Several weeks ago I wrote in general about the horrors of the Collins abridgments—here with A14_The Abbey Girls Again, we come face to face with them! The abridged version removes not only many of the folk-dance sequences, but a great deal of character development. The original version is much more coherent, if wordier. In this episode, folk dancing appears as having spiritual, moral, physical, and psychologically redemptive powers.
This installment was published in 1924 but is set in April-June of 1921. It introduces two new characters Mary (30) and Biddy (15) Devine, who are somewhat estranged at the opening and who both have problems to resolve. Mary had wanted to be a writer, but her writer father deprecated her work, and she has lapsed into an unhealthy world of dreams. She dreams instead of doing anything useful, and this flaw is discussed at great length; Jen and Joy are alarmed that she will become really mentally ill. The exercise, music, color, and beauty of folk-dancing will bring her a long way out of her troubles, but she will have more lessons to learn, even after this installment.
Biddy has fallen in with a crowd of lower-class girls whom Mary doesn’t approve of. Biddy is anxious to have fun and to “get ahead,” meaning to get the best of whatever she can. She goes out every night to the cinema (Charlie Chaplin is mentioned), and there are boys involved and make-up and clothes. Biddy’s involvement with the world of folk-dancing will improve her considerably, but she will retain her fatal flaw of wanting to get ahead for several books, including her own, A21_Biddy’s Secret.
Above: Biddy in the boat trying to assist Rosamund in the water to save Maidlin.
Plot Summary (Contains Spoilers)
Mary and Biddy Devine used to live in the country. {This is code for “used to be well off.”) After their parents died, and the three boys between them in age were killed in the War (original; in the abridgement they are mentioned once as being “abroad” and then we hear no more of them), they have struggled to live in London. Mary works as a typist; Biddy, who had to be pulled from her good boarding school, is going to a “college” to learn shorthand and typing. The story begins with pretty Biddy being enticed to going to the pictures with a questionable set of girl and boy friends, rather than going home to stodgy Mary, who is a typist. She gives into temptation, and Mary, upset to return home to a cold flat, drifts off into the fantasy world of dreams that she has increasingly been living in. These dreams are not described in the abridged version, but are made quite clear in the original: she dreams of knights and princesses and romances, forests, hermits, kings, etc.
Mary feels unable to do anything with Biddy. A knock on the door produced Jen Robins, who earlier that day had brought Mary Mr. Robins’ manuscript of Yorkshire life to be typed. (In the original she is accompanied by Frost, the chauffeur, per her mother’s orders—she is worried about kidnappers, white slavers, etc.) Now she shows up because she wants some typewritten programs for a dance party that she is putting on (this is in the days before mimeographing!). Mary is interested in the dancing and Jen invites her and her sister to attend. Jen visits Joy Shirley, who has been taking out little crippled children for an airing in her motor car, and the girls discuss Mary and agree that she needs to be woken up and taken care of.
The girls take Mary to an evening dance class and she is entranced. Jen gradually draws Mary and Biddy into dancing, and the girls are quite changed. Inspired by the dancing, Mary writes a wonderful long descriptive letter to her faraway relatives. She is about to drop back into her fantasy world when she catches herself up—after her encounters with the wholesome folk dancers she now feels that such dreaming is unnatural and that other people don’t do it. What has changed in her? “It’s through meeting all these new people . . . . None of them would do it. They’re all so—so healthy and normal! I wonder if they’d even understand? I supposed not; they’d think me crazy. And the dancing is so healthy and good; and the music is so simple and natural. It’s all so—so different! So real!” (61-2). Biddy reads her letter and encourages her to write more.
Joy invites them both down for a week to Abinger Hall, for the fresh spring air and to meet her adopted “daughters” Maidlin and Rosamund. They are awed by the beauty and luxuriousness of the Hall and the Abbey, but quickly discover that Maidlin and Rosamund have made them apple-pie beds and sewn up the sleeves of their nightgowns. Jen, Joy, and a bewildered and astonished Mary play the same tricks on the two younger girls, and Jen re-boobytraps Joy’s bed, and bedtime is filled with shrieks of wholesome laughter.
(Left: Rosamund, Biddy (center), and Maidlin.)
Jen trains Biddy and Mary in dancing the Bacca Pipes morris jig over clay pipes and Rufty Tufty for two couples. Jen plays the three-hole pipe for the dances. Later the girls learn The Old Mole, The Black Nag, and Picking Up Sticks.
Biddy discovers that one of Joy’s adopted daughters is an heiress. She quickly decides that it must be Rosamund, not Maidlin, whose working-class aunt is the caretaker of the Abbey. She is determined to attach herself to Rosamund in order to get ahead—to get the best of whatever is offered. This is her fatal flaw, and it will not be resolved in this installment.
The President (there was only ever the one) of the Hamlet Club, the now-married Cicely Everett shows up with her husband and invites all the girls to a picnic and dance on Thursday—a reunion of old and new Hamlet Club girls. Joy refuses: that is her day to drive the crippled children around in the country and she won’t let them down. Joy and Jen takes her children for a drive, ending near the Hall, and Jen stops at a local shop to buy candy for the kiddies. She returns to the car with the sweets and a pair of long clay pipes as well. (Bacca Pipes is traditionally danced over two crossed “church-warden” pipes and the point is to dance so well that you don’t break them.) Joy impetuously lays them cross-wise in the road and dances the jig to Jen’s playing. Sir Andrew Marchwood and his mother drive by “in a mighty carriage with the fat old horses and the still fatter coachman!” (239—original; “huge car” in the abridged version). Joy is vexed at again having been caught in her driving gear (gaiters and breeches) rather than a proper frock. Come on, Joy, it’s not his fault that you aren’t properly attired! But to the Oxenham-attuned eye, her vexation is a sign of her unacknowledged interest in him.
Here is the Bacca Pipes jig danced by the Outside Capering Crew at the Towersey Village Festival in 2007. Beautiful, beautiful dancing and great accordion playing as well! But if Joy danced even half as vigorously as these lads do one can see why Lady Marchwood was rather shocked–it’s not what a proper, wealthy young lady of 1921 would do.
Mary confesses to Joy and Jen about her dream world. She says that she had always wanted to write, but that her journalist father had been rather dismissive of her early efforts; he read some her fairy tales and found some nice things to say about them but told her that none of them would sell. He then went off to the Front (original) or as special correspondent to China (abridged) and dies of illness “behind the lines” (before he can obtain proper medical care). Discouraged, Mary burnt her papers and retreated to her imaginary world. Mary tells the Abbey Girls that the healthy dancing and coming to the country have saved her and Biddy.
–Here some readers wonder if EJO was fictionalizing her relationship with her own father, who was a prolific and well-known, “B-list” author who wrote a number of inspirational and religious works. John Dunkerley, for that was his real name, took the pen-name of Oxenham and Elsie and another writer sister also used Oxenham as their pen-names. The eldest child, Elsie was her father’s secretary for many years, typing his manuscripts until her own writing took off. Elsie’s first book, Goblin Island (1907), featured an unnamed Girl who types her father’s manuscripts and hides her own writing, so it seems likely that John Oxenham critiqued his daughter’s writing. But many of her books were dedicated to her parents either together or individually, so the relationship must not have been as negative as Mary’s experience.–
After the one-week stay has grown to a two-week stay, Mary and Biddy have to be taken back to London to return to their jobs and classes. On the last Sunday morning, Biddy, Maidlin, and Rosamund creep off to explore the little lake that lies between the Hall and the Marchwood estate. They take a small boat to an island and sit on tree branches. Maidlin falls into the lake, hitting her head on the way down; Rosamund jumps in to try to save her, and Biddy scrambles down the tree, spraining her ankle in the process. Maidlin has sunk like a stone, Rosamund is barely keeping her head up, and Biddy realizes that she shouldn’t jump in as well and tries to launch the boat. Fortunately, Sir Andrew Marchwood sees the accident, swims over and rescues all, although Maidlin has a bad concussion. He sends Joy sprinting for the doctor and then a few minutes later, after Maidlin starts breathing, sends Jen after her to reassure Joy. The girls recover, and Maidlin reveals to Joy that she and Biddy have planned that, when the heiress Maidlin turns 21, Biddy will become her secretary. Biddy has now attached herself to the real heiress. (Below: Biddy telling Joy that she ought to have a private secretary. Joy will, but it won’t be Biddy.)
Joy tells Jen that she has a plan for Mary, but wants to discuss it with the Pixie. The two of them go up to town to look at the shop of the Pixie’s handwoven fabrics and she tells them that they have thrown a life-line to Mary and must keep firm hold of it. She recommends that they get Mary to teach a folk dance class—it will absorb her unhealthy thoughts. She also recommends that they connect Mary with the Writing Person.
A few weeks after the Devines’ return to London, Jen comes to Mary with a crisis and a challenge. Her mother is entertaining guests and wants Jen to be there, rather than to teach her folk dance class—will Mary take it on? At first timid Mary demurs, but then, to please Jen, she steps up. She finds herself doing very well—she teaches the Bacca Pipes jig and the girls love it and her. Biddy is supportive and helpful. Jen says that she spoke to the Writing Person, who recommended that Mary write about real people and real things. Mary-Dorothy says that if she ever writes a book, she will dedicate it to Jen, her Fairy Godmother. Mary will continue to doubt herself in new endeavors, but her feet are now on the right path.
For Folk Dancers
Jen’s dance program is an ambitious and lengthy one, with 21 dances: The Helston Furry, The Mary and Dorothy, Gathering Peascods, and Newcastle in the first set, followed by the jigs The Old Woman Tossed up in a Blanket and Lumps of Plum Pudding, danced by “Madam” (Helen Kennedy North). Then the morris set dances Laudnum Bunches, Bobbing Joe, Shepherd’s hey, Rigs O’Marlow, then more of Madam’s jigs: Princess Royal and Ladies’ Pleasure. These are followed by the country dances Lady in the Dark, Maid in the Moon, Old Noll’s Jig, Childgrove, Parson’s Farewell, Oranges and Lemons, Scotch Cap, Sweet Kate, and Sellenger’s Round.
