Goa and the Blue Mountains; or, Six months of sick leave

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

A more serious affair is a grand dinner. This truly British form which hospitality assumes, may be divided into two kinds, the pure and the mixed. The former is the general favourite, as, consisting of bachelors only, it admits of an abandon in the style of conversation, and a general want of ceremoniousness truly grateful to the Anglo-Indian mind. A dinner where ladies are admitted is, by L’Allegro, considered an unmitigated pest; and those who dislike formality and restraint, scant potations, and the impossibility of smoking, will readily enter into his feelings.

The Ootacamund soirée happens about once every two months to the man of pleasure, who exerts all the powers of his mind to ward off the blow of an invitation. When he can no longer escape the misfortune, he resigns himself to his fate, dresses and repairs to the scene of unfestivity, with much of the same feeling he remembers experiencing when “nailed” for a Bath musical reunion, or a Cheltenham tea-party. He will have to endure many similar horrors. He must present Congo to the ladies, walk about with cakes and muffins, listen to unmelodious melody, and talk small—he whose body is sinking under the want of stimulants and narcotics, whose spirit is fainting under the peine forte et dure of endeavouring to curb an unruly tongue, which in spite of all efforts will occasionally give vent to half or three-quarters of some word utterly unfit for ears feminine or polite. If, as the Allegri sometimes are, the wretch be nervous upon the subject of being “talked about in connexion with some woman,” another misery will be added to the list above detailed. He has certainly passed the evening by the side of the young lady whom he first addressed—his reasons being that he had not courage to break away from her—and he may rest assured that all Ooty on the morrow will have wooed and won her for him. Finally, he observes that several of his married friends look coldly upon him, beginning the morning after the soirée. Probably he endeavoured to compensate for his want of vivacity, by a little of what he considered brilliancy, in the form of satire,—quizzing, as it is generally called. The person for whose benefit he ventured to

Tamper with such dangerous art,

looked amused by his facetiousness, encouraged him to proceed by

⸺The smile from partial beauty won,

and lost no time in repeating the substance of his remarks, decked, for the sake of excitement, in a richly imaginative garb, to the sensitive quizzee.

There are about half-a-dozen balls a year on the Neilgherries, the cause of their infrequency being the expense, and the unpopularity of the amusement amongst all manner and description of men, save and except the “squire of dames” only. This un-English style of festivity is also of two kinds, the subscription and the bachelors’: the former thinly attended, because 1l. is the price of a ticket, the latter much more numerously, because invitations are issued gratis. The amusement commences with the notes which the ladies indite in reply to their future entertainers, who scrutinize all such productions with a severity of censure and a rigidity of rule which might gratify a Johnson, or a Lindley Murray. And woe, woe, to her who slips in her syntax, or trips in her syllabication! Then the members of the club carve out for themselves a grievance, all swear that it is a “confounded shame to turn the place into a hop-shop,” and one surlier individual than the rest declares that “it shan’t be done again.” At the same time you observe they endure the indignity patiently enough, as it is a magnificent opportunity for disposing of their condemnable though not condemned gooseberry.

And here we pause for a moment in indignation at such a proceeding. May that man never be our friend who heedlessly sets a bottle of bad champagne before a fellow-creature at a ball! Heated and excited by the dancing atmosphere around, the victim’s palate becomes undiscerning, he drinks a tumbler when at other times a wine-glass full would have been too much, and in the morning—aroynt thee, Description! Well do we remember the bitter feelings with which we heard on one of these occasions, two gentlemen felicitating each other upon the quantity of sour gooseberry disposed of unobserved. Unobserved! we were enduring tortures from the too observable effects of it.

At eleven or twelve the ladies muster. The band—a trio of fiddlers, and a pianist, who performs on an instrument which suggests reminiscences of Tubal Cain—strikes up. The dancing begins—one eternal round of quadrilles, lancers, polkas, and waltzes. There is no difficulty in finding partners: the “wall-flower,” an ornament to the ball-room unknown in India generally, here blooms and flourishes luxuriantly as in our beloved fatherland. But if you are not a bald-headed colonel, a staff-officer in a gingerbread uniform, or a flash sub. in one of Her Majesty’s corps, you will prefer contemplating the festal scene from the modest young man’s great stand-by—the doorway. About one o’clock there is a break for supper—a hot substantial meal of course:—the dancing that follows is strikingly of a more spirited nature than that which preceded it. The general exhilaration infects, perhaps, even you. You screw up your courage to the point of asking some smiling spinster if she “may have the pleasure of dancing with you?” and by her good aid in action as well as advice, you find out, with no small exultation, that you have not quite forgotten your quadrille.

At three P.M. the ladies retire, apparently to the regret, really to the delight of the bachelors, who, with gait and gestures expressive of the profoundest satisfaction, repair to the supper-room for another hot and substantial meal. The conversation is lively: the toilettes, manners, conversation and dancing of the fair sex are blamed or extolled selon; the absence of the Bombay ladies and the scarcity of the Bombay gentlemen are commented upon with a naïveté which, if you happen to consider yourself one of them, is apt to be rather unpleasant. Before, however, you can make up your mind what to do, the cigars are lighted, spirits mixed, and the singing commences. This performance is usually of the style called at messes the “sentimental,” wherein a long chorus is a sine quâ non, the usual accompaniments a little horse-play in different parts of the room, and the conclusion a hammering of tables or rattling of glasses and a drumming with the heels, which, when well combined, produce truly an imposing effect. At length Aurora comes slowly in, elbowing her way, and sidling through the dense waves of rolling smoke, which would oppose her entrance, but failing therein, content themselves with communicating to her well known saffron-coloured morning wrapper a rather dull and dingy hue. Phœbus looks red and lowering at the prospect of the dozen gentlemen, who, in very pallid complexions, black garments, and patent leather boots, wind, with frequent halts, along a common road, leading, as each conceives, directly to his own abode. And the Muses thus preside over the conclusion, as they ushered in the beginning of the eventful fête.