OUR president, Val Wheeler announced that our trip with Brian Draper to the Forest of Dean was fully booked and confirmed the pick up points.

Our next meeting would be our AGM when, after the business has been dealt with, there will be a display of of interesting items from our records over the last 78 years including an account of our very first meeting in 1937.

Our speaker was Jon Goldswain whose talk was entitled “Elgar’s Women”. The first important woman in Elgar’s life was his mother who took an interest in his work and always supported him. She was a Roman Catholic as were her children. Elgar’s first love was Helen Weaver, the daughter of the owner of a shoe shop opposite Elgar’s father’s shop.

She was studious and musical and following their engagement he composed a lively polka for her, but she broke off the engagement because of their different religions.

By 1843 Elgar was teaching piano accompaniment and one of his pupils was Caroline Alice Roberts who was aristocratic and musical. He wrote “Salut d’Amour” for her as an engagement present and she dedicated her life to supporting him. He remained married to her in spite of acquiring many lady friends amongst them Dora Penny, Rose Burley and Lady Lygon. Elgar had one daughter, Carice, who had a lonely childhood as she always had to be quiet when her father was composing. In later life, after her mother died, she became close to her father. Jessica thanked Jon for his enjoyable talk and said how much we had enjoyed listening to Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

The competition, an item related to Elgar, was won by Jessica who also came second with Nova third. Pat Peach won the raffle. We meet on the first Monday of the month at 2pm in Finstall Village Hall and new members are warmly welcomed.