New Britain Herald Newspaper, May 24, 1927, Page 14

i e Science Traces Their Inter- = esting History From the " Very Ancient Times When ;i They Were Symbols of Worldly Power and Also Played an Important Part in Religious W orship Two fans that once belonged to Queen Marie Antoinette of France Miss Golder, the Jenny Ceremony attending which she appears in a current Paris music hall revue doings are filling so much space in the newspapers, always carry in the field a “baton of command,” which is a fan. In China nobody thinks of doing anything or going anywhere without a fan. Fans are said to have been a Chinese invention, dating back at least as far as 1000 B. C., and it is related that an Empress of the Middle Kingdotn, in days of long ago, carried on her chariot a feather fan which was used to keep the wheels free from dust. Custom in that country decrees the use of special kinds of fans for different occasions' and different purposes. But etiquette in this regard is not less rigid in Japan. The Japanese youth on attaining his majority receives the formal gift of a fan. Fans are used by priests, of spe- cial pattern. There are “tea fans,” car- ried at the annual celebration in honor of tea, on the first day of the first month. The Empress has a royal fan of exclu- sive design, which no one is allowed to imitate. It is a folding fan with seven streamers of ribbon four feet long at- tached to its outer sticks. In olden times Japanese generals car- ried “war fans” made of iron. There are court fans, tea fans, and dancing fans which are gracefully employed by dancing girls in gesturing. Water fans, for kitchen use, are of bamboo, covered with varnished paper; when dipped in water they give more coolness by evapo- ration. Fans are used by jugglers in feats of skill, by umpires to signal de- cisions at wrestling maiches, and by singers to modulate their voices. There is a story of a samurai named Araki, whom the ferocious daimio Na- bunaga summoned, wishing to kill him. Kneeling on the threshold of the audi- ence chamber, his neck came in line with sliding panels which a servant was in- structed to slam together, decapitating him. But Araki, suspecting mischief, laid his fan in the groove, jamming the shutters and saving himself. The Chinese claim the invention of the folding fan. So also do the Japanese, whe-say that it was suggested to the in- ventor by the structure of a bat’s wing. But it is worth mentioning that the de- veloping leaf of the palmetto might have furnished a perfect model, being as neatly pleated and packed as any folding fan. At first, only women of the demi- monde made use of folding fans. But later on they came to be more widely employed than any other kind. They were commonly made of paper, but also of ivory, tortoise shell, lacquer, mother- of-pearl, gold, silver, silk, and sandal- wood. Carved ivory fans are marvels of patient ingenuity. In China every important city and district has its folding fans, distinctive in pattern, color, and ornament. Th are made to suit people of all c! S, from mandarin to peasant; to suit the changing seasons, and in different sizes, according to the amount of breecze re- quired. The Emperor uses a summer fan of feathers and a winter one of silk Fashion in China lays down inexorable rules in regard to fans. To be seen with a fan that is too early or too late to be seasonable, is shockingly bad form The fan is part of the ceremony of tea- drinking. As soon as the tea is drunk, the host takes his fan and says, I in- vite you to fan yourselves.” Whereupon each guest uses his fan with dignified gravity. It is a breach of etiquette t.‘o Tnosm Chinese gemerals, whose Bl A J;pnnele war fan, made of iron be without a fan on such an occasion, or to refrain from using it. India is a hot country, and there fans are very ancient. Sculptures many cen- turies old show attendants of the Snake God waving fans. Fans made of the feathers of the peacock (a sacred bird in all southern and eastern Asia, as it also used to be in Mediterranean re- gions) are, by origin, of great antiquity; likewise fans of palm-leaf form. The latter in modern da are variously adorned and decorated—painted, inlaid, embroidered with silk, and made to glit- ter with spangles and beetles’ wings of metallic hues. A medieval fan from vlon, disc-shaped, is of gold set with cabochon sapphires. In Burma the monastic novice uses a large palm-leaf fan as a screen from the sight of womankind, moving it from right to left as occasion requires, when- ever a female person happens to pass When the capital of King Thee! captured by the British, in 1 were found among the royal tre w was , there worship, dating from the ninth century and now pre- served in the Abbey of Tournus four long-handled fans jeweled with rubies, the handles overlaid with gold. In England, in the time of Henry the Eighth, gentlemen carried enormous fans with handles a yard long. The sticks were commonly used for punish- ing refractory children, and it is re- corded that by this means Sir Thomas More corrected his grown daughters for running him into debt at the milliner’s. Such fans were used at court to dis- sipate the horrible odors for which such places were famous, the “palace smell,” due to defective plumbing and poor ven- tilation, being as characteristic of White- hall as it was of Versailles in those days. Ceremonial fans appear to have been used by the American Indians in early times. When the explofer La Salle, in isited on the banks of the lower M ippi by a native chieftain, the latter arrived clad in a white robe and preceded by two men dearing white fans, presumably of feathers. During the Middle Ages, in Europe, fans played an important part in reli- gious ceremonials, They were waved over the heads of priests at mass, or held by acolytes in front of the altar. The idea originally was to keep off the flies, whicl represented the devil, and to drive them away by faith. Beelzebub means, literally, Lord of the Flies, Later the fans were supposed to waft a divine influence upon the ceremony, their to-and-fro movement symbolizing Copyright, 1927, oy Johoson Festures. (oo w An exquisite English fan of the late eighteenth cen- tury, made of ivory, with hand- painted medallions the quivering of the wings of seraphim. These fans were called “flabella,” and a famous one that has been preserved, dating back to the ninth century, is now in the national museum at Florence. It belonged at that period to the abbey church of Tournus, south of Chalons. Pictures of sgints adorn it. Many me- dieval fans bear pictures of saints, and paintings of that epoch show angels waving fans. The oldest existing Christian fan be- longed to Theodolinda, a saintly queen of the Lombards, who lived in the sixth century. It is preserved as a secred relic in the Cathedral of Monza, near Milan, and superstition has invested it with such magical powers that maidens make pilgrimages from long distances to touch it and thereby enhance their pros- pects of acquiring husbands. In Colombia (South America) at the present time fans are as commonly used by men.as by women. One domestic use to which they are put is to blow the fire. For that purpose every house in that country is provided with a kitchen fan of cabbage-palm leaf. A like cus- tom holds in Portugal, where the “fire h-::";utrich feather fan with % i g Pe ¢ P S . 3 : : LR 3 Egyptian to fan,” so called, is usually of coarsely plaited straw or rush, with a rough, wooden handle. One of the most ancient uses of the fan—possibly the earliest, and very likely dating back to prehistoric times—was for winnowing grain, to separate it from the chaff. The lineage of fans is undoubtedly older than the Pyramids. In Egypt, thousands of years ago, there were banner and processional fans, of ostrich or pea- cock feathers, fixed on lcng, wooden handles. They ac- companied the Pha- raoh wherever he went, and on war ex- peditions two of them were mounted as standards on the monarch’s chariot. The office of fan-bearer was one of the highest in the kingdom, only princes and scions of the highest nobility being eligible to such appointments. There were a number of these official fan- bearers, who either attended the King in person on the field of battle or com- manded divisions of troops. Fan customs much the same prevailed in ancient Assyria, in Persia, and in Arabia. Fans for ordinary use were crescent-shaped, square and triangular. A bas-relief on an Egyptian monument of the tenth century B. C. shows a big fan suspended from the ceiling and op- erated by pulling a cord. Just such fans are in use nowadays in India. It is a very old device for cooling a room by agitating the stagnant air. In times antedating the Christian era the Phoenicians were the sea traders of the Mediterrancan, and it is supposed that they brought fans from Egypt and Assyria and introduced them to the Greeks and Romans. On ancient Greek vases women holding fans are often represented, and in some instances ser- vants are shown waving long-handled fans of recognizably Egyptian pattern. The priests of Isis carried fans made of the wings of birds, attached to the end of a long wand. References to feather fans are fre- " strument! In this land it speaks a par- o the high office of fan-bearer, as pictured on the wall of a tomb quent in early Greek litera- ture. Thus in one of the plays of Euripides a slave says: “I chanced with the close circle of feathers to be fanning the breeze that sported in the ringlets of Helen.” In Asia Minor such circular feather fans are known to have been in common use as early as the fifth cen- tury B. C. Fans were introduced into Italy in the sixth century B. C. Their handles had holes bored through them for thread or wire, to fasten feathers. Feather fans were in general use by the Romans long before the birth of Christ. Usually they were of peacock feathers, with long handles, and ancient frescoes show them waved by attendants to keep the flies off their mistresses while sleeping. Those blameless young ladies, the Vestal Vir- gins, used fans to start the flames of sacrificial fires. A story painted on an old Spanish fan says that the first fan was a wing which Cupid tore from the back of Zephyrus to cool the sleeping Psyche as she lay on a bed of roses. This, of course, is a figurative reference to the employment of the fan by women as a graceful aid to flirtation and love-making. An old-time contributor to that classic newspaper, the Spectator, wrote : “Women are armed with fans as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them. I have seen a fan so angry that it would have been dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to come within wind of it; and at other times so very languishing that, for the lady’s sake, I was glad the lover was at a suffi- cient distance from it. If I only see the faneof a disciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns or blushes.” The famous statesman Disraeli, so- journing in Spain, wrote: “A Spanish ° lady with her fan might shame the tac- tics of a troop of horse. Now she un- folds it with the slow pomp and elegance of the bird of Juno; now she flutters it with the languor of a disdainful beauty, and again with all the liveliness of a vi. vacious one. Anon she closes it with a whirr that makes you start. Magical in- ticular language, and gallantry requires no other mode to express the most subtle conceits.” It is to be feared that in these ultra. modern days women, who have not hesi- tated to sacrifice other graces, have ceased to cultivate the use of the fan as an amatory weapon. On the other hand, its use on the stage is elevated al- most to a fine art. To emphasize a movement, to give point and expression to some particular action—what more effective instrument conld be found than the fan! In discussing this interesting subject, | one should not forget the “trick fans.” There is one kind, its inventor unknown, which l6oks like an ordinary folding hn: Open it from left to right and it is like any other. But when opened from right to left the whole fan seemingly falls to pieces, its sticks no longer gnlted. The principle on which it works is simple enough, though puzzling until understood. Then there is the “double entendre” fan, which is of French origin, as might be imagined. Opened in the ordinary way, from left to right, it displays a harmless picture of flowers, birds, or landscape. Opened the opposite way, it reveals a shocking design.