The Halloween Tableaux of Fortune: 1894

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HALLOWEEN GAMES.

Tableaux of Fortune, Cupids Dream and the Years Forecast By Electricity

A very new Halloween play and one which will be carried out most beautifully even to its most minute detail in a very fashionable set of New York young people is a “game” called the tableau of fortune. And let it be stated right here that all entertainments on Halloween night are called “games,” although l they may not partake of the nature of play nor yet be intended for the juvenile members of the family.

 After the audience is seated, little tickets are distributed until each has a slip of pasteboard. Upon the slip there is the date, the initials of the hostess, a blank space, some little ornamentation like a bit of hand decoration, and a number.

In front of the audience hangs a curtain, while palms at either side, and just visible rearing their heads behind it, prepare the guests for something very fine to come.

There is a tinkle of a bell and number one appears with a big figure, mysteriously lowered over the upper edge of the curtain.

“Who holds number one?” asks the mistress of ceremonies.

“My card is number one,” replies some one–say Miss Brown.

“Well, Miss Brown, I have the honor to announce that the coming tableaux will reveal your fortune for the coming year. Note carefully the picture. It will be repeated in your own life within a twelvemonth. Let the curtain rise!”

As the curtain is pulled away there stands revealed a bride, in full bridal costume. There is the trailing high-necked gown of white, the veil, the orange blossoms, the prayer book—nothing is lacking. Of course the bride is very beautiful and the tableau is a pretty one, without considering the joy which must have been experienced by Miss Brown at the thought of herself so beautifully arrayed “within a year.”

When number two is called and the owner of the number has responded to it, the curtain again is drawn aside. This time the owner of the tableau is less fortunate, for the picture is that of a Cinderella seated by the fireplace in rags. Her shoes show the need of a fairy godmother and adown her tear-stained face the tears are still falling. A little histrionic talent and some knowledge of stage effects might not be disadvantageous here.

The next tableau, number three, may show the fairy godmother with her arms filled with finery for Cinderella, while that young lady with her back to the audience, leans toward her godmother. This would typify that young lady No. 3 will have trouble the beginning of ’95, but that love will clear a way before the year is ended.

The curtain rolls back and number four sees herself seated before a mirror giving the last touches to her face with powder puff and rouge pad. There are tiny half-moon patches upon her face, and her hair is piled high, powdered and stuck full of ornaments. She has ear-rings and is laden with jewels. If the mirror faces the audience there will be the very pretty effect of the face reflected in the glass. This tableau is extremely taking and typifies growing vanity.

CUPID’S DREAM.

Cupid’s Dream Is the sentimental title of a Halloween game which is to be produced in a large gathering of young people with tremendous effect. The cupid In a marble figure about two feet in height with an arrow in its hand. The bow is drawn and Cupid shoots his dart apparently straight at the heart of the victim.

If desired a small child could act as Cupid, or a terra cotta figure be substituted for the marble. Or, indeed, any Cupid at all might be used.

The game begins with a dialogue.

“Miss A’s love affair will now be decided. Is Miss A present?”

“I am here,” replies Miss A.

“Are you ready to know your fate in love?”

“I am ready.”

“Cupid, reveal your knowledge!”

Instantly to a musical tinkle of a silver bell, or a chime if it can be arranged, the curtain goes back–and there stands the marble Cupid. Upon him plays a clear blue light, and the audience is hushed with admiration, while all the time the bells tinkle most sweetly.

“Miss A, you will be very fortunate in love, and before the year Is ended you will have become engaged to the man of your choice, who will be a paragon of manly perfections.”

The bells tinkle until the curtain has closed. Then comes the dialogue over again. This time it is addressed to Miss B.

When the curtain goes back it is to the sound of a thin, shrill bell that rings in a monotonous way. There is no music in the light, and Cupid is bathed in a green light. The bell continues until the curtain is drawn over the unhappy sight.

“Miss B., you will love a man who adores you as well, but who is extremely jealous. His jealousy will mar your happiness.”

While Miss B’s friends are advising her what to do with a jealous man, Miss C is called, and Cupid appears again. This time there is a tolling of the bell—a very deep tolling—and poor Cupid is flooded with a deep yellow light.

“Unrequited love!” announces the master of ceremonies.

A lovely white light plays upon Cupid at Miss D’s name. And the interpretation is, “Will remain heart and quite fancy free.”

