Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (60 page)

The Hole in the Wall: Regency Dancing

by David William Wilkin

A
s noted elsewhere, I have spent some time teaching the dances that were done during the Regency era. I have spent the time doing this because I have found tremendous enjoyment performing them as well as guiding others through them. The advent of devices like the iPod and now our iPhones have allowed me to store some of these tunes on the device and carry them with me, as well as listen to them whenever I wish, even as I write my Regency novels, such as my latest,
Jane Austen and Ghosts
.

Regency dancing has been in vogue here in the U.S.A. for many years now. We owe its acceptance in the United States to the attendees of Science Fiction conventions, specifically the wives of the authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

These ladies, bored by not having much to do, took their love of Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances and asked one fan who was known for his ethnic dancing to choreograph dances that they had read about. The dances took off. Dancing spread to other venues, where attendees of Science Fiction conventions also were members of reenactment groups, specifically the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), which ends its study of previous times in 1600, well before our period.

Those interpreters of history, however, found a resource for dance from John Playford and the
English Dancing Master
. Though published in 1651, it is thought that all the dances he recorded and printed were also done before. A later dance, Hole in the Wall, made its way into many realms, that of the SCA and that of those dancing in the Regency genre at Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions and events solely concerned with the Regency.

Notes say that this dance, presented for you here, is from 1721. The music is from Henry Purcell and published in 1695 as Air VIII Hornpipe. The music was part of the incidental music in the revival of the 1677 tragedy of Mrs. Aphra Behn’s
Abdelazer or the Moor’s Revenge.
As far as we can tell, the name of the dance has little to do with the play. The orchestration of the music makes this piece related to the music of the French court of the late 17th century.

As mentioned, reenactment societies have taken this dance to the Regency and to the Renaissance. Many of those who dance it from those eras take the time to add embellishments believed to be found at those times. The dance, however, remains the same and is pleasant in any era.

Here is a technical description of the dance:

1) A couple honor each other, cast out and around B couple, meet below, pass through B couple to place; B couple honor each other, cast out and around A couple, meet above, pass through A couple to place.

2) A man, B lady bow and cross by right shoulders, exchanging places. B man, A lady bow and cross by right shoulders, exchanging places.

3) All 4 in set join hands, circle clockwise halfway to place. A couple cast around B’s, B’s lead up.

And now, let me break this down for you, first by giving you some
definitions
:

Set
—The set is the group of dancers. In Hole in the Wall, men line up facing their partners. The first couple at the top of the line is the A couple, the next couple is the B couple, and these two couples are one set. The next couple, the third in the line, are A’s once more, and so on.

Honor—
An honor would be for the man to give a short bow, and the lady a curtsy.

Cast
—Casting out and around means that the A man turns over his left shoulder and walks behind the B man to the place vacated by the next A man in line as he has also cast and moved down the line. The A lady does the same, turning over her right shoulder and walking behind the B lady on her side of the set to the place vacated by the next A lady.

Cross
—The cross is when a dancer goes to the other side of the set. In Hole in the Wall the cross is done along the diagonal, so instead of facing one’s partner, the dancer faces and crosses with the person of the opposite gender who is standing next to his or her partner.

Hands Round
—This is often called as four hands round, though all four people and all eight of their hands (two each) are used. Everyone joins hands in the square, making a circle. The circle now advances a certain number of places; in Hole in the Wall, it is two, or halfway around the circle. In this dance the dancers end up back where they started so this is often called as halfway to place.

Progression—
This is the term for how couples move on to dance with new people, for advancing to their next set of partners.

Now that we have some definitions in place, let’s move on to the
dance figures
:

The first part of the dance

• The A couple
  exchange honors
  , which is the man bowing and the lady curtsying.
  
• The A man
  casts
  by turning over his left shoulder and walking behind the B man to the place vacated by the next A man in line as he has also cast and moved down the line. The A lady does the same,
  casting
  over her right shoulder and walking behind the B lady on her side of the set.
  
• The A’s, who are now next to the B’s who have not moved, must
  meet below and pass
  through
  . This is often done with the active couple (the A’s) lightly touching inside hands at shoulder height. They walk back between the B couple and return to the place they started the dance. The entire figure is done without stopping.
  

• The second part of the first figure is the B couple doing everything the A couple just did. The B couple is at this time the active couple. This, though, is somewhat the reverse of the A couple. The B couple casts out and walks behind the A couple going up the set to meet above the A couple and then walks between the A couple back to place.
  

The second part of the dance

• This is now done on the diagonal. The A man
  honors
  the B lady and she him. They
  cross
  to each other’s place passing right shoulders. Again, many touch the fingers of their right hands to each other in our modern interpretation with a bit of flirtation. When they reach the place that was occupied by the other, they
  honor
  once more.
  
• As there was repetition before, so too again. This time the B man and the A lady do what was just done by their partners.
  

The third part of the dance (the
progression
)

• All four join hands
  and walk in a circle clockwise, halfway. This puts each person in the place where they started the dance.
  
• As at the beginning of the dance, the A couple
  casts
  down, but not this time to where the other A’s were before. This time they go to where the couple they have been dancing with (the B’s) are standing.
  
• Our B couple must get out of the way, and joining inside hands, as is done now, the B man leads his partner to the place that their A couple has vacated.
  
• At the end of this, the B’s find themselves with a new A couple, and the A’s have a new B couple as well.
  

Please note that at each end of the line, after one time through, there are extra couples. The B couple at the very top of the line has no couple to dance with, and the A couple at the bottom of the line is in the same position. The solitary couples will wait one time through the dance and then return to dance, but this time as they go along the line to the other end, they are now the reverse couple of what they were before. If they started as an A, they are now a B, and vice-versa.

At the Regency Assembly Press pages there is one page devoted to
Regency dancing
, as you would find at the time and recreated for today.

Source

Keller, Kate Van Winkle and Genevieve Shimer.
The Playford Ball: 103 Early Country Dances 1651-1820
. Country Dance & Song Society of America, 1994.

Almack’s: It’s Not Quite What You Think...

by M.M. Bennetts

A
lmack’s. The name conjures up images of a glittering Regency ball attended by ladies in elegant silk gowns and gentlemen in the formal attire of the age, all dancing and bowing together—Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, only in polished London setting. Though this, I suspect, may be down to the frequency with which the late Georgette Heyer wrote of the place.

The reality, regardless of the fictional lore, was somewhat different.

Almack’s Assembly Rooms were located on King Street, St. James’s. The Assembly Rooms themselves had been opened in 1764 by a Scot by the name of MacCall who, allegedly, decided on an approximate anagram of his name for the rooms.

There was a large ballroom—some ninety to one hundred feet long and forty feet wide—which was decorated with gilded columns and pilasters, classic medallions, and very large mirrors. By the late Regency (post 1814-15) it was lit by gas in elaborate cut-glass lustres.

There was a balcony at one end where the small orchestra was seated. Refreshments (such as they were) were deliberately (revoltingly) mediocre: weak lemonade or orgeat or ratafia, dry biscuits, and day-old brown bread and butter. (Although good wine or alcohol was never served on the premises, many gentlemen would have arrived already drunk.)

There was also a dais or raised seat at the upper end, where the Lady Patronesses sat,
“nodding acknowledgment as the invitees arrived.”

Balls were given once a week, on Wednesday evenings, for a twelve-week period during the Season—roughly from the beginning of March until early June. Until 1814, only country dances were permitted. Thereafter, quadrilles and the waltz were introduced to liven things up. No one was admitted after 11 p.m., but frequently the dancing went on well into Thursday morning.

By 1801, the required “uniform” for a gentleman was the look made famous and fashionable by George Brummell: a dark coat (navy or black), white cravat, and black knee breeches and silk stockings or tight black pantaloons with thin shoes (men’s black dancing pumps), and chapeau bras. Wider trousers or any introduction of colour were unacceptable and the wearer would be turned away at the door.

Admission to these balls was by ticket only, or by “voucher” (a cardboard square) as they were called, which were on sale on Bond Street.

And the cost of this? Almack’s membership fee was ten guineas—around £350 in today’s money according to the UK National Archives. One then had to buy one’s tickets at a cost of ten shillings each (£17 in today’s money).

But these vouchers were only made available to those on the List. And the means for inclusion on this List is among the most important things one needs to know about the place. For Almack’s during the early years of the 19th century was an exclusive club. Very exclusive. And it was run by women.

