Introduction

Garnet Carrington Trowell, violinist and twin brother of Arnold Trowell, was born and raised in Wellington, New Zealand. Considered the shy and less talented of the two twins, Garnet was nevertheless a fine musician. As an eleven-year-old, he toured the North Island of New Zealand with Pollard’s Opera Company Orchestra and performed alongside his father, Thomas Trowell, with the Wellington Orchestral Society. He attended Saint Patrick’s College in Wellington, where his father taught the violin.

To further the twins’ musical careers they were sent to Europe in August 1903. Initially, they studied at Dr Hoch’s Conservatorium in Frankfurt, Germany, but the withdrawal of key teachers from the institution precipitated a relocation to the Brussels Conservatoire in 1904. While studying at Queen’s College in London, KM and her sisters were taken to Europe on a number of occasions, which allowed them to see the Trowell brothers perform. KM also attended Garnet’s début London performance – with Mrs Barrington-Waters (sister-in-law of Val Waters, KM’s maternal uncle) and Arnold Trowell – at the inauguration of the New Zealand Association at the Westminster Palace Hotel on Tuesday, 3 July 1906. The brothers subsequently went back to Brussels for concerts in the autumn of the same year, at which time KM reluctantly returned to New Zealand with her family. While in her home country, the frustrated author wrote letters to the Trowell family in London but her emotional focus at this time was not on Garnet, but on his twin brother, Arnold, and their sister, Dolly.

Upon her return to London in August 1908, KM, realising that Arnold’s affections lay elsewhere, quickly switched her attentions to Garnet. The latter was frequently at London’s Lyric Theatre, performing operas by Wagner, Verdi, Gounod and Leoncavallo with the Moody Manners Opera Company. With his long hair and long cigarettes, Garnet easily passed for a bohemian musician, at least in the eyes of an impressionable KM. A physical relationship – ‘we will never get the landladies out of the room’ (see below, p. 676) – probably began in September and continued in November when Garnet had a week’s respite from touring with the Moody Manners Opera Company – ‘I’m afraid you will be thoroughly spoiled’ (below, p. 692).