Читать книгу Denounced - John Bloundelle-Burton - Страница 10

The rejoicings into which London broke out when, at last, the Scottish rebellion was decisively crushed caused Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens to be, perhaps, more frequented in the warm spring and summer of 1746 than they had ever been previously. Indeed, after the fright which had fallen upon the capital when the news came that the Highland troops were at Derby and within four days' march of London, it was not very astonishing that the inhabitants should, on the removal of that terror, give themselves up to wholesale amusement. Six months before, imminent ruin stared them in the face; the Bank of England, by that time regarded as being almost as stable an institution as it is now considered, had only escaped closing its doors by the oft-quoted artifice of paying the demands made on it in sixpences. Regiments engaged in foreign campaigns--Ligonier's Horse and Hawley's and Rich's Dragoons--had been hurried home from Williamstadt; Admiral Vernon and Commodores Boscawen and Smith were each at sea with a squadron looking for ships carrying the invaders; while fifty merchantmen, styled "armed cruisers," were patrolling the Channels round our shores. Also, as an outcome of the panic, the inhabitants of London had purchased for the army about to take the field against the Pretender, 12,000 pairs of breeches and the same number of pairs of woollen gloves, 12,000 shirts, 10,000 woollen caps and pairs of stockings, and 9,000 pairs of woollen spatterdashes; while, not to be outdone by the other citizens, the managers of the then existing London theatres offered to form the members of their various companies into volunteers attached to the City regiment.

But, ere the springtime had come, the invasion was over, the danger past. The young Duke of Cumberland, fresh from his triumphs in Flanders, had not only destroyed the rebel army, but had taken terrible and bloody vengeance upon all who had opposed him.^{[Note C]} Therefore London--indeed, all England--slept again in safety at night, and with the arrival of summer had plunged with greater fervour than ever into all its usual enjoyments. Amongst the enjoyments of the former none were more popular than those of Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens, the latter being more generally known and spoken of at that period as the Spring Gardens. Here, on the warm evenings which May brought with it, until the fashionable world departed for its country seats, or for Bath, Epsom, or Tunbridge, went on one continual round of pleasures and festivities--one night a masquerade, another a concert, vocal and instrumental, where, among others, the mysterious Tenducci--whose sex was always matter of discussion--sang and warbled, sometimes in a man's voice, sometimes in a woman's; illuminations took place every evening, and, as they died out and the company departed, the nightingales might be heard singing in the neighbouring fields and groves.

It was on one of these warm May nights that the wherry which brought Lady Belrose's party from Pimlico Fields to the Spring Gardens arrived at the latter place, while, as the boat touched the shore, from the gardens might already be heard the orchestra playing. In the wherry sat, of course, Lady Belrose herself, a still young and still good-looking woman, who, being a widow, thought herself entitled to always have in attendance upon her some beau or other, and who, to-night, had brought two, one a young lad from Oxford, the other almost as young a man, Sir Charles Ames. By her side sat Lady Fordingbridge, whose plain evening frock contrasted somewhat strongly with that of her friend, who was arrayed in a gorgeous brocade silk, while one of her cavaliers carried over his arm a green velvet mantle laced with gold, in case the evening turned cold and she should have occasion for it.

"I protest," said her ladyship, as stepping ashore she put on her mask, in which she was copied by the others--"I protest the very sound of the fiddles squeaking makes me long for a dance. Mr. Fane," she said, turning to that gentleman, who formed the last member of the party, "am I to have you for a partner to-night?"

Fane bowed and responded politely that he only trusted his old age and stiff joints would not prevent him from making himself acceptable, on at least one occasion, to her ladyship; while Sir Charles Ames, turning to Kitty, desired to know if she would so far favour him as to give him a dance.

But Lady Belrose, who had already gathered from her friend that she only made one of the party because of a serious and grave interview which she anticipated having with a gentleman whom she might meet at the fête, here interposed and, in a few well-chosen words, gave the baronet to understand that to dance was not Lady Fordingbridge's desire that evening. "She is not well," she said, "and will simply be an onlooker. Meanwhile, doubtless I can find you a sufficiency of partners among other friends." To this the young man protested that there was no need for Lady Belrose to endeavour to find him partners among her friends, since, if she would but condescend to be his partner, he could not possibly desire any other, and so, with these interchanges of politeness, they entered the gardens.

On this particular night at Vauxhall--the opening masquerade of the season--the fashionable world, as well as those who, though not in that world themselves, loved to gaze on the happier beings who were of it, assembled in large numbers and in a variety of costumes. Scaramouches in their black dresses, toques and masks, with rush lances in their hands, mingled with dancing girls clad in the Turkish costumes still known in these days as "Roxanas," in memory of the infamous woman who had first worn this garb; shepherdesses walked arm-in-arm with men dressed as grave and reverend clergymen; assumed victims of the Inquisition, invested in the San Benito, pirouetted and twirled with brazen-faced and under-clad Iphigenias and Phrynes--for the world was none too modest in those days!--mock soldiers, knights and satyrs, harlequins, and men in wizard's garments danced and drank, laughed and shouted with milkmaids, nuns, and Joans of Arc. And to testify, perhaps, the fact that they had not forgotten the dangers through which the country had recently passed, and also, perhaps, to hurl one last taunt at their crushed and broken foes, many of the maskers had arrayed themselves in the garbs of their late enemies--for some strutted round and round the orchestra pavilion and banqueting room dressed as Highlanders or French officers, others as miserable Scotch peasants having in their hands flails and reaping hooks. Others, again, had even attempted to portray the character of the unhappy Charles Edward, now in hiding in the Scotch wilds, and, as they danced and sang or drank their glasses of ale and ate their twopenny slices of hung-beef, and endeavoured even by their conversation to ape what they imagined to be the Scotch dialect. At the same time, outside all this seething, painted, and bedizened crowd were many others of the better classes, such as those who formed Lady Belrose's party, or visitors of a similar degree, who contented themselves by concealing their identity with masks, vizards, and dominos, or with hoods and laces.

In a somewhat retired spot beneath where stood a noble statue of Handel, now nearing his last days, executed by Roubiliac, and at the back of which were a small wooded green and bosquet in which were many arbours, Lady Belrose and her friends sat down to watch the kaleidoscopic crowd. Here, Sir Charles Ames, summoning a waiter, bade him bring refreshments for the party--viz., some iced fruits and a flask of champagne--and they being partaken of, he invited her ladyship to honour him by becoming his partner in a quadrille de contredanse, a new style of dancing introduced into the French ballets a year or so before, and but just come over to London. This the sprightly lady accepted at once, having already perfected herself in the new divertissement under Duharnel's tuition; but, on her other cavalier desiring also the honour of Lady Fordingbridge's hand, Kitty refused, on the ground that she knew not the dance, and neither was she very well.

"I' faith, Kate," said Lady Belrose, as she shook her sack over her great balloon-shaped hoop and fastened her mask more tightly under her hood, "yet have you lost but little to-night. The quadrille is well enough in our own houses or on our country lawns; here, I protest, the noise, the dust, and the stench of the oil lamps, to say nothing of the unknown and, doubtless, unclean creatures with whom we rub shoulders and touch hands, do not recommend it overmuch. However, lead me to it, Sir Charles, since you will have it so," and in another moment she, with her partner and the others who formed the sets, were bowing and curtseying to each other.

Meanwhile Mr. Wynn, Lady Belrose's second string, having begged that he might be allowed to find a partner and himself join in a set, since Lady Fordingbridge was so obdurate (he, too, had been learning the new dance from Monsieur Duharnel), took himself off, so that Kitty and her father were left alone together. And now it was that she, after scanning each male figure that was "more than common tall," began to tremble a little in her limbs and to feel as though she were about to faint. For in that portion of the crowd which was not dancing and which still followed its leaders round and round the orchestra pavilion, thereby illustrating the words of Bloomfield, a poet of the period, who wrote: