The late conflict between the Bishop of London and the Rev. Stewart Headlam as to the godliness of dancing ended practically in the excommunication of the dancers and the inhibition of the popular clergyman, whose version of the Thirty-Nine Articles includes Land Nationalization, Free Speech, Communion for Stage Players, and a Democratic Constitution for the Church. Mr. Headlam’s teaching, nevertheless, seems to have travelled further than the Bishop’s, for we hear, from Georgia, of a troop of factory hands removing the benches from their church on a Friday evening, and having a hearty dance. At a church in North Carolina, a brass band was allowed to perform some stirring rhythmical hymn tunes for the edification of a Negro congregation. These pious colored persons, we are told, “began to grow a little nervous and restless about the feet and, in a short time, the whole crowd was indulging in a regular old breakdown.” This is shocking, no doubt, to our insular conception of a church as a place where we must, on no account, enjoy ourselves, and where ladies are trained in the English art of sitting in rows for hours, dumb, expressionless, and with the elbows uncomfortably turned in. But, since people must enjoy themselves sometimes, why not in their own churches as well as in places where drinking bars, gambling tables, and other temptations to enjoy themselves unhealthily and indecently are deliberately put in their way? “Dancing is an art,” says Mr. Headlam. “All art is praise,” says Mr. Ruskin. Praise is, surely, not out of place in a church. We sing there; why should we not dance?
The Puritans, from whom we inherit our prejudice against such a proposal, objected to dancing and singing in all places and at all seasons. Merry England never shared that objection. We admit it in church only because we can afford to dance elsewhere. But, how about the people who have no such opportunities: no drawing rooms, no money, no self-control in the presence of temptation and license? We do not want to see Westminster Abbey turned into a ballroom. But, if some enterprising clergyman with a cure of souls in the slums were to hoist a board over his church door with the inscription, “Here men and women, after working hours, may dance without getting drunk on Fridays, hear good music on Saturdays, pray on Sundays, discuss public affairs without molestation from the police on Mondays, have the building for any honest purpose they please – theatricals, if desired, on Tuesdays, bring the children for games, amusing drill, and romps on Wednesdays, and volunteer for a thorough scrubbing down of the place on Thursdays” – well, it would be all very shocking, no doubt. But, after all, it would not interfere with the Bishop of London’s salary.
A music review by George Bernard Shaw, originally published in The Star, a London newspaper, on May 14, 1888; reprinted in London Music in 1888-89 as Heard by Corni di Bassetto (Later Known as Bernard Shaw) with Some Further Autobiographical Particulars by George Bernard Shaw; reprint (New York: Vienna House, 1973), pp. 34-35. The reprint volume was originally published in 1937.
As a young man, the famous playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) worked for six years (1888-1894) as a music critic in London. His complete music reviews were collected and published in four volumes in the 1930s.