Harold Williams
In 1917, several Australian soldiers, after weeks of training preparing for the Western Front, were on leave in London. They were wandering through Hyde Park when they sighted the Royal Albert Hall.
The ringleader, Sergeant Harold Williams, had a handy voice, leading the singalongs with his old mate Dos Wallach in the Easts dressing rooms after a Sydney club game. With a ‘follow me’ gesture to his soldier mates, he said: ‘Let’s see if we can get into there and test the acoustics.’
They tried one door, couldn’t get it to budge, before being shooed away by a security guard. ‘I’ll get back here one day,’ a chastened Williams told the guard.
He proved true to his word, as only a few years later the same corporal was a headline act at this famous venue.
Many Great War soldiers boast extraordinary stories. Few compare with Williams’ in its twists and turns and how sheer chance saw him undergo a dramatic life change.
Then again, even before heading to war, Williams was accustomed to unexpected moments. Born in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, Williams dabbled in a ‘bit of singing’ with the Waverley Methodist Church Choir, but was more fascinated by the local sporting fields and the Bondi surf. He played for the strong Waverley cricket club as understudy to Test wicketkeeper cum undertaker Hanson Carter, while in the winter he played on the wing for the strong Eastern Suburbs club.
As he wrote in his unpublished memoirs, ‘I was just one of a healthy bunch of boys for whom football and cricket were the most important and absorbing affairs of life.’
On the Friday of the week war was declared, Williams had finished his day’s work as a railways department stores clerk, when he saw an Easts official frantically running towards him. Williams was told he had to be at the Sydney Sports Ground the following day to play for NSW against the All Blacks. Herbert Jones, a NSW back, was ill, and he was needed to fill in.
Williams confronted New Zealand’s best, who won 25–10. The last-minute winger failed to get a mention in any of the newspaper reports, but was delighted he could say he was a representative player.
Like many others from the Easts club, he needed no persuasion to enlist. ‘I was 21, single and generally unencumbered, so without any particular emotional or spiritual upheaval, I decided it was “up to me” to join the AIF,’ Williams said.
Williams headed towards what he assumed would be Egypt on the Argyllshire in May 1916 as part of the 9th Field Ambulance. He was among friends on the ship, as on board were cricketing teammates Frank O’Keeffe and C.C. O’Connor, and Test representatives Jack Gregory and Charlie Macartney. Another notable sportsman was the Eastern Suburbs rugby league forward Jack ‘Bluey’ Watkins, who the previous year had played for Australia against the touring Great Britain team.
During the long voyage, Watkins convinced Harold the 13-man game was for him.
‘If I had any ambition at all at that time, it was that I should eventually be chosen to play Test cricket for Australia, and I should be falsely modest if I pretended the chances were altogether remote,’ Williams said.
However, Watkins was so persuasive that Williams firmly believed he ‘should return to Australia after the war and become a professional footballer’.
That is ‘until our arrival brought back the reality of the immediate job in hand’.
Promoted to sergeant in August 1916, military training was followed by several tense months in France, where he experienced the hell of winter in Armentières, Passchendaele and Messines, on one occasion almost gassed to death when he accidentally removed his gas mask. ‘I coughed for three weeks afterwards, but no more serious results occurred.’
Then military life went on a strange detour when he received a telegram from the British commander of the Anzac Corps, General William Birdwood, instructing him to ‘proceed immediately to Albert-sur-Somme to join the “Anzac Coves”’.
The Anzac what?
Williams discovered the Anzac Coves were an Australian and New Zealand soldier entertainment group. The first theatre troupe to be established by the AIF, it included singers, comedians, female impersonators, dancers and musicians who performed for the troops, with profits going to the Australian Soldier Comfort Fund. They were highly popular, performing in front of more than 150,000 members of the AIF. Even the Prince of Wales, the Australian High Commissioner and former Prime Minister Andrew Fisher and General Hubert Gough were lured to their shows, often staged in YMCA tents.
Birdwood, who wanted the Anzac Coves to be a quality troupe, had been told of Williams’ amateur singing skills, and demanded he leave the Ambulance Corps immediately.
One day khaki, the next ‘grease paint and powder and all the other trappings of the fully professional troupe’. He found the experience, which included leading the troupe in singing the war ballad ‘My Pals are Calling’, ‘pleasant and absorbing’. He still preferred his rough and ready mates in the Field Ambulance, and made it known he wasn’t keen on cavorting on a stage. This was noted by his superiors, particularly the officer in charge of the concert party — Major John Churchill, the younger brother of Winston.
A fuming Churchill told Williams: ‘Sergeant, if you don’t settle down to this job properly, we’ll have to send you back to base.’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’
‘I expect you think you’ll go back to your old unit.’
‘I hope to.’
‘Well you can stop hoping . . . for you won’t.’
After eleven weeks, Williams was finally back with his mates, attending to injured soldiers at Passchendaele and Messines, where he was promoted to regimental quarter-master sergeant. He remained one of the most popular soldiers in the Field Ambulance, reviving spirits by leading any singalong, until he headed to London in late 1918.
Transferred to the 1st Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Middlesex, he was told to look out for an Australian nurse named Dorothy Mason because she had an abundant supply of lollies. A friendship was quickly struck up.
