History with a Broken Hip. From Mills to Lane to Wilson.

 

It is five weeks today since cheerful Eliza and her ambulance zoomed a prostrate and pain-filled me off to Christchurch hospital. Thirteen hours, thereafter, spent in an uncomfortable day bed, with leg screaming (my hip was broken), were alleviated only by the comforting of delicious Dan ...  finally, I made it to a hospital bed ...

Anyway, I was out of there (4 days), just as soon as my acting ability made it possible ... the blessed Wendy and a lovely bloke from dear old Hokitika (may Zeus bless him and it!) ... somehow bundled me and a nifty little 'gutter frame' into the car and ... HOME. It isn't Paradise, it isn't Paradise (or is it?) but it is HOME ....

The last month has been ups and downs. A lovely little lass named Syvannah comes 3 times a week to watch me take a shower. I guess bathroom floors are perilous. I don't tell her that I hav'n't showered so frequently for years! I have had two visits from Tom, the physio, who is getting me to do the sort of ballet exercises that I used to teach the blokes on the NORTHERN STAR half a century ago. Thank you ACC, he too is encouraging. And pleasingly companionable. But .... while this 'National Health' care is agreeable, if (barring accidents) largely unneccesary ... what I would rather have is a GP overlook me weekly. But GPs, it seems, don't travel in the 21st century. And, er, sorry my little walker-gutter-frame don't fit in my wee car.

SO. 'Tied to my chair in an empty room like Andromeda tied to the rock...' ...

What do I do?  Sleep mostly at first. I sleep a very great deal. Watch Masterchef. I KNOW it's fixed, well, let's say HEAVILY EDITED. I enjoy it, and would do more so were the edits not so obvious, and the presenters didn't SHOUT.

Watch the racing (harness). Shame so much of it is after my bedtime, but the bit I like best is daytime. When Entain took over HRNZ, the coverage of the 'trots' improved vastly. Less extraneous rubbish and stuff-on-the-screen. A fair panoply of Presenters with an A team who don't gabble, who pronounce properly ... However, the B and C team ...  Can we get that amateurish thing called OUT THE GATE (grammar?) off the TV. 

Soon our very own EMILY will be back on track after her six month convalescence ...

But I have wandered. Passive cooking and racing don't satisfy the needs of a boy's day. I need something active. Since this cannot, perforce, be physical, I head for the 19th century and the world of the Victorian Vocalist. There are still many of my singers whose real identity, after 10 or 20 years, remain undiscovered. And the 'undiscovering' of one of them is always an incommensurate thrill ... so ...

Usually when I go in for a session of 'try again, Johnny' midst my list of Mysterious Musicians, I start at letter "A". This week I didn't. A query from an American scholar, about tenor Thomas MILLAR, had me rootling around in the "M"s.  And after 'Millar' came 'Mills'. Basso Watkin Mills had long fallen under my pen, but then there was soprano Jessie MILLS of Llanelly, well-liked prima donna ('a nice unpretending voice ... very considerable personal attractions') of several of the smallest opera companies on the British road in the later 1860s and the early 1870s. Her page was desperately empty. I determined, at the umpteenth try, to crack her.

It wasn't easy. She wasn't 'Miss', she wasn't 'Jessie', she wasn't 'Mills', either Miss or Mrs, and there was no opera singing lady that I could find living at Cac Glas, or Talbot Terrace, in Llanelly ...

Well, amazingly I got there. I sha'n't detail (oh! how many details!) how I did, but via one tiny clue, some siblings, husbands, other people's babies etc, I did. 'Jessie' -- born Gloucester 22 February 1846 -- was the youngest of ten (plus) children of a Littleworth cordwainer by the name of William Lane (1799-1872) and his wife Sarah née Mills (m 21 September 1818). Yes, Mills. 'Of the Angel Inn, Monmouth'. Seven of the brood were girls -- Elizabeth, Jane (Mrs James Wilson), Ann (Mrs William Henry Beard Bining), Matilda (Mrs Wilson) Thyrza, Eliza (Mr William Whitaker) and 'Jessie'. Several took an interest in singing. And several husbands, too. Several succeeded. 

