Capering & Kickery

Polish Dance, 1832

This blandly named "Polish Dance" was published by expatriate English dancing master William George Wells in The danciad, or companion to the modern ball room in Montreal in 1832.  I have my doubts about whether there is anything authentically Polish about it, but the dance itself is...interesting.  Let me start with a transcription.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

POLISH DANCE

    To be danced by an unlimited number of couples, and placed exactly in the same situation as for the Original Gallopade.

WALTZ TIME.

    Fig.— Promenade = = Poussette = = sett and turn partners = ladies’ hands across and back. joining hands to partners’, forming a cross = = all promenade in a cross and turn partners to places = = all the couples now fall into Quadrille parties of four, and perform La Pantalon, still in Waltz time = sauteuse = =.
    [This may be repeated at the pleasure of the party.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've previously discussed both Wells' "Original" Gallopade and the possibly-more-original Original Gallopade published by J. S. Pollock.  It's clear that the Polish Dance is performed in a circle of couples.  The reference is also a reminder that Wells was not necessarily the originator of many (any?) of the dances in his book; see here for another example. 

So, the Polish Dance should be done in a circle of couples, specifically, in an even number of couples, since in the second part of the dance, they form half-quadrille sets, couple-facing-couple, to perform the Pantalon figure of the French quadrille.  There are some minor reconstruction problems with the dance, but before going on to those, let's take a look at the basic structure of the dance:

• the couples move around the room, promenading and doing figures as a group
• they do a quadrille figure in pairs
• they end with sauteuse waltz

Does this remind you of anything? 

Chivers' La Grande Polonaise, 1821 (1818?)

La Grande Polonaise was published as an individual work by G. M. S. Chivers, probably early in 1821.  The first trace of its publication I have found is toward the end of an ad from London's Morning Post on Thursday, March 1st, 1821, for an Assembly to be held the following Monday.  The ad is shown at left; click to enlarge.  [see update note below for more information about the dating of this dance] 

La Grande Polonaise is not on the list of dances definitely planned for the assembly, but the author -- presumably Chivers himself -- noted that "several new Species of Dancing" would also be introduced, so it is possible it was danced at that event.  Its price of two shillings is the same at which it would later be advertised in the back of Chivers' third major book, The Dancing Master in Miniature (1825). 

I am not aware of any surviving copy of the original publication, alas, but the figures for La Grande Polonaise were also printed in Chivers' second book, The Modern Dancing Master (1822).  Chivers' description of the dance from that book:

La GRANDE POLONAISE, is generally thought to have originated in Poland, and it is a favorite Dance of the Polish Nobility.

The dance commences with a Tune in March Time, and terminates with a Sauteuse, and will require at least ten or twelve couple to perform it.

Any number of persons can join in the Dance; observing that there is an even number of couples; and no person should join after the Dance has commenced.

The figure given, is the same as was performed when the Allied Sovereigns were at Aix-la-Chappel.

I am extremely skeptical of Chivers' claim that this was danced at the Congress of Aix-la-Chappelle in 1818.  While the average London dancer might not have been familiar with the polonaise, a musical form and dance in 3/4 time, the Continental attendees probably would have been, and are unlikely to have danced a "polonaise" to march (4/4) music.  I expect they danced a polonaise (probably more than one, as the Congress lasted for two months), but I very much doubt it was this "polonaise".

Given Chivers' track record of choreographic creativity and blithe unconcern for accuracy in labeling dances, however, I do find it perfectly plausible that he created this dance himself and, out of ignorance or deliberate choice, used a march tune and an ordinary marching (walking) step rather than a polonaise step.  I thus consider La Grande Polonaise to be a purely English invention, not a Polish or even French dance, and not representative of early nineteenth century polonaise in general.  Nor, as a niche dance by a specific dancing master, would I expect it to have been widely danced outside London or even outside Chivers' own events.  But for a specifically English ball of the early 1820s, it's reasonable and unusual enough to make a pleasant change of pace.

Chivers' Troidrilles (2 of 2)

Continuing on with figures two and three of Chivers' Troidrilles...

Figure Two (Tune: Eté) 8b + 24bx4
8b    Introduction (not repeated)
2b    First head trio forward (en avant) and stop
2b    Opposite trio forward (en avant) and stop
4b    All retire to places, turning round to the right twice
8b    Four head ladies right hands across (moulinet) and left hands back
8b    Set (pas de basque) in trios (4b) and hands three round (4b)
Repeat three more times, other couples leading in turn

This is another straightforward reconstruction.  The figure is done four times as in standard quadrille practice: twice by the head couples (first couple leading, then opposite couple leading) then twice by the side couples, led first by the couple to the right of the first head couple.  

Steps
For the en avant, normally an opportunity for fancier steps, I would use a single chassé, jeté-assemblé because with three dancers holding hands, it's once again too awkward to have everyone dancing different steps.  For the retire to places, three chassé, jeté-assemblé.  The same each way for the moulinet and the final hands three round in trios.

Chivers' Troidrilles (1 of 2)

I adore dances that are for trios rather than couples.  There are so many interesting things one can do when there are three dancers in the mix rather than just two!  And, of course, it helps the address the problem that historical dance tends to be imbalanced in gender, with many more women than men interested, but many of them desiring to dance in historical gender roles...though those were not always as rigid as people believe.  Figures for one gentleman and two ladies go some way toward addressing this at balls.

I've written previously about G. M. S. Chivers' "Swedish" dances, trio country dances that were not actually Swedish, and the Scottish Sixdrilles, a reworking of the French quadrille to be danced by four trios rather than four couples.  The Troidrilles are more in the spirit of the latter (though the name is more harmonious): a miniature "quadrille" of only three figures for four trios published in Chivers' The Dancing Master in Miniature (London, 1825).  The figures are original, though very Chivers in style.

The Troidrilles were published as set to tunes -- presumably the English ones -- for the French quadrille: Pantalon, Eté, and Finale.  I believe that implies that there was no specific sheet music published for them.  Any quadrille set with a Finale figure of the same length (not always the case!) should work.  I generally teach and dance them using the recording of Paine's 12th Set of Quadrilles found on the album Music for Quadrilles by Kevin Smith and Green Ginger, with the Finale figure edited to remove the coda.

The formation, as noted, is a square of twelve dancers, each trio consisting of one gentleman between two ladies.  The head trios are the trio with their back to the music and the trio facing them.  The side trios are, obviously, the other two trios.  The figures were originally printed entirely in English; I've added French translations here and there for those who learned the figures in that language.  General familiarity with quadrille figures and steps is assumed; I will not explain either in detail.

I'll go through the figures one by one with notes on reconstruction or performance as required.

Another "Original" Gallopade

Whatever the Original Gallopade published by dancing master W. G. Wells ("late of London") in The danciad, or companion to the modern ball room (Montreal, 1832) may be, it's certainly not the "original", in the sense of being the first version, since it's clearly a variation of the Original Gallopade published in Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition) by J. S. Pollock (London, c1830).

The introductory material is also blatantly plagiarized from either Pollock or some common source, so it can hardly be called "original" in the creative sense either, and it is unlikely to be exactly what was originally introduced in 1829 and referenced in the introduction to the dance, which I will append in full at the bottom of this post.  I think that introduction is more about gallopade-as-a-dance-in-general rather than this specific gallopade.  But in any case, it's virtually identical to the introduction in Pollock, and they can't both be the original.

The one element actually original to Wells was a diagram showing the circle of couples (represented by X for gentlemen and O for ladies).  But all in all, I would say that "The Original Gallopade" should be considered a proper name rather than a description. 

That said, the dance figures themselves are an interesting variation on the Pollock dance, and I have such a small collection of figured gallopades for circles of couples that any addition is of interest.  

The Nahant Quadrilles (4 of 4)

The final post in my series on The Nahant Quadrilles: figure five and some thoughts on the quadrille as a whole!

The original wording:

1^st two cross over give right hand.  And back give left hand.  Form a line.  Balancez.  Half Promenade.  Forward 4.  Half right & left to places

This one should look familiar to anyone who has danced the French quadrille: it's a slightly shortened version of the third figure, La Poule.  This makes it quite easy to reconstruct, but it does present a problem with the music.  The shortened figure is twenty-four bars, while the music has four strains with no indications of any repeat structure.  Conveniently, however, the fourth strain is a transposed and elaborated version of the A strain, so for a twenty-four bar figure one could play A + BCA'x4 or perhaps save the A' strain for the last time through and play A + BCAx3 + BCA'.  The Spare Parts recording ignores the A' strain and just plays A + BCAx4, which works fine for dancing my reconstruction.

This figure really needs no further commentary; it's La Poule minus eight bars done by the lead pair alone, and the reconstruction is completely straightforward:

The Nahant Quadrilles (3 of 4)

And now we come to figure four, the biggest mess in the entire quadrille!  Problems with the figures, problems with the music, problems correlating the two...I believe in my conclusions, but I can't deny that there's a lot of guesswork involved in any reconstruction of this figure.

First, the music.  Take a look at Figure 4's tune, "Georgette", here.  There are three eight bar strains marked with a Da Capo al segno, to which my first response was, what segno?  There is no segno!  There's a Fine, oddly located at the end of the B strain, so presumably it was meant to be Da Capo al Fine.  But quadrille music usually ends on the A strain, and while the length of the figure is the next problem to consider, it's difficult to come up with a reasonable repeat structure that has AB at the end.  In thirty-two bars, A + BCAB repeated, perhaps, but in twenty-four bars, it's just impossible. 

The solution Spare Parts used on the recording was to simply decide the Fine was wrongly placed and should be at the end of the A strain.  Matching Patri's thirty-two bar reconstruction, they played it A + BBCAx4.  While it's hazardous to go purely by instinct, I believe that the A strain feels like it ought to be the ending strain.  You can listen for yourself here, where the audio clip plays A + BBCA BBCA B(fading out).  So I agree with the choice to end on the A strain. 

I am much less certain about the figure length and the four repeats, however.

The Nahant Quadrilles (2 of 4)

Onward we go, with figures two and three of The Nahant Quadrilles!

For figure two, the music (available here) has two strains with a Da Capo, which works without any tweaking.  The Spare Parts recording matches my reconstruction.

The original language for the figures:

Four ladies grand chain.  Forward & back 1^st two.  Back to back.  Repeat 4 times. 

This is a very short figure, only sixteen bars.  The second half is very straightforward: the first pair (first lady and opposite gentleman) go forward and back then perform a dos-à-dos.  As in the first figure, each time through this is a different pair.  

The first half, however, presents an interesting choice.

The Nahant Quadrilles (1 of 4)

At left is the cover of The Nahant Quadrilles, published in Philadelphia in 1836 but named after the resort town of Nahant, located on a peninsula near Boston and seen in the background of the cover image.  For many years, Nahant has been the home of a summer 1860s ball hosted by Nahant resident and Vintage Victorian proprietor Katy Bishop and her late husband Ben.  The Nahant Quadrilles were first worked on for these balls by the Bishops and my own late mentor, Patri Pugliese, in a style befitting the 1860s milieu in which they were used.  Patri was a stickler in his approach to dance reconstruction and dubbed his version a "choreography" because of the degree of adaptation.

I've long had my own reconstruction of this set tucked away, and since the Nahant ball (lately expanded to a full weekend) is canceled due to Covid, this seems an opportune moment to publish it and compare the different approaches.

The original sheet music by John H[ill] Hewitt for The Nahant Quadrilles, with the dance calls, may be found online at the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection of Johns Hopkins University.  The five tunes were named after women, with the first, "Rebecca", presumably for the cover dedicatee, Miss Rebecca Willson.  It has been recorded by the dance band Spare Parts in a version matching Patri's choreography on their album Dancing by the Shore, which may be purchased here.  That is a bit problematic for my reconstruction, which I will discuss as I work through the figures. 

Chivers' Second Set of Caledonians (1 of 2)

In the mid-1820s, London dancing master G. M. S. Chivers published two additional sets of "Caledonians" figures, over and above his first set of Caledonians, which became the standard nineteenth-century version.  The second set has some appealing variations in the figures: alternating half-figures for head and side couples; solos for both gentlemen and ladies in separate figures; a "meanwhile" figure to occupy the less-active couples; and a demi-grande-chaîne figure broken into quarters by extra full turns.  There's nothing too exotic, but it's a fun little set, fairly straightforward to reconstruct and easy to dance for anyone with general experience with Regency-era quadrille steps and figures.  I'll include the first couple of figures below and follow up with the remainder in a second post.

A note about music: my only source for Chivers' Second Set of Caledonians is his Dancing Master in Miniature (c1825), which gave figures only, no music.  I have not, so far, found the specifically published sheet music for them.  Given the degree to which sets of quadrille figures were recycled for different sets of tunes during the nineteenth century, I would not feel at all uncomfortable about dancing them to more-or-less random sets of Scottish music, either from another published set of Scottish-themed quadrilles or assembled from period Scottish tunes.  The length and repeat structure of the figures matches the standard "first set" of quadrilles.

On to the figures!

"The Fancy Ball", 1837: the tableaux vivants

So turns my memory to that brilliant sight
When wit and beauty held their festal night;
When the thronged hall its glittering groups displayed
Of Nature’s loveliness, by art arrayed;
Of graceful forms that mocked the sculptor’s art,
And eyes whose glances reached the coldest heart,
Of all that beauty loves or taste admires,
Of all that valor warms or genius fires.

While ideas for tableaux vivants, the "living pictures" that often opened a ball in the nineteenth century (or interrupted it, as at this ball in Heidelberg in the 1840s) are easy to come by, it's rare to find a detailed description of a whole series of them at a ball.  The poem "The Fancy Ball", from which the above lines are excerpted, devotes over half its length to poetic descriptions of the tableaux vivants performed at a ball held in Savannah, Georgia, in 1837, three of which are easily identifiable scenes from the works of Lord Byron or Sir Walter Scott.  I haven't been able to identify the other scenes, but hope to figure them out eventually.

The poem was written by Henry Bowen Anthony, a Rhode Island politician who spent some time working in Savannah as a young man.  During that time, he attended a fancy dress ball held in mid-March of 1837 by Godfrey and Julia Barnsley at Scarborough House, Julia's family home, now in the possession of her and her husband.  The ball was an extravagant one, and is quite well-documented.  It certainly made an impression on Anthony!

After returning from Savannah, Anthony became a newspaper editor and eventually entered politics, serving as a U. S. Senator from Rhode Island for twenty-five years and dying in office.

