I am Melba

As she alighted her train at Spencer Street station on 26 July 1914, Melba seemed years younger than on her previous visit. For a few days she visited her father and basked in the comfort of her own Coombe Cottage, and then the happy spell was broken.

German troops invaded Belgium and France, and Britain and Russia declared war on Germany. Australia, as an integral part of the British Empire, followed Britain’s lead, and news of Australia’s  declaration of war reached its citizens on the night of 4 August.

While Melba has unshakeable confidence in the power of the empire, she was still filled with foreboding. She observed her young Australian friends and relatives enlisting in the army, and the first troopships sailing away, and wondered how many would return.

Though insulated by distance, Melba continued to feel the shock, the more so since France and Belgium were so dear to her. Knowing it was essential to maintain national morale, she put on a brave face and demanded it of others. When the British defeated the Germans in a naval battle at the Falkland Islands in December, she ordered her chauffeur to drive her around to the larger Melbourne stores and offices. Once inside she demanded to see the manager and, once in his presence, she graciously but firmly instructed him to fly the Australian flag at once from his flagpole. The press applauded her action.

There was other patriotic work to be done, raising funds for the Red Cross. In the second month of the war she arranged a concert at the Melbourne Auditorium. She sang the national anthem and spectators waved their flags and joined in the last verse. Normally uncomfortable making speeches, Melba was discovering that the words came easily when she had important sentiments to convey. In no time, and without the slightest difficulty or hesitation, she roused the audience to a patriotic fervour.

Melba spread her patriotic activities to other towns and cities. In September 1914 she appeared at the Sydney Town Hall, pursuing a similar formula to the one in Melbourne, but introducing one notable novelty. She produced the flags of the Allied nations and proceeded to auction them. Flags were sold to enthusiastic bidders, who caught the spirit of the evening.

There was subdued amusement, too when the flag of Australia initially fetched only fifteen pounds. To raise the price, she exclaimed, ‘But it’s where I was born, and is signed by me. Why, Germany would give more for it than that!’ She was immediately offered twenty pounds. 

Her skill at extracting donations was earning her the nickname the ‘Queen of Pickpockets’. She thought nothing of accosting prosperous-looking strangers and saying, ‘I am Melba, and I want you to promise to give me everything in your pocket-book before you look inside to see how much you have.’

The disastrous landing at Gallipoli in Turkey caused terrible casualties, five of Melba’s relatives being listed among the dead. She told reporters that out of twenty-two male guests at her birthday party in London in 1914, seven were now dead and seven were wounded. Sometimes her mood was fierce. ‘Oh, that I were a man’, she once said, ‘and could go to the front and kill some Germans.’ In other moods she was depressed. She confided: ‘It is too horrible…I am beginning to wonder how any of us can go on living.’

In July 1917 in one of her fundraising concerts, shielded by an umbrella, Melba called for a shower of coins onstage. Through such concerts in her homeland, she raised 90,000 pounds for war charities. The largeness of the sum did not surprise her friends. For most of her career, Melba had been giving generously to charities, either by singing without payment at fundraising performances or by directly donating money. ‘I will never accept a penny for any work I do on British soil,’ she told reporters, ‘as long as this war lasts.’

In March 1918, while on a whistle-stop tour of the US, a friend ran to Melba’s side, excitedly flourishing a newspaper. Unknown to herself, Melba had been created a Dame of the British Empire, a new honour instituted by King George V to reward the citizens of the empire for outstanding warwork. Knowing that it was customary to gain a recipient’s consent before publicly bestowing an honour, Melba had momentary doubts whether the announcement was true, but they were quickly dispelled when a cable arrived from the Australian prime minister. For a loyal daughter of the empire such as Melba, there could be no higher reward, and the surprise only added to the pleasure. She is reputed to have danced around the railway carriage quite naked, singing ‘I’m a Dame, I’m a Dame.’

Extract published courtesy of Black Inc.
© Ann Blainey