Mr Smith: An admirable Victorian impresario. Voices not scenery.

 

His name came up somewhere, today, so I thought 'why not'. Amazingly few photos of him. Thanks to the Carl Rosa Trust for those here ...

SMITH, [Marmaduke] Valentine aka FABRINI, Valentine  (b Barnard Castle, Durham, 8 April 1849; d 103 Anerley Road, London SE20, 9 May 1933)

 

For more than thirty years, the tenor known more often as ‘Valentine Smith’ than as ‘Signor Fabrini’ was a feature of the British musical scene, notably, during the 1890s when he travelled his small-scale, yet often ambitious, opera company to all parts of the British isles and even beyond.

 

Marmaduke Smith was born in the Durham town of Barnard Castle, one of the ten or more children of William Smith and his wife Mary.  William Smith is described in 1851 as ‘whitesmith and farrier’ of Market Place, Pulman Yard, Barnard Castle. In 1861 he is ‘smith and iron foundryman’ of George Street in the same town. 

 

I first spot young Marmaduke up on the concert platform in 1870, at twenty years of age, singing in a concert at the New Victoria Hall in Sheerness, on a bill topped by Blanche Cole and with Meyer Lutz as accompanist, under the name of Mr M Smith. But it is some three years before he appears before me again, and now he is in London advertising ‘his first appearance since his return from Italy’ (27 March 1873) as a soloist with Henry Leslie’s choir, giving the Rossini ‘Cuius animum’ alongside Jessie Jones, Henry Guy and Charles Santley. The three men were all featured again, with Janet Patey, Pauline Rita and Julia Wigan in another concert on 24 April, and just a fortnight later Smith made what seems to have been his operatic debut – in England, at least – singing the role of Don Ottavio alongside Blanche Cole, Ida and Henri Corri, Frank Celli, George Fox, Alice Barth and Henry Pope at the Crystal Palace.

However, Mr V Smith was not to be around very much longer than Mr M Smith had been. For Marmaduke was swiftly picked up by Colonel Mapleson, signed to a contract with the Italian Opera, and when he resurfaced it was as ‘Signor Fabrini’.

Clarice Sinico

His first assignment as an Italian was a Mapleson concert party tour. Therese Titiens herself topped the bill along with Clarice Sinico and mezzo Justine Macvitz, one real Italian in Borella, and three Anglophone ones: Campobello, Giulio Perkins and Fabrini. During the company’s time in Edinburgh a performance of The Messiah was given, and Signor Fabrini took the tenor music alongside Titiens, Zélie Trebelli and Agnesi. When it came to the Italian opera season at Her Majesty’s Theatre, however, Signor Fabrini seems only to have appeared (alongside Perkins and Costa) as one of the three monks in Les Huguenots. During the season he also appeared at Christine Nilsson’s concert, on a bill including Santley, Castellan, Agnesi, Louise Singelli and Amelie Deméric-Lablache, singing ‘Bella adorata’ and ‘When other lips’.

Signor Fabrini did not pursue the Italian opera experience. Instead, he returned to English opera, and travelled to Ireland for an operatic season with the brothers Gunn at Dublin and Cork. I notice him playing Thaddeus to the Bohemian Girl of Rose Hersee.

 

 

Johanna Levier

 

During 1875, the young tenor picked up speed. He was seen at the Albert Hall, singing the tenor music in Israel in Egypt alongside Johanna Levier and Antoinette Sterling. Initially hired to sing second tenor to Sims Reeves, he ended up performing the whole of the tenor part when Reeves cancelled. Later in the year, he deputised elsewhere for the chronically unreliable star tenor, and also returned to the Albert Hall for an Elijah with Mme Lemmens-Sherrington, Bessie Palmer and Whitney. In May he returned to the Crystal Palace opera troupe, to sing the title-role in Faust and the tenor part in Le Domino noir alongside Rose Hersee, and, during the season, he can be seen on programmes at Mme Sainton-Dolby’s concerts, at the Brighton Aquarium with Jose Sherrington or Edna Hall, at Gatti’s promenade concerts (‘M’appari’, ‘When other lips’), in various provincial dates, and at the end of the year (10 December) he made a first performance with the Sacred Harmonic Society in The Messiah, sharing the tenor music with Reeves, Edward Lloyd and Montem Smith. By the following March, however, when the Society gave Samson, Signor Fabrini had been promoted to principal tenor, sharing the top of the bill with Edith Wynne, Janet Patey and Lewis Thomas.

Jose Sherrington

On 14 February 1876, Fabrini gave his first own concert in the modest surroundings of the Store Street Music Hall. Somewhat surprisingly, he opted for a Ballad concert, and Ann Banks and her sister, Agnes Drummond, featured alongside Helen D’Alton, Charles Tinney and Lithgow James. Fabrini had, however, as much talent for ballad singing as he had for larger music, and later in the year, when he appeared at Dr Bernhardt’s concerts at Langham Hall it was reported that he ‘gave some old English ballads exceedingly well’.

 He was heard in concert for Madame Sainton-Dolby (‘Her own sweet self’), at the Alexnadra Palace, the Royal Aquarium,, and on a number of occasions for Dr Bernhard’s Cecilian Choralists at Langham Hall, gave St Paul at the Albert Hall with Mme Nouver, Enriques and Foli, and played Acis to the Galatea of Ann Banks at Warrington, before in the new year he returned in force to the operatic stage, taking the tenor roles, between September and October, in Lucrezia Borgia, Il Trovatore, L’Elisir d’amore and Faust at the Crystal Palace with Henri and Ida Corri, Bessie Palmer and George Fox. In November he also appeared at the Aquarium in Isidore de Solla’s operatic season, singing Thaddeus once again opposite Rose Hersee.

Rose Hersee

For the next two years, Signor Fabrini seems to have confined his activities largely to concerts and oratorios in the provinces, Although in early 1879 I spot him singing at the Albert Hall on St Patrick’s Day and at St James’s Hall in Salvayre’s Stabat Mater. He was announced by D’Oyly Carte to sing the role of Ralph Rackstraw in HMS Pinafore in a short season at the Standard Theatre in September, but in the event both he and the contralto dropped out (although G&S historians have sometimes failed to catch this fact) and it was William Seymour and Rosina Brandram who actually appeared.

The reason for Signor Fabrini’s scratching may have been contractual, for it had already been reported in the music trade papers that he had been hired for a return to the operatic stage. Not in London, this time, nor even in Britain, but in the United States of America. He had, so it was averred, been hired for Emma Abbott’s lucratively touring English opera company.  If he had been, he didn’t go. Not yet. Only two years later. In the meanwhile, he continued with appearances under William Carter in various national concerts and in oratorio at the Albert Hall and in opera, during October and November 1880- at St George’s Hall (Il Trovatore, Don Giovanni, Norma), and concerts with Jenny Viard-Louis and Miss Melville, until on 30 June 1881 he set out for America.

 

Signor Valentino Fabrini was well publicised before his arrival .. ‘a new tenor formerly of Her Majesty’s company’ ‘late of Mapleson’s London Opera Company’ ... but he needed to be. For he was taking the place of co-first tenor (with the inexhaustible William Castle) in Miss Abbott’s company occupied in the previous season by the much loved Pasqualino Brignoli. Just how well he succeeded is evident in the fact that he would remain with Miss Abbott for four full seasons.

His first role with the company appears to have been Lionel in Martha played at New York’s Grand Opera House (4 October 1881) and his notices were careful: ‘a fine presence, fair acting and a pleasing light tenor voice’ or later ‘Sig Fabrini has a good voice – one better than his method – but it will not bear forcing. He does not seem at his ease on stage but was a very fair Lionel’ as he went on to sing Edgardo to Miss Abbott’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Manrico to her Leonora in Il Trovatore, Faust to her Marguerite,and Thaddeus to her Bohemian Girl, whilst Castle took the leads in Fra Diavolo, Maritana, Olivette, The Chimes of Normandy and Emilio Usiglio’s The Two Cavaliers.

 

His notices seem to have been unanimously appreciative, his voice was liked (although, curiously, often spoken of as being ‘light’), his acting was liked, and there were frequent mentions of his ‘handsome appearance’. There was also, given Miss Abbott’s propensity for publicity and for grabbing newspaper inches at any cost, a certain amount of nonsense promulgated concerning the Signor’s private life. At one stage it was asserted that ‘his real name is Fabrian and he is an American’, at another he was identified as being a Mr Smythe (which was a bit nearer) in the same sentence which accused Enrico Campobello of being ‘Mr Campbell’ (he was né Harry Martin). He was, however, spared the indignity, which fell to Castle, of being involved in ‘the Emma Abbott kiss’, in which the pair were supposed passionately to indulge, when Paul and Virginia was produced.

The Abbott kiss: a decided lack of passion

The season ended in May 1882, and Fabrini returned to England but he was back in America, the following August, to go round the country again, and the same timetable was repeated in 1883 and 1884. Over these years he added the Duke of Rigoletto, Idreno in Semiramide, when Miss Abbott was rash enough to attempt that opera, Elvino in La Sonnambula,Tolloller in Iolanthe and he also appeared from time to time in Castle’s roles in Mignon, The Chimes of Normandy and King for a Day et al.

 

 On 25 April 1885 Miss Abbott’s latest annual season came to an end, and with it Signor Fabrini’s connection with her. And, on his return to Britain, so also did Mr Marmaduke Smith’s connection with Signor Fabrini. From now on, for the remainder of his career, Marmaduke would be plain English ‘Mr Valentine Smith’.

Georgina Burns

 Mr Valentine Smith made his return to the English concert stage, befittingly, singing the oratorio Placida, the Christian Martyr, composed by his most faithful patron, William Carter (25 July 1885), and he made his return to the operatic stage, immediately afterwards, as a principal tenor, alongside Frederick Packard and Barton McGuckin, with the Carl Rosa company. He began his engagement by singing Faust to the Marguerite of Julia Gaylord at Blackpool and Manrico in Dublin, then moved on to play Don Jose to the Carmen of Marie Roze, The Bohemian Girl with Georgina Burns and the title-role in Marchetti’s Ruy Blas, (‘his powerful, rich tenor voice..’) produced at Liverpool in February 1886.

When the Rosa company played a season at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with more tenors available than seemed possible – McGuckin, Runcio, Max Eugene, Scovel, Smith and Seymour Jackson -- he sang only Maritana. In between times (‘by permission of Carl Rosa) he sang in concert and oratorio, from Bradford to the Albert Hall.

Valentine Smith sang for three seasons with Carl Rosa. It might, perhaps, only have been two but, when Scovel tried to blackmail the manager for a large increase in salary – from 20 to 45 pounds – Rosa responded by simply dropping the vain and importunate singer and re-hiring Smith at 30 pounds a week.

The Chevalier Scovel alias Signor Scovello

By the time his third season with the company was done, Valentine Smith was able to advertise that he had played the principal tenor roles in Lohengrin, Carmen, Faust, Ruy Blas, Il Trovatore, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Giovanni, Esmeralda, Maritana, The Bohemian Girl and The Puritan’s Daughter for Rosa.

 

After, now, some seven years singing first tenor with other people’s companies, in August 1888, Valentine Smith decided to launch his own outfit. He began in a suitably modest manner, at Liverpool’s St George’s Hall, and followed up with a season at the Alexandra Palace. Emily Parkinson, daughter of the tenor, was his prima donna and the company included Jeannie Rosse, Egbert Roberts, Charles H Victor, Rita Presano and Messrs Cushing and Muller. From late August until early October, Maritana, Il Trovatore, The Bohemian Girl, Lucia di Lammermoor and La Sonnambula were given as a complement to Messrs Pain’s daylight firework depiction of The Destruction of Pompeii and Professor Baldwin ‘the daring American aeronaut’ with his balloon and parachute act. 

