Found where it is, it is certainly a remarkable phenomenon, this
waltz. Look now at that young lady--how cold, formal, stately!--how
she has been trained to act the little queen amongst her admirers
and flatterers! See what a _reticence_ in all her demeanour. Even
feminine curiosity, if not subdued, has been dissimulated; and
though she notes every thing and every body, and can describe,
when she returns home, the dress of half the ladies in the room,
it is with an eye that seems to notice nothing. Her head has just
been released from the hair-dresser, and every hair is elaborately
adjusted. To the very holding of an enormous bouquet, "round
as my shield," which of itself seems to forbid all thoughts of
motion--every thing has been arranged and re-arranged. She sits
like an alabaster figure; she speaks, it is true, and she smiles as
she speaks; but evidently the smile and the speech have no natural
connexion with one another; they co-exist, but they have both been
quite separately studied, prepared, permitted. Well, the waltz
strikes up, and at a word from that bowing gentleman, himself a
piece of awful formality, this pale, slow, and graceful automaton
has risen. Where is she now? She is gone--vanished--transformed.
She is nowhere to be seen. But in her stead there is a breathless
girl, with flushed cheeks, ringlets given to the wind, dress flying
all abroad, spinning round the room, darting diagonally across it,
whirling fast as her little feet can carry her--faster, faster--for
it is her more powerful cavalier, who, holding her firmly by the
waist, sustains and augments her speed.
Perhaps some ingenious mind may discover a profound philosophy in
all this; perhaps, by retaining this authorised outlet for the mere
rage of movement, the rest of civilised life is better protected
against any disturbance of that quietude of deportment which it is
so essential to maintain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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