Here we go again. I'd never seen a portrait of Seymour Jackson, so when the sketch, and then the obituary photo, below turned up, I thought it was the moment to drag out my old Victorian Vocalists article and post it.
JACKSON, Seymour [JACKSON Samuel] (b Rochdale 18 June 1851; d Cheshire ?15 March 1935).
Mr Jackson was really big in Manchester ('Lancashire's Caruso'), for a decade and more. And a star in Llandudno and the Isle of Man. He was liked in the big cities and the small towns, too, but it was at home that he was voted the Lancashire singer of his era.
The thing about being a star somewhere like Llandudno, is that the press is inclined to fill columns on your subject. Someone whose personal history wouldn’t pull ten lines, if he were a city singer with a city journalist, could (and can) pull ten paragraphs in the provincial press. And, when you have a subject as open and unpretentious as Mr Jackson, well, the result is one of the best factual ‘interviews’ I have found. Well done, the North Wales Chronicle of 3 April 1866.
Samuel Jackson was the son of farmer, John Jackson and his wife, Hannah née Marsland, who settled, soon after his birth in the hamlet of Baguley, near Manchester. Young Samuel initially worked on the family farm, but, at the age of 26, he opened shop in Stratford Road, Hulme, as a fruiterer. At the same time, in spite of his family’s indifference, he had taken up music, joining the choir of the Weslyan Chapel at Timperley, while taking lessons from Mr Kirk, the organist at Bowdon. His first engagement was at Christ Church, Timperley at 6 pounds a year, then at St John, Brooklands, at twenty. There, he encountered Henry Wilson, of the Manchester Vocal Society and St Peter’s Church, who took him on as a pupil and as first tenor of his church. It is there that I spot the name of ‘Mr S Jackson’ singing solo for the first time, in a fundraising concert in January 1881, aged almost thirty, alongside some good local singers. He was quickly on his way to local celebrity. In April, I spot him at Liverpool’s Hope Hall, alongside Antoinette Sterling and local bass, Fred Gordon. In September he was back at Hope Hall, at the ‘Grand Opening Concert’ with locals Louisa Mills and Hannah Howard Dutton and Lea’s choir (‘If Love were what the rose is’), and a few weeks later he was seen in The Creation at Manchester’s Association Hall, with the local choral Union und Mr J A Cross. Cross would recall Mr Jackson, time and time again, for the rest of his career.
On 1 October 1881 Jackson appeared at the Free Trade Hall for G W Lane, in the company of Mary Davies and Leslie Crotty. The story goes that, as a result of sharing a platform with Crotty, Jackson was introduced to Carl Rosa. The time sequence looks a bit iffy here, but maybe it just took five years to make it happen. Much more happened with Mr Lane who, like Cross, would continue to engage Jackson, repeatedly, for his concerts for many years. Another connection which would be equally as durable was begun at Christmas when he was engaged to sing The Messiah at Douglas, Isle of Man, with Laura Smart.
In 1882, Mr Jackson was seen around the Manchester and Liverpool areas, at large concerts and venues and small. He sang at the Liverpool Concerts in the company of Edith Wynne, Robert Hilton, Mme Trebelli et al (‘How shall I woo her’, ‘Goodbye sweetheart’, ‘Mignonette’, ‘Led me your aid’), he sang at the Manchester Gentlemen’s Concerts and Glee Club, for Wilson at the Vocal Society and Cross at the Association Hall, as well as for the local orphanage, bazaars, garden parties, Failsworth School and in Belper, Ancoats, Lancaster (Messiah) et al. In October, he took a step into higher company when Edward Lloyd withdrew from one of de Jong’s Free Trade Hall concerts, and Jackson replaced him at the last moment in ‘My Own, My Guiding Star’, ‘My Queen’ and ‘Tom Bowling’ with considerable success (‘a strong clear tenor, very sweet in the upper register’). And Seymour Jackson decided to give up fruit, and become a professional vocalist.
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| Edward de Jong |
However, he did not, as yet, widen his geographical sphere much. During 1883 he largely repeated his engagements of the past two years – Cross’s popular concerts and oratorios (Elijah, Messiah), the Vocal Society, de Jong’s Concerts and the Working Men’s concerts, the concerts at Hulme Town Hall (Messiah), the Manchester Philharmonic Society (‘Sound an alarm’, Bach motet), Belper, Southport Winter Gardens, Blackburn, Stalybridge, Northwich, St Clement’s Bazaar, the Clifford Cricket Club --- although an announcement reached the press, and was widely copied, that he had been hired by Rosa. Something was stirring, but it was not for yet.
