Introduction - continued

During his life Cowen not only excelled in his chosen career, but found time to explore many outdoor pursuits, among them rowing, cycling and mountain climbing. He was a great traveller for his time, both within the United Kingdom and abroad. Many of these trips were, of course, in order to further his career, but, particularly in later life, there were countless pleasure trips. He spoke four languages fluently and had a smattering of others. He had somewhat Bohemian tastes, and was a popular member of both the Savage Club and the Green Room Club. He was also a great lover of books and collected ‘first editions’, notably Dickens and Thackeray, illustrations of Cruikshank and Leech, and the works of the humorists and caricaturists of the earlier part of the nineteenth century. Indeed, his own sense of humour was well-known among his friends, and demonstrated in the anecdotes in his writings, within his autobiography: My Art and My Friends, the biographies he wrote about others, and in his satirical book Music as She is Wrote.

Cowen was raised in an environment that was both cultured and privileged, and in the early years he could rely on the support of his mentor, his father, in his endeavours. Indeed, Frederick Augustus’s household must have been a very cosmopolitan setting in which to be brought up, as it not only allowed a musical talent to be born and nurtured, but also permitted an artist, in Frederic’s brother Lionel, to flourish, and the theatrical bent of his sister, Henrietta, to develop. With his father’s death, Cowen’s own skills enabled him to rise from an already advantageous position, to the top of his profession. He could afford to live in a large, detached, tremendously fashionable house, in one of the most elegant streets [Hamilton Terrace] of one of the most stylish suburbs [St John’s Wood] in London. Cowen, at the peak of his career, had a lavish lifestyle, able to invite the great and the good to his ‘at homes’. However, as he entered into the .twilight of his years, his financial standing began to wane, as he and his wife continued to live in the sumptuous manner to which they had become accustomed. The demise of Cowen’s musical popularity, which in part can be attributed to the inexorable rise in fame of Elgar’s music, but can also be traced to Cowen’s pandering to the tastes of his Victorian and Edwardian audiences, ultimately enforced a move to less lavish accommodation, but still within a stone’s throw of Hamilton Terrace.