‘This time, we’ll call the media,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘If that’s all right with you?’
‘I need to talk to my agent,’ Jane said.
Credits Plus
Although links between Edward Elgar and Alfred Watkins have not been mentioned in major biographies of either man, the geographical facts, as discovered by Jane Watkins, speak for themselves. However, confirmation: Jacob O’Callaghan records in Elgar, A Herefordshire Guide how the by-then eminent composer joined the famous Woolhope naturalists’ club, ‘possibly introduced by his neighbour, Alfred Watkins.’ And Laurence Meredith notes in In the News – Herefordshire, that Elgar, who had a photographic darkroom at Plas Gwyn, ‘was also a great friend of Herefordian Alfred Watkins, inventor of the modern photographic light-meter, and he and Elgar frequently met to discuss photography.’ Thanks to Woolhope member Sue Rice for pointing this out. It seems unlikely that Watkins and Elgar would not also explore their mutual fascination with the landscape.
Whiteleafed Oak, of course, exists as described, right down to the severely limited parking. Please treat it with respect. The theory of Whiteleafed Oak and the perpetual choirs was, as explained, first outlined, in comparatively recent times, by John Michell in his inspiring books City of Revelation and New Light on the Ancient Mystery of Glastonbury, developed by John Merron in an article in The Ley Hunter magazine, investigated by members of the Malvern-based British Society of Dowsers and guarded by Val de Heer, of the Aquarius shop, Malvern, who supplied essential background.
Did Elgar know it? None of the biographers mention it, but local people say, Yes … definitely.
The earliest mention of the Three Choirs Festival seems to have been about 1700. It was established for the performance of sacred music – originally Handel and Purcell – by the combined choirs of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford, with an orchestra behind them. And it was always held in the late summer. A gentrified, fairly formal event … or so they thought.
Many thanks also to Mike Ashley, author of Starlight Man, the excellent biography of Algernon Blackwood, for essential advice and perusal of correspondence; Richard Bartholomew on Elgar and Malvern topography, and Chris Bennett at the Elgar Birthplace Museum; Hereford Cathedral Director of Music Geraint Bowen; the Rev. Peter Brooks for crucial eleventh-hour assistance with the Welsh Triads and other problems; the Rev. Keith Crouch; Paul Devereux, author of Earthlights, Earthlights Revelation, Haunted Land and many other essential books on some of the mysteries dealt with here; Ros Ephraim, chorister and proprietor of Burway Books, Church Stretton, for the essential Gerontius; David Furlong, author of Working with Earth Energies; Nicola Goodwin, author of Tales from Herefordshire’s Graves and Burials; Paul Gormley for atmosphere; Robert Hale of the Malvern Gazette, my agent Andrew Hewson, BBC journalist Dave Howard, Phil Howard, Wendy Howell, Ced Jackson, Helen Lamb, Prof. Bernard Knight, Owen Morgan, John Moss, Mervynne and Ceri Payne and Edith Powell at the Arcade Bookshop in Pershore; Ron Phillips for Elgar-analysis and some inspiring discussions; the playwright David Pownall for Elgar psychology; Alun Rees for Gomer-related offences, Canon John Rowlands, author of Church, State and Society: the Attitudes of John Keble, Richard Hurrell Froud and John Henry Newman, 1827–1845; and leading Hay-on-Wye bookseller Tracy Thursfield, who put me on to The Human Chord and other Elgar-linked esoterica.
Principal books on Elgar consulted include Elgar’s Sacred Music by John Allison; The Life of Elgar by Michael Kennedy; Elgar – Child of Dreams by Jerrold Northrop Moore; Gerontius, a novel about Sir Edward Elgar by James Hamilton Paterson – better than any of them at presenting the great man as a complex, mixed-up human being. (No one, however, seems to have quite pinned him down. Michael Kennedy, distinguished music critic and former Northern Editor of the Daily Telegraph, is quick to squash suggestions that Elgar was a liberal, claiming triumphantly that he went fox-hunting, while Jacob O’Callaghan points out that Elgar allied himself with the campaigns of his vegetarian friend George Bernard Shaw and told a journalist that he had developed ‘a horror of the slaughter of wildlife for “sport.”’)
Also The Malvern Hills, An Ancient Landscape by Mark Bowden with contributions by David Field and Helen Winton; The Malverns by Pamela Hurle; The Old Straight Track by Alfred Watkins; Alfred Watkins, A Herefordshire Man by Ron Shoesmith; The Human Chord by Algernon Blackwood; the revised Who Dares Wins by Tony Geraghty; Bravo Two Zero and Immediate Action by Andy McNab; Freefall by Tom Read; The Music of the Spheres by Jamie James; Sacred Sounds by Ted Andrews; Ray Simpson’s Celtic Worship Through the Year; The Inner Teachings of the Golden Dawn by R.G. Torrens; and Not the Least (that’s the title), The Story of Little Malvern by Ronald Bryer.
Wychehill, by the way, is not the same place as either the Wyche or Lower Wyche areas of Malvern. However, an interesting ghost-road situation did arise a few years ago not too far away in the Herefordshire village of Stoke Lacy, scene of several unexplained road accidents. In this case, drivers said they felt as if something had taken over the steering. You couldn’t make it up; sometimes you don’t have to.
Thanks, as ever, to Krys and Geoff Boswell who preserve the website, www.philrickman.co.uk, against all kinds of negative forces, and Terry Smith who organises the T-shirts. In America, Rick and Claire Kleffel, Jani Sue Muhlestein, Marla Williams and Andy Ryan, Trudy Williams and Kevin Bowman, Jerry Handspicker and Rob Wilder.
And, on the publishing side: Anthony Cheetham, Nic Cheetham, Rosie de Courcy, Nick Austin and, of course, the lovely and phenomenal Carol who worked double shifts on this extremely taxing novel for about six weeks before we managed to pull it into shape.
Final note. Noctilucent clouds were visible in the northern sky over the Welsh border counties on at least one night towards the end of June, 2006. The aforementioned Paul Devereux (no relation to Preston – different spelling) explained what they were.
I’d seen them around midnight and wished I’d been at Whiteleafed Oak.