Paper 62

Quadrille Dancing at the Berkeley Hunt Ball, 1817

Contributed by Paul Cooper, Research Editor

We've studied many newspaper accounts of historical balls held in Britain in the early 19th century in our recent research papers, despite that we have yet to study a Quadrille Ball. We'll remedy that omission in this paper by investigating both the dances and dancing experienced at the Berkeley Hunt ball held in December 1817. It's a rare example of a historical Quadrille Ball for which a programme of dances survives.

Figure 1. Quadrilles, Third Set. Date uncertain but estimated to be 1810s, image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The individual quadrille dances that we'll consider further in this paper are:

• La Lisette
• La Villageoise
• La Matilda
• L'Eugene
• La Pastoralle
• La Jeane
• Pantalon
• La Leone
• Les Deux Amis
• Les Graces
• La Nouvelle Polonaise
• La Finale de Lodoiska

The Berkeley Hunt Ball, 1817

Participants of the Berkeley Hunt met in Gloucestershire each year to hunt foxes on horseback, the hunt continues to meet to this day (in a somewhat different capacity). At our date of 1817 the Berkeley Hunt hounds and kennels were owned by the Berkeley family, specifically Colonel William Berkeley (1786-1857). The Berkeley Hunt Ball was a grand entertainment that was held as part of the festivities for the people who travelled to Cheltenham and Gloucester for the annual hunt. We've previously investigated the phenomenon of a hunt ball in another paper, it studied the Perthshire Hunt Balls of 1809 and 1810, you might like to follow the link to read more about this popular form of entertainment. Both the Berkeley Hunt and our 1817 Berkeley Hunt Ball would have been similar to their Perthshire equivalents, they were simply held a few years later in rural England, rather than in Scotland.

The venue for the Hunt's annual ball of 1817 was the Plough Inn in Cheltenham (see Figure 2). Previous years had usually seen the ball held at the King's Head Inn at Gloucester (e.g. The Globe, 30th January 1811). The annual event held in early 1812 was reported to have involved 160 people sharing an elegant supper (Cheltenham Chronicle, 30th January 1812). A year later 140 people attended the King's Head, it was reported that the ball-room was very tastefully chalked, and elegantly illuminated with coloured lamps in appropriate devices. The supper comprised every delicacy of the season; and the dancing continued till five o'clock in the morning (Gloucester Journal, 22nd February 1813). It was reported of the 1814 event that This annual festivity was given at the King's Head in Gloucester, on Thursday the 10th. The ball-room was brilliantly illuminated and decorated in an appropriate style; and the floor was very tastefully chalked. The supper-tables were fancifully laid out; the wines of superior flavour; and the dancing was kept up, with unusual spirit, till seven o'clock in the morning, when the fashionable guests (about 200 in number) departed, highly gratified with this pleasurable evening (Bristol Times and Mirror, 19th of February 1814). Of early 1815 it is recorded (Bath Chronicle, 5th of January 1815) that At the Berkeley Hunt Ball, on Thursday, 300 persons of the first distinction were present. The elegance of the supper was the theme of general admiration; the dancing commenced between nine and ten o'clock, and continued till near daylight. 1816 saw the venue move to Cheltenham, the Bath Chronicle (29th of February 1816) recorded of the event that nearly 300 fashionables of the county were present. The arrangements of the evening were conducted upon a scale of magnificence and taste, which evinced the liberality of the Subscribers. At ten the Rooms were thrown open, the avenues to which were tastefully decorated with laurels, orange-trees, rose shrubs, variegated lamps, &c. The Ball-room was filled with all the beauty and fashion of the town and neighbourhood. At two the company sat down to a supper consisting of every delicacy the season could afford; after which dancing was resumed, and it was not will nearly eight that the Rooms were wholly cleared; so highly were the company delighted with the festivities of the entertainment..

We read very little of the details of the dancing at these annual events, we do however learn that the subscribers would attend from nearby counties. Some visitors would travel from even further afield. The dancing took place throughout the night to the light of variegated lamps on a floor decorated with chalk images, such was true of ballrooms across the country. None of the dances or tunes were named in these pre-1817 reports, they're very likely to have been predominantly (or perhaps entirely) made up of country dances, as was the case across most of Britain at a similar date. The event of December 1817 was a little different however, it would feature the newfangled trend of Quadrille dancing.

The Cheltenham Chronicle newspaper for the 25th of December 1817 wrote of the ball (with dance references highlighted in bold):

The town, during the last few days, has assumed a degree of gaiety that has revived us in a measure - the Berkeley Hunt Ball and Supper, after a short annunciation, took place Tuesday night, and we need not state was numerous and characteristically attended. About three, Col. Berkeley, four-in-hand, followed by a retinue of friends in their carriages, arrived at the Plough, and there, as well as from his entre into the place, were greeted by acclamations of the populace. From that period the town became in a bustle, and about nine fashion in all its strength began to concentrate at the Rooms, and, by about twelve, formed an assemblage which would have done honour to a palace of the metropolis - such is the influence of the Berkeley Hunt.

The Ladies, we hear, were dressed principally in white, and the gentleman wore the costume of the Berkeley Hunt. Dancing was maintained with charming vivacity till two o'clock, when, under a burst of well-according sounds the company proceeded to the supper-rooms, where a banquet, replete in all the delicacies of the season, was displayed. About three the Ball-Room began to re-fill, and the pleasure of the dance was enjoyed 'till morning broke in upon the recreation. Each character departed regretful at the termination of amusement, which, whilst dedicated to some of the most distinguished of the British Fair, adds the popularity, trade, and interest of Cheltenham, and pleasingly displays the courtesy of the Colonel and his associates. The following Quadrilles were danced in the course of the evening: La Lisette - La Villagoise (L'Ete) - La Matilda - L'Eugene - La Pastoralle - La Jeane - Pantalon - La Leone - Les Deux Amies - Les Graces - La Polonaise - La Finale Lodoiska, &c. -- The conduct of the entertainment, (provided on the first scale by Gunton, for Messrs Kelly and Co.) gave great satisfaction, whilst the wines were the theme of admiration. The avenues, &c. of the Rooms, were, as usual, emblematically embellished, and decorated with evergreens, inter-rayed with variegated lamps. Indeed, we do not remember an entertainment where more liberality of spirit, brilliancy of company, or luxury of enjoyment were evinced, displayed, or experienced, than at the Berkeley Hunt Ball for 1817.

Figure 2. The Plough Hotel in Cheltenham, venue for the Ball, depicted c.1870.

We're not informed whether anything other than Quadrilles were danced at the 1817 ball, the twelve tunes that were named are each readily identifiable as a popular Quadrille dance. It seems that the faithful of the Berkley Hunt Ball had decided to learn Quadrille dancing during 1817, they may have been danced exclusively at the ball! One curious observation covers the type of people who would have been present at the ball; they included the most distinguished of the British Fair together with a good number of local people, notably including tradesfolk. This ball would have been an opportunity for the relatively wealthy locals to mingle with those members of the aristocracy and gentry who had travelled to enjoy the Hunt. Presumably the dancing would have been open to anyone who had purchased a ticket and had suitably prepared themselves.

