THE LASTSUMMER

DAVID HOWARTH

The funeral in the country church was a yeardelayed, and the widow could not attend-but it

was far from gloomy. Sir Thomas Beecham gavethe oration by the grave, and a blackbird sang.

TWENTY-SIX years ago, when I wasyoung and more self-confident than I had

any right to be, I went to a funeral in a villagecalled Limpsfield in Surrey in the south of Eng-land. I have known Limpsfield nearly all my life.My grandfather used to live there, and now I livequite close to it myself; but I have never knownit well. It is not on the way to anywhere, and Ihave very seldom been there since the funeral.But I went one Sunday, to see if I had remem-bered the scene of the funeral exactly.

I had: I found the grave at once. It is right inthe middle of the churchyard, among othersclosely packed in tidy rows. Limpsfield haschanged and grown. It is a village which houseagents call "wi thin daily reach" of London, andthere are a good many middle-income com-muters' houses now round the edge of it, and avery new outbreak of bungalows. Evidently, ithas grown more in the last twenty-six years,since I was there, than in the previous sevenhundred and fifty, since the square stone towerof the church was built. But among the modernhouses, the core of the ancient village can still

be seen: the church itself, some medieval houses,a fourteenth-century lich gate at the entrance tothe churchyard. and a beautiful eighteenth-century vicarage. In the churchyard, there areyew trees which look immensely old. It is winternow, and when I went back they were dank andmournful; but when I went to the funeral, itwas early summer and a blackbird was singingin them.

The grave has a headstone now, and somebodyhas planted it with heather. There are only twonames on the stone: no claim of fame, orepitaph, or expression of hope of immortality.The names are Frederick Delius and JelkaDelius, man and wife; and the date of her deathis marked as the 28th of May, 1935. I must havebeen there on the 24th of May, because it washis funeral that I attended, and she died, if Iremember rightly, four days after it. He had diednearly a year before. That was one of manystrange things about the funeral.

I do not know who designed that headstone,which does not bother to tell a passer-by that theman who is buried there was a great composer;but a more pompous memorial would have beenout of place, because the music which Deliuswrote is always diffident and never flamboyant.I never met him, but if his music is a guide tohis character, I should think he would have beenperfectly satisfied with a grave which is humblerthan most of the graves of the parishioners ofLimpsfield.

Delius was an Englishman, and we Englishhave not bred very many great composers, so weare proud of the few we have; but to tell the

90 THE LAST SUMMER

truth, his father and mother were both German,and he lived almost all his life in France. Hewas born in Bradford, in the industrial north ofEngland, in 1862, and he died in France; butbefore he died, he said he would like to beburied in a country churchyard in the south ofEngland. This was an unexpected request, be-cause he had never had any connection with thesouth of England or, since his early youth, withthe Church of England. But it was perfectly clearthat that was what he had said, and so, after ayear's delay and some trouble with French officialregulations, his body. was brought to Englandand the ceremony at Limpsfield was arranged.Limpsfield was chosen because Beatrice Harrison,who was a cellist and a friend of Delius', livedthere. She was famous in the early days of broad-casting for playing her cello at night in the woodsnear Limpsfield, and thereby encouraging night-'ingales to sing into microphones which werehidden in the trees.

There was a very distinguished congregationof musicians in the church that morning, but Iam not a musician: I am only a person who likeslistening to music, one of those members ofEnglish concert audiences whom Sir ThomasBeecham has described, I believe, as not knowingmuch about music but liking the noise it makes. Ionly went to Limpsfield because I was told to go. Iwas in the recording department of the BBC, andthe news department asked us to record the serv-ice so that they could broadcast extracts from itin the news bulletins that night. But it was anassignmeht I accepted eagerly, because the musicof Delius had been one of my early loves, if notthe first of all.

