Allison Thompson Writer

Writing on English folk dance, Elsie J. Oxenham, Jane Austen, May Day and maypole dancing, Elsie J. Oxenham and more!

The Girl Guides’ Folk Dancer Badge

By Leave a Comment

One of the pleasures of writing a blog is to dive down any rabbit hole of interest, and this week’s interest is the varying requirements for a Girl Guide to earn her Folk Dancer Badge. Elsie Oxenham was both a Guide leader and a Camp Fire Guardian, and taught English folk dances to both of her groups. Which dances? Well, any that she knew, I suppose (including rapper sword), but now we have some further information starting in 1929 as to what dances a girl would be expected to demonstrate mastery of, and how these requirements changed over time with changing politics and interests.

This post would not have been possible without the brilliance of “Leslie,” whom I do not know but who I embrace as a spiritual sister. Leslie has done an amazing and comprehensive job of documenting the history of the Girl Guide movement. Check out her home page and particularly the history of the founding of the Girl Guides in 1910 by Agnes Baden-Powell at her elder brother Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s request.

Here is an early but undated image of Agnes Baden-Powell. You’ll see her “smart” uniform—here “smart” doesn’t mean fashionable or dashing as it can in other contexts, but “well-turned-out,” as an officer would look on the parade ground.  Note the well-fit coat with belt that was worn over a well-fit skirt, the hat, the tie, and the vaguely military-looking badge. This is attire that shapes the girl or woman into the image of the male officer—but without the physical freedom of trousers or a loose-fitting skirt, although Leslie writes that this early uniform was actually comparatively practical for the gently-born ladies who led the local Patrols. This was parade dress for leaders in the organization; while engaged in out-door activities in the 1920s, Girl Guides seem to have worn middy blouses and loose skirts over long dark stockings. Here’s a girl in a 1909 uniform (pre-standardization) courtesy of Leslie. [Read more…]

Cecil Sharp’s Elementary and Advanced Folk Dance Certificates, 1912

By Leave a Comment

Elsie J. Oxenham’s fictional heroine Rosamund Kane holds her Elementary Certificate from the English Folk Dance Society (the precursor of the EFDSS) and has possibly also passed the Advanced Cert. requirements for country dancing, if not for morris and sword. Cecil Sharp began offering these certificates of proficiency in 1912 as part of his control over the repertoire and its pedagogy, and they continued to be offered up to World War II, when Douglas Kennedy abolished them as he felt they were inhibiting participation by men in folk dancing. I have long wondered what these certifications entailed.

I am deeply indebted to Derek Schofield, former editor of English Dance & Song magazine and now the Reviews Editor for the Folk Music Journal, for uncovering the three-page pamphlet of the certification requirements of 1912. They are found in the Ralph Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, reference AS12. Derek speculates that the dances required might have changed over the years as Sharp published Books III, IV, and V of the Country Dance series.

Before we get to the requirements themselves, however, I’d like to digress a bit to discuss repertoire. I’ve been teaching English country dance for 45 years and have seen the repertoire change significantly and expand exponentially from the Sharp-based rep of the Seventies. One thing that we callers (and some dancers) have noticed is that as the repertoire has expanded, and as, in the U.S. at least, the technical standards have been relaxed, people don’t typically dance as well as they used to have to under the eagle eye of May Gadd (The Little Robin), nor do they have the knowledge of a core repertoire that people used to have. You used to be able to announce—at Pinewoods Camp English dance week at least—that the next dance would be the rather complicated dances Fandango or Newcastle or Nonesuch For Those Who Know (i.e., neither taught nor prompted) and three-quarters of those present would stand up for the dance and perform it pretty well.

For most groups or clubs now those days are gone. This is the present outcome of the age-old battle between Descriptivism (the way things (especially but not exclusively) language) currently are and Prescriptivism (the way things Ought To Be as defined by the Powers That Be). Are we going to be Inclusive (teaching generally to a low—Oops! Value judgment!—an accessible common standard and not investing effort in complicated set dances that can take quite a while to teach and master and scarcely three minutes to perform) or Exclusive (the reverse). Adding to the tension, we know that we sometimes lose dancers in our groups because they are tired of easy dances and want something with a little more meat to it! Elsie J. Oxenham was well aware of this tension between beauty and perfection versus happy-joining-in, and her characters actually explore but do not resolve the issue in a couple of the later installments—we even saw a touch of it in A25_Rosamund’s Tuckshop when one of the school girls says, in effect, that she is sick of the two-couple set dance Rufty Tufty (which was taught at her school) but ends up enjoying Corn Rigs with its jolly polka step.

The preliminary comments to the requirements indicate that you could take the exam in any of the three weeks of the Summer School at Stratford and thereafter by application. The preface indicates that the candidate had to exhibit “practical and theoretical” knowledge, although this requirement is reinforced in a heightened fashion for the Advanced Cert.   At least some of the country dances could be selected by the candidate, who had to submit her list in advance—it is unclear to what extent the examiners set the morris and sword dances, although Derek relates that he was told that the examiners would call for a set for, say, Shepherd’s Hey and tell you to dance fifth position in it.  The preface also clearly states that holding either certificate was not a test of “teaching capacity” and that a list of “approved” teachers was kept at the EFDS Office. It is also not clear that you would have been required to hold an Advanced Cert. in order to be approved to teach—in a later installment, Elsie J. Oxenham gives us a jolly teacher (and old friend from the Swiss Series) who the EFDS Secretary says is not quite up to snuff to get an advanced group ready for an examination in something complicated like Chelsea Reach, but is well-suited for leading a dance party, and that she knows all the newer dances.

Elementary Certificate Requirements, 1912

For the Elementary Certificate, you would be expected to be able to dance in any position in any of the groups of dances itemized below, starting with the country dances—are these in your wheelhouse?

     Book I                                                                                    Book II

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Any six dances from the Country Dance Books I and II (not more than two dances from Book 1, which were the easy, traditional longways dances). This is a total of 48 dances that you were expected to have mastered, although, again, it is not clear whether the candidate selected all the dances or whether the examiners set some.  (Click on the images above to see the list enlarged; see the dance instructions and tunes at The Round.
  2. Any six of the following 16 morris set dances (both handkerchief and short- or long-stick)Beansetting (I)             Old Woman Tossed Up (I)Laudnum Bunches (I)  Black Joke (I)

    Country Gardens (I)     Bobbing Joe (III)

    Trunkles (I)                     Shepherd’s Hey (III)

    Rigs O’Marlow (I)          Glorishears (III)

    How D’ye Do (I)             The Gallant Hussar (III)

    Blue-eyed Stranger (I)  Shooting (III)

    Maid of the Mill (I)        Brighton Camp (III)

  3.  Any one of the following three morris jigs.

Old Mother Oxford (II)     Lumps of Plum Pudding (III)     Jockie to the Fair (III)

  1. Any position of either the Kirkby Malzeard longsword dance (for six dancers) or the Flamborough Sword Dance (for eight dancers). This means six or eight unique positions in two dances of a very different style (click on the links to view them).

Note that the morris dances listed above have the volume number after each title. Cecil Sharp and Herbert MacIlwaine published the first two volumes of The Morris Book in 1907 and the third in 1910, and Sharp produced revised and expanded editions of all three a few years later. He published his three volumes of Sword Dances of Northern England from 1911 to 1913.  It was in these years that he was also producing his graded volumes of both country and morris dances—alas! I gave away my volumes of these a few years ago without examining them closely enough. I do not know if the grading was adult beginner to adult advanced or child to adult, but a dancer would at least have had a few more years to get Books I, II, and III under her belt than Book IV. But also note that the village tradition is not specified in the certification requirements above (or below)—you are expected to know it. For example, Beansetting, Laudnum, Country Gardens, Trunkles, Rigs, How D’ye Do, and Blue-eyed are all from the Headington tradition; Maid of the Mill is a linked handkerchief dance from the Ilmington tradition; Brighton Camp is from Eynsham; Lumps of Plum Pudding from the village of Bampton, and so on. You were expected to dance correctly in each style. Here’s what Elsie J. Oxenham, in a rare article printed in Every Girl’s Annual of, I believe, 1923 (my copy is undated, but she refers to having attended the Cheltenham vacation school in the prior year), has to say about the various styles; she begins by saying that each tradition has “peculiar points of its own” and continues:

Ilmington, in Warwickshire, has evolved an especially tricky, though beautiful hey or chain—“the thing with question-marks and tea-cup handles in it,” as I heard it described lately. Bampton, in Oxfordshire, has a peculiarly fascinating arm-movement, like the action of sowing seed or feeding hens—a real country movement, seen nowhere else—and gives us curious walking back-steps; also two very beautiful solo jigs. Fieldtown, in the same county, turns the back-steps into queer little hops, or sometimes into ferocious stamps, with quite a different arm-movement. Sherborne, in Gloucester, makes you move back in a weird shuffle, messes up its Morris step,  and has one really dreadful track movement; Sherborne is a brute, but a fascinating brute! Bledington, in Oxfordshire, is very original, and makes you twist your hands in the opposite way from any other village’s hands, and creates new and extraordinary jump positions in its capers; so do Fieldtown and Bampton, for that matter.
You have to concentrate on all important points like these. If you put whole-rounds into Bampton, or half-rounds into Ilmington, you get well shouted at if “Madam” [Helen Kennedy North] happens to be teaching; it is a failing of my own, so I know.
Or you keep meeting new forms of old friends. Take “Shepherd’s Hey.” You learn it as an Ilmington dance, with stick-tapping and the funny hey; presently you come across it with Bampton arm-waves and back-steps. Then you find it is also a Headington solo jig, with hand-clapping, and then it turns up as a Badby dance, with sticks again, but quite different sticks. And last of all it is a Fieldtown dance, with handkerchiefs, as in Bampton, but no other likeness, either in tune or dance, to any “Shepherd’s Hey” you have ever met before.

The above is from a writer who clearly enjoyed these dances but, despite her understanding and her clarity of description, did not feel confident enough to essay the examination. But this is the level of mastery you were clearly expected to show! And, remember, in 1912 you would have been examined by The Prophet himself, or by the imperious and critical Madam (Helen Kennedy North) or Joshua (Douglas Kennedy). Nerve-wracking!

Advanced Certificate Requirements, 1912

The requirements for the Advanced Certificate were considerably more demanding and involved a significantly greater focus on morris dancing—no wonder Rosamund has only passed the country dance portion of the Advanced Cert. and the Writing Person (one of EJO’s avatars) never attempted to obtain a certificate at all. Unlike the Elementary certification, the requirements for the Advanced one begin with the re-statement that the candidate had to possess “a practical and theoretical knowledge” of the materials listed below. This theoretical knowledge presumably means that you couldn’t just show the movements and rely on muscle memory or subtle cues from a partner—you had to intellectually know everything cold and be able to explain all the fiddly bits. At the end of this post I am going to give some questions that I think could have been on an English country dance exam, whether on paper or viva voce. They are real questions with real answers—will you be able to pass the test?

  1. Any ten dances from the Country Dance Books I and II—and again no more than two from the easy Book I.
  2. Any six morris dances from the following.

Laudnum Bunches (I)            Bobbing Joe (III)

Trunkles (I)                              Shepherd’s Hey (III)

Black Joke (I)                           Shooting (III)

Rodney (II)                               Brighton Camp (III)

  1. Any four morris dances from the following. Since these are from volume IV, they would certainly have been less familiar to the dancers, whether or not they are intrinsically more difficult.

