13 September, 1898
Left Victoria [blank space] train. Very fair passage. arrived at Spa
about 8.30. My quarters at Hotel d’Orange, supposed to be
best hotel. usual story. the rooms ordered for me & agreed
upon, were of course let to someone else & inferior rooms
given to me. “So sorry”, said the obsequious landlord
(a Jew). Dressed, dined & joined my friends (the Welyn
Ker Seymers, Winifred, Violet, Auntie etc at the Casino.
It’s mid 1898, a few months after the failure of The Beauty Stone. Sullivan has written to the Leeds Festival committee, declining to conduct the upcoming festival (in October) and also informing them he won’t be writing a new cantata for the event. Sullivan has also spread a story in the press that his health is so bad that his doctors have ordered him to spend at least two months recuperating on the Continent. (Quite the Rx!) In July he traveled to Bad Gastein in Austria where he received baths and massages. Then it was on to Thusis (now in Switzerland), for August.
Here, “Spa” is the literal town of Spa, in Belgium. In his diaries, Sullivan spills more ink describing his travels than on any other topic. One gets the impression he was taking detailed notes so that the next time he visited somewhere, he’d have some info on the place.
Sullivan rarely uses the word Jew, but does sometimes appear to use it as a slur, as here. Considering how many close Jewish friends and associates he had, in the worlds of music and business, I suppose this is just a sign of the times he lived in.
Harry Earnest Clay Ker-Seymer is the brother of Sullivan’s old chum, the composer Frederick Clay, who died by suicide in 1889. Winifred and Violet are Harry’s daughters. I don’t know how “Welyn” applies to the family. Perhaps Sullivan meant to write “Welwyn,” but even then I’m not aware of the connection.
Auntie?
“Auntie” is Fanny Ronalds, Sullivan’s long term mistress, and in this entry we needn’t question that identification because this rendezvous in Spa ends a peculiar tale that is untold, so far as I know. When Sullivan was in Thusis, he “proposed [to Ronalds] a plan for excursion with [Ronalds] and Mrs H [probably Amy Holmes, Sullivan’s cousin].” But later, Mr. “G.H.” forbids his wife to go! Worse, Fanny Ronalds is apparently ill and decides to go “to Seaside”, namely Dover. Over several days Sullivan tries to arrange some sort of rendezvous with Fanny. But in mid-August, Fanny suffers a “relapse” and says she cannot travel. Sullivan sends his servant Clotilde to Dover to nurse her, and sends other people as well, including — rather mysteriously, to me — the American businessman Edwin Marshall Fox. Sullivan and Ronalds’ connection to Mr. Fox is another story.
Eventually Sullivan gives up his own travels and goes to Dover, where he spends two days with Fanny in the Lord Warden Hotel (whose building still exists today). She is “much better”, and by the date of this entry, Sullivan has gotten his wish as he and Fanny begin a stay in Spa. Of course there is a casino.