Show and Tell Again

 

As I’ve done in past posts, I have a couple of new additions to my dance card/aide memoire collection that I had to share with you, because they’re such delightful confections…

 

Aren’t they?

The silver one on the left is a dainty two and a half inches long, with the chain and ring for wearing adding another six inches. The ring and chain indicate that this was intended to be a dance card and not just a note pad. There is a tubular holder for a pencil, now missing, and six thin leaves made of what looks like bone.

 

And the filigree! I’m not sure if it’s sterling or not—there does seem to be a tiny hallmark on one edge—but the intricate looping is marvelous.

 

 

The one on the right is four inches long and made of bone or ivory with silver edging (also hallmarked) all around on both covers and elaborate silver ornamentation with room for a monogram.

 

This one still has its tiny pencil for writing on the six bone leaves, which are held together by a silk ribbon woven through them. A delightful confection to carry to a ball…but what is even more delightful is the pencil inscription it still contains.

Reading across the leaves, from the leftmost leaf to right, it says

14th August 1897

Wishing you many many

returns of the day

HEPL

So some lucky young woman received this as a birthday present exactly 126 years ago yesterday. This inspires so many thoughts—who was she? Had she just made her entrance into society? Was it a gift from a family member, or a suitor? Did she treasure it so much that she refused to erase the message (there are signs that the other sides of the pages have been used and erased)?

 

What do you think?

A Very Clever Young Lady

 As you know, I’m an avid collector of 19^th century dance cards, those delightful little confections of silver and bone and shell that young ladies carried to keep track of their dance partners at balls. As we’ve discussed before, the ones that I collect date to the middle-ish part of the century, from around the 1830s to maybe the 1870s, when printed cards or booklets given out at balls became the standard (and a clever one, too: it gave you a tangible memento of your evening.) It also made sense: it meant you didn’t have to remember that you’d promised the first polka to Mr. Twinkletoes or the galop to Mr. Fleetfoot, because it was all right there in writing. 

I recently found this delightful carnet de bal online. Four and a quarter inches long by one and a quarter wide at its widest, it’s my favorite form—for some reason, I just love the fan-shaped ones. It’s a tad rickety—the chain and ring by which it would have hung from a young lady’s finger or button is gone, as is the pencil—and the coil of brass which would have held the pencil and formed a catch to keep it closed is partially detached from the back panel. The ribbon that held the leaves in place is still there, though detached from the front panel. But what makes this little trinket so marvelous (at least to me) is that its owner was a very organized young lady who also evidently did not like to have to keep track of to whom she’d promised that first polka. Look carefully at the individual leaves:

She carefully inked a heading on each leaf! They read (I apologize for the image quality—it was very hard to photograph!) from left to right, Valses (waltzes), Polkas, Quadrille (that one was a bit hard to make out), Galops, Polka Mazurka, and Schottishe [sic]…and then below that, six numbered spaces for names. Faint traces of names penciled in and erased are there, though alas, too faint and jumbled to read.

Based on the spelling of the dances and the quick research I did on when dances became popular, I’m guessing that this carnet is French, from the 1850s, while the Quadrille was still being danced and the Schottische a popular newcomer. So its owner was evidently well ahead of her time when it came to asset management—er, keeping track of her dance partners. 😊 I like to think that she was a popular young lady who was forced to find a creative way to manage her engagements. Who knows—maybe she helped popularize the printed programs of the future to help her daughters keep track of their swains!

Show and Tell!

I’ve written before about my delight in dance cards, those useful little notebooks that enabled fashionable young ladies to keep track of all the young men clamoring for the honor of a dance (that would so not have been me, by the way--just call me Miss Wallflower!), and have a new and exquisite one to share with you.

First, this one is in its original leather box (measuring 6 3/8 inches by 1 3/4 inches), which is just a dozen flavors of wow. See the teeny tiny hooks and loops that keep it closed?

On opening the velvet lined box, we find a fan-shaped carnet measuring 3 1/4 inches long (6 inches overall, including the chain and ring) made of what appears to be gold and silver vermeil over brass in an elegant, etched Rococo pattern. It is complete with double chain fastening it to a ring so that it could dangle from a young woman’s hand as she danced (because not all ball gowns have pockets!) Notice that the ring is a little outsized, to fit over a gloved finger.

When the “fan” is opened, there are five leaves of bone or ivory on which to write the names of dance partners…and the dainty pencil (all of 1 3/4 inches long!) with which to write them is still secure in its little loops.

I wonder what sparkling events this delightful little dance card was carried at, or what joys or heartaches it might have played a role in? There are plenty of signs that it was written on and erased…and then perhaps tucked away in a bureau drawer, based on the faint sachet scent still clinging to it. I do hope that whoever owned it kept it so well because of happy memories attached to it.

From my Collection...

I’m still collecting dance cards and aides memoire—you can see a few from my collection here—and have a couple of new pieces that I thought might interest you.

