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Agreeable Creatures. Sir Thomas lives in a baronial Manhattan duplex with Tudor interiors, leaves it occasionally for walks in nearby Central Park. On warm days he sometimes has a taxi follow him with his overcoat. He smokes continuously, preferring light Havana cigars. He refers to tea as "poison" and says of his preference: "I have to drink a certain amount of Scotch, very much against my will." When his chronic gout once got the better of him in Philadelphia, he had him self pushed on the stage in a wheelchair and conducted the performance while sitting. At one New York Philharmonic rehearsal he became so elated that he fell off the podium into the second violins. "Podiums," he remarked, on recovering himself, "are expressly designed as a conspiracy to get rid of conductors." Like every other conductor worthy of his salt, Sir Thomas has told noisy audiences to keep quiet—his phrase for it in Covent Garden was: "Shut up, you!"
This year, after a 20-year separation, Sir Thomas divorced his first wife, the former Utica Welles (New York-born descendant of Connecticut's fourth Governor Thomas Welles). They have two sons, Adrian, 38, and Thomas, 33, both at present with the British Armed Forces. Sir Thomas has five elderly sisters, whom he describes as "very agreeable creatures," all living in England and married to "husbands who all do exactly what they want them to do—I don't know whether it's a family attribute, or just luck."
The present Lady Beecham, whom Sir Thomas married after his Idaho divorce, is a blue-eyed, 34-year-old British pianist named Betty Humby who has often appeared on her husband's programs. Current apple of Sir Thomas' eye is her eleven-year-old son by a previous marriage. He plays the clarinet in the Deerfield (Mass.) Academy band.
A Mingled Chime.* "The English," remarks Sir Thomas, "are the laziest nation in the world. Since the radio we have become practically comatose. I foresee a generation which will never get out of bed." Sir Thomas' own lack of laziness is underlined by the fact that he has added writing to his other activities: he has a work in progress on Beaumont & Fletcher, and a forthcoming autobiography called A Mingled Chime.
Sir Thomas' remarks about music have a lofty, Tory tone. He takes a poor view of the musical tastes of the masses, declares that great music can exist only when furthered by men of wealth and discrimination. Remembering his own lavish, costly activities as a patron, Sir Thomas is irritated by people who declare that fine music should be put on a paying basis. "Music," says he, "is a parasitical luxury, supported by the few. It is something that must be inflicted on the public."
Meanwhile, through low-priced concert tickets and his splendid phonograph recordings, Sir Thomas' infliction is something that the U.S. public is suffering very happily. He has become a treasured and crusty feature on the musical landscape of democratic America.
* To be published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.