Background
Betty Humby was the daughter of Daniel Morgan Humby, a dentist and member of the Royal College of Surgeons.
Betty Humby was the daughter of Daniel Morgan Humby, a dentist and member of the Royal College of Surgeons.
She was 29 years his junior. When she was 14, she taught 30 pupils of her own, and two years later she became a piano professor, under Myra Hess at Tobias Matthay"s London music school. They had a son, Sir Jeremy Cashel Thomas, born 1 June 1931.
With the outbreak of World World War II, Thomas organised concerts in British cathedrals.
Having first met in the 1930s in England, Humby and Sir Thomas Beecham were reintroduced in the United States by Andrew Schulhof, who managed each of them. He later arranged for them to perform the Delius piano concerto together in June 1941 at a studio concert for Columbia Broadcasting System. Humby married Beecham on 19 January 1943, one month after a divorce was granted from Beecham"s wife Utica Celestia Welles.
They lived in New York City at 31 East 79th Street. This recording of October 1946 replaced an earlier version, made with the London Philharmonic Orchestra on October 3, 1945, which was not released.
According to the Lucas biography, her performance of the Delius concerto at Lafayette, Indiana, on December 1, 1950, marked the end of Lady Betty"s playing career.
She died of a heart attack in Argentina in 1958. She was 49.