To Understand A Man Fully Meet His Wife

Radio Record, 19 August 1938, Page 23

To Understand A Man Fully Meet His Wife

Mrs. Tibbett Talks to Jane Raeburn

OME famous playAS wright once said, . whether in bitterness or sincerity | do not know, . that before you can understand a man_ fully you must first see his wife.

That remark came strongly to my mind last week when IT met Mrs. Lawrence Tibbett, charming wife of the world’s greatest baritone. I have never spoken to Tibbett himself, or even seen him outside a picture-house, .yet I am sure that I caught as accurate an impression of the man’s personality in my brief interview as have many others who saw him face to face. Not that Mrs. Tibbett is at all the sort of person who would lose her individuality in anyone else. Rather, she has the poise and nameless graces of the woman who stands very firmly on her own feet. All the same, I believed I could see clearly in this very tall, very slim brunette with the friendly eyes and the amusing American neatness of speech, something of her husband’s candid outlook, his balance, unusual in a great artist, and the generosity and breadth of his interests. THIS couple share most things, I imagine, not only the luxuries and pleasures that fame can bring, but also without rancour its numberless obligations and its merciless toll upon nerve and energy. OR fame is no easy matter, whatever the envious might have you think. I asked Mrs. Tibbett what it felt like to be the wife of an "Idol of Millions." "Tf you want to be settled, and have a home and comfort and your children round you," she said, "then my advice is: Don’t marry an artist." "ast time we were home in New York, we spent four and a half months there. Generally it is less. You aa get tired sometimes of always living out of suitcases." Fortunately, Mrs. Tibbett is by temperament and environment peculiarly adaptable to this sort of thing. "AU my life I have been a traveller," she told me. "My parents used to spend half their time in Burope, half in America. There isn’t much I haven’t seen in either of those continents. I love travelling-the stimulation of meeting people, adusting to different conditions. "My idea is we are all too ready to slip into easy habit, into seeing the same friends and the same places, So that we can relax and let ourselves go, not bothering. When you travel, you just have to keep alert." And she added-as if I could not see how the wanderlust had got her-"I know how, if you get the chance, you

do want to settle down. Once I had to stay two years in California, not in one place, mind, but up and down the West Coast. And, at the end of two years, | thought, if I didn’t get out of that place soon I'd go mad!" I laughed at her. ‘"‘We can’t all afford to feel that way." Mrs. Tibbett admitted it with her easy smile. She confided that, globe-trotter as she is, she still has a ‘lurking terror of sea and air, She prayed for calm weather on the Tasman, dreads Cook Strait even, and regularly panicks on bump air journeys. "Mentally, Y’m a bad sailor; physically I’m never ill." T that, she turned the conversation from the thought of terrified travel. I asked about entertaining, because if you read any American gossip papers, you will know that the name of Mrs. Lawrence Tibbett stands high on the list of New York hostesses. "Yes, P’ve had to do plenty of it," she agreed. "I love it, but, of course, there’s an art in it, just as there’s an art in acting or singing. ‘My rule is leave your guests alone. Introduce them, open a topic of conversation, and let them argue it out. People like to go to a place where they will be allowed to please themselves. So often when you are getting into 4 really interesting talk, along comes the hostess with: "Oh, i do want you to meet so-and-so!’ The result is when you go home you ‘find you’ve said nothing else, but ‘How do you do? and ‘Yes, I do like your country, and so on." "Naturally when Mr. Tibbett is in New York, we entertain friends of several different cireles-the Metropolitan group, the musical cireles, the society crowd, our own particular friends. But I never bother to separate them-each group (Continued on page 25.)

"If you want to be settled ... then my advice is: Don’t marry an artist."

Meet Tibbett’s Wife

(Continued from page 23.) seems so interested in meeting the other, Bring them together and they find their own enjoyment if they are allowed!" ANOTHER branch of Mrs. Tibbett’s obligations as a famous singer's wife is her duty to charity. She explained the system on which much of the funds for New York’s charity work is raised-a system not altogether impossible of adaption in New Zealand. The scheme is very simple, An organiser buys up the Metropolitan Opera House, guaranteeing a full house, for any opera which she prefers. She then arranges among her friends, who work in teams, to sell tickets in their various districts. These tickets are sold at perhaps’ one-quarter or onethird above the usual price. Everything that is taken above the guarantee is handed over to charity. The Metropolitan artists are not affected because they are engaged on contract for so many performances, A performance is still a performance-charity or not, "People know they will have to give to charity some time." explained Mrs. Tibbett. "They find it convenient to give and at the same time have some enjoyment for their giving. The. guarantor hardly ever has to pay the Metropolitan man-agement-her main contribution is the vast amount of organising for these concerts. "Picture-houses are also bought up in the Same way, for the previews of outstanding films." UT even Mrs. Tibbett, energetic and willing as she is, admits that however stimulating to be a globe-trotting artist’s wife, it is also exhausting sometimes beyond the endurance of human nerves. That is why she likes New York- . ‘not only. because L was born there.and . because it is so huge, so glorious and exciting, but also. because it is the most impersonal city in the world. A place that can be desperately cruel, but’ a refuge as well, where you can shnt

your door on everyone and be alone in the midst of the millions." Maybe most of us-don’t realise how much it means to the. people in the limelight of publicity to be-able to sneak away from it now and then! The Tibbetts have a farm in Connecticut where they go when things get too hectic. "It’s wonderful for Mr. Tibbett," said his wife. "The strain under which those men live is terrific. There is not only his own singing, but his interest in music as a whole. He likes his finger in every musical pie. I have known him eleven years, been married for nearly seven, and I have always been amazed by watching him among people. Ile is like a sponge, sucking from them whatever they have to give. But what does it matter? He returns it on the stage, redoubled:"’ Yes, Lawrence Tibbett has an admirer as well as a helpmate in his wife. You don’t meet many like them-so famous, so feted, and yet so unaffectedly careless of glamour. Two artists perhaps, but two real people, too!