MR. PARKER THE DANCING-MASTER.
The joy of my second year at Lysterby was Mr. Parker the dancing-master.
Was he evoked from pantomime and grotesque legend by the sympathetic
genius of Sister Ignatius? We were all solemnly convened, in our best
shoes and frocks, to a great meeting in the big hall to make the
acquaintance of our dancing-master, and learn the polite steps of
society. A wizen cross-looking little creature stood at the top of the
long room, and as we entered in file, all agog, and ready enough, heaven
knows, to shriek for nothing, from sheer animal spirits, he bowed to us,
as I suppose they bowed in the good old days of Queen Anne. For Queen
Anne was his weakness. I wonder why, since she was neither the queen of
grace nor of beauty.
I recall the gist of his first speech: "We are now, young ladies, about
to study one of the most necessary and the most serious of arts, the art
of dancing. It is the art of dancing that makes ladies and gentlemen of
us all. In a ball-room the awkward, those who cannot dance, are in
disgrace. Nobody minds them, nobody admires them. They have not the tone
of society. They are poor creatures, who, for all society cares, might
never have been born. What it behoves you, young ladies, is to acquire
the tone of society from your earliest years, and it is only by a steady
practice of the art of dancing that you may hope to acquire it.
Practice, young ladies, makes perfect--remember that."
Ever afterwards, his first question, before beginning each week's
lesson, was: "What does practice do, young ladies?" and we were all
expected to reply in a single ringing voice: "Makes perfect, Mr.
Parker." Children are heartless satirists, and the follies of poor
little Mr. Parker filled us with wicked glee.
I see him still, unconscious tiny clown, gathering up in a delicate
grasp the tails of his black coat to show us how a lady curtseyed in the
remote days of Queen Anne. And mincing across the polished floor, he
would say, as he daintily picked his steps: "The lady enters the
ball-room on the tip of her toes--so!" Picture, I pray you, the comic
appearance of any woman who dared to enter a ball-room as Mr. Parker
walked across our dancing-hall! Society would stand still to gape. He
minced to right, he minced to left, he minced in and out of the five
positions, and then with eyes ecstatically closed, he would seize his
violin, and play the homely air of "Nora Creina," as he _chasséed_ up
and down the floor for our delectation, singing the while--
"Bend and rise-a--Nora Creina,
Rise on your toes-a--Nora Creina,
Chassez to the right-a--Nora Creina,
And then to the left-a--Nora Creina."
In his least inspired moments, he addressed us in the first position;
but whenever he soared aloft on the wings of imagination, he stood in
the glory of the fifth. In that position he never failed to recite to us
the imposing tale of his successes in the "reception halls" of the
Duchess of Leamington and the Marchioness of Stoke. Once he went so far
as to exhibit to us a new dance he had composed expressly for his
illustrious friend the duchess.
"My dears, that dance will be all the rage next spring in London, you
will see."
He was quite aware that we never would see, having nothing on earth to
do with the London season. But the assertion mystified us, and enchanted
him.
"Thus my hand lightly reposes on the waist of her Grace, her fingers
just touch my shoulders, and, one, two, three--boom!" he was gliding
round the room, clasping lightly an imaginary duchess in his arms, in
beatific unconsciousness of the exquisite absurdity of his appearance
and action, and we children followed his circumvolutions with glances
magnified and brightened by mirth and wonderment.
The irresistible Mr. Parker had a knavish trick of keeping us on our
good behaviour by a delusive promise persistently unfulfilled. Every
Tuesday, after saluting us in the fashion of the eighteenth century and
demanding from us an immense simultaneous curtsey of Queen Anne, holding
our skirts in an extravagant semicircle and trailing our little bent
bodies backward and upward upon the most pointed of toes, he would rap
the table with his bow, clear his throat, adjust his white tie,
straighten himself, and, with a hideous grin he doubtless deemed
captivating, he would address us inclusively--
"Young ladies, it is my intention to bring you a little confectionery
next Tuesday; and now, if you please, attention! and answer. What does
practice do?"
In vain we shouted our customary response with more than our customary
conviction; the confectionery was always for next Tuesday, and never,
alas! for to-day. With longing eyes we watched the slightest movement of
the master towards his pocket. He never produced anything but his
handkerchief, and when he doubled in two to wish us "O reevoyer," he
never omitted to say--
"To-day I did not pass by the confectioner's shop; but it will certainly
be for next Tuesday."
For a long time he took us in, as other so-called magicians have taken
in simpletons as great as we. We believed he had a secret understanding
with the devil, for only to the power of evil could we attribute a
quickness of apprehension such as he boasted. He would stand with his
back to us, playing away at his violin, while we _chasséed_ and
_croiséd_ and heaven knows what else--
"Now, my senses are so acutely alive to the impropriety of a false step,
young ladies, that even with my back turned to you, I shall be able to
tell which of you has erred without seeing her."
