said Fraulein Uder, ‘you will stand there where you cannot see the notes and I play first C, then another note, and you shall tell me what the second is.’
She hit C, and then hit another note with equal force.
‘What is that? Answer me.’
‘E,’ I said.
‘Quite right. Good. Now we will try again.’
Once more she thumped C, and then another note. ‘And that?’ ‘A,’ I hazarded.
‘Ach, that it first class. Good. This child is musical. You have the ear, yes. Ach, we shall get on famously.’
I certainly got off to a good start. I don’t think, to be honest, I had the least idea what the other notes were she was playing. I think it must have been an inspired guess. But anyway, having started on those lines we went ahead with plenty of good will on either side. Before long the houses resounded with scales, arpeggios, and in due course the strains of The Merry Peasant. I enjoyed my music lessons enormously. Both father and mother played the piano. Mother played Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words and various other ‘pieces’ that she had learned in her youth. She played well, but was not, I think, a passionate music lover. My father was naturally musical. He could play anything by ear, and he played delightful American songs and negro spirituals and other things. To The Merry Peasant Fraulein Uder and I added Trdumerei, and other of Schumann’s delicate little tunes. I practised with zeal for an hour or two a day. From Schumann I proceeded to Greig, which I loved passionately–Erotique and the First Rustle of Spring were my favourites. When I finally progressed to being able to play the Peer Gynt Morgen I was transported with delight. Fraulein Uder, like most Germans, was an excellent teacher. It was not all playing of pleasant tunes; there were masses of Czerny’s Exercises, about which I was not quite so zealous, but Fraulein Uder was having no nonsense. ‘You must the good grounding have,’ she said. ‘These exercises, they are the reality, the necessity. The tunes, yes, they are pretty little embroideries, they are like flowers, they bloom and drop off, but you must have the roots, the strong roots and the leaves.’ So I had a good deal of the strong roots and the leaves and an occasional flower or two, and I was probably much more pleased with the result than the others in the house, who found so much practising somewhat oppressive.
Then there was also dancing-class, which took place once a week, at something grandiosely called the Athenaeum Rooms, situated over a confectioner’s shop. I must have started going to dancing-class quite early–five or six, I think–because I remember that Nursie was still there and took me once a week. The young ones were started off with the polka. Their approach to it was to stamp three times: right, left, right–left, right, left–thump, thump, thump–thump, thump, thump. Very unpleasant it must have been for those having tea at the confectioner’s underneath. When I got home I was slightly upset by Madge, who said that that was not how the polka was danced. ‘You slide one foot, bring the next up to it, and then the first,’ she said, ‘like this.’ I was rather puzzled, but apparently it was Miss Hickey’s, the dancing-mistress’s idea of getting the rhythm of the polka before you did the steps.
Miss Hickey, I remember, was a wonderful if alarming personality. She was tall, stately, had a pompadour of grey hair beautifully arranged, long flowing skirts, and to waltz with her–which happened, of course, much later–was a terrifying experience. She had one pupil teacher of about eighteen or nineteen, and one of about thirteen called Aileen. Aileen was a sweet girl, who worked hard, and whom we all liked very much. The older one, Helen, was slightly terrifying, and only took notice of the really good dancers.
The procedure of dancing-class was as follows. It started with what were called ‘expanders’, which exercised your chest and arms. They were a sort of blue ribbon elastic with handles. You stretched these vigorously for about half an hour. There was then the polka, which was danced by all once they had graduated from thump, thump, thump–the older girls in the class dancing with the younger ones. ‘Have you seen me dance the polka? Have you seen my coat-tails fly?’ The polka was merry and unattractive. Then you had the grand march, in which, in pairs, you went up the middle of the room, round the sides, and into various figures of eight, the seniors leading, the juniors following up. You had partners for the march whom you engaged yourself, and a good deal of heart-burning took place over this. Naturally, everybody wished to have as partner either Helen or Aileen, but Miss Hickey saw to it that there were no particular monopolies. After the march the smaller ones were removed to the junior room, where they learned the steps of either the polka or, later, the waltz, or steps in their fancy dances at which they were particularly maladroit. The seniors did their fancy dance under the eye of Miss Hickey in the big room. This consisted of either a tambourine dance, a Spanish castanet dance, or a fan dance.
Talking of the fan dance, I once mentioned to my daughter, Rosalind, and her friend Susan, when they were girls of eighteen or nineteen, that I used to do a fan dance in my youth. Their ribald laughter puzzled me.
‘You didn’t really, mother, did you? A fan dance! Susan, she did a fan dance!’
‘Oh,’ said Susan, ‘I always thought that Victorians were so particular.’ It dawned on us soon, however, that by a fan dance we did not mean exactly the same thing.
After that the seniors sat out and the juniors did their dance, which was the Sailor’s Hornpipe or some gay little folk dance, not too difficult.
Finally we entered into the complications of The Lancers. We were also taught the Swedish Country Dance, and Sir Roger de Coverley. These last were especially useful because when you went to parties you were not shamed by ignorance of such social activities.
At Torquay we were almost entirely girls. When I went to dancing-class in Ealing there was quite a number of boys. This I think was when I was about nine, very shy, and not as yet adept in dancing. A boy of considerable charm, probably a year or two older than I was, came up and asked me to be his partner in The Lancers. Upset and downcast, I said that I couldn’t dance The Lancers. It seemed to me hard; I had never seen so attractive a boy. He had dark hair, merry eyes., and I felt at once that we were going to be soul-mates. I sat down sadly when The Lancers began, and almost immediately Mrs Wordsworth’s representative came up to me. ‘Now, Agatha, we can’t have anyone sitting out.’
‘I don’t know how to dance The Lancers, Mrs Wordsworth.’
‘No, dear, but you can soon learn. We must find you a partner.’
She seized a freckled boy with a snub nose and sandy hair; he also had adenoids. ‘Here you are. Here is William.’ During The Lancers, when we were engaged in visiting, I came up against my first love and his partner. He whispered to me, in dudgeon: ‘You wouldn’t dance with me, and here you are. It is very unkind of you.’ I tried to tell him that I couldn’t help it, that I had thought I couldn’t dance The Lancers but I was told I had to–but there is not time when you are visiting in The Lancers to enter into explanations. He continued to look reproachfully at me until the end of the dancing-class. I hoped I might meet him the following week, but alas I never saw him again: one of life’s sad love stories.
The waltz was the only dance I learned that was going to be useful to me through life, and I have never really liked waltzing. I do not like the rhythm, and I always used to get exceedingly giddy, especially when honoured by Miss Hickey. She had a wonderful sweep round in the waltz, which practically took you off your feet, and which left you at the end of the performance with your head reeling, hardly able to stand up. But I must admit that it was a beautiful sight to watch her.
Fraulein Uder disappeared from my life; I don’t know where or when. Perhaps she went back to Germany. She was replaced a little later by a young man called, as far as I remember, Mr Trotter.