I find it very difficult to say why I like listeningto Delius, or indeed to any other music. For thatmatter, real musicians are not very good at ex-plaining what they like. But I must try to de-scribe the emotions which the music of Deliusevokes, because that is the point of this story.When I went to the funeral, I had not heard verymuch of it except some songs and short orchestralpieces, and one of his major works: "Sea Drift,"which is a setting for baritone, chorus, and or-chestra of a poem by Walt Whitman. I had stillto encounter his "Mass of Life" and his con-

David Howarth wrote "D-Day," "The Shadow01 the Dam," and other books. With a degree inphysics and mathematics [rom. Cambridge, he be-came a BBC and war correspondent, served in theRoyal Navy, and was a Master Boatbuilder until1950, when he turned lull-time writer.

certos, and to this day I have never heard any ofhis operas, which I am rather afraid are dull.

But the short orchestral works still seem to meto be the essence of Delius, and they are theworks which have lasted best and are performedmost often. "Brigg Fair" is one of them, a settingof a Lincolnshire folk song. The titles of theothers suggest the character which is common tothem all: "In a Summer Garden," "SummerNight on the River," "A Song before Sunrise,""On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring," "ASong of Summer." These are the images foundin a great proportion of his music summer,warm nights, calm flowing water, peace, gentle-ness, contentment; and one must also add loveand companionship, because the music seldomsuggest~ a melancholy solitude. Youth is anotheringredient; at least, it seems so to me. Perhapsthat is only because T heard the music when Iwas very young. Delius was in his forties whenhe wrote the first of it, and he was a sick oldman when he wrote the "Song of Summer"; butit still conveys to me a youthful sense of summer,and now that I am in the forties myself, it makesme think sadly but not unhappily of all the warmsummers and all the companionships that haveever been. On the back of the envelope of mypresent record of "Brigg Fair" there is a quota·tion: "The sorrow that lies at the heart of allmortal joys, the bitterness at the core of all greatsweetness." That is very apt. Yet whatever onemay write or say about Delius, his music is purerpoetry than any poem in words.

THE BLACKBIRD

W HAT I have written so far is commonground, I suppose, however badly I have

written it. These are the objective qualities of themusic, and it does not make much differencewhat subjective pictures one adds to them, if onehas to add any at all. The music is evocative, notdescriptive. I admit that I always picture theFirst Cuckoo in Spring in the woods in Kentwhere I live, although I have read somewherea fact which I would rather not have known:that the perfectly beautiful melody in this workis a folk song from Norway. The summer is asouthern English summer, and 'the river is abackwater of the Thames, or else that reach ofthe Cam between Cambridge and Grantchesterwhere Rupert Brooke lived-before my day-andundergraduates go out in punts and talk philoso-phy. But it might just as well be the Seine, or abayou, if that is the right word, in the Southernstates; and either of those is a more likely source

of inspiration, because Delius lived on a river inFrance and possessed a rather mysterious andquite unprofitable farm ill Florida.

There is much to be said for having asort of funeral a year after a man is dead,instead of having it too soon. Some Africansbury their dead with very little ceremony. andthen have a much bigger funeral on the anniver-sary of the death. If we did it like that, the sharpedge of grief would have worn away. and theman's friends could meet to do him honor with-out creating a public ordeal for the people wholoved him best and miss him most. The funeralat Limpsfield was solemn, but it was far fromgloomy; in fact, as it turned out, it was a perfectexpression of the spirit of the dead man's music.Spring was just turning into summer, and it wasone of those days when England. with all itsblemishes, is still almost painfully beautifu1. SirThomas Beecham had brought down a section ofthe London Philharmonic Orchestra, and theyplayed the summery music in the church. I sup-pose nobody but a composer could have quitethe same privilege of communicating with hisown friends at his own funeral; it was a kind ofvictory over mortality. Afterwards, by the grave,Sir Thomas gave a funeral oration; and it wasthen that the blackbird sang. I do not rememberwhat Sir Thomas said, but I am sure it wasappropriate. He was a veteran conductor then,and an old friend of Delius', and he had donemore than anyone else to bring Delius to thenotice of the public; he remained a veteran con-

BY D AV I D HOW ART H 91

ductor for another quarter of a century. Whilehe was talking, I turned my microphone a littletoward the yew trees. 'Vhatever was said, it wascertainly appropriate that a blackbird shouldsing at that funera1.

But although so many of Delius' friends werethere that morning. his wife was not. She hadcome over from France for the occasion, but onthe journey she had caught pneumonia.

I do not think Jelka Delius was a woman whoset much store by ceremony, but it was sad thatshe could not come to that final ceremony atLimpsfield. They had been married for overthirty years. By all accounts, it had been a mar-riage which had reached heights of great happi-ness, and survived through depths of tragedy.Jelka was an art student in Paris in the 1890swhen they met. He was ten years older than shewas, a tall, thin, romantic Englishman of thirty-three, who lived alone without any visible familyties and seemed to her to be aristocratic, al-though as a matter of fact his father was a woolmerchant. She fell in love with him at once;both with him and with his songs, which shesang to his accompaniment. But in those daysDelius was a gay and rather feckless person.Jelka was not the only young lady in Paris who-had fallen for his charm, and he had no inclina-tion then for married life. So she settled downto wait for him and woo him; and she waitedseven years.

Among all the incidents of that long invertedcourtship, biographers of Delius emphasize one,

92 THE LAS T SUM MER

because it had a significance which was hiddenwhen it happened. Soon after they met, shelured him to take her boating on the river inthe village of Grez-sur-Loing, which is aboutforty miles out of Paris, and they landed fromtheir boat in an old deserted garden, enclosed bya church, a ruined castle, and a rambling emptyhouse. She knew the garden was there; she hadpainted in it several times before. But if it wasa stratagem to take him there, it only had alimited success. He was delighted with its at-mosphere of ancient peace, and declared that itwas the sort of place where he would like towork. But he did not ask her to marry him.

Soon afterwards, the house and its garden wereoffered for sale. Neither Jelka nor Delius hadany money, but she persuaded her mother to buyit; and when they married at last, in 1903, thehouse and garden became their home, and exceptin the years of the war they lived there ever after.

When they married, their resources were small,and their prospects were even smaller. Deliushad written a respectable quantity of music, butvery little of it had been published, and hardlyany of his orchestral or operatic work had beenperformed. But as it happened, he was on theverge of success. It is impossible now to saywhether it was through Jelka's influence, or theinfluence of the tranquil garden, or whether itwas simply that a truly original genius will al-ways be recognized in the end; but in the firstfew years of his marriage, his music began tocatch on-first in Germany, where he was hailedas a new German composer, and then in England,where he was hailed with equal pride as English.

For ten years, Delius had many reasons forhappiness: success in his art, a beautiful home, awife who undoubtedly adored him, and goodhealth: and in that period at Grez-sur-Loing hewrote his "Mass of Life" and most of the minorworks which are remembered best today. Butthose were the only ten years of his life when hehad so many blessings. In 1914, success desertedhim and the income he was earning from royal-ties disappeared, not through any fault of hisown, but because the war had started and musicin Europe had practically ceased. For the samereason, he and Jelka had to leave their home andmove to London; and as both of them were ofGerman origin and the Germany they knew wasthe indestructible Germany of music, it must besupposed that the years they lived in Londonwere unhappy.

After the end of the war, before the musicalworld had come to life again, he was overcomeby a personal disaster even more complete. In

1921 he fell ill. For three years, Jelka took himfrom place to place in Europe in an increasinglydesperate search for a doctor who could cure him.Sometimes their hopes were raised; but by 1925,he was totally paralyzed and blind. She took himback to the house at Grez-sur-Loing, knowingthat he was incurable and would always beabsolutely helpless although his mind remainedas clear as ever; and there in the garden whereshe had taken him when she was first in love, andin the house where his genius had flowered andfame and success had attended him, she nursedhim for nine years until he died.

A SUMMER GARDEN

IDID not know any of this history on the dayof the funeral, and I do not think I had ever

heard of Jelka Delius until somebody, as we leftthe churchyard, said it was a pity she had beentoo ill to come. I took my records back to Lon-don, and broadcast parts of them in the news,and that was that. But the next day, or the nextbut one, the telephone on the desk in my officerang three times. Three rings had a specialsignificance in Broadcasting House in that era;they meant that Sir John Reith, the DirectorGeneral himself, was on the line. The effect onjunior members of the staff was as if the LastTrump had sounded; I suppose he meant it tobe. He asked me if I had recorded the funeral,and told me to take the records, and somethingto play them on, to a nursing home in Kensing-ton, because somebody had suggested that Mrs.Delius might like to hear them.

