The Best of Ruskin Bond

by Bond, Ruskin

  Was I born with a silver spoon in my mouth that I could afford to sit in the sun for hours, doing nothing? Far from it; I was born poor and remained poor, as far as worldly riches went. But one has to eat and pay the rent. And there have been others to feed too. So I have to admit that between long bouts of idleness there have been short bursts of creativity. My typewriter after more than thirty years of loyal service, has finally collapsed, proof enough that it has not lain idle all this time.

  Sitting on walls, apparently doing nothing, has always been my favourite form of inactivity. But for these walls, and the many idle hours I have spent upon them, I would not have written even a fraction of the hundreds of stories, essays and other diversions that have been banged out on the typewriter over the years. It is not the walls themselves that set me off or give me ideas, but a personal view of the world that I receive from sitting there.

  Creative idleness, you could call it. A receptivity to the world around me—the breeze, the warmth of the old stone, the lizard on the rock, a raindrop on a blade of grass—these and other impressions impinge upon me as I sit in that passive, benign condition that makes people smile tolerantly at me as they pass. ‘Eccentric writer,’ they remark to each other, as they drive on, hurrying in a heat of hope, towards the pot of gold at the end of their personal rainbows.

  It’s true that I am eccentric in many ways, and old walls bring out the essence of my eccentricity.

  I do not have a garden wall. This shaky tumbledown house in the hills is perched directly above a motorable road, making me both accessible and vulnerable to casual callers of all kinds—inquisitive tourists, local busybodies, schoolgirls with their poems, hawkers selling candy-floss, itinerant sadhus, scrap merchants, potential Nobel prize winners. . . .

  To escape them, and to set my thoughts in order, I walk a little way up the road, cross it, and sit down on a parapet wall overlooking the Woodstock spur. Here, partially shaded by an overhanging oak, I am usually left alone. I look suitably down and out, shabbily dressed, a complete nonentity—not the sort of person you would want to be seen talking to!

  Stray dogs sometimes join me here. Having been a stray dog myself at various periods of my life, I can empathize with these friendly vagabonds of the road. Far more intelligent than your inbred Pom or Peke, they let me know by their silent companionship that they are on the same wave-length. They sport about on the road, but they do not yap at all and sundry.

  Left to myself on the wall, I am soon in the throes of composing a story or poem. I do not write it down—that can be done later—I just work it out in my mind, memorize my words, so to speak, and keep them stored up for my next writing session.

  Occasionally a car will stop, and someone I know will stick his head out and say, ‘No work today, Mr Bond? How I envy you! Not a care in the world!’

  I travel back in time some fifty years to Aunt Muriel asking me the same question. The years melt away, and I am a child again, sitting on the garden wall, doing nothing.

  ‘Don’t you get bored sitting there?’ asks the latest passing motorist, who has one of those half beards which are in vogue with TV news readers. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing, aunty,’ I reply.

  He gives me a long hard stare.

  ‘You must be dreaming. Don’t you recognize me?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Muriel.’

  He shakes his head sadly, steps on the gas, and goes roaring up the hill in a cloud of dust.

  ‘Poor old Bond,’ he tells his friends over evening cocktails. ‘Must be going round the bend. This morning he called me Aunty.’

  A Golden Voice Remembered

  My father was very fond of opera and operetta, but, living in India fifty or sixty years ago, he had to depend on gramophone records if he wanted to listen to his favourite arias from La Bohème or Madam Butterfly. He had an impressive collection of Caruso records, as well as Chaliapin, Gigli, Galli-Curci, and others. We travelled a great deal, and the square black wind-up gramophone went with us all over India. We had to pack the records very flat, otherwise they took on strange shapes in the heat and humidity. Changing needles and winding the gramophone were chores that I enjoyed as a small boy.

  When, in 1929-30, sound came to the cinema, it ushered in a great musical era. Although grand opera did not prove very popular with cinema audiences, operettas and stage musicals went down very well, and favourites such as Naughty Marietta (1935), Rose Marie (1936), Maytime (1937), and New Moon (1940) were soon turned into very popular screen musicals. My father took me to see some of these, in small cinemas in small cantonment towns all over northern India, and I became a great fan of the American baritone, Nelson Eddy, an opera singer who made it big in Hollywood and appeared in as many as seventeen film musicals between 1935 and 1947.

