TOYS AND TRINKETS.

I should like to know if the march of intellect has any thing to do with the indifference which the children of our day shew for toys. The Mrs. Chenevixes, and the petits Dunkerques of modern times would be ruined and undone, if it were not for the papas and mammas, whose boudoirs and dressing-rooms are the only baby-houses to be found in modern mansions.

The witty, the gallant Marquis de Sévigné was called by his mother “le roi des bagatelles,” from his love of bijouterie; and Lord —— might be called the emperor. His pipes and snuff-boxes alone might entitle him to the imperial grade in the sovereignty of trifles: while Lady —— is the very Catherine of Russia of trinkets, and autocrat of the toy-shop. There is not a useless utility, a superfluous superfluity, that ingenuity can devise for the amusement of idleness, which may not now be found on the tables of the great, and the imitators of their present rage for toys:—gold scissors that do not cut; silver needles that do not sew; pearl pen-knives that mend no pens; and work-boxes that hold no work save clock-work; fagots that never burn; and allumettes that are never to be lighted: with a hundred devices in gems and jewels, which it must have taken some poetical talent, and more poetical fancy than goes to half the sonnets and “lines” that we read, or at least pay for, to invent.

All this seems very frivolous; but then these “trifles light as air” are sometimes important enough in their results: for, if such fairy favours are occasionally bestowed by tributary friends, they are sometimes the insidious offerings of concealed admirers; who tell in toys, what words dare not utter; and give the history of a passion in a series of trinkets, which, if hearts of turquoise, and seals of emeralds could speak, would be found more than circumstantial evidences in Doctors’ Commons.

That petites-maîtres, and petites-maîtresses should thus “trifle life away,” and occupy their time and money like children, may not appear so very extraordinary; but that literary women—intellectual women—women who affect to think, and presume to write—and publish too, and make head against such organs of opinion as Quarterly Reviews, and the like—that they should give themselves the airs of fashionable frivolity, and endeavour to reconcile “les goûts d’un grand seigneur, et les revenus d’un poëte,” is really “too bad.” It is, however, a fair example of the incongruities of character, and the influence of vogue. What would the Scuderies, and the Daciers, and the Carters, and the Montagus say to the toy-shop house of a certain forty-volume-power female writer of the present day, who, if she has not written as well, has written as much, as those three voluminous ladies combined? What a disappointment to blue-stocking visitors, who expect to find her in the midst of that charming literary litter, intellectual disorder, and elegant neglect of all the elegancies of ordinary life, which marked the ménages of the femmes-savantes of the late and preceding centuries!—the broken tea-cup (substituted for a wine-glass) of Mary Wolstonecraft! or the Scotch mull and brown pocket-handkerchief of Catherine Macauley!! What a shock to hear this quarto authoress talk of esprit de rose instead of l’esprit des lois; to find the atmosphere of her drawing-room perfumed by a jardin of fresh flowers, whose odour, she pretends, has the same effect on her brain as sherries had upon Falstaff’s, “driving thence all the dull and crudy vapours, which environ it!”

How their literary Fustinesses of former times would turn up their intellectual noses at the frivolous tastes of this new-light Armande, could they see her, as I see her at this moment, writing at a rose-wood secrétaire, accommodating and pliant as any secrétaire on the list of diplomacy, and “seizing,” literally, not figuratively, (like Anna Matilda) her “golden quill.” There she sits, surrounded by the inspiring semblances of deathless wits and immortal beauties, shining from enamels durable as their fame—by bookcases, that glitter in gilt vellum and rosy russian—with Dante illustrated on Sevre vases, and the loves of Petrarch and Laura told on tea-cups. Which of the coronetted muses of the present saturnalia of Parnassus, where cooks and countesses jostle for precedency, does this sketch pourtray? Which of the Lady Charlottes and the Honourable Annas, who affect new patents of distinction, and think more of the honour bestowed by their publisher, than their pedigree, does this cap fit? Not one; for this literary petite-maîtresse—this amateur of frivolities, and inditer of philosophy—this collector of French toys, and collator of Irish chronicles—this trifler by taste, and author by necessity,

I don’t defend this passion for trifles—I only expose it, as an illustrative item in the history of female authorship, which is so often reproached with a slovenly neglect of all that is feminine and frivolous.

When somebody presented the celebrated Mademoiselle Scuderie with a bunch of pretty seals, she refused them, deeming them derogatory to the dignity of a “Fille Savante,” as she is called by Menage—so she sent them back with a couplet, observing,

It is odd enough that I should be thus blamed for my love of trifles and of truth—and for pursuing both, in my public and private life, with an earnestness, which at least attests my sincerity, if it does not prove my judgment. “On ne saurait avoir trop de fantaisies, musquées ou non musquées,” says Madame de Sévigné. This is also my creed: for I hold, that whatever cheers us on in the arduous path of life, and flings a flower over its dreariness—whatever innocently employs and safely recreates—whatever gives an object, or an amusement, “soberly,” (as Lady Grace has it,) is worth cultivating, even although it be but a taste for toys. When, therefore, one cannot command a box at the opera, it is well to be able to command a box from Bautte!⁠[54] When one cannot enjoy Rossini in full orchestra, it is a privilege to hear his best symphonies played on one’s writing-desk or work-table—and when denied the enchantments of Pasta and Pisaroni, it is pleasant still to hang upon tones, which, like theirs, seem to proceed from no “mortal mixture of earth’s mould”—fairy strains, played, as it were, by fairy fingers, on fairy instruments, made and moulded “par quelque araignée du voisinage.” Sensible women, I know, laugh at all this. Still, a woman should be “femme avant tout;” and she who is not so, more or less, is not a fair and perfect specimen of her sex.

The great always love toys. Even heroes are not above them. That gallant Centaur, Prince Potemkin, had the finest collection of joujoux of any grown gentleman on record; and Catherine the Great was wont to reward his devotion and his services, alternately, by trinkets and principalities, or to appease his jealousy by a government or a toy—

The Russian “petit enfant” was often found seated before a mountain of baby-things, in his military pavilion, by the Prince de Ligne, who has left such a pleasant description of the scene, and so wittily recorded the fact.

By far the prettiest toy I ever read or heard of, and the most appropriate for the baby-house of a literary lady, was one invented by Madame de Théanges, the sister of Madame de Montespan; and presented by that beautiful and mondaine Abbess, to the Duc de Maine, as an étrenne, in 1675.

This exquisite toy represented one of the royal apartments of Versailles, richly gilt and decorated—a state-bed occupied an alcove, and was surrounded by a gilt balustrade. In a grand fauteuil, within the precincts, sat the young prince, shewing a copy of adulatory verses to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, who stood beside him; while behind his chair was placed the celebrated Bossuet, and the Prince de Marsiliac. Two ladies, who had also the privilege of the ruelle, sat reading within the alcove. These were the charming Madame de la Fayette, and Madame de Théanges, whose beauty was set off by her religious habit, as Abbess de Fontrevault. Immediately without the balustrade stood Racine and Boileau—the former beckoning in the modest La Fontaine, who stood timidly at the door—the latter, with a pitch-fork, humorously affecting to keep off a crowd of bad poets, who were forcing their way to the presence and patronage of the young prince.

The merit and the value of this superb toy was, that all these figures were accurate portraits, exquisitely done in wax, and presented by the illustrious originals themselves to Madame de Théanges, for her classical and ingenious étrenne.