Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club

Tommy Evans
(26.8.1916 - 9.2.2001)

A personal tribute by Godfray Lequesne QC 
(published in the Newsletter of the Heath Street Baptist Church, Hampstead - March 2001)

One day in 1962, Tommy Evans walked up the street outside. Fixed to the front of the church he saw a notice that we needed an organist. His application for the post was accepted swiftly and with rejoicing. Well might it be - there had walked in from the street a fine musician of professional training and long experience, a far better organist than we ever expected to have.

Tommy remained our organist, with hardly a break, for 39 years, until he died this month. He remained our organist and he became much more. During those years both sides of the relationship were transformed. We, as we came to know him, found ourselves loving the very remarkable personality who had come into our midst. Some years ago, when Tommy had spent a long time in hospital, I attended a conference to consider where he should live. The doctor in charge of him was there. 'Well, Tommy', he said, 'What would you like to do ?' Tommy hesitated, then he answered, 'I should like to go on playing the organ in my church.'

Tommy's career had taken him to many places before that day when he walked in here. He was born in the middle of the first world war, in 1916. His father, a regular officer in the army, was killed on active service just before the end of the war. Tommy went to Wellington, a school which is very generous to the sons of fathers in the services. There he won the organ scholarship at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was awarded also a Kitchener scholarship, from the fund raised to commemorate Lord Kitchener. Tommy was conspicuous for his loyalty and gratitude to those, individuals or institutions, to which he felt indebted. So he was indebted to Magdalene, and I remember him travelling all the way to Kirkwall when former Kitchener scholars held a memorial service there for Kitchener, by the seas in which he was drowned.

When he came down from Cambridge, not long before the second world war, Tommy became director of music at Fettes College in Edinburgh. It was obvious from the way he spoke of it that he was very happy at Fettes. Indeed the young Tommy must have been a splendid schoolmaster, with his energetic enthusiasm, his delight in working with others, and his remarkable gift for friendship which all of us here have known.

The war broke upon Tommy's career, as it did for all of his generation. He spent it in the army, finishing in the forces of occupation in Berlin. He returned from the war to Fettes, and went on to take charge of the music at Wellington, his own old school, and at Hurstpierpoint.

After the war, Tommy was assailed by those dreadful fits of depression which dogged him for the rest of his life. It was terrible to see what they did to him, reducing him to helpless fear of everything around him and, while they lasted, making this vigorous man of so many interests and such various occupations incapable of activity of any kind. Each attack passed but must have left him with the apprehension - indeed knowledge - that another would come. Some people would have despaired. Tommy never did. He faced his lot with extraordinary and unfailing courage. He emerged each time, as I believe he did on the very day of his death, the same spirited man he had been before.

You knew that man. You remember that diminutive figure, with his short, hasty footsteps which made him appear always to be in a hurry. Often he was. Absent-minded as hardly even a professor can ever have been, he got himself frequently into predicaments which many would have found embarrassing. Tommy just laughed at them, so we did too.

What good company he was! His conversation flowed merrily on, full of anecdotes, recollections and comments on people high and low, very perceptive and never unkind. He loved giving hospitality and he was a talented host. He was also a highly gifted chef. I have eaten dishes next door here which I am sorry to think I shall not taste again. Perhaps you remember too the parties he gave, when that flat - it is more than a flat, there are two floors of it - was full of guests from top to bottom, and as the evening wore on Tommy might appear with a cigar in his mouth, his shoulders adorned by the fur and the glowing colour of a Bachelor of Music's hood.

Tommy was a great reader, particularly in history and biography but also in the English classics. He liked to study his ancestry, and did considerable research into the history of the Devonshire family of Bultael, with which he was connected through his mother. He went often, and often took his friends, to concerts, to opera and to theatre. We went together to The Trojans at the Barbican just before Christmas. I expect it was his last expedition of that kind and I am glad that it introduced him to a masterpiece he had not known before.

Tommy made his own amusements too. He liked play-reading and he loved making music. In his later years his principal interest was in playing the piano, which he used to practise by the hour in the room down there. In that room too were held sometimes meetings of the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club. Tommy had belonged to the Club since the days before the war, and I daresay it can hardly have had a member who contributed more to its activities or drew from them greater pleasure. He gave his own musical evenings too at home. They often concluded with a resounding performance of the overture to The Mastersingers in an arrangement for four players on two pianos. 'Remember', Tommy would say as we got ready to start, 'if you can hear your part, you're playing too loud!'

That was so characteristic. Tommy never thought much of the importance of his own part. His interest was in others. For many years he came every Sunday evening to help at our Contact Club here. I mentioned his gift of friendship. He made friends everywhere, and by his attention and his kindness he kept them. If anyone, friend or just acquaintance, needed help, Tommy's impulse was to give it: and he gave it generously and joyfully, with never a thought of his own comfort or even his own need. He was generous with his money, generous in his judgement and generous with his affection. He leaves a host of friends, grieving for him, unwilling - or unable - to realise that he has gone, 

'Watching, as the days return, 
For him, who never will'. 

Going, I have no doubt what words he has heard, and has heard with incredulity that they could be meant for him: 

'Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, 
my brethren, you have done it unto me.'