Safe Passage

by Mary Burchell

  We had known him and Viorica for exactly twenty years, and one of the stories we never tired of hearing was how they had shared the world premiere of Strauss’s Arabella together. I think many people knew that, in a whimsical, romantic way, Viorica was always Krauss’s Arabella after that, as he was her Mandryka. But what is both touching and extraordinary is that the parallel ran to the last minute of his life.

  Those who know the work will recall how Mandryka tells Arabella that, in his village, if a man woos a girl and she wishes to show she accepts him, she comes to him in the evening with a glass of water from the village spring. And naturally, Arabella makes great play with this in the final scene when she comes downstairs, bringing him a glass of water.

  On the last day of his life, Krauss had conducted an enormously successful concert in Mexico. When they returned to their hotel, he said he felt unwell and asked Viorica to fetch him a glass of water.

  In her own words, “I know I was not gone more than a minute or two, and when I came back he was dead. Do you realize that his last thought in this life was, ‘She is coming—with the glass of water.’”

  It was almost two years later, in March, 1956, that I was chosen as the subject of the famous television programme This Is Your Life. With the assistance of people who took part, the life story of a selected person is reconstructed. The whole point of the programme is that the central character should not know that he or she is going on television until the camera and the microphones are turned on. There are various ingenious ruses for getting the right person in the right place at the right time, and of course there has to be a great deal of backroom work beforehand, in which someone near the victim gives essential help. In my case, the “contact woman” was naturally Louise.

  Everything worked perfectly that night, and I am bound to say that I loved every minute of it. There were old friends, refugees we had not seen for years, a worker from our displaced persons camp in Bavaria, Alice from my wartime shelter in Bermondsey, a recording of Rosa speaking to me across the Atlantic and so on. Most exciting of all was that they brought Viorica from the village of Ehrwald in the Tyrol, where she was living in retirement.

  The programme was followed by a party in a hotel on the other side of town. The remarkable thing was that, although all the people came from different parts of our lives, they all got on like a house on fire, which shows that, throughout one’s life, one chooses one’s friends for the same reasons. Or perhaps one is chosen by them.

  When it was all over and we had said goodbye to those who were not staying on in London, Louise and I called a taxi from the nearby rank and drove the whole way home. Just as I went to pay the driver he asked, “Am I right, madam, in thinking I saw you on TV tonight?”

  I said, “You did.”

  “Well,” he replied, “may I complete your evening? Will you have this drive on me?”

  It could happen only in London!—where there are the best taxi-drivers in the world.

  The whole evening was thrilling and memorable. But what followed must rank, I think, as the most remarkable of all our operatic-cum-refugee experiences.

  Four months later, I went to speak at a Women’s Institute in Surrey, and at the end, an old lady came up to me and told me how much she had enjoyed my This Is Your Life programme, adding, “What I can’t get over is that couple.”

  I explained as tactfully as I could that there had not been a couple on my programme.

  “Yes, you know who I mean,” she insisted. “The couple—with the refugee work.”

  When I repeated that they had all been single people on my programme, she seemed quite annoyed with my stupidity, so I said something polite and got away. On the way home, I thought over what she had said. She had got the refugee part right. But for the rest, I decided she had just been mistaken. What else could I think?

  A whole year later, I went to speak in Newcastle-on-Tyne, where I always stay with good friends of ours. The sister-in-law of my hostess telephoned and asked me to come to lunch with her and a friend of hers, Brenda, who very much wanted to meet me. Over lunch, the subject of This Is Your Life once more came up in the conversation. I discovered that my friend, Meg, had not seen the programme and was greatly disappointed about this, but Brenda, who was meeting me for the first time, had seen it. She knew nothing much about Louise and me, had never read any book of mine, was not interested in the operatic world—but she had remembered that her friend Meg knew someone called Ida Cook, and so she was interested.

  “I had a wonderful time,” she told me. “My husband was out and I sat and watched it all on my own. But there’s something I want to ask you. Who was the tall, very good-looking foreigner who absolutely dominated the programme?”

  “There wasn’t one,” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “The tall, good-looking foreigner with the tremendous personality—and such charm,” she insisted. “You must know who I mean. I remember him above everyone else.”

  Puzzled and intrigued, I asked at which point he had come in, and she replied unhesitatingly that he came in with the singer—Viorica—and remained during the whole of the refugee part of the programme.

  I questioned her on other details, but I could not shake her story, and finally I said, “Well, of course, you are exactly describing Clemens Krauss, the husband of the singer. He started us on the refugee work and ever afterwards kept his hand upon us and hid our work for us. But he died two years before the programme.”

  “Oh, no! This man was there, like everyone else,” Brenda insisted. “Only he didn’t speak.”

  “Would you recognize a photograph of him?” I enquired.

  Yes, she was sure she would recognize him anywhere—he had made such an impression upon her.

  As will be imagined, when I revisited Newcastle in a few months’ time, I took some photographs with me. When my hostess said we were going to have some friends in on a certain evening, I asked her to invite Brenda and send her up to my room beforehand, so that I could speak to her alone.

