I’ve been reading Volume 2 of the Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the fascinating memoirs of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus who kept this particular diary between 1814-30.

In it there’s a good example of the social attitude which made it so hard for young women to perform musical instruments in public in the early 19th century. Elizabeth recounts having harp lessons in 1817 with a French harp teacher, Monsieur Elouis. She took part in group lessons with seven other ‘well-born’ girls, several of whom played very well.

‘We played concerted pieces doubling the parts. Chorus’s arranged by him, and sometimes duetts or solos, practising in other rooms. The fame of our execution spread over the town, and many persons entreated permission to mount up the long Common Stair to the poor frenchman’s garret to listen to such a number of harps played by such handsome girls. One of two of the Mamas would have had no objection, but my mother and Lady Hunter would not hear of their daughters being part of an exhibition. We went there to learn, not to shew off.’

She goes on to describe the day when M. Elouis brought a ‘very large fine looking military man, braided and belted and moustached’ to his garret hear the young ladies play their harps. But when Elizabeth’s governess realised that she was about to be put on public display (even just for an audience of one), ‘we were shawled and bonnetted in less time than I am writing of it, and on our way down stairs before poor Monsieur had finished his apologies to the officer and the other young ladies… We never returned to the Harp Classes, neither did the Hunters, and very soon they were given up. It was certainly an unwarrantable liberty, an impertinence, and the man must either have been totally unaware of the sort of pupils he was to find, or else an illbred ignorant person. Poor Elouis never recovered the mistake; he had to leave for want of business.’

When one realises the extent of the disapproval felt by polite society about the idea of their wives and daughters playing in public, one admires even more those women who did persist, did manage to take their musical talent onto the concert stage and to rise above the disquiet which their families probably went on expressing in the background.