For the meanwhile, things continued as before, but more so. Many a Manchester engagement of all kinds, The Creation at Darwen, concerts and a ‘Festival’ at Llandudno (The May Queen, Stabat Mater with Mary Davies), Die erste Walpurgisnacht and Stabat Mater at Halifax, engagements from Bradford to Blackpool’s North Pier to Altricham and Nelson and, at Christmastime a Messiah at Leeds, alongside Alwina Valleria, Hilda Wilson and Bridson which won him fine notices (‘a fine voice and a sound sympathetic style of singing’ ‘a pathos and fervor which left little to be desired’). On 13 June 1884 he staged his ‘first annual concert’ with local talent at the Free Trade Hall.
At some stage – and I don’t know when!, for there doesn’t seem to be a period when he is not singing on home turf – he visited Italy to take lessons, but he didn’t stay long. He decided that Mr Wilson’s teaching was just as good as the fashionable Milanese gentlemen’s, and returned to Manchester.
In 1885, he performed with several of the principal provincial societies, singing Elijah with the Bradford Choir, alongside Annie Albu, Hilda Wilson and Bridson, and at Leeds with Mrs Hutchinson, Eleanor Rees and Frederic King; and with the Huddersfield Choral Society in The Messiah with Carlotta Elliott, Miss Rees and Watkin Mills. But, as ever, he also sang at the Co-op Society’s Tea Party, the Tramways Sick Society, the St Clement’s Harvest Festival, the Workingmen’s concerts, repeated Cross concerts and other Manchester dates, on Blackpool Pier, at the Edinburgh Cricket Club and many others of the ilk, as well as giving his second ‘annual’ (11 April 1885). In December, he sang in a concert in Manchester at which Georgina Burns and Leslie Crotty took part: this seems to me to be more like the occasion of his introduction to Carl Rosa. Anyway, this time it was effective.
So after a bundle of dates in and around Manchester (Elijah), Leeds, Sheffield (Lobgesang), Brighouse (Samson) and York (The Damnation of Faust) and Llandudno, Mr Seymour Jackson made his stage debut, with the Carl Rosa opera, in one performance of The Bohemian Girl, alongside Julia Gaylord, Jennie Dickenson, Aynsley Cook and Max Eugene, during the company’s Manchester season. His hometown press greeted him as ‘not only a born actor … a sweet voice and artistic conception of that which he has to interpret...’. He was ‘engaged for three years’, and in the meanwhile went back to his usual busy local routine The Spectre’s Bride at Dewsbury, The Sleeping Beauty at Blackburn, The Creation at Harrogate, The Blessing of the Children at Llandudno, the Isle of Man, de Jong’s concerts, as well as Edward Henry’s in which he sang the Miserere with Marie Roze and The Bohemian Girl with Philippine Siedle.
It was in The Bohemian Girl that Jackson made his regular debut with the Rosa company at Cork, and he followed up as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni and Sylvain in Fadette. His notices were good -- ‘a pure tenor voice of sweet and excellent quality’, ‘impressed most favourably’-- but Fadette soon disappeared from the repertoire, and Jackson was left with sharing Ottavio and Thaddeus, until Martha was put up with Jackson teamed with Burns, Marion Burton and Crotty. This seemed to be his best role. Liverpool found ‘A voice of excellent quality and ample power coupled with and earnest delivery and acceptable presence ... ‘a voice of remarkable sweetness enhanced by intelligent training’. However, when the company weighed anchor at Drury Lane, for its London season, Jackson only got to perform Thaddeus again.
Soon he was back in Manchester, and for the season in the Isle of Man. Georgina Burns visited when he gave his 1887 concert and sang ‘Parigi o cara’ with him, but he would sing only once more with the Rosa. In 1888 (28 February), when the company visited Manchester, he gave one more Thaddeus. And when the J W Turner company visited he was ‘especially engaged’ to play Faust. The managers knew their box-office: Mr Jackson was ‘our most deservedly popular local entertainer’.
