The dancing lesson

Text 1: Monsieur Duval’s academy, by Lydia Carrow

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Dear Fanny, Mamma has engaged Monsieur Duval, who keeps an academy above the corn chandler’s, to teach Lucy and me the quadrille before the Assembly ball. You would laugh to see me. My new satin slippers were bought half a size small, so that my feet might look dainty, and by the end of the first figure my toes were burning. Monsieur plays a little fiddle as he walks among us and raps our ankles with his bow whenever we turn the wrong way, which in my case was every other minute. Worse still, the Pringle boys were made to partner us, and Edwin Pringle smells of onions and stares at the ceiling as if I were not there. I came home lame and cross, and Mamma says we go again on Thursday.

Explain two reasons why the dancing lesson was uncomfortable for the narrator.