"Miss Delcy" done to death by a stage father

 

DELCY, Miss [Catarina] [LACY, Catherine Josefa] (b Liverpool c 1819; d 11 Leighton Grove, Pancras, London 15 October 1889)

 

The history of the theatre and of music is filled with stories of ‘stage mothers’. The young lady known as ‘Miss Delcy’ seems to have been the victim of an overweeningly ambitious stage father.

 

The father in question was the gentleman known, indeed quite well-known, in the musical and theatrical worlds as Michael Rophino Lacy. Whether that were his real name, and whether any of the details concerning him and his family which have reached the reference books of the nation – and all, doubtless, descended from one hearsay source -- are true, I have no idea. But, for what they are worth, here they are. He is supposed to have been born in Bilbao, the son of an Irish merchant (no name ever given), and the date most often quoted is 19 June 1795. Or, occasionally, 1793. But, by 1817 – and probably well before -- he was living in Liverpool, with his wife Sarah née Norton, an actress at the local theatre (m Dublin 21 November 1817).

He tried his hand in several branches of showbusiness: as a child violinist (‘pupil of the celebrated Kreutzer’), and later as an actor, a playwright, a songwriter, a ‘teacher of violin, piano and Spanish guitar’, ‘leader of the Liverpool concerts’ and for several seasons of the King’s Theatre ballet, and a musical arranger, but it was as a librettist or, more precisely, a theatrical ‘adaptor’ and de- and re-constructor – a pinner-together of well-considered trifles -- that he would ultimately find his success. 

 

His first venture into the field seems to have been on no less a stage than Drury Lane, with a sort of a remake of Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia as Turkish Lovers (1 May 1827) in which Braham, Fanny Ayton, Horn, Mrs Geesin – and Harley and Miss Kelly in two invented comic characters – took part. ‘The drama was as heavy and inane as any it has ever been our fortune to sit out’ bewailed The Times. Lacy persisted, however, with versions of several of Scribe’s plays, including the little La Vieille, for which he fabricated a Rossinian score, arranged and composed by himself, and which, as Love in Wrinkles, proved a happier vehicle for Braham. Over the next few years, he flung himself into compiling a series of semi-pasticcio operatic spectaculars, scoring notable success with The Maid of Judah, a compound of Scott’s Ivanhoe, its French stage adaptation and music from a selection of often lesser-known Rossini works (Semiramide, Le Comte Ory, Torvaldo e Dorliska, Maometto, Armide et al) and a Cinderella, or the Fairy and the Little Glass Slipper which glued together a version of the preferred English pantomime version of Perrault’s tale (thus the fairy and the glass slipper) with another Rossini pastiche, centred around the principal pieces of his Cenerentola. If this latter drew the horrified thunders of some more knowledgeable music critics, it proved extremely successful with the public, and was long and widely played on English stages, in preference to the original opera.

He also committed versions of Robert le diable, Der Freischütz, Le Serment and Fra Diavolo, and put together a scriptural stage spectacle around a mixture of Rossini and Handel entitled The Israelites in Egypt, or The Passage of the Red Sea ‘an oratorio consisting of sacred music, scenery and presentation’ (22 February 1833) which caused a certain stir. He reappeared in the area as late as 1849, by which time his style of piece was less acceptable, with an unsuccessful Auber pasticcio entitled The Blind Sister.

 

Another of his later projects which failed to come off was the promotion of his daughter, Catherine, as the prima donna of the era.

 

Quite how good, or not, Catherine Lacy (‘Miss Delcy’) was as a vocalist we shall probably never know, as the figure of her father – publicising, proselytising and posturing -- seems to get in the way at every turn of her effortful half-dozen years as an operatic vocalist. The press, which through that time reviewed her performances with violently opposing and extreme appreciation or ridicule, appears to have taken sides almost from the outset, or maybe even before. There seems little doubt that Lacy heavily overdid the puffing of his prefabricated prima donna, and, while some papers were willing to go along with his designs, others reacted vigorously against them.

 

‘Miss Delcy’ was brought out at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 12 November 1839, in her father’s most famous opus, the English Cinderella, in the company of Frazer, Leffler, Morley, Hammond, Misses Betts and Collett and Mrs Alban Croft. ‘She scarcely seemed more than seventeen…’ reported The Times. She almost certainly was. But I can’t be exact. In the 1851 census (the first in which I find them), Lacy says he is 47, his wife Sarah is 50, and his daughters, Catherine and Sarah (both ‘born Liverpool’), are 26 and 25. Lacy was, of course, something like a decade older than that. The girls probably were too. I suspect Miss Delcy may have been twenty-ish on her official first night.

For some noticed that it wasn’t her first night at all. ‘She has been for some years past known in the northern provinces and was, so we understand, a favourite at York and Hull’ reported The Analyst in explanation of her poised performance, going on to comment ‘Her voice is strong, piercing and extensive in the upper part of the scale … [she] will therefore be a useful, although, we apprehend, not a highly attractive singer’.

And, six months earlier, The Age had copied a paragraph from the Doncaster Gazette,which claimed she had sung in Yorkshire, two years past, but had not yet been seen in London because terms and standards had not been acceptable.

And they were perfectly correct. I have before me a set of reviews from December 1836 and January and February 1837, of the Hull Theatre Royal, where Miss Delcy ‘pupil of Mr Rophino Lacy’ (why? asked the good Hull critic, not simply ‘Miss Lacy’?) is appearing to a volley of praise, supported by the members of the stock company, among whom Creswick, in Cinderella and Der Freischütz. And even that was evidently not a debut, for the reviewer speaks of ‘report’ (apparently from York) which has already spoken so highly of Miss Delcy’s abilities…’. She went on to play in Fra Diavolo, and The Barber of Seville opposite Binge, but cancelled The Marriage of Figaro through influenza, during a two-month engagement littered with farewells, indispositions and Benefits. 

 

But, back to the ‘official’ debut. There was no doubt that ‘the undertaking was arduous’, following Mary Ann Wood in ‘one of her greatest parts’, but the first night – if the press can be believed – went off pretty well. ‘We have rarely seen a debut for which less allowance was needed’, ‘A favourable impression was at once made by her singing the little opening ballad; her low notes were excellent and though her voice was trembling with anxiety the purest taste and the most delicate feeling were manifest. The high notes appeared at times rather forced and it was natural to think that the middle and low notes, which were beautifully clear and full, were alone of the first quality. However, the finale to the first act immediately dissipated all doubts as to any capabilities of her voice; her first nervousness was broken through, her high notes became rich and sweet and in the full flow of melody which she poured forth, the correctness of her intonation, the infusion of soul, and the quiet commanding facility of her execution gained the whole audience…’ (Times)

‘The debutante is young, apparently about seventeen or eighteen, girlish, with small features, and a merry, expressive, dark eye. As is generally the case in England, she has been hurried upon the stage rather prematurely and therefore we must speak of her great promise rather than her finished performance …’ ‘She has an organ of great power and compass,.. The lower and middle notes are excellent and it was only when she strained her voice to the highest pitch that it became harsh and unpleasing...  we have seldom witnessed a debut of one so young from which we could augur a more brilliant future... [she] bids fair to be one of the chief musical ornaments of our stage..’ (Literary Gazette) 

 

Father didn’t stay in the background. He came on with the young singer on her first night when she took her calls.

 

Miss Delcy followed up in Lacy’s versions of Freischütz and Fra Diavolo and the response seemed positive: ‘she has all the requisites by nature to make a fine singer. Her appearance is prepossessing, her enunciation clear and distinct, and her voice powerful, well toned and of large compass. As Agatha … she was loudly and deservedly applauded.’ ‘If this young lady will not fancy herself already a first-rate singer we have great hopes of her becoming such’.Report had it that ‘Mr Lacy is getting up one of Boieldieu’s operas for his daughter…’ but it didn’t happen. Mr Hammond’s management went belly up, and Miss Delcy’s starring season came to an end.

 

In June, Miss Delcy was seen in a pasticcio entertainment staged for Mr Dowton’s Benefit, but she was almost immediately thereafter heard of in France. Painfully prepared paragraphs were floated back to the London papers: [‘Miss Delcy] has created no little sensation in the musical world … The most distinguished judges here (M Berlioz among the number) place this lady’s voice at once amongst the very finest of the day, and pronounce her style from its breadth, musician-like purity and dramatic expression, as altogether unrivalled in France since the regretted retirement of Mademoiselle Falcon…’

‘Elle a chanté avec grand succès pendant la dernière saison a Drury Lane’ echoed Le Gazette Musicale de Paris assuring that ‘elle fait sensation dans le monde musicale’. The ‘sensation’ doesn’t seem to have left too many traces.

I spot her at 1843 – ‘Signora Caterina Delci, pupil of Pasta’ – billed, and widely paragraphed, to sing in La Sonnambula with Gardoni at La Scala, but ‘La rappresentazione nella quale doveva cantare la signora Delci fu protratta per ignoti cagioni’. Embarrassingly, the British newspaper Brother Jonathan reported her as a ‘great sensation’ in the part. In 1844, she shows up (or was announced, at least) at the Teatro Filarmonico, Verona (Il Barbiere di Siviglia) and Venice … where, The Liverpool Post agreeably printed, she apparently somewhere showed ‘a versatility unknown since Malibran’. But it doesn’t say where and how. Elsewhere, it was paragraphed that she had become ‘the favourite pupil of Pasta’. The Italian press said she had studied ‘several months’ with Pasta.

In 1844, the Lacys returned to Britain, and on 1 October Miss Delcy again took to the Drury Lane stage, this time under the management of Alfred Bunn, as Cinderella. The response was not enthusiastic: ‘[She] has been absent for three years in Italy and now returns to play one of her old characters scarcely as well as ere she left her native country’. She followed up again with Freischütz and Fra Diavolo, but was no competition for The Bohemian Girl or for Balfe’s new The Daughter of St Mark. After a few performances, Miss Delcy was seen no more.

 

A few months later, Mr Lacy made one more throw as a star-maker. In August, he and Catherine, along with Liverpudlian tenor Fred Gardner, who had played supporting parts with them at Drury Lane, set out for America. Once again, the puff flew high, and once again – and with even more vigour than in Britain – the press split into pro-Delcy (‘This debut will be one of the most brilliant ever witnessed in this city’ puffed the New York Herald) and anti-Delcy camps. Lacy apparently had the New York Herald firmly behind him: which automatically meant that he would find opposition elsewhere. And poor Miss Delcy? She just went on and sang.

She sang first on 15 September at the Park Theatre in La Sonnambula with Gardner as leading tenor and William Brough as Rodolfo. ‘One of the most successful debuts on record’, trumpeted The New York Herald, at the head of the approving press. When that press reached England, the Musical World reacted: ‘If this be true of Miss Delcy, then is Miss Delcy another Miss Delcy that the Miss Delcy who appeared at Covent Garden as Zerlina in Fra Diavolo? We shall be glad to hail her back to England thus wonderfully advanced beyond her former self’. Lacy (who took the baton for the Delcy performances, and apparently, thus, put up the backs of another section of the press and performers) followed up with Cinderella and the rest of his repertoire, and then continued on to Philadelphia (Chestnut Street Theatre) and Baltimore for opera and concerts ‘with pretty good success’ reported the Herald ‘they gave a concert in Baltimore which was numerously and fashionably attended’.

On 17 November, they reopened in New York, with a new attraction: America’s first Lucia di Lammermoor. This time, the press controversy really moved into high gear, and some of the pro- papers deserted the camp. The Broadway Journal, which had allowed the prima donna to be ‘young, showy and attractive in her manner besides being a singer of no ordinary merit’, now howled: ‘The performance of Lucia di Lammermoor was as good a specimen of musical murder as we have witnessed’. The New York Heraldpersisted ‘a very select and fashionable audience… Miss Delcy has much improved during her southern tour and sings the music of Lucia with taste and feeling ... a rich mezzo-soprano voice and great artistical skill’.

Catherine’s final role in New York appears to have been that of Rosetta in Love in a Village, which she played on 3 December 1845 for William Brough’s Benefit, and on the 5 December she appeared for her own Benefit as Lucy of Lammermoor (sic), before 'her final performances in America' at the Howard Athenaeum, Boston, from 16 December, where she sang Der Freischütz, still supported by Mr Gardner ‘principal tenor from Drury Lane Theatre, London’… and still puffed extravagantly … ‘Miss Delcy’s first evening at the Athenaeum will not fail to crowd the hall with a large audience even for that popular lace of resort, and as far as may be judged from the reputation of this accomplished artiste …’

The Lacys returned to England, where Miss Delcy’s ‘first appearance since her return from America’ was billed on 4 May 1846 at the Theatre Royal, Dublin. She played The Maid of Judah to Fred Gardner's Ivanhoe and Lucia di Lammermoor to his Edgar and continued on for a series of performances at the Liverpool Adelphi (La Sonnambula).

There don’t seem to have been many more. 

 

Lacy put on some lecture concerts (‘Handelian opera concerts’) at the Hanover Square Rooms in May 1847 in which Catherine sang the illustrations with Maria Hawes, Charles Manvers and Henry Phillips … but, thereafter, she seems to have left the public arena.

By the 1851 census she is ‘a music teacher’. In 1861, with her parents and her sister, at 7 Euston Rd, she is ‘teacher of music and languages’.

Things did not, thenceforth, go well for the Lacy family, it seems. Before Rophino Lacy died, on 20 September 1867, they were reduced to advertising in the press for financial help.

Catherine and Sarah can be seen in the 1871 census at 51 Great Russell Street – an address later more famous as the home of Pear’s Soap, and nowadays, less famously, as a Starbucks coffee house – but, after that, I see them no more.

It seems that Sarah Groenima Lacy died in 1878. And Catherine is the ‘Catherine Josefa Lacy’ listed in the Pancras death records for 1889. If those records are correct, at 71 years of age, she was a tiny bit older even than I guessed.

 

‘Miss Delcy’ did not entirely vanish from the musical world after her abandonment of the stage. A handful of songs have survived for which she provided words (to her father’s music) and/or music. ‘By the dark mountainside’, ‘Whither, whither away’, ‘Somebody’s waiting’ and ‘Children of the earth, farewell’ by ‘C J D’ or ‘Catherine J Delcy’ did not make her any more fame than her stage exploits. But at least they were not puffed out of existence.

 

Victorian Vocalists: the bolshie basso from Alsace

 

DECK, [?Joseph] Richard (b Guebwiller, Alsace, 27 September 1821; d London, 1882)

 

The career of the bass singer, Richard Deck, is somewhat murked in mystery. In fact, very little would be remembered about him at all, were it not for the fact that he, apparently, at some stage during whatever years he spent in England, had an encounter with the writer George Bernard Shaw, which has resulted in his being mentioned in all those books written, down the years, about Mr Shaw. 

In those biographies we are told that he was ‘an Alsatian basso profundo opera singer’ with extremist (anarchist, communard, Proudhonist) political views, that he was ‘a brother of the famous French ceramist’, Joseph-Théodore Deck (1823-1891), that Shaw spent, at one time, ‘three nights a week visiting his house … to learn French and help Deck improve his English. .’ at which time, the singer was ‘a poverty-stricken old man … with a room in Kentish Town’. Not that old! He died at 60. Shame that they don’t specify when this happened. 

 

My own first sighting of Richard Deck, as a vocalist, occurs 14 March 1846, at the concert given by one Mlle Péan de la Rochejagu, at the Paris Hôtel de Ville, singing her operetta Lully with Mesdames Sabatier and Cico. The next, in February 1848, when, with his ‘belle voix de basse’, he turns up at a concert given by MM Savart, Ropicquet and Mlle Girod, chez Mons Fite, in Paris, alongside a Mlle Boutet ‘pupil of Rubini’.

 

I spot him next, in January 1851, as ‘première basse et des Hermann-Léon’ at the theatre of Montauban, in a season opening with Lucie de Lammermoor: ‘M. Deck, première basse, dont le timbre de voix est parfaitement approprié à la nature des rôles dits de Hermann-Léon, chante avec facilité, et prend une bonne part au succès des pièces. Dans la Dame blanche, il a toujours été convenable, et, certes, le rôle qu'il remplissait n'est pas écrit pour faire briller l'artiste’.

‘Le rôle un peu difficile du capitaine Rolland (Mousquetaires de la reine) a été mal joué, mais bien chanté par M. Deck. Ce jeune artiste manque d'expérience, d'habitude, mais sa voix est fort belle. C'est un bloc de marbre d'où peut jaillir un chef-d'oeuvre; il n'y a qu'à le travailler, le ciseler et le polir’.

In Le Barbier de Séville ‘L'air de la Calomnie, a également valu des bravos à M. Deck’. 

The company also included a young and pretty Madame Deck who seems to have been more skilled on the piano than as the Queen in La Part du diable and Isabelle de Bavière in Charles VI.

 

Then, in 1857, he turns up in London, vaguely mentioned as being ‘primo basso profundo from the Grand Opera at Dresden’. The occasion is Jullien’s Benefit at the Royal Surrey Gardens (29-30 June), for which Deck was engaged as a deputy for an ailing Karl Formes. He sang ‘In diesem heil’gen Hallen’ and joined in a selection from Don Giovanni with the Gassiers, which earned him praise for ‘a first-rate organ and knew how to use it’.

