Ladies’ Southern Relief Association: Orphans’ Home Benefit

“The Bal d’opera under the auspices of the Ladies’ Southern Relief Association, which took place last evening at the Academy of Music, though not as generally attended as several of the traditional balls of the season, was a very pleasant affair and one of some social éclat. Though the number of guests was not in excess of four hundred most of those present were representatives of the gens de condition of the metropolis—the gathering being rather brilliant and select than surpassing in mere point of numeration. The Academy hall had been very little adorned for the occasion, the whole decorative design being limited to the background, where a couple of antique vases, snow-white as Parian marble and holding a couple of magnificent bouquets, had been erected. Behind and beyond these vases—the vases, in fact, forming the gateway thereto—were placed some eight or ten specimens of statuary, mostly symbolic of the aim of the ball, and behind these, upon a pedestal six or eight feet in height, was placed another statue, more especially emblematical, beneath a mélange of the Moresque crescent and slender shafts of Corinth.

The guests did not begin to arrive until about ten o’clock, and at that hour there was little evidence, save in the presence of a couple of bands in the uppermost gallery, of the intent for which the building had been opened. From that hour until eleven there were continuous arrivals of gentlemen, with ladies in silk and tulle and ladies in domino, until, at eleven o’clock, the number of guests had swollen to a moderate quantity. [list of some members of the committee, including John J. Astor]

The dancing began at half-past ten o’clock, when both bands struck a few notes by way of prelude.  The programme was an excellent selection.

The police arrangements without were controlled by Captain Brackett, and within by Sergeant Pelly.

Of masques there were few on the floor, mostly of the order which a professional would term ‘semi,’ the harlequin being the only allegorical representation present.”

“A ball after Easter is almost unheard of as a ball in Lent. The soft Spring weather does not tempt the blaze, and dust and din of the routs at the Academy; and the strain upon brain and the nerves involved in arranging Summer plans, and attaining Summer wardrobes, forbids the belles any greater exertion than a saunter on the Avenue, or a drive in the Park; any wilder excitement than an evening at Wallack’s, at the Opera, or with Ristori.

Nevertheless, when the poor are in question, dancing becomes quite another thing. We all know (we have heard it so often) that it is more blessed to give than to receive. But when it is a contest between the heathen of Borrioboola-Gha and the pretty lace handkerchief that one needs unspeakably, having but five; when one must decide between the supposititious hungry sand-hiller among the tributaries of the Tar, and a lovely trifle for the idol of one’s young affections Borrioboola and Carolina are apt to be unvisited. Cologne and Jockey Club, and laces, and silk, and diamonds, and flowers, and hairdressers’ services, and canes, and light kid gloves, and other necessaries of life being unprecedently high, of course people must curtail their little charities in order to be presentable at all. And solicitors of funds cannot ask, as once they could, $10, $20, $50, for the freezing infant of Terra del Fuego, or the starving citizens of the Indian Isles.

So veteran general’s [sic] of finance forego attack, but adopt a strategic system of mining, certain to make all pockets capitulate. They devise private theatricals, where to witness very bad acting, on a very small stage, a fashionable audience stifles and sighs, expressing discomfort, and delight in a most liberal largesse. They arrange amateur concert, and a polite public indorses notes which its least sensitive unit would decline to accept at Steinway’s or Irving. They manage balls, and the $10 tickets are eagerly seized, the general bother of preparation gracefully accepted, the saloon crowded by the very persons who would die of a rose in aromatic pain, if they were besought to take half the trouble in any directly helpful and plodding way. It is hard to walk through the charity gate of heaven in a plain gown and limited ornaments. It is so delicious to float into the kingdom on the throbbing waltz-music of Strauss and Donizetti.

All this, not by way of carping, but of commendation. Lovely Thais sits beside us. Let’s take the good the gods provide us. If these sweet children elect to learn the psalm, shall not they have two gingernuts?

The gingernuts were spread, last night, at the Academy, by seventy purveyors representing so much money, and so much social position, and so much deportment, that, to the eye of imagination, they appeared to be dressed in armor of gold, to glide gracefully through the throng on inaccessible stilts, and to have, each and every one, Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son in his pocket instead of a diary. So gracious were these seventy, however, they bore their faculties so meek, and were so clear in their great office, that when one had fairly recovered from the dizziness which the thought of the money they represented produced, he saw at once that golden armor was the only wear; that stilts were the greatest improvement upon legs, and that Chesterfield’s letters ought to become a part of every Sunday school library.

The great ballroom was not elaborately decorated, the Committee, with a fine sense of the fitness of things, feeling that entire and perfect chrysolite of tawdry cheapness ought not to be obscured by any attempt at grace, and wealth of color, and festive ornament which, on such a background, could only prove a melancholy failure. So they flooded the ills they had with whole rivulets, rivers, seas of gas, which only floated the bad architecture, bad coloring, bad effects, and could not drown them. But when the boxes, and the floors were full, one forgot, in the glow and blaze of dresses and jewels the ugly frame of the picture. The guests were late in coming, but toward midnight there were enough to fill the house pleasantly, not enough to make dancing impossible, and moving a weariness. There was the usual orchestra, playing such irresistible music as the Pied piper of Hamelin-town piped to the rats, and the children, but with no more dangerous results in this case than a swift foray for places, the destruction of flounces, and the odorous crushing of flowers.

A 1 o’clock there were very few maskers on the floor. Now and then a gentleman with more nose than belonged to him would pass you, seeming content with his incomplete disguise. The orchestra is playing a merry waltz, but, there are few circling couples revolving around the sparely filled area of the Academy. The clown looks stupid, for the want of some one on whom to practices [sic] his jokes, and he is content to tap every one on the back that he passes. Near the boxes could be seen August Belmont attempting to hob-nob with a German Prince. Leonard and Lawrence Jerome were entertaining a party of ladies with masks, Lawyer Stilton was gallanting a lady who was the observed of all observers. Promenading arm in arm were John Hoey and James Gordon Bennett, jr., seeming very much pleased, while {Prof. Doremus and Clarence A. Seward were sharing the smiles of a stately lady dressed in a corn colored silk dress with a black mask. As it approached 2 o’clock the guests commenced wending their way homeward. 

The dancing at all balls is alike.  The music is the same. The toilettes are duplicates of each other. The bows, and smiles, and small talk, are as old as the first grand party of the world. Nothing is new but the quick, electric response of the blood to the magnetism of the light, and color, and music, and odor, and all the sensuous charms that fit a ball-room. Nothing is seen but the flush of pretty girls when admiring eyes follow them, but felt the faster beating of hearts that can speak to each other in the wonderful passionate voice of the music. Nothing but the ever-renewed delight of dowagers in a party under any conditions, the ever-springing pleasure of the younger revelers in the excitement which stimulates the palled senses, and quickens the dull nerves. Nothing but the serene satisfaction of managers who have made the occasion a success, and the unrest of patient scribes whose doom it is to tell the tale of a hundred balls in a hundred ways, when each ball is as like the other as two peas, and not Scheherezade herself could enliven the recital. And these things, which alone are new with every fete, are the things alone which can never be set down, but must tell themselves otherwise than in words.”

“Maretzek’s bal d’opera, at the Academy of Music on the 2d inst. Was a magnificent [?].  Exclusiveness did the business—left to themselves, the so-called fashionable circles cannot be relied upon.  The Southern Relief Fund will not be increased by this aristocratic failure.”