Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

What is your favorite male Christian name?

What is your favorite female Christian name?

What is your favorite flower?

What is your favorite color?

What is your favorite style of music?

What is your favorite style of climate?

What is your favorite amusement?

What is your favorite study?

What is your favorite exercise?

What is your favorite book?

What is your favorite game? etc., etc.

These questions may be amplified according to the taste of the owner of the book.

These books are very common in English country houses, and the statistics of favoritism have been taken. Napoleon Bonaparte, even in the land of the Duke of Wellington, had the greatest number of admirers as a hero; Mary, Queen of Scots, was the favorite queen in a majority of instances; Lord Byron led off as a poet, and the names Edward and Alice had the greatest number of votes as admired Christian names. Joan of Arc is always ahead as a heroine. In America, after a five years’ experience, a number of books were compared, and resulted in a close tie between Washington and Napoleon as hero; between Charles X, of Sweden, and Francis I as king; with Mary, Queen of Scots, far ahead as queen; with Theodore and Mary as Christian names in advance. Yet an occasional originality crops out in these “preferences,” and the examination of the different opinions is always interesting.

The game of Authors, especially when created by the persons who wish to play it, is very interesting. The game can be bought, and is a very common one, as, perhaps, everybody knows; but it can be rendered uncommon by the preparation of the cards among the members of the family. There are sixty-four cards to be prepared, with each the name of a popular author, and any three of his works. The entire set is numbered from one to sixty-four. Any four cards containing the name and works of the same author form a book. Thus, “Henry W. Longfellow, ‘Hyperion,’ ‘Evangeline,’ ‘New England Tragedies,’” would form one set. As the shuffling and distribution of these cards, and the plan of also drawing from a pile in the middle of the table, creates the greatest uncertainty as to the whereabouts of a certain card, much amusement can be derived in the effort to make a book. The cards must be equally distributed one at a time, beginning at the left of the dealer. The players then arrange their cards in the hand. If one finds four of a kind, he immediately declares a book, and lays it face downward on the table; and then, if holding one of the “Longfellow’s,” he will say “Evangeline.” He can ask any other player for “Hyperion.” After receiving either the card or a negative answer, the next player to the left goes on with his play. Players can only call for such cards as belong to books of which they hold a portion. Should a player call for a card which he already holds, that card is forfeited to the person of whom it was called. The caller always finds the name of the card he wants among those printed in small type; the person of whom it is called finds it in large type at the top.

This game may be made very useful by using the names of kings and queens, and the learned men of their reigns, instead of authors. It is a very good way to study history. The popes can be utilized, with their attendant great men, and by playing the game for a season the dates and the events of some obscure period of history will be effectually fixed in the memory.

As the numbers affixed to the cards may be purely arbitrary, the count at the end will fluctuate with remarkable impartiality; thus, the Dickens cards may count but one, while Tupper will be named sixteen; Carlyle can be two, while Artemus Ward shall be sixty. This is made very amusing sometimes. King Henry VIII, who set no small store by himself, can be made to count very little in the kingly game, while the poor Edward IV may have a higher numeral than he was allowed in life.

VI.

FORTUNE-TELLING.

We now come to that game which interests old and young. None are so apathetic but that they relish a look behind the dark curtain. The apple-paring in the fire, the roasted chestnut and the raisin, the fire-back and the stars, have been interrogated since time began. The pack of cards, the tea-cup, the dream-book, the board with the mystic numbers, and the Bible and Key, have been consulted from time immemorial. The makers of games have given in their statistics, and they declare that there are no cards or games so sure of selling well as those which foretell the Future.

Now a very pretty Home Amusement is to cultivate, without believing much in them, the innocent sciences of palmistry and of fortune-telling. Several years ago this led to the making of a very pretty book by Mrs. Gilman, of South Carolina--a poetical and very harmless fortune-teller--made up of lines from the poets. The young ladies of the period used to draw as future husbands: “A professor, and a log cabin in the West”; “a lord, and a castle”; “a merchant prince”; “an irresolute and an obstinate fool”; “a well-favored gentleman,” and so on, the good fortunes being in great advance of the bad ones. It was a popular work, and amused many a tea-party.

Many people, since the advent of Spiritualism, have amused themselves with that wonderful toy, “Planchette,” and other curious caprices of mind-reading, clairvoyance, table-tipping, and knocks. The Key, which seems to possess strong magnetic powers, and all the performances which the unbeliever calls “nonsense,” or worse, and which the believing call “manifestations,” are also interesting; but we can not recommend this sort of tampering with nervous and exciting pleasure, as it has undoubtedly sometimes unhinged the most truly innocent minds. Such investigations should be left to strong and sober men, and should be approached in a very philosophical spirit, or not at all.

There can be no harm, however, in a playful consultation of the leaves of the daisy, the four-leaved clover, the fortunate black cat who brings us luck, the moon over the right shoulder, the oracular “You shall travel over land and sea”--believing in all the good fortune, but in none of the bad. The salt should be carefully thrown over the left shoulder, if spilled, and all the Fates and Fairies should be propitiated. It gives delightful variety to life to know all the superstitions and the lore of old nurses and grandmothers. Did we follow them back, we should find that they each had a poetical origin. We all like to believe that we can enumerate on our fingers the false friends, the enemies; but we may hope that the world could not hold the admirers and the friends whom one four-leaved clover or one black cat had given us--or promised us. To be sure, “we had dreamed of snakes, and that meant enemies.” But, after all, are not enemies next best to friends? They give us consequences, and who that is worth anything was ever without them? That would be a very colorless individual who should go through life without an enemy.

The riches which are hidden in a fortune-telling set of cards (although like Peter Goldthwaite’s treasure) are very real and comforting while they last. They are endless, they have few really trying responsibilities attached, they can not be taxed, they are absolutely where thieves can not break through and steal. They are so satisfactory, which real wealth never is; they buy everything we want; they go farther than any real fortune could go; they are our real and personal estate, and our poetical dreams; our Lamp of Aladdin, and our Chemical Bank. They are gained without hurting anybody; they are dug out of the ground without painful backache or bloodshed; they are inherited without stain, and can be spent without fear of profligacy. Of what other fortune can we say as much?

It would be an unending theme to try to make a catalogue of the superstitions of all nations. The Irish, with their wild belief in fairies, that _Leprechaun_--the little man in red, who, if you can catch him, will make you happy and prosperous for ever after; who has such a strange relationship to humanity that at birth and death the Leprechaun must be tended by a mortal! to read, as they do--these imaginative people--a sermon in every stone; to see luck beneath the four-leaved clover, and to hang a legend on every bush; to follow the more spiritually-minded Scotchman in his second sight, who holds that

“Coming events cast their shadows before.”

A very learned book has been written on the “Superstitions of Wales” alone. Eloquent and poetic are the people who have invented the Banshee, the Brownie (or domestic fairy who does all the work). The more tragic and less loving superstitions of Italy teach that the “evil eye” is always to be dreaded. The Breton superstitions are as wild as the sea-gust which sweeps from their coast. All these are subjects of profound interest to those who read the great subject of race, from ethnology, folk-lore, and ballads. The superstitions of a people tell their innermost characteristics, and are thus profoundly interesting.

The French have, however, tabularized fortune-telling for us. Their peculiar ability in arranging ceremonials and _fêtes_, and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy, show that they are able to foresee events with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in all technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and we are not surprised that they have here, as is their wont, given us the practical help which we need in fortune-telling. Mlle. Lenormand, the sorceress who prophesied to Napoleon his greatness, and to many of the princes and great men of France their downfall and their misfortunes, has left us thirty-six cards (to be bought at any book-store), wherein we can read the decrees of fate. Her preface says, “Thousands of noblemen did then acknowledge her great talent already during her lifetime, and did often confess that her method was full of truth and exactness.” Lenormand was a very clever sibyl; she had great ingenuity; she throws in enough of the inevitable bad, and finds enough of the possible good, to at least amuse those who consult her oracles. Whether we have confidence or faith in the divination, we can not but look for the lucky cards. In this game “The Cavalier” is a messenger of good fortune, and, if not surrounded by unlucky cards, brings good news, which the person may expect either from his own house or from abroad. This will, however, not take place immediately, but some time after.

“The Clover Leaf” is a harbinger of good news, but if surrounded by clouds it indicates great pain; but if No. 2 lies near No. 26 or 28, the pain will be of short duration, and will soon change to a happy issue.

“The Ship,” the symbol of commerce, signifies great wealth, which will be acquired by trade or inheritance. If near to the person, it means an early journey.

“The House” is a certain sign of success and prosperity, and although the present position of the person may be disagreeable, yet the future will be bright and happy. If this card lies in the center of the cards under the person, this is a hint to beware of those who surround him.

“A Tree,” if distant from the person, signifies good health. Nine trees, of different cards together, leave no doubt about the realization of all reasonable wishes.

“Clouds”: if their clear side is turned toward the person, it is a lucky sign; with the dark side turned toward the person, something disagreeable will soon happen.

“A Serpent” is a sign of misfortune, the extent of which depends upon the greater or smaller distance from the person; it is followed invariably by deceit, infidelity, and sorrow.

“A Coffin,” very near to the person, means, without any doubt, dangerous diseases, death, or total loss of fortune; more distant from the person, the card is less dangerous.

“The Nosegay” means much happiness in every respect.

“The Scythe” indicates great danger, which will only be avoided if lucky cards surround him.

“The Rod” means quarrels in the family, domestic afflictions, want of peace among married persons, fever, and protracted illness.

“The Birds” mean hardship to be overcome, but of short duration; distant from the person, they mean the accomplishment of a pleasant journey.

These are descriptions of a few of the picture-cards with which Mlle. Lenormand tells fortunes still, although she has gone to the land of certainty, and has herself found out if her symbols and emblems, and her combinations, really did draw aside the curtain of the future with invisible strings. We advise all our readers to possess themselves of her “Fortune-telling Cards” if they wish to become amateur sibyls.

The cup of tea, and the mysterious wanderings of the grounds around the cup, so long the favorite medium of the sibyl, seems to be an English superstition. It fits itself to the old crone domesticity of the Anglo-Saxon humble home, rather than to the more out-of-door romance of the Spaniards and the Italians; and yet the most out-of-door people in the world--the gypsies--use it as a means of discerning the future.

The cup should be filled with a weak infusion of tea--grounds and all--and then carefully turning the cup toward one, the tea should be carefully turned out, waving the cup so skillfully that the tea-leaves are dispersed over the surface of the cup. Happy the maid who can turn out the tea without spilling the leaves. If one drop of tea is left in the cup it will mean--a tear.

These grounds, or tea-leaves, have been used from the earliest days as the alphabet of the Parcæ. Before Chinese tea was brought to England the old fortune-tellers made some sort of a brew out of powdered herbs, which left their mark on the cup. We can understand how that sinuous serpent who has had so much to do with our destiny, as a synonym of evil, can be pictured or “visualized” by such a process; but where the sibyl finds the light-haired young man crossing a river, where she finds gold and where trouble, we must leave to the interpreters.