That regal command made no allowance fortechnical difficulties. Sound recording was aprimitive business then, long before tape wasinvented. We used to record on soft cellulosediscs, and the only portable apparatus we hadfor playing them was a clockwork gramophonewhich quickly wore them. out. Moreover, therecording I had made of the music in the churchwas far below concert standard; the acoustics ofthe church had been difficult. So before I set off,I went to the gramophone library and borrowedthe commercial records of my own favorite piecesof Delius: "In a Summer Garden," the "FirstCuckoo," "Summer Night on the River," and the"Song before Sunrise."

To excuse what I did that day, I must sayagain that I was young. I was not much overtwenty, and young for my age, and I had verylittle experience of life and none of death; and

. so I just thought that if Mrs. Delius was ill itmight cheer her up to hear some of her hus-

band's music, and I did not think in time that Imight be meddling with more profoundemotions.

The room in the nursing home was darkened.A woman took me in, ami stayed while I wasthere. 1 thought she was a friend or a relation ofJelka Delius', not a nurse. I put my gramophoneon a table near the bed; and I hardly dared lookat the spare, drawn, motionless face on thepillow, because I had understood by then-though I do not think anyone had told me-that she was dying. I played one of the piecesI had recorded in the church, and the words ofthe service, and then Sir Thomas Beecham'sfuneral oration. The blackbird could be heard.At the end of his oration, she turned her headtoward me where I stood in the half-darknessbeside the bed, and she smiled and said: "DearTommy." That was the only Lime she spokewhile I was there.

When I had finished, I whispered to thewoman who was waiting: "Do you think shewould like to hear some music?"

"Yes, I think she would," the woman said; andI put on one of the records I had brought. It was"In a Summer Garden."

A~ain, I do not know the technical words todescribe that piece of music. But there again areall the images I have tried to put into words:love, youth, tranquillity, content; and superim-posed on them, the gaiety of bright flowers,birdsong, and sunlight reflected on ripples ofrunning water. The work ends in a shimmering

BY D AV I D HOW ART H 93

series of chords so soft and so remote that themusic seems almost not to move and not to end,but only to dissolve as trees and flovers dissolvein dusk when night falls on a garden. When thelast of those chords was ended, the woman said:"I do not think she can hear any more"; and Ilooked again at Jelka Delius. Her eyes wereclosed and she was perfectly still, and I could notread any expression on her face,

IRE A D in the papers that she was dead; butit was not until many years later that I learneda little more about the music I had played her,and understood how reckless my choice had been.That was after the second war, when orchestralconcerts began again in London, and 1 heard"In a Summer Garden" again at the Albert Hall.Somebody lent me the score, and I saw for thefirst time the inscription that Delius had writtenon it. Even now I do not know what emotion Ibrought to that elderly lady in the last few con-scious moments of her life: a happy recollection,or a regret for love ~nd youth long past whichis almost unbearable to imagine. "In a SummerGarden" was written soon after Dclius marriedher, before the misery of the war and the agonyof his paralysis, and the garden it was written toevoke was their garden at Grez-sur-Loing. At thetop of the score, he had written: "To my wifeJelka"; and he had added two lines which arequoted from Rosetti:

All are my blooms, and all sweet blooms or loveTo thee I gave while spring and summer sang.

A~NE SEXTON

TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO TRIUMPH

CONSIDER Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,and think of tha t first flawless moment over the lawnof the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;and here are the shocked starlings pumping pastand think of innocent Icarus, who is doing quite well:larger than a sail, over the Iog and the blastof the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!Feel the fire at his neck and see how casuallyhe glances up and is caught, wondrously tunnelinginto that hot eye. W'110 cares that he fell back to the sea?See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging downwhile his sensible daddy goes straight inro town.

Hnr,/)pr', iV1nrrn7inp. Nrmemher 19(iJ