The Cuckoo’s Nest (IV)          The Rose (IV)

Constant Billy (IV)                   Bobby and Joan (IV)

Lads A-Bunchum (IV)              Banks of the Dee (IV)

London Pride (IV)                    Dearest Dicky (IV)

Swaggering Boney (IV)           Step Back (IV)

  1. Any two morris jigs from the following.

Princess Royal (first version) (III)             Sherborne Jig (IV)

Jockie to the Fair (III)                               None so Pretty (IV)

I’ll Go and Enlist (IV)                                 Molly Oxford (IV)

  1. Any two dances from the sword dance list. Again, this is any position in these very different sword dances.  For example, the Earsdon dances is a rapper sword dance whereas Grenoside is a slow longsword dance performed with stepping in clogs.  I encourage you to click on the bolded links.

Grenoside (I)          Sleights (II)

Earsdon (II)             Flamborough (II)

 Do I think I could have passed these Certs? In my young and lissom days I danced English country dances, morris (many traditions), rapper- and long-sword (ditto), English clog, garland, Running Set, New England contras, Scottish country dances, Highland dancing, and some Vintage and historical dancing. I am confident that with a bit of swotting up on some of the less-familiar set dances—but remember, you weren’t supposed to learn from books!—I would have passed the Elementary Cert. with flying colors or possibly colours, but I would have had to study hard for the Advanced one—not so much for the country dances (that requirement is the same, although I think the performance/knowledge standards were probably higher), but for the morris and sword!

Allison’s English Country Dance Examination Questions

These are real questions, some based on the fiddly bits that I recall Genevieve Shimer (May Gadd’s successor at CDSS) and others of her generation insisting on. Not all the questions are based on the country dance books I and II!

Answer fully and completely, using a No. 2 pencil and making no stray marks on the pages.

In Prince William, describe the actions of the first couple and the second woman in the first strain of the A music of the second part of the dance. What does the second woman particularly need to remember to do?

What is the correct sequence of the hands given in the chorus figure of Rufty Tufty? Choose from:

RLRL     RLLR     LRLR      LRRL       Other

Which couple (using original numbering) initiates the progressive hey at the end of the set dance Nonesuch?

Describe/show the difference(s) between the pas de basque step and the polka step. What dance named after a member of the Royal Family uses the pas de basque step?

Mark the dances below in a round formation that number anti-clockwise rather than clock-wise.

Peppers Black         Winifred’s Knot          Sage Leaf

Mundesse           Put on thy Smock on a Monday     Jenny Pluck Pears

Describe the actions of the second chorus figure of the dance for two couples, Althea.

In which figure of Sellenger’s Round do dancers raise their arms, and why?

The second time the lines of four form in Newcastle, which way are they facing? Across the hall or up and down it?

Elsie J. Oxenham and A25_Rosamund’s Tuck-Shop; A School Story

By Leave a Comment

There is a lot to unpack in this installment! As I discussed early on, the current group of postings in this blog relate to Elsie Oxenham’s Abbey Girl series and in particular to the folk-dancing scenes found therein. While many of EJO’s readers apparently find/found folk-dancing after reading the books, I came to her works from the world of folk dance and want to share her vision and her depictions—especially of Cecil Sharp and his teachers —with my folk-dance friends. After the last five or six installments that bore the subtitles “a romance of the Abbey Girls” and contained little or no dancing, we are now, at least briefly, back in the dance world. Rosamund will show us how a “certificated” teacher instructs.

As I also mentioned early on, I initially read these books completely out of order—not even realizing that there was an order—as they were shipped to me by the amazing Monica Godfrey, who wrote the article in the EFDSS magazine that inspired me to reach out to her to find out more about these mysterious Abbey Girls. And this installment, A25_Rosamund’s Tuck-Shop, with its significant subtitle, “A School Story,” was one that initially made my eyes roll back into my head. It starts off in a typically discursive way, with one girl in a bit of an inexplicable jam, who then meets up with other school pals, all of whom have names, nicknames, alternative nicknames, and so on until the brain bubbles and swells and one must call faintly for Jeeves to bring a restorative and a cold towel to tie around one’s head.

But perseverance (and multiple re-readings) pays off and I think I can now parse this for you or at least ease you over the early and confusing chapters. We will skip introducing most of the girls; just be aware that there is a younger group of rather wild girls, and an older group that includes Rhoda and her friends Tamzine and Sonny.

And here props to Elsie Oxenham, that consummate long-arc story plotter and re-purposer of characters! In 1909 she had published her fourth book, what was then a one-off tale titled The Girl Who Wouldn’t Make Friends. It told the story of Robertina Brent, left an estate in Wales called Plas Quellyn, by her god-father, painter Robert Quellyn, an admirer of her mother’s. Robert had unofficially adopted a friend’s orphan daughter, Gwyneth Morgan, but failed to make provision for her in his will. Deprived of her beloved Plas Quellyn, Gwyneth won’t make friends with Robin, until they are reconciled and become adopted sisters at the end of the story. Their conflict, which they relate to Rhoda hoping to help her in her dilemma, is not dissimilar to hers, though she refuses to acknowledge it. But what is more interesting to me is the slow and subtle interweaving of Robin into the Abbey series. We had a hint of it in the last installment: Sir Ivor Quellyn refers to the Welsh pictures of a distant cousin, that same Robert Quellyn, and to the heiress and estate. We’ll have occasional further hints of Robin and her estate until her story concludes in A32_Robins in the Abbey. It seems unlikely to me that when EJO published The Girl Who Wouldn’t Make Friends in 1909 she knew that she would repurpose Robin (although we can’t know for sure and there are other clear signs of careful, long-term plot planning), but having created her, she puts her to good use and brings her back. What fun it is to encounter old friends again!

A25_Rosamund’s Tuck-Shop was published in 1937 and takes place in September through October of 1930. It is a satisfying installment, showing Rosamund in fine form as a compassionate lover, sister, and friend. It also shows her as an excellent English folk dance teacher!

Plot Synopsis (Contains Spoilers)

Lady Rhoda Kane is mourning the recent death in a motorcycle accident of her younger brother, Geoff, the sixteen-year-old Earl of Kentisbury. The new Earl, also named Geoffrey, is the semi-invalid younger brother of Rhoda’s deceased father. His health has improved since he became engaged to a young girl whom Rhoda and her mother do not know but whom they hate. The new heir-presumptive is this girl’s baby half-brother, and Rhoda hates him, too.  They feel that a distant cousin, Bill Kane the sailor and his younger sister Rosalie, have been skipped over—like Mrs. Bennet, they do not seem to understand how the rules of entail and succession work. Lady Verriton had also been looking forward to acting as the head of the family during Geoff’s minority, and resents the young future countess and the fact that she, Lady Verriton, and her daughter will be turned out of the castle upon the Earl’s marriage. Rhoda has the additional chip on her shoulder that she herself is dark and petite, not tall and fair like all the others in the Kentisbury family.

—Now here Lady Rhoda and her mother are being just plain ridiculous! There are centuries of precedence that the Dowager and her daughters, younger sons, etc. are bounced out of the ancestral home as soon as the current Earl or Duke or whomever marries. It’s rather like the peaceful transition of power between one American President and the President-Elect! You don’t get to stay in the White House forever!

But Rhoda and Lady Verriton are unreasonably thinking that Bill, whom they know and love, and who often visited the estate when he was growing up, should have had the title, or should at least be next in line for it. They seem indifferent if not actively antagonistic to the new Earl, the invalid whom apparently no one paid much attention to until he got engaged and his fiancée took him to see new doctors who improved his health. Their animus is reserved for that nameless young gold-digger (as they think of her) and her wretched baby brother. The kindest thing one can say about Rhoda is that she and her mother are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder over the relatively recent death of their father/husband, respectively, and the very recent and tragic death of the teenaged Earl. The Careful Reader, who was not I until about the third re-reading, will have picked up that the boy was willful and stubborn and wouldn’t have made a particularly good Earl in any case. But that’s neither here nor there in this episode. —

Lady Verriton leaves the country to visit her sister and Lady Rhoda and her distant cousin Rosalie (Bill’s sister; she has no title) go to attend Wood End school, which is designed for girls who don’t want to go on to college, but whose future lies in running their husbands’ estates. They need to be able to direct and supervise the servants and outdoor staff. The curriculum is hands-on-learning of things like the insides of a motor car, basic veterinary skills, how to run a Women’s Institute meeting, and lots of gardening and other outdoor work, as well as French, which well-brought up young women are supposed to be fluent in. The uniform is like those of the Women’s Land Army of World War I—” …khaki breeches like those the land-girls had during the war and smocks [emphasis added].’” Which war is not specified—of course, WWII had not occurred either in real time nor Abbey Time—in fact the series ends before the war begins. But depending on when you read this installment, you might be forgiven for thinking the uniform was that of the Land Girls of WWII.

—Elsewhere EJO refers to the Wood End uniform as being a “smock” over the breeches and boots, and some illustrators (and I) took this to be a traditional shepherd’s type of smock below, as translated to the left. In the cover illustrations at the top of this post you’ll see the smock concept on the right, along with the stout gloves needed for pruning roses.

However, a loose billowy smock gets in your way if you are bending over hoeing or weeding. In fact the Land Army uniform was a long, belted jacket with lots of useful pockets and various colored arm-bands and hat-badges to show different lengths or service and accomplishments. The U.S. and Australia also instituted Women’s Land Armies or the equivalent, in order both to free up men for service and to increase home production of agricultural and, later, mechanical products. Here’s a good website devoted the Women’s Land Army, founded in January 1917 and disbanded in November, 1919. Here’s a website with more information. 

Below and especially to the right is the uniform: keys are slouch hat, breeches, high boots or short boots with puttees, and a coat that protects other garments.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Historia/Shutterstock (9820224a)
The Agricola Outfit – Strong Serviceable Well Cut and Becoming – Idea For Women Workers On the Land and Available From the Cleveland Manufacturing Company. Advertisement in the Sphere, 27 April 1918
Overalls For Women Workers, Ww1, 1918

 

 

Cousins Rhoda and Rosalie quickly make friends, including Robin Brent and Gwyneth Quellyn of The Girl Who Wouldn’t Make Friends, and Rhoda is reunited with Sonia (“Sonny”) Raymond, who is Joan Shirley Raymond’s husband’s niece. Near the school is a cottage with two halves: the Squirrel is a tea-shop and the Rose sells hand-made craft items. Both places are out of bounds for the school girls. They are allowed to visit the school tuckshop (Americans: closest analogy is ice cream parlor or candy store), run by pretty young Gail Alwyn. Due to her youth Gail has a little trouble keeping order; the left-hand image above shows her (flowered overall) telling two of the younger girls to get down off the counter.

The girls meet their country dance instructor, a tall, fair girl named Rosamund. They assume that her last name is Abbott, as she keeps referring to her aunts who run the Squirrel tea-house, but she just wants them to call her by her first name. Rosamund is blonde, walks with grace due to her years of country dancing, and wears an enormous diamond on her left hand—the girls speculate that she must be going to marry someone important. They try to pump Gail for more intel, but she is adamant about not gossiping. Of course, she is our Rosamund Kane, but shh! don’t tell Rhoda!

