The Handmaid's Tale

The Age

Saturday February 16, 2008

Jim Davidson

An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin

By Jacqueline Kent

Viking $49.95

Hephzibah Menuhin was destined to play second fiddle to the men in her life, writes Jim Davidson.

THE MENUHINS WERE one of the great musical partnerships of the 20th century. When they toured Australia in 1962, the one full-page advertisement in the program was for a perfume: it showed a violinist, in a gust of passion, throwing his arm around the lady pianist as she stood up, her hands lingering on the keyboard.

That placement in the concert program was entirely innocent - or a sophisticated joke. For brother and sister were close, holding hands when jointly taking their bows. As Hephzibah explained, they had a "Siamese soul".

Yehudi, the more famous, was probably the greatest child prodigy of the century. So remarkable was his technique and maturity of expression that at 16 he was chosen by Sir Edward Elgar to record his violin concerto. Yehudi's exceptional talent did not fade away; triumphs continued to the end of his life in 1999.

Hephzibah's life, the subject of this searching biography by Jacqueline Kent, was more anguished and possibly more interesting. Unlike the rosy path of Yehudi, it was marked by two sudden shifts.

The first occurred when, at the age of 18, Hephzibah bade farewell to her musical career and opted for married life on a Victorian sheep property; the second, 16 years later, when she walked out on her husband and two young children to go and live with a Viennese sociologist, first in Sydney and then in London.

Kent shows how the upbringing of the three Menuhin children was as extraordinary as their talent. The parents, understandably, shaped their own lives around the advancement of Yehudi. But when it was pointed out that Hephzibah's skills were of a similar order - "Madame Menuhin's womb is truly an academy of music," said one music teacher - their attitude was that these skills must be used to advance Yehudi's career, or else help her to become a domestic adornment.

Hephzibah was anything but a genteel tinkler; her piano-playing was like a manly stride. But, given the children's isolation as they practised and practised, Hephzibah came to develop ambivalent feelings about it. She knew she had a deep musical instinct, and aptitude, but often told herself she was not an "artist". There had to be some other way of relating to the world.

Deliverance came unexpectedly. In London they were staying in the same hotel as Lindsay and Nola Nicholas, heirs to the Aspro fortune. The Menuhins were captivated: "What freshness in the soul of these young Australians," Hephzibah noted in her diary. Yehudi fell for Nola, and married her, and shortly afterwards Hephzibah proposed to her brother.

Lindsay was musical, and played the organ; later, when Hephzibah took up music again, he would travel abroad with her, in an attempt to save their marriage. For her part Hephzibah took life in the Western District seriously, organising Red Cross activities during the Second World War and putting much effort - and money - into a travelling school library.

But she was unsettled by a visit to Theresienstadt in 1947, the transit camp and ghetto where the Germans staged social and cultural events for visiting dignitaries, even as individuals were dragged away to Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Hephzibah, one of the first postwar visitors to the camp, found her Jewishness dramatised and affirmed there. But no less important was a new sense of the relative marginality of art, so easily misapplied and incapable, in most respects, of affecting major issues. Hephzibah wanted to make a difference, and have access to a coherent view of the world.

This seemed to be offered by Richard Hauser, a management consultant living in Sydney. Attracted by his charisma, Hephzibah moved there and married him. They went to London where she assisted him in his projects, helping turn his ideas into books and cheerfully ran what was in effect a crash pad for needy people. But Hauser became increasingly self-absorbed and dictatorial, and also more promiscuous. Hephzibah's last few years, in which she contracted cancer, were miserable. When she died in 1981, Hauser was at her bedside, saying, "Why is this happening to me?"

Jacqueline Kent's biography shows how, despite her talents, Hephzibah's insecurities got the better of her. Prepared to be the handmaid to Yehudi and his "saintly stupidity", Hephzibah repeated the scenario with Hauser - who was part guru, part charlatan. Her dictatorial mother, conditioning Hephzibah to a meagre sense of entitlement, must bear some of the blame. There was real happiness with Lindsay Nicholas, but his emotional reticence and lack of interest in ideas eventually sapped the marriage of any meaning for her.

Without pushing the point, Jacqueline Kent shows that Hephzibah could have done with some assertiveness training. An Exacting Life is well written, well paced, and becomes an enthralling story.

Jim Davidson is completing a biography of the historian W. K. Hancock.

© 2008 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home