Paper 69

The New Quadrille Fan for 1817

Contributed by Paul Cooper, Research Editor

A rather interesting hand fan was published in London back in 1817 under the name The New Quadrille Fan for 1817 (see Figure 1). In this paper we'll study that fan and its printed contents, we'll also elaborate on what it can tell us about London's Quadrille dancing conventions at around the date of publication. We have previously studied the concept of dance fans, and notably of Quadrille Fans in a previous research paper, you can read more about them here. We've also written of the Quadrille dancing industry of 1817 in a different research paper, you can read more about that here. This paper extends those previous investigations.

Figure 1. The New Quadrille Fan for 1817

The Fan Itself

Not much is known about this fan. Its title implies that it was printed either in 1817 or towards the end of 1816; the content of the fan, as we will see shortly, rules out the earlier part of this date range, it seems likely to have been published towards the end of 1817. The manufacturer is not directly named, instead we find the words Published By in the bottom left hand corner, and Wine Office Court, Fleet Street in the bottom right. It's possible, perhaps likely, that the publisher's name has been truncated from the fan in the surviving copy that I have studied. None the less, we can take a reasonable guess at who the publisher is likely to have been: T.J. Fenwick of Number 7 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. This guess is derived from two other pieces of information: an unnamed stationer at 7 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street issued a likeness of the late Princess Charlotte (1796-1817) in December of 1817 (Morning Chronicle, 16th of December 1817), and a T.J. Fenwick was based at 7 Wine Office Court in early 1818 (The London Moderator, 22nd of April 1818). In all probability either Fenwick, or his immediate predecessor, issued our Fan.

The remaining content of the fan are the names and figures for thirty-three individual Quadrille dances, the titles are given in French, the figures in English. No other authorities (such as the name of a dancing master) are referenced, nor is a venue at which the fan might be used. We don't know if the fan was commissioned for a particular event, or on behalf of a specific community of people; nor do we know how many copies were issued, nor even the selling price. This type of fan is a fundamentally ephemeral object, such fans were printed, purchased and used; they then wore out and were disposed of. The fact that at least one copy of this particular fan survives is a matter of luck. There may have been many other such fans issued by independent printers and stationers at a similar date, there certainly were similar fans issued on behalf of some of London's more prominent dance authorities (we've studied the fans issued by Edward Payne (1792-1819) and James Paine (1778-1855) elsewhere), yet our fan does not duplicate any of these other fans. It appears to be a unique item produced independently of any other fans known to have been available at a similar date. It is evidence that a market existed for such material, and that the Quadrille dancing public found a use for this type of aide-memoire for dance figures to be necessary. We do know the approximate dates at which Edward Payne and James Paine published their equivalent fans: Payne advertised his fan to be available from late February of 1817, Paine from late May of 1817. I suspect that our Fan is likely to have been issued later in 1817 after these two earlier fans were already in circulation. I can't prove this to be the case, it's possible that it predates them both; in so far as the contents include many of Payne's figures, it seems likely that Payne's fan was already in circulation and had demonstrated a market for such material in advance of our fan being created.

The thirty-three quadrilles that are printed on the fan are rather interesting in their own right. Approximately half of them appear to be derived from the c.1816 Quadrille publications of Edward Payne, whereas the other half are taken from two 1811 publications issued in London by Clementi & Co. Three further dances are of currently unclear provenance. Payne's quadrilles were genuinely popular in 1817, their presence on the fan is not a surprise; whereas the Clementi dances from 1811 are entirely unexpected, their presence on the fan is most curious. Were the Clementi dances of 1811 still being danced in 1817? Did the manufacturer select those dances by random happenstance (perhaps happening to own copies of the originating 1811 publications)? Was there a community amongst whom the Clementi dances were still in fashion? There's sometimes a tendency to believe that the Quadrille dance first came to London in 1816, the Clementi publications of 1810 and 1811 are clear evidence that some British dancers were enjoying Quadrilles at an earlier date. That Clementi's quadrilles might still have been danced in 1817 is curious... perhaps there was such a demand for new Quadrilles in 1817 that the 1811 repertoire was being actively rediscovered in 1817, as though they were fresh and of the moment. These questions can't be authoritatively answered; perhaps the 1811 dances were printed on the fan by chance, perhaps they were being actively danced, all that can be said for certain is that somebody involved in the manufacturer of the fan thought that they would be of value to the quadrille dancing public.

