Thomas Wilson Dancing Master and publisist

This advert appears in the 1820 edition of Thomas Wilson's own book The Complete System of English Country Dancing.

We know very little about Thomas Wilson and much of what we do know is what he tells us himself. From his writings he was clearly not lacking in self belief or self confidence.

He was a prolific author of books about dance and dancing and was often used by publishers to add suggested figures to their published dance music.

Because he was so prolific and so many of his books have survived he has become our primary source for information about social dancing in the early nineteenth century.

How his often very dogmatic views on dance were regarded by his contemporaries  we can only guess.

The reviewers of his works though favorable in tone offer little specific comment, though they often have a gently mocking tone designed to puncture pomposity. The following reviews for instance appear in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1817:

101. A Companion to the Ball Room, containing a Choice Collection of the most original and admired Country Dance, Reel, Hornpipe, and Waltz Tubes‘, with a variety of appropriate figures ,' the Etiquette, and a Dissertation on the State of the Ball Room. By Thomas Wilson, Dancing Master, from the King’s Theatre, Opera House; Button, Whitaker, &Co.pp. 232.

THOUGH our dancing-days are pretty well over, Mr. Wilson recalls to memory that such days have been, and were most dear,- and there was a time when we should have thought such a publication as the present a very high treat. For the sake of the Author, we hope that there are many who still think so; and that the sale of his Work will remunerate his ingenuity and his labour.

 “He has been induced to bring forward the present Work, not only to answer the request of those who have so frequently and for so many years past applied to him, to publish a Pocket Collection of correct and favourite Country Dances, with appropriate Figures, for the use of the Ball Room, but also to answer every purpose of the Dancer and the Musician; and consequently no pains have been spared to render it, what he trusts it will be found to be, the most original, useful, and pleasing Collection ever found in a Work approximating to its kind-It chiefly consists of Airs, adapted to Country Dancing, Reels, Hornpipes, Waltzes, &Co. with their Ages and Nationality attached to them, and a variety of appropriate Figures, to such Tunes as require them, with Directions for their correct Performance and remarks thereon: also will be affixed, a Critical Dissertation on the Present State of the English Ball Room, Ball Room Musicians, and Musical Publications."

The Tunes, which are numerous, are all engraved; a scientific Introduction is prefixed; and the volume closes with “ A Dissertation on the present State of the English Ball Room; Ball Room Musick, and Collection of Country Dances; Ball Room Musicians‘ the Etiquette of the Ball Room, and a National and Characteristic Index.

54. A Description of the correct Method of Waltzing, the truly fashionable Species of Dancing, that, from the graceful and pleasing Beauty of its Movements, has obtained an Ascendancy over every other Department of that polite Branch of Education. Part I containing a correct explanatory Description of the several Movements and Attitudes in German and French Waltzing. By Tho. Wilson, Dancing- Master, (from the King's Theatre, Opera House) Author of "The Analysis of Country Dancing," " The Treasures of Terpsichore," and a Variety of other Works on Music and Dancing. Illustrated by Engravings, from Original Designs and Drawings, by. H. A. Randall. 12mo. pp.113.Sherwood &Co.

HAVING in our last Volume paid proper consideration to Mr. Wilson's "Country Dances," we shall content ourselves with now giving only the ample title of the present work i observing merely, that it is dedicated

"To the Ladies and Gentlemen, of the King's Theatre, Opera House, of the Theatres Royal, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and of the other Theatres, and to the Teachers of Dancing, and the others who have honoured the Treatise on the correct Method of Waltzing with their patronage and support, as subscribers and otherwise.

" No work on Dancing ever having been so highly patronised as the present, I can only say, that my sense of gratitude, excited by your goodness, is so strong, as to be altogether inexpressible, and such as never can be destroyed, but must be ever held in my remembrance, and cherished with enthusiasm."

The volume is splendidly printed; and will be a curious morsel for some Bibliomaniac of the next Century.

Disapproving in toto of the art of Waltzing, we cannot say more of the mode of teaching it.

55. The celebrated and fashionable Dance La Batteuse, with the various figures correctly explained, as danced at Paris, and at all the fashionable Balls and Assemblies of the Nobility and Gentry, and also at the Author's Balls and Assemblies : clearly illustrated by Diagrams, shewing the various Movements of which it is composed. Arranged for the Pianoforte, or Violin, by Thomas Wilson, Dancing-Master, folio, pp. 111.

THE skillful and indefatigable Mr. Wilson thus introduces La Batteuse :

 "The great celebrity which this Dance has so generally acquired in the first circles of Fashion, and the required frequency of its introduction in all fashionable Balls and Assemblies, has rendered it necessary that every Teacher of Fashionable Dancing should become properly acquainted with it. It has however, since the introduction of it as a fashionable dance, suffered many alterations which have tended to per vert the true nature of its composition as it correctly stands. To obviate as much as possible any further innovation On this pleasing Dance, is the Author's object in laying down the correct method of its performance, by giving the proper music, pointing out where the steps and the beating should be introduced, the quantity of musick required for each, and shewing by diagrams the form of the dance, and the correct manner of performing all the various movements of which it is composed."

As a consequence of this lack of real critique or comment it is unclear how reliable a guide he is to the real world of social dance in the early nineteenth century.

Jane Austen on drunkenness and adultery at the rooms

Jane Austen's letter to her sister Cassandra 12th - 13th May 1801. Jane was staying with her Aunt and Uncle in their home in the Paragon.

"In the evening I hope you honoured my Toilette & Ball with a thought; I dressed myself as well as I could, & my finery was much admired at home."

On Mondays, the Ball at the Upper Rooms was a formal dress ball. This was the last but one Ball of this season.

"By nine o'clock my Uncle, Aunt and I entered the rooms & linked Miss Winstone on to us."

The Ball started at 7 o'clock, so the Austens were probably timing their arrival to avoid the demanding and increasingly unpopular minuets.

"Before tea, it was a rather dull affair; but then the before tea did not last that long, for there was only one dance, dance by four couple. Think of four couple, surrounded by about an hundred people, dancing in the Upper Rooms at Bath! After tea we cheered up; the breaking up of private parties sent some scores more to the Ball, & tho' it was shockingly & inhumanly thin for this place, there were people enough I suppose to have made five or six very pretty Basingstoke assemblies."

Since the early 1790s, there had been an increasing fashion for attending private parties before considering moving on to the assemblies. This was one factor that led to the introduction of the much more informal fancy balls. The Austen party may have been particularly sensitive to numbers attending the Upper Rooms as her uncle had a financial interest in the rooms, having subscribed funds to their construction.

"I then got Mr Evelyn to talk to & Miss Twisleton to look at; and I am proud to say that I have a very good eye at an Adulteress, for tho' repeatedly assured that another in the party was the She, I fixed upon the right one from the first. A resemblance to Mrs Leigh was my guide."

The Twisleton family was related to the Austen family via the Leighs. Miss Twisleton was Miss Mary Cassandra Twislton, whose older sister Julie Judith Twislton married Jane's cousin, James Henry Leigh of Adlestrop, in 1786. Mary Cassandra had moved to Bath with her mother, Lady Saye and Sele, in 1800 following the end of a legal action that had made her notorious and allowed her cousin to brand her as an "adulteress."

At the age of 16, Mary Cassandra married Edward Ricketts. The marriage collapsed 7 years later when her husband discovered incriminating letters between his wife and Charles Taylor. The following year the Bishop of London granted Ricketts an Episcopal divorce. Not content with this, Ricketts applied to the House of Lords for a civil divorce. At the hearing, several witnesses swore they had seen Mary Cassandra visit her lover's house, and some commented on her dishevelled appearance on leaving. The most damaging evidence was provided by a maid who testified that Mary had boasted in graphic detail of Taylor's prowess as a lover compared to her husband's performance. Ricketts was granted his divorce in 1799.

Before this, the Twisleton name had already featured in a sexual scandal through Mary Cassandra's older brother Thomas's marriage to Charlotte Anne Frances Wattell, who was the daughter of John Wattell Esq and niece to Sir John Stonehouse. At about the age of eighteen, she had met, through a mutual love of performing in amateur theatricals, Mary's brother Thomas James Twisleton, the youngest son of Lord Saye and Sele. Twisleton was 18 and still at school, but within four months had eloped with her to Gretna Green. According to her husband, Mrs Twislton had very expensive tastes. She had "reduced him almost to poverty", and when he had attempted to remonstrate with her, she had "declared to go on the [professional] stage, where she knew she possessed the talent to support herself in affluence". He strongly opposed her plans, and when she went behind his back to meet Harris, the proprietor of the Covent Garden Theatre, he sought and obtained a deed of separation in 1794. At this time, the couple had five children, of whom only one daughter survived to maturity. However, before Twisleton got a divorce bill passed in 1798, Charlotte gave birth to a son as the result of an affair with a merchant named Stein. Stein acknowledged paternity and helped with his education.

Charlotte Twisleton around 1796

"She is not so pretty as I expected ; her face has the same defect of baldness as her sister's, & her features not so handsome; she was highly rouged & looked quietly & contentedly silly than anything else. Mrs Badcock & two young women were of the same party except when Mrs Badcock thought herself obliged to leave them, to run round the room after her drunken husband. His avoidance, & her pursuit, with the probable intoxication of both was an amusing scene."

This Mr Badcock may well be the young man mentioned in a letter preserved in the Bath library describing a ball in the Upper Rooms nine years earlier in 1792:

"It was amazingly crowded, although the minuets had not begun, so much so that we found some difficulty to get seats. I was very much entertained with the bad minuet dancers especially with a Mr. Badcock who was obliged to stand up with seven or eight Ladies successively, to the great diversion of the spectators. I believe there were twenty minuets which was rather tiresome, but at last the Country Dances began."

Making your dancing look effortless, smooth and steady.

In his 1822 book Elements of the Art of Dancing the Edinburgh dancing master, Alexander Strathy recommends the following exercise as a way of mastering this skill.

“PLACE your feet in the fifth position, keep the body upright, rest on the leg that is behind, raise the heel of the foot that is before, and slide the foot on the point slowly to the second position. The knee should be straight, as the foot arrives at the second position; place the heel of the foot which you have moved, keeping it forward; rest the body on it, and at the same time raise the heel of the other foot, which you now slide on the point into the fifth position before, keeping the knees straight, and the heel forward, that you may form the position closely; then do the same thing to the other side. This exercise should be also performed, by entering the foot behind in the fifth position.

Then, in the same manner;' from the fifth to the fourth position forward.-Place the feet in the fifth position, balance the body on the leg that is behind; raise the heel of the foot that is before, slide the foot on the point to the fourth position forward, keeping the knees straight; place the heel, and rest the body on the foremost leg, then slide up the foot that is behind, to the fifth .position behind.
Continue to do this several times forward, then backward. Do the same thing with the other foot before.”

Feet Positions

A tale of minuets and social climbing

On his arrival in Bath in October 1731, The Earl of Orrery's first port of call was naturally the Pump Room, but as soon as possible after he took himself off to the Terrace Walk and the shop of James Leake, the bookseller, who ran Bath's first circulating library and indeed one of the first circulating libraries in the country.

This is surprising as he had a very low opinion of Leake.

John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork and Orrery
 by Isaac Seeman

"This Leake is a most extraordinary Person. He is the Prince of all the coxcomical Fraternity of Booksellers: and, not having any Learning himself, He seems resolved to sell it as dear as possible to Others."

His reason for visiting Leake's shop is interesting as it sheds light on the operation of Bath societies and assemblies.

Leake was a snob. As the Earl relates:

“He looks upon every Man, distinguished by any Title, not only as his Friend, but his companion, and he treats him accordingly: but he disposes of his Favours and Regards as methodically as Nash takes out the Ladies to dance, and therefore speaks not to a Marquiss whilst a Duke is in the Room.”

The mention of Nash is a reference to how the minuets were managed at balls. The Minuet was a couple’s dance where one couple danced at a time before an admiring or, more often, critical company. After the first couple had danced, the man retired, and Richard Nash, as the then Master of the Ceremonies, would bring the woman a second partner. The minuets continued until all the ladies who had stood up for them had danced with two men. The succession of dancers was governed by strict rules of precedence arbitrated by the Master of the Ceremonies.

