But suppose, on the other hand, there are programmes. If one could get a sight of any dozen, taken at random, after all, I warrant there would be some curious if not edifying reading there. Names are (unintentionally enough) so slurred in the hurry of introduction—"Miss Mumble-mumble, allow me to introduce Mr. Jumble-jumble"—that, more often than not, neither party catches the other's name; and so She, even if she gives up her programme to be marked with the engagement, probably gets it back just scrawled with some initials; while He is driven to the expedient of entering on his programme some brief memorandum of dress or ornament—"blue and roses," "pearls," or the like—which may or may not serve to recall to him each fair personality in turn. Sisters, though, are apt to upset this descriptive arrangement by their provoking habit of going about in identical costumes. Some luckless wight has taken a satisfactory note of the dress and general appearance of a Miss Unknown, and then, horror! half an hour afterward he discovers that there are two wearers of such dress in the room, each the very ditto of the other. There is only one way out of it: when the destined dance arrives he must go boldly up to one of them with the usual "My dance, I believe?" For there's, at any rate, an even chance of his being right; while, at worst, if she answers, "I think not," his doubt is at once solved in favor of the other sister.
In the dances themselves there is not much variety. Society knows of four only—two "squares," quadrille and Lancers, and two "round," waltz and galop. Of these, waltzes are the most, and quadrilles the least, popular, it being of course understood that "round" dances occupy considerably more than half of every programme. Still, "squares" are not likely ever actually to disappear. There is a certain undeniable utility about them. They give breathing-times between waltz and galop; a share in the amusement of the evening to people who are too old or too ponderous, or otherwise unsuited for the whirling "rounds;" and scope for that pleasant institution, "sitting out," which, as everybody knows, consists in ostensibly engaging a partner for a "square," and then, instead of dancing it, deliberately spending the time in a quiet sit-down chat. "Dancing it," I see I have written, but truly it is only by courtesy that the word can be applied to a private-ball quadrille, in which nobody dreams of doing steps or attending to time, and the conventional ideal is reached by a sort of unconcerned-looking saunter, distantly suggestive of the formulated movements of the figures. But if you can't dance too ill for the "squares," on the other hand you can't dance too well for the "rounds," especially waltzes. All thorough-going dancers will now have nothing but the valse à trois temps, which requires both partners to be exactly in time both with one another and the music, and a partner who can only dance the old deux temps, or whose trois temps step is faulty, is not very likely, if a man, to be favored with many "rounds," or if a lady to be asked for them.
As for the talk of ball-rooms, its silliness and inanity are almost proverbial. And yet what else can one expect? In the "squares" one's attention is so constantly called off to some process of bowing, or setting, or crossing over, or turning round, that it is next to impossible to get half a dozen consecutive sentences of conversation at a time. Indeed, I have often meditated making a fortune by publishing, for the use of men whose small talk is limited, a pocket Dancers Conversation Book, to consist wholly of three-word beginnings of sentences, such as "Don't you think—," "Have you seen—," "Do you know—," and so on. The reader would be instructed, every time he found himself at rest beside his partner, to start one of these fragments, with a pleasant smile and an interrogative air, in well-founded confidence that by the time the third word was out of his mouth some exigency of the figure would require him to turn off to some independent movement on his own part, which ended, his partner might safely be assumed to have forgotten all about his last remark, and to be ready to listen to another equally illusory. But even supposing a couple have comparatively time to talk—as, for instance, during the short interval between two dances—how, if (as must continually happen) they were utter strangers to one another till ten minutes ago—how, I say, can they be expected to get beyond the veriest outworks and superficialities of conversation? The man (with whom it lies to take the lead) may possibly have a host of interests, and be able to talk sensibly or speciously on a variety of subjects, but at the start he is quite in the dark as to his partner's tastes and pursuits, and so almost perforce breaks ground with first one, and if that fails another, of the ordinary small-talk questions, on the chance of lighting upon some topic that the lady knows or cares about. There is always a hope of turning up trumps. "Have you been to the opera lately?" may discover an ardent musician, and pave the way for a long "sit-out" gossip on things musical. "Have you been in town long?" may lead to any amount of pleasantly rambling talk about places and people in the counties, or recollections of continental travel, perhaps the most fascinating of all kinds of "shop." Of course, if the partners are old friends, or even tolerably familiar acquaintances, the surface-fishing process is happily unnecessary, and they can plunge at once into deep waters. Still, even if they get upon so-called tender subjects, it's long odds they won't have time enough to get out of their depth. That danger is reserved for the quieter and more prolonged intercourse of picnic-parties and country-house life. Cupid's arrows seldom penetrate deep at a ball.
A careful observer of ball-room talk will not fail to notice what may be called the exclusive slang of society. He will find people "in society" habitually using a few pet words which they love, not because they are a bit better than the synonyms used by other people, but just because other people don't use them, whereby they serve as a sort of passwords or Masonic signs among the initiated. Just now plainness is all the fashion. Ladies who are not in society talk of "dresses" and "gentlemen," and grammatically contract "are not" into "aren't;" so the ladies of the Upper Ten say "gowns" and "men" and "ain't" for distinction's sake. And the same idea comes out at many points. The public-ball cavaliers rejoice in lavender- or lemon-colored kids, and display exuberant activity in the "squares;" so the dancing-man of society punctiliously gloves his hands in white, and strolls through a quadrille with an air of languid indifference. One romp, and one only, does the private ball countenance in the merry-go-round of the third figure of a "sixteen" (double) set of Lancers.