 

In the 1857-8 season, Richard Deck was seen regularly on the concert platforms of London, usually with his Zauberflöte aria. I spot him at the Réunion des arts, singing Carafa’s ‘Le Valet de chambre’ with Mme Borchardt ('Made a great impression  by the quality of his powerful bass voice, and the energy of his style'); at Jullien’s concerts at Her Majesty’s Theatre giving ‘La ci darem’ with Jetty Treffz; at the Crystal Palace with Mme Borchardt, and with Mlle Finoli, giving Mazel’s ‘L’orage à la grande chartreuse’; at St Martin’s Hall, with Spohr’s Faust aria ‘Stille noch dies Wuthverlangen’ and the inevitable Sarastro aria, or, billed as ‘the celebrated German basso’ at the Alhambra Monstre Concerts. On 27 March 1858 he was on the bill at the opening concerts of the St James’s Hall.

In May and June of 1858, he appeared in a whole run of public and private concerts, the last of which on 16 July at the Crystal Palace, alongside Sims Reeves, Louisa Pyne, the Weisses and Charlotte Dolby, and giving his ‘Isis und Osiris’ ... in Italian.

 

Richard Deck had evidently been well enough appreciated during his year or so on English platforms, but the 1858 season done, he simply vanishes. No little British paragraphs saying ‘Herr Deck who is so well-known here ... is now doing such-and-such’. Nothing. Where is he?

 

And thus it stays for a whole decade. Until, in April 1869, he resurfaces in London, at the New Philharmonic Society, with his same old Zauberflöte aria, and launches into a second period, of little more than a year, on the British concert platform. The engagements were, this time, a little less classy and a little less frequent, and after just a fair season Deck went out on the road, apparently as a replacement for Perunini (the Bath press suggested that ‘Perunini’ was Deck under another name), singing the bass music in a little concert party put together by Louisa Bodda Pyne and her husband. He gave his Zauberflöte and ‘Miei rampolli’ and joined in the company’s ensemble music, for something like six months around some medium and small provincial dates. And here, for the first time in ages, I see Madame Deck (the same one?) accompanying her husband, in a masonic concert.

 

Back in town for the 1870 season, he turns up just occasionally on bills of mostly second-rate concerts, ‘Herr Ricardo Deck’ accompanied by ‘Mme Deck’ (4 May), and the last appearances which I have spotted are on 10 July 1870, at Madame Montserrat’s concert, singing a French operatic trio, and in 16 July 1870, at a charity affair, in which he performed an aria from Le Châlet and the Carafa duet.

My last sighting of him is in an advertisement, in October of the same year, seeking engagements from a boarding house at 45 Tavistock Square. Well, no. My last sighting is in the death records of the British nation, which include a Richard Deck who died in St Pancras in 1882, at the age of 59. I imagine it is he. Or is it?

 

Because, peculiarly enough, Richard Deck does not seem to appear in any other official document that I can find, and notably in the censi. Maybe his ‘anarchist’ politics included such civil disobediences as skipping censi.

 

But, after the Franco-Prussian war, Richard Deck of London filled in a form declaring his date and place of birth as an Alsatian 'optant' -- choosing French nationality -- so we have at least one solid fact (on his say so) to go on. Son of François-Pierre Deck (1789-1846) and Rose née Ferne (1791-1852)? Of course, it means his age on his death certificate is wrong, but that's nothing unusual ... 

 

So, there it is. A very incomplete record of the life and career of a very curious basso. Maybe more will surface some day. Maybe all those ‘empty’ years may be filled. And maybe not. But for the meanwhile, here you are, ye next hundred Dickens dissectors! The truth about the old man in the garret, for your footnotes! Gimme a credit!

 

PS In an Alsatian journal of 1933 I find .. "Richard Deck, brother of Théodore Deck ... was Königlicher Hofsánger in Dresden .. went to England and sang with his wife, a good pianist, in many concerts". Many? When? Where?

 

Victorian Vocalists: A brace of British bassos ..

 

One British bass of the period leads to another ...  Morley, Weiss, Gregg, Brough ... and nearly every one of these was exported over the oceans ..

This one wasn't. And he may have been one of the best of them all.

HINCHCLIFFE, Thomas (b Stainland-within-Lindley, Yorks 21 March 1820; d Dombey Street, Halifax 12 May 1880).

 

William Hinchcliffe of Stainland was a tailor. He wed one Mary Taylor on 26 December 1819, and, thereafter, they produced at least ten children to fill their home in Priestley Alley. Father William is said to have been musical and, in good Yorkshire fashion, his sons followed in his musical ways. One of them, the eldest, Tom, would even make a profession of it.

 

Tom began his life following in his father’s footsteps as an apprentice tailor – the other boys worked as woolcombers etc – but, in 1848, he got a job as a bass singer at the Leeds Parish Church (25 guineas per annum), and he and his wife, Emily or Emelia née Holroyd, and their two young daughters moved to Leeds.

I first spot Tom in 1850, featured as bass soloist with the Leeds Choral Society, singing with Miss Mountain, Amelia Atkinson, and a Mr Turton, in their performance of The Mount of Olives and performing Spohr’s ‘The Hunter’. By June 1851,  the local press could report ‘he has now become a great favourite’, and he continued on to perform as a vocalist (and occasionally a clarinettist), outside his church duties, in Leeds, Barnsley ('we have not had so fine a bass singer for some time') Huddersfield, Sheffield, Bradford, Lancaster, Preston, Ossett, Dewsbury, Settle, Bramley, Bingley and other local towns, both in concert and in works such as The Messiah, Elijah (14 April 1852), The Creation or Acis and Galatea alongside Mrs Sunderland, Mary Whitham, Emma Thomas, George Inkersall and other Yorkshire stars.

He resigned his post at the Parish Church in May 1852, in 1854 his two daughters died, and, soon after, Hinchcliffe left Leeds to return to his native Halifax area, taking up positions at the local Parish Church, the Beverley Minster, with the West Yorkshire Militia Band and the Stainland Brass Band, while pursuing, as ever, his 'day job' as a pub landlord. In the 1861 census he can be seen presiding at the Halifax Woolshops Talbot Inn, and in 1871 at the Mason’s Arms, Gauxholme.

I see him last on the platform in 1872. In 1878 'one of the best bass vocalists that Yorkshire has produced' suffered a stroke and he died two years later.

