DEATH OF MME. GUY D’HARDELOT

Evening Star, Issue 22276, 29 February 1936, Page 2

DEATH OF MME. GUY D’HARDELOT

COMPOSER OF ‘ BECAUSE' MMe. Guy D’Hardelot, the song writer, died at her home in Wellington road,. St.. John’s Wood, last month, at the age of 78. She wrote songs which Melba sang at the height of her fame and which have been popular ever since. A million copies have been sold of her most famous song, ‘ Because,’ and nearly as popular are such melodies as ‘ The Dawn,’ ‘ I Sent You Red Roses,’ ‘I Hid My Love,’ ‘I Know a Lovely Garden,’ ‘My Message,’ ‘I Think,’ 'and ‘The Great Unknown.’ Her last song, ‘Dreams,’ was published about a year ago. Mine. D'Hardelot’s real name was Mrs Helen Rhodes. /She took her pen name from her birtli place, Chateau Hardelot,.near Boulogne. Guy was her maiden name. Her father was an English sea captain, and her mother was the well-known singer, Helen Guy. At the age of 15 Mine. D’Hardelot’s mother took her to Paris, where she studied music at the Conservatoire, and in her early twenties she published her first song, ‘ Sans Toi.’ When she first began composing songs, the musical world was rather critical. So she wrote two or three songs under an assumed name, and her critics were fuli of enthusiasm for the new composer. She enjoyed the joke enormously. Gounod, Massenet, and the other- musical celebrities of the time encouraged her song writing, and many of her works were sung by such famous singers as Melba, Victor Maurel, Palancon, and Mine. Calve. When she went to New York with Mine Calve to play the accompaniments of her own songs she was received into the inner circle of that brilliant company of musicians and actors which centred round the New Y T ork Opera at that time. Ellen Terry, Bernhardt, Melba, Caruso, and the two de Reskes were all her friends, and she used to recall memories of those New Y’ork days of the ’nineties. When later she went to live in London her Sunday night parties at her house at Regent’s Park, (once the home of Sarah Siddons) were famous. Goring Thomas first introduced her to Mr William Boosey. who in one of his favourite phrases said that to be a success every song must have a “D’Hardelot ending”—by which he meant that it must possess the type of dramatic climax which is a feature of every one of her songs. One of her most treasured recollections was of appearing before Queen Victoria at Windsor as accomnanist to Mine. Calve. Many of her pupifs have achieved fame, among them such singers as Carmen Hill, Ivy St. Holier, and Miriam Licette.