William Smith Williams and Music

William’s youngest daughter, Anna, was born in Campden Hill Terrace in 1845. Many years later she spoke in an interview of the Smith Williams family household. She had by then become a celebrated concert soprano.

Her interviewer wrote that, ‘Mr Smith Williams was a man of an extreme romantic and artistic temperament. In the evening the small petted Anna would sit on a stool at his knee while he said to the older ones - “Now, girls, shall we have some Mozart?”

“I don’t like Mozart!” the little maiden would say. “Can’t we have some operatic music instead?” But Mozart invariably carried the day.’

Anna Williams age 18 from family photographs