 

His little obituary notes say that he sang in London, and before Queen Victoria. I haven’t found a reference to this occasion, but if it were so, I imagine that it was on one of the occasions when the Yorkshire choirs visited London. After all, who would look after the pub...?

 

 *******

Here's another, from the other end of England .. ...

LANSMERE, Richard [HUGGETT, Richard] (b Strood, Kent x 9 July 1837; d 745 Classon Avenue, Brooklyn 3 January 1919)

 

Richard Huggett was born near Rochester, the second son of a painter and decorator of the same name and his wife Susannah, and he trained as a musician. Pianist, organist and conductor. He can be seen in the 1861 census, living in Great Berkhampstead, and listed as ‘professor of music’.

 

However, Mr Huggett also sported a fine bass-baritone singing voice, and in the early 1860s he decided on a change of direction. And a change of name. Mr Huggett took upon himself the surname of ‘Lansmere’.

 

Mr Lansmere was seen, from 1862, often in first-class company, at Collard’s Rooms, the Beaumont Institution ('Il Balen', 'Sulla poppa'), for Mr Filby at the Victoria Hall ('Farewell, if ever fondest prayer'), at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in Howard Glover’s concerts ('Farewell, I did not know your worth'), at the Hanover Square Rooms ('The Norse King's Wooing'), St James's Hall ('Chrystabel') with the Vocal Association, at the concerts of Aptommas, Miss Chipperfield, Clinton Fynes (‘Autumn Song’), Frederick Archer, Harriet Tennant et al, as well as in the suburbs and near counties, including, of course, often the Chatham and Rochester area ('Arm, arm ye brave, 'With Pious Hearts', 'Rejoice O Judah', 'If doughty deeds'' 'A pearl I boast is mine'). In 1868 he travelled to Dublin as part of a Brousil Family concert party tour with Mr and Mrs Frederic Archer and Wallace Wells (‘Eri tu’, Angelina’s ‘Sir Marmaduke’).

 

In early 1870, as the baritone of Stanley Betjemann’s little touring opera company, he took part in the operatic performances briefly mounted at St George’s Hall. His Valentine in Faust won fine reviews, and it was recorded that he was encored in ‘Even Bravest Heart’. When he played in Maritana with Betjemann at the same venue the press commented ‘He has only recently taken to the stage … He sings with care and always with appropriate rendering. In all probability he has a future before him.’

I spot him in concert in Dublin, in a concert Sonnambula with Pauline Rita and Perren (‘full-toned bass voice’) and then back in small-time touring opera, managing a virtual co-operative troupe with conductor Isidore de Solla and tenor Francis Gaynar (Maritana, La Sonnambula, Il Trovatore, Faust, Martha, Fra Diavolo).

 

About this time he settled in the Birmingham area, and during the 1870s he can be seen in concerts there (‘The Vagabond’, ‘Ruddier than the cherry’, ‘The King’s Highway', ‘Sulla poppa’, ‘Sir Marmaduke’, ‘Jack’s Yarn, ‘The Village Blacksmith’), but in 1881 he was back on the operatic road with William Parkinson, and with the Walshams, in a company carrying much the same repertoire as before.

 

In 1883, he appeared at the Crystal Palace as Mephistopheles in Faust, in Maritana, in Benedict’s Graziella for Temple and Faulkener Leigh, before joining up with the Offord family operetta troupe. His connection with the Offord-Cole-Gilbert families would endure: In 1887 he created the role of Luis Pasha in Parry Cole’s operetta The Romance of the Harem at Kilburn, and the following month, Albert Gilbert’s cantata Abdallah at St George’s Hall.

 He continued to tour in small opera companies, and won paragraphs in the papers when, as Devilshoof in The Bohemian Girl, he fell from a bridge bearing the baby. Several years later, he was still introducing the ‘accident’ into his performance, now with Valentine Smith’s opera, and at London’s Olympic Theatre, and still fooling press and public.

 In 1890 (6 May), Lansmere left England, and emigrated to America. The shipping lists for the Lydian Monarch show Mr Lansmere, aged 50 ,accompanied by a 29 (?!) -year-old Mrs Lansmere, with a Louis aged 15 and a Maud aged 11. Something doesn’t add up familywise (he was single in the 1881 census) but I daresay there is an explanation. Of course there is an explanation. Mr Huggett had finally married. 

And he had married (March 1889) a curious lady. The ‘widowed’ Marie Elizabeth Hasslacher. Marie said on her wedding banns that she was 39 years old, and the daughter of Colonel Frederick Foster Burlock. So the children were undoubtedly little Hasslachers. But Colonel F F Burlock was a Yale man, so his facts are well recorded, and he was born in 1837. And said to be childless. How then was he Marie’s father? And if her age is wrongly recorded, how would she have a 15 year-old son? Curious?

 

But she did indeed have such a son. Because when 'Mary Haslacher' sued Louis C Hasslacher for alimony, in 1877, the court report noted ‘a 14 month-old child’ on her lap in the box! The evidence during this suit, on her life and history, was colourful, to say the least. And she didn’t get her alimony. She was said to be 29 (she had admitted to 34 on her ship's manifest, shortly before) and her children were said to be born 20 June 1874 ('Louis von Hasslacher') and 2 August 1876, but Hasslacher, though admitting fatherhood of at least one child, denied marriage. She said all sorts of things. And gave all sorts of names. Of which Burlock was not one. He was, it appears, but a previous lover, and allegedly the father of a first (dead?) child. Amazingly, she won her ‘married or not married’ suit.

 

Anyway, Mary/Marie was also a performer, under the name of ‘Marie Gurney’. Which may or may not have been her actual name. And variants. A large performer, as she weighed in at some 200lbs. She had, so it was said, gone to Italy in 1867 to study, allegedly at some time married the Rev Dale of London, afterwards sang in the chorus with Strakosh, played Little Buttercup in several small American Pinafore companies, and acted in melodrama. She seemed to have a connection with Britain however (where F F latterly lived and died) and she is obviously the ‘Miss Gurney’ travelling to Britain on The City of London which was also taken by the Lydia Thompson troupe and by a Mr Hasslacher in 1873. Which is when Marie said, improbably, that she got married. A ‘May Gurney’ is seen on the British provincial stage (Hans the Boatman) in the 1880s. In 1878 'Marie Gurney' can be seen in minor operetta in America, with soprano Charles Heywood, claiming to be 'of Her Majesty's Theatre, London', in 1879 in HMS Pinafore at the Standard Theatre (as 'Kate Gurney' ?) with the downmarket Laurent/Corelli team, Clorinda to the Cinderella of Eva Mills in Brooklyn (1880) ... 

