Elise Hensler: Not Quite a Queen

 

HENSLER, Eliza [HENSLER, Elise Fredrika] (b La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland, 22 May 1836; d St Marta Palace, Lisbon, 21 May 1929)

 

The American-bred soprano Eliza Hensler had only a short, if pleasing, career as a singer, but she is perhaps (give or take Emilie Ambre) the only Victorian vocalist to have become something near to a regular royal Queen in real life.

 

Miss Hensler was born in Switzerland in 1836. Given the royally-coloured place she was to find in life, her personal details have been minutely recorded by historians, but unfortunately they have been recorded in divergent versions. I think I have, modestly, to leave it to the genealogists of the Portuguese royal family (into which she married) to work out whether her Christian names were Elise or Elisa, Fredrika, Frederica or Friederike, whether her father’s name was Jean/Johann Conrad Hensler or Friedrich Conrad Hensler (born ?Baden, Germany, ?26 June 1811), and whether her mother was née Josefa Hechelbacher or Elizabeth or Lizette or Louise Lörchner or Lörtscher. You would really think that even a morganatic Queen would have that sort of detail carved in stone, wouldn’t you. But no. Some ‘reference works’ even have her born in Vienna, others describe her as a ballerina and an actress. So much for ‘fact’.

 

The Henslers reportedly left Switzerland for Massachusetts when Eliza (as she was later known) was two. So I ought to be able to find them in the American censi of 1840 and 1850, but I can’t. (This could have something to do with the fact that Eliza’s younger sister is reported to have been born in Neuchatel on 19 June 1838, and always said she came to America aged six). My first official sightings of the Henslers are, in fact, on 7 June 1855 when Conrad Hensler, 43, and Elise Hensler 19, return to America on a ship from Europe. The following year, Elise took out her own passport (as ‘Elise F’), but the application form tells us only that she was 5ft 5ins with brown hair and hazel eyes and father is again listed as plain Conrad.

Trivial note: sister Mina Louise (note the Louise) christened one of her multitude of children ‘Fredrika’, so I think ‘Elise Fredrika’ is probably right. She also said her parents were both born in Switzerland and, as above, that the family came to America in 1844. I suppose its of minimal importance, but one does like to get these ‘facts’ right. Maybe, in fact, all these things are got right in a biography of Elise, A Contessa d’Edla written by Teresa Rebelo and published by Editorial Atheneia (ISBN 989 622 031X), but maybe not.

Father has been said to have been ‘a respectable mechanic’, ‘a shoemaker’, ‘a well-educated political refugee’ but most commonly, and doubtless correctly, a tailor. A bundle of addresses for his tailoring business have been suggested and one decidedly precise one has him working in 1851 as a cutter for Messrs Clapp and Gavitt at the corner of Beacon and Tremont, Boston, before setting up in partnership as ‘Hensler and Grothusen’. Unfortunately that same precise piece calls him ‘Adolph Hensler’, but the firm of Gustav A Grothusen and Conrad Hensler, tailors, of 32 Carver Street was (in 1852) a Boston fact, as was that of George P Clapp and George B Gavett of precisely the address given, so the Adolph has clearly to be forgiven.

 

Elise is said to have been discovered (‘attracted in the streets by the rare voice of the young girl …’) by a Springfield singing teacher and former tenor by the name of Guidi (d Albany 1857), and one Thomas Ball, singer turned sculptor, told many years later in the press how he visited Guidi’s studio in Springfield to hear the ‘seventeen or eighteen year old girl’ (she would have been younger) sing. ‘Her parents being in modest circumstances’, he recommended her to get a church choir position and was instrumental in having her engaged at the King’s Chapel, on Tremont and School, where she featured in the quartet with Ball, Julia Weston and Dr Derby. It was the churchgoers, he said, who subscribed to send their soprano to Europe.

 

Elise can be spotted (8 January 1853) singing in Boston with the Germania Musical Society, who also proposed to mount a Benefit to allow her to go overseas. She was gone in a matter of weeks.

 

Another version has her studying with a Signor Corelli, singing at Park Street Church, studying at Emerson School, and so forth, but the picture seems to be that the Henslers spent time in Boston and in Springfield (1848-1851), until the early 1850s when Conrad dissolved his tailoring firm and, in 1853, took his daughter off to Europe.

 

The Henslers went first to Paris, where Elise attended the Conservatoire for a few months, and studied with the elderly G-M Bordogni. It is refreshing to see it reported that she was awarded a ‘deuxième prix’ (most 2èmes have a habit of transforming into 1ers on contact with a newspaper), or, more correctly, a ‘deuxième accessit’ in 1853. From Paris, they continued, in 1854, to Florence and Milan, and Miss Hensler’s name appears in the newsletters sent back to Dwight’s Magazine in Boston by a fellow student, Harrison Millard.

It also appears, in the same year, listed with those of Augusta Albertini and Giuseppe Sinico in the listings for Milan’s Teatro della Canobbiana. This seems to be an error, for the two ladies were indeed at Milan, but both were engaged, alongside Giulia Sanchioli and Catherine Goldberg-Strossi, as prime donne for the season at La Scala. 

 

Neither history nor ‘history’ relates how the nineteen year-old American netted an engagement in such company, but wheels evidently had turned. The name of Prince Poniatowski is mentioned, above all in the extravagant correspondence sent back to America by Boston journalist Frank Boott Goodrich, who also indulged in violent tales of jealous prima donna rivalry (one-sided, of course) on the part of Albertini. Why a proven dramatic soprano of Albertini’s status should have bothered about a pretty, teenaged light soprano is not explained, but Goodrich (‘Dick Tinto’), who spends lines and lines describing the appealing Hensler physique, the success of the girl apparently surnamed ‘l’Americana’ at ‘a private party near Como’, the fact that she was paid a considerable salary rather than paying for the privilege of debuting, as was common, and who hailed her debut as ‘the first notable operatic entertainment offered by an American in Europe’ (rather stigmatising Albertini as ‘an Englishwoman’), was seemingly being a little more than just patriotically supportive. He continued to rail in print at Albertini when the La Scala season was over.

But the fact remains that the La Scala debut of Elise Hensler (December 1854) was a success. Not an earth-shaking success, but the kind of success, as one journalist wrote, that about one debutante in twenty scores in Italy. The vehicle of the occasion was Linda di Chamonix, and the circumstances apparently not propitious: the performance was postponed for theatrical reasons and then Conrad Hensler suffered a stroke. The papers printed ‘a private letter’ in which Miss Hensler expressed herself as having to go on and sing whilst crying for her father. The debutante was considered to have too small a voice for the auditorium, but her pretty, well-trained, accurate voice and charming appearance won through, and ‘la gentilla Hensler’ was a success.

The Scala season continued with Albertini in Trovatore, with Sanchioli in La Vestale and Miss Hensler was scheduled to sing La Sonnambula or Berta in Il Profeta, but I don’t think she did. By May, the Henslers (and Goodrich) were in Paris, and on 7 June 1855 – accompanied by suitable publicity -- they were back in America. Not, it was stressed, for professional reasons (the extended contract, which Goodrich related had been offered to her by La Scala, he said, had been rejected and the present one terminated), but for personal ones.

Nine days later, 16 June 1855, Elise Hensler made her American debut in Linda di Chamonix, playing alongside Brignoli, Bardiali, Rocco and Felicia Vestvali, at New York’s Academy of Music, manager W H Paine, musical director Max Maretzek, 

 

Mr Maretzek, in his autobiographical Sharps and Flats tells of the poorly-dressed, brown-eyes lass who auditioned for the chorus … ah, memoirs! We, of course, know that Elise Hensler’s eyes were hazel. Mr Maretzek was obviously not the moving force behind the sudden acquisition of Miss Hensler for the company, but he ought to have remembered the circumstances better for, in order to allow Elise to debut, Maretzek’s Benefit was postponed for two days. And when it went on (18 June), Miss Hensler sang an act of Linda in it.

Once again, Miss Hensler’s debut was successful. Once again, it caused no great stir, but it was voted agreeable, pleasant and effective and the New York Times, rather less blinded than Mr Goodrich, reported acutely: ‘The quality of Miss Hensler’s voice is sympathetic and sweet. It does not command admiration but beseeches it…’ continuing ‘Her method is the pure Italian, and as far as it goes, admirable…’ and sagely concluding that Miss Hensler would, with experience, be a fine operatic vocalist.

 

Elise spent the next months in occasional concert, beginning 20 June at Boston and following up in her ‘old home town’ of Springfield, in Nahant and in Newport, with her sister [Mina] Louise in support. She is, reported the music press, ‘the protégée of a refined set of Bostonians’ with ‘a voice of virgin sweetness and delicacy’, and moreover ‘the only American prima donna except Biscaccianti who has been liked in Europe’. Hum. Well, we won't go into that!

 

When the next season of opera opened at the Academy of Music, Miss Hensler was engaged, alongside Anna Lagrange as prima donna. She gave her Linda di Chamonix (and sang ‘Hail, Columbia’ in the interval), she sang Elvira to the Masaniello of Brignoli (‘a quiet and genuine success’, ‘A gentle freshness and purity added to much executive power’, ‘an able impersonation’), she was Adalgisa to the Norma of Lagrange and Berthe to her Fidès in Le Prophète (‘admirable acquittal of difficult business’), and when Don Giovanni was produced at the end of the season she sang Elvira to the Anna of Lagrange, the Zerlina of Nantier-Didiée, the Don of  Morrelli and the Leporello of Rovere. ‘Her singing was very sweet but she did not seem to be wholly conversant with her part’, reported the New York Times. But the verdict on Miss Hensler was decidedly positive -- ‘a fair debutante for whom this engagement is, we are sure, but the preface to a charming career ...’, ‘one of the most promising of her age we have ever seen’ (Putnam’s Magazine) – even although it was generally recognised that her voice as yet lacked strength and ‘its greatest charm at present is its freshness’.

The company then went on the road, where Miss Hensler’s roles included Elvira in I Puritani, and returned for a further season in New York, during which Arditi’s opera La Spia (24 March 1856) was given its premiere. Brignoli played the title role, Lagrange his mother, and Elise was Francesca, the jeune premiere. La Spia did not make a mark.

When the opera ended, and Mr Paine retired to restock his vaults, Elise Hensler returned to Boston. In May 1856 she can be seen singing there in concert with Millard and Adelaide Phillipps. A few days later she set sail for Italy.

 

She seems, however, to have stopped off in Paris, for it is there that I spot her next, in June 1857, singing at a concert given by the Sicilian violinist Nicosia. A compatriot with a pen described her as ‘an American who dresses like a Parisienne, pronounces like a Sienese, and sings like a Neapolitan’. She gave, he reported, ‘Caro nome’ and ‘Qui la voce’ ‘with exquisite taste and unimpeachable precision, and above all with immense success’.

In August, she is still in Paris, for she can be seen giving her ‘Caro nome’ at a concert given by a wealthy young American by the name of Hill, alongside a newer American soprano, Cora de Wilhorst.

 

In November 1857 she opened a season at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice, singing opposite the tenor Carrion in Moise and La Sonnambula, and Gilda to the Rigoletto of Varesi. ‘Beautiful and sympathetic, very interesting in passages where sentiment predominates, full of dignity and grace, Miss Hensler adds to all those qualities a charming voice of the nightingale…’ the French press reported, expressing at the same time a longing to see her in La Traviata (‘she would die beautifully’).

From Venice, she continued to the Carlo Felice in Genoa, where she shared the soprano roles over Carnevale with Antoninetta Montenegro, and, indeed, appeared in La Traviata alongside delle Sedie. While her singing was much appreciated her acting was found ‘cold and unimpassioned’. 

 

In April 1858 she was back in Paris, heading for Vienna (26 performances, Rigoletto, Cherubino, Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, Adalgisa), later in the year at the Teatro Mauroner in Trieste and Verona for Merelli (La Sonnambula, Moise), but then I lose track of her until autumn 1859, when she apparently arrived in Portugal as the member of what seems to have been a rather insignificant touring opera troupe. I pick her up in March of 1860, when she is engaged at Lisbon’s Teatro San Carlo, alongside prime donne Marcellina Lotti della Santa and Fortunata Tedesco, and singing Isabella in Robert le diable and Oscar in Ballo in maschera. She had apparently made her first appearance there the previous month in Le Prophète, and also played La Traviata. Her reviews were the same as ever: ‘charmante ... elle a une petite voix mais elle s’en sert avec gout et elle chante juste’. Correct, in tune, charming … if not exactly voluminous. But volume alongside Lotti and Tedesco would have been de trop.

 

Lisbon is where the story of Elise Hensler, Victorian vocalist, comes to an end. It was not just the press and public who found her ‘charmante’: Miss Hensler attracted the attention of ‘Dom Fernando’, Ferdinand [Augustus Francis Anthony] of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (b 29 October 1816), the consort of the late Queen of Portugal, Maria II (d 15 November 1853), father of her seven children, and regent of the country. 

A great deal has been written about their relationship: suffice it that in 1869 Elise Hensler, well and truly retired from the stage and created Countess d’Edla, became the morganatic wife of Ferdinand. He died in 1885, and she lived on – apparently shunning contact – till the age of 93, when she died in her Palace in Lisbon.

Needless to say, the tale of the girl from Boston who ‘was almost Queen of Spain’ has been often put onto paper, with more or less care for facts and more or less enjoyment of fictions.

It is insisted, from time to time, that Elise travelled with her mother. But mother remains a shadowy figure and, like father, what became of her is not recorded. Certainly, on some occasions when it is insisted that ‘mother came too’, she didn’t.

Elsewhere, she is credited with a busy sex life, and the mothering of a number of children. One source mentions two sons by one Miguel Angelo Pereira. And then there is Alice Hensler (Mme Manuel de Acevedo Gomez): allegedly the daughter of Ferdinand and Elise. Or not. But also allegedly born in Paris 25 December 1855 or was it 1856, four or five years before the two are supposed to have become coup-de-foudre acquainted. In 1855, Elise Hensler was, in any case, not in Paris, but singing in concert at the Boston Music Hall (22 December 1855). Maybe 1856? Oh dear, for an almost royal person, Elise Hensler and her family details seem to have been drolly inaccurately recorded.

