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.
Thomas Edgerton Wilks (1812-1854) seems to have been primarily an author of farces, a number of which are available online. According to a brief obituary included in The Life and Reminiscences of E. L. Blanchard (London, 1891; see footnote, pp. 150-151) he started writing in 1831 and published "some two hundred plays" before dying in a "state of wretched poverty". He was described elsewhere in the book as having "earned enough by his pen to starve upon" (p. 77), which would explain why he was willing to try his hand at a morality tale on the side.
"Lyddy!" is only a few pages long, and is neither complex nor particularly subtle. The lady of the title is Lady Lydia Montfaucon, who is wealthy, pretty, and an earl's daughter, and would have been a terrible coquette if not for her childhood love for the Honorable Adrian Vane. But she was a little bit vain and enjoyed exercising her power over her lover, so when he asked her if she would refrain, as a favor, from waltzing at a ball, or at least from waltzing with a particular nobleman, Viscount Manerton, who was known for corrupting women, she decided he was jealous and teased him by refusing to promise.
At the ball that evening, with Adrian in the room, Lydia "graciously gave an acquiescence to the intreaties [sic] of Viscount Manerton that she would join the valse, and away she went in the whirl with the formidable nobleman for her partner."
Uh-oh!
Adrian, not susceptible to this sort of manipulation, promptly left the country, returning four months later only because he heard a rumor that she was to marry someone else. It was untrue, fortunately, since within moments of setting eyes on each other again the lovers were embracing and exchanging mutual promises:
"I will never waltz again," promised she.
"I will never leave you again -- no not even for a single day!" responded he.
Wilks was not exactly up there with Dickens in his writing skills, but what interests me here is not the paper-thin plot but the attitude toward waltzing. One could interpret the problem as being that Lydia was immature and manipulative in trying to inspire jealousy in Adrian, but I think it's telling that the specific form that her misbehavior took was waltzing, and doing so with a particularly scandalous nobleman. The implication is that waltzing is a less innocent activity than, say, having extra dessert.
After Adrian and Lydia were reconciled, Viscount Manerton tried to brag that he could have "had that girl for asking". That is skating rather close to the 1810s anti-waltz canard,
"What you touch you may take."
The Young Lady's Magazine appears to have been to at least some extent of the mindset of the nineteenth-century anti-dance treatises that railed against dancing in general and/or couple dancing in particular. By 1837, the waltz had been in England for more than two decades and was commonly danced in the upper reaches of society, yet it was still considered titillating enough to be used as a device in a morality tale for young women.
For real-life context, it is interesting to compare Lydia's fictional situation with Fanny Kemble's experience with a censorious clergyman when traveling to America in 1832 (described partway through my post here). Like Lydia, Fanny agrees to restrict her dancing, though in her case only to the extent of restricting her waltzing to relatives or other ladies.
"Lyddy!" may be read online in its entirely at Google Books.
Comments