IV. JOANNA’S CARE 559

however fast the clergyman may gabble, or the choir-boys yowl, their psalms, an earnest reader can always think his prayer, to the end of the verse; but no mortal footing can give either the right accent, or the due pause, in any beautiful step, at the pace of modern waltz or polka music. Nay, even the last quadrille I ever saw well danced, (and would have given half my wits to have joined hands in,) by Jessie and Vicky Vokes, with Fred and Rosina,¹ was in truth not a quadrille, or four-square dance, but a beautifully flying romp. But Joanie could always dance everything rightly,* having not only the brightest light and warmth of heart, but a faultless foot; faultless in freedom-never narrowed, or lifted into point or arch by its boot or heel, but level, and at ease; small, almost to a fault, and in its swiftest steps rising and falling with the gentleness which only Byron has found words for-

“Naked foot,

That shines like snow-and falls on earth as mute.”²

* Of right dancing, in its use on the stage, see the repeated notices in Time and Tide. Here is the most careful one:-“She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an infant prodigy; there was no evidence, in the finish or strength of her motion, that she had been put to continual torture through half her eight or nine years. She did nothing more than any child, well taught, but painlessly, might do. She caricatured no older person,-attempted no curious or fantastic skill. She was dressed decently,-she moved decently,-she looked and behaved innocently,-and she danced her joyful dance with perfect grace, spirit, sweetness, and self-forgetfulness. And through all the vast theatre, full of English fathers and mothers and children, there was not one hand lifted to give her sign of praise but mine.

“Presently after this came on the forty thieves, who, as I told you, were girls; and there being no thieving to be presently done, and time hanging heavy on their hands, arms, and legs, the forty thief-girls proceeded to light forty cigars. Whereupon the British public gave them a round of applause.

“Whereupon I fell a-thinking; and saw little more of the piece, except as an ugly and disturbing dream.”³

¹ [For this family of dancers and comedians, see the Dictionary of National Biography.]

² [The Corsair, ii. 12.]

³ [Time and Tide, § 24 (Vol. XVII. p. 338). For other notices of dancing, see ibid., pp. 352, 357-358; and compare what Ruskin says of Taglioni (above, p. 176).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]