Quadrille Dancing in 1817

The Quadrille, as a dance form, is something that we've written about before; I don't intend to offer a full description of the dance form here. Suffice to say that the Quadrille was a type of French Country Dance usually performed in a square arrangement of (typically) four couples. It was very similar to the earlier Cotillion dance in many respects, sufficiently so that many early commentators on the Quadrille would confuse the two dance forms for each other, perhaps describing the Quadrille as being a type of Cotillion. Differences did exist however. For example, Quadrille dances of the 1810s would omit the Changes that were typical of Cotillion dances of the 1770s (this made individual Quadrille dances much shorter than a typical Cotillion would be). Quadrille dances were often combined together into a sequence of dances known as a Set, whereas Cotillion dances tended not to be grouped in this way (the duration of a Quadrille Set of the 1810s might be similar to that of perhaps one or two individual Cotillion dances of the 1770s). Cotillion dances usually involved all four couples moving simultaneously, whereas Quadrille dances were often arranged for just two (or perhaps four) dancers to perform, then the activity would be repeated for the remaining dancers. Quadrille dances would often be announced or prompted by a caller naming the individual figures out loud in French, this convention is less likely to have existed for Cotillion dancing. Moreover, Quadrille dancers were expected to know a variety of steps, to be confident in the main choreographies (despite the probability of their being prompted during the performance) and to perform well in the occasional solo passages that a dancer might encounter. The mania for Quadrille dancing was new in 1817 however, many ball goers around the country were discovering a necessity to learn the Quadrille, some coped better than others.

The Quadrille dance will have entered the public awareness, for many ordinary Britons, around the year 1816. They shot into fashion in the wake of the Carlton House Ball that year, this was a large scale entertainment held by the Prince Regent in July of 1816. An increased interest in Quadrille dances are evident in the historical record almost immediately thereafter. Several of London's music shops issued publications of the First Set of Quadrilles in the aftermath of the Ball. We've investigated the dancing at the 1816 Carlton House Ball, along with the early history of the Quadrille dance in London, in a previous paper. The rise of the Quadrille was more nuanced than that of course, they didn't simply burst into existence in 1816, some people had been dancing Quadrilles and Quadrille-like dances in Britain since perhaps the end of the 1790s. The story of the pre-1816 Quadrille dance, at least in Britain, is a little difficult to reconstruct thanks to a general shortage of information. Nonetheless, a story does emerge.

We've previously investigated the dancing at a Cotillion Ball that was held in Bristol in 1799. We discovered that those cotillions were somewhat quadrillesque in arrangement, we speculated that they were evidence of an evolution in the older Cotillion dance. We've also investigated French Country Dances that were danced at London society balls of 1808, they were reported to be different from regular Cotillion dances, they might have been early Quadrille dances. We've also investigated some hybrid French Country Dances that were neither Cotillions (in the regular sense) nor Quadrilles in the post 1816 sense, examples include La Batteuse that had circulated from at least 1812 and Le Boulanger that had continued to be danced since perhaps the 1760s. We've written of dances that were highly quadrillesque in nature but named as French Country Dances, including a collection by Frederic Venua published in London in 1815. Prototypical quadrille dances were evidently being enjoyed in London well before the 1816 Carlton House Ball brought them to the attention of a wider public.

The term First Set became important with respect to Quadrille dancing from around 1816. This term arose to describe the first set of Quadrilles that were widely known in London, we've shared dancing master Edward Payne (1792-1819)'s instructions for how to dance this most successful of Quadrille sets in a previous paper. Performing the First Set of Quadrilles was a challenge for many dancers, several memory aids were available to help; this included a selection of popular Quadrille Fans that were published from 1817 (with the figures printed on them), we've investigated examples of such fans in a previous paper. Quadrilles were sweeping the nation by this date; for example, we found them being danced at a ball at Brighton Pavilion in early 1817, also at Mrs Beaumont's Grand Ball of May 1817. Quadrilles were increasingly in fashion and the more ordinary of Britain's dancers aspired to perform well in them. Tuition in Quadrille dancing was widely offered by dancing masters, as advertised in the newspapers; also from numerous Quadrille preceptors (and similar books) that would be readily available for purchase by around 1818. The dancers at our ball at the end of 1817 had evidently decided that Quadrilles were the fashion and that's what they would dance.

Figure 3. A fox breaking cover at the Berkeley Hunt, from the 1822 Annals of Sporting and Fancy Gazette.

