Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

by Bierce, Ambrose

  “Thus I became abnormally developed in my lowest nature. I grew bolder, and from being able to return shy glances at first, was soon able to meet more daring ones, until the waltz became to me and whomsoever danced with me, one lingering, sweet, and purely sensual pleasure, where heart beat against heart, hand was held in hand, and eyes looked burning words which lips dared not speak.

  “All this while no one said to me: you do wrong; so I dreamed of sweet words whispered during the dance, and often felt while alone a thrill of joy indescribable yet overpowering when my mind would turn from my studies to remember a piece of temerity of unusual grandeur on the part of one or another of my cavaliers.

  “Girls talk to each other. I was still a school girl although mixing so much with the world. We talked together. We read romances that fed our romantic passions on seasoned food, and none but ourselves knew what subjects we discussed. Had our parents heard us they would have considered us on the high road to ruin.

  “Yet we had been taught that it was right to, dance; our parents did it, our friends did, and we were permitted. I will say also that all the girls with whom I associated, with the exception of one, had much the same experience in dancing; felt the same strangely sweet emotions, and felt that almost imperative necessity for a closer communion than that which even the freedom of a waltz permits, without knowing exactly why, or even comprehending what.

  “Married now, with home and children around me, I can at least thank God for the experience which will assuredly be the means of preventing my little daughters from indulging in any such dangerous pleasure. But, if a young girl, pure and innocent in the beginning, can be brought to feel what I have confessed to have felt, what must be the experience of a married woman? She knows what every glance of the eye, every bend of the head, every close clasp means, and knowing that reciprocates it and is led by swifter steps and a surer path down the dangerous, dishonorable road.

  “I doubt if my experience will be of much service, but it is the candid truth, from a woman who, in the cause of all the young girls who may be contaminated, desires to show just to what extent a young mind may be defiled by the injurious effects of round dances. I have not hesitated to lay bare what are a young girl’s most secret thoughts, in the hope that people will stop and consider, at least before handing their lillies of purity over to the arms of any one who may choose to blow the frosty breath of dishonor on their petals.”

  And this is the experience of a woman of unusual strength of character — one whose intellect has gained her a worldwide celebrity and earned for her the respect and attention of multitudes wherever the English language is spoken. What hope is there then for ordinary women to escape from this mental and physical contamination? which

  “Turns — if nothing else — at least our heads.”

  None whatever.

  CHAPTER VI.

  “Il fault bien dire que la danse est quasi le comble de tous vices * * * *c’est le -commencement d’une ordure, laquelle je ne veux declarer. Pour en parler rondement, il m’est advis que c’est une maniere de tout villaine et barbare * * * A quoy servent tant de saults que font ces filles, soustenues des compagnons par soubs les bras; a fin de regimber plus hault? Quel plaisir prennent ces sauterelles á se tormenter ainsi et demener la pluspart des nuicts sans se souler ou lasser de la danse?” — L. VIVES.

  MANY will say — have said — Byron wrote against the waltz because a physical infirmity prevented him from waltzing — that he is not a proper person to quote as an example for others to follow. It must be conceded that whatever his motive was, he well knew what he was writing about, and whatever his practices may have been in other respects, it is to his credit that his sense of the proprieties of life were not so blunted as to render him blind to this cause of gross public licentiousness.

  But, unlike Byron, I have, as has been stated before, practical experience, and positive knowledge in the matter whereof I speak, and am possessed of the most convincing assurances that my utterances will be received with joy by thousands of husbands and fathers whose views have been down-trodden — their sentiments disregarded, and their notions of morality held up to scorn because they disapprove of this “innocent amusement.”

  It has also been before said that this vice was “seemingly tolerated by all,” but I am proud to say that the placard posted about the streets announcing a “Sunday School Festival — dancing TO COMMENCE AT NINE O’CLOCK,” does not reflect the sentiments of the entire community; that in all the marts of business, in every avenue of trade, in counting-house and in work-shop, men are to be found who would shrink with horror from exposing their wives and daughters to the allurements of the dancehall — men who form a striking contrast to those simpering simpletons who sympathize with their feelings, but have not the courage to maintain the family honor by enforcing their views in the domestic circle.

  It is only a few years since the Frankfort Journal announced that the authorities had decided, in the interest of good morals, that in future dancing-masters should not teach their art to children who had not yet been confirmed. The teaching of dancing in boarding-houses and hotels was also forbidden. It is not desirable that the law should interfere with purely domestic affairs, but really it seems as if those unfortunate parents and husbands who shudder at the evil but are awed into silence by ridicule or open rebellion, stand in as urgent need of the law’s assistance as the Magdeburg godfathers and godmothers.

  I well know that many young ladies profess entire innocence of any impure emotions during all this “palming work.”

