Wand of Youth

Abstract Edward William Elgar was born in the village of Broadheath, just outside Worcester, on 2 June 1857. He was the fourth (or perhaps the fifth) child of William and Ann Elgar. They had married in 1848, and she had become a convert to Roman Catholicism in 1852 her husband was not baptized as a Roman Catholic until he was on his deathbed in 1906. He is said to have ‘detested’ papism and — jocularly—to have threatened to shoot his daughters if he saw them going to confession. A Dover man born in 1821, William Elgar settled in Worcester in 1841. He had served a musical apprenticeship with Coventry and Hollier of Dean Street, Soho. This firm was approached by the Comptroller of the Household of the Queen Dowager, Adelaide (widow of William IV), to provide a piano-tuner for the instruments at Witley Court, Worcestershire, where Adelaide took up residence in 1844.