Good Girls Don't Waltz

I’m in Nashville this week, Music City USA (although Austin, TX may also put in a claim for that title), and where there’s music, there’s bound to be dancing.

I don’t expect to see any foxtrot or waltzes here, which like Nashville’s original speakeasies, belong to another era. For me, witnessing a waltz has always felt like a step back in time. What can be more refined and more romantic?

Illustration of the nine waltz positions. Correct Method of German and French Waltzing (1816).

But it wasn’t always that way. Waltzing, when it first inveigled its way into British ballrooms by way of Austria during the Regency era, was met with shock and outrage. Matrons disapproved of it, the patronesses of Almack’s banned it, and no less a libertine than Lord Byron derided it.

What was so bad about the waltz?

First, unlike other popular of the dances of the period, couples danced with each other rather than as a group.

Secondly, the waltz involved the man touching the lady. For an extended period of time. In public. Scandal! In his poem satirizing the waltz, Byron wrote, “Waltz – waltz alone – both arms and legs demands, Liberal of feet and lavish of hands; Hands which may freely range in public sight.”

Attitudes gradually relaxed, and even the formidable clique of Almack’s patronesses began to permit waltzing, under certain conditions, by 1815. But the dance itself would continue to be considered “riotous and indecent” in certain circles for another decade.

If the waltz created such a stir, I cannot imagine what the response would be to what happens in today’s clubs!

Sources:

Mass Historia – “The Shocking Waltz”

Jane Austen Centre – “The History of the Waltz”

Wikipedia – Waltz

Getting the "Look"

Queen Amalie Auguste, c. 1823.

It’s Paris Fashion Week, an event I am sure that Kate Cochrane would have loved – certainly the spectacle if not all of the styles.

When it came to dressing my own heroine, the prospect took me in directions I couldn’t have imagined. I periodically found myself in the midst of writing a scene – a ball, a dinner, a horseback ride – and then stopping cold when it came to describing what Kate had on. For inspiration, I turned to the fabulous collections of material objects at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

I didn’t want to describe any old dress, or any type of jewels; I wanted what Kate wore to be as authentic and specific as possible to the age in which she lived. One of my favorite scenes in the novel involves Kate receiving a pair of emerald earrings from her husband. But how were they shaped? Were the earrings large or small? Did the stones appear simple or ornate? After many winding paths via Google searches and scouring museum collections, I found an image of a stunning pair of emerald earrings (and matching necklace!) that was allegedly a gift from the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte to his adopted daughter. Quelle merveille!

Emerald earring and necklace. V&A Museum.

I followed a similar approach for other aspects of Kate’s wardrobe, finding example of dresses and fabrics that show likely possibilities for what she would have worn. Silk for evening, or perhaps an airy muslin trimmed with silver threads, with cotton fabrics for daytime. Luckily, there are many people just as interested in the Regency and Georgian periods as I am, and I found a wealth of sources. The Jane Austen’s World blog, Jane Austen Centre, and Jane Austen’s London were all enormously helpful.

The Cochranes, my Pinterest board inspired by Kate and her family, shows more of the clothes, jewels, people, and places that inspire my novel!