WHEN LONDON WENT TO THE MASQUERADE

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 25

WHEN LONDON WENT TO THE MASQUERADE

During the food riots in London in 1772 the condition of the middle and lower classes found little sympathy among persons of fashion, says the "News-Chronicle." In the very midst of these distresses sprung; up a rage for masquerades. At one; of these licentious entertainments giyen in London it was calculated that not less than 10,000 guineas were expended by the revellers in dress and other luxuries. The trade of the metropolis would have profited by this to a certain extent had payment of liabilities been a recognised duty of the time. Dr. Goldsmith is named among those who masqueraded in "an old English dress"; and after lists of ladies, descriptions of their dresses, and praises of their wit and beauty, we find a sample of the easy virtue of the times in the presence of a group of "a lady abbess, and her nuns." The licence of speech, action, and allusion was astounding. At the Pantheon, the . excited crew generally finished by breakfasting at daylight on the remains of the supper, and then going home "gloriously drunk." At Cornelys' masquerades in Soho Square, after a supper, marked by hard drinking and immodest singing, the custom was to fling open the windows and pelt the eager, hungry, thirsty, and howling crowd below with half-empty bottles and the remains of the supper. " There was a Queen of Beauty at these masquerades1 as well, as a Queen of fashion. She excited the greatest admiration by giving frocks and tambour waistcoats as undress livery to her servants, and by the splendour of her chairmen, who never carried . her abroad without feathers in their hats. This gay young woman died in 1782,

in the thirty-second year of her age. By her death masquerades lost their great patroness. This species of entertainment was never encouraged by George 111, at whose request Foote abstained from giving a masquerade at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. There were some curious scruples entertained even by people of pleasure at this time. The most fashionable of them appeared at the theatre in Lent attired in mourning, and at the same season masquerades were considered as out of place; but these scrupulous persons found a method of reconciling their sense of religion with their taste for dissipation: In Lent, If masquerades displease tlio town, Call 'em ridottos and tUey still go down. Madame Teresa Cornelys, a German by birth, and by profession a public singer, was one of the entrepreneurs of masquerades. Walpole describes her as a singular dame. She took Carlisle House, on the east side of Soho. Square, enlarged it, and established here assemblies and balls by subscription. She went on building, and made her house a fairy palace for balls, concerts, and masquerades. Her opera, which she called "Harmonic Meetings," was charming. To avoid the Act, she pretended to take no money, and had the assurance to advertise that the subscription was to provide coats for the poor, for she Courted, the mob, and gained their favour. She then declared her masquerades were for the benefit of commerce. At last the Bench of Magistrates decided against her, and she was compelled to shut up the house. Her improvidence then induced her to become a "vender of asses' milk" at Knightsbridge, but, she sank still lower, and died in 1797, in the Fleet prison.