That most interesting of sibyls, “Norna of the Fitful Head,” used molten lead as a means of interpreting the unseen, and that can be done by our modern soothsayers.

Cards from early antiquity have been used to tell fortunes. The Queen of Hearts is the heroine, and as about her group the propitious reds, or the gloomy blacks, so may we hope for good or dread bad luck. The Ace of Spades is a bearer of evil tidings; the King of Hearts, at the right of the Queen, is the very Fortunatus himself. And now, who is this goddess so often invoked? _Fortuna_, courted by all nations, was, in Greek, _Tyche_, or the goddess of chance. She differed from Destiny or Fate in so far that she worked without law, giving or taking at her own good pleasure, and dispensing joy or sorrow indefinitely; her symbols were those of mutability--a ball, a wheel, a pair of wings, a rudder. The Romans affirmed that, when she entered their city, she threw off her wings and shoes, and determined to live with them for ever; she seems to have thought better of it, however. She was a sister of the Parcæ, or Fates, those three who spin the thread of life, measure it, and cut it off. Fortunatus, he of the inexhaustible purse of gold and the wishing-cap, is too familiar a figure to the readers of fairy tales to be mentioned here.

And yet, although all nations have desired to propitiate Fortuna, her high-priests and interpreters have ever been in disrepute. In Scotland, that land of demonology and witchcraft, of second-sight, of dreamy superstition, fortune-tellers were denounced as vagabonds, and their punishment, by statute, was scourging and burning of the ears. We all know how the knowledge of the “black art” was denounced in Germany; and the witches of Salem, while they were approached at dead of night by a pale magistrate who desired to have his fortune told, were, at his high behest, tortured, pilloried, and hanged the next week, if the fortune was a bad one, or, if being well foretold, was slow of accomplishment. That half-belief which superstitious persons repose in their oracles, shown in the case of the Indian, who breaks or maims his God if he does not respond to his prayer, and in the remarkable story of Louis XI, of France, who used to alternately pray to and abuse his leaden images of saints, is repeated often in the history of fortune-telling.

Mother Redcap, “a very witch,” was resorted to by hundreds of persons in England as a fortune-teller; her image remains on a coin dated 1667. The well-known prophecies of her neighbor, Mother Shipton, have come down to us. Poor Redcap had all the duckings and the batings of the populace. She and her black cat were the favorite horrors of the superstitious inhabitants of Kentish Town, and hundreds of men, women, and children saw the devil come in state to carry her off. But Mother Shipton (who was born at Knaresborough in the reign of Henry VII) became the most popular of British prophets, and, although she was supposed to have sold her soul to the Old Gentleman, she yet died in her bed decently and in order at an extreme old age. So Fortuna is capricious, even in her treatment of her votaries. It is not strange that “Palmistry” should have taken higher ground than mere fortune-telling, and indeed the lines of the hand will seem to map out character, and perhaps destiny, with some accuracy. The books say that the lines running through the palm indicate will or indecision, force or weakness, quickness or slowness; indeed, all which makes character and fate. We are the arbiters of at least a part of our fortune.

The power to tell fortunes by the hand can be learned from any of the French books on palmistry, and there are one or two little English translations. It can be sufficiently curious and varied to amuse the home circle, and so long as it is done for that purpose, fortune-telling can do no harm.

But the moment we rise above the idea that the beans, the tea-grounds, the black cat, the cards, or the lines in the palm, are but blind guides, making the most palpable mistakes, then the tampering with the curtain becomes dangerous, and we had better leave the future alone.

VII.

AMUSEMENTS FOR A RAINY DAY.

It may seem an impeachment of the taste of our readers to have lingered so long on the lesser lights of games and fortune-telling as “Home Amusements,” when we have before us the great world of decorative art: æsthetic embroidery, dinner-card designing, china painting, the making of screens, and the thousand and one devices by which the modern family can amuse itself.

The making of screens is an amusement which occupies the whole family most profitably for a rainy day, even if it is to be only the cutting out of pictures from the illustrated newspapers, and the subsequent arrangement of them in curious conjunction on a white cotton or muslin background. The use of screens has dawned upon the American mind within a few years. They are delightful in a dining-room to keep off a draught or to hide a closet-door. They break up a too long room admirably. They are very useful in a bedroom to shut off the washstand and bath; and they are very comforting to the invalid, as a protection to his easy-chair against insidious breezes.

Of course, those of satin or linen, embroidered by a skillful hand; those painted on canvas by the best painters of to-day; those from China and Japan--are the screens of the opulent. Very pretty paper screens may be bought at the shops for three or four dollars. But those on which a group of pictures are to be pasted are the cheapest and most amusing of any. And do not go and buy highly-glazed pictures for the purpose. If you do, the screen looks like a valentine. But cut out the pictures from old copies of the “London Illustrated News,” “Punch,” “Harper’s Weekly,” “Harper’s Bazaar,” and the English “Graphic,” paste them thickly one upon another, and you have a curious and most interesting mosaic. A lady in 1876, the Centennial year, made a very beautiful screen of fashion plates from the ordinary magazines of the period. Already (1881) these fashions look very antiquated, and the screen is becoming historically valuable. The effect of these delicately-colored pictures, put on as thickly as possible over the white muslin, has an effect like a festal procession, and is very pretty.

