[The author was 80 years old when she wrote her memoir, which finishes: ‘For my grandchildren, January 20^th1961'. ‘Your own mother’ and ‘Auntie May’ refer to the author’s daughters, Christine and May. In the final chapters of the memoir, the author surveys events in her life not accounted for in earlier chapters].

Well, I saw the [Portsmouth] Town Hall in its “first glory” [when it opened in 1890]. I have been to tuppenny concerts on Saturday nights when I was a girl. I have heard the “Messiah” sung there on many Good Fridays. I have been to bazaars and shows there, and once your own mother sang there is the Big Hall in a Music Festival, and she and Auntie May sang a duet from the same stage in the Big Hall. Ask her about it. She sang “[Gretchen] at the Spinning Wheel" (Schubert) and they sang the duet “See How the Morning Smiles”. I was there of course.