famous breasts. A writer, Hugues le Roux, observed in the language of education and dissipation, "All the Orient was in her hips."
Whad did he mean? That all the secrets and danger of an unknown continent curled within her muscles in a seductive implication? That the exoticism of The Silk Road traveled along the bends and curves of her body? When he watched her, did he see things that exceeded the dreams of respectable men? In her luscious prime, Otero must have been magnificent.
Le Belle Otero died in 1965, aged 97. The world by then must have become offensive to her: sloppy, rude and loud. Reputations were no longer gracefully destroyed in whispers, in the shadows, but in the street for all to see. Fifty years earlier she had purchased a home for $15,000,000 - now she was shamed by a monthly rent.
She had her memories: of the lives she ruined, of the underworld she ruled; of the jewels that glittered from her neck and arms - passion's decorations. Perhaps she rested her hands on her hips and marveled at their once singular power. She remembered that their slightest movement inspired words as brilliant as a diamond dropped into a glass of champagne and raised to her lips.
"They saw me, those reckless seekers of beauty, and in a night I was famous."
That one night was in 1876. She had been invited to a reception and the dress she wore was simple; serene beside the skirts bobbing like likes of crinoline and the bodices that cut deep, with decorations pursuing the cruel pathways of cloth and bone. All her dress did was follow the full, natural contour of her strong body. The dress was black - she was still mourning the death of her younger brother - and her creamy, unpowdered skin made a handsome contrast. her auburn hair warmed the eyes. She was an untouched palette, attractive to any artist who searched for his subjects in the drawing rooms of Victorian England.
And there were artists in attendance that night. In the morning, copies of her portrait could be seen in shop windows throughout London. In a single night, Lillie Langtry had become famous. Society had found its new Professional Beauty - invited to the most enviable parties, holding the London Season like a bouquet in her arms...she would be its queen until the flowers grew cold.
This photo was taken in 1890. Much had happened since then. She is 37 here; never possessing prettiness, which would have condemned her masculine wit, her features are clear-cut and Grecian. She is still Oscar Wilde's 'Helen of Troy'.
Her affair with Prince Edward (eventually to become Edward VII) had ended ten years ago, his attentions straying to a dark, nimble sprite, Sarah Bernhardt. Once Lillie was free of him, there had been other men. In 1881 she gave birth to a daughter, Jeanne Marie - the father's identity still a matter of speculation.
On her friends' advice, she embarked on a stage career. The leap from society to the stage is not such a tremendous one. And talent notwithstanding, there wouldn't be a theater in the country that would turn Mrs. Langtry away. Within months of her daughter's birth she had made her debut. In 1882 she was touring America. That same year she had found another lover, a millionaire, Fred Gebhard, and was his mistress for nine years.
And after him, there was George Alexander ("Squire") Baird, amateur jockey and boxer. He beat her regularly, seeking her forgiveness with diamonds and yachts. She found the bruises acceptable currency, and endured the violence that ran unrestrained across her skin.
A year after this picture was taken, a coarse fist would exploit the face that many had considered the loveliest in the world. She would hide that face, discolored and distorted, and sigh - perhaps - for the days when she was society's precious toy, the gilded lily lying on a velvet pillow.
They are mystic glances, subdued by glass, surrounded by enamel and pearls, garnets and gold, colors from the sky, stones from the earth. They stare boldly from beyond their frames, from beyond the centuries - clutching jealously at their meaning, keeping it hidden beneath the guarded depths of a lover's jewel.
There was a time when they searched crowded, powdered rooms: tiny ships with precious cargo, pinned safely within the gentle harbor of a silken bodice, by the sharp island of a velvet lapel. They held the image of a loved one's eye; the eye that animated a living face the way meaning inspires a word. Free from the danger of recognition they were unblinking testaments that their owner yearned, but had to keep that longing a secret.
When the sun questioned such audacity, the eye would appear to blink under its hot scolding. When it rained, the eye seemed to despair and cried for its wearer's loneliness. When the clouds pulled a shadow across the flippant sky, the darkness made the eye overcast and enigmatic.
