There had been speculation in the Australian press since 1936 about Marjorie returning to her homeland for a concert tour, fuelled by comments Marjorie made whenever she was interviewed by correspondents from Australian newspapers. ‘I am longing to come home to sing to my countrymen and women and I will do so just as soon as I can’, she had said many times, sentiments supported by reports from Ivor Boustead and Thorold Waters and quoted in Australian Musical News. Letters between Marjorie and family members also mention plans in 1937 and 1938; disappointment inevitably followed when those plans were shelved.
The delays resulted partly from Marjorie’s very full schedule, but also because the Australian concert industry had undergone a dramatic upheaval during the years of her absence. Since the 1890s private entrepreneurs had risked their own money bringing distinguished artists to Australia and firms like J. & N. Tait and J.C. Williamsons had earned enviable reputations for their efficiency and their acumen. The entire landscape was then reshaped in the early 1930s when the federal government established the Australian Broadcasting Commission and a process which detractors referred to as ‘nationalisation’ of the concert industry began. The ABC established new symphony orchestras in each state and set itself up as concert promoters using taxpayers’ money.
NBC Artists Services was one of the agencies the ABC negotiated with to secure artists for Australia and Marjorie’s name had been mentioned as early as 1936, but the American agents encouraged the ABC to take artists who would earn them the maximum in commissions and Marjorie was not one of these. It has been suggested that, in an attempt to discourage the ABC, NBC Artists Services advised them Marjorie really did not want to go to Australia, while advising her she would be wise to spend her time consolidating her position in America instead of wasting it in Australia.1
The ABC brought Pinza, Rethberg, the Australian pianist Eileen Joyce and the British conductor Malcolm Sargent to Australia in 1936, and Lotte Lehmann, violinist Bronislaw Huberman and the Australian contralto Essie Ackland in 1937.2 The following year Flagstad, Kipnis and Richard Tauber headed the ABC’s roster and the inclusion of Flagstad angered some Australians, who wrote indignant letters to the press asking why our own Wagnerian star had not been engaged first. All of these artists were well received in Australia but Lotte Lehmann’s visit was considered by the ABC to be the most successful, so negotiations were commenced for her to return in 1939.
In the meantime the ABC’s chief musical adviser and conductor of its Melbourne orchestra, Bernard Heinze, had attended one of Marjorie’s performances of Salome at the Met and cabled the ABC, suggesting that, as Lehmann had not yet signed, Marjorie should be engaged immediately. Negotiations began, but when NBC Artists Services insisted the ABC pay Marjorie the same fee they had offered Lehmann, the ABC demurred, expecting to be able to secure Australian artists more cheaply than their foreign counterparts. Negotiations collapsed. Lehmann signed and both the ABC and NBC Artists Services felt they had got the better deal. The ABC believed that Australians would not support concerts by two sopranos singing the German repertoire in the same season and that if Miss Lawrence wished to be considered as one of their celebrity artists for the 1940 season she should now acknowledge that she would accept the lower fee they had offered.
Marjorie was furious, but she had a trump card to play of which neither the ABC nor NBC Artists Services were aware. In the summer of 1938 she had received an offer to tour Australia from a private entrepreneur. Her friend from her student days, Archie Longden, had realised his dream and had managed successful recital tours of Australia for John Brownlee and that other distinguished Australian Wagnerian soprano, Florence Austral. At their meeting in Paris he offered to do the same for Marjorie the following year—during the southern hemisphere winter, when concert activity was at its peak in Australia. Marjorie liked and trusted Longden but she equivocated. Negotiations were still under way with the ABC at this time and Ivor Boustead had impressed on her when he was in Paris how powerful the ABC had become. Longden countered with the fact that the Taits and Williamsons were still prospering despite opposition from the ABC and that, as they spoke, Marjorie’s friend from the Met, Lawrence Tibbett, was playing to packed houses in Australia under the Tait banner.
