Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. When it is prosecuted in the centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer day, it is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time. The blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the salient points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl that dizzies and dazes one;but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very POSE of the dance is profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, and carelessly assumed by people who have but a casual and partial society-acquaintance. This I reckon profanity. This is levity the most culpable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of delicacy. That it is practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not cleanse the waltz. It is of itself unclean.
There were, besides, peculiar desagrements on this occasion.
As I said, there was no illusion,--not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with Nymphs and Apollos. The boys were boys, young, full of healthful promise, but too much in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at ease in their situation,--indeed, very much NOT at ease,--unmistakably warm, nervous, and uncomfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls, I dare say, under ordinary circumstances,--one was really lovely, with soft cheeks, long eyelashes, eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,--but Venus herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight as they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowzy,--puff-balls revolving through an atmosphere of dust,--a maze of steaming, reeking human couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than Spartan fortitude.
It was remarkable, and at the same time amusing, to observe the difference in the demeanor of the two sexes. The lions and the fawns seemed to have changed hearts,--perhaps they had. It was the boys that were nervous. The girls were unquailing. The boys were, however, heroic. They tried bravely to hide the fox and his gnawings; but traces were visible. They made desperate feint of being at the height of enjoyment and unconscious of spectators; but they had much modesty, for all that. The girls threw themselves into it pugnis et calcibus,--unshrinking, indefatigable. Did I say that it was amusing? I should rather say that it was painful. Can it be anything but painful to see young girls exhibiting the hardihood of the "professional"without the extenuating necessity?
There is another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to consider. The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer.
If the title of my article do not sufficiently indicate the depth and breadth of knowledge on which my opinions assume to be based, let me, that I may not seem to claim confidence upon false pretences, confess that I have never seen, either in this country or abroad, any ballet-dancer or any dancer on any stage. I do not suppose that I have ever been at any assembly where waltzing was a part of the amusements half a dozen times in my life, and never in the daytime, upon this occasion. Ialso admit that the sensations with which one would look upon this performance at Harvard would depend very much upon whether one went to it from that end of society which begins at the Jardin Mabille, or that which begins at a New England farm-house. I speak from the stand-point of the New England farm-house. Whether that or the Jardin Mabille is nearer the stand-point of the Bible, every one must decide for himself.
When I say "this is right, this is wrong," I do not wish to be understood as settling the question for others, but as expressing my own strongest conviction. When I say that the present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer, I mean that, from what I have heard and read of ballet-dancers, I judge that these girls gyrating in the centre of their gyrating and unmanageable hoops, cannot avoid, or do not know how to avoid, at any rate do not avoid, the exposure which the short skirts of the ballet-dancer are intended to make, and which, taking to myself all the shame of both the prudery and the coarseness if I am wrong, I call an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light, it is flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight it is not.
Indeed, I do not know that I will say "almost." Anything which tends to remove from woman her sanctity is not only almost, but altogether objectionable. Questionable action is often consecrated by holy motive, and there, even mistake is not fatal; but in this thing is no noble principle to neutralize practical error.
