W H LINGARD: a theatrical star for half a century

 

This morning, this nice portrait turned up on my screen. 'Horace Lingard' has been written about quite a lot since I first attemped a biographical article on him, sometime last century, in pre-internet days, So I thought I'd pull out the old (published) article and see if I could improve upon it with the aid of modern technology. and, oh goodness ... could I!  To start with, he wasn't Horace, he wasn't Lingard, he wasn't even Needham (which everyone, including me, had averred), his birth and family were swathed in mystery .. and no one, except me, seems to have got his birthdate correct. Well, he did chop half a dozen years of his age, from time to time ... back to the drawing board ..   remake the old article ..

LINGARD, W[illiam] H[orace] [THOMAS dit NEEDHAM, William] (b London, 20 June 1837; d London, 12 January 1927). 

Buccaneering musical comedian who purveyed musical theatre to all corners of the English-speaking world for more than half a century.

I spy 'Mr W H Lingard' first in 1857, at the Exmouth Music Hall ('the celebrated serio comic'), in 1858 at the Swansea Music Hall ('the inimitable burlesque buffo and comic vocalist'), and at Newport Theatre Royal, for George Melville, in Shakespeare and drama and giving comic songs between the pieces ('A Mr Lingard who played Peter [in The Stranger] may with care become a good low comedy actor'. He played with John Chute's company in Cardiff (where two Mr Lingards were billed! Mr W and Mr H) and at Wigan, Mr H was Laertes and Mr W the Ghost to J W Benson's Hamlet. He appeared for a season with the stock company at Southampton playing Lorenzo ('a gentleman of more than unusual comic talent', 'never fails to make the people laugh') in Beauty and the Brigands. His Zerlina was Jenny Willmore and a certain Alfred Glanville was the Harlequin. He played She Stoops to Conquer with Felix Rogers, Wormwood in The Lottery Ticket, Cheap John in The Flowers of the Forest. Mr W Lingard played Muster Grinnidge in Green Bushes at Hull where both Mr H (who's been around since Ilfracombe 1854) and Mr W were engaged. Mr W was noted as the 'promising low comedian', so I guess that was Horace. He played First Gravedigger to Miss Marriott's Hamlet. 

However, it was not as a Shakespearian comedian that 'Horace Lingard' made his most notable successes of these years. It was, rather, as a music-hall and stand-up performer, singing about what happens `On the Beach at Brighton on a Summer's Day', ‘The Model Police’, ‘The Life of William Shakespeare’, and ‘The Artful Dodger’s Return’ in an act built around a series of impersonations and comic songs.

He was hailed as 'a legitimate comic singer of no mean order' at the Southampton Theatre Tavern, then at Hardy's Dog Inn in Manchester (the other Mr L is at Norwich), the Whitebait Rooms, Glasgow (' a third and fourth call nightly' singing 'Jack Rag' and 'Reformation'), and at London's Knightsbridge Tavern, at the Sun, Evans's Supper Rooms, Canterbury Hall ... and Mr H is playing Macduff at Portsmouth with a Miss H Lingard ...! How many more? Ah, she's Mrs. Brother Henry has got a wife! Yes, he's Henry. Mr W moves on to the Adelaide Gallery and the South London ...

And Mr William Thomas, of Featherstone Buldings, Holborn, son of Henry Thomas, shipwright  ...

We know it's him, because when Amelia Martha ('Minnie' b Stepney x 10 February 1841) and he divorced, she confirmed the details and pseudonyms.  She, however, seems, at this time, to have tweaked the truth. Her father was an accountant. He might have done so, too. When he wanted a divorce he claimed the banns had been issued in an incorrect name.

Well, we are getting near to census time, and his address is 3 Sidney Square, Commercial Rd ... he's perfoming in Passion Week at the Surrey Theatre .. and, in May, is still in Tower Hamlets, so .. let's visit Sidney Square. Hmm Richard Henry Thomas of Sidney Square 'gentleman' died 4 October 1862 aged 42 ... I'll get on to investigating that later ... but oh! He's shifted to 24 Palace Rd.., Lambeth ..

