The CHUM Archives, Part 1 (The 1950s and '60s) (Photo courtesy Lawrence Chui) In October, 2003, legendary CHUM deejay Bob Laine retired after 45. Message Number: 13755 / Date Posted: 09/02/2008 S, CARA LOUISE from UNKNOWN is being searched for by JENNIFER WOOD from CHESTERFIELD I am trying to find my daughter. Vaughan Williams, his wife and the mistress who shared their bed Huddled together in the sandbagged bedroom of a bungalow in Dorking, Surrey, the three figures trembled in the darkness. It was the summer of 1. Hitler's doodlebug raids, when pilotless aircraft and their signature droning brought terror and destruction to Southern England. In one of the twin beds lay Ralph Vaughan Williams - already acclaimed as one of the finest composers ever to emerge in Britain. In the other lay his wife of 4. Adeline. And in between them, lying on a mattress placed on the floor, was Ursula Wood, a glamorous young poet whose close friendship with the great composer - almost four decades her senior - had by now become a full- blown affair. That Vaughan Williams should have invited his mistress into the marital home at all may seem strange. But the scene that night was even more perplexing. For on one side of her mattress, Ursula clasped the hand of the composer; on the other, she held the hand of his wife, as all three of them listened anxiously to the V- 1 planes overhead, and waited for the ominous cut of their engines. This extraordinary image, uncovered as part of a new documentary that I have made for the BBC, exposes the intriguing details of Williams's colourful private life that were kept hidden for decades. Only now, 5. 0 years after his death, can the story of his long, passionate love affair be told, thanks to a remarkable confession from the woman with whom he shared the final chapter of his life. And in so doing, it brings a new perspective to the glorious music which continues to inspire such affection. This spring, for the second year running, Vaughan Williams's enchanting work The Lark Ascending topped a Classic FM listeners' poll to become the most popular piece of classical music. His work is also enjoying a huge revival, with performances in cities all over the world. But there is far more to it than the gentle pastoralism of chirruping larks or the homely lyricism of his Fantasia On Greensleeves. Much of the music is romantic, with turbulent undercurrents - sometimes angry, sometimes erotic, but always passionate. And it was this same anger and passion, I believe, that lay behind the extraordinary menage a trois that he conducted for 1. Williams was, by all accounts, a red- blooded male. He was jokingly called Uncle Ralph by the dozens of female singers who lined up to give him admiring kisses after choral concerts which he had conducted.
There are stories of him lumbering up the stairs to the top floor of the Royal College of Music, where a beautiful young music student was practising the violin, just to snatch a glance at her through the window. On one occasion, the beautiful 1. Harriet Cohen asked him to write her a piano concerto. He agreed to the commission - in return for 1. She accepted the deal and paid off her . Such flirtations were always half in jest. Fashion in the years following World War II is characterized by the resurgence of haute couture after the austerity of the war years. Square shoulders and short. For as a handsome but unknown 2. Williams had married a cousin of Virginia Woolf, the coolly elegant Adeline Fisher. Theirs' was not a passionate marriage. There were to be no children, and from the start, he had been frustrated by his wife's obsessive devotion to her extensive family. Adeline had been deeply affected when her brother was killed in World War I, and wore mourning black for the rest of her life. She also developed rheumatoid arthritis which left her increasingly immobile, meaning that the couple were obliged to move out of London to a bungalow in Dorking. For Williams, who had relished life in the capital, it was a frustrating period, reflected in his violently discordant 4th Symphony. Then, just as he was resigning himself to old age, into his life stepped the flattering and youthful presence of Ursula Wood. As a young drama student at the Old Vic in London, Ursula had been captivated by Williams's music after seeing his ballet Job. She wrote to him persistently, and eventually persuaded the brilliant composer to take her out to lunch. In the forthcoming documentary, she describes for the first time what happened when he came to collect her by taxi for that first meeting in March 1. He was 6. 5, she was 2. But the age difference was no barrier to the spark of desire. She describes how she had found herself looking at . Voice, eyes and hands were somehow familiar, so that I felt that I was meeting again someone I had known before. But Williams, eager to impress, took her to a gourmet restaurant. She recalled how, in the taxi afterwards: . Ralph dropped everything and arrived with only one half of his face shaved. Their affair began shortly afterwards. Williams was captivated by Ursula's beauty and vitality, and the romantic glow was soon reflected in his music of the time - in particular, his uplifting Serenade To Music. But to complicate matters further, Ursula was herself married - to Army officer Michael Wood. Indeed, on one occasion, Ralph and his wife and Ursula and her husband all met up at the opera for what must have been a most uncomfortable evening, particularly as the opera (Williams's own Hugh The Drover) was a romantic story of rivals in love. You are mine at last! Ursula even confided in one or two friends that she'd had an abortion. Ralph's response was as swift as it was surprising: he took Ursula home to Dorking, where he and Adeline decreed that they would look after the grieving widow. If Adeline objected to this intrusion into her marital home, then she was smart enough to play her cards carefully. Though arthritis had confined her to a wheelchair, she was a shrewd woman, and when Ursula began to accompany Ralph to rehearsals as his . She must have suspected that Ursula gave Ralph a physical expression of love which she could not, and perhaps she even gave them her blessing. At home, Ralph dutifully went on nursing his wife, and Adeline knew that she had to avoid forcing him to choose between her and Ursula. So she befriended Ursula (who found her . Outwardly, the pretence was maintained. Family and most friends thought Ursula was simply a young acquaintance of the couple who helped care for them both. In reality, it was an unusual but mutually agreeable menage a trois, whose intimacy is reflected in that extraordinary scene of the three of them, side by side in bed, sheltering from Hitler's aerial bombardment. Ursula was, in her own words, . So she could only be the . And so life continued until Adeline's death in 1. Williams was finally free to wed his long- term . Released from his role as carer, and rejuvenated by marriage to his younger wife - Ralph was 8. Ursula 4. 1 when they wed - he spent five years in frenzied activity, travelling all over Britain and Europe, and visiting America. With Ursula he held parties, studied the latest women's fashions, supported struggling young composers and read the complete works of Shakespeare out loud. And even in his ninth decade he kept on writing music of vigour, vision and passion. He died in 1. 95. Ursula survived him by almost 5. Adeline. But shortly before her own death last October at the age of 9. Williams's friends still alive today speak of him with love and respect as a man of deep and abiding principle. But I believe the the tensions and passion of his private life bring a whole new understanding to his extraordinary talent. His music, so often restless and unsettled yet somehow at the same time serene, perhaps holds the clue to his personal struggle between honour, loyalty and love.
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