One remaining possibility is that if some of the dances originate from collections issued in London in 1811, perhaps all of them do. That is, perhaps the Quadrilles that Edward Payne published in 1816 were themselves derived from other (now lost) c.1811 publications. Perhaps Payne had a source for his Quadrilles that the manufacturer of this fan also had access to, perhaps those earlier publications are no longer extant today. This possibility is interesting but unlikely; Payne claimed to be the originator of his Quadrilles, I've no reason to challenge his own assertions on the subject.

Clementi & Co's Quadrille Publications of 1810 and 1811

Given that many of the dances printed on our Quadrille Fan were derived from the Clementi Cotillion publications for 1811, let's investigate those publications in a little more depth.

Clementi & Co published a collection of four music collections across 1810 and 1811 all titled Cotillions Selected for the Cotillion Balls (see Figure 2); two have the date 1810 printed on the cover and two have 1811, two have Book 1 printed on the cover and two have Book 2. They're fascinating and high quality publications. The two issued for 1810 are particularly interesting as Clementi acknowledged the original French publishers of the dances that he'd collected, they were credited as being originally from Messrs: Julien, Wolf, Rose and L'Herminè, with Julien (Louis Julien Clarchies, 1769-1815) being the principal source. There were no such credits for the publications issued in 1811. It's reasonable to suspect that Clementi sourced all of his dances from across these four publications from French originals. That is, Clementi's dances probably originated from France itself, rather than being English compositions and choreographies created in a French style.

Figure 2. Clementi & Co's Cotillions Selected for the Cotillion Balls, Book 1, 1811.

One immediate observation is that the collections claim to contain Cotillions and yet our 1817 fan describes the same dances as being Quadrilles. One might wonder how that could be. It's a conundrum that we've written about several times before, including for example here in relation to Cotillion dances that were being danced socially in London in 1808. In summary, the Cotillion dance form had been popular in Britain from the late 1760s, it waned in popularity towards the end of the 18th century; a new wave of dances variously referred to as French Country Dances, Cotillions or similar began to be danced in Britain across the first decade or so of the 19th century, some of this new wave of dances were examples of what would later be termed Quadrilles. The terms Cotillion and Quadrille were used interchangeably until perhaps 1816 when the term Quadrille became dominant. A Quadrille of the 1810s was quite different to a Cotillion of the 1760s, but a Quadrille of the 1810s could be much the same as a Cotillion of the 1810s; that is, terminology could mean different things to different people at different dates. That can be confusing to a modern reader, it was sometimes confusing to uninformed dancers 200+ years ago too. Suffice to say that Clementi used the term Cotillion in 1810 and 1811 to refer to the same type of dance that Payne and Paine would describe as a Quadrille in 1816 and 1817. Any lingering doubts we might have over this are dispelled by our Quadrille Fan of 1817 that very clearly identifies Clementi's dances as being Quadrilles, if they were danced in 1817 then they would be danced in the same way as any other Quadrille dance would be danced.

The next thing to note is that Clementi's Cotillions of 1810 and 1811 were Selected for the Cotillion Balls. This suggests that a form of public entertainment existed in the early 1810s in which Quadrilles would be danced. We've previously investigated the dancing at a Cotillion Ball that was held in 1799, on that occasion we suspected that the Cotillions were probably danced in a similar style to the Cotillion dances of the 1760s, and yet we noticed that several of the dances were potentially quadrillesque in arrangement. Perhaps by the 1810s Cotillion Balls, if they were still being held, would be more similar to prototypical Quadrille Balls of the form that would become very popular in 1817 in the wake of the 1816 Carlton House Ball. It was from 1816 that the Quadrille dance rose to sudden prominence in Britain, the style of dancing had been rising in popularity over several years before then.

A further curiosity of these publications is that they were Inscribed to the Lady Mayoress and Ladies Patronesses by the Managers. It's unclear who the Managers would be in this context, unless they were the Managers of Clementi & Co themselves, presumably Munzio Clementi (1752-1832) and colleagues. The term Ladies Patronesses suggests an association with the various Assembly Rooms around the country, first and foremost amongst which would have been Almacks Assembly Rooms in London. It's perhaps possible that Clementi's Cotillions were arranged for use at somewhere like Almacks. It is known that early Quadrilles were danced at venues like Almacks prior to the dance form's sudden rise to nationwide prominence in 1816, perhaps they were being danced at Almacks from as early as 1810, perhaps using music supplied by Clementi.

The Quadrilles themselves are presented with two lines of music, a treble and bass score, together with the dance figures in both French and English. Our Quadrille fan of 1817 only reproduces the English language version of the figures. The table that follows lists the quadrille dances from across these four collections (unnamed waltz and sauteuse tunes from the back of the collections are not included in the table), together with the credited provenance for the dance where available. I've added a further source annotation in square brackets to identify the original French publications from which Clementi appears to have gathered his dances, where I can identify them.

