The Potiphar Papers | Page 7

these perfumes, confused by this alluring music, and reflect upon the enormous sums wasted in a pompous profusion that delights no one,--when I look around upon all this rampant vulgarity in tinsel and Brussels lace, and think how fortunes go, how men struggle and lose the bloom of their honesty, how women hide in a smiling pretence, and eye with caustic glances their neighbor's newer house, diamonds, or porcelain, and observe their daughters, such as these,--why, I tremble and tremble, and this scene to-night, every 'crack' ball this winter will be, not the pleasant society of men and women, but--even in this young country--an orgie such as rotting Corinth saw, a frenzied festival of Rome in its decadence."
There was a sober truth in this bitterness, and we turned away to escape the sombre thought of the moment. Addressing one of the panting Houris who stood melting in a window, we spoke (and confess how absurdly) of the Düsseldorf Gallery. It was merely to avoid saying how warm the room was, and how pleasant the party was; facts upon which we had already sufficiently enlarged. "Yes, they are pretty pictures; but la! how long it must have taken Mr. Düsseldorf to paint them all;" was the reply.
By the Farnesian Hercules! no Roman sylph in her city's decline would ever have called the sun-god, Mr. Apollo. We hope that Houri melted entirely away in the window, but we certainly did not stay to see.
Passing out toward the supper-room we encountered two young men. "What, Hal," said one, "you at Mrs. Potiphar's?" It seems that Hal was a sprig of one of the old "families." "Well, Joe," said Hal, a little confused, "it is a little strange. The fact is I didn't mean to be here, but I concluded to compromise by coming, and not being introduced to the host." Hal could come, eat Potiphar's supper, drink his wines, spoil his carpets, laugh at his fashionable struggles, and affect the puppyism of a foreign Lord, because he disgraced the name of a man who had done some service somewhere, while Potiphar was only an honest man who made a fortune.
The supper-room was a pleasant place. The table was covered with a chaos of supper. Everything sweet and rare, and hot and cold, solid and liquid, was there. It was the very apotheosis of gilt gingerbread. There was a universal rush and struggle. The charge of the guards at Waterloo was nothing to it. Jellies, custards, oyster-soup, ice-cream, wine and water, gushed in profuse cascades over transparent precipices of tulle, muslin, gauze, silk, arid satin. Clumsy boys tumbled against costly dresses and smeared them with preserves,--when clean plates failed, the contents of plates already used were quietly "chucked" under the table--heeltaps of champagne were poured into the oyster tureens or overflowed upon plates to clear the glasses--wine of all kinds flowed in torrents, particularly down the throats of very young men, who evinced their manhood by becoming noisy, troublesome, and disgusting, and were finally either led, sick, into the hat room, or carried out of the way, drunk. The supper over, the young people attended by their matrons descended to the dancing-room for the "German." This is a dance commencing usually at midnight or a little after, and continuing indefinitely toward daybreak. The young people were attended by their matrons, who were there to supervise the morals and manners of their charges. To secure the performance of this duty, the young people took good care to sit where the matrons could not see them, nor did they, by any chance, look toward the quarter in which the matrons sat. In that quarter through all the varying mazes of the prolonged dance, to two o'clock, to three, to four, sat the bediamonded dowagers, the mothers, the matrons,--against nature, against common sense. They babbled with each other, they drowsed, they dozed. Their fans fell listless into their laps. In the adjoining room, out of the waking sight, even, of the then sleeping mammas, the daughters whirled in the close embrace of partners who had brought down bottles of champagne from the supper-room, and put them by the side of their chairs for occasional refreshment during the dance. The dizzy hours staggered by--"Azalia, you must come now," had been already said a dozen times, but only as by the scribes. Finally it was declared with authority. Azalia went,--Amelia--Arabella. The rest followed. There was a prolonged cloaking, there were lingering farewells. A few papas were in the supper-room, sitting among the _débris_ of game. A few young non-dancing husbands sat beneath gas unnaturally bright, reading whatever chance book was at hand, and thinking of the young child at home waiting for mamma who was dancing the "German" below. A few exhausted matrons sat in the robing-room, tired, sad,