Dances in the Channel Islands
[DANCE.]
Quadrille Figures, as danced at the Quadrille Assemblies, St. Helier’s, Jersey. [St Helier], Ph. Mourant, [1821?].
16mo, pp. 72; title-page and pp. 67–72 in English, the remainder in French; a few marks but a good copy in contemporary red roan, covers with a gilt border of flowers and leaves, front cover faded and stained, spine wanting, patterned printed endpapers (probably French, not in Kopylov).
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Quadrille Figures, as danced at the Quadrille Assemblies, St. Helier’s, Jersey.
Unrecorded pocket dance callbook printed on Jersey. One of the most popular ballroom dances of the nineteenth century, with elaborate steps danced by sets of couples in a square formation, the quadrille, which comprised a series of four or five linked dances, had its origins in the cotillion of the eighteenth century. Quadrilles were being danced in England at the turn of the century, imported from France, but it was the publication of sets of quadrilles by Edward Payne and James Paine in 1815–6, and its use at the Carlton House Ball of 1816, that catapulted the dance to enormous popularity. Most of the individual dances had French names – ‘La Trompette Guerrière’, ‘Les Lanciers’, ‘Le Fugitif’, ‘La Chinoise’; while ‘La McFarlin’ here was likely based on a Scottish reel.
The present work provides dance figures (written descriptions of the moves) for thirteen quadrilles, of which the seventh set is called ‘Payne’s 1st set’ and the fifth and tenth are drawn from collections published in Bath by White. At the end are ‘Three Figures of the new Parisian Quadrilles’, and ‘Corinthian or French Country Dances’ credited to the ‘Quadrille Repository’ of T. W. Lloyd, as well as some from a Periodical Collection of Popular Dances sold by Clementi – one dance in the latter is the ‘Coronation Waltz’, which likely dates publication to 1821 (George IV was crowned in July that year).
The printer Philippe Mourant (1771–1845) was official printer to the States of Jersey from 1796, but was primarily a newspaper proprietor, active as printer of the Soleil de l’Ile de Jersey (1792–9), the Gazette de l’Ile de Jersey (1799–1835), and the Jersey Loyalist (1825–1831). The Gazette drew largely from English papers, and in the 1810s showed a particular interested in the banquets and assemblies of ‘les fashionables’. His bookshop was the largest in the Channel Islands, with a circulating library of 3000 volumes, but despite what must have been a substantial output, surviving examples of his printing work are very rare.
Callbooks like this one, intended to fit in the pocket, are notoriously rare. This one is not in Library Hub or OCLC, and not recorded in dance bibliographies.