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His next move was to set himself up as a violin teacher, first going to his pupils’ houses and eventually taking a room at Great Malvern, then a fashionable Spa town. Among his pupils was a Miss Caroline Alice Roberts, daughter of a retired Major-General, who travelled from Redmarley nine miles away for her lessons. She was thirty-eight, lived with her widowed mother and was passionately interested in the arts, having had two novels published. Despite family objections and the disparity in their ages Elgar and his pupil grew fond of one another and after her mother died Alice, as she was known ignored the protestations of her aunts and announced their engagement. She also joined Edward in the Catholic Church.

Edward and Alice were married at Brompton Oratory London in 1889, and after living in rooms, they moved into a house in West Kensington. Such was Alice’s faith in her husband’s ability that she forsook her literary pursuits to devote her life to assisting and encouraging Edward in whom she could see a musical genius. Soon after this he wrote his first large scale work for orchestra the Overture “Froissart” at the request of the committee of the forthcoming Three Choirs Festival that was to be held that year at Worcester. He had already been engaged to play in the orchestra at the Festival, and took part when the work received its first performance.

The overture was a success, but the triumph was short lived. Back in London the Elgars were finding it difficult to make ends meet. There was only one answer- give up his high aspirations and return to Worcestershire They took a house in Malvern Link which they called “Forli” after the fifteenth century Italian painter of musical angels.

To eke out their meagre income Elgar took a job at the Mount’s Girl School in Malvern, a task that he was to detest, and from which neither he nor his pupils received much satisfaction.

It was while the Elgars were living at “Forli” that Alice gave birth to a daughter. Elgar devised a name for her from her mother’s Christian names so she became Carice Elgar. As a present to his wife on their third wedding anniversary Elgar composed a “Serenade for Strings” a work which already had the hallmark of his mastery on it and was destined to become one of the best known of his minor compositions the music is said to be an evocation of the Worcestershire countryside

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