Polly Morland - The Society of Timid Souls: or, How To Be Brave

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Henry Holt and Company and the Random House Group Limited: Excerpt from For John F. Kennedy His Inauguration from The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright 1961, 1962, by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC, and The Random House Group Limited.

The Estate of Muriel Morrissey: Excerpt from Courage by Amelia Earhart. Reprinted by permission of Amy Kleppner on behalf of the Estate of Muriel Morrissey. www.AmeliaEarhart.com

Simon & Schuster, Inc.: Excerpt from Death from The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume I: The Poems, Revised by W. B. Yeats, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1933 by the Macmillan Company, renewed 1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2013 by Polly Morland

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in the United Kingdom by Profile Books, London.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morland, Polly.
The society of timid souls: or how to be brave/Polly Morland.First edition.
pages cm
1. CourageCase studies. I. Title.
BJ1533.C8M67 2013
179.6dc23 2012043202

eISBN: 978-0-307-88908-9

Jacket design by Christopher Brand
Jacket photograph by Jeffrey Coolidge/Getty Images

v3.1

F OR MY LOVELY FATHER ,

E DGAR W ILLIAMS

( 19262010 )

C ONTENTS

A N OTE ON S OURCES

In the interests of readability, I have not used ellipses or brackets in certain quotations from the interviews that form the spine of this book, but, as with filmed interviews in a documentary, I have taken great care to remain true to the speakers meaning. The names of a handful of interviewees have been changed to protect their privacy. I have also reported what each interviewee told me in good faith, relying chiefly upon their accounts of dates, times, and facts.

A brave World, Sir, full of Religion, Knavery, and Change: we shall shortly see better days.

A PHRA B EHN , The Roundheads

INTRODUCTION

T HE DAY IS BITTERLY COLD . I SEE STEAM BLOOMING FROM A mans lips as he jumps down from the trolley car on the Upper West Side at Broadway and Seventy-third Street. His feet hit the icy sidewalk and the streetcar clangs away with all the acoustic precision that sound has on very cold days. He tugs the brim of his hat low over his eyes. The other passengers from downtown have been discussing the war, but he has not been thinking about the Japanese, or Hitler, or bombs. He has instead been thinking of his hands on the piano keyboard. The thought makes his mouth dry. Gripping the leather handle of his music satchel, he hesitates on the street corner for a moment. Then he sets off, crossing Broadway with a gray crowd of Sunday strollers. He skirts the upper edge of Verdi Square. Through the trees, the statue of the composer stands, his back turned, as if to eschew the sorry kind of musician the man has become. He walks on past the Central Savings Bank, glancing up at the clock above the door that says it is a minute or two before four oclock. Crossing Amsterdam Avenue onto West Seventy-third Street, he stops for a moment to check the advertisement torn from the newspaper and now foldeda little furtivelyin his coat pocket: NUMBER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY . There it ison the right. He passes beneath the portico and steps across the polished hallway into a wood-paneled elevator. With a clunk, he is lifted skyward, and when the elevator boy yanks open the metal grille again, the man finds himself at the inaugural meeting of the Society of Timid Souls.

Only fragments remain about what really happened that January day. We know that the year was 1942. We also know that just four unsteady piano players responded to the first advertisement placed by Bernard Gabriel, a professional concert pianist, publicizing a series of meetings to be held at his Manhattan apartment on the first and third Sunday afternoon of every month. In exchange for seventy-five cents apieceto cover, so the notice in The New York Times read, refreshmentsfear-racked musicians were invited to step in out of the cold and to play, to criticize and be criticized, in order to conquer the old bogey of stage fright. They were to assemble at Sherman Square Studios, high above West Seventy-third Street, in a room bare but for two Steinway grand pianos and so extensively soundproofed that no one would hear what went on behind the closed door. Inside was Maestro Gabriel, with no formal qualification for this work other than a confidence beyond his thirty years. Gabriel was, it was said, non-timid and duly he proceeded to deploy what he called strange and devious methods to inoculate those in attendance against their fears.

By the early summer, the Society of Timid Souls numbered more than twenty, and on May 17, The New Yorker sent along a reporter, Charles Cooke, who happened to be a pianist himself. First Cooke encountered the silver-haired Mr. William Hopkins, who told him, Im old enough to know better and Im scared to death, before plunging into a Respighi nocturne. Next came Mrs. Moeller, who grew flustered if the audience was silent. Then Miss Simson, who panicked even when others played. Finally, the mysterious inoculation process was revealed, with the revival of a Timid Soul belonging to a Miss Flora Cantwell.

This afternoon, said Bernard Gabriel, Im going to kill or cure her.

Flora Cantwell sat down at one of the two pianos and began to play an tude. As she stumbled throughso Charles Cooke told his readersMr. Gabriel moved among the Society members handing out props, a whistle here, a rattle there, occasionally pausing to whisper something into another Timid Souls ear.

Miss Cantwell finished playing.

Again, said Gabriel, and the moment the tude resumedpandemonium.

Miss Simson blew Bronx cheers on a Bronx-cheer blower. Mr. Carr spun a watchmans rattle. Mr. Hopkins repeatedly slammed the door. Miss Cohen warbled Daydreams Come True at Night and Mrs. Moeller flung the Manhattan Telephone Directory at the floor.

Flora Cantwell tucked her head down and kept playing.

Bernard Gabriel now crashed his hands upon the keyboard of the other Steinway, shouting, Youre playing abominably, but dont stop!

She did as he said and rising from the piano at the end, Miss Cantwell reported, I could play it in a boiler factory now.

Bernard Gabriels apparently comical methods proved to be remarkably effective. Many Timid Souls claimed to have been cured by a dose of his antitoxin, and a year later, Society membership had doubled to include timid actors, timid singers, timid public speakers, and timid parlor entertainers, each of them desperate to learnor to rememberhow to be brave.