Abandoned, but not desolate.(Belonging: A Memo)(Book Review)

Belonging: A Memoir, by Renee Goossens; ABC Books, 2003, $27.95.

THE TRAGICAL consequences of abandonment, physical or emotional, have come down to us as the classical myth about Ariadne on Naxos. It has become a myth with operatic overtones. The story comes to mind as you read the autobiography of Renee Goossens, both because of the cruelly repeated episodes of abandonment, and because of the operatic overtones.

To be born with a silver spoon in the mouth, as was the author, proved to be no talisman protecting her from the vicissitudes of a life which involved a change of mothers when she was six, the need to consider a change of fathers when she was eighteen, a near-fatal car accident after which her husband abandoned her when she was in her early twenties, and a jumble of religious and educational eruptions--all of which she eventually conquered though sheer determination, realistic and spiritual, assisted throughout her odyssey by two loves: her son and opera.

This fascinating and eminently readable book tells the story in an admirably human and understanding manner. Hard feelings are softened with a sometimes surprising, even saintly, plausibility; realism and philosophy triumph over self-pity.

An explanation of family circumstances in the Goossens dynasty is essential for following the bewildering signposts marking the frequent crossroads leading to dislocations and abandonments. The famous conductor Eugene Goossens (1893-1962), of Belgian and prominently musical background, was married three times. With his first wife, the American Dorothy Millar, he had three daughters. With his second wife, also American, Janet Lewis ("Jansi") he had two daughters--Sidonie ("Donie") in 1932, and Renee in 1940. The third wife was the wealthy divorced socialite Marjorie Foulkrod ("Yadi" or "Stepmother")--no children--with whom he came to Australia when beginning his associations as Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Director of the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in 1946. It had been necessary to appoint him to the dual jobs in order to make up his salary to his previous American level.

Renee came with them. Jansi, her mother, remained in New York and vanished totally from her two daughters' lives. No, not totally. She suddenly reappeared, unexpectedly, twelve years later and told Renee, then eighteen, a story which Renee refused, and still refuses, to believe, namely that Eugene Goossens had not been her father, and that Renee had in fact been the outcome of a brief fling with a visiting Swedish violinist.

Eventually Renee faced Eugene with this story. By then, the famous conductor had been knocked off his pedestal following that sad episode in 1956 when he was found by Customs at Sydney Airport bringing in, after conducting engagements overseas, what were at that time considered to be pornographic photographs and mysterious masks. He lost his two positions in Sydney, was fined 100 [pounds sterling], left Australia, and was ostracised abroad, ending as a sick and impoverished man living in dingy London quarters, a tragic end to an illustrious career. When Renee told him of Jansi's claim about fatherhood, he merely replied, "Have I not always accepted you as my daughter?" and made no further comment. There was no DNA testing in those days.