LA MASCOTTE: the days when musical-theatre sex was French fun ...

 

 

LA MASCOTTE Opéra-comique in 3 acts by Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru. Music by Edmond Audran. Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, 29 December 1880.

Produced at Louis Cantin's Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens following the enormous success there of Varney's Les Mousquetaires au couvent, Audran's successor to his splendid début with Les Noces d'Olivette was thus given two very difficult acts to follow. It triumphed unequivocally, giving the Bouffes-Parisiens another vast hit and going on to become and to remain one of the most popular French opérettes of all time.

Marie Montbazon as Bettina

The turkey-girl Bettina (Mlle Montbazon) is a `mascot' -- that is to say, she brings good luck to her household -- and when she joins the working staff of the miserable farmer Rocco (Raucourt) his luck changes immediately. Bettina's boyfriend, Rocco's shepherd Pippo (Louis Morlet), isn't allowed too close, however, for a mascot ceases to be a mascot if she ceases to be a virgin. Alas, when her virtues are discovered by the interminably unlucky King Laurent (Paul Hittemans), poor Bettina is dragged off to court, much to the displeasure of the Princess Fiametta (Mlle Dinelli) who, obviously unaware of the rules of being a mascot, assumes the girl is her father's mistress. A whole barrage of complexities leads up to preparations for a double royal wedding, from which Pippo and Bettina escape just as Fiametta's rejected suitor, Fritellini (Charles Lamy), attacks the now-instantly-unlucky Laurent with his army. But luck has changed sides only for as long as it takes for Pippo and Bettina, finally, to get wedded and bedded. When all efforts to stop this disaster fail, both camps have to sit down and wait for nine months and hope the young mother will produce twins. One apiece. For it appears that mascotry is hereditary.

King Laurent peeps over the wall to make sure there is no sex happening

Louis Morlet (Pippo)

Chivot and Duru's joyously lubricious libretto -- in which, of course, only the juves actually had sex -- built up to wilder and wilder comic scenes which, in the last act, bordered on the burlesques of earlier days, and the comedy was illustrated by a delicious Audran score. The hit number of the show was an ingenuous love duo for the shepherd and the turkey-girl with a `glou-glou' (her as the turkey) and `bé-bé' (he as a sheep) refrain, whilst Fritellini's melodic analysis of his own qualities (`Le je ne sais quoi poétique') and his bamboozling of the naïve Pippo (`Ah, mon cher, que vous êtes naïf') and Fiametta's appreciation of Pippo's muscles (`Ah! qu'il est beau!') boasted the piece's loveliest melodies. The comic side was topped by Laurent's declaration of his main advantage as a husband for Bettina -- his impotence (`J'en suis tout à fait incapable').

 La Mascotte was an overwhelming success at the Bouffes-Parisiens, playing for the entire season, and then for most of the next one as well. Cantin removed it in order to stage Louis Varney's Coquelicot, but when that piece failed to take he promptly brought back La Mascotte which proved far from having exhausted its public. It was nearly two years from its opening night when the show was finally taken off and replaced with the next Audran work, Gillette de Narbonne. Gillette de Narbonne was another fine success, but La Mascotte was naturally brought back in 1883 (11 April) with Piccaluga, Mme Gugot-Morlet (replacing a too-pregnant original star) and Édouard Maugé for another 92 performances, and it resurfaced again in 1889 with Théo, this time, in the title-rôle. Paris revivals were regular thereafter, including runs at the Menus-Plaisirs (1890, where on 14 July the show celebrated its 1500th Parisian performance), the Gaîté (1897, 1901 w Germaine Gallois, 1915 w Angèle Gril), the Apollo (1913, 1914), the Mogador (1921, 1944) and the Porte-Saint-Martin (1933 w Edmée Favart, 1935, 1968) as La Mascotte confirmed itself as one of the surest pillars of the opérette repertoire. 

Germaine Gallois as Bettina

The piece also travelled with considerable success. Although Vienna hosted an uncredited (and apparently insufficient) adaptation of Der Glücksengel, with Josefine Gallmeyer given top billing in the rôle of Fiametta alongside Girardi (Pippo), Karoline Finaly (Bettina) and Carl Adolf Friese (Lorenzo) for only 23 performances, and Germany extended it only a slightly warmer reception, in Hungary, where Lujza Blaha took on the rôle of the turkey-girl with Pál Vidor as her Pippo, János Kápolnai (Fritellini) and Vidor Kassai as Laurent, Az üdvöske (ad Jen*o* Rákosi) was an undoubted winner and it followed its original production with many returns. Britain reacted similarly when, after an out-of-town try-out at Brighton (a most unusual thing at the time) Alexander Henderson brought La Mascotte (ad Robert Reece, H B Farnie) to the Comedy Theatre with Violet Cameron and the 22 year-old Savoyard baritone Francis Gaillard starred, Lionel Brough heading the comedy, and Lizzie St Quinten and Henry Bracy in the chief singing rôles. 

