In our competition for prizes, the greater number of “extremely well” depended more on industry than proficiency, and I was diligent and laboured at my oar; so one Prize Day the Silver Medal for Music was awarded to me. When I look back on this startling incident, I blush to confess that I attribute this decoration to the over-indulgence of our little music mistress; but like many other décorées I felt very proud of the unmerited honour.
My dancing mistress, Madame Michau, had (if I may be allowed to say so) better reason to be satisfied with me; for, with the exception of my dear friend and namesake, Mary Broadwood, I was the best dancer in the school, and my teacher was never tired of instructing her two model pupils in boleros, cachucas, tambourine dances and the like, At that time, dancing in Society was reckoned an accomplishment, and upheld as an art, and it was not the fashion to slope and lounge through what is termed in modern slang, “Square Dances.”
I can scarcely imagine a prettier sight than that presented by those frequent children’s balls, given by the King and Queen at the Pavilion at Brighton. The building, as we all know, was a ridiculous Cockney erection of a Russo-Chinese character, still, few scenes could have been prettier than the interior of the principal room when filled by groups of gaily-dressed and, for the most part, lovely children; for I agree with an R.A. of my acquaintance who said that there is nothing on earth to compare with the beauty of a little “English Swell.”
Now, while I am treating of Monsieur and Madame Michau, I cannot omit to insert an anecdote of the former. Some years after I had left school, during a short stay in Brighton, I paid a visit to the dear old couple, from whom I received an enthusiastic welcome. “Enchanté!” said Monsieur, “de vous revoir, Mademoiselle—c’est à dire, sans doute, Madame?” I replied in a tone of mock melancholy: “Hélas non! Monsieur Michau, toujours Mademoiselle.” The good old man gazed at me with pity bordering on contempt, then, shrugging his shoulders, exclaimed in a dejected, though somewhat sarcastic, tone, “Ah! Mademoiselle, si ce n’était que votre danse....”
“HAVE THE HONOUR OF DANCING WITH ME?”
While yet a school-girl, during the Christmas holidays there was a great deal of juvenile dissipation in the way of balls, and so forth, the most delightful of all, in my opinion, being those given by Dr Everard at his celebrated establishment for young gentlemen, familiarly called the “Young House of Lords,” from the aristocracy of the pupils. My partners here were legion, including the late and the present Lords Northampton,[[24]] Mr Frederick Leveson Gower,[[25]] and my cousins, the sons of Sir Augustus Clifford. Willy Clifford, afterwards Admiral Sir William Clifford, caused great laughter among his school-fellows, who overheard him one night asking me to dance as follows: “Mary, will you have the honour of dancing with me?” Many men, I doubt not—if they spake their thoughts—might address a young lady in the same terms, but it is decidedly not the custom: which reminds me of a quaint reply I received once at a servants’ ball from a Somersetshire farmer, when in consideration of the difference of our social position I asked him to dance Sir Roger de Coverley with me. “Well, Miss Mary,” said honest Farmer Ashby, “I can’t say as I see any objection.”
[24]. Charles, third Marquess of Northampton, died in 1877. William, fourth Marquess, born in 1818, died in 1897.
[25]. Hon. Frederick Leveson Gower, second son of first Earl Granville.
I need not enlarge here on the subject of Dr Everard’s school, for every reader of “Dombey and Son” must be intimately acquainted with the interior of that establishment, where, as is recorded in the delightful book just mentioned, the whole of the afternoon preceding the ball their house was pervaded by a strong smell of singed hair and curling-tongs. In those days, curly locks were considered an indispensable accessory to full dress. Yes, I did enjoy those merry dances at Dr Everard’s, and I was proud of my popularity among my school-boy friends; yet—and this belongs surely to confessions of which I ought to be ashamed—the eventful night came, still at Brighton, when I was to make my début, as a grown-up young lady, at a real grown-up ball. There was rapture in the idea, and yet, after the fashion of most earthly pleasures, there was a drawback. I never had any secrets from my mother, and to her I carried my fears and apprehensions.
“Dearest,” I said, “you see I am very small, and, I am afraid, look dreadfully young (a fear that does not long survive in the female mind), and now you know, although to-night is a grown-up ball, I have no doubt some of these horrid boys will be coming up asking me to dance” (false and fickle ingrate!). “I shall feel so dreadfully ashamed, and shall not know what to do.” My mother, who ought, I think, to have read me a homily, laughed outright, and promised to tell the lady of the house that she was not to judge from appearances, for that I was really “out.” The hostess was worthy of the confidence placed in her by the mother of the débutante, for the first man she introduced to me was an officer, quartered in the town, whose height was six feet six. Then did I feel a certain degree of doubt, mingled with a natural feeling of elation. Could I reach up to his shoulder, or he down to my waist, in the waltz that was just beginning? I believe it was the first time I had ever danced with a regular soldier, but in the course of my Hampton Court life, where the only dancing men belonged to the regiments stationed there, and at Hounslow, I have always maintained that I have danced with the whole of the Army List, or at least with the Cavalry portion thereof. In some localities the female community are in the minority, and I remember a midshipman writing home from the West Indies: “We went ashore last night to a very pleasant dance, to which they were obliged to ask every girl in the place without distinction, or how else could we have manned our ball?”