While rummaging around in early eighteenth century material, I came across the marvelous City and country recreation: or, wit and merriment rightly calculated, for the pleasure and advantage of either sex, part of the frontispiece illustration of which appears at left. This short book, published in London in 1705, is a hilarious combination of advice book for lovers, warnings for the innocent newcomer to the city, poetry collection, and handy divination manual covering everything from astrology to palmistry with a few stops in between. Dance comes into it only indirectly, alas, but it's great reading regardless.
No author is listed, but the preface is signed with the initials "J. S." A scholar of the literature of this period, which I am not, might be able to connect those initials to a known writer.
I'll include the full descriptions of each of the two parts of the book just for their impressive long-windedness:
Part I. Containing the Pleasures of Courtship and Address; or, The whole Art of making Love. Directions for making a suitable Choice. A Description of true Love in all its Changes. How to express Love's silent Language. To know if a Party be in Love. Instructions for Courting a Maid or Widow: and how the Female Sex may make Love known, without any Injury to a modest and vertuous Behaviour; and how to dive into the secret Thoughts of their Lovers. The Comforts of Marriage in all its Circumstances; and how a good Wife may Reclaim a bad Husband, and the like of a Husband by a Wife. The whole Art of Fortune-Telling, shewing what Good or Bad Fortune is assigned you in Affairs of Love, Business, &c. A Collection of Choice Poems, by the most Celebrated Wits of the Age.
Part II. Containing all the cunning Intreagues of the Beaus, Sharpers, Bullies, and Female-Decoys, to Deceive and Ruin Gentlemen, Tradesmen, &c. With their lively Characters, and a plain Discription of their several Practices, to prevent their future Designs.
The Town Miss; or, London Jilt, in all her Humours, Shifts, and Intreagues; set forth, as a Looking-Glass, for the unthinking Beaus; Keeping Squires, Foolish Tradesmen, and others, to see their Folly in.
To which is added, the Misery of Gaming: Or, The Art of keeping Ready Money in One's Pocket at all Times: With other useful Matters, never before made Publick.
As usual, I've pulled out only the dance-related references, but I heartily recommend reading the entire thing. It was intended to be humorous in its time, but the overwrought eighteenth century prose makes it even more so to the modern reader. There are also genuine insights to be had about period attitudes and practices.
The entire book is available online here.
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Part I of the book covers courtship for both men and women followed by a paean to marriage (complete with multi-page poem) and advice on dealing with bad spouses (with more poetry). It also has a section on various methods of divination and yet another set of poems. Dance is mentioned in this part once in passing and once metaphorically. Chapter III discusses the signs and "silent language" of love and how to distinguish it from other "passions of the mind". Among the methods listed as used to "make Lovers sensible of each others Passions" is "grasping the Hand hard in Dancing". (p. 10) Chapter V covers how men might court and marry rich widows. The author recommends that once such a widow has consented to marry, the couple should do so "with all convenient speed" lest she have time to catch her breath, return to her doubts, and "lead you a longer Dance than before." (p. 22)
Fun bits not relevant to dance include instructions on bribing a woman's maid to speak well of a man with a "Round Piece of White or Yellow" (silver or gold coin), the strategic dropping of a glove or fan by a woman so that her suitor may pick it up, and the recommendation to carry a handkerchief ready to clean any spots from her garments...or pretend to, if there aren't any. The advice on courting widows is bawdier: if, while kissing, she "extends her Belly toward you", she is trying to feel whether a man has "any thing in order to answer her Expectations...to give her a Lover's satisfaction." The astrology, palmistry, and dream interpretation sections are about what one would expect. I was amused by the character judgments attached to hair color and the shape of various facial features; who knew that loss of virginity was supposed to make a woman's eyebrows curl? Finally, I found the highlight of the poems to be the reassuring one to a gentleman who has had to postpone his wedding due to catching smallpox: "You are not spotless, though you're innocent."
