Bedtime in Chessington was another painful experience. Dad would tuck me into bed and read me a poem or a story, in his precise, beautifully modulated voice. I would lie there, watching as he leaned toward the bedside light, studying his profile, loving him so much, knowing that my return home was imminent and that he was giving me every ounce of himself that he possibly could. I would feel achingly sad, and try not to cry, knowing that my tears would cause him grief. I’d pretend to fall asleep while he was reading, so that I wouldn’t have to return his good-night kiss or hug, for a gentle touch would have done me in altogether.
One particular day I was about to return to Beckenham, and feeling utterly miserable, I stood in the tiny dining area attempting to collect myself. There was a thick cut-glass bowl on the sideboard and the sunlight was sending rainbow refractions off the glass. I thought that if I stared at the bowl long enough, hard enough, something about its sharp angles would stop me from crying. I stared and stared, willing the cause of my anguish to come from the crystal and not my head and heart.
Dad would be stoic. He’d say, “Chick, we’ll get together again as soon as we possibly can.” We didn’t speak on the phone much, for that was painful, too. But he kept every promise, and whatever date he said he was coming for me, he came.
AUTUMN ARRIVED, AND lessons at the Cone-Ripman School began in earnest, which meant that I now had to go up to London every day. Aunt was still teaching dance at the school and living in her one-room apartment. Since I was only eight, it was decided that I would stay with her during the week while classes were in session, and go home to Beckenham at the weekends.
Uncle Bill was away in the Air Force, billeted somewhere, and Aunt and I were mostly alone together. I slept on a little cot; she had a single bed. Occasionally, Uncle Bill came home on leave, whereupon a screen was put up in front of my cot. They would cuddle in the single bed, and Auntie, giggling, would call, “Julia, turn to the wall!”—a phrase that stuck with us over the years.
I never had the impression that Auntie was really in love with Bill, though she seemed glad whenever he came back. They made a handsome couple. He was a tall, good-looking man, with silver gray hair. He dressed immaculately, always sporting a good tie or cravat, and looking elegant in his beloved cricket sweater and whites whenever he wore them. His trousers had a perfect crease and his old shoes were polished to a shine. He was certainly dashing in his air force uniform; he was a flight engineer, plotting courses, operating the radio. He flew often, making sorties over Germany and France. If Aunt wasn’t completely in love with him, they made a good show of it. They both enjoyed ballroom dancing and shared a similar sense of humor.
Meals were pretty simple in Auntie’s flat. She was a fair cook, but money and goods were so scarce. I remember toasting bread on a fork in front of the gas fire. It smelled and tasted horrible, but it was better than plain old bread and it was warm in the winter. Because of war rations, we ate a lot of Spam—fried mostly, with a vegetable or potatoes. We had powdered eggs for breakfast sometimes, and Aunt made a good stew when she could.
I remember when I caught a cold, Aunt said, “Ah, the best cure for that is a boiled onion.” I hated onions and protested, but she said, “No, you’ll eat it. It will cure you.” She bought a huge white Spanish onion, boiled it, and drenched it in butter, salt, and pepper. Lo and behold, it tasted delicious. The butter helped, the salt helped—and to my surprise, the cold disappeared.
Cone-Ripman School kept Auntie and me on a pretty rigorous schedule. There were academic lessons in the mornings and ballet, tap, and character dancing in the afternoons. Miss Grace Cone was the principal ballet teacher and a real martinet, always banging her cane on the floor to emphasize the musical beats. Another teacher, Miss Mackie, was a tough woman and quite cruel. She taught the tap classes, and had no tolerance for anyone timid or unsure. I received the impression from her that I was simply hopeless. For some reason, she seemed to have it in for me. I could tap fairly well—my feet did their stuff—but my arms were stiff and uncoordinated. I often elected to hide at the back of the class in hopes that she wouldn’t pick on me…but pick on me she did, and she was relentless.
I think my aunt felt the stress of teaching and of being responsible for me. She sensed I was unhappy. One day, she said, “Why don’t we just take some time off and go to the country and have a picnic? You choose when.” I chose a day when I would have had a lesson with Miss Mackie. The following morning when I returned to school, Miss Mackie questioned why I had missed the class. Aunt had told me to say that I hadn’t been feeling well, but Miss Mackie said, “I don’t believe it!” She wouldn’t let me off the hook. “Tell me the truth, tell me the truth, tell me the truth!” Finally I crumbled, and when I did tell the truth, I became violently ill, threw up, and was sent to the principal’s office to lie down. I was dizzy, sweating, and miserable. Miss Mackie came in. Putting her face close to mine, she hissed, “I hate liars.”
In the spring, just after I turned nine, Mum decided that I was old enough to try living in Beckenham full-time, and to take the train to London and back on a daily basis. Aunt met me at Victoria Station in the mornings, took me to school, and put me on the train home in the evenings. It was a half-hour journey by myself each way, and I soon became exhausted. Not only did I get up early to make it to London and then work at school all day, but after traveling back in the evening, I’d still have homework to do and my singing practice.
Not long after I moved back to Beckenham permanently, Auntie suddenly arrived at our door looking absolutely ashen. She was clutching a telegram in her hand, which announced that Bill had been shot down over France. He had evaded capture for twenty-eight days but had been caught and sent to a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he spent the remaining months of the war. It was not one of the more notorious camps, and mercifully, being an officer, he was not put to death. But we were all very concerned for him.
DURING THIS TIME, Pop continued to give me singing lessons. Although he tried everything he could to make friends, I wouldn’t have any of it. I was shy, self-conscious, and overwhelmed by his physicality. He seemed such a big man to me, and powerful. He was not tall, but everything about him was physical—he flexed his muscles, he chewed loudly and juicily, and sometimes breathed through his nose noisily. My father always seemed so gentle; Pop was strange, different, volatile at times. To a certain extent I was able to blank out the fact that I even had a stepfather. I refused to acknowledge that he and my mother were in the same bedroom; it was always just “my mother’s room.” I tried to live side by side with him, as if he were a temporary guest in the house, and I hated the singing lessons—absolutely hated them. He simply worked on basic vocal exercises with me, but I was also required to do a half hour’s practice every day on my own.
However, soon thereafter, I was taken to visit Pop’s voice teacher. Her name was Lilian Stiles-Allen, but she was always referred to as “Madame.” She had coached Pop when he first came to England from Canada, and she still occasionally gave him lessons. She was a short, very stout woman, with thick ankles, an ample backside, and a heavy bosom. There was a sort of “pouter pigeon” look about her. Her belt hung below her belly and was slung in a nice V, a little to the left of center. Always bejeweled, she dressed in long skirts to her ankles, and sensible lace-up shoes on tiny feet that looked too small to support the frame above. She walked with a strong cane and often donned a wonderful velvet cloak and beret. Her pretty face had several jowls, but her eyes were lovely. Though bulging slightly, their long, spiky lashes fanned her cheeks. Occasionally, she put on a fashionable hat of the times, usually with a great sweeping brim or a feather. She was imposing, yet gentle and kind, and she had the loveliest, most mellifluous speaking voice.
I don’t recall what I first sang for Madame, but I remember my stepfather being in the room and my mother playing for me. After I finished, Madame gave a low chuckle, then said gravely, “That was just lovely.” She counseled my parents, saying th
at I was so young and that it might be better to allow me to be a child a little longer and bring me back when I was, say, twelve or fourteen years old; plenty of time then to study in earnest with her if I wanted to, and my voice would have matured and would be ready for training.
But my voice developed so rapidly that by the time I was nine and a half, it was pretty obvious that I was going to sing, and sing quite well. Pop went back to Madame and pleaded with her to take me on, and she finally agreed. From then on my lessons were entirely with her and not with Pop, which was a relief to me. Thus my proper singing training began.
