Edward Elgar and His World (47 page)

Elgar appears to have first met Mabel Veronica Batten (1856–1916) and her lover, novelist Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943), in 1911.
⁶⁴
Batten and Hall were Catholic converts who had a house in the Malverns—both useful qualities for cultivating a friendship with Elgar. Elgar may have met Hall several years earlier as a guest at the house of her stepfather, singing teacher Alberto Visetti.
⁶⁵
Batten had been a renowned society singer who had studied harmony and composition in Dresden and Bruges. In 1902 she was described in an unidentified newspaper as “a pretty, vivacious lady, with a lovely voice and a distinct talent for music.”
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Both Edward and Alice Elgar enjoyed Batten's company. In 1913, for example, Batten's diary recorded lunching with Alice Elgar and the composer Liza Lehmann at the Berkeley Hotel.
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Elgar knew several of the successful women composers who were his contemporaries, many of whom had careers that centered around the private musical world.
⁶⁸
Liza Lehmann (1862–1918), having achieved considerable fame as a professional concert-hall singer, turned to composition after her marriage in 1894. Her first major work was the song cycle for four voices and piano,
In a Persian Garden
(1896), a setting of extracts from
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
in Edward Fitzgerald's popular translation. This work, however, might never have come to public attention were it not for the private musical world. Lehmann had been unable to get the work heard or published, but her friend, the society hostess Angelina Goetz, arranged a performance of it at one of her musical soirees and persuaded the firm of Metzler to publish it. One of the guests at Goetz's soiree was Hermann Klein, music critic for the
Sunday Times
, who was so impressed that he took the unusual step of reviewing a work that had been presented at a private concert. With such support, musicians soon took an interest in the cycle, which was to become extraordinarily popular throughout Britain and the United States.
⁶⁹
Elgar, however, was obviously not overly impressed with Lehmann's work, writing to Alice Stuart-Wortley in 1923, apropos of a stage version of Omar Khayyám at the Court Theatre: “I am
not
drawn to Liza Lehmann's music.”
⁷⁰

Elgar also knew Maude Valérie White (1855–1937). They had several friends and acquaintances in common, such as Frank Schuster, Lady Maud Warrender, and, especially, White's Broadway neighbor and close friend, the American actor Mary Anderson, later de Navarro. In a letter to Alice Stuart-Wortley of 1927, Elgar records Anderson coming to tea “with messages from Maude White.”
⁷¹
Both White and de Navarro were Catholics. Elgar's opinion of White's songs does not appear to have been recorded but they were so ubiquitous he must have known them, and the question of her influence over his own songwriting, an intriguing topic, is unfortunately beyond the scope of this essay.

It also seems probable that Elgar met Adela Maddison (1863–1929)—they too had several friends and acquaintances in common, including Schuster and Fauré. But no record of a meeting has survived.
⁷²
Another composer whose contact with Elgar appears to remain unrecorded is Ethel Smyth (1858–1944). He certainly heard her conduct her own music on at least one occasion, at the first meeting of the Musical League, of which he was president, in Liverpool in 1909.
⁷³
Smyth has left her opinion of Elgar's music, recording in her memoirs John Singer Sargent's request to her sister: “Do persuade your sister to
pretend
she likes Elgar's music.”
⁷⁴

Whereas Lehmann, Maddison, and White all found a supportive space in the private musical world of turn-of-the-century England, Smyth was rather more ambivalent, perhaps resisting the expectation that, as a woman, this was the sphere in which she was expected to succeed and flourish. With typical stubbornness Smyth refused to make use of or enjoy this kind of musical support. Smyth's view of amateur musicians was harsh, coming from someone who herself did not need to make a living through her music. Her disparaging remarks about Lady Radnor's String Band, written in retrospect, contrast sharply with the critical acclaim they attracted from contemporary commentators.
⁷⁵
Maybe, as a woman and a composer, Smyth feared her art might be compromised by too great an association with this private society world, one that was so clearly regarded as a feminized space, chiefly inhabited by women and by foreigners, often German-Jewish musicians or patrons.
⁷⁶

