Susana Walton

Susana Walton0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a gardener. On the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, she's created an enchanting and exotic place. When she first moved there more than forty years ago, her friend Laurence Olivier described it as a stone quarry. Today, its beauty is internationally famous, abundant witness to her marriage to one of our most famous composers, Sir William Walton.

Presenter0:52

Her husband was more than twice her age and took her to Iskia for the piece he needed to work. His piece gave birth to her passion, a marital sideline that became a work of art in its own right. I was created to take care of William, she says. I would never have married a normal man. She is Susannah Walton. So he was less than normal. He was a workaholic. So you had to find something to do, Susannah. Is that really how this garden came about? The garden came about because William, after he'd produced this beautiful opera Troilus and Cressida,

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It was quite evident five, six years of our life had gone by. And he said

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I have never been so happy in my life.

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as here.

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And I thought it was'cause he'd got married. Not a bit of it.

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It was because he for six months a year did not see a human being.

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And I'd said, darling, it's not the ideal for me. So he'd immediately jumped up and said, I'm going to buy a lovely piece of ground.

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And you can make a garden. And you already had your pockets stuffed with seeds. And the seeds were there sprouting in little baby pots. I want to ask you how you created it, but just for a beginning, let me just ask you to create a picture of it. It's overlooking the sea. It's wonderful, it's lush, it's dramatic, it's got rocks sticking out of it. But tell me about the wonderful exotic things that you have in it. When we bought this lovely piece of ground, it was a lava stream. There was nothing but rocks.

Susana Walton2:03

And the C.

Susana Walton2:05

Baby.

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And these immense stones is actually what inspired William and me to want to be there. But you've managed to establish amazing numbers of beautiful things there from from what orchids, jackarander, lilies, lotus. You've got a wonderful dragon tree that runs red with blood. Oh, that is a marvellous, marvellous part of the collection, because the last one that fell down, blown down by a gale.

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Internerife was six thousand years old, and it has this beautiful skin, and every time it a little branch falls off, or you hurt it, it oozes blood.

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And that's why in the old days they cut them down to make beautiful little powder, to make gentlemen feel happier. You see what I mean? It's a rival to Viagra, right here. Before Viag Viagra was Viagra.

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And then there's a huge cycad. Oh, the cycads. I'm quite enamored of this family, because it is two hundred and forty million years old.

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and it has survived.

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The plant actually imagine how clever The plant, once a year for only five hours, heats up seventeen degrees centigrade it goes up into a fever, and then it oozes a most wonderful scent to attract the insects, and the heat then softens the cone that is made of wood.

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and the insect can get the pollen, and the lady tree is doing the same at the other side of the wood, and her temperature is going up, and the insect is attracted by the scent and takes the pollen to her, and the wedding bells ring.

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Wonderful. We shall have more. Tell me about your first record.

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Well, my first record on the list is a beautiful Troilas and Cressida, the wonderful opera that for the first five years of my life William dedicated every instant of his being awake.

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He always said it was worse than having a baby, because it was took longer than nine months, and it was much more painful. So there you are.

Speaker 35:16

Mercy

Speaker 35:30

Sleep, sweep.

Presenter5:50

Judith Howarth as Cressida and Arthur Davis as Troiler singing their love duet from Act Two of Sir William Walton's opera with the English Northern Philemonia conducted by Richard Hickox, a love duet from the first major work your husband William Walton, Susannah, composed on the island of Isca, where he took you as his new young wife in the late forties, having completely swept you off your feet in your native Argentina. Tell me how it happened.

Presenter6:15

I was always a s rebel, so I broke with convention l lovely little girls couldn't go to offices where their parents didn't know the other people in the office. So I had my job, and it was the British Council, pretty innocuous job. And the London office asked the Buenos Aires office to take care of this eminent composer who was arriving for this three weeks of an international conference. So the first thing I did was organize a press conference to introduce him. And to my enormous

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Horror.

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At the end of the press conference he trots up to me and says You'll be very surprised, Miss Hill. I am going to marry you.