PS 1861 census. 3 Sidney Street. Henry Park, tailor, and large family; James Wynn, clerk, and family. Sigh. Foiled again.

But how about 28 May 1855: died Mr William Thomas of East India House at no 7 Sidney Square aged 73. Grandpa? Or is it all a red herring?

Back to the 'great Lingard'. The Trevor, the El Dorado (not top London dates), Southampton ('always sings his songs most racily'), Worthing ..

I see Henry 'of Sadler's Wells', in Scotland, Scarborough, and in the Isle of Wight (with wife) in 1862; and William at the Dover Catch Club and the Marylebone Music Hall where a certain Julia Lamartine 'from the Glasgow Concerts' was also on the bill. Her name would appear as a connuber in 'Horaces' wife's divorce claims. I see already 'Mr W Lingard 'a remarkably good comic vocalist' and Miss Lamartine 'a pleasant contralto singer' engaged together for the Whitebait, at Day's Crystal Palace with Anna Caradori, the Surrey Music Hall, Sheffield, the Victoria Rooms, Southampton ... while the wife advertises ..

 

In early 1864 Julia and William ('the greatest comic of the day') are at Sam Collins Music Hall, in early 1865 at Dundee. Julia was billed as 'Mrs Lingard' and was hissed on entering, at which William took his riding whip to the hisser. They played at the Whitebait and the Britannia in Glasgow (his concert 6th March) with Lingard scoring particularly with his Staue Song and its impersonations. He apparently, diuring this stay won a contest for £100. William enlarged his Statue Song to present an entertaiment Men of the Past and Present Day, impersonating in quick-change Napoleon, Wellington, Garibaldi, Lord Clyde. He also borrowed songs, notably, from Arthur Lloyd, and made a hit with his 'The Organ Grinder'.

Next, he proceeded to Weston's Music Hall in hometown Holborn for a long run. Thence to the Cambridge, where the lady vocalist supreme was Charlotte Grosvenor, and the Crystal Palace, Sam Collins's and the Phil, Islington. But there was no Julia. However, in November 1865 he is at the Alexandra, Manchester ... with Julia. So, she's still of actuality! However, once Will returns to town and the Pavilion ('the Statue Song has lately received some additons: General Grant, Robert Lee, Lord Palmerston ..'), the Phil and the Strand and the Alhambra ('the popular comic singer') ... he is up on his own. 

Later that year Julia is at the Marylebone, then the Pavilion and at Brighton with no William. After 1866, and half a dozen years as a performer, I see her not at all. And Amelia is left alone to bill as 'Mrs W Lingard'. But not for long.

Lingard took his comic songs to Gatti's in the Wesminster Bridge Road and ... after a goodly stint at the Phil in Islington took his departure with a Benefit. 16 April 1866. The bill was topped by Vance, Arthur Lloyd, J G Forde and and young lady by the name of Alice Dunning. Song and dance. They appeared together in Hull in June, and at a flop Comic Festival in Bristol (16 June 1866), at Gloucester for Jolly John Nash (18 June)  and were 'married' a couple of days later ...

The marriage was, of course, bigamous, which is probably why William used a different name, claimed a different father, 'coach builder', and spelled the assumed name incorrectly .. oh, and did the illegal deed in Bristol. But the third shot was good: Will and Alice remained together till the end of his life, sixty years later. She remained 'Miss Dunning' on the playbills for the nonce.

In 1868 the pair visited America and there Lingard caused a sensation with his songs, notably the number `Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines', and with what was claimed to be the first quick-change act ever seen in the country. He became hailed as `the best comic singer ever introduced to New York audiences'. And seems, at this stage, to have adopted the name 'Horace'.

He played at New York's Theatre Comique in farce and burlesque and, supported by his new wife/'wife', music-hall serio-comic Alice [Anne] DUNNING (b London, 29 July 1845, d 22 Elm Tree Rd, Hampstead, 25 June 1897) and her sister, Harriet Sarah (6 August 1853; London 7 December 1938), who worked under the name of Dickie Lingard, he took over the management of the house (27 June 1868) for a short period, playing sketches and burlesque (Pluto with Alice as Orpheus &c) until it was burned down, when the company moved out to Brooklyn, then to Boston (1869 'Mr Lingard has made a hit') where Lingard took over the local Theatre Comique (later as the Adelphi Theater).

