wouldn't want any damn fiddler in his family" and, when thwarted in this regard, cutting his son off without a shilling. So George apparently received no paternal assistance when, unable to get enough work in his chosen profession on occasions in the 1880s, he was compelled, he recalled, to sleep in the snow in Trafalgar Square and to button his jacket up to the neck when in polite society to conceal his lack of a shirt collar and waistcoat. His fortunes took a turn for the better in 1890 when he was appointed as foundation Ormond Professor of Music to head the newly created Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne. He had few formal qualifications for the position. In 1883 he had enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London but left after only a single term, having, according to a friend, become "impatient with the college's slow ways and slower Professors". This was the sum total of his tertiary education in music. His only other relevant achievement apart from his freelance music journalism had been a February 1888 performance by the London Symphony Orchestra of an excerpt from his opera Harold. The appointment of Australian university professors at that time was usually based on recommendations from expert committees set up for the purpose in London. The deficiency of Marshall-Hall's formal qualifications for the Melbourne chair is reflected in the fact that, although he was one of 48 applicants when the post was first advertised in March 1888, the London committee declined to make a recommendation. One member, the Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, Frederick Ouseley, conceded that there were "some eminently respectable men, and good musicians in the ordinary sense of the words" among the applicants, adding however that there were "certainly not five – hardly one – of whom I could honestly speak as first-class ... The best men have not become candidates." Certainly two other committee members, principal of the Royal Academy of Music Alexander Mackenzie and concert pianist Sir Charles Hallé, while echoing Ouseley's view, agreed that Marshall-Hall was the only candidate who was "near to the mark". But when later that year the job was re-advertised, Marshall-Hall was still not considered the most suitable applicant by the committee, which selected four names, including his, to send to the Council of the University of Melbourne, but declined to rank