ABSTRACT
The war did not end by Christmas, nor by all too many Christmases. The stock of golden sovereigns sank. Yet the sisters had much to give when war, as wars tragically do, stimulated in the middle classes an enlarged appetite for the arts. The oudook of the sisters was not particularly bright, but not so dark as it might have been. Adila took pupils. The attempt to ban German music was half-hearted: and in any case a great number of classical European composers were not Germans but Austrians, and Austrians were regarded in Britain as nicer than Germans. Fanny Davies found a spiritual contact with Jelly and planned a series of sonata recitals, taking the financial risk herself and paying Jelly a fee. Alexandre Fachiri, then twenty-eight, was of Greek extraction, but having been born in New York was an American citizen.
