Sir William Hamilton (That Hamilton Man!)

My last post for the EHFA was on Emma Hamilton, so it seems apropos that we discuss one of her other two halves, the man who is not often discussed, Sir William Hamilton.

Sir William Hamilton

January 12 1731-April 6 1803


Now, 200 years after he has died, he is more famous for whom he was married to, than his achievements in life.

For 36 years he was the British Ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. From 1764 to 1800. Turbulent times that saw the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon.

Hamilton was also an antiquarian, an archaeologist and vulcanologist. (DWW-being Ambassador in Naples provided was access to Vesuvius and Etna.) He was a noted collector and became a member of the Royal Society. Born the fourth son of Lord Archibald Hamilton, who was Governor of Jamica, his mother was the daughter of the sixth Earl of Aberdeen. She was a mistress of the son of George II, George the Prince of Wales, who was the father of George III. George III called Sir William his foster brother.

Sir William attended the Westminster School and then was commissioned into the 3rd Foot Guards in 1747. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1753. He married Catherine Barlow, daughter of a politician and left the army. She died in 1782, they had no children. In 1786, when he was 55 his nephew sent him a stunning young lady who had become the muse for George Romney. Sir William cancelled his nephew, Charles Greville’s debts for the introduction. Emma Lyon (Hart) captivated Sir William. They were married in 1791. He was 60 then and she was 26.

When Horatio Nelson crossed their path, a man he admired, he encouraged the notorious affair to develop. Eventually when they abandoned Naples, the three took up living all in the same houses in both Merton Place and London. Nelson refused to seek his own divorce and marry Emma until Sir William died, for they were such good friends.

William served as an MP for Midhurst in 1761 but then left to become the Ambassador to Naples. He began his collection of Greek Vases and other antiquities selling a part of his collection to the British Museum. A second collection was lost at sea when the HMS Colossus went down. What survived was purchased by Thomas Hope.

Sir William became an author Antiquités étrusques, grecques et romaines (1766–67) and Observations on Mount Vesuvius (1772). And he was a member of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a member of the Society of Dilettanti. He made more than 65 ascents to Mount Vesuvius and made a number of drawings before it’s eruption in 1765. He met Mozart during his tour of Italy in 1770. Goethe visited Hamilton in 1787. Goethe thought two chandeliers were most likely smuggled from Pompei, and a friend agreed telling the famed poet, that he should not pursue his investigations any further. Hamilton died in 1803 and is buried next to his first wife.

* * *

Mr. Wilkin writes Regency Historicals and Romances, Ruritanian (A great sub-genre that is fun to explore) and Edwardian Romances, Science Fiction and Fantasy works. He is the author of the very successful Pride & Prejudice continuation; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence. He has several other novels set in Regency England including The End of the World and The Shattered Mirror. His most recent work is the humorous spoof; Jane Austen and Ghosts, a story of what would happen were we to make any of these Monsters and Austen stories into a movie.

And Two Peas in a Pod, a madcap tale of identical twin brothers in Regency London who find they must impersonate each other to pursue their loves.

The links for all locations selling Mr. Wilkin's work can be found at the webpage and will point you to your favorite internet bookstore: David’s Books, and at various Internet and realworld bookstores including the iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords.

He is published by Regency Assembly Press

And he maintains his own blog called The Things That Catch My Eye where the entire Regency Lexicon has been hosted these last months as well as the current work in progress of the full Regency Timeline is being presented.

You also may follow Mr. Wilkin on Twitter at @DWWilkin

Mr. Wilkin maintains a Pinterest page with pictures and links to all the Regency Research he uncovers at Pinterest Regency-Era

That Hamilton Woman!

Emma (Hart) Hamilton

April 26 1765 to January 15 1815

Born the daughter of a blacksmith, died in infamy, the avowed mistress of England’s hero, Horatio Nelson. She was born Amy Lyon and later changed her name to Emma Hart.

 At the age of 12 she was a maid at the Hawarden, Wales. House of Doctor Honoratus Leigh Thomas, a surgeon in Chester. She then worked for the Budd family in Chatham place and helped a fellow maid, Jane Powell rehearse to become an actress. She then became a maid at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane to such notables as Mary Robinson. From being a maid she advanced to model and dancer.

  At the age of 15 she met Sir Harry Featherstonhaugh. She became an entertainer for him, dancing naked on the dining room table for he and his friends. At Harry’s Uppark estate in the South Downs she met the second son of the Earl of Warwick, the honorable Charles Francis Greville. She also conceived a child by Sir Harry. (1781.)

