Diary of Mary Berry, 7 June 1784

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124

text excerpt

Between Sarzanna [sic] and Lerici crossed another river in a small inconvenient boat. It was a holiday, and on the bank by the river, under the shade of festoons of vines hanging from tree to tree, was a group of peasants dancing to the music of a violin and tambour de basque. This sounds charming, and the scene around was truly so. I went up to the dancers, hoping to see that real gaiety and allegresse in all their motions—that unaffected unspoilt beauty and grace in their persons, which one is told is only to be met with in the native dances of peasants, and in comparison with which our beauties in ball-rooms are cold and insipid ; but truth, irresistible truth, with her broad mirror, too often destroys every gay fictitious image half-formed in my imagination. If real beauty and unaffected gaiety are not to be found in a ballroom, I am sure they did not exist among these peasants: they were most of them old and very plain, and danced with such a dullness and gravity that one would have supposed they had been celebrating funeral games.

excerpt from 'Diary of Mary Berry, 7 June 1784' pp. 124 (189 words)

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