Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Nineteenth century musicians and vocalists


Breakfast time, and I'm trolling through the ebay emporia ... faustinosdad (again!) and antiqueinspired gave me the most pleasure. Two splendid e-shops. I'm going for a second coffee, and I'll immerse myself once more ... my team! I've done the searching (and the correcting), you can do the shopping!

C H Parry

Geo Elvey

A C Mackenzie

James Maurice Wehli


Dan Godfrey

Joseph Barnby


John Sims Reeves

A slimmer than usual Euphrosyne Parepa 

Paul Juignet

Mary Davies
Agosto Susini

Not a Czech soprano as labelled, but Irma Marié of Parisian opéra-bouffe

Labelled 'A scene from a play?' TRILBY, I think?


Ernst Pauer

Saturday, October 27, 2018

RALPH WRECKSTRAW … or a tenor and his troubles

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‘Henri Laurent’. It is a matter of decades since I first bumped into this fellow. Right at the beginning of my Emily Soldene researches. I’ve written about him a bit a few times since, for slices of his story collide with, not only Emily’s, but that of the great dramatic soprano, Rosa Csillag (see Victorian Vocalists), with the tale of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas in America, the history of the grand San Francisco Tivoli Opera House … so, I thought: let’s put the story of ‘America’s first Ralph Rackstraw’ together as coherently as possible, for the sake of the Great Goddess Clio (muse of history) and the family historians on ancestry.com who have got his tale hilariously wrong, and even kill him off a quarter of a century early, at a time when he was still on the stage.


For yes, ‘Henri’, the man who must have got more ‘can’t sing, can’t act’ notices in his life and career, worked steadily – or, more accurately, unsteadily -- on the stage for a whole thirty-five years. How? Why? I have no idea. He was a tenor, which helps. A light and often, it seems, effortful tenor. He was tall, with a good figure and clearly had some sort of physical charm, judging by the number of wives and ‘wives’ he went through. Also, he didn’t seem to mind whom he worked for, for how little time, and when there was no work he mounted his own companies, which lasted anything from a few days to, on a good day, a month or two …
Anyway, I’ll tell the story, and you tell me what you think!


First of all, who actually was this ‘lanky tenor’ who claimed sometimes to be French, occasionally English, and ultimately (and correctly) a naturalized American? Well, he was actually born in Brighton, Sussex, of an English father and an allegedly French-born mother. I know nothing about mother, who is listed on her children’s birth records as Henrietta, Laura Henrietta and even on one occasion Louisa Henrietta. Not Laure Henriette, so maybe she was a French-born Englishwoman. The family historians modestly put ‘private’ in the place where her name should be, so I imagine there’s some ‘irregularity’ in the tale. Anyway, Henrietta née ??? only appears in one census, because at some stage in the 1850s the family relocated to Paris …

Father is different. Father was born, in Brighton, John James Hayward Ghislain, on 19 August 1816, son of ‘surgeon’ Alexander Ghislain (which sounds pretty Belgian to me) and his wife Anne née Lloyd (m 8 August 1813, Tower Hamlets). By the time he got round to being christened, in 1832, Alexander was ‘deceased, and John and his mother were living in George Street, Hackney. Still ‘Ghislain’. Fast forward. My next sighting of John is in 1841. He’s back in Brighton, with his abovesaid wife, and producing their first child. So is he the John Hayward ‘Geshing’ who was married the previous year in London? But to whom? Elizabeth Hornsby? Jane Polkinghorne? Sarah Todd? She's supposed to be Henrietta. More mystery.

There seem to have been about eight children born to the couple in the next decade or so, all surnamed ‘Gesling’, all born in and around Brighton, and latterly at the Shakespeare Inn, Howard Place, West Hill and an address in Montpelier Road. Both addresses were pubs, and father was a ‘licensed victualler’. And in the 1851 census, the family’s name was given as ‘Hayward’. ‘Hayward’ was the middle name of most of the children, too. Curious. More mystery.


Anyway, there is Mr ‘Hayward’ in the 1851 census, at the Shakespeare Inn, with Henrietta and Emilie (8), Reginald (7), Harry (5), Randolph (3) and Alfred (1). A couple have gone missing. Anyway, Harry (sic) is our man. Christened 26 November 1845.

And now, in the 50s, father had a career change. And a change of residence. The family had at some stage left for Paris where I spy John in 1856 working for John Arthur, an English agent and wine merchant. He then set up as the ‘English Agency Office, wine merchant, general agent’ at Faubourg Saint-Honoré 30. His employer dragged him to court where he was fined 25,000 francs for breach of contract and obliged to cease trading. Then, in 1858, ahe turns up as ‘clerk to the Rev Archer Thomas Gurney’, the vicar of the official Parisian English Church in the rue d’Aguesseau. In 1862 he was appointed to raise money from British residents of Paris for the Albert Memorial.

The English Church, rue d'Aguesseau

But it was other members of the family who made the splash. Reginald and Harry became sculling champions and the Brighton press reported, in 1865, ‘several very valuable prizes, amounting to between 50 and 60 pounds, were carried off by the sons of Mr Hayward Gesling, formerly a much-respected resident of Brighton’. Reginald ‘of the Paris Rowing Club’ indeed became for a number of years champion of France, then President of the Cercle d’aviron. He, of course, had a day job too. I see him referred to as ‘chaplain of the British Embassy’, but it appears he was specifically the funeral officer of the Embassy, responsible for the repatriation of strayed Anglican corpses to the motherland. One of those bodies was that of Oscar Wilde. 


Later he would make a second appearance in the headlines when he was involved in a celebrated and complex lawsuit (Viditz v Gesling) concerning an inheritance from a maiden Irish lady, which established a point of law.

