THE MASQUERADE BALL

The Masquerade Ball is one evening at the end of February. The rooms cleared for dancing, sixty places, and the guest list closed a month ahead.

Masks are worn until midnight. No member is announced at the door. Introductions are left to the room to sort out.

The Form

Every formal ball ever given has announced its arrivals. A name called at a door is how rank is published: who has come, in what order, and how the room ought to arrange itself around them.

The masquerade was invented to do the opposite.

The Venetians understood this better than anyone. A man in a bauta could not be placed. He could speak to someone far above him, and that person could not tell whether they were being addressed by an equal. The mask was worn at official business, voting included, because it took rank out of the room.

This is the same instrument used for the same purpose. The Court takes the label off a bottle at the Vintners’ Table and off a scent at the Perfumer’s Evening. Once a year it takes the label off the person.

What is left is whether somebody is worth talking to, which is the only thing the Court has ever claimed to be assembling for.

The Evening

Sixty places. It is by some distance the largest company the Court gathers, and it has to be. Eight people in masks is an absurdity. Sixty is a room.

Guests arrive masked and are not announced. There is no receiving line, and nobody is walked round and presented. A member finds the room, and the room finds him.

Dancing from nine, with a band and nothing else.

At midnight the masks come off.

That is the event. Three hours of conversation resolve into faces, and some of what is learned is pleasant and some of it is not. People discover they have been arguing happily with someone they had been avoiding for a year, or charmed by someone they had written off without meeting. It is the most useful twenty minutes of the Court’s year.

The room stays open afterward, unmasked, and most people stay in it.

What Is Asked

Black tie, and a mask. The mask is neither optional nor a novelty, and members who need one are told where to have it made.

The Court begins at nine whether or not everyone is there.

No member is announced, and members do not announce themselves. Giving your name before midnight defeats the evening, and it is noticed.

Telephones stay in pockets. A photographer attends after midnight only.

Nobody is pitched at the table, and it would be a strange thing to attempt at this one.

The Places

Sixty. The list closes a month ahead and is not published.

A member may bring a guest by arrangement, and answers for them. Guests are held to the same rule about names.

The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the whole of the evening.