ABSTRACT
London ‘society’ had bestowed its favour on St Moritz as a summer resort, and the Duke and Duchess of York the future King George V and Queen Mary were among the congenial company which Sullivan found there. ‘The great majority of tourists,’ as the Baedeker of that pre-skiing era pointed out, ‘visit Switzerland between the middle of July and the end of September.’ The gossip about the bather on the Belgian coast at Blankenbergh[e] was most unusual for Sullivan. The ‘professional beauties’, so called, were ‘an elite group of England’s most beautiful women, whose photographs were sold in shops all over the country’. With Victoria of England he was not on such informal terms, but the approaching Diamond Jubilee would bring him into closer contact. It was taken for granted that as England’s leading composer he would have a place in these celebrations, which were to reach their formal peak with services on Sunday 20 June 1897.