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and I could see three weeks of disaster in front of me with this lunatic chap.

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So I said, don't be ridiculous, doctor Walton. Not a bit of it. Every day at eleven o'clock he came to the office to pick me up to go shopping or looking at museums and all that.

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And he asked me, have you decided when are we getting married?

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Well, after two weeks of this I thought, well, you know,

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He must be serious. Of course by then I knew he was entrancing and attractive like mad. I wasn't going to lose this delicious creature. We should explain that you were, what, twenty two? He was. I was twenty two and William was only forty six. Then after two weeks he said nothing.

Susana Walton7:36

I was

Presenter7:42

And I thought, God, what's happened? Something's wrong today. So I said, What's wrong? Why haven't you asked me to marry you? He said, It's finished. I will never ask you again. The first woman in the street that I meet, I'm going to marry. And I said, Darling William, I don't think that's really the thing to do. And within the month we married.

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Next piece of music.

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Now the the the piece of music we're going to s we're going to hear now is a wonderful homage to the tango writer of Argentina. That was Piazzola, wonderful man, and of course it brings to mind my Argentine beginnings and the tango.

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Part of Le Grand Tango, played by Guidon Kramer, accompanied by Vadim Zakharov, and memories for you, Susannah Walton, of your home, your childhood in Argentina, which, as you say, was pretty unorthodox. Apparently your your mother taught you how to make a Molotov cocktail.

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Yes, but it is, I suppose, coming from the sort of far west of Argentina.

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We have these great big country estates, with hundreds of cows and sheep and things, but no fences.

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and so that anybody could walk in, and in the four months of summer holidays my poor mother had to contend with these three little children, and so she decided very practically to teach us how to shoot.

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Age six.

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But not shoot little buddies. Shoot to defend yourself. And did you shoot anybody? No, I never shot anybody, but I could I was a wonderful shot. But what about the Molotov cocktails?'Cause you did throw them from the roof of the house at one point. Well, that that is a later phase when uh Perron had imprisoned my father because he had a financial paper and he was saying that the old peso was going down the drain.

Susana Walton9:50

Yes, well the developer.

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And they had a grapevine, and they advised my mother that to night is your turn, meaning Perron was going to chastise us by burning the house down. And so mummy, knowing all this, had put us on the roof, and in tomato tins we concocted these lovely little monotoffs, and we set them off. I can tell you they couldn't get out fast enough.

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Terrible. You also apparently used to terrify your your family's house guests to death because you picked them up from the station or wherever it was and you were nine years old and you were driving, is that right? Yes, but you see, this is the whole spec if if at six you make a child responsible, at nine it's a grown-up. And so I could drive the car beautifully and there was only horses on the way anyhow, but it was twelve kilometres. And so the pedals are... But did you reach the pedals? Oh, I did stretch. I did stretch. And when I got to the station, those poor wretches were they blanched. Who's driving?

Susana Walton10:51

But did your face

Susana Walton10:53

Well yeah

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And this little object said

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A huge great station wagon. There's a huge, horrible station wagon full of mud.

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But what s uh strikes me is that that you obviously turned out to be a very good and obedient wife, and yet you had been, as we've just heard, you know, quite a tear away as a child. What what made you able to be able to

Susana Walton11:24

Yeah.

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At the beginning.

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to get my own little voice heard. And William was always right. So I put two and two together and shut up.

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Until he died when I then erupted again. But didn't you ever erupt when he was less than faithful? Because he. Oh, no, no, I love that.

Susana Walton11:44

Oh no no I love

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You cannot own anybody.

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I knew he had a tender heart, and the moment two beautiful legs went by, off he went. But I also knew he'd return, and he would return a happy man. He was absolutely full of himself. Okay, isn't that good? Did he own you, though?

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Well, he did.

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But you see

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If you're going to make a success of something, you have to work on it. And I was not going to be sent back to Argentina, so I made a success of it.

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Record number three.

