A lengthy, lively description of a masquerade in Heidelberg may be found in Meister Karl’s Sketch-book, by the American humorist, journalist, and folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, who described the book in his Memoirs as
...an odd mélange, which had appeared in chapters in the Knickerbocker Magazine. It was titled Meister Karl’s Sketch-Book. It had no great success beyond attaining to a second edition long after; yet Washington Irving praised it to everybody, and wrote to me that he liked it so much that he kept it by him to nibble ever and anon, like a Stilton cheese or a paté de foie gras; and here and there I have known men, like the late Nicolas Trübner or E. L. Bulwer, who found a strange attraction in it, but it was emphatically caviare to the general reader. It had at least a style of its own, which found a few imitators. It ranks, I think, about pari passu with Coryatt’s “Crudities,” or lower. (p. 206)
The Sketch-Book (1855) was a fictionalized travel journal based on Leland's experiences studying and traveling in Europe as a young man. In the preface, he explained that it had been written primarily between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, which would have been from 1840 to 1849. Leland spent three years during this period studying in Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris. He mentioned the various masked balls in Heidelberg in his Memoirs:
There were four great masked balls held in Heidelberg during the winter, each corresponding to a special state of society. That at the Museum or great University Club was patronised by the elite of nobility and the professors and their families. Then came the Harmonie—respectable, but not aristocratic. Then another in a hotel, which was rather more rowdy than reputable; not really outrageous, yet where the gentlemen students “whooped it up” in grand style with congenial grisettes; and, finally, there was a fancy ball at the Waldhorn, or some such place, or several of them, over the river, where peasants and students with maids to match could waltz once round the vast hall for a penny till stopped by a cordon of robust rustics. We thought it great fun with our partners to waltz impetuously and bump with such force against the barrier as to break through, in which case we were not only greatly admired, but got another waltz gratis. We had wild peasant-dancing in abundance, and the consumption of wine and beer was something awful. (p. 154)
It's difficult for me to determine exactly how fictionalized the specific experiences he described were without doing detailed biographical research, but the tone is generally realistic, and I've no reason to believe that his description of the masquerade ball would have been wildly outside the norm for its place and time.
I first came across this description in one of the excerpts from the Sketch-Book, published in The Knickerbocker in September 1851, which I believe to be its earliest publication. The full Sketch-Book is available online at archive.org; the masked ball is described in Chapter Eight, starting here. I will quote the most interesting and significant tidbits below.
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Leland introduced the masked ball chapter with a short poem followed by a bit of philosophy:
'In vino veritas.' The more a man disguises himself, fo much more does he appear in his true colors; which maxim is even better illustrated in masquerades than by the influence of wine. Strange that fancy dress should have the power to open the gates of the soul and out its prisoned fancies.
Perhaps the hour at which masked balls are held has something to do with the matter. Before breakfast, people are prone to tell what they would like to be. In the retrospective twilight hour, they review the past and think of what they were. Only after dinner, or more accurately, after supper, do they show what they are.
The author and his friends were minimalists about costume, and seem not even to have worn masks:
Not caring to go disguised, I resolved to enter simply 'en pékin,' as the French term the dressing in citizen's clothes. To be sure, the ball regulations insisted that every one in the room should wear a fancy dress; but this was allowed such a latitude of interpretation, that a fake nose or a feather could be received as the fullest sort of full dress. The usual method, however, of evading this rule, was to attach to the left lappel of the coat a little fancy mask, or masks, the size of a half-dollar, which were to be found in great variety at the different shops.
I've often seen mention that not everyone at a fancy dress or masquerade ball actually wore a costume beyond normal evening dress, but the idea of just wearing lapel pins in the shape of masks is new to me.
Some people made more of an effort at actual disguise, however; one lady pulled off a clever switch, resulting in her hearing words she'd rather not have heard:
'Confound it!' exclaimed my friend; 'you don't know what I've suffered since you saw me. Only think of that stupid Clara B.'s making a captive of me and dragging me all over the room, screaming out her broken English, till I fairly wished her, with her black domino, to the devil! But luck has smile upon me at last. Permit me to introduce to you my new friend, who speaks better English, is a hundred times more agreeable, and I dare say a thousand times prettier than Clara!'
