Mr Smith and Mr Jones: their panto song 1881

 

An unusual sheet music cover. Sadly, only the cover, it seems. I'd rather like to have heard the song ...

I daresay not many copies survive, for it was a number tried as part of the patchwork score of one provincial pantomime and seemingly, thereafter, put away. 

The pantomime in question was the 1881-2 Leeds Grand annual, Little Red Riding Hood, and it had some fair names attached to it. The producer was Wilson Barrett, the author was J Wilton Jones, the writer of many such, Jenny Hill was principal boy, Addie Blanche was one of the two principal girl, Kissie Wood the other, Harry Rickards was the villain, William Walton was the dog ...

Amongs these fine music-hall topbillers, Mr Henry C Arnold appeared as Mother Hubbard, and Mr J S Haydon as the wolf.

Now, John S Haydon (b Oxfordshire, 1837-1907) was a familar name in the midlands; more than forty years a dramatic actor (and, as we see here, a comic dramatic actor) ... I see him first at Leamington in the 1860s, and lastly in 1906, just before his death ... a long professional biography appears in the Leamington Spa Courier of 31 May 1901. If I cannot find out more about his personal background (yet), I have been much more successful with Messrs Arnold and Stamford. It was not an easy dig, for both men operated under noms de théâtre, and their real names were ... Mr Smith and Mr Jones.

Let's go with our dame comedian first. "Henry C Arnold". His birth name was apparently Hamilton Smith. Maybe Hamilton Clarke Smith. He said on his marriage certificate that his father was also Hamilton Clarke Smith, traveller, deceased. I think that may be fiction. Anyway, he seems to have been born in Liverpool, and I guess that is he working as a pawnbroker's apprentice in 1871. Born 1856? But the British records have no Hamilton Smith born between .. ahha!!! Hamilton Smith CLARKE. Born Everton, 9 July 1855. The familiar scenario. Daddy was a traveller .. by name Daniel Clarke. Mother was Matilda, probably Miss Smith.

It seems that Ham didn't broke pawn for long. Still in his teens, he hit the boards and 'Mr H C Arnold' can be seen in the 1872 Disney Roebuck pantomime The Fair One With the Golden Locks at Kidderminster, then in 1873 in the company at Southport, already in a travesty role. At Christmas he was Bluebeard in the panto at Ashton-under Lyme. In 1876, he was in the company at the Rotunda, Liverpool, director and md, Mr 'Charles Wood'. Mr Wood's teenage daughter, Miss 'Kissie Wood' was also a member, and the next year the young couple were married

And we discover that Kissie is actually Kezia Redfern. Anyway, the couple had a solid marriage which lasted till death did them part, and also worked alongside each other frequently through good provincial careers, in the later part of which Ham turned producer ..

I note that the ageing John S Haydon leads the cast ... and down the list is Miss Entwistle, daughter of Kissie's sister Mary, and 'Mr H C Arnold junior' so, it appears that, under one name or another the 'Arnolds' had a son. And, yes ... in the 1911 census, in Everton, Kezia gives '5 children, two living'.  The other was daughter, Dorothy, who also took up the theatre as 'Dorothy Clarke-Smith' (b Kirkdale 19 February 1893). 

Ham died at 14 Carstairs Rd Liverpool 12 November 1920 and is buried at Anfield. Kissie died in April 1928 in Devon, and is also buried in Anfield.

So, that's Mr Smith (ish). Now John J[ones] Stamford. Born plain John Jones born near Swansea. Sorry, but I should have no idea which John Jones is he! He turned out words and/or tunes for a plethora of songs of which 'What a Wonder', The Pride of the Regiment, All Have a Liquor', Don't tell your sister', 'Please do not tease me', 'When I say "no"' and 'Oh what a wicked young man you are' for Ethel Victor, 'Hang Up Your Hat Behind the Door (that leads into the shop)', 'Where was Moses when the light went out', 'Poor But a Gentleman Still', 'Turn off the Gas at the Metre', 'Jeremiah, blow the fire' and the durable 'Macnamara's Band' (one of 73 songs written for Billy Ashcroft, and the Alhambra) give the flavour.  He took over the management of the Belfast Alhambra and then the Dundee Music Hall, but returned to Belfast where he later turned from music-hall manager to publican and 'spirit merchant', before his death, 24 May 1899.

So now I know. And it was fun finding out ...

Three soldier boys ...

 

Saw this photo on e-bay this morning. 

Not the sort of picture I usually like to investigate. But the chappie in the middle looked so joyful and relaxed, with his pipe and plus-fours ... so while I devoured my morning tea, I looked ...

The back of the photo gives us a little information. A date: 1923-30. And names: Lieutenant Lister on the left, Lieutenant King on the right, and in the middle ... Lieutenant D'Arcy Symonds.  Well, that's not going to be difficult! 

And it wasn't. Herbert Frank Gordon D'Arcy Symonds, born Brighton 14 April 1899. Son of Jermyn D'Arcy Travers Symonds and his wife Beatrice Mary (née Ledsam) of Val Plaisant, St Helier, Jersey.  Father, grandfather (Major General Jermyn Charles Symonds) all military men ...

Married 1929

Seems to have been in Burma between 1830-3 with the 1st batallion of the Buffs ... I would guess this may have been where this jolly photo was taken ...

A sad photo, too. Herbert was killed at Mersa Matruh, in Egypt 7 July 1936, when the airplane in which he was travelling, on exercises, crashed on landing ...

He left one child, Jennifer who became Mrs Fleming ...

Hester remarried (Mrs Eric G S Shefford) in 1940.

Anybody know about Messrs Lister and King ... ?

Ladies of the Harem ... in retirement?

Once upon a time a flock of nearly 50 peafowl ranged the fields of Gerolstein. I was reduced to eating their eggs every year to stop a populations explosion. But they got wise, and hid said eggs in unlikely places  ... so we called in Nigel the peacock catcher & exporter and finally reduced the flock to (1) Paterfamilas (2) two of his lusty male descendants (3) two hens. Right? No. Some neighbouring (!) hens heard the cries of the marauding males and moved in! And everyone cried out some more, Paterfamilas was cowed and the hens laid a double crop. Call for Nigel! Cut off the problem, so to say, at its root. 

The lusty lads were ensnared and exported, and Paterfamilas left alone at the head of his wee harem. The five of them perch in a line on the rail of my wheelchair ramp, peacefully and companionably pecking the nits out of one another's eyes ...

Is this the aged Pascha, impotent after years of extravagance, luxuriating in his older years, attended by his  sisters, cousins, aunts, daughters, grand-grand-daughters ..?  Or will he be having a cockerel of a time come next breeding season? We'll see ..

Meanwhile, the ladies of the harem are cultivating their suntans while Mr P looks benignly on ...

From Funambulist and Pyrotechnician to Australian dancing girls ...

 

Yesterday, I came on a curious theatrical photo. Saucy girl dancers? But. This photo was taken in Melbourne, Australia. It was asking to be investigated!

 The vendor had it labelled as the 'Sisters Davablic". Errrr ... I don't think so!

The sisters Davalli .. or, recte, Duvalli ... which, of course, wasn't their name at all ... but little did I realise just how complex and fascinating finding my way to their real names and family history would be.

On 23 August 1869 our girls took the Essex, out of London, under contract to the Theatre Royal, Melbourne. On 10 November 1869 the 'Misses Duvalli' (operatic and acrobatic dancers) -- Heloise and Rosalie -- and Mr C F Coutts arrived in Australia. 'Mr Coutts' (ex-watchmaker turned comedian) was Heloise's real, legitimate husband. The ship's manifest says that Heloise was 20, Rosalie 22, and Charles 26. Well, er ...

Charles was born Charles Findlay. Rosalie Edith Irvine was born and registered in Berkshire in 1842, so was, thus, 27. So maybe the 2 is a 7? Heloise Agnes Irvine, who was really her sister, seems to have missed registration. Unless she was just plain Agnes. Her gravestone, in Sydney's Waverley Cemetery, says that she was born 1849. If so, she was married at 16 (21 August 1865), a mother at 17, performing at 10 ... Oh, and I think their name was not really Irvine at all ... but we'll get to that ...

Anyway, the girls made their Aussie debut 4 December 1869

They were delightedly received, and went on to appear as Harlequin and Columbine in Akhurst's pantomime The House that Jack Built. They ended up staying till February of 1871, and in that time Rosalie took herself a husband, J Charles Hall of the Theatre Royal company, who became part of the act.

The four purveyed their act around the music halls of England, before returning to Australia in 1874 for a more extended period, and though they voyaged to Asia and America in the years to come, it was Australia which they -- and their widowed mother -- made their home. 

Ah. The widowed mother. This is where it gets interesting. Mother's maiden name was Gyngell. Louise Malvina Gyngell. She was born in Bow 23 February 1808, one of the children of Daniel Gyngell 'musician' and his second wife, Louisa Perry. I suspect 'musician' may have been an approximation, for I think this 1815 advertisement is our man 

'The Swinging wire'. And there he is as early as 1805 plying the same well-regarded booth show. Musical glasses and slack rope vaulting by Master [Joseph] Gyngell. There's conjuring and marionettes and this and that, balacing an egg on a wheat straw ('the English equilibrist').

 

Three years on the Continent ..  and in 1819 come into the show Master H[oratio] Gyngell and Miss L Gyngell 'only nine years of age'.  Its Mama. By 1824 she has graduated to the tight rope 'from the stage to the gallery', the corde elastique and by 1826 the 'daring ascension on the fiery rope' which would become her trademark. By 1828 she is performing with a Signor Georgia and his display of fireworks ... and playing the harp! 1830 ...

And then, in 1831, Mama got married. She married a man named Thomas Wilkinson. That's what the records say. I wonder if he were 'Signor Georgia'

Anyway, she is still performing as Miss Gyngell in 1835 and ... what?  'Miss Gyngell met her death by a fall from a rope'???  Which Miss Gyngell? Why, the wife of 'Signor [de] Irvine'. 

Louise did fall from her rope, while performing at Covent Garden in 1837. But she only broke her arm, and she came back. But these days(since 1833?) she was under a new name ..

Signor is 'principal assistant'?

I mean 'de Irving'? What is this? We know that this gentleman's name was Thomas. Is this Thomas Wilkinson under a new appellation? Or has he gone by the wayside at some stage? Did Louise marry this man who apparently gave her four children - Ethelbert, Rosalie, Heloise and Edwy -- that we know of ... and who died, as Thomas Irvin, in 1863 (1 November) at Leeds. Or were they just de facto? What they became was, in 1842, 'Duvalli' ...   

Not Louise. She was permanently sidelined from climbing her ropes by her pregnancies. But father became 'Signor Duvalli' 'the British Blondin', tightroping across the Thames and, most famously, the River Tyne. And the girls went into the halls, around 1859, as 'the Sisters Duvalli'.

Louise's two sons died young. Edwy Hubert aged 19 (23 October 1863), Ethelbert in Australia at 26 (9 January 1873). She erected this monument to the two of them, and to her husband 'Clement Duvalli ascensionist and hero of the Tyne' who had followed his elder son to an unconsecrated grave three days later.

Clement? In 1842 he was 'Signor Nicolo Duvalli'. Sigh. 

There is little more to say.

Heloise (d Darlinghurst 16 May 1904) and Mr Finlay-Coutts (d Darlinghurst 4 June 1912) had a second daughter, in Australia.  Their elder, English daughter, as Rosalie Coutts-Duvalli (b Medway 1967) became a harpist, the second, Heloise Claire Duvalli-Coutts (b Melbourne, 9 November 1887), under the name of Heloise Alva, worked as a vocalist and musician, often in tandem with her sister. She married a Mr Norman Thomas from San Francisco.

Rosalie (d Darlinghurst 13 July 1912) outlived her husband, Hall, (d Darlinghurst  1 February 1907)

I'm sure there's more to know.  A clutch of birth certificates would help ...  maybe someone else can fill in the gaps ...

 

 

A little drop of rain ....

 

It has rained today at Gerolstein.

Like, really rained ...

We're used to puddles and lakes and so forth, because our land has a large clay content, but ...

We are bounded on both sides of the farm by what might be called 'waterways'. No, they're not our responsibility, they (and the bit of land on either side of them) belong to the local Council, currently represented by a thoroughly nice chap named Fred.  

Fred has been very helpful over the Council 'river reserve' land that permeates Gerolstein. but he doesn't live here, so he doesn't quite understand ...

Last time he was here (when Council trees and weeds were invading us), he told us we mustn't bank up the top of the river bed crevice, where the ravages of Saltwater Creek in a bad mood have eaten away the deep river's edge, with our available animal (horseshit) and vegetable (grass cuttings) refuse ...

Well, Fred, this is why.

The gap that we mustn't fill was well and truly filled today ...

And the flood doesn't stop there! The unintentional sub-river flows on ...

On it heads (that's their river to the left, behind the trees) past my washing line towards my house. Yes, my bathroom is five metres away ..

And to the cottage ..

That's the septic tank, foreground. I just paid $390 to have it emptied ....  I suppose it will now be full again ... and the deluge may have swept away my outpipes ...

Oh well, the peahens are having a nice paddle ...

I guess one could laugh about it, while sitting in front of a logfire with a whisky ... but ...

Sorry Fred.  We're going to go right on protecting, as best we can, our property from your wayward rivers .....

Elsie Joel: From Mabel to the music halls ... and men.

This week, I came upon a 1905 variety programme from the once lofty Oxford Music Hall.

