Formal ball in Brussels on 15 June 1815
The Duchess of Richmond's ball was a ball hosted by Charlotte Lennox, Duchess of Richmond, in Brussels on 15 June 1815, the night before the Battle of Quatre Bras. Charlotte's husband Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond, was in command of a reserve force in Brussels, which was protecting that city in case Napoleon Bonaparte invaded.
Elizabeth Longford described it as "the most famous ball in history". "The ball was certainly a brilliant affair", at which "with the exception of three generals, every officer high in Wellington's army was there to be seen".
The proceedings were interrupted soon after the arrival of the Duke of Wellington, when he was notified of Napoleon's unexpected advance on the nearby crossroads of Quatre Bras, located to the south. This forced him to depart after ordering his officers to leave to join their regiments. Some of the officers would soon die in battle and the poignancy of the drama has provided an enduring theme for artists, novelists and poets.
The ball.
According to Lady Georgiana, a daughter of the Duchess:
Lady Louisa, another of the Duchess's daughters, recalled:
While the exact order of the dances at this ball is not known, there is a comment from a contemporary critical observer about the season in Brussels:
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington with his intimate staff arrived some time between 11 pm and midnight. Shortly before supper, which started around 1 am, Lieutenant Henry Webster, an aide-de-camp to William, Prince of Orange, arrived with a message for the Prince. The Prince handed it to Wellington, who pocketed it unopened. A short time later Wellington read the message — written at around 10 pm, it reported that Prussian forces had been forced by the French to retreat from Fleurus. As Fleurus is north-east of Charleroi this meant that the French had crossed the river Sambre (although Wellington couldn't tell from this message in what strength) — Wellington requested the Prince to return to his headquarters immediately, and then, after issuing a few more orders, went into supper, where he sat between Lady Frances Wedderburn-Webster and Lady Georgiana Lennox. To his surprise the Prince of Orange returned and in a whisper informed him of another dispatch, this one sent by Baron Rebecque to the Prince's headquarters at Braine-le-Comte, and timed at 10:30 pm. It informed the Prince that the French had pushed up the main Charleroi to Brussels road nearly as far as Quatre Bras. After repeating to the Prince that he should return to his headquarters, Wellington continued to sit at the table and make small talk for 20 minutes more, before announcing that he would retire to bed. He rose from the supper-table and:
The atmosphere in the room changed when news circulated among the guests that the French were crossing the border:
Katherine Arden, daughter of Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley, described the events towards the end of the ball and the rest of the night:
Ballroom.
At the time of the ball no accurate record was kept of the location of the ballroom. In 1887, a plan of the house provided by her younger brother was published by Lady de Ros (daughter of the Duchess of Richmond); both were residents in the house. It was later reprinted in "Reminiscences of Lady de Ros" by the Hon. Mrs J. R. Swinton, her daughter.
Sir William Fraser examined the site and concluded that the room proposed as the ballroom by Lady de Ros was too small a space for the number of people who attended the ball. A short time after his visit, he wrote a letter to "The Times" which was published on 25 August 1888. He reported that he had likely discovered the room and that it was not part of the principal property that the Duke of Richmond had rented on the "Rue des Cendres", but was a coach house that backed onto the property and had an address in the next street, the "Rue de la Blanchisserie". The room had dimensions of long, broad, and about high (the low ceiling was a case where reality impinged on one meaning of Lord Byron's artistic allusion to "that high hall").
Research by lawyer P. Duvivier and published by Fleischman and Aerts in their 1956 book "Bruxelles pendant la bataille de Waterloo" put forward an alternative theory. It proposes that, unknown to Fraser, the coach house used as a ballroom had been demolished by the time of his investigations and that the building he assumed was the ballroom was built after 1815.
List of invitations.
The following were sent invitations to the ball:
Cultural influences.
The ball inspired a number of writers and artists in the nineteenth century. Sir Walter Scott mentioned it in passing in "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk". It was described by William Makepeace Thackeray in "Vanity Fair" and by Lord Byron in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage". Byron emphasises the contrast between the glamour of the ball and the horror of battle, concentrating on the emotional partings:
Thackeray's dramatic use of the ball in "Vanity Fair" inspired, in turn, a number of screen depictions. One notable example comes from the 1935 RKO production "Becky Sharp", the first full-length Technicolor film released after perfection of the full-color three-strip method, which makes the Duchess of Richmond's Ball the first historical set-piece ever staged in a full-colour feature film. Critics of the day were not kind to the picture itself, but the sequence in which the officers hurry to leave the ball — the red of their coats suddenly and emotionally filling the frame — was widely praised as showing great promise for the dramatic use of colour on-screen.
The ball also inspired artists, including John Everett Millais, who painted "The Black Brunswicker" in 1860, Henry Nelson O'Neil who painted "Before Waterloo" in 1868 and Robert Hillingford who painted "The Duchess of Richmond's Ball".
The ball was a scene in the third act of a melodrama called "In the Days of the Duke" written by Charles Haddon Chambers and J. Comyns Carr; it was displayed sumptuously in the 1897 production, with a backdrop by William Harford showing the hall and staircase inside the Duchess's house.
Several characters attend the ball in Georgette Heyer's novel "An Infamous Army" (1937), and also in "The Spanish Bride" (1940), her novelisation of the life of Sir Harry Smith.
The ball was used by Sergei Bondarchuk in his film "Waterloo" (1970) for dramatic effect. Bondarchuk contrasted an army at peace with the impending battle and in particular as a dramatic backdrop to show how completely Napoleon managed to "humbug" Wellington.
In the novel "Sharpe's Waterloo" (1990), Bernard Cornwell uses the ball in a similar way to Bondarchuk, placing his character Richard Sharpe in the role of the aide who brings the catastrophic news to Wellington, but includes a sub-plot where Sharpe brawls with Lord John Rossendale, the lover of Sharpe's wife and a man who owes money to him.
A fictional account is given of the Duchess of Richmond's ball in "The Campaigners", Volume 14 of "The Morland Dynasty", a series of historical novels by author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. Some of the fictional Morland family and other characters attend the ball and the events that unfold are seen and experienced through their eyes.
The ball serves as the backdrop for the first chapter of Julian Fellowes's 2016 novel "Belgravia" (adapted for television as "Belgravia" in 2020). The chapter is titled "Dancing into Battle", and portrays a potential that is avoided the next day by a battlefield fatality at Quatre Bras. Fellowes incorporates into his book real events that occurred during the ball, and inserts his fictional characters into them.
On 15 June 1965 the British Ambassador in Brussels held a ball to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo and the Duchess of Richmond's ball. 540 guests attended the function of whom the majority were Belgians. This commemoration ball has now become an annual event with the money raised going to support several charities.
Notes.
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