After a first run of 199 performances it came back after just a month for a further season with Clara Merivale and Gaillard starred, whilst Kate Santley took her production, and her Bettina, to the provinces. In 1884 Florence St John paired with Gaillard in a re-run, in 1885 Violet Cameron repeated her original rôle, in 1888 the French prima donna Mary Albert gave a season in French and, finally, in 1893, the Gaiety Theatre staged a La Mascotte season with Miss St John (9 September), the sixth sighting of the show in London in a dozen years. 

Francis Gaillard

Australia, in the meantime, had responded with equal delight to a J C Williamson production which featured his wife, Maggie Moore, as a truly lusty Bettina, alongside George Verdi (Pippo), W H Woodfield (Fritellini), Nellie Stewart (Fiametta), H M Harwood (Laurent) and Edwin Kelly (Rocco) in the first of what would be a long series of La Mascotte seasons.

The competition to get the first La Mascotte on to the American stage was all the hotter because of the vast success of the American version of Les Noces d'Olivette, but in the end it was the management of the ever to-the-fore Boston Museum who won the race. They mounted Theodore T Barker, Emile Schwab and J W Norcross’s version ('original dialogue and scenes by') of the show in April 1881 with Helen Carter, Seth Crane and Harry Brown in the principal rôles, and toured it under the banner of the 3ed-rate Grayson Comic Opera Co. 

It was nearly a month after this before Broadway got its first glimpse of the new show at the Bijou Theater, the house which had so successfully staged the earlier piece. They brought in the touring Wilbur Opera Company’s production, with Emma Howson (the original London Josephine of HMS Pinafore) and John Brand heading the cast, four days before the Boston company appeared at the Park Theater with their version. It was the Bijou which came out the better, for La Mascotte, an oversized hit in no time, ran there for an uninterrupted three months (108 performances), the Gobble Duet became, as it had in Britain, one of the hits of the season, and the floodgates were opened for productions of the show around the country.

Over the next 12 months Selina Dolaro appeared as Bettina in a quick revival at the Bijou (60 performances, see above), Geraldine Ulmar and H C Barnabee (Laurent) headed the Bostonians' production at Booth's, Paola Marié introduced the original French version, which was also played in repertoire by Louise Théo; Jenny Stubel and Alexander Klein gave Der Glücksengel at the Thalia-Theater in German, whilst the young Fay Templeton appeared in the title-rôle of a (grossly) remade-to-order production at the Windsor Theater. The flood slowed thereafter, but it did not stop for many years: Judic played Bettina during her 1885 tour, the Bijou revived the piece in 1887, a 1892 production at Palmer's Theater presented William Pruette as Pippo, Henry Dixey as Laurent and Camille D'Arville in the title-rôle, and Raymond Hitchcock and his wife Flora Zabelle starred, for a month, in a 1909 Klaw and Erlanger production at the New Amsterdam Theater. The last sight of La Mascotte on Broadway was in 1926 (1 December) when Jenny Syril and Servatius featured in a revival at the Jolson Theater, by which time the show had proven itself one of the most standard standards of the American-French repertoire. Largely because Audran's name has not remained a fashionable one, it has not, however, followed Offenbach and Strauss's works into the modern opera houses. Which is a pity.

A French film version was made in 1935 by Léon Mathot, with Germaine Roger as Bettina alongside Dranem, Lucien Baroux and Lestelly, which can be seen on DVD to this day, but La Mascotte had undoubtedly its most curious film exposure in 1913 when it was presented as a three-reeler film starring Minnie Jarbeau `in three six-minute acts' with accompanying sound `by means of Edison's wonderful kinetophone'. The experiment was apparently successful enough for the manufacturers to subsequently serve up the customers a version of Les Noces d'Olivette recorded in the same style.

Austria: Theater an der Wien Der Glücksengel 12 February 1881; Hungary: Népszinház Az üdvöske 10 April 1881; USA: Boston Museum 12 April 1881, Bijou Theater, New York 5 May 1881; UK: Comedy Theatre 15 October 1881; Germany: Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater Der Glücksengel 25 October 1881; Australia: Theatre Royal, Sydney 25 October 1882; Film Léon Mathot 1935

Recordings: complete (Clio, Decca), selection (EMI-Pathé) etc

The flowers that bloom in the spring tra-la!

 

Well, flowers and other things ...

Spring is a touch tardy this year. And we're sorta shorta rain ..

But ... here we are, Cup Week coming up and things are budding and even blooming ..

Yellow has been my favourite colour for decades. Witness, my racing silks ..

When my beloved Ian died, oh so many years ago, I buried his ashes under the old cherryblossom tree in the garden in front of my living-room window, and Wendy and I planted golden lilies and irises on the spot. Each year, they come into bloom in Yesvember ... I hadn't really noticed, but of course, each year they have spread a little wider .. and this year they have outdone Wordsworth's daffodils ..

Yes, the cherry tree has gone ...

And yes, that's Mr P[eacock] photobombing ...

Cheeky blighter, he's suddenly burst into activity with the arrival of All Hallows' Eve!  Woglinde got quite a shock ... but she's hanging around waiting for a repeat performance ..

He's thinking about it ....

and doubtless thinking also of past years, when he could battle off the concurrence and service thirty hens a day

This little patio rose has upheld it's reputation for precocity. While other bushes are merely budding, the honeychild is first off the mark as ever ..

