Probably Elgar's most popular work is his 'Enigma' Variations which, apart from its undoubted musical merit, still tantalises the musical detectives with the hidden 'secrets' which Elgar cleverly wove into the fabric of the score. But Elgar, who was fascinated by codes, ciphers, riddles and other forms of puzzles, has left us another mystery - the 'Dorabella' cipher.
Just over one hundred years ago - to be precise, on the14 July 1897 - Elgar sent a letter to a young friend, Miss Dora Penny, the 22 year-old daughter of the Rev. Alfred Penny, Rector of St Peter's, Wolverhampton. The unusual feature of the letter was that it was in a cipher which, a century later, still presents a challenge. There have been a couple of attempts at solving it but neither of these seem entirely satisfactory.
Can you solve this century-old challenge?
From 1895 until 1913, when she married and the Elgars moved to London, Dora Penny formed a long and close relationship with Elgar and his wife Alice. The account of this period is recalled in her book "Edward Elgar: Memories of a Variation" first published in 1937 and written under Dora Penny's married name of Mrs Richard Powell.
However, at the time that this curious letter was received she and the Elgars were barely acquainted, this coming about due to the re-marriage of her father. As she recalls in her book:
"My father had been made the Rector of Wolverhampton in the spring of that year and in the following August he married Miss Mary Frances Baker, of Hasfield, near Gloucester. With Miss Baker came a very substantial addition to the furniture line to our large rectory, and the connexion with her brought us a host of most delightful new friends."
Two of those friends were Edward and Alice Elgar and she goes on to describe her first meeting with the Elgars:
"Picture us now, my stepmother and me, tramming up to the station at Wolverhampton to meet them, on Friday 6 December 1895. The train came in and, of course, not having seen one another for an age, the two friends fell upon each other and Mr Elgar was left for me to look after. I quickly found out that music was the last thing he wanted to talk about. I think we talked about football. He wanted to know if I ever saw the Wolverhampton Wanderers play, and when he heard that our house was a stone's throw from their ground he was quite excited."
In the months that were to follow between this first meeting and the sending of the cipher Dora and Edward Elgar met on several occasions. They walked on the Malvern Hills, discussed map reading, went to watch football and horse racing, attended concerts and went kite flying. Could any of this provide a clue to Elgar's curious message?
A facsimile of the cipher is included as an appendix to her book where Dora Penny tantalisingly states:
"It is well known that Elgar was always interested in puzzles, ciphers, cryptograms and the like. The cipher here reproduced - the third letter I had from him, if indeed it is one - came to me enclosed in a letter from [Elgar's wife] to my stepmother. On the back of it is written 'Miss Penny'. It followed upon their visit to us at Wolverhampton in July 1897.
I have never had the slightest idea what message it conveys; he never explained it and all attempts to solve it have failed. Should any reader of this book succeed in arriving at a solution it would interest me very much to hear of it."
In the second edition of the book, which was published ten years later in an extensively revised and enlarged version, there is an additional footnote:
"Since the first edition of this book appeared, the cipher has, I know, been examined by a good few people skilled in such matters. Nobody, so far as I am aware, has yet succeeded in reading it."
What is the secret of this 1897 cipher? Elgar was well-known for his love of puzzles - indeed, less than two years later one of his most popular works, the Enigma Variations, received its premiere and immediately brought him to the forefront of the musical world. The Variations caught the public's attention not only from a musical point of view but also on account of the hidden cryptic clues which Elgar had cleverly woven into the fabric of the work.
Returning to the cipher sent to Dora Penny - what are we to make of it? Could it be simply a practical joke? Elgar was known to be a keen prankster, but to send a meaningless series of scribbles would surely be an exercise with very little amusement value - either to the sender or to the recipient. It could, of course, be a code with a particularly obscure method of decipherment, perhaps involving an intermediate key. But again, what would be the point of this? The letter was not a communication between long-standing friends well-versed in cryptology, simply one between comparative strangers. At the time that the letter was written Elgar was 40 and Dora was 23. Setting aside the possibility of a hoax, what would be the point of sending a cipher so difficult as to be virtually impossible for a 23 year-old to solve?
This leaves us with one remaining possibility - that of a cipher that is fairly simple to decode but only once the correct method of 'cracking' it is known. Years later, when Dora Penny questioned Elgar about the secret of the Enigma Variations, his only comment to her on the subject were the words "I thought that you, of all people, would guess it".
Did she also, unknowingly, hold the key which would have enabled her to make sense of the earlier cipher? If this was the case then she clearly failed to recognise what this 'key' might be and whatever it was died with her in 1964.
But maybe there is still a chance that the cipher can be persuaded to give up its secret one hundred years later!
Maybe someone on the WWW can succeed where Dora Penny drew a blank. If so then I also would be very interested to hear of it!
Have you any solution? Or an idea as to how the problem could be tackled.
The 'Dorabella' Cipher 
Get your own Free Home Page