An exciting fancy dress ball from the other side of the Atlantic was the "red domino dance" that took place in New York City on January 28, 1898, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Heber Bishop.
Heber Bishop (1840-1902) made himself a substantial fortune in Cuba, and the Bishops were well-known philanthropists and art collectors. They also held some unusually-themed fancy dress balls which, as was typical at the time, made the society columns of various newspapers, both in New York City and elsewhere. The column header at left is taken from the January 29, 1898, issue of The New York Times. Happily, the paper of record devoted several column-inches to details of the red domino dance, which must have been visually stunning. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes below are taken from the Times column, which may be found in PDF format in The New York Times online archive.
I have a general interest in fancy dress balls, but aside from my enjoyment of the colorful details of costumes and decorations, descriptions like this also offer bits of useful information about the organization of such a ball, which in this case included dancing, a late-night supper, and, in the small hours of the morning, a cotillion.
The decorations at the red domino dance were floral, including "large palms", "an ornamental table loaded with brilliant meteor carnations", and two vases "about four feet high...each filled with nearly 100 Easter lillies." The hallway from the reception room to the ballroom "had been transformed into a floral arbor." The primary color was, of course, red.
Floral decor was relatively routine for New York society balls, but the domino theme was more unusual. Everyone wore red dominos and, presumably, masks. They were described as "strange hooded figures hidden by long scarlet dominos", and observers noted that "except for differences in height, stride, and footgear, it was rather difficult to distinguish the men from the women. They were uniformly red, even to the slippers in the case of many feminine comers."
For those not familiar with dominos, a contemporary English description from the sixth edition of Ardern Holt's Fancy Dresses Described (London, c1896):
Worn at masque balls and sometimes as a fancy dress. It is made in satin, silk, and brocade, or of plain cotton in the Princess shape, having often a Watteau plait with cape and slender-pointed hood and wide sleeves. It should be large and long enough to slip over the dress easily, and hide it completely.
The illustration of a domino at left is taken from Butterick Publishing's costume book Masquerades, Tableaux and Drills (New York, 1906).
I can easily imagine how strange and disturbing an entire room full of caped, hooded, masked figures in blazing scarlet would have been. For a general idea, take a look at this video clip from Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. (Note: despite what the description says, this is not the notorious masquerade-orgy scene. The video clip includes two brief bedroom shots, but nothing at all explicit.) Starting at about 1:25 in, there is a shot of Tom Cruise, clad in a dark blue domino, entering a ballroom full of masked figures wearing black dominos. At about 2:00 in, there is a closeup of a figure in a red domino, and starting at 3:10 there are several group shots. The masks are Venetian Carnival-style, much more ornate than would have been worn for the red domino dance, but the overall effect is similar.
Guests began arriving at 11:00 PM, many coming from the opera, with dancing starting around 11:30 and did not last all that long. The unmasking was at about 1:00 AM, when the guests threw off their dominos as supper was announced. Underneath, they wore ordinary ball dress. The supper was a formal one, with a buffet afterward "for the benefit of those whose appetites might return".
Music was provided by P. M. Lander's Orchestra, a fifteen-piece group, which played from a large balcony and, as the Times noted, "were not sheltered by palms." The tune of four waltzes were named, with composers including Strauss, Wiegand, Herbert, and "Rosey", but we have no other information on the specific dances. A private ball of this sort likely would not have used dance cards, which in any case would have been completely useless given the anonymity of the dancers.
Following supper, there was a cotillion, led by one Worthington Whitehouse, a well-connected real estate broker who had a reputation as a skilled leader of cotillions, with Miss Mary Cunningham Bishop, the oldest of the four daughters of the house and the only one still unmarried. Her younger sister Edith, by then Mrs. Moses Taylor, was also present. The Bishop sisters are shown at left in an 1895 miniature held by The New York Historical Society.
The Times gave no details of the dancing in the cotillion, but some of the favors, which were famously an opportunity for conspicuous consumption, were described:
The favors, which had been partly imported and partly furnished by Mrs. Collins, consisted of various odd gifts, in accordance with the spirit of the evening. After one figure a huge scarlet shoe was brought into the ballroom, and dolls, covered with tissue paper and trimmed in red, were given to the men and women. The men got the small ones. There were also some English silver trinkets, heart-shaped sachets, trimmed in red; bunches of artificial fish, tied with red ribbon; small silver lamps for the women and cigar lighters for the men, also trimmed in red.
The Times noted that there were about 150 attendees overall, which was considered a "closely restricted" number, and that the guests were "by no means merely representative of the younger element of society". One wonders how many of them, and of what age and marital status, stayed for the cotillion, and how late it ran, given that supper began at 1:00 AM!
Sadly, the Times offered no more information about the ball.
Comments