The medium used for adhering the pictures is common flour paste, the pictures being also washed over the outside with the same, and all the edges effectually fastened down, the cotton cloth to which they are applied being tightly stretched over a wooden frame. When domestic paste is made, the material is frequently injured by scorching, or by the addition of too much water. Good paste, when spread on paper, will not strike through it like water, but will remain on the surface, like butter on a piece of bread. To make paste of a superior quality, that will not spoil when kept in a cool place for several months, it is necessary to add dissolved alum as a preservative. When a few quarts are required, dissolve a dessert-spoonful of alum in two quarts of tepid water. Put the water in a tin pail that will hold six or eight quarts, as the flour of which the paste is made will expand greatly while it is boiling. As soon as the tepid water has cooled, stir in good rye or wheat flour, until the liquid has the consistency of cream. See that every lump of flour is crushed before placing the vessel over the fire. To prevent scorching the paste, place over the fire a dish-kettle or wash-boiler, partly filled with water, and set the tin pail containing the material for paste in the water, permitting the bottom to rest on a few large nails or pebbles, to prevent excessive heat. Now add a teaspoonful of powdered resin, a few cloves to flavor the paste, and let it cook until the paste has become as thick as “Graham mush,” when it will be ready for use. Keep it in a tight jar, and it will last for a long time. If too thick, add cold water, and stir it thoroughly. Such paste will hold almost as well as glue.

The famous picture-books of Walter Crane make a very pretty frieze for screens; the artists of the family sometimes paint a frieze. In these days of dadoes the screens are often made with dado, wainscot, and frieze in three different colored papers, so that there are three tiers of background for the pictures, if the maker desires to leave spaces between them. The cutting out of the pictures is an amusing occupation for all the family on a rainy day.

This making of screens sometimes leads to another very attractive work for a rainy day--the preparation for a fancy dress ball. This, in a lonely country house, far away from the chance of any outward amusement, has often cheated a fortnight’s bad weather of its heart-depressing qualities.

As we have not the stores of old armor, old brocade and satin, powdered wigs, and costumes of the different reigns, which may be supposed from modern English novels to be the property of every English mansion, we must call upon taste and upon our national faculty of invention to help us in this dilemma. The country store will give us black and white tarlatan, chintz, cotton flannel (a most excellent medium), and, indeed, flannels of all sorts. Black lace, jewelry, and flowers are in every lady’s trunk, and, with some stiff linings and _appliqué_ chintz flowers, an old silk can be made into a priceless brocade.

Let us take a Venetian dress first. We will have King _Pantelon_, the Lord of Misrule, in black with scarlet shirt and three-cornered hat, and attended by his gay and dissolute crew. We will have the _Illustrissimi_, wearing the dress of the ancient Venetian nobility, scarlet cloaks, and long bag wigs, mightily disdainful; the _Chiozotti_ in black velvet, wide lace collars, and high cloth caps, adorned with artificial flowers--they shall shower _confetti_ and make jokes; we shall have dominoes and masks, Egyptians and Neapolitans in velvet, with scarlet caps and stockings, clapping castanets; we shall have Armenians, Levant merchants and sailors, Turks in caftans, Greeks and Dalmatians, regular-featured Mussulmans, Hindoos with jet-black hair, and Malay Lascars in many-colored turbans, fez, and scarf; grinning soot-black negroes, Polish Jews in furred caps and long coats, Magyars in Hessians and pelisses; Bohemian nurses in Czechen costume, a colored handkerchief in the hair; dark-eyed young _bourgeoises_ in coquettish black veils; elegant ladies in velvet and point lace; the gondolier, in his picturesque sailor costume and broad sash; the Finland peasant, with short skirts, long-dangling ear-rings, and silver pins; the Maltese with her _fazzoletto_; an old _Contadino_, with short velveteen knee-breeches, gaiters, and colored cotton umbrella; priests all in black gown, shovel hat, and black silk stockings; dashing naval officers; the _Guardia Nazionale_, and weather-beaten fishermen with bronzed faces and red Phrygian cap. We shall have Lord Byron, pale and melancholy, and picturesque Masaniello; the patriarchs of the Greek Church; the Spanish beauties, the Swiss peasant, the German Mädchen; the madcap Harlequin dress of a Spanish princess. Then there will be all the seasons--winter, for instance, in tulle, swansdown, and spun glass; the Marie Antoinettes, in pink brocade with long, square trains and trimmings of Marabout feathers; the lovely Georgian costume, a Seville gypsy, a Russian peasant; a flower-girl, a Nymph; Night and Day; Spanish students and Flemish boors; Pages of Queen Blanche of Castile; the beautiful white uniform of the _Dragon de Villars_; a gothic costume; Charlemagne and his Paladins. In short--“the Carnival of Venice.” All this was done, and well done, at a country house and the adjacent village (a village of not more than fifteen hundred inhabitants), and for very little money, only a few years ago.

The business is done if one only _thinks he can do it_; and there are numbers enough to work at it. A boarding-school holiday, a watering-place, a large town bent on “getting up something” for charity, should have one such home behind it, where a natural-born leader will set the whole thing going, and the picturesque shores of Italy will give up their delights to some western town, some inland village, some quiet and decorous hamlet of New England, where all the inhabitants are dying of _ennui_.

But here, from the pictures of our screen, which have suggested all this, we have been led off from Decorative Art into the business of giving a ball! We have been entertaining a motley crowd indeed!

“The day was dull, and dark, and dreary,
It rained, and the rain was never weary.”