"The Fancy Ball" was written when Anthony was only twenty-two and was privately published at the time.  It was reprinted, unrevised, in an edition of only one hundred copies in 1875.

Mr. Palmer comes of age, Yarmouth, 1831

Moving a bit forward in time, the coming of age ball of Mr. Samuel Palmer, junior, on Tuesday, March 1st, 1831, was accorded detailed coverage the following Saturday, March 5th, in The Norfolk Chronicle and Norwich Gazette.  The family seems to have been a prominent one, since they convinced then-Mayor Edmund Preston to lend them a hall and the whole town to deck itself out in celebration of their son's birthday.  And, of course, they were wealthy enough to throw a ball for several hundred guests.  Piecing together public records, I am reasonably certain that the birthday boy's full name was Samuel Thurtell Palmer (c1810-1850), whose parents were probably Samuel and Susanna (Thurtell?) Palmer.

Most of the article was, as usual, devoted to lengthy lists of guests and their costumes, but there were some interesting tidbits here and there.  The transcriptions below include all of the article with the exception of the lists that just named the attendees and their outfits.

York Fancy Dress Ball, 1824

There were fewer detailed descriptions of masquerades and fancy dress balls published in the first few decades of the nineteenth century than there were during Victoria's long reign, when such balls became enormously popular.  But the fancy dress ball held in the York (England) Assembly Rooms on Tuesday, March 23rd, 1824, was given a substantial writeup the following Saturday, March 27th, in The Yorkshire Gazette.  Most of the coverage was reprinted exactly on Thursday, April 1st, in The Leeds Intelligencer and Yorkshire General Advertiser.  All excerpts below were transcribed from the article in The Yorkshire Gazette.

As, apparently, the first public fancy dress ball ever held in York, the preliminaries and the efforts of the ball's nervous organizing committee were described in unusual detail, along with much back-patting about the success of the event. 

This novel and anxiously expected entertainment, was held on Tuesday evening in our magnificent Assembly Rooms and was attended by upwards of five hundred persons.  It being the first public Fancy Ball that had ever taken place in this county, the Committee felt no little anxiety respecting the ultimate success of their undertaking, and exerted themselves to the utmost, in making all the fit and proper arrangements for the fairy scenes of the evening — the expectation that had been held out, did not fall short of the reality, and we are most happy to have it in our power to state, that, on no former occasion, as a more splendid, brilliant, and amusing assemblage been collected; there was a freshness and gaiety of appearance which delighted all, and the grotesqueness of the scene was irresistible.

"Diamond" Reel of Six

This is an interesting little reel for two gentlemen and four ladies which I would consider reasonable for anywhere from the late 1820s to, at least in Scotland, the 1870s or even later.  I'm hesitant to date it too specifically since neither of the sources I have are precisely dated, and while one is at best late 1820s and the other well into the mid-nineteenth century, this reel is perfectly compatible with Regency style.  Unless I were in a particularly strict-constructionist mood, I wouldn't blink an eye to see it performed at a Regency event.

I have only two sources for this Reel of Six: Lowe's Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide, third edition (Edinburgh, c1830) and The Excelsior Manual of Dancing, by J. F. Wallace (Glasgow, c1875).  The dating on The Excelsior Manual is especially fuzzy.  The dances could be from as early as c1860, but the illustrations of the ladies dresses suggest the early 1870s to me.  In Traditional Dancing in Scotland, J. P. and T. M. Flett list it as c1872.  A later edition of The Excelsior Manual (datable from its contents to no earlier than the mid-1890s and listed by the Fletts as c1900) does not include this Reel of Six.  Nor have I found it in any other Scottish dance manuals of the nineteenth century, though my collection of those is thin enough that I wouldn't take that as a definitive statement about it having never appeared elsewhere.

Unlike most reels for six dancers, this reel is in "diamond" formation, like a Reel of Five.  The four ladies are at the four points of an imaginary diamond with the two gentlemen back to back in the center, and the reels are reels for four dancers rather than for three.  

In complexity, this Reel of Six falls somewhere between the simpler Reels of Five and the very elaborate one created by Regency London dancing master Thomas Wilson, which I described here.  There is no added circling or passing under arms, but it does include the fast cross by the outside dancers between the heying (reeling) dancers.  This is actually easier to pace with six dancers rather than five.  Other than that little detail, it consists of a standard alternation of heying (reeling) and setting, tweaked to accommodate the two extra ladies.  But unlike Wilson's choreographed reels, the sources for this one are impeccably Scottish.

Dancing to "Mr. Chivers' Whim"

I recently had a request in email for anything I had on the Regency-era dance tune "Mr. Chivers' Whim" from a questioner who had some mismatched figures (twenty-four bars) and music (thirty-two bars) but no original sources.  A little back-and-forth established that he wanted the most historical answer, which is presumably why the question came to me and not whoever popularized what they're doing under that name in eastern Europe.  This isn't the first time I've had this topic come up in conversation!

So, what's going on with "Mr. Chivers' Whim"?  Well, at some point in the last decade or two, the name became firmly attached to a twenty-four bar "Swedish dance", meaning a trio country dance.  People in Russia are mostly dancing it to the tune "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz", which is of course a different tune, and a waltz, not a reel.  Switching tunes is not inappropriate to do in a historical context, but it's incorrect to call it "Mr. Chivers' Whim" when they're dancing to "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz".  The name goes with the tune, not the figures.

To compound the problem, they're often using the Spare Parts recording of "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz" from the CD The Regency Ballroom, on which it is played with a forty-eight bar repeat structure, which means that the figures cross the music oddly; it's alternately danced to AAB and BC strains (the C strain is sixteen bars long).  That is actually wrong, from a historical perspective.  Take a look at this video and you can see/hear the problem clearly, though I am not singling out that group in particular; there are several similar videos from different groups in different cities.  That one just happened to come up first in my search results. 

I'm not sure where the thirty-two bar music comes in, but there's certainly a problem here.

A Fancy Dress Ball, Roxbury, 1827

It's October, and time once again to devote some attention to masquerade and fancy dress balls and other excuses to wear unusual costumes in historical ballrooms!

On January 3, 1828, The New York Mirror: A Weekly Gazette of Literature and the Fine Arts, published a description of what was supposedly the first fancy-dress ball ever held in New England, held at Norfolk House in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on "Wednesday last".  

Roxbury is now part of the city of Boston, but at the time it was a separate town.  According to the Roxbury Wikia entry on Norfolk House, it was originally built in 1781 as a private residence.  It was then sold to the Norfolk House Company in 1825 and opened as a public house in 1827 with the addition of a hall for public assemblies, which may be seen at back left in this image of Norfolk House (click to enlarge) from Roxbury, by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco (Arcadia Press, 1997), p. 17.   The original building was demolished in 1853 and replaced by a new Norfolk House, which still stands today.

The Mirror article describing the ball was reprinted from the Boston Evening Gazette, to which I don't have immediate access, so it's not clear on what date the ball was actually held.  Given the timing of Norfolk House's opening to the public, it cannot have been before 1827.  Since there is no reason to suppose the Mirror article was delayed for long, my best guess would be Wednesday, December 26th.  A fancy dress ball makes sense as part of seasonal celebrations. 