  When Brenda came in and I had greeted her, I said, “Before we go downstairs, I want to ask you something. Do you remember saying you saw an extra person on my television programme?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “I know what you mean.”

  “Can you still visualize that man?” I asked her.

  “Give me a minute,” she said, and she put her hands over her eyes. “Yes. I’ve got him—absolutely.”

  “Would you recognize a photograph of him?” I pressed her.

  “Oh, I think I would, Ida,” she assured me. “Yes, I think I would.”

  I spread some photographs on the bed. And she cried out immediately.

  “Oh, beyond any shadow of doubt! There’s no question about it—this is the man. It’s almost funny that he’s so like himself. That is how he stood—” She pointed to one of the photographs. Then she added wonderingly, “But how extraordinary. On the programme his hair was dark, not grey.”

  He was young again.

  Eventually I wrote an account of the incident, which was published in World Digest. And even at that point of time, three complete strangers came forward from different parts of the country—including a tough East End businessman who to this day thinks we somehow “spoofed” him—and identified “the extra person” from photographs. Each said almost the same thing: “I just wondered why he didn’t speak.”

  In some sense, I suppose, that would make a fitting end to this book. But, in point of fact, it was not an ending but a beginning for Louise and me of what I might call a fresh series of discoveries and adventures, so fascinating and so rewarding that another whole book would be required to describe them.

  Instead, since this is a book about star-gazing, in which the star-gazer has had full indulgence, let me give the last word to one of the stars on whom we gazed. It is true that these words were addressed to Louise and me from Martinelli, in 1967, but it is equally true that they may be taken to the hearts of all who have loved and appreciated g
reat artists, humbly acknowledging that without them life would have been a much less glorious affair.

  Dear Ida and Louise,

  What could any singer do without friends such as you? Believe me, without the devotion so selflessly expressed by both of you, it would be almost impossible for a singer to have a career. Self-ego is that which sustains most of us—the childlike desire to believe we, gifted by God with voices to please, are creatures set apart from mere mortal men.

  Yet doubt constantly assails us…. Are we as good as we think…? Do we have a right to the adoration cast upon us…and, most important, when our voices fade, and we are old, will we be forgotten? You two dear ladies have helped us, in your teen years and later mature life, to retain forever our dream of adoration, and in so doing have made so many veteran artists very happy, not the least of whom by far is Giovanni Martinelli. God bless and keep you both.

  AFTERWORD

  Ida Cook and the Romantic Novelists’Association

  Ida Cook, who wrote under the pseudonym Mary Burchell, was one of Mills & Boon’s most beloved authors. She wrote what we now call category romance from 1935 until she died in 1987. For the last twenty of those years she was President of the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) in the UK. From the RNA’s point of view it is impossible to overstate her importance; but she is equally compelling to the grateful reader and collector of eccentrics.

  Romantic Novelists’Association

  The RNA was started in 1960 by writer Alex Stuart with one hundred and fourteen other published authors. This was not Grub Street. Lady novelists took taxis and dined in Dior, as founder member Anne Weale recalled. The big names were Denise Robins (black velvet and chinchilla, edgy contemporary stories) and Barbara Cartland (sequins and white fox, strong on virginity). They were joined by industry professionals as Associate Vice Presidents, including publishers Alan Boon and John Hale and bookseller Christina Foyle. The RNA even had a royal patron, HM Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. It was a confident, ordered and prosperous world. But, and it was a big but, romantic fiction was largely dismissed with contempt by society in general and the media in particular. Stuart, Robins and Cartland wanted to change that.

  Mary Burchell was one of the first successful writers they invited. Unlike Cartland and Robins, she was not a big name to the general public, but she had a solid phalanx of loyal readers and was published in Canada and the USA and was translated into Dutch, French, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Italian and Spanish. In spring 1964 she joined Cartland, Stuart and the prolific Dorothy Black as one of the RNA’s Author Vice Presidents, the first Mills & Boon author to do so. Vice Presidents, in the words of Alex Stuart, were ‘chosen by reason of their eminence in the field of romantic fiction’ and were appointed for life.

  Burchell for President

  It was a difficult time for romantic fiction: Boots lending library closed; romantic imprints contracted, magazines reduced their commitment to serials; above all, the sixties looked askance at romance. By 1965 the founders proposed to get rid of the word ‘romantic’ from the new association’s name altogether. There was a ballot and the Change the Name faction was defeated. Cartland, Robins and Dorothy Black left the RNA altogether. Stuart resigned from Vice Presidency. As the only Author Vice President left, Mary Burchell agreed to take on the presidency, initially for one year.

  Compared with the high profile Cartland and Robins, Mary Burchell was relatively unknown to the general public. So RNA members were probably surprised to learn from the RNA News that in 1956 she had been the subject of the television programme This Is Your Life, and as recently as 1965 she and her sister had been ‘fêted in the United States where they were awarded decorations as Women of the Year and the Israeli Government presented them in London with a Certificate of Recognition for their refugee work.’ She had written an autobiography, they were told: We Followed Our Stars (as Safe Passage was originally titled) ‘not only tells light-heartedly of Miss Burchell’s background and career, it contains deeply moving facts about her refugee work.’ Miss Burchell, in fact, was a class act.