But see! how we have cheated the clouds! The rainy fortnight has been the most dissipated season possible--all owing to our happy device of getting up a fancy ball--one of the very many pleasant thoughts which have grown out of screens and screen-making.

VIII.

EMBROIDERY AND OTHER DECORATIVE ARTS.

Let us return to our three legitimate decorations--our fan-painting, our screen-painting, and our embroideries.

Of Embroidery the world is full, and at its best estate. The foolish old German wool-worsted work has gone out, and in its place we have the very elaborate church needle-work of the Middle Ages, and, better still, its tapestry.

Some ingenious lady discovered that a plain piece of carpet made a very good background for a rich curtain, after a few stitches of embroidery were added; and it took but one step farther for another lady to find in cotton velvet a good background for tapestry. The figures are sketched on, and then the embroidery is artistically added, in the style of the thirteenth century, when the characters were outlined by a single line, which also designates the shape and folds of the garments. These outlines are filled in with masses of stitches in two or three shades of color. It is best, in making tapestry, to adhere to this simplicity, as in attempting the later richness of the Gobelins the work degenerates into a vulgar imitation.

And in stitching away at the tapestry frame, the well-read mamma might give her daughters a little sketch of the history of tapestry. How once these artistic draperies were the adornments of those stone castles which knew no plastered walls. How they caught the story of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” the scenes from the Bible, the whole story of mythology, the history of great wars. There hangs to-day, at Blenheim, a perfect set of pictures of the victories of the great Duke of Marlborough, done for him by the pious Belgian nuns.

But those works anterior to the sixteenth century have the greatest interest for the student of tapestry. Gold thread and silk were freely used in their embellishment, and the effect is rather that of a mosaic than of a picture. The greens are a study. They are produced with a dark blue for the dark, and a yellow for the light tints. The wonderful work of Matilda, called the Bayeux tapestry, wrought on brown linen; the many historical pieces found in Italy, done in wools; and the collections all over Europe, show a mastery over the needle which we have lost.

But it was left for Francis I, of France, to establish the most renowned factory for these beautiful things, when at Fontainebleau he founded what is now the _Gobelins_. The Gobelins were two Dutch dyers of wool, celebrated for their brilliant scarlets, who eventually gave their name to the art, and a “Gobelin” got to mean a tapestry. Under Louis XIV the Luxurious this manufactory attained to highest importance. They became the Herters and Marcottes of France. Colbert, the Prime Minister, united under one head all the different bands of workmen who were employed on furniture and decorations for the royal palaces of France. To the weavers of carpets and tapestry were added embroiderers, goldsmiths, wood-carvers, dyers, etc. Charles Lebrun and his pupils were charged with furnishing designs. Lebrun himself furnished over twenty-four hundred designs. In 1667 Louis himself paid a visit of state to the manufactory, accompanied by Colbert, and examined the magnificent carpets, tapestries, silver plate, and carvings which formed the splendid “Manufactory of Furniture to the Crown.” This great establishment, however, went down, as Louis lost money; and after the death of Lebrun (he was father to the wretched husband of pretty Madame Le Brun) it returned to its original function of producing tapestry. These Gobelin tapestries grew to be the most wonderful reproduction of pictures ever seen.

But why, one pauses to ask, try to reproduce a picture “done in oils” by the laborious process of needle-work or weaving? Why by process of mosaic? It is one of the useless fancies of the human race. The old tapestry, done by hand when there were no Gobelins, had a meaning and a use. So has the modern tapestry done by hand. It is cheap, it is individual, it is original; but for the Gobelins, that favorite luxury of kings, we fail to see an excuse. However, it is very beautiful, expensive, and rare.

The process of tapestry weaving is called the “_haute lisse_,” the warp being placed vertically, in contradistinction to the “_basse lisse_,” a work with a horizontal warp, as is usual. The weaver stands with the model which he is to copy behind him. As the surface of the tapestry must present a perfectly smooth and even surface, all cuttings must be made on the wrong side, for the workman never sees the beautiful work he is doing. This has been made use of in poetry in the following simile:

“We work but blindly at the loom,
Nor see the pattern, save in parts;
Not ours to mark the gleam or bloom,
But labor on, with patient hearts.

“But when the angels overhead
The soul-wrought tapestry unfurls,
Perhaps the tears we vainly shed
May glow amid the threads--like pearls.

“The sorrow which has crushed the heart
A lily blooms, on azure field;
The strife in which we bore our part
In bud and flower may stand revealed.”

The Gobelins used gold, silver, pearls, and everything decorative in their work, at times, to produce effect. The first Revolution brought destruction to the Gobelins, as it did to everything else, and many choice pieces were burned. But it rose again under the first Napoleon, David furnishing designs. In 1871 the Communists again set fire to the manufactory, burning up the exhibition-room. Four hundred thousand dollars was the estimated loss. But when we remember that there perished tapestries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including the “Acts of the Apostles” by Raphael, and the now valuable, graceful, although affected, charming designs of Boucher, which were wrought for Pompadour, besides historical portraits and scenes, this seems a low estimate. The embroidery of the cartoons of Raphael, copies of which may be seen at Hampton Court, were among the greatest of the Gobelin triumphs.

However, to those who have walked the galleries of Florence, who have seen there the grand and beautiful specimens of embroidered tapestry of the sixteenth century, there will ever be a charm about old tapestry in the crude perspective and the sudden shading. It is this, perhaps, which can be copied. It is this to which the modern tapestry worker should address herself, if among the amusements of home she counts the making of curtains, and wall-coverings, and _portières_, which shall almost suggest the possibility that they once hung in a Florentine or a Venetian palace. A dark background of some cheap woolen stuff, a knowledge of drawing, the silk and woolen and cotton and linen threads now brought to our hand so cheaply--will all furnish forth the appliances for the making of tapestry hangings, such as a castellan of the Middle Ages would not have despised.