He'll have hundreds of blooms over the summer (when it arrives) ... 

The first strawberries are forming ...

The first flowers on the tomatoes

The wisteria is hanging on in there ..

The hawthorn is in flower ...

And the self-planted .. I have a weakness for these children of nature ... and the revenants from previous years are popping up, in places expected and unexpected...

I didn't really need to buy any new ones, but ...

I guess it's time to go out and water all these chaps. All right, I'm coming ....

Music in Boston: 1863

 

I found this bit of Boston musical ephemera yesterday. I don't usually bother with Boston, because that once important musical and theatrical centre seems -- in direct contrast to California -- to be shy about sharing its newspaper archives with those of us who live on the other side of the world. But, sometimes ..

So, what's special about this? Carl Zerrahn (b Malchow, Mecklenburg 28 July 1826; d Boston 29 December 1909) was a leading figure in Massachusetts music for half a century.

Whatever there is to say (and there is a great deal) about him has already been said.

[Maria] Teresa Carreño García de Sena (b Caracas, Venezuela 22 December 1853; d New York 12 June 1917) and her long and shining career (and colourful private life) have also been well documented. The interesting thing, however, is that our document is from the very earliest weeks of her career ..

She was but nine years old, and had made her official public debut only in the preceding November.

Which leaves Mrs Celia Houston Ford. Who? Unlike her two companions, Mrs Ford has left little mark on the history of music in Boston. And, yes, this was her 'debut' performance.

Lucelia A HOUSTON was born in Boston in 1841, one of the children of carpenter William Peterson Houston and his wife, Lucinda née Roberts. She was taught singing by local musician Augusto Bendelari (ex-of Naples) (1825-1903), and married 14 May 1862 Erastus H Ford, a young builder. Erastus would have been around to witness his wife's first public performance, but he died in South Boston, aged 30, 31 December 1864.

I can't find any notices of this concert. And, of course, Celia was wholly incidental to the 'one night only' performance of the cure little pianist ...  and the only other bill on which I spot her is for John K Paine's organ concert at Central Church, Portland 22 April 1863. She 'received great applause for her perfoermances which were rendered in a charming manner ... a sweet voice, of great compass .. accompanied by Kotzschmar ..'. Mr Paine, I see, was 'musical instructor at Harvard University'.

After the death of her husband, Celia set out for Europe 'to study with Garcia'. She may have, but she died 'of consumption' in Milan 27 October 1866.

Well, now we know. And it is a nice piece of musical ephemera ...

Fanny Jervis aka Mme Rubini Scalisi ... a forgotten musician

 

 

‘Former Great Tenor Dead’ trumpeted the New York Times on 8 May 1905. The New York Herald, not to be outdone, trumpeted too. And papers round the world, as papers did and do, picked up the story …

And almost every word of it was the most egregious poppycock. 

Edoardo Rubini Swynfen Jervis, they claimed, had been first tenor at St Petersburg and Paris, he had taught music to the English princesses, and to a long line of star vocalists from Lucca, Marimon, Volpini, Cotgoni and Campanini to Joseph Maas and ... who? Scalisi? He had taught at the London Academy of Music … and he had come, at last, to New York where he died, destitute, at number 115 West 106th Street.

Was any of it true? Well, just a little. He did teach, briefly, at the London Academy of Music. It was probably the best teaching job he ever had. And Scalisi? Madame Scalisi was his sister, who achieved much, much more in music than he ever did and it is for her, certainly not him, that the Jervis family got this little piece in my Victorian Vocalists collection.

 

RUBINI, Fanny [Jervis] [JERVIS, Fanny] (b Lucca, Italy c1847; d 8 Church Street, Shoreham by Sea 13 December 1915)

 

However, ‘Edoardo’ is responsible for much of the mythology surrounding the family, so a quick glance at his pretensions won’t hurt. ‘Rubini’? ‘Swynfen’? The suggestion here is that there is some connection, on the one hand, with the famous tenor G-B Rubini, and on the other with the aristocratic family of Lord St Vincent, rightly named Jervis, and with whom ‘Swynfen’ was a much-used additional name. True or false? My automatic reaction was to say ‘false’, but there just may be a smidginette of truth in there. So I went a-searching.

 

The father of this family was a portrait painter from Sheerness, by name John Jervis. The 1861 census says ‘Jarvis’ which, if true, would ruin the whole story, but other documents all say Jervis, so I allow him the benefit of that doubt. Mr Jervis obviously practised his painting outside England, for at some stage, probably in the late 1830s, he married an ‘Italian’ singer, and their children, born in the 1840s and 1850s, were all born in Italy. I say ‘Italian’, for Mrs Adele Eugénie Jervis was actually German, born in the city of Laibach (ie Ljubljana) around 1813, although she apparently worked under the name of ‘Signorina Rubini’. If she had no right to it (and it was, later, insisted that she was ‘of Italian parentage’) it was, given the propinquity of the great tenor Rubini and his French wife née Adelaide Chaumet (Mme Rubini-Comelli), a rather tacky thing to do. It has been related that a certain singing Mlle [surely not Sophie!] Méquillet of the 1830s took her master’s name in ‘homage’: If this is true, I suppose it could have been she. But it sounds rather fishy.

