Into soaring Westminster Abbey, most solemn Empire shrine, sepulchre of many a King, trooped last week a happy throng of Virginia Negroes and Negresses.
Soon their rich voices made the august welkin ring with old plantation hymns. London papers in the main approved, praised the singers and their hymn leader, Dr. Robert Nathaniel Dett of Virginia's Hampton Institute. At the close of the singing Negroes & Negresses crowded round the tomb of David Livingstone, famed explorer-missionary to "Darkest Africa" (1913-73). Reverently Dr. Dett laid a wreath on the tomb, and the Negro pilgrims knelt for a moment in silent prayer.
"We had a lovely crossing in the tourist third class of the French Line Steamer De Grasse" said one of the Negresses. "Everyone was just as nice as nice could be, and we like the French right well. The Lord Mayor of Plymouth came down to welcome us to England, and we sang one of our choral numbers for this lord before we took the boat train. When we got to London and had a real good night's rest, Prime Minister MacDonald invited us to tea at his official house, No. 10 Downing Street, you know. It was just grand, and we sang to him and Miss Ishbel. Our concerts in London are under the patronage of Ambassador Dawes [TIME, Sept. 23], and after that we all are going to sing in Belgium and Holland and France and Switzerland and Austria and Germany."
Guests whom Hostess Ishbel MacDonald distributed among the Virginians at tea included Chancellor of the Exchequer & Mrs. Philip Snowden (who warmly praised Dr. Dett's compositions), Foreign Minister & Mrs. Arthur Henderson, and the visiting Chancellor of Austria, Dr. Johann Schober.
After hot crumpet and Orange Pekoe Mr. MacDonald asked his guests to sing: "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?" a spiritual title he had seen beneath a painting at the opening of the Royal Academy (see p. 32). After several songs the Prime Minister was forced by affairs of state to depart but Miss MacDonald, enchanted, persuaded her guests to sing several more songs. She praised their generosity, earlier in the day when on the Tower of London's lofty terrace, surrounded by cawing black birds as large as chickens—the famed Tower rooks— the Virginians had given a free concert, rousingly applauded by the tourists.
London newspapers turned to Who's Who in Colored America, discovered and reported to their readers that Dr. Robert Nathaniel Dett, who was "Church and social pianist, Niagara Falls, N. Y. 1898-92" and "in 1919 organized the Musical Art Society in Hampton Institute, Virginia," is now a leading U. S. composer ("In the Bottoms," "Listen to the Lambs," etc.). Furthermore, learned London, "in 1924 he was summoned by his home town, Niagara Falls, N. Y., to be its guest artist for the inauguration of the celebration of Music Week, at which time a chorus of 100 voices, all white people, was placed at his disposal, to interpret his compositions. He has the distinction of being the only colored man so honored."