When you dig through skating history, you never know what you will unearth. In the spirit of cataloguing fascinating tales from skating history, #Unearthed is a once a month 'special occasion' on Skate Guard where fascinating writings by others that are of interest to skating history buffs are excavated, dusted off and shared for your reading pleasure. From forgotten fiction to long lost interviews to tales that have never been shared publicly, each #Unearthed is a fascinating journey through time. This month's 'buried treasure' is an essay by T. Maxwell Witham called "Skating Gossip" which originally appeared in the August to December 1895 issue of "The Badminton Magazine Of Sports And Pastimes". From the viewpoint of a practitioner of the English Style, Witham describes the evolution of skating in Europe and the rise in popularity of hand-in-hand - or pairs - skating.
"SKATING GOSSIP" (T. MAXWELL WITHAM)
All methods of self-propulsion are fascinating, but when, in addition, progression is only possible by means of a correct balance, as in skating and bicycling, the fascination is doubled.
Figure-skating, as distinguished from skating as a means of progression, is comparatively modern, and, curiously enough, emanates from Great Britain and from English-speaking people. Before the year 1830 figure-skating was in its infancy, and such movements as were known were handed down from generation to generation by tradition, as the few books on the subject that did exist described only the most elementary movements, and frequently the directions given for acquiring these were entirely misleading.
From the year 1869 till now skaters have been gradually taught by good text-books, the leading men in the art have studied the various movements that go to make up figure skating, and have now practically demonstrated all the fundamental strokes that are possible to the figure-skater. We are not
from this to understand that nothing new in figure-skating is possible. Far from it.
Although every possible stroke is now known, the multitude of combinations by joining one stroke with another is perfectly endless; but whether the rising generation will derive as much pleasure in devising these combinations as the pioneers of the art did in working out the simple initial strokes
is doubtful. In the dawn of figure-skating, undoubtedly the inside edge was the first which demonstrated the possibility of leaning over on an edge and so describing a curve, seeing that this inside edge was the easiest to execute by reason of the unemployed leg being always ready and available to act as a prop to the nervous or falling performer. This inside edge no doubt suggested the outside, and when this was demonstrated as possible, it was practised to the entire exclusion of the inside, because in the early days the position of the skater's body when executing the inside edge made it an ungainly and ungraceful movement.
In practising the outside edge, our ancestors, no doubt, in 'holding on' to the edge as long as possible occasionally found that at the end of the curve they made an involuntary half-turn, placing them
on the inside back, and this involuntary turn being by practice reduced to a certain turn gives us the common figure 3. It has, no doubt, struck many people, as it has struck me, as curious and almost incredible, that, given the dandy-horse, which demonstrated the possibility of riding on a machine having two wheels in the same plane, it was some forty years after the advent of the dandy horse before it occurred to some one to put cranks on the front wheel and so continue the motion, thus virtually creating the modern bicycle. And it is hardly more curious that, with the forward 3 commencing with an outside edge and turning to an inside edge backwards to guide them, it was years before the other turns were discovered.
Skaters continued to practise only the figures that had been handed down to them by tradition, gradually and slowly increasing the number of possible figures - such, for example, as a second and third turn in the 3. Who it was who had the boldness first to try the dangerous second turn is unknown, but the 3 having three turns and known as the ' double 3 ' was undoubtedly skated by the members of the Skating Club as early as 1830, but as a single turn, from inside back to inside forward, a means of propulsion ; and when this was recognised, any number of movements on one leg could be joined together and skated without any assistance from the other leg other than swing. It
is only within the last few years that the skating fraternity has from time to time been startled by the publication of descriptions and diagrams of new figures, some of them, perhaps, being put forward as theoretically possible, but practically impossible; yet now one sees boys of fourteen executing these supposed impossible figures with the greatest facility. How is this?
First, the modern figure-skater has a better constructed skate than his ancestors possessed; and, secondly, skating being an imitative art, he has only to copy what he sees others doing, or follow the careful instruction given in the text-books, and he is thus enabled to acquire facility in executing difficult movements much more rapidly than did the pioneers of the art; but he does not attain what was to the early figure-skaters the supreme pleasure of thinking out and demonstrating as possible some movement which at that period was a new departure.
The facility of communication all over the world has affected figure-skating as it has other arts, and itinerant professional skaters, mostly American, established themselves in Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Norway, and schools of skating were established, where the practice of the art is carried out by the natives in accordance with the early teaching of their professors, coupled with the desire for display peculiar to foreigners. The Englishman tries to, and does in fact skate the most difficult movements, and at the same time his whole desire is to conceal the difficulty.
The foreigners, on the other hand, exaggerate the motion or balance which emphasises the difficulty, and go for speed and dash, which they attain mostly at the cost of elegance. There is another school, that of St. Moritz, which is essentially British, and which has carried out the early teaching of the Skating Club of upright carriage and straightened knee to its logical conclusion, and it is quite wonderful to see the skill of the habitues of the St. Moritz rink in executing the most difficult
movements with the arms quiescent and the knee and body perfectly rigid. They carry this rigidity to an extent that some good judges consider exaggerated, but their style has one good quality, and one that will be more and more of use as an object lesson if our skating is to be done in the future principally in covered rinks, as it proves that by practice the most difficult movements may be skated with certainty and at a great pace without the stooping body, bent knee, and swinging arms which are the essential characteristics of difficult figures when skated in the acrobatic fashion common to foreigners.
What will the figure-skating of the future improve or degenerate into? The improvement of the last few years has been most marked on the part of the men, and the ladies are running them very close. The causes of this decided improvement are the start given to figure-skating by the introduction of roller skates in 1875, the greater interest that is now taken in anything athletic, the long frosts which we have enjoyed during the last few years, and the continuous practice which many of our best skaters obtain every year in the Engadine. But now that we have Niagara, and are to have similar places at Knightsbridge and Argyll Place, although there will be the opportunity of continuous
practice, the space available is contracted and crowded, and the chances are that, from an English point of view, the skating will deteriorate. Individual acrobatic performances on skates will doubtless develop enormously, but the accuracy and correct pose which have hitherto distinguished English skating, as seen to perfection in the ' Club figures,' will be lost.
There is one form of skating which has made some little progress of late years, which the real-ice rinks may bring to great perfection, and that is hand-in-hand skating. It is fascinating of itself, and is practically possible in a crowded rink. For the 'side-by-side' figures there are two ways of holding hands - first, the old method, where the gentleman, being on the left of the lady, takes her right hand in his right hand, and her left in his left, the joined right hands being underneath the left hands ; secondly, the method known as the Austrian. In this the lady puts her hands behind her with
the palms upwards, and the gentleman takes them in his hands, which are turned palms downwards. He stands behind the lady to her left, the left hands are joined and brought forward, and the lady's right hand is passed behind and across her back, and is so held in the gentleman's right. When the gentleman is to the right of the lady the position is, of course, reversed. At first this position feels cramped, and it is especially the lady who is most affected. This is caused by the strangeness of skating with her hands held behind her back, but if the gentleman will be careful to always be at her side, either to the right or left, instead of behind her, this feeling will soon wear off, and when the lady is able, without effort, to swing her arms behind her from one side to the other, according to the position of her partner, it will be found that much freer skating can be done in the Austrian than
in the old-fashioned side-by-side method.
One thing must be remembered in hand-in-hand skating: if either of the partners should feel that a fall is inevitable, the hands must be disengaged instantly; and to do this, and to ensure ease and grace, the hands should be held but lightly, and by the ends of the fingers. In the confined space of a real-ice rink Club figures are not possible, as they occupy far too much room; but this hand-in-hand skating
can be indulged in to any extent, and as every movement that can be executed by an individual skating alone can be equally well skated by two persons holding hands in the Austrian method, it is probable that for the next few years any great improvement in figure-skating will be in this direction.
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