The abbreviation “YD” for Yvonne Darling, as she was always known in Rachel’s family, speaks volumes.  Yvonne was quite simply ever the best of friends.

Our Newnham group, 1952-55, bonded us for life.  Highlights of those halcyon days were singing in the Pembroke Chapel choir, and revelling in its social gatherings.  At the Master’s Lodge choir party, you can see Yvonne front left, Rachel just behind her, and Bid behind her!  There were great punting picnics too.  The Valence Mary Singers was a small madrigal group (9 of us) in which Yvonne and Rachel also sang, often performing at the Dean’s musical evenings.  

Mixed doubles tennis – with Chris and Theo of course – on the lovely Newnham grass courts was happily memorable too. Yvonne played a steady and graceful game, often with a powerful winning cross-court shot!  It was fortuitous that Chris and Theo also shared lodgings together on Lensfield Road, so we could see from their bicycles parked on the street when it was worth knocking on their door!

At lectures with Yvonne, we don’t think we realised till much later how very privileged we were to be sitting at the feet of world-renowned research scientists.  One was Professor William Rushton, a leading and ground-breaking physiologist, whose lectures sometimes included dramatic practical demonstrations.  During one of these Rachel embarrassingly fainted, and had to be ignominiously dragged out by Yvonne and Verena!

After Cambridge, Yvonne and Rachel had a most sociable year sharing a flat in Kilburn, receiving many visitors, including Chris when not overseas, and Theo too.  We were all four together at Hammersmith to see Cambridge win the boat race by 11 lengths in 1956!  Life was then soon moving us on, all in different directions …

Verena, through her many solitary years at Ty Pren on the end of the Llyn Peninsula, especially valued Yvonne’s and Chris’s ongoing and supportive friendship.  They made countless journeys up to Ty Pren, with materials and toolbox ready to hand, using Chris’s expertise to erect a windmill, a fruit cage, also tightly designed bookshelves and a chair to fit well in her small cabin.  Verena recalls that all their hard work was always accompanied by SO much fun and laughter!  Her first thoughts now at once turn to Yvonne’s incredible kindness, also to her impressive strength of bearing at the sad time of Chris’s death.  Verena is still amazed at how Yvonne somehow managed to make time for simply everything, her work and many other worthwhile projects, as well as always being there for every generation of her own family.

Typically, it was Yvonne who managed to gather the five of us, including Diana over from Canada, for a “Newnham 5” reunion at her home in Emery Down in 2008.  This included a lovely visit to her beach hut.

“These are a few of Rachel’s favourite things”, valued beyond measure in her starquality friendship with Yvonne: –

• • Her unfailingly positive energy, a colossal dynamo of dependable goodness
  • Her wide-ranging interest and curiosity in simply everything
  • Her extravagant generosity
  • Her reading and her handwork, always something of both “on the go”
  • Her emotional warmth and radiant enthusiasm
  • Her realism and practicality – what an amazing GP she must have been!
  • Her gift as a raconteur – she could well have gone on the stage!
  • Her unquenchable humour and unforgettable laughter!

Yvonne faced her last illness with open honesty and grace.  A madrigal we loved to sing at Pembroke was, “Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore.”  The last words of that beautiful harmony express Yvonne’s trust in her final earthly days,  “Oh, come quickly, sweetest Lord, and raise my sprite to thee.”

We Newnhamites, blessed by almost seventy years of her constant friendship, can only be thankful for our good fortune when in 1952 we met the one and only YVONNE!

XX   Rachel and Verena