Читать книгу Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VII, December 1850, Vol. II - Various - Страница 9

We scarcely know a truer test of a gentlewoman's taste in dress than her selection of a shawl, and her manner of wearing it: and yet if the truth must be owned, it is the test from which few Englishwomen come with triumph. Generally speaking, the shawl is not their forte, in fact they are rather afraid of it. They acknowledge its comfort and convenience for the open carriage, or the sea-side promenade, but rarely recognize it for what it is, a garment capable of appearing the most feminine and graceful in the world. They are too often oppressed by a heap of false notions on the subject; have somehow an idea that a shawl is "old" or "dowdy;" and yet have a dim comprehension that the costly shawls which they more frequently hear of than see, must have some unimagined merits to prove an excuse for their price.

The Frenchwoman, on the contrary, has traditions about "Cashmeres," and remembers no blank of ignorance on the subject. She played at dressing her doll with one, you may be sure; chronicled as an epoch in her life, her first possession of the real thing; holds it as precious as a diamond, and as something to which appertains the same sort of intrinsic value; and shrugs her shoulders with compassionate contempt at an Englishwoman's ignorant indifference on this subject – just as a lover of olives pities the coarse palate which rejects them. Truly the taste for the shawl is a little inherent, and a great deal acquired and cultivated; as appreciation for the highest attributes of every department of art ever must be, from a relish for Canova's chefs-d'œuvres