I recently found Margaret ‘Peggy’
Black’s [1] article about ‘Delius at Home’ [2] in a bound volume of Music of all Nations [p.118-119] which I purchased
in the second-hand bookshop. This series, which was edited by ‘Sir Henry Wood’
[3] was published during the nineteen twenties and thirties, however, my copy is
not dated. I located an advert in the Yorkshire Evening Post (3 November 1927)
for ‘Part One’ of this fortnightly publication. I understand that there were 30
parts issued. So the final edition was probably in the first or second week of
December 1928. So a good surmise would be that Margaret Black’s article
appeared around mid-November of that year.
Clare Delius in her book [4] has
stated that her daughter, Margaret, first visited Grez-sur-Loing in in 1927. In
1920 when Claire was taking Margaret to her first boarding school, Delius pressed
an invitation on her to visit Grez: ‘Seven years were to intervene before she
could accept this invitation.’
This article was re-printed in the
Delius Society Journal, April 1984.
However, I have retained the author’s orthography and paragraph headings, as
well as providing some notes.
Notes on Introduction:
[1] Margaret Black was Delius’
niece. Her mother, Clare Black, née Clara Edith Delius (1866-1954) was the
composer’s favourite sister. In 1889 she married J.W.A. Black. Margaret lived until
October 1978.
[2] Delius moved to Grez in 1897
and died there in 1934.
[3] It is highly likely that
Wood’s name was simply an advertising ploy and that the considerable amount of
work the publication entailed was done by a team of editors. Each fortnightly
part included piano works, songs and essays.
[4] Delius, Clare, Frederic Delius: Memories of my Brother (London:
Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1933)
Delius at Home by
Margaret Black
True enough is the saying, “The
more brilliant the genius, the more modest the man." It is this modesty, this
dislike of publicity which has made Delius utterly ignore the articles
published frequently in the papers, under such headings as “Genius living in
obscurity and straitened circumstances”, “Famous composer neglected and unacknowledged
in a foreign country”.
All this is very romantic, and
satisfies the general idea of the public in connection with the arts, and that
is, that all great poets, composers and artists labour on under the most
adverse conditions until their death, when their brilliance is acknowledged by
a world stricken with remorse.
Their poems are read and quoted
in all the papers, their operas move audiences to ecstasies and tears, and
their pictures draw endless crowds dumb with admiration, or loquacious in their
praise, because death always opens the floodgates of belated and exaggerated
admiration.
Genius and Publicity
It is this very publicity that
genius shuns, and which my uncle, contrary to the general rule, encountered
early in his career, and which pleases him as little today as it did then. By
my expression, “His very publicity” I do not mean the interest of the public in
their works, but rather the curiosity of the public in their lives. What they
say and think, and eat and drink, where and how they live, and all their little
idiosyncrasies are magnified and trimmed to sound interesting, their most
commonplace saying pushed and twisted into a "story."
Life without privacy is a
nightmare. These “stories,” if not actually untrue, are so trimmed with mental
lace as to be almost unrecognisable from the original incident.
Delius refuses to discuss himself
through the medium of the press, in any way at all to be drawn into any “I do's,”
or “I dont's,” whatsoever; he dislikes it intensely, so that these “stories”
continue to circulate, and people form a vague idea he is living in straitened
circumstances and so ill that he cannot leave his house.
All this is very disheartening to
those who are doing all they can for his welfare. And as I spent some five or
six weeks with him last autumn, [1] it is my intention to give a short and clear
account of his life as he lives it now.
The Beautiful Home
He lives in an old French
château, with three rambling staircases, many old-world rooms, which he bought
from the Marquis de Cazeau, some twenty years ago. It has one of the most
beautiful gardens that I have ever seen, running down to a wide river, on which
he used often to row in his white boat, and it was here that he wrote some of
his most lovely compositions, such as “On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring”
which we have heard so often lately, especially on the wireless.
It will be noticed that so many
of his works take their theme or their name from nature, sunset, clouds, rain,
sunshine, trees in the wind, the soft, low notes of a running river, all these
can be depicted, and one is left with an idea as clear as though one had seen
it in a picture, or read it in a poem, and no wonder, with the inspiration of
his garden, which I am now going to describe.
The Garden
This is entered through a wide,
covered portico, on the right side of which is the hall door, so that one
drives in, and enters the hall dry shod. This portico leads to a paved
courtyard, with the stables and coach house on one side and an “English garden”
on the other. Peaches, plums, pears, apples, tomatoes, and figs, etc., grow in
this old French garden, surrounded by the grey and lichened walls, which form a
picturesque background for a riot of glowing flowers.
When I shut my eyes I can see it
now- late roses, great, sweet overblown things, flaming dahlias, and bushes of
mauve Michaelmas daisies, over it all the hot September sunshine, and the soft
hum of the bees, scuttling from flower to flower.
Rambling along the edges of the
flower beds and paths are tomatoes, growing in such profusion as to fill the
store-rooms until long after Christmas.
The River
In the middle of the garden is a
summer house, below that lies the lily pond and rustic bridge, then the
orchard. Shady trees and cool, green lawns lead down to the river, which is
very wide and placid, fringed on either bank by trees, growing in grass
meadows. Quaint grey paths wind all about the garden of this great composer,
whose deep love of nature speaks so plainly in all his works.
From underneath the vaulted
cellar flows a spring of pure water, which remains ice cold through the hottest
summer, and runs through the garden to the river, this is called “La Source."
Frowning over the garden is an
old tower, called “la Tour de la Reine Blanche,” all that remains of an old
castle, in which was imprisoned long years ago “la Reine Blanche,” for an “affaire
de coeur,” which banished her from the Court to the seclusion of the country,
where she could ponder over her indiscreet romance.
[To be continued]
Notes:
[1] Most likely the autumn of
1927.