When negotiations broke down with the ABC, Marjorie contacted ‘Archie’ and said she would take up his offer. Longden proudly announced to the Australian press that he was to have the privilege of managing her first homecoming tour, commencing in June 1939, the month after Lehmann departed Australia. The deal Longden had offered Marjorie was far more attractive than the ABC’s. She was to receive seventy-five per cent of the net profit from each of thirty scheduled recitals and broadcast fees were added to this when Longden persuaded the ABC to transmit seven of Marjorie’s recitals. The ABC also offered to make their Sydney and Melbourne orchestras available for concerts with Marjorie—for a suitable fee—if Longden required them.
In the lead-up to this tour Longden had flooded the Australian press with stories of Marjorie’s triumphs in Europe and North and South America, and her fans, family and friends in Australia were impatient for her arrival. Marjorie and Cyril were excited at the prospect of going home and, when they and Felix Wolfes (who had agreed to accompany Marjorie on the tour) set off from San Francisco on the Monterey on 24 May 1939, all things seemed in place for an artistic and commercial triumph. But as Robert Burns wrote, the best laid plans are apt to ‘gang’ astray and Marjorie’s would prove that adage true.
Before leaving New York Marjorie had had an enormous row with Heinz Friedlander as a result of his ongoing demands for ‘expense’ money and an incident on the Zoppot trip he had organised. During their first stopover in Berlin, Friedlander’s mother had met Marjorie and Cyril and confided to them her son’s plans to divorce his wife, marry Marjorie and take control of her career. Marjorie described Mutter Friedlander as sweet, but found her revelations decidedly galling. And on board the Monterey there was much discussion about Friedlander, with Felix Wolfes inadvertently letting slip that Friedlander had paid him $300 for the introduction to Marjorie back in 1936. Had it been at all possible, Wolfes would have found himself out of a job and, as Marjorie put it, ‘dumped on a desert island to rot’, but there was no handy island, so Wolfes stayed.
Encouraged by Cyril, Marjorie had forgiven Wolfes by the time the ship reached Sydney, but there the situation flared up again. A cable was waiting for Marjorie at her hotel. It was from Friedlander informing her that his divorce had finally come through and wunderbar she could now marry him. Marjorie cabled straight back telling Friedlander he was sacked as her self-appointed manager and that henceforth they were strangers. Privately she expressed relief that she was 10,000 miles away when the hot-headed German received her cable.
What, if any, marriage plans Marjorie had became one of the most often-asked questions from the Australian media over the next few weeks. Marjorie remained non-committal and answered with a deliberate twinkle in her eyes that she hoped to settle down some day, perhaps with an Australian husband on ‘a nice little property somewhere’. She had grown tired, she said of European men. Fortunately for Marjorie, the press never got wind of the Friedlander fracas.
The tour was to begin in Victoria, so Marjorie, Cyril, Wolfes and Longden (who had come on board the Monterey from the pilot boat via a rope ladder) stayed in Sydney for one night only, travelling the following evening on the overnight train to Melbourne. At Melbourne’s Spencer Street railway station they were greeted by a crowd of 700, including all the school children from Deans Marsh and Winchelsea, who had been given the day off to form a Melbourne guard of honour for Marjorie. There was also a large contingent of Lawrences, including sister Lena and brothers Lindsay, Ted and Alan. Ivor Boustead and Thorold Waters were nearby, as were two new acquaintances—Alfredo Luizzi, young baritone pupil of Boustead’s who had won the 1938 Ballarat Sun Aria and who would be Marjorie’s assisting artist on the tour, and the equally young Charles Buttrose, whom Longden had engaged to travel with the artists on the Victorian leg of their tour. There was also a massive press contingent and Marjorie was photographed with her brothers and sister, her right arm around Lena’s shoulders and her left around Lindsay’s. The photograph shows a happy and united group and it seems that in the excitement of reunion, differences had been genuinely, albeit temporarily, set aside. Marjorie reported later:
I had more or less adjusted differences with Lindsay, who was nevertheless still adamant about me repaying the £500 to the estate, i.e. himself. I refused and left without doing it.3
That afternoon Marjorie hosted a tea party for her nieces and nephews at her Melbourne hotel and shared cakes, jelly, cream buns and lemonade with this awestruck group, one of whom had been named in her honour and none of whom had ever met their famous aunt before. Marjorie explained to the children (all dressed up in their best clothes and with faces scrubbed until they shone) how ‘not a mile from here’ she had worked endless hours sewing buttons onto frocks. The press reported:
People who met Miss Lawrence found her little different in manner and temperament from ‘Marge’, the happy-go-lucky youngster who went away in search of fame. We are pleased to report that success has not spoiled her.4
Marjorie kept her promise to her father to begin the tour with a concert in the Globe Theatre in Winchelsea. She, Cyril, Wolfes, Longden and a cavalcade of newsmen and photographers progressed down to her hometown the following day and an even more remarkable welcome awaited them there. Led by a family friend carrying a large Australian flag, one hundred of the district’s citizens, all mounted on horses of various shapes and sizes, met them on the outskirts of town and escorted them to the Shire Hall, where the rest of the local population was assembled for a civic reception.
