Edward Elgar and His World

by Adams, Byron

  As mentioned earlier, Elgar told Adela Schuster that he had portrayed her brother in the coda of the Second Symphony, the pervading theme of which is Moore’s “descending figure.” Was Schuster one of the men, along with Jaeger, whose word or look “wrought flame in another’s man’s heart”? And did Schuster, whose favorite key of E-flat is common to all this music, have an inkling of Elgar’s tribute in the symphony’s coda and, thus, in The Music Makers? As Diana McVeagh once exclaimed, “If [Elgar] genuinely disliked people wondering about his private life, why had he not learned his lesson from ‘enigma’? To cap it all, he composed The Music Makers, with its allusions and references, many of which could not be fully understood by anyone who know nothing of his past life.”129

  But not all of Elgar’s self-revelations were made consciously. In his “symphonic study” Falstaff, the theme that, according to the composer’s own description, portrays Prince Hal in “his most courtly and genial mood” is cast in E-flat major. Unlike the “Nimrod” variation, the Second Symphony, or The Music Makers, a fictional character is portrayed in Pauer’s “eminently” masculine key in Falstaff. Although a full analysis of Falstaff is beyond the scope of this essay, it can be pointed out that this first Prince Hal theme undergoes a development both psychological and musical, since its apotheosis (rehearsal number 127) represents the royal progress of Prince Hal, just crowned as Henry V, and occurs just before his ruthless repudiation of Falstaff: “How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!” (2 Henry IV, 5.5.41, 46).130

  Example 6. Prince Hal as “courtly and genial,” Falstaff, op. 68, starting at rehearsal number 5.

  Whereas some Shakespearean scholars have discerned a homoerotic bond between Prince Hal and Falstaff—one that the new king must break decisively to assume full authority—others, such as Stephen Greenblatt, have viewed this relationship as one between a failed surrogate father and a son who must repudiate his “false father” to reach maturity. (Given the seemingly limitless levels of meaning in Shakespeare, both may be equally valid.) Greenblatt writes that Shakespeare may have had his own father, John, in mind when he created Falstaff, whose “fantasies about the limitless future” invariably “come to nothing, withering away in an adult son’s contempt.”131 Given Elgar’s uncanny ability to project his imagination into the souls of others, whether actual or fictional, is it possible that while he re-created Shakespeare’s Falstaff in his own image, he also secretly identified with Prince Hal, who, despite unpromising beginnings, achieves majesty?132 Did not Elgar reject his own father, who, according to his scornful son, “never did a stroke of work in his life”? Schooled by his mother to discipline—or repress—his emotions through voracious reading and incessant self-learning, Elgar assumed the mantle of a man of “stern reality” who in 1885 displaced his father as organist at St. George’s, and then progressed royally to fame, an honorary doctorate at Cambridge, knighthood, the Order of Merit, and other coveted honors.133

  Any composer’s creative process is shrouded in an impenetrable mystery, and the last thing that can be expected of any artist is a foolish consistency. It is clear that Elgar’s early reading, encouraged by his mother, made him into a lifelong autodidact; her literary tastes informed his own, and those tastes influenced his choice of texts. More mysterious are the ways in which Elgar’s retentive memory enabled him both to reflect and to transform the humdrum realities of his youth into imperishable works of art, and thereby transcend the unpromising circumstances of his birth. Elgar certainly took full advantage of the creative freedom evinced by Pauer’s “great composers” and never espoused a systematic approach to any part of the “mystery” of music. However much the autodidact from Worcester may have retained and transformed Pauer’s theories in the vast storehouse of his memory, certain of that author’s observations, when read in light of Elgar’s achievement, assume the force of prophecy: “He who aims at the greatest, the highest, must summon all his strength… . Art has to exhibit to humanity the ideal picture of what perfect human beauty can be.”134

  NOTES

  The author wishes to thank Charles Edward McGuire, John Lowerson, Lauren Cowdery, Eric N. Peterson, Paul De Angelis, Howard Meltzer, Conrad Susa, and Chris Bennett for their help in the completion of this essay, which is dedicated to Diana McVeagh.

  1. Rudolf de Cordova, “Illustrated Interviews: LXXXI—Dr. Edward Elgar,” The Strand Magazine 25 (May 1904): 539. Reprinted under the title “Elgar at ‘Craeg Lea,’” in Christopher Redwood, ed., An Elgar Companion (Ashbourne: Sequoia Publishing, 1982), 117–18.

  2. Jerrold Northrop Moore’s history of Elgar’s early educational experiences is particularly detailed; see Jerrold Northrop Moore, Edward Elgar: A Creative Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), chaps. 2–4, 14–63.

  3. Ibid., 1.

  4. Siegfried Sassoon, Diaries 1920–1922, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1981), 223.

  5. Conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Alan Webb, 13 January 1931, recorded by Alan Webb immediately afterward and quoted in Jerrold Northrop Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 4.

  6. Michael De-la-Noy, Elgar: The Man (London: Allan Lane, 1983), 18.

  7. Dorothy E. Williams, The Lygons of Madresfield Court (Logaston: Logaston Press, 2001), 96. This passage sheds an interesting light on Elgar’s relationship with the Lygon family, and especially Lady Mary Lygon, who is portrayed in the penultimate movement of the Enigma Variations: “Edward Elgar was only on the periphery of Lady Mary’s circle. She was aware that as a boy he had sometimes accompanied his father on his piano-tuning visits, during which the young lad was dispatched usually to play with the family of the Head Gardener.” Although Lady Mary Lygon encouraged the composer by attending his premieres whenever possible and invited him to participate in local musical events she sponsored, she retained a lively sense of the class differences between Elgar, the Roman Catholic son of a piano tuner, and her own family, ancient in lineage and predominantly—but not exclusively—High Church in religion. Oddly, Michael De-la-Noy describes William Elgar in old age as having the face of a “head gardener”; De-la-Noy, Elgar: The Man, 19. Interestingly, Frank Schuster told Sassoon that Elgar’s father was “always asked to lunch, of course,” but did not specify upon which table—servant’s or master’s—this meal was spread. See Sassoon, Diaries 1920–1922, 223.

  8. Although many biographers spell her name with an e as “Anne,” she signed herself “Ann.” See Michael Trott, “Elgar’s Remarkable Mother,” Elgar Society Journal 13, no. 4 (March 2004): 25.

  9. Ibid., 25. Trott describes Ann Elgar as “a voracious reader” who “acquired a love of poetry and the countryside.” Michael De-la-Noy, on the other hand, describes her as “only just literate in English.” The truth, as usual, may reside between these two extremes. See De-la-Noy, Elgar: The Man, 28.

  10. Although some writers have preferred euphemisms such as “commercial inn,” William Elgar himself referred to The Shades as a “tavern” in an 1845 letter sent to his family in Dover, quoted in De-la-Noy, Elgar: The Man, 19.

  11. For the uncertainty arising about the number of children born to William and Ann Elgar, see Robert Anderson, Elgar (New York: Schirmer Books, 1993), 3–4. Five of the Elgars’ children reached adulthood.

  12. De-la-Noy, Elgar: The Man, 20, 22.

  13. Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 17.

  14. Ibid., 6, 17–18. William Elgar even wrote to his family castigating “the absurd superstition and play-house mummery of the Papist” (15), but seems to have had little regard for the Church of England or the Wesleyans.

  15. Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 1–11.

