Money Musk occupies a special place in the history of American traditional dance. Both the tune itself and the accompanying dance figures have a well documented history reaching back into the late 1700s. Why have researchers been so interested in this particular dance and music? How can we account for this attraction?
Unlike so many traditional fiddle tunes, Money Musk is a tune with a known author. It was composed in Scotland by Daniel (sometimes Donald) Dow in 1776, and it first appeared in print around 1780 in Dow's Thirty Seven New Reels as "Sir Archibald Grant of Moniemusk's Reel."[1] A researcher cited by Andrew Kuntz, in his "Fiddler's Companion" website, says "that when the Gows published it in their 1799 Repository, Part First, they altered it rhythmically (by adding more 'Scots snaps' and smoothing out some dotted patterns for variety) and shortened the name to 'Monymusk, A Strathspey.' It has since that time been generally known simply as 'Monymusk' or its alternate spellings and variations."
Boston area dance musician Jack O'Connor used to refer lightly to the dance as "Fiscal Stench," and his wordplay came close to the mark. The words of the title come from Gaelic: moine mus(g)ach, or "nasty, filthy bog."
Since its original publication, the tune has been absorbed into musical traditions in Scotland, Ireland (where the strathspey rhythm was changed), Cape Breton, Quebec, and in different regions of the United States. Kuntz notes, "In America the tune was published in 1796 by B. Carr in Evening Amusements (Philadelphia), and soon became a staple of the dance circuit." Farther afield, he cites a "history of Romanian music by Poslusnicu [which] gives that 'Money Musk' (recorded as 'manimasca') was one of the dances at a nobleman's ball in Bucovina, Moldavia, sometime after 1812."
The tune is less common outside of New England and other northern states, but does appear in references connected to Confederate musicians the Civil War and allegedly appeared on a dance card from Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural Ball. Apparently the tune was also a popular solo number for concert band. Dance researcher Michael McKernan cites the tune's appearance as an encore, by audience request, at an 1856 concert that featured keyed-bugle player Edward (Ned) Kendall and the Salem (MA) Brass Band. That the band had an arrangement at the ready to accompany Kendall hints at the tune's familiarity. As the tune traveled, it took on a different character in each region that adopted it, evidenced by this note from the Fiddler's Companion website:
Paul Gifford says he once heard the great Montreal fiddling cab-driver, Jean Carignan, play at a concert [1973] where he took requests. Gifford asked for "Money Musk" and Carignan obliged, asking if he wanted the French, Scottish or Irish version! Gifford suggested French, but Carignan played them all.
In a recent communication, Gifford mentions that his father's father "had a Gem Roller Organ (from Sears) with a Money Musk roller. My grandfather and great-grandfather were fiddlers, my father and uncle also being musicians, so I learned the tune as a teenager in the'60s, myself. It was definitely the most popular tune in Michigan in the 19th century, based on mentions in local histories.... Knowledge of the tune dropped when the dance went out. I've only met something like four or five Michigan fiddlers who played the tune. In 1920, however, probably every one played it."
With a tune that originated in Scotland, Money Musk is, not surprisingly, well known in the Scottish country dance world. However, at the time of the tune and dance's first appearances in the late 1700s, "Scottish" country dance was not a distinct category of dance style. The general term was "country dancing," which the relatively well-off English population brought with them to Scotland, intending to recreate the experiences they had dancing at fashionable locales in England. Dance choreography set to a Scottish tune became "a country dance as danced in Scotland," and it was only in the last century that we see the creation of a more formal "Scottish country dance" designation. These early written versions, therefore, describe an English country dance melded to a Scottish tune.
Monymusk occupies a central place in the Scottish dance repertoire today and the dance has been used as a case study to demonstrate changes in Scottish country dancing over time, as in Hugh Thurston's Scotland's Dances (1954) and Hugh Foss's subsequent Notes on Evolution in Scottish Country Dancing (1973). Thurston devotes an entire chapter to his analysis of Monymusk; among the four reasons he gives for examining this one dance in such detail is this: "It is the first dance which I have found described in different words in different books." To appreciate this comment, we need to realize that in the late 1700s, wholesale plagiarism was common. Indeed, books under different titles copy descriptions word for word from other publishers. As we will see, two different publications a year apart give different wording for the dance.