The old bluestone building had been bedecked for the occasion with finery from half a dozen nearby drawing rooms. There were speeches galore, more kissing, weeping and, being an Australian bush gathering, much concentrated eating of home-made delicacies washed down with oceans of thick, strong tea.5
Marjorie was presented with an illuminated address and the event was filmed by Movietone News and broadcast ‘live’ by an outside broadcast unit from radio 3LO. That evening a ball was held in her honour at the Globe Theatre. Marjorie re-met many old friends that day and evening, including Pat Considine with whom she danced twice and who whispered in her ear that she was still the best looking ‘bird’ he’d ever seen.
Marjorie and her party stayed with Ada Boddington for the five nights of their visit to Winchelsea. Marjorie remarked that Felix Wolfes’s European nobility was put to the test by staying in an unheated Australian farmhouse in mid-winter and having to cope with the intricacies and discomforts of an outdoor toilet. ‘Boddie’ presented Marjorie with a magnificent concert gown she had made for her over the preceding months and Marjorie described it as being ‘as exquisite as that of any celebrated French couturier’.6
On the night after the ball Marjorie gave her concert at the Globe Theatre. The best piano in the district (a Steinway belonging to a local family) was removed to the theatre for Wolfes to play and 300 people crammed inside, with twice that number outside listening through the fortunately flimsy walls. The concert was broadcast nationally by the ABC, which meant that hundreds of thousands of Australians heard Marjorie sing songs by Schubert, Rachmaninov and Mussorgsky. These were followed by traditional songs, with the triumphant climax being the Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung.
The next morning Marjorie and her party drove to Deans Marsh and Marjorie sang during the Sunday service at St Paul’s church. Lindsay, Ted, Cyril and Alan resumed their old places in the choir. It was just like old times, the only missing figure being Alex Pearce, who had died a few years earlier. Other visits included afternoon tea with aunt Emma Smith, now eighty and the most consistent letter writer of Marjorie’s family.7
Ted Lawrence drove Marjorie and Cyril out to see the Lawrence farm at Winchelsea, which had been sold and was now sadly rundown, and to visit their parents’ graves at Bambra cemetery. The absence of her father from all these events had been the one note of deep sadness for Marjorie. At his graveside she spoke to him, telling him ‘Well, I made it Dad’ and that she had fulfilled her promise to sing in the Globe.
The press discreetly absented themselves from this last trip but they were on hand for two important photo opportunities before Marjorie returned to Melbourne. Decked out in a tweed jacket, jodhpurs and boots, Marjorie went riding, and photographs of her galloping over the paddocks were published in newspapers across Australia. The second opportunity involved another celebrity. On arriving in Melbourne Marjorie had told the press that she enjoyed bicycle riding but had not been able to bring her ‘bike’ with her to Australia. The Melbourne-based cycle manufacturers Malvern Star became aware of this and despatched one of their directors to Winchelsea with a brand new Malvern Star ladies’ roadster for Marjorie. The director and presenter of the bicycle was the legendary Australian cyclist Hubert Opperman and the press had a field day photographing ‘Oppy’ and ‘Marge’ together. Marjorie proudly told Opperman and the press that she had been on the finishing line for the Brest to Paris endurance race that Opperman had won in 1931, cheering her heart out but too shy to approach him after the race.
Marjorie’s recitals in Melbourne and provincial centres in Victoria were widely successful, despite strong opposition from the ABC. On the evenings between Marjorie’s appearances in the Melbourne Town Hall, the ABC presented the great German pianist Artur Schnabel in the same venue. Thus Melbournians were treated to six major recitals in seven days, more, Longden told the press, than he thought a city the size of Melbourne could support. Longden also accused the ABC of trying to elbow him and all private impresarios from the field and of being unpatriotic by engaging Lehmann in preference to Marjorie. The General Manager of the ABC, Charles Moses, countered in the press by claiming that Marjorie had been offered a tour in 1940 but had turned it down, that they had agreed to broadcast her recitals and had amended their orchestra dates for her appearances to suit her.
An average attendance of 2800 at Marjorie’s Melbourne recitals more than equalled Schnabel’s and, while connoisseurs might have preferred to hear the legendary pianist, the general public flocked to hear Marjorie singing Wagner showpieces and songs they knew, including ‘My Ain Folk’, where in the final stanza she substituted ‘dear Aus-tra-lia’ for ‘dear old Scotland’.8
Vast armfuls of flowers were presented to Marjorie at her every appearance and she particularly delighted in the small posies of daphne which filled her hotel suite with their exquisite perfume. Hundreds of people queued to meet Marjorie after each recital and to present her with chocolates, cakes and even a basket full of sand crabs and a home-made rabbit pie. A small toy kangaroo was passed up to her on stage at the end of one recital and at another a small toy platypus.9
Marjorie and Wolfes both caught colds in Melbourne and one recital had to be cancelled, but if Marjorie and Longden felt they had done it tough in the Victorian capital they had a rude shock in store when they began their Sydney season. Fewer than 1000 people turned up for Marjorie’s first recital in the Sydney Town Hall, and even fewer for the second and third. Marjorie complained that more people had turned up to see her in tiny Winchelsea than in Australia’s largest city and herein lies the key to this apparently incomprehensible situation. Reviews of Marjorie’s concerts were unsparing in their praise and there was no competition with the likes of Schnabel as there had been in Melbourne. Perhaps Sydneysiders stayed away because Marjorie was a Melbournian? There had always been intense rivalry between Australia’s two largest cities and all the hype about ‘Victoria’s golden haired beauty’ and ‘Melbourne’s gift to the Paris Opéra and to the Metropolitan’ probably ruffled feathers in Sydney. Marjorie cancelled a fourth recital and that stirred the press into a campaign in support of her. The Sydney papers berated their readers for their shabby treatment of a great singer and speculated on the damage their action (or inaction) would do to the city’s cultural reputation.
A committee of socialites headed by Lady Gowrie, wife the Governor of New South Wales, rallied support and at her fifth recital Marjorie finally sang to a respectably sized audience, but when she appeared five nights later with the ABC’s Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Wolfes, numbers had dropped off again. Longden suggested that prices might have affected ticket sales so Marjorie agreed to do a series of short recitals in the State Theatre, the city’s most palatial cinema where tickets were cheaper. Here, she finally sang to full houses, but no one could be sure whether Marjorie’s resplendent singing of opera arias or Bing Crosby’s crooning of half a dozen songs in the film East Side of Heaven, which followed each recital, was the drawcard. While in Sydney, Marjorie also looked up Emily Skyring, who had helped her with money in Paris nine years earlier. Skyring now lived there and reluctantly accepted repayment of the money along with a pair of complimentary tickets to Marjorie’s final recital at the State Theatre.
Anxious to quit a city where she felt unwanted, Marjorie, Cyril, Wolfes and Longden headed off for packed-out recitals in Canberra, followed by Brisbane. Marjorie experienced flying for the first time on the journey south from Brisbane and found the experience exhilarating, prompting her to praise the efficiency and convenience of air travel to the press. After another round of recitals in Victorian country towns, the group returned to Melbourne on Sunday 3 September to prepare for two final concerts. That evening Marjorie, Cyril, Wolfes and Longden gathered around the radio in Marjorie’s hotel suite to listen to a speech by Robert Menzies, recently elected prime minister of Australia. Menzies announced that as Germany had failed to meet a deadline set by Britain a state of war now existed between Britain and Germany and, therefore, between Australia and Germany. The storm that had been gathering for years had finally broken. Marjorie’s first act was to hug Felix Wolfes, who was in tears, and over the next few days she was preoccupied with thoughts of Mimi, Henri, Monsieur and Madame Grodet, Cécile Gilly and all her colleagues and friends in Paris.
Alfredo Luizzi (Australian, despite his Italian name) had not contributed much to the tour, but what he had done had been done well, so Marjorie had willingly agreed to sing at a testimonial concert organised for him in the Melbourne Town Hall. On the advice of his colleagues the young baritone had decided to travel to America and further his studies there, Europe now being effectively off limits. Also taking part in the concert was a delightful and prodigiously talented twelve-year-old pianist from Adelaide, Allison Nelson, who would unexpectedly reappear in Marjorie’s career decades later.
At this concert Marjorie sang two songs by Australian composers: Percy Grainger’s ‘Willow, Willow’ and Linda Phillips’s ‘The Charioteers’. The latter was dedicated to Marjorie and written by a young composer of more than average talent who became a lifelong friend and who eventually succeeded Thorold Waters as music critic of The Sun. Marjorie had met Grainger in America and the two had discovered they were not only compatriots but kindred free spirits. Marjorie would later include several songs by him and other Australian composers in her recital repertoire, adding an antipodean element to an already eclectic mix and giving exposure to works by composers who struggled to be heard. At the suggestion of Thorold Waters, around this time Marjorie established the ‘Marjorie Lawrence Prize’ of ten guineas, to be awarded to a young Australian singer annually, in conjunction with the Ballarat Sun Aria.10
Another distinctly Australian incident on this tour, this time with a slightly absurd element to it, was a story in the press which was probably true. It concerned Marjorie being approached by a local film company who were planning to make a movie of the life of Dame Nellie Melba. Marjorie Lawrence, they were reported as saying, would be ideal for acting and singing the role of Melba. When the press questioned Marjorie about this she was very diplomatic and said she believed it a great honour to be considered for the role, avoiding having to mention that her voice and her repertoire were nothing like Melba’s by explaining that she had already been approached by Hollywood to appear in films, which was probably also true.
The final concert of the tour took place on 13 September with the ABC’s Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Heinze. Marjorie had wanted to sing the Salome finale and the Immolation Scene, but Heinze vetoed the Strauss on the grounds that the performance would earn a royalty for a living enemy composer. Privately, the conductor was afraid the audience might react violently to two German opera excerpts on the same program. The Wagner was considered a reasonable risk, but the Strauss was replaced by a group of arias by French composers—Australia’s allies in the war—and Marjorie announced after singing the Wagner that she was donating her 250-pound earnings from the concert to the Red Cross.
Among the string players in the Melbourne Symphony at that time was Isabelle Moresby, who a few years later would write a book about music in Australia. We are indebted to Moresby for what is the most intimate portrait of Marjorie during this tour.
There was something so natural and spontaneous about her that she had most of her fellow Australians at her feet. Rehearsing with the orchestra—two thirds of whose string players were women—Marjorie beamed and dimpled at us, as if she were a sister to us all—with a quaint wisp of a hat nodding on top of her golden curls. ‘But why on earth must she wear such a funny little hat?’ queried one puzzled admirer. ‘What does it matter?’ was the whispered rejoinder, ‘If I were as pretty as she is, I wouldn’t care what I wore on my head!’11
Marjorie, Cyril and Wolfes left Sydney to return to the United States two days after the final concert in Melbourne. Archie Longden stayed behind in Australia and volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force.12 In the Fijian capital Suva, Marjorie fulfilled a commitment made on the outbound journey to give a concert for the local Red Cross. Most of the British, Indian and American communities on the island crammed into the Suva Town Hall to listen to Marjorie singing Gluck, Schubert, Mussorgsky and Wagner as giant punkahs swung to and fro above their heads stirring the hot, moisture-laden air.
