From Henry Hilliard and Pete Bruno h.h.hilliard@hotmail.com
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Noblesse Oblige
Book 5 Outer Darkness
Chapter 18 Postscript I
Researching in the Ryerson Library in Chicago where the Poole Family Papers are located, we came across a transcript of the BBC radio program called Desert Island Disks on which Martin Poole, the 5th Marquess of Branksome, was a guest in the early 1950s. Unfortunately, there is no audio recording and the BBC has not been able to locate it in their archive either. However it is possible for these authors to reconstruct the program with the aid of the typewritten notes. The host and interviewer was Roy Plomley.
Plomley, after welcoming Branksome, made a few comments about Parliament and Anthony Eden is mentioned to which Lord Branksome makes non-committal replies, squirming slightly on his tubular metal chair in front of the microphone. [It must be about 1955, for Eden has presumably been made Prime Minister, judging by the remarks].
Branksome is asked what object' he would most like on his desert island if he were castaway' and he replies that he would like to have Carlo Sifridi, his manservant, "Because it is a bother to change the records oneself," he says, and adds that Carlo is very good at operating his new `hi-fidelity' gramophone. There is laughter and Plomley points out that a servant is not an object and then Branksome says that he'd like to have his battered copy of Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham because it reminds him of his Edwardian childhood.
Plomley then volunteers that Lord Branksome was a great supporter of Sir Thomas Beecham when he formed the London Philharmonic and Branksome replies that this is correct, but says that he hasn't selected any of Sir Thomas' recordings because his own taste is much too lowbrow. He then admits that several famous musicians and singers have been his guests over the years and he mentions Paul Robeson in 1949 and Yehudi Menuhin more recently. Plomley remarks that Robeson has just had his passport revoked by the United States government and Branksome says that he knows this and thinks it outrageous and that he is sure that this action will prove unconstitutional if tested in court. He says they were both impressive men in their different ways.
The conversation then turns to music and Branksome explains that his first two records are songs from his childhood. "Even as a schoolboy I used to sneak up to London to go to the music halls with a school friend who liked to meet the great stars of the day to collect their autographs." He reels off the name of some of the stars, now all but forgotten
R.P.: "What did they make of eager school boys at their dressing room doors?"
B.: "They were always charming and perfectly correct ladies, often chaperoned by their mothers. They were very sweet to their youthful `fans'-- as we would be called these days--and delighted that their pictures and autographs were traded as currency among adoring schoolboys." [N.B. This account does not match some of the incidents recorded in Noblesse Oblige.]
The first song, it is explained, was originally sung by Vesta Victoria whom Branksome says was a big star before the First War. He then adds that he named his dogs after Vesta Tilly and Billy Matthews who were contemporaries of Vesta Victoria and wonders if the name `Vesta' was associated with the popular brand of matches.
["Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-wow"]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJnj7RlP9-A
B.: (enthusiastically): "They don't write songs like that anymore."
R.P.: (in what the reader may assume were rather leaden tones) "No they don't"
Branksome's second song he says is quite a personal one-- `as listeners will hear for themselves' and that he is often told he should head its stern warning.
["Don't Have Any More Mrs Moore"]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMBkTVrPZwU
Next there is a discussion about the First World War. Plomley remarks that participants in that conflict are all in middle age now and Bransome agrees. "I suppose you weren't even born then, Mr Plomley"
"Only just, your lordship."
Branksome has selected the predictable Keep the Home Fires Burning and he takes off the headphones while the record is playing. He hates the song and regrets having chosen it. He is remembering Ivor Novello, the composer and matinee idol of the period who, as Plomley reminds the audience, has just tragically died. He glances through the sound-proof window to where he can see Stephen sitting, grinning, and he knows Stephen is too is remembering the beautiful Ivor and how the Welshman came to Croome one weekend and...well, it's is true what they say about Welshmen.
