We Followed Our Stars by Ida Cook (wrote for M&B as Mary Burchell)

Yes, this is supposed to be a blog entry. I haven't finished the book yet (this is an autobiography). I've been able to read only a bit at a time for several days now and when I stop to tell whoever is nearby and try to purge the tears in my heart, the tears in my eyes and throat just get in the way . . .

I didn't even know til Aliquis posted something about her in January (or provided a link) who Mary Burchell / Ida Cook was (although I might have read some of her books as my mom subscribed and I began reading HRs in the late '70s, I didn't pay attention to who the authors were back then). She wrote for Mills & Boon from 1935 or 1936 til sometime in the '80s. She wrote this autobiography in 1950 and updated it in '75 or '76. Sun City Resident gave me 35 of Burchell's books and this was one of them. (According to Fantastic Fiction, she lived from 1904-1986 and her sister, Louise, from 1901-1991.)

Ida Cook and her sister Louise are credited with saving 29 lives by getting those people out of Europe -- I assume Germany and Austria, maybe the Netherlands, too. Basically, they were opera enthusiasts and b/c of the people they knew from their opera world, they were in a position to better understand what was happening in Germany and to help. I'll know more, of course, when I've finished the book. But what an amazing couple of women. And the coincidences in their lives. Had Louise never bo't a gramaphone, had opera records not come free with it, had the opera records not resonated with them, had these young women not then prioritized going to the opera -- saving their money to go see it in places besides London -- then Ida would not have written travel articles that supplemented her income from being a civil servant. Had she and Louise been shy about approaching opera stars (hence the name of her autobiography, b/c the did follow their stars around Europe and even made 2-3 trips to the States in the '20s and early '30s), then they would not have become friends to many of the stars and not known the first family that they rescued. Had an editor not read her travel articles and then enticed Ida away from her civil servant job to a magazine (to be an editor or something which she says she was horrible at) and had this other woman not kept mentoring Ida, Ida would not have written the serial (sp?) that the fiction editor at the magazine suggested she submit to a publishing house, M&B being one of 3 that he recommended. Had Mr. Boon (or Mills, can't remember who she signed the contract with) not included the provision in her contract that M&B had first right of refusal on her next two books, she might not have written more romances (she never meant to write one and it hadn't occurred to her that she could write more). And had she not had that income, or as she says, if she'd always had it and had become accustomed to spending it, she might not have been ABLE to save the people that they saved b/c that income was key to financing all their trips to wherever they had to go.

I'm a contradiction in beliefs: raised Catholic in our secular US culture, I believe in both Free Will and Providence or Divine Intervention and so all these things that lead one to the other choke me up. Not to mention the whole thought of what was going on and what was about to happen, which alone makes for thoughts sadder than any word in the English language.

And now that I've arrived in my reading to the mid-to-late 1930s, well, it's hard to think so much about the people they couldn't save. She herself mentions it. It was funny, I told my dh or whoever was near, I had just thought to myself something along those lines and then she wrote it. There have been several things that I've thought while reading it and shortly after, she's brought up the same thing.

I told dh that her voice for this much like sitting and having tea or coffee with her and just letting her tell me her tale. I wouldn't interrupt her to ask who all these famous people are and I'm certainly not going to go research them in the middle of her story. For now, it's enough to know that they were the stars of opera at that time. (She mentions all sorts of famous opera singers and composers and conductors and I've heard of maybe two. It does make me want to learn more about opera, be less intimidated by all I don't know and just enjoy the stories and the music.)

This autobiography has pointed out to me how pitiful my education was. I didn't learn enough about WWII (she mentioned more than once how glad she was that they didn't know of the changes that would come in 1934 and I had to ask my dh what happened in 1934). Fortunately, dh knew a bit but it didn't matter b/c once she and I arrived in 1934, she told me what happened. And that's when my reading slowed down.

Anyway, I wish that for the centenary that M&B had re-released this autobiography with a forward or letter from someone who knew her. Maybe they did and I missed it. Even though I sincerely doubt that they knew they were funding this when they bo't Ms. Cook's books, it is something that M&B should be totally proud of.

Penn, off to make dinner and think of pleasant things (now y'all can see why I've been listening to lighter audio books)

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