3-056-396 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

After the Party - drawn by E. F. Brewtnall, 1873. '"The Last Galop," with its giddy whirl of final ecstasy among the insatiable young dancers...has ceased to shake the floor of the ball-room, or rather of the un-carpeted drawing-room, where fifty people have enjoyed themselves from ten o'clock in the evening till four o'clock in the morning. It is time for all to go home: all but the very last of them, as we now perceive, are gone; and these are yet standing upon the doorstep, ready to enter their private or hired broughams, while the polite and genial master of the house, an elderly gentleman with the halo of commercial prosperity around his respectable head, is waiting to dismiss them with a fervent benediction at the starting of the carriages, before he will shut the house door. If he may thank each detachment of the company for the pleasure which their presence has given, it is their part equally to thank him, and his wife and daughters, for the delightful entertainment...but we are disposed to think a simple, hearty "Good Night!" is all that need be said on either side...It is far more important that the young men should help to put on the young ladies their shawls and scarfs, or their opera- cloaks, for the night is cold'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.