Canadian author Frances Elizabeth Herring (1851-1916) was born in England and immigrated to British Columbia in 1874. In addition to publishing six novels, she was also at various points a teacher and journalist, as well as an active community volunteer and the mother of eight children. A detailed biography, from which this information is drawn, may be found online at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography website. A blog devoted to her and her descendants provides some interesting further reading here. I nicked the photo at left, taken in the 1870s, from one of their posts.
I'm not wildly interested in Canadian colonial history or Frances Herring herself, but I did come across Herring's second novel, Among the People of British Columbia: Red, White, Yellow, and Brown, published in London in 1903, while digging around for dance references in literature. The entire novel is available on Google Books. Herring's novels focused primarily on characters like herself, white women colonists in far western Canada. While they are loaded with racist stereotypes and language which make for unpleasant reading today, they are still an interesting window into the customs of a British colonial population in the early twentieth century.
As usual, I'm going to talk only about the dance scenes in this novel. More specifically, since the dances of Native Americans/First Nations are far outside my area of study, I'm going to focus on how she depicts the dances of the colonists. As she says in the preface, "The social life speaks for itself, and is as we live it now." The now in question appears to be around 1900; the novel ends with a marriage performed in the August of that year.
I can't say much about the plot, because it's pretty thin: Agnes and Phil are in love. Their marriage and anticipated departure for San Francisco end the book. Among the People of British Columbia is much less a traditional novel than a collection of vignettes, based in part on Herring's own experiences. I imagine her books were popular more for this travel-stories aspect than for their dramatic plotting.
Among the People of British Columbia features two balls, a Caledonian Ball and a Children's Ball, and some informal dancing here and there. There's not a lot of dance information overall, but there are a few interesting tidbits.
A quick summary of the interesting bits:
- a Caledonian Ball with people in Scottish costume
- a Children's Ball where the adults may only dance with children
- informal family dancing -- making their own music
- waltz, polka, Lancers, Roger de Coverley, Scotch Reel
- fancy-dress quadrilles at the Children's Ball and on stage at a holiday celebration
- ending a Grand March with a Scotch Reel or with a Sicilian Circle
The full notes:
A Caledonian Ball attended by Agnes, the protagonist, is the subject of Chapter II, beginning on page 17:
A CALEDONIAN BALL given by The Sons of Scotland " was announced, and as Uncle M'Gregor was "Chief" that year, we naturally looked forward to it with great excitement, especially as it was my first ball. (p. 17)
People dressed up similarly to today. Many of the men wore kilts, and as for the women:
Mina and I wore plain white frocks to our ankles, with sashes of the M'Gregor tartan passed round our waists, and brought up to our right shoulders—there it was fastened by a cairngorm brooch—with long ends left which reached to the hem of our dresses; our hair was left loose, only being tied with the tartan. (p. 17)
Mrs Ross, who looked queenly in a dress of black velvet also to her ankles, diamond buckles on her shoes, and the tartan of the house of Stuart worn as our sashes were, a black velvet Scotch cap, its two long feathers fastened in by another handsome diamond buckle. (pp. 17-18)
The hall was decorated with bunting, evergreens, and wreathing (p. 19). The dance opened with a Grand March, which was followed immediately by a Scotch Reel:
We stepped into the Grand March with which the ball opened, led by our respective partners, just at nine o'clock. Then the bagpipes struck up, and we glided into a Scotch reel. (pp. 17-18)
That is particularly fascinating to me. I'd read in Scottish dance manuals about going from a March into a reel, as I described in this blog post, but seeing the practice actually depicted (however vaguely) in a novel is much better evidence that it was actually done.
The reel sets don't seem to have formed instantly, and the reels seem to have been square rather than linear, with two couples standing vis-à-vis, perhaps something like Wilson's New Reel for Four from almost a century earlier:
Vis-à-vis to [her uncle and Mrs. Ross] was a Highlander and his lady, both in the Campbell tartan. Phil and I were vis-à-vis to Dot (as Mina was called) and Tom. "What splendid-looking men they are in their kilts!" I exclaimed, as we waited for the sets to take their places, and I sat down near. (p. 18)
Agnes' uncle and Mrs. Ross "danced all the rest down", to the hearty applause of the spectators (p. 19).
Agnes danced a Lancers with the mayor, who had a delightful way with words in deprecating his own dancing: he "kicked up his heels as good as any Scotchman...if he was a Londoner" (p. 19). There was also a waltz (p. 21) and a polka (p. 22), but no further detail is given.