The eye can be a narcisisstic pool - a liquid mirror in which a person can see his own heart and desire. The DNA of human emotion swims in its oceanic depths. It reaches into the luminous sky and sees its image in the stars piercing the galaxies like an embroidery spanning infinite acres. But it can also be a communique of shade and color; a confession two hundred years old whose ghostly reflection still reclines in the embrace of loving gems, continuing its lonely search.
On four walls he painted a glittering, gilded cacophony, golden feathers dripping down leather walls, wings that panted against the ceiling, multitudes of patterns that made a mockery of empty space.
Peacocks make human noises; they scream and cry in jagged, lonely tones. But nature apologized to the male of the species for this atonality by providing him with iridescent rainbows that glistened and rippled as he moved, with an aurora borealis glowing from his feathers. Painters, and all aficionados of color, love his betrayal of earthiness, his irresponsible exhibitionism. He was seemingly made for negligence and beauty.
Beardsley drew skirts of peacock's tails that curled around the ankles, and clouds of feathers that breathed over Salome's shoulder:
Wilde made the peacock a symbol of languor and decadence; James MacNeil Whistler dedicated an entire room to this stunning bird with a cry like Lazarus waking in his tomb.
In 1876 Frederick R. Leyland commissioned Whistler to decorate his dining room. Leyland's preferences were serious and symmetrical and he should have known better than to let such an artistic sprite into his home.
Using pots full of gold metallic leaf, he covered the ceiling and panels of the walls in a thin layer of liquid metal, the alloy that began humbly as grains rolling in the bellies of streams and rivers. He then chose one color and investigated its darknesses, chosing its varied shadows as carefully as if they were the newest silks from Lyons. This palette of blue - prussian, cobalt and indigo - was used to sew a textile of feathers that flowed with impatient currents, wings that were as lush and stiff as brocaded draperies, tiny aristocratic heads poised on necks a swan would envy.
Four peacocks were created: four golden tapestries embroidered into the walls; four gardens clipped into a manicured maze that branched into gilded tangles; four streams of light siphoned from the sun and diluting that bright star. He called his glowing aviary: "Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room".
In a creative thrill Whistler wrote to Leyland, telling him that his dining room was "really alive with beauty - brilliant and gorgeous while at the same time delicate and refined to the last degree".
Leyland hated it. He hated the sunburst of feathers that blazed across his dark room like a sunset caught in a bottle. He hated the tendrils of plumes that charted burnished rivers from wall to wall. He hated the effete delicacy of the poised and posing birds. He hated their inescapable loveliness.
He hated Whistler's price.
There was a violent quarrrel - not surprising with two such high examples of ego - and Leyland eventually agreed to pay...half of Whistler's stated amount. He intensified the insult by paying in pounds instead of guineas. Pounds were the currency of trade, not of artists and other professionals. Furthermore, in the 1870's, a pound was worth twenty shillings, with the guinea twenty-one. Whistler lost the arguement, lost money and lost face.
But he got the last laugh.
He gained access into the offending room and painted one more masterpiece. It was a confrontation between two peacocks, frozen in the movements of an angry ballet: one standing with its feet straddling a pile of silver shillings, its throat a path of aggressive ruffles, alluding to Leyland's favored ruffled shirts. The other peacock, recoiling before its rich and greedy rival, has a silver crest feather resembling the lock of white hair that curled above Whistler's forehead. This altercation was called, "Art and Money, or, The Story of the Room."
This was finished in 1877. Whistler never stepped foot in the room again.
I read this essay many years ago; and it was written many years before that, in 1894, by Max Beerbohm. The title pleased me, for I thought I had found my advocate.
Max Beerbohm was a delightful writer, living at a time when one can turn wit into a career. I was not surprised that he would be the one to write an apologia so dear to me.
Max was a dandy - dandyism was one of the more effervescent trends of the late 19th century. It delighted in surface perfection of course, in Brummel's precision, but also sought the mental superiority that would lift its practitioners above the miasma of dirt, industry and vulgarity that lurked in every Victorian alley.
Max was a satirist. His humor was coy and fanciful. But when I read phrases like these, I chose to believe them:
"No longer is a lady of fashion blamed, if, to escaped the outrageous persecution of time, she fly for sanctuary to the toilet table."
"Artifice is the strength of the world, and in that same mask of paint, of powder...is a woman's strength."
"Artifice, sweetest exile, is come into her kingdom. Let us dance her a welcome!"
But the article, of course, was a farce, a parody. (Max, in fact, was a great admirer of the classic, unadorned British complexion) I had been taken for quite a ride - it was a wonderful gallop, but the fall was stupendous.
Had Max left it to me to defend cosmetics? Perhaps I can defend my use of cosmetics.
I've used make-up since high school. I'm not saying that I used it well, having fallen many times into the inexcusable trap of matching your eye shadow with your clothes. Especially inexcusable when you're wearing a powder blue pant suit. I didn't use it to hide, nor to glorify. It didn't, by the way, destroy my Youthful Glow or turn my skin moribund. It did, however, make me different. It gave me drama. That was reason enough for a teenager.
And in my twenties, when I had nothing else to do but think about such things, I realized that I would age very ungracefully. That is, I would protest the encroaching years most vehemently, using whatever weaponry I had at hand: pots, paints, rouge, reds, pinks, whites, liquid blacks. And I worried - I hoped I would be up to the task.
Fast forward - way forward - to the present, and I still use cosmetics. I might apply foundation and powder with a lighter hand (in college I went through a Noh actor phase); but you will only pry my lipstick from my cold, dead hands.
A naked face is no more honest than a painted one.
My face shows age, mere years. The laugh lines tell me that at some point in my life I have laughed. Wrinkles tell me that I have indulged in habitual facial expressions, been damaged by the sun, and that I am a poor hydrator. And that is all. Cosmetics do not blot out my life's experiences because my face isn't the picture that will tell those stories.
(Oh, in addition there is a slight separation in my right eyebrow which was a result of a traffic accident, when I was hurled from the backseat to a stare-down with the gear-shift. Wear your seatbelts, kids.)
My make-up will cover these imperfections as well as contribute to a creation. I like dramatic coloring - this is why I enjoy the dark eyes and blatant mouths of the 1920's. I am partial to theatricality both in look and in act. The onslaught of age weaves in and out of my reasoning like a ragged thread. Some of my cosmetics fight the battle, and some are used for pretty. Age certainly will not determine how long I will use them. That's a personal matter.
If you want to know about my life, don't study my wrinkles. Talk to me. Read what I've written. Look at what I've drawn.
Cosmetics can both conceal and express, and I defend them.
Earl Carroll was a club owner in the thirties and forties. His theaters were in New York (long gone) and in Los Angeles (in the hands of the City of Los Angeles Historic Preservation Board). Over the entrances of both venues was a proclamation of neon insolence: 'Through these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world.'
This was a time for conspicious clubbing. It was a time to wear your tightest and brightest, to wear flashing smiles and face flashing camera bulbs. Hair was short, shingled and lacquered; and shone with brilliantine.
It was no surprise that Carroll's revues were called 'Vanities'.
But the name of the show wasn't important, because the people came to see the girls. The surreal and statuesque costumes from the previous decade were considered clumsy and prehistoric. Who knows how many pounds of feathers, layers of painted taffeta or yards of sequined silk were packed away into trunks? No matter - people wanted to see bodies. And Carroll found them.
He prided himself on how perfectly matched his girls were. Before she was accepted, a willing girl had to be subjected to over twenty measurements. Notes were also taken on her voice, hair, eyes - the things that defeated the measuring tape. And considered last of all was 'personality'.
Carroll's girls were slim, with a hint of feminine softness, allowing the faintest shadow of a ribcage to show through. These revolutionary silhouettes were unheard of in their mothers' day.
Their mothers allowed whalebones and iron rods to compress their spines into an unnatural s-curve. This painful re-shaping forced the lady to walk bosom-first; presenting it like a calling card. Corsets fitted cuirrass-like - so that, bent and laced, a lady's walk was stiff and hobbled. She could take her seat only after making a half-turn that curled her long skirts around her ankles. Then, when all danger of tangling, tearing and toppling was avoided, she could safely lower herself down. She had successfully presented an ideal of feminity without showing an inch of skin.
And what of their mothers? And the mothers before them? In the early 19th century, women - men as well - padded their clothing to create an illusion of a dimunitive waist.
Earlier, the use of cosmetic endowments was seen as not only immoral but illegal. Just as the waist was being tortured, the use of bum-rolls, bustle frills and hip panniers made the admirer forget its torment and to focus on its exquisite tininess. In 1770 a bill was passed into English law, forbidding any woman "to impose upon, seduce, or betray into Matrimony any of His Majesty's subjects by means of scent, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bostered hips." I say, let the buyer beware.
It is ironic that during these decades when the female body was pressed, packed, bent and twisted in ways that made Nature frown at her fair creation's treatment, society preferred that ths body was fleshy and full. Arms and knees wrapped in cellulite were adorable and 'dimpled'. The figures that 150 years later paraded accross stages in divine unison were considered unfashionable, even unhealthy.
Very ironic. I say, if it is indeed true - that the centuries run in a sort of loop, repeating over and over again, just waiting for us to jump on - when it is time for me to come back again, I would like to do so as a milkmaid from 1785. I would churn away happily, knowing that I lived in a world where roundness was admired, and where a lady would never think of showing off her bone structure.
I always wanted to ride side saddle. I always wanted to wear a black, skin-tight riding habit - like Catherine 'Skittles' Walters, whom rumor had it, was sewn into her habit: the sections stitched together as she stood patiently in her flimsy undergarments. If she wore any at all - and very few knew that for sure...well, only the well-paying ones.
I always wanted to ride to hounds. But with no killing involved. And with no one getting 'blooded'. I wouldn't be interested in riding home with a smear of blood on my forehead to honor my first 'kill'. In fact, there'd be no honor in it at all.
But I want my blood to be stirrred. I want to mill amongst the black, pink and red coats. I would like to finger a delicate glass filled with something dark and mildly alcoholic as I keep my seat. I want to keep my horse calm, as the dogs fume and push at its legs like a nervous, active sea.
I want to ride. I want to crash through hedgerows and brush, thunder through the crisp and misty morning, tinged with autumn, scented with the burning wood of distant fireplaces.
But I've had none of that. I've done none of that. I've worn none of that.
But this morning I got just a hint of what I was wishing for.
I was walking to work, looking and listening. I saw in the distance someone walking their dog. A small, multi-colored animal, rather low to the ground. But it wasn't silent. It wasn't barkiing. It was baying. A sound you don't hear in the city. As I came closer I saw that this lively creature was a beagle, pulling at its leash, with its eager nose to the ground: lifting it up only to emit its thrilling, yodeling cry.
As it passed me, on some search-and-discover mission known only to itself, its owner - a lithe, attractive, gray-haired woman - gasped to me: "Where'd that fox go?"
How that made me smile. I was smiling when I crossed the street. I was smiling when I turned the corner. I was still smiling when I got to work.
I don't know how "Cyprian" traveled from a reference to a 4th century Bishop of Carthage to a term for a high-water courtesan, but what a long strange trip it must have been.
In the early 19th century, these ladies were named Cypria, Dulcinea, Cytherea and Paphian goddesses by the moneyed noblemen and dissolute second sons who pursued them. Perhaps they did so sincerely - some men can't see beyond the dark eyes nd pale silks which are actually their deadliest enemies - perhaps not: a woman living on her looks, on her body, on her own, always seemed a fit subject for mockery.
The members of this 'sisterhood' could be invited to public events, to the opera (many of them had their own boxes), to maqueredes, to the theater - where everyone went to be seen, where every respectable rogue would want a stylish, immoral decoration on his arm. But society's doors - and entertainments - were closed to them. Although they were probably draining the heirs of their inheritence, courtesans were not allowed into society's great houses.
These circumstances led to an event in 1818 that has been called 'The Cyprian's Ball', held in London's Argyll Rooms. Hosted by the most daring and celebrated members of the demi-monde, they invited their hot-house collections of admirers and protectors - old and new - to an evening of unrestrained entertainment in an aristocratic setting.
Members of the peerage, the court and the military attended, and were able to do so without embarrassment. Besides, there would be past amours to greet, current ones to keep in line and future ones to inspect and duly note. Rather like fact-finding tour.
The rooms were decorated with taste and expense, for a courtesan had a sharp and cynical appreciation of what the visible expression of style and the obvious use of money could attain. That evening the Rooms featured statuary, blushing pastel walls, trompe l'oeil pilasters, and a ceiling with elaborate plaster carvings, which caught the candlelight and cast shadows which grew longer as the hours grew shorter.
Ladies dresses were made of the sheerest and most expensive silks, gauzes and muslins. Gold thread and glass beads reflected light and made a delicate creation even more ethereal: a chance product of reflection and movement. Empire waists, tiny puffed sleeves which had no intention of keeping their hold on shoulders and decollete necklines - saying and displaying much - were all in evidence. As was the descreet dampening of the fabric to make sure it would accentuate every expensive curve.
There was of course, waltzing (it had only a few years since it was stolen from the peasants' fields and festivals):
The brightest lights of the underworld - the demi-monde, where rogues and royalty attended by dusk, vanishing by dawn - lent their fire to the Ball:
The five Montague sisters, known as the 'Stars of Erin'; a girl known only as Josephine - still a child, yet already having gone through four lovers whose names were only known by a tantalizing row of asterisks; the 'Queen of the Amazons' - dark and dashing; the experienced Nelly Mansell, called 'Old Pomona' (Goddess of Fruit Trees) becausse of the 'richness of her first fruits'; Ellen Richardson: "Venus Callipyga" (in Greek: Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks); Dolly Drinkwater, who would drink nothing stronger than French Brandy; The Tartar Sultana; The Mocking Bird; The Red and Black Swans; The Blue Eyed Lima; and the notorious Harriette Wilson (in the picture above, shown at the right, wearing a pink dress): sharp-tempered, sharp-witted and with, as she boasted, 'a devil in my body', along with her sisters Fanny, Amy and Sophia.
These and many others danced, gossiped (a favorite Regency pasttime), preened, posed, were intoxicating and perhaps became a little intoxicated as well. A light supper and champagne was served at dawn, as the cold sunlight was reaching into the corners where the candles had begun to smoke and waver.
By the time the day had boldly broken, these 'Fair Impures', galaxies of fascination visible only by night, had departed - their newly acquired planets in possession, rotating obediently around them.
A while ago, Vox asked me if I would have preferred the past or the future as my living quarters. I answered - as I recall quite verbosely - in favor of the past. The question made me think of delicious mouthfuls of time I wanted to taste...but never biting off more that I could chew.
Anyway, that seemed to be that.
But I couldn't help thinking: what about the minutes, the tiniest of seconds? Is there a swiftly passing frame of the past I wish I could have stayed? Something small, acting as a microcosm of something great - the droplet of water which suggests the storm? I wouldn't want to be greedy and move my life into another's timeline...but what moment of history do I wish I'd have seen - as the classic fly on the wall, the face in the crowd?
Well, I do have a few requests:
January 15,1559. London is cold and frosty, but the people line the street, their jostling feet turning the fallen snow into an unwieldy mush. They lean from the windows of their homes. Colorful banners and streamers of fabric are taut in the cold wind, brightening crooked, wooden houses - handmade and imperfect.
Everyone is waiting for the Princess. Elizabeth Tudor, 25 years old, was riding in state - reclining inside a gold and silver litter which must have been shining like a beacon in the distance, its blaze cutting through the falling snow. Elizabeth was on her way to Westminster Abbey, where she would be crowned Queen.
People who were there, writing their notes, their messages, their memoirs, commiting to memory an unforgettable sight, agree on the look and the behavior of the bronze-haired girl of that day. She waved to the cheering people and thanked them for their good wishes. Her face was wan, and her long hair lay unleased across her shoulders. She wore a dress of thick gold brocade, a wreath of jewels and pearls, and heavy ermine coronation robes.
The people loved her: their adulation was unrestrained and boisterous. She represented youth, health and fertility - in a Queen this trifecta meant protection against their greatest fear, royalty without issue. (Little did they know.) She represented liberation from her predecessor, a close-minded, sad woman who would forever have the word 'Bloody' attached to her name.
One elderly man, with a voice strong enough to be heard by Princess and chroniclers alike, called out "Remember old King Harry the Eighth!"
Her face up to then had been pleasant, but stiff. But at the man's joyful admonition, her face relaxed into a broad smile. She would remember.