Rita Presano

Over the following months, he appeared in a number of Carter concerts at the Albert Hall, and visited Dublin to play in opera for Augustus Harris, before on 26 January he brought his opera company to the West End. The venue was the less than loved Olympic Theatre, and the performances were not what the West End was accustomed to. For Valentine Smith’s productions centred firmly on the performers. There was minimal scenery and no attempt at all to appeal to the ‘fashionable’ audiences of the Italian opera or of the Covent Garden and Her Majesty’s Theatre English operas. The Times sniffed: ‘The originator of this undertaking can have no intention of courting comparison with any London revivals of operas known to the present generation' ... tutting that ‘the modest ambition on the part of the management is seen by the fact that extra cheap seats have been put in instead of stalls’ but allowing ‘The indulgence of the house is less called for in respect of the singing and acting than in the matter of mise en scene. The ballet and the chorus of this revival may be ranked as operatic curiosities’.

Clara Perry

Indeed, Smith’s leading singers – Clara Perry, Henry Pope, Ella Collins – had played their roles with the best English opera companies, and Susetta Fenn, Stanley Potter, Charles Victor, Richard Lansmere and Louise Lyle also had their references. And, when Fra Diavolo was produced, the company’s general manager, the veteran Charles Durand took once again to the stage. Maritana, The Bohemian Girl, Lucia di Lammermoor and Il Trovatore were also played over a one-month season. A month later Agnes Hewitt, lessee of the Olympic, filed for bankruptcy.

 

Not so Valentine Smith. He returned first of all to the concert stage, giving his ‘Let me like a soldier fall’, ‘The anchor’s weighed’, ‘Sound an alarm’, ‘When other lips’ and other tenor classics at a run of concerts at the Albert Hall, at the Prince’s Hall, and in the Covent Garden proms season before, with the coming of autumn, he relaunched his company on a provincial tour. ‘Valentine Smith the dramatic tenor and his Grand English Opera Company’ including at this stage Carina Clelland, Miss Parkinson, Durand’s sometime star soprano Mlle Mariani, now singing contralto, Sam Whyte, and many of his originals, would cover the country for some eight years. The accent would remain, throughout, on the performance – the venues which Smith played were not always conventional, and ranged from a stage mocked up in Newcastle Town Hall to, over Michael Gunn’s protests, the Round Room of the Rotundo in Dublin – and, most particularly, on the manager-star’s performance. ‘The dramatic tenor’ and his ‘top C from the chest’ were advertised to good effect.

 

Smith’s company retained the old favourite operas in its repertoire -  Maritana, The Bohemian Girl, Faust, Il Trovatore, Fra Diavolo and Lucia di Lammermoor were never far away, and Norma, The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, Martha, The Rose of Castille, The Lily of Killarney were also played -- but Smith revived Balfe’s Blanche de Nevers in 1890, in 1893 he put out a version of Adam’s Si j’étais roi (King for a Day), which he had played with Emma Abbott, and in 1896 he premiered Stephen Philpot’s La Gitana. He also added Cavalleria Rusticana to his baggage when that opera became fashionable.

 

Amelia Sinico, Julia Lennox (ex-Siedle), Kneale Campbell, Constance St Bride (ie Bridget Connolly), Josephine Pulham and Ghita Corri took turns in supporting the tenor, who ventured occasionally to the London suburbs, at the Standard or the Parkhurst Theatre, without again invading the West End. At the age of almost fifty ‘the popular tenor’ was still pulling notices such as ‘his command of a chest C may be set down in two senses as a notable achievement in the way of ut de poitrine’, and between his touring seasons he still put in appearances at the Albert Hall and other concert venues. In 1897 (18 June) he can be seen at the Albert Hall alongside Albani, Esther Palliser and others, giving those tenor chestnuts ‘The Message’ and ‘The Death of Nelson’ in his own particular style.

Valentine Smith continued to perform, into the twentieth century, after folding away his opera tours. I have spotted him at the new Theatre Royal, Kilburn (19 March 1900) doing operatic selections and a new 1-act romantic opera by Stephen Philpot alongside the comicalties of Arthur Roberts, and again in 1902 (28 April) at Stratford’s Borough Theatre singing Manrico with Kelson Trueman’s Imperial Grand Opera Company in a company including Joseph O’Mara, Marie Duma, G H Snazelle and Marie Titiens. ‘He was applauded to the echo’ the press reported.

After thirty years of singing, that was certainly a reference.

 

Valentine Smith appears to have retired around this time. I see his name no more on the bills of the nation, no more advertisements of the famous ‘C from the chest’. He lived on, in retirement, for a further thirty years, and died at the age of 83 in 1933.

 

Valentine Smith married during his early years as a singer and he and his wife Mary Ann née Gugeri gave birth to (at least) two sons and two daughters. Their eldest son, named Marmaduke Valentine Smith (b Croydon 1874; d Boscombe 15 August 1951) for his father, became well known as a newspaper proprietor, printer and distributor.

 

Tesseman: A disastrous Victorian tenor ...

 

I scan e-bay every morning with my first cup of tea. And just occasionally the site turns up a splendid surprise. Today was one of those occasions.

In my last 30 years of research, I've come upon some droll characters. Most of them seem, I wonder why, to be tenors. Mr Burley from Scarborough was one of the drollest. I did not expect, ever, to come upon a photograph of this very minor Victorian Vocalist ... but ... 

Yes. He looks rather as I suspected he might have ...

BURLEIGH, Tesseman [BURLEY, Thomas James] (b Scarborough, x St Crux 13 October 1844; d Toronto, Canada 2 February 1901)

 

Mr Tesseman Burleigh (as he called himself, most of the time) was an unfortunate Victorian vocalist. Given a chance at the limelight early, and undoubtedly unadvisedly, he dug himself into a hole and spent the rest of his career trying to get himself out.

 

Thomas Burley was born in Yorkshire, the son of a greengrocer, Andrew Burley and his wife Charlotte née Tesseman, and, in his early twenties -- whilst working as an engine fitter -- sang at local concerts. He subsequently went to London and studied there with Henry Deacon, with whom he appeared in concert in Wales. The only record I have of his appearing in a London concert, at this time, is at Mme Sainton-Dolby’s 1868 evening (3 June) at St James’s Hall, on a large and very rich bill, topped by the Italian opera’s Nilsson, Trebelli, Gardoni, Bettini and Gassier. Tesseman then spent some time in Italy, and made his reappearance on home soil at Miss Austin’s concert on 22 May 1871. He gave Brizzi’s ‘Ave Maria’, ‘Adelaide’ and duetted Lucantoni’s ‘Il convuego’ with Miss Austin, and the press noted: ‘His singing would have been more pleasing had it been less boisterous’.

However, Mr Tesseman, evidently, pleased one important person: Colonel Mapleson, for her was hired as a junior member of the Italian opera company. He made his first appearances in concert, at Liverpool (‘Una furtiva lagrima’, ‘Da quell’istante’), Edinburgh and Newcastle, and the reaction was frankly disastrous. The music press wrote: ‘We are at a loss to know upon what grounds that gentleman has succeeded in enlisting himself under the Mapleson banner’. 

‘Signor Tesseman of the Italian opera’ appeared in a handful of concerts over the following seasons, and on 18 November 1872 put up his own programme at York, assisted by Anita Leoni and the Signori Zoboli and Rocca. The occasion was a fiasco. In 1874 and 1875 he turned up in several concerts at St George’s Hall, St James’s Hall and the Hanover Square Rooms, and deputised for Wilbye Cooper in Gollmick’s cantata The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, in 1876 he sang with the Welsh Choral Union, alongside Edith Wynne and Elena Angele, and he returned regularly to his native Scarborough in concert. In 1878 he announced his ‘Farewell’ concert there, prior to his departure for America (‘Adelaide’, Mazzini’s ‘When I am gone’). But he wasn’t gone. I see his name attached to a production of A Cruise to China in 1880. His name, however, had been long forgotten in operatic circles, when he was taken on in 1881 as a member of the William Parkinson touring opera (‘T B Tesseman’), and then by Samuel Hayes, for his unfortunate opera season at the Lyceum (Mietelore in Dinorah, Rustighello in Lucrezia Borgia, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Tonio in La Figlia di reggimento, Bois Rosé in Les Huguenots). 

After that, he remained unheard of, surfacing only in 1885, if he is the ‘T C Burleigh’ touring in Rip van Winkle, and in 1887, when he took Pony Moore of the Moore and Burgess Minstrels to court for sacking him after a very short part of a year’s contract. ‘He had trained in Italy’, it was reported, ‘where he enjoyed several engagements as leading tenor’ ... [he was] also engaged by Mapleson and the Royal Italian opera …’. Moore said that the singer had been engaged subject to trial, and had failed the trial, and the court agreed with him.

I spot ‘Signor Tesseman’ (still) singing at Brook Green in 1886, giving his Brizzi ‘Ave Maria’ (still) at Aptommas’s concert in May 1888, and then, one last time, in 1891, producing a pantomime-type entertainment with children at the Royalty Theatre.

 

Having completed this little piece, I chanced upon the following article. Somebody has evidently found a good deal of interest in 'Mr Tesseman Burleigh'. It seems that his private life was as disordered as his professional one, and his first marriage to Priscilla daughter of Richard Harris Tindall of East Mount, Scarborough, was followed by a second union to one Florence Winne  …

 

Signor Thomas Tesseyman Burley, man of no moral character

                     

…When of a sufficient age Thomas was placed as a Chorister in the [York] cathedral under Dr Cambridge (recte; Camidge) where he displayed no special feature as a treble singer, but afterwards, developed a tenor voice of excellent quality.  After leaving the Minster he joined the band of the 16th Lancers and played the Saxhorn. Through the instrumentality of a generous patron, who had been struck by he quality of his voice, he was trained for an opera singer and sent to Italy to complete his studies.  In this he was very successful and obtained an opening to sing at the Opera house at San Carlo Naples, where he appeared as Thaddeus and made a good impression on his hearers as, in addition to his excellent voice, he was also of a prepossessing appearance. Oct 1st 1870 he concluded his engagement at the Opera House at Bergamo where he performed in the Huguenots.  After completing his engagement at Naples, he returned to England but could not obtain a place on the London stage, although on May 27th 1871 he sang at the Queens rooms, therefore came up North and sang at several concerts.  At Scarborough he appeared and was received with some enthusiasm, the Mayor inviting him to his house where unfortunately his fine voice and good looks made such an impression on Miss Tindall that she fell in love with him and, to her he proposed and she accepted.  After marriage came the awakening of the unsuspecting bride who found her husband to be a man of no moral character and treated her in the most cruel and heartless manner, using the money he had obtained from her for his own selfish and dissolute tastes.  A divorce was, however, obtained and a sum of money paid to him to satisfy his needs.  He gave a concert in his native place which attracted one of the most fashionable audiences that has been seen in the concert room.  On May 27th 1871, he made his last appearance at the Queens Rooms, Hanover Street London in conjunction with Charles Halle (Halle Orchestra), Madame Norman, Neruda, M. Paque, Miss Austin, the latter and Signor Burley very highly applauded for their rendering of ‘Adelaide’. He was afterwards specially engaged to sing at St James' Hall with Adeline Patti, Madame Titiens, Mme Sinico, Mme Trebelli, Bellini, and Miss Edith Wynne. ApThomas as the harpist, also performed. He had planned a concert in York in the October. A downward course was his future. Engagements, even on the concert platform, became less frequent and the society he frequented tended to debase him, his inclinations being favourable to such influence and in the end his English career was completed by his emigration to Canada, where he ultimately settled and married an actress and died in Toronto on Feb 2nd 1901 at the age of 56 years’.

