Figure Skating in the Formative Years: Singles, Pairs, and the Expanding Role of Women
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Figure Skating in the Formative Years: Singles, Pairs, and the Expanding Role of Women
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252039065 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 03/20/2015 |
| Edition description: | 1st Edition |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d) |
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Figure Skating in the Formative Years
Singles, Pairs, and the Expanding Role of Women
By James R. Hines
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-03906-5
CHAPTER 1
A GODDESS, A SAINT, AND A DARING PRINCESS
The beginning of figure skating is usually traced back to 1660, the period of the Restoration in England, but movement on ice, both as a necessity and as a recreational activity, is much older. We begin this survey with three women: a goddess, a saint, and a princess, all of whom have interesting connections to the sport.
Our earliest knowledge of skating comes from myths from the ancient world of the North. Long, cold winters, especially in the Scandinavian countries, required a means of traversing frozen landscapes efficiently, a necessity for survival. Short days and long nights provided only a few hours daily in which to hunt for food, and the tools employed for mobility included skates, snowshoes, skis, and sledges, all of which probably existed and were in use for thousands of years. The terminology employed sometimes makes it difficult to determine which implement is being referred to in the myths. All except sledges required poles, like those used in skiing, to propel the traveler forward. Bows or other weapons used for hunting were slung over the hunters' shoulders or suspended on their backs. The thirteenth-century writer Snorri Sturluson refers to Ull as the god of hunting, of the bow, and of snowshoes. He crossed the sea on a magic bone, clearly a reference to bone skates.
Skadi, the goddess of snowshoes and probably also of winter, and therefore of darkness and death, was the daughter of the giant Thiassi. She and her consort, the god Njord, in an ill-fated marriage lived apart because Skadi loved the mountains, Njord the seacoast. Few of the myths about Skadi mention her activities except those linked to hunting, but in winter that required movement across ice and snow. Skadi was later married to Odin, the god of poetry and wisdom and the chief god in Norse mythology. She boasted frequently about her temples and sanctuaries, and although there is disagreement among scholars, a number of place names in eastern Sweden appear to confirm her position and importance, an example being Skadalundr (Skadi's grove). It has been suggested that Scandinavia itself is named after her. The myths indicate that Skadi traveled on snowshoes, but like Ull, she probably would have used skates as well, depending on whether the surface she was traversing was snow or ice.
Snowshoes, sledges, and bone skates were practical tools that provided efficient movement across ice and snow, but it seems probable that they were used also for recreational purposes and for sport. Not only gods and goddesses were skating but mortals as well, and they employed bone skates, perhaps for thousands of years. Such activity was documented by William Fitzstephen as early as the twelfth century in London. The significance of Ull and Skadi is that they are the first named individuals who can be thought of as skaters.
Outside of that mythological world, the first skater for whom we have a name is Lidwina of Schiedam, the patron saint of skating. Skadi, as the daughter of a giant and herself a fierce hunter, does not fit the modern mold of an elegant lady figure skater. Lidwina, on the other hand, was reportedly a beautiful and vivacious young woman. Born on Palm Sunday in 1380, she was the only daughter in a poor family that included nine children. At age fifteen, while skating with friends on a pond in Schiedam, the Netherlands, Lidwina collided with a fellow skater, breaking a rib as she fell to the ice. She never recovered, growing steadily worse throughout the remainder of her life. She died on Holy Tuesday in 1433, twenty-three days after her fifty-third birthday.
Lidwina suffered unexpected reactions following her accident. Spasms of pain convulsed and contorted her body, and she eventually lost almost all muscular control of her limbs. Symptoms of various known diseases appeared, and she became permanently bedridden. None of her former beauty remained. She was administered to by a priest from the local church, Father John Pot, who urged her to think always of the suffering of the Lord and to relate her suffering to his. Constantly meditating on the Passion, Lidwina believed that God had called her to be a victim for the sins of others. About 1407, she began to have mystical visions, communing with God, various saints, and her guardian angel. After her death, a hospital was built on the site of the home where she had spent her years of suffering.
Lidwina was buried in Schiedam, but in 1615 her relics were moved to Brussels, where they remained for 256 years before being returned in 1871 to the Church of Our Lady of Visitation in Schiedam. In 1931, it was rededicated as the Church of Lidwina. The building was demolished in 1969, and her remains were moved to the Singelkirk, which then became known as the Church of Holy Lidwina and Our Lady of the Rosary. It has since been elevated to the status of a basilica minor and is now called the Basilica of Lidwina. Although she is referred to as Saint Lidwina, she has never been officially canonized by the church, but on March 4, 1890, her cult was formally confirmed by Pope Leo XIII. Her feast day is celebrated in Schiedam on April 14, the date on which she died.