 

The Lansmeres and children arrived in America and set up as singing teachers with ‘St George’s School’ in Brooklyn, Marie claiming to be ‘of the symphonic conservatoire, Milan’ and to have sung with Nilsson. Apparently they made a droll couple, the tubby ‘Madame Marie Ernst (sic) Lansmere’ and her husband ‘Professor Lansmere’ with his long hair, moustachios and imperial.

 

Marie’s ambitions, however, went further. She wanted to start her own comic opera company. And she did. The Marie Gurney Opera Company, with Richard Lansmere, late of the Olympic Theatre, London, playing Buttercup and Corcoran in Pinafore (Elaine Gryce being Josephine!), La Mascotte, a rewritten The Bohemian Girl as The Gypsy Queen (played by Marie), a potted Les Cloches de Corneville and The Mikado were played in venues in Brooklyn, New Jersey and in variety houses for a couple of seasons. The 'assistant business manager' and an occasional performer was Mr Louis Gurney. Lansmere was conductor.

Alas, Mrs Lansmere-Hasslacher-Hoggett (sic) ended up in the Supreme Court of New York, charged with not paying her bills and loans. Which definitively knolled the knell of the company. Their costumes and scenery were auctioned off. The school seems already to have vanished. Richard, however, had steady work as a church singer at various Roman Catholic churches and, as late as 1901, I see him at singing regularly St Charles Borromeo’s Church, alongside British tenor Francis Gaynar. Marie gave occasional entertainments.

My last sighting of the pair – Richard and Mary (sic) -- is in the 1910 census, still in Brooklyn’s East 35th Street, with 32 year-old Maud G Haslocher (sic), born England of a German father and a Connecticut mother. The child both its parents had abandoned at the age of seven. Mary has a Connecticut father and an English mother. She admits to having borne five children, two of whom are living, he to being a teacher... 

 

Well, there are obviously ins and outs to this family that we needn’t follow. Maud is alone in Lynbrook, NY, by 1920, a stenographer for a typist company. Richard Lansmere had died -- of heart disease and senility -- in Brooklyn. on 3 January 1919 'retired musician, aged 81, widower'. Maud had signed his death certificate: 'daughter'. Marie had died 1 August 1913 at Mineola NY. Allegedly 62. 

 

The music press didn't notice the passing of one who had led such a persistently small-time, but thoroughly full, life as Victorian vocalist.

PS One knows not to trust Wikipedia, but far worse is this AI thing that Google is attempting to promote. Quoting me - me! - they aver that Lansmere was hired to play Ralph in Pinafore. Goodness! A bass Rackstraw. Why do they do this?

Mrs Alban Croft

 

Many is the time I have searched history to match a photograph or portrait of a singer with his or her story. this time it's the other way round. I have the story ... but no picture.  Revelling in my success in disrobing the tale of Mrs Elwood Andrea, I lingered a little in the letter 'A' and turned my attentions to Alban Croft or, more especially, his rather more talented wife ....

CROFT, Mrs Alban [CROFT, Elinor] (née GRIFFITHS) (b Church Street, Widcombe 26 December 1813; d Dublin, 22 January 1878)

 

Alban Joseph Croft (b Llanarth, Monmouth 22 June 1803; d 53 Leinster Road, Dublin 5 December 1891) ‘son of James Croft of the Park, Llantilio Crossenny, afterwards of Troy, by Anne daughter to Charles Hyde of Hyde End, co Berks’, a family which was worthy of inclusion in a contemporary History of Monmouthshire, was a ‘professor of music’ in London in the 1830s. My earliest sighting of him as a performer, 'a pupil of Garcia', in January 1829, is singing in a concert at Bath. However, when he appeared at Mme Dulcken's concert in 1834 (7 June, 'E serbata') at London's King's Concert Rooms, it was billed as 'his first public appearance'.

 

On 28 July 1831, Croft was wedded, at All Souls, Marylebone, to Miss Elinor Griffiths, a teenaged lady, also 'of Bath', whose 'natural and lawful father' was a 'hatter, hosier and glover' called Walter, and whose mother, Jane Seymour Griffiths (apparently a stay and corset-maker) witnessed the ceremony. Miss Griffiths – to be known for the next forty years and more as ‘Mrs Alban Croft’ -- was possessed of a strong soprano voice, and from 1837 she was put in evidence on several occasions in important positions in the London operatic stage.

 In 1837 and 1838, the Alban Crofts – baritone and soprano – turn up togetherr in a number of London concerts. The first of these I have noticed is Mr Kellner’s (April 1837) where they performed Donizetti’s Torquato Tasso duet ‘Colei Sofronia Olinda egli si appella’ together and The Times commented: ‘the lady and gentleman have both very powerful voices and are possessed of good taste’. They gave concerts of their own in both years, appeared at the Hanover Square Rooms, and in 1838 I see Mrs Croft taking part in a concert at the Surrey Theatre alongside several Italian opera vocalists. And it was paragraphed in the press that the couple were to star in a new English opera, by Rooke.

 

On 9 March 1839, however, Elinor found herself thoroughly among the Italians, for the young singer was hired by Laporte for the Italian opera, and launched (‘Madame Croft her first appearance on the stage’) at the opening of his season as Antonina in Belisario. The occasion was evidently something of a disaster. This time, The Times found nothing to like: ‘an Englishwoman we presume from he pronunciation of the National anthem’ ‘without the slightest pretensions to the position, her voice is weak, her intonation most defective, and her acting inanimate...’. ‘Could not sing in tune’ dismissed another critic.

 

The Crofts returned to the concert world, but, before the year was out, Mrs Croft was given a second theatrical chance, this time in English opera at Drury Lane. She appeared as the Fairy Queen to the Cinderella of Miss Delcy (‘Mrs Alban Croft came out well as the Fairy Queen, her voice is powerful but the part is too small to allow of a decided opinion 'a fine quality of voice and indications of good natural taste'). A few days later, however, she was put up as Polly Peachum, alongside Mr Frazer and Mrs Waylett, and the same paper which had damned her so roundly at Her Majesty’s Theatre wrote: ‘Her voice is of singular power, completely filling the house, and in the higher passages, which so much predominate in the part of Polly, she displays a compass even equal to her power. Nature already having given her so much power, there is no occasion for her to force her voice, which she sometimes does, and thus produces a sound deficient in sweetness. For ornament she has too great predilection ... she buries the native melody beneath a load of adornments. This was last night the more disappointing, as she invariably began her songs exceedingly well, proceeding tastefully and evenly until she at once dissipated the charm by a heterogenous flourish or a note artificially sustained ... we recommend her to prefer simplicity in the singing of an old English melody to a perpetual display. With her fine voice, pleasing person, and her agreeable notion of acting, it is completely in her power to take a good position on the stage, and if she des not attain this, it will be her own fault…’

 

She followed up as Rosetta in Love in a Village (‘graceful singing of the airs and the fine expression of a countenance which lights up with musical intelligence and beauty’ ‘a very pleasing representative of the supposed village maid’) with Frazer, Leffler, Mrs Waylett and Miss Betts, as Lucy Bertram in Guy Mannering, Diana Vernon in Rob Roy ('with considerable taste and effect'), Lisette in an English version of Boieldieu's Le Nouveau Seigneur du Village (My Lord is not my Lord) with Henry Phillips, and as Aeolia in The Mountain Sylph (‘The quality of Mrs Albin Croft’s voice is really excellent, combining the richest tones with great pathos and purity of expression ..’), before Mr Hammond, the manager, went broke, owing her £36.13.4d

 

Mrs Croft repeated her Mountain Sylph (with her husband as Hela) and The Beggar's Opera at the Surrey Theatre, and they played extensively in the British provinces (Der Freischütz, My Lord is not my Lord, Guy Mannering, La Sonnambula, Fra Diavolo, No!, Rob Roy, Rosina, No Song no Supper etc) most often in a threesome with tenor Shrivall, ending up in Dublin where Frazer was tenor and where Cinderella was produced. This time Elinor took the title-role. They also played The Mountain Sylph, Amilie, La Sonnambula, Fra Diavolo, The Slave, Lucia di Lammermoor &c as they continued around Britain. Oddly, the London census of 1841 shows Elinor and Alban in John Street, Charing Cross, with theri three children, (and there were more to follow ) but it was not until the beginning of 1843 that she surfaced for a third time on the London stage, this time at the Princess’s Theatre, where she was apparently engaged to cover prima donna Eugenia Garcia as La Sonnambula. 

During the season, she was cast in the leading role in Mrs Gilbert a’Beckett’s opera Little Red Riding Hood, and the metropolitan press delivered a third verdict: ‘Having improved vastly since she was last before a London public she is now a very pleasing and interesting vocalist with the advantage of considerable personal attractions. There is no great feeling in her singing, there is nothing that approaches an inspiration, but her style is good, her execution neat and in the distribution of light and shade she evinces a calculated taste and judgement. The command over her voice, which is perfect in most instances, fails her occasionally in the high notes...the finale, which is a piece to display the execution of the prima donna, like so many in the modern Italian operas, she achieved with great credit.’

However, this was her last London stage appearance. In the mid-1840s, Alban Croft took up a church engagement in Dublin, and thereafter he, his wife, and their family of musical children were seen only rarely in performance in England. Mrs Croft performed occasionally in opera – I have noticed her in Scotland and Liverpool (1845 La Sonnambula) with Sims Reeves, and playing in Lucia di Lammermoor in Ireland – but reserved her appearances, thereafter, largely to concerts and to church singing, mostly in Dublin, through until the 1860s.

 

Alban Croft held engagements at the University Church and at St Xavier’s Chapel, where his eldest son, Hamilton Croft (b 1834; d Dublin 4 August 1887), subsequently succeeded him. 

Daughters Marie (Mary), Celia and in particular Kate, also appeared as singers.

 

Croft also penned an amount of published music, of which a ‘My beautiful, my own’ (1842) -- sung by Mr and Mrs Croft and by Sims Reeves -- seems to have been the most performed. The words, by one Irish J Halford, were judged good, Croft's music 'indifferent', but Reeves gave it at the prestigious London Wednesday concerts, and plugged it solidly.

Geraldine St Maur: or The Blogger bloggered ...

 

Blogger tells me I have posted 1639 articles. And have had over a million viewers. Maybe, but Blogger's statistics have always been rather iffy.

However, every single one of those articles -- whether diary, travelogue, theatre review or good old plain research has one thing in common: they are each and every one 'all my own work'.

Number 1640 is, therefore to be marked with a white stone.

I don't know how and why I got into delving into the Who Was Who of C19th members of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Anyway, I did. And for a goodly while there, I daily divested the once well-known and less well-known Cartesians of their stage name, and opened up their real lives a little. Some, of course, were less than obliging: a few positively infuriating, and these were confined to a dungeon known after its most opaque occupants as the 'Too Hard Box, or the Millie Vere-Geraldine St Maur Box'.

But I do not give up easily. The years went by, and like Pandora's box, this box -- one-by-one -- let various of its prisoners escape. On 13 July 2021 I nabbed 'Millie Vere'

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2021/07/lord-love-you-millie-vere-or-out-of.html

So the 'Too Hard Box' had to be re-named. It became the Geraldine StMaur Box. Until today.