Jane's husband was vocalist and publican James Wilson of Monmouth. The 'Running Horse' in Barton St Mary,  must have been a merry musical pub, because 'Jessie' worked there as a barmaid as a teenager (see C61), James and Jane's daughter, 'Hilda' was to become one of the great oratorio contraltos of the era, and her younger brother, Henry James Lane Wilson (b Gloucester 26 December 1864; d 27 Castellain Road 8 January 1915), a baritone singer who was to make himself a name as an arranger and composer as well as a vocalist and accompanist. Annie (Mrs Bining) sang in concert, and was a soprano member of the Gloucester Festival Choir and its contingent to the Crystal Palace in the 1870s, Eliza sang locally and I imagine also with the Choir ...

But let's try to track Jessie, as I will call her. I spot her in 1865, singing (as Ellen Lane) at the Monmouth Athenaeum, alongside Mrs Bining. How she got from there to being 'prima donna of the Manley Opera Company', a year or so later, I know not. But she did. I need to explain: the Manley Opera Company was a tiny outfit put together by reasonably reputable tenor Henry Manley to feature himself, his family and a microscopic company in every popular opera under the sun. And they did OK in the smallest venues of the country. Especially when Mr Manley hired little Miss Lane from Monmouth to be his 20 year-old opposite number. As 'Jessie Mills'.

Jessie must have been a fast learner or, more probably, Mr Manley's 'versions' were decidedly Cibberised, but I see 'Miss Mills' advertised within months as starred in La Sonnambula, Il Trovatore, L'Elisir d'amore, Le Fille du régiment, Maritana, The Bohemian Girl, Maritana, The Rose of Castile, Fra Diavolo, Faust, The Barber of Seville ...    and her reviews were very nice. At Exeter she sang Lucia di Lammermoor. Then it was Norma. And so it went on for some four years.

Then came my first Clue. 28 February 1870, Mrs Whitaker née Lane gave a concert at the Gloucester Corn Exchange ....

and Jessie's identity was revealed ...

Annoyingly, I still couldn't find 'Nellie Lane' thereafter. Until I found this ...

Mrs Ellen Waddle. Brother-in-law as witness.

After giving birth to a daughter, Minnie Helen, Mrs Waddle went back to the opera, touring with some of Britain's tiniest opera troupes with Isidore de Solla, Francis Gaynar, Henri Dunthorne and Adairine Tisdall, H D Glover, Ella Collins, G S Bradshaw, Mr Aubrey, T C Goodwin, Jessie Clayton and other stalwarts until she joined up with Henry Haigh's more consequent troupe. The more consequent Mrs Haigh ('Madame Haigh-Dyer') was the company's leading lady, so Jessie's load was lesser and lighter. In 1878, she tried London, but soon returned to Llanelly and quasi-retirement.

Jessie died at the age of 54 on 1 September 1900. She left a comfortable sum. Hugh outlived her (d 1906) and daughter Minnie survived till 26 March 1946 (a month after my birth!). Unmarried, she left a large sum and her diamonds (and her dog) to her lady friend(s) ...

 If that was the end of the direct descent of 'Jessie Mills', it was decidedly not the end, as I have said, of her family's association. Niece Matilda was to reach the upper echelons of Britih music-making:

WILSON, Hilda [WILSON Matilda Ellen] (b Monmouth 7 April 1860; d Bournemouth 10 December 1918).

 

Hilda Wilson was one of the most prominent contralto singers in the British musical festivals of the last decades of the 19th century.

 

Her father was a certain James Wilson, originally a shoemaker in Monmouth and, by the time of Hilda’s birth, an innkeeper in the same town. Biographical notes insist that he was also bandmaster of the Monmouth Volunteer band, but his occupation is listed as ‘publican’, so I guess the musical side of his life was an amateur one.