One day one of the younger girls, who is out-of-bounds, spies a loom in the front room of the Rose, and tells the others. Sonia is wild to see it more closely and the girls decide to—it’s hard to believe this!—sneak downstairs in the middle of the night, go out-of-bounds —that is, impugning their honor to obey the rules—and commit a little B&E. Robin Brent tries hard to dissuade them from this bad idea. Rhoda is uneasy about the project but goes anyway as part of the group. The girls enter the cottage to see a lovely piece of white material shot with gold and silver on the loom. Gail Alwyn comes down and tells them to go home. Then Rosamund, in a jolly blue kimono and with her hair in long fair plaits, comes down to see what the noise is. Rhoda has just picked up a piece of paper that she assumes is instructions for the weaving pattern, but is actually a letter from Maidlin. Rosamund is furious and accuses Rhoda of reading her letter (a cardinal sin in Victorian England, but also she wonders if Rhoda has deduced who she is and is trying to find some dirt on the future Countess), and Rhoda denies it. After everyone calms down and cocoa is served, a teacher from the school, Lisbeth Durant, comes in; she had seen the girls leaving the school building, but it took her some time to dress and figure out where they went. She carelessly reveals Rosamund’s last name and Rhoda turns white with rage when she realizes that this jolly dance teacher is the horrid interloper. The girls leave, and the adults promise that they won’t tell the Head of School. Rosamund weeps when they leave. Rosamund has been aware all along that Rhoda hates her, and she has convinced the Head not to reveal who she is, hoping that she can get Rhoda to change her mind before she reveals her identity.

(Above: Rosamund is in a red kimono. Dark-haired Rhoda is seated and it is probably Tamzine wearing the school jacket and tie. This illustrator did not get the Land Army uniform memo! BTW, that is not my thumb.)

While her friends try to convince her to play nice, Rhoda remains adamant in her rage and dislike of Rosamund. The latter finishes the piece of material–it is for Maidlin, for her upcoming singing debut at the Queen’s Hall under the baton of Sir Ivor Llewellyn, Lady Joy Shirley Marchwood’s fiancé. The other girls come to apologize again, and Rosamund sends them back to school, urging them not to go via the commons, as a developer has cut down many trees, leaving the great top-heavy pines dangerously exposed. A storm with high winds is arriving. Rhoda also appears at the cottage and angrily confronts Rosamund. As Rhoda jerkily moves to leave the room, she bumps into the writing table and knocks ink onto the material, ruining it. Rosamund speaks harshly to Rhoda, who runs out of the cottage, sobbing.

Rosamund works to compose herself. After a while she realizes that Rhoda is not really to blame; that it was an accident and not done on purpose. She scribbles a note of apology (in pencil! Nice touch, Elsie!) and takes it up to the school, where Rhoda is not to be found. Rosamund intuits that Rhoda has run to the commons so as not to be easily discovered, and she goes after her, despite the high winds. She starts to lead Rhoda to safety, but the girl trips and, before she can recover, a large tree named Adam, falls and pins her down. Another tree, Eve, is swaying dangerously and is certain to fall soon. Rhoda urges Rosamund to flee, on her own account as well as Geoffrey’s and her brother’s, but Rosamund refuses to leave her alone. They wait for Eve to fall and Rosamund hopes that she’ll be killed outright, rather than left crippled. Here EJO shows us without telling us that Rosamund is playing up and playing the game as well as being true to the motto of the Hamlet Club. The tree does crash, but lands on the first tree. Rosamund is briefly knocked out, but the girls are safe.

Adam and Eve and the fall of the trees—man’s fall from Eden? Oxenham rarely indulges in overt religious symbolism, but this could be one of the times, although I am still puzzling over it. Oxenham liked to give her heroines a Problem to resolve—and Lady Rhoda’s is pride. Rhoda has to be humbled by Rosamund’s generosity with regard to the ruined fabric and her gallantry in staying with Rhoda in the face of danger and possible death before she can achieve peace of mind and happiness.

The gardener and other men arrive and help the girls back to the school. Rhoda apologizes profusely for ruining the dress, but Rosamund assures her that Maidlin will prefer the reconciliation to the material, as indeed she does. Rhoda becomes completely reconciled to Rosamund and also confesses to the other girls that it was she who had ruined Maidlin’s gown. Rhoda and Rosalie offer to be bridesmaids at Rosamund’s wedding.

For Folk Dancers

This installment has quite a lot on dance: both on some new dances that Rosamund teaches the girls as well as the style of teaching and some of the comments on dance style itself.

Rhoda is eager to learn the country dancing, as her local Women’s Institute does it—she has not, however, cared to join in with them because she does not want to reveal her lack of knowledge and be “hauled through” a dance by mere villagers. (Her friends laugh at her for her snobbish attitude.) Rhoda asks if the teacher knows a lot of dances: “A dreadful thing happened once in our village. The W.I. had had lessons from a school teacher, and thought they knew a lot. Then someone else took them on, and she said they were doing it all wrong. She taught them all different ways, and the poor things didn’t know where they were, or what or who was right’ (97).” She is assured that Rosamund has the headquarters’ certificate. Rosamund appears, walking lightly “with a movement which told, to anyone who understood, of years of folk-dancing” (98).

Accomplished pianist Gail plays the dulcitone for the dancing: a pretty but rather quiet and tinkly sound-ing spinet-like instrument. Rosamund thinks that it fits the dances even better than the penny whistle that Gail had wanted to play, but I’m not sure I agree with her, at least not for some dances—here’s a dulcitone.

Gail asks for a chance to dance and Rosamund assures her that she’ll play better if she does. She then tells the girls to join hands and slip clockwise—and the girls asks which way that is. (102). And this was when everyone was using analog clocks!

To start the session, Rosamund tells the girls to form two lines and Tamzine says rather scornfully that she knows what’s going to happen: “‘Lead your woman down and turn her under; skip her back and swing your partner! These things in lines are all alike’ (98)” It is clear from this comment that folk dancing has to some extent already permeated the school P.E. curriculum. Rosamund says that perhaps she’s done Haste to the Wedding or Pop Goes the Weasel (both from Sharp’s first Country Dance Book of 1909), but what they are going to do is different. Later, Rosamund tells them to form a two-couple set, Tamzine scornfully thinks it’s going to be for Rufty Tufty, which apparently she is rather sick of. These sound like comments from real girls.

Here is Rosamund teaching:

“‘Take hands-four; oh—sorry! Make small rings of two couples! Now—those with their backs to me are Ones, those facing me are Twos. You’re sure of that? Keep your same number till you reach the end of the line, then change. I’ll take care of you when you change your number. Play the tune, Gail; listen everybody! It’s ‘Christchurch Bells.’ Do you know it?’ (99)”

Rhoda says that she knows it as a song and Rosamund tells the girls that many of the dances were songs. Rosamund continues, making the girls “practice the brisk clapping and the ‘cast,’” but almost at once insisting on the movements being fitted to the music. “As soon as the girls knew what they had to do, they were urged to try it with the tune, so that the music and movements should go together in their minds. (100)” This is excellent teaching technique! I have seen far too many people teach a dance without giving any indication of the music.

Christchurch Bells is indeed a jolly little dance and a good one for beginners in that it is short and the progression very clear. It is a three-part tune, originally a round or catch, written by Oxford don Henry Aldrich in 1673 and published in 1733 in The Second Book of the Catch Club.

  1. Hark the bonny Christchurch bells, one two three four five six.

They sound so woundy great, so wondrous sweet,

And they troll so merrily, merrily.

2.  Hark the first and second bell that every day at four and ten

Cries come, come, come, come, come to prayers, and the verger troops before ye.

3.  Tingle, tingle, ting goes the small bell at nine to call the bearers home,

But the de’il a man will leave his can ‘til he hears the mighty Tom.

The song Christchurch Bells in Oxford reminds us that the city was a place of worship as well as study, and that the bells of the various churches pealed all day long to tell the hours and to call students to class and celebrants to prayer. English bells were not pitched to play a tune as in a carillon, but different-sized bells did have different tones and pitches and could be rung in changes for specific purposes. Tom is clearly a basso profundo who says it’s time to high-tail it home. (For more on bells, read Dorothy Sayers’ mystery The Nine Tailors (1934). Did Oxenham read this? Probably—in addition to her popular mysteries, Sayers also wrote on religious topics, and she would have been of interest to EJO.) The “can” referred to above is the mug of beer that some prefer to other pursuits.

Here is a delightful rendition of the catch—be sure to watch it to the very end!

Here’s the dance as interpreted by Cecil Sharp from the seventh edition (1686—thirteen years after Aldrich wrote his song; it must have already been popularly spread by word of mouth) of The Dancing Master. Phrase One: first man turns second woman by the right, then his partner by the left. Phrase Two: second man turns first woman by the left and his partner by the right. Phrase Three: all four slipping circle around in 8 steps, then two claps (own hands, partner Right, own, partner Left), and in four steps the ones cast off to second places, twos moving up. Fun and easy but with amusing potential to get mixed up on the turns—is it left-hand or right? Well, here’s what EJO has Rosamund say; the girls are having some trouble at the ends of the lines when they change numbers and Rosamund urges them to trust the couples coming at them.

Presently Rosamund called a halt. “Look here, you people! Trust the couple coming up or down the line to you. They’ve been doing it all the way; they won’t suddenly go wrong. If the second woman wants to give right hand, let her, new first man! She’s correct; don’t insist on giving her your left.” Rosamund is right! This kind of insight reminds us that Elsie Oxenham taught dancing to her Camp Fire and her Girl Guide troop.

Later one of the girls asks how many dances Rosamund knows:  she responds “120,” but that they won’t get through them all in this term (185). Rosamund is being a little dated—her answer would have been nearly correct up to 1922, which was about the time that the Oxenham family left London and presumably that EJO ceased to dance quite as often as formerly with the EFDS crowd.

The Country Dance Book I    (1909)              18 (or 20 if you count variants in this edition)

Book II                                   (1911)              30

Book III                                  (1912)              34

Book IV                                  (1916)              43

We’ll leave out Book V (1918) because it is devoted to the Kentucky Running Set. Book VI (1922) contained another 52 dances interpreted by Sharp from the Playford publications. However, the sum of the dances in the first four books is 125. (The total sum, again excluding Book V, is 177.)

However, Elsie and Rosamund are not wholly out-of-date! The dance Corn Rigs, with its polka step, comes from Sharp’s amanuensis and prominent collector in her own right, Maud Karpeles’ 1931 publication of Twelve Traditional Country Dances with pianoforte arrangements by Ralph Vaughan Williams. In a later instalment, EJO will refer to the dance Steamboat, which also comes from this publication. These dances deserve an essay of their own, which they are not going to receive at present—their importance in this story is that Oxenham, 57 in 1937 when the book was published, was still in touch with dance trends. The girls enjoy this dance and its new step:  “. . . at the end of ‘Corn Rigs’ they broke into spontaneous clapping. ‘That’s tophole! Great, that one is!’”

And now on to two dances that Rosamund teaches that I am confident that few if any Gentle Readers will have encountered (I was certainly unfamiliar with them!): Sage Leaf and Put on Thy Smock on a Monday. Both are set dances with some complexities and both have tunes that are. . . . undistinguished. Dull, in fact.

Like (and probably related to) the Boulanger that Jane Austen enjoyed about 130 years later, the Sage Leaf (fourth edition, 1670) is a dance that is probably a blast at the end of your first grown-up party, when you and the other eighteen-year-old kids are slightly tipsy on the punch that you didn’t know was as strong as all that, and there’s a cute boy who keeps looking at you. In other words, it’s a party dance. There’s lots of skipping about and then plenty of time to catch your breath. Here’s how it goes.

