[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> Next]
The Dancing Academy
George Cruikshank
1839
Etching on copper
10.3 x 9.0 cm vignetted
"The Dancing Academy," for Chapter 9 in "Characters," by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz, originally published in Bell's Life in London on 11 October 1835, illustrated by Cruikshank in 1836, and redrafted for the 1839 Chapman and Hall anthology, facing p. 190
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Well; Mr. Augustus Cooper went away to one of the cheap shoemakers' shops in Holborn, where gentlemen's dress-pumps are seven-and-sixpence, and men's strong walking just nothing at all, and bought a pair of the regular seven-and-sixpenny, long-quartered, town-mades, in which he astonished himself quite as much as his mother, and sallied forth to Signor Billsmethi's. There were four other private pupils in the parlour: two ladies and two gentlemen. Such nice people! Not a bit of pride about them. One of the ladies in particular, who was in training for a Columbine, was remarkably affable; and she and Miss Billsmethi took such an interest in Mr. Augustus Cooper, and joked, and smiled, and looked so bewitching, that he got quite at home, and learnt his steps in no time. After the practising was over, Signor Billsmethi, and Miss Billsmethi, and Master Billsmethi, and a young lady, and the two ladies, and the two gentlemen, danced a quadrille — none of your slipping and sliding about, but regular warm work, flying into corners, and diving among chairs, and shooting out at the door, — something like dancing! Signor Billsmethi in particular, notwithstanding his having a little fiddle to play all the time, was out on the landing every figure, and Master Billsmethi, when everybody else was breathless, danced a hornpipe, with a cane in his hand, and a cheese-plate on his head, to the unqualified admiration of the whole company. Then, Signor Billsmethi insisted, as they were so happy, that they should all stay to supper, and proposed sending Master Billsmethi for the beer and spirits, whereupon the two gentlemen swore, "strike 'em wulgar if they'd stand that;" and were just going to quarrel who should pay for it, when Mr. Augustus Cooper said he would, if they'd have the kindness to allow him — and they had the kindness to allow him; and Master Billsmethi brought the beer in a can, and the rum in a quart pot. They had a regular night of it; and Miss Billsmethi squeezed Mr. Augustus Cooper's hand under the table; and Mr. Augustus Cooper returned the squeeze, and returned home too, at something to six o'clock in the morning, when he was put to bed by main force by the apprentice, after repeatedly expressing an uncontrollable desire to pitch his revered parent out of the second-floor window, and to throttle the apprentice with his own neck-handkerchief. — "Characters," Chapter 9, "The Dancing Academy," pp. 192-93.
Originally published as "Scenes and Characters. No. 3" in Bell's Life in London on 11 October 1835, the sketch once again presents a portrait of a young adult Londoner trapped by unfortunate circumstances, and duped by unscrupulous confidence artists. Modern dance studios apparently inherited somewhat dubious business practices from the Victorian forebears, the dupe in this case being a petite bourgeois business-owner named Augustus Cooper. To escape his widowed mother's domination of both his business and private life, Cooper decides to become a patron of the local, East End dancing academy, run by an unscrupulous but "charming" Englishman with a pseudo-Italian name, Signor Billsmethi. Augustus Cooper "is set up and sued for breach of contract by Miss Billsmethi, and must be rescued by his mother, who supplies a cash settlement of £20 and regains control of her son" (Davis 84).
The happy fiddler can be none other than the terpsichorean Billsmethi himself, playing the fiddle for his son, dressed as a sailor and doing a hornpipe. The flirtatious daughter, the snare for the conny, is possibly the young woman in the dark dress, centre, turned to talk to the young man behind her. The slender youth in the dancing pumps (right) is probably Augustus Cooper himself. The advertising sign in the background refers to the forthcoming "Grand Ball" that the dancing academy will stage some weeks after Mr. Cooper's initial appearance at the academy. The composition contains no suggestion that Augustus Cooper will be falling prey to a confidence scheme involving the same plot device that drives the Bardell suit in Pickwick Papers, namely breach of promise of marriage.
Left: Cruikshank's far more animated and engaging bacchanal, Greenwich Fair. Centre: Cruikshank's view of the rising classes in a tea garden, London Recreations. Right: Cruikshank's scene backstage during an amateur production of Macbeth, Private Theatres. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Bentley, Nicholas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens: Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z. The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. "The Dancing Academy," Chapter 9 in "Characters," Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1839; rpt., 1890. Pp. 190-94.
Dickens, Charles. "The Dancing Academy," Chapter 9 in "Characters," Christmas Books and Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1875 [rpt. of 1867 Ticknor & Fields edition]. Pp.367-70.
Dickens, Charles. "The Dancing Academy," Chapter 9 in "Characters," Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. Pp. 120-23.
Dickens, Charles. "The Dancing Academy," Chapter 9 in "Characters," Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 1. Pp. 244-50.
Hawksley, Lucinda Dickens. Chapter 3, "Sketches by Boz." Dickens Bicentenary 1812-2012: Charles Dickens. San Rafael, California: Insight, 2011. Pp. 12-15.
Schlicke, Paul. "Sketches by Boz." Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. Pp. 530-535.
Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 2009.
Last modified 20 May 2017