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| ISBN-13: | 9781741761061 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Dame Joan Hammond
Love and Music
By Sara Hardy
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2008 Sara HardyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74176-106-1
CHAPTER 1
SPORT AND PLAY
JOAN WAS THREE YEARS OLD when she experienced her first adventure. It was a hot summer night, just before dawn. Her room was airless so she decided to kick off her bedclothes and go for a walk. She was wearing a nightdress and had nothing on her feet. She meandered through the house, into the garden, then to the bushland beyond — discarding her nightie as she went. She wandered naked, on and on, as the starlight faded and the sun rose. She must have come close to some fascinating yet potentially lethal encounters: cobwebs, reptiles, kangaroos ... It's fortunate that the family dog accompanied her on this journey, for it was through this dog that she was eventually found. A neighbour spotted the dog and the dog led her to the naked child. Joan was too young to remember the experience but her parents never forgot it.
At heart Joan was a childlike free spirit, blissfully following her own course, unaware of dangers ahead. Strangely enough, there would almost always be a devoted friend keeping watch nearby — usually human but sometimes a dog.
THE NIGHT SKY lit up each year when it came to Joan's birthday. May 24 was Empire Day — Queen Victoria's birthday, later called Commonwealth Day — and Australians celebrated with fireworks. Bonfires burned, catherine wheels twirled and rockets burst into particles of brilliance. Samuel, Joan's father, told her that cracker night was held in her honour, and of course she believed him.
It was a harmless fantasy, like Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy, but in later years Joan found that Samuel tended to give misinformation about a number of things. In fact he fabricated to such a degree that she began to question everything he said.
Joan had a neat way of summing up her origins: 'I was conceived in England, born in New Zealand and raised in Australia.' This was entirely true. She was conceived in a well-appointed house that overlooked Wimbledon Common, was born in a small rented house in Christchurch, and grew up in comfort on the North Shore of Sydney. Yet behind these simple facts was a hidden story.
Two of Joan's nieces alerted me to the 'skeleton' in the family closet. Both said there was something odd about Samuel and Hilda Hammond's marriage. They remembered the flurry there'd been when someone offered to do Joan's family tree — there was a very definite 'No! No thanks.' They suggested, with a certain sense of humour, that the problem was probably that Samuel and Hilda had never married, or that Samuel was a bigamist. The core of the issue was Samuel's name. His birth name was Samuel Hood, and for reasons no one knew (Samuel's explanations being weak and unbelievable), the family accepted that at some point he'd sidelined the 'Hood' and added the 'Hammond'. It was a long time ago and there was no documentation.
One clue did come to light. Embedded in Joan's papers (held by the National Library of Australia) was a scrap of handwritten paper that traced the ancestry of Joyce Calcutt, Joan's paternal grandmother. From this clue I was able to piece together some of Samuel's story. It goes like this: Samuel Hood was a working-class lad who'd grown up in the East End of London in the 1880s. His father had been an engineer's fitter and his mother died young. Samuel developed into a handsome, lean young man who was fond of a laugh, a drink and a gamble — and he was always on the lookout for a likely opportunity. He saw that opportunity in electricity. He became an electrical engineer and started his own business. At about the same time, meanwhile, he met and married Edith, a girl from St Pancras. By 1901 they'd settled in a house in East Ham. Samuel aged twenty-five, Edith almost thirty.
Two or three years passed and then Samuel met Hilda Blandford, a smiling seventeen year old from the Isle of Wight. Samuel found Hilda Blandford very attractive ...
So now there was Edith in East Ham and Hilda wearing a wedding ring and nursing a baby on Wimbledon Common. Thankfully, Samuel managed to turn his electrical business into a highly profitable venture, but some of his shadier business dealings were causing him problems. Things became increasingly tricky, so much so that he decided to make a few protective 'adjustments', one of which was to alter his name. He became Samuel H. Hammond, the 'H' for 'Hood' sitting silently in the middle. It was a made-up name, and never changed legally.
Samuel opened a business in the city and boldly registered it in the 1909 London Directory as 'Samuel Hammond & Co, Electrical Engineers, 107 Cannon St, EC'. It was an excellent location and he prospered.
Hilda, meanwhile, had accepted Samuel's explanations concerning the lack of a marriage certificate and was remarkably happy. By 1908 she had two little boys, Noel and Len. Life was good for the Hammonds (but it's unclear how life was for Edith Hood). Samuel took to wearing a bowler hat and well-tailored suits and contemplated taking up golf. Even so, the bad odour of his past hung about him. He thought that a new start in the colonies could be just the thing, New Zealand for instance, or Australia. Hilda was dismayed, but Samuel was so enthusiastic she was soon persuaded that a new land was just what they needed.
In early 1912 Samuel, Hilda and their two boys boarded the Shaw Savill liner that was to take them to the Antipodes — Hilda heavily pregnant with her third child. There were storms off the Cape of Good Hope and all manner of delays during the voyage. Samuel wanted to attend to business prospects in Sydney but Hilda wanted to be comfortably settled and definitely off the ship before her baby was born. By the time their ship reached Christchurch, New Zealand, they decided it was wise to disembark.
