I live in this house, with many interruptions, from since I was two years old. About 40 years in other words. Until 10 years ago we were guarded day and night. In the entrance hall of the police station an the oposite site of the street used to be a bullet-proof glass window, where 24h/24h, 7/7 a young police recruit sat staring at our front door. The police station was eventually deserted, but until then, we were without doubt the best guarded Belgians ever. Even Mr. Dutroux doesn’t get that much police attention than we back then. We even thougth of replacing the bright white neon-lamp lighting the office behind the window by a nice red one. It never happened, though.

From time to time the police station even caused some trouble. To begin with, only one side of the street was available for parking cars. But some days also the other side was fenced off and crowded with enormous, mean looking, black combat vehicles, motors running, ready to take an assault at some innoncent protesting students elsewhere in the city. And every now and then even some really big watercanons took our street by surprise. But, this occasional annoyances aside, we the neighbours of the police station, didn’t have much in common with the troops camping there. Of course, we received more often than averagly some unfair penalities (i.e. for leaving the fog lamp on – you musn’t leave them on in the city, sir!). One day they even arrested our chicken, named Katrien. The fowl escaped from our garden to look for better worms the other side of the wall and ran straight into the arms of the lawkeeper on duty. At home Katrien wasn’t much of an egg – producing prodigy, but there in goal she managed to lay her first egg ever. Katrien of course was our hero after that feat. Even our cats were more respectful after her adventure in the police station.

You probably already noticed: I’am not a huge fan of police stations. The military in general doesn’t seem to grow on me. Although I read a fair amount of works about Napoleon’s ‘Grande Armée’ and the social mores of his troops recently. But that’s another story. On the other hand, I could myself ascertain in Antwerp as well as in Ghent that the neighbourhoods of army barracks of big police stations (in Belgium they were historicaly the same) used to be the richest in numbers of dance halls. In Antwerp for instance the ‘Kloosterstraat’ was such a place of perdition. At the end of that particular street used to lie the historical citadel which was only demolished completely in 1881. Of course there used also to be a part of the historical port at the currently very fashionable “Zuid”. But also near the Falconplein, where there used to be an policestation until 1941 and which was lying next to the ‘Noorderdokken’ (Northern Docklands), one could find important numbers of dance halls. Barracks and wharfs: a steady source of young, male clients guarenteed. Per se the place where stangers and passengers took their pleasure on the fly, without much of the regular social control being applicable or even possible.

In Ghent dance halls used to be concentrated in the Sint-Amandsstraat (next to the fantastic Sint-Pietersplein). Right on the junction of the historical university neighbourhood and the barracks of the Citadelpark. Again the combination of young, male passengers can be found and again the social control was rather loose. Ports, universities, barracks. There used to be a fourth place where one can find abundant numbers of dancing halls: the main roads leading to the citygates. Access roads are still the places where one will find dancings today. Because of the availablity of cars, they are implanted some miles away of the outskirts of our ill confined Belgian cities. In the 19the century they used to lie “within the gates” as one would call it. And again this used to be places with a larger than average numbers of male strangers passing by. Salesman mainly, heading for the market or on their way home, pockets filled with uncontrollable money. Later on, the neighourhoods of railwaystations took over this function. Places of arrival and departure by definition.

When I apply this analyses on my own neighbourhood, they seem to work out fine. The police station, the University Library and the Maria Theresia College all lie around the corner of each other. Within the triangle they form 8 out of 18 known dance halls active at the end of the 19th century can be found. I verified this during my last research days in the Leuven city archives. Even today one can discover the traces of this activity: party hall LIDO and the former STUDIO cinema venues are just a street away. Personally I remember the red lights behind the windows of some small brothels in the Maria-Theresiastraat very well. Even an 8 year old boy knew that these weren’t what you call ‘normal’ pubs. One could discover price current glued to the main window, posting unrealistic high prices for simple drinks like a coke or a beer. ‘Why does a simple coke costs about 80 franks in that pub?’ would be one of the embarrassing questions a kid could ask his parents coming back from the bakery with fresh rolls for breakfast on a Sunday morning. So last sunday I decided to go out and take some pictures of them. Or to be correct: what is left of them.

Without doubt to be continued…

Around the end of last year, I received this noteworthy little book written by Nick Foulkes. The weeks after I read through and through, intrigued more by the title than by anything else, I must confess. It rather seemed one of those typical Britisch history books. The author is well read into the subject, he is telling his story with the adequate amount of passion, and the language is superb some of the time. Bill Bryson is the archetype (although he is an American, stricktly speaking) of this type of historian and perhaps Foulkes is a bit less sexy than him and certainly far less well coached along his way to success.

But, wether this is the kind of history study I prefer, remains to be seen. It’s possible really, that it is not meant as a scientific study. It could, for example, be meant as a written version of the BBC infotainment history news item. If that were the case, one could ask questions about the title in the first place and about the amount of notes keeping cropping up all the time. They, at least, give the impression that one reads a serious study. Which isn’t the case for the whole of the book in my opinion.

The point is of course that the number of Waterloo drenched books and articles in the Anglosaxon world is impossibly enormous. With the years approaching the magical number 15 it hardly could get any worse one hoped. Unfortunately it got tenfold worse. And most of this so called “studies” are just citing each other like an eternal circle of historical life. The reason for this isn’t hard to imagine. Like Foulkes most of the authors don’t bother diving deeper into the archives to look for new insights than strictly necessary. Most of them just read through the masses of published eyewitnesses. The number of these is so scaringly huge, one could ask the question if not every handwritten letter or diary of the 1800 – 1815 years has been printed today.

This fact gave birth to an entire legion of discourse historians, who just love to read all this stuff and dive up for us, the readers, all but the best quotes and oneliners. Because, this writers where there at the time, weren’t they? Which of course is highly discussable. Just like today an eyewitness isn’t everywhere all the time. So, if you would want to create an overview of a certain situation, citing them can be quite challenging.

Of course personal acounts of any kind are much nicer to read that piles of boring archive dossiers. So for the historian who likes to read much, it certainly is an option to run through all those letters. Although they don’t provide answers for everything IMHO. And this book proves just that by making some very bold statements and by comparing a bit boringly the reports of some eyewitnesses. The chance that two eyewitnesses agree on every point of a situation they witnessed is close to zero. But is that so interesting to me, the reader? Aside a funny discussion about just that problem, which can be a sporty thing to do among historians (or other freaks), I strongly suggest not to repeat this trick in front of an audience who bought the book for casual reading.

I just give an example of one of the bold statements. Foulkes marvels quite a bit about the more than liberal amounts of alcohol consumed by the male part of the population in the regency era. Next he states that alcohol was the fuel of the era, unlike later in history. I don’t like the kind of reasoning personally. You could do this of course, but only after a serious investigation and comparison to other era’s. Wasn’t everybody drinking as much before? Isn’t heavy drinking typical for stressfull situations like pre-battle tension? How about the drinking habits among soldiers in Flanders Fields for instance? Or football hooligans today, for they go to battle too, aren’t they? I mean: is this statement based on some hard socio-economical evidence about alcohol production? If that were the case, I didn’t find the kind of study (if it exists) mentioned in the bibliography. Or medical inquiry or insights for that matter? I don’t think so either.

So that been said, the link between the title and the content isn’t always clear to me. There is very little to none to be found on balls in the book. Except for the legendary ball of the Duchess of Richmond on the eve of Waterloo of course. But that is already so thoroughly described and analysed time and again, that it would have been much nicer not to hear from it again. There were other balls in Brussels at the time? Why not dive a bit deeper in them? It is of course nice to learn some new facts about the British war tourism on the eve of Waterloo in Brussels. But I doubt if that was something new as a phenomena. One could write a similar study about Vienna on the eve of the battle against the Turks, I suppose. War tourism is a reality quite well accepted among historians. As long as the tourists stayed a bit on the side, it was accepted by the warlords until the first world war. One could even ask the question if contemporary war correspondence isn’t close to be an historical equivalent.

So my conclusion: nice little book, but not rock solid from an historical point of view. And a very wrong title for someone longing for more insight in ball culture like me. Of course I’am aware that I’am a rather bizarre kind of character among the readers one would like to write for.

Normaly you wont hear me complain often about the hard work I invest in my pretty intense hobby.

Most of the time I consider it as a privilege to be able to do what I do. Most of the time, though some days are not like the others.

The last two weeks, for instance, where fairly intense. A bit of an overdose, really. Even for this fella.

The launch of the new blog generated loads of extra work. Not to mention the (self chosen) translation into English.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed the fact that you could all follow my blog worldwide.

An advantage I could hardly have imagined before. I rarely invest in attracting new readers, though.

The point is: if you want to do it properly, you realy have to go for it. And I don’t. Because I wont. Because I don’t think it is essential for what I want to achieve.

So I will have to slow down a bit. There just aren’t more than 24hrs in a day. Period.

But, what was it, that bothered me in the first place? Well, I had to finish a ‘so called’ review for a scientific paper.

The point is: I reviewed the book of a good and loyal friend, Staf Vos (Dancing in Belgium 1890 – 1940 – only available in Dutch). And trying to be just and correct and scientific at the same time, can be exhausting, occasionally.

At last a book of a fellow dance historian, every inch as involved in the subject as myself.Please buy this book and consequently devore it.

After the experience, you will be enriched with an enormous quantity of interesting facts and hopefully also short of some hard stuck illusions.

At least about the dance history of this small slightly surrealistic European country.

After the review thing, I dived head-over-shoulders into the history of the quadrille.

I promised to give a lecture, you see, for the weekend after that(members only).

And because I’am working on my doctorate on the train mostly, I fell short of some ‘traintime’ for the first time in a while.

The train company will love to hear this: somebody not bothering to spend more time on a train than strictly necessary.

And so, I got a bit tired and decided to share this blogpost to the world.

I hope you enjoyed the trip. Because, let me be clear: I still amuse myself enormously being able to do this work each and every day. An into the bargain being acclaimed for it from time to time.

Life is just about hugs. Giving some, receiving some. Right?

For those who didn’t see it: you didn’t miss anything.

For those who did: I appologize

For those who encountered the same problem: here you can find some remedy.

Good thing is: Badi doesn’t destroy your content. He (or she for that matter) is only messing with the admin’s site.

Lucky enough you can easily access your admin panel (< site URL>/wp-admin) and restore the damage.

If you know what to do, your site is up again in 5 minutes.

Success!

(Photo: Baid Assad)