The earliest appearance of dance figures attached to the Monymusk tune is in Francis Werner's 8 Cotillions, 6 Favorite Country Dances and two Minuets, with their proper Figures for the Harp, Harpsichord and Violin ... Book xviii, for the Year 1785, in the collection of the British Library[2]:
Turn your Partner with the right hand quite round and cast off one Cu: turn with the left quite round set 3 & 3 top and bottom & turn your Partner set 3 & 3 sideways & turn your Partner hands six quite round and back again lead out sides and turn your Partner with both hands.[3]
However, the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society (RSCDS) uses as its source the dance's appearance a year later in John Preston's (London) 24 Country Dances for the Year 1786. Even in its infancy, there are variations in how the dance is described. Here is how Monymusk appeared in Preston:
Turn your partner with the right hand and cast off one couple - turn your partner with the left hand and cast back,[4] the lady falling in at the top, the gentleman at the bottom - set three and three and turn your partner - set three and three sideways and turn your partner - hands six round - and back again - lead through the bottom and come up one couple - lead through the top.
Thurston concludes, "Preston is probably describing the figure which Werner is content to name; at any rate, lead outsides and turn is likely to be similar to Preston's figure. We notice that in this figure the tracks of the dancers are figures of eight, not across the dance...but up and down."
In comparison, the modern RSCDS version goes like this:
A 1-4 Ones turn by right hands once around and cast one place, twos dance up.
5-8 Ones turn by left hands once and a bit into lines of three across the dance.
B 1-4 All set twice; ones turning into second place improper on second setting.
5-8 All set twice again.
A 1-8 Six hands round and back.
B 1-6 Reels of three on the sides, ones give right shoulder to second corners.
7-8 Ones cross over to own sides.
So, is the "Scottish" Monymusk the direct antecedent of our American contra? In several articles published in Ralph Page's Northern Junket magazine, Thurston looks at these dances as part of a study comparing the dances of two cultures. He writes, "There is no point for instance, in comparing the 'Monymusk' you find there [in RSCDS books] with the American 'Money Musk.' First, it was taken from an English book, and there is nothing Scottish about the figures, although the tune is a good Scottish one. Second, it is reconstructed wrongly."
Putting it bluntly, Thurston says, "Monymusk is not a traditional Scottish dance. It was resurrected in 1934 (out of a book published in England in 1786) and there is no evidence that it was ever danced in Scotland before that date."
Thurston, an RSCDS certificated instructor and a professor of mathematics , was one of the few dance leaders to contradict Jean Milligan, the influential figure who created modern Scottish country dancing, playing a role similar to that of Cecil Sharp and English country dancing. Thurston felt that Milligan's dance interpretations were not grounded in historical fact, and that spurred him to do his own research.[5] His "reconstructed wrongly" comment refers in part to Milligan's substitution of the reels of three (aka, hey for three) in the final figure. As he points out, putting reels of three here provides the dance with an ending that follows a set pattern common to many other early Scottish dances. In somewhat the same way, many American contras of the 19th century end with a fixed pattern: actives dance down the center and back, cast off, and dance a right and left through, over and back.
What about other English sources? The dance at the turn of the 18th century was in no way solidified. For example, see Thomas Wilson's The treasures of Terpsichore; or, A companion for the ball-room, published in London in 1816.[6] Wilson includes directions for a Money Musk as part of his "collection of all the most popular English country dances." Following a custom common at that time, when different figures could be attached to tunes, Wilson provides not one set of directions but two to accompany the tune. Take your pick!
Money Musk 2 parts repeated
Single Figure. Whole figure at top, down the middle, up again, and foot it to the top couple.
Double Figure. The top couple swing with right hands round one couple, then with left, set three across and three in your places, hands six round and back again, and lead through bottom and top.
Michael McKernan collected two dozen descriptions of the figures, spanning a period from Saltator's A Treatise on Dancing (1802) to Eloise Hubbard Linscott's Folksongs of Old New England (1939), which presents the 32-bar figures as called by Happy Hale, Hinsdale, NH. Unfortunately, McKernan's research on Money Musk has not yet been published, but he is considering making it available on the Internet. He notes:
The earliest reference I have located to Money Musk on this continent dates from 1792. Elizabeth Simcoe, the wife of a British Army colonel (later, general) who was stationed in various parts of Canada, made this entry in her diary while in Quebec: "A splendid Ball at the Chateau, but the heat was so great that I was very near fainting after having danced Money Musk & the Jupon Rouge."