Painting on fans has become a very common Home Amusement, and it is a very elegant one. The white silk fan is usually selected, although linen, satin, and wood fans are all easy and pleasant mediums. For painting on silk, some technical knowledge is necessary, some gum-water, or sizing, to prevent the paint from spreading. For painting on wood, one needs only the common water-color box, and a simple knowledge of drawing and painting. Flowers, birds, and butterflies are the favorite devices, monograms having gone out of fashion. It is better, if possible, to have the silk stretched on a frame before it is mounted on sticks, as one still sees the masterpieces of Boucher, Watteau, and Greuze, not yet mounted, but framed, in galleries--far too precious to mount, the Marchioness who ordered them having, perhaps, fortunately forgotten her caprice that we may admire it.

And what pretty and pleasing and altogether historical memories come in with the fan! It was created in primeval ages. The Egyptian ladies had them of lotus-leaves; the Greek and Roman ladies followed. The word _flabellum_ occurs often in the Roman literature. They also had fans of peacock-feathers, and of some expansive material painted in brilliant colors. They were not made to open and shut like ours; that is a modern invention. They were stiff, with long handles, for ladies were fanned by their slaves. The _flabellifer_, or fan-bearer, was some young attendant, generally male, whose common business it was to carry his mistress’s fan. Would that were the fashion now! There is a Pompeian painting of Cupid as the fan-bearer of Ariadne, and lamenting her desertion by Theseus. In Queen Elizabeth’s day the fan was usually made of feathers, like the fan still used in the East. The handle was richly ornamented, and set with stones. A fashionable lady was never without her fan, which was chained to her girdle by a jeweled chain. A satirist of the day, Stephen Gosson, approves of the fan if used to drive away flies and for cooling the skin. He, however, continues scornfully:

“But seeing they were still in hand,
In house, in field, in church, in street,
In summer, winter, water, land,
In cold, in heat, in dry, in wet--
I judge they are for wives such tools
As babies are in plays for fools.”

Queen Elizabeth dropped a silver-handled fan into the moat at Amstead Hall, which occasioned many madrigals. Sir Francis Drake presented to his royal mistress a “fan of feathers, white and red, enameled with a half-moon of mother-of-pearl; within that a half-moon garnished with sparks of diamonds, and a few seed pearls on one side. Having her Majesty’s picture within it, and on the reverse a crow.” Why not try, young ladies, to paint a fan like this? Use silver dust to illustrate “sparks of diamonds.” It would be a very pretty conceit.

Poor Leicester gave, as his New Year’s gift, in 1574, “a fan of white feathers set in a handle of gold, garnished on one side with two very fair emeralds, and fully garnished with rubies and diamonds, and on each side a white bear (his cognizance), and two pearls hanging, a lion romping, with a white muzzled bear at his foot.” This fan would be difficult to copy. It was evidently a love-token from poor, ill-used Leicester to his haughty queen. Just before Christmas, in 1595, Elizabeth went to Kew, dined at my Lord Keeper’s house, and there was handed her a “fine fan, with a handle garnished with diamonds.”

Fans in Shakespeare’s time seem to have been composed of ostrich-feathers, and so on, stuck into handles. In “Love and Honor,” by Sir William Davenant, we find the line,

“All your plate, Vasco, is the silver handle of your old prisoner’s
fan.”

Marston says:

“Another, he
Her silver-handled fan would gladly be.”

Forty pounds were often given for a fan in Elizabeth’s time. Bishop Hall, in his “Satires,” in 1597, says:

“While one piece pays her idle waiting man,
Or buys a hood, or silver-handled fan.”

The fan of the Countess of Suffolk resembles a powder-puff.

But gentlemen carried fans in those days. We find in a manuscript in the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford, the following allusion: “The gentlemen then had prodigious fans, as is to be seen in old pictures, like that instrument which is used to dry feathers, and it had a handle at least one half as long, with which their daughters oftentimes were corrected. Sir Edward Cole, Lord Chief Justice, rode the circuit with such a fan, and William Dugdale told me he was witness of it.” The Earl of Manchester also used such a fan. “But the fathers and mothers slasht their daughters, in the time of their besom-discipline, when they were perfect women.” Both fashions have happily passed away. Lords Chief Justices no longer “slash” their daughters, nor do they carry fans.

Of Catharine de Braganza (1664) we read that she and her maids walked from Whitehall in procession to St. James’s Palace through the park in glittering costume of silver lace in the bright morning sunshine. Parasols being unknown in England at that era, the courtly belles used the gigantic green shading-fans, which had been introduced by the Queen and her Portuguese ladies, to shield their complexions from the sun, when they did not wish wholly to obscure their charms by putting on their masks. Both were in general use in this reign. The green shading-fan is of Moorish origin, and for more than a century after the marriage of Catharine of Braganza was considered an indispensable luxury by our fair and stately ancestral dames, who used them in open carriages, in the promenade, and at prayers, where they ostentatiously screened their devotions from public view by spreading them before their faces while they knelt.

But China and Japan--the home of fans--are waiting to be let in! and as soon as the India trade was opened by Catharine’s marriage treaty, there entered the carved ivory fan, the light bamboo and palm-leaf, the paper fan, the silk folding fan, mounted on beautiful Japanese sticks; all came to England about this time.

