finance his winter studies of music and literature. His application was successful, and in May 1912 he began his duties. He worked initially under Walter Attewell, a former Nottinghamshire professional, and later under the Yorkshire and England cricketer Ted Wainwright. Cardus established good working relations with both of these, but identified most closely with Cyril Alington, the school's headmaster: "Because of Alington I call myself ... an old Salopian". Alington first detected Cardus's intellectual potential when he found him reading a copy of Gilbert Murray's translation of Euripides's drama Medea. In August 1914, in addition to his cricketing duties he became Alington's secretary, after the previous incumbent joined the army at the outbreak of war; Cardus was rejected for military service because of his poor eyesight. Cardus did not find his duties at Shrewsbury onerous. He made frequent trips to Manchester, for Hallé concerts or to watch Thomas Beecham conduct at the Manchester Opera House. He found time for other work; thus, in the winter of 1913–14, he was the music critic for the northern edition of The Daily Citizen. This short-lived newspaper was an official organ of the early Labour Party; mainly out of admiration for Bernard Shaw Cardus had joined the Independent Labour Party, but quickly lost interest in socialism: "Their creed or system was obviously not to be a means to an end but an end in itself". According to Brookes, the influence of Shrewsbury School affected Cardus to the extent that "[t]he playing fields of an English public school were for him a more natural setting than the iconoclastic frenzy of the Lyons café where socialism vied with Richard Strauss for pride of place in the race to modernity". The Daily Citizen paid poorly, and Cardus's association with it ended in April 1914. Cardus spent his winters in Manchester, studying hard in anticipation of any opportunity for an opening as a music critic, eking out his summer savings by taking temporary clerical work. Around 1916 he met Edith King, an art teacher and amateur actress who became a regular attender at the Lyons café meetings. In the summers, when Cardus returned to Shrewsbury, she kept him informed of musical and cultural events in Manchester. The Shrewsbury years, which Brookes describes as a "magical interlude", ended suddenly when, at the end of the 1916 summer, Alington was appointed headmaster of Eton. Initially it seemed likely that Cardus