V. of Scotland, died of consumption a few days after dancing the Volta, some of the pious and bigoted people of Edinburgh said, "Her death was a celestial punishment for having gyrated in that naughty French dance." When waltzing arrived in its present form it was at first denounced as vehemently as in those old days. Even Byron, who laughed at conventionality and satirized the traditional views of his days, wrote a poem against waltzing.
To the many millions who have spent some of their most unforgettable and delightful hours dancing the dreamy Waltz, under the influence of its seductive music, this animosity toward their now accepted Queen of the Ball-room must appear ridiculous. And yet not a very few of these same passionate waltzers raise their voices in protest to-day and look horrified at the mere mention of the modern Tango.
Even the Lancers did not go unmolested by the poisonous arrows of prudes, and came in for its turn of foolish antagonism. An American writing home in those days, "hoped that the exhibition of dancing practised in depraved Europe would never soil any drawing-room in the land of the free." However, the Lancers came to be included in the program of the state balls of Buckingham
Palace and were sanctioned by Queen Victoria.
167
