Long, long, ago I published a reconstruction of the mid-19th century American contra (country) dance published as “Harvest Home” in some of Elias Howe’s dance compilations. I have nothing new to add to that reconstruction, but as I’ve collated more and more contra dances of that era, I’ve found the same figures under a couple of other names in other source, including one predating Howe’s publication of it, with a suggestive pattern of differences.
(more…)Category: Civil War (American)
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No “Secesh”, 1862
On January 25, 1862, a dramatic little story appeared in a column in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The New York Letter”, which covered news from New York City. The United States was eight months into the Civil War against the Confederacy (formally, the Confederate States of America, or C. S. A.), and New Yorkers were on the alert for Confederate spies, or “Secesh” (secessionists). So it was quite alarming for a gentleman to notice, in a paint shop,
several suspicious looking bundles, boxes, etc., marked “C. S. A. Sutler’s Department,” “C. S. A. Medical Department,” etc.
He reported the items to the police, and detectives were duly assigned to watch the shop, where, on the evening of January 23rd (going by the date of the column), they noticed someone leaving the premises,
enwrapped in a long cloak and scarf, carrying the suspicious bundles under his arm
Suspicious indeed! The detectives followed him to a house, which he and dozens of other cloaked men entered. Was it a secret meeting of spies? Smugglers? Terrorists? Police surrounded the house, but after sending one policeman inside to reconnoiter, they abruptly retired from the scene.
Why did they leave? And what does this have to do with dance, anyway?
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Displeased by dancing, 1852
"Pleasing the Parish; or, The Minister's Wife", and its sequel, "Intervention", appeared in the January and July, 1852, issues of Godey's Lady's Book, probably the most prominent women's magazine of mid-19th century America. The author remained anonymous, offering only a list of their previously published stories.
The first story is the sad tale of the overwhelming demands made upon Mrs. Stone, the wife of a theologian who accepts a position as rector of a large parish in New York City. Her inability to fulfill all the demands on a rector's wife and her refusal to yield in all areas to the leading female parishioners makes her increasingly unpopular and, as a result, miserable. In the second story, she has the temerity to attend a gathering of friends rather than the organizational meeting. Both the gathering and its consequences offer brief insights into the practice and perception of dance in mid-nineteenth-century America.
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The Way it Ended, 1855
I came across this story in a California newspaper, The Weekly Placer Herald, and didn't find it particularly believable. But it was not original to the Herald; the attribution at the end is to the Albany Dutchman, which seems to have been more of a weekly humor publication than a newspaper. Per the Library of Congress's Chronicling America website, it described itself in 1849 as "A weekly newspaper-devoted to fun, literature, good advice, women and other luxuries." I don't have any way to check the attribution at the moment, as the Albany Dutchman doesn't seem to be online, but that fits with my impression that this is a tall tale, not an actual incident. It nonetheless makes a light-hearted ending to my month of masquerades!
In the story, two friends, Bob and Frank, lie to Bob's wife about his having to help a sick uncle. In reality, they are sneaking off to a masquerade ball. While Bob is a married man, Frank is "a roue, and as a matter of course is a great favorite with the ladies—roues always are."
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A Fancy Dress Party (from A Few Friends), 1864
A Few Friends, by Korman Lynn, was serialized in nine parts in Godey's Lady's Book during the year 1864. The serial doesn't have a lot of plot; it describes eight evenings of a group of friends gathering together to, for the most part, play parlor games. It's great for anyone who wants to research mid-nineteenth century parlor games, which are described in elaborate detail, but the only section of any real interest to me is the final one, in which the friends gather for a fancy dress party.
To pick up the story at this point, it is only necessary to know that the kind and generous Ben Stykes has been quietly pursuing the lively Mary Gliddon from the beginning of the story, though a certain Mr. Hedges, a young man from Liverpool, is also interested in her.
Even a single part of the story is too long for me to transcribe here, but I'll quote the costume descriptions, some of which are detailed and unusual, and the resolution of the romance.
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Against the odds
I recently made note of a mailing list post that referred to dances done at American Civil War reenactments, such as the Virginia Reel, and couple-facing-couple dances like the Spanish Dance/Waltz, as "historically-flavored". I don't think the poster meant to imply that these dances were actually ahistorical; this is someone whom I'm certain knows better. But there's an interesting underlying point I wanted to expand on in this, which is that it's possible to have an entire ball full of historically-appropriate, accurately-reconstructed dances, and still have the ball as a whole not be convincing as a historical event. Because having all the dances accurate to the time period is not enough. There are at least two other external factors to consider: the geographic setting and the specific type of ball and ball attendees. A ball held by a member of high society in New York City is not going to have the same dance repertoire as a ball set in a frontier town in Oregon, even if they are both set in 1898, and a middle-class French ball would be even more different.
