Category: Books and articles

How to stop in 1772

Bev

“How do I stop?” is usually among the first questions asked by beginning skaters. Robert Jones notes that being able to stop is important because skaters often collide and recommends three ways to stop in his book (pp. 56–57):

Jump and make a quarter turn in the air

[Stopping] may be easily done, by leaping up, and coming down with the feet parallel, at about twelve inches asunder, and turned as much as possible to the right or left; so that according to the seaman’s phrase, the broad sides of the skates may be before you.

I have never seen anyone stop using this method. It sounds both showy and dangerous.

Hockey stop

When travelling, you may stop yourself, by only turning the feet to the right or left, as before described, and pressing on the inside edge of the foremost foot.

These first two methods are recommended and help skaters “avoid many dangers, such as banks of snow, broken ice, &c. “

Heel stop

This is the most common method, and the least useful.

But the method which skaters generally make use of to stop themselves, is by no means so certain; for as they only bear on the heels of their skates, they run a considerable distance before they stop, by which means they not only spoil the ice, but often break their skates; and, unless they perceive the danger at some distance, are not able to escape it.

This is an interesting parallel to inline skating today: skates designed for beginners typically come with a heel brake. It’s meant to be dragged on the ground to bring the skater to a gradual stop. This doesn’t work very well, and advanced skaters remove the heel brake (or buy skates without one) and stop in other ways.

Reference

R. Jones and W. E. Cormack. 2017. A Treatise on Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Evanston, IL: Skating History Press.

Skating in Thomson’s Winter

Bev

James Thomson’s The Seasons was a collection of four poems, one for each season, published in the eighteenth century. Since this blog is about skating, we’re interested in Winter.

Winter was the first season to be published, in 1726. At that point it didn’t have any skating in it. That version is available from ECCO TCP.

The full collection was published in 1730. That version, available in Google books, does mention skating:

On blithesome frolicks bent, the youthful swains,

While every work of man is laid at rest,

Fond o’er the river rush, and shuddering view

The doubtful deeps below. Or where the lake

And long canal the cerule plain extend,

The city pours forth her thousands, swarming all,

From every quarter: and, with him who slides;

Or sketing [sic] sweeps, swift as the winds, along,

In circling poise; or else disorder’d falls,

His feet, illuded, sprawling to the sky,

While the laugh rages round; from end to end,

Encreasing still, resounds the crowded scene.

Thomson, The Seasons (1730), lines 718–729

Skating is spelled “sketing” in the main text, but an erratum corrects it to “skating”. This is corrected, and the passage reprinted, in the 1735 edition.

In the 1744 edition, we finally get the version Jones quotes:

On blithsome Frolicks bent, the youthful Swains

While every Work of Man is laid at rest,

Fond o’er the River croud, in various Sport

And Revelry dissolv’d; where mixing glad,

Happiest of all the Train! the raptur’d Boy

Lashes the whirling Top. Or, where the Rhine

Branch’d out in many a long Canal extends,

From every Province swarming, void of Care,

Batavia rushes forth; and as they sweep,

On sounding Skates, a thousand different Ways,

In circling Poise, swift as the Winds, along,

The then gay Land is madden’d all to Joy.

Nor less the northern Courts, wide o’er the Snow,

Pour a new Pomp. Eager, on rapid Sleds,

Their vigorous Youth in bold Contention wheel

The long-resounding Course. Mean-time, to raise

The manly Strife, with highly-blooming Charms,

Flush’d by the Season, Scandinavia‘s Dames,

Or Russia‘s buxom Daughters glow around.

Thomson, The Works of James Thomson, vol. 1 (1750), Winter, lines 763–781. (Text matches the 1744 edition.)

In grad school I learned that all the interesting research questions in philology have already been answered by nineteenth-century German guys. This one is no exception. Otto Zippel wrote his dissertation on the textual history of Winter. The next year, he published a critical edition of the Seasons “together with all the various readings of the later editions” (1908, v). Skating first appears in his C text; the 1744 edition is his E text.

References

Otto Zippel. 1907. Entstehungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte von Thomsons “Winter”. Nebst historisch-kritischer Ausgabe der “Seasons”. PhD dissertation, Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin. Part 1

Otto Zippel. 1908. Thomson’s Seasons: Critical Edition. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.

Editions of Robert Jones’s Treatise on Skating

Bev

I’ve sorted out the various editions of Robert Jones’s Treatise on Skating in a new article. As I was doing this, I discovered several new things that aren’t mentioned in my edition of his book. It seemed like lots of new stuff has come online in the last few years! And now it’s time to update my edition.

This article was part of my contribution to the new skating bibliography on Schaatshistorie,nl. It is now live, but more items are still being added. I still have a stack of bone skates references to put in. It will be an amazing resource when it’s done.

Stevens’ Bibliography of Figure Skating

Bev

Ryan Stevens, who writes the Skate Guard blog, has taken on the gargantuan task of making sense of all the books on figure skating published in the last century and a quarter by continuing F. W. Foster’s 1898 Bibliography of Skating. It’s a job worth doing and Stevens is to be commended for taking it on.

The bulk of the text (pp. 14–249) consists of a list divided into 15 sections: General (very long), Skating History (65 entries), Shows and Tours (14 entries), Skating Clubs (38 entries), Skating in Art (7 entries), The Science of Skating (8 entries), Skating in the Media (6 entries), LGBTQ+ Skating (8 entries), Academia (13 entries), Cooking (4 entries), Fashion (21 entries), Fiction (a paragraph of generalities with a few specific book recommendations), Biographies (very long), Newspapers (16 entries, mainly web archives), and Periodicals (many entries). Rulebooks and other official publications are excluded.

The General section contains over 400 entries. Each includes the book’s title, author, and year. Many entries feature a brief note mentioning a book’s focus or language. Most are in English, but many other languages are represented as well. They are listed in chronological order, which highlights the shift from books on skating technique to very specialized books and eventually to books aimed at spectators rather than skaters as the sport’s general appeal grew.

The other extremely long section is the list of biographies. This section is organized by skater (alphabetized by first name) instead of date, making it possible to find favorite skaters easily. This format gives an overview of each skater’s popularity. Yuzuru Hanyu wins that competition with 36 entries, all in Japanese.

Given the incredibly large number of skating books published, a complete bibliography is impossible, and Stevens does not claim to have listed every book published between 1899 and 2023. However, a few omissions are puzzling. Henry C. Lowther’s Principle of Skating Turns and Combined Figure-Skating are included, as is the omnibus English Skating in Three Parts; but the first part, Edges and Striking, is missing. D’Este Stock’s The Figure Skate (1954) is included twice (under General, with the author given as “Clarence Stock Sidney D’Este” and under Science, with the author correctly listed as “C. S. D’Este Stock”) but H. E. Vandervell’s book published under the same title in 1901 is absent. Also missing is James R. Hines’ Historical Dictionary of Figure Skating, though his other books are included.

Minor typographical errors are scattered throughout; for example, Lowther’s Principle is listed as “Principles,” and Three Parts is listed as “Three Parks”. However, my main criticism is about layout. The pdf I read does not look like it was professionally produced. There are infelicitous pagebreaks in the middle of entries, and a few pages are blank except for a heading. These issues may have to do with format I read the book in; I hope the print version has an improved layout.

Overall, it’s a good list of books that will certainly be of interest to figure skating enthusiasts. The formatting issues don’t interfere with its functionality.

[Full disclosure: I received a pdf version of this book in exchange for an honest review.]

References

C. S. d’Este Stock. 1954. The Figure Skate: A Research into Dimensions and their Effects upon Performance with a Consideration of Penetrations into Ice and the Pressure upon It. Folkstone, Kent: A. Stace & Sons.

Fred. W. Foster. 1898. A Bibliography of Skating. London: Warburst.

James R. Hines. 2011. A Historical Dictionary of Figure Skating. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Henry C. Lowther. 1900. Principle of Skating Turns. London: H. Cox.

Henry C. Lowther. 1902. Combined Figure-Skating. London: H. Cox.

Henry C. Lowther. 1902. Edges and Striking. London: H. Cox.

Henry C. Lowther. 1902. English Skating in Three Parts. London: H. Cox.

Ryan Stevens. 2023. A Bibliography of Figure Skating 1899–2023: The International Guide to Reading about the World’s Most Exciting Sport. Independently published. ISBN 979-8373971102 (paperback), 979-8373987363 (hardcover); also available on Kindle.

H. E. Vandervell. 1901. The Figure Skate: A Research into the Form of Blade Best Adapted to Curvilinear Skating. London: Straker Brothers.

Vieth, On Skating

Bev

I have completed my translation of the first German book on skating, Gerhard Ulrich Anton Vieth’s Ueber das Schrittschuhlaufen. It was originally a lecture given in Dessau in 1788, then published as a journal article in 1789, and finally published in book form with some additions by an anonymous editor in 1790.

Vieth’s book is interesting because he’s the first to connect skating to dance. He quotes Noverre’s Lettres sur la danse and suggests skating to music.

Vieth also uses physics to explain how to skate a spiral line. He brings up Newton’s laws and some of the things Newton proves in the Principia. That’s not really surprising since in his life off the ice, Vieth is a math teacher. He’s also one of the pioneers of physical education, along with GutsMuths and Jahn.

The book quite short and doesn’t talk about practical fundamentals, like what kind of skates to use. Still, it’s very interesting to compare with Robert Jones’s book from 18 years earlier.

Lunn’s Letters to Young Winter Sportsmen

Bev
Letters to Young Winter Sportsmen - Skiing, Skating and Curling - Lunn, Brian
The cover of the Home Farm Books reprint. Note the misused comma!

Young men planning to spend the winter at an Alpine resort (which lots of rich English people did back in the day) and get involved in winter sports while there are the intended audience of this book, which was published in 1927.

The book gives a good sense if what it was like to vacation at these Alpine resorts and of how excited people were about their winter sports. I particularly liked this paragraph:

If, later on, you wish to give yourself seriously to ski-ing, you should induce your father to send you for a few terms to the excellent university of Innsbruck, whence Kitzbühl, St. Anton, and many other smaller places can so easily be reached for the week-ends. In the days when the Austrian crown made living so cheap for the foreigner, I spent some months there working for an examination. One could have breakfast on the morning train to Kitzbühl, spend the day ski-ing there, and have dinner on the train in the evening, and a third-class ticket in Austria entitled you to the use of the restaurant car. I did not pass the examination that year.

Lunn, Letters, p. 14.

The book is mostly about skiing, but it does include a rather long chapter on figure skating by Humphry Cobb. Cobb also wrote the chapter on curling. In addition, Lunn’s wife wrote the chapters on skiing equipment and the first day, and Geoffrey Samuelson wrote the chapter on racing. This means just four of the nine chapters were actually written by Lunn!

While the book is addressed to young men, some comments are made indirectly to women by referring to the reader’s sister(s). Mrs. Lunn (who wrote the chapter on equipment) remarks,

…all of the foregoing applies to your sisters as well as to yourself—both sexes wear the same things [i.e., pants, not dresses] out ski-ing.

Lunn, Letters, p. 20.

In contrast, Cobb advised women to wear skirts while skating:

Clothes I will leave to you and your tailor. All I can say is let them be suitable, and please persuade your sister, if she is going to skate, to wear a skirt.

Lunn, Letters, p. 91.

Cobb focuses on the English style, which he recommends starting with. Once you’ve learned it, he adds,

if you have any reason or feel a yearning to become an International skater, by all means try it. It is an art and not a sport, or rather I should say, the element of sport is subservient to the artistry and appearance, and studied—often too studied—grace of the International skater.

Lunn, Letters, p. 89.

It’s interesting to see the English style (mainly combined figures) referred to as the more sporting of the two, while the International style (the flashy ancestor of today’s competitive skating) is considered an art instead.

Reference

Brian Lunn. 1927. Letters to Young Winter Sportsmen: Skiing, Skating, and Curling. Facsimile reprint by Home Farm Books, n.d.

Frostiana’s chapter on skating

Bev
The cover of my edition of Frostiana.

Frostiana is a book about various ice activities that was allegedly (but probably not literally) published on the ice during the last London Frost Fair in 1814. I put together an edition of it a few years ago.

The whole book is a collection of previous works, generally without citations. Today we call this plagiarism in academic circles. I added some citations, but not all, to my edition.

The last chapter of Frostiana is about skating. It’s a mix of several different sources, but I’ve just figured out that the main one for the chunks called “Origin of skating” and “Rules for learners” was the first Encyclopedia Britannica article on skating. It was included in volume 10 of the second edition, published in 1783. You can read it at the Internet Archive.

There’s one important difference between the original and the reprint that says something about how far knowledge of skating came between 1783 and 1814. The original says:

Although the ancients were remarkable for their dexterity in most of the athletic sports, yet skating seems to have been unknown to them. It may be looked on, therefore, as a modern invention; and probably derived its origin in Holland, where it naturally became habitual and necessary, not only as a graceful and elegant amusement, but as an expeditious mode of travelling when the lakes and canals were frozen up during winter.

Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 10, p. 9168

Frostiana says:

Although the ancients were remarkable for for their dexterity in most of the athletic sports, yet skating seems to have been unknown to them. According to the antiquaries, this exercise made its appearance in the thirteenth century. It probably derived its origin in Holland, where it was practised, not only as a graceful and elegant amusement, but as an expeditious mode of travelling when the lakes and canals were frozen up during winter.

Frostiana, p. 159

The thirteenth century still seems about right for the introduction of metal-bladed skates. The antiquaries made good progress!

Frostiana also cuts the paragraph bout the Edinburgh skating club and the article’s author:

The metropolis of Scotland has produced more instances of elegant skaters, than perhaps any other country whatever; and the institution of a Skating Club about 40 years ago, has contributed not a little to the improvement of this elegant amusement. We are indebted for this article to a gentleman of that Club, who has made the practice and improvement of skating his particular study; and as the nature of our work will not permit the insertion of a full treatise on skating, we shall give a few instructions which may be of use towards the attainment of the art.

Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 10, p. 9186

The date of the Edinburgh Skating Club’s founding has been unclear to skating historians for years. Here, it sounds like a member is putting it in the 1740s.

References

“Skating.” In Encyclopædia Britannica. 2nd ed., vol. 10. Edinburgh: J. Balfour et al., 1783

B. A. Thurber, ed. 2018. Frostiana: Or a History of the River Thames in a Frozen State. Evanston, IL: Skating History Press.

End of the Compulsories

Bev

James Hines, author of the great big skating history book, has come out with another book. This one is billed as focusing on figures and has been made much of by US Figure Skating: Sarah Brannen reviewed it on the USFSA site and the August 2022 issue of Skating mentioned it. It’s a self-published limited edition. I have copy 27 of 100.

The cover of HInes’s new book.

Despite its billing, I didn’t think this book was primarily about figures. Part 1 is called “The Development of Figures: A Brief History,” but is really about the development of figure skating, not just figures. It summarizes the early literature on skating. In this literature, the word “figure” was not used as specifically as it is now. Figures were drawings on the ice, but also body positions and patterns made by the motions of people across the ice. A study of what “figure” meant over time and how it came refer specifically to tracings on the ice would be very interesting!

Part 2 is called “The ISU and the Compulsories.” It is roughly half about figures and half about pattern dance. I was excited to see tables of numbers showing how world champions placed in figures and free skating, both before and after the introduction of the short program.

Part 3 consists of three appendices: a schedule of compulsory figures that appears to be taken from an old skating book (it looks exactly like the one at the back of the second edition of T.D. Richardson’s Modern Figure Skating (London: Methuen, 1938), down to the font and pagebreaks, except that Richardson heads the factor column “Factor of Value Today.” and includes his proposed new values in another column), an Lynn Thomas published in Skating in May 1968 (the title is not given in the book, but I was able to dig it out of the online archive: it’s called “Who needs figures?”), and a list of pattern dances showing when each dance was invented and added to the schedule.

The book’s main strength is the amount of detail included. It is very precise, giving facts clearly and concisely. However, ensuring that so many precise details are also accurate requires extremely careful editing and proofreading. Unfortunately, the book has suffered in that regard. I noticed a number of typographical errors, including in the names of skaters. For example, Lily Cheetham’s last name is spelled “Cheatham” (p. 52) and Carl von Korper is called “Carl von Corper” (p. 59); Henry Crofton Lowther is called “Henry Cecil Lowther” repeatedly, but that seems to be a misidentification rather than a typo.

The book’s main weakness is one Hines has been criticized for before: lack of engagement with the secondary literature. The sources listed in End‘s bibliography are all either old handbooks on figure skating or popular histories by the likes of Dennis Bird, Nigel Brown and Ben Wright. Erica Rand and Cat Ariail both point to this in their reviews of Hines’s Figure Skating in the Formative Years. There is a very rich body of literature on sport history, especially women’s sport history; engagement with that body would add a lot to the study of compulsories.

Despite these flaws, I enjoyed reading the book and looking at the numerous illustrations. Its level of detail provides a good entry point for more analytical studies of figures and dance through history.