As many couples as will, lady standing to the gentleman’s right, join hands in a big circle and slip to the right and then to the left. Gents dance in to the center and fall back; ladies the same. Now comes the distinctive figure—let’s say there are four couples in this set.

First couple lead in to the center, fall back, and then right-hand turn. Then second couple does the same thing, then third, then fourth. Now first man turns his partner by the right-hand once and a half around, then turns the second lady by the right, then the third, then the fourth, wending his way around the ring. Then the second gentleman turns his partner thusly and then all the other ladies. Then the third gent, then the fourth the same.

Now, to change things up, that whole paragraph is repeated with the second couple starting with the leading in. Then that paragraph again for the third couple, then again for the fourth. You can see that if there are a lot of couples, there is a fair bit of standing about, which is when you get to chat with your partner. The dance concludes with everyone circling right and left back again. One pities the musicians.

(Actually, with stronger tunes to support it, I could see this dance being fun in certain situations, particularly with a community of people who are familiar and comfortable with each other—at the closing party at a dance camp/weekend or for a home-school group or something of that sort. It wouldn’t take long to teach and is very accessible.)

Put on thy Smock on a Monday is a round for three couples that doesn’t deserve to be as forgotten as it is, again probably because the tune is dull, IMO. It has the standard USA figures (up a double or slipping circle, siding, and arming) with a chorus that is led by each gentleman in turn. The chorus is not difficult, per se, but, as Rosamund notes, you have to have a good spatial sense. Think of it as the first gentleman honoring, in turn, the third lady, then the second, then his own partner. Here’s how it goes: you are in a circle, first gent, and the first lady is on your right hand and the second on your left. Join hands with these two ladies and advance in a line to the left-over lady and retire; as the 2L and 1L turn each other once around behind your back, so to speak, you turn that honored third lady three-quarters around to end facing the second lady, opening into a new line of three numbered 1L – 1G – 3L. These three advance and retire and the two ladies turn once around while the first gentleman turns the second lady three-quarters around to re-orient the line facing the first lady, numbering 3L – 1G – 2L. Advance and retire and the first gent turns his partner while the other two ladies turn each other: all end at home positions. If you keep in mind that the honored lady will always end up at the active gentleman’s right hand with the nearer other lady in his left, and that the lines are oriented in three directions, it’s not so bad! This chorus is repeated by the second gentleman after the siding, and by the third after the arming. It could be tricksy in an all-girl set! The Wood End girls call it a “dear little dance,” but they have difficulty in controlling their three-quarter turns. (It takes a fair bit of control to turn only three-quarters in the phrase of music that you could turn once around in!) Rosamund tells them that they must cultivate their sense of “design.” This is a new word for EJO—she has mentioned “pattern” before—patterns work themselves out—but “design” is probably closer to what is needed in terms of the spatial awareness for this dance.

One of the tricky points that Rosamund is aware of is that Sage Leaf, a round for five couples, is numbered anti-clockwise, whereas Put on thy Smock is numbered the more usual clockwise. I do not know why or how Sharp came up with these rules—I don’t see anything in the facsimiles to indicate it. But this kind of detail would certainly have been part of the certificate testing.

Our next episode brings Rosamund to her happy ending, but there is more drama ahead. But first, a brief detour to the world of the certificate.

We all want Joy!

By Leave a Comment

Joy Shirley, currently the dowager Lady Marchwood and soon to be Lady Quellyn, is a challenging character for me to like, along the lines of Emma Woodhouse. Even though I am a Life Member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, for decades I had to force myself to reread Emma every few years, principally because I could not stand what I perceived as Emma’s smugness, her manipulativeness, her self-satisfaction, and her general air of complacency. Then I started teaching not-for-credit classes on Austen. I worked through all five of the other books and realized that I had to tackle Emma. I obtained the excellent Cambridge edition of the work and made myself really pay attention to the character. While I still would not go so far as to call her “faultless despite her faults,” I have grown to admire and understand her character better. She would still not be my first or second choice (or even third!) of a companion on a deserted island (that would be Mr. Knightley (he would have a pocketknife and be able to do useful things like gut fish) or Miss Morland (she would cheerfully gather coconuts to make an SOS sign on the beach, even if she didn’t know what an SOS is)), but I can like Emma in a cautious way.

I can’t quite get to this point with Joy, and it is not altogether because of her character but because of how Oxenham writes about her. Austen is, after all, an A+++ (can’t get enough pluses!) writer and Oxenham is a solid B with frequent B+ and occasional A- scenes, typically those of description of scenery or dancing. With nearly 100 books over a 60-year career, Oxenham was more prolific but less lapidary than Austen. But comparisons are odious—let’s dig more into Joy’s character and background. [Read more…]

Elsie J. Oxenham and A24_Joy’s New Adventure; A Romance of the Abbey Girls

By Leave a Comment

Gentle Reader, like some of Mr. Collins’ delicate compliments to the ladies, this blog has been long in the making; I did not start posting until I felt that I had about 80% of each of the book’s summary and analysis written, and that process took several years. Some 80 per cents were more complete than others! Then, each week, I refine the post, which can be quite time-consuming. But this combination of long gestation and weekly challenge has given me some deeper insights into characters and actions. One character that I have had as much difficulty in liking as I did Miss Emma Woodhouse, is that of Joy Shirley, now the dowager Lady Marchwood. This installment is hers, though it is not told from her point of view, and she does not necessarily appear to advantage in it. Next week’s post—God willin’ and the crick don’t rise—will be about Joy. So now I have seven days to pull those thoughts together!

Published in 1935, A24_Joy’s New Adventure; A Romance of the Abbey Girls, is set in June through August of 1930. The word “romance” tells you that there is going to be little or no folk dancing—our focus is on different things.

Plot Synopsis (Contains Spoilers)

Sixteen-year-old Abigail Ann Alwyn, known as Gail, is on a train down to the village of Whiteways. Gail is the orphaned grand-daughter of the famous composer Frederick Alwyn, who wrote progressive music that no one—at least no Abbey Girl—likes or understands. He died recently and Gail is now the ward of the famous conductor Sir Ivor Quellyn. Without discussing it with her, Sir Ivor has sent her to the village to attend the music school for girls that Lady Joy Marchwood runs. Gail does not want to attend and does not want to be a concert pianist as her grandfather intended. She contemplates running away. At a halt, the train compartment door opens (must be the old kind where the carriages did not connect) and a tall girl with blond hair in buns over her ears bursts in and welcomes Gail. She is Rosamund Kane.

Rosamund fills Gail in on the backstory; Lady Marchwood is not old as Gail had imagined, but young, scarcely thirty, and the mother of twin girls. Her husband had been killed while on safari—Joy was in fact engaged, married, widowed, and a mother all within one year—and Lady Joy has taken to doing good works in the village with her music school and a crafts center and so on. (This is in fact one of Oxenham’s repeated visions of a cooperative community of artists and artisans all run by a benevolent queen.) She takes Gail through the Abbey, and we know that the visitor is the right sort because she responds to its beauty. Gail confesses that she does not want to go to the music school and must tell Lady Marchwood so right away, and Rosamund urges her to give it a try. She then takes Gail to see Lady Jen, whose fourth child is just three weeks old.

Jen greets them warmly and tells Rosamund that she is sorry about the news—Rosamund doesn’t know what news she is talking about. And now we hear that the prediction made at the end of the last installment has come true—the young Earl of Kentisbury has gone out on a motorbike at night after he had been forbidden to, and been killed. The new Earl is his uncle, Geoffrey the invalid, and Rosamund’s baby half-brother is now the heir presumptive. Rosamund reveals that Geoffrey wants to marry her and she would like that but hates the idea of being a Countess. She also fears that she will not be able to keep Roderick at the cottage, since he has become more important to the succession. Jen is not happy about Rosamund marrying an invalid twenty years older than herself—and here there is a veiled hint that she wants Rosamund to be able to have children—but urges her to follow her heart. Rosamund goes into the Manor to make a phone call.

Suddenly screams fill the air and Gail, followed more slowly by Jen, rushes off. A small shed is on fire. In front of it, seven-year-old Andrew Marchwood (Jen and Ken’s eldest son) is holding down a struggling seven-year old Margaret Marchwood (one of Joy’s twin daughters) so that she can’t enter the burning shed. She is screaming for Elizabeth, who is inside it.

Gail rushes into the shed, brings out the unconscious Tony Marchwood (five, and Jen’s second son) and goes back in. She brings out Elizabeth-Twin, whose hair and clothes are on fire, and beats out the flames with her hands.

The children have been playing at Camp Fire, and lit some candles inside the wood shed that was littered with wood shavings. It was (of course) the twins’ idea.  Sir Kenneth Marchwood finally says what some Readers have been thinking for quite some time, which is that the twins are brats and should be spanked and he won’t be responsible for them again. The children are uninjured, but Gail is badly burned—one finger will always be crooked and she will not be able to play music in public. Maidlin returns to the Hall from a visit to her Italian relatives and she and Gail become good friends. (In the cover illustration above, Maidlin, the Primrose Queen, is in the yellow dress and Gail, with her red-brown curls, in white.)

—Here I digress to meditate on the Marchwood twins, of whom I am not overly fond. Margaret, in particular, has a form of attention deficit disorder: she is flighty and impulsive and can’t stick to anything regular. In her grief over her loss of her husband, Joy has spoiled them terribly, and the omniscient narrator and several of the characters are aware of this. Occasionally in the series a character will call Joy out on some poor parenting technique. The twins are useful to the author because they create some kind of havoc that creates the tension or conflict that a story needs. If you are a girl visitor, beware! You are likely to suffer grievous bodily harm in protecting the brats from some predicament that they created themselves. The twins also represent the negative side of Joy, the side that used to be called the Wild Cat that Walks on its Own. And here, as I meditate, I see that EJO is also cleverly setting the twins up with their Problem—as I wrote some posts ago, each of the principal girls has a Problem that she must resolve in order to become happy. Some Problems are externally-focused, such as Jen’s coping with the loss of her parents. Rosamund’s Problem will similarly be the external one of her future marriage and what that entails. But some Problems are internal, and Maidlin and Joy have these. Maidlin is almost done solving her Problem—while still a bit over-sensitive and artistic, she is now quite capable of taking care of herself and others, and of understanding and forgiving Joy’s negative side while still loving her. So, in re-reading Joy’s New Adventure last night I noticed that EJO subtly linked the dead young Earl and the two girls lying in bed after the fire as equal cases of “disastrous self will.” Elizabeth and especially Margaret will have to learn self-control, empathy, and compassion before they reach their goal. It will be a long journey!—

Joy and Jen take care of Gail, whom they call Abbey Gail or Abbey Gale (she is hot-tempered). Meanwhile, Sir Ivor comes to visit. It is clear to Gail and Maidlin that he and Joy are interested in each other. Joy is over-excited. The over-sensitive Maidlin begins to feel neglected by Joy and uncomfortable with Ivor’s focus on her voice. Ivor raves over the improvement in her voice and says that she now sings as a woman (her voice has taken on new maturity after her growth in taking care of Biddy in France), and Joy becomes increasingly jealous and insecure about his affections. One night, upon Maid’s return from running her Camp Fire, her cloak falls off and there she is in her gown and beads and beautiful hair. Ivor is impressed and clearly admires her as a man admires a beautiful woman. Joy imperiously says: “‘Maidlin! You did it on purpose! Go to bed at once!’”

