And more than the moment--the day, nay, the whole week--was dramatic in
the history of local musical enterprise.
It had occurred to somebody in Hanbridge, about a year before, that
since York, Norwich, Hereford, Gloucester, Birmingham, and even
Blackpool had their musical festivals, the Five Towns, too, ought to
have its musical festival. The Five Towns possessed a larger population
than any of these centres save Birmingham, and it was notorious for its
love of music. Choirs from the Five Towns had gone to all sorts of
places--such as Brecknock, Aberystwyth, the Crystal Palace, and even a
place called Hull--and had come back with first prizes--cups and
banners--for the singing of choruses and part-songs. There were three
(or at least two and a half) rival choirs in Hanbridge alone. Then also
the brass band contests were famously attended. In the Five Towns the
number of cornet players is scarcely exceeded by the number of
public-houses. Hence the feeling, born and fanned into lustiness at
Hanbridge, that the Five Towns owed it to its self-respect to have a
Musical Festival like the rest of the world! Men who had never heard of
Wagner, men who could not have told the difference between a sonata and
a sonnet to save their souls, men who spent all their lives in
manufacturing tea-cups or china door-knobs, were invited to guarantee
five pounds a-piece against possible loss on the festival; and they
bravely and blindly did so. The conductor of the largest Hanbridge
choir, being appointed to conduct the preliminary rehearsals of the
Festival Chorus, had an acute attack of self-importance, which, by the
way, almost ended fatally a year later.
Double-crown posters appeared magically on all the hoardings announcing
that a Festival consisting of three evening and two morning concerts
would be held in the Alexandra Hall, at Hanbridge, on the 6th, 7th and
8th November, and that the box-plan could be consulted at the principal
stationers. The Alexandra Hall contained no boxes whatever, but
"box-plan" was the phrase sacred to the occasion, and had to be used.
And the Festival more and more impregnated the air, and took the lion's
share of the columns of the _Staffordshire Signal_. Every few days the
_Signal_ reported progress, even to intimate biographical details of the
singers engaged, and of the composers to be performed, together with
analyses of the latter's works. And at last the week itself had dawned
in exhilaration and excitement. And early on the day before the opening
day John Merazzi, the renowned conductor, and Herbert Millwain, the
renowned leader of the orchestra, and the renowned orchestra itself, all
arrived from London. And finally sundry musical critics arrived from
the offices of sundry London dailies. The presence of these latter
convinced an awed population that its Festival was a real Festival, and
not a local make-believe. And it also tranquillized in some degree the
exasperating and disconcerting effect of a telegram from the capricious
Countess of Chell (who had taken six balcony seats and was the official
advertised high patroness of the Festival) announcing at the last moment
that she could not attend.