She stepped back to survey my appearance; I felt both naked and foolish, and could not meet her scrutiny.
“Sandals, I think — and we shall paint your toe-nails with gold leaf, as it is considered very fast. Madame Bigeon, a quantity of wadding, if you please — we must endeavour to provide mademoiselle with a bit more décolleté … ”
If it was the dirtiest hotel in London, the quantity of candles, and the magnificence of the scene within the assembly rooms, contrived to dazzle the eye so thoroughly that every hint of grime was obscured. Eliza and I alighted from our carriage a few minutes past ten o’clock, and were admitted without much more than a cursory perusal of our figures and dress; two such bold pieces as we presented, the better part of our faces obscured by black loo masks and our hair dressed with gems, should never be turned from the Cyprians Ball.
I am not sure what I feared more: to have my bottom slapped in a familiar way as I attempted with dignity to negotiate the stairs; to find that my arm had been pinched, or my skirts snapped above my heels; but the attitudes of the horde of gentlemen lounging along the banisters were refreshingly circumspect. If their eyes roved over the frank presentation of my charms, they kept their opinions to themselves; all but one foxed fellow, who studied Eliza with protuberant eyes and snorted, “Damme! If it ain’t mutton dressed as lamb!”
I grasped my sister by the wrist, the better to prevent an unseemly fracas as she rounded on the jackanapes indignantly, and whispered, “Never mind! You are not here to make a conquest, recollect — but to preserve your innocence and reputation!”
“Then I fear we are the only ladies likely to do so,” my sister returned grimly.
The assembly rooms were in fact two dining parlours thrown together, by the elimination of certain doors, and the contiguity of a passage, with a small anteroom at its far end — Limmer’s being not the sort of place to run to dancing, in the ordinary way, and thus failing to possess a ballroom. Indeed, I had heard my brother Henry refer to the place as akin to Tattersall’s, where gentlemen of the turf laid bets of an evening in the smoke-filled coffee room. But the Patronesses, as Mr. Chizzlewit had called them in unconscious mimicry of Almack’s, had worked their magic in transforming the dingy place, with yards of striped silk suspended from the ceiling to suggest an Oriental tent, and quantities of blooming lilies in tubs, grouped round a dais, on which the musicians played.
“Well, my dear, if the quality of the refreshments is any indication,” Eliza observed, as she sipped at a glass of champagne, “this is most certainly the anti-Almack’s. All one ever receives there is tepid lemonade. I do believe the Demi-reps have hired Gunter’s! Only observe the lobster patties!”[29]
“Pray pardon the intrusion,” said a gravelly voice behind us, “but I could not help noticing how ravishing you appear this evening, my sprite! Such a bewitching colour! So entirely suited to one of mature years, and experience. ”
I turned, and found to my astonishment that no less a personage than Francis Rawdon, Earl Moira, hovered on the fringe of our charmed circle. The core of my being was seized with apprehension, as tho’ with a vise; I could no more speak than I could trust myself to glance at Eliza. She had been acquainted with Lord Moira these ten years at least; and her husband was the man’s banker! Had the Earl detected us in our scandalous subterfuge? Should we be disgraced, and exposed?
He bowed to both of us, but extended his hand to my sister — who might certainly be declared ravishing, by one several years her senior, as she stood ample-bosomed in her claret-coloured gown. Moira, it appeared, followed the Prince Regent in his tastes — that Royal personage being known to favour well-endowed ladies of a certain age.
Eliza uttered an hysterickal giggle that could not be suppressed — put her champagne glass into my hand with trembling fingers — and dropped the curtsey that had graced Versailles itself. As I watched her sweep into the waltz on Lord Moira’s arm, I reflected that so game a pullet as the Comtesse de Feuillide should never betray my schemes.
BY ELEVEN O’CLOCK, THE ROOMS HAD FILLED TO such an extent that the Cyprians Ball should certainly be declared a frightful squeeze, and thus, an unqualified success. Everywhere one looked, the bright plumage of the Birds of Paradise — who ranged in age from fifteen to fifty — twirled about the floor, or dangled indolently from the shoulders of various gentlemen, or held pride of place at a supper table. I will confess that I witnessed scenes that should be adjudged a trifle warm — the habits of some of the ladies, and the inebriation of some of the gentlemen, passing the bounds of what must be acceptable. I will also say, however, that the chief difference between the venue in which I found myself, and those which fell within the realm of the ton, is that such incidents were allowed to occur within full view of all assembled — for certainly as many proceed behind the cover of shrubbery, when such balls are sponsored by the Quality. I applauded the Cyprians for their lack of hypocrisy, and accepted the offer of a quadrille, and a country dance, from a dashing man in his thirties whom Eliza later assured me was no less than Freddy Ponsonby.
He is acquitted one of the rakes of the age, and I shall always regard his anonymous, and quite unconscious, gallantry towards myself with affection; but at his attempting to steer me into the passage, in an effort to run his hands the length of my overlaced body, I told him tartly that I required a better sort of introduction before I should permit such freedoms. He then produced a fifty-pound note from his breast pocket — fifty pounds! Which is no less than I contrive to live on, for the space of a year! — and I was so overpowered I could do nothing but stutter out my apologies, and back away in shame from his laughing good looks. The experience forced me to contemplate seriously the attractions that must have weighed with one such as Julia Radcliffe — disgraced, unwed, cut off from her family, and entirely dependent upon the good offices of rakes.
Julia herself was in high bloom. She appeared at Limmer’s at half-past eleven o’clock, unmasked and queenly, her white dress deliberately innocent — and the last word in daring exposure. I am sure she had dampened her undergown, for it clung to her limbs as she moved in a shocking degree, outlining the curves of her body, which emerged like the torso of Venus from her tightly-laced bodice; and the jewels that she wore were hardly paste. This was the ideal that such dashing, tho’ respectable, ladies as Caroline Lamb meant to emulate, in snubbing their noses at the ton; but Julia was the embodiment of the raffish dream. At her appearance, she was instantly surrounded by the highest names in the land; I could not have approached her, had I dared. Even Harriette Wilson, the dark foil to Miss Radcliffe’s white and gold beauty, was left to command a lesser court — those who discovered Miss Radcliffe’s card to be already filled, her dances already bespoke.
Eliza, who had sustained full three dances with Earl Moira, was cooling her overheated cheeks on a balcony, well supplied with champagne and dexterously employed in foiling her old friend’s unwitting sallies. I left her to her amusements — saw Freddy Ponsonby exerting himself to charm a girl scarcely escaped from the schoolroom — and observed instead those whom Miss Radcliffe favoured.
One was the heir to a dukedom; the other, a marquis. A third lucky fellow was George Canning, who was permitted to stand up with the Barque; and included among them all, as tho’ by special favour or afterthought, was an impoverished French count … young Julien, Comte d’Entraigues.
I had observed the father long before, purring French obscenities into the ear of a tittering child; but Julien must have come in Radcliffe’s train, for I had not encountered him yet this evening. He looked, as a Pink of the Ton must, exquisite: His linen snowy, his satin breeches unimpeachable, his dark coating cut within a hairsbreadth of his shoulders. He had adopted Mr. Brummell’s maxim, which dictated that if a common man of the street turned to stare after one, one was certainly overdressed. Julien’s rule was to render himself inconspicuous by the sheer exactitude of his raiment; and allow his dark good looks — his refined countenance — his complete mastery of self — to speak for themselves. Such qualities must always distinguish the gentleman of breeding, no matter how impoverished.
29
Gunter’s was the foremost confectioner of Regency London and was frequently hired to cater the refreshments at private debutante balls. —