 

Since the four children of this marriage were all born in Italy: Edward allegedly in Rome in March 1841, William about 1843, Fanny at Lucca in 1846 or 7, and Adele in Florence in 1857, I cannot know precisely how and when they were christened, but the 1861 census entry for 12 Elm Terrace, Kensington, shows the three younger children listed with just one simple Christian name apiece. Jervis. No Rubini, no Swynfen.

 

My first sighting of the Jervis children as performers is in 1855. A little squib in the English press mentions that ‘a Master Jervis and his sister Mdlle Fanny have been giving concerts in Florence with great success’. Yes, there they are, 5 May 1855, at the Sala d’Arte ‘il giovanetto Odoardo Jervis e la di lui sorellina Fanny’. They are playing, not singing: the vocals are supplied by the Irish soprano Elena Corani (née Conran).

 

The Jervis family must have returned to Britain soon after Adele’s birth, for, on 11 July 1859, The Times announced: ‘The little pianiste, Fanny Rubini, pupil of her mother, Signora Rubini, has the honour to announce that she will give a grand morning concert this day (by kind permission) at the residence of Mrs Elliott Macnaughton, 46 Eaton Square. To commence at 3 o’clock. Artists: Mme Rieder Schlumberger, Signora Alba, Signori Marras, Crivelli, Corsi, Ciabatta, Giulio Regondi and Mr Blagrove. Director: Signor Campana.’ The next week ‘the young Italian pianist’ appeared at Giacinto Marras’s concert.

‘Fanny Jervis Rubini’ followed up this debut with another concert the following year (27 June 1860) in which brother, Edoardo Jervis Rubini, also played and conducted, and at which Catherine Hayes sang, and again in 1862 (21 June) and 1863 (2 July). By 1865, I notice, cartes de visite of ‘Miss Rubini’ were being published for sale, and, by 1866, she was well enough considered to be engaged, as replacement for Marie Krebs, from 1 October, as pianist at Alfred Mellon’s series of Covent Garden proms ('She played Thalberg's fantasia on L'Elisir d'amore and was rapturously encored', 'A young pianist of most refined taste and with the specialty of a delightfully liquid touch' 'fait fanatisme .. un talent sérieux' ) . In January 1867, I spot her playing both at the Popular Concerts at Her Majesty’s Theatre ('a pianist of no ordinary stamp') and as guest with the London Glee and Madrigal Union. Although she had sung in private homes since 1867, it is only in 1869, that I spy Fanny out for the first time as a vocalist, when, in a Dublin concert, having given her keyboard items, she also delivered the Faust Jewel Song.

Things seem to have moved briskly from there, but the family moved out of England, and on to the Continent, and my sightings of Mlle Rubini become episodic. In 1870 I spot her singing in concert in Paris. She is, the Paris press say, on her way to an engagement at the Pergola Theatre in Florence. ‘Vingt ans, expressive et charmante personne, jolie voix, du style, un vrai talent de musicienne, voilà certes de quoi se frayer une première place sur nos scènes lyriques’. Later, the report is that she is ‘studying in Florence’. And that ‘Miss Fanny Jervis who had previously made a favourable impression by her singing in the fashionable reunions of Florence, appeared at the Pergola Theatre some nights since in La Sonnambula and made a very successful début’ (‘haben wir für Fräulein Fanny Jervis Rubini die besten Hoffnung’ ‘Frln Fanny Jervis trat im Pergola-Theater mehrere Mal in der Sonnambula mit grossen Beifall auf’.) She is, in any case, doing well enough that ‘Edoardo’ and ‘Guglielmo’ Rubini, music teachers in London, see it worthwhile to advertise themselves, a bit superfluously, as her brothers. She also took part, at the Pergola, in a comic melodrama with music (22 March 1871) Il Califfo by Ettore Dechamps playing the slave, Amina, to the Haroun al Raschid of Pietro Silenzi.

In August 1871, she was back in England, singing at Rivière’s proms and in Manchester, for de Jong (‘a recall after each song’), before whisking back to Aix-la-Chapelle (‘Prima donna of the Covent Garden concerts’), Bordeaux, Lille, Baden (‘avalanche de bouquets’) under the management of Ullman, amid rumours of great things to come. And come they did. Mlle Fanny Rubini -- in demand for the Parisian concerts (Cherubini 'Ave Maria', 'O luce di', duets with Trebelli, Tagliafico)-- was engaged as a principal soprano at Paris’s Théâtre des Italiens. 

 

She made her debut there singing Gilda in Rigoletto alongside delle Sedie, and was wholly successful: ‘[Elle] n'a qu'à se louer de l'accueil du public. Ses deux duos, l'un avec le ténor, l'autre avec le baryton, lui ont acquis les sympathies de l'auditoire. Sa voix de soprano est d'un beau timbre, surtout dans les cordes hautes, et sa méthode est excellente. Mais il ne faut pas qu'elle se lasse de travailler, ne fût-ce que pour donner plus de souplesse à son organe et pour mieux soigner ses attaques, qui parfois n'ont pas été très-exactes. Somme toute, elle peut être satisfaite de l'épreuve, et le succès doit l'encourager. On peut même dire que c'est à elle plus particulièrement que s'adressaient les applaudissements qui ont éclaté après le quatuor.’

 

It was rumoured that she would follow up in La Sonnambula (‘in which she played at the Pergola in Florence’) but she seems, later during her engagement, to have appeared only with Marietta Alboni, Gardoni and Penco, in the part of Elisetta in a few performances of Il matrimonio segreto where her singing pleased more than her acting  (‘Mlle Rubini a lancé une pluie de perles de la plus belle eau et du plus beau son’, ‘Mlle Rubini fait ce qu’elle peut, mais son jeu laisse encore beaucoup à désirer’).

 

From Paris she headed back to London, where she and one of her brothers mounted a concert at the Hanover Square Rooms ('L'Estasi'), then to Baden for the concert season, singing alongside Csillag, delle Sedie and Campanini ('O luce di'), and to Italy or was it Warsaw where, it was said, she had been signed to appear in Mignon. ‘She is engaged for the season as prima donna assoluta at the Apollo Theatre, Rome’ reported the Paris music press. 

 

Thereafter, she turns up Valletta in Malta (Dinorah), at the Fondo (Dinorah) and Mercadante (Rosa in La Campana dell'eremittegio, Principessa di Tesca in Golisciani's Wallerstein) in Naples, and for the summer of 1875, alongside Tamagno and Justine Macvitz, at the Liceu, Barcelona – now equipped with a new name. She has become Madame Rubini-Scalisi, the wife of conductor Carlo Scalisi. 

 

In 1876 she visited South America, and in 1876-7, she can be seen sharing the billing with Erminia Borghi-Mamo and Elena Sanz at the Teatro Real, Madrid, performing La Sonnambula, Rigoletto, Linda di Chamonix, L'Étoile du Nord, Fra Diavolo and Dinorah, with Gayarre as her tenor and Mariano Padilla as baritone. With the last named, she scored ‘un trionfo’ as Linda: ‘la artista de las afligranadas fiorature, a que se presta se voz de siempre grate timbre, y con cuyos magnificos recursos tanto ha brilliado en Rigoletto, Sonnambula y Dinorah. In 1878 (27 November) she took the soprano role in Auteri Manzocchi’s Il Negriero (27 November 1878) alongside Stagno and Moriami. In June 1880, in Paris, she played in the Marquis Filiasi’s private production of Il Menestrello, and she also took part in several pieces composed by Bottesini, notably his Ero e Leandro and Cedar, programmed in 1880, at Naples, where she and her husband were engaged.

 

The Scalisis remained a considerable time at Naples and its San Carlo Theatre, where Carlo Scalisi, for a number of years in the 1880s, actually took over the management. Fanny, there, sang everything from Amelia in Simone Boccanegra to Elsa in Lohengrin,the title-role in Dinorah, Catherine in L’Etoile du nord, Gilda in Rigoletto, Sita in Le Roi de Lahore and Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana.

 

Elsewhere, in the 1880s, I see Fanny singing Traviata at the Rome Apollo, Aida at Florence and at Nice, at the Carlo Fenice, Genoa in Les pêcheurs des perles, I see mention of her at Brescia, at Seville, Malaga, Granada, Turin and Brindisi, and in 1888, Scalisi having bankrupted at Naples the previous season, she spent several months back in London, once again teaming with Bottesini (‘applauded for the dramatic power she displayed in an aria from Nenia’), with Helen D’Alton and Isidore de Lara, in a series of concerts.

 

After London, however, I find little sign of Madame Scalisi -- although she seems to have tackled Santuzza in Foggia -- until, in 1893, it is announced that she and her husband will take up positions at the head of the singing department at the Naples Conservatoire. If Fanny did this, it was not for long. For, in 1894, I find her – with no sign of him – back in London, and back on the concert stage. The first occasion is a matinee musicale (‘nineteenth season’) given by one Signor Bonetti, and Madame Fanny Scalisi ‘from La Scala, Milan and the San Carlo, Naples’ is top-billed. La Scala? But the surprise comes further down the bill. ‘Madame Adelaide Rubini’. Fanny’s mother would have been over eighty years of age. Surely this cannot be she. Is it perhaps sister Adele taking up the family stage name?  25 July she has her own concert at Collard’s Rooms. The same Madame Adelaide appears again on 2 July 1895, when Fanny mounts her own concert at the Queen’s Hall. The previous week, she had appeared at the Music Trades prize-giving at the Agricultural Hall, as winner of the the piano section! The soprano award was won by … Miss Annie Rosa Swinfen. Oh no!

 

The Queen’s Hall concert is my last sighting of Fanny as a performer. Maybe she went back to Italy where, I think, I have seen her husband conducting in the early days of the new century. Ultimately, however, she did return to Britain, for the British records reveal the death of ‘Frances J Scalisi’, at the age of 68, in the district of Steyning (presumably at Hove) in 1915. She lies in Mill Lane Cemetery, in a sadly neglected grave ...

Mother Adele, who had spent her later life living with daughter Adele (Mrs Inderwick) and her family, in England, died in Brighton in 1903, at the age of 90.

 

As for the music-teacher brothers, Edward – as we know -- ended up in America, and he was never so famous as in death. In the 1870s he began teaching music in Exeter, where in 1883 he married a local girl, Mary Smith (d Surrey, 29 June 1918). From Exeter, Torquay, Tiverton, Taunton and Teignmouth, he moved to Malvern and tried teaching in Birmingham, before throwing it in and emigrating, in about 1890, to Ontario, and finally, in 1897, to America.

 

William made altogether more of a success in life, largely as a composer of light piano music which he published voluminously under the name G[uglielmo] Jervis Rubini. He, too, married and I spot him the 1891 census ‘aged 44’ with wife and baby boy, mother and sister, Adele Inderwick (d 1934) and child, before losing him. Apparently he died in 1895.

Fanny Scalisi did, herself, have at least one child.  In 1927, the Grands Cercles of Paris include amongst their listings one ‘Jervis Arthur Scalisi’. This is presumably the Arthur George Jervis Scalisi, composer of ‘Najah’ (three Hindoo dances for piano) and ‘The Opium Dream’, the George Scalisi seen playing piano at Wigmore Hall, and above all the Arturo Domenico F G Scalisi born in Valetta, Malta, in 1874, and married in London in 1897. 'Captain Arthur George Scalisi-Jervis' of Bedford Chambers ... 'medical officer' ...

 

And here’s the rub. This Arthur Scalisi married, in what seems to have been a double wedding, a Miss Emily Mary Bowden. The other groom was one Luigi d’Antonio and the other bride was Miss Alice Edith Jervis, of Shenstone, Staffordshire, the daughter of the Hon Edward Swynfen Jervis of Little Aston Hall, and the legitimate descendant of that Lord St Vincent to whom, I was so sure, our Jervis family was only pretending to be related.  Do I have now to infer otherwise?

 

Emily Mary Scalisi of the Palazzo Schioppa Riviera de Chiesa, Naples, wife of Arthur Scalisi, died 26 July 1897. Probate to Arthur Scalisi and ... Alice Edith d'Antonio, wife of Luigi d'Antonio ...  effects: a whopping 29,000 pounds! After his momentary marriage, Arthur remarried and he died in Vancouver, Canada 10 February 1942.

 

Well, if there is a connection, the music in the family goes much further back than I had counted upon. To the famously colourful Mary Ann Jervis, pupil of Pasta, composer of the opera Siroe (1831), a selection from which was sung at Oury’s concert on 29 July of that year, the extravagant enchantress of the Duke of Wellington, sometime wife of the ‘mad’ Dyce Sombre, and later Lady Forester.

 

Guglielmo/William (not ‘George’ as the web would have it) published a piece of dance music in 1877. It is entitled ‘L’Étoile du chant’ and its title page bears a colour lithograph of Fanny as Zerlina in Fra Diavolo. Alas, search as I may, I can find no surviving copy. However, the National Portrait Gallery hold this photo of a 'Miss Rubini' which seems as if it might be the young Fanny ...

 

PS I discover that the singing Miss Swinfen (1863-1922), later Mrs Charles Burrell, was the daughter of a city missionary from Brixton … could that name really be a coincidence? 

 

 

Harry Clifton: 150 years on, or a Distorted Story

 

Writing this article wasn't in the top hundred of the jobs on my to-do list. Harry Clifton (comic vocalist and writer) has really come into my orbit, in the past, largely through his last de facto 'wife', the splendid comic opera contralto Fanny Edwards. 

However. Yesterday I came upon one of his songs, and I remembered that I'd been squirreling such items away in a Dropbox folder for years ..  So, I thought I'd pop into Google and see if he'd been already 'done' by some worthwhile source.  'Worthwhile' was the key word. Yes, Wikiplegia has a small piece on him. A few familiar facts and a whole lot of fuzzy stuff. And, what? Not even a birthdate! 

That's easily fixed. Henry Robert CLIFTON was born in Hoddesdon, Broxbourne, Hertfordshire on 20 April 1832. His father, Henry Clifton was a builder and carpenter, his mother was Harriet or Harriot née Hollingsworth. They had been married 29 April 1828 in Southwark.

Henry sr died in 1838, and Harriet and her 9 year-old son can be seen in a lodging house in Hoddesdon High Street in the 1841 census. She is listed as 30 and independent. Really? So she would have been 17 at her marriage? Not impossible, but such a fact is usually recorded on the banns. And Harry was actually 8.

So, what next. Wiki tells us Harry was orphaned. A very peculiar bunch of Family Historians (Harry had no surviving issue), can't agree as to whether Harriet died in 1843(ish) in ?Battersea, or in 1864 in Watford. An entry for Harry in the 1851 census would be helpful (with, or probably without mother), but I can't find one. Wiki squirms out by saying 'little is known of his early adulthood'. I'm still searching, but by 1851, aged 18, he was probably already an entertainer. In 1853 he advertised his 'third annual Benefit'. 

