In every large city a set arises whose aim is to be exclusive. Sometimes this privilege seems to be pushed too far. Often one is astonished at the black sheep who leap into the well-defended enclosures. In London, formerly, an autocratic set of ladies, well known as Almacks, turned out the Duke of Wellington because he came in a black cravat. In our republican country perpetual Almacks arise, offensive and defensive,—a state of things which has its advantages and disadvantages. It keeps up an interest in society. It is like the fire in the engine: it makes the train move, even if it sends out smoke and cinders which get into people's eyes and make them weep. It is a part of the inevitable friction which accompanies the best machinery; and if they have patience, those who are left out one winter will be the inside aristocrats of the next, and can leave somebody else out.
Quadrilles, the Lancers, and occasionally a Virginia Reel, are introduced to make the modern ball more interesting, and enable people who cannot bear the whirl of the waltz to dance. The elderly can dance a quadrille without loss of breath or dignity. Indeed, the Americans are the only people who relegate the dance to the young alone. In Europe the old gray-head, the old mustache, leads the German. Ambassadors and generals, princes and potentates, go spinning around with gray-haired ladies until they are seventy. Grandmothers dance with their grandsons. Socrates learned to dance. In Europe it is the elderly woman who receives the most flattering invitations to lead the German. An ambassadress of fifty would be very much astonished if the prince did not ask her to dance.
The saltatory art is like the flight of a butterfly,—hard to describe, impossible to follow. The valse à deux temps keeps its precedence in Europe as the favourite measure, varied with galop, polka, and polka mazourka. We add, in America, Dancing in the Barn, which is really a Spanish dance.
The Pavanne is worthy of study, and the Minuet de la Cour is a stately and beautiful thing, quite worthy of being learned, if it only teaches our women how to make a courtesy.
Each leader of the German is a potentate; he leads his troops through new evolutions, and into combinations so vast, varied, and changeful that it is impossible to do more than hint at them.
The proper name for a private ball is "a dance." In London one never talks of balls; it is always "a dance." Although supper is served generally at a buffet, yet some leaders, with large houses, are introducing little tables, which are more agreeable, but infinitely inconvenient. The comfort, however, of being able to sit while eating, and the fact that a party of four or six may enjoy their supper together would certainly determine the question as to its agreeableness. This is a London fashion, one set succeeding another at the same table. It can only be carried out, however, in a very large house or public place. The ball suppers in New York—indeed, all over America—are very "gorgeous feeds" compared with those one sees in Europe. The profusion of flowers, the hot oysters, boned turkey, terrapin, and canvas-back duck, the salmon, the game patties, salads, ices, jellies, and creams, all crowded in, sweetbreads and green peas, filet de bœuf, constant cups of bouillon,—one feels Carlyle's internal rat gnawing as one reads of them,—the champagne, the punch, the fine glass, choice china, the drapery of German looms, the Queen Anne silver, the porcelain of Sèvres and Dresden, the beauty of the women, the smart dressing, make the ball supper an elegant, an amazing, a princely sort of sight, saving that princes do not give such feasts,—only Americans.
WEDDINGS.
"Rice and slippers, slippers and rice!
Quaint old symbols of all that's nice
In a world made up of sugar and spice,