"Ah, I don't know anything about that," replied Dr. Elgar, "but I do know we are a nation with great military proclivities, and I did not see why the ordinary quick march should not be treated on a large scale in the way that the waltz, the old-fashioned slow march, and even the polka have been treated by the great composers; yet all marches on the symphonic scale are so slow that people can't march to them. I have some of the soldier instinct in me, and so I have written two marches of which, so far from being ashamed, I am proud. 'Pomp and Circumstance,' by the way, is merely the generic name for what is a set of six marches. Two, as you know, have already appeared, and the others will come later. One of them is to be a Soldier's Funeral March. [Illustration: REDUCED FACSIMILE OF MS. OF "POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE."] "As for 'The Imperial March,' which was written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee of 1897, it would, perhaps, interest you to know that only on January 22nd last it was given in St. George's Chapel, Berlin, at the unveiling of the memorials of Queen Victoria and the Empress Frederick, and Dr. G. R. Sinclair, of Hereford Cathedral, played it on the organ. [Illustration: _From a Photo. by_] GOLF ON MALVERN COMMON. [_Foulsham & Banfield._] "How and when do I do my music? I can tell you very easily. I come into my study at nine o'clock in the morning and I work till a quarter to one. I don't do any inventing then, for that comes anywhere and everywhere. It may be when I am walking, golfing, or cycling, or the ideas may come in the evening, and then I sit up until any hour in order to get them down. The morning is devoted to revising and orchestration, of which I have as much to do as I can manage. As soon as lunch is over I go out for exercise and return about four or later, after which I sometimes do two hours' work before dinner. A country life I find absolutely essential to me, and here the conditions are exactly what I require. As you see," and Dr. Elgar moved over to the large window which takes up the whole of one side of his study, "I get a wonderful view of the surrounding country. I can see across Worcestershire, to Edgehill, the Cathedral of Worcester, the Abbeys of Pershore and Tewkesbury, and even the smoke from round Birmingham. It is delightfully quiet, and yet in contrast with it there is a constant stream of communication with the outside world in the shape of cables from America and Australia, and letters innumerable from all over the world."