THE POCKET-HANDKERCHIEF.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 346, 22 July 1875, Page 3

THE POCKET-HANDKERCHIEF.

Until the reign of the Empress Josephine, a handkerchief was thought in France so shocking an object that a lady would never have dared to use it before any one. The word even was carefully avoided in refined conversation. An actor who would have used a handkerchief on the stage, even in the most tearful moments of the play, would have been unmercifully hissed; and it was only in the beginning of the present century that a celebrated actress dared to appear with a handkerchief in her hand. Having to speak of this handkerchief in the course of the piece, she could never summon enough courage to call it by its true name, but referred to it as a light tissue. A few years later, a translation of one of Shakespeare’s plays by Alfred de Vigny having been acted, the word handkerchief was used for the first time on the stage, amid cries of indignation from a great part of the house. I doubt if even to-day French elegants would carry handkerchiefs if the wife of Napoleon I. had not given the signal for adopting them. The Empress Josephine, although really lovely, had ugly teeth. To conceal them she was in the habit of carrying small handerchiefs adorned with costly laces, which she continually raised gracefully to her lips. Of course all the ladies of the Court followed her example, and handkerchiefs have rapidly become an important and costly part of the feminine toilette ; so much so that the piece of a single handkerchief of the trousseau of the Duchess of Edinburgh would make the fortune of a necessitous family.