  Eddy’s marching songs in particular appealed to me, and I sang them lustily in the garden, on the road, or on the rooftop. They still come booming forth when I set out for a walk in the hills around my Himalayan home: ‘Stouthearted Men’ from New Moon, ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp’ from Naughty Marietta, ‘Tokay’ from Bitter Sweet (1940), ‘Ride, Cossack, Ride’ from Balalaika (1939), and ‘Soldiers of Fortune’ from The Girl of the Golden West (1938). Sigmund Romberg, Victor Herbert, and Rudolf Friml were the stouthearted composers of most of these musicals.

  A lesser-known but very pleasing Eddy vehicle was Let Freedom Ring (1939), a sort of patriotic Western in which Eddy fights small-town political corruption and discrimination. Forgotten now, it was quite a hit in its time, and featured some of his best songs, including, as a climax, his rousing rendering of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ He was then at the height of his popularity—America’s highest paid singer—and had he chosen to run for President, he might well have given his opponents a run for their money.

  He is probably best remembered for the eight operettas he made with Jeanette MacDonald. Together they became known as ‘America’s Singing Sweethearts.’ They made love in duets, such as ‘Indian Love Call’ (Rose Marie), ‘Wanting You’ (New Moon), ‘Will You Remember?’ (Maytime), and ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’ (Naughty Marietta). These were romantic, sentimental films, but the lovely ringing voices of the stars more than made up for stereotyped plots and dialogue. One exception to the formula was Sweethearts (1938), scripted by the acerbic Dorothy Parker of The New Yorker; she brought some of her acid wit to the set sugary recipe. The usually hostile critics agreed that the film was brightly acted and splendidly sung by its stars.

  Another somewhat unusual operetta was The Chocolate Soldier (1941), in which Eddy appeared opposite Metropolitan opera star Rise Stevens. His masquerading as a flamboyant Cossack was a revelation to many who had dismissed him as a wooden actor. ‘The most effective piece of acting he ever committed to film,’ writes film historian Clive Hirschman in Hollywood Musicals. Eddy also revelled in singing Musorgsky’s ‘Song of the Flea’. He enjoyed singing in Russian, and his rendering of the ‘Song of the Volga Boatman’ in Balalaika was superb. Some of his old recordings have been reissued in Russian Songs and Arias, published by Mac/Eddy Records in 1982.

  *

  I have always been drawn to Nelson Eddy, the singer and the person. For one thing, I like baritones and don’t see why it should always be the tenors who get the leading roles in opera. They are invariably the heroes, while the basses and baritones have to make do as villains or buffoons.

  Eddy was one baritone who got to play the hero. Not once, but over and over again. And it wasn’t as though he couldn’t sing tenor. His marvellous range enabled him to dub for both tenor and bass in Phantom of the Opera (1943); and in Walt Disney’s Make Mine Music (1946), he lent his voice to Willie, an opera-singing whale whose one ambition was to sing at the Met. The music for the entire sequence comprised ‘Shortnin’ Bread’ (a traditional song), and operatic excerpts from Rossini’s ‘The Barber of Seville’, Donizetti’s ‘Lucia de Lammermoor’, Leoncavallo’s ‘I Pagliacci’, Wagner’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’, Boito’s ‘Mefistofe
le’, and Flotow’s ‘Martha’. All the parts in these excerpts—soprano, tenor, baritone, bass and chorus—were sung by Eddy. They were the best items in an otherwise disappointing film.

  As a youngster in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, where he was born on June 29, 1901, Eddy had taught himself opera by listening to phonograph records by Scotti, Werrenrath, and other great baritones of the day. He would sing along with the recording until he was satisfied with the results. After he left school, he tried his hand at a newspaper career, working for two large Philadelphia papers. Later he became a copywriter for an advertising agency, and did rather well until it became apparent that music was his first and most important love. He was fired for singing on the job. The great American baritone David Bispham heard from a newspaper friend about the ‘singing reporter’ and met Eddy soon afterward. Bispham was so impressed that he agreed to become Eddy’s coach, thus beginning his formal vocal training.

  For a time Eddy sang with the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company. While singing in Tannhauser, Eddy met Edouard Lippe, veteran opera singer, who suggested that the young man go to Europe for further training. When the impoverished singer protested that he was unable to afford the trip, Lippe suggested that Eddy borrow on his future, and the young baritone managed to obtain a loan from a banker friend of the family; he went to study under William V. Vilonat, teacher of many Philadelphia students, in Dresden, Germany. After several months of study in Dresden and Paris, Eddy was about to return to the United States when he learned that he had been chosen for baritone roles with the Dresden Opera Company. ‘I don’t think Vilonat has ever forgiven me for turning down that chance,’ he said later. ‘But I wanted to see America again. I wanted to put myself in the hands of the American public, sink or swim.’

  In 1924 Eddy made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in the role of Tonio in Pagliacci. He mastered some thirty-two operatic roles. ‘Nelson Eddy,’ wrote the music critic of the Philadelphia Record in 1924, ‘had an electrifying effect on the audience. A young man with that indefinable gift, so seldom seen, of arresting the audience’s interest and holding it continuously, Mr Eddy was a star from the moment he appeared on stage.’

  Concert tours occupied Eddy for the next few years, and by 1933 he had sung in nearly every large city in the United States. It was the concert stage that brought him to the attention of Hollywood. A distinguished assembly in Los Angeles was awaiting the start of a concert by a noted opera star. The star, however, had suddenly become critically ill, and a substitute was rushed by plane from San Diego. The substitute was Nelson Eddy, practically unknown on the West Coast at the time. When he began to sing, the audience at once accepted him. It was a brilliant success, with the baritone responding to no less than fourteen encores. The next day motion picture studios began calling him. Within a week he had signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and had sung his first song on the screen—in Joan Crawford’s Dancing Lady (1934). A year later, with Naughty Marietta, he catapulted to stardom.

  *

  Recently on a BBC request programme, I was fortunate to pick up Nelson Eddy’s rendering, in Russian, of the ‘Song of the Volga Boatman’ (from the 1939 film Balalaika), and was captivated all over again by the singer’s full-bodied baritone. It made me wonder why so little is heard about him today, although we are constantly being reminded of the greatness of Paul Robeson or Lawrence Tibbett. Eddy was definitely in their class, and superior to singers like Howard Keel who succeeded him in MGM musicals. Perhaps his versatility worked against him. He sang in everything from opera to musical comedy, radio shows, and nightclub acts; and music critics like to be able to pigeonhole their singers in a particular category. His popularity roused the ire of rivals and critics, who seldom missed an opportunity to snipe at him. One critic complained of his singing in Phantom of the Opera, and went on to praise the bass who was singing in the same operatic sequence; it turned out that the bass was Nelson Eddy dubbing for a non-singing actor.

  Although none of his films was a flop, it was in the concert field that Nelson Eddy achieved his real fame. His screen personality was watered down, but his dynamic magnetism and masterful voice when heard live came across with full force. Besides, he hated the Hollywood game, he disliked L. B. Mayer (head of MGM studios), and he continued his film career mainly to boost his concert attendances. He firmly refused to discuss his personal life with the press, suing columnist Louella Parsons for implying that his on-screen romance with Jeanette MacDonald was continued off-screen. The ‘singing sweethearts’ of the screen were not, in fact, particularly fond of each other, but you wouldn’t have guessed it; they were such good professionals.

  ‘I love to sing and meet the people,’ Eddy once said, and that was exactly what he did during the twenty years that followed his last film in 1947. His radio show ran for thirteen years, and in 1953 he made the transition to nightclubs. Many remember him from this period, including Buzz Kennedy, an Australian columnist who met him when Eddy toured Australia in the mid-1960s. ‘He was one of the nicest people I’ve met,’ recalls Kennedy today. And the hypercritical reviewer of Variety wrote of one of Eddy’s last appearances: ‘He required less than a minute to put a jam-packed audience in his hip pocket.’

  It was in front of another jam-packed audience, in Miami Beach, Florida, on March 6, 1967, that Nelson Eddy collapsed on stage, having just sung ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’. ‘Would you bear with me a minute?’ he asked his audience. ‘I can’t seem to get the words out.’ These were his last words. Minutes later he was dead.

  *

  Well, my childhood record collection had long since disappeared, and I wasn’t going to wait another year for the BBC to play a Nelson Eddy record. So I started making enquiries, and found, to my delight, that a number of music companies in America had reissued the old songs as well as tapes of his radio shows. The latter were fascinating, as they included songs that had never been released in his recording days. In two years of diligent collecting, I now have on tape or disk more than 200 Nelson Eddy songs, far more than I ever heard as a boy.

  I open my window to look out at the Himalayas striding away into the sky, while those lovely old songs drift out over the sunwashed hillside—’While My Lady Sleeps,’ ‘Shenandoah,’ ‘The Hills of Home,’ ‘Song of the Open Road,’ ‘Neath the Southern Moon,’ ‘By the Waters of Minnetonka,’ ‘When I Have Sung My Songs to You.’

  ‘When I have sung my songs to you, I’ll sing no more,’ goes the old ballad.

  But for one faithful listener, Nelson Eddy is still singing.

  At Home In India

  There are many among us who, given the opportunity to leave India, are only too happy to go. But whenever I have had the chance to go away, I have held back. Or something has held me back.

  What is it that has such a hold on me, but leaves others free to go where they will, sometimes never to come back?

  A few years ago I was offered a well-paid job on a magazine in Hong Kong. I thought about it for weeks, worried myself to distraction, and finally, with a great sigh of relief, turned it down.

  My friends thought I was crazy. They still do. Most of them would have jumped at a comparable offer, even if it had meant spending the rest of their lives far from the palm-fringed coasts or pine-clad mountains of this land. Many friends have indeed gone away, never to return, except perhaps to get married, very quickly, before they are off again! Don’t they feel homesick, I wonder.

  I am almost paranoid at the thought of going away and then being unable to come back. This almost happened to me when, as a boy, I went to England, longed to return to India, and did not have the money for the passage. For two years I worked and slaved like a miser (something I have never done since) until I had enough to bring me home.

  And ‘home’ wasn’t parents and brothers and sisters. They were no longer here. Home, for me, was India.

  So what is it that keeps me here? My birth? I take too closely after a Nordic grandparent to pass for a typi
cal son of the soil. Hotel receptionists often ask me for my passport.

  ‘Must I carry a passport to travel in my own country?’ I ask.

  ‘But you don’t look like an Indian,’ they protest.

  ‘I’m a Red Indian,’ I say.

  India is where I was born and went to school and grew to manhood. India was where my father was born and went to school and worked and died. India is where my grandfather lived and died. Surely that entitles me to a place in the Indian sun? If it doesn’t, I can revert to my mother’s family And go back to the time of Timur the Lame. How far back does one have to go in order to establish one’s Indianness?

  It must be the land itself that holds me. But so many of my fellow Indians have been born (and reborn) here, and yet they think nothing of leaving the land. They will leave the mountains for the plains; the villages for the cities; their country for another country; and if other countries were a little more willing to open their doors, we would have no population problem—mass emigration would have solved it.

  But it’s more than the land that holds me. For India is more than a land. India is an atmosphere. Over thousands of years, the races and religions of the world have mingled here and produced that unique, indefinable phenomenon, the Indian: so terrifying in a crowd, so beautiful in himself.

  And oddly enough, I’m one too. I know that I’m as Indian as the postman or the paanwala or your favourite MP.

  Race did not make me an Indian. Religion did not make me an Indian. But history did. And in the long run, it’s history that counts.

  Getting The Juices Flowing

  It has been said that life begins at forty. Possibly. But I have found that it begins to sag at forty-five.

  The other morning, stooping to tie my shoelaces, I found myself out of breath. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. It was due, of course, to my stomach getting in the way and pressing against my chest. I was badly out of condition. And I decided that the best solution would be a daily jog around the hill-station where I live—Mussoorie.