Unidentified Musical Ephemera: A bit of Baltimore?

 

I had a great deal of fun, recently, winkling out the identity of an old playbill from Iowa, so when I saw this one, dated but no venue or familiar names, I thought 'well, have a go'!

So, 15 May 1855, where?

Somewhere in the Baltimore-Wilmington-Philadelphia area. But where?

Odd Fellow's Hall? They were all over the place. Marsh's Music Store? Stephen W Marsh had a musical shop 'opposite Court Square' in Springfield, Mass. Ah! There's one in Philadelphia ... John Marsh, music publisher .. New Masonic Hall ...

And Philadelphia turns up a pianist by the name of Edward William Magenis. Or Maginnis. 

And there he is, playing piano for a concert given by the same Sheppard girls at Wilmington a few weeks earlier! 

So who are these sisters?

Caroline M Sheppard, Georgie Sheppard and .. according to other announcements. Mrs M A Powell, late of Baltimore, who had been visible in Philadelphia concerts since 1851, alongside the chief purveyor of local concerts, Richard Turner, was a third sister.

I have found the family -- or part of it -- in the 1850 census of Baltimore. 

Mrs Powell is evidently already wed and gone.

I see Caroline teaching music and singing at Miss D T Kingbourne's Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies in 1853. And in 1855 ..

At some stage, they became 'late of Baltimore' and are taking lessons from the composer and singer Signor Natale Perelli (b Italy 24 December 1816; d Philadelphia 2 March 1867), sometime primo tenore of the Havana Opera Company and America's original Ernani. 

There is just one thing odd about this bill. Fifteen year-old Georgie (b 3 January 1840) was not 'Miss G'. She was 'Mrs G' and the mother of a baby daughter. She had married a John Woolman Sheppard -- a relative? -- 4 October 1854, and borne a daughter, Linda who, we are told, was born 22 February 1854. Yes, this family goes from curiosity to muddle.

The girls can't have been too bad. Concerting with Fred Crouch, and rubbing shoulders with Teresa Parodi.

Intially, Caroline seems to have been the most prominent of the sisters through engagements in concert which reached as far as the New York American Music Association at Dodsworth's Academy, the Boston Lyceum, the Yonkers Lyceum, Poughkeepsie, Bridgeton, but it was Georgie (who had claimed her employment as 'prima donna' in the 1860 census!) who had the longer life in music. She sang with the Old Folks Company, and went on to church engagements at St Peter's Episcopalian, Brooklyn et al, and concerts at Steinway and Irving Hall ('Sweet Spirit, Hear my Prayer', 'I waited for the Lord'), as 'first soprano of the Jersey Harmonic Society', and with Theodore Thomas into the 1870s. Now, apparently abandoned by her husband (she sued him in the Supreme Court for 'failure to support') she continued on till about 1875 ... 

I see Georgie, Linda, son Ferdinand/Fernando and brother Albert living in New York in the 1870 census, and mother and two children in East 31st Street in1880 ..  By 1900, in Lenox Avenue, she is knocking 4 years off her age, Ferdie is a bookkeeper and there is a baby Georgie McMartin, child of the deceased Linda (Mrs John F McMartin) ...  Georgie died 16 August 1912.

Caroline? No idea. Mrs Powell? No idea. Mr W Carroll? I can find nothing at all on him. Parents? Alas, no luck.

But it's a lovely bit of American musical ephemera.

'Mister Dickens'. Godly qualms.

 

BURNETT, Henry (b Alverstoke 12 November 1811; d Titchfield, Hants 7 February 1893)

BURNETT, Mrs [née DICKENS, Frances Elizabeth] (b Portsmouth 28 October 1810; d Islington 2 September 1848)

 

Mr Burnett has a story of which I don’t care to get into the personal details. He was a minor London tenor, who became a fairly prominent Manchester tenor, and who has been written about ad infinitum because he was, for a while, the husband of Miss Fanny Dickens, sister to Charles of that ilk. Being a Dickens scholar is a career in itself, so I’ll simply stick to Henry and ignore the ramifications of the Dickens connection, which have been done to death by one writer or another. None of whose books I have read.

 

Henry began his singing as Master Burnett. I see him as, presumably, a late soprano, performing at Lucombe’s Library etc in Brighton, in 1826-7. Not earlier, apparently, though the Dickensians say otherwise (with what source?). From 1832 to 1836, he attended the Royal Academy of Music, where Fanny Dickens was also studying. It was a rich period in the Academy’s history with students including Charlott Ann Birch, Stretton, Adeline Cooper, Margaret Postans, Fanny Wyndham and others, but Henry and Fanny both held their place among these successful singers.

 

I first see the adult Henry in public at the Society of British Musicians in 1834-5 (German Reed’s ‘Go forget me’) and in various RAM-related concerts (Beethoven 9th, duets with W Seguin and Mrs Aveling Smith, Last Judgment), including one mounted by Fanny and her pianist colleague, Miss Foster, 29 April 1836, at Willis’s Rooms, with Margaret Postans-Shaw topping the bill. At Madame Bonnias’s concert he ‘sang ‘Bendemeer’s Stream’ very sweetly’.

 

In 1837, Henry went on the stage, appearing at the Colosseum in a burletta entitled The Trophy alongside Manvers, Giubilei and the Misses Smith. The Misses Smith were connected with Braham’s St James’s Theatre, which was connected with Charles Dickens …Anyway, 13 September 1837, Burnett and Fanny were wed.