A Different Reel of Five

This alternate reel of five comes from  Lowe's Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide, third edition (Edinburgh, c1830), where it is the only reel of five given.  The formation is the same as that of the "common" reel for five described by Thomas Wilson during the Regency era and by me in my previous post.  Lowe's original description reads:

Reel of Five.
(Places -- one Lady at the top of the room, one at the bottom, one at each side, and the Gentleman in the middle.)  The Gentleman, with two of the Ladies, makes a reel of three, while the other two Ladies circle round them; all set, during which the Gentleman turns to each Lady alternately; he then forms the reel of three with the other two Ladies.

Although the source for this reel is about a decade post-Regency, the reel itself is in keeping with Regency style and would not be obtrusively out of place in a Regency ballroom.  And, unlike London-based Thomas Wilson's provenance-free "common reel of five", this one appeared in a Scottish dance manual and thus can be more confidently documented as actually Scottish for those concerned about authenticity of place as well as time.

Wilson's diagram for the common reel of five is so useful that I'm reproducing it at left and will use the same letters to describe the dancers in this reel.  Like Wilson's New Reel of Five and unlike his so-called common Reel of Five, this is a reel for four ladies and one gentleman.  As with those other reels, the genders of the dancers don't make any difference in the actual dancing.

Lowe's original description offers no progression, just a brief twenty-four bar sequence of hey, set, and hey again.  The most obvious interpretation of this would be that it is just as simple as classic reels of three and reels of four: alternate heying and setting indefinitely, the center dancer just shifting his or her starting direction each time.  

Waltzing Around

A recent mailing list discussion centered on how to quickly teach people to do a "waltz-around", the style of country dance progression in which two couples waltz around each other once and a half times.  This is most famously part of the mid- to late-nineteenth-century Spanish Dance, as well as other American waltz contra dances (such as the German Waltz and Bohemian Waltz).  It dates back at least as far as the late 1810s to early 1820s in England, when Spanish dances were an entire genre of country dances in waltz time, and both they and ordinary waltz country dances featured this figure, sometimes under the names "poussette" or "waltze".  I expect it goes even further back on the European continent, but I haven't yet pursued that line of research.

As a dancer, the waltz-around has always been one of those figures that I just...do.  I'd observed that it's difficult for beginners to master the tight curvature of the circle and making one and a half circles in only eight measures, but as an experienced waltzer, I've long been able to do it instinctively.  And I'd never broken down precisely what I did or worked out how to explain it to others.  

So I suppose it's about time!

A miscellany of mescolanzes

I don't often get asked to write about particular topics on Kickery, but I recently received, via the comments here, a request from a teacher at Mrs. Bennet's Ballroom, a historical dance group in London, UK, for a few of my favorite figures for mescolanzes, the four-facing-four country dance format I surveyed earlier this year.  Since the focus of the group seems to be the Regency era, I'll stick with figures from manuals by London dancing master G. M. S. Chivers, which are from the very tail end of the official Regency period (1811-1820) and a few years after.

As I discussed in my earlier survey, Chivers seems to have really liked the mescolanze format, and a few other dancing masters and authors picked it up, but other than the special case of La Tempête, I can't really say with confidence that mescolanzes were a popular or even common dance form in nineteenth-century England.  But the format appears across enough different sources that I'm comfortable with using it sparingly to add variety for the late Regency and immediate post-Regency era.  I don't ever do more than one mescolanze at a ball, however.

Mescolanze figures are derived from country dances and quadrilles, with some figures from the latter descending from much older French contredanse (cotillon) figures.  A characteristic figure, of course, is the famous chassé-by-couples featured prominently in La Tempête.  Since the group already has that dance in its repertoire, I'll not include any others with the same figure.

A cautionary tale, 1837

The short story "Lyddy!", by Thomas Egerton Wilks, was published in a London journal, The Young Lady's Magazine, in 1837, its first year of publication, the works from which were collected in a single volume published in 1838.  

Though its title is similar to that of other ladies' magazines of the era, The Young Lady's Magazine actually had much loftier ambitions:

...to concentrate every energy in the production, not only of such matter as may amuse the fancy, but at the same time tend to expand the mind, elevate the morals, refine the intellect, and awaken, -- not the morbid sensibilities, too often produced by ill-selected fictions -- but those pure, unhacknied feelings of the youthful heart, which are in themselves a mine of inexhaustible treasures, and which, by their development, shed a halo of enchantment around.
      --- Preface, p. iii

Referring to fashion as "that universal enslaver" which it believe should be "far removed from those pages where the young and guileless are taught to seek for intellectual improvement", the editors declared that even their "light productions" (entertaining fiction)

...may sparkle and be redolent of mirth, but their wit shall never inflict a wound, and their humour shall never be tainted with aught offensive to the chastest delicacy.
        --- Address, p. 2

I don't generally spend a lot of time reading uplifting moral tracts, but I tripped over "Lyddy!" in one of my regular searches for nineteenth-century women's fiction with ballroom scenes.

Journal of a Residence in America, 1835

Finding the mention of dancing a Kentucky Reel in the actress Fanny Kemble's first memoir, Journal of a residence in America (Paris, 1835), inspired me to do a careful reading of the entire book to look for other dance references.  

American dance manuals for the 1820s and 1830s are relatively scarce, and sources like diaries and letters are in any case superior since they describe what was actually done, rather than what dancing masters wanted done.  Kemble's memoir, based on the daily journal she kept during her travels, adds an extra dimension.  As an Englishwoman raised in France, she can comment not only on what she danced in America during her visit but also on how it differed from practices on the other side of the Atlantic.  The Journal covers 1832-1833, and it was published only a few years later, so it is less subject to the vagaries of long-term memory than some of her later memoirs.

Although the Journal is more than three hundred pages in print, reading it turned out to be no chore.  Kemble was an excellent writer, despite using all the typical verbal curlicues of the nineteenth century, and her observations on American society and her experiences as a traveling actress are often keenly interesting.  Her blow-by-blow description of a disastrous death scene in a performance of Romeo and Juliet is one of the funniest theatrical anecdotes I've ever read, and her comments on American politics are still relevant today.  Her observations about the divisions in the nation and the likelihood of war between the north and south were surprisingly prescient.  I highly recommend the Journal as entertaining reading for anyone interested in theatrical history or in American society in the early 1830s.  The entire Journal in one volume is online at the Internet Archive.

Here, however, I am going to concentrate on Kemble's references to dance.

The Sixdrilles (3 of 3)

Wrapping up my mini-series on the Sixdrilles, here are the final two figures and some overall thoughts.  The earlier figures can be found in my first and second posts in the series.

The Sixdrilles (2 of 3)

Moving right along from my first post in the Sixdrilles series, here are the reconstructions of the next two figures:

Figure Two: L’Été (8b introduction + 24bx4)
4b    First gentleman and two opposite ladies en avant and en arrière.
4b    Same three chassez-dechassez (à droite et à gauche)
4b    Same three traversez, gentleman crossing between the two ladies
4b    Same three chassez-dechassez
4b    Same three traversez/balancez [see note below] while partners balancez
4b    Same three rond de trois

The figure is then repeated by the second gentleman and the two opposite ladies, the third gentlemen and two opposite ladies, and the fourth gentleman and two opposite ladies.

