Miseries of a Ball Room: 1826

A red ball gown, c. 1827 http://collections.lacma.org/node/214640

MISERIES OF A BALL ROOM

Lamentation 1. After repeating warnings to be at your place of rendezvous; prepared to glide gaily through the ‘mazy dance,’ at a remarkably early hour—to be obliged, through the tardiness of the managers in distributing the tickets, and the difficulty the company causing in to their numbers, to sit still two or three hours, filled with anxious and disappointed expectation.

2. To be engaged to dance with a partner who blunders all the way down a country dance, after receiving ten or a dozen first rate invitations.
3. The plague of that complicated revolution called “right and left,” for the awkwardness of some and the inattention of others.
4. To have for your own partners, on your next neighbour, a gentleman with a frock coat.
5. To have a new pair of gloves ruined on account of your partner’s neglecting to wear his; or in plain English, to have your neat white kids fall a sacrifice to his parsimony.
6. Through the indifference of the company, to have a continuation of mistakes, while dancing your favorite figure.
7. While in the act of taking your very much admired balance, to be tripped up with your untied shoe string.
8. While going down the middle, with quick music, to be delighted with the sight of your comb upon the floor, and your hair flowing upon your shoulders.
9. Dancing half the night with a pair of shoes far too tight in length and breadth—unmentionables on every toe.

Jemima Sensitive.

Additional misery, by a gentleman.

A venerable invitation given in so equivocal manner, that you find yourself on the appointed evening, waiting on a friend who had no thought of seeing you.

Washington Whig [Bridgeton, NJ] 11 November 1826: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil does not dance, but recognises the offenders (and they offend serially) from peeps round the corner at various balls. All can surely sympathise with the loss of neat, white kids.  And even a non-terpsichorean recoils from a man in a frock coat at an evening rout.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

The Horror of the Amateur Piano Player: 1871

BAD MANNERS OF PIANO PLAYERS.

It is a mistake to suppose that, even as an accomplishment, piano playing is so very highly prized. I dropped in to spend an hour with an intelligent friend. I was particularly interested in the Franco-Prussian war, and, as he had lived much, both in Paris and Berlin, I hoped to learn about some things not discussed in the newspapers. His youngest daughter, a beautiful girl, had just arrived, fresh from the glories of the closing exercises of a seminary.

We were in the midst of our discussions, and he was repeating some conversations with Bismarck, in which I was intensely interested, when the fond, proud mother said :

“Now, if you will listen, Gertie will play the piece which she played last Thursday evening at Madame ‘s.” Gertie began, alas, and she kept on, and on, and on.

There were four of us gentlemen, three were callers, one the editor of a city paper. We were all eager to listen to our host, of Bismarck and Napoleon.

That unhappy child kept at it. We sat there with a hypocritical smile on our faces, but, internally, as mad as we could be. When at length, the sixteen pages had been finished, and the girl turned around for the prescribed adulation, all but one of us exclaimed, “wonderful, exquisite, delightful!” and the editor, (who, when coming down in the car an hour later, emphasized his disgust with an awful big word,) declared he had never heard anything so wonderful, and added, that she really ought to go abroad to study with the great masters. The lying executed by some of us was perfect. I have forgotten whether this kind of falsehood is mentioned in the works upon white lying, but if I ever write upon “white lies,” I shall give this kind a prominent place.

Girls, if you ever obtrude an average piano performance upon a company of intelligent people, engaged in conversation, nine in ten of them will secretly regard you as a nuisance, no matter how much they exclaim, “exquisite, delicious, wonderful!” Of course your parents will be gratified with your performance; mamma will be pleased and proud with the show-off, and papa will smile. How else could he do, after paying $2,000 piano bills? It is a pretty picture to their eyes — the loved one seated at a splendid, great instrument, executing one of the grandest compositions of one of the immortal masters. And, although you are not inspired with the passion of the heaven-born composer, and your performance is a mechanical, soulless humdrum, that matters not to your father and mother, their loving imaginations will supply all that is needed to make the picture complete. But the rest of us will heartily wish that you had not interrupted our conversation.

It is an amazing blindness on the part of parents. It always astonishes me that they don’t see the impertinence of the thing. They certainly wouldn’t think of asking the company to cease their conversation to hear you speak your piece, or perform a dance. The piano alone is licensed to say to everybody, “cease your conversation, and listen to me; I am about to make a big noise!”

Our Girls, Dio Lewis, M.D., 1871

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil is reminded of that scene from Pride and Prejudice where Elizabeth Bennet’s sister Mary sets out to entertain: “Mary’s powers were by no means fitted for such a display: her voice was weak, and her manner affected.” And of Mr Bennet’s admirable pronouncement: “That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough.”  Dr Lewis no doubt on many occasions longed for a Mr Bennet.

Dr Diocletian Lewis [1823-1886] was a homeopathic physician, temperance and physical hygiene advocate. We have previously read his screed on the insidious poison of the opera.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.