London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
BALS MASQUES IN THE TIME OF ALBERT SMITH.
In the olden days juvenile revellers were rather fond of the costume of Charles II. I refer to the period when moustaches were unknown to the upper lips of anyone outside the commissioned ranks of the cavalry. The representatives of his late Majesty of festive memory had to wear false hair, and I can just remember that such an ornament is distinctly inconvenient. The heat of the ball-room generally | |
224 | melted the gum, and one had to be constantly reaffixing the hirsute appendage. I am able to declare from experience that it is no easy matter to take supper in a false moustache. It interferes with the soup, disagrees with the , and intercepts the champagne. Besides a melancholy . although, possibly, historically accurate, is a dismal sight in the ball-room. Albert Smith, and (I think) Horace Mayhew, wrote much of the of their day, and invariably selected as a type of the saddest of the sad, a woe-begone representative of the So I think I may insist on the assertion, that if a man elects to go to a fancy dress ball as a he should at least be naturally cheerful. It is the sort of costume that might have been appropriately worn by Mark Tapley. |