Reginald with some of the Brits who stuck it out through the Franco-Prussian war.

Reginald’s younger brother, Rowland, later became his adjoint. But Harry, as we shall see, was vowed to a different kind of life.

In 1868, Harry won the French junior sculls (ah! that physique again), and in the same year John Ghislain-Gesling died. By the 1871 census, Harry was back in London, staying in an hotel and described as an ‘agent’. For whom or what it is not said. But it wasn’t for long. Within months he had got himself a job as a chorister with the Gaiety Theatre company. One of those useful men that the company employed to play all the little bits and pieces where necessary and make up the vocal choruses. I see that he got to play Achilles in La Belle Hélène on tour.

During the 1872 summer he went on tour with the Liverpool Prince of Wales Company in Geneviève de Brabant playing the little part of the Hermit, and later one of the gens d’armes, and when he returned to the Gaiety tour he was promoted to the role of Grog in La Grande-Duchesse. The tour company appeared for a while in London, and Harry was cast to play Lischen and Fritzchen, as a forepiece, with Claliah Albertazzi and in the bit part of Count Screwem in the burlesque, Snae Fell at the Gaiety itself. But the understudy got his chance. Augusta Thompson, principal boy in the burlesque, went ‘off’ and Harry played her part for the nonce!



He toured some more, played a bit part in Guy Fawkes MP at the Gaiety, and he got married (16 February 1874). ‘Lizzie Wright’ (1850-1936) had been, for several years, one of the most appreciated British principal dancers around town. Emily Soldene recorded that she was ‘a brilliant dancer’. Her real name was Elizabeth Macintyre (and she must not be confused with 'Lardy Wilson' of the Gaiety), she hailed from Glasgow, and the marriage turned out to be a mistake, but the scandals were not for just yet.

In England, Charles Martel was often played by a leggy lady

Harry finished at the Gaiety, after three years’ service, and joined up with Emily Soldene’s party. Seemingly as an understudy, for he replaced Violet Grenville as Charles Martel in Geneviève de Brabant part way through the run. However, Emily’s next date after London was New York, and so Harry, established as 2nd or 3rd tenorino to her troupe, got to make the trip. He appeared as Martel, as Pomponnet in La Fille de Madame Angot, as Grog in La Grande-Duchesse, and as Landry in Chilpéric on the left-hand side of the Atlantic, and when the rest of the company went home, he didn’t. 


The rest of his career and most of his life would be in America.

Henri and Lizzie in San Francisco 1876

The Soldene company and their shows had been decidedly successful, and other venues leaped to imitate them. One of these was the Robinson Hall, and even though Harry had only been a supporting player with Soldene, he was billed big for the title-role in Chilpéric, next to Louise Howard and E P Jepson. He lasted less than two weeks. But that may have been because he had been offered a better job. Less than two months later he opened a season of comic opera (20 September 1875) as leading tenor to America’s comic opera sweetheart, Mrs Alice Oates. It was a fair company: Australian baritone John Howson, Charles H Drew, Gus Hall, Annie Kemp Bowler and … Miss Lizzie Wright? Alice played a large repertoire of rather individual versions of the opéra-bouffe repertoire – Giroflé-Giroflà, La Fille de Madame Angot, Le Près St Gervais, La Grande-Duchesse, La Jolie Parfumeuse, La Princesse de Trébizonde, what was billed as America’s first Trial by Jury, but wasn’t, etc – and Harry was the leading man in each and every one. He was also, soon, rather obviously, leading man to pretty Alice in more than one way, and 4 December 1877 the merde hit the machine.

Well, most pictures of Alice show her as a pouting, fluffy blonde!

‘On December 4, in this city, the wife of Henri Laurent, first tenor of the Oates troupe, instituted proceedings for divorce, alleging grave improprieties with a prominent lady member of that troupe. These proceedings explain why Mrs Laurent, as she shall be called here, returned so suddenly last October from her home in Scotland where she had gone after relinquishing her engagement as a chorister in the Soldene troupe ...’.
Hmm. Lizzie ‘relinquished her engagement with the Soldene troupe’, did she? Why? When? She went to Scotland when her husband was touring America with a company that could very well have used her services? Why? When? Anyway, now she came back and by February the Clipper was reporting: ‘ The Washington papers report that Mr and Mrs Henri Laurent have adjusted their matrimonial difficulties and Baltimore journals confirm it. We hope the report is true, but are not prepared to endorse it..’. This was the beginning of a longish period where Harry featured more in the gossip columns than the music ones. He was suing the Cincinnati Times for $20,000, Alice had dismissed him because managers wouldn’t book the troupe because of his immorality (what, asked the paper, advisedly, about HER immorality?), he has sailed for Le Havre …

I guess he had. Lizzie was reported to be touring with Rice. But it might not have been she, for some little wanna-bes were rushing to call themselves ‘Miss Laurent’. How deliciously scandaleux!



In a few months, he was back. To what could have been the job of his career. James Duff was staging what would be New York’s first sighting of a version of HMS Pinafore (15 January 1879). 

Tom Whiffen as a 'perfect' First Lord

Tom Whiffen and his wife Blanche Galton as Porter and Buttercup gave the company a solid backbone, Eva Mills was Josephine, William Davidge was Deadeye and Harry really was ‘America’s first Ralph Rackstraw’. 