The Sixdrilles (1 of 3)

The Sixdrilles are a clever reworking of the figures French Quadrille (or First Set) for a group of twelve dancers in the form of a square of trios, each consisting of a gentleman and two ladies.  I have two Scottish sources for them, which match fairly closely:

The Ball-Room, by Monsieur J. P. Boulogne (Glasgow, 1827).

Lowe's Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide...Third Edition, by the Messrs. Lowe (Edinburgh, c1830)

Monsieur Boulogne is billed as French, but I know no more about him.  The Messrs. Lowe were a group of four brothers, all dance teachers, one of whom eventually became famous as dancing master at Balmoral for the family of Queen Victoria.  Their book is difficult to date, especially since it is a third edition.  A reference to the Sixdrilles being created around the time of the coronation of Charles X puts it at 1824 or later, and a late reference to the opera Guillaume Tell (Paris, 1829) at the very end of the book suggests 1830 onward.  The last half-dozen pages look like a later attachment, however, and may have been added for the second or third edition.  The Sixdrilles appear much earlier and are integrated into the overall work.

Whatever their precise date, Boulogne ensures that these particular trio-quadrilles are at least documentable to late-1820s Scotland.  Let me note, however, that the idea of a quadrille of trios is not unique to Scottish sources.  Either a lot of people had the same inspiration or there was significant borrowing of ideas (if not precise figures) going on.

In Germany, quadrilles for twelve (called Douzes) in four-trio (as opposed to six-couple) formations were published in the 1811 and 1813 editions of Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker's Taschenbuch zum geselligen Vergnügen and, closer in time to the Sixdrilles, in Christian Langer's 1824 and 1838 editions of Terpsichore.  In London, G. M. S. Chivers included a set of "Troisdrilles" in his mid-1820s The Dancing Master in Miniature, and in far-off Quebec, W. G. Wells included "Tredrilles" in his 1832 Danciad.  Wells copied most of his book from English sources, so I suspect his Tredrilles are likewise borrowed.  

Given Boulogne's nationality and the Lowes' tendency to borrow liberally from continental sources, it would not particularly surprise me if the Sixdrilles have a French or German source.  None of the other trio-quadrilles are precisely the same as the Sixdrilles, however.  The Becker Douzes have some interesting figures, but the Tredrilles and Troisdrilles are banal.

The Sixdrilles are excellent, however: intelligent variations on the basic figures that are easy to learn for dancers who know the First Set, as any good dancer of the 1820s would, and a convenient solution to the problem of having more ladies than gentlemen at a ball.  

Sadly, it is near-impossible to definitively answer the critical question of whether they were ever actually danced.  There's a dearth of written ball programs for the British Isles in this era, and the Sixdrilles need not even have been listed on such.  They were musically compatible with the First Set, so most of the room could be dancing a normal quadrille while a few individual sets danced in trio formation.  But since the imbalance of genders continues to be a problem today, I find it useful to have a solution documentable to dance manuals, if not to the dance floor.

The Ladies' Ball, 1835

2016 being a leap year, some folks have been chatting about leap year balls or leap day dances, including the idea of such balls being a traditional occasion for ladies to ask gentlemen to dance, rather than the standard vice-versa.  I'm not sure how far back that tradition actually goes, but it reminded me of an amusing story published in Atkinson's Saturday Evening Post & Bulletin in 1835, entitled "The Ladies' Ball".

Atkinson's Saturday Evening Post & Bulletin was a Philadelphia newspaper published under various names from 1800; Samuel Atkinson was the publisher from 1831-1839.  Along with domestic and foreign news, Atkinson also included essays, fiction, poetry, household hints, etc.  Its descendant survives to this day as the bimonthly Saturday Evening Post, famous in the mid-twentieth century for its Norman Rockwell covers.

"The Ladies' Ball" tells the story of a social crisis: the gentleman of a certain nameless city, distracted by the study of mnemonics and other sciences, had forgotten to organize the traditional Christmas ball.

Chassé-Croisé with Scottish steps

I reconstructed Regency dancing master Thomas Wilson's Royal Scotch Quadrilles ten or so years ago and have taught them off and on ever since, eventually with music custom-recorded for me by the dance band Spare Parts.  But though I put the basic calls for the figures online years ago, I've never done a detailed write-up of my reconstruction.  One reason for that is that while I have long-since solidified my reconstruction of the figures, I've never been satisfied with the step-sequences I've used for one of the last figures of the dance, the chassé-croisé.

Chassé-croisé is a very common figure in Regency quadrilles: partners both face the center of the set, slide sideways to the corners (the gentleman passing behind the lady), balance, slide back, and balance again.  Each part takes two bars for a total of eight.  There are also four-bar versions that skip the balancing.  A couple of years ago I wrote a series of three posts covering different ways to perform the sequence with the French steps which are normally used in quadrilles, the first of which breaks down the figure in detail for those unfamiliar with it.

The problem for me has been that Wilson specifically said about The Royal Scotch Quadrilles that they were "adapted to Scotch steps", and my interpretation of that comment is that the figures should be performed using the best information we have on native Scottish dance steps of that era, the set of steps described by Francis Peacock in 1805, even if the Scots themselves were happily dancing French quadrilles with French steps by the early 1820s.  And that presents a problem with this particular figure.  

Unlike the French step repertoire, Peacock's does not include any equivalent of the jeté-assemblé combination that often concludes French step-sequences and has the handy effect of "resetting" the feet, leaving the weight balanced evenly so that either foot can be freed to start the next step.  That is particularly useful in setting up for chassé-croisé, since while the gentleman moves to the right and therefore can easily start with his right foot in the standard fashion for this era, the lady is moving to the left, and step-sequences call for her to start on her left foot, as may be seen in the sequences I have described previously.  If there is no jeté-assemblé, then the lady cannot easily free her left foot instead of her right.  And if she starts the sliding sequence with her right foot (there is a Scottish step that makes that a viable option) she ends up with her left foot free for the balancing, which is also non-ideal.  What to do?

Over the past decade or so I've experimented with adding "foot fudges" (extra changes of weight), started whole series of figures on the left foot, and sometimes allowed the dancers to balance in mirror image or left-first.  None of this is good period practice.  There are documented ways to cheat in historical quadrille footwork, but adding extra weight changes is not one of them.  There are occasionally step-sequences that start on the left foot, but doing a whole quadrille figure on the opposite foot from one's partner is just wrong.  And balancing is generally done with both dancers moving to the right, or on the right foot first, not to the left, and definitely not in mirror image.  It's been a constant irritation to me that I couldn't get this one element of this quadrille up to my own standards, to the point where I stopped teaching it unless specially requested.

So I'm particularly grateful to one of my students, who during a private tutoring session this afternoon made an offhand remark that abruptly solved the problem for me.  The answer has been right in front of me all along.

The Swedish Dances, Part Ten: A Quebec Connection

I'm always keeping an eye out for more references to Regency-era or later Swedish dances, which I described in a series of posts a couple of years ago.  The newest source I've turned up adds nothing to my understanding of the dances, but does provide a dandy demonstration of more nineteenth century plagiarism and evidence of their having crossed the Atlantic long before they appeared in America.

Dancing master William George Wells, Professor of Dancing "late of London", published The danciad, or companion to the modern ball room in Montreal in 1832.  In his effort to introduce "new dances, as used in Europe" to the British colony, he appears to have lifted large parts of his dance manual directly from London dancing master J. S. Pollock, as seen in the second edition of Pollock's Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (London, c1830).