And not just any women. These are ladies of highest birth, fortune, and snobbery. And possibly the last of those qualities is the most important. They are the Lady Patronesses.

In 1812, the Patronesses were:

Lady Emily Cowper
: daughter of the Earl and Countess of Melbourne; by 1814, the lover of Lord Palmerston and then his wife; sister of William Lamb and therefore sister-in-law to Lady Caroline Lamb who is the niece of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and daughter of the Earl and Countess of Bessborough;

Lady Jersey
: wife of the 5th Earl of Jersey, the granddaughter of Robert Childs, a banker, and a considerable heiress; sister to the 11th Earl of Westmorland (and yes, her nickname was Silence because she never shut her mouth);

Lady Castlereagh
: wife of Viscount Castlereagh (later the Marquis of Londonderry—he was Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons from 1812 until his death in 1822), she was the daughter of the 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire—he’d been the British Ambassador to Russia and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland;

Mrs. Drummond Burrell
: wife of the notable dandy who was enobled so she later became Lady Gwydry and eventually Lady Willoughby de Eresby;

Lady Sefton
: wife of the 2nd Earl of Sefton;

The Austrian Ambassador’s wife,
Princess Esterhazy
, and after 1814, the Russian Ambassador’s wife,
Countess Lieven
(who deserves her own blog as she is one of the most opinionated, odiously officious, haughtiest busybodies ever to breathe oxygen).

Unofficially, until he fled to the Continent to escape his debtors in 1814, Mr. Brummell also wielded a great deal of influence over whom to admit to the List and whom to strike off.

And probably it is this description of those who wielded the power to include or exclude that is most informative about Almack’s. Because although politics (and sex, London street riots, and the war) were all forbidden topics of conversation there, these were women at the pinnacle of political power and patronage, influence and wealth, not just in Britain but in Europe itself.

Between them, they weighed and scrutinised Britain’s nobility and gentry. And in most cases, found it wanting. Probably some full three-quarters of Britain’s aristocracy failed to gain their approbation. Wealth—especially if it “smelled of the shop”—was no guarantee of entry. Nor was birth. Good looks or talent might help. Dancing well, especially if one were male, was a definite asset.

According to Captain Gronow in his
Regency Recollections
:

Very often, persons whose rank and fortunes entitled them to the entree, were excluded by the cliqueism of the lady patronesses: for the female government of Almack’s was a pure despotism and subject to all the caprices of despotic rule.

The travel writer, Major Chambre, in his
Recollections
, wrote of the “Rules of Admission”:

No lady or gentleman’s name could continue on the list of the same patroness for more than one set of balls. No gentleman’s tickets could be transferred; nor could ladies procure them for their female friends, nor gentlemen for gentlemen. A mother might give hers to a daughter, or one unmarried sister to another. Subscribers who were prevented coming, were requested to give notice to the lady patronesses on the day of the ball by two o’clock...that the vacancies might be filled up.

Moreover, having been on the List one year did not necessarily mean one could look to be included in the next year’s List. Often too, in what might be described as playfulness (some might call it bitchiness) the patronesses would extend vouchers to a lady, but not her husband. Or vice versa. Particularly if it was felt one had married beneath oneself.

Almack’s was, in short, a place wholly given over to the pursuit of sex and marriage—and these are alliances based on property, money, political influence, and prestige. It is not about “love-matches”.

In Austenite language (though Jane Austen herself never mentions it), Almack’s was a place where Miss Georgiana Darcy could be safely introduced to eligible young men, without her brother or her trustees worrying that she might encounter a fortune-hunter of the stamp of Wickham or Willoughby. Likewise, these eligible young men would be sure that Miss Georgiana Darcy had been vetted by the Patronesses, that she was possessed of the fortune she claimed to have, and that she was suitably well-born.

For those who are devotees of
Downton Abbey
, if I may give another example, Almack’s provided one setting where the Lady Mary Crawleys of the age might encounter suitable gentlemen with whom they might form an alliance. It was never a place for ingenues from the country.

It was a hot-house atmosphere of gossip, music, dancing, and repressed sexual tension perhaps, but above all, it was a place where the very rich and very powerful played, partied, and reigned supreme....

In Gronow’s words, Almack’s was
“the seventh heaven of the fashionable world.”