JEAMES IN EXCELSIS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 826, 13 August 1864, Page 6

JEAMES IN EXCELSIS.

(From the Saturday Revieio.)

There is a person, or gentleman, or whatever he ought to be called, who lives at Paris, and seems to us to be all that Jeanies in his wildest dreams could imagine. That man and bis calling are a real study, and the French deserve all the credit of having invented him. His vocation is this.^'He fe-to be found at a great dressmaker's, and his duty is to look at the ladies when they try their things on, and to give them the benefit of a masculine taste. He is a man who can tell them the impressions their bonnets and dresses will make on their lovers or their husbands. They had long ago arrived at the art of dazzling, irritating, or satisfying their female friends, and they knew that when they were nicely dressed they were more charming to their male friends; but it was reserved for these later days to. have a masculine world critical of the details of women's costume, and a machinery by which women can avert -criticism by anticipating it. The gifted being can tell them what men •will think impressive, enchanting, or a failure, what will be overlooked, however excellent it may be, what colours will best secure attention, and what arrangement is likely to produce the most tender emotions. A lady comes before him with anew bonnet; he looks at her steadily, and then reveals to her all the secrets of that grand mind of male observers, at the contents of whicl? she has hitherto only dimly guessed. Perhaps civilized life, with all its wonderful alteration of the position which, in ruder times, the two sexes occupied to each other, never produced anything much more wonderful than this glorified Jeames standing opposite a fine lady, and letting her know what the gentlemen ' of her circle will think of her new clothes. The utmost propriety, howover, is observed. The chiefs of the establishment give the most positive assurances to all their customers that the gifted being is, warranted not to touch. He hovers about the fine ladies, and the emanations of his genius flow from his soul for their benefit, but he never puts his hands upon them. It is alia mere record of'feeling. He reveals to them that such or such a bonnet, taken in connection with such or such a dress, when viewed at a given distance, awakens a particular set of emotions in the minds of men. They look into him as into a glass, and they see there themselves reflected, not as they are, but as men think they look; and the tribunals of his country show what they think of him, and a halo of glory is'thrown over his position, even by the "law itself. A French journalist not long ago took upon ■ himself to make some critical- observations on the nature and functions of this milliner's showman.' He remarked that, so far as he could see, this splendid func- ' tionary and his luncheons could not be got for nothing, and that, as a matter of plain prosaic fact, the husbands ultimately paid for him. This was not to be endured. f Jeames was not toljhave the gilding stripped off him in this way. He brought an action against the rash libeller, and actually obtained a decision in his favor, and the legal authorities held that it was a calumny to say that he cost anything. The dresses sold at the establishment were ; not a bit dearer, according to this judgment, because the Satan of flunkeys was hired to comment on them. He was a pure heaven-given extra, beaming on the ladies, guiding, fascinating, and feeding them, without any one having a right to suppose for a moment that he was paid for. Surely this is a position to which our own . native' Teames never aspired, but which, i if he will, reflect on it, will satisfy his utmost aspirations. To be always in attendance on the grandest and smartest ladies, to be engaged to stare at them, to be expressly retained to make remarks on them, to compliment them and flatter them, to reveal to them the future sentiments of lovers and husbands, to see them looking their, best before any other male eye has enjoyed the spectacle, and then to be protected by the law of the land from having it said that all this magnificent smirking must somehow be paid for, is surely a lot as much beyond the dreams of the Bath Swarry as the houris of a Mohammedan's Paradise are beyond the women he can find in his native town. This arch flunkey embodies very neatly many of the ultimate consequences to which civilization is leading us. In the old days of French society, some one is said to have asked a lady whether she did not feel shy at having her breakfast brought to her, when she was in her night costume, by a footman. She laughed at the notion, and protested she could not understand feeling shy at the presence of a creature so ineffably beneath her, that a brute animal would have been as dangerous to her virtue. Times are changed now, and flunkeys have risen in the world since then. Jeames, looked on as an as or a horse bringing in,

like a good useful beast of burden, the chocolate or coffee of the great lady, was a very rudimentary type of the gifted being •who is certainly warranted not to touch, but who exercises almost every other kind of familiarity towards the gayest and richest and most fashionable ladies of Paris. It is the tendency of modern society to bring different classes into relations of great familiarity towards each other, although the endeavor is made, and generally with success, to create some barrier by which a feeling of separation may be maintained. The ladies who try on their dresses before a paid male admirer, who look into his expressive countenance or treasure up his suggestive words in order that they may know how the men of their own set will like them, and who learn the tastes of gentlemen from the experiences of a flunkey, enter into a region of familiarity which a marchioness even of the days of the Regency would have thought odiously improper. The number of women sacrificed in one form or other by the astounding luxury and recklessness of Paris must sometimes draw forth a sigh even from the unreflecting breasts of women with a beautiful new dress on. They must shudder at the thought of all that

civilised man inflicts on civilised woman, and of the extreme eagerness with which civilised woman meets her fate. But at this repository of taste and extravagance there is at least one glaring instance, to be found of the degradation- to which civilised woman can. reduce man. The archflunkey was by nature constituted like other men. He might have been honest, dignified, and self-respecting. He might have been a soldier, or a navvie, or a sous prefet; but the grasp of society seized him and turned him to the uses of fine ladie3.

He has been taught to smirk, and make artistic remarks, and hand wine with a "■raceful bow, in order that women may by his aid be more successful in their endeavors to please those whom they wish to attract; and in all probability the poor wretch, like other victims of gay society, hugs his chains and thinks himself one of the finest and noblest and happiest of men. He is sure he is in excelsis, and forgets he is Jeames. Probably, there are few persons in Paris more satisfied with their po« sition; and to have got a man to have such an opinion of such a vocation is no slight revenge for that degradation at the hands of men which women have to deplore.