By the 20th century it was just another Hall rather than the crême de la crême of the genre it had been decades earlier. Rather a lot of comedians, dancers, acrobats of whom I have never heard -- 

Only the to-be-great Harry Tate with his 'Motoring' sketch ...

But wait. There IS one other name that is familiar to me ... spot 5 ... Elsa Joel, ballad vocalist ....  twenty years on, its the Mabel of D'Oyly Carte's children's Pirates of Penzance company, fulfilling a twenty-year career in the middle to lower echelons of Britain's music halls. Why, and what happened in between? 

Elsie Blanche JOEL was born in Birmingham 2 May 1872, the second of the two daughters of a Jewish-Welsh commercial traveller, Michael Joseph Joel (1830-1893) and his wife Catharine Charlotte (née Kemp). 

She seems to have made her first appearances in public at the Royal Aquarium, with her teacher, mezzo-soprano Jenny Pratt (see https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2022/01/jenny-contralto-or-fiddlers-bride.html)  in February 1884, and sang on the programmes there, under Dan Godfrey, with Redfern Hollins, Arthur Oswald and various unknowns for a number of weeks. So she was not entirely a novice when chosen to play Mabel, in December of the year, at the Savoy Theatre.

'She was decidedly successful: 'In her pretty little embroidered white satin dress she won all hearts by her engaging ways and modest demeanour while her singing which is of a florid style, full of trills and runs which she executes with perfect ease, was graceful and effective in the extreme ...' (Daily News). Alas, it was not to last. After just weeks of the run, she fell sick, and had to be replaced by Amy Broughton. Apparently it was a genuine illness. It was related later that she had fallen prey to small-pox.

Children's Pirates: I'm pretty sure that's Elsie as Mabel

It seems that it was six years before she returned to public performing. Sam Adams, at the Trocadero, gave her a spot in the small print on his programme. She sang 'Una voce poco fa', 'Bird of Winter' and 'Home Sweet Home' (and 'God save theQueen') and was very well received: 'now a tall and handsome young lady .. without hesitation we may say she is the most brilliant vocalist heard on the music hall stage in recent years'. Elsie looked set for a good career. But real life intervened.

Cuthbert Edward Clark was assistant md at the Empire, Holloway. He was also newly married to music-hall chorine Elizabeth Hoby. He and Elsie emigrated together to Manchester, when Cuthbert took up the musical direction of the local Palace of Varieties and where Elsie gave birth, over the years that followed, to three children - Kate, Cuthbert Victor (21 July 1895) and Gladys - before the relationship subsided. When Elizabeth later came (somewhat tardily) to divorce Mr Clark in 1910, Elsa was quoted as evidence, rather than his subsequent paramour, but that's another story. 

Cuthbert went on to play and write for provincial theatres, Tiller shows, and scored a hit with the song 'Susie -ue' as sung by another Jewish lady, Ada Reeve, while Elsa ...  Elsa married!  The man was 21 year-old mechanical engineer Herbert Tetlow Francis and it was a mistake. Within weeks she was suing for divorce.

She did not, I suspect, stay 'single' for long, but the next documented 'husband' of whom I have proof occurs around 1917. And it was again the music halls that provided her with this partner. He was, of course, married.

Alfred Bernard Joseph Vincent Bayley, known as 'Monte Bayly' (alleged to be entitle to the rank of Count de Krauchy) was a performer, but was later to become better known as an administrator with various music-hall societies. He had been married, in 1902, to Di Bloustein (ka 'Diana Hope') a Jewish performer from Ballarat, Australia, and they had had a daughter, Mathilde Judith Josephine, 4 October 1906. The marriage seems to have been a rocky one, and Monte wrote on his wife's 1911 census entry 'talks too much'. They divorced in 1919, with Elsa again quoted as the scarlet woman, and Diana dragged Mathilde off to Los Angeles, and a new father. Elsa is supposed to have lived with Bayley until 1928, but when he died in 1928 his partner was an illusionist 'Mdlle Margot' ie Mabel Jarman.

'Mdlle Margot' married someone else soon after. And so did Elsa. Yes, actually 'married'. Charles Valnetine Barker was a young(er) jeweller's assistant. And they seemingly lived happily ever after. Well, until 1944, when Barker died (21 October, Clapham). Elsie seems to have lasted to the age of 80, and her death is registered in the Thant region in 1953.

Her singing? Well, she made up a bill conveniently and agreeably in variety houses through the years. In 1896, she even made a trip to America as a support act to Albert Chevalier ...

European theatres and music halls?  Can find no trace ...  'all the principal..'?  Poppycock.  

