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Performing at Trinity Cambridge with Rupert Brooke. Exchanges v town and country
We had a wonderful afternoon on the Fellows’ Lawn at Trinity, Cambridge. It was arranged by Rupert Brooke and Stewart Wilson and after the show they took some of my troupe, boys of Thaxted who until that day had never been in a train, to see the Colleges, and gave them a sumptuous
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tea and a row on the river.
And when any dancer came up to London to teach I always gave them a little jaunt round London before they went back to the country.
I took them to the House of Commons, to Westminster Cathedral, to St Paul’s and they were much impressed….
Another old man told me while he was watching our dances, “Ah. That is the dancing of my heart. It is clean dancing. I’ve been a wicked old man, I have been all over the world, but I’ve never went into them ‘uggin’ dances.”
I think these girls were a revelation to some of their hosts. One host told me he asked friends in from the Golf Course to meet the teacher - - - she was so interesting to talk to.
Lady Constance Lytton told me that the Morris dances were the first recreation in which she had been able to interest the village lads.
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