d you will look as well as ever you did in
your life, that is, as you have done lately, which is better than ever
you did before. You must not, in truth, expect that I your shepherd
should be quite so fit to figure in a fan mount. Besides the gout for
six months, which makes some flaws in the bloom of elderly Arcadians, I
have been so far from keeping sheep for the last ten days, that I have
kept nothing but bad hours; and have been such a rake that I put myself
in mind of a poor old cripple that I saw formerly at Hogarth's auction:
he bid for the Rake's Progress, saying, "I will buy my own progress,"
though he looked as if he had no more title to it than I have, but by
limping and sitting up. In short, I have been at four balls since
yesterday se'nnight, though I had the prudence not to stay supper at
Lord Stanley's. That festival was very expensive, for it is the fashion
now to make romances rather than balls. In the hall was a band of French
horns and clarionets in laced uniforms and feathers. The dome of the
staircase was beautifully illuminated with coloured glass lanthorns; in
the ante-room was a bevy of vestals in white habits, making tea; in the
next, a drapery of sarcenet, that with a very funereal air crossed the
chimney, and depended in vast festoons over the sconces. The third
chamber's doors were heightened with candles in gilt vases, and the
ballroom was formed into an oval with benches above each other, not
unlike pews, and covered with red serge, above which were arbours of
flowers, red and green pilasters, more sarcenet, and Lord March's
glasses, which he had lent, as an upholsterer asked Lord Stanley 300l.
for the loan of some. He had burst open the side of the wall to build an
orchestra, with a pendant mirror to reflect the dancers, a la Guisnes;
and the musicians were in scarlet robes, like the candle-snuffers who
represent the senates of Venice at Drury Lane. There were two more
chambers at which I never arrived for the crowd. The seasons, danced by
himself, the younger Storer, the Duc de Lauzun and another, the youngest
Miss Stanley, Miss Poole, the youngest Wrottesley and another Miss, who
is likewise anonymous in my memory, were in errant shepherdly dresses
without invention, and Storer and Miss Wrottesley in banians with furs,
for winter, cock and hen. In six rooms below were magnificent suppers. I
was not quite so sober last night at Mons. de Guisnes', where the
evening began with a ball of child