Wm Davidge as Deadeye
The show and Whiffen were immediate hits, and the jiggery pokery started. HMS Pinafores, or shows sailing under that title, went into production all over the place, while those that had got in on the ground floor started squabbling amongst themselves. Duff had, apparently, signed his cast – or Harry, anyway – for the 8 weeks he counted on the piece running. 2 weeks right of notice. Harry sniffed a better opportunity and a better deal up at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, so he gave notice. On his last performance he refused to go on for Act 2 until his salary was paid. Duff had foreseen this, had Alonzo Hatch standing by, and Harry – wearing the all-important costume – refused to leave until paid. Duff called the police, Harry spent the night in the cells and then sued Duff for false imprisonment … and lost.

Anyway, Hatch stayed on at the Standard, Harry played night one at the Fifth Avenue and, on legal advice, stayed off on night two. The Josephine – ‘Blanche Corelli’ – played Ralph. But the courts ruled that Harry could play until everything was sorted out … as Pinafores began to flood the nation, and the nation’s newspapers. The Chicago Tribune, in its usual National Enquirer style of journalism, headlined ‘Pinafore is getting stale’ before inventing a tale about Harry in a cupboard in Alice’s room and a resulting fight with Edward Connell ..

Harry had used the Fifth Avenue season to put together his own company, allegedly with financial help from Alice, and Henri Laurent’s Fifth Avenue HMS Pinafore company duly set out on the road. Leading lady: Blanche Corelli. Byebye, Alice. Hello, Blanche.


I won’t go into Blanche here, because she has won a place in my Victorian Vocalists. Not on her own merits, but because she was born Eva Dorothea Hermann, daughter of the magician Carl Hermann and the great soprano Rosa Csillag née Goldstein. The press took violent sides, published the usual amount of fiction, and then for heaven’s sake, Lizzie got in on the act waving a bundle of love letters. Alice accused her of blackmail (and it’s pretty clear Lizzie was after and got money), but both girls were already out of the picture. In mid-1879 there were more ‘rumours’ about divorce, but it seems that in the end Blanche was the only one to go through that formality. Yes, she too was married: to her father’s ex-manager William Singer. The couple’s Pinafore company folded in Canada in July 1879, and they joined up with Grau [and Wolfsohn]’s troupe playing Fatinitza, Giroflé-Giroflà and an unfortunate piece by the young Gustav Kerker entitled Cadets.

Blanche Corelli

The partisan press sneered: ‘The vivacious Oates will probably pour ashes on her head when she hears that the Laurent-Corelli party has come to grief in the bleak northwest..’

But work was not lacking. The Kiralfys had mounted a spectacular entitled Enchantment at Niblo’s Gardens, with two English vocalists, Charley Campbell and Rose Lee, as the vocal relief to the piles of scenery and dances which were the raison d’être of the show. Now it was going on tour, and Harry and Blanche were hired for the singing roles. When summer came, they went to St Louis and had three tries at giving their comic operas there, but they were saved from the wreckage by Enchantment which was revived for a second run at Niblo’s. 

Now watch, and count, very carefully.


After the Niblo’s season the couple set off for Boston to head ‘Henry Laurent’s original Fifth Avenue Company’ in Pinafore, Trial by Jury, Olivette et al. Blanche had rewritten the libretto of Olivette so as to combine the roles of Valentin and Mérimac into one and the whole affair was desperately amateurish (‘he can neither act nor sing’), but that didn’t stop Harry from launching a no2 company. At Newport, the 23 members of the company each had a warrant for his arrest taken out for wages unpaid. But they plodded on. Around Massachusetts and environs with the standard repertoire -- Billee Taylor, Olivette, Fatinitza, La Mascotte – and various announcements of new works. They were in rehearsal for Grisar’s Les Poupées de’Infante (Puppets) with Fatty Norcross in Boston when, 14 September 1881, Lizzie was said to have been brought to bed with twin daughters. One is registered in New York and one in Boston. Wow! How did she manage that? Well, the press had once dubbed Harry ‘the Gander-Legged Tenor’. It seems that Lizzie was of the opinion that what was good for the gander was good for the goose! Did you count? Henri and Lizzie hadn’t been near each other for more than nine months. And Blanche and Harry had actually been married in Boston 12 June 1881.
The family historians list these daughters (if there were indeed two) as being surnamed Laurent. Harry is named as the father in the registration. But I’ll guarantee Harry had nothing to do with Lizzie’s illegitimate daughter(s). Nor the one that followed the next year. And meanwhile, he had had a good notice! He was ‘By far the most deserving of praise’ of the artists in Puppets. Rose Stella would not have liked that!



And on it wandered. He played the Duke in Patience for Rice, returned to the Boston Gaiety for Pinafore, Patience and The Pirates of Penzance and then ventured to New York for more Pirates (‘in one or two sentimental moments managed to be quite effective, but generally he so forces and strains what is left of a tenor voice [that was never of much account] that he becomes far from pleasant vocally in the better part of the score..’ ‘a forced-up baritone’) and Billee Taylor (‘a bad Billee both in vocal and dramatic way’). All in all, his acting was, these days, getting better notices than his singing. And … Blanche seems to vanished to tour her own company. And … it was reported that he had divorced Lizzie for adultery! That’s a bit of a joke! But, of course, she had had two or three children in about a year, whereas he either had been careful or couldn’t.

So, on he went. Tony Pastor’s as Pippo in La Mascotte, now the Colonel in Patience, a tour with Catherine Lewis, a disastrous local piece called Uncle Sam, at Chelsea, Mass, a season at Spanish Fort, New Orleans, followed by the quickly folding Acme Co. In November 1884 he was still in New Orleans playing The Merry War and The Little Duke under the banner of Laurent’s Ideal Comic Opera Co. And … what is this? Mrs Laurent choreographing? Surely not!

1885 brought more indifferent employment: with Fay Templeton at Memphis, with Amy Gordon till she got a better job, a tour with Teddy and Fred Solomon and Lillian Russell, which lasted only a few weeks, and, in 1886, an imploding season at Minneapolis. An engagement for summer at St Louis and the one-night stand circuit with ‘Yank’ Newell followed … at the same time as Blanche’s last try at a Blanche Corelli Opera Company collapsed in Baltimore. Blanche had had enough. She went home to Europe, and … well, that’s another story.


1887, 1888 he surfaces trying one more Rackstraw in the boondocks, trying one more suing of a management (Emily Soldene! How very dare he!), until he floated ashore in San Francisco, engaged for an interesting season at the Orpheum. Well, it was interesting on paper. Helen Dingeon was the soprano, Annie Leaf and later Carrie Godfrey … and the repertoire they played, before the management ran out of funds, included The Old Guard, Amorita, The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief, The Marquis of Rivoli, Boccaccio, The Merry War,  Tenor and soprano down-marketed to the Wigwam, but Harry got lucky; Arthur Messmer was struggling with the tenor workload at the Tivoli, so Mons Laurent was hired to supplement him. He made his first appearance as Gaston in Donna Juanita with Ethel Lynton, then played Grosvenor in Patience, and when the house did grand opera he and Messmer alternated Manrico and Faust, and he sang Arturo to Messmer’s Edgardo and the Lucia of one of the Valergas. Lionel in Martha, Jan in The Beggar Student, A Night in Venice, La Fauvette du Temple (The Nightingale) … and then, as usual, Harry fouled up again. He sued the Krelings for back salary, they countersued, and he got 2 weeks wages, the boot, and a ticket to New York.

In June 1889 I see him engaged at Herzberg’s West Brighton Pavilion, Coney Island. He is not only performing but also stage directing. 

Now, I have not been so naïve as to think that Harry had been living a monkish life since the seemingly indifferent-all-round wandering-off of Blanche. Well, he hadn’t. He had allegedly married again, and he had had a son. Well, I suppose it was his. Anyway, the young lady concerned was a soubrette soprano by the name of Julia Glover, said to have been born 1870, and said to have been married to him in 1886, and to this one he would, at last, stick. Their son, born (c 1886), Henry, died of peritonitis in 1901. Anyway, the first time I see Julia on the stage is in this Coney Island season, and she had a gentle rise to small, then larger roles in a perfectly respectable little career.

In 1890 Harry was hired, alongside no less a star than del Puente, for the Hinrichs opera company, but he quit and instead meandered back to Boston (where his notices were often less unfavourable) to join what was billed as Colonel Foster’s Boston Ideals. He was – ideally -- cast as Saint-Angenor, the broken-down tenor, in La Fauvette du Temple (‘[he] has apparently lost his voice but being a comedian of ability does not seem to need it in his part’), but the cast roster resembled in no way the quality of that of the original Ideals, and the venture came to grief nastily in Louisville …

The Able Opera Co, the Shackford Opera Co in Said Pasha, the Sargent Aborn Opera Co, the City Directory company ... then, in 1894, the couple came to New York's Casino Theatre in an English version of the hit German musical comedy Der Corner Grocer aus der Avenue A. New York was not ready for a genuine American musical comedy, and the piece folded in a month. But he was on the right track. He was now a comedian who sings a bit.


As such, he joined Nellie McHenry’s company, playing John Potipher in The Bicycle Girl (Julia was chorus), but allowed himself to be tempted back to comic opera in an attempt to run a Tivoli-type house in Chicago. When he played summer season at Rock Island the local paper protested loudly at their theatre being palmed off with such poor singing. Julia, now promoted to solo parts, had at least the virtue of freshness. Harry was clapped out.

He was seen in The French Maid on tour, in vaudeville, in Edward Rush’s ‘naughty’ Sappho, in potted operas, in something called the Murray Lane Opera Company, and then, somehow, when it seemed he was all done and dusted off, he got hired by the fashionable actor Richard Mansfield to play supporting roles in his company. For some three years he appeared with Mansfield, playing François, the comedy servant in Beaucaire, Artemidorus in Julius Caesar, Michael Nagoy in Ivan the Terrible, Scholorman in the English version of Old Heidelberg, in Beau Brummell, A Parisian Romance, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde et al. And when his time with Mansfield finished, he joined Charles Hawtrey, playing Dr Chapman in A Message from Mars.

A new career, as a character actor, seemed to be profiling for him, but it didn’t happen. My last sighting of sixty-year-old Harry, on stage, is with Hawtrey in an Actors’ Fund Benefit in May 1905.

At some stage, Harry and Julia returned to England. They can be seen, in 1911, at 44a Queen Street Edgeware Road …

Harry died at 3 Deans Road, Merstham, Surrey on 4 January 1920. Julia hung on in for a few years, 'Bramber Cottage, Dean's Road, Reigate' before I see her – Mrs Julia L Gesling – heading for New York … and out of my ken.

To tie up the ends, or as many as can be tied, concerning Harry’s women? Poor Alice was long dead. Blanche became a character singer in the Vienna theatre for some years and then a singing teacher in Berlin. She was still alive in 1939. Did she brave it out through the war years? They weren’t the years when one needed a Jewish singing teacher in Berlin. Julia, we lose in the mists of 1923 New York, and Lizzie ..
Blanche as a komische Alte


Blanche. A 'respected singing teacher' in Berlin.


Lizzie dodged the war. She died in 1936, in Kensington, at the age of 85. Daughter, Lillian, married Frederick William Parkinson in 1906, and well, anyway, she has nothing to do with Harry.

Lord, what a crew. And what a foremast hand! Which is the only real reason that anyone would write about him ... sorry my lot ...

Postscriptum: three different (?) people have posted Gesling 'trees' on the web. Largely because of Reginald, who married properly (Miss Eliza Rule of Thorpe le Soken) and had, to my knowledge, a son (Reginald John Candler Gesling) and two daughters Mary Henrietta (Mrs Robert Taylor Rule) and Laura Eliza; and his sister Laura Henrietta (Mrs Edward Lee) who also had issue. Randolph married too, was widowed, and ended up in the Brighton workhouse where he died in 1922. Reginald, after his marathon court case of more than a decade (which he seems eventually to have won, after eight changes of legal mind), gave up the ghost in 1915 (9 September). 

Post-postscriptum: I finally lighted on photos of Henri, thanks to the always invaluable Andrea Cawelti of Harvard. The three photos of our 'hero' above have been tacked in. However, this fourth one, firmly labelled Henri Laurent is clearly not him. David Stone tells me it is Charles Makin in the role of Bobstay.






















Sunday, October 21, 2018

John Le Hay: a little of the man behind the comedian

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Ever since I started writing books about music and theatre – forty years ago now – my mail box has welcomed a run of letters, asking for my help in identifying people’s mysterious or mythologized relations. I have always done my best to help, although queries of the kind ‘my great-aunt was in the chorus of The Dancing Years, I don’t know by what name, can you find her?’ are a bit hopeless. In other cases, I have been thrilled to chase a mystery to its end for someone. When I published the contents of a Gaiety girl’s scrapbook, on this blog, before gifting the book itself to Harvard, what was my surprise to promptly hear from her family! With extra bits of gossip. Since this IS a blog, and not a published book, I was able to go back and tack those bits in!

This week, I heard from the direct descendant of one of the 100 artists whom I biographized in Victorian Vocalists. I had some things that he hadn’t known, and he had a mystery-solver that I hadn’t sorted out. Alas, that one is published and printed, so I can’t get J W Turner’s period of moonlighting under another performance name in.


My other query this week was of a different sort. I have investigated many players’ ‘unknown’ identities, with more success than not. But I haven’t really tackled the ones that ‘everybody knows about’. The straightforward, successful types. I mean, no treasure-hunt, no triumph … so ‘John Le Hay’? He even says in Who’s Who that his real name was Healy. Born Ireland, 25 March 1854, began his professional career as a Minstrel, then at the Royalty Theatre, before launching into a long association with D’Oyly Carte and in musical theatre. So..? Well, that’s what I’m here for. To double check ‘conventional knowledge’.


John Mackway Healy wasn’t born in Ireland. He was born in Bethnal Green. Probably at 4 Charles Street, in the Hackney Road, like his brother. He was registered in the second quarter of 1854, but 25 March is a perfectly possible birthdate, as the quarters do overlap. His parents were an elder John Healy (1820-1901) who was not born in Ireland, either, but in St Giles, and his wife Sophia Elizabeth Mackway (1823-1886), from Pentonville. Healy senior worked as a manager in a pawnshop, and the young John began his working life following in his father’s footsteps. And there is no reason why he should not have, at the same time, partaken of amateur dramatics.

As for the minstrel ventriloquy, there were many troupes covering Britain, sporting vents from the starry Lt Walter Cole or Alex Davis downwards.. There is no reason why John shouldn’t have played with such a troupe, but there is no evidence, that I can find, that he did.

And so, to the theatre. In the chorus of The Zoo at the Royalty. Well, Edgar Bruce lavishly advertised a chorus of forty, under Teddy Solomon, for the Easter 1879 revival of Stephenson’s little musical comedy. I suppose some of the forty walked on in the main piece, the decidedly successful Crutch and Toothpick, as well, but after 18 performances, most of the famous forty were out of a job. Except those retained for the 3 1/2 weeks of Teddy’s operetta, A Will With A Vengeance, which replaced Sullivan’s piece on the bill. It seems John wasn’t amongst them. Or was he?


But he would be all right. His next shop was as a member of the chorus of Carte’s tour of HMS Pinafore and he was off, away and gently trotting towards glory. Which you can read about in detail on the regular G&S sites. 

The Carte company of 1880 included two sisters from Bethnal Green, Marian and Alice Lowry (Mrs William Woolnough, 1853-1929), the daughters of printer/compositor John Ring Lowry and his wife, Betsy Haythorpe.  Marian (b St Luke's 3 February 1855; d Hampstead 4 September 1940), who had featured for several seasons with Letty ('Dot') Lind in Howard Paul’s Entertainment, performed as ‘Marian May’, and she made a nice career for a decade. She also married little Mr Healy – now and for all time metamorphosed into ‘John Le Hay’. They were to have three daughters and a son. The two surviving girls – Norah Sophia (1884-1970) and Millicent Marian Rylance (1888-1966) -- survived, went on the stage, Millicent married …

The lass who went on the musical comedy stage as ‘Daisy Le Hay’ was née Rose Clara Carter, the wife (for a while) of hotelier John Thomas Hornsley Sample, and it seems in nowise related to our family. Likewise, I don't think he was related to the Sisters Mackaway, who performed a skate dance on a pedestal!


In the 1911 census, John and Marian can be seen in Hackney, with their two daughters, and Marian’s widowed sister Alice, with her daughter Maud Woolnough (b 5 August 1878). The Healys and the Lowry-Woolnoughs had been a close-knit family, in 1901 Marian’s elderly mother (1820-1902) and sister had made up part of the household, in 1891, the widowed John Healy was there and the two families occupied two adjacent houses. John sr had retired from pawnbroking, and young son Joseph (x 22 March 1858) had taken up the business. And with seeming sizeable success. In 1911 he – single – is at his longtime shop at 317 Mare Street, Hackney Road, with three assistants, a housekeeper, a cook, a housemaid ..  Joseph died 13 August 1931.