 

Henry moved on to the St James’s, where the second tenor was … Mr Bennett … leaving room for some mix-ups. However, he seems to have taken over in the Dickens/Hullah Village Coquettes and played there in The Ambassadress (Benedict), Ron o’ the Fen (Edgar de Courcey) and The Devil’s Opera (Signor Herman). He filled the season at the English Opera House (July 1838) (St Clair in The Grey Doublet with ‘When first I heard thy voice’ by Frank Romer, Andrea in The Evil Eye, Signor Hermann in The Devil’s Opera, Lorenzo in Fra Diavolo) and then moved on to Covent Garden (Lorenzo in Fra Diavolo, Lorenzo in The Cabinet, Fiorello in Marriage of Figaro, Holloway in Barbara, Singing Witch in Macbeth, Minstrel in Cymbeline, William Tell, ‘The Breeze is hush’d’ by W F Lockwood) through into 1839. At Christmas, I spot the couple singing in the Mozart mass at the Sardinian Chapel. Then it was back to the English Opera House, where Frazer was now lead tenor (Captain Rowland in Freaks and Follies), …

 

At which stage, so the Dickensian researchers tell us, Henry got godly qualms about the theatre, and left London for Manchester.

 

Whether it was a good move religiously, I know not, but it was a good move professionally. From being a small fish in the London music and theatre world, Henry went to being one of the handful of principal concert and oratorio tenors in Lancashire. Although, in theory, they had come to town not for that purpose, but ‘to teach music on the Wilhem principle’, the same principle which Hullah was to turn to such good account. They offered a course of no less than 60 lessons …

 

As a performer, Henry found approbation from the Manchester critics and work with just about all the local choral societies. Fanny, who even pulled out, ill, of their debut concert (30 November 1841), performed rather less and more often, actually, at the keyboard.

 

As a teacher, Henry became attached to the Manchester Athenaeum, where he appeared regularly in concert, teaming with all the local stars – the Misses Leach and Hardman, Misses Kenneth and Stott, and Mrs Sunderland, Mrs Winterbottom, Anna Ablomowicz, the Rafters et al – singing in such pieces as Alexander’s Feast, The Seasons, The First Walpurgisnacht, Elijah et al, and delivering ballads from ‘Annie Laurie’ to ‘The Pilgrim of Love’ to ‘O Erin my Country’.

 

Fanny died in 1848, their crippled nine year-old son Henry Augustus in 1849, and thereafter Henry’s name disappeared from the concert lists. I haven’t found him as a public performer again. 

He remarried, Miss Sarah Hargreaves, had some more children, and apparently faded away into South-of-England music teaching.

 

A rather pale career for a once promising tenor. I’m afraid God was to blame. One way and another.

 

 

Grab Me a Gondola ... or ten!

 

This week, a treat, such as doesn't come my musical-theatre way very often in these wearisomely trendy and over-amplified days ...

My report simply bubbled out of me. So I shall reprint it here.

I've just listened to the new recording of GRAB ME A GONDOLA. I, who remember the original ...

 

Wonderful that a show like this, witty and tuneful, should be given a new production. Where? Why, at Britain's most enterprising drama/music school at Guildford.

 

For decades I have watched the output of Guildford. As an agent, in the 80s, most of the young clients I took on to my books were from there. One goodie from Guildhall, another from Arts, but mostly Guildford. 

 

And now young Stewart Nicholls, like me a champion of the post-war British musical comedy, has taken over and this is the result. Instead of students being taught how to mimic American performers from you-tube, we get fresh, lovely, shiningly original and natural performances. 

 I have been involved with drama/music schools on both sides of this planet for over half-a-century. Sometimes the standard of their shows has been fair-to-good. Sometimes it was weak. There were occasions when I wouldn't have hired a single person from a production's cast. Possibly the students were ill displayed in poor or unsuitable material. 

 

But, in fifty years, things have clearly changed. In Guildford, at least! I don't think I've ever heard young folk performing with such joy and vigour and technical assurance. And with a dazzling 2-piano accompaniment (remember MR CINDERS?). This recording, for me, shows us all the way things could and should be going, how students should be taught and displayed ... I shall be playing it on loop ... 

What will other schools come up with? There is a welter of wonderful (British) musical theatre out there. And when the 'opposition' listens to what Guildford can do ... No more RENT, no more HAIR, no more 20th century monoliths ... give a young girl and a young man something in which they can suitably shine ...

 

Bravo Stewart and Guildford ... I hope you get around to LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS, EXPRESSO BONGO, MAKE ME AN OFFER et al in my lifetime.

Unidentified Theatre Ephemera: a voyage of discovery in Iowa

 

What do you do when you find a delicious piece of C19th theatrical ephemera without a place, a date ...

One such turned up on my desk this week. 

German programme. $1.  Not anymore, dandruff. Although you might be pressed to find anyone but a lover of operatic curiosities willing to pay a whole dollar for it. And it is, obviously, not from Germany.

It is from German America. Witness the Mr and Mrs participants. I can do better than that, and posit that it is from Davenport, Iowa. How do I know that? Because the STIBOLT family were rife there in the C19th. And they married into the HASS and MARTENS families ...

Date? A little trickier. Their (amateur) performance doesn't seemm to have made the press.

Let's be cunning. The family, who emigrated with three 'Danish' babies, consisted of:

Father: Jens Pedr Stibolt. Born Schleswig-Holstein ie Denmark 24 December 1812. Died Davenport 12 July 1887. For years the editor of a German newspaper which promoted "demokratiche" politics.

Mother: Carolina Dorothea [Wulfhilde] née EHLERT (b Schleswig-Holstein 27 February 1816; d Davenport 8 October 1904)

Children: 

[Carolina] Emilie ('Amelia') Erasmine Stibolt b 24 June 1841-1925 (Mrs HOFFMANN)

Jens Peter Stibolt 1844-1880

Olga Louise Stibolt 1844-1927 (Mrs Louis C J MARTEN)

Caspar Henrik Stibolt 1848-1888

Erasmine ('Minna') 1855-1890 (Mrs F W [von] EGLOFFSTEIN)

Louisa Aurelia 1855-1905 (Mrs C W [von] EGLOFFSTEIN)

Albert Julius 1856-1919

Jessie Frimonde 1858-1918 (Mrs C E SCHOLING)

So. Date?

Before 1880, and the death of Jens jr.  And Lillie of the next generation (born 1871, daughter of said Jens jr) as a ballerina? Aged what?

Ancestry.com has delivered up this splendid photo of a part of the family.

We clearly have Jens sr, Carolina and .... is that Jens jr? Are the two ladies his sisters or is one his wife? The two little boys? Jens jr's two sons? Not if that is Jens jr. His younger son was born a week after his death.  Yet ... the photo is said to include Jens I, Jens II and Lillie. And only one of Jens's other siblings had children before his death ...  

Anyhow if Lillie (who seems to be source of the photo) is one of the little girls here, the photo must date from somewhere in the second half of the 1870s. Which is fine, but doesn't help in dating the programme any closer than we were already!

I'm not doing too well here. So. Clara [Josephine] Marten. Daughter of Olga. Born Davenport 25 April 1869. That's better.  Father: saloon keeper. In 1880, she is twelve years old. In 1870 she is 3. So, if she is the elder girl, and Lillie the younger ..  

The other thing that intrigues me about our playbill is its dramatic content. A family of amateurs performing Franz Lachner's 1841 opera Catharina Cornaro?  Only 'Miss L[ouise] Stibolt' had any pretension as a vocalist, being the possessor of a 'soprano voice of great volume and power'. 'Miss M' will be her sister Erasmine, known as Minna. Mr A is Albert whose wife was also known to sing. Mr C is Caspar, Miss J is youngest sister, Jessie ...

John Henry Schuett (1839-1919) was bachelor fond of theatre, who ran a grocery and china shop .. member of the Turner Society ...

Agnes Limprecht (1847-?) another Schleswig Holsteiner, married (eventually) P T Koch, banker ..they were members of the Turner Society ..

The German Turner Society of Davenport. Founded 1852. Gymnastic. Artistic. Democrat. Volubly supported by Mr Stibolt's paper .. Turners' Thespian Society .. Turner Hall ... balls, masquerades, excursions, fair and industrial exhibition ..

OK. This is where we are. 1876 August Ficke officer of the Davenport Turners 'attorney, financier, philanthropist' and a son b 1850? ... 1877 two hundred members .. the Gesang section of the Turner Society .. 1880 Flotte Bursche, Zehn Mädchen und kein Mann ... 

I don't think I shall discover much more ...  time to get on with indexing (groan!) the next book ...

A torrent of Temples ... Glasgow to Hobart, via Boston.

Set on a track today by a photo .. only to discover that I'd been 'there', years ago, for another member of the family!

Rose Temple

TEMPLE, Mrs [MAJOR, Harriett née DAVIS] (b Worcester x 19 May 1822; d London August 1879)

 ‘Mrs Temple of Exeter Hall’, ‘Madame Temple of the Italian Opera’, ‘Mrs Temple of the East End concerts’ ... yes, in spite of what I feared, for many years, they actually are all the same person. A person who, truthfully, in spite of a comfortable career, didn’t impinge greatly on the heights of the musical world, and therefore whose life story was all the more difficult to investigate. Mrs Temple didn’t seem to have a beginning or an end: just a middle. I’m used to artists like that, and I was resigned to, probably, not discovering the truth of her. For, naturally, her name wasn’t Temple. But then a piece of paper from two generations down the line surfaced ...  a bell rang somewhere in my memory ... and bingo!

 

Harriett ‘Temple’ was born in Worcester, the daughter of a ‘much respected professional’, John Davis and his wife Catherine née Clark, and she started singing at an early age. I see little Miss Davis stepping in to sing the solos in an anthem with the Worcester Choral Society at St Helen’s Church at fourteen years of age. The next year she is sharing a concert platform with Mrs and Mrs Edmunds (ex-Mary Cawse), and the next promoting her own concert (17 April 1838) in Easter week. ‘A very promising and deserving young vocalist’ quoth the press, nodding towards the recent demise of her father.

Over the next few years, Miss Davis became Worcestershire’s star vocalist, singing oratorio with the Worcester Harmonic Society, at the D’Egville family’s concerts, the Worcester Philharmonic Concerts, with the Worcester Quadrille Band, at charity concerts and church occasions, at the Theatre Royal Worcester, and visiting Kidderminster, Gloucester, Cheltenham  (‘With verdure clad’, ‘Do not mingle’, Knight’s ‘The Grecian Daughter’, ‘Where the bee sucks’, ‘Bid me discourse’, Barker’s ‘Thy vows are all broken’, ‘Languir per una bella’, ‘L’amor suo’, ‘Wake gentle Mary’, Let the bright seraphim, ‘, ‘O magnify the Lord’, ‘The Mermaid’) to he accompaniment of encores and ‘thunderous applause’.

