THE WATERLOO BALL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—The paragraph on this subject reproduced in your review of Sir M. Grant Duff's " Notes from a Diary " gives additional circulation to a statement recently made in many obituary notices of the late Lady Louisa Tighe. It is now admitted, on the authority of two of the fourth Duke of Richmond's daughters who were both present, that the ball took place in their father's house at Brussels. The particular room in which the actual dancing went on, which was an annexe to the main building, has undoubtedly been demolished. But the house itself remains as part of a hospital in the Rue des Cendres. It is not visible from the street, and there is no public right-of-way giving access to it. The chaplain of the hospital told me in 1893, that he bad known people who remembered the Duke of Richmond's occupation of it. He further wrote to me that he had himself, many years before, superintended the removal of a little building, containing a private staircase and some rooms, from a spot on which (according to a plan of the house published by the late Lady de Ros in Hurray's Magazine for January, 1889) the ballroom ought to have been. There has subsequently been unearthed an extract from the diary of the late Mr. Lawrence Peel, who married another daughter of the Duke of Richmond. From this it appears that on May 19th, 1835, he and his wife visited her father's old house in Brussels, and found that the ballroom had been "converted into small rooms, a staircase, &o" The actual words of both these documents may be found in the Times of September 23rd, 1897. They form only one item out of a quantity of other and overwhelming evidence on the point, which, I am half-ashamed to say, I have from time to time amused myself by collecting.—I am. Sir, &c.,
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