One of the best-known skating pictures from throughout the sport's history is the famous woodcut printed in Johannes Brugman's 1498 book Vita of Lidwina. Historically, it provides valuable iconographic evidence about skating at that early date. It shows Lidwina being cared for by two friends; in addition, a woman is seen approaching them on skates, as is a man farther back. He appears to be skating on an inside edge, which is probable. Preference for the more sophisticated and more difficult outside edge is a product of the eighteenth century. Both skaters are holding their arms crossed together in front, which remained common through the eighteenth century. A couple appear to be socializing at the back right, demonstrating the recreational aspect of skating in the fifteenth century.
Skadi was a Scandinavian goddess. Lidwina came from a poor family in the Netherlands. The third of our three women was British and of noble birth. Paintings suggest that she, like Lidwina, was quite beautiful. Mary, the princess royal of Orange, was the daughter of King Charles I of England and Queen Henrietta Maria of France. Born on November 4, 1631, she was married at age nine to Willem, the son of Frederick Henry, the prince of Orange, who served as Stadtholder in the Netherlands. The marriage was not consummated for several years. At age eleven, in 1642, Mary moved with her mother to the Dutch Republic. Willem succeeded his father as Stadtholder in 1647 but died just three years later. The couple's only child, also named Willem, later became William III of England, reigning from 1689 to 1702.
Mary's father, Charles I, was beheaded in 1649 after a ruling of the infamous Rump Parliament. The royal family was exiled in the Netherlands during the austere decade of the Cromwellian Protectorate. There Mary and several of her siblings took up skating. It has been reported that the duke of York, the future James II, taught English country dancing to women of the Dutch court and in turn learned from them how to execute the "Dutch roll," skating's first figure. It had evolved in the Netherlands following the invention of bladed skates three centuries earlier.
The Stuarts learned to skate in Holland, and they clearly enjoyed it. But the roots of figure skating are in England following the reestablishment of the monarchy in 1660. While Mary was still in Holland, the French ambassador made an amusing and somewhat chauvinistic reference to her skating. In a communiqué to Louis XIV He wrote: "'Twas a very extraordinary thing to see the Princess of Orange clad in petticoats shorter than are generally worn by ladies so strictly decorous, these tucked up halfway to her waist, and with iron pattens on her feet learning to slide sometime poised on one leg, sometime on another." Mary had discovered the hindrance of long skirts in skating, but not until the twentieth century would skirts be permanently shortened.
None of our three ladies were figure skating in the modern sense, but they were skating on ice. Lidwina in the fourteenth century and Mary three centuries later were skating basic edges on bladed skates, most assuredly inside edges. Unlike Skadi, who employed skating for practical reasons, Lidwina and Mary skated recreationally. Movement on ice, first as a tool and later as a pastime, dates back many centuries, perhaps several millennia. Some participants were just sliding on the ice, but those more skilled and daring fastened bones or other implements to their feet and pushed themselves along with poles. The Dutch invented the bladed skate and discarded the poles, which provided a practical means of transportation along their numerous canals during the winter months, and they developed a love of skating both for travel and as a social activity By the mid-seventeenth century, it had become a national pastime, especially among the aristocracy. Descriptions of fairs and public celebrations attest to its popularity. But it was speed skating that would develop to a high level in Holland. For the further development and evolution of what eventually became figure skating, we must cross the English Channel and review activities following the restoration of the Stuart monarchy.
CHAPTER 2THE PIONEERING YEARS, 1662–1772
Oliver Cromwell, who in 1649 had brought a king to the scaffold, died in September 1658. His eldest son, Richard, his named successor, proved to be a weak and ineffective leader. In less than a year, in May 1659, he retired to France. Months of internal turmoil followed before the "Convention Parliament" restored the Stuart monarchy in March 1660. Two months later, King Charles II arrived in England. The famed diarist Samuel Pepys, a member of the Convention Parliament, provides detailed and vivid descriptions of a revitalized society In celebratory prose, he wrote: "The whole design is broken, and every man begins to be merry and full of hope." The austerity of the Cromwellian era had passed. That merriment included skating. On a December day in 1662 at St. James' Park, Pepys reported that after "a great frost, [I] did see people sliding with their skeets, which is a very pretty art." The term "skeets" indicates specifically the use of bladed skates. His use of the word "art" suggests that at least some of the skaters were skating on flowing edges, perhaps even experimenting with elementary figures that would require some experience and practice. The skaters were not just sliding or gliding across the ice. On the contrary, they were drawing attention to themselves with good skating skills.
