Father Degan and the Dancers May 12, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
Recently came across this beautiful list of dancing advice, which reminds me of the kind of manners post I love from the two nerdy history girls. I wanted to make gentle fun of this, but it seems that the author, a priest, had a certain amount of common sense and lacked the easy dogamatism of English Catholicism. The text is described as ‘Don’t’s and Bewares for Flappers’
1. Don’t dance more than once with the same married man, no matter how rich he may be.
2. Show a preference for those dances which are characterised graceful movement —from which ‘dipping,’ ‘jerks’ strangle-holds, and rumpetty-jumpetty eccentricities are absent.
3. Remember that style and deportment are more important than steps.
4. Take part in many dances as possible and avoid sitting out for the purpose of carrying on a short-lived flirtation with some scented and curled adventurer
5. ‘One partner only’ is not only unutterably boring, but it also anti-social.
6. Sparkling head-bands are sensible as well as pretty, but don’t paint and powder the face. ‘Beauty unadorned is adorned the most’
7. Don’t let boys lift you off your feet and whirl you through the air.
8. Never take intoxicating drink at a dance. There is no better stimulant than the wine of youth.
9. After the ball go straight home with other girl friends and don’t allow yourself to be escorted circuitouely by your best-boy-of-the-moment, whom perhaps you have just ‘picked up’ without previous acquaintanceship
10. Never accept invitations to dances at night clubs, no matter how exclusive. They are haunts of dope and vice.
I kept the date out of this for a first reading: 1922. The author was one Father John Degan. Apparently Father Degan’s ‘outspoken and original’ comments from the pulpit had caused much discussion and controversy (or so the newspapers claim). On the basis of this list I’d say he was a backwoods G. K. Chesterton. There is apparently a memorial window to this sensible-sounding Savonarola of the English Midlands. There is also one other reference to the good Father Degan from the Catholic Herald, 1938. Curioser and curioser:
The Rev. Joseph Degan, whose Sunday evening dances at St. Saviour’s Institute, Coalville, Leicestershire, caused considerable comment some years ago [why?], has produced a book, Rules of Life (published by Burns, Oates and Washbourne, price 2s. 6d.). This book includes the matter of the four-page leaflets which Fr. Degan used to distribute periodically after his dances [wth!], giving moral and religious instruction in tabloid form. These leaflets so impressed the Chief Constable of Leicestershire with their power for good that he gave instructions to the police not to interfere with the famous Sunday evening dances. [what was going on at these dances?]
Anything more on the good Father Degan: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Or dancing…
Writing this I got nostalgic for the brilliant Change Partners and Dance with Me: Father Degan would certainly have approved