This preoccupation with precedence and class motivated the Earl’s visit to Leake. Orrey’s Earldom was of the Irish nobility. Irish titles were considered inferior to their English counterparts.

He was anxious to discover if his secret was known in Bath and was relieved to discover:

“As yet he is ignorant that my Earldom lies in Ireland,”

This allowed him to implement a plan he had hatched

“to keep him so, I have borrowed the only Book of Heraldry He had in his Shop : by this method I shall be served many degrees above my Place, and may have a Squeeze of his Hand in presence of an Earl of Great Britain.”

Anne Bland music publisher

Anne Bland is an important figure for those interested in the dance music of the period of Jane Austen's life and novels. Anne Bland, who has no connection with the music publisher John Bland, began her music publishing business in London 1784. 

Anne Bland was established at 23 Oxford Street prior to 1790 and issued sheet music and yearly sets of dances.   Anne partnered with E. Weller in 1792, forming Bland and Weller. In addition to their publishing activities, which included a large number of country-dance collections, many of which survive, and the first English edition of three Mozart piano sonatas (k280, 282, 283), they were also piano and wind instrument makers. Anne Bland as "Music Seller, Oxford Street" is given in the Musical Directory for 1794. 

Early English pianoforte by Bland and Weller
23 Oxford Street

In 1805, the firm purchased from Dibdin, the composer, musician, dramatist, novelist and actor, the copyrights of 360 of his songs together with his musical stock, which they then reissued. Anne Bland retired in about 1818, and a sale of plates and copyrights took place though Weller carried on the business as Weller & Co. until 1820.

Typical surviving dance collections include:

24 Favorite country dances, hornpipes and reels with their proper figures for the German flute or violin as performed at court and all public assemblies 1807
24 Favourite Country Dances, Hornpipes and Reels with their proper figures for the German flute or violin. As performed at court and all public assemblies.A typical country dance tune and instruction book printed in London in 1803
Bland and Weller’s Annual Collection of Twenty-four Country Dances for the year 1797, with their proper Figures. For the Violin
Bland and Weller’s annual Collection of twenty-four Country Dances for the year 1798, with their proper figures, for the violin
Bland and Weller’s Annual Collection of twenty-four Country Dances for the Year 1799, with their proper Figures. For the violin and German flute, etc.

Bland and Weller
Clarinet

Bath Fashions Autumn 1761

Mid 18th century French Silk Brocade
with silver thread highlights

During this period, silks were often woven to order from a chosen pattern.

Galloway Buildings Today

 On the same page of the Bath Chronicle, Warren and company, the London perfumers, were advertising the wares they had on sale at their perfume shop at the upper end of Orange Grove in Bath. These included "Warren's true prepar'd [sic] French Chicken Gloves, for cleaning and whitening the Hands and Arms, for Ladies and Gentlemen, as usual, at 5s a pair." Chicken Gloves were made from a thin, strong leather derived from the skin of cattle fetuses or, as the name suggests, chicken skins.

Mr De La Main - Dancing Master

The European Magazine and London Review Volume April 1797 obituary  “Lately, at Bath, Mr De la Main, formally a wine-merchant and dancing master".

There is some evidence of Thomas De La Main operating as a dancing master in Bath as early as 1757.

Thomas De le Main opened a public dancing academy in his house in Westgate Street, where he taught both ladies and gentlemen in September 1768. Prior to that, he had been teaching private pupils and the students of a local boarding school.

By 1774, he was also trading as a wine merchant out of 4 Westgate Street. Sometime in early 1775, the wine business was in the hands of Robert De Le Main, probably Thomas's son.

By 1775, De La Main was organising balls at the New Rooms to show off his students' skills. These seem to have been held on Saturdays with a 6:30 start time.

By 1776, when the business was sold, Robert had acquired a partner in the wine merchants called Mr. Higgs.

In the winter of 1778, Thomas De La Main from Bath was running a dancing academy in Dublin.

Thomas was still running dancing classes in Bath as late as 1786.

In April 1797, the Chronicle announced, "died, in a very advanced age, Mr De La Main, formerly an eminent wine-merchant and dancing master of this city."