CHAPTER XII

VIENNA GAIETIES

I HAVE come to a halt and have been looking through the preceding pages, and am painfully conscious of the frivolity of most of their contents. They are indeed but an empty record of the vanities of "society," a chronicle à la Jeames of idle doings now buried in the past; and, as I turn them over, they seem to emit a faint, sickly odour of extinguished wax-lights, faded flowers, and perfumes that have long lost their strength. The only

grace" about them is that "of a day that is dead!" It is with considerable diffidence, therefore, that I return to the subject of Vienna festivities. Yet what is Vienna without its carnival or Fasching, and how thoroughly delightful were Vienna carnivals in my time! I will then boldly and unblushingly plunge into some account of them. Alfred de Musset, I think it is, who writes :—

"Le seul bien qui me reste au monde

Est d'avoir quelquefois pleuré !"

and there is a touching force in this which must come home to many of us. But I would add that it is well, too, to have laughed and been merry, and gaily to have taken such gaiety as Providence has vouchsafed to us in our time-even to

have danced with all one's might and main as I did with the prettiest Vienna Comtessen-alas! how matronly they now must look !-when Strauss wielded the bow and Berlichingen led the revels, and there were forty or fifty or eighty feet of clear parquet before one-a fair field and no favour!

In our own overgrown society, too, it is the fashion to herd together night after night during the hottest season of the year in so-called "mansions" under the pretence of a ball. What is there of a ball about these gatherings? Neither dancingspace nor music with any true rhythm in it, and but few men or women who can really dance. Little but a mass of struggling couples, shoving and pushing and trampling on each other's toes, or rushing wildly about, keeping no time, and occasionally upsetting whatever comes in their way. I once saw the venerable Lord Lyndhurst felled to the ground at a dance in his own house, and what little breath was left in his poor old body knocked clean out of it. Think what an indecorous ending this might have been to so dignified a lifealmost as bad as that of poor Pyrrhus brained by the base utensil of the patriotic Argive dame!

At Vienna they manage these things very differently. When people meet at a ball they mean dancing, and have the sense to make everything subserve the end in view. Now the main conditions of this possibly frivolous but assuredly harmless amusement may be said to be space, order, and

THE MASTER OF THE REVELS

267

proper training. In order to secure the first, the ballroom is held sacred to the dancers; chaperons or lazy loiterers are scarcely allowed inside it. These may sit and talk scandal, or play cards or watch their respective charges from afar in the other rooms, but on no account must they crowd the privileged precincts. The next important requisite of order is obtained by a delegation of absolute authority to that eminent functionary the Vortänzer. The office is one of great dignity and trust, and deserves explanation. Erudite Professoren would have little difficulty in showing that the institution is of great antiquity, extending indeed as far back as the Jewish kingdom-did not King David himself "dance before" the Ark? In the modern Imperial city of Vienna the chief Vortänzer holds his appointment from the Court. Other inferior Vortänzer there are besides in the lower strata of society, but I speak here only of the most exalted. The duties then of this master of the revels at Court, and in the private houses where he condescends to officiate, may be most conveniently described by stating what occurs in the case of some foreign Embassy about to give a ball.

The first step of the Ambassadress is to write to the Vortänzer and invite him to confer with her. The great man of course calls and assures her Excellency of his devotion to her orders, and lays before her his programme for the occasion. On the day itself he is in attendance half-an-hour before the

time for which the invitations have been issued. From the moment he enters the house he takes, as it were, the command. For instance, he has arranged the order of the dances: so many quadrilles, so many waltzes, so many polkas; he sees to the dances not exceeding a certain time, and a sufficient but not too long an interval of rest being allowed between each. The orchestra obeys his signal alone-the Olympian Strauss himself bows to his directions-and woe betide the unfortunate hostess who should presume to question his arrangements! Lady Westmorland once did. this, and the Vortänzer, with becoming spirit, threatened to withdraw on the spot; a threat to which she was obliged to yield, for its immediate consequence must have been a general strike of the Comtessen, who would not have danced a step without their leader. Then, too, as regards the paramount point of order, he takes care to limit the number of couples dancing at the same time, and restrains, by physical pressure if necessary, any awkward creatures who attempt to crowd the floor instead of keeping along the walls. In all these proceedings his authority is unquestioned, and the fiercest Uhlans and Dragoons, fellows who have had a dozen affairs of honour, submit to him like lambs. His chief responsibility, however, consists in leading the cotillon, and to do this well at Vienna is indeed a triumph of art. Here he has to show both energy and tact, together

with great inventiveness-for new figures have to be devised for the most critical and fastidious of publics who are at the same time performers in them-in fact, the science of a tactician with the gifts of an able commander.

I had the good luck to witness the last years of the reign of the great Berlichingen (the poor fellow died some years afterwards of fever caught during the Sadowa campaign), and it was almost worth a journey to Vienna to see him acquit himself of his duties. To begin with, although then on the shady side of forty, he was the smartest-looking soldier it was possible to see, and wore his becoming uniform of major of Uhlans with inimitable grace. He was one of the best riders in Austria, and, with his tall figure and clean, well-knit limbs, bronzed features and long, tawny moustache, was the perfect type of a doughty knight, such as his own famous ancestor of the iron hand-or even the great Sir Lancelot himself, except that it is hard to realise Sir Lancelot leading a cotillon! As for his dancing, it was the poetry of the art-if art it be. No wonder those dear little Viennese girls idolised him! He had drilled them to such perfection that they marched and countermarched, massed themselves into column, deployed in line and formed square as well as any regiment in the K. K. service, and their Amazonian manœuvres were the prettiest sight imaginable. All these Mitzies and Resies and Tonies-bless

1 Diminutives of Marie, Thérèse, Antoinette.