My first sighting of the boy is at Herbert Hudson's Concert Room, pendant to the King's Head public house in Digbeth, Birmingham. 'Vocal and dramatic entertainment every evening, free admission'. So, I imagine, no or liquid pay! Mr Hudson, also a comic singer, went on to run the Spread Eagle Concert Hall in Spiceal Street, and the Midland Counties Concert Hall in the Bull Ring before his death, 7 April 1858. But Harry was on his way. He took the Railway Saloon in Chatham High Street for a couple of months...

OK. Late of the Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool concerts. I have to search some more! 28 October he took himself a Benefit, and then ...

My next sighting is in Bristol at Easter 1854. Entry Free again. Pendant to a pub? Did this happen? We know he was in Bristol ...

Anyway, by August he was appearing in Cheltenham and Birmingham in variety programmes. Not very high-class ones (I only know of Charley Buckingham's dogs and a Mlle Cerito), but there were fireworks

And there was something else. Miss Annie Charlton. Hannah Eliza Charlton. Mrs Harry Clifton. The couple had been married during that time in Bristol (1 March 1854). 

This is the only evidence I have of Annie being a performer. Alas, she would not be for long. The young Mrs Clifton died on a date on which the Family Historians cannot agree. It was, however, surely before 1857, when Harry embarked on a disastrous second marriage. 

In 1855, I spot him at Mr John Balmbra's Music Saloon, at the Wheatsheaf Inn, in Newcastle, but, more importantly in his first visit to Ireland. He appeared at the Shakspere (sic) Concert Hall in Belfast and, for the first of what would be many, many appearances at Jude's Concert Hall, pendant to Mr Jude's 'Royal Hotel, Tavern and Coffee Rooms', at Dublin's 12/13 Grafton Street. 'Mr H R Clifton from the principal London Concerts'. He is reported to have sung 'Russo-Turkish songs' (the countries were at war).

Nota Bene: at this time a Mr H Clifton, wife and daughter little Blanche put in an appearance in the London halls doing comic songs, duets et al. Latterly father billed himself as J H Clifton. Blanche, it seems, went to Australia, became Mrs Frank Hussey, and got out of our hair. This Mt Clifton seems to have been, some years previously, manager of Wolverhampton's Staffordshire Knot Music Hall.

In 1856, our man is at Blackheath, Rendall's Concert Hall, Portsea, Woolwich ('an old favourite'!), before he and his 'clever songs on passing events' again returned to Dublin. There he shared a bill, notably, with Mary Ann Lawrence, the future 'Millie Cavendish' of New York's Black Crook. 1857 sees him -- when not in Dublin -- at the London Supper Rooms in Manchester's Bridge Street. And it appears that it was now that he took employ at Evans's Supper Rooms. And committed the folly of his life. The new wife was 19 year-old Mary Ann Terry from Birmingham (b 18 March 1838).

And here we meet a piece of fake history. The Family Historians have mistaken their Mary Ann and chosen to ally themselves and their ancestors to a lass from Leeds who was someone else altogether! Perhaps this is where the extraneous children come from. This terrible Mary Ann who was to be the bane of Harry's life, was one of the children of Birmingham coach-harness plater and wire worker John Terry and his wife Louisa. They can be seen in the 1851 census: parents, John, Mary Ann, Alfred, Walter, Andrew, Daniel, Rosannah, Rhoda. 

Anyway, when Harry sued for judicial separation after 7 years of married non-bliss, he listed the details of his wife's perpetual drunkenness, her physical attacks on him ... and his list included no children. I assume he got his judicial separation, they subsequently 'lived apart', but he was not yet rid of Mary Ann. When he died, leaving his fortune of some £6,000 to his current partner, she rose up like Frumah Sarah to challenge the will. I hope she didn't succeed.

I see him at the Birmingham Concert Hall, at Wilton's Music Hall, at the Glasgow Whitebait Rooms ('old favourite'), Sheffield's Surrey Music Hall, Westbar, the Belfast Imperial Colosseum, and more and more at Jude's in Dublin. And now, songtitles begin to be mentioned more freely: 'Jack Jenkins', 'The School Boy', the topical 'Galway/Lever Line', 'Out for the Night', Ambrose Maynard's new song on the Elections, Harry Sydney's 'The Old Frieze Coat', 'Pat of Mullingar', 'Dublin Rhymes', 'Meandering Mulligan', 'Reform', 'The Drogheda Trip', his Shakespearian burlesque songs ... 'he has a new song nearly every night' commented the Dublin press, as he passed 200, 250, 300 nights on the bill at Jude's.

1860 included further dates at Holder's in Birmingham, the Canterbury Hall in Salford, the Knightsbridge Music Hall, and in Scotland where his extempore and impromptu songs went down a treat ('Local Events') and he appeared regularly in the Temperance Society Saturday Nights in Glasgow alongside prima donna Pauline Vaneri and local balladeer, Helen Kirk. 