 

Well! How about that! And yes, there he is being the ‘eminent tenor’ in concert in Niagara in 1895, and then teaching singing in Toronto. And self-publishing a singing manual (1896). And, heavens, here he is in A Souvenir of Musical Toronto (1899). And … this man has been written about all over the place! Here, in 1872, a wandering tourist bumps into him in Turin ... ‘Signor Tesseman whom I last saw in the part of Oberon with Titiens on the Dublin stage ..’. So Mapleson did let him on the stage!

 

What a tale! What a ******

 

 

 

 

 

The 1886 music hall: an agent's price list.

 

Many years ago, when I was a baby (ish) theatrical agent, someone invented the electric typewriter and I had what I thought was the novel idea of sending out Artist Availability Lists to managements. The electric typewriter could run off the same page(s) lots of time, you see. Novel? Hardly. A century too late. And today I came upon this 1886 example of an Availability List from the southside variety agency of 'Mr de Vere'. Wonderful piece of music-hall history!

I read through the list... and I recognised only two names!  Ada HERMINE (sometimes Herminie) a successful 'operatic vocalist' and Pollie BEAUMONT long-lasting soubrette.  So I thought I had better investigate. Was this a cheap-n-cheerful agency? Or were any of these acts good stuff.

Let's go for the most expensive act. £10 a week for HERR JULIUS KELLER. The antipodean wonder and phenomenon of 1885. What did he do, thought. This Australian with a germanic name? Well, he wasn't Australian. He was a genuine German. And 'antipodean' was here used in its original sense. Herr Keller was an upside down man. He apparently had paralysed legs, and his act consisted of doing everything normally done by legs with his arms!

Jules KELLER [KELLER, Barnett Jules] (b Fridrichshof, Dahme-Spreewald, Germany January 1866; d Salisbury 1 July 1906) grew up in England, and launched himself as a novelty act in 1885 as 'the pedo-manual phenomeon'. He was an entire success and progressed quickly to venues such as the Star Music Hall, Liverpool and the Westminster Aquarium ('the marvellous feats of this gentleman must be see to be believed'), thence to the Continent..

He married Bella Conrad in 1892 and his infirmity did not prevent his fathering two sons (Ira, Arthur) and a daughter (Adelaide). He was travelling from Brooklyn, USA (the home of his wife's family), via Plymouth, to London Waterloo, on the London and South Western Railway boat express, to begin his year's touring, when the train crashed leaving 27 dead. Jules was one.

'R[ichar]d TABRA' 'comic vocalist and dancer' and Annie STERN 'serio, ballad and dancer', came as a pair for £4.10s.0d. And, yes, they were husband and wife. Married 12 December 1883.

Dick was the son of comedy sketch performer 'Richard Leggett' and his wife Sarah, and his rightful name was Richard SMITH (1855-1928). His speciality was a routine entitled 'the growing lad' in which he 'grew' upwards as he sang. Annie was 'a handsome burlesque dancer'. In 1892, the couple left for the United States, Dick where became a shipping clerk. He died aged 73, and Annie (1861-1947) survived him by some two decades.

ROBZAT was another of those acrobatic names which covered the identity of a prosaic Englishman. This one apparently came from Northampton, where, around 1876, he put together an act built around slack-rope work and juggling with partners who called themselves 'T Azella' and 'T Loretz'. A unicycle was soon included in their performance, and one rode the cycle on the wire whilst the other two hung beneath and juggled. Until July 1877 when the chain supporting their apparatus snapped and the men were catapulted to the ground. Mr Azella (a rather naive nom de gymnast, unless he belonged to the well-known Azella team) and Mr Loretz seem to have decided that enough was enough, and in 1878 Robzat reappears as a single. Billed variously as 'the Japanese juggler' 'the equilibristic marvel' 'with his performing pigeon, Billy, 'the Neapolitan wonder', 'the Royal juggler' and finally as 'chair equilibrist and valuter' (1904) he and his 'dexterous juggling with glass globes, knives and torches' were a solid item on music hall bills throughout the land. He seems to have adventured abroad but little -- I see him at the Paris El Dorado in June 1885 -- maybe because there was apparently (unless she's a typo) at 27 Lambeth Rd, letting rooms...?  Anyway he seems to have been good value at £3.10s.0d.

Pollie BEAUMONT was around for a long time. I imagine her real name was not Beaumont, and I doubt if the other half of the Sisters Beaumont was either. Anyway the Sisters seem to have got going in about 1879 (there was a Mr Beaumont, alongside them, too) and lasted until about 1884. Pollie, thereafter, is a single. At a meagre £3 a week. She worked, as such, into the 20th century and I see her in the Variety Veterans Home in Brinsworth House, near Twickenham, in the 1920s and 1930s ... I see her on many occasions in the 1880s advertised alongside Ada Hermin[i]e ..  ssters? girlfriends? ... more work needed.

If she was really 63 in 1921 ....

Rose COLLINETTI [JAMESON, Ellen Rosa] (b Blyth 1854; d Kensington 1909) was an extraordinarily versatile lass. Dancer, singer, equilibrist, musician .. she worked in all three capacities singly, or all at once .. proffering a skipping rope dance on a pedestal, and/or a refined mandoline, banjo or guitar performance.

She was the third child of an Irish musician, James Jameson, who had assumed the name of 'James Collinetti', and his wife, Louisa Georgina. So we can safely assume that she had nothing to do with 'the Collinetti Ohio Melodists' or the four 'Brothers Collinetti'. The parents may have been the Mr and Mrs Collinetti who can be spied working around 1860 with a repertoire of comic duets, and the blackface Collinettis who were on the same bill as Rose in Birmigham in 1874. Rose's older brother, James, also professed music -- was he the blackface boy? -- but sister Louisa was a shirt-seamstress.

My first sighting of Rose doing her pedestal routine is in 1873, at Paul's Concert Hall, in 1877 she ('a very clever and versatile young lady') was playing at London's Star Music Hall. Then at the Oxford, the Marylebone, and off to Edinburgh for pantomime ('charming mandoline playing and no less clever dancing'). Amid a welter of engagements, she appeared at the Holborn Royal ('I like to take a ramble in the morning', 'The Belle of Baltimore'), Deacons, the Cambridge, the Sun, the Westminster Aquarium ... in any or all of her capacities: at the Cambridge, she sang 'The Minstrel Boy', a serio song, played the guitar, did her dance .. all in one show. A decade later she was still advertising 'mandoline and banjo, American song and dance artiste and premier High Pedestal performer..'.  All that for £3.10s.0d! But I guess she was getting into the later stages of her career. My final sighting of her performing is in early 1891 ...

 I think Rose would have been better value than the £4 'Ethiopians' known as FIRTH and LACY. After diligent search I can find them only in minior engagements at Bury St Edmunds, Tring and Dunraven Castle.

'SAILOR' WARD was definitely worth £4 of anyone's money. He was the best and most authentic nautical vocalist in the land. 'The T P Cooke of the music halls'. And, advertisedly, a genuine sailor of fifteen years experience in the Royal Navy and the Merchant matinee. 'Bronzed, burly and bearded', 'the only legitimate sailor on the music-hall stage. But he didn't just look the part: he had a fine singing voice and could dance a mean hornpipe. Which he did.

He seems to have made his first appearances on the halls in 1879 at Crowder's in Greenwich ('Tom Bowling', 'Polly', 'Goodbye Jane'), and after a little stint with something named Rodney Golding's Entertainment, came on to the London scene at the Marylebone Music Hall early in 1880, then at the Holborn Royal. When the Surrey Theatre revived Black-Eyed Susan, they hired Sailor Ward to add verisimilitude to the occasion by singing 'All in the Downs'.

In the years that followed he was to be seen around the land, giving 'The White Squall', 'The Midshipmite', 'Jack's Yarn', 'We still hold the sway of the Sea', 'Our Sails Are Set' (each made up and dressed as a different tar), and dancing his hornpipe to delighted audiences. Between 1885-1886 he carried with him a certain Master Cleveland 'banjoist and top boot dancer', who may or may not have been a son. Or a cabin boy. In 1888 he played Ben Bolt in the Oldham pantomime of Robinson Crusoe. And by 1894 he was purveying a 'Lifeboat' song equipped with rolls of thunders and flashes of limelight.

For a couple of years he managed the struggling Stockton Grand (prices 2d to 6d), but he returned to London where I see him repeating his 'All in the Downs' and dancing his hornpipe in Black-Eyes Susan. In the new century he appears from time to time in South London ... and can that be he, in 1919, in 1923 ...?

Alas, in all that time I hav'n't succeeded in picking up either his real name, nor his home port ... nor a picture, nor a programme ... nothing, just a swodge of appreciative reviews. 

'Mons [Carl] TREGETOUR' (b Burnham, Bucks c 1855) was a shadowgraphist, a juggler, a would-be writer ... and, I fear, something of a run-of-the-mill performer. I spot him on the odd bill (Marylebone, Standard, Aquarium) in the 1880s and 1890s. Also in the 1891 census. I checked out the Charleses born in Burnham, but with no luck. £3 10s. Hmm.

The Sisters MERRYWOOD just may have been sisters. Eva and Grace. But their name certainly wasn't Merrywood. At one stage they called themselves 'the Dublin Belles', but when they went to Dublin they were 'England's Beauties'. So I have no idea of the truth. Eva came on the scene first. I see her singing and skipping-rope dancing, in 1882, at Hartlepool and playing in pantomime at Marylebone and Richmond to good notices. But, by 1884, the act is the Sisters Merrywood. And it is a decidedly successful act. Two 'ladylike little romps' of whom it was many a time noted 'we liked their dancing better than their singing', but whose popularity therewith didn't seem to suffer. They were noted as 'very merry' throughout England, Ireland and Scotland, in variety and pantomime, for three or four years before, in 1888, Grace withdrew.  

Eva, however, sailed on, as a serio song and dance girl. Soon, however, she was not really alone. She seems to have appeared on a bill, for the first time, with the 'magician' who called himself 'SANDRO VIO' ('the Wizard King' 'the youngest Wizard of the World') a sleight-of-hand artist from Hammersmith, at Kinsella's in Dublin at Christmas 1886. Monsieur/Signor Vio was, according to his say-so, British born of Italian and French parents. Maybe. Anyway, he mixed his 'escamoteur' act with an increasing amount of humour, and found a novel act when he became 'the American Necromancer and Exposer of Modern Magic' revaling how some of the easier tricks were done. He also purveyed a thought-reading act with a 'Mystic Zerbini'.

Alex is said to have married Eva at some stage, but since I know neither of their veritable names, I can't confirm that. But in 1894, I see her referred to as his wife. Or 'wife'.  Sandro was still working in 1914. I haven't see Eva out since 1895. Grace pops up in Dublin in 1892. Well, it is difficult when you don't know folk's real names.

Oh, I notice that on Mr deVere's list the girls are rated £4, and Sandy only £3.10s.  

Now the list includes a Miss Stella de VERE. She's rated, no less, at £8 for her 'Continental comedy princess and cosmopolitan quick-change' act. You don't have to be a wizard to suss that she is no Stella, no deVere, and that she is in some way related to the owner of agency.

Well, she was his wife. And this time, I've sussed out the double pseudonym bit. 'Mr Ernest de Vere' was actually Ernest BRISKER (b Islington 1854; d 62 Hogarth Road, Hove 12 August 1938), son of a Jewish Austrian commercial traveller, and a sometime singer turned variety agent. Ernie married, in 1879, another singer, Leeds-born Eliza Ann PULLAN, in Sowerby, Yorks. Yep, that's 'Stella'. Stella, alas, was not to have a long life. She died in Chelsea, aged 41, 21 January 1893. Ernie allegedly re-married another Elizabeth ka Violet (b 9 August 1877; d Hayling Island 1 June 1970) and bred ...

Ernest and Stella can be seen together in the 1881 pantomime at Middlesborough, but Ernest soon switched to the agency business, where he remained prominent for some twenty years. Stella seems to have had a regular career ... but £8?

