How old is my heart, how old , how old is
my heart,
and did I ever go forth with song when the morn was new?
Christopher Brennan 1897
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Janet le Brun Brown was born at her
family's property Riggsdale in Goulburn, New South Wales, on 14 June, 1900. Her
father, Walterus le Brun Brown, was a grazier and her mother, Eugenie Emmeline Hanniford
Fletcher, a nurse. In years to come her father became a stock dealer and was dragged to
death by a horse.
The lineage of the le Brun Brown family is
easily traced to that most ancient Scottish family the Brouns of Colstoun in
Midlothian. The family had an illustrious past which included an association with a wizard
as early as 1267 who bestowed upon it a pear with the wonderful property of being able to
keep fresh for ages. The family fortunes depended upon the preservation of this piece of
fruit. When an ancestor was killed fighting for the cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie, his
children fled to France and Denmark. Included in this lineage was the Marquise of
Dalhousie, Governor-General of India 1847-1855 and, over the years, a number of celebrated
lawyers and judges. This legal tradition was upheld by Janet le Brun's grandfather, a
Police Magistrate who, together with his wife and their four daughters, raised her.
Janet le Brun was a frail infant and
medical opinion was that if she were to remain in Goulburn she would die. So it was that
her paternal grandparents, who lived away from Goulburn, were to raise her from the age of
fourteen months. Visits to her mother were rare and treasured. Her grandmother, who had
been raised by the people who purchased her family property after her parents' death,
closely identified with Janet's predicament and treated her as her own. Granny, as she was
known to Janet, enjoyed the reputation in her youth of being a fearless horsewoman and a
fine shot with a rifle or gun and was regarded as a true Australian pioneer.
During the years that Horace Keats was
travelling the ocean, young Janet le Brun travelled in country New South Wales. When she
was taken to her grandparents, her grandfather, whom she called Daddy, was Police
Magistrate at Inverell, an intensely Scottish town which boasted an abundance of aspiring
bagpipers. This gave her an intense aversion to the pipes from then on. The loathing was
added to in later years when her maiden aunts, three of whom were not particularly
sensitive, applied pressure for her to dance the Hornpipe. She was mature enough to
realise how ludicrous this would look with her then spindly legs. After she had spent
three of her early years in Inverell, Daddy was transferred to Moree. Here Janet made many
visits to station properties and later recalled the cracks which appeared in the ground
during droughts and having nightmares about falling into them. After three years in Moree,
they moved to Dungog.
Because of constant illness, there was no
early formal schooling and large parts of her life were spent indoors. She became an avid
reader. With the encouragement of the most prominent and intelligent of her maiden aunts,
she also became a painter. Whilst the family was at Dungog, both painting and piano
lessons were given. When she was eight, she went to a private school, continuing painting
and piano lessons at the local convent. This same maiden aunt, Jessie Louisa, had a fine
voice and Janet le Brun, out of admiration, sang also; however, she did not receive formal
voice training. Her memories of Dungog were of mobs of cattle being driven past their home
on their way North for grazing. They would eat the roses out of the garden and caused
considerable frustration for the entire family who all delighted in gardening.
Granny died in November, 1912. Perhaps the
most fitting tribute to her and her family was made by The Eastern Telegraph,
Dungog:
In her early days Mrs Brown was a woman who interested
herself in her surroundings .... In company with her husband and family ... she had been
in many parts of this State which was necessitated through the various appointments to
which Mr Brown was sent. At each centre the family threw in their lot with every movement
which was for the advancement of the place, and Mrs Brown always took her share in these
functions.
It is very likely that when Janet le Brun
was mourning the death of her beloved Granny in dusty Dungog, Horace Keats was in Sydney
revelling in those glorious pre-summer days which may be fully appreciated when basking on
Sydney beaches or being on the harbour. So attached to this harbour was he that in years
to come he was known to have said, "I'd rather drown in poverty in Sydney Harbour
than live in luxury in London."