(diagram from Pollock, c1830)

The Swedish section is one of those parts.  The introductory text is copied word-for-word from Pollock, right down to the abbreviations.  The three figures I described in my post on Pollock's Swedish dances are identical, and given with identical wording.  Even the irregular spacing of the first two lines in the diagram, which can be seen at left, is the same.  The only major difference is spelling out "four" rather than using the numeral in notating how many parts each dance has.

Apparently the enterprising immigrant carried a copy of Pollock's work across the Atlantic with him, though I suppose there's some small possibility that Wells had previously published his work in England and that Pollock copied from him.  In the absence of any earlier Wells manual, it seems most likely that Wells was the plagiarist here.

It's hard to say whether the Swedish dances were actually done in Quebec in this era.  Wells published under the patronage of Lord and Lady Aylmer, the former being the fifth Baron Aylmer, appointed Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada from 1830-1835.  Aylmer's tenure seems not to have been terribly successful, and he was apparently notable for favoring the English-speaking community over the French.  Supporting (perhaps even importing) an English dancing master would fit with this, but one doubts that it would have made Wells popular among the francophones.  But Wells seems to have been the first to bring the Swedish dances across the Atlantic, and with their appearance in his manual, at least the possibility of their having been danced in Canada in this era exists.

On the Exclusive in Dancing, 1834

The English and French seem never to have been shy about taking sly little pokes at each other.  In 1834 a New York newspaper reprinted from an unnamed London paper an article, "On the Exclusive in Dancing", which took aim at French ballroom etiquette.  Apparently the French were questioning the propriety of the country dance:

[The French] appear to be growing fastidious in their amusements, and have learned to be English enough to question certain minor points of propriety and etiquette in their public balls; as, for instance, whether it be proper for a gentleman to resign the hand of his partner to contact with strangers for the mere preservation of a figure in a country dance, 

and had in fact discarded country dances completely, in favor of

some more conjugal kind of movement, either waltzes, mazurkas, or galopes, that rivet a couple together for a whole evening till (we would fain hope) they were sick of one another and themselves.

Note the implications of "conjugal" there.  In their sudden concern for "propriety", the French were abandoning the relatively innocent country dance in favor of dances like the waltz and galop that kept the dancers in each others' arms and had thoroughly scandalized the English in the early decades of the century.

The above alone would be an interesting tidbit about the changing popularity of particular dance forms in the 1830s, the tradition of partner-changing (or not), and the differences between the ballrooms of France and England.  But the author then goes on to smugly insult the French by implying that the reason for these "contracts of fidelity" was some "internal weakness" of upper-class French ladies, who had to be protected from the least temptation, to which they would presumably succumb:

Their constancy to their partner would appear but a poor offering when they fear to endanger it by interchanging it with another. 

The English were not exactly in a position to criticize the morals of the French in this area, but underneath the geopolitical sniping, there is an interesting point of ballroom etiquette. 

Dance fashions in Paris, 1822

Here's an interesting little tidbit that's a good reminder of some of the things we don't know about early nineteenth century social dance.

The article at left, "Present State of Dancing in Paris", appeared in the April, 1822, issue of Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine, better known as La Belle Assemblée.

The highlights:

"Spanish dances are quite the rage; and the term may be well applied to the Bularo, which, when danced in the best manner in Spain, always reminded me of two persons scolding each other: this dance, with the Fandango, is much in favour now in Paris; and the French ladies dance them in a manner, which would make one imagine they had long sojourned in Spain, or, at least, among the Pyrenees."

"Spanish dances" here seems to refer not to the variant country dance form but rather to dances for couples, or possibly for solo female dancers.  Male and female dancers both use castanets, and the (presumably female) Fandango dancers wear "Chinese crape pantaloons lined with levantine."

"The waltz and Le Moulinet still, however, continue in high favour: the diversity of steps introduced in all dances is astonishing; and the agile movement of the small feet, all in white satin slippers, absolutely dazzle the eyes." 

Note that these appear to have been exclusively French feet.  English ladies are declared notable for the "elegance and vanity of their attire" and "the intrinsic worth of their jewels and ornaments".

I would guess Le Moulinet to refer to quadrilles, which were indeed blessed with a wild diversity of steps in this era.  I'd be quite curious to know how diverse the waltz steps were; surviving sources don't provide nearly as much variation as for the quadrille.

"The shuffling step, I am sorry to say, à la Portugais, is not yet out of favour." 

Apparently Portuguese steps were not as admired as Spanish ones.

Click the photograph to enlarge and read the whole thing!

Article photograph courtesy of Irene Urban, from her collection
of early nineteenth-century women's magazines.

Three "Scottish" Setting Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles

(This continues a very occasional series of posts on setting steps for quadrilles, with the previous posts including eight easy sequences and two French sequences.)

Calling these three sequences "Scottish" is really a bit of a misnomer, since the sources are Alexander Strathy's Elements of the Art of Dancing (Edinburgh, 1822), which is in large part a translation of a French manual by J. H. Goudoux, and an anonymous Scottish manuscript entitled Contre Danses à Paris 1818.  All three sequences are certainly French in their steps and style and quite possibly in origin.  They probably would not have caused anyone in Paris in that era to bat an eyelash.  But technically, they are documented to Scotland, not France, in the late 1810s-early 1820s.

Two French Setting Sequences for Regency-era Quadrilles

Several years ago I posted eight easy setting sequences for Regency-era French quadrilles and said in the comments I'd try to post more "soon".  That has now stretched to more than five years, but, better late than never, here are a couple of others, this time directly from a trio of French manuals by J. H. Gourdoux (or Gourdoux-Daux):

Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville (2nd edition, 1811)
Recueil d’un Genre Nouveau de Contredanses et Walses (1819)
De l’Art de la Danse (1823)

Once again, these are easy sequences, but a bit more interesting than the previous set.

Another Country Dance Gallopade

• Era: 1830s, England

This dance is one of a pair of country dance gallopades published in London dancing master J. S. Pollock's c1830 manual, A Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition).  They have no names or specific music, just numbers.  I've previously discussed the second one; now here's the first.  It's a very straightforward reconstruction.

Here are the original instructions:

No. 1.     (4 parts) 

    The whole of the party arranged in the same way as for a country dance stand facing the top of the room, and chassez croise all with partners -- then facing your partners, all advance, retire, and back to back -- first and second couples hands across and back again -- first lady pass outside the ladies to the bottom of the dance, the first gent. at the same time going down outside of the gents. and turn partner with both hands, remaining at bottom.

Chassé-Croisé Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles (2 of 3)

(This is the second post in a mini-series covering Regency-era step-sequences for the quadrille figure chassé-croisé.  See the first post for a general introduction to the figure.)

My second sequence for chassé-croisé actually comes from a French source, the second edition of Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville (Paris, 1811) by J. H. Gourdoux.  The same sequence reappears in his later manual, De l’Art de la Danse (Paris, 1823).  It is similar to the Strathy sequence described in my previous post, but the differences are quite intriguing.

I won't cover steps in this post, since I just summarized them in the previous one and no additional ones are required for Gourdoux's sequence.