So, a modest career, from a child starlet to an adult make-weight ... and an apparently mobile private life ...

The children? After Elsa's death, Cuthbert ('mechanic') and his wife Rose emigrated to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he died in 1970. A daughter, Jean V Clark, was born in London in 1930.  The girls ...? Well ...

End of story. For now.

Thirteen daughters ...

A nice, cool grey morning, with a drizzle of rain. Sunday. I don't feel like doing anything intelligent, and the Olympics ar'n't yet worth watching -- deckquoits on ice, qualifying round of skijump -- 50 to qualify out of 53? -- so I decided to play the "who do you think you are" game.

It was supposed to be a quickie, but it spread a bit ... why? Because the lady in the photo had thirteen daughters (and two sons)... 

This is Mrs Edward Clark. Born Adeline Mary Scott, eldest daughter of a Sydenham stockbroker, Henry L Scott (Godstone House, West Hill). The baby is her fourth daughter, Nellie ...

Adeline (b Devizes 1843; d Sydenham 22 August 1929) married (4 May 1865) within the Sydenham stockbroking world, and she and Mr Clarke settled down in Sussex Villa, then at Eardley House, Beckenham, and finally, at child six, at Lapsewood ... the number of their household staff grew too, as Mr Clark seemed to do well at broking stock ..

I chased up the children incredulously ... first of all, seven daughters in a row, then, at last, a son. Four more daughters, and then .. twins ...

I leave aside the sons for the moment to look at those thirteen girls. Well, I haven't been able to follow them all: I lose no2 Ethel Mary (b Sussex Villas, 26 June 1867), and no10 Christine Janet (b Lapsewood 28 January 1880).

No5, Frances Alice died as an infant, no13 Sylvia Joan (b Lapsewood 11 March 1884) as a little child, and Katharine Annie (b Beckenham 1868) at the age of 18 (7 May 1887).

Four of the remaining seven girls remained single: no1 Adeline Maud (b Sussex Villa 6 February 1866; d 5 October 1843), our 'Nellie' otherwise no4 Helen Gertrude (b Eardly House 1870; d Dorset 26 September 1962), no8 Florence Ida (b Lapsewood 19 July 1877; d 2 November 1939), and twin Olive Marion (b 2 January 1883; d 1949) who was, or became, 'mentally incapacitated'.

So, just four of the thirteen girls wed, and, with the boys, carried on the family.

no6 Eveline Louise (b Lapsewood 23 September 1872; d Brentwood 17 October 1917) married William James Graham (9 June 1903) 'gentleman' of Sydenham. She doesn't seem to have had children, and in 1911 she is a patient in a private nursing home.

no7 Dora Septima (b Lapsewood 10 July 1874; b Bromley 5 June 1957) married legal man Colin Reed-Davies who became Chief Justice of the Bermudas, got knighted, making Dora a Lady. They had two children, but son Mervyn hung himself in his rooms at Cambridge University, at the age of 20, for reasons undivulged. Their daughter did not marry.

no9 Lucy Angela (b Lapsewood 29 September 1878; d 5 March 1943) had a false start. She married a soi-disant civil serviceman named Darent Henry McDonald who turned out to be unsatisfactory, and traded him in for a divorced bank manager, George Austin Adolphus who gave her four children.

no11 Violet Howard (b Lapsewood 20 September 1881; d Paddington 31 December 1962) married Mr George Herbert Higgins (31 May 1906), and had two sons and a daughter. Daughter Violet became Mrs George Ridley Debenham.

Untimely death did not leave the male line alone either. Farmer Edward George Urling (b 19 December 1875; d 3 August 1951) had two wives, a son and a daughter. Son, Edward Keats Urling Clark was killed in the war, leaving an infant son. Daughter Doris remained unmarried.

Twin son Henry Laurence Urling Clark (b Lapsewood 2 January 1883; d Reigate 15 April 1975) followed his father's traces in the stockbroking world, and became Chairman of the Council of the Stock Exchange and, in 1950, Sir Henry. I see lots of Urling Clarks around the web (latterly with a hyphen!) so I guess they come from Henry and his wives and from Edward's son ...

Henry lost a 24 year-old son, David, at El Alamein in 1942.

And another to suicide ...

Quite a family.

Well, that's what curiosity an one photo can lead to ... I'm sure there's more ...

The original of the photo (for sale) can be found on e-bay at

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275144409929?hash=item400fe28349:g:eWYAAOSwoR9h9R1S

A week later, this turned up.  No surname, but I recognised the christain names ...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284654408375?hash=item4246b992b7:g:bYUAAOSwEVdfqn3L