The Value of a Fan “When we were children,” remarked a delightful old lady, who carried her 70 years with aristocratic grace, “the little girls were always taught to carry a fan when they went into the drawing room. ‘Always carry your fan, my dear,’ was my mother’s last injunction when I went out. ‘It will keep you from feeling awkward and looking conscious,’ and I have often thought what an excellent fashion it was and what a pity it is that the importance of the fan had so greatly decreased. In my day to manage a fan properly was considered a distant accomplishment. To unfurl it slowly and majestically as a Juno might, to flutter it vivaciously, to wave it languidly, to open and shut it meditatively—all this we were expected to learn by instinct and observation. “’With a fan you need never look ill at ease,’ was another of my mother’s maxims, and we girls quickly found out the truth of this for ourselves, and I tell my granddaughters that they lose a goodly weapon when they leave their fans at home or consider them merely as an adjunct of their toilets, in use merely to cool their heated faces” New York Tribune. Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot 21 August 1894: p. 5
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 15:11:06 +0000
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