Hervey, Dudley, Mrs.

Biography

Mrs. Dudley Hervey was the headmistress of the Belstead House School in Aldeburgh, England, where the English Folk Dance Society school was held beginning in 1922. Hervey kept a scrapbook related to Cecil Sharp, the musicologist, and founder of the English Folk Dance Society.

Sharp is credited with collecting and reviving traditional folk songs and dances from the English countryside and reinstating them into the cultural life of the nation. He was born in London on November 22, 1859, and was educated at Uppingham School and Cambridge University. After a brief career in law, including a stint as associate to the chief justice of South Australia in 1889, he changed his career from law to music. He became assistant organist of Adelaide and co-director of the Adelaide College of Music in South Australia. In 1892 he returned to England. He was master at Ludgrove Preparatory School from 1893 to 1910 and principal of the Hamstead Conservatoire of Music from 1896 to 1905.

Sharp was first attracted to folk dancing when he saw the Morris Dancers in Headington, Oxford in 1899. He then began his life-long work to revive and preserve traditional folk music and dance. Sharp published several books of folk dance collections which included Morris dances, country dances, and sword dances of Northern England. He also published collections of native English folk songs. In 1911 he founded the English Folk Dance Society and initiated the teaching of folk song and dance in English schools. The school sessions held at Aldeburgh were to be the last directed by Sharp before his death. He was also a collector of folk songs and dances of America. Between 1916 and 1918 he visited the Appalachian Mountains to study American folk songs of English origin.

Cecil Sharp died in Hampstead, England on June 23, 1924. In 1930, Cecil Sharp House was established in London as a center for the preservation of folk song and dance, and to serve as the headquarters of the English Folk Dance Society.

For further biographical information, see Maud Karpeles, Cecil Sharp: his life and work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).

From the guide to the Scrapbook on Cecil Sharp's English Folk Dance Society school, 1920-1931, (University of California, Irvine. Library. Special Collections and Archives.)