Chapter Three
Innocents Abroad

A few weeks before Marjorie sailed for Europe she made four recordings for the Australian branch of the Aeolian Company in Melbourne. Marjorie, or her family or supporters, paid for these private recordings and, although they were allocated catalogue numbers and carried Aeolian’s standard pink ‘Vocalion’ label, they were never issued commercially; small numbers were pressed to order (at seven shillings and sixpence each) and largely purchased as gifts. Considering how few of these discs were pressed, it is remarkable that any copies survive, but survive they do, allowing us to hear what the twenty-one-year-old Marjorie sounded like before her fame extended beyond Australia.

For the time these discs were well recorded, in what the company proudly described as its ‘state-of-the-art recording studio’ in Coppin Street, Richmond. Taking the catalogue numbers as a guide, the first item Marjorie recorded was Beethoven’s song ‘In questa tomba oscura’, followed by ‘O don fatale’ from Don Carlos, the song ‘Ring, Bells, Ring’ by Maude Craske Day and finally a piece that became a favourite encore of Marjorie’s throughout her singing career: Laura Lemon’s ballad ‘My Ain Folk’.

Played at eighty revolutions per minute (the standard speed for Vocalion discs), these recordings reveal a deep, resonant contralto voice and a style of singing that shows clear indebtedness to Marjorie’s model Clara Butt. The tone is rich in the Beethoven song and the effect is suitably tomb-like. The heavily truncated version of ‘O don fatale’ (cut down to fit onto a three-minute disc) hints at why Ivor Boustead suggested Marjorie sing something else at the Ballarat competition. Marjorie gives a good display of legato singing in the central section, but the faster beginning and end of the aria sound choppy and there is little attempt to convey the character’s emotional roller-coaster ride so beautifully translated into music by Verdi. The two popular items come off best. Marjorie sounds more relaxed and comfortable (as well she might at this stage in her career) with drawing room ballads. She had probably been singing ‘My Ain Folk’ for a decade before she made this recording and Marjorie relishes the tune and the words, without over-sentimentalising what is essentially a syrupy piece.

At best these recordings are curiosities, but they are important for our understanding of the singer that Marjorie would later become. Clearly that sound foundation in the lower register Boustead was striving for had been established before she left his studio and we catch glimpses of Marjorie’s upper register, but as yet there is little in between. This makes the two registers (upper and lower) sound like two different voices. There are also a few stylistic signposts pointing to the future, such as a tendency to introduce portamenti (sliding between notes) at unexpected moments in the music, which would become hallmarks of Marjorie’s mature style.1

Marjorie farewelled the people of Winchelsea and Geelong at two final concerts. In Winchelsea the ‘pictures’ at the Globe Theatre were suspended for one night, and the locals, including the entire Lawrence family and a large contingent from Deans Marsh, assembled to hear Marjorie sing. Supported by local artists, the Western District’s favourite daughter was decked out in her pink beaded evening gown.

At the conclusion of the Winchelsea concert Marjorie was presented with a travelling rug made from local wool—‘to remind you of the district where you grew up and the people who are so proud of you’. The soft, thick rug would prove useful when Marjorie arrived in Europe at the beginning of winter, but neither she nor any of the good folk who gathered around her after the concert shaking her hand and admiring their gift could ever have imagined that it would end up stolen by German soldiers when Hitler’s army marched into Paris twelve years later.

After the Geelong concert, Howard Hitchcock, still smarting from his failure to keep his promise about Melba, made a fervent speech in which he predicted Marjorie would eclipse all other Australian-born female singers. He then presented Marjorie with a leather-bound, gold-embossed address book, which fortunately did not share the fate of the rug. Marjorie used that little book for the next twenty years and it survives, worn soft and dog-eared, among Marjorie’s papers.

At a farewell party for Marjorie on her last night at home, the Lawrences gathered around the piano and sang together for a final time, at the end of the evening her father, brothers and sister singing the old hymn ‘God be with you till we meet again’ for her. It was typical of the Lawrences and many families in what Patrick White called this land of callused hearts, to express their feelings in song rather than words, but the sentiments were no less sincere.

The liner Jervis Bay was scheduled to sail from Prince’s Pier, Port Melbourne at 4.30 on the afternoon of 23 October, bound for Southampton, the port from which Grandma Lawrence had embarked seventy-four years earlier. Passengers had been requested to board the ship by 3.30 pm, but the Lawrences, en masse, had arrived hours before. They had inspected the cabin Marjorie and Boddie would be sharing for the next five weeks and had organised for a couple of rather shaky family photos to be taken in the pale sunlight on deck. This was the last time all the Lawrence ‘kids’ were photographed together with ‘Dad’ in their midst. Bill Lawrence, now in his late sixties and with his moustache turned snowy white, looks dejected and preoccupied in the photographs. Marjorie looks tense and excited, decked out in a voluminous rabbit skin coat and hanging on for dear life to a capacious handbag.

In Interrupted Melody Marjorie gives a fictional and romanticised account of the departure of the ship, describing a sea of coloured paper streamers, her Dad standing forlornly on the wharf and Marjorie, blinded by tears, singing his favourite song to him from the ship’s railing. What actually happened was much more prosaic. Instead of a call for all those going ashore to leave the ship, an announcement was made that the Jervis Bay’s sailing would be delayed for several hours because of a massive storm in the Great Australian Bight. As time passed father and brothers began to fidget; there were cows at home that needed milking, a long drive ahead of them with early morning chores the next day, and lightning and thunder fast approaching.

Marjorie sadly farewelled her family, with Bill reassuring her that he would arrange her journey home if things didn’t go to plan or if she became homesick. He also said in an aside Marjorie was not supposed to hear, ‘Oh well, I’ll never see her again’. Tears flowed and Marjorie’s last glimpse of her family came as they hurried into the watery gloom on Prince’s Pier.

The Jervis Bay finally sailed at midnight and the first twelve hours of the voyage were an ordeal, with Marjorie and Boddie taking refuge in their bunks and remaining there as the steamer ploughed through mountainous seas, gale-force winds and torrential rain, finally limping into Port Adelaide, their first port of call. By the time the ship steamed out of Fremantle into the broad, blue expanse of the Indian Ocean two days later, the weather and the passengers had brightened and Marjorie and Boddie slipped effortlessly into the gay milieu of shipboard life.

As a companion Ada Boddington was a great success, but as a chaperone she failed miserably. One of the senior officers on the ship took a fancy to her and she was soon off flirting with him, leaving Marjorie to take care of herself. Also on board was a young Englishman named William Baker who chanced his luck with Marjorie. ‘Bill’ Baker, who was in the diamond business, an agent for a company based at Johannesburg, was on his way home to Birmingham from New Zealand. Athletic, blonde-haired, snappily dressed, full of charm and by Marjorie’s standards, alluringly sophisticated, he was just a year older than she—and Marjorie fell for him.

When the ship docked at Colombo, Marjorie and her new beau went ashore with a group of other young people. They engaged a fleet of rickshaws and visited what they thought was a famous tea house. There they lounged on divans smoking cigarettes in preposterously long holders, savouring the scent of the nutmeg flowers that filled the air and feeling delightfully exotic. Suspicion dawned when the nubile young women who served them began making suggestive gestures at the menfolk. The party beat a hasty retreat. The ‘tea house’ turned out to be the most famous brothel in the city.

Colombo had other exotic attractions on offer. Someone suggested a drive to Moratura Beach, south of the city, which was famous for nude bathing. Having swum naked in creeks and dams with her brothers all through her childhood Marjorie was not particularly troubled by the concept of nudity, but she and her companions were alarmed when a large crocodile suddenly appeared on the beach scattering bathers. Another hasty retreat was made, this time back to the ship.

Between their departure from Colombo and the ship’s entry into the Red Sea, Marjorie was involved in an embarrassing incident, but not one of her making. Marjorie and Boddie had barely spoken to the captain of the Jervis Bay, a portly, bewhiskered old salt, since coming on board and were surprised when a steward knocked on their cabin door and presented them with a handwritten note from the captain inviting ‘Marjorie and companion’ to join him for dinner that night. When the two presented themselves at the captain’s table at eight as instructed, the captain’s first words to Marjorie were: ‘Thank you so much for the flowers, my dear. How thoughtful of a young girl like you.’ Marjorie responded with: ‘What flowers?’ It transpired that the captain had received a large floral arrangement accompanied by a card reading: ‘With the compliments of Marjorie’. A young violinist named Marjorie Schmitt who was travelling to Belgium hoping to study with the great violin virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe had joined the ship at Port Adelaide, but the captain had assumed that the flowers were from Marjorie Lawrence. In fact, they were from Marjorie Schmitt. Despite this incident Marjorie and Boddie enjoyed a splendid meal along with the other privileged guests that evening and Boddie showed Marjorie how to eat asparagus, a delicacy she had never tasted before. Marjorie Schmitt had her turn at the captain’s table the following night.

Sailing through the Suez Canal fascinated Marjorie. Ships going in opposite directions passed each other with what seemed like only feet separating them, while Arabs leading camels plodded along the shore line in the shadows of the gigantic grey steel ships. It was an extraordinary juxtaposition of modern and ancient cultures, and when the sun set, the howling of jackals could be heard from both banks.

Twenty-one days out of Melbourne, the Jervis Bay entered Port Said, where feluccas with dark red sails clustered along the shore and naked boys dived into the sea to retrieve coins thrown by the ship’s passengers. Marjorie and Bill Baker went ashore and explored the city. Marjorie was appalled by the filth in the streets and the stinking smells that hung in the still air. As dusk approached and what the couple decided were ‘rum-looking coves’ began to appear on the streets, they beat yet another hasty retreat to the safety of the Jervis Bay.

Long romantic nights in tropical waters and shared adventures brought Marjorie and the young Englishmen closer together and sex seemed the inevitable next stage in their relationship, until Marjorie dropped the news that this was to be a new experience for her. Bill Baker backed off rapidly, leaving Marjorie wondering whether virginity was to be her permanent lot. The two settled back into a friendship, although marriage was spoken of and Baker promised to write to Marjorie when he reached home. The pair also made plans to meet later in London. Nothing came of it and Marjorie heard no more about Bill Baker until a woman approached her after a concert in Birmingham in 1945 and introduced herself as Bill’s sister. Her brother, the woman said, was then living in South Africa, but still spoke fondly of Marjorie. Like Pat Considine, Bill Baker never married.

As the Jervis Bay steamed through the Mediterranean, Marjorie received a request from the captain to sing at the Armistice Day service he was to conduct on deck. Before the assembled passengers and crew and with noisy gulls squawking overhead, Marjorie sang Elgar’s ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ accompanied by the ship’s dance band. It was the first time her voice had been heard publicly outside her homeland.

The Jervis Bay docked at Southampton on 17 November. Marjorie and Boddie travelled to London by train and then on to the Midlands for a brief visit to Boddie’s parents, and from there to Paris. For this last stage of their journey the pair took the train to Dover, a ferry across the channel to Calais and finally another train to Paris, arriving at Gare Saint-Lazare on a wet afternoon, feeling bedraggled, lost and confused. Marjorie’s dream of reaching Paris had finally come true, but at the time she wondered if it would prove to be a nightmare. Rolling green paddocks, bright sunshine, friendly ‘Aussie’ faces and the familiar drawl seemed to belong to a different universe.

The travel company that had booked the trip from London for the pair had also arranged for Marjorie and Boddie to stay at the Hôtel Louvre Sainte-Anne just off Avenue de l‘Opéra. The distance between the station and the hotel is no more than two kilometres, but neither of them knew that. They waved down a taxi and explained in broken English that they wanted to be taken to the ‘Saint Anne Hotel’. The driver pegged them as strangers (and gullible ones at that) and drove half way around central Paris before dropping them in Rue Sainte-Anne and demanding twenty-nine francs, three times the amount the journey should have cost.

From the taxi Marjorie had caught glimpses of the Opéra—Paris’s grand opera house—known to Parisians as the ‘Palais Garnier’ in honour of its architect. Marjorie insisted that before they unpack she and Boddie walk up Avenue de l’Opéra to see the building at close range. The women stood on the busy Place de l’Opéra and stared in awe at the intricately carved stone façade of what is still the grandest of all opera houses, crowned with busts of famous composers and adorned with colossal gilded statues. ‘I’m going to sing there one day’, Marjorie told her companion. ‘Of course you are, Marge dear’, Boddie replied but neither of them was convinced.

John Brownlee had returned to Paris ahead of Marjorie and she had written to the baritone giving him the date of their arrival and the name of their hotel. Time and again Marjorie asked at the hotel reception desk if there was a message for her from Monsieur Jean Brownlee, but none came. Finally after three days she mustered the courage to ring Brownlee’s apartment in the suburb of Nieully-sur-Seine. The singer’s sister, Jess, answered the telephone. When Marjorie explained who she was, Jess Brownlee (who was always fiercely protective of her brother) informed her impatiently that ‘John has the flu and is far too sick to see you’. Marjorie was about to retaliate with some words the singer’s sister probably hadn’t heard since leaving Australia, when Jess Brownlee added: ‘However, he has arranged an audition for you with Madame Gilly at four on Thursday afternoon, so make sure you’re there’. Marjorie’s relief was immense as Jess Brownlee gave her Cécile Gilly’s address, spelling out the words carefully while Marjorie scribbled them down on a scrap of paper.

The following Thursday, two hours before the appointed time and clutching the scrap of paper and a street map she had bought to guide her, Marjorie climbed the lower slopes of the hill leading up to Montmartre and located number 58 Rue de la Rochefoucauld, an address that would become like a second home to her over the next couple of years.2 She hung around in the street filling in time until just before the appointed time and then rang the doorbell. A maid showed Marjorie to the top floor and ushered her into ‘Madame’s’ studio, a spacious room with a grand piano and a small stage with burgundy-coloured proscenium drapes. A beautiful, dignified looking woman with skin like ivory and touches of grey through her hair sat in the centre of the room. Beside her stood John Brownlee, a beaming smile on his face.

Marjorie’s French extended no further than ‘Bon jour, Madame’ and if Gilly had any English she was not about to waste it on this gauche bumpkin from Australia. Brownlee acted as interpreter, but Gilly wasted no time on small talk. ‘Chantez, chantez, Mademoiselle’, she ordered.

A young female pianist appeared from nowhere and Marjorie climbed onto the little stage, while Gilly and Brownlee retreated to the other end of the room. Marjorie sang ‘O don fatale’ in Italian, and ‘O, My Heart is Weary’ in English. Gilly then came forward, her face expressionless, and waved the pianist off the piano stool. She sat at the piano herself and struck a key indicating with an imperious gesture that Marjorie was to sing the same note. As Boustead had made her do years before, Marjorie followed Gilly, singing scales and isolated notes that took her from the bottom to the top of her voice.

Although Marjorie had sung very little since leaving Australia, she knew she was singing well, speculating that the enforced rest might have been beneficial to her voice. When Gilly finally stopped playing and exclaimed: ‘Ah, une soprano dramatique … une soprano Wagnerienne!’ and Marjorie saw the look of satisfaction on Brownlee’s face, she knew she had done well.

The exchanges that followed had to be translated by Brownlee. Gilly said she would teach Marjorie and asked where she was living. When Marjorie mentioned the hotel, Gilly threw her hands in the air and said a hotel was not the right place for a student to live and that Marjorie should be living with a French family where she could learn the language and steep herself in ‘the glorious culture of France’. Gilly added that she knew such a family and would arrange an introduction to them for Marjorie and her companion. Marjorie departed from 58 Rue de la Rochefoucauld with her head spinning, her feet barely touching the ground and her confidence renewed.

Next day a petite and friendly woman named Marguerite Palustre arrived at the Hôtel Louvre Sainte-Anne and introduced herself to Marjorie and Boddie. Mademoiselle Palustre was a teacher of languages who specialised in teaching French to English-speaking singing students, including several from Madame Gilly’s studio. Madame Gilly, she explained, had charged her with escorting Marjorie and ‘Madame Boddington’ to meet the family of Monsieur and Madame Grodet.

Palustre had a small automobile and as she drove Marjorie and Boddie back up the hill towards Montmartre she explained tactfully that the Grodets were very respectable people who had fallen on hard times and supported themselves by taking in foreign students as lodgers. The little car swung into Avenue Trudaine, a kilometre further up the hill from Gilly’s house and stopped outside number twenty-seven. The southern side of this broad tree-lined avenue was (and is) typical of residential streets in central Paris, with a continuous line of five-story buildings dating from the Haussmann era, all facing straight onto the street and graced by tall windows, ornate pediments and cast-iron balconies.

Without the thought of singing to distract her, Marjorie felt more uncomfortable meeting the family she might soon be living with than she had confronting Madame Gilly. She recalled with amusement:

I was wearing a two-tone dress made out of heavy wool—one of my homemade Winchelsea numbers. The skirt was a dull brown and the top insipid beige with a large floppy bow on the neckline. This was matched with flat-heeled shoes and my big, all purpose handbag. The Grodets looked me up and down and frowned and all I could do was giggle!3

Monsieur Emile Grodet and Madame Marie Grodet de Lacratelle were both elderly, courtly and spoke no English. Also at the meeting was their son, Henri, a tall, slim, dark-haired young man in his mid-twenties. Marjorie thought young Grodet very charming and wondered if she was being introduced to the first of those immoral Frenchmen she had heard about.

The Grodets owned the third level of the building and already had lodgers occupying some of their eight bedrooms. The house was filled with oversized antiques, tinkling chandeliers and old paintings—relics of the Grodets’ wealthier days, Palustre explained in an aside to Marjorie. The décor seemed excessively ornate to Marjorie who knew nothing about antiques, and the plumbing in the communal bathroom looked primitive, but as the rent was low and the location ideal, a deal was struck. Marjorie and Boddie moved to Avenue Trudaine the next day.

As Marjorie got to know the Grodets she discovered much about them that was interesting and endearing. Emile Grodet was a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur and had been the mayor and leading industrialist in the town of Noisy-le-Grand in the Marne Valley, until his partner ruined their business. Grodet had to sell off all his assets except the house in Paris to pay the debts the partner had incurred in their joint names. Marjorie described him as ‘charming, courteous in old-fashioned ways and a fervent patriot who still fancied himself as a ladies’ man’.4

Madame Grodet de Lacratelle, who retained her family name, was an aristocrat and an essayist, a deeply religious woman who was beginning to lose her eyesight when Marjorie came to live with them. Later she would proudly explain to Marjorie that she had grown up in a château, could trace her family back for centuries, was related to three members of the Académie française and as a girl had conversed with Lamartine and Victor Hugo.5

The first meal Marjorie and Boddie shared with the Grodets, like so many of Marjorie’s experiences of recent times, quickly developed into a farce. Seated around the massive dining table were ‘Madame’ and ‘Monsieur’, who ate with great formality and scowled if anyone spoke in any language other than French (suspecting the offender might be slandering them), Marjorie and Boddie (whom the Grodets called Madame Boddin-tune to her great annoyance) and several other boarders, including Einar Johansen, a young Danish piano student who alone among the other residents spoke some English.6

The food was good but not plentiful and Boddie caused annoyance by demanding that she must have a salad. The Grodets’ old maid, Lucienne, was despatched grumbling to the pantry to cobble together a dish the Grodets never ate and considered decidedly bourgeois. When the main course was served Marjorie experimented with one of the French phrases she had learned: ‘Passez-moi le pot de moutarde, s’il vous plait’, but the Grodets were not impressed at this early stage in their acquaintance with the strange women from a land they believed was populated largely by les kangaroos and les chiens sauvage. When coffee was served Marjorie discovered a new taste sensation: camembert cheese, another food that became a lifelong passion for her.7

Trips to the bathroom were also comical. Still suspicious of all French men, Marjorie would only venture to the communal bathroom in company with Boddie. The other residents thought these antipodeans very odd as they scuttled along the hall arm in arm and swathed in unbecoming bathrobes and leather slippers. A rumour soon spread through the house that they were ‘les lesbiennes’ even though they had separate bedrooms.

Marjorie’s room had a French window opening onto a tiny balcony overlooking the street and opposite the house was the Lycée Rollin, a famous boys’ school where the alumni included the painters Manet, Moreau and Utrillo.8 Marjorie spent many hours at the window watching the boys in their distinctive uniforms going back and forth to school in the wan winter sunlight or icy driving rain, thinking all the while about her brothers back home. To John Brownlee she confessed that she wasn’t sure how well she would be able to cope with big city living, apartment dwelling, dusty antiques and bleak weather, and how she longed for the sunshine and greenery of Australia. ‘You’ll have to get used to it like I did’, her compatriot told her. ‘It’s no use complaining. You can’t get out in the paddocks here, Marge. This is Paris.’9

Marjorie did get used to it and came to understand and love Paris, claiming it as her second home, but this took time. Typical of the knowledge that did not filter through to her for some time was that on the opposite side of the Lycée Rollin and a mere one hundred metres from her window was Boulevard de Rochechouart, location of several of Paris’s most famous maison closes and the haunt of legions of streetwalkers and dirty postcard sellers. Henry Miller wrote that ‘semen ran thick in the gutters of Boulevard de Rochechouart’. For a while at least Marjorie remained blissfully ignorant of such realities and fortunately for her, the only ‘Miller’ read in the Lawrence household back home was the local grocer’s advertising.

Einar Johansen helped Marjorie acclimatise, as did Henri Grodet. Johansen became a friend and Henri became Marjorie’s latest boyfriend and, quite possibly, her first lover. Henri showed Marjorie over Paris, including to the top of the Eiffel Tower and on picnics to the Bois de Boulogne. He also introduced her to the delights of French cuisine and Paris café society and took her for the first time to the Opéra to hear Brownlee sing Telramund in Wagner’s Lohengrin.

Another member of the Grodet family was helpful to Marjorie’s acclimatisation. A few weeks after Marjorie arrived one of the Grodet daughters returned home after a disastrous marriage to a brutal Armenian silk merchant. Emilie—known to everyone as ‘Mimi’—was as tall as her brother and had the same pale skin and doleful eyes, features which made Henri attractive, while she simply looked wan. But Mimi was kind of heart and immediately became fond of Marjorie. Soon Mimi was accorded the title ‘best friend’, supplanting Yvonne Batson in far-off Australia.

For all her lack of beauty, Mimi was a French woman through and through and she took it upon herself to inject some chic into Marjorie’s fashion sense and improve her appearance, beginning by helping Marjorie to choose a couple of hats. ‘Only servants go into the street without le chapeau, cheri’, Mimi admonished her sternly.

The need for Mimi’s sartorial advice was reinforced when Marjorie and Boddie were invited by Jess Brownlee to a tea party, attended by several elegant French woman and another Australian, Louise Hanson-Dyer, millionairess, patron of the arts and unofficial chargé d’affaires of the Australian community in Paris. Marjorie thought she acquitted herself well enough that afternoon, but as she was leaving her hostess took her aside and told her bluntly that her frock was a disaster, her hair needed thinning out and slicking down and her flat shoes were beyond the pale.

Under Mimi’s guidance Marjorie began to wear fewer layers of clothing, replaced her woolly Australian underwear with some more feminine items, got her hair coiffured and began to take interest and care in the details of dressing. The transformation from ‘young bumpkin’ to ‘glamorous woman’ began, and just occasionally progressed a little too far. After Jess Brownlee’s rebuke, Marjorie went out and bought herself a skin-tight dress and the highest-heeled pair of shoes she could find. She turned up for her next singing lesson wearing this outfit and with her hair severely slicked down. Madame Gilly screamed ‘Mon Dieu! You look like une putain. Go home immediately and change and don’t come back till you are Marjoree again!’ The slinky dress and the towering shoes were relegated to the back of Marjorie’s wardrobe and never worn again.

Early in the new year, Boddie announced that she was returning to Australia. There had never been a firm agreement between the two women about how long Boddie would keep her company, but Marjorie had envisaged it running to months rather than weeks and she was surprised and nervous at the prospect of being left ‘alone’, although Mimi, Henri and the senior Grodets assured her they would take care of her.

The Grodets kept their word and Mimi proved a reliable friend and later a staunch ally when Marjorie began to build her career. Henri provided much more than that and it was the great regret of his and Mimi’s lives that Marjorie did not marry Henri and that the two women did not become sisters in the legal sense. ‘Henri was handsome, charming and lovable,’ Marjorie would recall wistfully years later, ‘but I was focused on making a career as a singer and I was not about to make the mistake I nearly made with Pat Considine’.10 Monsieur and Madame Grodet soon warmed to Marjorie, recognising her Aussie ebullience, enthusiasm and ready laugh as virtues, not signs of frivolousness. They became like doting grandparents to her and in years to come they would follow her triumphs with pride, while she agonised over the misfortunes that befell them.