Note how quickly the dance jumped across the Atlantic! The dance's first written description in America (as "Money Mosque") comes in 1794, in Elisabeth Crawford's manuscript Commonplace book containing rules of grammer and the figures of 13 country dances. From this start, the dance, like the tune, spreads rapidly. Indeed, Robert Keller's detailed Dance Figures Index: American Country Dances, 1730-1810, cites no fewer than 21 instances of Money Musk within that narrow timeframe. Readers who wish to follow Money Musk's complex trail can go to the online version of Keller's admirable index.
In addition to Money Musk, we can find New Money Musk, Money Mosque, Money Musk & Yankee Doodle, Money-Musk, and Monney Musk. Nor can we assume that these are all the same. Indeed, Keller and McKernan note the differences-sometimes subtle and sometimes major-among the different dances, including some that share the same title.
The figures in those early American publications only somewhat resemble the contra dance we know today. For example, look at the directions in a dance manual published in Norwich, CT, in 1798 and bearing a weighty title-The gentleman & lady's companion: containing the newest cotillions and country dances, to which is added, instances of ill manners, to be carefully avoided by youth of both sexes:
Six hands half way round and back, firft and fecond gentlemen balance together and turn round, the 1ft and 2nd ladies do the fame, down the middle, up again, caft off, right and left.
Among other early American appearances for Money Musk are
One important early American source, with instructions for 64 country dances, appears in 1802. A Treatise on Dancing; and on Various other matters, which are connected with that accomplishment and which are requisite to make Youth well received, and regulate their behavior in company, together with a full description of dancing in general-lessons, steps, figures, &c., is generally referred to by the name "Saltator," a pseudonym for its author. Saltator's figures:
First couple cross over, down the out side, promenade round the gentleman fall between the second couple, the lady between the third, six dance address, first couple promenade and fall below the second, six demicircinate, right and left atop.
After looking at many of these variations, McKernan comments:
[I]t is clear that around 1800, there were several quite distinct figure-sequences that had been given the name "Money Musk." A possible reason for this might be that the tune was popular with the dancing public, and that it took some time before they settled on the figure sequence that best fit the music.
With so many variations circulating in America, it is not surprising that we can locate an early text that looks similar to the dance of recent memory, in A Select Collection of the Newest and Most Favorite Country Dances, commonly referred to as the Otsego (NY) manuscript of 1808:
Turn your partner once and a half round, lead down opposite sides one couple, three first couple balance, take right hands and turn your partner to the bottom yourself at top, balance, turn to places, right and left.
By the middle of the 19th century in America, these figures-if not their timing-is consistent. For example, here is Thomas Hillgrove's (1857) The scholars' companion and ball-room vade mecum, comprising a description of all the principal dances ... With hints and instructions respecting toilet, deportment, &c., &c.
First couple give the right hand, and swing once and a half round; then go below one and forward and back six; right hand to partner, and swing three quarters round; forward and back six; swing to place, and right and left four.
As Ralph Page points out (echoing comments by numerous other dance researchers), "In the early days the expression to 'swing' meant to turn with one hand or the other, or occasionally with both hands, depending on the dance and the figures." (An Elegant Collection of Contras and Squares, 1984, p. 57) Through the second half of that century, these directions remain essentially unchanged in dance manuals. By 1893, in J. A. French's The prompter's handbook, we see the timing explicitly indicated. (Note: the numbers here refer to measures, not to counts or steps, which would be twice as many). French's timing fits a 32-bar tune:
First couple join hands, swing once and one-half around [4]; go below next couple [4]; forward six [4]; swing three-quarters around [4]; forward six again [4]; swing to place [4]; right and left [8].
The most dramatic change in the history of Money Musk, and the focus of many a dance historian's research efforts, came when the dance shifted in length, a development unparalleled in recent contra dance history. More specifically, the dance figures remained almost the same but dancers had sixteen fewer steps in which to complete their moves. To date, we have been not able to identify exactly when and where the change took place from a 32 bar dance to a 24 bar dance. Ralph Page has suggested the 1870s as the time when this shift took place, but he provides no documentation for this. Page also describes (Northern Junket, Vol. I, #4) a 24-bar version in the course of recounting his own experiences as a young dancer many years earlier-described in more detail below-so the change occurred sometime in a 50-year window spanning the turn of that century.