I wondered why Stella was worth £8. What to say of The Musical GARTOS. Fifteen quid. OK, there were (at this stage) four of them, but ... really? So a triple 'seek' here. Who (1) were these folk, (2) what was/were their real name(s) and (3) why were they worth £15.0s.0d.  I've just dipped, but the answer to (3) is clear. YES! So here I go. Maybe tomorrow. 

It is tomorrow. And I'm not doing enormously well on the 'who' bit. But this is what I've found. 

This is from 1878. But the original Garto -- Harry Garto, nigger and musician -- goes back well before that. Just how far, I shall have to find out.

I shall take a wee stroll down to Walnut Tree Walk on the off chance. And there he is! Henry William Garto. In 1894, and 1896, still! In 1904 and 1907, there's Henry William Gatty.  Ahha! Could they be one and the same person? 1842-1909. YES!!!!!!

Henry William GATTY born Webber St, Southwark 1842, died Lambeth October 1909. Son of Frederick Thomas Gatty (1819-1877, painter and paperhanger) and Caroline Ann née Harmer (1820-1890). Married 30 March 1863 Dinah ROSSER ... children Henry Frederick, Theresa, Annie, Ada ... 

What more proof could I ask for! Gottim! Harry started off in his father's trade, and I see him first doing a blackface act with Peter Lawson in 1868. Now, I know Mr Lawson (b 1834), because he became a tenor chorister with, among others, Emily Soldene's company. At this stage, however, he was a 'negro delineator' 'tenor vocalist and tambourinist' and a former member of Albain's Coloured Opera Troupe with whom he had announcedly appeared before the Sultan at Constantinople. Advertised as 'negro comedians, instrumentalists and dancers from the Alhambra, London' they appeared at the Trevor Music Hall and at Leeds at the start of what was to be several fruitful years of teamwork, before Peter went off to sing opéra-bouffe around the world, and Harry went out as a single with his spesh: a concertina act, playing a normal sized instrument and a quarter-sized one. 'One of the finest English concertina players'. Harry developed his performance as 'The Demon of Music', 'the Funny Musical Momus' with other items and 'instruments'. He played 'Come Back to Erin' on a tea-kettle, imitated a whole military band with his concertinas, played 'an almost invisible violin' ...  in 1877 his son Harry dit Alfred joined him in a double act, as an array of bottles was added to the improbable array of twenty items from which the pair produced music.

Harry Garto

In 1883, the two girls joined the act, now yclept 'The Four Musical Gartos' as the team visited the Continent, appeared with Sanger's Circus, and increased their artillery to 50 instruments ...

Harry died in 1909. It seems he'd gone back to wallpaper and paint. Though I see 'The Three Gartos' were still active. But the 1880s had been their heyday, when they were, clearly, worth their fifteen smackers.

The SISTERS SCHOFIELD were a nice act. Pretty girls, pretty frocks, pretty songs and good step and clog dancing. Never top of the bill, just a pretty bill-filler. The words 'refined', 'ladylike' and 'tasteful' were used time and again to describe their act. No double entendres or highkicks here. 

They actually were sisters. The children of theatre carpenter William Schofield and his wife Lucy. They called themselves 'Laura' and 'Bella', they were christened Lucy [Laura] and Eliza. Lucy was born in Southampton in 1861, Eliza in Northamptonshire in 1862, which means they were only 12 and 11 when they went on the stage, billed as 'the best female clog dancers in the world'. 

The act lasted for 20 years, until Laura got married. She chopped five years off her age in front of the registrar and her husband, William Routledge (1 April 1893). Eliza, who witnessed the wedding obviously stayed stumm. Alas, it mattered not. In little more than a year Laura was dead, I imagine of the consequences of marriage.

Brother John, who for a season joined the sisters in an act, delivering comic songs, went on to a successful career as a comedian.

THE COLERIDGES were a sketch act. They purveyed the same 'sensational' sketch (Convicts 48 and 49) around England between 1880 ('variety entertainers') and 1896, adding to it at some stage another The Collier Boy. They were, clearly, not legitimately 'Coleridge', they were said to be man and wife, and I didn't have much faith in an ad that promoted Welsby L and Sophia Coleridge, But .... the L was for real. Mr Coleridge was rightly Mr LEMON -- see 1881 census -- allegedly born Bedford 1849 .. Mrs was Mary Sophia Lemon ...  I'm leaving it there!  £6? Nice work, if you can get it.

On to the other page. OK, this is the first page. With the acts available NOW. I suspect, the less saleable ones. A few as little as £2.10s.  

Do I investigate Mons Jules Poule (£7!) pigeon act? Or blackfaced Will Hicks, who comes along with a serio and a soprano ... £6 the lot? Alex Day, the cornet player in a job lot with a 'Marie Santley' serio .. £4 the pair ..  am I going to get into "Carleton Wentworth' at a whopping £6.10s?

Why not?

Jules POULE equilibrist, juggler ('pyramids of fragile articles', 'burning lamps'), plate-spinner, pigeon-charmer .. In the 1891 census he said he was born in Germany circa 1854, and he called himself 'Herr' when he didn't call himself 'Mons'. And advertise his act in Spanish. I see him first in Paisley in 1880. By 1894 he has an act with trained cats and birds. In 1895 I spot him in Olmütz ... 'salon-jongleur et malabariste' ..  

Will HICKS was said to be married to his soprano-serio 'Jenny RENFORTH'. I suppose 'Evelyn MASSEY' the 'high operatic soprano' who tagged along with them was somebody's sister, cousin or child. £6 for the three ...

Will first appeared, in Yorkshire, in 1874 billed as 'the great negro grotesque, musician and dancer with his wonderful soldier dog, [Little] Prim' and voted 'vastly amusing'. In 1876, he is on a bill with Jenny, with his act varied with 'whistle-pipe, fairy bells and concertina' and over the next decade they worked and advertised together, latterly with Miss Massey. In 1884 Will became secretary to 'Signor Durland' (eig George Thomas RUDLAND) at the Sunderland Star Music Hall, and after 1887 I see them -- and Miss Massey -- no more.

