Harp Column Blogs: Carl SwansonArchive

Some of you have occasionally asked about Mildred Dilling, so I thought you might be interested in my experience with her.  This will not be a biography. There have been two articles on her in the American Harp Journal over the years.  The most recent was in the winter 2001 issue( vol. 18, no. 2). The other is in the winter 1981 issue( vol. 8, no. 2), which appeared less than a year before she died. I want to reminisce about her character(boy, was she a character!), what she was like to be around, and to tell some of the stories I heard from other people about her.

Whenever I've told people stories about her, the inevitable reaction is, "You have to write this down."  So here it is.  There is too much to put in one blog, so I'm going to spread it out over the next three or four blogs.  The following information comes partly from my own experiences with her, partly from what she herself told me, and partly from what others who knew her very well told me.

For starters, here's a little summation of her life to consider.  She lived in New York city and worked as a harpist at exactly the same time that two men(Salzedo and Grandjany) completely dominated the harp world in the United States. .  She was married only briefly, and so had to support herself her whole adult life. She never held an orchestra position nor a school teaching position of any kind  And yet she was much more famous than either Salzedo or Grandjany, and made a lot more money.  When she died in 1982,her stock portfolio alone was worth 2 million dollars!  She lived in a gargantuan apartment on East 51st St. (her apartment was in the same building as Shirley Mclaine's).  She owned some 50 harps, and had influenced generations of harpists.

I first met Miss Dilling (as everybody called her) in Paris once or twice while I was living there.  The only real vacation she ever took was an annual trip to Paris each fall where she would set herself up in a hotel on the rue de Rivoli across from the Louvre for a week or two and go out to see Marx Brother's movies every day at a revival cinema, then go to concerts in the evening.  I was introduced to her by a former student of hers who was also living in Paris and was a good friend of mine.  Mildred smiled politely when I was introduced to her and then immediately forget that I was even there.

Several years later, at the 1975 Conference in Minneapolis, I ran into her again and introduced myself, mentioning the name of the former student who had introduced us several years earlier.  She again put on her public greeting smile, and again immediately wiped my existence from her memory.

Then, at a conference perhaps two years later, I was sitting in the audience one night next to an older man who I didn't know.  We talked a little before the concert started and he mentioned that he was a good friend of Mildred's.  I mentioned to him at some point that I repaired harps.  At intermission I had to go up on  stage because I was playing in the second half in some huge 20 harp ensemble piece.  As I waited for the second half to start I looked up to see that Mildred had taken the seat that I had just vacated and she and the man were talking.  Suddenly, he looked at me and gestured frantically to get my attention.  "She wants to talk to you," he mouthed.  The second the concert was over, she rushed over to me like a pit bull attacking a rabbit.  "What's your name," she  said in the tone of a drill sergeant. "Carl Swanson," I said.  "I understand you repair harps" she said. "I have a harp that needs a new soundboard.  How much do you charge for a new soundboard?"  That was the start of my relationship with Mildred, and in the years that I knew her, the most frequent phrase I would hear from her was "how much...?"

I repaired that harp for her and delivered it to her at her apartment when I was done.  She looked it over carefully, then picked up the phone and dialed a number.  "He just delivered the harp and it's beautiful," she said to whoever was on the other end.  "His finish work is like velvet."  When she got off the phone, she explained that she had a friend who needed some work too, and she was waiting to see how this one came out.  When I left Mildred's apartment, I went straight to Marian's apartment to pick up her harp.  Marian and I became very good friends and I repaired several instruments for her, all because of Mildred.

In those days(the late '70's) used harps were regularly advertised in the New York Times, and Mildred was always on the lookout for used harps.  She must have gotten out to the news stand at 5 o'clock every morning, because several times she called me around 7 A.M.  "I'm at a woman's house on Long Island," she would say,"and she has a style 14(or whatever) for sale.  How much would a new baseboard cost?" I would tell her, and then invariably hear "All that money for that little piece of wood?"  Every time I did a repair job for Mildred, it would start with endless complaining over the price.  Once we had settled on the cost(I never gave in to her verbal assaults) then it was a done deal and she paid what we had agreed on.  The next time she called  with another repair job, she'd start in all over again, and we'd have to go through the same rigmarole every single time.

In my dealings with Mildred, I quickly figured out that she never made any decision that did not involve making(or saving) money.  Money was the overriding force that drove her life.  As with other people I have known who are obsessed with money, it caused her at times to do things that were somewhat less than ethical, and to frequently step on other people's toes.

She was a shrewd businesswoman and it manifested itself in many ways.  The apartment that she had was in a building that had been built at the beginning of the depression.  Mildred initially rented a studio apartment in it.  As the depression wore on, rents on the larger apartments(vacant since the building had been completed) came tumbling down, and at some point Mildred figured out that she could rent one of the largest apartments in the building, rent out a couple of bedrooms to college girls, and live cheaper there than in her studio apartment.  The larger apartment, the one she lived in for the rest of her life, was on the 9th floor, had 4 bedrooms, a huge living room with a small stage at one end, and windows on all  sides.  You could look out those windows to the East River on one side, up 1st avenue from another, crosstown from another, and down first avenue on the south side.

But there was a problem initially.  One of the bedrooms was right over 1st Avenue, and, because of the canyon effect, was very noisy.  Girls would rent it and then move out after a few months because of the noise.  Mildred (always able to find a solution, particularly where money was involved) solved that problem by renting the room to a deaf girl! For the rest of her life, she always reserved that bedroom for girls with severe hearing loss.  Mildred told me once that there were times when she had all four bedrooms rented and she slept on a couch in the living room.  She was running a boarding house(at a profit) in one of the most elegant buildings in New York!

Next time:  Mildred on tour