 

One person whose personal details are well documented, however, is Elise’s sister, [Mina] Louise, who sang with her in concert in Boston days. Louise married Dr Daniel Denison Slade (27 May 1856), and mothered eleven children, amongst whom the painter Conrad Hensler Slade (1871-1949).

 

Elise Hensler lived through the whole of the Victorian period and, indeed, married Queen Victoria’s cousin, so although she was a vocalist for but a handful of years, she probably deserves to fill five pages of this article.

Millard: Singer, soldier, songwriter, customs official and mind reader

MILLARD, [Samuel] Harrison (b Boston, 27 November 1829; d 70 East 120th St, New York, 10 September 1895)

 

Harrison Millard, or Signor Millardi as he aberrantly rechristened himself during a few youthful years, will, in truth, not go down in musical history as a particularly effective Victorian vocalist. However, his name is much better remembered than those of many of his more vocally deserving contemporaries, because of his other musical activities: most especially his achievements as the author and/or composer of some particularly popular ballads in the English drawing room or patriotic styles, and also because of a short, but anecdotally fruitful, career as a military musician.

 

Sam Millard was born in Boston in 1829 (though, for some reason, most references chop a single year off his age), the son of a British-born builder of the same name and his wife Marie or Maria Ham of New Hampshire, and it is said that he took to music at an early age, performing as a boy alto in church choirs and, from 1845, as a soloist with the Boston Handel and Haydn Society. An anecdote has him stepping in, in an emergency, at the age of 15, to sing the tenor part in Samson.

Around 1851, now a tenor, he went to Europe to study, and in April 1853, a ‘viaggatore’ reported back to the hometown press ‘[He} is developing his fine tenor rapidly. I heard him the other evening in a cavatina from one of the operas at the Accademia. His execution of the difficult passages elicited great applause’. Again, in the late part of 1854, laudatory paragraphs about the activities of Millard, and his fellow Bostonians-in-Italy, Adelaide Phillipps, Eliza Hensler and baritone Edward Sumner, filtered back to Dwight’s Magazine. The correspondent was unmistakeably Mr Millard, and I suspect the ‘viaggatore’ may have been as well.

Miss Hensler went on to sing at La Scala, Miss Phillipps to a splendid career, Mr Sumner seems to have vanished: as for Mr Millard, he went back to Boston, where in, November 1854, Dwight chronicled a little private gathering ‘[Mr Millard gave] his friends an opportunity of witnessing the results of three years Italian schooling of the naturally fine tenor voice… all were delighted with the ripe beauty of Mr Millard’s voice.. [he] seems like an Italian artist, without any of the Italian exaggeration’, concluding ‘We cannot doubt Mr Millard will be a delightful concert singer … with the exception of Mr Arthurson, we have not had his equal…’.

Shortly after, Millard gave a public concert at Chickering Hall. He sang an aria from Il Bravo, ‘Questa o quella’, ‘If with all your hearts’, a French chanson, and duets with Mrs E A Wentworth and a fifteen year-old Eliza Davis (who had a cold), and Dwight sportively dubbed it ‘a charming little affair’.

 

During 1855, Harrison Millard appeared in Boston in concert and in oratorio with the Handel and Haydn Society, and at the beginning of 1856 he made what appears to have been (in spite of unspecific ‘debuts’ in Florence and Arezzo) his first appearance in opera, guesting with the Anna Lagrange company, during its visit to Boston. Miss Hensler won praise for her appearance in Linda di Chamonix, but Millard did not: 

‘We wish we could say the same of Mr Millard’s assumption of the role of Fernando in La Favorita. Quite a numerous audience were assembled and he was greeted, at first, with warmth but, further than the courtesies always extended to a debutant, his appearance created no enthusiasm and, but for the energetic and in some cases sublime personification of Leonora by Mdlle Didiée, the opera would have been a failure…’

Millard, however, joined Conrad Borrani and Henriette Behrens in a grandly titled ‘American Opera Company’ which performed some concerts, during April, in Philadelphia, before he returned to Boston, advertisedly ‘from remarkable success in Philadelphia’, to give a ‘Farewell Concert’, prior to leaving again for Europe. The Misses Hensler and Phillipps also took part and, alongside Millard’s ‘Ah si ben mio’, ‘Quando le sere’, ‘You’ll remember me’ and his own ‘Il Pescatore’, he gave ‘Si la stanchezza’ with the latter lady, and trios from Attila and Il Trovatore with both. The ladies were highly praised but ‘Mr Millard was received with less favour … He has a method of forcing his upper notes which is anything but agreeable. In ballad singing, which does not run high, he excels, hence his success in Balfe’s ballad…’

Millard – or Signor Millardi as he had for the nonce become – did not return to Italy, but instead visited England, where he was taken up by Jullien for his concert series at the Surrey Gardens. Dwight loyally copied back a review from the Manchester Examiner of his performance (‘Harri Millard’ this time) in The Creation, praising their boy for ‘a voice of remarkable and beautiful quality’ which, even if his lower notes were adjudged weak,  ‘his style is masterly, we have seldom had to chronicle a more successful debut’, but the British press simply derided his Surrey Gardens ‘La donna è mobile’.

He appeared at Charlotte Dolby’s soirees, at the Beaumont Institute, and in the early part of 1857 was engaged, along with Fred Lablache and the young British mezzo known as Corelli, to support Catherine Hayes in her extensive farewell concert party tour. Back in London, he sang at Alfred Mellon’s Passion Week concerts at Drury Lane, at Woolwich with Frank Mori, at George Case’s monster concert, and, on the occasion of an Exeter Hall Easter Monday Verdi spectacular, sang ‘Questa o quella’ and ‘Parigi o cara’ on a bill with Sims Reeves. Signor Millardi was making his way. In April, he sang the tenor music in the Stabat Mater at the Réunion des Arts with Annie Thirlwall, Annie Lascelles, and the Signor Kinni (who really was Italian) and Gregorio (who wasn’t), and at St Martin’s Hall in the People’s Concerts. He appeared at the Beethoven Rooms for Mme Enderssohn and again with Mrs Macfarren, returned to the Surrey Gardens for Jullien and I spot him, come Christmas, singing in The Messiah at Northampton, alongside Mmes Enderssohn and Huddart and Charles Santley.

In April 1858, he had one more shot at the operatic stage, when he appeared, again with Mme Enderssohn and with old ally Borrani, in Lucrezia Borgia in a very brief J H Tully season. My last sighting of Signor Millardi on the British platform is on 3 June 1858, at a concert given by the Misses Mascall at the Hanover Square Rooms. 

His British sojourn had been neither the success nor the disaster promised by his earliest reviews, but it was now over, and Millard (the Italian pretence now dropped) returned to Boston, its churches and its concert platforms.

There, on 21 February 1859, he featured, alongside Mrs Harwood, J Q Wetherbee and Charles Guilmette, in the title-role of Robert Stoepel’s ‘romantic Indian symphony’ Hiawatha.

By the time of the 1860 census, however, shortly before his marriage to Miss Laura Thompson, he found it fit to describe himself as ‘organist, teacher and music publisher’s reader’.

In 1861, however, he is listed as the tenor of the quartet of New York’s Christ Church, at Fifth Avenue and E35th Street. Mr Millard’s career as a performer was far from finished and it was, indeed, to enter what would turn out to be its most memorable moments.

In 1861, S H Millard joined the army, as a private solider in Company A of the 71st Regiment. His musical talents were put to use, and on 9 May he conducted a guards’ concert at the Navy Yard Barrack, Washington, in which his songs ‘The flag of the free’ and ‘Viva l’America’ were featured. He also sang the apt (?) ‘Let me like a soldier fall’ and, apparently, duetted the Trovatore ‘Miserere’ with Harvey Dodsworth. The occasion caused somewhat of a stir, caused Private Millard and his soldierish and patriotic songs (including ‘Only Nine Miles to the Junction’) to be enormously noticed, published and sold. Apparently flushed with success, Private Millard enrolled in the 19th US Infantry, the regular army, where he was affected to the staff of General Rousseau. He took part in the Battle of Chickamauga (19 September 1863 sq), in the course of which he was wounded, and he retired from the army the 7 November following.

Millard, thereafter, took up a post as a custom-house entry clerk at the New York Customs House while, nevertheless, continuing his efforts as a ‘musician and composer’. In early 1871 it was announced internationally that he was in the throes of composing a four-act opera, Deborah, which ‘if he completes it, will be the first of its kind by an American’. It appears that it was completed, but it was not performed.

He also continued to make appearances as a vocalist, and, in the 1870s, I spot him on a number of occasions singing at Chickering Hall and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

In September 1879, however, he decided to give up his job at the Custom House, and the following year his name began to appear more regularly in the musical and dramatic press. Three new songs, ‘I’ll Open the Gate for you’, ‘The Ships Go Sailing By’ and ‘We Will Be Friends Forever’ were advertised, he mounted a concert (18 February) at the Chickering Hall, and he launched himself, in partnership with W H Singleton, as a theatrical performer. ‘Millard’s Excentriques in Our Photograph Party’ trumpeted the Low’s Opera House, Providence, Rhode Island, bills for an entertainment which was ‘a musical comedietta based on Longfellow’s Evangeline, with music composed, selected, arranged and performed by Millard with the assistance of the Misses Clara Arnaud, Alice Henderson, Charlotte Hutchings et al. When E E Rice, proprietor of the enormously successful burlesque Evangeline, protested about this copycat production, Singleton advertised bullishly that Millard’s piece was ‘far superior to his old and worn out [Evangeline] with its puerile and insipid music and bad puns’. Harrison Millard singing his own ‘When the Tide Comes In’ and ‘Dear Little Heart’ appeared, it seems, for about as many performances as Rice’s piece did in years.

In 1881, he published what he hopefully advertised as ‘a national anthem’ ‘God Save Our President from Every Harm’.

In 1883, Millard jumped on another bandwagon with an ‘operatic’ version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was produced (26 June) by the touring Holman Opera Company with Brookhouse Bowler as Reuben Meredith and Charles O’Connor playing Topsy in travesty, and again in San Francisco in 1894 by Mme Fabbri’s company; and in 1888 he can be seen in San Francisco with an entertainment Fashions in Music, in which he delivered a number of his own songs, as well as baritone arias from La Traviata and Beatrice di Tenda.  He shared a bill with the mind-reading act of a Mr Bishop, and with the whistling Mrs Shaw, and travelled to the Caribbean and Central America with his performance. ‘Mr Millard who has a not very musical and somewhat throaty light baritone or low tenor voice, sang his own songs very well, and received hearty applause’.

 

Latterly, he performed less himself, and devoted himself to promoting his youngest daughter, Marie Millard, who had some success as a comic opera soprano. Marie (b New York, 25 April 1869; d Los Angeles, 12 February 1943) subsequently (19 June 1898) married the musician Louis F Gottschalk.

Millard died of Bright’s disease, in New York, in 1895, but the most popular of his several hundred published songs survived him largely, and parlour ballads such as ‘Whip-oor-will’, ‘Waiting’ and ‘When the Tide Comes in’ and, of course, his once popular patriotic tunes, have earned him a permanent place in the musical literature of nineteenth-century America, which has charitably forgiven him the Excentriques and the mind-reading.

Coming your way soon ...

From a bed (broken hip!) far away from you ....!

Read all about it!

https://sunypress.edu/Books/Q/Queen-of-Burlesque

The dwarf who sang: Henry Collard

 

In the Victorian era, the fashion for childish performers, curiosities and theatre and circus 'freaks' was at its peak. 

But, mostly, it was a fashion. Few of the too-young and little people actually had memorable talent beyond being 'little'. Occasionally a Louisa Vinning or a Julia Mathews would surface, who took her amazing childish vocal talents into skilled and starry adult years. Or the dwarvish minstrel, Japanese Tommy, who amused audiences with his grotesqueries for a good number of years. There were juvenile opera troupes and there were kiddie shows of all kinds, but rarely did any of these come up to adult standard. Their attraction was that they were kiddies. Or miniature men and women. Giving material normally performed by normally proportioned singers, dancers and actors.

Japanese Tommy

The dwarvish performers who are remembered today are largely those who were poured on to the worlds concert stages in the wake of the 'Tom Thumb' promotion. Publicity pays. P T Barnum's Charles Stratton -- under the name of the famous French fairytale -- resulted in a host of midgetmen displayed as Commodore this, Admiral that, General the other and advertised on a myriad cartes de visite. What did they all do ..? Not very much, it seems, excepted be looked at. And 'Tom Thumb' has been, in modern times, identified with Mr Stratton, rather than with his illustrious predecessor-namesakes.

All this, as preface to ...  one little (in inches) man who didn't need to emphasise his height to get splendid review. Because Henry Collard could really sing! 

This photo from 1870. Nineteen years of age, 35 inches in height ... taken in his home town in Kent

So who and why was he?

Henry Collard was born in Knowlton, Kent, the son of Edward Collard ('farmer of 192 acres, employing five men..') a member of a wide and well-known farming family, and of his wife Mary [Denne] née Collard (cousin?) which may explain his dwarfery. One other of their children was born similarly afflicted.

But Henry didn't and his family didn't clearly regard him as 'afflicted'. He was put to music, with a young Kingstone man named Richard Rye, and in his mid-teens began appearing as 'Master Collard' in local village concerts. He was not precisely 'Master'. At eighteen, although he was still described as 'a child with the voice of a man', he was not a child. Only in size. His voice? It seems to have been one of those that slips from boy soprano to alto and thence to a species of tenor.  However, the quality of Henry's organ was evidently appealingly sweet and soft, his diction exemplary, and Mr Rye's teaching of technique sensibly correct, and the whole made up into the armoury of a pleasing young local singer who was heard in the concerts around Canterbury, Faverham', Dover et environs in the later 1860s. The solo singers were usually amateurs, or the choristers from Rochester Cathedral notably the veteran William Makepeace at whose Faversham concert (15 April 1868) I spot our Henry. 

