Ask The Expert: The Waltz in Jane Austen’s Time
Ask The Expert will be an occasional feature of AustenBlog, when we have an expert at hand and something to ask her. 
Gentle Reader Anna posted a comment in the discussion about MP last week…
Since I’ve seen the waltz used in the new versions of Persuasion and Mansfield Park I’m wondering how anachronistic it is for the time period. I was initially outraged that they would try to pass off such scandalous dancing in a movie set during the Regency period. But then some quick Googling showed that it was introduced in London around 1812. Does anyone know how common waltzing would have been throughout Britain in the 1810s?
We asked Allison Thompson, who is a musician and dance historian (see her Persuasions On-Line essay on dancing in Jane Austen’s novels) if she could shed some light on the subject.
The question of the authenticity of a closed (“turning”) waltz in any dramatization of an Austen novel has two parts: one, in what year was the novel written and, two, in what year have the movie-makers chosen to set the novel. The waltz as a rhythm for music and for country dances was known in England c. 1810: dance historian/teacher Susan de Guardiola informs me that she has a c.1811 source which describes poussettes in the country dance performed with the sauteuse step (a fast 2/4 waltz) and other figures done “à la waltz.” She adds, however, that it is not clear whether either phrase implies a closed waltz position with turning, or just steps, or both. By 1813, Lord Byron was incensed enough about the turning waltz to write his long poem condemning it. And in the summer of 1814, Lady Lieven, one of the Lady Patronesses of Almacks, created a sensation and made the waltz finally accepted when she danced it at Almacks with Lord “Cupid” Palmerston. So it seems reasonable to say that the turning waltz was increasing in popularity in London from 1812 or 1813 on, really taking off after the Peace Congress in 1814, but that the evidence for a closed turning waltz prior to about 1813 is murky. Finally, it is not at all clear how rapidly the waltz traveled outwards to the provinces.
Regardless, Regency bucks and belles would not have recognized the waltz that Edmund and Fanny performed.
In 1816, dancing master Thomas Wilson produced his “Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing for the Truly Fashionable Species of Dancing” which claimed to lay out The Right Way to Waltz (Wilson was a bit of a complainer and thought that he was the only qualified teacher around). He notes that the English, “till lately,” were not so conversant with the right way of performing the dance, and he carefully describes the differences between the French and the German styles of turning.
His description of the French Waltz, for example, shows that it commonly had three parts—the Slow Waltz, the Sauteuse Waltz and the Jetté or Quick Sauteuse Waltz—all of which he liked to see preceded by a slow March in waltz time (one step per measure). Each part of the waltz was slightly faster than the previous. The style of the dance was very high on the toes, and to greatly simplify the instructions for the Slow waltz, imagine that the gentleman pirouettes in three beats (that is, he is in demi-pointe position on both feet, one behind the other in fifth position, and in three beats is just sort of gyro-scoping around with legs straight and in “an easy equilibrium of the Body,” so that the foot that was behind ends up in front). During his pirouette, the lady takes three bourrée steps around him; then they reverse the roles. This alternating pirouetting and stepping has a very different appearance from the modern ballroom waltz. Also different to modern eyes was the Sauteuse, which involved light, leaping steps (from the French, sauter, to jump). So, even if Fanny and Edmund were waltzing in-doors, on the polished wooden floor that the dance really requires, the style of the dance would be very different from what we saw in the recent film.
Wilson also goes on to describe the variety of hand holds, rather than just the simple “ballroom” position that we saw: for example, partners could stand side-by-side, with the left hands clasped in front of them, the lady’s right hand at her waist and the gentleman’s right arm encircling her waist to grasp her hand; or they could assume the position that Lord Byron found so particularly shocking in 1813: both the lady’s hands on the gentleman’s shoulders, his hands on her waist and his feet moving in between hers. Tsk, tsk.
As for Austen herself, she was 35 in 1810, past her dancing days. It seems highly unlikely to me that she would have learned to waltz—she was rather dismissive of her niece Fanny’s modern quadrille music, for example. When younger, she liked to dance, and many people have noted that her plots are rather like the intricacies of a country dance. Surely if she had seen a turning waltz, and noted its shockingly close embrace, she would have made use of it in her plots. In fact, the only mention of a waltz in her novels is in Emma (written between 1814 and 1815) when Mrs. Weston strikes up a “irresistible” waltz just as Emma must depart, but we don’t know whether this was just pretty music to listen to, or music for a turning waltz or a waltz country dance. Mansfield Park was written between 1812 and 1814 and Persuasion was completed in 1816, so it is technically possible that some of the characters could have been familiar with a waltz; again, however, we don’t know how rapidly the craze spread beyond London. Prior to Wilson’s publication (which he claimed any gentleman could use teach himself the waltz with “ease and precision”), one would have had to learn the waltz directly from a dancing master.
Beyond the technicalities of the dates, we must also examine Austen’s characters’ motivations (as opposed to the filmmakers’ characters’ motivations). I could well imagine Maria Rushworth and Henry Crawford enjoying the close embrace of a turning waltz at a smart party in London (Mr. Rushworth being too stupid to learn it), but where would Edmund Bertram have learned it (even if he were inclined to it—recall how merely acting a play bothered him), and inconceivable that Fanny would have learned it either at Portsmouth or the Park. And in some of the recent films, particularly Mansfield Park, it is rather difficult to pinpoint the year the movie is actually supposed to be set in: inconsistencies in costuming, which may have been introduced as a short-hand for characterization, make it difficult to date the film.
To sum up, it is technically possible—but a bit of a stretch—to see characters from Austen’s later-written novels waltz, but if they had waltzed, it would have looked quite different from the waltz of today. Both historically and as far as characterization goes, I find the out-of-doors waltz that we saw Fanny and Edmund perform in the latest movie of Mansfield Park impossible. Whether other viewers felt that it conveyed the appropriate emotion of love triumphant is up to them.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:52 pm
From a report on the Prince Regent’s grand ball from the society pages of The Times of London, summer, 1816:
“We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the [Viennese] Waltz was introduced (we believe for the first time) at the English court on Friday last … it is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compressor on the bodies in their dance, to see that it is indeed far removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is attempted to be forced on the respectable classes of society by the civil examples of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.”
February 4th, 2008 at 6:33 am
Thank you very much! That was most interesting, and I’m going to save it to Delicious so that I won’t anachronize.
the position that Lord Byron found so particularly shocking in 1813: both the lady’s hands on the gentleman’s shoulders, his hands on her waist and his feet moving in between hers. Tsk, tsk.
But having a kid with your half-sister is okay.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Oh, NOW you’ve done it, Miss Otis: we’ll get a bunch of indignant posts about how THAT WAS APOCRYPHAL! LOL! Even if it was (and I have no idea if it was), you have to admit that Byron was, erm, free with his affections.
I do find it amusing as heck that he found the waltz shocking!
February 4th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Thanks for the information!
February 5th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
While I do not compare Georgette Heyer to Jane, she is highly respected as to her research on the Regency period, and her description of the battle of Waterloo has been used at West
Point, further honoring her accuracy. She references the new dance the Waltz in several of her books, all of which are pre-1820. Several mentions as the the “shocking” closeness of the participants are made by the characters, and the dances occasionally take place in the country, not just in London.
February 5th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I love and respect Heyer’s works too, but even her biographer notes that she did not perform “scholarly” research to the extent of noting her sources, etc., and some of her dicta cannot be traced to a reputable source. For example, her very special (over)use of Regency slang has its roots in a contemporary source (the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue), but it is not clear if well-bred ladies and gentlemen (over the age of 18) in, say, 1815 actually used such slang. Indeed, contemporary works such as Austen’s suggest that they didn’t. Heyer’s masterly description of the battle of Waterloo can indeed be tied to several very specific sources, but she made no effort to extrapolate battle actions to general social trends, as you are suggesting that she did in the area of dance. So the fact that some of Heyer’s novels containing waltzing are set pre-1820 is not ipso facto relevant. That is, the fact that Miss Trent and The Nonesuch waltz in the provinces in their novel is not proof of anything except the author’s excellent story-telling sense. (Quibbles with dates aside, that novel is wonderful in describing the different generational attitudes towards the waltz.)
I am happy (with certain qualifications) to use a novel written by someone in a given period as a reference for dances as performed at the time of the novel, but I would not use a non-contemporary author’s research and impressions of same. That is, I wouldn’t submit the dance scenes in Mysteries of Udolpho or even The Three Musketeers as evidence of dance practices of the mid-17th century periods in which these novels were set: the authors had no first-hand knowledge of those periods. But I am much more willing to work with Alcott’s impressions of the German cotillion or the mazurka as danced in America circa 1865 or Hardy’s (very knowledgeable) discussions of social and ceremonial dance of the 1840s or so, since both authors had first-hand knowledge of what they wrote about.
Thus, we can obtain a lot of useful information from Tom Moore’s poem “Country Dance and Quadrille,” written ca. 1822, which describes a ball in the provinces in which the English nymph Country Dance just barely wins out in a popularity contest with Mam’zelle Quadrille. The waltz, in this Battle of the Dance Titans in the Provinces, is nowhere to be seen. This isn’t conclusive evidence, by any means, but it is indicative of general trends. Without further documentation, I argue that it is unlikely that the waltz would have appeared much outside London (and maybe Edinburgh) prior to the 1820s. Austen might have seen a waltz country dance when visiting relatives in London, but we just don’t know for sure. The dates *could* work out, but the fact that Austen didn’t use a turning waltz as a plot/character device in her novels suggests that the dance wasn’t that important to her. That, in and of itself, is probably a good enough reason not to include it in a film, IMHO.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Meredith–I’m a huge Heyer fan, too, but you also have to remember that she wrote about the aristocracy, not the gentry as did Austen. The behavior of the two classes was rather different–the aristocracy was more daring in its behavior, freer with sexuality, etc. It would be like taking Paris and Britney’s behavior as indicative of behavior in middle America to compare the behavior in Heyer’s novels to Austen’s novels.
