Harriet Cohen - Relationship With Sir Arnold Bax

Relationship With Sir Arnold Bax

"One day I will let my music give itself up to love – love without strife or fret or circumstances – just the praise to you". "My mouth longs for your soft mouth...". These are just two quotes from the love letters between Sir Arnold Bax and Harriet Cohen.

Harriet Cohen's love affair with Bax lasted for over forty years until he died in 1953. It was Bax who gave Harriet Cohen the name "Tania" for which she was affectionately known by close friends and family. Their passionate affair started in 1914 when she was 19 and he was 31, although they had met two years earlier. Bax was creatively inspired by Cohen and in 1915 wrote for her within 13 days three pieces including "The Princess's Rose Garden", "The Maiden with the Daffodil" and "In the Vodka Shop".

Some believe that their time together inspired his famous tone-poem Tintagel, in which he may have in part expressed his anguish at "the dream their world denied". The affair led to Bax's ultimate decision to leave his wife and children in 1918, but they could never live openly together because Bax's wife refused a divorce. Neither could their relationship be recognised publicly because of the social climate of their generation. Cohen possibly became pregnant with Bax's child in 1919 but if she did, she lost the child in an early miscarriage. Harriet Cohen's recently published letters reveal the turbulence and anguish of the relationship. Cohen always claimed that the long standing affair denied her becoming a "Dame", but this is not substantiated. Through the 1930s their relationship became less passionate as her international career flourished, and Bax sought a quieter haven with his gentler mistress Mary Gleaves; nonetheless the affair continued and they remained close, as private letters between Cohen and Bax reveal. In 1935, for example, they travelled together to Stockholm and met Jean Sibelius, a composer who had long influenced Bax's music.

On 23 September 1947, Bax's wife Elsa ("Elsita") died. Cohen probably expected to finally marry Bax after an affair that had now lasted 30 years. Events were to unfold quite differently. Bax did not initially inform Cohen about the death of his wife, a fact she was to discover in May 1948 whilst recording the music that Bax had written for the film Oliver Twist, when Elsa's will was published. A greater shock followed, when Bax revealed his secret twenty-year affair with Gleaves and his intention not to remarry. This was at a time when Cohen was losing prominence in Britain, and in May 1948 Cohen had an accident with a tray of glasses, which severed the artery in her right hand thus restricting her performing career for some years.

When Bax died on 3 October 1953, Cohen was deeply affected by his death. His will bequeathed half of his interest from his literary and musical compositions to Cohen for life, and half to Mary Gleaves. After their death his royalties and estate were to pass to his children. Cohen also kept the London property that Bax had bought for her - throughout Cohen's life Bax had financially assisted her.