It's likely that several Sets of Quadrilles were already popular amongst some London communities well before the 1816 Carlton House Ball made Quadrilles famous. The dancers at Almack's Assembly Rooms, for example, are understood to have been dancing them in 1815. The term first set may even have been coined by the dancers at Almack's before the associated Quadrille Set rose to prominence elsewhere. The Almack's quadrilles were also, somewhat confusingly, known as the Parisian Quadrilles, a term that invited the uninitiated to assume that they were directly imported from Paris (rather than being in the style of the Quadrilles from Paris but of unspecified origins). In the aftermath of the Carlton House Ball several music shops issued copies of the First Set of Quadrilles, we've written of five such publications issued around 1816 elsewhere. James Paine (1779-1855), the orchestra leader at Almack's, became especially associated with the First Set of Quadrilles; later writers often mistakenly ascribed their origins to him personally.

Several further quadrille sets were hurried to market after the initial publication(s) of the First Set. Many such Quadrilles Sets were available by the date of our ball at the end of 1817. James Paine advertised his 8th Set of Quadrilles to be available in August 1817 (The Times, 12th August 1817), Edward Payne advertised his own 9th Set of Quadrilles to be available in February of 1818 (Morning Post, 5th February 1818). Other publishers were also issuing Quadrille Sets. Some of these publications, like those issued by James Paine, offered little more than alternative music for the figures of the First Set of Quadrilles; others, like many examples issued by Edward Payne, would introduce new choreographies each time. James Paine was a musician, Edward Payne was a dancing master, it's perhaps for this reason that Payne encouraged many varied sets of figures to be enjoyed whereas Paine tended not to do so. As time passed a standard formula for most Quadrille Sets emerged; dances were often arranged to be compatible with the figures of the First Set even if they offered an optional alternative set of figures too. A fairly consistent repertoire of dance figures were employed in the Quadrilles, at least amongst those of London origin; Quadrilles imported from elsewhere (such as The Lancers quadrilles from Dublin, also introduced in 1817) sometimes introduced exotic new figures for dancers to master. At our date of 1817 there were numerous different sets of Quadrille figures that dancers might be expected to know, or to at least cope with if encountered at a ball. By around the year 1820 the desire for novelty in Quadrilles had begun to wear off, most new Quadrille Sets published thereafter tended to employ (or at least be compatible with) the figures of the First Set.

Our Berkeley Hunt Ball of 1817 is fascinating as it occurred at a point in time when Quadrille dances were proliferating and before a standard convention for arranging them had fully emerged. It's quite likely that some dancers would have struggled to cope.

Observations concerning the Quadrilles danced at the 1817 Berkeley Hunt Ball

Twelve individual Quadrille tunes or dances are named as having been danced at the Ball. Most of them are readily identifiable from more than one published source, we can thereby reconstruct most of the play list, including both the figures and music for each dance. The list of tunes named are: La Lisette - La Villagoise (L'Ete) - La Matilda - L'Eugene - La Pastoralle - La Jeane - Pantalon - La Leone - Les Deux Amies - Les Graces - La Polonaise - La Finale Lodoiska, &c.. The etcetera on the end suggests that there could have been further such dances that have remained unnamed.

Figure 4. James Paine's c.1816 Third Set of Quadrilles. Image courtesy of dance historian John Gardiner-Garden.

A couple of initial observations might immediately be made. Firstly, these are individual Quadrille dance tunes. This is a deceptively important point. Most Quadrilles were published in collections of five or six dances, when we refer to a Set of Quadrilles we're usually implying that combination of five or six individual dances. It's uncommon to find historical references to specific quadrille tunes from within a Set named in isolation. This could imply that the individual Quadrille dances were being danced separately and not as part of a recognised Set. It might not imply that, it may only imply that the correspondent who wrote about them didn't understand the subtlety of Quadrille Sets and named the tunes in much the same way that they might have named Country Dancing tunes at any other event. As we will discover shortly, many of the named tunes are in fact derived from published Sets, maybe the correspondent had unnecessarily named several individual tunes where they could have instead referred to Paine's Third Set or similar. The implication we receive from the list is that either the writer, or the dancers, did not consider the published sources of the music to be significant to them. They danced a collection of individual Quadrilles, each with its own name, regardless of where they came from. This haphazard arrangement of Quadrilles, if a genuine artefact of how they were danced, has implications for how the ball was organised; Quadrille dancers of the 1820s would normally form-up with the expectation of dancing five of six Quadrilles together in sequence, it's unclear whether that would have happened at our ball, perhaps dancers were only together for a single dance and then found new partners for the next. Sadly we can only guess at what might have happened.