With these words he presented his new flame, who however seemed any thing but gratified by the compliments paid her; and no wonder, for it was no no other than Miss Clara B. herself, who had during the waltz simply retired, and changing her domino, succeeded in passing herself off on the Wolf as an entirely new and different article.
This sounds unlikely, but I can say from personal experience that it can be done, and people can be fooled en masse, so I don't necessarily regard this as a bit of fictional exaggeration slipping in A domino could be an all-encompassing cloak, hood, and mask, so that could make it especially easy.
The friend (Wolf) did figure it out when she spoke; the voice is generally a weak point in disguises like this.
Conversation was freer than usual, with informality of address the rule and some "saucy" exchanges:
Old friends treat each other like strangers, while strangers are accosted as old friends. Every one speaks freely and saucily to his neighbor, constantly employing the familiar 'thou,' instead of th more reserved 'you.'
'Are you my true love?' asks Brown-coat.
'No; I just left her kissing the coachman,' replies Queen Mary.
One couple demonstrated why parents were reluctant to send their young daughters to events like this:
'Are you the Grand Duke of Thunder and Lightning?' whispered a musical young-lady voice.
'Are you the Countess Sweetcake?' replied a gentleman bandit.
This was evidently a preconcerted signal, for the pair glided off affectionately, arm-in-arm.
An interesting approach to party-favors was for the ladies to distribute small symbolic items made of sugar to the gentlemen:
The ladies are all provided with little fancy boxes, containing a great variety of sugar-plums made in the form of divers implements, each of which symbolizes a sentiment, a wish, an accusation, or intimation. These are freely bestowed upon the gentlemen, who are thus not unfrequently startled and mystified.
A trim little Swiss peasant girl bustled up and presented me with a boat from her stores.
'When you return to America and cross the ocean,' she said, 'this will carry you.'
Another presented me with a little sugar knapsack, to use during my return tour, evidently supposing in her ignorance that the journey would be by land.
The author provided a list at the end of all the sugar-plums he had received during the ball, which gives some idea of the variety: hearts, babies in wrappings, baby in cradle, storks, kreutzer orders, old women, candles, lantern, boat, knapsacks, pocket-books, butterfly, baskets (equivalent in German to mittens), Cupids, and Hymens.
One dance was interrupted by an elaborate and enthusiastically-received tableau vivant:
...a cry of astonishment from those near the door heralded the approach of a singular spectacle. A party of masquers, oddly arrayed as nine-pins, entered the hall, commanded by a centre pin, or king, and followed by two harlequins, each bearing a bowling ball at least three feet in diameter, made of canvas, painted, and stretched on a frame. Amid the shouts of the assembly, a long space was cleared; the pin arranged themselves, and the two harlequins began their game. As the music pealed up, on went a ball, and down went the foremost pin. Then his adversary rolled in turn, with still better success. Every one touched by the ball was obliged, by a preconcerted arrangement, to fall. Finally, one harlequin made an 'alle neune,' or nine-stroke; so down went all the pins, en masse, forming a remarkable assortment of dead-wood--I should say, tableau vivnat!
The nine-pins speedily recovered and walked off, the harlequins rolling their ball after them.
I can't tell whether this was planned in advance by the ball-organizers or a spontaneous attempt by a group of guests.
A second performance was less well-received:
Another pause was now heralded by a grand blast of trumpets, and tramping slowly along, in marched another procession, consisting of characters taken from German history. There was Arminius, or Herrman, with his eagle-winged helmet and long-haired attendances, with Heaven knows how many other partners in his toils. But this procession, though earnestly gazed at, evidently failed to excite the same interest as the nine-pins.
Arminius (Hermann) was a Germanic chieftain noted for turning back the Roman legions and thus keeping Germany Germanic rather than Romanized. He is indeed depicted with a winged helmet on the Hermannsdenkmal monument, which was begun in the late 1830s.