After every dance, in the early stage of the ball, there is a general set of the dancers in the direction of the tea-room. Till some time between midnight and one o'clock the door of the supper room is kept strictly closed, and light refreshments—tea, iced coffee, cream- and water-ices, various "cups" and lemonades and strawberryades, and cakes and biscuits and such-like—have undisputed possession of the field. Anything to get away for five minutes from the heated atmosphere of the dancing-room; so it is generally advisable to propose "tea" to your partner as an excuse for a visit to the back room down stairs (probably Paterfamilias's study or the children's school-room on other days); and, once there, you will ask instructions as to whether "tea" shall this time take the form of "cup," or something-ade, or ice. Most likely it will be the latter, and between "cream" and "water" [ices] her voice is almost sure, despite the certainty of consequential thirst, to be for "cream." But hardly has the preux chevalier successfully struggled at the buffet for the creamy spoonful when harp and horn are heard preluding to the next dance up stairs, and everybody must hurry back from passage, stairs or tea-room to find or await his or her next partner.
When the ball is at its fullest is the time for the really first-rate dancer to turn his talent to the best advantage. Nearly all London ball-givers have such an immense circle of acquaintances that, for some shorter or longer period of the evening, their parties are pretty sure to be overcrowded. Soon after midnight, it may be, all the world and his wife will just have arrived together, and the abomination of suffocation sets in. The staircase is congested and impassable: the dancing area in the ball-room is encroached upon till a space about as big as a dining-table is all the dancers have to dance in. At which crisis it wants no little skill and practice in a man to steer his partner deftly and without collisions through the intricate mêlée. It can be done, though, to a degree hardly credible till practically tested, the really greatest difficulties being, in point of fact, rather to start and stop than to avoid bumpings when once fairly underweight; but ladies suffer sufficiently from dizzy or clumsy partners to make them often, in a crowd, prefer to give their "rounds" to a man whose steering is good, rather than to one whose feet are less dexterous than his tongue.
At some unperceived moment toward one o'clock couples descending to the ice-room find the dining-room door wide open, the signal that the supper period has commenced. First, one or two make up their minds that the discovery is opportune, and enter shyly in the face of an expectant line of waiters drawn up behind the buffet. Note the arrangement of the room while there is yet space to grasp its details, for ten minutes hence, be sure, the place will be so thronged, with such an all-pervading hurry-scurry going on, that there will be no chance of noting anything. Facing you as you enter, down the length of one side of the room, runs a long buffet-table, the nearer side spread with the apparatus of eating and drinking, the centre laden with every variety of comestibles, interspersed at intervals with tall épergnes and other silver ornaments sacred to all that's aesthetically captivating in fruit and flower; while in the rear, calm, collected and decorous, stand a row of middle-aged ministering persons from Gunter's. There are no chairs at the buffet. If you sup there, you must sup standing—no great hardship, as the table is of course of a height just convenient for the purpose—and you can either accept the services of the ministering person opposite you, or help yourself from the multitude of dishes within reach. All very well, this, for those who are in a hurry, just snatching a morsel between two dances, and for all who see no practicable opportunity of doing better for their partners and themselves. For, an intervening gangway being of course left clear for folk to pass up and down to and along the buffet, the rest of the floor-space is occupied by three or more (according to the size of the room) small round tables, low, chair-surrounded, each laden with a due complement of plates, glasses, victuals, and so on, and each capable of accommodating three or four couples at a time. To one of these, if you are wise, and have the luck to espy any vacant chairs, you will surely—I am of course addressing my male readers—lead your partner. I assume that, with an experienced eye to this very thing, you have purposely contrived to engage one with whom you specially enjoy, or think it likely that you will enjoy, a good gossip, for a quadrille that occurs just at this period of the evening, and that you have suggested "sitting out" the dance in the supper-room; so that you have now descended the stairs happy in the consciousness of ten minutes or more of leisure before the next "round" will again demand your indefatigable trois temps in the ball-room.
Well, two chairs secured, and partner comfortably seated on one of them, the next thing for the man to do, before settling down into conversation, is to forage at the buffet for supplies; for the stock originally placed on the little table is pretty sure to have been eviscerated in the course of the first half hour's attack. He doesn't ask his partner to say what she will have, knowing full well that ladies, young and old, even if so interrogated, are sure to give that invariable pair of successive answers, "chicken" and "jelly," not because they really prefer those to any other viands—as a matter of fact, their own inclinations, so far as they are earthly enough to have any, are generally very much otherwise—but from a modest wish to give the least possible trouble; chicken and jelly being stock dishes that are quite certain to be at hand in every supper-room. No, he is far more likely to please by asking to have the matter left in his hands, and thereupon going off to the buffet, to return with a small but varied collection of three or four samples, each on a separate plate, of the most novel and attractive of the culinary triumphs there displayed, for her to choose from. Which duty done, and some champagne and seltzer-water deftly mixed, he will with a light heart take possession of his reserved chair, and fall to upon one or other of the unchosen samples and the most thoroughly zestful chat of the evening.