According to one webpage, Will was really named POLLARD and Jenny, MELLON. Maybe. But I can't find them anywhere under those names. As for little Prim, I wonder what he did and if it was the same canine from 1874 to 1886. I noticed a Will PARKER 'nigger, dancer ..' with a 'soldier dog'  'The Original Ole Mudder Gum' in 1872 ... 'laughable burlesque of the cannon-ball feat of Herr Holtum ...' 'The Nervous Nigger', 'Do You Want your chimney swept?' ... and wondered for a moment .. but no. He is still going when Mr Hicks begins ..

Another couple were Alex[ander] DAY and Marie SANTLEY. He a comic vocalist and one-armed cornet player, she a little sparky serio. He shows up in 1875 on the midland halls, she some three years later. They are said to have been married in 1878 or 1879, as they had a daughter 30 January 1880 in South Shields. I have yet tom find proof. The only document I can find is the death of 'Marie' as Mary Elizabeth Day 14 March 1898 at 3 Gowland Street, South Shields ... 

Alex doesn't seem to have ever altered his act, Marie ran through a welter of songs with titles such as 'A modest young duck of eighteen'. 'One of the Hallelujah lasses', 'You're not good enough for me', 'Don't you go too far', 'Mary, Matilda, Maria', 'Bridget Maguire', 'I'm always a lady when it's my night out' or 'What will become of you I don't know'.

Ettie Margaret Rose Raynham, daughter of theatre-manager Walter Raynham also took the name of 'Marie Santley' for the stage in the 1890s.

CARLTON, WENTWORTH and LITTLE MAY (yes, comma between Carlton and Wentworth) and their melodramatic domestic sketches, put together it seems largely to allow May to show her quadruple thtreat talents, seem to have lasted but a little while. Unless 'Little May' is the one of that name who played Charles Arnold's little son in Hans, the Boatman. I had the impression that that May [Hannan] was Arnold's actual daughter. Anyway, she's being Fritz when C&W are doig their 'pathetic little sketch' on the halls.

The adults had been around since 1883, but I see them not after 1887.

T B BRYDGE and Nellie ESTELLE did a sketch entitled Treachery and she recited 'The Tenth Hussar', they both sang. Then they briefly joined Billy West in a blackface comedy trio ...  In 1898 they were still purveying a sketch Domestic Squabbles, in 1900 The Charmed Necklet ... 

Thomas B Brydge (b Stockport 1845) and his wife Ellen A (b London) kindly turn up playing Aston on 1891 census night. And in 1871 he is Thomas B Bridge 'ethiopian artist' born 1842 with a wife Matilda aged 18 (b Ashby, Norfolk) ... 1881 he's 'vocalist' with Matilda.. Thomas Bold BRIDGE musician married 1866 Elizabeth Hirst ... getting there! Married in 1883 shoemaker's daughter, Ellena Ann Crudgington (b Bacon St, Bethnal Green, 10 March 1854). I guess that's 'Nellie Estelle'. Oh, there they are, still 'actor' and 'dancer' in the 1911 census at 31 Waleran Buildings, Old Kent Road ...   Bless them! Real troupers .... I hope they saved those £4.10s-es.

The others? Well, Ada HERMINE by any other spelling and any other name, I'm leaving for now. She was a kosher 'operatic' vocalist, and I'ne tried through the years to sort her out, without success. 

The chap who called himself Tom BOWLING and paired with Miss Rose WYNNE ...  surprisingly I unearthed them!  I'm not sure why a Scots-born, Irish/Yorkshire comic, who operated largely in Yorkshire and surrounds, and who had nothing to do, as far as I know, with the sea, would take for stage name the title of Dibdin's hugely famous nautical ballad. His real name was George Aytoun ATKINSON (b Leith, 14 March 1855) and he started life as a shipping clerk. In 1881 he married Rosina SIPPLE (b London 1859; d Liverpool 24 January 1906) 'balladist, Serio-comic and comedienne'. Yes, that was Miss Wynne. They worked through the 1880s and into the 1890s, she, seemingly being the main attraction, latterly. In 1891 he is callling himself 'George AYTOUN'. In 1901 he is 'married' but no sign of Rose, in 1911 he is a widower.. now apparently a theatrical agent ... 

TRILLO 'the refined and amusing ventriloquist'  19 Stanmer Park Rd, Battersea Park. 'Ventriloquist and mime'. 'Professor Trillo and his wooden-headed family' (1885) 'his comic ventriloquial figures' ...  His real name appears to have been Albert SHEARING ... and Gina Ambridge has sorted him out! Born, yes, as Albert Shearing, Alderholt, Dorset 1859; d Preston 1931. Originally a builder's clerk, married Sarah Ann Jelley, 7 children ... 

T[homas] H[enry] SPEARS was another Scotsman. He worked as a comedian through the 1880s and 1890s, both as 'Henry Spears' and T H, in the company of a variety of ladies to whom he professed to be related. He must have started performing a bit late in life (?b 1845), or changed his name, for in 1883 when I spot him at Ayr, he is teamed with one 'Peggy Pond', a juvenile 'mimic', who is said to be his daughter. (Wot! Spiers and Pond?). Around that time he is credited with a number of songs ('I don't much care about it', 'To please the men', 'Seventeen and never been kissed').

Next, he is working with one ballad-singing 'Marie Hiller', who is said to be his wife, then it's the 'Three Comical Cures' -- Henry, Marie and Maggie Spears. At one stage he is 'The Military Monarch' and Peggy is 'The Silver Queen', then its the 'Spears Drawing Room Combination'. He is 'comedian and facial artist'. And there's a Lily Le Breton (oh no!) who is said to be his wife .. and a 'Harriet Le Breton' ... and now he''s ventriloquist? In 1896 he briefly became proprietor of the Limerick People's Palace.

So who were they -- Peggy, Marie, Maggie, Lily, Harriet ..? 

De Vere clearly made his agency pay. He was around the scene for many years ...  I'm glad I had an electric typewriter ...