"A CIRCUS LIFE"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 142, 17 June 1937, Page 19

"A CIRCUS LIFE"

PIANIST'S "SECRETARY" WIFE

'T had been married only 24 hours when my husband told me I was to be his secretary and gave me a letter to write," said Mrs. Benno Moiseiwitsch when she arrived in Sydney from Melbourne recently (states the "Morning Herald"). "I had no idea just what that was going to mean, but now the work keeps me so busy that when there is a lull I get quite bored and nervy.

"I write all my husband's correspondence by hand, and it is ruining my handwriting, which, at the end of a letter, develops into a scrawl. I always sign myself 'secretary,' and use my maiden initials.

"At one time I used to paste my husband's programmes in a book, but it got so bulky that now I rewrite them out by hand, with all references in a book. I also keep all his Press cuttings, and now Boris, our son, is being interviewed at the age of six years, so I have started a Press cutting book for him."

Before her marriage, Mrs. Moiseiwitsch lived in Shanghai, where she met her husband in the artists' room after a concert.

"He always says he married me because he liked my mother," laughed Mrs. Moiseiwitsch. "You see, they are both Russian, and she used to cook him Russian delicacies*- My mother was musical, but my father used to go to sleep at concerts. "We were married in Shanghai, and sinc x c them it has been a circus life. We travel about with golf bags and a dummy piano, which my husband, who is very considerate of neighbours, uses to practise his < exercises. He always takes it to the artists' room, and warms his hands practising scales before a concert. Other artists we have known have used electric hot-water bottles or bowls of hot water.

"My own interests?" repeated Mrs. Moiseiwitsch. "As you see they are all absorbed in my husband's work. Even frocks have diminished in importance, and I had pnly tea days to prepare for my trip to Australia; but as I usually wear a great deal of black, and always plainly-made clothes, it was sufficient."