And, uh, what Allison said, too.
But I do love me some Georgette.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
All of the above is accurate (I speak as a dance historian and Heyer fan). But I have found a reference in a letter of Mrs Creevey (the wife of Thomas Creevey the diarist) that she watched while “Prinny” (the Prince Regent) was being taught the waltz in 1805. She commented that he could go around a few times before getting dizzy. Of course he was probably inebriated at the time, since he was drunk more than he was sober. However, for those who look for the waltz in Austen, there is a sentence in Emma where Mrs Weston plays an “irresistable waltz.” However we do not know if this could be what a music text of the time refers to as “country dance waltzing” or a real waltz. To the correspondent who wants agenuine historic reference, I refer her to Scott’s Redgauntlet of 1822, which describes differences between English and Scottish dances. (The Scottish reel was brought to London by the Duchess of Gordon, a daring and ambitious hostess.) Those who write about dance should really be more careful. A supposedly brilliant columnist in the NY Times made a fool of himself some years ago by writing a learned essay on dance and society at the time of the Congress of Vienna, and succeeded in mentioning half a dozen dances that had been out of style for over a century. And don’t lets get into what is seen in films. The dances in historical films set in any time previous to the 20th century are ALWAYS wrong.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I certainly agree with Judith that most of the dancing in historical films is factually wrong–whether or not it works well or not to forward the filmmaker’s desire to, in a short-hand, if not historically accurate, manner convey a great deal of emotion. I am also indebted for her reference to Prinny’s waltzing–hadn’t encountered that before! But, again, an isolated case of inebriated nobility dancing something outre is not quite the same as asserting that *everybody* was doin’ it.
Further, as per what I wrote above, I would counsel caution with relying on dating Scottish dances in England to Scott’s historical novel Redgauntlet, published in 1824 and describing the Jacobite rebellion of the ‘45 and some years after. Alas! Scott was not born until 1771 (4 years before JA), some years after the ‘45, so, though he could have been *told* of dance practices of the period, he had no first-hand knowledge of them. (Scott was quite an Antiquarian, and included many old customs and such in his books and the notes to them, but we have to regard these carefully–were said customs really being done in, say 1824, when he wrote of them, let alone 1745 and shortly thereafter? Scott was also A Romantick.)
February 6th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
It just occurred to me that a good comparison to the reaction to the waltz in JA’s time is the response to pole-dancing in ours. (You know what I mean: scantily clad girls writhing aerobically and sexily around a stationary pole. Said to be the Latest Fad For Losing Weight and Having Fun.)
Many young celebrities (the same ones who also spend $20,000 on carry-bags for their toy dogs) are touting the physical and emotional benefits of pole-dancing; “*So* aerobic! And sexy!”
And, yes, even in my fly-over town, one can find classes in pole-dancing.
But, as an-ahem! (Early) Middle-aged Lady, will I take said class? No
Do I want to see pole-dancing? Not really.
If I were a writer of fiction, would I include pole-dancing in my novel? Probably not, as it is not on my socio-economic radar.
But obviously some small group of trend-setters and early adapters are embracing the fad. 50 years from now if someone writes that “the pole-dancing craze swept the nation” will that be a true statement? Obviously the generalization is indeed too sweeping. This is a reminder why we have to be careful about generalizations surrounding social trends.
February 8th, 2008 at 11:34 am
In reference to Alison’s most recent remarks: I have encountered more than once people who seem to think that care towards historical accuracy in theater, literature or film will in some manner (never made plain to me) actually diminish or interfere with emotional mood. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such slovenliness only exasperates the knowledgeable and misinforms the laity. Those risible “regency” novels published by the forestful (alas) contain such incredible errors as having a heroine employ plaster of Paris instead of sticking plaster, and in relation to dance, discussing “who leads” in relation to a quadrille, as well as the use of the box step. I could go on for some time, but spare the sensibilities of the readers as well as my own blood pressure.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
“And in some of the recent films, particularly Mansfield Park, it is rather difficult to pinpoint the year the movie is actually supposed to be set in: inconsistencies in costuming, which may have been introduced as a short-hand for characterization, make it difficult to date the film.”
Isn’t this the truth! It has been suggested that MP3 takes place some years before it was written and so my oh my they are way, way off. Thanks so much for the terrific and reliable information!
Even in Daniel Deronda written and taking place in Victorian times, the heroine doesn’t like to waltz and have someone touching her. She prefers the quadrille.