[Edna Bold’s Aunt Harriet, a talented piano player, strongly shaped her niece’s musical appreciation by taking her and her siblings to the opera. Family friends Jack Corlett and his wife Belle had strong interests in politics and music. They encouraged Edna Bold to become a teacher. Bold remembered her Grandmother’s kitchen as the site of inspiration of her self-education and love of music]

The fortunate Aunt Harriet, [uncles] Joe and Frank, so splendidly regaled on Sunday afternoons, could fill my Grandmother’s kitchen with pulsating excitement and delight that could well outlast the week. If John Corlett happened to descend on the house with his gales of sound and flapping arms, the very structure of the walls and roof would seem to shake and roar till John could be persuaded to give a tune in his light, sweet tenor in the parlour. The sentimental ballads he sang to the restrained playing of Harriet invariably calmed the household and reduced it to common sense and sanity.