The Dog Days of Sir Edward Elgar

June 4th, 2025

Many years ago, I found myself in a position that forced me to give up a much-loved pet. My fiancé was allergic to my cat. After we married, I reluctantly surrendered my Siamese cat Twiggy to my parents. I missed her terribly, but in retrospect, forty-three years of a good marriage was worth the tradeoff.  

English composer Sir Edward Elgar found himself in a similar dilemma. The young, single composer loved dogs, and owned a spaniel named Marco. Then he met Caroline Roberts, an intelligent woman from a distinguished family who was musical, spoke five languages, and was a talented writer and published author. In 1886, when she was thirty-eight years old, she decided to take piano lessons from thirty-year-old Edward Elgar. 

They fell in love and got engaged. Her family was appalled. Elgar was poorer, younger, and Catholic. But Alice and Edward didn’t care. In 1889, they married. As a wedding present, Caroline gave him poetry that she’d written, and Edward gave her a piece he composed called Salut d’Amour, which would someday be one of his most famous works. They had one child together, a daughter named Irene. It was all wonderful, except for one thing: unlike Elgar, Caroline could not stand dogs and forbid them in the house. So, Elgar gave up his Marco and for years admired everybody else’s dogs. 

It must have been hard for Sir Edward Elgar to give up his beloved Marco, even for a wonderful woman, but we should be glad he did. It was Caroline who encouraged Edward to compose, and did everything to make it happen. While Elgar struggled to earn a living early on, Alice was his steadfast cheerleader. They lived off royalties from her books. She took over every responsibility so Edward could focus on composition. She abandoned her own creative endeavors, saying that “the care of a genius is enough of a life work for any woman.”  

Without Elgar’s dog-hating wife, we would have missed some of the world’s greatest music. Caroline was the one who encouraged him to compose the Enigma Variations, his greatest work. Although he dedicated the first variation to her, Elgar’s love for dogs was still strong enough that the eleventh variation was dedicated to Dan, the bulldog, who belonged to his friend George Sinclair. The variation portrays the dog falling into the River Wye, his paddling upstream and his triumphant bark when reaching land. It was the antics of Dan, the dog that helped catapult Elgar to fame. It must have been incredibly satisfying when Elgar emerged as England’s greatest composer and was knighted in 1904, and Carolyn became Lady Elgar.  

After 30 years of marriage, in 1920, Caroline Elgar was diagnosed with lung cancer and died that year. Sir Edward Elgar was devastated but found a single consolation. After three decades of wedded bliss, Elgar dealt with his grief by going out and acquiring not one, not two, but three dogs. Perhaps one dog for every decade of marriage? He wasted no time getting another spaniel named Marco, named after the dog he gave away years before, along with two terriers named Meg and Mina.  

Edward Elgar with his dogs Marco, Mina and Meg.

For the rest of his life, the three dogs were almost always at his side. When separated from them, Elgar stayed connected. He once wished his dogs good night during a live radio broadcast. One night during dinner with friends at a fancy restaurant, Elgar’s friends overheard him on a phone call, telling one of his dogs to stop chewing the couch cushions. An English journalist, who once called Elgar’s dogs “The Three Musketeers,” wrote that “… the three dogs line up in front of Sir Edward, who sits on the arm of a couch and gives them sweet biscuits and cake. At a word they simultaneously rise up like soldiers and stand at attention.”  

Sir Edward Elgar lived fourteen more years with his beloved dogs, dying in 1934. His story is so touching that I found myself wondering, as a widow now, should I go out and buy myself a cat? Or maybe four cats, one for every year I lived without Twiggy? But my three-pound Chihuahua has put her paw down and has forbidden it.  

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Click here for Elgar’s Enigma Variation 11.

Listen out for: How Elgar created the sounds of Dan the bulldog in variation 11. Dan can be heard falling down the bank into the River Wye in bar 1, paddling upstream in bars 2 and 3, and then rejoicing at landing back on the bank with a bark in the second half of bar 5!