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Updated: May 27, 2025
While Musard furnished special music for the minuets and quadrilles, adapting it in one case from airs of the '45, the Queen's piper, Mackay, gave forth, for the benefit of the strathspey and reel- dancers, the stirring strains of "Miss Drummond of Perth," "Tullochgorum," and "The Marquis of Huntly's Highland Fling," which must have rung with wild glee through the halls of kings.
Nay, I shall be unfit even for a May-day holiday-time; for these minuets, rigadoons, and French dances, that I have been practising, will make me but ill company for my milk-maid companions that are to be. To be sure I had better, as things stand, have learned to wash and scour, and brew and bake, and such like.
In the first, the young ladies, who were playing at chess, were ordered to sing to us the choruses of Athaliah; in another, they danced minuets and country dances, while a nun, not quite so able as St. Cecilia, played on a violin.
There were two minuets to take in all the party. Cynthia and Mr. Jordan were in the head one, with the bride. He was a little stiff and excused himself, as he wasn't much given to dancing. It didn't matter so much in the minuet. Then they paired off any way. Mr. Ed Saltonstall caught Cynthia's hand. "I'm just dying to dance with you, and this is the basket quadrille.
Then, after the minuets, came country dances, the music being performed by a harp, fiddle, and flageolet, perched in a little balcony, and thrumming through the evening rather feeble and melancholy tunes. Take up an old book of music, and play a few of those tunes now, and one wonders how people at any time could have found the airs otherwise than melancholy.
Lady Chesterfield's minuet was the last dance before supper, served with royal splendour in the dining-room, to which the Queen passed at twelve o'clock. After supper the Queen danced in a quadrille and in the two next minuets.
I left her alone for a moment after supper, and went to the box, where I expected to find Madame Pichona, but it was occupied by maskers, who were unknown to me, so I rejoined my partner, and we went on dancing the minuets and quadrilles till the fandango was announced.
Each of the sisters leaned a little forward to speak, shook her head after speaking, and became upright again when silent. Miss Clarissa never moved her arms. She sometimes played tunes upon them with her fingers minuets and marches I should think but never moved them.
After the polonaise we danced minuets, and a somewhat elderly lady asked me if I could dance the "King Conqueror," so I proceeded to execute it with her. It had gone out of fashion since the time of the Regency, but my companion may have shone in it in those days. All the younger ladies stood round and watched us with admiration.
I am sure if there is such a thing as a devil in this world, he must have been here last night, and have had some hand in contriving what happened to me. And not contented with plenty for the present, they carried away my jemmy-worked silk garters, and half a dozen new minuets I had just got, to serve, I suppose, as provision for the winter.
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