These animals were his constant companions, even seeming to take precedence over his music. On the night of his seventieth birthday, Elgar conducted a massive concert of his music for the BBC. At the conclusion he stepped up to the microphone and said: "Good night everybody. Good night, Marco."
For his Christmas card of 1929 he quoted lines from Walt Whitman:
"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd:
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied - not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth."