A Period Piece

Having decided to read more fiction about dancing, I purchased Rosamond Lehmann’s Invitation to the Waltz (1932, republished by Virago, 1981). It is an interesting rather than enjoyable book; there is an atmosphere of sexual threat throughout, and 1932 is not nostalgic for 1920. There is an unspoken message that bringing up teenage girls as ignorant of the Facts of Life as possible–instead handing them frantic yet mysterious warnings like “Never Be Alone in A Train Carriage With A Man”–will eventually lead to disaster.

That said, the protagonist of the book is a pretty 17-year-old girl, with a prettier older sister, so this atmosphere of sexual anxiety is not inauthentic. Olivia’s thoughts and feelings will not be alien to any woman who grew up with “strict parents” and a sense that male attention is essential to her social standing but too much will ruin her life. What is more dated is the message that lingering Victorian social conventions blight women’s lives, trapping this weed-wearing widow in a church-going pose that oppresses the vicar, that vulgar seamstress at home forever with her awful mother, and this upper-middle-class family into celebratory rituals that barely engage the heart. Love is embarrassing, joy is embarrassing, embarrassment lurks behind every English shrub.

However, the story of the waltz–or, really, debutante ball, really–is gripping. After Part One, the story of Olivia’s anxiety-laden birthday, and Part Two, the nervous run-up to the party, comes Part Three, and it is a splendid pen portrait of an aristocratic family’s celebration of its only daughter’s come-out c. 1920, complete with bedrooms serving as cloakrooms, an antler-decorated great hall, furniture-crowded antechambers, and “the ballroom, brilliantly lit.”

Marigold, the daughter of the house, greets Olivia and Kate while “swinging a little basket full of programmes with silk cords and tiny pencils of different colours”–and I wonder how she prevents the cords from getting snarled up.

The boy Olivia and her sister have reluctantly brought (to ascertain there will be enough men) asks the debutante at once for a dance, and she prevaricates about being completely booked up until “the fourth extra.” Reggie settles for it and writes Marigold’s full name carefully in his card while she scribbles “Billiard Ball” in her own.

Olivia and Kate contemplate the facts that they will now have to stay at the dance until the possibly bitter end and there are 23 blank spaces on their cards before “the fourth extra”. What if they are left empty? They haven’t yet seen any boys they recognize, and their social circle has been (for both class and moral reasons) kept deliberately small. Reggie saves Olivia from her immediate embarrassment, however, by asking her to dance. He dances badly, alas.

I interject at this point to say that this ball doesn’t end until after 3 AM. The maximum number of dances I plan for our contemporary Edinburgh 3.5 hour dances are 8 ceilidh dances, 6 waltzes, and a 45 minute interval for chatting, snacks, and swing-dancing. Marigold’s ball is in England, and it has a band that plays foxtrots, waltzes, the two-step and ultimately a galloping country dance.

The dance has a refreshment room with black-coated disapproving waiters where Olivia and Reggie, after their unhappy turn around the room–and everyone is indeed dancing AROUND the room in approved fashion–take refuge. Fortunately for them both, Olivia encounters exuberant friends there. Fortunately for Kate, she discovers her popular cousin on the dance floor, and Etty re-introduces her to a young local man. Thus, after the initial anxiety and awkwardness that too many of us have experienced at the beginning of dances, the sisters’ situation improves.

The book is really about negotiating one’s place in the British class system still solidly in place in 1920, but Lehmann has a miniaturist’s eye, so there are lots of lovely details about the dance. “Brother officers” horse around early on and are reproved by their hostess. Introductions are made or requested. One man mentions that his younger brothers have made dancing their “latest craze” and keep gramophones both in their bedrooms and in the bathroom so they can practise as soon as they get up in the morning. Every man seems to know how to “take the corners” as he revolves his partner around them. There is a sit-down “supper interval.” Partners chat as they dance, and couples move in and out of rooms. And rigid attention to the dance cards (programmes) is not universally practised: Olivia’s flight to the face-saving sanctuary of the cloakroom is stopped by a spontaneous invitation to dance.

Naturally, almost everyone present knows how to do it, as it was part of their education. In fact, Olivia recalls having danced a “baby polka” with a blond boy when they were both children, and as she had (then) asked him to dance four times, he had commented on it in a droll way that made all the adults laugh. (There is a hideous sequel to this embarrassing encounter. Let’s just say the blond boy did not improve with age.)

The madness of the final dance (‘the fourth extra”)–which in Scotland would be Strip the Willow–is “stopped dead” by the band striking up “God Save the King”. If my experience is anything to go by, “God Save the King” has largely been replaced in Scotland (or Edinburgh) by “Auld Lang Syne.” Ending a dance with the seasonal Marian Anthem is my own idea, but I hope it catches on.

From what I have read, the sequel to this novel (let alone Dusty Answer) is not something to be left around for children to read, but this particular Lehmann novel is fine for teenagers–although the protagonist is agnostic and her father is an atheist: caveat emptor.

While a period piece, Invitation to the Waltz strikes me as being particularly rooted in reality, right down to the peril of having dirty old men in one’s midst but lacking the social tools to rebuff them. (Fortunately, nothing worse than being bored and embarrassed happens to our heroine here.) As one gathers from the novels of Nancy Mitford, men who lusted after little girls and teenagers were hiding in plain sight at this time. Mitford seems to laugh it off; Lehmann doesn’t.

And good for her. Dirty old men are not to be laughed at but excluded, and I advise would-be hosts and hostesses not to be too liberal with their invitations, and to listen when young people tell them Good Old So-and-So Wouldn’t Hurt A Fly is a pest. Meanwhile, what makes dances fun–as is illustrated by this story–is meeting friends, being introduced to potential new ones, eating and drinking yummy things, light conversation, and knowing how to dance. These are all aspects a good dance host or hostess must consider.

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Thank you to those who came to the Michaelmas Dance 2024! For information on upcoming events, please contact me at info@tradcathsocialdancing.co.uk.


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