Dame Clara's Romance

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 6, 24 August 1928, Page 13

Dame Clara's Romance

"THE life story of Clara Butt, written by an old fellow pupil, Winifred Ponder, is full of interesting and intimate details of the great singer’s career concerning which her vast adoring public can never hear enough. But the story of her courtship, uniquely romantic, makes a direct appeal to every woman in whose heart romance dies hard. It began on the concert platform when she was appearing with Mr. Kennerley Rumford in duets. In those days it was customary for singers to hold their music, and he used to pencil messages to her on the margins of the songs. Night after night, standing beside him on the platform she would find these little notes as she turned the pages. Then a kindly fate helped the artist wooer by delivering into his hands a ballad which later the two were to make famous the world over-‘The Keys of Feaven." One night as they sang the gong together, he made his appeal in earnest through the well-known words of the quaint and charming ballad. Clara accepted him in singing the last verse, and the two left the platform engaged, the audience little guessing that life’s sweetest song had been sung. To-day Dame Clara holds the heart of millions, all the more because she ardently believes in the gramophone and wireless.