Chassé-Croisé Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles (1 of 3)

By far the most common sequence variations to be found in quadrille manuals of the early nineteenth century are those for setting, forward and back, chassez-dechassez, and crossing over.  But a few manuals give sequences for more elaborate figures such as chassé-croisé, in which two dancers, side by side, change places and back.  There are quite a few ways to perform the figure, but the most common is probably that danced with one's partner in eight bars as follows:

2b    Change places, gentlemen passing behind ladies
2b    Set
2b    Change back, gentlemen again passing behind ladies
2b    Set

This can be performed just by two couples (heads or sides) or by all four at once, as in the classic Finale figure of the first set of French quadrilles. 

Revisiting Chassé Out

Almost four years ago, I discussed the quadrille figure "chassé out", or chassé ouvert, in a post discussing the reconstruction of a mid-century quadrille.  I've revisited the figure occasionally since then, both in its Regency-era context and in its unusual mid-19th century appearances in the quadrille calls of American dancing master Elias Howe, and found enough new information to be worth a fresh post on the topic and to make me reconsider how I would reconstruct the figure both for early quadrilles of the 1810s-1820s and for the quadrille sets published by Howe in 1858 and 1862.

Thoughts on stepping the Grand Chain in Regency quadrilles

It's not unusual for new sources to turn up that make me go back and reconsider a reconstruction.  It's a little irritating for it to happen less than a month after I finally get around to publishing one here on Kickery, and doubly irritating for it to be not a new source but old sources I simply hadn't looked at recently.  Fortunately, this is less a change in my reconstruction than further background and options.

In reconstructing the fourth figure of the Mid-Lothians, an early 1820s quadrille, I wrote in my reconstruction notes that "I've never found any description of what step sequence to use for this figure," referring to the grand chain.  Actually, I had come across such, many years ago, and they had simply slipped my mind.  But I was looking through quadrille sources for a different project and found them again, so here is a little more information about performance options for the grand chain.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 6

This is the sixth and last in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians, a set of quadrilles from the 1820s.  Previous posts: The first figure; background information; and sources, second figure, third figure, fourth figure, fifth figure.

The sixth and final figure of the Mid Lothians is set to a combination of two similar Jacobite tunes, "Lewie Gordon" and "Over the Hills".  My ear isn't sophisticated enough to sort through Evans' arrangement and figure out which (or whether) individual strains are drawn from each tune.  Lewie Gordon was a son of the Duke of Gordon who fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie and was exiled after Culloden.  "Over the Hills", also known as "O'er the Hills and Far Away" and "Over the Seas and far away", has a complex history and may have originally been from England.  It is familar to many today as the theme music for the Sharpe television series based on the Bernard Cornwell novels about a British rifleman during the Napoleonic Wars.

Lyrics and background on each tune as well as MIDI files for listening may be found at Christian Souchon's collection of Jacobite songs; there are individual pages for both "Lewie Gordon" and "O'er the Hills".  Note that all Souchon's pages play music immediately upon opening!  More lyrics for "O'er the Hills" may be found on the song's page at The Compleat Sean Bean, a Sean Bean (Sharpe in the television series) fan site created by writer Winona Kent.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 5

This is the fifth in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians, a set of quadrilles from the 1820s.  The first figure, background information, and sources are discussed in the first post in the series.  Second figure here.  Third figure here.  Fourth figure here.

The fifth figure of the Mid Lothians is set to the famous march of Clan Campbell, "The Campbells are Coming", with its rousing chorus, presumably not sung while dancing a quadrille:

The Campbells are coming Oho, Oho!

The Campbells are coming Oho, Oho!

The Campbells are coming to bonnie Lochleven

The Campbells are coming Oho, Oho!

There are many, many recordings of this tune available.  Though the lyrics were partly rewritten by Robert Burns in the late eighteenth century, the tune dates back at least to the Jacobite rebellions of the first half of the century.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 4

This is the fourth in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians, a set of quadrilles from the 1820s.  The first figure, background information, and sources are discussed in the first post in the series.  Second figure here.  Third figure here.

The fourth figure of the Mid Lothians is set to a combination of "Peggy's Love" and "Auld Robin Gray", though my ear is not good enough to pick out which strains are from each tune when filtered through Evans' arrangements.

"Peggy's Love", or "Little Peggy's Love" is a strathspey which has also been used for a Scottish Country Dance.  It is said to have been composed by William Marshall and published as "Lady Louisa Gordon's Strathspey" in 1781.  It was apparently used as the musical basis for a ballet at the King's Theatre Opera House (the professional home of Regency-era dancing master Thomas Wilson) in the 1790s.  Evans mostly retains the strathspey rhythm in his arrangement.

"Auld Robin Gray" was written in 1772 by the Scottish poet Lady Anne Lindsay, with a tune by Reverend William Leeves.  The song is something of a sequel to the classic Jacobite song "Logie O'Buchan" (note: music plays immediately upon opening this page) which mourns for the Old Pretender under the guise of a woman missing her lover Jamie while being pressured to marry someone richer.  In "Auld Robin Gray", she actually ends up married to Robin Gray before her true love Jamie returns for her.  The tune may be heard in a MIDI file created by Christian Souchon (plays immediately upon opening).  An arrangement by Hadyn may be found at Ball State University's Digital Music Repository.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 3

This is the third in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians, a set of quadrilles from the 1820s.  The first figure, background information, and sources are discussed in the first post and the second figure here.

The third figure of the Mid Lothians is set to "Riggs O'Barley", previously known as "Corn Rigs are bonie" but taking on a new name after being used by Robert Burns for his 1783 poem, "The Rigs O' barley".  Numerous recordings (with the Burns lyrics) are available.  It is also found on the sound track of a classic 1973 horror film, The Wicker Man, under the title "Corn Rigs".

Evans' arrangement consists of three eight-bar strains (ABC), with the A strain having an alternate second ending as well.  The thirty-two-bar figure is noted on the sheet music as starting on the A strain, so I would expect a repeat structure of A (ABACx4) with the initial A using the first ending and subsequent ones the second.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 2

This is the second in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians.  The first figure, background information, and sources are discussed in the previous post.

The second figure of the Mid Lothians is set to a highly simplified arrangement of the "Lassie wi'the Lint-White Locks", a tune actually called "Rothiemurchies Rant" but so strongly associated with the Robert Burns poem from 1794 that Evans seems to have adopted the poem's title for the tune.  It is also known today as "The Graf Spee".  The tune is traditionally used for a Scottish Country Dance and can be heard on numerous recordings.  Some interesting background may be found at The Mudcat Café. 

Evans' version is in a different key and consists almost entirely of relatively sedate eighth notes, unlike the dotted strathspey rhythm of the original, which is given below the quadrille arrangement for comparison.

