If I had staid at home I should never have known these things; and however one may detest, I do not feel that we can become familiar with what is wrong, without being the worse for it.
In two days after Lady Campion’s popping-jay, we were forced by my uncle to attend an evening party at Lady Neville’s. It is not more than two months since she has lost a beautiful and accomplished daughter, who died of decline. If my beloved mother had hung over the dying couch of a child, would she——but I must curb myself, and relate facts, not comment upon them, or I shall never have done. Till ten o’clock at night we did not go to Neville Court, though the cards particularly notified “an early party;” and when we reached that splendid mansion, we found an immense assemblage of the beau monde, greater than it was possible to suppose could be mustered at such a distance from London which is the focus of all fashionable rays, a few of which only are scattered and refracted by various accidents in certain individual families, as cracks in a glass will disturb the transmission of the sun’s beams. Here was another lie direct, for the cards also informed us, that the party was to be a “small” one. Why this perversion of language? I cannot fathom it. If some lurking remnant of compunctious feeling crossed the heart of Lady Neville; and in the words “small” and “early” she discovered a slight palliation of the offence against decency (for I will not profane the sweet idea of maternal love by using its language in such company), which she had determined on committing, I should perceive the reason of the strange deception of which I am speaking, but all was gaiety and glitter. Lady Neville and her daughters sparkled with diamonds arranged upon a sort of gossamer drapery, so light, so graceful, so artificially adjusted, fashionable and becoming, that mourning was the last sentiment which such paraphernalia could excite or indicate. Their dress told lies as well as their cards.
The house at Neville Court is superb, and as I wandered from room to room with the amiable Frasers and my own Charlotte, I felt the luxury of kindred sentiment in a new world, and gave free course to thoughts that were little in unison with the passing scene. I fancied this magnificent ball-room, with its chandeliers, its lustres, and chalked floor, two short months ago, perhaps, the theatre of another sort of assembly. I marked the spot where, in imagination, I could descry the lonely tressels supporting their sad and youthful burthen——that opening flower untimely torn from its stalk, and snatched from the warm hopes of unfolding spring. I beheld the mutes, and saw the tables spread with funeral fare; the “cold baked meats” of death; the sable hangings; the hirelings of office, marshalling their dismal train, at least with features screwed to the occasion, and voices subdued to whisper. With the most painful feelings I asked within myself, “must we fly from the fondest ties of nature, to seek for sorrow in ‘those chambers of imagery supplied from the undertaker’s mercenary taste;’ and fail to find it enshrined within the breast of a mother or a sister?” My cheek curdled, and my breathing became oppressed, while these melancholy phantoms glided past my mental vision, and like spectres mingled in the dance. The brilliant ball-room seemed to me no other than Holbein’s “dance of Death;” and when I was roused from my reverie by, “Miss Douglas, will you daunce?” let slip, as if from the mouth of one just dropping asleep, whose muscles had become too flaccid to retain the words within its lips any longer, I started as if I had been shot by one of Lady Campion’s arrows, and turned round upon—Mr. Johnson. Though I delight in dancing, there was too much lead at my heart to allow of merriment in my feet at this moment; and I therefore instinctively declined, and for a time got rid of the consummate puppyism of this disagreeable young man.
To my utter astonishment I was asked to join in the next quadrille by Lord Thornborough, whose politeness I should not have supposed from any thing else I had witnessed, could have induced the remembrance of a country lass, and a stranger (though the latter is the highest claim to attention in my dear Ireland), amidst such dazzling beauty and attraction as solicited his regards. You see I did him injustice, and am ready to make the amende honorable; but as I had refused Mr. Johnson, I could not dance with any one else, and though I did not regret this circumstance from any admiration of milord, I confess to having found it difficult to sit still, when the gloomy contemplations with which the evening commenced, began to yield to the inspiring influence of lively music. I had, however, the great pleasure of seeing Charlotte enjoying a gratification which was denied to me; and, would you believe it, she had scarcely begun to move, when a crowd was collected to see her dance. Her figure is so like what one imagines of a Sylph, and her ear is so perfect, that to admire her performance in a quadrille, would appear nothing more than the necessary routine of cause and effect, if I had not believed the group by which we were surrounded quite too artificial in its construction to leave a corner for nature to slide in at. However, so it was, that I heard several of the gentlemen express their approbation in terms more energetic than I should have thought such indolent looking people likely to employ on any occasion, even of the moment; and dear unconscious Charlotte seemed for a time Reine de la fête.
“Yes,” said Mr. Bolton, who came to sit by me for a little while, “there is the triumph of truth and native grace over all the contrivances of fashion. There is your sister, who has never seen London or Paris, bearing away the palm from all those painted dolls who are swinging their persons round the room.”
Quadrilles ended, how shall I express my feelings at seeing Lady Campion and Lord Thornborough get up to waltz! Timanthes, a painter of ancient times, drew a veil over the face of a father whose grief he felt unequal to pourtray. I must borrow his device, and let a curtain fall over an exhibition which I wish obliterated from my memory. I found a few lines by Frederick, which he wrote in London, after returning from a ball, part of the concluding stanza of which shall finish my descant upon this distasteful theme:
“But there is something in a waltz which wears
Off all the lovely bloom of virgin grace,
When round Belinda’s form a stranger dares