In 1868-9 Henry appeared at a number of such concerts ('The Lover and the Bird', 'Little Nell') where, as far as I can tell, only his singing and not his stature was noticed as being of interest until Show Business came his way in the person of the popular comic vocalist Arthur Lloyd. Mr Lloyd was interested in both Henry's size and his singing. Midgets/dwarves were 'in' thanks to Mr Barnum, and one who could really sing ...?  So he hired him for his 1869-70 concert party tour

It proved a happy hiring. If Henry's size was now the initial attraction ('he resembles Tom Thumb') his ballad singing ('I'd nothing else to do') and his 'remarkably good tenor voice' also won encores and plaudits, and he became a major attraction for the little party. 'The star of the evening [was] a youth about eighteen years old and two feet high ... a very pleasing singer' ... 'the greatest curiosity of the age ... smaller than Tom Thumb or Commodore Nutt' ... 'Arthur Lloyd intends to introduce him to the metropolis at the conclusion of his provincial tour.' The 'two feet' was undoubtedly an exaggeration but it seems Henry was indeed smaller than Mr Stratton. Also 'better shaped and much handsomer

The tour made its way through Scotland, Ireland and the North of England . 'Possessed of a fair, frank face, yellow curled hair and a brilliant complexion, the tiny singer at once prepossesses his audience. But when he begins to sing, all sense of the phenomenal is lost ... a really good and pure tenor voice .. singing in a masterly manner...'

It was Easter Monday 1870, at the Royal Music Hall, Holborn that the 'accomplished and agreeable dwarf vocalist' 'the world's smallest singer' appeared in London. 'Besides being a rare and interesting curiosity as a miniature man [he] is an excellent and delightful singer' 'a tremendous success' 'he sings simple ballads ('A Bashful Man', 'Sporting in the Sunshine', 'Happy Be thy dreams') with an evenness and simplicity which are in themselves delightful.

At first seen only at the Royal, he then appeared at the North Woolwich Gardens, the South London Palace, the Bedford, the Sun in Knightsbridge, as well as in concerts in his own Kentish area about the time that our photo was taken

35 inches sounds more probable. 

In March 1871 he was cast in a Drury Lane production of The Dragon of Wantley, as a miniature blacksmith, at Easter at the Princess's as a little fiddler in the fantasy The Man in the Moon, singing 'Come Back to Erin, he played the Olympic, the Cambridge ('Thou art so near and yet so far', 'She wore a wreath of roses'), the Manchester Alhambra, the Liverpool Music Hall and then with W J Hill's Omnifarious concert party, before he was recalled to Drury Lane to take to title-role in the pantomime Tom Thumb. His rather abusive cognomen of 'le petit Sims Reeves' was emphasised by his singing 'My Pretty Jane'.

Another 'novelty' casting came in June 1872 at Liverpool, when he was put up as Tom Tug in The Waterman. Obviously he could sing the songs. The sight of a 3-foot Tom romancing a 5ft Wilhelmina must have been odd. But The Waterman had been subjected to all sorts of weirdisms over the years. And Henry's version clearly went down all right, for he repeated it on a number of occasions.

His next venture was a 'novelty' one. Jarrett and Palmer of the newly rebuilt Niblo's Garden, New York, formerly the home of The Black Crook, decided to have a shot at repeating their legs-and-scenery show and its long-running success and, just as with the former show, lined up a set of dancers, acts and vocalists from Britain and Europe to feature as its main attractions. Thus, for the 'grand spectacular dramatic romance' Leo and Lotos they arranged to import star dancers Katti Lanner and Jeanne Pitteri from the Alhambra, Crystal Palace prima donna Marie Rossetti (Miss Brennan from Norwich), Lizzie Kelsey, Laura Joyce, Bessie Sudlow and ... Henry Collard to feature alongside the performing dogs, a ventriloquist, a drum soloist, a child violonist billed as 'the coming Mozart', a panorama of 'Paris under the commune', the obligatory transformation scene et al.  Henry was cast as Kohinoor, the King of the Realm of Jewels alongside one very large Mrs Edward Wright as his Queen. He was billed to give his 'imitations of Sims Reeves'. 'The miniature Mario, the smallest and sweetest singer living...'.  Some of the New York press were not impressed: 'a piping, childish, treble voice ... the dexterity with which he manages it does not compensate for its general feebleness and immaturity'. They affirmed that he was 40 inches tall; and 20 years old. Leo and Lotos was made over, but stayed on stage for only four months, then sank. On 2 April, Henry returned to the UK.

But the adventures were not quite over. He took an engagement singing Irish songs between the trick for Maskelyne and Cooke at the Egyptian Hall, and then was hired for a month by Heinrich Hoffmann at the Schützenhaus in Hamburg. 'The smallest tenor and comedian in the world'. Yes, his light comic acting ability had been recognised. But now the adventures were touching their end. He went back to Liverpool  for more performances of The Waterman and to play King Williwag, the dwarf king, in the panto The King of the Golden Valley, sang at Vance's Varieties and again at the Egyptian Hall, then visited Nottingham to play yet more Waterman and Tom Thumb in the pantomime Little Bo Peep and Boy Blue, or Tom Thumb and the Norfolk Giant. The last professional credit I can find for Henry in 22 September 1877, when he was hired for a spot to sing 'Maids Must Marry' as Sir Geoffrey Hudson in the play England at Drury Lane.

He returned, as ever, to Kent, sang once again in local concerts (Canterbury, Chislet, Ash etc) in church, at the cricket club and in 1879 he married. He and Agnes née Wood would have three children. I have no idea whether she and they were of 'normal' size, but Henry -- now a considerable farmer and timber-merchant/builder in Margate -- would not live to see them grown to adulthood. On 13 April 1888, at his home in Myrtle Villas, Tivoli Road he went upstairs to bed ... and died.

In my humble opinion, Henry Collard is one of the period's few dwarvish performers of the Victorian stage and platform who deserves to be remembered for anything but his size ...   when he is remembered.

A slippery song: Did you Ever See an Oyster Walk Upstairs?

 

Last week, this piece of music-hall sheet-music turned up on e-bay.

Some thirty years ago, when I was researching the life of Teddy Solomon, I got the impression that the then very young musician had something to do with this piece. Orchestrated? Conducted, perhaps? I ultimately came to the conclusion that the case had to rest 'unproven', but the song's title has stuck in my mind ever since.

I hav'n't managed to find the lyrics, but the gist is - the chappie is trying to find an oyster with perambulatory tendancies, because his girl will only marry him when he does. You know, one of those 'till all the seas run dry' poems. But, of course, comic, as our singer runs from policeman to mermaid to fishmonger in search of the whereabouts of the mythical creature.

So, if not Teddy, who? Well, the music cover gives us three names. In descending size of billing: Fred Roberts, Fred Gilbert and Lizzie Coote. The first singer, the writer, and the lass who made the piece a success. A success which made the title a catch word for thirty years. Rather longer than the song was sung. But that song was a fair success in its time, thanks to the three folk above and the man who organised them and it, music-hall agent Charles [Adolphe] ROBERTS (b France 12 May 1839; d  in the street 6 July 1897). No relation, it seems, to the aforesaid Fred.

At the time of the 'invention' of the Oyster Song, Charles was a flourishing music-hall agent, with 300 acts on his books, at 5 York Road, Gilbert was one of his clerks who wrote songs on the side, Lizzie [COOTE, Elizabeth Phyllis] (b Dundee 9 October 1862; d Chorlton 18 February 1886) was just turned ten years of age, and Fred was a middle-of-the-bill comic singer at lesser music-halls in, mostly, the London suburbs. All, of course, represented by Charles, who had the privilege of supplying the whole bill to some such establishments.

Just as today, entertainment advertisements were not always quite honest. Here is one for the Watford Corn Exchange 17 December 1872, with Fred billed underneath top British opera contralto 'Lucy Franklein' (POWELL, Lucy Mary).

Curious. Firstly, it was not 'especially for', secondly it was not officially set by Roberts, thirdly .. why be 'of Cremorne Proms' when you could be 'of Sadler's Wells' or a handful of London Music Halls? Mostly,  Fred's engagements were reported merely in the list of 'also sangs' with only rare mention of 'what he sang'. Up to now, his cover of Harry Sydney's 'It's just as well to take things in a quiet sort of way of way' had been the only notability. Until now.

I have found three occasions where Fred gave his 'Oyster' song prior to Watford, and there were doubtless more; 7 November at chairman F W Montague's Benefit at the Pavilion, 28 November at manager Robert Fort's Benefit at the Forester's Music Hall in Mile End, and 14 December at Conquest's Concert Hall for Edward Westbrook. It was not particularly noticed, except for its curious title. And on the last-named occasion the authorship was credited, in The London and Provincial Entr'acte, to Gilbert and small-time agent Frank Elton, along with a swatch of other titles. 

Roberts sang 'his' song at the Bedford (one of Charles's 'dominions'), the Marylebone, at various country fetes under his boss's management, but not as a feature -- he now had other songs to deliver: 'Yachting around the coast', 'Although She Said Don't I Knew she meant Do', 'Newspapers', 'Old Clothes, Old Hats', 'Get Away, Come a Little it Closer', 'Take It Bob', 'Don't I Wish I had known it Before' , 'Etcetera'. But , whilst the country's amateur vocalists tried their skills, other folk picked up the piece. In a feminine version. The well-liked serio, Patti Goddard, at the Sun Music Hall and 'the perfect little lady', child performer Lizzie Coote, at the Marylebone, the Canterbury, the Cambridge. In 1876, she was still giving her version at the Pavilion.

Lizzie was a good performer, but her salient quality was her youth. By the time she died, at 23, with credits ranging from Oliver Twist at the Olympic, to pantomime at Covent Garden, to supporting Lydia Thompson and Willie Edouin, she was just another pretty soubrette of talent.

And, of course, not American at all! She and most of her musical siblings (that's another article!) were born in Dundee, Scotland. They had merely visited America for some months as part of the 'Miniature Minstrels'.

Another of the principals of our tale also had a sad end. But not before he had had his Big Moment. Frederick [Younge] GILBERT (b Strand, 2 March 1850; d Sandgate, Kent 12 April 1903) started out in the business in his teens as a singer of comic songs, but soon switched his attention to the agency side, workng briefly for Ambrose Maynard, and then for Charles Roberts. Like others of his ilk, he also turned his pen to writing and composing material for the agency's clients -- Arthur Lloyd ('The Royal Academy Beau') Nelly Melville, James Hillier ('Just a Tickle in the Tunnel', The Dorking Tunnel'), Kate Melbourne ('Epsom Downs') , Edith Murray ('Floating on the Tide'), the black-face comics Brothers Seward (Joe's Farewell), Fred Roberts -- and the 'Oyster' was an early success. There were to be many more songs: 'At Trinity Church I Met My Doom', Gus Elen's 'Down the Road went Polly' and its burlesque 'Up the road', 'Under the Maybush', Bessie Bellwood's 'Kensington Road', 'That's What the Girl Said to the Soldier' , 'Romano's, 'I'll Place it in the hands of my solicitor, 'Why is the World so Gay' , 'Bridget the Spanish Dancer', Tom Costello's 'She Comes Home Tight on Saturday Night', and, most enduringly, 'The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo', as Gilbert pursued a tidy career as a music-hall agent, latterly on his own account, at 7 York Rd, through nearly three decades, until struck down by consumption at 53. 

Fred's personal life appears a lot more opaque than his professional one. The birth records of Britain have Frederick Younge Gilbert listed in 1850. The death records, Frederick Young Gilbert in 1903. I have found plain Frederick Gilbert fathering daughter Emma 1875 and Esther 1877, and a son Frederick Charles in 1879 (died 1880). The mother is listed as Emma Young. Apparently a concubine. I knew about the daughters, because 'The Man Who Broke the Bank' made a fortune, and the sisters had to go to court, years later, to get it. But I find no wife. Mother and daughters can be seen in Chelsea in 1881. ut no Fred. Oh, the family historians have turned up a different wife, and in the 1901 census he is accompanied by a Mrs Julia Haswell.  I'm sure the answer to these seeming anomalies is simple, but I can't find it.

Another 'Oyster' man had a sad end too. Charles 'Gus' Roberts did not last at the top of the music-hall tree. His fortunes dwindled until he was employed as a charity clerk ... and one day he fell down dead in the street. Aged 58.

Which leaves us with Fred ROBERTS.  Born St Pancras saith the 1871 cenus. 25. Unmarried. Professor of Music. I guess that is he. So apparently he is the Fred Roberts, 'piano and comic', claiming to be be of the RAM, who can be seen as accompanist in a very minor concert party with Charles Mackney ('brother of') and wife, a pair of blackfaced minstrels et the odd al, playing at Knowsley, Leeds' Hole in the Wall, Hyde, Mansfield, Lincoln et al in 1866, singing Harry Sydney's' 'It's just as well to take things in a quiet sort of way'. 'The provincial comic' found his way on to the middle reaches of a number of smaller London houses, including Edward Garcia's Regent Music Hall, the Raglan and Wilton's, and a number of the fêtes organised by Charles Roberts. And on 7 November 1872, he brought out the Oyster song at the Pavilion.

It went down all right. He sang it at the Bedford, the Marylebone, at Ipswich and Leicester, while moving on to other new songs -- 'Yachting Round the Coast', 'Floating with the Tide', 'Although she said don't, I knew she meant do', 'Although', 'Newspapers', 'Take it, Bob', 'Old clothes', 'Don't I wish I had known it before', 'Not Very Far from Regent Street', 'Get away, come a little bit closer', 'Nod your head when you mean yes', 'I don't care a fig what you say', 'I don't know how they do it, but they do'  -- while others, mostly ladies, picked up the Oyster.

Roberts was a useful supporting act in the London minors, but at the end of the 1870s he moved up to be the manager of the Bedford Musical Hall, run by George Fredericks (BARBER, George Hearne) and his wife, 'Carrie Julian'. He would stay there until the owner's death, and the destruction of the Bedford.

Fred can be seen in the 1891 census ('music hall manager') at 11 Acacia Rd, Marylebone, with a wife named Hannah ...

Which means that he is not the English comic-songster Fred Roberts who appeared on the American stages in the 1880s and 1890s. 

So is he the Fred Roberts singing at the Oxford in Brighton in 1890? At the Marylebone in 1891? Penning 'Arthful Cards' for Alf Cawthorn .. Playing with a minstrel troupe at Llandudno? Its surely he at the funeral of Botting of the Marylebone ... 'Fred Roberts comic vocalist' ... maybe. But I can't find proof ...

I see there's a suggestion that he died in 1930. If so, nobody noticed ....

So, in the end the 'Oyster' didn't bring lasting luck to its makers. Shame ...

And I haven't done wonderfully either. But I tried.

Victorian Vocalists: the mysterious Madame Morgan ... outed!

 

Over the past couple of decades, when it has been my hobby to delve into the 'who was' and the 'what did they do?' of nineteenth-century singers, I've succeeded in dragging forth the facts on a goodly number of the species from behind seemingly impenetrable pseudonyms and stage names. 

This week, by dint of dogged perseverance, I scored a really nice gotcha!

Madame Eugenia Morgan appears on the scene in 1889. She becomes a pupil at the Guildhall School of Music and for more than a decade thereafter is utterly ubiquitous in the concert rooms of the London suburbs and the Home Counties, on piers and in Mechanics' Institutes, Town Halls ... anywhere a concert could be staged , Madame Morgan was there. But .. who was she? Whence did she come? Why was she Madame from day one at school? Who was Morgan? Well, it soon became clear to me that something was not 'normal' and time and time again, after having had her cross the paths and careers of more transparent folks, I put Eugenia aside. But only 'aside'. And in April 2026 she revealed all to me ... well, nearly all. But enough!

So. She was indeed a married woman, and mother of a son, when she enrolled at the Guildhall. Why Madame rather than Mrs I know not, but such was an affectation of the age. And why I had missed her, time and again, was that she was a rather mature student. Thirty-four years of age! 

The story, mined from the past, goes like this. Eugenia Morgan Puddicombe (yes!) was born at Silverton, Tiverton, Devon 10 December 1855. Father Edward Morgan Puddicombe MD, medical officer for Bickley and Silverton, mother the former Isabella Zefinia (sic) Cresswell, daughter of the vicar of Creech St Michael. 

She seems to have lived a plain and comfy life -- although three of her four siblings died in the 1860s -- until 1880, when her mother died, and the following year (13 July 1881) Eugenia married Mr Walter Baker, 'youngest son of Dr Baker of Portman Square' and, en suite, gave birth to a son, Harold Edward. Mr Baker was an electrical engineer and would remain so all his life, but he was also an amateur vocalist ... which I guess is how they met.

The déclic came in 1887. Father, too, died. And Eugenia decided to have a crack at being a professional singer. She enrolled at the Guildhall. She quickly climbed the ranks and became the school's top soprano. In 1890 her rendition of 'I will extol thee' won her the first prize for singing. But she was already collecting honoraria and song credits ...

'La Zingara' (Bucalossi), 'Lusitania (Edward St Quentin), 'By the Fountain' (Stephen Adams), 'Winds in the Trees' (Goring Thomas), 'The Flight of Ages' (Frederick Bevan), 'Home, Dearie, Home', 'The Carnival' and 'Voices' (Molloy), The Sleeping Tide' and 'She is thinking of you'(Kellie), 'La Serenata' (Tosti), 'Come to Me' (Denza), 'Winter' (Scott Gatty), 'The Castilian Maid (Lehmann), 'Thou Art My Life' (Mazzoni), 'The Mission of a Rose' and 'The Swallows' (Cowen), 'The Vales of Arklow' (Leslie Stuart), 'Sognai' (Schira) e tutti quanti were leavened, in concert, by a touch of opera or light opera. And, before long, the kind of 'selections' formerly featured in music halls. Eugenia sang hundreds of Arlines, hundreds of Maritanas: well, the music of them. Although she played both roles at the Guildhall or in one of the many concerts given with old Guildhall colleagues. Madame M would never feature in a regular Opera company, even though one or two mendacious ads claimed that she was 'late of the Carl Rosa' or 'of the Crystal Palace Grand Opera' etc. Her dramatic essays were limited to concert performances ('a voice of fair power and extensive range') of such as The Rose of the Auvergne, The Sleeping Queen, Quid pro quo et al. And then came the English Opera Singers, and Mr Burgon.

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2025/07/harry-burgon-bass-who-was-boss.html

These groups were concert parties, both featured 'songs from the shows' from grand opera to a goodly dose of Gilbert and Sullivan, and, from 1892, Madame M succeeded to the soprano spot in both groups, turn by turn, for many years. The second half of the concert became a 'grand selection' from a favourite opera, and if The Bohemian Girl and Maritana were the most given, Eugenia got to sing her favourite 'Jewel Song' when Faust was given and the role of Santuzza when Cavalleria rusticana became a regular on Burgon's programmes.  Ivanhoe, Il Trovatore, I Pagliacci, La Fille du régiment  also took a less frequent turn. She got a little variety when the Burgon troupe were employed by provincial groups to guest as the soloists in their choral performances (The Bride of Dunkerron at Bradford, The Golden Legend at Aberdeen, Judas Maccabaeus at Penrith, Engedi at Chelmsford). 

After Burgon's death, his wife for a short while carried on the group, but by the earliest years of the twentieth century, it was over. In the 1901 census, Walter and Eugenia can be seen at 69 Elgin Avenue, Maida Vale. Walter is still engineering, Eugenia is taking in paying guests.

Eugenia died at 109 Elgin Avenue 21 November 1916. Walter outlived her -- he can be seen in the 1921 census '67 years and one month old' -- but what became of him I know not.

Anyway, there's 'Madame Morgan' a mystery no longer!

And her fellow workers? Less problematic... for the most part. 