  To them let me say: If you are so sluggish in your sensibilities as this would imply, then you are not yet fit subjects for the endearments of married life, and can give but poor promise of securing your husband’s affection. But if on the other hand (as in most cases is true) you experience the true bliss of this intoxication, then indeed will the ground of your emotions be pretty well worked over before you reach the hymeneal altar, and the nuptial couch will have but little to offer for your consideration with which you are not already in some measure familiar.

  A friend at my elbow remarks. “I agree with you perfectly, but my wife likes these dances, — sees no harm in them, and her concluding and unanswerable argument is, that if I danced them, I should like them just as well as she does.” The truth of this latter statement depends upon your moral perceptions. There is but one answer to the former, given by “Othello,”

  “This is the curse of Marriage:

  We call these delicate creatures ours —

  But not their appetites.”

  If you are so lax in your attention — so deficient in those qualities which go to make a woman happy — that she seeks the embrace of other men to supply the more than half acknowledged need — if this be true, my friend, I leave the matter with you — it belongs to another class of subjects, treated of by Doctor Acton of London — I refer you to his able works.

  Another says: Both my wife and I enjoy these dances. We see no particular harm in them—”to the pure all things are pure.” The very same thing may be said by the habitués of other haunts of infamy —

  “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

  As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;

  Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

  We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

  There is, again, a very large class of dancers who frankly allow that there is immorality in the modern waltz, but insist that this immorality need not be, and by them is not, practised. They dance — but very properly, you know. These are the Pharisees who beat their breasts in public places, crying fie! upon their neighbors, and bravo! upon themselves.

  Of course, they will tell you, there are persons who are excited impurely by the waltz, but these are persons who would be immoral under any circumstances. “To the pure all things are pure.” It is astonishing how apt they are with these tongue-worn aphorisms. To the pure all things are pure, — yes, but purity is only a relative virtue who
se value is fixed by the moral standard of the individual. What would be pure to some would be grossly impure to others, and when you place your wife or daughter in the arms of such salacious gentry as have been described in the foregoing pages are you not pretty much in the position of the gentleman who when gravely informed by a guest who was taking an unaccountably hasty leave that his (the host’s) wife had lewdly entreated him, replied: “But, my friend, that is nothing; your wife did as much for me when I visited you last year.” This gentleman, remember, was also ready to add: “to the pure all things are pure.” The Waltz should assuredly have figured among the “pure impurities” of Petronius.

  But even if it be allowed that a lady can waltz virtuously, I have already shown that in that case she must not dance well. And what a pitiful spectacle, surely, is that of a lady trying “how not to do it” — converting her natural grace into clumsiness in order that she may do an indecent thing decently, and remain

  “Warm but not wanton; dazzled, but not blind.”

  But perhaps she cannot waltz. In that case how long will it take her to learn? Will not one single dance lower her standard of purity if her partner happens to be one of the adepts I have described?

  “But,” cries the fair dancer “you must remember that no lady will permit herself to be introduced to, or accept as a partner, any but a gentleman, who she is sure will treat her with becoming respect.”

  I will not stop to inquire what her definition of a “gentleman” is — whether the most courteous and urbane of men may not be a most desperate roué at heart The attitude and ‘contact are the same in any case, and if it needs must be that a husband is to see his wife folded in the close embrace of another man, is it any consolation for him to know that her partner is eligible as a rival in other respects than his nimble feet — that he who is brushing the bloom from his peach is at least his equal? Can you stop to consider the intellectual accomplishments and social status of the man who has invaded the sacred domain of your wife’s chamber? No — equally unimportant is it to you, who or what he may be — that has thus exercised a privilege reserved by all pure-minded women for their husbands alone.

  But in this matter of the selection of the fittest the ladies have set up a man of straw, which I must - proceed to demolish. In order that the lawless contact may be impartially distributed, and that no* lady may be free to choose whose sexual magnetism she shall absorb, we have imported from across the water a foreign variety of the abomination, by which ingenious contrivance the color of the ribbon a lady chances to hold determines who shall have the use of her body in the waltz, and places her in the pitiable predicament of the “poore bryde” at ancient French weddings, who, as we read in Christen, “State of Matrimony,” must “kepe foote with all dancers, and refuse none, how scabbed, foule, droncken, rude, and shameless soever he be.”

  Nor are even the square dances any longer left as a refuge for the more modest, for to such a pitch has the passion for this public sexual intimacy come, ‘that the waltz is now inseparably wedded to the quadrille. Even the old fogies are sometimes trapped by this device. A quadrille is called and they take their places feeling quite safe. “First couple forward!”

  “Cross over!”

  “Change partners!”

  “Waltz up and down the centre!”

  “Change over!”

  “All hands waltz round the outside!” and before they know it their sedate notions are lost in the “waltz quadrille.” It may be said that every arrangement of the dance looks to an “equitable” distribution of each lady’s favors. It is a recognized fact that a lady dancing repeatedly with the same gentleman shows a marked preference thereby — and he is deemed rude and selfish who attempts to monoplize his affianced, or shows reluctance in resigning her to the arms of another.

