I'd previously avoided posting any of the actual Halloween figures given in H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), simply because each one is so short that any one didn't seem like enough material to make a decent blog post. But in combination, these four figures actually touch on different elements that might be useful for anyone planning an early twentieth century Halloween-themed event.
Taking the four figures in the order in which they appear in Walker:
Hallowe'en
A girl dressed in witch's costume of tall pointed hat, handkerchief and apron over some gay colored dress, with huge silver paper buckles on her shoes. She carried a broom to represent the old fashioned round brooms. Any piece of poetry, as Homes' "Spectre Pig," Longfellow's "Skeleton in Armour" will be appropriate.
This isn't a dance figure, but it's a type of description that appears frequently in Walker: a person representing some holiday or time of year, who usually does some sort of brief recitation. I'm not sure whether such figures would appear and recite singly at an event, maybe as a sort of opening invocation, or whether there were balls in which multiple people appeared as different figures and recited. Given that this is also a costume specifically for a girl, I'm also not sure whether this is the sort of thing that would be done at adult event or whether it was reserved for children's parties, or whether "girl" might be applied more loosely to a young woman. Lots of questions to ponder!
The costume described is typical of witch costumes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The illustration at left is taken from Ardern Holt's Fancy Dresses Described, 5th Edition (London, 1887) and shows the same general design - pointy hat, buckles on shoes, broom, etc.
Hallowe'en Figure
This figure is usually given on the 31st of October. Furnish for the gentlemen rough house hats and for the ladies the same. Have the musicians play all kinds of lively music. Begin with a grand march, and near the end confetti should be used in large quantities. All two-step.
This rather under-described figure is simply a grand march, suitable for opening a ball, with "rough house hats" distributed for the guests to wear. Were they wearing fancy dress of their own, one wonders, or were the hats the only costume elements? And what, one wonders, did they do with the large quantities of confetti? Throw it around, presumably, making a complete mess of the floor and a nice hazard for the following two-step!
(Servants: once again, there need to be servants. Waiting, with brooms.)
"Her Pumpkin Plentiful."
Take four barrel-hoops; cross three of them inside each other, and tie them together at the top and bottom, so that each gets an equal distance from each other, like the meridians on a globe. Cover this frame with pumpkin-colored calico, remembering to leave a good-sized hole. Then fill it with fresh sawdust and hide in it a variety of little surprises as-- small china lucky dogs, thimbles, rings, bits of old coin, needle cases, and all manner of charms. Everybody dances past the pumpkin and finds their future fate in "Her Pumpkin Plentiful." The omens of the articles drawn are the usual ones: A thimble for an old maid, a coin for riches, a ring for an engagement, etc.
This figure is only borderline dance-related, and it is not, technically, even listed as a specifically Halloween figure, though I feel that the pumpkin association and its placement amidst the three named Halloween figures strongly implies the theme. What interests me about it is a little less obvious. The little surprises hidden in the pumpkin are very similar to the trinkets hidden in a traditional Twelfth Night cake. And in the early nineteenth century, at least, Twelfth Night was another occasion for fancy dress. We have costume lists from, for example, Twelfth Night celebrations in Jane Austen's family. Did this light fortune-telling game migrate and mutate from Twelfth Night to Halloween in parallel with the growing fancy dress tradition of the latter and (I think) fading of the former? Or is it pure coincidence?
Hallowe'en Figure No. 2.
The leader scatters handfuls of pumpkin seeds over the floor, and hands each guest a needle threaded with strong thread; then there is a merry race to see who can make the longest chain of pumpkin seeds in ten, fifteen or twenty minutes, or any given time. Favors.
And, finally, a party-game figure which has nothing to do with dance. It could even be considered actively unfriendly to dancing, since it involves scattering seeds all over the floor, (which doesn't exactly create a safe surface for dancing) and then sitting everyone down for at least ten minutes to sew them into chains.
I'm not sure quite what conclusions to draw from these figures other than that by the early twentieth century, at least, there seems to have been a decided drift by away from the dance aspect of fancy dress balls and parties and toward plain, non-dancing, dress-up events. The first and perhaps the last figure also seem to hint at a shift toward considering such events children's parties rather than adult ones. All these trends would be fully realized by the time I was growing up in the late twentieth century.
In the meantime, combine these figures with spooky ones like Mahler's Camping or elaborate ones such as I've described in the past for an interesting early twentieth century fancy dress ball program. Just remember to get help to sweep up the confetti, sawdust, and seeds afterward!
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