Member Reviews
Until reading Mary Burchell’s A Song Begins, Miss Bates found it hard to believe that anyone could rival her beloved Betty Neels. And yet, here she is, enthralled with Mary Burchell. And all she can say is, MOAR! A Song Begins is the first of Burchell’s Warrender Saga, a series of thirteen romances she wrote for Mills and Boon stretching from 1965 to 1985. They are set in the opera world and feature harsh, closed-off heroes and heroines who can hold their own against them. Burchell and Neels share the exclusive heroine POV and the mystery, which Miss Bates loves, of knowing the heroes only by their actions. Their kindness and love for the heroine are hinted at with only very occasional near-tender gestures. Otherwise, they’re cyphers of raised eyebrows, mysterious smiles, flashing, angry eyes, suppressed frustration, and an exacting work ethic, to which our heroine’s inexperience is subject, in Neels’ case in the surgery and Burchell’s on the stage. A Song Begins opens with Anthea Benton, aspiring singer from Cromerdale, trying to win a TV singing spot to help her pay her way to London and voice training. Anthea’s family is financially humble; while loving and supportive of her aspirations, they cannot afford to help her. This TV spot is her only chance and it is foiled by the one of the judges, the great conductor Oscar Warrender. Anthea’s disappointment is short-lived, however, because she receives word, through her voice teacher, Miss Sharp, that a mysterious benefactor is funding her move to London to study with none other than the maestro extraordinaire himself, Oscar Warrender!
Oscar and Anthea’s relationship is definitely one where the power differential is so much greater for her. And yet, what Miss Bates loved about Anthea is: she was never cowed. She stood up for herself and never lost a sense of who she was. Training with Oscar is hard, exacting, confusing, and she receives very little by way of praise, or reward. It is, in turn, exhilarating and exciting. Anthea knows he’s the best and that his best can make her great. While Oscar does bring out the best in Anthea’s voice, Anthea nevertheless spends most of their initial acquaintance referring to him as that “odious” man. She insists she doesn’t like him but his arrogance, sang-froid, and total dedication to his art and her voice leave him seemingly indifferent to her dislike.
Burchell’s hero, like Neels’, appears impervious to sentiment. Miss Bates loves how Neels and Burchell create enigmatic heroes, who nevertheless signal incipient tenderness. Because they cannot speak their loving-kindness, their bodies must stand in for it. A case in point is Anthea’s first glimpse of Oscar as he judges at the TV singing competition:
Goodlooking in a forceful and rather intimidating way, he seemed bored most of the time, but occasionally roused himself to a glance of sardonic and incredulous amusement … in the strong light she could even see that his lashes were unexpectedly long and cast a deep shadow on his cheeks.
“Forceful.” “Intimidating.” “Sardonic.” Adjectives diverting the heroine from her attraction. Ah, but those lengthy “lashes,” a touch of the soft, the feminine, something that says I’m safe and in me lurk affection and vulnerability.
Oscar’s lashes have to hold Anthea in good stead because Oscar is difficult, even hurtful at times. He’s mercurial: one moment he’ll browbeat Anthea and the next, take her hand and show a moment of mercy. But Anthea, while she suffers under his tutelage, also knows she’s learning more than she ever thought possible. She recognizes that his rigor is for the art’s sake, not to be deliberately cruel. And she holds her own. She is his equal in art and temperament.
Because Oscar is impenetrable, Anthea’s growing attraction to, and love for, him must come through a physical awareness as much as social interaction. Their occasional and quite innocent touches, innocent at least by our 50 shades world, are as visceral and moving to the romance reader as any explicit love scene. In the first weeks of their lessons, Oscar takes Anthea to the opera to watch a performance of Verdi’ Otello. Oscar takes Anthea’s arm; her response is instinctive and powerful. Her body knows what Oscar means to her before her mind admits it:
… but as she felt those long, strong fingers close round her arm, with only the thin silk of Vicki’s gold stole in between, she was immediately aware of a current of feeling that was electric in its primitive suddenness and violence.
Burchell’s “currents” of swift and heady awareness, on the heroine’s part that is, are indications of feeling that is yet unrealized, unspoken. And this ability to express the inexpressible, when done as well as Burchell does, are what the genre does greatly.
Anthea’s incipient feelings are fully realized in our hero. He know what he feels and he knows what he wants: Anthea as partner on stage, in bed, as wife and companion. But, like the best of Neels’ heroes, Oscar waits, helps Anthea achieve professional mastery, before he declares himself. In the meanwhile, Burchell uses music the way Neels uses the rhythms of the medical workday to draw an invisible line of connection between hero and heroine. When Oscar has an opportunity to rehearse Anthea for the part of Desdemona, their play-acting stands in for their relationship. Burchell fuses the tragedy of Othello and Desdemona into the romance HEA:
Lie on that sofa, Anthea. You’ve said your prayers and got into bed and then – Otello comes in.” She did exactly what he told her. But she stared up at him with wide, frightened eyes, as he stood over her, instead of feigning sleep. “Close your eyes,” he said softly. “Close your eyes. You’re asleep. And when you open them again, remember that you love the man you see there, even though you fear him.” He was standing looking down at her with heart-searching melancholy as well as indescribably menace, and she suddenly thought of what he had said – “You love the man, even though you fear him – ” The conviction was upon her in that moment that this was absolutely true, and, without her even knowing it, there was tenderness as well as terror in her glance, and in her voice too. And then, when he asked her, in tones heavy with fate, if she had said her prayers that night, the whole thing became so chillingly real that all sense of the theatre dropped away from her.
What a brilliant, important moment for the genre. Desdemona’s feelings, mysterious to her and leading to her death, are commingled with Anthea’s, mysterious to her, and leading to the fulfillment of love and fidelity, companionship and purpose, with Oscar, whom she too both loves and fears.
Whatever you do this year, treat yourself to one of the greatest the genre offers, treat yourself to Oscar, Anthea and see how their song begins. Miss Austen would’ve loved this romance novel; Miss Bates certainly did. In it, we discover “there is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” Emma.
Mary Burchell’s A Song Begins was originally published by Mills and Boon in 1965. It was reissued by Endeavour Press in November 2016. Miss Bates received an e-ARC from Endeavour Press, via Netgalley.