Ever since the Deliuses had left their comfortable home for Orléans in September 1914, they had suffered one disruption after another, but by now, despite bouts of depression and ill health, Delius had miraculously recovered the energy and inspiration he needed to go on writing. 1914 had seen the completion of North Country Sketches; 1915, the Double Concerto; and in 1916, the Requiem, the String Quartet, A Dance Rhapsody no. 2, the Violin Concerto and the Cello Sonata. Then in 1917 he finished Eventyr, revised the quartet, and wrote two of his three most beautiful partsongs – and in 1918, he produced A Song before Sunrise and most of the Poem of Life and Love.

Now, however, following the end of the War, the next five years were an almost continuous round of journeys (most of them doubtless extremely exhausting) to concerts or operas in London and Germany, holidaying in Norway and southern Europe, and to German sanatoria for ‘cures’, with very little time spent at Grez. Depression, indeed, rather than physical ailments, became an increasingly serious problem – brought on by a number of things. The vandalism of the house at Grez had upset the Deliuses beyond measure; for a considerable time they had been virtual refugees in England, separated from most of their possessions; Beecham had more or less given up conducting Delius’s music – indeed, he was hardly giving any orchestral concerts at all, and what time and energy he had to spare from trying to resolve his financial problems was spent in the opera house – so the Deliuses saw little or nothing of their great friend; and finally they were short of money, unable to recover assets which they held in Germany. Post-war England was a grim place: inflation had almost doubled, the value of the pound had plummeted by over 60 percent, and:

Music does not seem to be very flourishing in London at present: the price of everything goes up and there is no increase of audiences, but rather the reverse, so that the loss on concerts is greater than ever.

Finally, the lawyer on whom Delius was relying in his dispute with Universal, Franz Heinitz, had died.