Theatres of War: Performing Pacifism

Abstract

The book of The Ballet of the Nations is the prime mover behind the virtual exhibition. Published in 1915, its richly illustrated pages open onto a secret world of experimental theatre, pacifist politics and artistic community which survived in wartime London despite the hostile cultural conditions of the home front. The author, Vernon Lee, was a cosmopolitan writer and intellectual. Her outspoken objections to the war, which she explored through the pacifist allegory of The Ballet of the Nations, and polemics such as Peace with Honour (Union of Democratic Control, 1915), alienated much of her readership. However, she found sympathetic supporters in the artist Maxwell Armfield and his wife, the writer Constance Smedley Armfield, whom she knew through the internationalizing cultural forum of the Lyceum Club. The Armfields arranged for her to recite the text of the Ballet at meetings of the pacifist Union of Democratic Control, hosted at their studio in Glebe Place and at the Margaret Morris Theatre on King’s Rd, where it attracted the attention of the publishers Chatto & Windus. Armfield illustrated the text with a ‘pictorial commentary’, which gives the book its striking appearance.

Keywords

• vernon lee
• ballet of the nations
• nationalism
• lyceum club
• maxwell armfield
• constance smedley
• margaret morris