A Reading and Analysis of the Dancing from the Fezziwig Ball scene in ＂A Christmas Carol＂

Well, hello everyone! I know it's been a long time since I made a video. If you're wondering where I've been these last few months, well, first of all, I had a total health breakdown. Second of all, I had some extreme life stress with one of my hobby spaces, not Dickens, because apparently all my hobby spaces have decided to be horrible and bigoted this time. And then we moved to this beautiful new house. Well, new to us. It's from 1915 and it has some beautiful historical details. You're probably laughing at me for calling something from 1915 old, but hey, I live in California and to us, that's freaking old. But before we get back to our regularly scheduled videos, not that my videos are regularly scheduled, it just happens to be a few days before Christmas, so I thought I would do what most YouTubers do and do something festive for the holidays. Even though I've been off the air for a long time, like Doctor Who, it's time to make a Christmas special. And the thing that most gets me into the holiday spirit is reading or seeing a movie or a play of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Actually, my favorite thing to do at Christmas time is to dance at the Fezziwig Dance Party at the Dickens Fair, but this is the second year in the road that's Oh, well, hi. This is Dax. This is Dax. She's about 12 weeks old and she's a snuggle bug and a brat. And by the way, if you wanted to know if the boycott is still on, it is very much still on. Management has still not met our minimum safety requirements and we are not going back to work until they do. And my idea was, why don't I read a description of Regency dancing from the Victorian era? And I just happened to have this Victorian copy of Charles Dickens' Complete Christmas Stories and I thought I would sit here and read the Fezziwig ball scene and analyze it for its Regency dance content. Because, of course, Scrooge is living in 1840s, but his youth was in the Regency era, so it is relevant to our discussion of Regency dances. Even though Charles Dickens wasn't writing in the Regency, the Regency was still within living memory, so the descriptions of it are, while not primary sources, they're very good secondary sources. The ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door and asked Scrooge if he knew it. Know it, said Scrooge. Was I apprenticed here? They went in. At the sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig sitting behind such a high desk that, if he had been two inches taller, he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement. Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it's Fezziwig alive again! Old Fezziwig laid down his pen and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands, adjusted his capacious waistcoat, laughed all over himself from his shoes to his organ of benevolence, and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice, Yo ho, the Ebenezer, Dick! Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow apprentice. Dick Wilkins, to be sure, said Scrooge to the ghost. Bless me, there he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick, dear, dear. Yo ho, my boys, said Fezziwig. No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas Ebenezer. Let's have the shutters up, cried old Fezziwig with a sharp clap of his hands, before a man can say Jack Robinson. You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged into the street with the shutters, one, two, three, had them up in their places, four, five, six, barred them and pinned them, seven, eight, nine, and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like racehorses. Hilly ho, cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with wonderful agility. Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here. Hilly ho, Dick. Cheer up, Ebenezer. Clear away. There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away or couldn't have cleared away with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore. The floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the flyer, and the warehouse was a snug and warm and dry and bright a ballroom as you would desire to see upon a winter's night. In came a fiddler with a music book and went up to the lofty desk and made an orchestra of it and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid with her cousin, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having bored enough from his master, trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another, some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling. In they all came, any how and every how. Away they all went, twenty couple at once, hands half round and back again the other way, down the middle and up again, round and round in various stations of affectionate grouping. So what we're hearing here is a bunch of typical Regency dance figures, hands half round and back again, um, we would say in modern English country dance we would call that a right hand star halfway and a left hand star back, um, down the middle and up again, fairly self-explanatory, and I'm guessing the round and round means circling cats. Hi Dax. Hi Dax. Such a good girl. I thought we wouldn't be able to film this without her jumping into my lap. She loves laps, huh? You're such a lap cat. Actually, not really on my lap, you're more on my arm. Moving on. Old top couple always turning up in the wrong place. New top couple starting off again as soon as they got there. All top couples at last and not a bottom one to help them. So what that's describing is a little chaos in the progression of the set. So the old top couple turning up in the wrong place means that the top couple has not moved down one place like you're supposed to every round of the dance for it to continue, um, and that can hold up the dance in various ways. You end up with, um, just dancing with the same people over and over again, and if there are other people at the top waiting to come in they can wait forever, and I've got two adorable little kittens that are being naughty. Subscribe to my Patreon for more cat content. So old top couple always turning up in the wrong place refers to the progression of the dance breaking down. I say in a lot of my videos that for English country dancing, the top couple is supposed to move down one place every round of the dance until they reach the bottom, and there's usually a figure within the figure sequence that makes up the dance that progresses the couple. But if the couple messes up that figure, they can either end up in the same place or a place they're not supposed to be, like two places down, one place up, and that would cause some chaos. The next thing they describe is new top couples starting off as soon as they get to the top. So this is a mistake that's clearly made out of over-enthusiasm, because in English country dancing, when a former bottom couple finally reaches the top, they still have to wait out two more rounds before they can start dancing, because they need two more couples to join them at the top before they can dance down. So you can imagine if the top couple finishes at the top finally and then immediately dances down, that too is going to cause some problems. And then finally we see all top couples and not a bottom couple to be had. Well, I mean, if they're all starting out as soon as they get to the top, that's what's going to happen. But basically the chaos that's going to cause is that the top couples need bottom couples to do the figures with, and if they're all top couples, they have no other couples to do the figures with, so you can't really do the dance. All right, continuing on. When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, well done! And the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again. Though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shudder. And he were a brand new man, resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish. There were more dances, and there were more forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of cold roast, and there was a great piece of cold boiled, and there were mince pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the roast and boiled, when the fiddler, artful dog mind, the sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told him, struck up Sir Roger de Coverlie. Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple too, with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them. Three or four and twenty pair of partners, people who would not be trifled with, people who would dance, and had no notion of walking. So you may be wondering why the one dance feels like he needs to dunk himself in a pint of beer. Well the thing is, English country dances back then typically ran at least 20 minutes, and if there's 20 couples in the line, it might have been a little longer than that. It might have been closer to half an hour. So that's a long time to be fiddling, and the fact that he just downs a beer and goes right back at it is astounding. So the next dance description we hear in this passage is when the fiddler strikes up the tune and Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig stand up to dance. Now I've talked a little bit about Sir Roger de Coverlie, but let me cover it again. Yeah, I know that was bad. I'm not even sorry. So for those of you who haven't heard my commentary on Sir Roger de Coverlie from other videos, basically it was a finishing dance in the Regency era, meaning it was the dance that you would typically end the evening on. It wasn't the only finishing dance, but it was a popular one, and how it was different from normal English country dances is normally within the long set, the top couple will dance in groups with two other couples, but in Sir Roger, the top couple dances with the entire set. So there are figures every round of the dance that involve every couple in the set. This makes each round of the dance quite long, especially if you have a big set, but the fun is that you get to dance with everyone, and at the end of the evening, it's a great way to kind of say goodbye to everyone. And the last thing I notice here is that they talk about these dancers are not to be trifled with. They would dance, and they had no notion of walking. This is another aspect of Regency dancing that I've covered extensively in other videos. That is that footwork was very important to them, so people wouldn't walk the figures unless they were extremely tired. In Mansfield Park, when Sir Thomas Bertram notices that Fanny is walking the figures at the end of the night at her coming out ball, he takes this as a sign of extreme fatigue and sends her to bed. All right, moving on back to the book. But if they had been twice as many, ah, four times, old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me higher, and I'll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted at any given time what would have become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance, advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, corkscrew, thread the needle, and back again to your place, Fezziwig cut, cut so deathly that he appeared to wink with his legs and came upon his feet again without a stagger. So I love that description of Fezziwig doing fancy footwork and seeming to wink with his legs. That's just, I don't know how you would wink with your legs. Maybe that's, that's in the motion of the knees that, you know, kind of like an eyelid. Your knees are going up and down, like closing and opening. It's a nice word picture anyway. So one thing that really interests me is the description of the figures they give for Sir Roger Decoverly. Namely, advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, corkscrew, thread the needle, and back again to your place. From the descriptions I've seen of the dance from the Regency, and for a good example of this, I'm going to show you a copy of the description that Thomas Wilson gives. But basically, with the exception of the addition of a bow and curtsy, this is exactly the dance that Wilson describes. If you look at these diagrams from 1809, you can see the three primary figures, the advance and retire, turn by hands, all that jazz, to the long corners, the corkscrew figure, and the thread the needle figure. Now, Dickens was born in 1812, which means he was eight when the Regency ended. That is, the Prince Regent became George IV in 1820. And that's old enough that most people can remember, so it could be that he's just accurately remembering what the dance was like in his childhood. Or the dance just hadn't drifted a lot in 30 years. Possibly both. Either way, good on him. That's a good description of a dance from someone who isn't a dancing master. So that's actually the last dance description in the passage. I know it's not a lot, but for people like me who are interested in reading sources from the era or from close to the era that depict how people actually danced, it has some good morsels in it. I enjoy reading it from that perspective, certainly. However, I'm not the sort of person that's just going to leave you in mid-story this way, so I at least want to get to the end of the Fezziwig scene. So for those of you who just were here for the dance descriptions, there you are. For those of you who would like to finish to the end of the Fezziwig scene, follow me. When the clock struck 11, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everyone had retired but the two apprentices, they did the same to them, and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds, which were under the counter in the back shop. During the whole of this time, Scrooge acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick returned from them, that he remembered the ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, with the light upon its head burnt very clear. A small matter, said the ghost, to make these silly folks so full of gratitude. Small, echoed Scrooge. The spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig, and when he had done so, said, Why, is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money, three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise? It isn't that, said Scrooge, heated by the remark. And speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. It isn't spirit. He had the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks, in the things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add up and count them. What then? The happiness he gives. It's quite as great as if it cost a fortune. He felt the spirit's glance and stopped. What is the matter? Asked the ghost. Nothing particular, said Scrooge. Something, I think, the ghost insisted. No, said Scrooge. No, I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clock just now, that's all. His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish, and Scrooge and the ghost again stood side by side in the open air. My time grows short, observed the spirit. Quick. And I hope you're all familiar with the story. I hope I'm not leaving you on a cliffhanger here. If you really haven't ever actually read it, I mean, I know pretty much everyone's seen some movie version or a parody of A Christmas Carol, but if you haven't actually read it, it's a novella. It's only about 70 pages long. It's some of Charles Dickens' most readable prose, and I would highly recommend it. It would probably only take you a couple of hours, and it's a great thing to do over the holidays. And if audiobooks are more your thing, you can get it read by some pretty famous celebrities. My favorite, personally, is it being read by Sir Patrick Stewart, who used to do a one-man version of A Christmas Carol, and indeed made a movie of A Christmas Carol where he played Scrooge, which is pretty decent in my opinion. But as someone who spent a decade of their life participating in the Dickens Fair every weekend, and now not to have it for two years, first due to pandemic and second due to boycott, it's really hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit without getting into A Christmas Carol. Really, the Christmas stories of Charles Dickens are my Christmas. I really think that they capture the spirit, the goodwill, the joy better than our modern movies and books. And it's my favorite thing to do this time of year. So thank you for indulging me. I hope I was able to give you some nice examples of descriptions of Regency dancing from about 30 years after the Regency. So still within living memory, certainly. So it's a good enough source. As I said, it's not perfect, but it's a good source. And I'm just having fun. So to all of you out there, if you celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas. And if you don't, you still have my warm greetings, and I'll see you for the next video. Take care, everyone. Oh, hi, baby. Hi. You're gonna say hi? You're gonna say hi, sweetheart? Nope, you're gonna be a wiggly kitty. You're gonna be a little wiggly kitty. Oh, hi, baby. Hi, baby. Oh, hi. So thanks for indulging me with reading one of my favorite stories and talking about the dances from it. If you enjoyed this video, please like us, share with your friends, subscribe, all that thing. I have a Patreon. It's mostly just to give me a little financial support, but I do have a few perks to go with them. So if you're interested in that, you can head on over to patreon.com to check that out. Of course, I haven't really had a lot of bonus content since I haven't had any content content recently, but we're going to fix that. I usually close out by saying have an ostentatiously good day, but since we're not covering Austin here, I guess have a Dickensianly good Christmas. And if you don't celebrate Christmas, just have a wonderful rest of your December and a happy new year. All right, take care, everyone. Bye.