In 1849, he married Jane Lane, a shoemaker’s daughter from Gloucester, and Matilda, their first child, was born in 1860. Shortly after, the couple shifted to Gloucester, where James, who became mine host of the ‘Running Horse’, apparently kept up his musical activities (Brown and Stratton says he held ‘important posts’), and where the three remaining Wilson children were born. All four of James and Jane’s family would make a career in the world of music.

 

Matilda – quickly become Hilda – started in her early teens, as a member of the choir at St Mildred’s Church, and with the Gloucester Choral Society, where she quickly became a soloist. I spot her at the age of fourteen singing in Birch’s The Merrie Men of Sherwood Forest at Iley, alongside male soloists – Thomas Hunt and Waddams -- from the Cathedral choir, and the following year at Gloucester with Julia Jones and H T Bywater, at Lydney in selections from Elijah with Thomas Brandon, Sarah Ferrabee and George Hunt, and at Northleach with Brandon and local amateurs Miss Ferrabee and Walter Jakeway.

By 1876, Hilda was travelling freely, to Cheltenham and to Wales, with a selection of songs ranging from ‘The Lover and the Bird’ and ‘Love Hailed a Little Maid’ to ‘The Fisherman’s Wife’, frequently with Brandon, Hunt, William Mann Dyson and other members of the Cathedral forces, or the Welsh vocalist Charles Videon Harding. When she sang in Cardiff 22 November 1876, the press spoke of her as  ‘a promising contralto of about 16 with an exceedingly good though not powerful, voice. Her vocalisation is clear and truthfully in tune … she has already acquired a very good style and is likely to become a great favourite’.

On 2 January 1877 she sang The Messiah at Cheltenham (‘Miss Hilda Wilson, a very promising contralto, sang ‘O thou that tellest’ and ‘He was despised’ with much feeling, and was warmly and deservedly applauded’), and sang the same work in Sheffield, Denbigh, Hull, Swansea  et al in her ‘rich and clear’ voice. Agnes Larkcom, Bywater, Harper Kearton, Charles W Fredericks, Julia Jones and other local artists were occasionally joined by such as Mathilde Enequist (Messiah Swansea) to give young Hilda her first taste of Town Hall company.

In 1878, Hilda was enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music, and after a farewell concert in the Gloucester Corn Exchange (29 October) with her teacher, William Shakespeare (‘received a perfect ovation and had to repeat her exquisite and touching rendering of Sullivan's ‘Lost Chord’’) she headed for London.  

Her studies in London did not prevent her from continuing to perform intermittently from Bristol and Ipswich to Glasgow and Swansea, and in 1880 she won her most significant engagement to date in the Three Choirs Musical Festival in her home town of Gloucester. With the indomitable Janet Patey, the admired Grace Damian and another local singer, Mary Wakefield, also billed in the contralto department, Hilda’s share was necessary small. She sang the spare bits in Elijah, took part in the Palestrina Stabat Mater and gave ‘Che faro’ in concert. However, this was the beginning of an epoch. In the next quarter of a century, Hilda Wilson would be a contralto soloist – supporting, starring and then supporting again – in the highly fashionable (and rather hidebound) Three Choirs Festival, churning out annual Messiahs and Elijahs in a thoroughly impeccable English oratorio style, plus introducing the occasional new and/or interesting work.

Other Festivals – mostly not annual – picked up on this ideal and always-praised oratorio singer, and Miss Wilson became the contralto 

flagbearer of the Festival scene, in succession to the great Dolby and Patey, in the later years of the century.

In 1881, still a student, Hilda was awarded the Westmoreland Scholarship at the RAM (and she won it again the following year), and visited Worcester for the Festival. She shared the solos of Elijah with Patey (‘as well as has been done by any artist of late years’) and took part in The Messiah, a Jephtha selection and gave Gounod’s popular ‘The Worker’. In 1882, she won the Parepa Rosa medal, and sang in the Hereford Festival, taking part, notably, in the premiere of George Garrett’s cantata The Shunamite alongside Anna Williams, Frank Boyle and Frederic King, and in Molique’s Abraham.

On 22 June 1882 she made what was called her ‘London debut’ at the home of the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol: someone was conveniently forgetting that in 1880 she had appeared in the Trio Concerts at St George’s Hall and the Twopenny Concerts at Kensington Town Hall.

Furth afield, she was being widely heard in oratorio The Legend of St Cecilia at Gloucester, Elijah at Portmadoc, The Ancient Mariner at Worcester, Judas Maccabaeus at Southampton, Redemption at Edinburgh and Glasgow, The Messiah at York and Oxford, Psyche at Worcester, St Paul at Nottingham and on 23 February 1883 she appeared in Redemption with the reconstituted Sacred Harmonic Society alongside Mary Davies, Henry Guy and Charles Santley.

For the Gloucester Festival of 1883, she shared the contralto music with Patey and apart from the inevitable Elijah and Messiah and the currently ubiquitous Redemption, took part in the first performance of Dr Stainer’s St Mary Magdalene with Anna Williams, Lloyd and King. The following month, she sang at the Leeds Festival, where Grace Damian joined the two contraltos from the Three Choirs, and Hilda’s part included the creation of Cellier’s cantata Gray’s Elegy with the same solo team as Stainer’s work.

Hilda Wilson was now, at 23, established as one of the country’s top contraltos, and she appeared in all the best places. After Leeds, she was heard in Walpurgisnacht with Santley at the Crystal Palace, with the Albert Hall choral society in Redemption, at the Monday pops, at St James’s Hall in The Messiah, with Willing’s choir in King David, in between visiting Huddersfield for Eli or Bradford for Moses in Egypt. 

At the Albert Hall she teamed with Emma Albani, Edward Lloyd and Charles Santley in a foursome which would become highly familiar to audiences.

In 1884 she sang in the first London production of Mackenzie’s The Rose of Sharon (7 November) by the Sacred Harmonic Society, and repeated the piece at the Crystal Palace, where she again gave Redemption. During this season she appears to have sung less out of town, and for the only year of her career did not appear at any of the Festivals. The following year, her name was again missing from the Three Choirs Festival lists, in favour of Eliza Enriques, but she joined Mrs Patey for the Chester Festival in July, and fulfilled a busy programme round the country including repeated performances of The Rose of Sharon, appearances with the Bach Choir (first London performances of Parry’s Prometheus Unbound, Friedrich Kiel’s Star of Bethlehem), the premiere of Charles Thorne’s The Last Sigh of the Moor at St James’s Hall, and performances with the Sacred Harmonic Society (The Mount of Olives, The Woman of Samaria) and at the Albert Hall, where she sang with Albani, Lloyd and Santley in the first London performance of Gounod’s follow-up to Redemption, Mors e Vita (14 November 1885).

In 1886, Hilda Wilson returned to the Three Choirs Festival. Janet Patey still topped the bill, but Hilda had plenty to do including two news works: C H Lloyd’s cantata Andromeda in which she sang Cassiopeia to the Andromeda of Anna Williams, the Perseus of Edward Lloyd and the Priest of Watkins Mills; and W S Rockstro’s The Good Shepherd.  The following week, she took part in a Wolverhampton Festival and introduced another new work: Frederick Corder’s Walter Scott cantata The Bridal of Triermain with Alwina Valleria, Henry Piercy and Santley. After a return to London to sing The Messiah at the Covent Garden Proms, she moved on to the Leeds Festival, but ill health forced her to relinquish most of her programme.

The feature of her 1887 season was the Norwich Festival (11 October). Mme Patey was not engaged, and Hilda Wilson was billed a principal contralto. The week prior to the Festival Hilda had taken part in a Huddersfield Festival for which Ebenezer Prout had specially written a cantata The Red Cross Knight. Hilda joined Annie Marriot, Lloyd and Mills in the first performance, and Prout dedicated his ‘The Song of Judith’ to her. It got its first showing at the Norwich Festival, alongside another new piece, by Bottesini, The Garden of Olivet. Later in the year, the original cast (Marriott/Wilson/Lloyd/Santley) repeated Bottesini’s piece with the Sacred Harmonic Society.

Hilda’s final creation of the year was at a so-called Walthamstow Festival, staged by local musician J F H Read in order to give his cantata Harold a hearing. She and Mrs Hutchinson took the female roles.

