78 The EconomistJune 27th 2020
A
s soon asher pay for singing with the Bert Ambrose band was
doubled in 1938, Vera Lynn bought herself a fur coat. She also
got a green Austin 10 with a soft canvas top, and a three-bed semi
for herself and her parents in Barking. There she could soak in her
very own big bath and go to the lavatory indoors. But the coat was
the first thing she bought. It cost £75. Every young girl in the 1930s
wanted that sort of coat, of course. And she also felt she needed it,
even deserved it, for what she was doing. When it settled heavily
on her shoulders, she felt like royalty.
She was always well aware of what she was worth. More than
the 6/6d a week she got for sewing buttons in her first job; she left
after a day. More than the £20 a week Ambrose paid her for being a
“crooner”, so she let him know she could get good work as a non-
crooning soloist elsewhere. More than the dismissive look some
people gave her because she was toothy and gawky and, when she
opened her mouth, talked Cockney—or at least East Ham, which
was not the East End, really Essex. And she was worth a lot more,
when she started recording, than being just the “vocal refrain” on
the b-side of a sixpenny Woolworth’s record. Her ambitions were
much bigger than that.
And why not? Her voice was clear and strong, a deep contralto,
once songs were pitched low enough to suit it. Her enunciation
was crisp and bright. And she had a real nose for a good song. When
she went along to Denmark Street to browse through the publish-
ers’ sheet music, she could pick out a winner at once, by the words.
She never could read music, but the tune was almost an after-
thought. It was all about the feeling. If the lyrics had the right sen-
timent, were simple and from the heart, the song was right for her.
She could believe in it then, and perform it with such complete
sincerity that she moved her audience to tears.
So she proved during the second world war, when songs she’d
found— “We’ll Meet Again”, “The White Cliffs of Dover”, “There’llAlways be an England”—had an extraordinary effect on Britain.
Her voice, whether on scratchy 78s, crackling through a wireless or
live in London halls with sirens wailing outside, became the blue-
bird of “White Cliffs” that flew hopefully above the horrors. On
Sunday evenings listeners at home and abroad were glued to her
“letter to the forces”, “Sincerely Yours”, as she played requests and
relayed messages. She so raised the morale of both the home front
and the boys abroad that she was sometimes jokingly credited with
winning the war all by herself. And it secured her a status so lasting
that 80 years later, in another crisis, Britain turned to her again,
giving her a billing and an affection second only to the queen’s.
Not all approved of her wartime popularity. She was at the lowly
end of the social scale, the daughter of a plumber and a seamstress,
and if she didn’t care about that, others did. It made some people
shudder (as it had made her teachers shudder) that she had forged
her teenage singing career in those terrible places, working-men’s
clubs. High-ups at the bbccalled her songs “slush”, and some gen-
erals and mps complained that they might make soldiers desert.
Her quick retort was to point to her postbag: 1,000 letters a week
from servicemen, who adored her because she was ordinary,
friendly and sisterly, the sort of girl they had left behind. What was
more, they especially liked the sentimental songs. She knew they
would. They were corny but home-bred, like a conversation be-
tween two people who found it hard to express their feelings to
each other, as many ordinary English people did. We’ll meet again,
don’t know where, don’t know when...
She wasn’t glamorous like the Hollywood stars, Betty Grable for
example, whom the fighting men all lusted after. Nothing sparkled
on her; she wore utility suits and, often, uniform. She was not re-
mote; she brought home closer to the boys and, at home, she was in
the fight with everyone else. She sang in factories, on airfields, and
in the Underground during the Blitz. After concerts in London she
would drive home in her Austin 10, a tin hat beside her in case
shrapnel came through the roof. She popped over with flowers to
hospitals where soldiers’ wives had just had babies, to announce
the good news on her show. And in 1944 she went out to the Far East
to sing to her farthest-flung listeners in person.
It was her special duty, she felt, to cheer up boys who were for-
gotten. In Burma, the toughest part of the trip, she was one girl
among 6,000 men. She swapped her flowing chiffon frock for
shapeless khakis that at least kept the mosquitoes out, and sang
until her make-up ran in the humidity and her voice became a
croak. In camp she lived as the boys did, in a grass hut, washing out
of a bucket. She drank tea with them, and sat on their beds in field
hospitals to chat, even though the stench of gangrene almost over-
whelmed her. The battle of Kohima was raging not far off, and she
was game to record her songs against the gunfire. That was forbid-
den but, in any case, she was already the sweet voice of the war.
She traded on that for the rest of her long life. Any brave things
she had done were brushed off, as she kept her Burma souvenirs
(the tiny secret diary, the fresh-tugged bullet she was given by a
surgeon) in a plastic bag stowed in a drawer. After all, she had been
one among so many. But she went on singing the songs and work-
ing for forces’ charities, and thus stayed firmly fixed in public
hearts. Producers of her many concerts and tvshows, from the
1950s to the 1980s, often tried to update her. They persuaded her to
wear modern gowns and to sing Lennon-McCartney and country
music, both of which she rather liked. But if they dared to suggest
that “White Cliffs” or “I’ll Be Seeing You” were outmoded, she was
horrified and offended. The songs summed up Britain in its finest
hour. She—after 1975, Dame Vera—had to keep that memory alive.
The public certainly understood. Her appearances, even with
her voice long gone, drew crowds who cheered her as warmly as
ever. In chillier weather the regal fur came out again, if only as a
hat. She would smile back in constant delight, regularly waving, as
if she had been born to it. Women would sometimes curtsy to her,
feeling it was right somehow. For this was like a queen passing. 7Dame Vera Lynn, singer and entertainer, died on June 18th,
aged 103Queen in all but name
Obituary Vera Lynn