Then Lord Branksome pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes for a minute as Plomley talks to someone in the control room and he thinks of the War and thinks of another tune-- another tune that the soldiers put different, truer, words to. And he is imagining Stephen in the trenches and it is terrible. It is a strangely deserted landscape from which all colour has been sapped. There are blasted trees and wire and mud under a pall of smoke. There has been an attack for he (or is it Stephen?) is wearing his respirator. Then he's suddenly at the Peace Conference and he sees President Wilson and Clemenceau signing things. They do not speak. Then he feels the warm sunshine and he finds himself in the poppy-strewn fields of northern France and there is a picnic-- ladies in white dresses-- mothers (Is it his own mother? He can't tell) and pretty daughters like his Charlotte and there are little children and he hears the soldiers singing the song...
["They Wouldn't Believe Me"]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_LhOO6Q6p8
"Lord Branksome!" hisses Plomley and he motions Martin to put the headphones on again for they are `on the air'.
It has only been a minute, but it seemed an age and Martin recovers himself and glances up to the window just to make sure that Stephen is not really dead and then he begins to talk of his love of American music and the songs of the 1920s that were popular on the dance floors of London when he was a young man. Plomley asks him if he was `a bright young thing' and Branksome supposes that he was.
"Have you seen The Boyfriend, Lord Branksome?" Martin starts and looks to the window to make sure Stephen is behaving-- The Plunger having joined him with a cup of BBC tea. Then he realizes that it is the musical play set in the 1920s that Plomley is referring to.
"Yes, it was very good and young Mr Wilson is a talented writer, but I've never worn a striped blazer in my life...although I do know someone who had one," he added thinking of Stephen in his cricket whites and an intimate afternoon spent on a punt under a willow on The Broads.
["T'aint No Sin"]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlg46kIGm_Q
Martin's song was so silly that they were all chortling and a discussion about prohibition in the United States follows and Martin tells the story about how his butler went to the United States in the 1920s and reported that he wasn't overly troubled by the new law and quipped that `prohibition was at least better than no alcohol at all'. "He is a very droll man, our Mr Chilvers," says Lord Bransome, laughing, and he is imagining them all sitting around the wireless in the kitchen at Croome.
R.P.: "But I believe you are an aficionado of popular jazz from those years."
"Well, perhaps I am," admitted Branksome, not really knowing what an aficionado was, "and I have got a very good record collection at Croome. I had American friends who would send them over when you couldn't obtain them in England and I would play them for all my friends. The older generation thought they were terrible, of course, but I suppose I am a member of that generation now. I loathe that dreadful `Rock Around the Clock', although I am opposed to actually banning rock-and-roll music, as some of my fellow peers say they would like to do."
Lord Branksome is asked to explain about the next recording.
"I think it is one of Cole Porter's cleverest songs, both musically and lyrically." He goes on to tell what a good friend Cole has been over the years and how Porter was the best man at his wedding. "Now I want you to listen carefully to the plunger mute trumpet work; it's by a brilliant trumpeter who rejoiced in the singular name of Bubber Mily. Leo Reisman's pianist is the great Eddie Duchin."
Plomley asks Martin if he has seen the recent film of Duchin's life. Branksome has and thinks Tyrone Power is a wonderful actor, but stops himself just in time from saying he looks rather like his Stephen, which he does.
["What is this thing called love?"]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKF5GuqKYpo
The talk turns to modern concert music and Martin said he was exposed to it in the early 1920s and found it quite perplexing. He says he has an artistic friend who was very much in the avant-garde and who patronized the early cubist painters and their counterparts in music. "` Free chromaticists' I believe I remember them being called." He glances up at The Plunger, but he is not betraying any emotion and is fitting a cigarette into its tortoiseshell holder.
"Were they a-tonalists, Lord Branksome?"
"Terribly; not a tone or melody in their whole damn repertoire. Nothing to soothe the ear and nothing so old fashioned as a key of course, but I suppose it was quite exciting at the time."
"Tell me about Miss Billie Holiday, Lord Branksome."
"Well, I am sorry to say that I have never met her but I am greatly attracted to her emotional rendition of songs-- they go straight to one's heart-- if one has one at all-- and she has a unique way of coming in just behind the note as listeners will hear for themselves."
Branksome was thinking that he really wanted to play Strange Fruit, a melancholy dirge about lynching in the South, but the BBC has banned it. Instead he points out that Miss Holiday had been refused permission to use the main lift in the Lincoln Hotel where she was performing. "It is an outrage and I said so in the House."
