Mary "Mollie" Perris

Last year, about this time, I expressed regret that not much was widely known about some women who were important in the lives of composers.  My curiosity about Isobel Holst, widow of Gustav, was coincidentally met shortly afterwards by Dr Philippa Tudor, but we still await a biography of Carice Elgar. Last Thursday, thanks to Radio 3's Breakfast (here, 38 minutes in), another figure steps out of the shadows, this time the wife of a singer. Mollie Brown, who died a few weeks ago at the age of 100, was the widow of tenor Wilfred Brown, a unique voice in British music. She supported him by taking up the post of matron at Bedales School when Wilfred gave up a teaching post there to devote himself to singing full-time. In the fifty years after his death, she worked to keep his memory alive. 

She was born Mollie AG Perris in Lewisham in July 1923. I have found nothing more on the Web until 1947, when there is an intriguing record of a Mollie Perris in the trace & paint department of the short-lived Gaumont British Animation studios at Moor Hall, Cookham. Electoral registers between 1947 and 1949 show a "Mary A Perris" at the location. This could be the same person but there was a surprising number of Perrises around at the time and Mollie was not an uncommon nickname. One also wonders how the teacher in Hampshire met the artist in Berkshire, who continued to appear on the electoral register there even after the marriage to Wilfred Brown in 1949 in Hendon. 

It was clearly a happy marriage which produced two sons and two daughters or six children according to which personal reminiscence one reads. From actress Patience Tomlinson's recollection on Breakfast, it transpires that Mollie Brown retired to Suffolk and would welcome visitors with home-baked bread and memories of Wilfred.