The vellum fans of France, on which Watteau first painted his shepherdesses in hoop-petticoats, and swains in full-bottomed wigs, the choice impossible goddesses of Boucher, with cupids and nymphs, all came next. The history of fans, in France alone, would fill a volume; and the neighboring kingdom of Spain, where the language of fans has become a very serious study, would give us another volume. The fans of tortoise-shell, enriched with jewels, are a favorite luxury of to-day. Oliver Wendell Holmes has written a delightful poem on the “Origin of the Fan.” In all our art loan collections there is, nowadays, an exhibition of fans. The young student of fan-painting should strive to see some of those of Watteau and of Boucher. Tiffany to-day turns out some very beautiful specimens; and more than one of our artists could admirably paint a fan or two as his contribution to Fan History.

Nothing can be prettier as a Home Amusement than fan-painting, into which much, but not too much, Japanese suggestion should creep. Remember, young ladies, the plea of that poor stork, of which we have seen so much, “that he be allowed to put down his other leg!” and spare us the gilded bird, or give him to us but seldom.

The art of Illumination, which is now studied occasionally by our young ladies, goes wonderfully well into fan-painting. Perhaps it is too good for it. Perhaps the same hand which can copy the old initial letter which makes the missals rich and rare, should not condescend to the application of the same delicate manipulation in order to ornament a fan. But a fan of vellum, painted by an illuminator, is still a very beautiful thing.

A fan painted to illustrate a song or a ballad is a very pretty thing. The common linen fan, on which a clever hand draws with pencil or ink the story of “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” becomes a precious possession. And in these days of Kate Greenaways and Rosina Emmets we ought to have many charming fan decorators. We should not object if they selected the old-fashioned _maniéré_ goddesses, hovering cupids, smiling nymphs, and _posé_ infants of Boucher, if they would give us his cool, pearly grays, and sweet, soft rose tints. We have had enough of realism and ugliness, disagreeable cat-tails, and harsh, dirty Joan of Arcs. Let us have a little beauty by way of a change, at least on our fans. Perhaps we could “live up to it.”

Nor should we fail to note the pleasant possibility of all the dinner-cards of a winter coming fresh from the hands of the young ladies of the family. What infinite suggestion does one glimpse of the garden on a June morning give to the fair artist! We can imagine that some poetical member should thus summon and direct her sister and brother artists in the following manner:

“Do give me, Rosamond, that spray of sweet-brier which has caught a bit of spider-web over its sweetest pink bud. Throw in that green dragon-fly who is about to dart through the spider’s web. Give me, Grace, that morning-glory cup with a yellow butterfly floating over it. It will shame the best Venetian glass of Mrs. Crœsus.

“You, Jane, paint me those dandelions, strewed by some millionaire who is tired of his gold. You, Constance, take this volume of the old poets, and hunt up appropriate mottoes to write under these fancies from Nature. They shall illuminate our dinners of next winter, and breathe the breath of Nature through our stiff conventionality. They shall be our visitors from Titania.

“Yes, a happy thought! You, Mary, who are so akin to the fairies, give us your kindred. Paint me Oberon and Queen Mab giving a banquet in yon lily. What a splendid and baronial apartment! How the golden shower falls on their royal heads from those laden stamens! True courtiers they, who never stop flattering. Suggest, if you can, with your brush, the perfume of luxury which is born and bred in this royal pavilion. Show me their delicate guests. Here comes the Butterfly, most _repandu_ of beaus; and the Humming-bird, rich bachelor (hard to catch), who dashes in for a look at the beauties, and away again--you can put him in; he is a type for a dinner-card.

“And you, Paul, who are of a strong, masculine, satirical turn, shall make all these frogs and toads into guests in another set of dinner-cards. Give me the frog as an Ambassador. I like his pouting throat, his puffy air--it so simulates importance. How grand and disdainful he is! I declare, he looks so like old Mr. ----! But do not make a portrait; that would give offense. These toads are just about as lively and as brilliant as the rank and file of diners-out. Put them all in Worth dresses. Make the dishes on the table after Hawthorne’s delicate fancy, the shapes of summer vegetables--squashes, cucumbers, pea-pods. What is that pretty poem I remember about Pods?

“‘The Monk’s-hood and the Shepherd’s-purse,
And the Poppy’s pepper-caster;
The Rose’s scarlet reticule,
And the somber box of the Aster;
Nasturtion’s biting brandy-flask,
Infused with a wholesome smart;
And the Milkweed’s knot of white floss silk,
Which will not come apart;
For next to the bud where the Poppy nods,
And the sweet Moss-rose--are the late Seed-pods.’”

“Yes,” said Mary, “pods are very pretty.”

Well, we have, perhaps, talked nonsense enough about the dinner-cards. It is a pretty Home Amusement for the back piazza in summer, or for the close and guarded warm home parlor of winter. Give us the results of both, young ladies. And since all the wealthy chromo people are offering such splendid sums for the Christmas, Easter, and even advertising cards, why should not every group try their hand at the--perhaps--thousand dollar prize?

Here is a suggestion for a Christmas card: A group of young pagans going out of the Catacombs are represented as strewing flowers and singing gay songs. On the other side a group of austere early Christians are coming in, singing hymns. Between the two a ray of light comes down through a fissure of the roof and forms a cross. The religion that is going out, the religion that is coming in--the cross is between them. How much a clever hand could make of this moment of time, so replete with interest to all the world!