Marjorie also gave a concert in the McKinlay Auditorium in Honolulu and she, Cyril and Wolfes were photographed in tropical attire, Marjorie and Cyril holding a pineapple and Wolfes holding a ukulele. Marjorie was also photographed by the press sitting on Waikiki Beach with the ubiquitous ukulele and the score of Die Walküre propped up in front of her. She was not attempting to play Wagner on the ukulele (as a glance at the photos might suggest), but in fact learning a new role—Sieglinde, which she was contracted to sing for the San Francisco Opera on their arrival back in the United States.
Having become one of the two or three leading Brünnhildes in the world, it may seem strange that Marjorie would have bothered with the lighter soprano role in Die Walküre, but the request for Marjorie and Flagstad to alternate in these roles had come from both Gaetano Merola (head of the San Francisco Opera) and Edward Johnson. Both impresarios had recognised the publicity value of what neither would have admitted was a stunt.
The ‘stunt’ nearly didn’t come off when word reached both companies that Flagstad was having difficulty getting a passage from war-torn Europe to America. Marjorie received a cable in Hawaii from Johnson’s assistant Edward Zeigler saying she should hold herself ready to take over all the Wagner dramatic soprano roles at the Met in the coming winter season if Flagstad arrived late or not at all.13 As it turned out Flagstad reached the United States in time for the first performance of Die Walküre at the San Francisco Opera, in which she sang Sieglinde and Marjorie sang Brünnhilde. A week later on 24 October 1939, Marjorie sang Sieglinde for the first time, with Flagstad as Brünnhilde.
Three of the four performances of Die Walküre given by the San Francisco Opera that season were conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, Bodanzky’s dynamic new assistant in the German wing at the Met, and the fourth by Flagstad’s tame and obedient protégée Edwin McArthur. Marjorie was unlucky to have McArthur in the pit on the night she tackled Sieglinde for the first time. McArthur had never conducted the opera before and Leinsdorf had cornered all the rehearsal time, so when McArthur stood before the orchestra to conduct the prologue it was for the first time. A pedestrian performance resulted, redeemed only by the voices of Flagstad, Marjorie and Melchior.14 The critics praised Marjorie, although some expressed the opinion that she was a better Brünnhilde than a Sieglinde. Olin Downes attended and wrote in the New York Times that Marjorie brought a spontaneity and abandon to her singing of the part which made plausible Siegmund’s apostrophe to the Spring and the blossoming of the Walsung blood.15
Marjorie and Melchior next met up for a performance of Siegfried in St Louis, which was followed by a series of joint recitals in Chicago, Detroit and Toronto, further cementing their friendship and treating audiences to mouth-watering programs of Wagner, including the dawn duet from Götterdämmerung and the Siegmund-Sieglinde duet from Die Walküre.
While in Montreal Marjorie also gave a joint recital with Ezio Pinza and, while Cyril was driving them back to their hotel after the recital, the Italian basso tried to seduce Marjorie.
Pinza clutched my hand and fervently declared he had adored me since the first time he saw me. He lamented that because Cyril was with us, he could not talk freely but, he panted, there were many things he yearned to tell me. He would come to my room directly we got to the hotel and relate them he said. I laughingly told Signor Pinza that I did not think anything he might have to say would stale if it remained unsaid until the following morning when we were less tired, but it had to be tonight, he said. When we reached the hotel Cyril did a magnificent job of running interference and I was able to escape to my room, but Pinza would not be put off. Just as I was getting ready for bed he arrived outside my door. He sang, he shouted, he hammered and he threatened to break down the door until a hotel official attracted by the din arrived and led off my gifted, warm-hearted colleague.16
Pinza was an adored matinee idol and a handsome man who exuded tremendous virility and charm and Marjorie must have been tempted to succumb to his passion, but no doubt his reputation as a womaniser deterred her and the prospect of being another of his much vaunted conquests did not appeal to her. Rejection did not affect Pinza’s friendship with Marjorie and when he married the daughter of a Larchmont dentist (less than half his age) the following year he sent most of the women he had successfully or unsuccessfully tried to seduce, including Marjorie, invitations to his wedding.
Back in New York, Marjorie and Cyril settled into the Ansonia as Marjorie prepared for her next season at the Met as well as for opera and concert engagements across the length and breadth of the nation that fate had destined would now be her new home. Early on, there were a couple of events which consolidated her recent renewed association with her homeland. Marjorie joined John Brownlee in providing the entertainment for the inaugural dinner of the Australian Association of New York, of which they, Percy Grainger and about one hundred other Australians living in the city were founder members. On this occasion Marjorie sang Grainger’s powerful and moving song ‘Shallow Brown’, impressing the composer so much he sent her a note a month later saying her singing still lingered in his memory.
Marjorie and Grainger were also elected executive members of the ANZAC War Relief Fund, an organisation established to raise money to buy personal items for Australian and New Zealand troops then being committed to the war in Europe, and towards the end of 1940 they also collaborated on a fund-raising concert at Carnegie Hall.
This was organised by Marjorie and billed as a ‘Dominions Night Concert’, featuring Marjorie, Grainger and assisting artists, with the proceeds going to ‘Bundles for Britain’, a British charity set up to assist Britons on the home front suffering nightly bombing raids from the Luftwaffe. In the preceding months Grainger and Marjorie had met several times and corresponded to discuss which of Grainger’s songs and arrangements Marjorie would sing in the second half of the program, which was devoted entirely to the Australian composer’s work. Eventually they settled on ‘Hubby and Wifey’, ‘Rule Britannia’, ‘Willow, Willow’, ‘The Old Woman at the Christening’ and ‘Shallow Brown’ with Grainger and the American composer Henry Cowell playing the guitar and piano parts and a string ensemble led by cellist Willem Durieux.
Plans for the concert went smoothly until a day or so before the concert was to be held, when Lord Lothian, the British ambassador to the United States died. The British charity felt obliged to withdraw out of respect for their ambassador, announcing that the concert had been cancelled. Marjorie hastily assembled the press and informed them the concert was back on and she was taking over full responsibility for it, believing, she said, that no Briton (least of all a representative of His Majesty the King) would want to deny the suffering population of Britain the comforts the money raised by the concert could provide. Privately Marjorie was furious. So much work had been put into the event by so many people she considered it immoral that it should be cancelled because of the death of an individual who had refused medical treatment on religious grounds.
As well as the Grainger items Marjorie sang songs by Brahms, Fauré, Duparc and Canteloube, an English group and a new song (‘Miranda’) by the American composer Richard Hageman. Marjorie dedicated the ‘Four Serious Songs’ of Brahms to the memory of Lothian and in a speech she quoted what she said had been the ambassador’s final words: ‘Before the judgement seat of God each must answer for his own actions’, which must have stirred mixed reaction from those who knew the circumstances of his death. Noel Strauss reported in The New York Times that Marjorie and Grainger received ‘a series of overwhelming ovations by the large and patriotic audience, including many Australians, who set up their native “Coo-ee” call’.17
On the train back to his home in White Plains the following day Grainger wrote to Marjorie. Referring to the concert he noted with numerous underlinings and several Graingerisms:
It is the only time that I have heard my songs perfectly done—with glorious sincerity and exquisite differentiation of mood, warm emotionality and crystal clear diction. No other singer I know would have had the courage to present these songs as they should be—in a drastic way—a thoroughly Australian way. Your great artistry is a match for your thrilling voice. I also want to say how much I admired the way you and your brother stuck to your guns and put the concert through. That again is truly Australian.18
Grainger’s words are a timely reminder that, even at the height of her career and long after she adopted the United States as her home and became an American citizen, at heart Marjorie was and would always remain an Aussie.