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Elgar was invited to performances across Europe and America many times, and was feted wherever he went. Yet despite being knighted in 1904, Elgar really just wanted to be left alone to get on with his writing. How ironic that at the very time that Elgar was feeling depressed and uncertain, from 1900 to 1914, the public considered those years to be his golden, creative era.
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Brinkwells Cottage in Fittleworth
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When World War I broke out in 1914, Elgar was in his late 50s and way too old to jump out of trenches. In any case, I doubt that he would have found the idea of killing other young men even vaguely tolerable. Nonetheless he wanted to serve King and Country in some capacity, and his last musical project of the war years was setting of verses by Rudyard Kipling to music.*
Classical Music Blog noted Elgar’s prestigious academic appointments, his many overseas trips and the increasing fees from his performances, but said that fame came at a cost. His new life as a celebrity often provoked ill-health from his high-strung nature and interrupted his privacy. Despite his large house in Hampstead, Elgar needed to escape from his exhausting personal schedule and the misery of post-war London.
And he needed to be out of the city. In earlier part of his life, Elgar had found the peace and quiet of the countryside, its views, sounds and smells, to be inspiring.
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Sir Edward Elgar, country gent, 1905
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So moving to the country was definitely important for Elgar, if he was to recover his strength. But it is unclear who selected Brinkwells Cottage in Fittleworth as the place to recuperate. Elgar’s friend, novelist and critic Ford Madox Ford, lived next door in the wilds of West Sussex, with the Australian artist Stella Bowen. Before the war Ford had founded The English Review, in which he published all the finest Edwardian authors, including Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, HG Wells and William Butler Yeats. So it may well have been Ford who persuaded Elgar to move, by offering him sparkling, intellectual company. *
I personally think it was Alice Elgar who said to her husband “Eddy darling, are you trying to kill yourself with overwork and depression? Let us go to somewhere quieter and greener, a place where noone will find you”. In either case Elgar fell in love with Brinkwells the first day he saw it and rented the secluded thatched cottage in its rustic woodland setting as a country retreat from 1917 to 1920. The cottage was owned by the landscape artist Rex Vicat Cole.
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The studio
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Elgar did indeed potter around the cottage and gardens, but he also achieved some quality writing. Immediately after the war, in 1918 and 1919, he produced four large-scale works: a violin sonata, a piano quintet, a string quartet and his famous cello concerto. *
Part of the recuperation process was working less and relaxing more. The owners of the Swan Inn in Fittleworth pointed out that Sir Edward Elgar, arguably England’s greatest composer, enjoyed the hospitality of their little rural hotel on many occasions. It was only after his beloved wife’s death in 1920 that Elgar wanted to leave; he did so in August 1921. *
Elgar died in Feb 1934 and was buried next to Alice in St Wulstan's Church in Little Malvern.*
The agent for the cottage reminds visitors that in 1929, Elgar’s music studio was moved up the hill to its present location at Bedham, a small hamlet in an area of totally unspoilt beech woodland. In 1949, long after Elgar’s death, the studio was increased in size.
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Swan Inn in Fittleworth
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During his lifetime, Elgar lived in dozens of residences. And this does not include the houses of close friends where he could stay at as a house guest, sometimes for months on end. People interested in examining Elgar's choices in homes, gardens and decorative arts would love The Elgar Trail. It suggests that Edward Elgar was a restless soul.
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Two recent connections with Brinkwells that the reader might like to consider. Firstly the 1996 film, Elgar's Tenth Muse: the Life of an English Composer starring James Fox, was filmed on location at Fittleworth.
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Secondly a book by Carol Fitzgerald and Brian W Harvey called Elgar, Vicat Cole and the Ghosts of Brinkwells, was published by Phillimore in 2007. The authors show that Elgar rented the cottage from the artist Rex Vicat Cole who had enlisted during WW1. Elgar used the artist's studio as a music room and composed surrounded by his canvases and drawings.
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The authors suggest that by looking closely at the profound influence of a time, place, and key people during a chapter of a composer’s life, one will gain a better understanding of his music from that period. Elgar certainly respected Rex Vicat Cole's work and the two men were united in their deep love and understanding of the woods that surrounded the cottage. The enchantment of Brinkwells was as evident in Cole's paintings as it was in Elgar's music.
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