People had more stamina then! Both dancers and audiences!
Jen, Joy, and Joan take Mary to a class taught by Madam. The class starts off with morris dancing, and the scene is described from Mary’s untutored point of view; she sees that people mingle around and then slowly separate into sets of six. Madam calls for a foot-up and only one person does it correctly—the class hasn’t met for four weeks and the students “had completely forgotten subtle exceptions to general rules” (37)—in this tradition, the foot-up starts on the inside foot. Madam asks what happens at the end of the first half—
“Quarter galley inwards and downwards,” Joy said limply, utterly crushed; she had done what she thought a very beautiful whole galley outwards. (38)”
[In a morris foot-up the two lines of 3 dancers advance forward—generally towards the Presence or the music—then turn in some fashion to dance downward back to places. In this case they are to dance a half-galley inwards (90 degree turn inwards jumping on one foot while circling the other in the air. But EJO doesn’t give these details or tell us what a galley is—she focuses on Joy’s reaction.]
Mary watches with interest and delight and is amazed when the dancers find their way home after the heys (a weaving figure). “But the thing Mary felt and enjoyed most keenly was the atmosphere of whole-hearted jollity and friendliness, which Madam created and nearly every person in the class seemed to share. The jokes were endless; though the work was strenuous and everyone was in earnest—more or less—yet there was laughter and enjoyment all the time. The music was fascinating; Mary knew bits of it would haunt her at night. (38)” Jen discovers that Mary’s middle name is Dorothy, and so she calls her Mary-Dorothy, after The Mary and Dorothy, which is the name of a very easy country dance that isn’t danced much anymore.
Madam’s class is strenuous and rigorous—although participants are enjoying themselves, they work very hard to achieve a clear standard of accomplishment. They work their way through the dances Step Back, Rigs O’ Marlow, and Laudnum Bunches as well as the solo jig Princess Royal. With the morris over, country dances begin and the girls are thrilled that Madam gives them a Running Set that goes on for 20 minutes without a break and tires them all out. In 1918 Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles published part V of The Country Dance Book, describing the Running Set that they documented in Kentucky. This was clearly a favorite of Oxenham’s as she includes it in several books that feature Madam, though it fades away after that character drops out.
Here’s a link to dancers of Berea College, Kentucky “running a set” (that was the phrase originally used) in the same fashion as Sharp and Karpeles saw it: without music. And here’s an earlier Berea group, dancing at the tempo that I recall dancing in the 1980s and that Oxenham describes: basically a nearly flat-out run. The narrator is Dr. John Ramsay, long-time leader of the Berea folk dancers.
The class then dance the challenging dance for four couples Chelsea Reach, and Jen invites both girls to a party the next night at the Pixie’s club in Plaistow, which was a poor part of town.
The Pixie’s dance party is charmingly described in the original version. The participants are little girls, and their parents watch them from above. One of the cuter scenes in the original is that the little girls, seated resting on the smooth floor, discover that “by lifting up her feet and giving herself a push with her hands, she could spin round and round like a top. The fashion spread like measles, and in every corner little rings of small girls sat twirling happily, ignoring agitated parents, who could not forget the certain results to white underclothes. (144)” The Pixie and the girls laugh. The image makes me laugh, too. This kind of detail is part of the charm of EJO’s writing.
On the program is Gathering Peascods, Rufty Tufty, Goddesses, Winifred’s Knot, and The Butterfly—and Biddy has learned all of these at school and is eager to participate. Jen says there will also be We Won’t Go Home Till Morning and Galopede and that both are easy. Jen notes that Biddy is a good dancer but has ’some of the usual school faults; she’s on her toes and that’s not allowed. But she’ll dance well when she forgets a little; there’s a lot of bad teaching in schools, the Pixie says.’” (58) Jen drags Mary into the dance The Butterfly and Mary skips about and is amazed to find that she enjoys it.
Mary is taken to another dance class where she talks to the Writing Person who encourages her to dance and to try everything, even morris. “‘You may never be able to get the certificates, Miss Devine; I know nothing about that. I’ve never even tried for any of them myself. But you can have quite as much fun out of it as the certificate people.’ (65)” She adds that the exercise and music are a great help to a worker who has to use her imagination. Jen and Joy both stress the importance of Mary joining in with Biddy’s interests.
Biddy is amazed to return home one day finding Mary sewing herself a “gymmie”—a gym tunic. The tunic is much shorter than Mary’s day dresses, and she is very anxious about appearing with “legs” in public. They attend a class that Jen teaches and learn the morris step. A few sessions later they learn the Flamborough sword dance (which is danced with wooden swords held in the left hand) and Mary is amazed to find out how easy it is to make the lock. Both girls find that Jen, the music, and the dances come into their minds during the work week and give a whole new color to life (71-2). Because they are engaged in this activity together, they are drawn more closely together. Biddy drops most of her old and unsatisfactory friends.
I don’t quite understand this image, which looks like a dancer at a cabaret! It is probably meant to be Jen, because of the short hair. It is a good representation of the gym tunic, worn over dark stockings and with a white shirt and tie.
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