In print, though, the dance remains a 32-bar dance well into the 20th century. Elizabeth Burchenal's American Country-Dancing (1918), based in part on her field work in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire, presents a 32-bar Money Musk. In 1926, with the publication of the first edition of "Good Morning", ostensibly written by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford though certainly with considerable assistance provided by Ford's dancing master, Benjamin Lovett, we find Money Musk in a 32-bar form:
First couple swing once and a half around (8 bars)
Forward six (4)
Swing three-fourths around (4)
Forward six (4)
Swing three-quarters to place (4)
Right and left (8)
Similar instructions remain in later editions, into the 1940s. One change in the dance, though, is noteworthy. For the first figure, the later edition specifies that the head couple "links right arms and swings once and a half around," a more vigorous movement that replaces the right hand turn implied in the first edition. Interestingly, in both versions, there is no mention of going down the outside, today a standard part of the dance. The active couple simply turns their way down the center into second place.[7]
Writing with Beth Tolman in The Country Dance Book (1937), Ralph Page describes a Money Musk with what appears to be-gasp!-a bona fide swing. Page's context indicates that the move is what we now consider as a swing, not a hand turn:
Since it was first danced, there have been as many variations on the original tune as there have been fiddlers to play them. And there have been changes in the dance figures, too. Originally the first call was "Right hand to partner, swing once and a half around." Since this walk-around business proved a bit slow, the young blades of fifty or sixty years ago [i.e., around 1875] revamped it. The oldsters were properly horrified, but finally gave in, the way they always do. The new version holds to this day. Moderately difficult to do, Money Musk is perfectly learnable, with a little concentration:
Swing partner in the center (8 bars)
Each go below one couple and forward six (4 bars)
Right hand to partner, turn three-quarters round (4 bars)
Forward six (4 bars)
Right hand to partner, turn three-quarters round to place (4 bars)
Right and left (8 bars)
Money Musk has long had its own mystique. Writing in his Northern Junket magazine (Vol. 2, #11, Oct. 1951, pp. 20-21) when he presented the dance, Ralph Page acknowledged its special and sometimes fatal attraction:
Seems like everybody who ever heard of a contra dance wants to learn Money Musk. Often it's the first contra they attempt, and after getting gloriously mixed up decide then and there that contra dances aren't for them and stand steadfast in their determination. Did you run a hundred yard dash the first time you walked? Then why do you expect to dance Money Musk the first contra you try?
Money Musk is not easy; neither is it too difficult. The steps are based on split second timing though, and therein lies much of your difficulty.
In a 1974 interview with Katey Ziegler, a student at Hampshire College, Page acknowledged his own trials learning the dance, and described in detail an incident in his home town of Munsonville, NH[8]:
You're familiar with Money Musk. Well, the second three-quarters around always buffaloed me. The first one, once and a half, was easy enough, but then to go three quarters from there was something else. Now, the second three quarters around I'd be apt to end up anywhere but where I was supposed to be. It's just, nobody ever showed me really how to get around there. Mother did the best she could but it was one of her favorite dances and she never had a chance to dance with me, you know, she always would dance with somebody else.
There was one night, oh I was 14 or 15 and there was a dance in the community hall and I was dancing with my cousin. And the prompter announced Money Musk so I got up on the floor and it just happened that I got next to my mother who was dancing with uncle John McClure. I shouldn't have been there but anyway, there I was.
It was one of his favorite dances. And he was an irascible old Scotsman and if you didn't know the dance you didn't get in and louse up his dance. You go somewhere else. He looked down at me and says, "You know this dance?" I said yes. He said, "That's good because you didn't the last time saw you trying to do it." Well, I didn't say anything.
Then we got started and it came my turn to be active, and I went once and a half around. That was easy cause all you've got to do is change places with your partner, but turning around, all the way around and a little bit more. So, the first three quarters around wasn't too bad. I ended up about where I was supposed to. But then the second three quarters around before the right and left four, I stopped right in front of uncle John McLure, which is not where I was supposed to be.
And he drew back his number twelve show and lifted me by the seat of the pants and he said, "Over there, you little S.O.B." and he lifted me about six inches off the floor. And when I landed I was right over there, right where I was supposed to be. I'll never forget it to this day, I never.
It was my favorite dance to call, not my favorite one to dance but my favorite one to call. But I never called it in my life without some time in the dance I can hear uncle John, "Over there you little son of a -" you know.
Mother says, "You shouldn't have done that, John."
"Why not?" he said, "he's spoiling my dance."
