The series of diaries begins in 1882, when Lucy Etheldred Broadwood was 24, and continues until the day before her death, 21 August 1929. She was a dedicated diarist, seldom missing a day's entry, and often marked important events with underlining or double lines in the margin beside the entry. Some entries appear to have been made retrospectively. There are 39 volumes of handwritten diaries, in a variety of sizes and formats. Some are ruled-line notebooks, others have pre-printed diary pages, the latter often given to Lucy as Christmas presents. Lucy often inserted or attached programmes, reviews and newscuttings which relate to particular diary entries or events.
Lucy's diaries function rather as a summary aide-memoire than as a detailed description of her life. They encompass her energetic social life: music and concerts, private dinner parties, and visits to friends and festivals all over Britain. Throughout, she gives summary details of correspondence written and received; books read; lectures and concerts attended; and social and family events. She notes events of national and international importance, especially during the Boer War, 1899-1901, and the First World War, 1914-1918, and often inserts programmes, cuttings and reviews pertinent to individual entries.
She attended a wide variety of concerts, plays and exhibitions, always listing the music performed and often the people present. She is usually unreserved in her judgement of both composer and performer. For example, on 15 June 1901 she attended a revival of Purcell's Fairy Queen at St George's Hall, London, at which 'Evangi Florence and Mr O'Sullivan sang well, Mr S Beel led the strings well. The Purcell Operatic Society was monstrously bad and the tenor also'.
She was an accomplished poet, artist and cartoonist and often mentions her work, noting when she has sent copies to relatives or friends. She sent some of the humorous poems to papers such as The Globe and Punch and mentions whether they were accepted for publication or not. She also enjoyed word games and charades. On 1 April 1892 she records sending the music critic, JA Fuller Maitland, a hoax folk song, which she describes as 'a Dorsetshire boning song' (6782/8).
Through her diaries it is possible to trace her development as a performer. She describes her training and performance as a singer during the late 1880s and early 1890s and encloses reviews. She also performed as a pianist and accompanist, often illustrating her own and her friends' lectures with piano and vocal examples. Occasionally, while staying at Lyne, she also fulfilled the duties of church organist at Newdigate and Capel. Lucy never performed as a professional musician, participating instead in amateur recitals and lectures, friends' musical parties or concerts run by such philanthropic foundations as the People's Concert Society. At one such charity concert in Stepney, on 12 May 1885, she wrote: 'immense applause when I appeared owing to father having given the grand piano' (6782/2/).
On 1 February 1899, in the year after the death of her mother, Juliana, Lucy and her niece, Barbara Craster, gave up the lease of the Broadwood's town house in St George's Square, Pimlico, and moved into a mansion flat, 84 Carlisle Mansions, Westminster (6782/13). From this time onwards, Lucy regularly entertained at home. She began to hold a series of musical parties which she describes in detail and which were attended by up to 60 guests. At one such tea party on 14 January 1902, Lucy, the baritone James Campbell McInnes, and the pianist CA Lidgey, performed for 30 guests (6782/16). Other musicians would often perform at or attend these parties, including the composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Graham Peel and Percy Grainger, and the pianists, Fanny Davies and Juliette Folville.
The diaries also demonstrate how Lucy would promote and encourage her protégés, both musical and otherwise. In October 1902, she gave 'grandmotherly advice' to Ralph Vaughan Williams about his cantata, Willow-wood, which premiered at a Broadwood concert in March 1903 (6782/16-17). On 12 October 1910, she records her impressions of the premiere of Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony: 'Heavy orchestration drowned chorus and solos a good deal, otherwise very fine indeed'. Just over a week later, on 18 Oct, the composer 'came to find out why vocal parts were drowned by his orchestra. We spent some hours in going thro' the whole of his 'Sea Symphony', he pruning and altering' (6782/23).
Percy Grainger made his London debut as a pianist during the 1904-1905 season of Broadwood concerts, and became a frequent visitor at 84 Carlisle Mansions. He continued to be a regular correspondent after he emigrated to America in 1915. She also took an interest in the careers of her relatives, noting, for example, the stages in the academic career of her nephew, Herbert Craster, who eventually became Keeper of the Bodleian Library; or of talented young friends, such as the Swiss artist, Jakob Wäch, about whom she wrote to the artists John Hassall and Anna Alma Tadema in 1911 (diary, 6782/23; their replies, 2185/LEB/1/368, 373-4).
Lucy took great interest in the career of the Lancashire-born baritone, James Campbell McInnes. From 1901, he became a regular visitor to her flat, where she helped him rehearse, encouraged him to perform and introduced him to her musical and social circle. As he became more famous, he, in his turn, introduced new figures to her circle, including the composer, Graham Peel, who became his secretary and companion. Lucy notes the names and occasionally brief impressions of these visitors in her diary. Peel later photographed her at home (30 June 1903, 6782/17; photographs, 2185/LEB/9/112-115); and, in June 1907, taught her how to use a phonograph for recording folksong (6782/21).
She also took an interest in McInnes' family and his personal life. On 16 September 1902, she records '…went to 40 Barclay Road to call on Mrs McInnes, saw her, Maggie and the son John from Africa. Afterwards came home to tea when JCMcI came (fresh from the soothsayer Mrs Wilkins!)… Long talk with JCMcI about his future'. On 26 September 1902, Lucy 'went by appointment to see Mrs Pollard at the 'Women's Institute' about profession for Maggie McInnes' (6782/16).
During the six-week engagement period immediately prior to McInnes' short-lived marriage to Angela Mackail on 5 May 1911, Lucy frequently mentioned that she correspondence with and visits from McInnes, the Mackails and Peel. On the wedding day itself, she remained at home playing Bach cantatas before driving to Woolwich to hear the Royal Artillery band rehearse a song she had noted and harmonised (6782/23).
Although Lucy had always been interested in traditional song, her diaries do not begin to reflect her work as a collector until the late 1880s when she begins to note correspondence with local collectors, perhaps in preparation for the re-issue of Sussex Songs, co-edited by her cousin Herbert F Birch Reynardson. On 11 August 1891, while on holiday in Edinburgh, she notes that JA Fuller Maitland and the editor, Mr Tuer, 'asked me to become an editress [sic] to a proposed collection of local songs' (6782/8). This collection, co-edited with Fuller Maitland, was published in 1893 as English County Songs. Her diary for 1891 records that she immediately began writing to her local informants requesting more songs. The gradually increasing circle of folksong correspondents and visitors included Frank Kidson, Annie Gilchrist, Frances Tolmie, Gavin Greig, Alexander Keith, Cecil Sharp, Percy Merrick and Samuel Willett.
Her diaries continue to reflect her increasingly focussed interest in folklore and song. Throughout the 1890s, she attended meetings of the Folk Lore Society; and was an active member of the Folk Song Society (FSS) from its foundation in 1898. On 6 February 1904, Lucy met with Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp, a London music teacher who had come to folk song through his interest in traditional English dance tunes. Her diary records that they 'discussed [the] Folk Song Society and made a scheme for reviving its dying embers' (6782/18).
Lucy was elected and served as the Society's Hon Secretary and Editor of its journal from 1904 to 1926. She was also regularly invited to serve as a judge or on committees of local musical festivals such as the Wakefield Musical Festival, Kendal, Cumbria, and the Leith Hill Musical Festival, Dorking (Lucy was a member of the Musical Selection Committee from its foundation in 1905 until her death). However, when she does allude to this work it is largely as an aside to her descriptions of the music she heard performed or of the people she met. She also records her attendance at meetings of other societies of which she was a member, including The People's Concert Society and The People's Entertainment Society.
Lucy mentions in her diaries technological developments as much as artistic ones. On 7 May 1906, Grainger and Lucy stayed at the home of the tenor, Gervase Elwes, in Brigg, Lincs, while they judged the North Lincolnshire Musical Competitions and collected many new songs from local men (6782/20). Inspired by Grainger's enthusiasm for using the phonograph to record folksongs 'in the field', Lucy acquired one of her own for a collecting trip to Arisaig, Inverness, in June the following year (6782/21). Later, in March 1908, she taught the composer and folk song collector, George Butterworth, who had been introduced to her circle by Vaughan Williams, to use a phonograph (ibid).
From the late 1880s, Lucy frequently mentions visits to the London Library, the British Museum and other named repositories for purposes of folksong and later, genealogical, research. In the 1890s, she also began research into the music of Purcell, probably inspired by the growing renaissance of interest in early music promoted by such figures as AJ Hipkins, employee of John Broadwood & Sons, Arnold Dolmetsch, instrument maker, and Gustav Holst, composer.
After the death of her father, Henry Fowler Broadwood, in 1893, she also began to take an active interest in the running of the family firm, John Broadwood & Sons, encouraged by her elder siblings, Henry Tschudi and Bertha Broadwood. Some entries relating to the firm's troubles are written in German.
Lucy took a keen interest in the publication and copyright of her music and, from the 1890s onwards, she regularly makes entries in her diary regarding the correction of proofs, publication of her works or meetings with publishers concerning royalties. She began producing arrangements and harmonisations for folk songs in the 1890s; 'Jess MacPharlane' became famous when Harry Plunket Greene made it part of his repertoire. From the late 1890s, she also became recognised as a translator of Bach cantatas, especially Selig ist der Mann (Blessed is the Man) which was frequently performed by James Campbell McInnes.
Lucy's wide circle of family and acquaintances can be seen in the address lists at the back of many of the diaries, which also record the daily exchange of voluminous correspondence. Friends included the Farrers of Abinger Hall; the Brays of Shere; the Evelyns of Wotton; the Vaughan Williams of Leith Hill Place, Dorking; the Lee Steeres of Jayes Park, Ockley; the Crasters of Craster, Northumberland; and the Heaths, the Spring-Rices, the Mackenzies, the Richmond Richies, the Todhunters, the Manistys and the Webbs. For a biographical index of some of Lucy Broadwood's regular correspondents, see appendix 1 of 2185/LEB/-.
Throughout, although Lucy shows the traditional diarist's concerns for the state of the weather and her own health, she also reveals another side to her character, with her interest in the spiritualist and psychic world. In the early 1900s, she regularly records 'mind-reading' and 'visualisation' sessions at her home, usually with Barbara Craster and McInnes. They also visited a 'soothsayer', Mrs Wilkins, whose address is noted in the diary for 1902 (6782/16).
She also began to record her dreams and visions which, during the First World War, it appears she suffered with increasing frequency. During this period she records Zeppelin attacks on London and the changes occasioned by rationing. She seems to have been affected very deeply by the war; many of her younger friends and relatives served and some were killed at the Front. Barbara Craster served as a nurse with a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) in France, 1914-1916, before joining the Women's Royal Naval Reserve in 1917.
After the war, Lucy's diaries reflect the increasing changes to her life. Following the McInnes' widely reported divorce in 1917, James Campbell McInnes enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps before emigrating to Canada in 1919. In 1902, Barbara Craster moved out of 84 Carlisle Mansions to her own flat in Wimbledon. Lucy gave up the lease on the apartment to her nephew Francis Pryor and moved first to 20 Queensberry Place, Kensington; then, in 1923, to 41 Drayton Court, Chelsea.
In the 1920s, she became increasingly haunted by financial worries and ill-health. Having travelled widely throughout Britain and Europe before the war, she made several trips to Glarus, Switzerland, the birthplace of her ancestors the Tschudis. Although her work as a folk song collector seems to wane during this period, she maintained a hectic schedule of social visits; attendance at concerts, galleries and plays; and involvement in local music festivals. She also became interested in an obscure form of research into the authenticity of Shakespeare's sonnets. Lucy died on 22 August 1929 whilst staying at Dropmore, Canterbury, Kent, where she had gone to attend a festival.