by Sue Corbett
She had a big repertory — the result of a remarkable facility in reading and an equally remarkable memory — and at an early stage in her career laid the foundations of it with the other concertos of Beethoven, all the concertos of Mozart, which she subsequently played at the National Gallery and during the Festival of Britain, 1951, the popular Schumann and Grieg concertos, which she treated as the small lyrical pieces they are, and the two big Brahms concertos, which perhaps suited her less but were well within her intellectual capacity. Her catholic taste embraced the virginalists, the sonatas of Scarlatti and late Beethoven, Bach and the romantics, and her own contemporaries and juniors. There was in her character and in her playing alike a mixture of strength and graciousness — she could be very pertinacious — which more than technical brilliance made her an artist of international reputation. She was one of the few English artists to establish herself as a musician of the front rank not only at home but in many European countries and in the United States.
The National Gallery concerts, which ran from the autumn of 1939 throughout the war to April, 1946, formed an episode of a unique character in her career and in English musical history. She had some help from Sir Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery, and from Mr Howard Ferguson, and encouragement from one or two other musicians, but the idea, the initiative, and the plan of giving daily lunch-hour concerts at a cheap flat rate price of admission was hers. She launched the scheme with a recital, planned the programmes, and presided over the committee which ran it. The concerts met an acutely felt need and immediately took their place as one of the stable features in London’s disrupted life. They ran uninterruptedly all through the bombardments, nocturnal or matutinal, for six and a half years. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother went more than once and their value to the nation was recognized by the founder’s promotion in the Order of the British Empire from Commander (conferred in 1936) to Dame. She was during that grim time the leader of our musical life. Only when, in 1946, the emergency was past and the concerts came to an end did she feel able to accept the many pressing invitations she had received to play abroad again. She continued to play for another 16 years when recurring arthritis brought about her retirement. She received affectionate tributes three years later when she celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday.
Dame Myra Hess, DBE, concert pianist, was born on February 25, 1890. She died on November 25, 1965, aged 75
ENID BLYTON
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PROLIFIC AUTHOR OF BEST-SELLING BUT OFTEN CONTROVERSIAL CHILDREN’S BOOKS
NOVEMBER 29, 1968
Miss Enid Blyton, who died yesterday, was perhaps the most successful and most controversial children’s author of the postwar period. Certainly she was the most productive: at her death something like 400 titles stood to her name.
Inevitably, her name is linked with her creation (or, as those who disliked her work called him) her creature, Noddy. Noddy became a household name. Though a figure of fiction, fiction could not hold him, he became a hot commercial property. At different times you could find him on the West End stage; on the back of breakfast food packets; on the handles of toothbrushes; and in the form of an eggcup. He was loathed by many adults — particularly librarians — and loved by many children. The antis found him odious, unwholesome, and wet — he was said to weep when confronted by some intractable Toyland problem. The case for the antis was crystallized some years ago in a witty article in Encounter. But it is probably true to say that those children who enjoyed Noddy were not much influenced by the knockers. They looked on the works of Miss Blyton and found them good. They could not see what all the fuss was about.
Enid Blyton reading one of her own stories to her daughters in 1949
However, to judge the prolific Miss Blyton solely on the merits of the mini-adventures of Noddy, Big Ears and Mr Plod would be unfair. The enormous success of her Famous Five and Secret Seven series and the enduring popularity of such books as The Island of Adventure, The Sea of Adventure and The Valley of Adventure was earned for she could write a readable tale, a tale with action in it, and a tale that children, shrewd critics, found credible.
The daughter of T. C. Blyton, her early years are not easy to chart exactly; she was not one to favour the publisher’s practice of printing on the dust-jacket of a book a piece about its author. She was born in the late 1890s and brought up and educated in Beckenham; she was musical, taking her LRAM at an early age. Her father wished her to become a concert pianist but she had already decided that she would write for children and to prepare for this left home and took Froebel training. Subsequently she was governess to a family of boys in Surrey and this experience encouraged her to open a small school of her own. By now she was writing stories, poems, and plays for her pupils, the themes and ideas for these often coming from the children, and contributing regularly to Teacher’s World.
Her first published book, Child Whispers, a collection of poems, appeared in 1922. Her first stories were published by George Newnes and she was intimately connected with the popular children’s magazine Sunny Stories. It was at Newnes that she met and in 1924 married her first husband, Lieutenant-Colonel H. A. Pollock. After her marriage she spread her wings yet further, editing books on teaching and a children’s encyclopaedia.
Early in the 1940s it was suggested to her by a London publisher that she should emulate Angela Brazil and write school stories for girls. She took the advice and the tales she wrote went like hot cakes. So successful were they after the Second World War when there was a continuing shortage of paper and printing facilities that it was difficult to keep them in stock. At least three publishers were taking her work. Books of all kinds flowed from her pen: she produced an abridged edition of T. A. Coward’s Birds of the British Isles and their Eggs, a children’s life of Christ, some Old Testament tales, a version of Pilgrim’s Progress, readers for class use, and books on botany and volumes of verse.
These, of course, in addition to her immensely popular Secret Seven and Famous Five series. Her success was not loved by the public librarians who in some cases imposed sanctions against her books. Children asked for her books and were told they were not in stock.
Cold war broke out. While the librarians were probably unwise to betray their prejudices so openly Miss Blyton was perhaps wrong in contending that children should have what they liked no matter what other books were squeezed out. Whoever was in the right the fact remains that though Miss Blyton’s writings were not great literature they were harmless, as any adult who has worked through a bout of Secret Seven or Famous Five knows.
There are many children who can read but do not read much; they find The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe just a little too much for them; Miss Blyton they pick up and they are away; they are better catered for now but it was not always so. Undoubtedly she helped many a child on the frontiers of book reading to take his first step.
She did not frequently get what is called a good press and over the years became as cagey as Marie Corelli about herself and her affairs. Yet her relations with children were of the best. Many years ago she reluctantly agreed to speak at a children’s book week and arrived not noticeably well turned out. She was a huge success. On the spot it was arranged that she should appear each day. For many years after that she was a first choice at one famous book fair and always drew packed houses.
Her second husband, Kenneth Waters, FRCS, whom she married in 1943, died in 1967. She leaves two daughters by her first marriage.
Enid Blyton, children’s writer, was born on August 11, 1897. She died on November 28, 1968, aged 71
PROFESSOR DOROTHY GARROD
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PALAEOLITHIC ARCHAEOLOGIST WHO IN 1939 BECAME THE FIRST WOMAN TO HOLD A CAMBRIDGE PROFESSORSHIP
DECEMBER 19, 1968
Professor Dorothy Garrod, CBE, sometime Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and former Disney Professor of Archaeology in the University of Cambridge, died yesterday at the age of 76. For more than two generations she was
the leading authority in this country on Palaeolithic archaeology, and the first woman to be appointed professor at the University of Cambridge.
Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod was born in London in 1892, the daughter of Sir Archibald Edward Garrod, KCMG, FRS, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. She was educated at Burklands School, St Albans, and at Newnham College, Cambridge. She went up to Cambridge in 1913 to read first history and then classics. In 1919 after three years of war work in France she returned to academic studies to read for the diploma in anthropology of Oxford, which she obtained with distinction.
In 1927 she undertook her first major piece of original fieldwork — the excavation of the Devil’s Tower rock shelter at Gibraltar. The results were published in a long paper to the Royal Anthropological Institute in the following year and made a considerable impression both for the nature of the discoveries — the first important finds of Neanderthal man associated with cultural remains and geological evidences of age in the Iberian Peninsula — and on account of the admirable way in which the investigation had been planned and presented. In 1929 she was elected research Fellow of her old college, and in 1932 while holding a Leverhulme research fellowship she embarked on the greatest single task in her notable career as a field worker, the excavation of the immense stratified sequence of Palaeolithic cave habitations at Mount Carmel, Palestine.
Although followed soon after by comparable finds by a French expedition in the Judean desert, and a German expedition in Syria, the discoveries at Mount Carmel remain perhaps the most richly informative single contribution to the study of primitive man ever achieved by one investigator at any one locality. Thereby Garrod was able to reveal for the first time the essential features of the prehistoric succession of south-west Asia, from the final stages of the Lower Palaeolithic to the earliest signs of agriculture — a total period of human development now known to have lasted approximately 100,000 years. Moreover the conclusions set out in her well-known monograph “The Stone Age of Mount Carmel” in 1937 have been abundantly confirmed by later work, while the full significance of the material and observations is still after nearly 30 years by no means exhausted.
Garrod’s remarkable capacity for field investigations was accompanied by a striking gift for the synthesis of the growing mass of data on the prehistoric past. At a time when most workers were content to elaborate knowledge of particular areas, Garrod played a leading part in stimulating conscious elucidation of the broader patterns of the Old Stone Age in much the same fashion as her contemporary Gordon Childe did for the European Neolithic. Her paper to the British Association as President of Section H in 1937, entitled, “The Upper Palaeolithic in the Light of Recent Research”, is a landmark in the development of the geographical and historical approach to Palaeolithic problems. Its particular occasion, the historical relation between the eastern and western groups of the Upper Palaeolithic, remained with her an abiding interest that was undoubtedly stimulated in the first instance by the finds of this phase at Mount Carmel, and led to a long series of much discussed papers.
Professor Dorothy Garrod, CBE, archaeologist, was born on May 5, 1892. She died on December 18, 1968, aged 76
DAME ADELINE GENÉE
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DANISH BALLERINA WHO RAISED STANDARDS IN THE PROFESSION AS FOUNDER PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE ROYAL ACADEMY OF DANCING
APRIL 24, 1970
Dame Adeline Genée-Isitt, DBE, who died yesterday, at the age of 92, was not only one of the best and most loved dancers of her day, but through tireless effort as well as example one of the founders of British ballet as it exists today.