Historians have determined that the royal family brought the Dutch roll back from the Netherlands, but they probably experimented with other figures as well. It may seem curious that Pepys first reported seeing skating in 1662 because of his relatively thorough documenting of activities in London beginning in the year of the royal family's return, but there had been a limited number of frosts during the previous two winters. As skating evolved, particularly in countries with less severe weather, the all too few days for skating were eagerly awaited. Skating clubs would later keep season-by-season records of them. Two weeks after Pepys's first mention of skating, he reported accompanying James, the duke of York and the next king of England as James II, "to the parke where, though the ice was broken and dangerous, yet he would go slide upon his scates, which I did not like, but he slides very well." Records for 1662 and the next several years document hard frosts, always to the delight of skaters in London. One can presume that with the "merriment" of the period and engagement in skating by members of the royal family, many people enthusiastically took up the sport, especially those from the aristocracy and the clergy who had the funds necessary to purchase bladed skates.
We have no way of knowing what specific figures British skaters might have been doing or experimenting with during the seventeenth century The Dutch roll, learned in Holland and brought back to England, provided the basis of all skating. It would have been learned first on inside edges, but as skaters became more proficient, they found greater delight in the more elegant outside edges. It seems probable that the curves became somewhat deeper, although they were limited severely relative to today's edges by the short height of skate blades. By the 1760s, a century after the Restoration, and for another century after that, skating on outside edges was viewed as the mark of a good skater.
Evidence, both literary and iconographic, of skating as a recreational activity abounds throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and not just in the British Isles; but useful descriptions of skating technique or of a repertoire of figures are lacking until 1772. The most proficient skaters undoubtedly experimented with interesting figures and tried "tricks" of various kinds, but what those figures and tricks were remains unknown. There were early attempts at skating backward, although skate design at that time made it difficult and dangerous. Hops off the ice without revolution were surely tried by the most daring skaters, as were simple spins, probably on two feet, for one or a small number of revolutions. A skater's technique and skill were developed primarily by experimentation, through observation of other skaters, and with help from skating friends.
A century of development began with the Restoration and ended with the publication in 1772 of the first book on skating, Robert Jones's self-published A Treatise on Skating, which the author claimed in the subtitle was "founded on certain principles deduced from many years experience: by which that noble exercise is now reduced to an art, and may be taught and learned by a regular method, with both ease and safety" Jones provided for the first time a technical basis for skating, and his book serves as the point of departure for understanding the evolution of what nearly a hundred years later would be called "figure skating."
Jones's characterization of skating as "reduced to an art" is interesting and telling. A century earlier, Pepys had described skating as "a very pretty art," clearly meaning that it was pleasurable to watch. Jones, however, was referring to art as correct skating technique, which had developed by that time to the point where it could be taught to others with definable form and when properly learned an established skating standard. Still today, skaters, officials, and fans debate and argue about "art" in skating, primarily the concept of a balance between art and athleticism, that unique characteristic that defines figure skating.
Jones provides written descriptions of specific figures, those employed by the best skaters of his generation. "Rolling" was done specifically on outside edges, a movement considered "the most graceful and becoming of all others." Seven additional figures are described. Among the most important historically is the "spiral line," for which a bent skating leg was employed with the body leaning well forward, but the position did not approach the modern spiral, in which the body is characteristically parallel to the ice. Another figure still important today is the spread eagle, which Jones called the "great inside circle." The skater stepped first onto the right foot and then brought the left foot close to it, heel to heel, tracing the same line but with the left heel raised slightly to avoid catching on impediments in the ice, a problem that was solved in 1836 by improvements in skate design. Unlike spread eagles today, in the early version the legs were bent at the knees.
Advanced figures included the "flying Mercury" and the "fencing attitude," which are best described as poses that were held until all forward momentum ceased. The fencing attitude gradually disappeared from the basic repertoire of figures, but the flying Mercury was still being done a century later, although then skated backward as well as forward.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction xv
Chapter 1 A Goddess, a Saint, and a Daring Princess 1
Chapter 2 The Pioneering Years, 1662-1772 5
Chapter 3 The Defining Years, 1772-1869 11
Chapter 4 Toward an International Style 30
Chapter 5 The Rise of International Competition 49
Chapter 6 Skating between the World Wars 71
Chapter 7 Show Skating 94
Chapter 8 What Lies Ahead 109
Preface to the Appendixes 119
Appendix A Competitors at the World Championships, 1896-1939 121
Appendix B Competitors at the European Championships, 1891-1939 138
Appendix C Competitors at the North American Championships, 1923-1941 151
Appendix D Competitors at the Olympic Winter Games, 1908-1936 158
Appendix E Medal Counts by Discipline and Country 165
Appendix F Host Cities for the Championships 169
Appendix G World Figure Skating Hall of Fame (Pre-World War II Members) 171
Appendix H Thumbnail Sketches of World and Olympic Champions 173
Notes 179
Bibliography 189
Illustration Sources and Credits 195
Index 197