Mary Berry in St.-Rémy-de-Provence - 2 January, 1785

from Diary of Mary Berry, 2 January 1785, pages 143–144:

At St. Rémy all the young people of the town were dancing in the faubourg. For the first time in my life I saw small bourgeois servants and peasants dancing with natural grace and signs of real gaiety: they wanted no dancing-master to show them the figures. For half an hour they danced the figure of a quarrée, and were never wrong in a single step, and always with a grace and gaiety that one sometimes vainly looks for in our dress-ball rooms. Their band was a tambourine and a fife; they danced quarrées, a Pérégordine, and a dance they …   more >>

cite as

Mary Berry, Diary of Mary Berry, 2 January 1785. In Lady Theresa Lewis (ed.), Extracts of the Journal and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the Year 1783 to 1852, volume 1 (London, 1865), p. 143–144. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1541520924800 accessed: 28 March, 2024

location of experience: St.-Rémy-de-Provence

Listeners

Mary Berry
Author, literary hostess, Playwright
1763-1852

Listening to

hide composers
music to accompany French peasant dancing performed by Servants and peasants

Experience Information

Date/Time 2 January, 1785
Medium live
Listening Environment in the company of others, outdoors, in public

Originally submitted by lcc5 on Tue, 06 Nov 2018 16:15:27 +0000
Approved on Sat, 01 Dec 2018 11:51:29 +0000