—Here I think that if I were a Girl Reader I wouldn’t really understand what was going on. What is the “it”? I don’t know if I would have noticed that it is weird that a thirty-year old woman tells a girl in her twenties to go to bed as if she were a naughty child. EJO does not write well about grown-up emotions, especially when sex is involved, not that we ever say that word! We have seen time and again that Abbey Girls are often unconscious of their feelings towards their Man until he proposes. Joy is an exception—she is excited by her feelings for Ivor and hopes that he will propose—he has taken her to see his mother; she is even looking ahead to the possibility of more children (we know this because she flushes slightly at the thought of babies)—but she is terribly jealous of Maidlin, her adopted daughter. It is not until some pages later, after this scene, when Joy runs to Jen for comfort and advice and says that Ivor had been interested in her eight years before, though she hadn’t known it, that we begin to understand this. Jen makes it clear that Joy overreacted and needs to apologize to Maid. Joy returns to the Hall and Ivor sweeps her away to propose to her. Through Gail’s eyes we are made to understand that Ivor is rather Joy-like himself; he is imperious, used to being obeyed, and somewhat blind and insensitive to other people’s feelings. Through Jen and Rosamund’s eyes we hear that Ivor might actually be a better match for Joy than Sir Andrew was; they have music in common, and Sir Andrew would have been bored with it. Joy does not go to Maidlin that night, and she and Gail leave the Hall in the early morning.

After a brief check-in with Rosamund and Biddy (and here we find out for sure that her nice Frenchman has proposed to her), the girls end up in St. Valéry in France, on the mouth of the Somme, a tidal river. Maid refers to the Battle of the Somme that took place in 1916, observing that she barely remembered the brave men and that Gail wouldn’t know about it first-hand. She is correct in Abbey Time; she was eleven in 1916 and Gail was about one.  EJO’s description of the town and the fishing boats coming in on the tide is charming and evocative—some of her best writing! She excelled at painting pictures of places and activities, such as folk-dancing.

Maidlin receives a letter of apology from Joy forwarded by Rosamond. She writes a pleasant answer. Immediately after Gail posts the letter, they receive a telegram from Rosamond to return quickly: Margaret has fallen down the well—

—Quick, Lassie! Timmy’s in the well! Go fetch the doctor!—

—and hurt her head and Joy needs her. Joy had been showing Ivor around the secret passages under the Abbey and the twins followed them and started larking about. Margaret fell into the well and Elizabeth jumped in after her, most fortunately, as there was water at the bottom of it. Elizabeth held up Margaret’s head until rescue comes. The girls race back to England. Maidlin feels that if she had been there the accident wouldn’t have happened, but both Rosamund and Gail scout that idea—it was Joy’s fault for not paying attention. All explanations are made and fences mended. Rosamund is engaged. She tells Gail that a school is moving in to the big house near the Rose and Squirrel teashop/crafts store. There is another little cottage nearby that Rosamund wishes to use as the school “tuck shop” where the students can buy sweets and ice cream. She offers Gail the position of tuck shop lady, and Gail accepts.

For Folk Dancers

Nada. But do not lose heart. The next installment will include quite a lot.

Elsie J. Oxenham and A23_Maidlin to the Rescue; A Story of the Abbey Girls

By Leave a Comment

Published in 1934, this installment takes place just before A22_Rosamund’s Victory. Like its two predecessors, Maidlin to the Rescue has the subtitle that provides the important information that this is part of the Abbey series. The book serves as an installment that shows Maidlin becoming more mature and capable. It also has the important role of introducing two teenaged girls who can be heroines for a couple of stories until the second generation grows old enough to be viable heroines.

There is no folk dancing until the last two pages.

Plot Synopsis (Contains Spoilers)

The story opens with Rachel (sixteen and a half) and Damaris (fifteen and a half) Ellerton out on the Yorkshire fells (hills) somberly discussing their plight—their aunt died suddenly several days earlier and they haven’t heard from their father, who has been in America for about eight years, in some time. They have no money and cannot go back to the school they love. Rachel is concerned that her sister needs more education, but Damaris is keen to get a job. They are presently living at a nearby farm as they can’t live alone at the family farm, Crossrigs.

They discuss selling the farm, but can’t bear to let it go out of the family. They talk about their wealthy cousin, Madalena di Ravarati, who has never written to them or visited them. The more impetuous Rachel thinks that she looks down on them, although Damaris suggests that perhaps she doesn’t know about their existence, as they arrived at the farm after she had left. They recall that their aunt had been recently visited by a Miss Baldry, who was opening a tea shop halfway up the mountain and who had mentioned that she needed help. They determine to run away and work for her rather than have cousin Maidlin take pity on them.

With Rachel in the lead, they write a rather nasty note to their cousin which in effect says that they are poor but don’t want her help in any way—however if she wishes to buy or rent the farm she may and their father will pay her back when he returns. They also write to the lawyer and the woman that they are staying with that they have gone to get a job.

They drag themselves up the mountain, wearing their “fell-running” shorts, and arrive at dawn, finding Miss Baldry’s house to be much smaller and dingier than Rachel’s imagination had painted. She feeds them and agrees to take them in on trial. Damaris laughingly says that the place should be called “Hiker’s Halt,” and Miss Baldry agrees and says that she wants the girls to wear their shorts when waiting on customers. This distresses Rachel very much. With the hard physical work and Miss Baldry’s unpleasant personality, both girls are soon very unhappy and realize that they have made a mistake, but don’t know what to do about it. As they move their things in, a paper containing Madalena’s address fluttered out of Rachel’s Bible and she replaces it under Miss Baldry’s eagle eye.

At the Abbey, Maidlin is very surprised to receive a telegram from a lawyer saying that the girls had run away. What girls? She questions her Aunt Ann Watson, who is sick in bed with bronchitis and a kind of depression, with something on her mind, and Ann finally confesses that, a year after Maidlin left the farm, her younger brother brought his daughters there to live while he went back to America to seek his fortune. She was anxious to keep Maidlin in the better social atmosphere of the Abbey and the Hall, so she said nothing about the changes in the family. Ann also reveals that, before she died, her estranged sister on the farm sent her word that the father was dead and that there was no money. Maidlin is stunned to realize that she has relatives on her mother’s side other than Aunt Ann. She then receives the girls’ rather horrible letter and tells Jen that she must go to help them. But where are they?

In the meantime, Miss Baldry, aware that the girls dislike her and that she has mismanaged them and they might run away, copies Maidlin’s address from the paper in the Bible and writes to her. She is hoping for a reward. Maidlin receives the letter and discusses it with Jen and here we get some strange and conflicting responses.  “Oh, the rotter!” they say of Miss Baldry, figuring that she must have obtained the address by going through the girls’ things (just not done, my dear!) and that she is giving them away behind their backs (jolly bad form!). However, in the next breath Jen points out that it will make it easier to find them! And to our modern eyes, Miss Baldry is doing the right thing in informing a relative of the minor children’s whereabouts.

Lady Jen Marchwood, leaving her husband at home to worry over the babies and croup (no one has had it yet, but he worries anyway), escorts Maidlin to Yorkshire, driven by Henderson the chauffeur, even though his wife is expecting a baby (isn’t there an under-chauffeur?). They stop at the Halt several times, not revealing who they are, and find the girls to be delightful. On one visit a group of ten hikers show up and Jen laughingly refers to herself and Maidlin as the Brown and Primrose Queens but does not reveal their real names. The pair pitch in to cut bread and make sandwiches.

The next day, Jen hears that the baby does have croup, and races home on the train. Maidlin goes to the Halt and reveals who she is and that she hadn’t known of the girls’ existence. She has quite a tantrum of angry sobbing about the nastiness of the letter, and it convinces Rachel and Damaris that they have made a mistake. They agree to go with her and Maidlin gives Miss Baldry ten pounds. The cousins are reconciled and Maid suggests that Rachel could train to be her secretary now that Biddy is married to her Frenchman, and that Damaris might learn to keep bees on the farm.

For Folk Dancers

Virtually nothing. The day after the girls all arrive back at Abinger Hall it is the Marchwood twins’ sixth birthday. At the party they dance Brighton Camp, Haste to the Wedding, Galopede (all easy dances suitable for children) and the singing game A-hunting we will go. They conclude with Sellenger’s Round, with the twins in the center, gravely bobbing curtseys to the dancers.

 

Elsie J. Oxenham and A22_Rosamund’s Victory; A Romance of the Abbey Girls

By 2 Comments

Published in 1933, Rosamund’s Victory, subtitled “A Romance of the Abbey Girls,” is set in February to March of 1929 and occurs immediately after A20_The Abbey Girls on Trial, and semi-concurrently with A21_Biddy’s Secret. It is an important installment in the story because it introduces the Kane family and its complicated family tree. It also a showcase for Rosamund Kane, who is, as I have mentioned, my favorite of the heroines. Here we see her loving, attentive, and determined—a strong character going through some challenging times and winning through.

There is no folk dancing, alas. Too many more important things going on.

Plot Synopsis (Contains Spoilers)

Two young women wearing leather coats and broad-brimmed hats stop outside a duplex cottage called The Rose and Squirrel that offers teas and lunches and hand-crafted goods. They are Lisabel Durrant and Rena Mackay—remember them? We met them in A12_Jen of the Abbey School—and they are trained gardeners who are going to put the garden of an empty nearby estate in order. They beg for tea and then for beds for the night from Rosamund Kane. Tall, pretty and blonde, 23-year old Rosamund tells them that she is expecting a baby in a day or two—hearty laugh!—he is her “step-brother” (half-brother) and is six weeks old and will be coming to live with her shortly. A year or so prior to the opening of this story, Rosamund’s 60-year old father married Eleanor, the middle of three young sisters, two of whom Audrey and Elspeth, keep The Squirrel (the tea house) while Rosamund runs The Rose (the craft shop). Rosamund somewhat jokingly refers to them as her aunts. Eleanor and the baby are currently in London. [Read more…]

Elsie J. Oxenham and A21_Biddy’s Secret; A Romance of the Abbey Girls

By 1 Comment

This is a MOST PECULIAR BOOK, by EJO’s standards. It is the only one in the canon that hints that a baby carriage could precede a marriage. Biddy’s Secret has the subtitle—and this might be the only subtitle in all her works—“A Romance of the Abbey Girls,” indicating that it is aimed at the older reader. In fact, the romance is not Biddy’s but that of Ruth Devine, her cousin. This installment includes threatened murder-suicide, spousal abandonment and proposed child abandonment, a reference to “white slavery,” which was the pre-WWII term for sex trafficking, deception, and references to devious Frenchmen who lead English girls astray by pretending to marry them in an unofficial ceremony. I meant it when I said it was peculiar!

In the last installment we saw Maidlin shattered at being, as she saw it, rejected by her beloved Rosamund. She has used Ros as a shield between herself and the world though in past episodes she has also been shown as able to cope if the situation really calls for it. For several installments Oxenham has been carefully setting up Maidlin’s Problem; now we will have its resolution. Jen Robins, now Lady Marchwood (one of two, recall?), is one of the few people who perceive that shy, dependent Maidlin has yet to find the key to adulthood—and that that key is someone else’s need for her.

