I loved dancing with a delirious ‘I wish I could die’ passion, especially when the music appealed to me … but alas! only one in ten partners had any notion of time, and what made it worse, the nine were always behind, never before the beat. … Sometimes I would firmly seize smaller, lighter partners by the scruff of the neck, so to speak, and whirl them along in the way they should go, but I saw they were not enjoying themselves, and oddly enough I wanted these wretches to like dancing with me.
Ethel Smyth