All the shades of color are shown, according to their meanings, and the delighted audience openly regret when no more Cupid Dreams are to be seen. To arrange the colored lights the room must be darkened. A gas jet back of the audience must be supplied with a pipe with a large gas burner upon it. In front of the burner there are regular calcium light slides of all colors easily taken out and replaced.

All Halloween games must have the element of luck introduced. Nor can they possibly be without love. But by the skilful blending of these two qualities a Halloween entertainment may be interesting to all–even to those with this world’s love affairs already decided. In the affair of this kind surprises are always in order and the more of these the merrier.

A. P.

The Salt Lake [UT] Herald 28 October 1894; p. 13

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It is quite curious how a religious festival celebrating the spirits of the dead returning to roam the earth for a night became so entangled with amorous divination rituals. We have seen this before in the fancies of “Nut Crack Night.”

One wonders if the mistress or master of ceremonies sent out spies beforehand to ascertain romantic entanglements or aversions before so blithely predicting unrequited love for a party guest. It seems as though the result would inevitably be the unhappy young woman rushing from the room in floods of tears and when next heard of, taking solemn vows in some austere convent. Surprises are not always in order….

Mrs Daffodil feels that such artistic tableaux should be on the order of “Twenty Questions,” where the guests have to guess the identity of the gentleman seen leaving the apartments of the young bride recently wed to the aged financier. Alternately, the “game” might expose a well-known gentleman as a card-cheat and a cad, at which he would quietly take his hat, and then flee the country before the ports could be watched. Hours of wholesome amusement and one needn’t enlist a child or a terra cotta cupid.

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 anecdote

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 Bridal Veil: 1886

THE BRIDAL VEIL.

A pretty, dark-eyed girl began to work it, whose lover was over the sea. She was a French girl, and came of a good family of lacemakers.

“I’ll work my own bridal veil in my leisure time,” she said. “So when Walter comes to marry me I shall be a gay bride.”

But she never finished the veil. Walter came too soon. She married her English lover—as poor as herself—and went with him to London, and the half-finished bridal veil went along, carefully folded away at the bottom of a trunk, and, for the time being quite forgotten.

It may have been forgotten in earnest, during twelve years, for aught I know; certainly it lay that long unnoticed. A lovely ten year old girl was the fairy that broke its long sleep at last. She had dark eyes, like the little peasant of twelve years ago, but Walter’s golden hair.

“Oh! the charming lace!” she cried, clapping her hands and dancing delightedly, as Elise shook it out of the folds. “Dear mamma, what is it‘? and who made it? and why is it but half done? Can I have it for a dress for my doll, mamma?”

The pretty, dark-haired matron laughed and shook her head, and half sighed, and she pressed the delicate fabric to her lips. Then she told her child the history of its making.

“Mamma, teach me to work it,” she said one day. “My fingers are much finer and tinier than yours.”

After that she would bring her little work-basket to her mother’s side and work at a veil for her doll. The facility with which she learned the graceful art was astonishing. At the age of fifteen so expert was she that Elise did not fear to let her take part in the creation of the bridal veil itself, but they worked at it now and then as fancy seized them.

* * * *

Louis Riviere was from France, like Adele’s mother—that had been a bond between them from the first —for Adele loved her mother’s country for her mother’s sake, though she herself was proud of being called English ; and she also loved the young Frenchman.

The happy weeks and months grew into years. Adele was seventeen; it was agreed and promised that when spring-time came she would be Riviere’s bride.

“We must finish the bridal veil,” cried Elise, eagerly. “I tell you, Monsieur Louis, no lady of your proud house ever wore a lace more exquisite and rich. Ah! shall I not be proud when I look at my beautiful child in her marriage robes, and think of the poor little peasant girl of long ago, who toiled at the lace to earn coarse bread so far away over the sea?”

Louis turned quickly at these words, a look of displeased surprise in his dark eyes.

“What peasant girl, madam?” he questioned, uneasily.

“Myself,” she answered, happily, not marking the look or the tone. “What was I but a poor little lacemaker when my generous young lover married me, the father of Adele?”

He answered nothing, and Elise went merrily chatting on, but Adele noticed his suddenly downcast air and gloomed eyes, though she was far from suspecting the cause of either.

His haughty family pride had received a blow. He conceived an absolute but violent dislike to the bridal veil.

“I detest the sight of it!” he cried one evening in a moment of self-forgetfulness, and when he and Adele were alone. “If, indeed, you love me, never work at it in my presence, Adele; and if I dared ask one special favor of you it should be__”

He paused suddenly. She was listening in great surprise.

“Well,” she said, “it should be ___”

“Wear any other veil in the world but that one to be married in!”

She folded her work and let her fair hands fall on it in her lap; one could see those little hands were trembling.

“You ask a singular favor,” she said, with forced quietness. “Are you not aware that my dear mother worked this veil?”

The hot, impulsive temper answered instantly, without a thought: “It is for that reason I hate it!”

“You did not know when first you sought me for a bride that mamma was a lace-worker in France; if you had, perhaps you would not have loved me. Since you have learned this fact you have regretted our engagement. You need not speak; I have seen a change in you—I feel that it is so! But there is no harm done,” she went on, with simple dignity, “since I have learned the truth before it is too late; and so,” she held out to him a little trembling hand, which he took mechanically—“and so I will grant you the favor you covet, my friend. Your bride shall not wear my darling mother’s bridal veil”—here he kissed the hand, and she drew it quickly away—“but that is because I shall not be your bride.”

No need to dwell upon what followed. His prayers, his protestations—humble at first, then angry his tears that had no power in them to sap the strength of her resolution.

Her parents questioned her in vain. She had quarreled with Louis; that was all they could learn. And before a chance for reconciliation came Elise was smitten with mortal illness and died in three days, and Adele, overwhelmed by the awful calamity, was prostrate with brain fever.

At this juncture a summons came to Louis from France, demanding his immediate presence there. Strange changes had taken place. Two of the three lives that had stood between him and the titles and estates of the Marquis de la Riviere had been suddenly swept away, and the third, a frail, delicate child, lay dying. The present marquis, himself a feeble old man, was also at the point of death, so they sent in haste for Louis, as the heir of the dying nobleman.

The news bewildered him. His heart swelled with exultation and delight, but it sank again. Adele! Had he lost Adele?

“I care not for rank or wealth, unless she shares them!” cried his heart. “I will go and implore her pardon.”

A few weeks later he wrote, informing her fully of his strangely altered fortunes and imploring her to pardon and accept once more as her true-love the love of the Marquis de la Riviere.

And the letter never reached her. The house to which it came was empty and deserted, the late happy home was broken up, and the little English girl, for whom a husband and title and fortune were waiting in sunny France, was earning a sorrowful living as lace-maker! Such are some of the strange realities of real life more wonderful than any fiction.

* * * * *

Many a gay belle and brilliant beauty had spread her net to secure the splendid prize of a titled husband. Foremost among the many, Rosalind Hale; she was the fairest and wealthiest of them all; and her golden hair was not unlike Adele’s. She arranged charades, tableaux, plays—in which he should sustain a part with her. It never occurred to her that he was at once too good-natured and too indifferent to refuse.

The tableaux were suggestive enough. One, upon which Miss Hale had quite set her heart, was that of a bridal—need it be said that Louis was the bridegroom, herself the bride‘?

“He will speak, now, surely,” she thought, as she blushed and trembled before him, While the curtain came slowly down. But no, he only bowed as he led her from the platform; and then one of the buttons of his coat caught in her bridal veil. As the marquis stopped to disengage the lace suddenly he uttered a strange cry. It was Adele’s bridal veil.

“I borrowed it of a lace-maker,” Miss Hale said, in reply to his anxious questioning. “I had ordered one like it; but her health is bad and she failed to have it finished in time. So I made her lend me this.”

“Oh, no? very thin and worn and sad,” she said in reply to another question of Louis’; “with fine eyes, but too dull and pale to be called pretty. But an exquisite lace maker. I shall be glad to give you her address if you have any work for her.” Yes, he had work for her—work that they would share together; the blessed work of binding up an almost broken heart, of restoring love and happiness to both their lives.

Pale and thin and somewhat careworn still was the bride of the marquis on her wedding day; but to his eyes—the eyes of faithful love—it was still the sweetest face in the whole world that smiled and wept beneath Elise’s bridal veil. And he kissed the old lace and blessed it, because through it he had found her again.

The Otago [NZ] Witness 2 January 1886: p. 5

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Suggestive tableaux, indeed!  There is a bit of Blanche Ingram in Miss Hale, although fortunately there is no Bertha Mason Rochester to tear Elise’s veil. One hopes that the Marquis, who, we may observe, is no Mr Rochester, ate a good deal of humble pie before Adele took him back.

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.