First published in 1932, the book takes place in February and April, 1929, partly concurrent with A22_Rosamund’s Victory. The cover illustration above shows Ruth Devine at Abinger Hall, going out to pick flowers with the Marchwood twins to send to poor children in London.

There is nothing in this book for folk dancers, except the observation that country dancing from a young age gives one exceptional grace and posture. You can stop reading now if you like.

Plot Synopsis (Contains Spoilers)

The story opens with the device that EJO often uses: that of introducing a girl who is not the main heroine but to whom all the back-story will be told or who will interact in a meaningful, though short-term way with the main heroines. Ruth Devine, Mary-Dorothy’s and Bridget (Biddy)’s cousin, is finally back in England. Diamonds have been found on the family farm in South Africa and she is now wealthy and able to travel. When the story begins, she is visiting friends whom she made on-board ship, but soon decides to leave them as she fears that the son of the house is going to propose to her and she doesn’t like him “that way.” She goes to the Abbey to find Maidlin unhappy at being continually called “babe,” “infant,” or “little one,” by Joy, in particular, but also by Rosamund. Joy keeps her adopted daughter swaddled in cotton-wool (a precursor of how she will treat her actual children). Maidlin feels that she has been too sheltered—she’d like to go get a job for a year and learn to live on her income. She wants to know how regular girls live, so that she can better manage her eventual inheritance. Joy squashes this idea. Maidlin, accompanied by Mary-Dorothy, was to visit her estates in Italy—but Mary, visiting Joan Raymond’s family, is in quarantine with them for mumps that one of the children picked up. (Oh, those quarantines—so useful for writers! We know all about quarantines now, don’t we? Only in the books they end after a few weeks so the characters can get on with their lives.) Ruth offers to accompany Maidlin to Paris—from there, the latter will go on to Italy.

While on the train, Ruth confides that she is going to meet another set of friends, Americans, whom she met on the ship—and this one has a son of the house whom she hopes will propose to her. During their Channel crossing, Maidlin confesses that she intends to run away from Joy and the Abbey—she will ask Biddy to help her find a job and live as ordinary girls do for a year. She wants to give the part of her that is the daughter of a north country housemaid a chance to grow. Ruth reluctantly agrees to support her in this endeavor, and gives good advice about trying to be less sensitive and to be more grownup. In the morning Ralph Norman meets the girls at the train and is charming in the “aw, shucks, ma’am” way that English authors used between the wars to represent quaint Americanisms. Maidlin travels on to Aix, where Biddy is at present, and when she gets there, she is met by a strange young woman with a note from Biddy asking her to come to her, as she is ill and needs help. For a moment she fears that the woman is a White Slaver (a sex trafficker—and boy, howdy, is this a jarring touch of reality in this series? White Slavery was indeed a preoccupation of the Twenties and Thirties but there is no precedent for it in EJO’s works), but the use of “Biddums” as the signature reassures her. She follows Annette Pernet to her home in the village of Annecy where she finds Biddy—with a baby! Practically the first words out of Biddy’s mouth are: “I’m married.” This statement suggests that both girls are aware that babies can come without marriage.

Biddy had married Claude Verdier, the nephew of the owner of the firm that she worked for, and there was a big row. The family have long considered nephew Claude a “rotter,” and the owner’s son, Etienne, had also been interested in Biddy, though she was unaware of this. Biddy’s head was turned by Claude’s charms; the fact that she would also become a member of the wealthy family was another allurement—she has always had an eye “for the main chance,” and this flaw has betrayed her. Within a few weeks of the marriage he tired of her and went off to South America. Though this point is not mentioned, he is a Catholic, and divorce is not an option.  Monsieur Verdier senior fired Biddy, and she went to Annecy where she has been waitressing for Mme. Pernet. Her letters to and from the family have been secretly forwarded by a friend in Lyons, so that no one actually knows where she is. She has lied to Joy and Mary and the others for more than nine months. Incroyable! This secret is difficult for the reader of today to understand:  we have to understand that Biddy is aware of her flaw of trying to get ahead, that she regretted her hasty marriage and was embarrassed to mention both it and her rapid abandonment by her husband, and then there is the baby.

Biddy is not making a good recovery. The Pernets at first fear that Maidlin is too childish to help, but she calms Biddy and becomes a tower of strength. In the throes of what we now call post-partum depression, Biddy threatens to throw herself and the baby out the window if Maidlin doesn’t keep her secret. We see Maidlin quietly and courageously taking control of the situation; she agrees to tell Joy and Mary that Biddy has simply been ill, and that she is going to stay for a while and nurse her, but she is determined to take Biddy and the baby back to England and the Hall. Biddy considers leaving the baby with the Pernets and only visiting her occasionally, but Maidlin won’t allow this. Maidlin asks Biddy if she was “properly” married, as she has heard of French men falsely arranging marriages, and Biddy says that she is sure of it. Maidlin is very sure that Biddy married Claude in order to get an in to the family—she has always been keen to “get on” in life.

While Biddy—whom the Pernets call Madame Bidet, and if you don’t think this is both hilarious and linguistically inconceivable, I do! What was Elsie thinking?—is recuperating, Maidlin gamely pitches in to help the Pernets, waitressing one day when Annette has a migraine. Here she encounters an English family with a young son who admires her (they are not named now, but we will encounter them some episodes ahead—a good example of how EJO recycled characters to weave them into future novels). The Frenchmen in the café much admire her beauty and look at her with Hungry Eyes, and she is forced to spill hot soup on one of them. Even though she is petite, pretty, and girlish-looking, we see that Maidlin can take care of herself! (Left: Maidlin, with a daffodil in her hair, must go back to the English family to retake their order.)

Troubled by her burdens, Maidlin seeks and receives help from God (not named as such, but obvious). She decides that a letter conveying the news to Joy and to Biddy’s sister Mary is insufficient; that Biddy needs to tell her story in person. Maidlin persuades Biddy to go to England—just as she reluctantly agrees, they find out that the Verdiers have put an announcement in The Times asking for “Biddy Devine who married Claude Verdier at Lyons on April 30th, last” to communicate with the family firm. Telegrams start flying: “Is she married?” Chapters eighteen through twenty are titled: Ruth Asks a Question, Rosamund Asks a Question, Everybody Asks Questions. Since the announcement clearly referred to a marriage, what they must be asking is really “is the marriage valid?” There is an element in this questioning that shows that they are aware that Biddy is impulsive and on the make.

Hot-headed Joy is very angry at not hearing the news of the marriage directly from Maidlin, but sensible Jen talks her around. Jen is also the only one to foresee that there might be a baby. The two girls and baby travel back to England. Biddy funks confessing herself, and Maidlin says that she’ll help but that it would be better for Biddy to do it. At the last moment, as the car pulls up to Abinger Hall, Biddy thrusts the baby into Maid’s hands and goes in and confesses.

Everyone makes up and they all sense a difference in Maidlin. She is much more mature. She confesses to Joy that she had planned to run away—to have Biddy find her a job in Lyons and not come back to the Hall for a year. Joy is heart-broken to realize that she does not understand her “first baby.” Wise up, Joy! You don’t understand anybody!

Everyone thinks that Biddy can no longer be Maid’s future secretary, both because of needing to take care of the baby and because her hasty marriage and her concealment of it show that she is irresponsible. Maidlin remains firm that she wants Biddy—however, the Verdier’s news comes that Claude is dead and that Etienne, the son of the firm, actually went all the way to South America to confirm this, believing it possible that Claude would fake the news. Etienne writes that perhaps they can meet again in a few years—and Biddy confesses to Maidlin (again) that she is interested in him. Sir Kenneth Marchwood agrees to be the baby’s godfather and the wealthy heiress Maidlin is the godmother, so Biddy, still with her eye to the main chance, has done well for her baby. Poor Biddy! There are a couple of brief mentions of her in later installments, but she basically fades out of the picture with her fault acknowledged but essentially un-remediated.

For Folk Dancers

There is no dancing. Maidlin sings Way, Way, Edward, Lord Rendal, As I walked out one May morning, The Keeper did a-shooting go, I spent all my money ‘long o’ Sally Brown, and O Shanadar, I love your daughter—the last is really Shenandoah—EJO’s phonetic spelling with the English accent of the “r” added to a word ending with a vowel shows that she heard this song but never saw the words.

Elsie J. Oxenham and A20_The Abbey Girls on Trial

By Leave a Comment

Published in 1931 and taking place from June of 1928 through February of 1929, A20_The Abbey Girls on Trial is the real beginning of Rosamund Kane’s Cinderella story. Rosamund is my favorite of the Abbey heroines: she is tall, fair, pretty as an English rose, sturdy, both physically and emotionally, compassionate, well-disciplined, determined, plucky, friendly, jolly, and kind. Unlike Joan, Joy, Jen, and Maidlin, who either inherit or marry money (or both), Rosamund must earn her eventual good fortune and happy ending. She also becomes one of the strongest exemplars of the spirit of the Abbey.

You may recall that she came to the Abbey as a fifteen-year-old boarder while she attended Miss Macey’s School. There is family in the background, but we hear little of them until, when Rosamund is eighteen, her mother is taken ill and goes to Sir Rennie Brown’s sanatorium in the Alps, where she dies, presumably of T.B. Rosamund’s father remains in Ceylon and we hear nothing about nor from him.

In the last few installments, Rosamund has begun to exhibit feelings of restlessness at living at Abinger Hall with Lady Joy and Maidlin, essentially doing nothing. She is a go-getter and wants to do something meaningful, not just teaching folk dancing to the villagers. She says that she wants a “future,” not just a change. In this installment we will see her on her way. This is a fun read for older girls, with lots of details about furnishing the cottage and finding the crafts for sale. We are also seeing—more clearly than with Joy, Joan, and Jen—the younger girls modeling their growth into adulthood and—in later episodes—romance.

Rosamund and Maidlin are the two Abbey Girls who are most clearly “on trial” in this episode—they are faced with challenges and problems and even the potential of a rift in their deep friendship. But the two Abbott sisters are also on trial to make a success of their tea house and their lives, while Lady Joy continues to be challenged to reach out and have empathy for others.

Above: the cover illustration shows Audrey (weeping) and Eleanor Abbott of the Squirrel House. Audrey is weeping because the work and responsibility is too much for her. On the spine we see Rosamund entering both the tea house and their story.

Other than a mention of The Geud Man of Ballangigh, there is nothing for folk dancers in this episode—although I have some jolly links to clips at the foot of this article, so go check them out if nothing else!

Plot Summary (Contains Spoilers)

The novel opens with sisters Audrey, 29, and Elspeth, 19, Abbott, who run a tea shop in the country called the Squirrel House. The burden of running it falls on Audrey, as Elspeth is dreamy, forgetful, and shy. One day they receive a letter from their middle sister, Eleanor, 22, who has been visiting posh friends in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). She announces that she has just married a 60-year-old man, a Mr. Kane. The girls are stunned and disgusted. The letter also says that Mr. Kane has a 22-year old daughter who is living in England with her friends. They are intrigued and wonder if she’ll want to be a sister to them, since Eleanor is such a gold-digging slacker—but then they remember that they are now this new girl’s aunts!

Mrs. Joan Raymond comes late that day to ask for tea for herself and Rosamund and Maidlin—Joan has come from her home where her daughter has come down with measles—measles again! the Scourge of the series!—and the two younger girls come from the Hall, where the precious Marchwood twins are four and can’t be allowed to get infected. (Lady Joy is a helicopter mother.) Lady Jen Robins Marchwood has just had her third baby, Rosemary Jane, and they want to talk the happy event over. Shy Elspeth is a little frightened of tall, commanding Rosamund, and Maidlin observes out loud that Elspeth has been crying—whereupon she flees into the woods. Maidlin goes to apologize, and we see how gentle and kind she is with girls in need; she is indeed a good Camp Fire Guardian. Neither of the younger visitors is introduced to the Abbotts.

A few days later Rosamund receives a letter from her father in Ceylon announcing his marriage to a girl her own age. She is quite crushed—she doesn’t have much affection for her father, since he has not troubled himself to see her for many years, but she had been planning to go out to keep house for him when he asked for her. She is disgusted by the thought of Beautiful Girl, as she calls Eleanor (it is how her father called her when he first met her), marrying an old man. She goes to the Abbey to seek spiritual consolation.

Rosamund tells Maidlin and Jen that this marriage changes everything—she can’t go on saying at the Hall marking time and teaching country dancing. She has some money from her mother and an allowance from her father but she needs a purpose in life. Maidlin gleefully tells Jen that what Rosamund wants is to keep a shop—with things in cardboard boxes! She wants to sell good, handmade crafts. They talk further about Beautiful Girl and the news that she has two sisters.

The two Abbott girls write to “Miss Kane,” inviting her to come meet them and make friends. Elspeth includes a sweet note illustrated with squirrels. Rosamund is overjoyed to find that “those jolly girls” at the Squirrel House are now related to her. Maidlin, introverted, immature, and dependent for so long on her beloved Rosamund, is very afraid that she will leave and go live with the “squirrel girls”—everyone else thinks that this separation would be good for Maidlin, who uses Ros as a shield against the world. With her usual lack of insight, Joy tells Rosamund that she is selfish for putting her own wishes to run a shop ahead of Joy’s, Maid’s and Jen’s wish to retain her at the Hall. Rosamund is crushed, but Mary Devine talks Joy out of her position, saying that it would be selfish of Joy to insist.

Rosamund sends the car to bring the Abbotts to the Hall—they are very nervous but impressed and are all happy to be introduced to each other. The three of them drive back to the Squirrel House and the Abbotts invite Rosamund to take the other half of the cottage for her crafts shop. The second half will be called the Rose.

A few days later, however, Rosamund receives a letter from her father that cuts off her allowance, as he now has a wife to support (she is apparently more expensive that Rosamund’s mother had been; also, the un-named business has been bad for years). She talks to the Abbotts, who find a solution—Rosamund will work for them as waitress/cook; they’ll share food expenses; they can work it out. Plus, Rosamund’s half of the cottage has a lavish fruit garden—they’ll sell raspberries and jam and flowers. Audrey suggests that in winter, Rosamund should take up her father’s offer of a little more education and take a good cookery class in London to earn a certificate. Joy is upset that a girl of Rosamund’s “personality and education” should be reduced to washing cups and picking berries. Rosamund responds: “‘The first thing for a girl of my personality and education—if they really exist—to do, is to show that she can keep herself and pay her way. I’ve let Father pay for me too long. Bu I felt he was responsible for me, and so long as he could to it, it was right that he should. Now I intend to look after myself.’ (192)” Everyone bucks up and offers to help. Joy says she’ll keep Rosamund’s room ready at the Hall for whenever she wants to visit and Rosamund is very touched. Everyone goes to visit the Rose and Squirrel and Sir Ken Marchwood offers to have the cottage white-washed and a bath installed.

Some weeks pass and Maidlin goes to visit, finding Rosamund in the kitchen picking currants off the stems. She tells Maid that she went to see a young man crippled in a motor-bike accident who carves little wooden animals. “‘When I asked him if he’d let me show a few and try to sell them for him, his mother broke down and cried. I nearly wept myself at sight of his face. It’s not so much the money, though they’ll be glad of it: but he’ll feel he’s of some use to his people if he can sell his carvings. It was like new life to him.’ (210)” We saw Rosamund selflessly helping Cecily Perowne in the last installment; now we see her well-launched on caring for the village people around her.

Above: Unclear! Dark hair usually means Maidlin and long fair hair Rosamund. Perhaps they are tootling along to the Rose and Squirrel? Note the open car, the necessary furs and cloche hats and the somewhat earlier fashion of this cover from the one at the top of the post. The luggage is in the “dickey” in the back.

Maidlin asks for advice about her Camp Fire girls, but Rosamund refuses to give any—she wants Maid to stand on her own feet. Maidlin feels lost and rejected. The two drift apart as the months pass. In a most unusual fashion, Lady Joy goes to Rosamund and asks what is going on. The conversation is not a success. Jen then talks to Joy and diagnoses that Rosamund tried to shut the door a little, so that Maidlin would learn to run her own Camp Fire, but that Maidlin responded by closing the door firmly and locking it, leaving Rosamund lonely and bewildered. Maidlin has yet to resolve her Character Problems of excessive hero worship of Joy and dependency on Ros. Jen scolds Joy for scolding Rosamund. Joy wonders why she doesn’t see things as clearly as Jen, who responds that she trusts people more than Joy does. “‘I trust the good in them.’ (253)”

Jen visits Rosamund, who is packing to go make apologies to Maidlin, and counsels her. Rosamund has been a little too abrupt in trying to make Maidlin grow up. They talk about jobs and the importance of sticking to them, and the jobs that the Abbey Girls hold. Rosamund and Maidlin are reconciled.

Rosamund receives word that her father has died. Some days later, Maidlin, Joy, and Jen visit the Rose and Squirrel to find Audrey and Rosamund packing to go to Malta (which is in the Mediterranean—the ship has gone through the Suez Canal), with Elspeth going to stay with an old lady in the village as they can’t afford three tickets. En route by ship home, Mrs. Kane has given birth to young Roderick Kane, and the girls are traveling to help her bring the baby to England. Feeling certain that Beautiful Girl will spoil the baby, Rosamund wants to claim her half-brother and adopt him. She wants him to be brought up right, in England, and hints at a deeper importance of this action.

For Folk Dancers

The only mention of dancing is that Lady Joy Marchwood teaches The Geud Man of Ballangigh to her Ranger group—the older teenage Guides. Excellent choice! Compared to the challenging set dances that the girls typically engage in, Geud Man is a great dance for beginners: the pattern is easily grasped, it is easy for the pairs of dancers to help each other, and it has a jolly tune. It is a longways dance from the tenth edition of Playford (1698), and Cecil Sharp published it in the Country Dance Book VI in 1922, two years before his death.

Here is a very nice short instrumental clip played by Les Triolets

And here is Seth Tepfer & the Syncopaths playing it for a dance weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a fun clip.

 

Elsie J. Oxenham and A19_The Abbey Girls Play Up

By Leave a Comment

Set in May through July of 1927, three years after the last installment, and published in 1930, A19_The Abbey Girls Play Up is light in tone but discusses serious issues of duty and responsibility. Our heroines have uttered the phrases “play the game” and “play up” in the series before but we haven’t paid much attention to the words—perhaps we haven’t understood them and are wondering what game is being referred to. But here the phrase “play up” takes on titular importance. It is a reference to the famous poem by Sir Henry John Newbolt titled “Vitaḯ Lampada,” meaning “the torch of life.” The poem tells how a schoolboy, a future soldier, learns selfless commitment to duty in cricket matches in the famous Close at Clifton College. The poem was written in 1892 and refers to the Battle of Abu Klea in Sudan in January 1885 during the unsuccessful expedition to rescue General Gordon. Here’s Newbolt’s poem:

There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”

 

The sand of the desert is sodden red,—
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;—
The Gatling‘s jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”

 

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind—
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”

The poem was widely admired at first, but during and after World War I was satirized. The phrase play up and play the game appears in many fictional works, including Stalky & Co. (published in 1899 in book form after having been previously serialized) by Rudyard Kipling and numerous works by P.G. Wodehouse, who started his career writing short stories for boys’ magazines. I think it is likely that Elsie Oxenham, whose father John Oxenham was a successful inspirational and religious writer, had met Newbolt, as London literary circles were small. John Oxenham wrote several of the poems that Camp Fire leaders used when lighting the fire or engaging in other ritual activities. And, of course, to create a new Camp Fire circle (consisting of a Guardian and at least six girls), Maribel passes the torch to the new leader, Maidlin.

In The Abbey Girls Play Up, several of the inner circle are faced with challenges and must play up and rise to the occasion. While feeling inadequate, unprepared, or unsuited for the challenge, they consciously take on new duties. They say that because they have so much—referring to money, but also to joy in dancing and beauty—they feel that they must share it with those who have less. Shy Mary Devine is asked to lead a Sunday School class for girls and, though she is very uncertain about her ability to do so, agrees. Jen Marchwood is shown as bustling about as Lady of the Manor, opening fêtes and hospitals and doing all the public work that the villages around ask of her. Jen also forces Joy, in her third year of widowhood, to take on duties and not be a shirker—Joy eventually takes on the leadership of a Ranger group (the older girl Guides). Maidlin thinks that she ought to lead on a Guide group because there is a need for a new village activity but hates the thought of Guiding—she eventually starts a Camp Fire for the younger girls of the village. And Rosamund provides the happy ending. That the Abbey Girls “play up” mean that they face and take on responsibilities, act with honor and courage, and contribute to life and the world around them.

In the previous installment we were shocked to hear that Joy, a recent widow, Jen, expecting her first baby, and Mary-Dorothy, newly serious about her writing, all felt that dancing wasn’t as important to them as it had been; that it was a pleasant activity, but not the most important thing in life. Either readers complained or Elsie Oxenham realized that she could not let the folk dancing aspect of her series vanish, so A19_The Abbey Girls Play Up returns Jen, Mary, and Joan to folk dancing.

The illustration shows Maribel (blonde plaits) passing the torch to Maidlin as a new Camp Fire is created. The younger girls have not yet made their gowns or begun earning honors.

Plot Synopsis (Contains Spoilers)

The story opens with fifteen-year-old Cecily Brown in despair because she has been told by Sarah, the caregiver with whom she boards, that she is not allowed to go folk-dancing that night: Sarah thinks that Cecily was rude to Joan Raymond, the teacher, at the last session. Sarah, who is a lower-class villager (see below), doesn’t understand Cecily who is very emotional and gets worked up by the dancing. Cecily is a fifteen-year-old orphan who first appeared two years earlier in A Camp Mystery (1932) as a spy for the bad guys. Known as Cécile Le Brun, she is part-English by birth but was kidnapped at the age of three or four by the bad guys who put her in a French convent until they needed her for their nefarious deeds. (A Camp Mystery is EJO’s worst book and the plot is pretty unintelligible, suffice it to say that it is set in Switzerland.) There she met Girl Guide leaders Maribel Ritchie and Rosalind Firth, who eventually took her under their wing and “adopted” her. Cecily has brown eyes and unusual, dark red hair with bangs cut straight across her forehead. Maribel and Rosalind have sent her to England to study and get acclimated to English life.

The debacle happened in the dance Mage on a Cree. Cecily tells the dancers how to do it better (more detail below). The other adults think that Cecily was rude to Joan, but Joan understands Cecily’s passion for dancing. Sarah is firm that Cecily can’t dance until her guardian Maribel has ok’d it. Jen, now Lady Marchwood, came to the class Cecily missed and played her tin whistle. Deeply unhappy at missing this treat, Cecily buys one and tries to play: she has a good ear and soon picks out the tunes of We won’t go home till morning, Rufty Tufty, The Butterfly, and The Old Mole.