Jessie BROWNING [BROWN, Jessie] (b Southwark x 16 August 1886, d Buenos Aires) (Mrs Joseph Constance Jones)

Adeline VAUDREY [née MOULD, Adeline] (b Southampton 1863 x 19 December 1864; d Upper Phillimore Place, Kensington 2 August 1926) (Mrs John Rorie Friend)

Ann[ie] LAYTON (b Knaphill 1859) (Mrs Percy Frederick [Keitley-] Webb)

Emily [Jane] RASEY (b St John's Wood 4 February 1873; d Barnet, 4 September 1969)

[Walter] Cecil BARNARD (b Canonbury 10 August 1866; d Savage Club, London 30 November 1897)

Charles [Edwin] ELLISON (b Knutsford 8 July 1854; d Lewisham High St, New Cross 16 March 1913)

[Thomas] Wills-PAGE [PAGE, Thomas William] b Soho 1863

Broughton BLACK [BLACK, Harry Virgilius] (b Manchester x 15 July 1860; d Black Rock House, Rottingdean 8 April 1926)

Hilton ST JUST [TODD, George William] (b Bradford, Yorks x Rawdon 27 March 1862; d Nag’s Head, Sutton-on-Trent, Notts 16 September 1940)

Antonio Alfred MEDCALF (b Felixstowe 9 August 1866; d Albert Rd, Woodford March 1921)

Kelson TRUMAN [TRUEMAN, Alfred William] (b Melksham 12 March 1862; b Tonbridge 17 October 1925)

John [Frederick] PROBERT (b Clerkenwell 1856; d Golder's Green Rd, Hendon 12 December 1926)

'Wilfrid CUNLIFFE' (b Hartlepool c 1858; d Weymouth ?1932)

 [Thomas] Henry BEAUMONT (b Robin Hood Hill, Berry Brow, Huddersfield 17 January 1858; d 11 Warwick Avenue, London 19 August 1919).

Victorian vocalists: A contralto from Dublin

 

SCOTT-FENNELL, Elizabeth [née FENNELL] (b Ireland c1840; d 19 Herbert Street, Dublin 31 August 1911)

 

Elizabeth Fennell grew up, and I assume was born, in Dublin. Booterstown, it seems. The names and quality of her parents is somewhat unsure, but they seem to have been by name John and Elizabeth, and father appears to have been a butcher and a farmer. Or a victualler. She had a number of siblings some rather younger than she – Annie (Mrs Thomas Patrick Gill d Deansgate 3 October 1926), Agnes (Mrs Peter Alfred Lawlor), probably Theresa, Kate (Mrs Thomas Furlong) and maybe John and Ellen (Mrs Thomas Dunphy) and Thomas. Some of them seem to have inhabited number 92 Lower Baggot Street, an address which in modern times has become connected rather with murder rather than music.

 

Elizabeth attended the Irish Academy of Music, and I spot her first performing, as a student in 1861 ('I Know That My Redeemer Liveth'), 1862 ('her voice is a pure soprano' alongside sister Kate) and in 1863, at the Shane’s Castle Festival, and in church at a benefit for St Catherine’s Orphanage. Still as a soprano. A remembering one later wrote: ‘[she] had a wonderful voice as a girl, a soprano and contralto compass rolled into one. The gifted Irish vocalist was tall for her age, and very stately as a young debutante she looked in her white silk frock ...’

In 1864 I spot her singing with Julia Cruise, Richard W Smith, Edward Peele, and the tenor Topham in the Dublin concerts, duetting with Madame Rudersdorff, and 19 December she took part in the first performance of George W Torrance’s oratorio The Captivity. Over the years that followed, she appeared widely in Ireland, mainly with the other top Irish-based vocalists – Topham and Grattan Kelly in particular – and the occasional visitor such as Madame Lemmens Sherrington or Anna Hiles. Her repertoire at this stage was largely of the soprano bent: I see her singing ‘Should he Upbraid’, 'The beating of my own heart',‘The Captive Greek Girl’, ‘L’Ardita’, Costa’s ‘Morning Prayer’, ‘Jerusalem’, ‘My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair’, Abt's 'Oh! ye tears', ‘O vago fior’ but also ‘Nobil donna’ and ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’, ‘Araby dear Araby’ and duets from La Favorita. She also featured Irish songs, including those by local composers such as Vincent Wallace, Joseph Robinson, W G Goodwin, Dr Stewart, Blanchard (‘Maura’), William E Hudson (‘Your Loss Will Break My Heart’) and John Dunne, whose cantata Myra she premiered in 1866 (21 May). Needless to say, the repertoire was largely bulked out by the popular ditties of the day – Molloy’s ‘White Daisy’, ‘Ruby’ by Virginia Gabriel, ‘The Children’s Kingdom’ et al.

She ventured to Britain in January 1870, for the Glasgow Saturday Evening Concerts, and was quite eclipsed, along with the other singers, by the top-billed curiosity: Mr Home the spiritualist, making an essay as a reciter. But later in the year (27 May) she visited London and appeared at Ambrose Austin’s concert at St James’s Hall along with Titiens, Sainton-Dolby, Edith Wynne, Graziani, Sims Reeves et al. She gave ‘Savourneen Deelish’ to great applause: ‘a mezzo-soprano voice of great power and beauty, equal in tone, extensive in range and with a fulness in the lower tomes similar to the quality of a contralto and with an equal force and sweetness in the higher notes. In her first song she displayed a compass of two octaves …’

She advertised for engagements (‘the new contralto from Dublin’) but few were forthcoming and her best opportunity came in a performance of Mrs Joseph Robinson’s cantata God is Love at the Hanover Square Rooms (29 June 1870).

In October she again visited Glasgow to sing the contralto role to Blanche Cole’s soprano and Sims Reeves’s tenor in Samson and in January 1872 she was engaged for the Boosey Ballad series at London’s St James’s Hall. London more or less forgot they’d heard her before, and enthused, all over again, over her ‘good voice and intelligence’ and her ‘real talent for singing Irish melodies’. She sang as many English ballads as Irish ones, and found equal success with Virginia Gabriel’s ‘Nightfall at Sea’ and ‘O Willie Boy’, Blumenthal’s ‘The days that are no more’, Louisa Gray’s ‘Then and Now’ or ‘Love’s Young Dream’ as with Wallace’s ‘Why do I weep for thee’, ‘The Harp that once thru Tara’s Halls’ or ‘Escadil Mavourneen shaun’.

She sang her Rinaldo aria at the Monday pops, and at private functions and she also got married (8 August 1872). Her husband was Mr John Scott (d 92 Lower Baggot Street 17 September 1881) and henceforth she was ‘Mrs Scott-Fennell’. In the nine years of their marriage she gave birth to five children, as she continued her career in music, performing and teaching again, largely in Ireland, but with visits to Scotland and to Liverpool and in 1878 to London, where she appeared on Irish Night at the Covent Garden Proms (‘I wish I were on yonder hill’, ‘When the tide comes in’).

 

Mrs Scott-Fennell became a stalwart of the Irish music scene, teaching at the Royal Irish Academy, and staging her annual concert (1890 was the 18th). In the 1890s, she performed less. She had made one last professional visit to London in 1887 for the Saturday Evening concerts at St James’s Hall. But ‘Mrs Scott-Fennell’s Concert’ continued to the 20th century.

 

At sometime after the 1901 census, she and her remaining family moved out of the house in Lower Baggot Street which they had occupied so long. Finally, Elizabeth moved in with her youngest sister, Annie, at whose home she died in 1911.

 

Her elder daughter, Ethel Lillis Scott (b Baggot Street, 3 March 1874) married the vocalist Edward Gordon Cleather.