At Christmas 1887 he sang Messiahs at Leeds, with Albani, Patey and Mills – at Huddersfield and at Manchester, there were performances of the Lobgesang, The Woman of Samaria, The Creation, Jephtha, Stabat Mater and endless concerts at everything from the Prince’s Theatre and the Halle concerts to a Benefit for St Bridget’s Roman Catholic Female Orphanage or a Creation at Eccles Parish Church.
He ventured another Thaddeus with Arthur Rousbey’s company at Liverpool, and then 20 October 1888 he was back on the London stage. James Lancaster of Manchester had taken the Queen’s Theatre, to present his wife, Miss Wallis, in As You Like It, and they hired Manchester’s tenor to play the singing role of Amiens. In his hands, it was ‘ably rendered’, after which it was back home again for a brace of Messiahs and more of the same.
Only it wasn’t quite the same. Mr Jackson had seemingly taken a liking to the stage, and in early 1889 he put together a ‘Manchester Opera Company’ composed largely of local artists and including, all or some of the time, Albert McGuckin, the eternal Sallie Conway, Mrs Farrar-Hyde RAM, Emily Parkinson, Edward Muller, comprimario of Sydney Leslie’s company, and various one-off lassies. They played Widnes, Birkenhead, Ashton-under-Lyne, Keighley, Oldham, Harrogate and died at the Manchester Comedy Theatre, taking Jackson’s savings with them. In September he ‘of Peel Terrace, Chester Rd, Old Trafford’, was declared bankrupt.
But he didn’t stop. Blackpool, the Isle of Man, Mr Cross, a brief ‘Marie Roze concert party’, Mr T A Barrett’s concert (singing ‘Twas Sad When I and Dolly Parted’, from the Manchester musical, The Sultan of Mocha) and then …
Mr Seymour Jackson on the bill of the Empire Theatre Music Hall, Leicester Square (October 1890), and at the Manchester Palace of Varieties on a bill with Marie Vanoni, Addie Conyers, Eunice Vance and one Charles Chaplin.
But in between the music hall stints, there were more concerts – Mr Cross, Mr Lane and Mr T A Barrett, the newest and most substantial of local concert-impresarios, the Botanical Gardens, the Old Folks and Blind People’s Party, the Chapeltown Sacred Harmonic Society, the Glossop Rugby Football Club, the British Dental Association dinner, the Blackpool Winter Gardens … And, as ever, sometimes he sang with local talent, and sometimes with such artists as William Ludwig, Fanny Moody, Charles Manners. At one Barrett concert he sang ‘A Wandering Minstrel, I’, while Kirkby Lunn sang Lady Sangazure, at another he duetted ‘The Moon has raised her lamp above’ with Ludwig; at a Lane evening he shared the stage with Mdlle Trebelli, Esther Palliser and Andrew Black; at Liverpool’s Good Friday concert of 1894 he sang the ‘Quando corpus’ of Rossini with Alice Esty, Lily Moody and Manners, before heading back to variety or the Blackpool Tower. He still, too, gave the occasional concert of his own, but nowadays the Free Trade Hall was only ‘moderately filled’.
In the 1901 census Samuel Jackson can be seen living in Blackpool with his wife, Elizabeth Jane (née Holt, d Sandy Lane, Baguley 8 June 1935) and five of their children. He is now ‘teacher of singing and vocalist’, and, indeed, in 1910 his name even appears in the cast list of a village production of Rob Roy. In the 1911 census, the Jacksons have returned to Manchester, and he is simply ‘professor of singing’. Two of the seven children are still at home.
The family historians disagree on his date of death. They all say 1935, but one gives a date in February, another in March, another 'after September'. Wife Elizabeth died in June of that year as 'widow', so the 'after September' is wrong, The February Samuel 'of Rochdale' named his sons as executors and they ar'n't Seymour's sons .. so that leaves the March date ... well, that doesn't seem to be him either. The gravestone is full of Emmas, a Doris, an Elizabeth .. The only safe clue is that newspaper clipping which says 'died yesterday'. Alas it is thoroughly clipped, thus undated and unidentified! The photographer is credited: Warwick Brooks of Manchester. Sometime MP for Mile End!
His youngest son, Samuel Seymour Jackson (1894-1938) was the father of diplomat Sir Geoffrey [Holt Seymour] Jackson (1915-1987).
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