A second observation is that the correspondent has intermingled the names of the tunes with the names of dances. This too is a deceptively important point. The dances of the First Set of Quadrilles have names that are distinct from their tunes; one such example is the Pantalon figure, James Paine's First Set publication combined the Pantalon sequence of figures with a tune named La Paysanne, his Second Set publication combined them with a tune named La Penelope and his Third Set publication paired the Pantalon figures with a tune named La Lisette. Keen observers may have noticed that our list of dances from the Berkeley Hunt Ball includes both Pantalon and La Lisette as separate dances. The implication is that the same set of figures may have been danced to more than one tune at our event. Other figure sequences from the First Set include both L'Ete and La Pastoralle, both of which also appear within our list of dances. It's uncertain which piece of music would have been used for some of these dances, it's likely that the same dance figures would have been danced to several of the tunes. In most cases we have the name of the tune that was danced at the Berkeley Hunt Ball, not the name of the figure sequence that was danced, though in most cases the figures associated with the tune were predetermined and absolute. Anybody who danced La Lisette, anywhere in the country, is likely to have done so using the figure sequence known as Pantalon. We can, therefore, rediscover most of what would have been danced at our ball.

A less obvious but fascinating discovery is that two thirds of the named tunes are derived from just two c.1816 Sets of published Quadrilles. The first four tunes to be named are found in James Paine's 1816 Third Set of Quadrilles (see Figure 4), those tunes are: La Lisette, La Villageoise, La Matilda and L'Eugene. A fifth tune is known from numerous sources including Paine's Third Set, this tune is Les Graces. Three further tunes are derived from Edward Payne's 1816 Third Set of Quadrilles (see Figure 5), those tunes are: La Leone, La Polonaise (Payne named it La Nouvelle Polonaise) and La Finale Lodoiska. Edward Payne and James Paine were, as far as I can discern, unrelated; it's merely chance that they had such similar names and worked in the same industry - it was a source of confusion at the time and remains so to this day. One of the remaining tunes, Les Deux Amis, is from Edward Payne's c.1816 Fifth Set of Quadrilles. The final three tunes from our list include two sets of Figures from the First Set of Quadrilles, Pantalon and Pastorale, they might have been danced to the unnamed tunes that Edward Payne associated with them in his First Set of Quadrilles. The final dance of La Jeane is a bit of a mystery, it's not something I can definitively identify. The quadrilles appear to have been a patchwork of individual dances from multiple sources. It seems unlikely that dancers at the Ball would have been expected to purchase copies of the music in order to know the dances, it's more likely that these individual dances were already known and being taught and danced in the local area. We can only assume that they would have been danced using the figures published by James Paine, Edward Payne and others.

Aside: A curiosity of Edward Payne's Third Set of Quadrilles is that two separate editions of the publication were issued (see Figure 5). The first c.1816, the second perhaps a year or so later. The content of the two editions is almost the same but for one crucial detail: the tunes weren't named until the second edition. In the first edition the tunes remained unnamed. The absence of names for the tunes in the first edition may hint that names weren't really needed at that early time. As more Quadrille tunes were published and danced, a mechanism was needed to disambiguate them. The names of the tunes were evidently circulating by the date of our Berkeley Hunt Ball in 1817.

