Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Volume 2: Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the Queen — John Shaqi
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Volume 2: Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the QueenCampan, Mme. (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette)
History
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Volume 2: Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the Queen
Campan, Mme. (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette)
France -- Court and courtiers; Marie Antoinette, Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of France, 1755-1793
Fashion continued its fluctuating progress; and head-dresses, with their
superstructures of gauze, flowers, and feathers, became so lofty that the
women could not find carriages high enough to admit them; and they were
often seen either stooping, or holding their heads out of the windows.
Others knelt down in order to manage these elevated objects of ridicule
with less danger.
[If the use of these extravagant feathers and head-dresses had continued,
say the memoirs of that period very seriously, it would have effected a
revolution in architecture. It would have been found necessary to raise
the doors and ceilings of the boxes at the theatre, and particularly the
bodies of carriages. It was not without mortification that the King
observed the Queen's adoption of this style of dress: she was never so
lovely in his eyes as when unadorned by art. One day Carlin, performing
at Court as harlequin, stuck in his hat, instead of the rabbit's tail, its
prescribed ornament, a peacock's feather of excessive length. This new
appendage, which repeatedly got entangled among the scenery, gave him an
opportunity for a great deal of buffoonery. There was some inclination to
punish him; but it was presumed that he had not assumed the feather
without authority.-NOTE BY THE EDITOR.]
Innumerable caricatures, exhibited in all directions, and some of which
artfully gave the features of the Queen, attacked the extravagance of
fashion, but with very little effect. It changed only, as is always the
case, through the influence of inconstancy and time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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