SEVEN
I TOOK LESSONS WITH Madame once a week at first. She was living in Leeds, but traveled regularly down to London to teach at Weeke’s Studios in Hanover Square.
The place was fascinating. Walking the corridors to Madame’s classroom, I heard a cacophony of voices and instruments coming from the different rooms. My own singing with Madame just added to the chorus, and didn’t feel like any big deal. Once our studio door was closed, I felt pretty much sealed off from the rest—yet part of a special community at the same time.
Madame played the piano badly, and she had long, pretty fingernails that clacked away on the ivory keys. She always wore good rings on her hands to give her something else to look at during the many hours of teaching. Her accompaniment was mostly only “suggested,” so one filled in the blanks in one’s head as one was singing, but it didn’t matter because she was a superb teacher.
She was a dramatic soprano, having been fairly well known for playing the role of Old Nokomis in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall. She performed many oratorios, concerts, and radio programs, and had an amazing singing voice, which produced a kind of flute-like sound, especially in her higher range. Rather than coming out of her throat, it seemed to pass down her nose. It was a particular technique that she had perfected, and later, I realized that her voice resembled that of Kirsten Flagstad, the Norwegian soprano, whom she admired.
Madame would sit at the piano and I would sit or occasionally stand beside her, and we’d work for a long time on technique. She explained to me, “I’m going to give you lots of mental pictures in terms of placement. One of these pictures will fall into place one day, and you will have found your vocal position.”
We always began our lessons with breathing exercises and then gentle scales, one in particular called the “five-nine-thirteen,” which was the notes of any scale sung in chromatic sequence up and back again, first five, then nine, then all thirteen of the full octave. I would sing these scales using assorted vowels, usually a strong B, the “Buh” pulling the voice forward, followed by a long E. These exercises strengthened the voice, placing it behind the teeth and forward off the throat so that one didn’t swallow the sound. We worked with “Bay’s” and “Bi’s,” “Mee’s” and “Dee’s.” The “Oo’s” and “Oh’s” were harder for me to sustain.
Madame said, “Think of a beautiful string of pearls, and each pearl is identical to the next. I want you to bring the high notes down to where you are placing your low notes and bring the low notes up. As you come down, bring the voice up and as you go up, bring it down.” I learned what a wonderful long line of sound this technique makes, which is why, I believe, in later years I was able to glissando up two or three octaves, without a break.
Being a young voice in a young throat, my muscles would occasionally ache, but little by little, with Madame’s tuition and careful guidance, I was able to improve and push one step further. After every lesson I noticed greater strength in my vocal equipment.
After scales were finished, we worked on simple ballads, but as I advanced, we moved on to more complicated pieces—operatic coloratura arias in particular. (By age twelve, I was blazing away at the most difficult technical passages, which seldom bothered me at all.)
We practiced Handel a great deal, using just the exercise vowels at first, then progressing to the words: songs like “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth,” and the “Rejoice” from the Messiah, and “Oh, Had I Jubal’s Lyre.” Madame always said, “When in doubt, return to Handel. Handel will never let you down vocally. Anytime, practice Handel.” She praised the composer for his knowledge of words that singers can hang onto, to help strengthen a voice without harm. Handel wrote many long passages that required good breath control, and these were invaluable exercises.
Madame also put great emphasis on the ends of phrases. For example, if I was coming to the end of a song and holding the last note, she would say, “Follow it, follow it, follow it—see it going down the road in front of you as far as you can. See it disappearing into the distance. Now just close the mouth on it and finish the sound.”
The lyrics at the end of Handel’s “Rejoice” are “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee!” and as I sang the word “thee-e-e-e-e-,” I’d hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it—but if I wasn’t careful, I’d go “thee-uh” as my vocal line finished, and the voice would fall back into my mouth. She’d tell me to “close the sound beyond the breath.” Lo and behold, the voice and the word held true.
