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Caroline and with her sister Lucy and brother Richard and their parents arrived in America aboard the maiden voyage of the Caronia on 21 September 1950. Her father had been part of the pre-war League of Nations and had come to New York with former colleagues for the beginning of the UN where he would head the English translation section. Caroline’s mother (born Jocelyn Waller) descended from Irish and English gentry, but Caroline slipped comfortably into public school life in Sea Cliff. That year when we were given a form asking if we wanted to learn a musical instrument Caroline began her life’s career. “I put a tick on a piece of paper saying I wanted to learn the violin.” By the end of year the other would-be violinists, including this writer, had given up. Her father arranged private lessons with professional violinist and Juliard graduate Dorothy Kesner of Oyster Bay. (Kesner had studied under the famous Hungarian violinist and teacher Leopold Auer, and so does talent pass through time and space.)
Betty Gelling might have written the first original composition for Caroline but when she presented it to her in Sue Frost’s dining room one day, Caroline said she could not play music that had no bars, only notes on the staff because she needed the bars for the proper tempo.
Caroline excelled in most subjects and says, “My greatest trouble after leaving school was to decide what field to go into—some know, some have to decide.” She returned to England to take qualifying exams that would be necessary if she decided to continue her education there. When she returned to England she found that her American education had made her an idealist. “I thought we would all go out and make it in the world. I had been out of school only two years when my younger sister Lucy said, ‘Caroline you’ve been out in the world and what have you’ve done?’” Except for English history, Caroline says, “I found when I got to England I found I had much better general knowledge. Lots of people here leave school without really knowing anything.”
With the English exams behind her, she left to visit her French-Swiss relatives in the beautiful city of Lausanne on Lake Geneva. There she studied French at Lausanne University and took violin lessons at Lausanne Conservatoire. An inspiring teacher helped her decide that her future lay with the instrument she had chosen in 5th grade. She returned to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music for the next four years. But “Why not go abroad for a bit?” she thought as soon as she finished.
For the next two years she played with the Kunstmaand Orchestra that later would become the Amsterdam Philharmonic and even later the Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra. When she returned to England to play with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, she married fellow violinist John Thorgilson, and they adopted two children. Caroline gave up her orchestra contract to be with the children, but continued to freelance for both the Bournemouth orchestra and its affiliated chamber orchestra, commitments that kept her playing almost full time. She and her husband divorced ten years after adopting their children, and Caroline continued playing. Her daughter Kate went into social work and her son Oliver into acting.
As the millennium approached Caroline says, “I wound down my playing.” In our search for classmates, we found Caroline listed as a guest violinist with the Isle of Wight Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, three years ago she was pulling ivy off a wall of her 19th century Dorset cottage, slipped on the wet footing, fell backward and broke her right arm badly, tearing the muscle from the bone. That put an end to her playing. She doesn’t know if she can ever play again but says, “Maybe I’ve had enough.” She does listen to music, but not orchestral music. “If someone puts some on I’m straight back at work.” She stays busy fixing her cottage, babysitting for her daughter, and traveling to visit family and friends and foreign venues.
“I never regretted taking up music,” she says, “as I always loved it and the camaraderie of orchestral life,” but it had many disadvantages, including “lowish pay, unsocial hours which were difficult raising children, and orchestral politics.” The unique reward of a career in orchestral music was “the fundamental experience of everyone doing their best to make a harmonious whole—which doesn’t always occur in the outside world.”
(Caroline lives in England. Address available to classmates by request.)
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