Dancing in the 19th century

[mightymads]

In this famous scene Watson says that Holmes taught him how to dance. But in actuality where did gentlemen learn this art? (Ladies did probably at home). Was it an obligatory part of homeschooling? But some attended public schools from quite an early age. Was it included in the school curriculum then? A cursory search returned some 19th century manuals on dancing, but dancing is all about practice. You can read as much as you want and hardly learn anything without trying it.

If anyone has links to sources about it or knows something, please help?



PS gifs are not mine, found via google

Comments

[cimorene]

I've always assumed it was included at boarding schools, like Eton, but not at the other sort. ...And in that case I would assume Watson would have learned it at school, because he gives every sign of being gently reared, but perhaps it's only at the most posh schools and he went to a more modest one? Or, if his family were military - which I can't remember, but isn't impossible? - he may have spent some of his childhood abroad and missed it that way...?

Thinking about book canon, it's very difficult to imagine the possibility that he didn't already know how to dance when he met Holmes though. Wouldn't any sort of ladies' man in this era have been to plenty of dances? He can't be charming ladies at card tables or public taverns or solely in his professional capacity, surely?

[mightymads]

I’m sure Watson was proficient in dancing as gentlemen of his time were supposed to be. Ritchie films are not very historically accurate, so perhaps that line was for the sake of the memorable moment. It is not mentioned in the Canon whether Watson’s family was military. Considering that Watson was loosely based on Doyle himself, Watson could have attended something not as posh as Eton.

Doyle came from a genteel but poor family and attended Stonyhurst, a Jesuit school, and later Feldkirch, another Jesuit school, but in Germany. And he seemed to be proficient in dancing, since he mentioned enjoying balls and similar social gatherings.

[cimorene]

Quite likely that dancing was taught as a matter of course at the less posh schools for the genteel, then. The lower down the income and class ladder one goes, the less likely, I think, that the instruction could have been extra-curricular. And I think it would probably be essential knowledge to pretty much every pupil of that sort of school at some point or other...

[rachelindeed]

This question reminds me of one of the passages from The Education of Henry Adams that made me laugh out loud. Henry's father was serving as the U.S. ambassador to England in the early 1860s, and Henry came along as his private secretary. He was forced to attend social functions among the British upper crust, and was hilariously mortified all of the time. (He writes about himself in the third person, but this is all autobiographical):

"His social education was more barren still, and more trying to his vanity. His little mistakes in etiquette or address made him writhe with torture. He never forgot the first two or three social functions he attended: one an afternoon at Miss Burdett Coutts's in Stratton Place, where he hid himself in the embrasure of a window and hoped that no one noticed him; another was a garden-party given by the old anti-slavery Duchess Dowager of Sutherland at Chiswick, where the American Minister and Mrs. Adams were kept in conversation by the old Duchess till every one else went away except the young Duke and his cousins, who set to playing leap-frog on the lawn. At intervals during the next thirty years Henry Adams continued to happen upon the Duke, who, singularly enough, was always playing leap-frog. Still another nightmare he suffered at a dance given by the old Duchess Dowager of Somerset, a terrible vision in castanets, who seized him and forced him to perform a Highland fling before the assembled nobility and gentry, with the daughter of the Turkish Ambassador for partner. This might seem humorous to some, but to him the world turned to ashes."

[mightymads]

I couldn’t find much in English. Perhaps I’m not searching the right way? I found some info about Russian aristocracy, though. It seems like children were taught from a pretty early age (about 5-6), and that dancing contributed to a person’s bearing in general: it was a sign of a genteel upbringing if one moved easily and gracefully.

[mightymads]

What a great anecdote! It’s so difficult to find anything at all about ballroom dancing in the 19th century. Only in someone’s memoirs, I suppose. Alas, Doyle said nothing in his about how he was taught.