John Le Hay had a very fine career, at home and abroad, and was still in the saddle and striding on, before his sad and fatal automobile accident in 1926 … Marian survived him, and died (as Marian Mackway Healy) at 136 Fellowes Road, Hampstead, 5 September 1940 aged 86.

But we know about that. My little wander into the Le Hay-paddock was with the aim of picking up one or two little tidbits of ‘colouring’ and a bit of personal background to his tale. And now I’ve somewhat done that, plus the shopping, weed-sprayed the patio, the bach forecourt, visited our newborn foal, and it’s cocktail time. Till next time!













Monday, October 15, 2018

THE MOVING PICTURE SHOW … and Tyrolean singers


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How did I get here? Well, little things can send you off on long and fascinating journeys … and, as usual, in my case, it was a photo. This photo.


Madame Lloyd’s choir and orchestra. Well, it depends what you call a ‘choir’. And an orchestra. Um … of three, or four? I guess that’s Madame in the middle. And perhaps Monsieur? Well, I’ve dug in my usual fashion and come up with quite a lot of fun bits. ‘Madame Lloyd’, whomsoever she may have been, and ‘Mr S Lloyd’, were showbusiness stalwarts for fifteen solid years of trouping. What did they do? Well, they followed the fashions in this era of changing ways in entertainment, and they entertained a lot of people, from 1889 till 1905, in British halls, theatres and on endless piers … whether as ‘the Italian Choir and Diorama Company’, ‘Madame Lloyd’s Musical and Scenic Company’, ‘Madame Lloyd’s Italian Choir’ or any of many more variations thereupon.

What entertainment consisted of at its conception was a diorama exhibition (the first seems to have been a canvas diorama of Canada), with an accompanying ‘guided tour’, given by Mr Lloyd, the remainder of the evening being made up by solo and choral vocals by a group of nine girls, who also doubled as the ‘orchestra’: a flautist, a mandoline-player, a guitarist, piano, bells and, when available, banjo, harp and an elocutionist. I have no idea what Madame L did. She never appeared. Maybe she sewed the costumes and chaperoned the girls.
Those costumes were the only thing about the show which was ‘Italian’. The girls came mostly from the north of England, but fashion deemed that a little exoticness was needed around the elements of what we might nowadays we might call a concert party. That fashion had been set rolling in the late 1870s by a successful group called the ‘Swiss Alpine Choir’. The group, run by Carl Leroux André, from Saint-Gallen, was in effect a girl’s orchestra with vocals. This photo looks as if it may have come from their earliest days. 


However, the ‘choir’ wasn’t just a nineteenth-century girl-group. As you may see, ‘Spice Girls’ these lasses weren’t. The choir had more insidious purposes. Its backers came from the Temperance movement, Christianity was obligatory, and musical ability (especially on such exotica as the gigilira) preferred. ‘Professor’ André headquartered himself in Hackney where he and his singing wife taught music and the virtuous life to the halt, the lame, the delicate, the female… and he obviously did it pretty well. But ‘the message’ was the important thing: their programme consisted of ‘temperance songs, recitations, dialogues etc’. ‘The voices blend well together in the choruses and there are one or two good soloists’ noted the Hastings press. 


The company manager, Arthur Brogden, turned out fresh words, not all bearing the message but obeying the ethic, the Professor composed yards of music, and the group became popular as they toured – in a fashion Brogden would later take a credit for pioneering – round the country.




I have tried to discover the names of the artists, but alas, apart from Mme Andre and Mr E Collett, they are simple referred to as Mdlles Clémence, Alicia, Amy, Christine, Carry and Marie. But happily for me, the census man came round in April, and there in Blackburn, staying at – horror! – an hotel, we see Amélie André, singer, 40, born Switzerland, [Joseph] Arthur Brogden (24) from Liverpool ‘songster’, plus the Misses Alice Hodson (22), Christine Smellie (22, Scotland), Edward S Collett (21, Stratford Essex), Marie von Waldeck (22), Amy Stothard (19), Caroline Brooks (18), Jessie ?Molt (16) and – I guessed it – le petit Eugène is Master Eugène André aged 9, born Liverpool.

Is that le petit Eugene in front? And Amélie at the back?

But down in Manchester I spy the Professor with the B team: Mary Emily Williams (22, Wales), Pollie Handley (19, Wolverhampton), Lily Marshall (18, Woolwich), Anna Lanner (21, Germany), Rebecca Brooks (13) … Temperance set to music was evidently a growth industry!


 None of these names mean anything to me, but I see that Mr Collett, who won the best solo reviews, is, by the 1891 describing himself, sadly, as ‘late vocalist’. The Professor having died the previous year, Amélie is, in the same year, now a boarding house keeper in Littlehampton, where she died in 1901, but Eugène continued as an instrumentalist through the decades.


The Alpine Choir continued, as ‘Arthur Brogden’s Original Swiss Choir’ (18 members). Brogden became the manager of several music-halls, married performer ‘Viola May’ (Ada Eliza Annie Le Butt from Liverpool), had four performing children, and ..




