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MADAME BE GIRAHDIN. 83
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
• In Her, The Published Following Two Ye...
drawing-room was tlie last representative of tlie traditional Parisian for salo the n , such art of as " it holding was in a the saloon few last / ' possessed generations in preceding such perfection our own - by ;
the GeofMns , de 1 'Espinasses , Rolands , de Montcalms , du Caylas _, Duras , and Recamiers of former days , seems to be dying out from
among the Frenchwomen of the present , and with it the correlative " art of conversation / ' which _jorobabl y depends , more intimately
than is generally imagined , upon it . It is evident that the crowded assemblages now so much in vogue
must be unfavorable to the development of conversation ; in the first lacebecause the people thus assembled arefor the most _j _3 art , little
known p , to one another , and in the second place , ( and this point is perhaps the more important of the two ) because they usually so far
outnumber the seats provided for them . These seats being given up almost -whollto the " weaker sex / ' the ladies are thus made to form
y a . circle , more or less formal , from which the gentlemen are practically excluded , and are consequently reduced to the necessity , if they
talk at all , of talking to one another ; while the gentlemen lean against the walls , or form groups in corners and about the doors ,
reduced , like the ladies , to remain silent , or to talk among themselves ;—a separation necessarily fatal to conversation , properly so
called . Nothing is more common , now-a-days , in Paris , than the lamentations of house-mistresses over the separation between the sexes
so generally to be seen at evening-parties , and the decline of conversational talent . But if , instead of confining themselves to idle
complaints of the stiffness and vapidity of their last soiree , these ladies would ive themselves the trouble of reflecting upon the probable
causes g of the general dulness of evening-parties unrelieved by dancingthey miht possibly not find it so difficult as they imagine to
restore , to these g assemblies something of the charm which they have undoubtedllost of late . For who has not been consciouson the
entering a y drawing-room , of the subtle but most powerful influence , exerted on his feelingsand even on his _intellectiial condition , by
has the appearance not found himself and the , agreeabl disposition y predisposed of the room to ? the Who exercise , for instance of his ,
powers of speech by the sight of cosy little groups of comfortablelooking seats ? And who , on the contrary , has not felt both brain
and tongue becoming paralysed at the sight of a formidable circle of wide-spreading gowns and outstanding masses of black broadcloth ,
forming two distinct camps , between which any attempt at parley seems Listen impossible to what ? Madame de Girardina sovereiauthoriton gn y
this matter , once replied to a complaining , lady friend , whom she v _/ as trying to convince thatif le no longer converse at
eveninghas parties resulted with in the great animation measure , and peop from pleasure the fact of other that times in most , this modern change
, drawing-rooms , the seats are injudiciously placed .
. " The arrangement of a drawing-room / ' said Madame de Girardin
Madame Be Girahdin. 83
MADAME BE _GIRAHDIN . 83
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1860, page 83, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101860/page/11/
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