by John Calder
But the contact with Buckle and Harewood, and also Rosenthal, had further consequences. Richard Buckle, very public-school in manner and a captain of a regiment during the war, was very good at getting money out of backers. Extremely gay, to employ a word not in use then, he had an entourage of other gay men, mostly fairly well-off, whom he exploited in many ways, some of them working for him for next to nothing, others financing his magazine and other projects. Harewood was not gay, but he too was much manipulated by Buckle. When Harewood later became Director of the Edinburgh Festival, he commissioned Richard Buckle to mount a massive exhibition around the work and career of Diaghilev, which later transferred to Forbes House in London. Buckle then tried to get money out of me to keep Ballet going. I had been more than tolerant about his long-overdue printing bills, and I knew that he still owed money to his previous printer. Harewood felt that he had already done enough for Ballet and was in any case now only interested in his own magazine. I tried to work out a business plan to put Ballet into the black, which would mean reaching a settlement with past creditors or other backers to clean up the mess and allow there to be a future. One problem, I think – and I was not the only one to think it – was that Buckle’s expensive lifestyle was the largest overhead item. When I finally made it clear that I could only help if past creditors could somehow be satisfied, Buckle became abusive. In his autobiography he comments acidly: “Well, there it was: Calder would not sign an agreement with us while we owed two or three thousand pounds. I suppose it was unreasonable of me to wonder why he should not fork out this sum in cash. It appears that he had not the ready money. Rich people never have.”
I was not above doing some exploiting myself, and I talked Lord Harewood, with whom I was by then on first-name terms, into becoming chairman of a company I set up to distribute abroad what was printed in Britain, which was called British Print and Export Ltd. Its exact function I now forget, but at any rate, it never got off the ground. I left printing and concentrated on my two main activities: timber and publishing.
I became very friendly with Harold Rosenthal. I saw him frequently in connection with Opera magazine. One day I suggested to him that I would like to publish an Opera Annual, and he enthusiastically agreed to edit it. We planned a large-format glossy album to come out every year before Christmas, something that would be an informative book to read, carrying reviews of the opera year in different countries – with features on operatic personalities and events, and with news and opinions. The album would also be a reference book with details of forthcoming seasons, premieres, debuts and deaths. It was to be filled with high-quality illustrations.
The first Opera Annual appeared in late 1954, just after the opening of the Covent Garden season. What caused its success more than any other factor was Lord Harewood’s name on the front cover. He had written a two-page introduction – and that sold it. Lord Harewood was much in the news at that time. He was first cousin to the Queen and high up in the line of those who could succeed her if a series of accidents or assassinations should wipe out the monarch and her closest relatives. His mother was the Princess Royal, who had married the sixth Earl, his father. His tastes were very different from those of his forebears and class in general, all interested in hunting, sport and country pursuits, not music and culture. Taken prisoner during the war (he was a captain in the Grenadier Guards at the time), he was given VIP treatment in the prison camp and allowed to receive, having requested it from his family, a complete edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which he read all the way through. He was married to a woman with a musical pedigree, Marion Stein, daughter of the noted musicologist Erwin Stein, much associated with Schoenberg; Marion was a concert pianist, but after her marriage she no longer performed in public. My later friend, Arthur Boyars, who had been at school with her, told me that at age thirteen or thereabouts the class had been asked to write an essay on ‘My Ambition’ – and hers had been to marry a member of the British aristocracy. She had certainly succeeded.
Harewood had become a director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1951, and he joined the staff in 1953. He was a prominent member of the circle around Benjamin Britten, and suggested, during the time when arrangements were being made for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952, that an opera might be commissioned from Britten, regarded as one of the leading younger composers, although under a cloud for having spent the war in America. The suggestion was taken up, and Britten wrote Gloriana for the occasion, based on the life of the first Queen Elizabeth, depicting her in an unfortunately unflattering light. The libretto was by William Plomer, based on the iconoclastic book Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey, whose speciality was debunking the reputations of nationally admired heroes and heroines. Both composer and librettist should have realized that they were on dangerous ground. The Queen was certainly not pleased, and court circles attending the opera found it offensive and did not much like the music either – not a surprise as few members would have been opera-goers in any case. The occasion was a fiasco, mocked by the tabloid press, and Harewood was persona non grata for a considerable time at the Palace. He was however newsworthy, and his name made the Opera Annual a great success.