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CD Review: The Grand Victorian Ballroom
The Grand Victorian Ballroom: Waltzes, Quadrilles, Contras, Polkas, and Other 19th Century Dance Music (Gaslantern Records, 2012), with its accompanying sheet music, is the second of two CDs I received for my birthday earlier this year, along with North & South. But unlike North & South, this album was designed for dancing, so it is both beautifully played for listening pleasure and entirely functional as dance music. The musicians, once again, are the members of the Orchestra of the Gilded Age (I still don’t know exactly who those members are) conducted by Jeffrey Hunter.Edited 1/26/2026 to add: Sadly, this company seems to be out of business and the CD and sheet music book are no longer available for sale, though they might still be found used somewhere. All links have been changed to archive links.
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CD Review: North & South
I received the CD North & South: Forgotten Music from the American Civil War (Gaslantern Records, 2013) and its accompanying sheet music as a birthday gift this year, and a very lovely gift it was! Sixteen new pieces of historical music, beautifully played by the Orchestra of the Gilded Age, conducted by Jeffrey Hunter, many of them suitable for dancing!Edited 1/25/2026 to add: Sadly, this company seems to be out of business and the CD and sheet music book are no longer available for sale, though they might still be found used somewhere. All links have been changed to archive links.
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Aurora Waltz / Hungarian Waltz – Contra Dance
It’s been quite some time since I’ve added a nineteenth-century American contra dance to Kickery. Here’s a waltz contra from the ever-useful Elias Howe that, with only a few bars of turning waltz, is an easy dance for beginners. The set of figures appears in near-identical form in at least four of Howe’s numerous dance manuals: the Complete ball-room handbook (1858), The pocket ball-room prompter (1858), and the American dancing master, and ball-room prompter (1862 and 1866).
The original text:
First couple balance, cross over and go down outside below two couples — first couple balance again and waltz up to place — down the centre, back and cast off — swing six
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Reminiscences, 1865
I have what seems like an endless collection of works of nineteenth-century women’s fiction that I plow through for the dance references whenever I have the chance. Most of them are overly sentimental and laden with heavy-handed moral messages. “Reminiscences”, which was serialized in the American women’s periodical Godey’s Lady’s Book from February to June, 1865, was no exception to this, alas, but at least it was relatively short.
The background of the piece is a bit of a mystery. The author is the same “Ethelstone” credited with “Dancing the Schottische” (Godey’s, July 1862), which I discussed a few years ago. I’ve never been able to locate any information about this author. And “Reminiscences” adds a new element of confusion because it is written in first person and purports to be the story of one Ethel Stone. Was “Ethelstone” actually a woman named Ethel Stone? Is this fiction masquerading as memoir? Or part of an actual memoir of a life that oh-so-conveniently included the elements of a mid-nineteenth-century morality tale? That seems unlikely, so I assume that it’s fiction. But I may never know for certain.
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Flower Girl’s Dance
Flower Girl’s Dance is an American Civil War-era contra dance that I remember dancing way back in the early 1990s when I first started doing mid-nineteenth-century dance. But the version we did does not actually match that found in any source I’ve ever seen. And it’s easy to see why: the versions given in the sources don’t actually work very well. And now that I’ve reconstructed the California Reel, I have a little theory about why that is.
The earliest sources I have for Flower Girl’s Dance are Elias Howe’s two 1858 books, the Pocket Ball-Room Prompter and the Complete Ball-Room Handbook. I strongly suspect that all the later sources were copying to some degree from Howe. So let’s look at Howe’s instructions:
FLOWER GIRL’S DANCE.
(Music: Girl I left behind me.)
Form as for Spanish Dance. All chassa to the right, half balance–chassa back, swing four half round–swing four half round and back–half promenade, half right and left–forward and back all, forward and pass to next couple (as in the Haymakers).There are some minor differences of spelling and punctuation, but the wording is essentially the same across almost forty years of Howe publications. Taken at face value with the hash marks setting off eight-bar musical strains, this yields a 40-bar dance:
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California Reel
There’s the famous Virginia Reel. There’s a Kentucky Reel. Why not a California Reel?
Unlike those other two reels, which are full-set dances, the California Reel is a normal progressive contra dance in the “Spanish Dance” format: couple facing couple, either down a longways set or in a circle. For this particular dance, a line of couples will work better.