  Emma was sent off to London until the baby was born but now she became the mistress of Greville. The child, when it was born was taken to be raised by the Blackburn family. Emma saw her daughter frequently until those periods when she was in debt. The girl became a companion or governess in her later life.

  Greville had Emma sit for George Romney and kept her as his mistress. Romney now took on Emma as one of his chief inspirations, his muse. She is in many of the most famous paintings by Romney.

  By 1783, Greville needed to find a rich wife (though another source says he never married), so he passed Emma to his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, the British Envoy to Naples. Hamilton was glad for Greville’s marriage meant he did not have to support his nephew any longer either. In a transaction, Hamilton acquired Emma much as one buys a piece of pottery. Emma had no knowledge of the transaction, and was furious about it when she found out. But she did become Hamilton’s mistress.

  She created a new art form, crossing between posture, dance and acting for his guests and it was a sensation. Other artists took on this type of performance. In 1791, Hamilton married Emma in England. He was 60 and she 26.

  And then in 1793, she met Horatio Nelson at the court of the King and Queen of Naples. Nelson came back to Naples in 1798 after the Battle of the Nile sorely wounded, and she nursed him back to health. Then for his 40th birthday she had a party with 1800 guests to celebrate it. Sir William even seems then to have tolerated and encouraged the affair that developed between Emma and Nelson.

  That Emma and Nelson could have such an endorsement may stem from the age of Sir William, and that Nelson was the most famous Briton in the world now that he had won the Battle of the Nile, and through George Romney and her founding of a new art form, and her great beauty, Emma was the most famous female Briton. (DWW-The two most important Britons, even more so than any King or Prime Minister, right at that moment) And William Hamilton was a collector. These two were under his roof, carrying on. He was able to show them off.

  Emma was now, in 1799, the close personal friend and advisor to the Queen of Naples, Marie Carolina whose sister, Marie Antoinette had been executed by the French. It was probably not too impossible to tell those of Naples, that the French were the great enemy. Those who did want the French as allies, were the aristocrats, not the people or the royals. The royal family fled to Sicily. Nelson tried to aid the Royal family and put down this aristocratic revolution. He was recalled to Britain, though he, Emma and Sir William took the longest possible route back.

  They arrived in Britain in 1800 to a hero’s welcome. They lived together openly and the affair became public knowledge. The Admiralty sent Nelson back to sea.

  Now Emma and Nelson wished to marry, but they would not do so until Sir William died, who they both cared for very much. Nor could Nelson get a divorce from his wife unless he had another great victory. In 1801, Emma gave birth to her and Nelson’s daughter, Horatia. Nelson bought a house in Wimbledon, Merton Place, where they all could live. They became the papers celebrity sensation of the day. Emma was no longer the great beauty, and they did try to live a quieter life.

  Sir William died in 1803 and Nelson left for the sea again. Emma was pregnant once more. The child died a few weeks after it was born. Emma began to spend lavishly and gamble. Then Nelson died at Trafalgar.

  Now she ran through the remaining money and became heavily in debt. Merton Place was left to her and Emma tried to maintain it as a monument to Nelson. It too sent her into further debt. She had now returned to poverty and drank herself to death in Calais. Horatia married the Reverend Phillip Ward and had ten children.

* * *

Mr. Wilkin writes Regency Historicals and Romances, Ruritanian (A great sub-genre that is fun to explore) and Edwardian Romances, Science Fiction and Fantasy works. He is the author of the very successful Pride & Prejudice continuation; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence. He has several other novels set in Regency England including The End of the World and The Shattered Mirror. His most recent work is the humorous spoof; Jane Austen and Ghosts, a story of what would happen were we to make any of these Monsters and Austen stories into a movie.

And Two Peas in a Pod, a madcap tale of identical twin brothers in Regency London who find they must impersonate each other to pursue their loves.

The links for all locations selling Mr. Wilkin's work can be found at the webpage and will point you to your favorite internet bookstore: David’s Books, and at various Internet and realworld bookstores including the iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords.

He is published by Regency Assembly Press

And he maintains his own blog called The Things That Catch My Eye where the entire Regency Lexicon has been hosted these last months as well as the current work in progress of the full Regency Timeline is being presented.

You also may follow Mr. Wilkin on Twitter at @DWWilkin

Mr. Wilkin maintains a Pinterest page with pictures and links to all the Regency Research he uncovers at Pinterest Regency-Era

The Hole in the Wall

by David Wilkin

As noted before and elsewhere, I have spent some time teaching the dances that have been done in the Regency Era. I have spent the time doing this because I 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 when I wish even as I write my Regency Novels, such as my latest, Jane Austen and Ghosts.