Perhaps the most important and most unacknowledged figure in this private world of music was not only German and Jewish but further set apart by his homosexuality. Leo Francis Schuster (1852–1927), known as Frank (or Frankie), was undoubtedly prominent in British musical society and in Elgar's life and career. Yet, with the exception of Byron Adams, writers on Elgar have curiously downplayed the importance of Schuster's role both in Elgar's life and in the musical world of which the composer became a part. The most often quoted pen portrait of Schuster, used by both Jerrold Northrop Moore and Michael Kennedy, is the unpleasant one found in the diary of the poet Siegfried Sassoon:

Unable to create anything himself, he loved and longed to assist in the creation of music… . He was something more than a
patron
of music, because he loved music as much as it is humanly possible to do. In the presence of great musicians he was humble, bowing before them in his Semitic way, and flattering them over effusively… . He lacked essential good-breeding and was always the Frankfurt Jew among aristocrats.
⁷⁷

Sassoon, himself a Roman Catholic convert of Jewish origin (on his father's side) and a man deeply troubled by his own homosexuality, had a somewhat uncomfortable friendship with Schuster, with whom he traveled in Europe and at whose various houses he was a frequent guest. When Schuster died he left Sassoon his collection of poetry books. Sassoon commented in his diary: “A meagre little collection: I wish he had left me a better feeling about his character. What I learnt from him was mostly negative. How not to live on £8,000 a year.”
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One of the aspects of Schuster's character that Sassoon may have found difficult to bear was Schuster's gentle teasing about the poet's sexual relationships with men.
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But Sassoon's uncharitable description of Schuster has persisted among Elgar scholars. Percy Young, for example, dismissed Schuster as “one of Edward's wealthy friends, a homosexual dilettante whom Alice did not like,” and few commentators go beyond pointing out that Schuster was homosexual, of Jewish and German background, and a musical patron who gave Elgar financial help. Re-creating Schuster's life or character is difficult.
⁸⁰
Few letters either to or from him (other than those written by and to Elgar) have survived and few other documents or records trace his activities.
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But it is known that Schuster's family settled in England in the mid-nineteenth century, presumably before or not long after he was born, and that he was educated at Eton. He inherited considerable wealth and decided not to work in the family business but to live off that wealth and use it to promote the arts, with music being his particular passion. Young writes that he had a “deformed foot” as the result of a childhood accident.
⁸²

The remembrances of other friends provide a more generous picture than that given by Sassoon. Maude Valérie White, in her 1914 memoirs, wrote:

Mr. Frank Schuster is so very well known as one of the most ardent music lovers in London, that it is hardly necessary to explain who he is. But he is the kindest and most constant of friends, and a most congenial comrade into the bargain, for his happy sense of humour is absolutely unique, and surrounds him as the sea surrounds Sicily! … His lovely little house in Great Queen Street, Westminster, has been for years and years one of the chief centres of musical London, and few indeed are the artists of distinction, both English and foreign, who have not at some time or other enjoyed the hospitality of this kindest of hosts.
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In 1883 Schuster had found White somewhere to stay when she went to study in Vienna, and in 1889 invited her to stay at Casa Wolkoff in Venice.
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Due to the last minute cancellation of Lady Gladys de Grey, White was the only woman in the house party, somewhat to Schuster's, although not White's, consternation.
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He also, of course, provided a venue for performance of her songs. A letter survives from baritone Charles Santley to Schuster, written in 1887, in which Santley agrees, presumably at one of Schuster's parties, to sing White's “The Devout Lover.”
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Other letters, as well as Elgar's travel diary, attest that Schuster was himself a proficient pianist. In 1886 Jacques Blumenthal reminded Schuster that he had accompanied the “Preislied” from Wagner's
Meistersinger
publicly in St. James's Hall “better than any professional.”
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Elgar's travel diary records an evening in Teraphia while on a cruise in the Mediterranean in the autumn of 1905 when “Lady M. [Maud Warrender] sang many songs & Frank accompanied beautifully.”
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He was certainly enough of a musician to be a valued recipient (as both reader and listener) of Elgar's latest scores and music.