I have five sources for California Reel, though two of them are simply later editions of other sources:
- The ball-room manual, containing a complete description of contra dances, with remarks on cotillions, quadrilles, and Spanish dance, revised edition, presumed to be by William Henry Quimby (Belfast, Maine, 1856; introduction signed W. H. Q)
- The ball room guide : a description of the most popular contra dances of the day, (Laconia, New Hampshire, 1858)
- The ball-room manual of contra dances and social cotillons, with remarks on quadrilles and Spanish dance, vest pocket edition, presumed to be by William Henry Quimby (Belfast, Maine, and Boston, 1863) (later edition of first source above, again signed W. H. Q.)
- Howe’s New American Dancing Master by Elias Howe (Boston, 1882)
- Howe’s New American Dancing Master by Elias Howe (Boston, 1892)
All of them have the same language in the description, varying only in punctuation and spelling. I am reasonably sure that the text in most of these sources was copied from either the 1856 source or some earlier source.
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Susan’s Sociables
When I first wrote about the quadrille figure called the Sociable almost seven years ago, I noted that some sources offered slightly different sets of figures, and at least two suggested that the choice of figures was up to the caller:
“No positive rule as to what figure shall be called in the Quadrille Sociable. The choice is left entirely to the prompter.” (Brookes, L. De G. Brookes on Modern Dancing. New York, 1867)
“Prompters often call figures in the ‘Sociable’ to suit their fancy, introducing the ‘Star Figure,’ ‘Grand Chain,’ etc.” (De Garmo, William. The Dance of Society. New York, 1875)
I rarely exercise the option to call variant figures; my habit has been to do the most common four-figure sequence twice over, once for the ladies to progress and once for the gentlemen, with an eight-bar “All chassez” and honors coda at the end. Including introductory honors, this calls for a structure of 8b + 32bx8 + 8b. Working with live musicians, I can have music played to fit this pattern exactly. Or, if I am using the Sociable as the final figure of a quadrille, the short version with the progressive figures done only once (ladies progressing) is plenty, and since 8b + 32bx4 + 8b is a common finale structure, if necessary, it is easy to find a recording with that pattern.
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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!
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Newport Fancy Dress Ball, 1850
The final fancy dress of the Newport summer season of 1850 occurred on Wednesday, September 4th. It was covered by The Boston Herald on September 5th (“Grand Fancy Ball at Newport”, p. 4) and more extensively by The New York Herald on September 6th (“The Grand Fancy Dress Ball at Newport”, p. 1). The bulk of the coverage was devoted to lists of attendees and their costumes, as is typical for fancy dress balls, but there are some other tidbits of useful information as well. The New York Herald article is extremely lengthy, so I have not transcribed all of it. The article from The Boston Herald is quite short, but not nearly as interesting.
The ball was held at the rebuilt Ocean House, the original of which had opened in 1844, burned down, and been rebuilt. This Ocean House was not the same as the modern Ocean House in Newport. A different hotel by the same name opened in 1868, was demolished in 2005, and then rebuilt again in 2010.
At the RhodeTour website, Dr. Brian Knoth writes about the first two Ocean Houses, with specific mention of the 1850 Fancy Dress Ball:
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Christmas Hornpipe
After my last experience with hornpipes, it’s nice to have a contra recommended for tunes called hornpipes without having to hunt down or worry unduly about the music!
“Christmas Hornpipe” is the name of the tune in the image below, taken from Elias Howe’s Improved Edition of the Musician’s Omnibus (Boston, 1861). Click to enlarge.
Whether to call the figures “Christmas Hornpipe” is a more ambiguous question, since they appear with other tunes as well (more on this below), reused in the same way figures were in the extended Regency era, from at least 1858 through the mid-1890s.
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On evening parties with dancing, 1860
The most fashionable as well as pleasant way in the present day to entertain guests is to invite them to evening parties, which vary in size from the “company,” “sociable,” “soiree,” to the party, par excellence, which is but one step from the ball.
The entertainment upon such occasions may vary with the taste of the hostess or the caprice of her guests. Some prefer dancing, some music, some conversations. Small parties, called together for dramatical or poetical readings, are now fashionable, and very delightful.
— The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of PolitenessI first came across Florence Hartley’s The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness (G. G. Evans: Philadelphia, 1860) via the July, 1861, issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book, which excerpted the section on the etiquette for a lady hosting an evening party. There is a matching section for the (female) guests at an evening party as well as sections for ladies hosting or attending balls. I have spent a great deal of time over the years reading about mid-nineteenth century ballroom etiquette, but considerably less on that for more informal events. I thus found Mrs. Hartley’s thoughts on the subject quite interesting. It would be fun to host smaller events such as these, if one had both the sizable rooms and the servants that Mrs. Hartley assumes will be available or hired for the night.
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The Trio
Since I frequently have to deal with an imbalance in numbers between the ladies and the gentlemen at nineteenth century balls, I’m always interested in dances that use a trio formation. This can be one gentleman with two ladies or vice-versa, though the former is the more common situation.
This dance, simply called “The Trio”, appears in at least two editions of Elias Howe’s American dancing master, and ball-room prompter (Boston, 1862 and 1866). Howe’s instructions are a bit vague and neglect to mention the actual timing of the figures, but a little experimentation convinced me that the following reconstruction is workable and fun. This is an extremely easy dance, good for groups of beginners.
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Thoughts on teaching polka and polka redowa
I recently had the opportunity to watch another teacher do a general introduction to the standard mid-nineteenth century couple dances. That’s a rarer event than you’d imagine. Historical dance teachers aren’t that thick on the ground, and even at multi-teacher festivals, either there aren’t any introductory classes or I’m busy teaching my own classes during them.
Watching this class reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to write up for months about altering how we teach this repertoire. This doesn’t apply to the one-night-stand sort of teaching gig, but I think it’s something other teachers with ongoing classes may find useful.
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“agoing to dance the spanish dance”
“…George Cowls says tell Nancy he is right in his glory to day and when he comes home he is agoing to dance the spanish dance with you and he says tell Abby he is agoing through ceders swamp with her…”
— Pvt. Jairus Hammond to Nancy Titus, December 8, 1862Here’s rare documentation of a specific dance: a mention in a letter from a Union soldier during the American Civil War to his sister, dated one hundred and fifty-two years ago today, that another man plans to dance the Spanish Dance (previously described here) with her when he returns. There has been no real doubt that the Spanish Dance was actually danced and was as popular as its frequent appearance in dance manuals suggests. I have found it listed on dozens of dance cards. But this is another little piece of documentation demonstrating that its popularity extended well down the social scale.
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Ending a Grand March
In almost seven years of writing Kickery (has it really been that long?) I think I’ve only once said anything at all detailed about the Grand March, which was generally performed as the opening dance at American balls in the latter part of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, though occasionally it appears later on the program. Clearly an overview is overdue!
This isn’t it.
While working recently on the ball program for a pair of Civil War-era balls to be held in Gettysburg in November, I started wondering idly how many ways there were to end a Grand March. So I made a little list. I won’t be using most of these, alas; the Gettysburg balls are insanely crowded and thus do not lend themselves to really interesting Marches. But I thought it might be fun to share some of the possibilities.
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Tales of the Schottische from Godey’s Lady’s Book
A comment from one of my Russian correspondents that the schottische was rarely, if ever, danced in Russia in the nineteenth century* started me thinking, after a series of mental jumps**, about how well-accepted (or not) the schottische was in America in its early years.
There appears to have been some dissension on the merits of the dance after its introduction to America around 1849. Edmund Ferrero claimed in The art of dancing (New York, 1859) that the schottische had “acquired great favor”, and all the major dance manuals from the end of the 1850s onward include it. But the anonymous author of Beadle’s dime ball-room companion and guide to dancing (New York, 1868) claimed that the schottische was considered “vulgar”. Since it appeared regularly on dance cards from at least the late 1850s all the way into the early twentieth century, that can’t have been a universal opinion. But was it really anyone’s other than, presumably, those of ministers and others who condemned dancing altogether?
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Howe’s “Rats” Quadrille, concluded (3 of 3)
This is the third in a series of three posts discussing the “Rats” Quadrille, with this one covering the fourth and fifth figures. See the two previous posts for introduction and background and the first three figures.
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Howe’s “Rats” Quadrille, continued (2 of 3)
On to the actual figures of Howe’s “Rats” Quadrille! Please see the first post in the “Rats” series for an introduction to the quadrille and links to sheet music.
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Howe’s “Rats” Quadrille (1 of 3)
Les Rats Quadrilles is a set of five tunes composed by G. Redler as alternate music for the first set of French quadrilles. The tunes are unusually good, and the set became enormously popular and was reprinted for many years, not only in England but in America and Australia as well. In 1854 a piano-duet (four hands) version arranged by J. C. Vierec was published in Philadelphia.Some editions featured the “tree roots” version of the title shown at left, and others a small orchestra of rats with various instruments. American editions seem to have credited the composer as “J. Redler”, but English sources consistently give his first initial as “G”.
I do not have a definitive initial date for the first publication of Les Rats, but in 1846, A. M. Hartley, in his The academic speaker, a system of elocution (Glasgow) mentions on page 319 the inclusion of “Redler’s popular Rat Quadrilles” in Volume I of the collected Hamilton’s Cabinet of Music, a sheet music series, which puts Les Rats into the first half of the 1840s.