Regency Dancing has been in vogue for many years now. We owe it’s 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 Regency Romances, and asked one fan who was known for his ethnic dancing, to choreograph dances that they had read about. These 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, which ends it 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 it’s way into both 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.

Presented for you here, notes say this dance is from 1721. Dancing certainly gives one a Regency feel. 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 make this piece related to the music of the French Court of the late 17th century.

As mentioned, re-enactment 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 embellish their movements with the caricatures found at those times. The dance however, remains the same and is pleasant in any era.

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 half way to place. A couple cast around B's, B's lead up.

Breaking this down for you.

Defintions:

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 are the A couple. The next couple are the B’s and these two couples are one set. The next couple, the third in the line, are A’s once more.

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 casting over her right shoulder and walking behind the B lady on her side of the set.

Cross-The cross is you getting to the other side of the set. In Hole in the Wall the cross is done along the diagonal, so instead of facing your partner, you face and cross with the person of the same gender next to your partner.

Hands Round-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 half way around the circle. In this dance you end up back where you started so this is often called as half way to place.

Progression-The term for how couples move on to dance with new people. Advancing to your next set of partners.


The Dance Figures:

The first part of the dance:
❖The A couple exchange honors, which is the man bowing and the lady curtsying.

❖Casting-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 casting over her right shoulder and walking behind the B lady on her side of the set.

❖Meet below and pass through means that the A’s are now next to the B’s, the B’s have not moved, along the line. This is often done with the active couple 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.


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 others 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.


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. 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 couple as well.


Please note that at each end of the line, after once 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. This happens and the couples will wait one time through the dance and return to dance, but this time as they go along the line to the very 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 that is recreated today.

Research
Kate Van Winkle Keller and Genevieve Shimer The Playford Ball, 1994

Mr. Wilkin writes Regency Historicals and Romances, Ruritanian and Edwardian Romances, Science Fiction and Fantasy. He is the author of the very successful Pride & Prejudice continuation; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence. His most recent work is the humorous spoof; Jane Austen and Ghosts.

His work can be found for sale at: David’s Books, and at various Internet and realworld bookstores including the iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords.
He is published by Regency Assembly Press
And he maintains his own blog called The Things That Catch My Eye
You also may follow Mr. Wilkin on Twitter at @DWWilkin

Regency Era Wallpaper, or Decorating your Drawing Rooms

by David W. Wilkin

One thing I find when writing my Regency Romances, or reading others, is that they invariably have many scenes in a drawing room. And why not, the art of calling on ones friends and neighbors was a central point of many of the Ton’s days. Or when in the country, the men may have been off sporting about the grounds of the great manor house, but our Heroines were back at the house, ensconced, in a drawing room.

Now, I bring this up because when I sit down and am madly typing away, I am much more concerned with what takes place in the scene, then the setting, and this I fault myself for. I have watched enough BBC dramas to know exactly what these rooms look like in my mind. I have visited several of the great houses and know how they look as well. I just take the short cut that relies on my psychic ability to project what I see in my mind's eye to be inherent in my writing and know that my readers need nothing from me to guide them to a similar view.

Now I shall remove my tongue from my cheek. It is easy enough to type with it planted there, but not so easy to speak should I want to hold a conversation.

As I fault myself for not providing enough detail about the rooms, I begin to add either in first draft, or second, details about furniture, and the layout of a room where a scene is set. Sometimes I create detail about the color schemes. But I still fall short, I am sure of it. (Though my action, which takes place often times through dialogue, starts off quickly in these drawing rooms, and my Hero’s being manly men, take little notice of the decor when they are about to offer for the Heroine.)

During the Regency our rooms could be decorated with a few materials, and they could use more than one at a time to ornament their rooms. Prior to our period, in Late Georgian times, the fashionable set would have had fabric hangings stretched between chair rail and cornice. Expensive and opulent fabrics made of silk, velvet and wool damasks.

By the 1770s wallpaper came into general use. These comprised patterned flock and printed designs. As late Georgian merged into our Regency, we see an increase in the wealth of many during the times. Despite the war, affluence was growing. And as it did so, the use of wallpapers took over, though silk and some other fabrics remained a luxury to adorn one’s walls.

The motifs employed were classical, Neo-Grecian, created in bas relief or as trompe l’oeil. The surviving wall paintings from Pompeii became vogue as they were unearthed the previous century. Making a room all over in the theme of Chinese, Turkish, Egyptian of Gothic was quite common, but few of these survive for study.

So before continuing the discussion of wallpapers what we know as they come into their own is that the rooms of the older established houses, whose owners might not have enough of the ready to keep up with the times, will have walls that are painted, or covered with fabrics. That alone can set the tone for your drawing rooms. The Duke of Wellington famously attempted shades of yellow at Apsley House, causing controversy.