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Now we have Liszt's Forced Symphony. William.

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Had this music room that was soundproof.

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cork under the floor, you know, everything, so no one could hear him. But sometimes when the Spirit moved him, he would open the double door and say, Now you can listen.

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And he would put on a record and he's old-fashioned record player and this was one of his favorites.

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Part of the first movement of Liszt's Faust Symphony, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham. So, Susannah, William announced that he was going to marry you. He announced that you weren't going to live in London, you were going to go and live in Italy or all year round. I mean, some people then, I think W. H. Orden and people, were living out there for six months of the year, weren't they? But not for twelve months of the year. Did he ever?

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consult you on any of these things. What did you just announce? William had a wonderful trait. He was the master of La Fette accompli.

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And then of course, it's there, whatever you've done.

Susana Walton14:20

Whatever you've done

Presenter14:22

Well it's a good way of getting your own way, I suppose, you know. Um he he also announced, no consultation, no negotiation, that there weren't to be any children, didn't he?

Presenter14:30

We'd just been married for an hour in the in the mayor's office, and I was consulting this little white book that they give to people when you get married in Argentina, the family book, and I was laughing myself sick because it said if after three or four months of being married you find nothing different in yourselves, you better go to a doctor. I read this out and translated it.

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And he said, What?

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You mean to say you want to have a child?

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I start to laugh. I said, Darling, you married a South American Catholic.

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And he said, In that case, I'll divorce you now because I don't want to have children.

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I started to laugh. I can look. I said, I'm not interested in children. Thank God. You said you weren't interested in children. I said, thank God. But I could see his point. William married at 46 to be taken care of. So he wanted to be the child. He wanted to be absolutely the only person. The problem was you became pregnant. Well, that was an accident because no one had told me how not to become pregnant. You know, those primitive days.

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And so that when I I I found out this uh this uh happening, it was very difficult years because it was unlawful and you had to put money on a on a on a little table and then you disappeared f to another building and then somebody came up. It was really a ghastly, ghastly uh experience. But I never mentioned it again.

Susana Walton15:41

Yeah.

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'Cause what was the point? Well, I suppose because it hurt you terribly, didn't it? Well, it must have been an experience I didn't want to have happen again. How miserable did it make you then?

Presenter16:18

Oh, well, I cried for several days, and Lee said that if I went on crying he'd leave. So of course I stopped crying.

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So he really wa I mean, you said it before he you know, you were put on this earth, you said, to look after William. That's exact you were he was your mission in life, yes. But you know how he was your child. How else, Sue, how else could two people meet from different parts of the world?

Susana Walton16:35

How was your child?

Presenter16:42

And get on. You know, there was a recipe somewhere that we were following. But the recipe was that you had to subjugate yourself to him, obviously. And and he would become your child. But also then, and we go back to where we began, the garden has really been your child, hasn't it? Well, the garden is is what is my creation. But it was created.

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to be a composer's garden, where the artist would feel safe, in harmony with his surroundings, able to solve his difficulties with his composition, because he was in peace.

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Record number four. Oh, we're going to die here, Paul Hindermitz, Trio for Strings, number two. I think William told me that they had met at one of those uh in his young days, at one of those meetings of contemporary music in Salzburg. And Paul Hindermitz

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actually was divine.

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The opening of the second movement of Paul Hindermid's Trio for Strings, number two, played by the Hindermid Trio. It was recorded in 1934, that one. So, Susannah the theme of the garden had to be peace and unity. You knew that. Otherwise you had a blank sheet of paper, albeit one covered with these great lumps of rock. How did you set about creating it?

Presenter18:54

The thing is that I had read The Education of a Gardener and I realized that although I adored trees, I could not put them in an order that was pleasing to the eye. And I wanted Russell Page to come. Of course I thought, never, he'll never put foot, because Naples was so far south. And he was a very famous landscape artist. He was at the top of his career. He'd worked for, I don't know, the Shah of Persia, for all the sort of Arab sheep. White money. The White House also.

