ABSTRACT
Illness was a principal reason, but not the only one, given by Arthur Sullivan when he wrote to ‘Dearest G’ [Grove] from Brome on 12 October 1887: It was a great effort to him to give up the Philharmonic for he loved his orchestra, and was proud of our performances. It was an abandonment of a prized position, and Sullivan’s declared reasons do not seem quite strong enough. Sullivan found the new plot a ‘pretty story—no topsy-turvy dom, very human and funny also’, as he noted in his diary. The success of the 1886 Leeds Festival, not least with The Golden Legend, gave Sullivan good reason to suppose that the conductorship of the coming 1889 Festival would likewise be offered to him, especially as the organizers hoped to persuade him to write a symphony for it. On receiving that letter of Carte’s, written on 13 February 1888, Sullivan must have indeed been stirred into an immediate letter to Gilbert.