One incident involving Harewood sticks in my memory. I went to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, and a few seats before me was the diminutive figure of Erwin Stein, Harewood’s father-in-law. One obviously German-Jewish lady just behind his group commented to another, “Da geht Herr Stein.” Her friend replied, “Nein, Herr Königstein,” suggesting that he saw himself as the ancestor of future kings.3
Even today the Opera Annual reads well and is useful for reference. The frontispiece of the first number, showing Mattiwilda Dobbs and Howell Glynne in Coq d’Or at Covent Garden, which opened the season, brings back vivid memories, as do the other photographs, one showing the same Dobbs, a black-American coloratura, in Ariadne auf Naxos the previous summer (this time without the play) at Glyndebourne; with her is Dorothy Dow, Sena Jurinac and a marvellous cast. I gave a party at Wilton Terrace for the publication, and many of the stars of the current season at Covent Garden came, as well as conductors and senior staff. Harewood made a little speech; Sir David Webster, the administrator, was more than friendly and promised to sell the Opera Annual in the opera house. It was soon doing well in all the bookshops, which now began to treat me as a serious publisher.
I was also publishing other books on music. There was a fine June day in 1953 when I remember giving lunch at home to a large group that included my old school mentor George Hurst, now an established conductor, Lord Harewood, Peter Ustinov, some actress from Hollywood and one or two others. Peter Ustinov was not the only wit, and conversation flowed easily, but I was a little worried about time, because I had tickets to Glyndebourne: it was my first visit, and I intended to drive there after lunch. It turned out to be a real rush, the roads being very slow in those years, but Christya and I arrived just in time. It was the same Ariadne, in the two-act version, that I mentioned above.
There was a plump, gentle and very friendly gentleman sitting in the row in front of us. We were, as is obligatory at Glyndebourne, all in evening dress, and Christya always dressed to be noticed. He had taken one look at her, turned around before the opera began to get into conversation, and glued himself to us in the interval. He showed us around the garden and lily pond and kept up an animated conversation. When he heard I was a publisher, he became interested in me as well as my wife. He was Edward Lockspeiser, a musicologist specializing in French music, in Debussy in particular, about whom he was writing a two-volume biography. He was also a music critic with an ambition to become a conductor, which was rather late in the day for a man of forty-eight. He drove back to London with us and became a friend who was soon putting up ideas for books on musical subjects. He suggested that I might translate Hans Redlich’s pioneering book on Alban Berg, announced but not yet published by Universal Verlag in Vienna, who owned all Berg rights. T
he author was living in London. I met him and agreed to publish his own translation, which required some heavy revision of the author’s Germanic English. It appeared in 1957, not long after the original German edition. Through it, I became a devotee of the music of Alban Berg, as of his teacher Schoenberg and co-pupil Anton von Webern. It was the first book on Berg to appear in English. Edward Lockspeiser then suggested that I should commission from him an anthology of writings by French musical figures, which eventually appeared as The Musical Clef in 1958, the same year that I published the first book to appear in English on Francis Poulenc, which Lockspeiser translated himself, editing it heavily and dehagiographizing it from the French biography of Henri Hell. Over many years, until his death in 1973, he remained a friend. His advice and contacts in those early years were a considerable help to me as I developed a list of books on music, which was in any case one of my greatest pleasures. And I learnt much from Edward and from others to whom he introduced me in ways that widened my knowledge and tastes. It has been a privilege to be able to combine a hobby with a profession, and it has kept me in touch with music and musicians.
I think it was John Barnard who told me about this time that Dr Dembitzer had been arrested by the FBI in New York. Apparently he was the secretary of an international ring that forged British, American and Canadian passports for those trying to leave Europe – a lucrative activity. I remembered the evening of my first Götterdämmerung and my introduction to Flagstad. Some time later I heard that he had been released from prison because he had brokered a deal with the US government, no doubt to help the CIA with some information. I heard no more of him after that, but remember him still as a man of wide culture and great charm who had once been very kind to me.
In retrospect it is a mystery how I managed to do so many things, largely unrelated to each other, and still not only keep a full-time job with Calders Ltd, but even to do well at it.
Christya meddled in everything, and her fondness for intrigue – her Becky Sharp streak as I often thought of it – never made things easy and often caused me embarrassment and serious problems. One day, her mother suddenly showed up in London and expected to move in with us and be supported by us – that is by me. There were rows in public and in private until she moved into a hotel, keeping up a campaign of molestation from there until I had to apply for a court order to stop her, after which she returned to New York.
Once I was telephoned by Christya at the office and told that there had been a burglary at Wilton Terrace: all her jewellery had been stolen. I went home and found that she had already called the insurance company and the assessor was present. She had given an exaggerated account of the jewellery she possessed, which had been listed at excessive values, and I could see that the assessor was very sceptical. Two days later, hunting around the flat, I found a cache of the missing items in the place where she had hidden them. The only thing missing was a pair of emerald earrings I had bought her once in Edinburgh during the festival. Before she knew of my find I telephoned the insurance company and told them the jewellery had been mislaid and I had found it. She was furious when she knew and the row went on for weeks, but I was not going to be party to a fraud. The emerald earrings, she finally admitted, she had given to her mother to sell in New York. I never bought her any jewellery after that.
At about this time Christya was opening various accounts with department stores, which I did my best to limit or cancel. She never had the slightest intention of paying for anything and, unsurprisingly, there were always creditors at the door or on the telephone. In the US she had used her sex appeal either to get men to pay her bills or to avoid payment, but at that time she had been more mobile than was possible living with me in London. I needed to be constantly on guard in order to outwit her and to put a stop to the accumulation of quite unnecessary debt poisoning my life.
She became pregnant, and in March 1952 produced a son. The birth was premature, and Michael Hemans, the gynaecologist, performed a Caesarean operation. The birth took place in a private nursing home in Marylebone, and the boy was to be called James in line with family tradition. Hemans and his colleagues went off to the Savile Club to celebrate the evening immediately after delivery, and the newborn premature baby was left in the care of a trainee nurse, who apparently, left alone all night, was dressing and undressing it as if it were a doll. In the morning the boy was blue in the face and put into an incubator, but it was too late and he died after a few hours. The lungs had hardened and the baby was unable to breathe. My grief was great, but I had to overcome it, and as Christya herself was in danger then, it was important to hide the news from her for some days. She could not understand why she could not see her child, and I had to invent little stories to reassure her. I arranged the funeral, and a few days after the birth I went alone to Golders Green Cemetery for the burial. Two hours later I was in the Harley Street Nursing home inventing stories about the baby. I think it was on the night the baby died, but it might have been the night of the funeral, that I bought a bottle of whisky, went home and drank all of it until I passed out.
I had sent my grandfather a telegram on the night of the birth and the next morning came the congratulatory reply. Whatever my past sins, they were forgiven. He was supremely happy that there was now a male Calder to carry on the name for another generation. I had been trying to persuade him to release a capital sum that was mine, but needed his agreement and signature, and for months he had delayed doing this. The telegram ended by saying that of course he would now agree to what I wanted. After the baby died I waited two or three days and then sent him a letter explaining what had happened. There was no reply to this. Within a month I wrote him again about the trust fund that he had agreed to break up so that I could have access to the capital. I received a cold reply, some considerable time later, saying that he had changed his mind.
By early 1951 I had been all over the main branches of Calders Ltd and learnt the essentials of the home-grown sleeper trade. I was now ready to be given my first big responsibility, my own timber yard to manage. It was to be Birkenhead. A second cousin of mine, Andy MacDonald, had been running Birkenhead for some years. Bought shortly after the war, Grandidges Ltd had belonged to a Merseyside family of that name, and was now part of Calders Ltd. My cousin Andy had not been a successful manager. He was a Highland gentleman with a barely concealed grudge against the Calders, who had taken over (robbed him of, I am sure he said in private) his family distillery, MacDonald Greenlees, which produced a famous malt, Sandy Mac. He lacked any commercial flair and had no idea of how to invest his time or money on anything other than a country estate. A great deal of capital was invested in the Birkenhead yard, and it constantly lost money or barely broke even. I went to see the place, was shown around by Andy, who pointed out problems that to my mind could be easily resolved: they were not problems at the other yards where I had worked.
The reason I was to be given Birkenhead was obviously because the directors expected that I would do no better than my cousin, and thereby blot my copybook with my uncle. To have a young man with the name of the firm learning the business obviously posed a threat to all the ambitious directors, to some more than others. Vogel, who was already isolated, needed me as an ally just then, but his long-term plans were to get Isaac Wolfson, chairman of the rapidly expanding Great Universal Stores and a major customer, to come into the business and let him run it.
Before starting at Birkenhead, I spent two months in Bordeaux, at my uncle’s instigation, in order to acquire stocks of softwood for British Rail, suddenly available as a result of forest fires. The point was that the trees, although charred on the outside and effectively killed as standing wood, still contained good usable timber on the inside, and these were right for railway sleepers. BR hoped to acquire large stocks cheaply and were borrowing professionals from industrial timber firms to negotiate and inspect. My uncle appointed me to go, and our biggest rival, Montague Mayer Ltd, sent Harold Wilson, ex-Presiden
t of the Board of Trade, who after the Labour government went out of power in 1951 had been given a sinecure directorship. Questions had been previously asked why Montague Mayer seemed to have greater facility in getting timber import licences than other firms. The answer was now evident. Sending Wilson to France was a way of giving him a holiday.
I then spent two months in Bordeaux, an interesting experience that was hard on my liver because the owners of the forest also owned the vineyards. Mid-morning usually meant Château d’Yquem or similar gourmet wine, lunches were long and there were feasts in the evening. There is a restaurant called Le Chapon Fin, to which I was frequently taken, that had a wine list at least a hundred pages long. When I asked how they could sell thousands of different local wines, I was told that when a wine grower came in with his guests he always ordered his own wines, and therefore they had to stock them all.