Editing Frederick Delius (section)

===Last years===
A young English admirer, [[Eric Fenby]], learning that Delius was trying to compose by dictating to Jelka, volunteered his services as an unpaid amanuensis. For five years, from 1928, he worked with Delius, taking down his new compositions from dictation, and helping him revise earlier works. Together they produced ''Cynara'' (a setting of words by [[Ernest Dowson]]), ''A Late Lark'' (a setting of [[William Ernest Henley|W. E. Henley]]), ''[[A Song of Summer]]'', a third violin sonata, the ''Irmelin'' prelude, and ''Idyll'' (1932), which reused music from Delius's short opera ''Margot la rouge'', composed thirty years earlier. McVeagh rates their greatest joint production as ''The Songs of Farewell'', settings of Whitman poems for chorus and orchestra, which were dedicated to Jelka.<ref name=dnb/> Other works produced in this period include a ''Caprice and Elegy'' for cello and orchestra written for the distinguished British cellist [[Beatrice Harrison]], and a short orchestral piece, ''Fantastic Dance'', which Delius dedicated to Fenby.<ref name= F88/> The violin sonata incorporates the first, incomprehensible, melody that Delius had attempted to dictate to Fenby before their ''modus operandi'' had been worked out. Fenby's initial failure to pick up the tune led Delius to the view that "[the] boy is no good&nbsp;... he cannot even take down a simple melody".<ref>Fenby (1981), pp. 31–33</ref>{{refn|A complete list of the works created or revised during the Delius–Fenby collaboration is provided in Fenby (1981), pp. 261–62.|group= n}} Fenby later wrote a book about his experiences of working with Delius. Among other details, Fenby reveals Delius's love of cricket. The pair followed the [[Australian cricket team in England in 1930|1930 Test series]] between England and Australia with great interest, and regaled a bemused Jelka with accounts of their boyhood exploits in the game.<ref>Fenby (1981), pp. 102–03</ref> In 1932, Delius was awarded the Freedom of the City of Bradford.<ref name="WhatDoTheyKnow">{{Whatdotheyknow.com|https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/freedom_of_the_city_list_3#incoming-2135991|Email from Bradford City Council on 29 September 2022|891779|Bradford City Council|29 September 2022}}</ref>

[[File:Delius grave.jpg|thumb|alt=A slate headstone in a grassy churchyard|Delius's grave at St Peter's Church in [[Limpsfield]], Surrey, photographed in 2013]]
In 1933, the year before both composers died, Elgar, who had flown to Paris to conduct a performance of his [[Violin Concerto (Elgar)|Violin Concerto]], visited Delius at Grez. Delius was not on the whole an admirer of Elgar's music,{{refn| Delius said of Elgar's [[Symphony No. 1 (Elgar)|First Symphony]]: "It starts with a theme out of the ''[[Parsifal (opera)|Parcival]]'' Prelude a little altered. The slow movement is a theme out of [[Requiem (Verdi)|Verdi's Requiem]] a little altered. The rest is [[Felix Mendelssohn|Mendelssohn]] and [[Johannes Brahms|Brahms]], thick and without the slightest orchestral charm – gray – and they all shout 'Masterwork'!"<ref name=butler/> He also called ''[[The Dream of Gerontius]]'' nauseating; he admired Elgar's ''[[Falstaff (Elgar)|Falstaff]]'', however.<ref name=dnb/>|group= n}} but the two men took to each other, and there followed a warm correspondence until Elgar's death in February 1934.<ref name=grove/> Elgar described Delius as "a poet and a visionary".<ref>Redwood, p. 94, ''quoted'' in McVeagh, ODNB</ref>

Delius died at Grez on 10 June 1934, aged 72. He had wished to be buried in his own garden, but the French authorities forbade it. His alternative wish, despite his atheism, was to be buried "in some country churchyard in the south of England, where people could place wild flowers".<ref name=grove/> At this time Jelka was too ill to make the journey across the [[English Channel|Channel]], and Delius was temporarily buried in the local cemetery at Grez.<ref>Fenby (1981), p. 227</ref>

By May 1935, Jelka felt she had enough strength to undertake the crossing to attend a reburial in England. She chose [[Church of St Peter, Limpsfield|St Peter's]] church, [[Limpsfield]], [[Surrey]] as the site for the grave.{{refn|According to Beatrice Harrison's sister Margaret, there was some question whether Anglican churches would be willing to accept the body of a professed atheist for burial. The Harrison family, who lived nearby, secured the agreement of the vicar of Limpsfield, and Jelka chose St Peter's churchyard for her husband's reinterment.<ref>Harrison, Margaret. "[http://www.delius.org.uk/journals/uploads/journal87.pdf Margaret Harrison remembers] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190802140507/http://www.delius.org.uk/journals/uploads/journal87.pdf |date=2 August 2019 }}", The Delius Society Journal, Autumn 1985, No. 87, p. 18</ref>|group= n}} She sailed to England for the service, but became ill ''en route'', and on arrival was taken to hospital in Dover and then Kensington in London, missing the reburial on 26 May.<ref>Fenby (1981), p. 230</ref> The ceremony took place at midnight; the headline in the ''Sunday Dispatch'' was "Sixty People Under Flickering Lamps In A Surrey Churchyard".<ref>Fenby (1981), pp. 106–07 (Fig. 16)</ref> The vicar offered a prayer: "May the souls of the departed through the mercy of God rest in peace."<ref>Fenby (1981), pp. 233–34</ref> Jelka died two days later, on 28 May. She was buried in the same grave as Delius.<ref name=dnb/>