The promotional publicity for New Zealand had promised wealth, health and sunshine, but Samuel was disturbed to discover that business opportunities were limited and there was a shortage of suitable housing. Had prospects been more positive, the Hammonds may well have bought land and settled in Christchurch. As it turned out, Samuel rented a small house as a temporary measure. This was done just in time, for Hilda went into labour on 24 May 1912. All went well and a baby girl was born. A few weeks later she was baptised 'Joan Hilda Hood Hammond', Hammond being the surname.
Samuel left for Sydney a few weeks later, leaving Hilda and the little ones behind. It was six months before he sent word that they were to follow. It's unclear what business dealings he put together during those months but the outcome was that he was able to settle his family in a large house with ample grounds that adjoined bushland. The location was Beecroft, a semirural area in the Hills District of Sydney.
So Samuel and Hilda made their way in the new country as Mr and Mrs Hammond, and of course neither their children nor anyone else thought to question their legitimacy — not at that time anyway.
JOAN'S FIRST SEVEN YEARS were free-flowing. Both Hilda and Samuel had come from humble beginnings. Both had lost a parent early on, and two of Hilda's sisters had died from tuberculosis. Samuel and Hilda obviously wanted their children to have a good start. Their way of achieving this was to send them to boarding school at a young age. Noel and Len were sent aged five, while Joan was sent aged seven.
The school chosen for Joan was rather unusual. Glen Carron, The Garden School, was situated in an old mansion in the suburb of Mosman on Sydney's North Shore. It was co-educational and run by Miss Arnold and Miss Macdonald. These two women were disciples of The Order of the Star of the East, an order founded by the Theosophical community based near Madras, India. Theosophy was a brand of spiritualism popular at that time. Committed Theosophists tended to be unconventional in their dress and habits — they favoured loose casual clothes and a vegetarian diet. The tone of the school was progressive, and free-flowing play, especially in terms of music and movement, was encouraged.
Hilda and Samuel probably chose this school because of its reputation, for it's unlikely they were Theosophists. The freedom suited Joan well. It was here that she started to play the violin, here that she discovered her athleticism, and here that she danced through the garden waving silken scarves in time to rather unusual music.
She was a robust little girl who could channel her energies with astonishing concentration — if she liked what she was doing. She especially liked to play the violin and felt connected to the instrument. She knew that the strings could be made to speak, to sing, with a supreme eloquence — and she worked hard to release that voice. Yet there was another element, something she didn't pay much attention to: her teachers began to notice that she had a very attractive singing voice. But it was the violin she wanted to master, and her progress was very good.
SAMUEL'S PROGRESS WAS ALSO VERY GOOD. He'd become a merchant/agent — an importer of goods ranging from Packard cars to dry ice. His entrepreneurial activities had earned him a prestigious business address in George Street in the city, and his success was such that he could afford to build his dream home. He bought a large plot in Lindfield, an underdeveloped suburb on the upper North Shore, conveniently close to the railway station. The house was two storey, had a small ballroom, leadlight windows bearing the Hammond 'coat of arms', and had Samuel's initials carved into the wooden fixtures (the S superimposed over the H was later mistaken for the dollar sign!). There was a terraced garden, a tennis court, and a cricket lawn that gave on to bushland and then drifted down to a creek with dainty ferns and sandstone rock pools. He named the house 'Walbrook' after the ward of Walbrook in the City of London where he'd run his electrical business. It was completed in time to accommodate Tony, born in 1920, the final addition to the family.
Samuel was doing so well that he built a holiday house at Palm Beach. It was a wonderful location: the house was next to the sea and it overlooked the narrow neck of land connecting Palm Beach to the Barrenjoey headland (which separates the Pacific Ocean from Pittwater). There was the beginnings of a simple golf course on this land, and this was developed into a nine-hole links. Samuel and Hilda were keen golfers by this time and Samuel became a founding member of the Palm Beach Golf Club. The front veranda of the holiday house overlooked the ninth green and young Joan was given a miniature set of golf clubs and encouraged to try her hand. Golf would become a major passion one day, but for the moment it was the sea and nothing but the sea that took her fancy.
Joan and her elder brothers would go swimming, sailing and surfing. Whatever Noel and Len could do, Joan would do too. She was tall for her age, strong and fearless. Eldest brother Noel would go looking for his surfboard to find that his little sister had gone off with it. She adored surfing, and was one of the first of the girls to be seen catching a wave at Palm Beach — it was impressive, given that the boards were so big and heavy in those days.
IT ALL SOUNDS IDYLLIC. The large family home, the holiday house, the upper-middle-class comforts. Yet Joan's niece, Aurora, told me that Len couldn't think of one kind word to say about his mother, and he described his father as a drinker and a gambler. Len was adamant that he never received parental love. The Hammond children were showered with material things but starved of affection. Len remembered going to visit his little brother Tony at boarding school because his parents neglected to do so.
