Y’all – I wore the Green 1790s round gown! This Regency card party got entirely lost in the shuffle of moving between Chile and Canada, and –
My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen!
I own myself very much remiss in my lack of prior correspondence –
Please be assured that the delay in transcribing this delightful occasion is not for want of ENTHUSIASM or any lack of DELIGHT on my part – indeed it only is the very great BUSINESS of my schedule that has prevented me from relating the proceedings of this most DIVERTING event –
I had been visiting with Miss W– in Williamsburg (lately removed to Virginia from the capital seat of the Viceroyalty of Peru in the Americas) and there we attended together a small – and very select – card party sponsored by Virginia’s own Regency Society!
Miss W– wore a round gown of figured white muslin, and I a new gown of printed India muslin. Mine is a gown of the new style, the stuff having been transported across the equator from Shahjahanabad to the port of Valparaiso and from thence carried on to Santiago, where it was made up entirely by myself!
Miss W–‘s gown was ornamented by the admiration of a Mr H–, himself outfitted in a suit stitched by her own hands, as a token of her esteem.
Mr H– is indeed a MOST estimable gentleman, amiable and obliging in his attentions, devoting himself to the both of us with the greatest possible courtesy, and keeping his ladies well in ratafia and orgeat, and ensuring that our plates of dainties and savories were never left wanting!
At the party, we were instructed in the playing of several diverting new card games. I became quite a ‘proficient’ at the game of Lottery – said to be the great favorite of a certain Miss Lydia Bennet, and I made up a table at Whist, and while i may say that i PLAYED it, I cannot say that i truly learned TO play!
The company was easy and unaffected, and I must own to you that all the entire assembly was quite taken with my ‘fine eyes’ – nay, I must be entirely honest, and declare that I made a conquest! Two conquests! Many Conquests! Everyone present declared me divine! I was the recipient of offer after offer from gentlemen – and ladies, too – whom I had foremostly perceived as genteel and honorable and not – until the moment of whispered declaration behind noble pilasters and elevated fans – the impudent and importuning rakes for which they stood revealed!
It was only as I, lowering my maiden eyes to veil my blushes, caught view of the corresponding flush upon of my upper breast that I began to suspect the true reason for the unanimous partiality! Earlier in the evening, dressing in my gown before my fire I had proudly declared my insistence that I should not bury my pretty gown beneath a fichu but bare my bosom as the new fashion dictates, and –
– Annnnd this is where I yank the pen out of my laudanum-soaked cousin Sofia’s claw-like little fingers and change the password on my WordPress account.
“But I need MATERIAL.” She had told me. “I swear I’ll write only what truly happened. ‘Tis only imagination in any event. I promise on my honor that I will never PUBLISH a single WORD – “
And I swear, the woman thinks she’s only one purple-penned piece of prose away from a liaison amoureuse with that ratted poet Lord Byron himself. Staring into her pin-point pupils, I reckon I should just tell her that the elopement’s set for next Tuesday and Childe Harold is waiting around the corner with a horse.
Either way, she’s never seeing any more photos of MY holidays ever again.
The truth? We had a very nice card party. The games were enjoyable, although for a raw beginner, whist was something of a slog. And everybody was polite, charming and ENTIRELY refined all evening.
Some lessons, however, were learned.
Four: Check which wig you’re throwing into your suitcase for an international move. Instead of my flowing 1790s locks, I ended up with a shrubbery. Fortunately for me, in the humidity of the Virginia Tidewater in August, frizz looks natural. Nevertheless.
Three: I genuinely don’t know how Georgian ladies traveled wearing those little back-bustles that fasten high up on your rib cage. We had to stop the car 300 meters down the road from where we started to take ours off.
Two: Plan your exit! There are few more mortifying situations than being farewell’d by all of the ladies and gentlemen with whom you’ve been exchanging polished banter all evening, while you’re standing in the middle of a car park with your skirts over your head, and your companion’s gentleman friend is up your petticoats wrestling your back bustle.
If your hair happens to have removed itself from your head and is dangling from the back bumper like a chiffon-tasseled rat, it is only fuel on the fire of your excruciation.
And One: Keep Cousin Sofia away from the laudanum bottle and out of my laptop. Recipes may only prescribe 10% opium by weight, but God knows what’s going on in Sofia’s still room. I have my suspicions.