At about the same time, Eloise Hubbard Linscott's chapter on dance in her Folk Songs of Old New England (1939) describes the standard 32-bar dance, although without the swing described by Tolman and Page.
The timing of this 32-bar dance encouraged leisurely and graceful movement. Emerson Lang, a musician from north central Vermont who had strong ties to that region's venerable dance tradition linked to dancing master Ed Larkin, had this to say in a 1989 letter to caller Thomas Mousin. Lang was an elderly man at the time, remembering a dance tradition going back to the 1930s:
In the old days in Washington County [VT], the "Money Musk" sets required that the lines be a little farther apart than the conventional contra, thus allowing room for the starting dancers to "extend" hand-hold and arm position. Thus the first dancers had a bit of "show-off" as they did their "once-and-a-half-around". Giving Couple One the whole of the A Music, 16 beats, allows plenty of time to "glide" or "chassez" around, rather than just the regular "run-walk" regular steps.
About the "chassez" steps: Starting with the right step, the footwork goes RLR. LRL. RLR. LRL. And so forth. It can give the feeling almost of the centrifugal effect found in a "buzz-step" swing, but here the couple is farther apart with "extended" arms (if the room permits between the lines.) The step may be likened to the step you use for some Morris movements. King of a galloping glide.
I have seen this dance "hurried up" (and ruined) by a tradition that apparently disregarded the niceties of the older tradition. Was it Run step, 1-1/2 around and get to the forward and back in the 16 beats of the A music? It's very exciting and hectic. Then there was the three-quarters round and the forward and back all included in the next 16 beats. Again, possible and hectic.
This "hurried up" comment certainly refers to the 24-bar Money Musk described by Ralph Page as the way the dance was done in New Hampshire. In the first of his two Cracking Chestnuts columns on Money Musk, David Smukler quotes Page's recollection of a 24 bar Money Musk danced at a kitchen junket in his youth. Page was born in 1903, and his Northern Junket recollection of this event came in 1949; presumably he is describing an event in the 1920s or early 1930s. When Page actually presents Money Musk in Northern Junket, cited above, he likewise describes a 24-bar version, although he does not specify the counts for how each piece is timed. (Page also prints a 24-bar version of the tune, the earliest such music we have been able to locate.) In his classic work, The Contra Dance Book (1956), Rickey Holden gives explicit timing for a 24-bar version. By this time, Page was an influential figure in the country dance world, and Holden may have been presenting the dance in Page's favored format.
Changing the length of the dance also means making a change in the music as well. The standard pattern for contra dance tunes is an 8-bar A part, which is repeated, followed by an 8-bar B part, also repeated. For a 24-bar tune, we need either a different combination of those two parts (AAB or ABB) or something entirely new. For at least 50 years now, fiddlers have been using a three-part tune structure, with a C part not in Dow's original tune. This music appears in Page's presentation of the dance in 1951, but the music itself appears much earlier. For example, in the first edition of Henry Ford's "Good Morning", published in 1926, the music shown has four distinct parts and some old-timers remember Money Musk being played that way, ABCD, instead of the more usual AABB. The third part of that music is that which is commonly played today for the third section (rights and lefts) of the dance.
Ralph Page died in 1985; five years later, Roger Knox published his collection, Contras: As Ralph Page Called Them. To Page's description of the figures, Knox added explicit timing to indicate how Page wanted the dance done, the same timing shown in Holden's 1954 book. Here the numbers specify steps, or beats:
Right hand to partner, turn once and a half around (8) Go below one couple and forward six and back (4 + 2 + 2) Right hand to partner, turn three quarters around (6) Forward six once more & back (2 + 2) Right hand to partner, turn three quarters around to place (6) Right and left four. (with couple above) (16)
In his Northern Junket description of the dance, Page describes the "forward six" figure as "take two short steps forward and two steps back." This may be the crucial accommodation by dancers that made possible the new timing-two steps in each direction instead of four-and it is this two-count movement that developed into a vigorous balance, much to Page's dismay.
Ralph Page enjoyed historical dance research, and he discusses Money Musk at length in his 1984 Elegant Collection. In this, his last book, he returned to the earlier notation of the dance in 32 bars but he confuses the issue delightfully by printing 24 bars of music! Page passes along a challenge to the dance caller who would master the ways of this celebrated dance:
I have in my dance collection twelve Money Musks, eleven of them quite different from the others. The version that survived in New England is that found in Griffith's "Otsego, N.Y. Mss." (1808).... [T]he figures are identical to the way we danced it. It was a favorite dance for generations and no evening of dancing was complete without it.
