Alice Mary Buckton | |
---|---|
Born | 9 March 1867 |
Died | 1944 |
Alice Mary Buckton (1867-1944) was an English educator, poet, community playwright, feminist and mystic.
In 1899 Buckton established a Froebelian educational institution, Sesame House, in London. Her mystery play Eager Heart, first performed in 1903, was the first of several pageant plays written or stage-managed by Buckton. A Bahá'í convert, she recited an ode to open the 1911 First Universal Races Congress. After buying the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, she established it as a hostel in Glastonbury, helping to establish Glastonbury as a site of pilgrimage.[1]
Alice Buckton was born in Haslemere, Surrey on 9 March 1867. She was the eldest of seven daughters of the entomologist George Bowdler Buckton,[2] and his wife Mary Ann Odling.[3] She came to know Alfred Tennyson, who lived nearby, and years later still wore a cloak given her by Tennyson.[2]
As a young woman Alice Buckton was involved with the Women's University Settlement which grew out of the work of Octavia Hill.[4][5] She then became interested in the educational ideas of Friedrich Fröbel,[1] and traveled to Germany to visit the Pestalozzi-Fröbel House. She managed to persuade the Principal there, Annet Schepel, to come to England and help set up a similar institution in London, the Sesame Garden and House for Home Life Training in St John's Wood.[4] In an 1898 lecture Buckton outlined a plan for this new institution.[6] Buckton emphasised the importance of motherhood in the thought of Pestalozzi and Fröbel, and declared the kindergarten to be part of the "woman's movement".[7] Sesame House opened in 1899, with Patrick Geddes on the committee.[2] One woman trained at Sesame House was Lileen Hardy, who went on to open the free kindergarten St. Saviour's Child Garden in Edinburgh.[8] By 1902 the school at Sesame House had sixty-five students.[9] Buckton and Schepel became lifelong partners, living together until Schepel's death in Glastonbury in 1931.[4]
In 1901 Buckton published her first poetry collection, Through Human Eyes. Verse from the collection was later set to music by Gustav Holst as The heart worships.[10]
Buckton's mystery play Eager Heart was first performed in Lincoln's Inn Hall in 1903.[11] The play was an immediate success. Three decades later there had been hundreds of performances and over 41,000 published copies of the play sold.[12]
In 1907 Buckton became drawn into the Baháʼí Faith.[citation needed]
Buckton attended the First Universal Races Congress in London in 1911,[13] opening proceedings with an 'Ode of Salutation' from Europe, alongside T. Ramakrishna Pillai speaking for the East and W. E. B. DuBois speaking for Africa.[14]
In 1912 Buckton bought the Chalice Well in Glastonbury.[15] She and Schepel opened a hostel there which drew pilgrims from around the world, and Buckton continued to live in Glastonbury for the rest of her life.
In August 1913 Buckton stage-managed Caroline Cannon's Pageant of Gwent at the National Eisteddfod of Wales.[16] The following year she supported an Arthurian festival at Glastonbury, centered around the performance of a music drama by Reginald Buckley, 'The Birth of Arthur'.[17] She herself wrote and produced The Coming of Bride, first performed in Glastonbury on 6 August 1914.[16] The Coming of the Dawn was written to be produced at Christmas 1918 by the YWCA.[18]
In 1919 Buckton spoke at a Leisure of the People Conference in Manchester, describing the way in which everyday people in Glastonbury threw themselves into performance of pageant plays. As a result, the University Settlement organized a May festival in Ancoats, for which Buckton wrote an allegorical play around the figures of Labour, Beauty and Joy.[19]
In 1925 she wrote a series of six radio sketches based on the Arthurian legends, performed by the Cardiff Station Radio Players with music by Warwick Braithwaite.[20]
In 1938 she received a civil list pension "in recognition of her services to literature and of the services rendered by her father".[21]