Hall's family moved around the country with her father and spent some years in Guarlford, a small village near Malvern.

When she was nine, Émile Sauret heard her play, and she gained one of the recently instituted Wessely Exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Music, London: but owing to her father's lack of means she did not take it up.

[1][4] She continued to study under several well known teachers, including a year with Edward Elgar in 1894 aged 10, August Wilhelmj in London in 1896, and Max Mossel [nl] in Birmingham in 1898.

[5] The story goes that a clergyman found her in a half-starved condition playing for coppers in the streets of Bristol, took her to London and with the assistance of some friends—including W. Ebsworth Hill of the renowned violin makers W.E.

Hill & Sons, composer Jane Roeckel and philanthropist Philip Napier Miles[6]—placed her in a position to receive lessons from Professor Johann Kruse[7] (who had studied with Joachim) in 1900.