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Caroline Alice Elgar (9 October 1848 - 7 April 1920) was an English author of verse and prose fiction, who married the composer Edward Elgar.

She was born Caroline Alice Roberts, daughter of Major-General Sir Henry Gee Roberts KCB and Julia Maria Raikes. She was born in Bhooj, Gujarat, India. Known as Alice, she was the youngest of four children, having three brothers Albert Henry Roberts (born in 1839), Frederick Boyd Roberts (1841) and Stanley Napier Roberts (1844).

She studied the piano with Hubert-Ferdinand Kufferath in Brussels and harmony with Charles Harford Lloyd. Before she was married her writing was published under the name C. Alice Roberts. She spoke fluent German, and also Italian, French and Spanish.

Her father died in 1860, and in 1886 she was living with her elderly mother at Hazeldine House at Redmarley in Worcestershire (now in Gloucestershire), when she took up piano accompaniment lessons with Edward Elgar.

Alice was eight years older that her husband Edward Elgar when they married on 8 May 1889, at Brompton Oratory. As an engagement present, Elgar had presented her with the short violin and piano piece called Salut d'Amour, and she presented him with one of her poems The Wind at Dawn. The Elgars spent their honeymoon on the Isle of Wight, then returned to London to be closer to the centre of British musical life – first to West Kensington before moving to Upper Norwood to be near the Crystal Palace concerts, before moving back to Fulham. Their only child, Carice Irene, born at 51 Avonmore Road in Fulham on 14 August 1890, was named with a combination of her mother’s names. After the birth of their daughter, they returned to Malvern where her husband could earn a living teaching and conducting local musical ensembles.

When her husband received his knighthood in 1904, she became Lady Elgar.

By January 1920, friends had noticed that she had lost her normal vitality and had not been out of the house since November . She attended a performance of Elgar's Second Symphony on 16 March, and the next day went to a Harley Steet doctor, but stayed at home in Hampstead when Elgar travelled to a concert in Leeds. The last concert she attended was a performance of some of Elgar's chamber music in London. She died of cancer on 7 April. Among the mourners at her funeral, with Edward and Carice, were her brother Napier, Frank Schuster, Albert Sammons and Billy Reed.

Legacy

Elgar gave her initials “C.A.E.” to the first of his Enigma Variations.

Alice's diary, kept during the years of her marriage, between 1889 and 1920, has been a valuable record of information about lives of her and her family.

Works

Poems set to music by Edward Elgar

• "The Wind at Dawn", song (1888)
• "O Happy Eyes", part-song SATB, Op.18 No.1 (1890). Elgar's Op. 18 No.2 "Love" was dedicated to Alice.
• The Snow, part-song SSA acc. 2 violins and piano, Op. 26 No.1 (1894). From her poem Isabel Trevithoe.
• Fly, Singing Bird, part-song SSA acc. 2 violins and piano, Op. 26 No.2 (1894). From her poem Isabel Trevithoe.
• From the Bavarian Highlands, six choral songs SATB and orchestra, Op. 27 (1896). Alice also gave the songs their German subtitles.
  • 1. The Dance (Sonnenbichl); 2. False Love (Wamberg); 3. Lullaby (In Hammersbach); 4. Aspiration (Bei Sankt Anton); 5. On the Alm (Hoch Alp); 6. The Marksmen (Bei Murnau)
• "Love alone will stay", song, (1898). Later in “Sea Pictures”, Op. 37 as In Haven (Capri)
• "A spear, a sword", song (from Caractacus, Op. 35 (1898))
• A Christmas Greeting, carol for 2 sopranos, male chorus ad lib, 2 violins and piano, Op. 52, (1907)
• "The King's Way", song (1910)

Other works

• Marchmont Manor, a novel.
• Translation from German of Ritter Gluck by E. T. A. Hoffmann
• Isabel Trevithoe, a poem by "C. A. R.", published in India (1879)

References

• Kennedy, Michael (1987). Portrait of Elgar (Third ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0192840177. {{cite book}}: Check |first= value (help)
• Moore, Jerrold N. (1984). Edward Elgar: a Creative Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0193154471.
• Reed, William H (1989). Elgar as I knew him. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192822578.
• Young, Percy M. (1978). Alice Elgar: enigma of a Victorian lady. London: Dobson. ISBN 0234774827. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Obituary in The Times, 8 April 1920

Notes

1. Moore, p.115
2. Kennedy, p. 24
3. Kennedy, p. 26
4. Kennedy, p. 28
5. Kennedy, p. 31
6. Reed, pp.66-7
7. Moore, pp.750-1

• English poets
• English novelists