In 1842, she was included with Miss Birch, Mrs Loder, Misses Marshall and Hawes as one of the soloists for the Worcester Festival. She gave ‘If God be with us’ in The Messiah, ‘Come, ever smiling liberty’ and ‘established her reputation as a highly promising vocalist’ in such a way that the local critic avowed  ‘more gratification from hearing her than’ any soprano except Miss Birch.

 

Underneath the top-billed Miss Davis, the local concerts frequently included a male quartet taken from the area’s best-known musicians: the Rogers brothers, John Rickhuss, Mr Sefton and, occasionally, a young Mr Major.

 

Schoolmaster’s son, Richard Wer(e) Major (b Frome, 27 February 1817; d London 1871) hailed from Somerset, but by 1841 he was installed in Diglis, boarding with a sailor’s family, working at something illegible in the census returns, and giving ‘The Outlaw’ and such like at local concerts.  In 1844, Miss Davis and Mr Major were wed, and they emigrated from Worcestershire to London. They also changed their name. Professionally, that is, for the couple were embarked on a career as vocalists. And also on parenthood. Over the next decade and a half they would give birth to Kate, Bessie, [Harriet] Rose, Florence and Emma, all of whom became singers and actresses.

 

I don’t know what it is about the not uncommon name of ‘Temple’ which makes it attractive to baritones, but Richard Major – like the more famous Richard Barker Cobb later – chose to become ‘Mr Temple’. Harriet, thus, was now ‘Mrs Temple’ and the girls … well, we’ll get to them later.

 

Mr Temple had a modest career. He was several years a minor principal in Tully’s National Opera Company, I spot him 1866 at the Theatre Royal Bath in pantomime and as Hecate in Macbeth but he seems to have been mostly a chorus singer.

 

Mrs Temple, however, did rather better. After a couple of years being seen intermittently in concert with her husband (billed as ‘of the Theatres Royal’!) noticeably at the Grecian Saloon with a group of nigger burlesquers (‘Long time ago’ ‘in excellent style’), she suddenly turns up at the Covent Garden Italian Opera (2 May 1848), no less, playing Clorinda to the Thisbe of Mme Bellini and the Cenerentola of Marietta Alboni. And in La Favorita with Grisi and Mario.

The operatic interlude seems to have been brief, and Mrs Temple is seen on the platform at Drury Lane for the Distins’ concert, at the Horns Tavern, the National Hall in Holborn (‘My beautiful Rhine’, ‘Giorno d’orrore’ with Caroline Felton, ‘The Grecian daughter’, ‘The heart is giving’) and at Brighton with the local Sacred Harmonic Society singing the Dettingen Te Deum, selections from The Messiah and ‘The Infant’s Prayer’ with Messrs Genge and Lawler.

In 1850 (31 May) she was engaged to sing second soprano to Catherine Hayes in the London Sacred Harmonic Society’s Creation, and she succeeded well (‘a debutante here …gave the cavatina ‘The marvellous work’ with such gusto and effect as to nearly obtain an encore’). After a season of further Holborn concerts, a couple of tours round Dorsetshire – usually in the company of Genge and billed as ‘Mrs Temple of the Royal Italian Opera’, -- she returned to Surman’s Society and seconded Louisa Pyne in The Messiah (28 February 1851), Charlott Ann Birch in Jephtha (28 March ‘‘Young Happy Iphis’ with precision and brilliancy’), and Susan Sunderland again in The Messiah. She was also engaged for the original Sacred Harmonic Society where she made a first appearance seconding Clara Novello in Elijah (26 September 1851), followed by The Seasons with Mrs Sunderland. Over the next decade she was seen at Exeter Hall with both societies, seconding Miss Birch in Elijah, Solomon and The Creation with Surman, and Novello and Parepa in Elijah and in Deborah. Her final performance seems to have been in the last work in 1862 (31 January). 

 

The Italian Opera? It went on till 1852. There, as the ladies of the Queen of the Night we see Mesdames Temple, Chierici and Brennan… And if she is the ‘Madame Temple’ of the Beale opera company, playing Flora in Traviata with Madame Gassier in 1857, it seems she had not abandoned the stage.

 

She visited Portsmouth frequently (on one occasion she and her husband are referred to as ‘locals’), sang the principal music in The Messiah, St Paul, Judas Maccabeus, Samsonand The Creation in the provinces, with Grimsby latterly replacing Portsmouth as a centre of operations. In 1856, she again took part in the Three Choirs Festival.

However, each of the C19th censi show them and their crocodile of daughters firmly ensconced in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. The 1871 census has husband, wife and daughter Kate all described as ‘chorister’. 

 

In that same year, Richard Major died, and ‘Mrs Temple’ disappears from my view. I think she must be the Harriett Major who died aged 57, in London, in 1879. 

 

The daughters remained to carry on the Temple name, but only two chose to use it.  Kate seems to have quit the stage, but the other four girls all started a career in musical theatre as Bessie Major, Rose Temple, Florence Trevallyan and Emma Temple. And Rose (twice) and Florence married within the profession.

 

Florence (b London 4 November 1856; d Cronulla, NSW 7 January 1932) had a successful career as a singing actress, and married a scion of the Brough family. [Lionel Barnabas] Robert Brough became an important producer of plays in Australia, his wife a leading actress, and Bessie and Emma (who had begun in burlesque and opéra-bouffe) both became successful actresses in the company as well. All three girls spent a good number of years Down Under, but Bessie seems finally to have come home. She died, unmarried, in St George’s Hospital 14 December 1934. Emma 14 March 1936, in Rose Bay, Sydney 14 March 1936.

 

[Harriet] Rose dit TEMPLE (b Tavistock Street, 13 March 1855) took a different route. A very pleasing ingénue in comic opera, she toured with the Gaiety company, as Praline in Nemesis, with Joseph Eldred in La Princesse de Trébizonde (Zanetta), Lurline, Military Billee Taylor, The Water Nymph and featured in Rob Roy and Guy Mannering in Scotland before she travelled to America with the Julia Mathews company (1875). When that company folded, she joined the Alice Oates Co, Stetson's Evangeline, Adah Richmond's troupe, and the stock company at the Boston Museum (Ralph Rackstraw in HMS Pinafore). She also married actor James H Jones and bore two children before divorcing (1880).

At the Museum she was seen as Niobe Marsh in Cinderella at School, Nancy Malone to Boucicault's Shaughraun, as Mrs Lillian Allison (Rosalind) in The Lark (Die Fledermaus), Phoebe in Billee Taylor, Patience in Patience, Dr Puff in Babes in the Wood, and briefly in a new piece named The Lightkeeper's Daughter. In 1883 she was seen in Fortunio and in Alice May's showcase of Satanella, and then ... she married a frightful scoundrel called Harry Froom, formerly the husband of another singer, ‘Rose Stella’, and retired to Ninji Novgorod, where his family was in business, to more motherhood and a quick widowhood. She died at 30 North Side Clapham Common, 11 May 1939, leaving her £117 12s 9d to her son Charles Froom (1885-1959). 

 

This generation of the ‘Temple’ family doesn’t seem to have kept up the musical connection, but Kate married (1879) a gentleman named Edward Leahy, and gave birth to a Daisy Mary and a Frederick. Daisy, in her turn, married the well-known musical comedy actor, Frederick Pope Stamper. For a while. Before they divorced, they produced Lionel Henry Stamper (1906-1985), a small time actor, whose grandson, comedian Jack Dee, has added one more chapter to the Temple-Major family history in the theatre.

1870s London theatre: a gaggle of girls ...

 

E-bay, alas, once a fertile source of C19th theatrical material, has so overgrown its once manageable proportions, that it is not half the joyous ramble that it was, even a few years back. But then, I imagine it is run by a machine, goes through no quality or accuracy checks, and -- currently, in my field at least, -- is suffering from lack of product. As a result, I, who used to spend more than an hour, with my first cuppa, perusing the 'latest postings', now spend about ten minutes. Because a whole heap of the 'new postings' ar'n't that at all. They are just yesterday's or last week's items claiming a new date. 'Antique sheet music' and variants are no longer worth seeking. And if you ask for 'antique photo actress' you get pictures (colour!) of American soap actresses wearing minimal clothing. But ...

If I don't dig as deeply as I did in the past, I still do a little daily dig. And, every so often, amongst the dross and the tenth-time-round items, something nice pops up. Most of the time, I must say, from the classiest vendors in the field ...

This week it was 'crouching gerbil' in Nottingham, UK, who has hit the bullseye. A bundle of some seventy cartes de visite, most of which seem to date from the early 1870s.  Many are named, some , alas, are not. Many are not of the actresses one usually sees pictured on ebay. Some have been latterly (re)named by someone with a pencil. A couple are 'first times' for me. So, let's have a look. 

The first carte that caught my eye was of Alma Egerton. I know of her. She was one of the 'front line' of the chorus at the Gaiety Theatre in its earliest years. Tiny parts when they were going.  But what made me sit up was that the other two of the 'big three' Gaiety girls were there too! Lardy Wilson and Kate Love. Someone must have been to see Aladdin II or Thespis or Cinderella the Younger at the Gaiety in the earliest '70s! The last-named show (1871) actually listed its chorus: Love, Egerton, Rose Wilson, Misses Angus, Verulam, A Herbert, Gordon, A & F Villiers, Hardy, Forster, Cazally. M & R Granger, Gresham, Wallace, Butler .. quite a few stage-names in there. But yes, here is a photo of Miss 'Sissy' Gresham ..

What can I find out about these lasses? The answer is, personally, only one has revealed her full details, and that because she used her real name, was bred to the theatre, and her daughter later became a stage 'beauty'.

Kate LOVE (b Dublin 11 June 1853; d 312 Cale Street, Chelsea 20 October 1919) was the daughter of the well-known William Edward Love, the 'polyphonist', and his wife, Eliza. She was a feature of the chorus at the Gaiety (Titania in The Cricket on the Hearth, Bacchis in La Belle Hélène, Robert the Devil, Bluebeard et al) between 1869 and  1874, with times out for marriage and a daughter or two, for Chilpéric (with Lardy and Alma)...

Kate married well-connected Scotman Lewis Grant Watson (22 November 1871) 'agent in wine', and gave birth to three daughters and a son. Second daughter, Mabel Frances Watson, took her mother's name for a career as Mabel LOVE (b Islington 16 October 1873; d Weybridge 15 May 1953), notably at the Gaiety but also in the faits divers columns. Third daughter, Blanche Annie (Mrs Harold E Austin) also took a turn on the stage.

