HARLOW

Eliza and her sister were educated by their father at home with the help of tutors he was able to find locally in Harlow. He followed his own radical ideas about education, reflecting his political views and the work of his equally radical, schoolteacher wife, Eliza Gould, who died when Eliza was only 7 years old.

There must have been a shortage of music teachers in Harlow at that time as it seems she received no music training in composition, but probably would have had piano and singing lessons – more easily available to young ladies.

Eliza was a musical genius, wholly spontaneous, who composed from childhood. (The Monthly Record, 1952)

SOUTH PLACE UNITARIAN CHAPEL

Her skills as a composer were channelled daily through her work at South Place, so what may be her best work forms part of the Hymns and Anthems created for use by her own double choir. This important volume included the original setting of her sister’s words –  Nearer My God to Thee – which is not the music you may be familiar with. However, although the texts of the publication were sold widely it seems Eliza thought her unconventional living arrangements may have prejudiced people against using it  – as she complained to her sister…

… ‘tis possible a prejudice against my name may exist in many quarters so as to seriously damage the sale

There may have been other reasons too:- the wide range of poetic and musical authors may not have appealed to more conservative congregations; the music required professional musicians which would not always have been available; she never completed the work, and those who could have helped publicise it did little after her early death.

Hymns and Anthems included many arrangements of work by famous composers as well as 63 pieces of her own. She took great care to provide variety both in her choice of words and the composers who may have already been familiar to the congregation. She worked with the Music Director at the Unitarian Chapel – Collet Dobson Collet – who said of her work:-

In the selection of tunes appropriate to the words, Miss Flower was very successful, …… setting of Mrs. Adams’s  “O human heart thou hast a song” to a trio from Mozart’s “Magic Flute”, … Mary Howitt’s “The earth is thine and it thou keepest”, to an air of Hummel’s. Thus was the tedium of repetition avoided and the music always “married to immortal verse”.

A Talented Musician

The philosopher John Stuart Mill quoted Charles Pemberton as having remarked that Eliza Flower…..

was a splendid musician, whose performances on the organ caused the chapel of W. J. Fox to be visited on Sundays by crowds, who were not exactly followers of that gentleman’s religious teaching.

In the Ethical Record in 1986 Peter Bacos wrote:

The Flower sisters were musically gifted, and were responsible for most of the music performed in the chapel. Mendelssohn was introduced to them during his tour of England and remarked on their talent.

There are some accounts of the sisters’ vocal capabilities:

They were a pair of singing birds; beautiful, intelligent, sensitive, well-read. (The Monthly Record, 1952)

A Radical Influence

In the South Place Magazine, published in January, 1896, this exhortation of both sister’s influence on the society in which they moved shows just how important they were:

They (and Fox) formed the centre of a most distinguished circle, which attracted to itself the choicest and most thoughtful spirits of the day. Under such influences the fine arts, the highest secular literature, the softening and more humane, because more aesthetic, products of human activity were wedded to hard thinking and the austere pursuit of religious and moral science at South Place.

The effect of this infusion of a more universal and human element was a great flowering out, expansion, and refining of the religious ideal. A truer and more complete, because better balanced, union of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True became henceforth possible.

The circle included many radical thinkers, all of whom were influenced by this charismatic & beautiful woman; –  poet Robert Browning,  writers Harriet Martineau and William and Mary Howitt, Thomas Southwood Smith (physician), philosophers Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill, musician and publisher Vincent Novello, artists William James Linton and Margaret Gillies, and academic Thomas Wade.

An article in a South Place Ethical Society pamphlet makes it clear that Eliza’s music was still being performed at South Place in the early 1920s

… whose vibrations still resound to the magic call of the poetry and music, to which Sarah and Eliza gave birth, and whose beauty still echoes within the walls of their old intellectual and spiritual home at South Place. (Wallis Mansford)

SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE

As well as her music for use in the chapel she also wrote songs for the parlour, for public concerts and for the street.

One large collection of art songs is Musical Illustrations of the Waverley Novels, which was published by Novello in 1831 – an indication of how highly she was regarded.

The Westminster Review said of one of the songs – “The Death of Madge Wildfire”:

The whole history and previous character of the poor victim, … seem all to have been vividly present to the composer’s mind… The composition is a strange and touching melange of wildness, beauty, and pathos.

The philosopher John Stuart Mill also published positive reviews in his journals,

Her Songs of the Months was serialised by Fox in the South Place journal, The Monthly Repository.

We know of two other published collections –   Songs of the Seasons 1832 and Freetrade Songs of the Seasons which was published by Novello in 1845 to support the Anti-Corn-Law League. The texts, by Flower’s sister Sarah, combine the familiar art song trope with the struggles of poverty-stricken labourers.

Flower wrote many protest songs with Harriet Martineau, a feminist author and influential campaigner against slavery. Together, Martineau and Flower formed what was probably the most powerful protest-song partnership of the nineteenth century in the UK. Many of their songs became popular anthems, sung by thousands of protesting workers in the streets – most of whom would have had no idea that their voices were carrying the words and music of two young ladies.

FLOWER & FOX

Eliza Flower took up an unconventional living arrangement with the preacher at the Unitarian Chapel – William Johnson Fox who was her guardian. Fox separated from his wife of 14 years, taking two of his children (Eliza and Florance ) with him to set up home with Eliza – ostensibly she was helping with his religious and political work while running the household and taking care of his children.

His lectures and Sunday addresses were prepared in full shorthand notes, and for publication were usually copied out by Eliza Flower, his devoted amanuensis.
(The Monthly Record, 1952)

Fox’s eldest son Florance was described as a deaf mute

She devoted herself especially to the afflicted son Florance, with so much success that he was enabled to obtain a place in government service and to hold it until retirement at the normal age.
( Monthly Record, 1952)

Eliza Flower was a strong influence on W.J. Fox and how he regarded women, treating them as equal in cultural settings though she also took a more traditional role of secretary, house keeper and surrogate mother to his children. Together they promoted the rights of women, particularly in relation to education and to the right of partners to divorce if they were simply incompatible (the reason he gave for leaving his wife).

The natural inference is that the incompatibility was simply Eliza Flower. (A.S. Toms 1924)

ELIZA FLOWER

The Poet Catherine Bromley, one of the many people influenced by Eliza, described her in her diary as

… a bewildering, fascinating, elusive being, the presiding genius in all the the social and musical activities of the chapel.

The poet Robert Browning first met Eliza when he was 5 or 6 years old, and was highly influenced by both sisters who encouraged his work throughout his childhood. He had a strong passion for Eliza, and it is said that his poem “Pauline” is about her, and we know that he sent her letters and poems as he was growing up, though he retrieved and destroyed them all.

Browning described Flower as:

“… a composer of real genius”

In 1922 Mr. H. W. Stephenson, published a Memoir of Sarah Flower Adams

…they were like two “Flowers” on one stem, and with the death of Eliza, … Sarah literally pined away