Patricia Newman
Patricia Newman is the author of the new children's picture book Beatrice and the Nightingale. Margaret Quinlin is the publisher of the book, which focuses on a duet between a cellist and a nightingale that was broadcast on the BBC in 1924. Newman's many other books include Sharks Unhooked.
Q: What inspired you to create Beatrice and the Nightingale?
PN: Like many book ideas, Beatrice and the Nightingale is rooted in the mundane activities of everyday life. The pandemic had shut down our world. My husband and I were isolating at home, and like many of you, cleaning closets, taking walks, and baking bread.
One evening we watched a Netflix movie called The Dig with Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan about the excavation of Sutton Hoo, an Anglo-Saxon burial mound. Lily James plays the part of a young archaeologist, Peggy Piggott.
In one scene, Peggy speaks to an RAF pilot about nightingales. She says she’d “never heard a nightingale at all. Only over the wireless.” She goes on to tell him about Beatrice Harrison, a famous cellist who convinced the BBC in 1924 to broadcast a nightingale singing as she practiced cello in her garden.
I had never heard about Beatrice or her nightingale duets, and the combination of music, nature, and technology captured my attention.
MQ: This combination captivated me as well and I knew I wanted to publish the book upon meeting Patti and reading her proposal. I work closely with my colleague Vicky Holifield, and she too was especially drawn to the music and the birds. But we were also intrigued by the role that technology played in the outcome.
Q: What do you think Beatrice’s performances with the nightingale meant to people at the time?
PN: When I share Beatrice and the Nightingale at school visits, I ask the children to imagine a time when streaming services like Spotify and YouTube music didn’t exist and cell phones and televisions hadn’t been invented yet.
To enjoy music, people either played instruments, sang, or attended concerts in large halls to watch others perform. Even radio, which is an afterthought in today’s world, was brand-spanking new then. Additionally, apps like Merlin or iNaturalist are part of a future no one had yet conceived.
By 1924, Beatrice had already performed several concerts aired by the BBC, so like any of today’s performers who see a marketing opportunity on social media, she capitalized on her contacts to deliver something new to the BBC’s audience. At the same time, the BBC pulled off a historic feat – broadcasting birdsong live for the first time over the airwaves.
I hope Beatrice and the Nightingale helps readers understand the overwhelming sense of wonder and awe the millions of listeners must have felt on that spring night in 1924. I often wonder if any of the listeners considered that such a feat might be possible.
To bring that idea to the present day, what will we see/hear in the near future that we didn’t think was possible?
MQ: This is one of the fascinating aspects of this story for me. How people in the late 1800s listened to music. Music seems to be always available to us now, but not so then. As Patti describes above, you either played an instrument and sang, or you attended a concert—sometimes in a small gathering in homes, or at a concert hall.
Beatrice was heralded for her performances at concert halls throughout Europe. There is a wonderful scene in the book when she is carried out of the concert hall in Moscow by the adoring crowd. So moved were they by her music on the cello that they removed the horses from her carriage and pulled it themselves to her hotel. Beatrice and her three sisters played music as a quartet giving performances for guests in their family home and elsewhere.
Listeners throughout the British empire were stunned to hear sound that was so real to them and some reportedly became emotional. Beatrice received over 50,000 letters as a result of the broadcast. Letters were addressed to “Lady of the Nightingales.”
PN: And the duets were broadcast for years after that!
MQ: Twelve years, I believe. They stopped because of WWII.
Q: How did you research the story, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
PN: Most of the nonfiction books I’ve written feature contemporary young scientists tackling some of the many environmental challenges our world faces. I always speak to the scientists and often visit them in the field to see their work.
But Beatrice Harrison passed away in 1965, so I was forced to search for other primary sources. Patricia Cleveland-Peck’s annotated edition of Beatrice’s diary, The Cello and the Nightingale, is a gold mine of dates, details, and family stories. I had such fun reading about Beatrice’s eccentric musical family with (literally) hundreds of pets. Between Isabelle’s illustrations and my text, we tried to include as many of these sparkling nuggets as possible.
Beatrice’s life as a cellist, her rise to fame, and the subsequent cello-nightingale duets were all surprising to me. But perhaps the most shocking bit of news was the fact some people thought Beatrice’s first duet with the nightingale in 1924 was faked.
Just before I signed the contract with Margaret’s imprint, she emailed me with this headline, “BBC reveals that famous nightingale and cello duet was faked” (Discover Wildlife, 12 April 2022). I’m not new to the world of research, so I couldn’t wrap my head around how the duet could have been faked.
Luckily, Margaret is an amazing editor! She wrote, “I would like to get to the bottom of what we know. I don’t think it kills the book. In fact, it makes it more interesting” (July 2022 email).
I agree! Check out the back matter in Beatrice and the Nightingale for how I researched this possible fake, and what conclusions we drew.
Q: What do you think Isabelle Follath’s illustrations add to the book?
PN: Isabelle’s art sets Beatrice in motion. She transforms Beatrice from a black-and-white photograph to a living soul. I shared my research with her about Beatrice’s house, the family’s pets, and her gowns for concerts.
For instance, we know from Beatrice’s diary that she wore a sun bonnet, white kid shoes, and a blue sash, which Isabelle faithfully included on the page that begins, “At father’s regimental band concert…”
Isabelle recreated the late 19th-early 20th century world Beatrice inhabited with wallpaper patterns, furniture, and flooring. When Beatrice purchases her cello Pietro from a dealer, we tracked down photographic evidence of the instrument dealer’s name and Isabelle added it to the window of his shop (see the page that begins, “Back in England, Beatrice acquired a special cello…”)
In addition to all this attention to detail, Isabelle’s illustrations glow with possibility and passion, the same qualities I imagine emanated from Beatrice herself.
MQ: I adore Isabelle’s work, and Patti’s description of her! She was so very dedicated to the project and to getting it right. She did quite a lot of research on her own in addition to what Patti shared.
We had some wonderful Zoom sessions discussing the emerging book in which we each shared our enthusiasm for Patti’s manuscript and Beatrice’s story. We were all charmed by the number of birds that the family had and discussed whether to show them flying free or in cages. We decided to show both!
The evening scenes when Beatrice was playing the cello and waiting for the bird to respond were a high point in the story. Patti worked and reworked the text to get the right balance of technical and atmospheric information without an overwhelming amount of detail. Isabelle’s interpretation of these scenes bordered on magical.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
PN: Beatrice gives readers so many gifts. Her love of music and the power to uplift those who listen. A gratitude for nature and the importance of birds to the biodiversity of our world. An appreciation for the technological discoveries that made Beatrice’s duet with the nightingale possible. And how one woman’s passion made all of it possible.
I call Beatrice and the Nightingale a Teach the Hope book, because it is a model of how one person can make a difference.
MQ: This is a beautiful description from Patti and I agree. I also hoped that readers would be moved by Beatrice’s commitment to excellence and her persistence in pursuit of it.
Q: What are you working on now?
PN: I have several new ideas for books about environmental heroes that offer hope for our world. I’m juggling several books at once. Fingers crossed for some good news soon.
Q: Anything else we should know?
MQ: Patti mentioned technology. I am astonished by the significance of a powerful new microphone that the BBC had acquired months before the garden broadcast, which had such sensitivity that it strikingly improved sound quality to the point of approximating natural sound. This was what so moved the listeners, and many became emotional upon hearing the broadcast.
The microphone was called the Marconi-Sykes magnetophone and it reportedly marked a new era in radio broadcasting in Britain.
PN: Margaret brings up a good point. Science crisscrosses our lives in so many ways. I love to explore the ways science connects us to our world.
Beatrice’s story is one example of a connection between music, nature and technology. Contemporary cellist Yo-Yo Ma imitates Beatrice with his Our Common Nature series that helps us find our way back to nature through music.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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