Then also
the brass band contests were famously attended. In the Five Towns the
number of cornet players is scarcely exceeded by the number of
public-houses. Hence the feeling, born and fanned into lustiness at
Hanbridge, that the Five Towns owed it to its self-respect to have a
Musical Festival like the rest of the world! Men who had never heard of
Wagner, men who could not have told the difference between a sonata and
a sonnet to save their souls, men who spent all their lives in
manufacturing tea-cups or china door-knobs, were invited to guarantee
five pounds a-piece against possible loss on the festival; and they
bravely and blindly did so. The conductor of the largest Hanbridge
choir, being appointed to conduct the preliminary rehearsals of the
Festival Chorus, had an acute attack of self-importance, which, by the
way, almost ended fatally a year later.
Double-crown posters appeared magically on all the hoardings announcing
that a Festival consisting of three evening and two morning concerts
would be held in the Alexandra Hall, at Hanbridge, on the 6th, 7th and
8th November, and that the box-plan could be consulted at the principal
stationers.
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