 | Letters of Mrs. Adams, |  |
This day eight months I sailed for Europe, since
which many new and interesting scenes have presented
themselves before me. I have seen many of
the beauties, and some of the deformities, of this
old world. I have been more than ever convinced,
that there is no summit of virtue, and no depth of
vice, which human nature is not capable of rising to,
on the one hand, or sinking into, on the other. I
have felt the force of an observation, which I have
read, that daily example is the most subtile of poisons.
I have found my taste reconciling itself to
habits, customs, and fashions, which at first disgusted
me. The first dance which I saw upon the stage
were enchanting; but, no sooner did the
dance commence, than I felt my delicacy wounded,
and I was ashamed to be seen to look at them.
Girls, clothed in the thinnest silk and gauze, with
their petticoats short, springing two feet from the
floor, poising themselves in the air, with their feet
flying, and as perfectly showing their garters and
drawers as though no petticoat had been worn, was
a sight altogether new to me. Their motions are
as light as air, and as quick as lightning; they balance
themselves to astonishment. No description
can equal the reality. They are daily trained to it,
from early infancy, at a royal academy, instituted
for this purpose. You will very often see little
creatures, not more than seven or eight years old,
as undauntedly performing their parts as the eldest
among them. Shall I speak a truth, and say that
repeatedly seeing these dances has worn off that
disgust, which I at first felt, and that I see them now
with pleasure? Yet, when I consider the tendency
of these things, the passions they must excite, and
the known character, even to a proverb, which is
attached to an opera girl, my abhorrence is not
lessened, and neither my reason nor judgment has
accompanied my sensibility in acquiring any degree
of callousness. The art of dancing is carried
to the highest degree of perfection that it is capable
of. At the opera, the house is neither so grand, nor
of so beautiful architecture, as the French theatre, but
it is more frequented by the beau monde, who had
more various and more highly decorated, the dresses
more costly and rich. And O! the music, vocal
and instrumental, it has a soft, persuasive power,
and a dying sound. Conceive a highly decorated
building, filled with youth, beauty, grace, ease, clad
in all the most pleasing and various ornaments of
dress, which fancy can form; these objects singing
like cherubs to the best tuned instruments, most
skilfully handled, the softest, tenderest strains; every
attitude corresponding with the music; full of the
god or goddess whom they celebrate; the female
voices accompanied by an equal number of Adonises.
Think you that this city can fail of becoming a Cythera,
and this house the temple of Venus?
"When music softens, and when dancing fires,"
it requires the immortal shield of the invincible Minerva,
to screen youth from the arrows which assail
them on every side.
As soon as a girl sets her foot upon the floor of
the opera, she is excommunicated by the Church, and
denied burial in holy ground. She conceives nothing
worse can happen to her; all restraint is thrown off,
and she delivers herself to the first who bids high
enough for her. But let me turn from a picture, of
which the outlines are but just sketched; I would
willingly veil the rest, as it can only tend to excite
sentiments of horror.
| Letters of Mrs. Adams, | |