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It is never danced now in the ball-rooms of the aristocracy, but the middle classes have not yet quite discarded their old friend, though even amongst their programmes its name rarely occurs. Perhaps no dance affords greater facilities for the display of ignorance or skill, elegance or vulgarity, than the Polka.
"You were not so easily persuaded to decorate a ball-room at Mussoorie," Mrs. Linforth continued. Sir John smiled, and there was a little bitterness in the smile. "Ah!" he said, and there was a hint, too, of bitterness in his voice, "I was wanted to decorate ball-rooms then. So I didn't go. Now I am not wanted. So I do." "That's not the true explanation," Mrs.
"I was growing impatient, Norman," she said; and then, remembering his criticisms on the wooing of women, she hastened to add "impatient at the want of novelty; it seems to me that in London ball-rooms all the men talk in the same fashion." Lord Arleigh laughed. "What are they to do, Philippa?" he asked. "They have each one the same duties to perform to please their partners and amuse themselves.
Like the people who stared at the pilgrims passing through Vanity Fair, the Parisians wondered, and understood for the first time that here was a lady who did indeed pass through things temporal, "with eyes fixed on things eternal"; and whose supreme delight lay, not in ball-rooms, race-courses, or courts, but in finding out suffering humanity and striving to alleviate its woes.
What a difference must there be, both in mind and body, between a joyous high-spirited dame of those days, glowing with health and exercise, freshened by every breeze that blows, seated loftily and gracefully on her saddle, with plume on head, and hawk on hand, and her descendant of the present day, the pale victim of routs and ball-rooms, sunk languidly in one corner of an enervating carriage."
They never remind us of the mincing and affected "Polonaises a la Pompadour," which our orchestras have introduced into ball-rooms, our virtuosi in concerts, or of those to be found in our "Parlor Repertories," filled, as they invariably are, with hackneyed collections of music, marked by insipidity and mannerism.
No longer sought as the belle of the soldiers' ball-rooms, she aspired to leadership among their wives and families, and was accorded that pre-eminence rather than the fierce battle which was sure to follow any revolt. She became avaricious, some said miserly, and Clancy miserable. Then began the downward course.
Coningsby and Edith met frequently, if to breathe the same atmosphere in the same crowded saloons can be described as meeting; ever watching each other's movements, and yet studious never to encounter each other's glance. The charms of Miss Millbank had become an universal topic, they were celebrated in ball-rooms, they were discussed at clubs: Edith was the beauty of the season.
All those ambassadors, counts, barons, bishops, and diplomatists seemed to have assembled at Rastadt for the sole purpose of giving banquets, tea-parties, and balls; no one thought of attending to business, and all more serious ideas seemed to have been utterly banished, while every one spoke of the gorgeous decorations of the ball-rooms and of the magnificence of the state dinners, where the most enthusiastic toasts were drunk in honor of the victorious French general; and the people seemed most anxious entirely to forget poor, suffering, and patient Germany.
There was light from fifty candles, and the eternal breeze lifted and dispersed the heavy perfume of the flowers. Hamilton had been in many ball-rooms, but never in one like this.
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