The Children's Ball is described in Chapter V and is part of the general May Day celebrations organized by the local firefighters, who called themselves Hyacks, "from a Chinook word meaning 'quick,' " (p. 56). Apparently the term is still in use in western Canada today.
The May Day celebrations (pp. 56-63) included selecting a Queen of the May and her court and having young girls do a Maypole dance. Food and candy are given out to the children, who also do races and games for prizes. There is a parade of fire engines, bands, and anyone who wants to join in. And then the dancing began in what was apparently a two-story hall with a unique feature:
A circular opening, corresponding in size to [the band's] stand, has been left in the floor of the second story, allowing the music to penetrate to all parts of the building, and it is a pretty sight to look down upon the moving group below, whilst the same movement of promenade and dance is going on around you. (p. 64)
I hope there was a rail around that hole, because one can easily imagine how having a hole in the middle of the dance floor at a children's event could go horribly wrong.
This informal dancing, at which each adult must be paired with a child, lasted until 5:30 in the afternoon, with the ball itself scheduled to begin at ten (p. 64).
Agnes' aunt spots an old-timer:
...there's Mr M'Donald ; he's getting grey at last. He used to conduct our balls, weddings, May-days, and funerals from the time I came here, and long before, and they can't get along without him yet ! " (p. 65)
who still seems somehow involved in organizing the ball:
He returned to his post, and seemed as capable of ordering all these numbers as he had been of the little bands of "long ago," (pp. 65-66)
I'd love for this to refer to the ladies having numbers, but I think it more likely refers to musical numbers.
The Grand March is led by the May Queen, the Hyacks, and their partners:
The music struck up, and out came the reigning Queen, holding on to the fire captain, followed by the ex-Queen with the chief engineer ; then followed more Hyacks, far from the heyday of youth, but gallant still, each leading a little girl in white ; then others—doctors, lawyers, military men, civilians of all classes—each leading a little girl ; till scores had emerged from somewhere in the dim background into the full glare of electric arc lights, doing the Grand March first, and merging into the Sicilian Circle, which the little girls went through wonderfully well, being directed, of course, by their partners. Scarcely a boy danced, and ladies failed in their persuasions to get them out. (p. 66)
Here's another common ending for a Grand March: shifting into a Sicilian Circle. This is commonly found in dance manuals and on dance cards, and I often use it myself at balls.
An unspecified number of easy, child-friendly dances followed, and the ball concluded with a miniature masque:
Presently eight Hyacks—four of them in grotesque female attire, the other four in male costumes as fantastic, and all wearing masks—appeared, to the breathless delight of the young folks. They danced an old-time set of Quadrilles, with many improvised steps and movements, and made their exit amidst thunders of applause. (p. 66)
After the children retire, the adults are allowed to dance with each other and keep on dancing for some time, with no details given (p. 67).
Later in the novel, Agnes and her family go to the provincial capitol, Victoria, for ten days of celebrations of the Queen's Birthday. On their last night there, they make some informal music and do a bit of dancing:
Several more young people joined us in the evening, and aunt made me bring out my violin, Mina took the piano, Robert his guitar, and we had music, instrumental and vocal, till the "wee sma'" hours. Then we had a waltz and a Scotch reel, but Mrs M'Win insisted on finishing up with "Sir Roger de Coverley" before "good-nights" were said. (p. 98)
Another dance tidbit: a group of them venture onto American soil just in time for an Independence Day celebration, which featured another fancy dress quadrille:
The band struck up, and from the thick bushes near by stepped four couples dressed in the costumes of the time of George Washington. The young men wore kneebreeches and so on ; the almost white heads of two young Icelanders needed little powder, the other two men were shorter and darker. The four girls were dressed respectively in light heliotrope, cream, yellow, and blue, made à la Marthe Washington, and with powdered hair and patches. Very, very nice they looked as they mounted the platform, and went gracefully through an old-fashioned set of quadrilles. (p. 232)
This is not social dancing, just a brief performance, but it's interesting to me that both fancy quadrilles are referred to as "old-time" and "old-fashioned". Does Agnes (or Herring) consider quadrilles in general old-fashioned or was it the specific quadrilles danced or some element of the performances?
That concludes the dance references. If anyone is interested in reading the novel, which does have a lot of fascinating depictions of frontier life in a multicultural setting, if you can get past the casual racism and painful pidgin dialects, the entire book may be found here.
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