Schuster's obituary in the
Times
was provided by two correspondents. The first described Schuster's “wonderful music parties” and added that he “was an admirable pianist himself… . He was an artist, too, and had a remarkable fair for distinguishing and encouraging the best in all that work.” The second talked of

that enthusiasm which was most astonishing as it was one of the most delightful of his characteristics. It was communicative; his joys he gave to others, his sorrows he kept to himself… . In the depths of that singular heart, at once so simple, so odd, and so willing to pass for what it was not, there were hidden three jewels—humility, patience, and love.
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Besides his renowned musical parties, which frequently showcased Elgar's music, Schuster was involved in more public music-related activities and institutions. He was closely involved with the Royal Academy of Music for many years and appears to have been a member of the committee of management.
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In 1882 he was present at a meeting convened by the Lord Mayor of London to discuss establishing a Royal College of Music and in 1891 he was involved in the Dramatic and Musical Benevolent Fund.
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In 1899 he served on the council of the Sunday Concert Society, together with Hubert Parry, and later that same year, with the Hon. Alexander Yorke and Paolo Tosti, organized a concert under the patronage of the Queen and the Duke of Wales at Grosvenor House in aid of the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital in Margate.
⁹²

In 1911 Schuster was named, together with Leonard Borwick, Fanny Davies, Percy Grainger, Irene Scharrer, Emil Sauer, Alice Stuart-Wortley, three members of the Verne family and others, as a supporter of a scheme to endow a “Chopin Bed” for professional pianists in a sanatorium or convalescent home.
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Shortly before his death he demonstrated his awareness of the possibilities of new technology by serving on the advisory body for a scheme to popularize Beethoven's music “by means of the gramophone.”
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But it was through private music making that Schuster made the most significant impact on the British musical world of his day. He was only too aware of the limitations of British public musical events, writing to Adrian Boult in 1906:

I received yesterday another precious installment from E
^d
Elgar of first proofs of his “Kingdom” this is a work of extraordinary subtlety and delicacy & of more than usual ‘intimacy' of atmosphere. Heaven help it when produced in the respectable
stodgy
manner of a Birmingham Festival!—but of course I can't resist going for all that.
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Schuster clearly adored Elgar's music and devoted much of his considerable energy to promoting it and to supporting the composer through his bouts of depression. His first party for Elgar and his music appears to have been a reception after the performance of the “Meditation” from
The Light of Life
conducted by Henry Wood at Queen's Hall on May 9, 1899.
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This was before the success of the
Enigma
Variations at its first performance on June 19 that year. By autumn, Elgar was sitting for a life-sized bronze bust by Percival Hedley for Schuster's music room.
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Elgar's letters to Schuster show his deep gratitude to the man who promoted his work to influential musical figures, provided financial backing, and opened both his London home and his country retreat, The Hut, near Maidenhead, as venues for exciting musical evenings. Schuster introduced Elgar to a wide variety of interesting cultural and society figures, from art critic Claude Phillips and painter John Singer Sargent to the other composer whose music he was so instrumental in promoting in England—Gabriel Fauré.
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Music patron Winaretta Singer, the Princesse de Polignac, recalled an early Fauré appearance in London:

He first came to London with me in 1896 to give a concert in Frank Schuster's new music room in Old Queen Street, which was to be inaugurated by an orchestral and vocal concert entirely devoted to Fauré's music. It was an unforgettable evening, for the music had been well rehearsed and the greatest artists had gathered together to sing or play.
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At The Hut, Schuster also provided an important composing refuge for Elgar, and significant parts of the First Symphony, Violin Concerto, and
Falstaff
were composed there. As early in their relationship as 1901, Schuster had written to Elgar from Dresden: