A week of balls in Moscow in January 1815, as described by Sofya Volkova

The Moscow winter seasons of 1814-15 were brighter and richer than the pre-war seasons of 1810-11. This is understandable: people were exhausted by the hardships of war, by ruin, universal gloom and interminable mourning, and when the time came, they returned to life with fresh and even greater vigour.

Sofya Alexandrovna Volkova (née Rimskaya-Korsakova) describes one week of her life on 4 January 1815:

Saturday: dancing until five in the morning at the Obolenskys',
Monday: dancing until three at Golitsyn's,
Thursday: a costume ball at Ryabinina's,
Saturday: an evening at the Obolenskys',
Sunday: luncheon at Count Tolstoy's, followed at once by dancing,
Sunday evening: dancing at Golitsyn's.

"All these balls are so lively that one must whirl about to the point of exhaustion. Then one lies in bed for half the day from weariness." Unsurprisingly, by February no trace of Volkova's plumpness remained under such a regimen; people even said that her loss of weight was unhealthy. Princess Shakhovskaya also fell ill from the endless merriment, while little Countess Bobrinskaya was brought to the brink of death by a cold caught at a ball. "This year many have paid dearly for their dancing," Volkova writes to Lanskaya.

The conclusion is simple: in society life I personally have a great deal to catch up on, and urgently. To lose a little weight through dancing would indeed do no harm, but letting myself go as Shakhovskaya and Bobrinskaya did is surely not worth it.