When Joan was quizzed about her parents she declined to answer. The most she would say was that Hilda wasn't maternal.
A close friend of Joan told me that the family was known as 'the fighting Hammonds'. They were a lively bunch, 'full of personality' and forever arguing — and there was much estrangement between siblings and parents in later life.
IT WAS 1925 and Joan was twelve years old when Samuel gave the children a new bicycle. It was a lovely sporty type of 'grown-up' bicycle with attractively curved handlebars — a boy's bicycle. Joan and her brothers loved to put it through its paces. One of Joan's tricks was to ride with her feet on the handlebars. The bike was kept at 'Walbrook' and she especially enjoyed riding around the quiet roads of Lindfield. They were steep, gritty, unmade roads, with lots of bends and blind corners. She liked to career around these roads as if she was on a speed track doing a time trial. On one particular day she'd done about four laps of this 'track' and was feeling full of bravado. She took a bend too wide and was on the wrong side of the road just as a car was coming up the hill the other way. It was the sort of car that had large lamps, wide running boards and spoke-wheels. She slammed into the passenger side of the car, threw out her left arm to protect herself and caught her forearm in between the spokes of the front wheel. It was only a matter of seconds till the car could stop, but during that time her left arm was twisted round and round as her body was dragged along the ground.
She remembers being completely numb as the driver laid her in the back of the car. He drove her to a doctor who immediately sent her to the nearest hospital. It was decided that the arm would have to be amputated from the elbow. Fortunately, a young surgeon was rushed to the hospital and his opinion held sway. He detected a faint pulse and thought that he could save the arm. The operation was a success, but then Joan had to endure four more operations over the next twelve months. It was a ghastly cycle of pain: surgery would be done, the arm would be strung up for some time, the fingers waxed to keep them straight, the arm would heal, some movement would be gained, and then the whole horrible cycle would have to be gone through again. The fifth operation involved a skin graft. Skin was removed from her inner thigh and placed around the wrist area. She remembered this as one of the worst experiences.
She was out of action for a year. Her left arm was now two inches shorter than her right and movement was painful and limited. The wound was raw-looking, blotchy, bumpy and reddish blue. There was also a nasty scar on her thigh where the skin graft had been taken. She fought these difficulties with a steely determination, fired by her desire to resume her two great loves, sport and music, and by music she meant playing the violin. She had dreamed of becoming a professional violinist.
She worked to recover strength and agility in her arm and fingers, but the first time she attempted to play her violin she couldn't even raise the instrument higher than her waist. It was months before she could place it under her chin, but gradually, gradually, she was able to play again. She must have discovered extraordinary depths of willpower and patience. Strengths she would call upon in later life.
She spent several months at home while her arm healed. She read, painted and listened to records on her wind-up gramophone. Her brothers had piles of jazz records and she enjoyed these as well as pop songs, but it was classical music that she loved. Hilda encouraged her to listen to a range of classical music and bought her some music scores.
Hilda's background was even more humble than Samuel's. Her father had been a mariner but had died when she was young. Matilda, her widowed mother, was left with five young children to bring up and she probably achieved this by working as a laundress. Hilda is variously described as shy, smiling, pleasant and not so pleasant (depending on whom I interviewed). Slim and good looking in her youth, she became a stocky woman with a square face and wide smile. She can't have had much of an education — brought up on little money on the Isle of Wight — so it's significant that she was so enthusiastic about Joan's interest in classical music. Joan always said that it was Hilda rather than Samuel who had the 'singing gene' in the family. Samuel tried to take some credit by saying he used to sing at Westminster Abbey, but Joan never believed him — he didn't have much of a voice.
WHEN JOAN WAS well enough to go back to school she was sent to the Presbyterian Ladies' College at Pymble (the Hammonds were Church of England but PLC took all-comers). Pymble was just a short train ride from Lindfield, yet Joan was a boarder. She didn't seem to mind, in fact she enjoyed her sense of superiority over the 'day-bugs' (day girls). She also enjoyed the camaraderie and general high jinks. She had a good sense of fun and became popular very quickly — not so easy when you're a new girl arriving mid-year.
She involved herself in every sports activity available and wore an arm shield for rougher games like hockey. Photos of her at this time show a girl in school uniform or gym slip with one sleeve rolled up and the other buttoned down. If she was sleeveless, or in a swimming costume, the left arm was placed so it was out of sight of the camera.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dame Joan Hammond by Sara Hardy. Copyright © 2008 Sara Hardy. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
PRELUDE,1 SPORT AND PLAY,
2 A POWERFUL DRIVE,
3 INNOCENT ABROAD,
4 BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS — THE WAR YEARS,
5 ILLUMINATION,
6 LOVE AND MUSIC,
7 'WHEN I HAVE SUNG MY SONGS',
8 MASTER TEACHER,
9 FATE,
CODA: THAT WHICH REMAINS,
ENCORE,
SELECTED RECORDINGS,
GOLFING HIGHLIGHTS,
ENDNOTES,
PICTURE CREDITS,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS,