“May I ask, my lord, what a masquerade is supposed to represent?” Miss Newville inquired.
“Well, really now, I never thought of it. I suppose it means something, but just what, upon my soul, I cannot tell you, except to have a jolly good time and appear to be what we are not.”
“Are such masquerade balls usually attended by noble lords and ladies?”
“Oh, yes. They are almost the exclusive patrons. I attended one a little while ago at Carlisle House. It was intended the king and queen should be patrons. Tickets were sent to his most gracious majesty, and, of course, there was a great crush. The king and queen returned the tickets, but everybody else was there. I remember that the Duke of Cleveland appeared as Henry VIII.; the Duke of Gloucester as a fine old English gentleman; the Duchess of Buccleugh as the Witch of Endor; Lady Edgecombe as a nun; the Duchess of Bolton as the goddess Diana; Lady Stanhope as Melopomene; the Countess of Waldegrave as Jane Shore; Lord Galway’s daughter, Mrs. Monckton, as an Indian princess, in a golden robe, embroidered with diamonds, opals, and pearls worth thirty thousand pounds. One of the gentlemen came as a Swiss ballad-singer with a hurdy-gurdy, leading a tame bear with a muzzle on his nose. He had been stopped by the gate-keeper, because he had only a ticket and a half—the half ticket for the bear; but it being a she-bear and ladies being admitted at half price, the hurdy-gurdy man won the day. Everybody laughed and said it was the best joke of the season.”
Lord Upperton saw a troubled look upon Miss Newville’s face, as if she had heard quite enough about masquerades.
“The recreations of court life, I would not have you think, Miss Newville, are masquerades and balls, and nothing else. We have suppers which are quite different affairs, where we do not try to be what we are not. After the theatres are out we go to the banquet halls, where wine and wit flow together. We gossip, sing songs, and flirt with the Macaroni ladies. The opera girls sing to us if they are not too tipsy, and we have gay larks till the wagons begin to rumble around Covent Garden Market, and the greengrocers are displaying their onions and cabbages for the early morning sale.”
“Who are the Macaroni ladies?” Miss Newville asked.
Lord Upperton laughed.
“I don’t wonder that you inquire. We call them Macaronies, ladies and gentlemen alike, who have traveled on the Continent, flirted at Versailles, in Paris, or in the Palace Barberini in Rome; who have eaten macaroni in Naples, and who have come home with all the follies, to say nothing of some of the vices of the nobility of other countries, in addition to what they had before they started on their travels. The gentlemen wear their hair in long curls; the ladies patch and paint their faces. If they haven’t a pimple or a wart they make one. They wear gorgeous dresses. The gentlemen twiddle canes ornamented with dogs’ heads or eagles’ beaks, with gold tassels; carry attar of rose bottles in their gloved hands, and squirt rosewater on their handkerchiefs. They ogle the ladies through their quizzing glasses, wear high-heeled slippers, and diddle along on their toes like a French dancing-master teaching his pupils the minuet. The ladies simper and giggle and wink at the gentlemen from behind their fans, and leave you to imagine something they don’t say.”
Again Lord Upperton saw a troubled look upon Miss Newville’s face.