Too ill to be endured

ENDURED 

I danced with Mr. John Wood again, twice with a Mr. South, a lad from Winchester, who, I suppose, is as far from being related to the bishop of that diocese as it is possible to be, with G. Lefroy, and J. Harwood, who, I think, takes to me rather more than he used to do. One of my gayest actions was sitting down two dances in preference to having Lord Bolton’s eldest son for my partner, who danced too ill to be endured. Letter to Cassandra Austen, 8 January 1799, The Letters of Jane Austen 

It is amusing to envision a young Jane Austen at a ball, dancing away the night, besieged by the charms of bad dance partners with leaden feet!

Too funny. Has the world changed so much in 200 years? I think not. In a not so distant past, I remember attending a college dance at a Frat party where my dance partner thought John Travolta’s moves far too refined; – – and attempting a spin into a mis-directed bump, missed my hip by a foot and landed in the punch bowl! A moment in disco dancing infamy that my Sorority sisters still squeal about today!

I was astounded to read in the on-line JASNA Persuasions article The Felicities of Rapid Motion: Jane Austen in the Ballroom, that in the Regency era it was felt that the skill of a person’s dancing expressed the quality of his or her soul or spirit. Hmm? Jane Austen often had her most foolish characters dancing like clods. Is there an ironic revelation afoot? Her choice of clergyman Mr. Collins dancing in Pride & Prejudice seems to support this. Ha!

*Illustration of costume Parisien, plate 11, from the Journal des Dames et Desmodes, (1808)