To confuse the issue, New Hampshire dancers of the 1870s dropped eight measures of music while still retaining thirty-two measures of dance figures. Why? Who knows? We like to think that by doing so they added a spark to the dance that it lacked before. Please. No flak! We are entitled to our opinion. Certainly our version demands split-second timing on the caller's part as well as for the dancers. I learned to call from my uncle, Wallace Dunn, but he refused to help me to call it New Hampshire style saying: "If yer can't figger it out y'ain't a caller'n belong down on th' dance floor." So go ahead and "figger it out."
Acknowledgements: Special thanks go to Michael McKernan for sharing an unpublished draft of an article summarizing his research into Money Musk and for maintaining scholarly enthusiasm and encouragement throughout this project. Thank you, also, to David Smukler for his keen editorial eye. With so much assistance, I hope I have it right, but any mistakes that appear are solely my own doing, not those of the many people who provided leads and information: Robert Balchin (Curator, Music Collections, of the British Library), Michael Barraclough , Susan de Guardiola, Paul Gifford, Roland Goodbody (Special Collections, University of New Hampshire), Sarah Hepworth (Special Collections, Glasgow University Library), James Hill, Andrew Kuntz, Jeanetta McColl, Sylvia Miskoe , John Ramsay, Andrew T. Stewart, Ralph Sweet, Marianne Taylor, Hugh Thurston, Paul Tyler, Peta Webb (Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, English Folk Dance and Song Society), and David Park Williams.
[1] There is an earlier tune called Monymusk, composed c. 1760 by Thomas Channon. We have not examined the tune-the manuscript is part of Special Collections at the Glasgow University Library-but we surmise that this melody, less than 20 bars long, was most likely written to accompany a hymn. Sir Archibald Grant himself had been encouraging the formation of choirs in the area near Aberdeen, a reaction to the "depth of the tedium that church music had fallen into, and the irritation it caused among worshippers." A local choirmaster, Channon was at the forefront of this "craze for choir singing." For more on Scottish choir music, far removed from our Money Musk focus, see All that hath life and breath, a Church of Scotland pamphlet.
[2] In addition to publishing dance figures for Monymusk, Werner is worth mentioning for another accomplishment. In the 1700s, dances generally were not called. The couple at the top of the set had the responsibility for selecting a set of figures and dancing them, after which others in the set would join in. But according to Cyril Hendrickson and Kate Van Winkle Keller, two authorities on American colonial dancing, "Public prompting was used in the late 1770s in London by Francis Werner who played on the harp and directed the figures at the same time." (Hendrickson and Keller)
[3] It is interesting to note that in this earliest form, the left hand turn anticipates a common modern way of doing the American contra. As David Smukler pointed out in his Cracking Chestnuts column, after the initial right hand turn takes them below one place, some dancers today like to turn by the left hand once and a quarter to form the lines up and down the hall, instead of the more traditional right hand turn three-quarters.
[4] The "cast back" is either a mistake or needs to be interpreted differently than the "cast off." To reach their next position in the lines of three across the set, the active couple needs to be in the middle of the set.
[5] Marianne Taylor, herself a certificated RSCDS instructor, tells this story: Miss Milligan is in Texas, teaching for C. Stewart Smith (sadly now departed!). They are flying to Vancouver, where she intends to give Dr. Thurston a piece of her mind about his recently published comments on the RSCDS research techniques and their way of figuring out Scottish dances. They get to Vancouver; Hugh meets them, his wife Nina gives them a lovely meal and then Hugh and Miss. M. go into his study, while Stewart sits outside, chewing his nails and listening for sounds of conflict. After about an hour, Hugh and Miss M. emerge, all smiles, and Miss M. trumpets "Dr. Thurston and I have agreed to disagree!" This is the closest she ever came, I think, to admitting any fault!
[6] Wilson's book, along with many others, is available as part of the Library of Congress's online "An American Ballroom Companion." This helpful and accessible collection includes more than 200 dance manuals and other related materials.
[7] Some earlier books explicitly tell the active couple to go down the outside. It is possible that when directions say "Go below," the dancing convention at the time may have been to cast down the outside into that place.
[8] Unpublished paper by Katey Zeigler, Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts.