Electrical cable being laid in High Street
A mild damp day with only a little rain. Motored first to Riddell Lodge (Morton1) + then for a message (to go myself) to Andrew Linton, Gilmanscleuch2. Found him a bit nervous after slight flue + being confined to the house for a month. Got back about 3. Went to a delightful performance by the Arts League of Service.3 One of the Company Susan Richards4 stayed here.
1 Andrew Morton, forester, was Inhabitant Occupier of a house West Lodge, North Riddell, Lilliesleaf [1922 Valuation Roll, VR011600033-/882, Roxburgh County, page 882 of 993].
2 Andrew Linton (1876-1951), of Gilmanscleuch, Ettrick, farmer, agriculturalist and collector. His papers are catalogued as Scottish Borders Archives SCS10 (GB1097 SCS10).
3 The Arts League of Service was established in 1919 after a meeting in the studio of dancer and choreographer Margaret Morris, wife of Scottish Colourist J D Fergusson. Amongst other activities it ran an repertory company which for “almost twenty years brought theatre to a large number of communities across Britain.” [sources: Hopkinson, Martin. “The Arts League of Service in London, 1919—28.” Print Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2, 2013, pp. 179–82. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23766549. and West, Emma, A Brief Introduction to … the Arts League of Service (ALS), at Revolutionary Red Tape https://emmawest.art.blog/ 01/09/2019, both accessed 9 Dec. 2023].
4 Susan Richards is unidentified but may be Eva Mary ‘Susan’ Richards (1898-1986), who was to marry Basil Budgett in 1926 at Lexden, Essex. She is recorded as a member of the 1923 to 1937 A.L.S. touring parties. With Susan on the 1923 tour were Sarah Ellen ‘Sara’ Allgood (1880-1950), Irish actor; Hermione Baddeley (1906-1986), actor; Norah Balfour, R.A.D.A. Diploma graduate 1915; Rupert Bruce; Basil Henry Budgett (1899-1974), motor mechanic and A.L.S. driver, very occasional performer; Dorothy Clouston (? Dorothy Clouston née Bourn, marr. James M Clouston Jun Quarter 1921, Hastings); Kathleen Dillon (1898-1990), dancer and designer, danced for Margaret Morris aet 13, toured with A.L.S. in the early 1920s, but perhaps best known as the model wearing a home-made hat sitting for J D Fergusson’s portrait ‘Rose Rhythm’; Eleanor Mary Elder (1888-1971), actor, dancer, producer, founder and manager of A.L.S., married Hugh Mackay, September 1923; Felix Myles or Miles Patrick Irwin (1893-1950), travelling actor [1939 Register]; Hubert John Leslie (1890-1976), silhouettist, artist, entertainer and teacher; Agnes Lowson, so far unidentified but, according to Eleanor Elder, Hubert Leslie’s sister (they appeared together during the 1923 tour); Joan Luxton; Hugh Mackay (1888-1966), singer, married Eleanor Elder, September 1923; Cyril Nash (1886-1945), performer with A.L.S. and later with B.B.C. Repertory Company; J Cranstoun Nevill; Winifred Nicholson (?), pianist and accompanist; Susan Richmond; Charles ‘Edmund’ Rubbra (1901-1986), British composer, playing piano for A.L.S. at this time; Rita Thom; Anthony Thomas; Charles Thomas; Alan Trotter; Mackenzie Ward may be Mackenzie Ward (1903-1976), stage and film actor; Geoffrey Wincott (1901-1973), actor, BBC announcer and producer, and Judith Helen Hain née Wogan-Brown (1887-1966), ‘Judith Wogan’, actor and manager.
Sources include: Advocates for the Arts #1: Eleanor Elder in West, Emma, ‘Revolutionary Red Tape Bringing Art to the People in Modern Britain’, 2 Sep 2019; The Arts League of Service 1923 in The Shirburnian No. CCCXLII, June 1923, Volume XXXII; and Elder, Eleanor, ‘Travelling Players The Story of the Arts League of Service’, Frederick Muller, London, 1939.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/26, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1923]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 