  CHAPTER VII.

  “Transformed all wives to Dalilahs,

  Whose husbands were not for the cause;

  And turned the men to ten-horn’d cattle,

  Because they went not out to battle.”

  SAMUEL BUTLER.

  SOME time ago a lady friend said to me: “How is it that while so many of you gentlemen are fond of dancing until you are married, yet from that moment few of you can be induced to dance any more. In fact it is a fraud perpetrated upon young ladies; you fall in love with them in the ball room, you court them there, you marry them there, and they naturally think you will continue to take them there. But no — thenceforth they must stay at home, or if you are induced to go occasionally, you are as cross and ill-natured about it as possible; as though it was something dreadful. If the dancing-hall is good enough to get a wife in, is it not good enough to take a wife to?”

  My dear lady, said I, you have stated the case with a fairness not often met with in an opponent. There can be no stronger evidence (none other is required) to establish the sexualism of the popular dance than that which you have just cited. The privileges of matrimony relieve the necessity for the dance. The lover is compelled to share that which the husband considers all his own. Those who, while single, were most deeply versed in the mysteries and pleasures of the waltz are, when married, the first to proclaim their abhorrence of it, too often, it is true, in a mild and impotent protest, but not always.

  Is the reader acquainted with Boyesen’s novel called “Gunnar?” If so he will remember that Ragnhild was to wed Lars under the pressure of parental authority. She preferred, however, the valiant, dancing Gunnar. “Ha! ha! ha!’’ cried he, “strike up a tune and that a right lusty one!” The music struck up, he swung upon his heel, caught the girl who stood nearest him round the waist; and whirled away with her. Suddenly he stopped and gazed right into her face, and who should it be but Ragnhild. She begged and tried to release herself from his arm, but he lifted her from the floor, made another leap, and danced away, so that the floor shook under them.”

  “Gunnar, Gunnar,” whispered she, “please, Gunnar, let me go” — he heard nothing. “Gunnar,” begged she again, now already half surrendering, “only think what mother would say if she were here.” But now she began to feel the spell of the dance. The walls, the roof, and the people began to whirl round her in a strange, bewildering circle; at one moment the music seemed to be winging its way to her from an unfathomable depth in an inconceivable, measureless distance, and in the next it was roaring and booming in her ears with the rush and din of an infinite cataract of tone. Unconsciously her feet moved, to its measure, her heart beat to it, and she forgot her scruples, her fear, and everything but him in the bliss of the dance.

  Gunnar knew how to tread the springing dance, and no one would deny him the rank of the first dancer in the valley, so, it was a dance worth seeing, and of the girls, there was scarcely one who did not wish herself in the happy Ragnhild’s place” — (of course they did.) After the music had ceased, it was some time before Ragnhild fully recovered her senses — (quite likely); she still clung fast to Gunnar’s arm, the floor seemed to be heaving and sinking under her — (quite common in such cases), and the space was filled with a vague, distant hum.” (Why not?)

  Later, the gleaming knife in the hands of Lars, showed that he but too plainly understood the nature of the performance in which his future wife had been engaged. And the sequel well attests, that his happiness did not increase with his knowledge. Even the vigor of a Norwegian climate was not sufficient to cool his fury. What a promising field for future operations must sunnier climes present for such enterprising young gentlemen.

  Follow the subject a little further and it will be seen that Ragnhild lost more than her head in the bewildering whirl. Now let me ask any father or mother (or husband if you will), — any man possessing a grain of common sense, if Ragnhild was in a safe condition to be shown by Gunnar, to one of our commodious carriages and driven to her home (perhaps miles away) at three o’clock in the morning?

  “Lead us not into temptation.”

  Yet this is done — is permitted by very many of our so-called “prudent paren
ts” and while they are crying out about “social evils,” are doing all in their power to furnish recruits for the great army of the infamous.

  “Deliver us from evil.”

  There are two types of married ladies who practise, and of course enjoy, the waltz, and lest either might discover the portrait of the other and take offence that her own lovely face was not used to adorn these pages, each shall have a separate notice. They will probably have already recognized portraits of themselves in this volume, but the object here is more particularly to distinguish between the two.

  The first of these we may safely call semi-respectable — she is so partly from necessity, partly from choice — from choice because she regards it as the “proper thing” that her husband should dance attendance while she dances something else, during the performance of which, the poet tells us,

  “The fair one’s breast Gives all it can and bids us take the rest.”

  She has not yet quite reached that stage of shamelessness when she can carouse the entire night without some lingering regard for what Mrs. Grundy will say; besides this, she is not quite sure of her position, and does not know exactly how much her husband will bear. She is afflicted with a bare suspicion that his docile nature might be over taxed — that in the pigeon holes of his dull cranium might be found a desire to make it rather lively if too openly slighted. “Oh, no,” she reasons, “take him along his presence makes it all right — his smile gives sanction to all that may happen. When he is with me who dare complain?”