  Advocate of Romance

  Once appointed, she lost no time in nailing her colours to the mast. ‘A good romantic novel is a heart-warming thing which strikes a responsive chord in those who are happy and offers a certain lifting of the spirits to those who are not.’ She was gracious to her predecessor, regretting Robins’ resignation, and saying, ‘I can only promise that I will do my best to emulate her example of devoted work during her six years of office.’ But she was of the party which had won and she set out her position clearly:

  ‘To me, romance is that quality which gives a certain air of probability to our fondest dreams. It is akin to optimism and the determination to make the best of things, and has taken many people over dreary difficulties and prompted others to dare the impossible.’

  RNA News No 51

  It was a principle she lived by. You can detect it in the autobiography. Later she reinforced it at the seventh Awards Dinner in May 1967:

  The President recalled how the late Nancy Spain had once said – Cherish romance! Any fool can be a realist. ‘Of course any fool can also be a romantic,’ Miss Burchell added dryly.

  Nevertheless it was fortunate for this country, she went on, that we were not led by a realist in 1940. ‘If a realist had told us that we were going to have a miserable time, and asked if we could survive it, we might not have done so. Luckily, Churchill was one of the great romantics.’

  RNA News No 53

  It was only just over twenty years since the end of the War, which all her audience would remember vividly. (One of the Guests of Honour that year was Russell Braddon, a survivor of Changi.) When Mary Burchell spoke of survival, she was not being metaphorical.

  A sense of proportion

  Right from the start, Mary Burchell told RNA members that she thought it pointless to ‘battle madly for an unrealistic degree of prestige in the writing world.’ Again and again, in her twenty-year presidency, she urged moderation: romantic novelists needed ‘to have a sense of humour, a sense of proportion and, above all, a true understanding of the importance and unimportance of their work. We should never be apologetic, but nor should we be aggressive.’

  Fun

  Aggressive, she clearly wasn’t, but Mary Burchell was not self-effacing either. One of the other guests at that 1967 dinner was Ginette Spanier, the (English) directrice of the House of Balmain. They obviously got on like mad and we find Mary offering to organise an RNA trip to Paris to see the spring collection in 1971, saying ‘no doubt Miss Spanier would provide a splendid welcome.’

  Miss Spanier came up trumps and a group went to Balmain, saw the collection, were hugely impressed by the ‘crystal chandeliers and gossamer drapes’ – and also by Madame Spanier’s ‘dishy husband’ who helped entertain them in the Spaniers’ Paris apartment afterwards. And when they got back to the hotel, ‘Mary Burchell entertained us with fascinating sidelights on her experiences lasting until midnight.’

  In 1975, she hosted the RNA summer party at her own expense in the Churchill Room at Dolphin Square, the prestige apartment complex along side the Thames in Pimlico, where she kept a pied-à-terre. Thereafter, it became a tradition that the summer function should be the President’s party, spilling out into Dolphin Square’s three and a half acres of tranquil gardens when the evenings were sunny. The food could have come straight out of a Mary Stewart novel – ‘the wine when ‘twas rosé, smoked salmon, caviare and prawn canapés’ – but even more memorable was the welcome from Mary Burchell and her family, particularly her sister Louise with whom she shared her home and her travels. Dorothy Mackie Low, another RNA Chairman, wrote after Mary’s death, ‘None of us who enjoyed her hospitality at a Mary Burchell party will ever forget her beaming smile after being thanked, as she flung her arms wide and said, ‘Darling, I enjoy it too. I love talking and I love you all!’

  Legacy

  When she
died, the affection in the tributes to her was unmistakable. She had steered the organisation through choppy waters, but people spoke also of her kindness, her wit, her good sense – and the legendary parties. When she first became President an interviewer for the RNA News asked: did the new President have any unfulfilled writing ambitions? ‘No, none at all,’ she said. ‘I am a born romantic and I am sure I will never change.’ She didn’t.

  How lucky we were.

  Jenny Haddon

  Romantic Novelists’Association Chairman 2005-2007

  Ida and Louise as young women.

  Ida and Louise in their homemade finery.

  Ida and Louise with Amelita Galli-Curci.

  Ida, Ezio Pinza, Viorica Ursuleac, and Louise.

  Amelita Galli-Curci and Homer Samuels.

  Clemens Krauss and Viorica Ursuleac.

  Ida called this “The picture that started it all.” Clemens Krauss, Mitia Mayer-Lissman, and Viorica Ursuleac outside Covent Garden.

  Ezio Pinza outside Covent Garden in 1939.

  Louise with Ezio Pinza.

  Ida and Louise arriving in New York.

  Ida with Maria Callas at Dolphin Square in 1964.

  Ida at her typewriter. She wrote more than 100 novels for Mills & Boon under the pen name Mary Burchell.

  Louise and Ida with Maria Callas.

  Ida with Eammon Andrews when she appeared on “This Is Your Life” in March 1956.

  Brochure from the Maurice Frost Lecture Agency featuring Ida.

  Ida and Tito Gobbi with a copy of his autobiography, which she helped write.