The Lingards toured for a number of years, in and out of New York and Boston, with programmes which included plays (Our American Cousin, Miriam's Crime, All That Glitters is not Gold, The Spitalfields Weaver, Delicate Ground, David Garrick, Elfie, Frou-Frou &c) , burlesques (Lalla Rookh, Kenilworth and the eternal Pluto)  and, later, short operettas featured alongside Horace's own stand-up performance. A tale is told of family rivalry in which Alice and Horace, each considering themselves the main attraction, allegedly came to hard words. To prove his point, Horace withdrew from the bill, leaving Alice to head it alone. When the receipts went down and his wager was apparently won, he came back. Well, it was all good publicity. Another scene of 'matrimonial squabble' was played out in Pluto one night. And the Grand Duke Alexis (the one who is supposed to have had an affair with Lydia Thompson) presented him newsworthily with a sapphire ring at Detroit. 

The American press hailed 'His success here is one of the marvels of the present theatrical era'. The American gossip press reported his 'separation from Amelia' and his several children by Alice. (They had two daughters).

Lingard shared his programmes -- of which his sketches remained the star item -- both with Susie Galton and Thomas and Blanche Whiffen (née Galton) and their family group, the earliest purveyors of Offenbach in English to American audiences, and with the Howard Pauls, and he travelled his company -- playing everything from drama to burlesque -- as far afield as the south Pacific, appearing in Australia from October 1875 billed as `the world-renowned comedian' in Our Boys, David Garrick, Married in Haste, the melodrama Dead to the World and a comic opera called I Ladroni, allegedly of his own making. However, I Ladroni (Theatre Royal, Sydney 19 February 1876), which he had first mounted in St Louis several years earlier, and which was allegedly musically compiled by Giuseppe Operti, bore a remarkably close resemblance both textually and musically to Burnand and Sullivan's early opéra-bouffe The Contrabandista.

In February 1879, hot on the heels of the first startling Broadway performances of HMS Pinafore, Lingard starred as John Wellington Wells in New York's first The Sorcerer and later the same year the Lingards sailed off again to New Zealand and Australia, playing HMS Pinafore (he as Joseph Porter, she as Josephine) and The Sorcerer. He was pursued legally, in a stranger-than-fiction saga of court appearances, featuring flights and at least one probably faked bankruptcy, by J C Williamson (who had played at the Theatre Comique in 1869 under Lingard's management) who had bought the Australasian rights to Gilbert and Sullivan's show. Balked by the courts, Lingard eventually had to give up, but he continued to play in his repertoire his own `sequel', The Wreck of the Pinafore, which ultimately found its way very briefly to the London stage. He also performed a number of French works (notably as Frimousse to Alice's Le Petit Duc), as well as Our Boys, Old Bachelors, Gilbert's The Happy Land, H B Farnie's Pluto and the inevitable I Ladroni.

 After touring the rest of the Pacific circuit -- Japan, China, Hong Kong -- the Lingards finally returned to Britain where Horace mounted a special Gaiety Theatre matinée to promote his wife as a star, but metropolitan success did not come their way and it was ultimately in the British provinces that Lingard found himself a very comfortable niche.

In collaboration with ‘cellist, actor and producer Auguste van Biene, he produced and subsequently toured endlessly with English versions of such reputable French pieces as Le Droit d’aînesse (Falka, Tancred), Les Voltigeurs de la 32ème (The Old Guard, Polydore Poupart) and Pepita (La Princesse des Canaries, Inigo). In a rare venture into the West End he tried Pepita at Toole's Theatre in 1888 and was gratified with a run of 102 performances before going back on the road. He also played one London week of Messager's La Fauvette du Temple (1891) and produced a revival of Offenbach's Les Brigands. For this revival he used a youthful translation by W S Gilbert, published by Boosey and Hawkes, and once again found himself in court, on the receiving end of a writ from the author who had no wish to see his juvenilia thus displayed (nor, perhaps, for its influence on The Pirates of Penzance and The Mountebanks, in particular, to be noticed). For once, this time, Lingard was on the right end of the law.

 Lingard also co-wrote (or at least put his co-name to) and produced a burlesque of his touring success Falka under the title Brother Pelican (1894) and mounted a new and short-lived show called The Chorus Girl as part of his repertoire in 1897 (Caractacus Tire). In 1899, now a widower, he was still to be found on the road, starring in the chief comic part of a musical called An American Heiress (Stuart McNab). He trouped his shows endlessly and, in his eighties, allowed himself to drop from star comic rôles to smaller parts, whilst also taking time off to direct amateur productions of the works which he had performed in his younger days. He died in his ninetieth year, with less than £100 to his name.

The two daughters of Horace and Alice Lingard both married music. Lulu (Louise Emily Marie Dunning Needham, 1867-1926) became Lulu Wicks, but then the wife of a doctor, and Nellie Wilhelmina (1869-1962)-- a leading lady in Australian musical theatre (La Cigale, La Mascotte) as Mowbray Lingard -- having disposed of a certain Frank M Burbank (‘of the Boston Theater’), became the wife of Arthur Godfrey, composer of the successful Little Miss Nobody (1898) and nephew to the more famous bandsman and arranger Dan Godfrey. 

As related, Lingard’s first wife was actress and music-hall performer Minnie Foster (Amelia Martha Flint, 3 April 1860). She worked latterly as ‘Mrs W H Lingard’, and carried on doing so, even after her husband ran away to bigamise with Alice Dunning. The pair were finally legally divorced, apparently on a technicality (one son William Henry Thomas 7 November 1861) in 1878, she married a Mr Musto, and Lingard married Alice a second time (1883) just to make it all as nearly legitimate as it could be. Minnie died in Edmonton in 1903.

OK. I've upmarketed and expanded my piece a bit here and there. But the discovery that 'Horace' was possibly/probably really 'Thomas', which was revealed in the press, once Amelia Martha began proceedings has, anyhow,  led me all over the place. With limited results.

And there is still plenty to find elsewhere on the personal side. What happened, for example, to brother Henry? Who was father Henry? Who was Miss Lamartine? And what became of son 'Harry' William Thomas? He can be seen in 1871 as a 9 year-old boarder under the name Harry Lingard at Mr Busk's school in Bessborough Gardens. In 1881 he is a 'professional actor' ... 'H Lingard jr'. At age 21 he was in court in Wales accused (not guilty) of fraud. In 1889 he was on the bill at the Foresters Music Hall ...

Dickie married theatre manager Davison Alexander Dalziel in Australia in 1876 (29 Janary). By the time she died, in London in 1938, she had become a baroness and a multi millionairess. Mr D had become 'the man who brought taxicabs to London' and Tory MP for Brixton.

Late discovery: 1864 Henry Horace Lingard 'who had been performing the ghost all around the country' and had 'a theatrical establishment at Farnham'.  Oh! Wandsworth Prison: 1863-4 Henry Lingard, actor, travelled in a railway carriage without a ticket ... and fraud!  12 months imprisonent! 1864 lunatic asylum in Bristol. If that's him, he died Fishponds 22 December 1874 ...   1861 census, Henry Lingard 29 actor born Bristol, with wife Sarah actress 29 ...  1864 Islington workhouse...   Oh! Henry ...

This isn't really Alice's article. She needs one all of her own. When she died, in 1897, The Era reported lavishly

It seems clear that 'Horace' took his stage name following his brother's assumption of 'Lingard' ... but oh dear! That doesn't help me with finding his family. In 1841, 1851, 1861 ...

Curiosity. 1901 census. Church Row, Bethnal Green 'visiting' widow Mrs Amelia M Flint, 99, widow Mrs Amelia M illegible 70. Plus Kate M Lingard 32 actress ...  

I'm all Lingarded out.  I'll have another go in a few years ...