On 19 April 1888 Hilda made an appearance with the Philharmonic Society, introducing ‘The Song of Judith’ to London, in June she sang Elijah at the service marking the completion of the Bristol Cathedral, and in September joined Eliza Enriquez as the contralto soloists for the Hereford Festival (The Woman of Samaria, The Golden Legend, ‘God thou art great’ etc). A North Staffordshire Festival featured Elijah with Henschel as the prophet.

In Oxford she sang with Anna Williams, Kearton and Mills in a Missa Solemnis by J H Meo, before returning to the Golden Legends and Messiahs, as well as a Joshua with Prout’s Hackney Choral Society and the newly produced Parry Judith, and a rare operatic moment in concert, when she took part in the Rigoletto quartet with Antoinette Trebelli, Maybrick and William Foxon.

The early part of 1889 found Hilda singing Brahms’ Gipsy Songs and Schumann’s Spanisches Liederspiel in concert, and taking part in the Her Majesty’s Theatre’s proms season, before taking to the Festival circuit at Lincoln (Elijah, with younger sister Agnes in the cast), at Gloucester – now established thoroughly as prima contralto (Stabat Mater, Elijah, Judith, Messiah, Golden Legend, Prodigal Son) and at Leeds where more adventurous programming found her singing in Schubert’s Mass and in a new work, The Voyage of Maeldune by C V Stanford (Albani/Wilson/Lloyd/Foote) and the ‘church cantata’ Last Night at Bethany of the conductor C. Lee Williams (Albani/Wilson/Lloyd/Brereton).

On 14 December 1889 she sang in the premiere production of Frederic Cowen’s St John’s Eve at the Crystal Palace.

The season of 1890 found Hilda in a new hat. In April she produced a series of concerts at the Steinway Hall, with a programme made up entirely of members of the Wilson family. Hilda was, of course, the big attraction in ‘Sleep gentle lady’ by Emily Phillips, Cowen’s ‘Absence’, Ernest Birch’s ‘I heard the voice’, or ‘The Day of Life’. This last was the work of her young brother, Henry James Lane Wilson  (b Gloucester 26 December 1864; d 27 Castellain Road 8 January 1915), a baritone singer who was to make himself a name as an arranger and composer as well as a vocalist and accompanist. Henry took part alongside Agnes [Rose] (b Gloucester 8 October 1864; d 39 Beaumont Street 27 April 1907), a capable soprano who filled a number of provincial engagements during her career, and William [George] Stroud Wilson (b Gloucester 20 May 1868; d Barnes, Surrey, 22 March 1901) some time violinist at the Italian opera and a church singer.

After this venture, Hilda returned to her usual tracks – a Choral Symphony at the Philharmonic Society, the Worcester Festival where she introduced the role of the Queen in Bridge’s The Repentance of Nineveh, the Bristol Festival (Redemption, Messiah, Judith) and the Cheltenham Festival where the Bridge cantata was given a second hearing. The Festivals finished for the year, she was off to Liverpool for Theodora, to Cardiff, Bristol, Belfast, the Albert Hall for another Rose of Sharon and then to Oxford for a concert – with Albani, Lloyd and Henschel – for Antonin Dvorak.

 

And so it continued. The Bach choir, the Albert Hall (Mors e vita), the Crystal Palace, the annual Good Friday Stabat Mater at St James’s Hall, another little series of family and friends concerts at St Luke’s Schoolrooms, the Crystal Palace Handel Festival, followed by the Hereford Festival, with the introduction of C H Lloyd’s cantata A Song of Judgement, and the Birmingham Festival where she joined Albani, Iver McKay and Watkin Mills in the first performance of Dvorak’s Requiem. Then back to the Albert Hall for the Choral Symphony, The Golden Legend, the Dvorak Requiem, and to the Bach choir.

 

1892 brought the Lincoln and Peterborough Festival (The Return of Israel, Last Judgement), the Gloucester Festival with Lee Williams’s new Gethsemane, the Cardiff Festival with Dvorak’s Stabat Mater on the programme, and the Leeds Festival (Mozart Requiem, Bach Mass), 1893 included Festivals at Worcester, Cheltenham (Festival Odeby Berthold Tours) and Bristol and a performance of Cowen’s The Water Lily at the Crystal Palace, 1894 the Festivals of Hereford (Bach Christmas Oratorio, the Dvorak Requiem etc), where Agnes was included among the minor principals, and Birmingham where two more new pieces were produced. Hilda took part in the premieres of Hubert Parry’s King Saul, singing the part of the Witch of Endor, and in Georg Henschel’s version of the Stabat Mater.

 

In 1895 (7 February) King Saul was given it first London showing at the Albert Hall with Hilda in her original role, in April the Bach Choir mounted a Festival with the B Minor Mass featured, and in August the Queens Hall proms started up, with Hilda and brother Henry both featured. Hilda included, alongside her Schubert songs, her brothers ‘Voices of the Angels’. The Gloucester Festival saw the premiere of Cowen’s Transfiguration, but her engagement for the Leeds Festival was compromised by illness.

 

Hilda was now running a slighter schedule. She was a prolific teacher, and an examiner and judge for the Royal Academy and the Guildhall, but she retained her Festival dates – Worcester and Bristol in 1896, Hereford in 1897 and only sang for her final time at the Three Choirs Festival in 1904.

 

She introduced Reginald Steggall’s scena Elaine, she sang in the oratorio performances at the Queen’s Hall and at the Crystal Palace … and she appeared as a vocalist with a telepathist’s show. 

On 15 November 1897 she and Henry mounted a concert at Steinway Hall (‘O Willow’, ‘The Slighted Swain’, ‘Ombra mai fu’) and they repeated the effort, with a pupil of Agnes’s on 9 December.  Henry was doing well as a vocalist and in 1898 he was hired, as well as Hilda, for the Three Choirs Festival where he took a considerable part in the baritone music, including Rosalind Ellicott’s Henry of Navarre. He appeared on other occasions with Hilda, singing ‘In a Persian Garden’ at Steinway Hall, at the Queen’s Hall in Dvorak’s Biblical Songs and Bendl’s Gipsy Songs, and in 1900 (28 September) at Steinway Hall in another concert of their own. His own nine-part song cycle ‘Flora’s Holiday’ was premiered at Steinway Hall in 1902, and was much performed thereafter.

 

In 1904 Hilda Wilson married a young accountant and would-be writer, Ashley Richard Hart (b Clifton 1868, d Wilwyn, Findon Rd, Worthing 2 April 1945). In 1924 he published Dead yet living: the mysteries of life and death, but I find nothing else, by which I presume he was more accountant than author.

 

The Wilson family, however, proved ill-fated. William, married in 1898, died at the age of 32 in 1901, Agnes followed in 1907 and Henry in 1915. The eldest of the four siblings, Hilda, survived the longest, reaching the age of 60. William and his wife, Clara Barclay, produced a son, who as Robert James Barclay Wilson (1899-1988) FGSM, a teacher at the Guildhall School of Music, made his name as an organist, conductor, composer and author. He introduced to the radio a piece called Nymphs and Shepherds a pasticcio of Elizabethan tunes (‘by himself’) which was subsequently published as being by Hilda and Henry, associated with F Keel and A[rthur] Somervell. And with the suffix MA following Hilda’s name.

The M. was in some kind of teaching, and appears to have occurred in 1909.

 

Alongside her career as a vocalist and teacher, Hilda Wilson also penned a number of songs (‘My Roses’, ‘When birds do sing’, ‘The Message from the sea’, ‘From Oversea’, ‘The first and last kiss’, ‘Work still to do’), some under the pseudonym Douglas Hope.

I have a feeling this family may ramify more widely ... if so, I shall add later. But Auntie Jessie seems, till now, to have gotten forgotten. A lassie who sang a major lead in a major opera every night for years ... all round the British Isles ...

Victorian Vocalists: Smith, Smith and Smith (and Smith)

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.

 

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.