Nice playbill on ebay today. So here's my article to go with it.
SMITH, Catherine (b Titchbourne Street, St James's 12 February 1814; d London 27 December 1879)
SMITH, [Martha] Julia (b Oxford Street, London 4 January 1816; d Brighton 24 January 1881)
SMITH, Maria [Elizabeth] (b Marylebone, London 18 March 1820; d Margate 23 July 1853)
SMITH, Frederick (b St James’s, London 4 March 1811; d 62 Fernhead Rd, London 30 August 1887)
Usually, when folk are related – even merely by an aunt’s convenient marriage – to the aristocracy, it makes the hunt for their facts and figures all the easier. But not always. But, then, it doesn’t help matters at all when the person you that are looking for is named John Smith.
The Misses Smith were, as the press repeated at almost every mention of their names, ‘nieces of Miss Stephens’ or, soon after their careers began, ‘nieces of the Countess of Exeter’ and, pretty soon, following her octogenarian husband’s quick demise, ‘of the Dowager Countess of Exeter’. In fact, the lady concerned was much more celebrated during the twenty-five years she spent on the stage, as Miss Stephens, than in the forty she spent in retirement as Countess of Exeter: for Kitty Stephens (b 18 September 1794; d Belgrave Square, London, 22 Feb 1882) was quite simply the most popular of all British theatrical vocalists of the era just before Queen Victoria came to the throne.
The three Misses Smith and their two brothers were the children of Kitty Stephens’s (considerably) eldest sister, by name Mary Elizabeth. The elder Miss Stephens was a singer too, and she made her debut on the London stage at Drury Lane, 9 November 1798 (not, pace Wikipedia, 1799) in the role of Polly in The Beggar’s Opera. She played for six seasons in London, on stage (No Song no Supper, The Egyptian Festival, Love in a Village et al), in the oratorios and in concerts, then headed for Liverpool. But she renounced the stage some years after her marriage (Liverpool 6 June 1806) to Mr John Smith, vocalist, variously ‘of Drury Lane’ and ‘of the Theatre Royal, Liverpool’. Quite what happened next, I cannot discover. I have picked up only one of those infuriatingly ‘modest’ comments of which Victorian journalists were so fond: ‘For reasons I need not refer to, they left London for Edinburgh and Glasgow for many years…’
When? What reasons?
Well, Smith is said, in 1806, to be ‘of the Liverpool Theatre’ and to have debuted at Drury Lane as Lorenzo in The Cabinet on 20 January 1808, following up as Belville in Rosina on 14 March. ‘He possesses a counter tenor of some power and sweetness’, quoth one reviewer. But ‘Mr J Smith’ can be seen singing (The Cabinet, The Haunted Tower, Lionel and Clarissa, In and Out of Tune, Caractacus, The Duenna, Man and Wife) at Drury Lane through 1808, and reference is made, subsequently, to his ‘deep bass voice’! I deeply suspect that there was more than one Mr Smith. I spot him duetting ‘All’s Well’ with Braham (30 May 1809) at that gentleman’s Benefit. He and Elizabeth also played, that year, at Liverpool. He’s with the Lane company in 1809, creating the role of Usberg the Tartar in The Circassian Bride, and in 1810 at the Lyceum (Baron Romanza in Oh! This Love).
He has a Benefit at the Lane 5 July 1814, plays in Shakespeare in 1815, his usual Don Ferdinand in The Duenna in 1816, and in 1818 he is at Covent Garden (Antonio in The Duenna) and Drury Lane (Murdoch in Rob Roy, The Bride of Abydos, Love in a Village and, as usual, the pantomime), but he is primarily, according to his children’s christening records, a ‘musician’ and ‘vocalist’ whose name is appended, as a performer, to the song ‘Ben Bowser’ by Munro, and who, like Kitty Stephens and doubtless Elizabeth, is listed among ‘the pupils of Gesualdo Lanza’. I see him singing with Master Smith and Mr G Smith at the Covent Garden Theatrical Fund Dinner in 1822, and in 1824 giving ‘The Soldier’s Oath of Allegiance’ at the Dibdin Festival at the Freemasons’ Tavern.
As for his children: according to their census entries, eldest daughter Catherine was supposed to have been born in Norwich. Julia, Maria and singing brother Frederic[k] in London. But it has been a sticky job finding out when. The Smiths lied so consistently (and inconsistently) about their ages that even their death certificates are unreliable, and those few works of reference which get round to mentioning them, even manage to get the dates of demise of two of the sisters wrong!
The records of the British nation, however, tell us Mary Elizabeth (b 2 October 1783) died in Liverpool 26 April 1828, and it seems that she had by that time mothered five children: the first was ‘eldest son’, William Henry, born in Westminster 18 November 1809, and the second Frederic[k]. One of these became a child star, as ‘Master Smith’, and can be seen at the Ancient Britons in 1821, singing the National Anthem solos and ‘The Cambrian Minstrel Boy’ and judged ‘great attraction of the evening’. He sang at the Ancient Concert, Bishop’s oratorios (‘Smith the little warbler’), and the 1821 Worcester Festival, billed as ‘nine years old’, which would, if true, make it Frederic. Which it probably was, as William died at the age of 19 (27 April 1827), while a pupil of the Royal Academy of Music, where he was known as a ‘cellist.
In fact, he was not the first of the Smiths to join the Academy. Frederic was also a pupil, but both were headed off by their first sister, Catherine. Catherine was a featured part of the Academy’s initial intake in 1823. Aged nine years old. She owed her place – for influence was all, at this time, rather than talent -- to Mr Fuller of Roshill, late MP for Sussex, and of course to the magic words ‘niece of’.
Catherine may very well have been born in Norwich – father seems to have worked at the Ranelagh Gardens and the Stowmarket in the mid to late 1810s – but she was christened, like her brother, in Titchbourne Street, Westminster and her birth registered as 12 February 1814. A fact which she spent her life trying to make people forget. Julia followed, at a date unspecified, and Maria in 1820, dates which were inclined to suffer, in days to come, from ‘amendments’ of up to a decade.
I wondered if they had broken the record for age-shaving when I found a couple of surprising entries from the Edinburgh newspapers …’
‘the celebrated musical phenomena the three Misses Smith’ ‘surpasses anything of a juvenile kind ever before witnessed in this place’ ‘they recently performed chez the Marquis of Buckingham’. And ‘the Misses Smith, whose combined musical talents for harmony, ingenuity and novelty we are informed far surpasses anything of the juvenile kind ever before witnessed in this city’ can be seen in concert at Mr Dale’s Room New Town.
It’s not the text that’s surprising, it’s the dates. The first piece dates from November 1815, the second took place 20 September 1816. If this is our Misses Smith (and it can’t be) they had lied even more than I thought was possible. Mr Smith ‘from the Opera House and the King’s Concerts, London’ performs on the new-invented seven-stringed violin’ and his ‘grand harmonica of 200 musical glasses’, The three Misses and their brother perform on a violin. All four at once! I think not. Other Smiths.
But, under the tutelage of their mother, our three girls and one boy certainly started young enough.
Here is ‘the celebrated Master Smith’ as early as 11 October 1820, singing at the Concert Room, Bury, ‘[he] has lately made his appearance at the Nobilities and other concerts in London and [his] astonishing vocal powers have been the admiration of every person who has heard him’, giving, with his father, a programme called The Harmonic Society. The following December 14, he is at the Assembly Rooms, Bristol, top-billed alongside Mrs Salmon, with Knyvett, Begrez and Vaughan, singing ‘Cease your funning’ and ‘I’ve been an orphan boy’ (‘vast extent of voice, sweetness and correct taste … thunders of applause’) and then at Bath and at Oxford (12 February 1821). At the Covent Garden oratorios he sang ‘The Hymn of Eve’ and ‘Sons of Freedom’ (23 March), and then proceeded on to Worcester, the Liverpool concerts, the Exeter concerts with Miss Stephens, the English Opera House for Incledon’s Benefit, the New Argyll Rooms for Rovedino, the Norwich Festival of 1822, and a multitude of city and provincial Concerts. Usually with father in tow.
And on 7 April 1823, at the Ancient Britons, we have Mr J Smith, Miss C Smith RAM and Mr Smith. On 20 June, Master Smith 1825 (‘nephew of Miss Stephens’) took a Benefit concert at the Argyll Rooms, at which was billed Miss Smith ‘aged eleven, sister of ..’ and, of course, aunty Kitty. He sang ‘Bid me discourse’, ‘Tell me gentle stranger’ and ‘Crudel perche’ with sister Kitty jr …
Master Smith seems, by the force of nature, to have stopped being a star soprano soon after this, and, by 1826, he is at the RAM, studying violin under Mori, alongside his brother.
Since I presume that the Miss Smith ‘about fifteen years old’ who made a debut as Cherubino at Drury Lane, in November 1831, opposite Templeton (‘pupil of Barnett, first stage appearance’) and as Little Pickle is yet another Smith, it seems that the two eldest girls, ‘daughters of Mr John Smith’, began performing, generally, in public after their brother had ceased. I see them, billed already as ‘nieces of the celebrated Miss Stephens’ singing at Frogmore Lodge for the Princess Augusta and making ‘their first appearance in public’(!) at Mrs Dulcken’s concert at the King’s Theatre 20 May 1833.
In May 1834, I spot them at the Royal Institution, joining Henry Phillips in illustrating lectures on vocal music, and I have here a playbill, from the Ipswich Theatre, dated 7 July 1834, in which Mr J Smith, late of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and his daughters (‘two young ladies of great musical talent and nieces of …’), are playing Love in a Village and No Song, No Supper. Later in the week they played Mistresses Ford and Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in Rosina, Guy Mannering, and The Turnpike Gate. On 19 September they are in concert with their father at Worcester, and on 10 November at the Theatre Royal, Sheffield with Miss Stephens, as Lucy and Julia in Guy Mannering.
In January 1835, father (now billed as ‘of the Theatre Royal, English Opera House’) and daughters are at the Theatre Royal, Manchester, alongside ‘the American Indians’, playing The Quaker. In March, I pick them up in Macclesfield singing ‘I know a bank’ and the Tancredi duet, and referred to as ‘The Misses Smith whose vocal powers were the great attraction…’ and in August, at Southampton, playing as Susanna and the Countess to father’s Figaro, and Fatima and Irene in Bluebeard, as well as for their father’s Benefit in The Lord of the Manor (4 September). They are at Ryde on 19th of the month, playing The Marriage of Figaro, No! and Bluebeard (‘A greater musical treat was never experienced on the Isle of Wight. The Misses Smith elicited the most rapturous applause and the singing of Mr Smith deservedly drew down the plaudits of the audience’). Stamford, Sheffield, Doncaster follow and, at Christmas, they are at the Liver Theatre, playing Black-Eyed Susan alongside T P Cooke. (‘The greatest attraction of the evening was the exquisite singing of the Misses Smith ... There are not sweeter duet singers in England than these lovely and talented sisters’). In July 1836, the Musical World reported that they ‘have been performing in most of the provincial towns’.
On 29 September 1836, John Braham opened the St James’s Theatre with a company which included several theatrical novices. His leading lady was the 21-year-old Miss Rainforth, and she was supported by Miss Smith and Miss Julia Smith, all three billed as ‘pupil of T Cooke’.
The girls sang duets in the original programme, then performed with John Parry in The Tradesman’s Ball, duetting ‘The Keel Row’ (encored), while Catherine joined Parry in ‘Old bachelors ought to be pitied’. In Charles Dickens’s The Strange Old Gentleman they appeared as Fanny and Mary Wilson.
The three young women followed tradition and made their first [London operatic] stage appearances in Artaxerxes, but it was Miss Rainforth who sang the role of Mandane. Kitty was cast as Artaxerxes, and Julia as ‘principal girl’ Semira. They fitted in ‘I know a bank’ and Meyerbeer’s ‘Ravisa qual alma’ (Il Crociato) and The Morning Post reported ‘Their attraction lies mainly in their voices, though they also have some pretension to dramatic talent. From long practice, they have acquired such a precision as duet singers as renders their performance, in this way, a great treat. Both have very sweet and clear voices, and that of the younger of the two verges on a contralto. They are admirably adapted for that on which they evidently rest their claims to favour…’ later adding, ‘some (of their) passages resemble two well-tuned musical glasses’.
The Examiner, which was in a cute mood and had quaint things to say about all those involved didn’t spare the Misses Smith: ‘there are two stout Miss Smiths at this theatre and one of these Miss Smiths acts Artaxerxes: this lady has a little fat person and a little fat reedy voice, the effects of which approach occasionally to the ludicrous. The two fat Miss Smiths sing little fat duets together very prettily; but as their two pursy little voices do not make up one good voice, they ought never to be separated’.
If their debuts were satisfactory, the run of the piece was less smooth. Kitty Smith fell ill, and Julia had to deputise in the opera’s title-role, while her understudy Miss Stanley took over as Semira. Then Julia, too, was off and poor Miss Stanley ended up playing both roles at once, until the baritone comedian John Parry could come to the rescue.
During the course of the season, the two girls appeared variously in the theatre’s musical productions. And duetted in some that weren’t. After they had been interpolated into The Wager and Love is Blind, the Standard sighed ‘as is their wont, (they) warbled almost too warblingly. They should have lived and sung when trillos were the mode’. The Morning Post dubbed them ‘the fair inseparables’ and found them, in the Lent concerts, ‘decidedly improved’.
They appeared as Sophia and Peggy in The Lord of the Manor, in The Castle of Andalusia. Julia was Julia Mannering to Miss Rainforth’s Lucy Bertram, and Madge in The French Refugee and when the Hullah/Dickens operetta The Village Coquettes was staged, Julia (Rose, ‘Some folks who have grown old and sour’) and Miss Rainforth took the title-roles, when a semi-burlesque version of Oberon was staged under the title The Enchanted Horn, Miss Rainforth was Rezia, Julia played Fatima and Kitty was the Mermaid.
The Musical World reported ‘Miss Julia Smith who played the part of Fatima was encored in the song ‘Araby, dear Araby’. The compliment was as spontaneous as it was deserved, for she sang with much clearness and purity of tone as well as correctness of manner. The last note in this air, which ends in the higher octave of the key was, we think, intended by the composer to be staccatoed, and the effect of so singing it sustains to the last the vivacious character of the song. This note being a good one in Miss Smith’s voice, it was pardonable enough in her, but not judicious, to hang upon it. Her sister sang very pleasantly that beautiful mermaid’s song with its conch-like accompaniment of the horns and violins con sordini..’
Julia appeared in a couple of German pasticcio pieces, ‘as Maria, a subordinate character’ in The Eagle’s Haunt (‘had some pretty music allotted her and gave it con amore’) and The Cornet and the operetta Wanted a Brigand, and when Auber’s The Ambassadress was staged, both girls were in the cast. When Artaxerxes was repeated Julia was allotted the title-role, and Kitty played the hero, Artabanes.
In between times, they also took part, along with Antonio Giubilei, Manvers and Burnett, in a piece called The Trophy, mounted at the Colosseum, which combined more German operatic music, by Marschner, with Spohr waltzes, supported by a comic ballet and ‘the feats of the Egyptian brothers’. Apparently littlest sister was there too, for ‘the three Misses Smith’ were billed. Julia also played in a ‘national opera’ called Punch and Judy, and she and Kitty interpolated their duets in other pieces.
The engagement at the St James’s and with Braham (who took the sisters with him to Bristol to play musical drama in the autumn of ’37) lasted into 1838, and, after its ending, the Misses Smith headed back north where in June they began an engagement at Edinburgh’s Adelphi Theatre playing the musical comedy Rural Felicity. The piece may have been mediocre, but it gave the girls opportunities: ‘The Misses Smith are not unworthy of the title of ‘celebrated vocalists’. They have excellent soprano voices of considerable compass and power. Miss Smith has rather more volume of voice than her sister Miss [Julia], but it is not superior in point of sweetness. The two ladies have been evidently trained in an excellent school. Their voices are flexible and their articulation distinct and clear.’ They got in ‘My pretty page’, ‘The Keel Row’, ‘I know a bank’, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ (Catherine) and ‘Donald’ (Julia), leaving little space for their leading man, a certain young Mr Barker. The programme was completed by their regular The Marriage of Figaro.
From Edinburgh the moved on to Liverpool with their comedy, to Lancaster where they gave a full concert, to Manchester (Sweethearts and Wives, The Lord of the Manor, Charles the Second. No! with Barker and George Horncastle). They revisited the Edinburgh Adelphi, to play eight nights in the musical drama named Open House, or the Two Sisters (‘In the duet of ‘Say, tho’ thou strive’ their talents were displayed to great advantage. The audience were in such an ecstasy of delight that nothing would serve but a double encore…’). On their Benefit night they played an English version of Auber’s Le Domino noir.
In November they visited Belfast (The Twin Sisters, Love in a Village ‘a succession of the most beautiful songs and duets which it has been our fortune to hear on any occasion’), in March of the new year, at Preston (The Marriage of Figaro with Julia as the Countess and Catherine as Susanna, The Two Sisters), followed by a re-engagement at Belfast, a re-engagement at Preston, a visit to the Victoria Theatre in Cork, where ‘Mira o Norma’ seems to have found its way into Love in a Village, and then back in the last months of the year to Edinburgh, ‘for the first time in two years’, to start a new campaign with a concert and Guy Mannering, and to Dundee.
Through 1840, and into 1841, they were engaged at the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, where they were cast, amongst others, in Rural Felicity, the musical farce Lock and Key, The Lass o’ Gowrie, The Lord of the Manor, Love in a Village, Rob Roy (Kitty starred opposite house tenor Robert Shrivall), The Merry Wives of Windsor (including ‘Bid me discourse’ and half a dozen other songs for them), The Loan of a Lover (equally extra-musicked) and Der Freischütz, in which Kitty sang Agathe and mezzo-soubrette Julia was Aennchen. They were also seen regularly in concert, alongside Shrivall and John Wilson, singing ballads, oratorio music, and most especially duets with ‘a sweet simplicity and feeling that were quite enchanting’. I spot them again at the Edinburgh Theatre Royal in 1841, playing Rosanthe and Donna Isadora in Brother and Sister, and Margaretta and Dorothy in No Song, No Supper, alongside Donald King.
From here on, it seems that the Misses Smith devoted themselves, especially, to concerts and to their duet singing. I spot them in Aberdeen and in Newcastle ‘singing duets harmonised by their brother, Mr F[rederick] Smith’, the three of them at Wolverhampton (‘they gave eight duets, five of which were encored’), and by 13 February 1843, when I pick them up at Worcester, they have become officially four, with the addition to the act of youngest sister, Maria. In April, at the Theatre Royal, Bristol, their duets and ballads have become supplemented by ‘Mira, o Norma’ and two Italian terzettos.
They visited the main provincial towns, and by the time they returned, in December 1844, to the St James’s , in concerts, they are being referred to as ‘the celebrated Scottish vocalists the Misses Smith’ -- even though the three of them (‘conductor: Mr F Smith’) have been illustrating lectures by Mr White and Mr Forde on ‘The National Music of Ireland’, and giving ballad concerts for several months in Dublin.
They duly returned to the country, and, when they appeared at Liverpool, they were top of the bill (23 February 1846), above a certain Mr J S[ims] Reeves.
In 1847 (16 December), Kitty married the vocalist Frederic Penny (later ka Penna), and left the act, but Maria moved up to take her place, and the latest version of the Misses Smith continued on its way. In 1849, Maria and Julia can be seen singing the illustrations for Henry Bishop’s musical lectures, in 1850 they (and Frederick) are touring a Scottish show with Mr Milne, in 1851 they can be seen in Scotland, singing with Augustus Braham, and in 1852 at the Liverpool Saturday Evenings with Staudigl.
But in 1853 (and not in 1862, as stated elsewhere), Maria died ‘after a lingering illness’, at the age of just 33. Julia appeared intermittently in public, thereafter, as a soloist, and, ultimately, she and brother Frederic moved to Cheltenham where they settled as music teachers. They can be seen there in both the 1861 and 1871 censi (‘their lessons in Italian and English singing 27 Tivoli Place, Lansdown’), before they moved on to Brighton.
When Julia died in 1881, it was stated that she was 62. She was 65. Kitty had died two years earlier, admitting to 59. She too was 65.
Frederick survived his sisters, and died at the age of 77.
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