In Search of Song: The Life and Times of Lucy Broadwood (review)

If British musical life between 1860 and 1930 could be likened to a stage, then Lucy Broadwood ranks among the leading character actors to tread the boards during that time. Whether in her capacity as scholar, editor, composer, pianist, singer, folksong collector, administrator, businesswoman, writer, or public intellectual, her visage pops up time and again in the supporting casts of other stories—including those of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Percy Grainger, Cecil Sharp, J. A. Fuller-Maitland, James Campbell McInnes, and the Folk-Song Society—but always in the background, where she has remained an elusive and largely unknown figure. Thanks to Dorothy de Val, this is no longer the case. In Search of Song: The Life and Times of Lucy Broadwood finally turns the spotlight on its eponymous subject, and its illumination reveals a remarkable example of the New Woman, even if such a characterization might have met with an ambivalent response from Broadwood herself.

Lucy Etheldred Broadwood was born in 1858, the eleventh and final child of Henry Fowler Broadwood and Juliana Birch, and one of nine girls, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Raised at Lyne, a regal country house on the Surrey and Sussex border, Lucy (as de Val refers to her throughout the book) enjoyed the benefits of growing up in the Victorian upper-middle class, thanks to the family piano business. A series of private tutors at Lyne, social seasons in London, and summers in Scotland all helped form a family life that ‘was a whirl of musical, artistic and intellectual events’ (p. 15). Had Lucy been born in 1958 rather than 1858, her intellectual prowess, including ‘her vast literary knowledge and ease with languages’, would have made her ‘an ideal university professor: it is tantalizing to speculate what effect the Cambridge education her brothers received as a matter of course would have had on her’ (pp. 3–4).

As she grew into adulthood, her wide-ranging interests—among them comparative religion, art history, French and English literature, folklore, athletics (including tennis, bicycling, and, more unusually, crossbow shooting), and ecclesiastical architecture—brought her into contact with some of London’s leading intellectual figures. In addition, her charm and varied connections within the London social scene helped open many professional doors that were otherwise closed to women. This fortuitous combination of scholarly drive and personal charisma enabled her to compile and edit three significant collections of folksongs—Sussex Songs, with Herbert Birch Reynardson (1890), English County Songs, with J. A. Fuller Maitland (1893), and English Traditional Songs and Carols (1908)—as well as help found the Folk-Song Society in 1898. She went on to serve that group in multiple capacities over the next three decades, including as committee member, journal editor, secretary, and eventually (if all too briefly) president, a post to which she was elected only a few months before her death in 1929.

Much of the information about Lucy’s early years is provided through the diaries of her older sister, Bertha, a formidable woman in her own right, and one on whom de Val also lavishes a significant amount of attention. Indeed, a suitable alternative title for this book would have been Lucy Broadwood and her World, as this is far from a narrowly focused biography. Unlike some books sporting the ‘Life and Times’ moniker, In Search of Song really does live up to its claim, engaging as closely with the people, organizations, and culture surrounding Broadwood as it does with her own story. For instance, de Val treats the discussion of Broadwood’s long and intimate (if probably unconsummated) relationship with the Lancashire baritone James Campbell McInnes with impressive even-handedness. By focusing as much on McInnes’s role in the relationship as Broadwood’s, de Val reveals a wealth of detail about the life of this talented but troubled singer, enriching the reader’s understanding both...