Expert

Yesterday was my first day back in the archives. My phone was crawling with messages (an ongoing family situation). Then came a phone-call, which I couldn’t answer without running out to where I could talk. That led to another, and another. And another. Back and forth I went.  I can’t tell you what a day it was!

However, I did get through several folders of Thomas Nelson papers.  I’m in search of the first mention of a particular individual who was very influential in Nelson’s educational music output.  I found him mentioned a couple of times in yesterday’s papers, once quite unexpectedly. I need to see how this sits in my timeline.  Honestly, I didn’t expect to find him urging an organist’s wife to submit a book proposal on … elocution!  It didn’t look like choral speaking (yes, that was a thing, which was quite in vogue a little later on). Indeed, a Nelson editor specifically advised his boss that it was about elocution, so I don’t need to wonder.

Nelson’s rejected the lady’s proposal. She found another publisher.  I briefly wondered how the Englishman who basically ended up acting as music advisor to the Nelson editors, came to know a Scottish organist and his wife, quite early on in his professional career? But I think they probably met at a course or conference.