  16. Ibid., 2, 20, 73, 76–77.

  17. The confusion over the spelling of Ann Elgar’s Christian name was passed down to the next generation through her youngest child, who, though baptized Ellen Agnes was consistently called “Helen Agnes” by her siblings. This confusion over nomen
clature extended to her nickname, which is spelled variously as “Dot” or “Dott.” See Richard Smith, “Elgar, Dot and the Stroud Connection—Part One,” Elgar Society Journal 14, no. 5 (July 2006): 14–20. All ambiguities in this regard were resolved once and for all in 1903, when Dot (or Dott, or Ellen, or Helen) took vows in the Dominican Order and assumed the name Sister Mary Reginald. Her vocation was marked by ill health but steady promotion until 1919, when she was elected Mother General of the five linked convents of St. Rose of Lima. See Richard Smith, “Elgar, Dot and the Stroud Connection—Part Two,” Elgar Society Journal 14, no. 6 (November 2006).

  18. Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 148.

  19. Charles Edward McGuire’s research concerning the fierce nature of Miss Walsh’s beliefs, and the uncompromising way these beliefs were put into practice, further suggest that her Dame school was run in an orderly—and probably highly disciplined—fashion. See McGuire’s essay in this volume.

  20. Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 151. The order that reigned at Miss Walsh’s establishment was unusual, as many Catholic Dame schools of the time were slovenly and ineffective. In general, Catholic education for working-class children before 1870 was a shambles. As Rose reports, “Working-class Catholics stand out as more critical of their schooling than Anglicans or Dissenters… . They gave their schools and teachers a much lower positive rating, were much more likely to complain about corporeal punishment, reported lower parental interest in education, were less likely to see any benefit in their education, were far more prone to regret the quality of their schooling, and were much happier to leave school” (184).

  21. Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 35–36. For more information on St. Anne’s, see Charles Edward McGuire’s essay in this volume.

  22. Jerrold Northrop Moore, ed., Edward Elgar: Letters of a Lifetime (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 248.

  23. For more information concerning Elgar’s attendance at St. Anne’s, see Charles Edward McGuire’s essay in this volume, note 38.

  24. Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 40–41.

  25. Though certainly not one of the great public schools like Eton or Charterhouse, Littleton House can be characterized as a “public” school due to its “private” exclusivity: in other words, fees were assessed.

  26. Anderson, Elgar, 5.

  27. Elgar’s boyhood friend Hubert Leicester recalled: “E.’s mother always worried as to where the money was coming from; his father taking life very easily, enjoying his rides into the country for piano-tuning, and the proceeds of each visit more than likely swallowed up by the unnecessary expense incurred in getting there.” Quoted in Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 17. William Elgar’s indifference, even contempt, for his son’s ambitions can be inferred from Hubert Leicester’s testimony that Elgar’s “mother was always ready to help and encourage him, but his father and uncle were merely amused and scoffed at these childish efforts [at composition]—an attitude in which they persisted until E[lgar] really had made his way in the world… . They failed to see, not only that they had an exceptionally gifted boy in the family, but even that he was moderately clever at music.” Quoted in Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 28. After quoting Leicester’s memory, Moore makes the apt if chilling observation, “Perhaps they did not want to see it.”

  28. Anderson, Elgar, 2.

  29. Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 57.

  30. Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 64.

  31. For Longfellow’s popularity among working-class British readers, see Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 54, 85, 371, 374, 375.

  32. Newton Arvin, Longfellow: His Life and Work (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1962), 148.

  33. Ibid., 318.

  34. Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 354.

  35. Ann Elgar kept a scrapbook filled with quotations from various authors, with Longfellow the most often represented; see Anderson, Elgar, 2.

  36. Ann’s couplet is quoted in De-la-Noy, Elgar: The Man, 26. “The Children’s Hour” in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894), 225–26.

  37. Quoted in Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 5.

  38. See Byron Adams, “Elgar’s Later Oratorios: Roman Catholicism, Decadence and the Wagnerian Dialectic of Shame and Grace,” in The Cambridge Companion to Elgar, ed. Daniel M. Grimley and Julian Rushton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 97. Elgar was hardly the only composer of the late nineteenth century to be inspired by Longfellow: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Antonin Dvoák both found inspiration in Hiawatha. For a searching investigation of Dvoák’s interest in Hiawatha, see Michael Beckermann, New Worlds of Dvoák: Searching in America for the Composer’s Inner Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 25–66.

  39. Moore, Letters of a Lifetime, 81.

  40. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion: A Romance (Philadelphia: David McKay Publisher, 1893), 8. The gender of this dead friend, who is recalled several times in the course of Hyperion, is never identified. In an uncharacteristic lapse, Moore writes that the protagonist of Longfellow’s book “travels through Germany and Switzerland to forget an unhappy love affair,” but the only unhappy love affair alluded to in Hyperion occurs at the climax, some two-thirds of the way through the narrative (book 3, chap. 6). See Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 64.

  41. Arvin, Longfellow, 118.

  42. Longfellow, Hyperion, 163, 235.

  43. Arvin, Longfellow, 117. For Elgar’s uncanny ability to project himself into the personalities of others, including literary characters, see Byron Adams, “The ‘Dark Saying’ of the Enigma: Homoeroticism and the Elgarian Paradox,” in Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity, ed. Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitsell (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 230–31, 235, 237.

  44. Letter of George Bernard Shaw to Virginia Woolf, 10 May 1940; quoted in Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 738. This incident occurred at a luncheon in March 1919.

  45. Newton, Longfellow, 55.

  46. Shortly after this incident, Mary Ashburton jilts the hero. Longfellow, Hyperion, 249–52.

  47. Aidan J. Thomson, “Re-reading Elgar: Hermeneutics, Criticism and Reception in England and Germany, 1900–1914,” Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 2002, 114f.

  48. Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 69; the quotation from Longfellow is in book 1, chap. 3. See Longfellow, Hyperion, 25.

  49. Late in life Elgar sent a Christmas card that featured a quotation from Leaves of Grass; see Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 782–83.

  50. Robert J. Buckley, “Elgar at ‘Forli’” in Redwood, An Elgar Companion, 113.

  51. Brian Trowell, “Elgar’s Use of Literature,” in Edward Elgar: Music and Literature, ed. Raymond Monk, (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993), 193.

  52. Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 4–5, 38–39, 126, 187.

  53. De Cordova, “Elgar at ‘Craeg Lea,’” 118–19. Robert Anderson’s convincing version of the mysterious appearance of the tattered old books is that “there was a bookseller who stored his stock in an Elgar loft.” Anderson, Elgar, 9.

  54. F. G. Edwards, “Edward Elgar,” The Musical Times (October 1900), reprinted in Redwood, An Elgar Companion, 38.

  55. Trowell, “Elgar’s Use of Literature,” 192.

  56. Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 129–30, 128.

  57. Ibid., 95, 130, 374. Of particular interest in light of Ann Elgar’s poetical ambitions was the beneficent effect that Pope’s translations of Homer had upon working-class women poets of the eighteenth century, an influence that may well have persisted into the nineteenth century (18).

  58. Sassoon, Diaries 1920–1922, 223.

  59. Quoted in Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 68–69.

  60. Elgar told Buckley that his mother “read translations of the Latin classics, of the Greek tragedians a
nd talked in the home of what she read.” Robert J. Buckley, Sir Edward Elgar (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1904), 5–6. Brian Trowell has sensibly observed: “The fact that Anne [sic] Elgar read classical authors in translation evidently became garbled by double hearsay when Sassoon reported Schuster in 1922 as saying that ‘she used to sit up half the night reading Greek and Latin with him [Elgar] when a boy.’” Trowell, Elgar’s Use of Literature, 300, n. 69.

  61. See, for example, Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 110, 374–75. For Ann Elgar’s practice of reading poetry to her children, see Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 9.

  62. Concerning “W.N.,” Anderson, Elgar, 315. The diary that Moore alludes to parenthetically is presumably that of Alice Elgar. Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 702.

  63. There is so much literature on this aspect of Elgar’s character that one particularly fine essay must suffice as an introduction: see Diana McVeagh, “A Man’s Attitude to Life,” in Monk, Edward Elgar: Music and Literature.