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Moving on to Part II, which is all about warning country innocents against the various hazards of the city, primarily men and women who will cheat them out of money in various ways. Chapter II covers the strategies of a "Town-shift" (male) befriending such young men, among which are taking them to "some baudy Musick-house, where Dancing, Singing, Musick, and the Sight of a few Town-cracks in taudry Dresses" will impress them, the better to lighten their purses. (p. 108)
After that, the dance-relevant bits get progressively more entertaining. In Chapter III, which covers the female counterpart, the "Town-Jilt", she demonstrates her veneer of genteel education by first "making the last Courtesie the French Dancing-master taught her" (p. 103). She then performs a "Courtesie of another Fashion", with the memorable description "inclining her Body, and drawing back her Buttocks, as if she feared he was going to take her by that we will not here Name". (p. 104) That line should help dance students remember to keep a straight posture when curtsying! A final passing reference is when the Jilt pretends to fear going to the theatre, for the sake of her reputation, but her true fear is to avoid anyone who knows her and would "spoil all the Jig of the Jest". (p. 109)
In Chapter IV, which is a caution to young women against the "Town-beau" who might ruin them, the author's distaste for the stereotypical French dancing-master, and perhaps the French in general, comes into full flower. The "Town-beau" is often an impoverished younger son, off to the city to make his fortune, where he realizes that his countrified dance background simply won't suffice:
"Another thing suddainly bolts into his Noddle; and that is, many Ladies and Gentlewomen, being airy and of light Heels themselves, are extreamly taken with Dancing, and though he has a smattering at Country-dances, he partly learned at School, and partly at the May-pole, amongst the Cherry-cheek'd Lasses in Straw-hats and red Petticoats; yet he does not believe those will pass Muster amongst fine Folks, especially amongst those that are Frenchify'd and think no Nation but France can afford either Fashion or Fancies that are gentiel and obliging..." [continued below]
The term "Country-dances" is ambiguous here. The author seems to be using it in the literal sense of rural pastimes like Maypole dance, but it could also refer to the specific genre of group dances found in the publications of the Playfords and their successors. Usually those are coded as specifically English, in contrast to French imports, which seems like something the author ought to favor, given his obvious anti-French prejudice, which gets more and more eloquent as he goes on:
"...he finds himself necessitated to find out some mimical Ape of a French Dancing-Master, and the rather, because those Buffoons have great Acquaintance with the Ladies, and by this means he may be the more easily introduced: He is not long to see for these antick Mamamouchies, for the swarm almost everywhere at the gentiel end of the Town, where they are very diligent to lend the Ladies the use of their Foot, as they call it, to teach them the Sarabran, a-la-mode Complement, the Reverence, the Fantastick, and all the antick Follies of their Nation, which they tell them is always to change; so that they can never tell when or where they shall end..." (p. 117-118)
Definitely beware those antick Mamamouchies, the French dancing-masters! The author was up on his theatre history -- the term "mamamouchi" was created by Molière as a fictional "pompous title, supposedly Turkish" in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670). The dig at the end about changing dances requiring more and more instruction from the dancing master is not specific to the French, or to the early eighteenth century, however. There were plenty of nineteenth- and twentieth-century dancing masters who created dances for blatantly commercial reasons.
The author goes on to make fun of the French accent while describing how the Town-beau uses the dancing master to vouch for him socially:
"his French Dancing-master at first introducing him at Balls and musical Entertainments, as his ver' goot Friend, and their trees humble Serviture; and recommending him as a most accomplish'd Gentleman..."
while he
"...pays his profound Respects, by Bowing and Cringing a-la-mode de France". (p. 118-119)
"A la mode de France" is actually the name of a dance (similar to the better known "None such") that appears in multiple editions of The Dancing Master from 1651 to 1728, but I think this is more a case of the dance being named after a common phrase than the author referring to a particular country dance.
Finally, rather than bore a young woman with "Syllogisms and Pedantry" like one newly graduated from University, the Town-beau tells her
"Stories of a Ball, fine Dancing and Singing, and where such and such Ladies meet to spend a few innocent Hours, in diverting themselves with harmless Recreation". (p. 120)
That concludes the list of dance references in City and Country Recreation, but the comedy in the guise of warnings goes on with lively descriptions of an elaborate scheme for marital and financial fraud, a kitchen courtship employed in the process of ruining a shopkeeper ("the Nails of your Allurements have scratched my very Heart...and the Foot of your Disdain has trod on the Toes of my Perseverance"), a pickpocket dangling from a harness hidden under a man's cloak, entrapment as a highwayman for purposes of blackmail, fake pregnancy to extort child support, the use of a dog to transport cards under the table while gambling, and more.
Truly, as the Preface states, "nothing of the like Nature can be imagined beyond it."
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