10. Other Musical Staff
Though Betty Rayment’s position as the Caldecott musical authority went unchallenged, quite a few staff could play, some of them very well. Mr. Christie (if I ever knew his first name I have forgotten it*) had charge of the Senior Study boys when I first moved into that group, then became Miss Travers’s assistant in the West Wing. I remember him deputizing on the chapel organ for a sick Betty Rayment with a sure hand.
A remarkable person in her own right was Marion Kidd. She looked after the junior-senior girls in the big room adjoining the dining room – this later became the staff room. She battled bravely with their teenage whims, maintaining an air of perpetual exuberance. She conducted the girls’ choir at Musical Evenings (Betty seems to have preferred accompanying them on the piano to conducting them) and was pretty fluent on the piano. Once she peeped in while I was practicing in the Music Room and soon we were playing duets. Betty always insisted on careful preparation, but before long we were off like the wind. “We weren’t playing this fast at the beginning!” I panted out. “Well, we are now!” she retorted. I learnt from her that impromptu busking has its attractions. Marion Kidd married a young man who briefly worked at Caldecott as some sort of assistant; his name was Damien but I do not remember his surname**. They left the Community to live in Hythe, but she died only a few years later at an early age.
Another who died at no great age, of cancer, was Betty Rayment’s niece Janis, who worked with the senior girls for a couple of years. She played the piano and the violin passably well, but her real interest was singing – she hoped to make a career as a soprano. She shared the Rayment tendency to seek out the best London teacher, with the added proviso that she liked them to be very very old and very very wise. The problem with teachers who are very very old and very very wise is that they are likely to die before they have taught you much, and this happened more than once. After several changes of teacher, she married and retired to domestic life. It is difficult to say now how good she might have become, but she took her studies very seriously and persuaded me to play her accompaniments. Up till then I had really only played solo and she gave me useful experience in accompanying a singer. I did little accompanying during my Edinburgh years but I have done a lot in Milan and if easily established myself in that role, I owe it to Janis. Not that I got everything right immediately. I see from my programmes that I accompanied her in two songs at a Musical Evening on 19th July 1970. The first was Durante’s “Vergin, tutto amor”, which has a very simple accompaniment of repeated chords. With Alexander Kelly, I had been working on how to project my tone into the concert hall. This is essential for solo work but accompanying is another matter. As I started off, applying my newly acquired projected tone unstintingly, Betty, who was beside me to turn the pages, whispered into my ear, “Have pity on the poor wench!”
Miss E’s successor in the sick room was Mrs. Ella Warrington. She was Dutch and I suppose she was either widowed or divorced, since we never saw any Mr. Warrington. She played the violin and had a brother who lived in Paris and was a musicologist. She was also determined that her twin children should learn instruments. One played the clarinet and I have no memories of that. The other, Trevor, played the cello and Mrs. Warrington seemed convinced that, since I played the violin in addition to the piano, I would be able to help him, something I conscientiously tried to do, in sickness and in health. Once, when I was in the East Wing with a bout of flu, Mrs. Warrington brought him in to play me his scales and arpeggios. An original therapy. I also accompanied him in one of his Grade exams. The examiner was Eric Thiman, whom we had already seen adjudicating at a competitive festival in Canterbury. Thiman’s particular trademark was that he always had a cigarette dangling from his lips. He did not seem to take drags on it, but apparently found it impossible to function without the smoke wafting around his face and up his nose and in his eyes. He could not have known the exam pieces very well, since he stood just behind the young Warrington, following the score. The lad had an open collar and, poised exactly above the back of his bare neck was Thiman’s cigarette, with a steadily growing column of ash that sagged little by little under its own weight. It would have to break off sooner or later and I hardly dared to breathe lest I disturb it.
Lacton Hall was run for several years by John and Leela Hort, a mixed couple who had been compelled to leave native South Africa by the apartheid system. John played the cello a little, Leela played the violin and had some pretensions to singing as a soprano. To enable them to take part in the Community orchestra, Betty arranged at least once for rehearsals to take place in Lacton Hall, perhaps the only time I ever set foot in the place. Rather ambitiously, the Horts managed to persuade the Lacton Hall children to perform a much simplified version of “Twelfth Night”, which they presented at the Hatch.
Also on the Lacton Hall staff for a short time was Peggy Dancyger. She had, I believe, a diploma in cello, but I never heard her play it. She must have been attracted towards deep instruments, since I remember her playing a bass recorder.
I have already mentioned Joyce Murdin and elsewhere I write about Joan Watson. Joan Watson’s successor was Muriel Morris, who played the flute and was a staunch supporter of the Community’s musical activities.
Another of the school teachers whom I got to know fairly well, but not as a teacher, was Effie Devenish – the junior class was taught in my days by Margaret Robson, a remarkable person I will remember later. Miss Devenish was a fine amateur musician. She played the piano and organ well enough to stand in for Betty Rayment in Chapel, she conducted the choir at Musical Evenings, she played the clarinet in the local orchestra and I think Betty tried to get her to play the violin, too. She was another loyal supporter of all Betty’s attempts to keep music alive in the Community. They remained friends after retirement and visited each other, I believe, for as long as they were mobile enough to do so.
Diana Howarth struggled hard to master the cello.
Betty made constant efforts to involve staff in the Community music making. Her hope was that staff somewhat sceptical of the value of music as part of a child’s education might be brought round by taking part themselves.
Lastly, Matthew King was the son of a Caldecott Director rather than a “Caldecott child” as such, but he has had, and continues to have, a major musical career and has written on various Caldecott platforms of his debt to Betty Rayment.
* His name was David and he left at Easter 1964 (information from Gerald Moran).
** His surname was McLellan. Marion Kidd died in April 1976 (information from Gerald Moran).