She was born at Hinnerup, near Aarhus, Denmark, on January 6, 1878. The survivor of twins, she was named Anina. From about the age of four she showed a love of dancing which was encouraged by her father’s brother, a successful ballet master and dancer, who had taken the professional name of Alexander Genée. This uncle and his wife, a Hungarian ballerina named Antonia Zimmerman, offered to make themselves responsible for her upbringing as soon as she was old enough to undertake rigorous training.
She took the same adopted surname as her uncle, who also chose for her the first name Adeline (after Adelina Patti). What she was taught was the old pure classical style of dancing which had flourished in Paris nearly a century earlier, been brought from there to Copenhagen by August Bournonville, and passed on by him to Christian Johansson, with whom Alexander Genée studied in St. Petersburg.
She made her first public appearance at ten in a Polka à la picarde, but she was not encouraged to become a child prodigy. Instead, she took her place in due course in her uncle’s corps de ballet, although her industry and good memory soon brought her the opportunity to dance solo roles when other members of the company were absent.
Alexander Genée’s career took the family to Stettin, to Berlin, and then to Munich, where he decided to revive for his niece, then 18, what became one of her most famous ballets, Coppélia. Shortly afterwards came an invitation to appear in London at the Empire Theatre, and although the first offer (for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee celebrations) had to be refused, Adeline Genée arrived there in November, 1897, with a six weeks’ contract. She stayed, with only brief interruptions, for 10 years.
The ballets at the Empire were of a lighter nature than the kind Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet was later to popularize. In almost all of them Genée as the star would be seen not only in her classical solo but also in at least one dance to display her gift of characterization. One of the most famous of her solos, first given in High Jinks in 1904, was Return from the Hunt, given in full long-skirted riding kit, portraying both horse and rider, the exhilaration of the one and the nimbleness of the other.
In October, 1902, Genée was invited as guest artist to the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, where she danced Coppélia and Flower Festival at Genzano with Hans Beck, and a duet by her uncle with Gustav Uhlendorff. The Danish critics found her style exceptionally refined, although “a little hard and cool”, and greatly admired her virtuosity which encompassed steps not then normally attempted by women, including entrechat six and double pirouettes.
In January, 1905, Genée took part in a Command performance at Chatsworth before Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, the first time a dancer had been so honoured. In 1907 she left for her first tour of the United States, where she enjoyed a success comparable to that she had long commanded in London. By now her reputation was such that works of a more serious nature could be produced at the Empire; in 1906 she danced Coppélia there and in 1909 Alexander Genée mounted for her a version of the ballet scene from Robert le Diable which, with Taglioni in the role Genée now played, had ushered in the Romantic ballet. Genée herself also produced a number of ballets, often based on historical models.
Marriage to a successful businessman, Frank S. N. Isitt, in 1910, brought her great happiness, and after further tours in the United States and Australia, and London seasons at the Coliseum, Genée in 1914 announced her farewell season. The subscription list for a farewell present was headed by five fellow ballerinas including Pavlova and Karsavina, but with characteristic generosity Genée asked that the money raised be given to relieve the poverty of another dancer who had fallen on hard times.
In fact Genée continued dancing for a time after this season, but withdrew from regular appearances in 1917. This was not, however, to be the end of her connexion with the dance. On December 31, 1920, the Association of Teachers of Operatic Dancing of Great Britain was formed to raise standards and Genée elected its first president. The post was no sinecure: she helped draw up a standard syllabus, organized performances for the benefit of the association, personally sought the patronage of Queen Mary which was granted in 1928, and eight years later had the pleasure of seeing the association granted its charter as the Royal Academy of Dancing.
Adeline Genée’s last appearances were made in The Love Song, a duet with Anton Dolin which she produced for a charity performance in June, 1932, repeated on the programmes of a
special group of English dancers which she took to Copenhagen later that year (appearing at the Royal Theatre during the British Industries Fair), and gave for the last time in a BBC television broadcast on March 15, 1933.
She was created DBE in 1950 for her services to ballet. She was made an honorary Mps.D. by London University in 1946. She was proud, too, of the links she maintained with her native land and of the several honours bestowed upon her by Denmark.
Dame Adeline retired from the presidency of the RAD in 1954, handing over the office to Dame Margot Fonteyn. She retained her interest in ballet, however, and in 1967 was present at the gala performance to open a new theatre named after her at East Grinstead. Her husband died in 1939.
It was Adeline Genée’s blessing to bring happiness to many thousands who admired and enjoyed her art. It was her pride to conduct herself always so that her profession should be respected. It was her self-appointed task to give that art and profession a strong foundation in her second homeland. Purity and clearness of style were hers in her life as in her dancing, and for many she left the memory of “an art with the warmth and innocence of sunshine”.