In 1861, he was engaged at the Queen's Theatre in Dublin, where he made an unusual appearance as an actor (Jacob Twig in Black-Eyed Susan) and gave his 'new entertainment', before moving to Jude's for a season, then back to Glasgow .. and, after '20 months in Ireland and Scotland', came to London and engagements at the Knightbridge, the Marylebone. 'The Dark Girl dressed in Blue' proved his song of the season

At Christmas he was back in Scotland with his hit song, plus 'Uncle Joe', 'Obadiah Oh!', and a 'new, quaint and original' song titled 'Paddington Green'. As 'Polly Perkins of Paddington Green' it would give him another durable success.

Harry had by now formed a profitable alliance with the music publishers Hopwood and Crew, as a result of which high-class editions of his flood of new songs were published, and over the years a vast list emerged. 

In the same month of June 1863 in which 'Paddington Green' was published, Harry supplied another winner in 'Isabella, the Barber's Daughter', followed by 'Poor Old Mike', 'Water Cresses' ... and still they kept coming. Hundreds and hundreds, of which a regular quota became favourites for a shorter or longer time.

Harry's regular London dates, at this time, may not have been at the classiest music-halls -- the Knightsbridge, the Marylebone, Wilton's, the Middlesex were not top houses -- but back in Scotland he was the number one. And to Scotland he duly went with his homemade songs, the best of other folks' songs, and plenty of local references, and the topical lyrics which went down so well. The Prince of Wales got wed, Harry brought out 'The Prince of Wales's Wedding', when the Pepper's Ghost Illusion became the rage, Harry advertised his own Ghost ('Have you seen the Ghost?'), at Christmas time he sang of 'The Past Year' while never neglecting his Oirishisms ('Ireland's Gem', 'Paddy's Wedding') or his tales of bad luck in love ('Blighted Affection', 'The Milkman'), not to forget his ration of extempore songs, and society pictures ('The Concert Room') and, above all, the 'motto songs' -- comical homilies or cautionary tales ... it was endless!

In 1864, he was seen at the Pavilion, the Regent, Sam Collins's ('The Commercial Man or Sold Again', The Weeping Willer' etc) and even gave a concert back in his native Herfordshire (Hertford Corn Exchange 25 October 1864), but the event of 1864 was undoubtedly his liberation from Mary Ann. 

Now his private life could take the same upward elan as his public one. With a little help from Hopwood and Crew. And their promotion not only of his new songs ('The Mail Train', 'The Calico Printer's Clerk', 'Darby Maguire', 'The Good Tempered Man') but of a new venture. 25 April 1865 marked the appearance of Harry's Hopwood and Crew-backed 'Star Concert Party'. A manna for Harry, who had recently lost his savings in a Birmingham bank failure.

The 'Star Concert Party' comprised Harry, three vocalists -- Frank Sadlier (tenor), Bessie Aitken (soprano) and Fanny Edwards (contralto) -- and a pianist, Mr David Williams. Nothing very novel. All three vocalists were well-enough known in Scotland. Mr Sadlier (or Sadleir) from Leeds was an adequate baritenor who spent a dozen years on the northern music-hall circuits, Miss Aitken (Mrs Billing) was a fine and experienced young singer, dubbed 'the Queen of Scottish Ballad Vocalists' through a quarter of a century of career, and Fanny too had, at this stage, been on the Scottish circuits for several years. The composition of the party would soon change, but Harry and Fanny were its backbone -- and a couple -- from now until his death.

During that time, Fanny's younger sister, Hannah Edwards (ka Annie KINNAIRD) became the soprano of the group, and married the party's latest tenor [Jacob] Redfern HOLLINS ... whose history is worthy a whole article to itself (yes, I've written it!) ...

Hollins, of course, became celebrated as the original tenor of George Edwardes's production of Dorothy.

Fanny went on to become a top comic opera contralto and the exploits of her later career, and those of her family, largely in America, I've covered elsewhere.

The last seven years of Harry's life were visibly the most successful and the happiest. Alas, they years were only seven. At the age of just forty, he succumbed to dropsy, at Shepherds Bush' amid the Edwards family on 15 July 1872. 

I hav'n't attempted to follow him through those last seven years chronologically.  His popularity well and truly established, the concert party dates followed one upon the other, the new songs followed ten upon the other, and they remain as his monument, some even dubbed in modern times as 'folk songs', and played as such, a century and a half on.  Here's a bill from 1868. And, see ... Apart from the established 'Fifty Years Ago', and his duet with Fanny, Harry doesn't let on what he's going to sing ...

I am not going to try to list our man's published songs. Though someone ought to. I am not going to try to precisely date all of them. Although it may be possible. At various times (see above) there were put out lists of those in print ...

         So these all pre-date August 1866.

Just a few more, which I happen to have to hand ...

Enough. There must be loads of Harryphemera around in England, Scotland and Ireland ...  but I am in New Zealand. Anyone who can add, please do. But at least some of the facts have been put right.

PS Wiki, I have found no reference in the thousand press reports on Harry to his being known as 'Handsome Harry'. The references to his married life are already debunked.

PPS Family historians? Start over with the right wife.

PPPS me. I reckon I deserve a whisky or three.