1899 onwards – into the new century and a change of hands yet again

The next ‘port of call’ for our Barnum & Bailey’s travelling circus was Paris, France, and I know that Haldan Jebe was very excited about this – mainly because of the friendships he wanted to renew there, but also because of its exciting new musical life.

I soon found I was being introduced to a yet another way of music-making which was so much freer than the prominent German/Austrian style.  Although Wagner’s operas, especially ‘Parsifal’ and ‘Tristan und Isolde’ were well received in Paris at this time, there was an explosion of creativity among other musicians such as Claude Debussy, Gabriel Faure, Camille Saint-Saens, Vincent d’Indy and Maurice Ravel.  There was something very rich and liberating, especially in the works of these younger composers, which savoured the freedom found in breaking loose from the rigidity of German formalism.

(Claude Debussy)

Although we had plenty to do in our regular circus ‘shows’, it was not long before Halfdan was visiting the notorious Montmartre region of the capital, with me under his arm, renewing old friendships, including his old friend from his Leipzig days, Fritz Delius, recently settled nearby, south of Paris, not far from Fontainebleau.  We played a lot of folk-inspired music, as well as newly composed pieces – and Halfdan relished it here more than anywhere else on our European tour.

(Paris in 1900)

Eventually, after our exhausting grand European tour and a final ‘show’ back in London, we prepared to set sail from Southampton to return to New York. John & Betsy Richardson, with other members of the extended Richardson family including Percy, and Hannah Richardson’s father Frederick de la Bertauche, were all present again, but they had some very sad news.  John and Frederick informed Harvey Watkins and my ‘owner’ Halfdan that Hannah was suffering with TB, and unlikely to live much longer.  And all this under the shadow of the British Empire’s grief over the death of Queen Victoria in January the previous year.

(La Miseria by Cristóbal Rojas (1886). Rojas had tuberculosis when he painted this. Here he depicts the social aspect of the disease, and its relation with Living conditions at the close of the 19th century).

In her fragile state, Hannah (through John and Frederick) was asking to see Edith, Harvey Watkins’s wife; she had an urgent request to make of her.  It turned out that it was Hannah’s dying wish to have me, August Manns’s violin (on loan to Halfdan), ‘returned’ to the Richardson family, knowing that it would mean ‘the world’ to her late husband Arthur, to her father-in-law John and to his uncle Isaac Richardson (who had died in 1875).  Hannah knew that all three had been very fond of each other, even though often separated from one another.  Would Edith work her charm on Halfdan Jebe, and see what could be done?

To my astonishment, it turned out that Edith knew the distinguished August Manns – her family had lived on the same street in Sydenham near the Crystal Palace – and so she went straight to my legitimate owner, by-passing Halfdan and Annabelle (who was still in New York).  August Manns was sympathetic, but unwilling to hand me over, since he had made – that very same week – a commitment to sell me to a leading member of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra in London, Charles Woodhouse.  Manns was in the process of writing to Annabelle Lightfoot stating that I was no longer ‘On loan’, requesting that I should be returned to him as soon as she could arrange a journey back from America to London.  Little did he know that I was already in London!

Edith tried to reassure Hannah, and her father-in-law John, informing them that Charles Woodhouse frequently appeared in London concerts, and often played at the Norwich Musical Festivals too (even though John’s branch of the Richardson family had left north Norfolk years ago).  Edith, with her husband Harvey’s help, took it upon herself to both explain my presence in London to August Manns, and to persuade Halfdan Jebe to hand me over to my rightful owner.  What a performance! I felt more like a chattel than a violin!

I was sorry to lose my connection with Halfdan Jebe, not least because, through him I had been introduced to an extremely wide and varied repertoire of music throughout America and Europe.  I had learned that, at the dawn of this new century, the world of music-making was going through a revolution of its own – with traditional styles mixing with rag-time, jazz, folk music, expressionism, experiments with oriental sounds, and even with atonality and serialism. 

It was as if our musical life was anticipating the extreme devastation and catastrophic horrors of the Great War which were soon to shatter and change everyone and everything forever.