Behooves it to say a word or two of the materials of the typical ball-supper? There is a family likeness about those turned out by Gunter that the experience of one season is enough to make one recognize. And, on the whole, the Gunterian supper is as good, in its way, as; need be. Nothing hot, of course, except oyster soup (specially adapted for deserving chaperons), and, maybe, some delicately browned cutlets; but cold meats of every shade of substantiality, from boars' heads and chickens and raised pies to the most delicate of sandwiches, tempting translucent aspics, in which larks, lobsters, prawns, fillets of sole, and such-like lie "imbedded and injellied," and ethereal plovers' eggs. Of sweets the multitude and variety is almost infinite; and indeed the possible combinations of things creamy and jammy and gelatinous are tolerably well known all over the world. Among them fresh strawberries combined with plain iced cream may be mentioned as holding a high place in general favor. As to the drinkables, sherry and claret are always at hand, but the almost universal beverage is a mixture of, say, two thirds of champagne to one of seltzer-water. The idea of this mixture is, no doubt, partly to get rid of that excess of fixed air which is apt to make undiluted champagne a rather uncomfortable material for a draught; but the custom is mainly the result of sad experience of the unwisdom of doing otherwise, owing (it must be admitted) to the badness of the so-called champagne only too commonly dispensed at ball suppers. How the man who wouldn't dream of giving his guests a glass of inferior wine at his dinner-table comes to think nothing of poisoning them with the cheap rubbish that audaciously flouts in advertising columns as "supper-champagne," has puzzled sager brains than mine. Surely, bad wine is not less injurious taken in repeated draughts in the small hours of the morning than it would be sipped in small doses at dinner-time; yet it's only here and there a logically-minded individual produces his dinner-champagne at his wife's dancing-parties; and everywhere else old and young with equal caution demand a prudent admixture of the seltzer that will, if anything can, avert a next-morning headache. The chaperon, warrantably hungry, taking her time over her supper in a comfortable corner, is often not to be tempted by any sparkling liquid; but the dancers want the nervous exhilaration that champagne, however inferior, at least temporarily supplies, and are rarely careful enough to shun the danger altogether.
"Are you going on anywhere?" is a query that not unfrequently meets one's ears about halfway through the evening. "Going on" is an essentially town practice. In the country, houses lie too far scattered for it, and there is seldom such a press of gayeties on foot together as to make it likely that two or more engagements will have been made for one night. But in London, owing to the limited number of evenings comprised in a season, as compared with the host of people who want to give their parties in the course of it, it constantly happens that folk who go out much find themselves invited to a dinner, a drum and a couple of dances, all on one and the same evening. Ay, and they manage to achieve them all, too, thanks to determination and broughams. To the dinner at eight P. M.; away at a quarter to eleven to put in an appearance and for ten minutes swell the hurried and promiscuous chatter at the drum; thence off again to one of the balls—to stay if it is good, or if it isn't to go on after a dance or two to the other. The custom is so thoroughly recognized that no hostess would ever dream of being offended with any of her guests for "going on" elsewhere whenever they think fit. Not that she is ever likely to know whether this or that individual does or does not do so; for it's not at all necessary before one goes off to say any formal good-night to the hostess, and in fact men very seldom do so. When they have had dancing enough, or, remembering some disagreeable necessity of being up and alert for work next morning, feel it's about time to be going bedward, they quietly slink down stairs to the cloak-room, get hats and wraps, and are off in a fast hansom without a word to anybody. It's all very well for the young lady, who has from day to day no calls upon her time but those of her own pleasures and engagements, to stay late at any particularly pleasant dance. She may collapse to her heart's content next morning, and still be ready again by nightfall for another round of excitements; but with her partners things are very different, unless, indeed, they are officers in the Household Brigade. The young barrister or banker, or what not, who is frivolous enough to like combining some nights of dancing in the season with hard days of work, soon finds that the only way of gratifying both tastes is to partake sparingly, in point of hours, of the former one; so he comforts himself with the reflection that there are as good balls in the season as ever came out of it, and resolutely says good-night to the most festive scenes by 2 A. M. at latest. By that time, indeed, the best of a private ball is very commonly over. No doubt there are delicious and long-to-be-remembered opportunities now and then seizable by staying later. Strauss' world-known "Blue Danube" waltz with an appreciative partner, and the rare luxury of ample dancing-space in an emptying room, is one such. But when the minute-hand of the hall-clock is approaching the third of the small hours, the endurance of the most indulgent and enduring of matrons is apt to get exhausted, and she carries off her brood, determined, like everybody else, not to be the last to go. In the tea-room she will get a strengthening draught of some clear soup or other in a tea-cup, and meanwhile John Thomas will have called the carriage to the door.