One of the things saved from the wreck was a grand piano, for the Condesa was a first-rate musician, and on Salud’s eighteenth “name-day” a party was arranged with the double object of “offering the new house” to their large circle of acquaintance, and giving the girl a little amusement at home, since it was now out of the question for her to have a season at Madrid. The three daughters set to work and made paper flowers—a pretty accomplishment in which Spanish ladies excel—and garlands of leaves to adorn the patio. The Condesa herself superintended the preparation of various dainty little refreshments for her guests, and everything on the eventful night was as bright and attractive as good taste and willing hands could make it.
But there were no ices, no champagne, no set supper, and no band, the girls of the house taking turns to play endless seguidillas, rigodones, and valses for their guests. And when the dance was over and the Condesa and her daughters stood in the patio saying good-bye to those whom they had done their best to entertain, they heard one aristocratic dame remark to another of her kind—
“Were you ever before invited to anything quite so shabby? Really, if Maria de las Nieves could not afford something better than that, she had no business to invite us at all!”
But this specimen of aristocratic courtesy was displayed in a “capital,” and things fortunately are very different in more out-of-the-way places.
In these I have seen young people meet together to talk and laugh and dance for hours, quite satisfied with no more costly refreshment than a bottle of water with a single glass from which they all drank in turn; while a lady who held weekly receptions to which we were invited once for the whole year, was regarded as quite a liberal hostess because she provided weak coffee and biscuits ad lib.
It was in a country town that I had the pleasure of attending my first and only subscription ball in Spain. The King’s approaching marriage had brought everything English very much into fashion, and we were received on entering the theatre, where the ball was held, by the young gentleman who had got us the tickets, dressed as a Pierrot but wearing a bowler hat from Christie’s, whose label was displayed by an ingenious turn of the hand as he led me into the dancing-room, otherwise the auditorium of the theatre.
It was Carnival, and most of the dancers were in fancy dress. The place was prettily decorated, and the boxes and dress circle were crowded with spectators. All the elder ladies were wearing black or white mantillas or Manila shawls, and one ought to have received an impression of smartness or even of elegance. But something was wrong somewhere to our English eyes, and instead of admiring the coup d’œil one cast about to see why one felt as if one had accidentally intruded upon a festivity in Whitechapel.
“Will you dance with me?” asked the Pierrot of a girl of our party, who, by the way, wore a realistic beggar’s dress, all red and yellow rags, which her Spanish friends thought very absurd because it had cost only a few pesetas. And as the couple moved off together I suddenly discovered why the scene reminded me of a London coster dance. Every young man and many of the old ones wore a hat—generally a bowler—and even if he took it off to valse, which not many of them did, he carried it carefully under his arm as he danced, regardless of the inconvenience to his partner.
“What do you think of our ball?” asked an acquaintance, who was smoking a cigarette as well as wearing his hat.
I was tactless enough to say that it looked odd to us to see so many hats about, and I noticed that the young man’s face fell. I learnt afterwards that the bowler from Christie’s was believed to be absolutely the dernier cri in England, and that being so, it was considered as appropriate to the ballroom as to the street.