LICENTIOUS ENTERTAINMENTS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 15 June 1935, Page 11

LICENTIOUS ENTERTAINMENTS

J) USING the food riots in London in 1772 the condition of the middle and loAver classes found little sympathy among persons of fashion, says the ‘‘News-Clironiclc.” In the Aery midst of these distresses sprung up a rage for masquerades. At one of these licentious entertainments given in London it Avas calculated that not less 10,00(f guineas Avcro expended by the revellers in dress and other luxuries. The trade of the metropolis Avoulcl have profited by this to a certain extent had payment of liabilities been a recognised duty of the time. Dr. Coldsmitn is named among those avlio masqueraded in “ail old English dress”; and after lists of ladies, descriptions of their dresses, and praises of their Avit and beauty, we find a sample of the easy A'irtue of the times in the presence of a group of “a lady abbess, and her nuns.” The license of speech, action, and allusion was astounding. At the Pantheon, the excited croAA" generally finished by breakfasting at daylight on the remains of the supper, and then going home “gloriously drunk. ” At Cornelys’ masquerades in Soho SqAiare, after a supper, marked by hard drinking and immodest singing, the custom Avas to fling, open the AvindoAvs and pelt the eager, hungry, thirsty, and hoAvling crowd beloAV Avitli halfempty bottles and the remains of the supper.

There was a Queen of Beauty at these masquerades 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 chairman, 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

When London Went to Masquerade

groat patroness. This species of entertainment was noA'er encouraged by George 111, at ivliose request Foote abstained from gi\ing a masquerade at the Little Theatre in the Hayinarket. There ivero 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 saine season masquerades were considered out of place; but these scrupulous persons found a method ot reconciling their sense of religion Avitli their taste for dissipation: In Lent, if the masquerades displease the town, Call ’em ridottos and they still go down. Madame Teresa Cornelys, a German by birth, and by profession a public singer, ivas 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 her assemblies and balls by subscription. She went on building, and made her house a fairy palace for balls, concerts, and masquerades. Her opera, Avliich she called “Harmonic Meetings,” was charming. To avoid the Act, she protended to take no money, and had the assurance to adA'ertise that the subscription was to proAnde coats, for the poor, for she courted the mob, and gained their faA r our. She then declared her masquerades Avere for the benefit of commerce. At last the Bench of Magistrates decided against her, and she AA'as compelled to shut up the house. Her improvidence then induced her to become a “vender of asses’ milk” at Knight.sbridge, but she sank still loAA’or, and died in 1797, in the Fleet prison.