A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern.

  • Iwan Bloch
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    649/700 (page 619)
    the floor and selected a partner by reciting a certain lyme. The lady concerned knelt on the cushion and was issed by her male partner. Then she repeated the process ith another man, and this was continued until every young tan and woman had knelt on the cushion and been kissed. These kissing dances appear to have been popular in Eng- md for a long time before Addison. Kissing in this con- Lection is, for instance, mentioned in Henry VIII (Act I, !cene 4). ; Another English national dance is the hornpipe dance, h which the dancers hold the upper part of their bodies traight and stiff, and dance with a shambling movement of ihe legs. The ' hunt the squirrel' is also an English national dance, a which the partners alternately chase each other. The dance known as the ' Anglaise ' is not an English, but b Bohemian dance. It was only in France that certain typically English steps were introduced into this dance. I On the other hand, the ' contre danse' is of purely English )rigin. Its French name is a corruption of country dance. I The first German valse was danced in the year 1813 at ilmack's ballroom, and excited general indignation, not only wnong persons of the respectable middle class, but also among paragons of virtue like George Gordon Byron, who in his poem ' The Valse ' wrote: If such thou lovest, love her then no more, Or give, like her, caresses to a score, Her mind with these is gone, and with it go The little left behind it to bestow. The dancing-masters of the nineteenth century were also in bad odour with the public. Dickens' Dancing Academy contains an excellent description of the true state of affairs at these dancing schools. [619]