The Waterloo Ball.

Hastings Standard, Issue 476, 15 November 1897, Page 4

The Waterloo Ball.

Yet another fond illusion has been shattered, and this time it is one which the amateur reciter and the lover of poetical sentiment will be especially loth to part with. It is long since the Waterloo myth of "Up, Guards, and at them," was exposed by the merciless historian; but it has been reserved for a recent writer to take all the romance out of the historical ball which preceded the Battle of Waterloo. Sir W. Fraser, in a book entitled "The Waterloo Ball," has thrown the light of accurate knowledge upon the subject, with results as appalling as any produced by the Bontgen rays. " Within a window'd niche of that hall, sate Brunswick's fated chieftain," &c. Who is not familiar with the verses —the noblest to be found in all the works of Byron, according to Sir Walter Scott referring to the revelry in the ballroom of the Duchess of Richmond at Brussels, which was suddenly hushed by " the cannon's opening roar ?" Where and what was the " high hall" of the poet ? Alas, it was but the low-roofed showroom of a coach-builder in the Rue de la Blanchisserie, adjacent to the residence of the Duchess, which she had hired for the purpose of her famous entertainment. The inductive process by which Sir W. Fraser arrives at this conclusion is a perfect model of laborious research, more characteristic of a German professor than an English Lifeguardsman. Sir William's revelations do not stop here, for he also shows, among other things, that far from only getting intimation of the approach of Napoleon at the ball in question, the news had reached Wellington at 8 o'clock on the afternoon of the same day by the hands of the fastest officer in all the Prnssian Army, who had performed the unparalleled feat of riding thirty miles in thirty hours with the momentous intelligence ! Thus illusion after illusion goes to the limbo of exploded fiction, and the idyllic glory of life departs, leaving us face to face with dry facts and sordid realities. The truth we must have, at whatever cost, but a little fiction is pleasant while it lasts, and no doubt the historians of to-day will go on embellishing their records in the good old style, providing work for future critics of the destructive class. —Lyttelton Times.