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Updated: June 19, 2025
Modern manners, late dinners, ball-dresses, and the Houses of Parliament, are doubtless serious obstacles to the higher classes of the nobility and gentry frequently attending the theatre; but the example of the Opera-house, which is crowded night after night with the élite of that very class, is sufficient to demonstrate, that all these difficulties can be got over, when people of fashion make up their minds to go to a place of amusement, even where not one in ten understand the language in which the piece is composed.
"It's dat ar cussed infunnelly party at Lockemup last Toosday!" said Jenny, as she cleared away the tea service "a-screwin' up tight in cusseds an' ball-dresses! an' a-dancing all night till broad daylight! 'sides heavin' of ever so much unwholesome 'fectionery trash down her t'roat de constitution ob de United States hisself couldn't stan' sich! much less a delicy young gall!
Neighbours scarcely ventured to whisper to one another, and the young ladies in ball-dresses, who, as if by a magnetic cohesion, were all together, sat for a long time in a row in deep, embarrassed silence, like a hedge of blue, red, and white flowers, in which no bird dared sing. The dinner began by the host bidding his guests welcome.
In the evening she returned to more terrestrial joys, and arraying herself in some of her infinite varieties of ball-dresses, with flowers and jewels in her hair, a tiny Panama hat cocked jauntily on the top of her head, and a rich shawl with one end thrown over the shoulder, she would step daintily out in her black satin shoes, with old Xavier in attendance, or sometimes with Robson as her cavalier, to meet her friends on the beach, or make a call in the lamp-lit corridor of some other rancho.
It was such a beautiful night, so warm that we ladies could walk about in our ball-dresses without any extra wraps; there were about six thousand people invited, they said. It seemed as if all Paris was there. After the quadrille d'honneur their Majesties circulated freely about. Every one was eager to offer congratulations to the Emperor.
Oh, my reader! may you never behold such a sight as that which presented itself: eighty- three men and women in ball-dresses; the former with their lank powdered locks streaming over their faces; the latter with faded flowers, uncurled wigs, smudged rouge, blear eyes, draggling feathers, rumpled satins each more desperately melancholy and hideous than the other each, except my beloved Belinda Bulcher, whose raven ringlets never having been in curl could of course never go out of curl; whose cheek, pale as the lily, could, as it may naturally be supposed, grow no paler; whose neck and beauteous arms, dazzling as alabaster, needed no pearl-powder, and therefore, as I need not state, did not suffer because the pearl-powder had come off.
"No one will believe that we have been abroad unless we bring home a lot of clothes. The lingerie and all that is ordered already; but the dresses must be made at the last moment, and we shall have a horrid time of it, I suppose. Worth has promised to make me two walking-suits and two ball-dresses, but he's very bad about keeping his word. Did you do much when you were in Paris, Katy?"
The box contained the airiest and most girlish of ball-dresses, all cloudlike white tulle, and the most entrancing wreath of wild-roses and hawthorn, such a wreath as never before had crowned Miss Lovel's bright-brown hair. Of course there was the usual amount of thanks and kissing and raptures.
Sunday came quickly, for the intervening days had been very fully occupied, and thus Katherine had been saved from too much thought of the boys and their possible trials. It was a soft, lovely spring day. The lilacs and laburnums had put on their ball-dresses for the season, and there was a fresh, youthful feeling in the air.
The nailed door remained closely shut, and the disappointed watchers tried to console themselves by inventing satisfactory reasons for their non-appearance. "They are busy, you see. There is so much to unpack. Gabrielle is hanging her ball-dresses in the wardrobe and covering them over with muslin curtains." "She wouldn't unpack for herself, silly!
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