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their carriages drew up to the townhouse and the men jumped down, the ladies alighted, climbing up the front stoop and following the rest of the women up the carpeted stairs to their hostess’s bedroom. Adding their coats and capes to the pile on the bed, they removed their heavy boots, slipped on their dainty shoes, and turned their attention to the mirror. All around Hetty, small cliques of women who had grown up, gone to school, or summered together laughed and whispered knowingly as they smoothed their hair and pinched their cheeks to make them pink. A glance at Hetty showed them a tall young woman with blue eyes and peach complexion, dressed in a smart new gown. Handsome, yes. But an outsider, decidedly. Even the most attractive young woman might lose her confidence in their midst.
    They smiled at their men, who waited outside the door and escorted them down. In the drawing room, exchanging pleasantries, everyone seemed to know everyone, except for the young girl from out of town. If dancing followed the supper, the ladies were asked for a waltz or a polka, but only the best were invited to do the quadrille.It could be a long evening for a young woman from New Bedford, but the sparkling Hetty was often asked to dance.
    Hostesses sent an endless stream of invitations for dances, costume parties, and masked balls, but without a doubt, the event of the year was given by Mrs. William Schermerhorn. The current rage was for fancy dress balls where costumes ranged from nuns and devils to Ivanhoes and harlequins. The craze was declared “insane and incoherent” by George Templeton Strong, the Wall Street lawyer on everyone’s invitation list.
    Mrs. Schermerhorn announced something different: a themed costume ball in the style of Louis XV. Important households fluttered with excitement as the women studied paintings of French palace life, men wondered what to do about their whiskers in the clean-shaven court, and everyone ordered their seamstresses in Paris to stitch up clothes like those worn in the mid-eighteenth century.
    The night of the ball, a long line of hansom carriages with liveried coachmen drew up in front of the Schermerhorn mansion on Great Jones Street. Servants dressed in court costumes and white wigs welcomed the six hundred guests, the cream of the city’s fashionable set. Astors, Aspinwalls, Brevoorts, Rhinelanders, and Knickerbockers gushed when they saw the dark, heavy interior transformed into a light and fanciful Versailles. The walls shimmered in their coats of wedding-cake white with gold trim, the crystal chandeliers glittered over graceful rococo furnishings, vases and baskets burst with elaborate flower arrangements, and gilded mirrors reflected the spectacularly costumed guests.
    Merchants, lawyers, and real estate tycoons ordinarily seen in tall hats, high pointed shirt collars, shapeless black waistcoats, and black broadcloth frock coats—“a fearful sight,” according to Walt Whitman—became Louis XV or his courtiers for the night. Their heads covered in powdered wigs nipped at the nape with velvet bows, they waltzed in with long panniered coats and frilly shirts, lace cravats and lace cuffs spilling out from under their embroidered coat sleeves. On their limbs they showed off silk stockings and satin breeches; on their hips some carried sheathed swords.
    The rich businessmen’s wives and daughters, transformed into aristocrats, dazzled with their diamonds and colored jewels. Hairdressershad worked for hours arranging their huge wigs, curled and powdered to perfection, and on their faces they had carefully painted beauty marks. Fluttering their fans, bending this way and that to show off their swelling breasts, they pirouetted in their broad panniers and ruffled satin gowns, each a perfect Madame Pompadour.
    To make the occasion more memorable, the costumed musicians played the German cotillion, and guests arranged in small circles followed the intricate calls as they paired, flirted,