Almost all of the dances from the two collections from 1811, on the right side of the table, are found on our 1817 Quadrille Fan; the only such dance that is missing is La Marechalle. None of the dances from the two 1810 collections are found on the Fan. One of the 1811 Clementi dances was published without a name (at least in the copy from the British Library that I've studied), we can recover the intended name as potentially having been La Arabelle based on evidence from our 1817 Fan (where the figure sequence is present under that name). It's possible that later corrected editions of Clementi's publication included this name. The English language text from the Clementi publications is generally reproduced unchanged on our Fan; this is a little unfortunate as Clementi's English language translations of the figures are error prone, the French originals being rather more specific and accurate about what should happen. Anyone attempting to use the fan to actually understand the figures of these dances, without having been taught them first, would be at a distinct disadvantage. Some of the dances are really quite complicated, they're difficult to understand even in the original French language. Furthermore, the Fan introduces various spelling mistakes and other corruptions that add additional complexity to the process of understanding the dances.

In many cases we can identify the underlying Parisian publications from which Clementi appears to have sourced his dances. Eighteen of them were collected from the 11th, 12th and 13th numbers of Recueil Des Contre-danses et Walzes by Louis Julien Clarchies Americain. The precise date of publication of these underlying Parisian sources is uncertain, they certainly predate our 1810 Clementi publications. They're likely to have been published relatively recently however, they might perhaps date to 1809 or thereabouts. As far as I can discern Clementi selected no dances from Clarchies' 14th or later collections (my archives are incomplete so I can't be entirely certain on this point). If Clementi had access to Clarchies' 14th or later works when he produced his own collections, it seems likely that he would have used them, thus the 13th collection was likely to be the most recent available at Clementi's date of publication. Clementi carefully reproduced the music from the French source works, he was less precise over the text of the figures however, in many cases he altered (and arguably improved upon) the original French version of the text. The English text to the dances that we find on our 1817 Fan is therefore a slightly error prone copy of Clementi's 1810/1811 English text, which is itself an erratic translation of Clementi's French version of the text, which in turn is adapted from slightly earlier French originals.

Most of the Clementi dances from 1811 are what I would loosely describe as being high quality. This is not said with respect to the quality of the publication, music, paper, etc., and certainly not in respect to Clementi's English language translations, but rather with respect to the dance figures. They are in most cases clear, comprehensible and consistent. In each case the initial A strain of music is clearly allocated to preparatory honours and the dance begins with the B strain, which is the typical convention for a Quadrille of the later 1810s. Any given figure tends to have the same amount of music set aside for it in each of the dances, this consistency is important when interpreting a dance, it offers increased confidence that we've understood what the choreographer intended. The main exception from amongst the 1811 collection is a dance named La Gardelle that I've struggled to interpret and arrange, even the French text is difficult to make sense of; indeed, this particular dance can also be found in an 1805 publication issued in London by Michael Kelly and it's just as confusing there too. The same is less true of the 1810 dances, their quality is more variable, a greater proportion of them defy simple interpretation.

A further observation we might make is that a few of the Quadrilles of what would later be termed the First Set of Quadrilles do appear amongst these Clementi collections, namely Pantalon, L'Ete, La Poule and La Trenice. There's no suggestion that they should be danced as a set however, or even that they are related to each other; at this point in time (1810 and 1811) they were simply example Quadrille dances much like any other. The collection of Quadrilles that make up the First Set is something that seems only to have become significant, at least in London, from perhaps 1815 or thereabouts; the combination may not have become internationally significant until after they were danced together in London at the 1816 Carlton House Ball, after which date that specific combination was treated as the pre-eminent arrangement for Quadrille dancing in Britain.

The Contents of the 1817 Quadrille Fan

We've noted that around half the content of the Fan is derived from the collections of dances issued by Clementi & Co in 1811, the other half (except for three) are sourced from Edward Payne's Quadrille collections of c.1816, a mixture of his First, Fourth and Fifth sets of Quadrilles. We've discussed Payne's quadrilles many times before, you can follow the link to read more. The remaining dances of unclear provenance were named La Liberte, La Nouvelle Alliance and the probably misnamed L'Amasiae (which probably should be L'Amanside); these names are familiar from multiple sources, notably Payne's 1816 Second Set of Quadrilles, yet I've not identified the source of the figures that are printed on the fan. The fact that all three appear linked to Payne's second set suggest that alternative figures for that music were in circulation in 1817 even if they're not currently known from other printed sources.

The sequence in which the quadrilles are printed on the fan is somewhat random. The Clementi sourced dances appear first and are almost in the sequence printed by Clementi (with a few scattered exceptions), the Payne sourced dances follow with no clear significance to the sequencing. The dances may have been arranged on the paper on the basis of how best they would fit into the space available. There's no clear grouping to the dances, they seem to be thirty-three separate Quadrille dances rather than six proscribed sets of Quadrilles. Nonetheless, the dance at the bottom of the third column of the Fan does refer to a dance on the sixth column as being in the Sixth Set which might suggest that the dances were indeed grouped; the dance at the bottom of the fifth column likewise points to instructions in the Fourth Set, the dance at the bottom of the sixth column refers to instructions in the Fifth Set; the dances themselves are positioned too haphazardly to suggest at a deliberate grouping however, the word Set seems to be used to imply column rather than anything else. For example, the Finale quadrille appears in the fourth column of the fan, it does so in the second position not the end of the column however. I don't think purchasers of the fan would have interpreted the columns as being Sets in the same sense that Payne's Third Set of Quadrilles might imply an ordered Set.

Spelling mistakes aside, many of the dances are easy to identify, especially those sourced from the publications of Edward Payne. The Payne Quadrilles were genuinely popular in 1817, it's likely that purchasers of the fan would have found it useful if attending a Quadrille Ball at which they would be expected to know the choreographed figures for Payne's Quadrilles. Whether or not the Clementi sourced figures were similarly valuable is unknown; it's possible that they were being danced socially in 1817, it's also possible that the manufacturer included those dances without understanding that they were no longer (or perhaps had never been) widely danced.

What follows is a table of the dances from the Fan, with additional supporting information where appropriate. The original punctuation and spelling from the source works has been corrected in an attempt to improve readability over the text found on the Fan itself. We've animated suggested arrangements of most of the dances.

A note on Prompting of Figures

This existence of this fan offers evidence that ordinary dancers in 1817 struggled to memorise the figures to the many new sets of Quadrille dances that were actively being danced at that date. We saw something similar when we investigated the programme of dances at an 1817 Quadrille Ball in a previous paper. We've also studied the 1817 Quadrille Fans issued by Edward Payne and James Paine and made similar observations. We've seen several books of Quadrilles published in 1817 by Charles Wheatstone. There were so many Quadrille dances available to be danced that the dancers struggled to cope. Figures for the dances were sometimes published on small cards and made available to dancers as memory aids, the Fans and books served a similar purpose. A further new technique emerged too, the concept of prompting or calling of dancers.

This new technique of prompting involved having somebody announce the figures of a dance as it was being performed, perhaps a few bars ahead of the dancers themselves. This was not a technique that had been used in British ballrooms at earlier dates for either Country Dancing or Cotillion Dancing, it was a new innovation particularly associated with Quadrille Dancing. The prompter would announce the figures in French, in so doing they would assist the dancers with a prompt of what would be coming next. Dance historian Richard Powers has shared an excellent research paper on-line where he discusses the evidence for this, I'll not repeat the entirety of his arguments here. Suffice to say that they are compelling. I encourage you instead to read his paper or to watch the associated video.

It's possible of course that dances had been prompted at less elite venues at earlier dates. Maybe having someone prompt the figures for a Country Dance had been popular at village gatherings at earlier dates. It's entirely possible. We've previously written of Martin Platts and Francis Werner who advertised their availability to direct the proper figures of a dance (whatever that meant) in the 1780s and 1790s. The prompting of Quadrilles was a new phenomenon for the elite assemblies however, it became commonplace by about 1820 or thereabouts. At our 1817 date the convention may not have been universal, thus the need for Quadrille Fans to help the public to cope with what they were being expected to dance.

Conclusion

This fascinating Fan is a rare survivor from 1817. It offers a glimpse of insight and nuance into London's evolving dance conventions at that date. We don't know who created the fan, why they did so, or who was expected to benefit from it. The fact that it existed at all is fascinating, that a copy survives at all is lucky. The inclusion of Quadrille dances previously published in 1811 is even more interesting, it suggests that those earlier dances might have seen a new lease of life as the Quadrille dance form became suddenly popular from mid 1816. There's a great deal that we don't know, this fan offers just one more hint of information from which we can try to reimagine the past.

And that's where we'll leave this investigation for now. If you have any additional information to share, do please Contact Us as we'd love to know more.