It would seem as if, with all the suggestions of Easter, that no one would need anything but a paint-box and a pack of blank cards to interest them at this season. We should have the World being hatched out of an egg; the Saxon goddess Eastre; the Legend of the Stork; the German children searching for the Nest in the garden where the Easter-hen had laid her egg; the great Sunburst; the Sun dancing on Easter morning; the games of mediæval England, when the women played ball at one end of the town and the men at the other, and one fine couple taking occasion to run away to get married on the sly. The Easter Egg is full of meat for the artist.

Growing out of these thoughts comes up the great and increasing taste for symbolism, which finds its highest exponent in church embroidery. The Catholic Church has ever been a good customer of the decorative art schools. It needs and consumes or uses much embroidery. But the pious women of Protestant communion now also deem it a duty and a pleasure to decorate the altars of their beloved churches with much that is symbolic and beautiful, and it is a favorite form of Home Amusement to create an altar-cloth or some draperies which shall engross an hour or two a day of the time of the best embroideresses in the family.

The favorite symbols are these: The Cross in its various forms; the monogram composed of the Greek letters Χ (_Ch_) and Ρ (_R_), the first two in the name of CHRIST; the Apocalyptic letters Α and Ω (_Alpha_ and _Omega_), often combined into a monogram; and the Greek characters ΙΗΣ, the first three letters in the name ΙΗΣΟΥΣ (JESUS). This last symbol is sometimes interpreted thus, in Latin: _J[esus], H[ominum] S[alvator]_--JESUS, OF MEN THE SAVIOUR.

Less frequent is the Fish, which was often used by the early Christians as a kind of secret sign of their faith, the reason being that ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Greek word for “fish,” contains the initials of an article of their creed, thus: Ι[ησοῦς] Χ[ριστὸς], Θ[εοῦ] Υ[ιὸς], Σ[ωτὴρ]--_Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Saviour_.

Besides the foregoing, we have the Ship, indicating the Church, as typified by Noah’s Ark; the Anchor (always in close connection with the ship) entwined with a dolphin--emblems of Fortitude, Faith, and Hope; the Dove, occasionally bearing the olive-branch--the symbol of Christian Charity and Meekness; the Phœnix and the Peacock--symbols of Eternity; the Cock of Watchfulness; the Lyre of the Worship of God; the Palm-branch--the heathen symbol of Victory, but in a Christian sense that of Victory over Death; the Sheaf; the Bunch of Grapes, with other Biblical signs and allusions, such as the Hart at the Brook; the Brazen Serpent; the Ark of the Covenant; the Seven-branched Candlestick; the Serpent in the Garden of Eden; and, lastly, the Cross, with flowers, with a Crown, with a dove hovering about it. Many of these decorative symbols suggest themselves to the contemplative mind, and enter into the appropriate designs for ecclesiastical embroidery.

This embroidery must be beautifully executed to be worthy of its mission. The face of Christ has been so exquisitely wrought by some devout embroideresses that it is like a painting. The work should be done in a frame, and after considerable study.

And how pleasant a study for a winter evening becomes the universal subject of symbolism! We learn that the Eagle and the Thunderbolt were the symbols of Power under pagan mythology, because the attributes of the highest among the gods. The Rod, with the two serpents, indicated Commerce, because Mercury, whose insignia they were, was the God of Traffic. The Club, the emblem of Strength, was the attribute of Hercules. The Griffin--most useful animal for all decorative purposes--was sacred to Apollo. The symbol of the Sphinx was taken from the fable of Œdipus. We are coming back to the Oriental method of teaching by parables in all our new internal decoration; and for the illuminator the knowledge is priceless.

We mount up from these simpler emblems to a consideration of the myths of Niobe, of Cupid and Psyche, of Orpheus captivating the wild beasts of the forest by the sound of his lyre, in which was supposed to lurk an analogy of the history of our Lord. Then we come down to the materialism of the ancients, by which a river is symbolized by a river-god; a city, by a goddess with a mural crown; night, by a female figure with a torch and a star-bespangled robe; heaven, by a male figure throwing a veil in an arched form over his head. All these reflections, born of study and leading to it, are brought in by the practical application now made in embroidery, painting, and wall-decorations; and it would be well if, among the Home Amusements, these graver studies went hand in hand with the pleasant duties of embroidery and illuminating cards and books.

Ole Bull says that he arrived at his wonderful effects upon the violin less by manual practice than by meditation. It would be well to _think_ much over the subject of art. He _practiced_ less and _thought_ more, it is said, than other violinists. No occupation conduces more to quiet and pleasant thought than that of embroidery. We want realism; but we also want idealism. There is no sort of doubt that Art, once admitted as a friend of the family, becomes the greatest instigator of all sorts of Home Amusements, whether peeping out through the paint-box, the needle, the embroidering-frame, the etching tool, or the turpentine-bottle and the mineral paints which are to decorate the plaque. Art is a sprite whose acquaintance should be cultivated.

IX.

ETCHING.

“Good etching is the poetry of drawing, written down rapidly in short-hand.” No doubt many a very orderly mamma, who has had a son or daughter afflicted with a mania for etching, as so many young people are now, has a vision of bath-tubs misappropriated to mixtures of what looked very unlike clear water for cleansing purposes, and which turned out to have plates of copper inside waiting for a bite of acid. Such mammas will blame us for calling this a Home Amusement; they call it--it is to be feared--“a Nuisance.” And yet what form of Art is so near the highest forms of poetry? The etcher is next door to his subject and his public. He has but the ink and himself between that cloud-shadow and them.