Sure enough he always pounced on the bungler, and never failed to switch
round his bow violently and hit her toes. How was it done? Simply
enough, one of us discovered quite by accident. There was a big mahogany
press, as finely polished as a mirror, and in front of this the master
planted himself. The rows of dancers, from crown to heel, were as clear
to him as in a glass. By such simple means may a terrible reputation be
acquired. For months had Mr. Parker shabbily usurped the fame of a
magician.
In his quality of master he could permit himself a brutality of candour
not usually shown by his sex to us without the strictest limits of
intimacy. There was a big girl of sixteen, very stout, very tall,
squarely built, with poultry-yard writ in broad letters over her whole
dull and earthly form. An excellent creature, I have no doubt, though I
knew nothing whatever about her, being half her age, which in school
constitutes a difference of something approaching half a century. Her
name was Janet Twycross, and she came from Shakespeare's town. As befits
a master of the graceful art, Mr. Parker's preference was, given to the
slim and lovely nymph, and such a square emblem of the soil as Janet
Twycross would naturally provoke his impatient contempt. Possibly she
merited all the vicious rage he showered on her poor big feet,
pathetically evident, emerging from skirts that just reached her
ankles. But with my larger experience and knowledge of his sex, I am
inclined to doubt it, and attribute his vindictiveness to a mere
masculine hatred of ugliness in woman rather than to the teacher's
legitimate wrath. Hardly a Tuesday went by but he sent the inoffensive,
great, meek creature into floods of tears; and while she wept and
sobbed, looking less lovely than ever in her sorrow, he would snarl and
snicker at her, imitate her jeeringly, and cast obloquy on her unshapely
feet.
"A ploughboy would be disgraced by such feet as Miss Twycross's," he
would hiss across at her, and then rap them wickedly with his bow.
The art of dancing, Mr. Parker proved to us, is insufficient to make a
gentleman of its adept. Once his unsleeping fury against the unhappy
girl carried him to singular lengths. He bade us all be seated, and
then, with his customary inflated and foolish air began to address us
upon the power of art. With art you can achieve anything, you can even
lend grace to the ungraceful.
"I will now chose from your ranks the most awkward, the most pitiable
and clumsy of her sex. The young lady unassisted cannot dance a single
step; but such is my consummate skill, so finished is my art, that I
shall actually succeed in bestowing some of my own grace as a dancer
upon her. Advance, Miss Twycross."
I leave you to picture the sensations of the unfortunate so addressed
and so described. She advanced slowly, square and sodden, but with an
unmistakable look of anguish in her poor harassed eyes, of a blue as
dull and troubled as her complexion; and a certain twitching of her thin
tight lips was eloquent enough of her unprovoked hurt.
Mr. Parker, with his simpering disgusted air of ill-natured little
dandy, flourished a perfumed handkerchief about her face, to sustain his
affronted nerves, no doubt, placed an arm gingerly about the flat square
waist, clasped her outer hand in evident revulsion, and began to scamper
and drag her round the room in the steps of a wild schottische. Most of
us tittered--could we be expected to measure the misery of the girl,
while nature made us excruciatingly alive to the absurdity of her
tormentor?
As a girl myself I have often laughed in recalling the incident; but I
own that the brute should have been kicked out of the establishment for
such an object-lesson in the art of communicating grace. As for his
boasted achievement, even we babies could perfectly understand that
there was not much to choose between his jerky waxwork steps and the
heavy stamp of his partner. She at least was true to nature and moved as
she looked, an honest cow-like creature, whom you were at liberty not to
admire, but who offered you no reason to despise her. While he, her
vindictive enemy, mean unnatural little body, sheathing a base,
affected, silly little soul, fiddling and scraping away his days which
were neither dignified nor manly, he offered himself to the unlimited
contempt of even such microscopic humanity as ours. We felt he was not a
man with the large capacity of manhood, but a disgraced and laughable
thing, a puppet moving upon springs and speaking artificially,
manufactured as dolls are, for the delectation of little folk.
We enjoyed Mr. Parker, but we never regarded him as more human than the
clown or the harlequin of the pantomime. We imitated him together; we
played _at him_, as we played at soldiers or fairies or social
entertainment. Had we learnt that he was dead or ill, or driven to the
poorhouse, it would have been just as if we had heard such news of
harlequin, or heard that Peeping Tom had fallen from his window and
smashed his head. Mr. Parker was not a person at the Ivies; he was a
capital joke.