No. I didn't know anything about her, either. I don't know how I missed her, in my shrimp-netting years among Victorian vocalists, but I did.
Even now, I've had to scrape the bottom of the boat to discover much about her. Much more, that is, however than a vast list of engagements, of credits, ranging over two decades and filling four pages of notes on my computer.
So why have a suddenly seen fit to discover Miss Sellers all of a sudden? Because of this ..
I'll get a better photo from my collector friend who snapped this up (well, I signalled him!) later. And there is Fannie.
Who was she? Well, she lived most of her life in the lovely Yorkshire village of Knaresborough, near the once fashionable spa-town of Harrogate. But she was born in Trafalgar Street, Leeds, the child of William Sellers, tanner and currier, ad his wife Sarah. The family removed to Karesborough when Fanny was a wee thing, and there they lived and died. Although Fanny/Fannie voyaged incessantly till the end of the 20th century.. father William died in 1872 , but mother Sarah lived into the 20th century, sharing Crag Cottage or Rockville Cottage with he unmarried daughter until her death in 1904.
Fannie SELLERS (b Leeds 7 December 1853; d Knaresborough 1939)
So, what about Fannie's singing career? Well, I spot her for the first time in 1879. Twenty-six? Surely she must have sung before that. Or not? Maybe that's why her voice lasted so long, inimpaired. So I guess she is not the Miss Sellers singing in Yorkshire in 1865; but undoubtedly the Miss Sellers giving, with Miss Storey their 'annual concert' in Knaresborough in 1879. So, I go on from there.
I am not going to list all the hundreds of concerts in which Fannie appeared, as principal soprano ... over 20 years, to unvaryingly fine notices. Beginning in Leeds, Knaresborough, Harrogate, Spofforth, Wetherby, Leyburn, Middlesborough, Ripon, Boston Spa, Blyth, Rochdale, Newcastle and reaching to Belfast, Dundee, Doncaster .. I'll just point out some of the more substantial works in which she appeared. And I exclude the interminable Yorkshire Messiahs ...
1881 (8 January) Leeds Phil Soc Benjamin in Macfarren's Joseph behind Anna Williams, Frederic King and Frank Boyle
1881 Leyburn The Ancient Mariner
1882 Hartlepool The Rose Maiden; Ripon The May Queen
1883 Leeds Festival Elijah quartets and Barnby's 97th Psalm;
1884 Ripon Oberthür's The Pilgrim Queen
1885 Hunslet J F Barnett's The Building of the Ship; Middlesborough Gaul's Holy City
1886-7 Edward Oxenford's The Crown of Roses, Alfred Halstead/J Allanson Benson The Water Nymph, L N Parker's Sylvia; Pudsey Choral Union Samson, Brighouse Choral Soc Acis and Galatea/Stabat Mater, Ripon Athalie, Sheffield Barnby's Rebekah, Penrith Golden Legend
1888 Headingly Vocal Society Christensen's The Discontented Maidens, Gall's Ruth
1889 Rawmarsh and Parkgate Elijah
1891 Huddersfield The Rose Maiden
1892 Malton Gaul's The Erl King's Daughter; Ripon J Allanson Benson's King Hezekiah; Chesterfield Acis and Galatea
1893 Malton Choral Society Haul's Joan of Arc, Sheffield Stainer's Mary Magdalene, Blyth van Bree's St Cecilia's Day
1898 Harrogate Armes's St John the Evangelist ..
And that's just a slim selection.
In later years she slowed down a tad, but I see that she sang Clairette in Derby in a concert performance of La Fille de Madame Angot in 1897!
After her mother's death, she took, in 1909, a widower husband, William Clark Bentley of Aldborough (but originally of Knaresborough), a cashier, with an unmothered daughter, Catherine.
She lived another thirty years, but her hectic days of music were past.
Somebody has posted a photo of her in her later days
and of her grave. TLC needed ...?
I hope its tended. She deserves that much from musical Yorkshire.
PS for Sullivan fans: in concert she sang various of Sullivan's songs, notably 'The Lost Chord', 'Let me Dream of thee' and, at Dawson's concerts, 'Brightly shines our wedding day'.
I got caught, of course, and ended up investigating the tenor, Edward KEMP (b Batley, Yorks 1854; d Levett's Field, Lichfield 18 August 1922). Kemp was the last child of Edward [William?] Kemp, a woollen worker ('woollen cleaner') from Soothill, Yorks, and his wife, Ann Taylor. He was so much the last that I am not whether he was born before his father's death (30 September 1854). His elder siblings worked in the wollen industry ('mill hand', 'power loom weaver', 'woollen spinner'), and Edward too worked as a factory hand before he became a gas meter inspector, married (1876) Mary Willoughby from Pudsey and began a family. Then Kemp turned professional tenor, first at Southwell Minster (11 April 1878), then at Chester Cathedral (15 February 1879), and finally at Lichfield Cathedral (3 November 1881). He would remain there for some forty years, up to his death.
At the same time, he fulfilled a multitude of concert and oratorio engagements -- at Chester with the local orchestral Society and the Cathedral Philharmonic Society, and once installed at Lichfield, widely in the West Midlands of England and of Wales. As with Fannie Sellers, I have a vast list of engagements listed in the 1880s and 1890s, performances of The Messiah, Elijah, The First Walpurgisnacht, The Crusaders, The Sleeping Beauty, Lobgesang, St John the Baptist, Acis and Galatea, Gade's Spring Message, The Ancient Mariner, St Paul, Joan of Arc, The Seasons ...
From 1900, he became involved in local Unionist politics and in 1915 finally got himself on to the city's council. However, he made most news when in 1920 he performed a duet at Lichfield with his grandson, Charles, son of younger daughter Edith Florence Mercer.
His two sons both became choirboys at the Cathedral. George Frederic Handel (26 January 1877-13 February 1950) and Francis Joseph Haydn (1878-1911). Their first sister was named Clara Novello Kemp.
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