Cicely: Not a NOTT

 

NOTT, Cicely [HATCH, Sarah Ann] (b Hampshire, x Alverstoke  29 April 1832; d 23 Albert Square, Clapham, 3 January 1900)

 

Some people are just unlucky. Their story and reputation has come down to us, today, in truly dilapidated state. ‘Cicely Nott’ is one.

She is mentioned often in books and, of course, by the cutters-and-pasters of the worldwide web, largely because a grandchild of hers became a 20th century musical-comedy star, under the name Cicely Courtneidge. So, grandma gets a regular throw-away mention of the type ‘Cicely Nott, an opera star at Covent Garden’. Cicely was a vocalist, certainly, but, to my knowledge, she sang only two part-performances of opera in her life: and they weren’t at Covent Garden. And ‘star’? Harrumph.

 

Her name, equally, wasn’t Cicely Nott. Which we always knew. It was Sarah Ann Harris. That’s in all sorts of books, including (before I knew better) one of mine.  But, you see, that apparently wasn’t her name either. Cicely gave her father’s name, on her marriage certificate, as Elijah Luke Hatch Harris. Long winded? But such a person didn’t seem to exist. So I went a-digging and found what I expected: Harris was a pseudonym. Elijah Luke Hatch called himself Edward Harris, presumably -- I guessed -- because he was something in the theatrical or artistic world. 

 

Mr Hatch (b 18 October 1796; d 10 Newington Road, 12 February 1853) married, in 1819, (30 August) a lady named Ann Baylis and they promptly had son, on whose birth registration father is said to have been an attorney’s clerk. (Odd, when he’d been up at the Old Bailey, as a teenager, for fraud). The child seemingly died in 1826, and something must have happened to the mother, too, because Mr Hatch turns up in the Isle of Wight, soon after, breeding a Charles, a Rosina, our Sarah Ann and a Henry, with the collaboration of a lady called Jane. He has chucked his Elijah Luke (well, you would, even without the Old Bailey) and is calling himself Edward Harris Hatch.

Since the children were christened at various stops around Hampshire I imagined ‘Edward Harris’ ‘well known in the theatrical world’ was a touring actor. But he wasn’t. And who was Jane? Were they married? (Are they Edward Harris m Jane Norris Dublin 1829?)  Well, she stayed around, and she was buried (after him) in his grave, in Nunhead Cemetery … because I finally dug up Edward and Jane Harris, at 2 Paddington Place, Bloomsbury, in 1851’s census. Edward is a 54-year-old clerk at Lloyds Newspaper office, Jane is 40, born Portsea, and 20 year-old Rosina (b Newport Isle of Wight) is a music teacher. So it seems Edward-Elijah wasn’t an actor, but maybe a writer? Or a journalist? Or both?

 

 

Well, I don't know! 

 

The girls were put into a boarding school in North End, Croydon, where they can be seen in the 1841 census, and I spot Rosina out in public in 1844-5, at the Adelaide Gallery, performing a Welsh dance. On the same bill a ‘Master Harris’ dances the polka with a Miss Peltzer who I imagine is Ann, 11 year-old daughter of musician Ferdinand Pelzer.  I thought he might be the brother, for one newspaper refers to him as ‘son of the late Mr Harris of Covent Garden’, but we don't get on to christian names.

Sarah Ann was put to study voice with John Roe jr, and, at sixteen, she was put on the stage at George Tedder’s concert at the Horns, Kennington. She got the most inspired plugging from one paper. It was Lloyd’s and I guess that now we know why. Nepotism!

 

Through 1849, she appeared at such venues as Crosby Hall, Southampton Buildings, the Horns (‘Where the bee sucks’, ‘I love the merry sunshine’ ‘sweetness, vivacity and brilliance of execution’), or at the Walworth Institute where she and Rosina appeared for Griesbach with ‘members of Jullien’s orchestra’ ('These two ladies are so much alike it is difficult to recognise them apart') and Wilson ('The Mountain Home', 'It was summer when he left me')

Quite how when and where the connection with Jullien began – maybe here, or maybe back in polka days, when the musician was trying cash in on the new dance – but this is where the story of Cicely Nott officially starts. ‘Jullien heard her in private, placed her at the RAM, paid her expenses..’.  As he would do with Kate Ranoe.

 

Anyway, she did attend the Academy, and she did study with Garcia, and Jullien launched her as vocalist, alongside Bottesini, at his splashy orchestral concerts at Drury Lane, as ‘Miss Sarah Nott’ on 1 December 1851. She sang Marliani’s ‘Stanca di piu combattere’, beloved of Grisi, and got better notices for her looks than for her singing: ‘prepossessing appearance, has a soprano voice somewhat thin, though not unsympathetic in quality, and executes the florid passages with considerable fluency and neatness. ... she sang nearly a quarter of a tone too sharp throughout…’. She was billed as 'a pupil of Jullien'

Jullien took his orchestra on the road in the new year, with Bottesini and Sivori featured, and Miss Cicely Nott, equipped with habitual Jullien puff -- ‘who created a sensation at Drury Lane’ – as vocalist. The pretty young soprano didn’t always win total approval. Dublin cooed ‘an extremely interesting and graceful young lady, possessing a voice (in so far as it is audible) of the kind known as altissima soprano’. Her persistent Marliani always, it appears, sounded scared, and she did much better in a high, showy piece written to suit her means by Jullien (ps Roch-Albert), ‘Echoes of Lucerne’. In Scotland she tried ‘Annie Laurie’ ‘in a style which made us regret she had attempted Scottish music’. But she stuck with her songs, and the nervousness calmed in a year or two.

She sang in mostly Jullien associated events, in a concert party with his instrumental stars, plus Louisa Bassano and Alexander Reichardt (with whom she duetted Lucia di Lammermoor), and come June 1852 she joined her protector at the Surrey Gardens, to rather better notices: ‘very neat and facile execution of florid passages for which her high attenuated and flexible voice is peculiarly adapted ... most likely to fill the vacancy occasioned by the retirement of Persiani’. Well, she wouldn’t.

 

She continued back to Drury Lane with Jullien, where she sang ‘Qui la voce’ to Anna Zerr’s Queen of the night (a vertiginous combination!), and ventured to other London concerts – Miss Dolby’s, Meyer Lutz’s, the Polish Ball, Miss Ransford’s (‘Deh vieni’), George Case, Kathleen Fitzwilliam and, in March 1853, a concert given by sister Rosina at the Horns, Kennington.

Come the season, she returned to the Surrey Gardens, and on 27 August 1853 she had her crack at opera. She was added to the programme – which featured Caradori, Formes and (ahha!) Reichardt -- to give one act of La Sonnambula, following their performance of Lucrezia Borgia (27 August 1853). I can’t find a review, but in the one week remaining of the season I think she gave it once more. That was Cicely’s operatic career, and it seems pretty clear it was not a success. But as a concert vocalist she was doing all right. She toured an entertainment with harpist Frederick Chatterton, sang at the revived Wednesday Evening concerts (Haas’s Tyrolienne, ‘Peace Inviting’ with Herr Zeiss’s trumpet), Miss Dolby’s soirees, at the Glasgow concerts and at St Martin’s Hall, she returned in 1854 to the Surrey Gardens and made a stage appearance with amateurs at St James’s Theatre singing a witch in Macbeth.

The following year, she played with the military amateurs at Plymouth (Loan of a Lover, A Roland for an Oliver) in March, then broached the professional stage in the extravaganza Prince Prettypet and the Butterfly in Dublin. She was the Prince, and the supporting cast included Marie and Effie Wilton and Fanny and Julia Cruise. During her stint at Dublin, she also played Ophelia to the Hamlet of Phelps.

When she played Belfast, the press decided that she ‘would never win laurels by her style of acting’ but gaped over her interpolation of Rode’s Air and Variations. At Edinburgh, though the press thought that ‘a little more energy is desirable’ in Loan of a Lover and Le Châlet, cheered her Venzano waltz, and when she played Rosina remarked ‘[she] sings better possibly than any resident provincial vocalist that we know’.

She continued to sing in concert, but more and more, through the 1850s (still billed as ‘late of Jullien’s concerts, Drury Lane’) she played in extravaganza – The Prince of Happy Land, Conrad and Medora, The Child of the Regiment, The Bonnie Fishwife, Little Red Riding Hood...

 

In 1857 (28 March) Sarah married Pio Giovanni Michele Bellini, 'vocalist and singing master', allegedly a relation of the composer, in Edinburgh, but after less than two years of marriage he died (22 Marlborough Place, Brighton 5 October 1858) aged just 33. So, Cicely, having finished her contract at Brighton in February of 1859, then set out for Europe. For the next year she gave her ‘Echoes of Lucerne’ and her Venzano Waltz, in elevated social circles, around central Europe, before returning to England and to Brighton to appear as principal boy in pantomime (Ramiro in Cinderella).

 

For the next quarter of a century, Cicely Nott featured on the stages of Britain. Frequently in extravaganza and pantomime, later as a character lady in comic opera, sometimes in her own entertainment, or in the music halls. She played Miserima, the spirit of Memory in Manfred and Wilhelmina in The Waterman at Drury Lane (1863), Ariel in The Tempest at Birmingham, The Rose of the Auvergne in the music halls – and got had up for it – she played Shakespeare and classic comedy with Creswick at the Princess’s, and Lucy in The Beggar’s Opera with the Bandmanns at the Adelphi. She mixed Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Around the World in 80 Days and The Colleen Bawn with Olivia, Plot and Passion and Amy Robsart; she played with the Vokes family at the Imperial and Dion Boucicault at the Standard, and toured as Peronella in Boccaccio with Emily Soldene. My last sighting of her is in the 1890s …

 

Cicely Nott had not quite developed in the way that the strange Mons Jullien had intended, but she had had a long and much appreciated career. And, of course, she left behind a dynasty.

 

After Bellini’s death, Cicely married (22 March 1862) Sam Adams of the music-halls. The marriage fell apart, but not before Mrs Adams had produced a clutch of future fine theatricals.

 

Ada Cecilia Blanche (b Musley House, Brixton, London 16 July 1863, d St Mary’s Guest House, Burlington Lane, Chiswick 1 January 1953), Edith Maude (b 14 Alwyne Rd., Canonbury, Islington, 19 April 1865, d 3 Hyde Park Rd., Harrogate 17 January 1929), Albert George Down (b 35 Colebrooke Row, Islington, 11 December 1866, d Liverpool, 17 April 1904), Rosaline May (b 35 Colebrook Row 25 July 1868; d Marylebone, August 1914) and Adelaide (b 6 Manley Place, Kennington Park, 21 July 1870; d Ryde, 30 November 1945). Otherwise Miss Ada Blanche, Miss Edith Blanche, Mr Bert Adams, Miss Rosie Nott and Miss Addie Blanche.

Ada Blanche

The family tree goes on to include, as mentioned, Miss Courtneidge, and ‘Marie Blanche’ (Marie Adelaide Peacock), her husband Edmund Lewis Waller and her paramour George Robey.

 

‘Cicely’ died in 1900 at the age of 67.

 

Rosina, by the way, of Newington Place, married ‘C B Osborne’, or Charles Benjamin George Bolton (witness: Sarah Ann Harris), at which stage papa was declared a 'gent' and not 'deceased', and lived until 1910. Her four daughters don’t seem to have gone in for music or theatre.