Two years after the death of his wife,
Walterus le Brun Brown retired and, with a remaining aunt (three had gone to live in
Katoomba two years before), went to live in Chatswood, Sydney. Janet le Brun joined the
other aunts in Katoomba. Here, she took up her musical education with Ida Gurney. Ida
Gurney, like Cyril Monk, was a pupil and later assistant to Herr Kretschmann. It was she
who was to predict that, in years to come, Horace Keats would compose. Janet's formal
schooling continued as a weekly boarder at Springwood Ladies College.
At this school, some of Janet's intense
physical and mental courage was put to the test. Apparently pupils at this college were
given the choice of a weekly hot bath or a daily cold shower. Being used to daily bathing,
this matter, despite the choice, became a contentious issue and Janet le Brun insisted on
a daily shower. As a consequence she had to report to the principal every day who felt her
over to be sure that she had indeed showered. This was particularly gruelling during
winter but the ritual was adhered to by this determined young girl. Censorship of mail
proved to be the last straw for the aunts who removed her from this school and, in the
course of 1914, Janet le Brun commenced four years of happiness as a boarder at Gosford
Girls School.
The school was small with a tight-knit
community of girls and parents. Many of the subjects were taught in French and reading was
encouraged. She had an aptitude for French which was encouraged by her aunts who were very
proud of their aristocratic French background. In later years, her letters to Keats during
their courtship were liberally sprinkled with French phrases and, in many of his replies,
there were tentative attempts to emulate her. As well, their conversations contained
frequent snippets of this language and, later still, their elder son, Russell, frequently
included French phrases in his correspondence. Poetry was not her favourite subject at
this stage; maturity, coupled with more singing, would be required to develop what was to
become a deep appreciation for this form of expression. At this school, her skills at the
piano were such that she gave piano lessons.
More painting lessons were given to her by
a Mr George Collingridge who had lived in France and was the pupil of a prominent French
artist. As she had no tertiary aspirations, she did not sit for formal examinations and
left school at seventeen to live with her maiden aunts at Katoomba.
Early in 1918, whilst Keats was taking
engagements in order to exist, Janet le Brun had a quarrel with her aunt Jessie Louisa who
claimed that Janet was not praying at church. The spirited reply was, "If you'd been
praying you would not have noticed." Upon being threatened with a riding crop, the
young girl, who had not had a hand laid upon her person, left and went to live with the
aunt and Daddy in Chatswood.
The aunts in Katoomba were Victorian in
outlook, very conscious of being of noble stock, extremely devout members of the Church of
England and, for a young girl who had been a school boarder and so had tasted
independence, they were unduly oppressive. The brighter lights of Sydney beckoned. Her
mother and younger sister were living in Haberfield so Chatswood, closer than Katoomba,
was more attractive. Her father lived in Leeton at the time.
Janet le Brun was anxious to pursue a
professional musical career so, while in Sydney, she played and sang at various military
hospitals and troop entertainment centres. On one occasion her accompanist, a Mr Reg Gard,
pointed out Horace Keats to her with the comment, "There goes the finest judge of a
voice in Australia."
A meeting with this judge of a voice took
place at The New Zealand Soldiers Rest Room in Wynyard Street. Earlier, the hostess of
that September day, a Mrs Lightband, had wanted Keats to meet this delightful young
singer. Keats, then twenty-three, retorted, "Don't want to meet any more bloody
women."
Nevertheless, during the course of that
afternoon, Keats asked Mrs Lightband to meet the "girl with the voice." They met
and, after a long stay at the Rest Room, during which her evening curfew of nine o'clock
was exceeded (with permission from Daddy), Keats took her by ferry to McMahons Point. On
that ferry trip he informed her that he was going to marry her. From McMahons Point he
took her to Chatswood by tram. When they arrived at the family home, Keats was introduced
to her grandfather. Their instant rapport lasted until the death of the retired Police
Magistrate.
Their engagement was announced mid-October,
much to the dismay of the Katoomba aunts who immediately commenced a campaign of barely
concealed sabotage.
There was a magic that Janet le Brun wove
that was to change the course of Horace Keats' life.
Kenneth Mackenzie said, "Janet and
Horace Keats were above all else lovers." From the moment of meeting, their letters,
written almost daily prior to their marriage, consisted of protestations of deep and
enduring love. In addition to letters, and despite his unusual working hours, they
attempted to see or telephone each other whenever possible. Normal in the early stages of
a romance? Yes. In years to come, however, letters written by Horace Keats whilst away
working in Melbourne express an intense love and a loneliness because of the temporary
separation. Even after twenty-seven years together, their need for each other had not been
diluted.
The unique relationship of being lovers,
rather than just partners, protected their marriage despite the miseries of unbelievable
financial hardship, pettifogging from their respective families, and the loss of their
elder son, who went down with HMAS Canberra. All this was coupled with the constant
disenchantment and frustration associated with composing and performing for a small public
during World War II. Nevertheless, their bond did not come effortlessly, for each had been
extremely independent from an early age. Both were quick to tantrum.
The tendency to a mutual fiery temper
threatened their early love. Janet was to say that two tempers like theirs could not
coexist and it was up to the strongest of the two partners to curb their ire. This she
did. As well, she curbed the occasional rages of their progeny with varying degrees of
success.
Janet had openly stated in her letters to
her future husband that she had always dreamed of marrying a musician. On one occasion,
when he expressed a desire to seek alternative employment, she discouraged him, stating
that he would not be able to cope with a nine-to-five position. At the time of this
declaration, he was experiencing difficulty and frustration in working with other
musicians. Referring to some theatre orchestra or like ensemble, he said in one letter,
"I will have to go back to work with my babies this evening."
Janet's love, affecting her husband from
their early meeting to his death, was a dedicated and powerful one. This endured until her
death sixty-two years later. It transcended all barriers, particularly those raised in the
early stages of their relationship. These impediments included objections raised by her
immediate family: ‘a musician was not a fit person to marry a le Brun Brown', as well
as the outright rejection of the proposed marriage by Janet's future mother-in-law. Her
initial contact with Horace's father resulted in a curt note from him: ‘Dear Miss
Brown, Would you kindly break off your engagement to my son now.' Despite these obstacles,
her adoration, along with a brilliant and attractive intellect, combined into an awesome
force irresistible to the man who was its object.
Their wedding was a hasty affair because
the aunts exerted pressure on Janet's father and grandfather and came very close to
swaying them against the marriage. A number of priests and Anglican clergymen turned my
father away because of perceived haste. Finally he found a Church of England minister
willing to perform the marriage ceremony which was on 9th November, 1918. So successful
was the aunts' divisiveness that only my mother's maternal relatives were present at the
wedding.
The Armistice was two days after the
wedding and Janet Keats described her feelings:
disbelief in a way, I suppose everyone
felt what we felt, that it can't really be true, and to make the most of the peaceful
moments, while they had them.. I was too engrossed in the personal end of it, it was a
fight to marry Horace or not to marry him at all or be sent away by the aunts and that
superseded everything else, I think.
They remained in Sydney for a fortnight.
During this time Keats introduced his bride to a number of friends, including Peter and
Nan Dawson. Many hinted darkly at a procession of women who had preceded her and warned
the new bride that, based upon past experience, the marriage would only last three months.
Janet was firm that the past should not be dwelt upon and a clean slate lay before them.
She had also been warned by medical practitioners that her husband's life-span would be
limited because of the heart condition which had prevented him from participating in the
war. Janet, however, had an ‘old heart' in a young body, which was literally bursting
with song, and so she went forth leaving the security of a well-to-do family to sleep on
the modern equivalent of yellow bracken.
My mother has sheets of linen white,
My father has blankets of purple dye.
But to my true-love will I come to-night
And in yellow bracken I'll surely lie
From Yellow Bracken
John Cowper Powys
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