At the same time, he met up with a cousin in England, and on a trip to Sheffield was invited to sing during a private party. After entertaining the group, one party-goer, deeply impressed with Williams’ rich baritone voice, asked if he had ever thought of taking singing seriously — to the extent of having some lessons.
Williams replied ‘No’. Instead his ‘principal objective was to get home as quickly as possible and start on my football career’.
However, his friends did not give up, convincing him to have lessons with Charles Phillips, teacher of singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Phillips had a studio at the international recital venue Wigmore Hall. Williams relented.
After several lessons, Phillips convinced him to stay in London and ‘take up singing here professionally’.
When demobilised from the army in July 1919, Williams took the gamble. He remained in London, took singing seriously, and pursued Nurse Mason. Within months they were married in a church in Marylebone, close to where he was having his lessons. While intensely happy, Mr and Mrs Williams did it tough. He was short of funds and constantly wondered if he had made the right choice.
‘London at the close of World War I was a disturbed, bewildered and bewildering city even for the native citizen and much more for a raw “colonial” still in uniform, fumbling with the beginnings of a new career,’ Williams wrote.
Luckily an Australian squatter, Charles Billyard-Leake, who during the war donated his Middlesex mansion to the Australian Government to use as a hospital, organised a ‘vague’ job as an assistant secretary of the Stearn Electric Lamp Company, which helped Williams pay for his singing lessons. The 25 shillings a week lessons cost about half of Williams’ wage.
Phillips persuaded Williams to enter numerous singing competitions, where he received encouragement from the judges. But to go the extra step he had to organise his own recital. This was no easy feat for any inexperienced, impoverished singer, as they had to pay for it. If Williams wanted to have a recital at Wigmore Hall, it would require £60 — a large amount of money just after the war. Williams somehow found the cash and in December 1919, thirteen months after his first lesson, made his debut at the hall.
So dedicated was he to ensure this was a success he even practised on his wedding night. The newly married couple had a short honeymoon in Devon. After the wedding ceremony, Harold asked the Devon hotel manager if he could use a room to practise. Off he disappeared for several hours before eventually re-joining his wife in their hotel suite.
His commitment was rewarded, as in the front row of the recital hall were music critics from the leading London dailies. Their reviews the following day were glowing.
The Times described Williams as possessing ‘a voice of noble quality, glittering, stirring and intrepid’. The Daily Telegraph said: ‘He has a voice of exceptionally good quality.’
However, Williams was perturbed both newspapers mentioned his Australian accent, and he should work on the sounding of his vowels. Phillips took the hint and eradicated the Aussie strine from Williams’ voice. Williams’ confidence grew from a successful second recital, together with regular musicale and concert work throughout England.
In 1920, the Columbia Gramophone Company approached him to make recordings. This was a fruitful partnership which lasted several decades, with Columbia releasing a string of records under either his name or the pseudonym Geoffrey Spencer.
At last making a living out of singing, Williams handed in his resignation papers at the Stearn Electric Lamp Company in late 1920.
His operatic debut occurred the following year when he appeared as Wolfram in Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser as a member of the British National Opera Company. More crucially in 1924 he sang in the stage première of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s The Song of Hiawatha, conducted by Eugene Goossens. For the next 15 years, he appeared in countless performances of Hiawatha, in various roles including the lead when it was staged at the Royal Albert Hall.
‘I played the original Hiawatha and I played the last Hiawatha and I played all the Hiawathas in between.’
He was a Covent Garden regular, singing numerous parts including Boris (Boris Godunov) and Mephistopheles (Faust). Once playing Elijah with his left arm in plaster due to a motor accident, he appeared with countless outstanding conductors including Otto Klemperer, Sir John Barbirolli, Arturo Toscanini, Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Thomas Beecham. Now rated one of the best baritones in the United Kingdom, Williams sang at Elgar’s memorial service in 1934 and three years later at the coronation of King George VI.
Australian authorities contacted him to tour his own homeland, which saw him in 1930 back in Sydney for the first time in 14 years for a series of concerts. He was soon catching up with his old Eastern Suburbs sporting mates, leading the rugby singalongs.
Despite his intensive schedule, Williams did not give up his sporting pursuits. Moving the family, which included twin daughters, to Sussex, he was a committed member of the local cricket club, donning the pads for many seasons. He never missed a London Test match, becoming close friends with numerous Australian players including Bill O’Reilly, Stan McCabe and Alan Kippax.
During the Second World War, Williams taught at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music, gaining extra fame by performing the ABC children’s radio program The Argonauts opening and closing themes, as well as the role of Orpheus.
After the war, he returned to England, where he continued to get positive reviews, including from renowned cricket writer Neville Cardus, who was The Guardian newspaper’s music critic. They became close friends, which was not surprising considering their shared common loves — music and cricket.
Williams was finally lured home in 1952 to become the Sydney Conservatorium’s professor of singing. He remained at the Conservatorium for more than 20 years, touring Australia and New Zealand with the ABC and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, until retiring at the age of 78.
He kept up his rugby connections, even agreeing to do the ceremonial kick-off at the Easts versus Wests match at his old Woollahra Oval home ground in 1968.
On his 80th birthday in 1973, Williams appeared on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald, pictured with singer Kamahl. He was still amazed how his life had evolved.
‘I began singing completely by accident — I never dreamt of being a singer.’
Two years on, this much-loved character sang his last note.