Susana Walton19:16

I mean what

Susana Walton19:18

Yeah.

Susana Walton19:20

Point or go

Susana Walton19:22

Sheeps with money.

Presenter19:25

and he came with his little Russian wife, and he said he'd never worked so hard,'cause I followed him round like a dog, you know, with my pad and writing in green ink, everything.

Susana Walton19:33

Uh

Speaker 319:33

You know what?

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And he was a genius because this lava stream.

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that, you know, when you saw it without plants, must have been ghastly. He saw immediately

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That, as he explained to me, you can design with a line.

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And his line for us was an L-shaped garden, and on each corner and end is a beautiful fountain that is so wonderfully simple and beautiful, harmonious. And there's where the peace lies. But William didn't like his fountains. They were too noisy. Is that right? Well, he had a button in his music room to put off the the fountains because every time somebody came, I put them on. And so every time that when William was writing, it disturbed him, because through this great window of his opposite the table where he wrote his music, this sound came through, though it was a very thick glass, and he would put it off. So I took the message. He's working. No disturbance. Record number five.

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Now we are coming to a most exciting piece of music.

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William wrote his wonderful symphonic music.

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But his film music was also very, very special, and his great friendship with Laurence Olivier was the thing that was, I think, at the bottom of all this.

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At the time that Larry asked William to write the Henry the Fifth score,

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It is very difficult for us to understand that Shakespeare was not in.

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Shakespeare was a boar.

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Nobody wanted to see it in films.

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And when the the the the film was finished and Larry saw it without the music, he was very depressed.

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because he thought it will never be accepted.

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Then the music came, and it ignited that work.

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And when he saw the music on it, he said, William has saved this work.

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That was the charge and battle from Sir William Walton's score for Olivier's Henry V, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by the composer himself. Difficult, of course, for both of you living out in Iskia to stay in the cultural loop, as it were, at such a distance. And I'm sure that the gramophone and the wireless were very important to you, but also all those people who came by like Olivier. Who else came? Because you had some money. Well, Larry Olivier was, as I say, our main friend, because he came every year. And Vivian.

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But you know, that when I married

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In Argentina, it was not the thing to meet actors.

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You couldn't invite them to dine at your home. Well, I arri I arrive in London, and the most beautiful thing you could ever hope was to meet Vivian and Larry.

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I mean they were more important than the King and Queen.

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And so I was in absolute seventh heaven meeting these people, and all during Larry's life, even after William's death, he came out every year to see me.

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So name-drop me some more. I mean, Maria Callas. Well, we had Callas, we had wonderful Carrion.

Speaker 323:45

Well we have colors

Presenter23:48

And Elizabeth Schwatzkopf came. But how did you get on with all of these people? They were all quite a lot older than you. I think Charlie Chaplin and Terence Rattigan and Vaughan Williams, all these amazing names, but all Williams' generation, not yours, really. Were you. Well, it was very amusing to meet these people. Did you hold your own with them? I bet you. Oh, no, I listened. I listened. For once I didn't shat away.

Susana Walton24:04

Did you have

Susana Walton24:06

Oh no, I'll just

Susana Walton24:07

Uh

Speaker 324:07

I'm fake.

Presenter24:10

I listened. Terry Rattigan had had one of our little houses we'd built to keep the property in in funds. And he had his mother come and all these actors that of course were in his place. And it was entrancing to meet these people. And why did they come? Did they c uh because William was, as we say, a workaholic. He was quite a sort of pessimist, really. He liked to sort of be quiet and close. Why did these people come?

Susana Walton24:35

Okay

Presenter24:37

And so they found that this was it w they were very adorable, the little houses that I had built, out of little wine cellars and things. And they rented them by the year. And so Robin Maugham had a house, and you know, the Nadia Narina, the bar dancer, had a house. And all these different people from the ballet and from the theater and from writers. It was very, very lovely. And did William like the social whirl of it? Oh yes, at eleven o'clock he would then abandon his music room and see who is having a drink where.

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So they were all very pallid together.

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Record number six.

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Now we're going to hear a very lovely Mendelssohn song.

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It's Nathan Berg singing the Venetian gondolier song. You know, I have selected this for fun. Let's have a little fun.

Susana Walton25:35

Yeah.

Susana Walton25:39

Uh

Speaker 325:42

The wrest wirt woch la und maaskedichkend. Nir die sinzucht im hertzen mier brend wi dies in

Speaker 326:10

Einschwerk leitenag, Zwo Selbigenzait, Und sie twelk die zogich.

Susana Walton26:11

Work might

Susana Walton26:20

Fuck you.

Speaker 326:22

The sport is very

Presenter26:26

Nathan Berg singing Mendelssohn's Venetian gondolier song accompanied by Eugene Asti. Nathan Berg, one of the successes of your masterclass, summer masterclasses which you hold, he was an early success, which you hold at La Motella, your garden, your home, every year, and have done ever since William died, because that's what he wanted you to do, wasn't it? He wanted the property to be a memorial to himself, because he was so proud of it. And he dedicated it to young musicians. And you built a little recital hall as well. So the first thing I did was to carve out of the rock beside William's music room a small recital room so that one could have benefit the young. We have concerts with young performers from the schools, the music schools in Italy, and this very lovely masterclass, because it's the first and only masterclass where the young don't pay.

Susana Walton26:55

So the first

Presenter27:17

William could never afford to pay, so it's in his honour. And and this year is his centenary year, and you.

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Perform his façade now, don't you? You do what Edith Sitwell used to do in façade. Tell me how you do it, what you do. Well,

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I I'm very cheeky.

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Because

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I remember meeting darling Edith, this extraordinary tall creature in a very long dress.

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very imperial, with a tock velvet toque on her head. She was enormously tall, and on top of that was this velvet thing. And then her breast was covered in sort of Mexican gold and beautiful, enormous aquamarine rings on her fingers, two on each finger. I mean this extraordinary creature and adored William Natchin.

Presenter28:09

Well, now what happened was that when William was a child he well child, uh young man he was adopted by the Sitwells and she, Edith Sitwell, was writing these weird poems that were experiments in abstract uh writing. The the words had to

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Be as good as music because they gave you the rhythm and all that. Now, if she could do it.

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Not being a musician.

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I could also recite, I thought, except that I knew that William had only married me because I knew nothing about music, and this was my only virtue, I'd better keep it. So

Presenter28:45

After William died, I studied this work. And so I learnt this thing by heart. And then a friend of mine, Latham Koenig, who is a young conductor, he had a group of people going through Italy doing contemporary music. And of course this was rather sickening for the Italian public. So they asked him to the other half to do facade so they'd brighten up a bit. And he said, Why can't you do it? And I said, Of course I'll try, but I have never done it, so I don't know what you're doing with a silly stick in your hand. You better come and rehearse me.

Presenter29:20

And so instead of coming to rehearse me, she he was in Rome doing opera, and he came up at nine o'clock to Venice to La Finice, if you please.

Presenter29:30

to conduct this performance. So but no rehearsal. No rehearsal. And it was like a ping pong game. Out, out, out, in

Presenter29:40

Out, in, out, out, out. So I was desperate. Next morning, in the Piazzetta in front of San Marco, in Venice, the people come up to me and say, brava, brava! Said they must be crazy. But if they think that that was good, then I must do it professionally. Sydney has candidaps chill. It's Mrs. Marigold's jacket, as she gaps at the indoor still. But a dawn in the box of the sailor, blue as the decks of the sea, Nelson awoke, crowed like a cox, then back to the dust sank he. And Robinson Crusoe, Russo, the bright and foxy beer. But he finds fresh eyes in the negress smiles, the boxy doxy dear. But they watch me die.

Presenter30:40

Ah

Speaker 230:41

Said Mr. Wag like a bear, In mind jump up and a whiskers that trailing on a top of the fair.

Susana Walton30:46

Yeah.

Speaker 230:47

Rolla la la la tala la la la la cola la.

Presenter30:53

There's terrific performance by Cosway Lady Walton reciting Edith Sitwell's poem Polka, set to music by Sir William Walton for his first publicly performed work Facade. She's accompanied there by members of the City of London Sinfonia conducted by Richard Hickox. You you do live alone really on an island because you know on this programme we're talking about casting you away on one, but uh but it's hardly a deserted one as we've or a desert one as we've gathered.

Presenter31:17

But William died, what, eighteen years ago now? William died in nineteen eighty three. And you've obviously obviously created a whole new life for yourself. It took some doing, though, didn't it? You couldn't. So it was awful because one should have known.

Susana Walton31:22

Really. And you just take

Presenter31:33

One should have been a little more s you know, less stupid.

Presenter31:37

one had married someone twenty five years older. It was evident that William was going to uh perhaps die before me. He'd had a terrible operation on lung cancer. He'd survived it.

Presenter31:47

You know, it was on the cards. But you never look at life straightforwardly. You know what you see? You don't see.

Presenter31:55

So what happened is that he suddenly pops off and I feel bereft. I'd never prepared for this moment. I my whole life was William. I just didn't know what I was doing there. What the hell am I here for? So I was desperate. I cried on everybody's shoulder. I was a pest and a bore for two years. Then I went to India and one of those wonderful Indian doctors told me, You were very lucky. It's over.

Presenter32:21

But I got a shock.

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Now you start a new life.

Presenter32:25

And he must have brainwashed me because I started a new life with the William Walton Trust that William had created with his great friend and solicitor, Lord Goodman, and he wanted his music taken care of, he wanted the young musicians to be taken care of, so I set off a new life.

Presenter32:41

But you were only in your late fifties, and did you never consider remarrying?

Presenter32:45

Oh, I never considered remarrying, but my mother was desperately keen that I should remarry, because she said it wasn't nice to be alone. And so I said, Mammy, no one's going to marry me, nobody, in their senses, because I can't stop talking about William.

Presenter33:01

So you are married. So you're married to William's memory, and you're married to your beautiful garden, La Motella, yes? That's exactly. That was the thing. Divided in two.

Presenter33:10

Last piece of music.

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Oh, we are going now to do uh a a very lovely piece of m well, it's an extraordinary work.

Presenter33:19

William was very jealous of Verdi.

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because he also was getting old and he said if only one could be such a genius as to produce false stuff

Presenter33:31

At that age, Falstaff is a miracle work.

Presenter33:35

And it doesn't look like the work of an old man. It's so full of great spirit and beautiful music.

Speaker 333:54

Yeah.

Speaker 334:17

Hey, please, pay for the view!

Presenter34:43

That was Tito Gobby as the humiliated Falstaff in the opening of Act Three of Verdi's Opera with the Philhomonia Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Herbert von Carrian. Well, now, Susanna, if you could only take one of those eight records, if you were just confined to one, which one would you take?

Presenter34:59

I have to take something by William.

Presenter35:01

Because of course, you know.

Presenter35:03

We are sort of one.

Presenter35:06

And I would take Torres and Cressida.

Presenter35:08

The Love Duet, of course. And what about your book? You get the Bible and you get the complete works of Shakespeare. Oh, uh what what I'd like to take because being a a gardening fiend

Susana Walton35:13

Well

Presenter35:17

I would like to take

Presenter35:19

Russell Page's Education of a God.

Presenter35:22

Cause it's a marvellous book.

Presenter35:25

And what about your luxury?

Presenter35:27

Well, now, you know, luxuries are quite superfluous on islands, aren't they? But there's one thing you have to do.

Presenter35:33

You have to sleep.

Presenter35:35

And how can you sleep without a pillow? So I'd like to take a nice little cosy round feather pillow.

Presenter35:44

Susannah Lady Bolton, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Sue, thank you for having me here.

Susana Walton36:00

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.