A Brief Note on the Minuet

Currently, I am reading The Sylph by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. First published anonymously around 1777 when Georgiana was twenty-one, the book follows the adventures of Julia, a young girl from the country who's city-bred husband, Lord Stanley, whisks her off to London where she becomes part of the depraved and oh-so-exciting life of the ton. The book, written as an epistolary, is comprised of letters between Julia and her sister, Julia and her father, Lord Stanley and his friends, etc. I imagine that soon there will be letters from the elusive Sylph, but I'm not that far along yet. With everything else going on, I have scant time for pleasure reading.

But I do know this much: the book is shocking in all of the most delicious ways. The critiques Georgiana levels at fashion, marriage, and the life of an aristocratic young woman caused scandal in her own day, and for 18th-century historians like me, it continues to elicit shocked laughter, gasps, and even, at times, blushes. What, so you think the 18th century was prim and proper, and that a girl all-too-familiar with the 'anything goes' attitude of 21st-century America should not find anything shocking in an old book? Ha. Obviously, I need to educate you in the seamier side of 18th century living. Some of it though, you're right, comes from adopting an 18th century mindset. When you know how they thought, what was considered right and wrong, what was considered scandalous and shocking, and the politics of the time, the book takes on much deeper layers and even the slightest remark stands out as a major societal infraction.

In particular, I'm thinking of the minuet. In one of her letters, Julia writes [emphasis my own], "Nay, I begin to think, I might as well have learnt nothing; and that the time and expence which were bestowed on my education were all lost, since I even do not know how to walk a minuet properly."

I gasped aloud upon reading that sentence. Some of you out there might understand. Julia couldn't dance the minuet. Well! I never! A girl of society, living in London, unable to dance the minuet! Oh, wouldn't they all make merry of her after a ball; her dancing skills (or lack thereof) would be the talk of the town for weeks. No wonder Lord Stanley-- in his prideful, arrogant, stand-offish way-- worried for her! The minuet was the most important dance of all. At a ball, each couple would, one-by-one, enter the center of the dance floor starting with the most important couple in the room (the King and Queen, in England, or the Governor and his wife, in the colonies) and everyone would watch. A graceful minuet could make you; a bad one could break you. Oh, Julia! The ton is a treacherous place.

What? Not shocking to you? Well, maybe after a few lessons in eighteenth-century society I'll be able to find something that makes even the most jaded among you gasp in surprise!