R.P: "Do you think that Britain needs race relations legislation, Lord Branksome?"
B.: "I don't believe so. You can't regulate people's feeling by passing laws but at the same time I would not like to think that any hotel in London would refuse coloured guests. This country is desperately short of labour and the Conservative Party welcomes all the new Caribbean members of the Commonwealth. They will make good Britons, if given the chance.
["Solitude"]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d4KCZwUxRU
Plomley then talks to Branksome about country life and he sounds enthusiastic about farming and the rapid increase in production despite the decline in rural population. "In my part of the world, most of the farms have been consolidated into larger holdings. I feel proud that we have been in the vanguard of modernization. Price stabilization under both parties, has allowed farmers to invest in their futures and the subsidies for chemical fertilizers, sprays and diesel fuel have made all the difference. In fact I think I can say that our farmers have not been so well off since my grandfather's day and the publican of the public house on my estate was complaining to me just the other day that the farmers are all at home watching their television sets instead of coming in for their pint."
"Should Britain join in trading with the European nations?"
"Neither our Party nor the Labour Party are convinced that we should join the Benelux countries or the Steel Community just yet and the people in my part of England look to something much wider than just Western Europe when they get letters from abroad; we still have our traditional trading partners.
"Of course I love France and have been going there since before the First War and I particularly like people and landscape of southern France and the food of Provence. We in England could learn much from the cooking of that region; the people are poor and the ingredients are simple, but prepared with infinite care. I recommend Mrs David's excellent book called French Country Cooking."
R.P: "Do you cook yourself, Lord Branksome?"
B: "A little-- stews in France and I make an excellent omelets au fines herbes, if I do say so myself. Lately I have been cooking on a barbecue that I had built at Croome.
R.P.: "What's that?"
M: "It is a sort of campfire in the garden that Americans have and it is used to roast and grill meat. It imparts a smoky flavour that is quite delicious."
R.P.: "And you do this cooking for your guests yourself ?"
B.: "Oh yes; it is done outside in fine weather as for a picnic. The easiest way is to have one's butler or a footman attend the fire and remind one when to turn the sausages so they don't burn. I bought a special `leisure wear' outfit for my butler in Florida. He sulked and refused to wear it at first, but I think short trousers are very sensible--at any age-- and hibiscuses make such a cheerful pattern on grey days, don't you think? I suppose servants are conservative by nature.
"But I love French food best of all and my next song reminds me of Paris before the War and how we waited for the Germans to be gone."
R.P.: "And we waited for our loved ones from whom we were parted?"
"Yes, that too," says Branksome and he thinks privately how he waited for Stephen when he was in North Africa and then in Italy and of that almost unbearable intensity that comes with absence and how this was seemingly shared with all those who waited at home during those awful years.
["J'attendrai"]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1KTOgKJazw
"For my last song, I have chosen a particularly happy one that I often have my valet play when I'm in my bath. I find that I can accompany Senor Schipa with my own acceptable tenor voice (or so the Vicar tells me) and in fact it makes the both of us laugh, especially when I play it with the volume turned right up, but it drives a certain other person (whom I won't name) quite mad and I have had to hide the record because he has threatened violence upon it. Some people are just not music lovers, are they Mr Plomley?" Here Branksome looks up to the window and Stephen is pretending to be wounded by Martin's accusation. He nudges The Plunger and mimes a request for support. When it is not forthcoming, Stephen playfully grabs The Plunger around the neck and disarranges his carefully groomed ginger hair with his other hand, dislodging his accustomed props: his monocle and his cigarette holder. Stephen is grinning broadly and being very childish. Then his two old friends dissolve into laughter--silent behind the glass--and Martin tries to stem the infection, but he can't and laughs loudly at the absurdity of it all, at the absurdity and wonder of Life itself.
["Vievre"]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_5TWili4vc
To be continued with one more Postscript. Thank you for reading. Do let us know what you think of Martin's choice of music or if you have any other comments or questions. Pete and I would really love to hear from you. Just send them to h.h.hilliard@hotmail.com and please put NOB Nifty in the subject line.