First, isn’t this wee aide memoire adorable? It’s the smallest in my collection, a dainty 1 7/8 inches long and under an inch wide, and with four leaves. I also like the ambiguity of the inscription, “Forget me not”...was it a gift from an admirer, a souvenir of a friendship, or just a reminder that this was the place to jot down things one didn’t want to forget?

This one was clearly meant to be used as a dance card: note the ring, so that it could be worn while dancing if one did not have a pocket or reticule at hand. I have a special fondness for these fan-shaped ones. This one has five leaves for writing on, two loops at the left to hold a minute pencil, and a sturdy clasp:

This last aide memoire is highly unusual; I’ve never seen one with a cover made of stone! The jasper (or agate) cover is very handsome and is translucent when held up to the light. Unusually, it has leaves for every day of the week, Sunday included...and the matching pencil is just plain awesome:

And in another type of collection, I was delighted last Saturday to make a new face-to-face acquaintance...long-time NineteenTeen reader and commenter QnPoohBear stopped by a teen book event in Rhode Island where I was a guest to say hello and bring me some printouts of WWI era articles and recipes from her collection. It was a pleasure to see you outside of cyberspace, QNPoohBear!!

Any other collectors out there? What sparks your acquisitive streak?

Dance Cards, Again

A few years back I did a post on dance cards, those handy little erasable tablets of bone or ivory carried by ladies at balls to keep track of the partners to whom they’d promised dances. I’ve collected them for years, and recently acquired two that I thought would interest you...except they aren’t exactly dance cards.

At some point later in the 19th century as printing became less expensive, it became the thing to print dance card programs for dances and balls, both private and public. They listed the occasion, location, and dances to be played over the course of the evening, along with a space to fill in partners' names. It was no longer necessary to remember to bring your cute little silver and ivory dance card, and at the end of the evening you had a nice souvenir of the event. Ah, progress.

But you still had to hold onto the thing somehow while you were dancing...and that’s where these come in—dance card holders:

The one on the left, made of brass, consists of a clip that could slip over a lady’s belt or waistband, suspended from which is a ferociously sturdy toothed clip. No dance program had a chance to slip out of this one!

The holder on the right is altogether more delicate, made of silver filigree. It has a ring (from the size of it, meant to be worn on one’s pinky finger) and a clip which gripped the dance program and was held in place by a sliding ring: Not quite as much fun as the old dance cards, but one must move with the times!

You Want to Dance with Me? I Want it in Writing!

Okay...first, old business. The winner of the drawing for a signed copy of Sarah MacLean's The Season is:

Starry*Night!

Starry*Night, you'll be hearing from Sarah shortly to arrange mailing your prize. Thank you to everyone who stopped by and commented! Now, for today's topic...

The nineteenth century was a century of progress. I mean, think about it: at the beginning of the century, if you wanted to go somewhere you rode a horse or a horse-drawn vehicle; by the end there were railroads and automobiles. At the beginning of the century, your house was lit by candles; by the end, gas and electric lighting were available almost everywhere. And at the beginning of the century, you pretty much had to dance with whoever asked you at a ball; by the end, there were dance cards. See what I mean? Progress!

Okay, I’ll settle down now.

So what were dance cards?

Like technology, they evolved over the century. From what I’ve been able to find, they were probably first in use in Austria and may have been spread as everyone returned home to their various corners of Europe from the Congress of Vienna, that huge year-long party—ahem, series of negotiations—that ended the Napoleonic Wars (for you hard-core history geeks out there, I highly recommend David King’s Vienna 1814 for a highly readable account of the Congress). At this time, “group” dances like country dancing and the highly formal minuets where precedence and etiquette decreed whom you could dance with fell out of favor, to gradually be replaced by “pairs” dances like the waltz and later on the polka and others. And because there were now more dances per evening (as opposed to the fewer but longer country dances of the past) it became harder to remember which young men you’d promised to dance with. So young women used the adorable little notebooks that opened like fans that they already carried about in their reticules to note down shopping lists and so on, and used them to record dance partners for the evening. I've posted a photo above of a few from my collection--you can see the varying materials (bone, ivory, mother of pearl, tortoise shell, silver) and styles, as well as ways of carrying them (see the little ring on the fan-shaped one and the clip on the Indian chief one so that it could be fastened on a belt?) A few are even inscribed "Bal", or ball in French (see close-up at left). I've seen varying opinions as to when dance cards were in general use...most likely, their use grew through the 1830s until they were a commonplace by the time Victoria was queen.

Towards the middle of the century, dance cards changed: they were pre-printed booklets of paper or cardboard listing each specific dance that the musicians would play, in order. Tiny pencils were attached by a ribbon or cord to the program, and the whole could dangle from a wrist or belt, and later be preserved as a memento of the evening. They became progressively more decorative and elaborate as the century moved on, peaking with the astonishing “ballspenden” popular in Austria before World War I (check this site out for a look at how crazy they could get!)