The moments would be few, when she would let herself be so open, so seemingly approachable again. I would have liked to have seen that moment.
Fast forward to August 9, 1902. This time it was a King who would be crowned in The Abbey: Edward VII - large, ruddy and self-indulgent; but just as popular as the pale waif-like creature who had been crowned there nearly 500 years earlier.
He has been quoted as saying that the most memorable part of the glittering ceremony - weighed down with tradition as well as jewels - was when his wife, Alexandra, was crowned. At the moment that the diadem was placed on her lovely and subdued head, all the peeresses in atttendance lifted their own tiaras to place on their heads: repeating perhaps their own crowning glory.
Edward was entranced with the movement, ballet-like, of the hundreds of white arms "arching over their heads" as they raised then lowered their coronets, flashing with diamonds; he was in love with the sudden, sleek sound of rustling robes. The act was imbued with historical significance: each lady representing hundreds of years of landed wealth, but for that split second of grace they were beautiful as well.
The elegant symbolism must has been spellbinding. I would have liked to have been there, just for that one brief synchronized, aristocratic, performance.
Now, before the coronation, the Marchioness of Londonderry had withdrawn to the peeresses' lavatory. Stooping to adjust her train, she lost her massive tiara in the 'pan'. The only way to retrieve it without damaging its layers of jewels was by using a gynecological forceps. I doubt if such a thing would have been available 'in house' so some time must have passed before the instrument was delivered.
So...what did she do? Would she have blushed? Did she swear? Shout? Stamp her foot? How would such a stately lady have expressed her embarrassment and frustration? This type of thing really doesn't happen every day...yes, I would have liked to have been in on this, too. Well, perhaps just waiting outside the door.
This is the Marchioness at the Devonshire House Ball in 1897, dressed as the Empress of Austria. The offending tiara is the circlet forming the base of her crown. Little did she suspect that in 5 years it would have to be fished out of the toilet with an instrument typically used for plumbing...an entirely different type of plumbing.
Studying history is like beachcombing. No matter what you find - be it little or large; whole or fragmented; dull or colorful; old and faded or recently washed up...it's all real, it all played its part in a larger world.
And it should always be dusted off and taken home.
Ah, the fan. That dainty, fluttering thing whose owner
"Directs its wanton motions so,
That it wounds more than cupid's bow;
Gives coolness to the matchless dame,
To ev'ry other heart a flame."
In the 18th and 19th centuries, when the fan dance was exercised with unequaled seriousness and complexity, within the very narrow space of a ball, or a dinner, or a masquerade, women had the upper hand. Armed with these works of art made of wood and paper, hiding their faces and showing their feelings, they communicated what they wanted to the gentleman who was willing to watch and read her face and hands.
During the hours which she stepped out of her home and away from the constraints it housed, she could enter a world where she could pretend to be free. Free to arm herself with pretty baubles and ribbons and paints to enter a world of competitive flirting.
It was a subtle, delicate game where both parties were lying and knew it. But it would make for an entertaining evening and when it was time to be handed into your carriage at dawn (when most successful parties would be winding down), who was the worse?
The fan was used to say what couldn't be shouted. Some fan-makers came up with systems where each movement of the fan would correspond with a letter of the alphabet. Some systems tacked a phrase to these movements:
Twirling fan in left hand: 'We are watched'
Covering left ear with open fan: 'Do not betray our secret'
Letting fan rest on left cheek: 'No'
Opening and shutting fan: 'You are cruel'
Fanning slowly: 'I am married'
And on and on...
It was make-believe. It was escapism. What would these women find when they returned to their homes? Loneliness, boredom, abuse...many things, but rarely what the magical evening promised. The men would leave, shaking their heads at those two-faced protected women while checking their pocketbooks to make sure they had enough money to take their courtesans out to dinner.
But for one evening, within the safe confines of the ballroom, the lady can dress up and flirt, always stopping just short of her bolder cyprian sisters' behavior.
Does all this demonstrate a dearth of communication between men and women? The smothering of truth? Well, I see it like this. People want to arrive at the truth too quickly. They want to take the shortest path. Even if that takes them over the bumpiest roads.
I prefer to take the scenic route.