Figure 5. The First (c.1816) and Second (c.1817) editions of Edward Payne's Third Set of Quadrilles. The later edition has been signed by Payne himself as proof that it is a legitimate copy. Left image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD, h.925.aa.(14.). ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Right image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD, h.3212.r.(10.). ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

We might also question whether the list of tunes from the ball is complete, did they also dance the omitted Quadrilles from the respective third sets of both James Paine and Edward Payne? Those missing, but perhaps danced, Quadrilles would be: L'Heureuse Fantasie (from Paine's 3rd set) and Duc De Berry, La Caroline and La Henriette (from Payne's 3rd set). We can only speculate as to an answer. One clue might be found in the 1817 Quadrille Fan published by James Paine, a fan we've written about elsewhere. This fan listed the Quadrilles as they were being danced at Almack's Assembly Rooms in the summer of 1817, the named sets were not arranged to match the publications of either Payne or Paine. This hints that individual communities of dancers, at this 1817 date, might have arranged their own sets of Quadrilles from whatever patchwork of constituent parts took their fancy. The list of dances at our Berkeley Hunt ball do not match the sets danced at Almack's. The evidence from the Almack's Fan suggests that the figures of the First Set of Quadrilles were combined with one or two alternative quadrilles to form new sets. Something similar may have been happening at Gloucester and Cheltenham too, locally arranged chimera Quadrille Sets may have been danced at our Berkeley Hunt Ball. They certainly danced popular Quadrilles, just not necessarily in the same arrangements that London's music sellers were issuing them.

As we've seen, the Quadrilles named as having been danced at our ball are primarily associated with the publications of James Paine and of Edward Payne. They are also known from other sources however. 1817 was a date at which copyright, as applied to musical publications, was still in its infancy; some publishers considered social dance music to be unprotected in law and fair for reuse. We've written about issues of copyright relating to dance music of the period elsewhere. The significance of this observation is that several music shops offered duplicative works, without permission, featuring the Quadrilles of both Edward Payne and James Paine. One such example was a series of publications issued by Chappell & Co c.1817, each with the title Set of Quadrilles with their proper Figures in French and English, Performed by Paine's Band, &c. and Danced at Almacks, The Argyll Rooms and all the Nobilities Balls. The third number in this collection happens to include many of the Quadrilles performed at our ball: La Leone, La Finale de Lodoiska, La Nouvelle Polonaise, La Lisette, La Villageoise, La Matilda, L'Eugene and Le Graces. That is, Chappell's third collection contained a superset of the Third Set publications of both Payne and Paine. I've no reason to think that this work was actively used for our Berkeley Hunt ball, I suspect it's just coincidence that two thirds of the dances could be found published in the same volume. There were other duplicative works issued too of course, Skillern & Challoner (for example) republished Paine's Third Set themselves with a new musical accompaniment of their own arrangement c.1817, Mitchell's Musical Library did something very similar with Payne's Third Set c.1817. Many of the dances were also included in later anthologies such as Charles Wheatstone's c.1823 Quadrilliana publication. Where the Quadrilles were republished the melody and dance figures remained the same (other than occasional copying errors) so we can be reasonably certain of how the dances were arranged and performed.

Aside: a curiosity with some of these Quadrilles is from where they derive their names. In most cases we have no real evidence, they may simply have been invented. Some of the names had been used at previous dates for other French Country Dances however. For example, the names La Lisette and La Matilda (both from James Paine's Third Set) had both been used for dances published by Clementi & Co. c.1811. The associated tunes are quite different between the publications of Clementi and Paine, it does seem that Paine was influenced by Clementi in some respect as the names can't have been reused by chance alone. The name La Matilda is even more curious as it was also used as the name for a different Quadrille published (at an uncertain date) in Paris by Louis-Julien Clarchies. The name Les Deux Amis had also been previously used for a variety of different tunes.

Across the twelve quadrille dances we will shortly discover that at least 9 different sets of figures are likely to have been danced. Perhaps 10 if we assume that the otherwise unknown La Jeane had a unique set of figures associated with it. The two figure sequences to have almost certainly been repeated are Pantalon and La Poule. Dancers, if they aspired to memorise all twelve quadrilles, would have a lot to remember. In practice it's unlikely that they were expected to memorise the figures, the practicalities of doing so were too much of a challenge. A new convention instead arose for announcing or prompting of the figures in French, any dancer who was familiar with the basic repertoire of steps and figures could rely on the prompting to help them navigate the confusing arrangements. If you'd like to read more about the early history of Quadrille prompting I can strongly recommend a paper by dance historian Richard Powers on the subject. It's uncertain whether the Quadrilles at our Berkeley Hunt Ball were prompted or not but it's likely that they would have been.