Doh! A teetotal deer, a (mostly) female deer



But back to the ‘choirs’. Nobody of any importance (or just nobody) tried to copy the Prof in the early ‘80s. Maybe they were put off by the Temperance thing. But gradually variations on his theme arrived. In 1887 there was something called Whitefield’s Spanish Choir lurking round Landport, there was Huntingdon’s Italian Choir, and in 1889 the Scots accompanist ‘Marie Clifford’ (Maria Margaret Huntley, sometime Mrs Dr William James Garbutt, b Glasgow 17 August 1862), who had been playing piano for her second husband, magician ‘Dr Seaton’ (Richard George Reynolds), put together a troupe of ‘lady instrumentalists, those who sing preferred’. 


She started as the Marie Clifford Concert Company, with her husband magicking alongside Jessie and Kate Millar, Dorothy Heath, Emmeline Knox et al, quickly metamorphosed it into Marie Clifford’s Spanish Choir and Ladies’ Orchestra (‘nine ladies, harp, violin, piano, banjo, mandoline, musical glasses …’), then into Marie Clifford’s Spanish Choir and Merrymakers … we’ll get back to Marie.

A year later ‘Madame Lloyd’ got into business with her 'famous Italian Choir'. I don’t know where and when they started. My first sightings of them are in Eastwood, Notts, Town Hall, Heanor, and Alfreton in the very last part of 1890. So they clearly started very small. And finally, a review! Public Hall, Coalville, Leics. January 1891. Well, they may be doing the boondocks (and the docks don’t come any more boon than Coalville!), but they have a fair line up. Violinist Douglas Eley (ELY, Robert George b Worksop 6 January 1871; d Maidenhead 24 October 1951) who would later start his own long-lived company (‘Eley’s Gipsy Maids’), Nellie Vaughan, contralto, of the J W Turner opera co (small parts) and her livelier sister Annie who would go on to be a ‘clairvoyant’ on the halls, ballad vocalist Violet Melrose of the music-halls, Rose Melville (Mrs François MacMahon) elocutionist, Maggie Jenkins from Dowlais who would be a featured soprano for some years. Unlike Mrs MacMahon, who jumped ship in favour of the ephemeral Sheffield team, ‘Mr Doubleday’s Royal American Choir’, after a few weeks. And Nellie Vaughan joined Marie Clifford!


But by February they are the ‘Italian Choir and Diorama Company’. And, like André, doing two ‘donation at the door’ concerts on Sundays. But … diorama?

And then comes that nice 1891 census. Well, the company seems to be in Heywood, Lancs. Eight of them anyway. Where are the rest? And where the mysterious Mr and Mrs Lloyd? Hah! Mr & Mrs L[l]oyd 'professional singer' born England aged 33. Staying at the pub. A fake 'landlady entry'.`

Well, I know a wee bit about some of those present. The most successful would be James (16, pianist) and John (13, violin) Jackson, from Rochdale. After this engagement their father sent the boys and their wee sister Annie on the road as ‘the Jackson Family’, multi-instrumentalists. The family eventually took over the Rochdale Hippodrome and still owned it in the 1950s. 15 year-old Agnes Harvey, a miner’s daughter from Church Gresley, married a muso, Percy Glenelyon Stratford, and seems to have given up the business; Hilda Parker (1868-1926), of ‘the Parker family’ of Kentish Town, presumably went back there and became Mrs Robert Neish Davidson, and, like Alfred Oswin William Kirby became a music teacher. He went to the war as a RGA gunner …

The Parker Family

On into the 1890s … poor little Nora Bolzani the ‘reciter’ of the 1892 tour died aged 21, Tissie Cantwell, of the Cantwell sisters, seems to have been equally unfortunate … little Beatie became Beatie Edmunds … among the few names that are mentioned more than once, I notice the experienced elocutionist Fannie Sanderson, formerly of Dyson’s troupe … but then, in 1896, the world of entertainment changed. 


The canvas diorama was doomed. The Kinematograph made its first appearance. Scenery was no longer painted, it was projected on slides and – wonder! – films which actually showed moving pictures. Animated pictures. I don’t know who first used the gadget as an adjunct to public entertainment, but the first mention of the kinematograph, by that name (there were many others), that I have seen is in October 1896, when the Grand Music Hall, Clapham offered ‘the wonder of the nineteenth century showing animated photographs’. Within weeks, columns of advertisements for various machines – German, British (R W Paul’s), French, American (Edison’s) – appeared in the pages of the theatre press – everybody wanted the machine, and the various versions (‘Anarithmosope’, ‘Motophotoscope’, ‘Vitagraph’, ‘Animatographe’ etc) were quickly to be seen in town-halls and music-halls all round the country.


The next step was to improve the quality. By Christmas the British Athletic Company was advertising ‘Gyngell’s Kinematograph is steady, clear and reliable…’. But the kinema was still just an item on a bill, an ‘act’ which you could hire, like a singer or a comedian, with the machine’s operator, by the week. It was not yet an integral part of a performance. But things were moving fast …soon, already, you could hire a machine for a year at a time ...

Marie Clifford seems to have been the quickest off the mark. William Turle’s Royal Cinematograph was touring as an adjunct to her Spanish Choir by September 1896! The Walford Family show soon followed suit. Herr Pareezer with his ‘Diorama and Prussian Choir’, Joshua Dyson’s Diorama and Gipsy Choir, Hamilton’s Excursions and others stuck with the old ways a bit longer. Madame Lloyd doesn’t appear to have resisted too long. By 1899 she, too, was featuring film in her show. Until a performance at Glasgow’s Camlachie Institute when the celluloid burst into flames. Madame’s machine was promptly advertised for sale (cost £42, for sale £14 ..) and she went back to promising ‘the programme also includes the gramophone, classic statuary, meteor-chromatic sketches, and some splendid views of Wales. Also dioramic scenes of the war, the Dreyfus case etc,,,’ from ‘Madame Lloyd’s Musical and Scenic company’. But you couldn’t stop the tide: the movies were soon back on the programme and praised: ‘the cinematographic pictures were exceptionally fine’.