Many voices have a natural break going from mid-voice into a higher register. I call it “gear shifting.” Madame was very adamant that gear shifting was out of the question, and that one should be able to move up or down in a smooth line and without a change in tone. It’s required of opera singers, but for musical theater and popular music, it can sound too “proper,” too formal a way of singing. She did not let me use a chest voice at all at first, which was extremely good training for me as a youngster. Later, as I sang more and more musical theater, a chest voice became essential at times—and then she actually worked with me on that, too, helping me bridge the gap between chest voice and soprano, using technique and thought.
Madame hoped very much that I would go into opera, but I always sensed that it was too big a stretch for me. My voice was extremely high and thin, and though clean and clear, it never had the necessary guts and weight for opera. Classical singers never use microphones—they soar above and over an orchestra. It’s unbelievable to me how they do it. It’s full-bore singing, and although in many operas it only amounts to about twenty minutes or so of true, flat-out vocal effort, it’s nevertheless a question of lungs and volume and strength.
I could understand why Madame’s weight gave her dramatic voice such power, because good singing does come from the whole body—from well-planted feet and a solid stance on strong legs, to diaphragm control and correct vocal placement. The rest is brain/muscle coordination and air passing through vocal cords, combined with a trained ear and true pitch.
Though Madame gave me the best technique I could possibly have had, I think her ambition for me to go into opera and to try to emulate her sound was, finally, impractical. I didn’t seem able to find what she called “that special place,” though I tried and tried. My attempts usually resulted in a somewhat pinched, nasal sound. Madame’s technique was correct and safe—and for her, foolproof—but for me, I felt it didn’t allow for a certain reality. I was “lifting” the voice up into the head, which is essential, but the nasal sound never seemed as true for me as a slightly more open, released sound. When I finally found that voice, it was an adaptation of everything she’d ever given me. By the time we had worked together for fifteen years or so, I knew enough to know what was correct and what wasn’t, though one never stops learning, thinking, feeling, making vocal choices that are as safe as possible. Continued maintenance and “refresher courses” are essential.
Singers seldom take classes with other pupils, and thus lack the opportunity to make comparisons. We don’t see what we do, as we would in a ballet class in front of a mirror. It is all about sensing, listening, making subtle adjustments, finding out why something doesn’t work and solving the problem. After all the practice, one relies on the technique to “hold,” so that it virtually becomes second nature. Then, one concentrates on the melody, the phrasing, the lyrics—and the joy of giving it to an audience.
MADAME’S TEACHING WAS all about vocal placement. She used lyrics to help give the voice a foundation. She didn’t coach me much as to the meaning of the lyric—that is something I came to later in life. Occasionally, she would make me articulate a word—“beautiful,” for example, to convey its loveliness—but time and again she drilled into me that if I was true to my consonants—let’s say, the strong B, as in, again, “Behold…thy King cometh unto Thee”—then the consonants would pull my voice forward, and keep my vowels true. For Madame, it was the foundation, the technique, that mattered most.
Right from the start, I was expected to practice daily, of course, and I had to really knuckle down. Madame never had any printed pages, though she did mark my music constantly and I took copious notes. My mother followed Madame’s notations and helped me remember whatever was marked, especially when I was very young. The exercises were practiced alone, but my mother often came and worked on specific songs with me afterward.
She was a wonderful accompanist. It was a joy to sing with her because, after Madame’s terrible piano playing, Mum’s music sounded almost fully orchestrated. Having sung technically for so long, I felt uplifted and set free by hearing the composition played the way it was intended.
There were certain songs, however, that I simply could not sing. Songs in the minor key or with a yearning reference, like “Songs My Mother Taught Me” or “O My Beloved Father,” from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, for example. I was overwhelmed by the sadness of the lyric combined with the pure sweetness of a melody. I would feel my throat closing as I choked up. Edging behind the piano stool so that Mum couldn’t see, I would fight tears for all I was worth, but suddenly the voice would be gone in a mess of emotion. Mum would turn around and see me simply bawling my eyes out.
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