We will now consider each of the twelve named Quadrille dances individually.

Figures for the 1817 Berkeley Hunt Quadrilles

The table below summarises some basic information for each of the quadrilles from our late 1817 Ball. The first column provides the name of the tune and the name of the associated figure sequence (if it's one of the well known sequences from the First Set of Quadrilles) or specifies unique if the figures are unique to that quadrille (that is, it isn't a well known sequence from the First Set). The first column also indicates how many bars of music are associated with a single iteration of the figures [most of the quadrilles involve four iterations, some only require two, one of them involves eight iterations]. The Second column provides the figures as published by either James Paine or Edward Payne as appropriate in both English and French, in each case I've added an Introduction and Honours section that is only implied in the original text but not explicitly printed. I've also added a prefix to link the figures with a particular strain of music; for example A) indicates that the associated figure is danced to the first strain, B) implies the second and so forth. In some instances A1) and A2) are used to distinguish between the first repetition of the first strain and the second repetition of that strain. A partial strain is indicated by a range such as B1-4) implying that the first four bars of the second strain are associated with the figure. I've determined the arrangement of music to dance figures, in many cases it's not entirely obvious from the source documents how the figures should be matched to the music, alternative arrangements are sometimes possible. The third column contains explanatory notes specific to the Quadrille and links to supporting information where available. I've digitised and shared my personal copy of the 1817 Third Set of Quadrilles collection from Chappell & Co. through the Internet Archive, links to the Chappell music and figures are included below where relevant.

Conclusion

The description of the dancing at the late-1817 Berkeley Hunt Ball is fascinating. It offers a rare insight into the conventions of the early British Quadrille Balls. The conventions would evolve over time, Quadrille and Waltz balls would go on to become a popular form of social dance entertainment into the 1820s and beyond. At our date in 1817 the conventions had yet to become fully established, we gain a peek of insight into how the dancing might have been arranged at a transitional event. At our event at least 12 individual Quadrille dances were involved, that's approximately two Quadrille Sets, they seem not to have danced any of the Sets exactly as they were published by the London music shops however. There are many questions we can't answer: we don't know how many quadrille dances individual squads would form for (before seeking new partners), we don't know how many squads would dance the same quadrille concurrently, we don't know whether the dances were prompted (though they very probably were), we can't even identify one of the tunes. We do however know the names of the tunes and have identified eleven of them, we could reproduce most of the dancing from this ball today if we wished to do so. We can only speculate as to how representative of the wider Quadrille dancing industry this particular event was, it does however offer a fascinating glimpse of insight.

Perhaps you and a group of friends might like to recreate the dances from this December 1817 Ball? If so, do please take a video and share it and do let us know! And if you have anything else to share on this subject, do please Contact Us as we'd love to know more!

Postscript - March 2024

I recently became aware of a unique little book archived within the special collections of Harvard University titled: Quadrilles to be Danced at the Berkeley Hunt Ball on Friday evening, Feb 7, 1817. The date is not a precise match for our Ball, it is however similarly named. I requested a digitised copy as I was intrigued to discover what additional insights it might offer. The book contains a printed list of dance figures for two sets of Quadrilles, a total of twelve individual dances. The dance figures contained within are for Quadrilles named: La Pantalon (1st Set), L'Ete, La Poule, Lodoiska, La Nouvelle Pastorelle, La Finale; La Pantalon (2d Set), Le Wellington, La Trenise, La Nouvelle Polonaise, Promenade, La Fanni. It's fascinating that a book of quadrille notations was printed for this specific 1817 event, perhaps similar books were published for other events; indeed, perhaps a similar book was published for our Berkeley Hunt Ball later that same year.