Maribel and Rosalind, both in their Guide uniforms, show up and discuss Cecily’s future–they can’t provide more education for her: she must become a typist or a cook. They hear Cecily ‘s playing and are impressed. Sarah tells them that she can’t do anything with Cecily on folk dance nights as she gets so worked up. Cecily explains that she just couldn’t bear to see the pattern of the dance messed up. The girls decide to go and see Mrs. Raymond, who lives at Rayley Hall, about 30 miles from our usual locations of Abinger Hall and Marchwood Manor. Cecily’s guardians realize that school hasn’t been enough for Cecily—the country dancing is fulfilling something deep inside her, and that she needs music in her life. They also meet her friend, Mrs. Sandy Alexander, a young widowed violinist. Sandy tells Cecily her life story and we appreciate that she has also “played the game,” abandoning her dreams of music school to care for her ill mother.

Maribel, Rosalind, and Cecily are absorbed into the Abbey Girls clan, meeting the Dowager Lady Marchwood (Joy Shirley) and Lady Marchwood (Jen Robbins), known informally and incorrectly as Lady Joy and Lady Jen. Both ladies have two babies. Jen invites the three girls to stay at the Manor one weekend where Maribel meets Mike Marchwood, Sir Kenneth’s cousin. Mike is a Boy Scout leader supervising a camp nearby. Much is made of the two Guides and Scout Mike “saluting” each other’s uniforms. Maidlin confesses to Maribel and Rosalind that she feels that she should lead a Guide group but that she hates the thought of it—they tell her she shouldn’t do it if she doesn’t love it. They tell her about the American Camp Fire movement.

—I’ll go into this more in future posts, but a simplified way to think about Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and Camp Fire in the early days of the movements is that the Scouts and the Guides were almost para-military, or more accurately, pre-military groups, while Camp Fire was romantic. Guides/Scouts wore “smart” uniforms, even in the street, saluted when they met or parted, earned titles such as “Captain” and “Colonel,” carried the flag of their unit or company as well as the nation’s flag, and learned, among other things, “wig-wag” (semaphore) and Morse code. Camp Fire girls learned songs and poetry, made and embroidered their own gowns and headbands (which they did not wear in the street), and took on Native American-style names. Camp Fire “ranks” are symbolic: from Wood-Gatherer to Fire-Lighter to Torch-Bearer. Both groups engaged in hiking, camping, and other healthful activities, and earned badges (Guides/Scouts) or honors/beads (Camp Fire), for learning skills or passing tests of discipline. Elsie Oxenham was both a Guardian and a Guide leader. It is clear that her sympathies lean towards the more spiritual Camp Fire, but that she recognized that more English girls would have access to or interest in the Guiding movement. In the Abbey Girls series, the more masterful Joy is active in the Guides, while intense and romantic Maidlin, Camp Fire. In non-Abbey Girl books, Camp Fire tends to be more frequently represented. In Maribel’s back-story books, the Camp Keema series, the differences between the two movements threatened to divide the school and actually do divide friends.—

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Devine, Lady Jen, Joan Raymond, and Maidlin are all presented as having (unpaid) jobs such as teaching dancing. Mary agonizes over taking on the challenge of teaching a village girls’ Sunday school class; Maidlin agonizes over taking on leading a Girl Guide group. Lady Jen is busy representing “The Manor” while opening bazaars, fêtes and hospitals. Only Lady Joy, still wearing black and mourning her husband after three years, does nothing much for anyone, yet there is a need in the village for a leader of a group of older Girl Guides, known as Rangers.

Lady Jen tackles Joy’s problem head-on by reminding her that her twin girls will soon notice that their mother does nothing compared to all the “Aunties,” and that soon they will be out dancing and doing things and Joy will left to sit at home alone. She urges Joy not simply to give money, which is easy for her, but to give of herself.  In this discussion, Jen does not refer to the concept of “playing-up,” but it is clearly implied. Joy visits Sandy Alexander and realizes that here is another young widow who is doing more than she is. Joy is struck by this and agrees to be the Ranger leader.

On a second visit to the Marchwoods, Maribel takes her Camp Fire gown and beads. Wearing them—and with her hair down!—and thinking that none of the gentlemen are at home, she goes down to the drawing room to show Maidlin—and there is Scout Mike, in his Scout shorts! Pretty soon he is looking at her with Hungry Eyes, and we all know what that means! Maribel is presented as Kataga or “the Stormy Waves” of Camp Keema, the Camp that faces the Wind. Though she had not yet officially joined the group, Rosalind was to take on the name of Senhalonee, the Builder. It is clear that the names reflect their characters and/or aspirations.

Maribel passes the torch of the new Camp Fire to Maidlin, who will be its Guardian. The Camp is Waditaka, the Adventurous Camp, the Camp of Brave People. Maidlin takes on the name of Nawadaha, the Singer, and Cecily that of Wopida, Gratitude. Jen takes a photo of the event, which she sends to Rosamund Kane, who is in Switzerland visiting friends at the Platz, the sanatorium in the Alps. There is a long description of the village Whit-Monday day celebration with all, regardless of age or rank, dancing together. Maribel teaches Mike to dance and he enjoys it thoroughly.

Lady Joy discovers Cecily’s musical talents and offers her a place in her music school. Maribel and Mike are matched up. Rosamund suddenly provides a happy ending:  when she saw the photo of the Camp Fire, she instantly recognized that one girl must be the daughter of a patient—she also has distinctive red hair with bangs cut straight across the forehead, proving that haircuts are hereditary. The woman, Mrs. Perowne, is a musician whose husband died, and whose baby was kidnapped. Rosamund comes to England to make sure and of course it is Cecily. In the true Abbey fashion of helpfulness, Rosamund escorts Cecily to Switzerland and Lady Joy offers Sandy Alexander a place in the music school.

The story concludes with Rosamund Kane telling Maidlin that she herself feels useless just living at the Hall. While everyone is kind to her, she needs a purpose in life that is more than teaching country-dancing. She wants to be out and doing something, a theme that will be further explored in the next few episodes.

For Folk Dancers

As mentioned previously, EJO had a conflicted approach to class and folk dance, and this installment shows both of her approaches. There is an idyllic set piece of everyone—Hall and village—dancing on Whit Monday. One of tall Lady Jen’s partners is a little girl who sent a note to the Manor to ask Jen to dance with her, and Jen, when telling her friends about it, refers to the girl as “only” village. While the little girl and Jen are charming together, it is a bit of a nails-on-the-blackboard moment. At other points in the story, Cecily and Joan note that the Women’s Institute dancers are generally “heavy” and graceless, and they don’t focus well on the details of the complicated Playford-style set dances that Joan teaches. They enjoy the dancing, but they just don’t “get it” the way Cecily, who comes from a middle-class background, does.

Craving music, Cecily has sought comfort from “Little” Sandy Alexander, the violinist. She attended one class and played The Old Mole with such spirit that Cecily danced better than before. She begs Joan to have Sandy play for all the classes, but Joan can’t just chuck the faithful pianist, even though she plays very heavily. Joan gives the pianist hints like “‘Play it like music! Phrase it more! Don’t be so particular to accent the beat!’”

Cecily’s trouble came from bad dancing in the three-couple dance Mage on a Cree, another complicated Playford-style dance.

“They [the Women’s Institute] would turn the wrong way, backwards, to make the ring, and it’s hideous. I said it ought to be on, not back; a turn and a half, like you do in ‘Old Mole.’ It’s ugly; it spoils the pattern; and they would do it. Mrs. Raymond [Joan] kept shouting ‘Right turn! Back turn!’ but they wouldn’t listen. I was frantic; I was a woman, so I didn’t have to do it. It drove me wild to see them messing it up; and—and I dashed at them and shoved them round the other way, and Mrs. Green says I yelled: ‘That way, idiots!’ I’m certain I never did. But they didn’t like it; they were mad. And—and Mrs. Raymond said I’d better leave the teaching to her, as I was so much the youngest in the class. She laughed, when she said it; she wasn’t a scrap upset. But I was all worked up, and I said something back to her. I’m sure I only said: ‘But you can’t do it all. You can’t see four sets at once. And they don’t listen to you!’”

This excerpt puzzles me and I feel that Cecily and her creator are making two uncharacteristic errors.  The first is that there is no back-circle in The Old Mole. The second is that when the men form the back-circle, they do not do “a turn and a half”—they simply dance in, pull their right shoulders back for a half-turn, join hands and slip to their right, once around. The Women’s Institute dancers are moving in and pulling their left shoulders back to form the circle. Objectively there is little difference and they achieve the same goal. But Sharp’s interpretations are all right-footed or right-turned, and, remember, it was his way or the highway.

Mage on a Cree was first published in Playford’s The English Dancing Master in 1651. In The Playford Ball, Kate Van Winkle Keller and Genevieve Shimer write that even at the time, English people may not have known what it meant. They suggest that it came from the Irish. Later editions tried to make sense of the word “mage,” suggesting that it meant “magpie.” Here is an early twentieth-century recording of the tune by Stanford Robinson and the National Military Band. If the technicians got the ratio correct between the original LP record and the modern equipment—and one assumes that they did—this gives you an excellent sense of the speed of dancing in the early years.

The big dance scene is on Whit-Monday. Whit-Sunday is Pentecost, which in the Catholic and Anglican faith takes place seven weeks after the Resurrection and is the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon Christ’s disciples. In the medieval world the entire week of Whitsun was a holiday. Many of the Hamlet Club show up for the annual dance including Miriam, the first May Queen, accompanied by her seven-year-old daughter—the first of the next generation to dance.

The whole village seemed to be dancing, and there was no keeping to friendly sets. Guides, Scouts, members of the Women’s Institute, and of nothing at all, danced in rings with the visitors [Maribel and Rosalind and the Hamlet Club] and made up their longways sets. Maribel offers to play the fiddle while Margia Lane, the usual fiddler, dances. And, finally, Scout Mike appears and implores Maribel to teach him to dance.

Usually EJO does not usually describe the process of learning to dance. There are many set pieces in her works where visitors stare “wonderingly” at the colorful, changing patterns of dances like Newcastle for four couples, that goes from “rings” to stars, to arches, to lines, and more. But here we actually see a neophyte learning. At first Sir Kenneth, the M.C., tells Mike to grab couples and form them into sets of no more than seven couples, making the maypole in the center of the village green “the top.” Mike has no idea what this means, and he slips away to find Maribel. We then see Maribel coaching him through Flowers of Edinburgh as a second couple, teaching him to swing and give weight, and to skip (one foot in front of the other) not slip (the same foot always leading). He is dismayed when they reach the top of the set and become Ones and even suggests leaving the set, which of course Maribel nixes. Later she teaches him the Helston Furry step for the processional and the longways dance Christchurch Bells, which has a hand-clapping sequence that Mike enjoys teasing his “Princess” with by never being consistent in whether he is going to slap or merely tap her hands. The whole event is one of Oxenham’s most charming and evocative dance episodes and is unique in being experienced in part through Mike’s eyes. Joan’s and Jen’s husbands do dance, but not much, so this is the rare scene that might convince boys and men that dancing could be fun, if only to be able to hold hands with the girl they are sweet on. Mike and Maribel’s playful dancing and courtship suggest that they will have a successful marriage in which each gives equal weight.