ABSTRACT
Days After the Pan-African Conference ended Jaeger wrote to Elgar on 12 August 1900:
Taylor writes to me this morning that he has a commission to write the music for Stephen Phillips’ Herod which Beerbohm Tree will produce at Her Majesty’s. Lucky beggar! But I do wonder what he will do with the music to a play. I dont [doubt?] he has ever been to a theatre in his life, at least I’ve never heard him say so. Really nothing succeeds like success. Produce one work that will become really POPULAR, & you get commissions chucked at you! Its extraordinary. 1
Her Majesty’s Theatre in the heart of London was close to the Haymarket Theatre which Herbert Beerbohm Tree managed in the 1890s. Born in London of Germanic descent in 1852 Tree nursed ambitions to be an actor as he worked in his father’s office. 2 At the Haymarket he starred as Svengali in Trilby in 1895 –