Now, there are a number of learned folk who profess to be with me in this (useless?) search for the truth about these -- and all sorts of other -- old-time singers. But easily the most diligent is Jeff Clarke of Engalnd's Opera della Luna. So when Jeff writes with a query, I know it's not just idle chatter of an inconsequential matter ...

So here, I let him take up the story. No 1640 is all yours, Jeff!

"It all started with Rose Berend. 

Who?   One of the original cast of Thespis at the Gaiety. For some time I have been pursuing some research into Hollingshead’s Gaiety, a very different place than George Edwardes later more celebrated establishment.  In looking into the original cast of Thespis I saw that little or nothing was known of Rose Berend who played Pretteia.  For anyone who’s interested, she was born Sarah Rose Brunt (soon to become Brent) in 1847. She worked a number of years as Rose de Brent before becoming Berend.  She died in 1930, her death recorded under her married name: Rose Williams. Aged 83.

Rose Berend

With some pride at my digging success, I forwarded my discoveries to the master himself (KG) who replied “Wow!  Well done. Another one bites the dust! Now have a go at Geraldine St Maur”.  

What a dastardly thing to do to an unsuspecting amateur sleuth like yours truly.   Geraldine St Maur was a much travelled member of D’Oyly Carte’s company and the first Peep-Bo in New York. She therefore figures in many advertisements and illustrations, yet nothing hitherto was known of who she was.  I didn’t hold out much hope.

'Geraldine St Maur'

The first thing to discover was that there was a genuine aristocratic lady of that name: the daughter of the Duke of Somerset who made the papers in 1864. There were many references to her in 1864, but only in that year, from then on she was referred to as Lady Geraldine Somerset. But the name must have made an impression on someone wanting a classier identity.

I discovered that the name St Maur is a corruption of Seymour (or is it the other way round?) and that the Somerset St Maurs are descendants and relatives of the ill-fated third wife of Henry VIII.   

I therefore began searches into Seymours who might fit the bill.  None, alas, appeared.  In a last ditch attempt to find the elusive Geraldine I abandoned the Sey and searched just on Moore.  There was a very successful actress Louisa Moore working in the late 1860s and 1870s who turned up in searches frequently, making looking for another lady of the stage with that surname even more tricky. And I almost missed her.  There she was, lurking “disguised” in the 1871 census:  

Yes, Find My Past says she was a medical student, but look more closely at the actual form…  She is a 16 year old musical student living in lodgings with her mother Sarah Ann Moore who made hats for a living. 

10 years earlier she appears on the census as plain Louisa Moore – with her mother Sarah and father James, in a house which they shared with two other families, one a musician.   

 Once again the AI of Find My Past has misread the handwritten form. Louisa was 6 not 4, and born in 1855.  Did their housemate George, a professional musician, have an early influence on the young Louisa? And did she assume a fantasy identity as the aristocratic Lady St Maur?

By 1871 the young musical student had acquired some additional names: Geraldine Louisa Rose Moore. 

I did wonder briefly whether this made her too old as a likely candidate, but not at all. She was two years younger than Leonora Braham and Jessie Bond who were both born in 1853. 

Although the renown of the successful actress, Louisa Moore, would deter our young singer from working under the same name, I believe an advertisement for a charity concert -- in support of the Tichborne Claimant -- at the very minor little King's Cross Theatre in 1872 shows our young Louisa making her debut as an alumna of the Royal Academy of Music, sharing the bill with Mr Lorenzo and his Performing Dogs.  

The question then arises, what was she doing in between this concert and the first appearance of Geraldine St Maur for D’Oyly Carte? 

There was a rather enigmatic young actress called simply Miss Geraldine who appears from time to time throughout the 1870s playing small roles in touring shows. This may or may not be her.

I think the most likely explanation is that she was working as a chorister, if not for D’Oyly Carte, then for Carl Rosa or one of the many other companies that were on the road, whose choristers, as with D’Oyly Carte, were not acknowledged in programmes and certainly not in the press.

We know that she first appears in records as Geraldine St Maur in 1883 when she played a named role in Matrimony, the curtain raiser to Patience on tour, and presumably was one of twenty love-sick maidens in the main opera.  Might she not have been in the chorus for Pinafore and Pirates and worked for Carte for a few years by then, but not had cause so far to be identified by name?  She seems to have played in the 1883 Plymouth pantomime, and ('of Mr D'Oyly Carte's company') as the singing Fairy Queen in The Forty Thieves at Bristol at Christmas 1884 ...

Her D’Oyly Carte career from this point on is well documented elsewhere. After her final appearance with the company, I can find her in just two roles.  

Firstly in August 1912 she joined the cast of a show called A Girl’s Temptation, by the moralising reformer Mrs Morton Powell, which had been on the road since 1910.  It apparently taught its audience “a great moral lesson”, and was largely played in towns where such a lesson was badly needed.  And then finally I find her in 1913 working with Rutland Barrington in Ways and Means. 

Barrington was 60 and still working was largely trading on his Savoy reputation but attempting to further his career as a comic actor. Sadly the theatres that were prepared to take his show were not the most glamorous. Yes, they played Manchester, but at the Royal Osborne Theatre – a grim old playhouse in a rough suburb of the city. Crewe, Burton-on –Trent, and Dewsbury were other dates on the tour. It was certainly not Number 1!

Miss St Maur appears not to have been in the show when it opened in Oxford in January 1913, (maybe still touring with A Girl’s Temptation), but she appears in the cast list the following week in Hastings.

The play did not do well.  This tour folded in April. Barrington returned to the West End to appear in other plays. Ways and Means appears to have been extensively re-written and presented later that year in the West End as The Gilded Pill.  It fared no better. Ms St Maur was not in it.

If Geraldine St Maur was indeed Louisa Moore of Lambeth, then she was nearly 60 by this time.   

And if she was, and never married, then she may have died in Lambeth, aged 63 in the last quarter of 1919.

So that’s my theory. I’m not sure how watertight it is, but that is it.  At least Kurt is convinced, and that’s good enough for me.

And it's good enough for me!  Now I have to find a new name for the "Too Hard Box" of the D'Oyly Carte archives!