The ball committee and their workmen have been hard at the work of preparation till the last minute, and now it is half-past 10 P. M., and carriages are beginning to roll up to the hall with their freights of fair and—other ones. The staircase and corridor are lined with stately tropical plants and banks of many-colored flowers. First to the tea-room, as the stream seems to be flowing in that direction. This suite of cozy paneled rooms are the sacred and most private haunts of the Benchers, the self-electing governing body of the Inn. How astonished, not to say shocked, those berobed and bewigged legal luminaries, in their frames upon the walls, must be to look down upon this gay laughing, talking, tea-and-ice-consuming mob of invaders! I fear no one heeds their possible feelings much to-night, though: there are far more important matters—searching in the crowd for friends, engaging partners for dances, introducing and being introduced—to occupy all one's time and thoughts.
From the dais-end of the hall, where on other days the Benchers' table stands, you may well take a preliminary survey of the scene of action. What a flood of light those sun-burners in the roof pour down! The blazoned escutcheons of past and present judges, members of the Inn, with which the walls are lined, show off all their colors, and the stained-glass windows do their best to look illuminated. In the gallery opposite a band of no less than nine-and-twenty picked men of Coote and Tinney's sit ready to play all the latest dance-music as long as any one will stay to dance to it; while all over the smoothly-polished floor the dancers are somehow evolving a kind of order out of chaos, and sorting themselves into pairs and sets for the opening quadrille. The male half of the gathering is, of course, almost exclusively legal, but there are no distinctions of legal rank to-night. Learned vice-chancellors, queen's counsel, juniors and students fraternize and compete for chats and dances with the ladies quite promiscuously. The hosts of the evening, the members of the corps, are distinguished by a small knot of ribbons, the corps colors, in their button-holes; but, for comfort's sake, uniforms have been tabooed in favor of the ordinary civilian's black and white. There is present, however, a military element, after all. Something like eight hundred guests are assembled here, and no little method is needed to enable such a crowd to move about from room to room without confusion and blocking-up of doorways and passages. So a couple of tall Guardsmen have been providently posted in every doorway, who, you will find, allow you readily enough to pass them in one direction, but, once passed, politely prohibit your returning on your steps, and point you forward on a course which, circling through a suite of rooms and passages, will bring you round again by another entrance into the ball-room. By this simple expedient free circulation to and from the tea-rooms and the supper-tent—a temporary erection stretching nearly to the Temple church outside—is effectually kept up all the evening, and much loss of time and temper saved. Note how, in the hall, too, the crowd of dancers are kept, in their own interest, within bounds. Half a score of the little drummers of the Grenadiers are on duty there, in all the finery of scarlet, braid and overwhelming bearskins. These, as soon as the band strikes up a waltz or galop, raise slender barriers of silken cords at intervals across the hall, cutting up the whole big area into three or four moderate-sized ones, in each of which a distinct ring may spin round and round, without fear of collisions with unexpected errant couples from other quarters of the hall. Truly the ball committee deserve the credit of having been ingeniously provident of many things; though, to be sure, it is just part of their legal stock in trade to be so. But the author of that arrangement in the passage-nooks—have you noticed it in your between-dances saunterings?—smooth-hewn pyramids of crystal ice, embowered in ferns and palms, and lit up from behind by some device which makes them glow a lovely rose-color all over—that man deserves a prize, I protest, for an inspiration that hardly could be expected from the frowsy atmosphere of lawyers' chambers. It will be morning, pale and gray, before the last volunteers see the last ladies to their carriage, and betake themselves bedward with ears ringing with half a dozen waltz tunes, and pleasantly oblivious for the nonce of briefs and work-a-day botherations.
Kind, patient reader—I feel the adjectives are justly due to any one who has accompanied my roving pen thus far—did you ever watch a street-child eating, say, a jam-tart? The dry corners of pastry are first all nibbled off; gradually the outworks where the jam lies thin are trenched upon all round; while the toothsome centre is fondly kept intact for the final morsel. Even so have I been reserving my bonne bouche, the private ball; which in its happiest developments is, to my thinking, as far superior to the semi-public ball as this latter to the public. In its happiest developments, mind; for private balls in London are as infinitely diverse in character as they are infinitely multitudinous in number; and some sorts are (to speak politely) comparatively undesirable. So, in deference to the exigencies of time and space, let us confine our attention to the private dance as it appears in what is called (or calls itself) "society."
And first, as to the people who give these private balls, or dances, or dancing-parties (for these two synonyms are very commonly preferred to the more pretentious word "ball"). They may be roughly classified under five heads:
1st (and foremost). Mothers of marriageable daughters.
2d. People who for some reason or other—official or social position, wealth, vanity, or what not—are expected, or think they are expected, to give balls.
3d. Good-natured, amusement-loving married folk, with money and without grown children.
4th. Benevolent grandfathers, dowagers and aunts.
5th. The most unlikely people.
And how, where and when are these various dance-givers' gifts bestowed? The "how" is the easiest thing possible if the lady about to give the dance is of established position in society. Her set of friends and acquaintances is numerous, even to embarrassment. All the people whose dinners or drums or dances she goes to must of course be asked: a dance for a dance is a rule as obligatory as that of "cutlet for cutlet" (as a matter-of-fact old lady of the world phrased it) is in dinner-giving circles. At least as many young ladies as she can do with are sure to be supplied by this means; while as for men, there are all the host of bachelors to resort to who at the beginning of the season have left their visiting-cards at her door, thereby intimating, "I am in town, and ready to be asked to any entertainment you may happen to get up, and here is my address." But if our intending hostess is a new-comer in London, and has not yet picked up a sufficiency of town-acquaintances, or if those whom she has are not altogether the style of folk she wishes to invite, a different course of procedure has to be adopted. It may be taken as an axiom that there are always plenty of people in society who are ready to go anywhere (within recognized limits) to a ball, provided that some lady of acknowledged experience in such matters will stand sponsor for its probable goodness. So our hostess betakes herself to the half dozen or dozen of her lady friends who are possessed of the most extended and desirable sets of acquaintances, and, diplomatically interesting them in her design, leaves with each of them, for distribution at discretion, a little pack of cards of invitation. And next day young Jones, coming home to his bachelor lodgings in St. James's, find on his table the conventional oblong card: