ABSTRACT
After-dinner music at the Crawford’s house contrasts two types of singers. Grace Steyne, the rector’s daughter, is far behind the ‘girl-wife’ hostess Ida in brilliancy and style but has a fine voice that she uses ‘with true musical taste’, not attempting anything beyond her ability. Grace’s music making is a labour of love – she plays the organ at church and trains the village choir, ‘not a very easy task when scarcely any of the members knew their notes so as to read the music’ (p. 366). Illustration ‘I was almost as deep in my book as you were in your paper’ shows Dr Fereday and wife Grace at the breakfast table with a piano in the background p. 12
Number 302 (10 October 1885) Only a Girl-Wife Ch. 2 pp. 22-3 Varieties (The History of the Piano) p. 30 Answers to Correspondents pp. 30-1
Nightingale (general)
Number 303 (17 October 1885) Only a Girl-Wife Ch. 3 pp. 33-5 ‘Rise Up, My Love!’ (music score) (The Countess of Munster, Words from ‘The Song of
Solomon’) pp. 36-7 Answers to Correspondents (Music heading) pp. 47-8
Lieder ohne Worte (music education), Bessie (composition), A Grateful Reader (music education), A Lover of the G.O.P. (lesson etiquette), Soldier’s Daughter (general), Sirius (repertoire), An Anxious One (voice), Green Leaves (repertoire), Hyacinth (piano, instrument maintenance), Fugue (general), Eldonia (music history and appreciation)
Number 304 (24 October 1885) Answers to Correspondents pp. 63-4
Sally Brass (general)
Number 305 (31 October 1885) Only a Girl-Wife Ch. 4 pp. 66-7 New Music p. 71 Answers to Correspondents (Music heading) pp. 79-80
An Anxious Reader (applied music, pronunciation), A Middle-Aged One (general), H. G. (practising society), Vera Hugo (applied music), Rita (violin), Nil Desperandum (general), O.T.M.U.L. (general), Mountain Violet (applied music), Green Hat (Austria) (zither), Fanny E. (voice)
Number 306 (7 November 1885) Only a Girl-Wife Ch. 5 pp. 81-3 Three Social Evenings (Anne Beale) pp. 86-7
During one of three social gatherings of young women members of the Y.W.C.A., some 50 members formed a choir for a ‘Service of Song’ to sing hymns for the 200 girls in the audience.
