Waltzing

Excerpt from Peterson's Magazine, May 1853 at 318.

       Fashionable Waltzing.-- In Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for March we find the following severe, but not undeserved remarks on fashionable waltzing. The writer, after speaking of the original plain waltz, which even Byron denounced, and characterizing it as the least objectionable and most graceful of the waltzes, proceeds as follows:

      The character of the waltz gradually became changed. From a graceful rotatory motion, it degenerated into a Bacchic movement, similar, no doubt, to the first Thespian performances, which were intended, as scholars tell us, to be in honor of the young Lyaeus. Then came the galoppe, which was a still further manifestation of the triumphal processions of Ariadne. Dancing, as one of the fine arts, now received its virtual death blow. You saw an infuriated-looking fellow throw his arm round a girl's waist, and rush off with her as if he had been one of the troop of Romulus abducting a reluctant Sabine. Sabina, however, made no remonstrance, but went along with him quite cordially. They pursued a species of bat-like race round the room--jerking, flitting, backing, and pirouetting, without rule, and without any vestige of grace until breath failed them, and the panting virgin was pulled up sort on the arm of her perspiring partner.

      This, however, called for a reform: and it was reformed. But what? By the introduction of the polka--the favorite dance, and no wonder, of the Casinos. View it philosophically, and you find it to be neither more nor less than the nuptial dance of Bacchus and Ariadne. Our mothers or grandmothers were staggered, and some of them shocked, at the introduction of the ballet in the opera-houses. What would they say now, could they see one of their female descendants absolutely in the embrace of some hairy animal--fronting him--linked to him--drawn to him--her head reclining on his shoulder, and he perusing her charms--executing the most ungraceful of all possible movements, at the will of a notorious Tomnoddy? No doubt everything is innocent, and the whole dance is conducted--no one side at least--with perfect purity of idea. But somehow or other, these grapplings, squeezings, and approximations, look rather odd in the eyes of the unprejudiced spectator; and we, who have seen the feasts of Egyptians Almas almost surpassed in British ball-rooms, may be pardoned for expressing our conviction, that a little--nay, a good deal--more of feminine reserve than is presently practised, would be vastly advantageous to the young ladies who resort to those haunts which they have been taught to consider as the matrimonial bazaar.

      In this concluding warning we join. The young ladies, who think to win admirers by waltzing, make a grievous mistake. No sensible husband was ever won by the agility by which a belle performed the Polka, much less the Schottish. It will be noticed that Blackwood's indignation is aroused by the former waltz entirely. This requires an explanation. The Schottish is not danced in England, in respectable society; and we presume, therefore, that the writer never saw it. We are told, though we are not quite sure, that it is never seen at private parties even on the Continent. Had Blackwood ever witnessed this ungraceful, not to say disgusting waltz, his animad-versions, we have no doubt, would have been far more severe. It is a dance fit only for Bacchantes. One can realize the possibility of such a waltz originating nowhere but in the orgies of inebriated wantons.

      We have known so many young men, and they the most refined and intelligent, to cease going to balls or dancing parties at all, in consequence of their disgust at the Schottish, that we are heartily glad to find that it is going out of fashion. In the very best society it was never fashionable. But in many circles, otherwise well-bred, it somehow obtained a footing, we suspect through the recommendations of the vulgar and impudent foreign dancing-masters. Young ladies danced it without any thought of wrong, and even yet, perhaps, are generally ignorant of the light in which honorable men regard it.