Evans trims the four strains of the original tune to three strains (ABC) of eight bars each, with the third strain being a repeat of the first with a slight variation in the last bar.  The figure is repeated four times.  Instructions on the music indicate the that the (thirty-two-bar) figure begins on the A strain, which also has repeat markings. so a repeat structure of A (ABACx4) or possibly A (AABCx4) seems indicated, which leaves the figures concluding on the same music (since C = A) as they began, as is typical for a quadrille figure.  Either way, the A strain ends up getting repeated three times in succession multiple times.  A (ABBCx4) would also be a possibility, albeit a somewhat odd one for a quadrille, and somewhat reduces the repetiiveness.  If not for the figure instructions on the music, I'd be inclined to go with A (BABCx4) just for a bit more variety.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 1

The Mid Lothians, A new Set of Quadrilles, was a set of traditional Scottish tunes selected by J. S. Pollock, "Professor of Dancing / late of Paris /", with the tunes arranged by R. W. Evans and new quadrille figures (given in French and English) choreographed by Pollock.  The undated music was published in London in the early 1820s (Google Books dates it to 1821), and the figures additionally appear in Pollock's La Terpsichore Moderne, Ninth Edition (London, c1824) and in Henry Whale's Hommage à Taglioni, A Fashionable Quadrille Preceptor and Ballroom Companion (Philadelphia, 1836).  The English-language instructions in all three sources are extremely consistent, though there are a few discrepancies between the French and English versions given on the sheet music. 

The set is cannily dedicated to Lady Gwydir, more familiar to students of upper-crust Regency society as one of the famous Patronesses of Almacks under her former name, Mrs. Drummond-Burrell.  Born in 1786, Lady Sarah Clementina Drummond, heiress of Lord Perth, married Peter Burrell in 1807, whereupon they both hyphenated their names to Drummond-Burrell to preserve the prestigious Drummond name.  In 1820, the couple succeeded Peter's parents to double honors as Baron and Baroness Gwydir (or Gwydyr) and Baron and Baroness Willoughby de Eresby.

The Mid Lothians refers to the area of Scotland around Edinburgh.  The title of the set and the use of well-known Scottish tunes may be an attempt to play off the success of Sir Walter Scott's popular 1818 novel, The Heart of Midlothian, or simply a reflection of the popularity of all things Scottish at the time.  Some of the tunes used are versions of those famously used by Robert Burns for his poems in the late eighteenth century.

The Swedish Dances, Part Seven: After Mr. Chivers

(Seventh in a series of posts discussing and analyzing the Swedish dances.  The first post may be found here.)

While never a prominent format, the Swedish dances became enough of a success to outlast their originator.  In the second edition of his Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (London, c1830), dancing master J. S. Pollock, “Professor of Dancing, late of Paris” gives figures for many of the unusual country dance formats originating in the late 1810s and early 1820s, among them three different sets of figures for Swedish dances.  

Pollock describes the Swedish dances as being suited to either a lady between two gentlemen or a gentleman between two ladies, though his instructions are invariably for the latter configuration.  His diagram suggests a set of trios all of the same configuration.  Interestingly, Pollock explicitly states that “no change of places is to be made either at the top or bottom of the same,” meaning at the ends of the set.  This means that a right-hand dancer going down the set would become a left-hand dancer coming back up, a minor complication which Pollock was either indifferent to or regarded as a feature.

Pollock’s three dances, each thirty-two bars in length, are not given associated tune-names, only numbers, consistent with his descriptions of other types of dances.  Any tune of the proper length might be used.  My reconstructions are as follows:

Gothic Ancestry: A Country Dance Gallopade

• Era: 1830s, England

A year or so ago I published a discussion and reconstruction of the 1862 country dance gallopade known as The Gothic Dance and mentioned that there was a very similar dance in London dancing master J. S. Pollock's c1830 manual, A Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition).  I've taught this dance at the few 1830s events I've had an opportunity to run, but have not previously published a reconstruction.

The original instructions for the dance, one of a pair of country dance gallopades with numbers but no titles, are as follows:

No. 2.     (4 parts) 

    All advance, retire, and cross over, changing places with partners -- advance, retire, and cross over back again -- first and second couples right and left -- first couple gallopade down the middle to the bottom of the dance, and remain at the bottom.

The formation is a long line of couples, gentlemen on one side (with their left side toward the top of the set, or orchestra) and ladies on the other, in two facing lines.  While not specified, I'd have the dancers take hands along those lines.  The reconstruction is fairly straightforward:

4b    All advance and retire in lines
4b    All cross over, passing right shoulders and turning to the right to form facing lines again
8b    Repeat all of the above to original places
8b    First two couples right and left
8b    First couple gallopade down the center to the end, remaining there

(repeat until all couples have gone down the dance)

The similarity to the Gothic Dance as well as to the traditional English Galopede, which this appears to be an early version of, is obvious in the advance/retire/cross over pattern and final gallopade, though the Gothic Dance is far more creative in its figures.  This dance is simple and rather sedate by comparison!

An 1830s Galop Pattern

• Era: 1830s England

This new and fashionable dance, which it appears is of Russian origin, was first introduced into this country at His Majesty's ball, St. James Palace, on the 11th June, 1829, when the Princess Esterhazy, the Earl of Clanwilliam, the Duke of Devonshire, and some of the foreign ministers exerted themselves in teachings its novel movements to the company, and was danced alternately with Quadrilles and Waltzing during the whole of the evening.
     -- J.S. Pollock, Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (2nd ed), London, c1830

In an earlier post, I described the basic galop of the mid- to late 19th century as a series of slides and "chasing" steps with half-turns interspersed, commonly found in the pattern of four-slide galops, performed as follows:

2b    Slide-close-slide-close-slide-close-slide (half-turn) (count: 1 & 2 & 3 & turn)
2b    Slide-close-slide-close-slide-close-slide (half-turn) (count: 1 & 2 & 3 & turn)

All slides are performed along the line of dance.  The default turning direction is clockwise, though counter-clockwise turns are also possible.  The first set are performed with the first foot (gentleman's left, lady's right) with the second foot then closing behind in order to again slide with the first foot.  The second series is then performed by sliding with the second foot and closing with the first.  The galop sequences may also be extended to four bars per set, i.e. "eight-slide" galops. 

This description is consistent with most galop sources from the mid-century onward.  But oddly enough, that's not how it's described in the source from which the quotation above was drawn. 

The Royal Gallopade

The Royal Gallopade is an interesting mix of popular 1830s dances, with elements borrowed from country dances, galopades, and quadrilles, plus a concluding sauteuse waltz.  My only source for it is the Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition) by J. S. Pollock, London (see update at end of post).  It is undated, but the mix of dances and a textual reference to an 1829 event suggests the early 1830s.  Pollock claims that gallopades "appear" to be of Russian origin.  Among those he credits with their introduction is the sixth Duke of Devonshire, who was a close friend of both the Prince Regent (later George IV) and Czar Nicholas I and had traveled to the Russian court.

Pollock depicts the original gallopade as a choreographed sequence dance for a circle of couples with gallop interspersed with short dance figures and gives not only this original but gallopades in country dance and quadrille form.  Fittingly, the Royal Gallopade is given a separate section of its own between the quadrille and country dance gallopades.

My photocopy of the Pollock book is at least third-generation and extremely blurry, but as best I can make it out (I make no guarantees on the punctuation) the description of the dance sequence is as follows:

Gallopade (as described in the original Gallopade) straight forward to the top of the room the lady crossing the gent at the end of each four bars; on arriving at the top, the first couple in one set, faces the first couple of the other set; the second couples faces the second, and so on to the bottom of the dance, then each four perform the figure of Le Pantalon -- the whole of the party then face the bottom of the room, and gallopade as before -- then perform La Poule -- gallopade to the top of the room, and finish with the sauteuse round the room.

While given as a social dance, this makes a spectacular performance piece as well.