Leland gives a detailed description of the ball program (dance card). The tone makes me suspect that such programs were not yet usual in America, since he seems to have thought that it needed rather a lot of explanation:
In this, as in many German balls, small ball-books, in the shape of a card, with a lead-pencil, were supplied gratis to all entering, On these were engraved the name of the association, with the words, 'Tanz-Folge,' or orer of dancing, and 'Ouverture.' The dances as noted, with a blank space left opposite each for the ladies and gentlemen to record the names of their partners, were, first, one Polonaise, one waltz, one 'Galopade,' one 'Schottische,' one 'Française,' (quadrille,) two waltzes, then a long pause, succeeded by two 'Galopades,' two Françaises, to 'Schottische,' three 'Galopades,' and a cotillion; the latter resembling any thing in the world by the dance known by the same name in America.
This helpfully provides the list of dances, the order of dances, the information that at least some German-speakers called the quadrille a "Française", indicating a French country dance, just as English and Scottish ones were Anglaises and Ecossaises, respectively, and the information that a cotillion was to be danced at the end. At this point in America, "cotillion" and "quadrille" were being used with some interchangeability, so I think Leyland probably meant that this German cotillion was of the "dance party game" variety, which was said to have been introduced in America in the mid-1840s. Leyland seems to have expected his American readers not to be familiar with this definition.
He gave a bit of description of the opening polonaise:
The thoroughness of German genius is admirably manifested in the interminable length of their balls. Before eight o'clock, Herr Ludwig Zimmer, Professor of Dancing at the University of Heidelberg, (his name is actually enrolled on its catalogue as one of the faculty,) was leading off the Polonaise, or grand commencing march, in all it glory. Up the middle and down the sides; in, out and about, went Herr Zimmer, leading his grotesquely-attired army at will where they least expected to turn.
For the first waltz, Leyland specified that he danced the deux temps:
A waltz now struck up, and clasping the waist of my pretty tornemtor, I was quickly whirling away through the mysteries of the deux temps.
And he commented briefly on a scottische:
A lively Schottisch was now played, and the maskers pairing off, were soon jigging round the hall in double-quick time.
Of more interest to me, however, were the rules printed on the back of the dance program and annotated by Leyland:
1. 'All previous engagements for free dances are strictly forbidden.'
(A free dance, or 'free turn,' let me remark, is one called out impromptu, by the master of ceremonies, during the pause ensuing between all the regular dances.)
2. 'Hospitiren is allowed to no one, except the regular ball-directors.'
(Note.--To hospiriten, is to borrow from a gentleman his partner, for a single tour around the room. This term, as well as schiefsen, to shoot, is also applied by German students to unpaid attendance on the University lectures.)
The first rule concerns what nowadays are called "extras", and the second is an early form of "cutting in". I love the comparison of borrowing a gentleman's partner to crashing a lecture course -- you can tell this was written by a student!
The supper break was taken at a nearby hotel. I won't transcribe the description of the chaos of the large group of merry masqueraders descending on the dining room; it can all be read in the online copy. There was quite a lot of drinking involved, and one gentleman, Otto, vanished entirely:
All the next day, Otto's friends searched for him in vain. Inquiries were made in every beer-house, coffee-house, club hotel, and billiard-room. That he had not found his way into one of the University prisons, we were well assured. One or two enterprising individuals even went so far as to look for him around the University itself, deeming that he might, in an absent moment, have found his way into a lecture-room.
The little joke about a student having "in an absent moment" actually gone into a lecture hall again makes it obvious the author was (or had recently been) a student. Student life seems to have consisted of more parties than lectures.
Otto was eventually located in a summerhouse under a pile of leaves being stored as cattle feed.
Leyland's final summation:
As for the ball, it passed off--for Heidelberg--quietly and pleasantly. Not more than fifty love-affairs ensued; and the number of challenges given on the occasion, and subsequently fought out at Neunheim, over the river, was estimated at the remarkably low figure of twenty-three.
I suspect those numbers are the most exaggerated part of the entire piece.
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The entire journal, which is fun reading, or the masked ball chapter (eight) alone, may be found here.
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