Gold, however, was not allowed for your run of the mill members of the Ton, and even amongst the first circle. Save that for Prinny and his brothers.

And by no means do we ever wish to gaze upon the unadorned white wall. That is something that was not done. And though not wallpaper, during our period, as we transitioned from the coverings of fabric, we find entire walls fauxed to look like marble, or fake wood graining. Entire guides such as Nathaniel Whitcock’s Decorative Painter and Glazier’s Guide showed just how to achieve these effects.

By 1790 wallpaper was in common usage, but not necessarily for the entire wall. The chair rail, made of wood, was still a divider of the surface. At the end of the period it might be considered fashionable to remove the chair rail and run wallpaper the entire length of the wall. This was the practice in the 1830s, but earlier the use of the chair rail dividing the upper and lower parts of the wall was still very much the practice.

At the time, wallpaper was designed as we see with block printed patterns on pearwood blocks to produce rolls of 11 1/2 yards in length. In the 1830s the blocks were replaced by mechanized cylinders. In 1783 there is a patent for a machine that will emboss the paper, but there was an import ban on French paper until 1825. When this was lifted it led to lighter, cheaper paper flooding the market. In order to hang the paper, a specialist was needed. It was an art under the upholstery branch. By the 1820s wallpaper retailing was so sophisticated that manufacturers were making their own, illustrated order books. There is a copy in the Victoria and Albert of Cowtan’s Order Book.

Popular designs were often flock paper, with powdered wool, or other fabric refuse on glued patterns to give a cut-pile effect. These were also used for borders. Imitation of marble or dressed stone was often used in hallways or passages (not a drawing room, I know, but my research uncovered this tidbit.) Pin ground papers were used for practical reasons in rooms. Flies would soil the paper and so having this would cover the fly marks. Somehow though, my interpretation of the idealized Ton won’t have dead fly spots on the papers of their drawing room. A good vigorous cleanse by the servants will of course take care of such things. (These are historical novels I turn my hand to, not totally historically accurate novels, but now the vision of one of those not of the First Stare, energetically scrubbing at her wall before someone like Austen's Lady Catherine de Burgh is expected to visit has come into my head and I just may have to use it.)

Gothic papers were available from the manufacturers, bedrooms got ‘moire papers’, which was made to look like watered silk, or to suggest drapery. Floral patterns in bedrooms which had small repeats in the pattern and also used in the rooms of the servants.

For the rich, as was the craze in all things oriental, Chinese wallpapers were sought. These could be hand painted which naturally would appeal to all of the first circle. Understated bragging rights to a pattern that no one else had.

With this exploration of what was done in period, one can easily then take the knowledge and adapt that to building a unique drawing room. Any young heroine given the chance can remodel the wool and silk covered walls of her husbands mother to the more modern wall paper. A trip to look at the manufacturers book, or to speak to a specialist who can procure a one of a kind paper surely can be recounted in a paragraph or two to add to the setting of the next Regency drawing room you read about, or that I remember to write about.


Research
Stephen Calloway The Elements of Style, 1991
Steven Parissien Regency Style, 1992
Susan Watkins Jane Austen in Style, 1990

Mr. Wilkin writes Regency Historicals and Romances, Ruritanian and Edwardian Romances, Science Fictions and Fantasy. He is the author of the very successful Pride & Prejudice continuation; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence.

His work can be found for sale at: David’s Books, and at various Internet and real world bookstores including the iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords.
He is published by Regency Assembly Press
And he maintains his own blog called The Things That Catch My Eye

Waltzing during the English Regency? Preposterous!

by David W. Wilkin

One of the challenges that I have encountered as a writer is that history and what is happening around the characters be mostly true to what we know of the past. When I first read Regency Romances and saw inaccuracies, I wanted to fault the writer for what they should have known. Now that I am a writer I recognize that we bend the truth on occasion. Did Wellington really meet our heroine? Was Prinny an intimate of our Lord? But as a dance teacher of many of the dances of the period, nothing irks me more then to see our protagonist out for a spin on the dance floor before the waltz was accepted.

Our principals in uncovering whether this could be done are Thomas Wilson, dance master and author of the period, Tsar Alexander, ruler of all the Russias, and the Countess Dorothea von Lieven-a patroness of Almacks. The time period that this spans is 1813 to 1816, so recounting waltzing in England before then is verboten. Other writers might take exception to this. Waltzing was done on the Continent before 1812. Not as we know it now. The man’s hands were in completely different locations. The tempo of the music also was different, so the footwork is not the turning box step that we have today. Or even the floating circle that Victorian waltz was.

Waltzing on the Continent, in the midst of a war, where movement between society was very limited at the time, most likely would remain on the Continent. Many Romances set in the period of the Regency often turn a blind eye to the war and the effects of the war that went on for nearly 25 years. An entire generation lived at that time, and most books think of this as an after thought. It is clear that the war, and Liberated France had an effect on England. We look at the Regency as the years of 1811 to 1820 when Prince George served as Regent for his father, but culturally we can relate this as the end of the Georgian Era, say from the 1790s (the fall of Bourbon power in France) to the mid 1830s (William IV and Victoria.)

When I was first exposed to the issue, it was through verbal history that we have no waltzing in English Society until the visit of Tsar Alexander to Almacks. As a historian one knows that primary sources are best, and verbal history from 1814, just is very hard to verify at this time. (How old would someone have to be to have been at Almacks to have witnessed the event, 212 years old now?) But primary sources are also hard to track down, and sometimes if a thing is known by all to be true, then is it not true?

In all probability waltzing was known by some, the man’s right hand raised above, his left lowered in between he and his partner, not his left hand clutching the lady behind her back to bring her close to his chest. That of course is great for a romantic Regency novel, and one where your hero and heroine can talk ever so intimately on the dance floor. But should the waltzing of the period been known by a few the Patronesses of Almacks had deemed it socially unacceptable.

Now trying to put in context what that means today. To do something deemed socially unacceptable would be like dining nude in public as if you were a minority in San Francisco (It was recently in the news.) Once you have done it, you find that your circle of friends shrinks a great deal. (It also seems a little unhygienic. The dining in San Francisco thing.) So back to Regency London, if you are at Almacks, well the musicians are not going to play any music for you to have a chance to do so. Their playlist is already set by the Patronesses.

If you have your own ball, and it is found that you had done this scandalous dance, (men holding the hands of their partners throughout, absurd) then would you get vouchers to permit you back to Almacks, where all of society mingles? Not likely. You might be regarded as part of the fast set, those who are talked of in ondits all the time. And of course the waltz needs two to dance. So were you to do so, you also have to corrupt a partner to the dark side also.

Those of us who have learned to waltz, or who teach it, also know that doing so is not something that you snap your fingers and it is mastered. It takes time. So again, how do we allow that a country that does not want to have this dance done by its leaders of society see heroes and heroines in our novels know how to do it before it was taught?

Countess Lieven was a patroness of Almacks, in England as wife of the Russian Ambassador from 1812 to 1834, we see she was a beauty, and notorious for having several liaisons with many statesmen of Europe. She became a Patroness of Almacks sometime around 1814. In 1826, she became the Princess Lieven. She was quite instrumental as a go between when Tsar Alexander slipped into England with his sister, Grand Duchess Catherine. The English adored the Russians much more then they liked their own royalty and this caused no few problems for the allies. (Russia and England were allied at the time against France.) The Countess smoothed matters and Prinny (George IV) became indebted to her.

It is possible that the Countess first taught the waltz, but as the verbal history goes, the Tsar came to Almacks, where there was a ball in the Assembly rooms for Society (having a voucher to Almacks so you could see and be seen was the difference in being part of the Ton, the ten thousand elite of England, and the elite of the Ton.

It is more likely to my mind that the waltz for its intimacy, even though there was more separation between dancers then, then now, was not danced until the Tsar asked it to be played so that he could dance it.

One can see how perhaps the Countess may have showed off the waltz, but it was not yet accepted or allowed to be danced. She was not yet a Patroness of Almacks, she was the wife of an ambassador, she was not English. But in 1814 when she serves to intercede between the Tsar and Prinny, she rises in stature. Then she would have the presence in society to be a leader. She would be able to keep alive a cultural phenomena her sovereign introduced.

What is my last clue to how things play out, is how does one teach the waltz? Unlike country dance, where we have documentation going back over 150 years at the time to Playford and his The English Dancing Master, we don’t have an English text on the waltz until Thomas Wilson writes A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing, the Truly Fashionable Species of Dancing, in 1816. Wilson presents a dance as described before, different then we are familiar with now, a five step movement. Are these clues, and pieces of historical fact enough to give us the definitive first day that one can cite that waltzing is allowable in England?

Perhaps.

Perhaps it is enough when we take into account the society of the times. We know the attitude of the period, and we have documentation showing us when others could learn how to do the dance. This research affirmed for me what the verbal history had shown and given me a predilection to. Waltzing before the Tsar visits London, never! But after, well if it is good enough for an Emperor, how can anyone question it being good enough for the Ton.


Research
Elizabeth Aldrich From the Ballroom to Hell, 1991