Kate Love

Mabel Love

If Kate has the completest story, there is no doubt that 'Lardie' had the most colourful one. I have tried since my earliest days to find out what her real name was. To find out whence she came, and whither she went. Was she really 'Wilson'? We are told she had a sister in the business, but nothing more. Except, of course, that she bore a child to the very royal Duke of Edinburgh.

That splendid gossip columnist, Emily Soldene, tells in her memoirs of Lardy  bringing her 'royal baby' (a son,, apparently) to the Gaiety dressing room, to show the girls .. but just that.

Unfortunately, Lardy billed herself just as 'Miss L Wilson' and there were a number of those about on  stage and the music-hall platform in the late 1860s and the 1870s. Is it she dancing alongside Betsy Sismondi in 1869? We know it is she '5ft 10 and all in proportion' in Chilpéric and Le Petit Faust. Then the Gaiety. Chalybea, the Queen of the Submarines in Aladdin II ('a transcendentally beautifil creature appears as a water sprite ... the charm goes when she speaks for her voice resembleth that of a peacock'), Abdallah in Ali Baba .. was her voice that bad? She appeared in Boucicault's plays, as Mrs Dangle in The Critic .. but when she was cast, in 1875, as a statuesque Hippolyta in the Gaiety's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the suggestion was that she should be seen and not heard. It was for her physique rather than her abilities that 'Lardy' -- 'that imposing female' -- would be remembered.

In 1880, a newspaper answered a reader's query about 'whatever happened to Lardy Wilson?'  'She is living in dignified obscurity and her income from private sources is sufficient to make her independent of that unreliable profession which she has relinquished' ...  

I wonder what became of the baby boy ...

Lardy's lover

PS Who is Miss Emma Wilson of the Gaiety Theatre (1873) ...? She's not Lardy ...

Alma EGERTON the third of the three Gaiety 'graces' is another of unknown origin. Twice, over the years, I have tried to equate her with a certain Alma Beswick from Walmer, but I've now given up. 'Egerton' with its mildly aristocratic ring, seems to have been a popular stage name. There was a Maud, a Kate (who played with Lydia Thompson's troupe) .. the songwriter Frank Egerton was really William Frederick Cullen Hughes ...

So, all I can say is that Alma seems to have come from the amateur 'Snowdrop Minstrels' (1869) to the Gaiety and to parts in The Cricket on the Hearth (Oberon), La Belle Hélène (Loeona), La Fille de Madame Angot (Lange's maid), Martha (Lord Ernest), Ici on parle français (Mrs Rattan) e tutti quanti. She played in Chilpéric with Lardy and Kate Egerton, in Little Faust with both Kates, Rose Cullen, Lennox Grey, Miss Gresham ... the stock of 'girls' clearly had a pecking order. The same few headed the most glamorous choruses in the city. And Alma was one of the tops. For four years or so, after which ...?

Alma Egerton

Our hoard includes a few ladies much better known to fame than our 'front line' girls.  Some splendid photos of the Grand Duchess herself, 'Australian' Julia MATHEWS upon whom I have dilated, at length, time and again

There's Nellie BROMLEY to whom I've devoted a sizeable amount of space also, here in a particularly winning photo

 

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2018/06/blog-post.html

There's the 'infamous' Louisa Lennox GREY sister of the sometime Gaiety conductor, Johnnie Caulfield, who had a fine career as a musical performer but who was 'damned for all time' when she attempted, in later life, to extort money from her old lovers. Her ploy was exposed and she has gone down in theatre history -- thanks to such as Clement Scott, Emily Soldene and Kurt Gänzl -- as a bad egg. With 'football forward thighs'.

Louisa Lennox Grey

This one is labelled 'Miss Kemp' and our penciller has annotated it 'Annie Kemp Bowler'. I think not. Annie Kemp was born in Boston. She became Mrs Bowler in 1860. Well before this photo was taken ... more likely is Miss Edith KEMP of the Royalty Theatre 1871 (Nell Gwynne), the Vaudeville (1870) and the Princess's Theatre ..

Also in that Royalty company was one named Rose CLAIR[E] whose photo herewith

Rose and ?sister Georgie played at Margate, the Surrey pantomime of 1870, and were sometime of the Strand, the Surrey Gardens, and the tiny 'parts' of the grandiose Babil and Bijou. Rose appeared in The Love Spell at the Crystal Palace operas in 1872. They went to the Court, where they played alongside Marie O'Berne, then to the Princess's ..  I haven't much idea what their real names were, but I notice that in 1877, Georgie is c/o Mrs G Pauncefort of the Lyceum. Is that Georgina Claire Pauncefort? I think I'm getting near ... Georgiana Pauncefort comedienne had a daughter Clara in Bristol 1851 ..

Then, there's Louise CLAIRE whom we have encountered before, at Brighton, the Surrey, the Strand, Vaudeville  et al...   oh, with Miss Pauncefort?

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2022/09/this-delightful-photograph-of-three.html

There's a delightful photo of Marie O'Berne, before she became Mrs Saker 

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2021/01/1869-wandering-theatrical-photo.html

There's poor Rachel Sanger, (Mrs James Clegg Scanlan) who died on the other side of the Atlantic, where she had gone with her husband, in 1884

And so forth, and so on. Some ladies who were not musical-theatre performers ..

Another who died young was Rose CULLEN (Mrs Albert Tuck) 

Rose was another of the twelve Chilpéric pages. Daughter of sculptor John Cullen, she was married in 1868 and divorced for blatant adultery in 1873. She made a modest (if that is the word) career as a slightly singing actress ('pretty face and piquant style') and died in 1888.

Of inestimably more value as a performer was Emma (Amelia) CHAMBERS (b Goodge St, London 14 June 1848; d Brighton 7 September 1933). Emma appeared as Aladdin to the Princess of Rose Cullen at the Strand, and as Chiquita in the Olympic Theatre's How I Found Crusoe in 1872 to her 'Imagination'. So maybe our 'collector' of girlie photos visited that theatre, as well as the Gaiety. Anyway, whereas most 'girls' were seem for a handful of seasons glittering across the footlights before vanishing, diminutive Emma spent a good half-century in the limelight. And with reason. She wasn't just a pleasing vision: she could, sing, she could act, she could 'lift every scene in which she took part' and audiences loved her, whether in large role or small, as a dynamic principal boy, an opéra-bouffe or -comique soubrette or comedienne, or into her sixties as a punchy character actress.

Emma began working in the music halls in 1864 (Chatham, South London, Brighton Birmingham, Aldershot, Nottingham, Sheffield, Oriental Music Hall &c) at first as a ballad singer ('good voice and graceful manner') and then as a 'fascinating character vocalist', 'a young singer and dancer who exercises most despotic sway over her audiences' at the Marylebone, MacDonald's, Sam Collins, the Sun until Christmas 1867 when she was cast a Master Simon Simple in the Standard Theatre pantomime. She continued on the halls ('Has anyone here seen Charley?' 'Oh, send him back to me', 'All Skedaddle' a frowsy maidservant describing 'Early in the Morning' ('Dirty maid of all work'), 'The Prince of Pleasure', 'Kissing at the door', 'Are you coming out tonight?'), visiting the Standard again to play little Bily Button in Tell Tale Tit, playing the Oxford ('Pretty Little Poll', 'Does anyone want a servant?'), the Victoria (Robin Rosebud in Nime Nip) and covering the country -- Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, Hull -- until 1871 when, after seven years as a song and dance girl, she was cast for the Mrs John Wood company at the St James's Theatre.

Once again, she was cast as a little lad, 'a tiny admiral', Harry Halyard, in My Poll and Partner Joe, and made a singular success. She played Pootepet in Mrs Wood's famous La Belle Sauvage, pantomime at Liverpool and in 1872 was launched at the Strand Theatre as a principal burlesque boy. The title-role in Pygmalion, Sir Marmaduke Neville in The Last of the Barons, Aladdin, Earl Percy in Anne Boleyn. 'She has made such rapid strides since deserted the music halls - one of the cleverest little burlesque actresses at present on the stage'. She played with Henry Neville at the Olympic, appeared as Alfred the Great in panto, Louise the blind girl in the melodrama The Two Orphans, then moved to London's vast Alhambra. She proved a great favourite there through more than two years -- Brunehaut in Chilpéric, Desdemona in the old Othello according to Act of Parliament, Frau Rose Doppeldick in Spectresheim, Bridget aka Sir Belario the Beautifu in Lord Bateman, Zerlina in Don Juan,, Sanchica in Don Quixote, Popotte in Le Voyage à la lune, Cupid (of course) in Orphée aux enfers, Zoe in Indigo teamed with J H Ryley, the title-role in Widfire -- before moving to the Philharmonic to play in England's awaited Le Petit Duc. She played neither the 'little' Duke nor Duchess, but took the Desclauzas role of the Headmistress! She proved to be one of the few good things about the production and survived into the West End version which was not a success. But Emma was, and she was quickly transported to the Globe Theatre  to take over the role of Serpolette in the landmark production of Les Cloches de Corneville. Serpolette -- in town and all round Britain -- would fill years of her future life. She even named her daughter Serpolette, but alas, the child died before its first birthday..

She returned for while to the Alhambra (Bianca in Venice, Regina in The Princesse of Trébizonde, Jacqueline in La Petite Mademoiselle, Frolique in Rothomago), and played more Serpolettes, before she created what would be her best original role: Arabella in the original Billee Taylor.

But if her career were blooming, her home life was not. Her baby daughter died, her husband proved a louse ... she divorced ... and in 1885 she voyaged to Australia. There she played in comedy and musical theatre, and even in pantomime, before heading a company to South Africa for a year's tour with a 'manager' (later averred to be a 'husband'), Albert Marsh. 

Back in London, in 1891, she was starred as Joan of Arc in the Opera Comique, but she (and he) would return to Australia and she (or he) tried the Williamson hit Struck Oil in England. It failed. They headed back to South Africa ..

The extensive list of Emma's credits thereafter includes several less than memorable musical plays (Sport, The New Mephisto), a time at the Britannia, and in the 1900s a long period with the company run by Cyril Maude. She was still performing, in character roles, in 1915 (Mark Blow's My Aunt company) in the last years of a remarkable career.

Now, why is Fanny WRIGHT here? Yes, same period, but ... well, maybe our collector went to lots of theatres. Fanny was, for twenty years, a fixture at the Haymarket Theatre.

Frances Jane WRIGHT was born in November 1839 in Bolton. She made her first appearance on the London stage at the Haymarket as a dancer in 1855 and became a fixture, for nearly two decades, on the theatre's bills. Her dancing was her principal attraction, but it was averred that she was also 'an accomplished vocalist'. In the 1850s she danced alongside the Spanish Dancers, the Cushnie sisters, partnered Milano and succeeded Mary Brown as the theatre's Columbine, went on to play in the Haymarket burlesques, and featured as Mercury in the 1865 English production of Orpheus in the Haymarket. From her home at 20 Haymarket, she played in comic opera, comedy (Palmis in The Palace of Truth), burlesque and ballet with equal success into the 1870s, when her younger brother, Charles Bartholemew Wright became the theatre's manager under Buckstone. In 1872, she married actor Edward Osborne (WILLIAMS, Edward John) and bore him a son before the 33 year-old Edward died in a fit in Camden High Street, while shopping (18 April 1876). Fanny took up choreography and teaching 'ladies' fashionable dancing' with her pre-marital daughter, Alice -- who passed as her niece -- on the Haymarket premises, until Alice landed a job with America's Colville Folly Company. Mother and daughter crossed to America, where they apparently led a somewhat struggling existence, until Alice, on tour with the Photos Company ended her life by throwing herself from a high window in Cleveland (allegedly crying 'forgive me, mother'). Fanny made it back to Britain where she died 'of bronchitis' 20 June 1883. Aged 43.

Brother Charles continued the family's connection with the theatre. His daughter Fanny (Frances Emily WRIGHT) had a career as a musical comedy actress, alongside her husband Picton ROXBOROUGH (Alfred Richard GAUNT).

Many of these ladies are old friends. However, two or three count for me as 'discoveries'.

For years, Sissy or Cissie or Cecelia or Cicely GRESHAM has just been known to me as 'Miss Gresham'. An evident stage name which I judged (rightly) to be just as impenetrable as her contemporary 'Miss L Verulam'. Sigh, that pathetic penchant of the chorus girl for the names of the aristocracy. I never thought to find a photo of her! And I see now why she was Gaiety frontline material!

She appeared at Holborn in 1869 in Prince Amabel, tried as a leading lady at Wrexham ('Cicelie Greshame'!), joined the Gaiety company in 1870 and toured with them in 1871 (Loeona in Belle Hélène, quadrille dancer). In 1872 she was billed as a principal dancer at the Gaiety, and she continued there -- mostly playing decorative maidservants (Susan in Billy Lackaday, Anna Maria in Ici on parle français) until 1875. Her comings and goings are obfuscated by a certain 'Maud Gresham' who appeared at the same time (Princess's Theatre, Court Theatre etc) but since Gresham(e) is surely a stage name, sorting those girls out is a problematic exercise.

'Miss BELLEW' is another surprise. And, I'm sure, another pseudonym. She is not the Hon Miss Bellew, the Countess Caroline Bellew and her sister, Frances, of legacy litigations saga fame, or the Miss S Bellew of the Wiveliscombe Penny Readings .. but surely the 'Miss Bellew' of the Charing Cross Theatre in May 1870. Then of the Adelphi (The Mistletoe Bough), the Globe (Falsacappa, promoted from chorus) before being announced as heading to America with Lydia Thompson. Did she go? Or is she the Mabel Bellew playing at Cheltenham, Banbury et al in 1872 ... she must be 'Miss Bellew of the Adelphi' playing with amateurs at the Haymarket .. not the Miss Bellew involved in the Tichborne case ..? I'll stick with 'of the Adelphi'

'Miss Bellew'

We have Rose and Carlotta Leclercq, Maud Middleton, Minnie Sidney, Ada Cavendish, Bella Moore, Louisa Moore, Myra Holme, Amy Roselle, Amy Fawsitt, Julie Riel,

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2020/11/murderous-marguerite-of-park-lane-1872.html 

Amy Sheridan, inevitably

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-most-beautiful-woman-on-british.html

then Helen BERTRAM? Clearly not the lady from America (1865-1953) of whom one instantly thinks -- and who was really Lulu May BURT). If it is, is doesn't belong with these other girls. Wrong period, wrong country ...

Miss Bertram

Once again, we have a bevy of Miss Bertrams in the right time, and the right place. I see one Edith Bertram playing Lady Psyche in The Princess at Liverpool in 1870, with Marie O'Berne as Ida, and Juno in Paris. She went off to India in 1871. And took the Royalty Theatre in 1872. Possible? But yes! I knew there was one in the Gaiety company. December 1871, dancer with the Julia Mathews troupe on tour ... I have no other clues. But NOT Helen ...

Alice PHILLIPS? The daughter of the great Henry Phillips? I think this may be the young lady who played at the Queen's Theatre (Juno in The Tempest, Julia in The Last Days of Pompeii) featured as Azurine in Babil and Bijou. 1873 engaged for the Princess's (Ariel in Manfred alongside Miss Kemp), various concerts 'of the Princess's Theatre', 1874 Opera-Comique (Diana in Ixion Re-wheeled) ...   Was this the same Alice? The reviews seem to suggest 'not'.

What else? The ill-fated Helène THERVAL who played but little in England and died of cancer in her twenties

A few I am stonkered on.

Grace POWELL? Well, there was one of that name at the Phil in 1866. She doesn't look like a ball of fire ...

Grace Powell

Who is Annie CHURCHILL?

Miss JAMES?

Miss FRANKLIN? I vaguely recall one of that name. I shall look again .. She looks more like a performer and less like a millinery model than some of the others .. There was Jenny Franklin, solo dancer in the 1860s and 1870s ... 

Annie CAMERON?

And more. Some illegible, some patently pencil-named incorrectly, some plain unnamed ... but, well, we have made a start! Thank you Mr/Ms Gerbil for this grand collection ... You've given me three days of great entertainment and a delicious bit of discovery ...  with more to come!