The personnel of the troupe had steadied somewhat. Mary Young, Nellie Miller, Jessica Stokes, Clara Kirkman, Beatie Edmunds, flautist Lillian Stoneley (surely a relation of Scots kiddie instrumentalists Ernie and Susie who also appeared with the company), xylophonist Alice Cleveland, Fannie Sanderson for the recitation, Ida Mildred McQualter (b Chelsea 5 March 1882; d Uxbridge 1951) and her cornet, Mabel Mavis on the mandoline and musical glasses, Alice Meier (b Plymouth 16 August 1885; d 10 Palgrave Rd London 20 February 1983) on the dulcimer, vocalist Myra Bennett, violinist and musical director Howard William Galpin (b Dorset 10 April 1872; d Bristol 4 May 1954), sometime organist of Hinckley Parish Church …

In 1903, the company brought in not only Miss Gertrude Bradshaw, who sang ‘From Mighty Kings’, but three male performers, a yodeller, a comedian, and a vocalist. So we can see that our photograph is taken after that expansion. Actually, it was taken in April 1904, during a season at their favourite venue of Hastings. Because one copy is very kindly dated! And, therefore, we know who some of them are. The little fellow in Tirolean dress is clearly the yodeller. Gustave Tobler (b 1877). Madame hadn’t had to look far for him: he had been the husband of Myra Bennett (b Lambeth 14 May 1875) since 7 September 1901. The couple did duets in the show so I’m guessing that’s Myra in the frilly hat? (Gustave recorded the tyrolienne 'Le Pâtre des montagnes' for HMV).

The comedian? The one in the braided jacket? [George Ernest] Gilbert Childs. Yes, in spite of what ImdB and others say that is him. The famous Gilbert Childs. The one born in Balham is someone else. Young Gilbert also married within the troupe: the soprano Mary Harriet Young. I wonder which one she is. 


That leaves four men. One will be Mr Walter Adams (descriptive song 'The Coatguardsman'), another will be Herr K Szynski or Cyznski (piccolo, xylophone), I presume one is the manager, and one the musical director. Still Mr Galpin. The musicians are probably the two in the tuxes. I’d pick the looming gent at the back as, what? The company manager? … I wonder who operated the film-machine.

There are supposed to be nine singing-playing women. So maybe that isn’t Madame Lloyd. Maybe there was no Madame Lloyd. Not in the act. The reviews mention, Mary, Myra, Ida Macqualter the cornettist, Cissie Senior (mezzo) from Hull who sang Maritana, Cecilia Allington (pupil of Odoardo Barri! 'The Lost Chord') and ‘little’ Beatie Edmunds (coon song and cakewalk). Well, I’ve found a photo which reckons to be Beatie (fl 1897-1904) what do you reckon?


There are other names quoted in later dates: Miss F Robinson (drums), Lily Leighton, Eulalie Carl, Mary Beresford (piano), Dorrie Courtney, Marion van Flymen the reciter … but not very much later. The company seems to have closed down little more than a year after. Eley’s Gipsy Maids vanished about 1908. The fashion had changed.

Herewith a latter-day (1905) program for Madam (sic) Lloyd's troupe ..


But if the days of the diorama and its touring ‘choirs’ – Spanish, Italian, Alpine or Prussian – were dead or dying, some of the performers had good to grand careers to come.

From the Lloyd group, Gilbert Childs was the stand out. Born in Islington 1885, the son of Ernest Batten Childs, a piano-tuner, he went on the stage as a child as a member of the Mohawk Minstrels. He was in his mid-teens when he played with Madame Lloyd, and found himself a wife, and in 1906, he went on the musical stage touring for a long stint in Les P’tites Michu, before taking a turn on the music-hall stage. In 1911, he and Mary were engaged by Charles Frohman the play in The Arcadians in America. He stayed oure mer to follow up as Crion in The Siren and The Quaker Girl before returning to Britain where he toured in the revue Sugar and Spice, and then the Harry Day entertainments Funbeams and Flashes. When the famous Co-Optimists was produced in 1921, he joined Davy Burnaby, Laddie Cliff, Melville Gideon, Phyllis Monkman, Betty Chester to head the troupe through three years until he was felled by heart disease. Such was his popularity, that when his illness was reported, he got the headline, above … Ellen Terry. He returned to the team, and to radio work, but it was only temporary. He died in Lambeth Hospital 24 September 1931.

Mary (b Wickhambreaux 15 April 1877; d Shoreditch 15 March 1956), eight years older than her husband, outlived him by a quarter of a century, but seems to have given up performing after Broadway.

Another member of the ‘family’ who went on to fine success was the lass who called herself ‘Mabel Mavis’. Mabel, by any other name, seems to have started off playing mandoline with the Walford Family troupe around 1899. But she was a clever lass. One minute she was playing fairy in panto in Kent, then next (1908) billed as the marvelous lady musician, on a multitude of instruments, notably the musical glasses, with comedian Charles Coburn. In 1909 she was at the Jardin de Paris (France), in 1912 with Coburn again, in 1914 ‘La Pierrette diverteuse musicale’ was noted as ‘the last British artist to leave Brussels after the German invasion’, in 1921 she is still with Coburn. Hm. Was she his wife? No. His mistress? Or just a Very Useful Lady? After the war, where she can be seen entertaining the troops, I see her very little. But I’m sure she’s there: just without her nom de mandoline.

Dorrie Courtney, the fine banjo player, actually made it to the talking pictures.

Little Ernie headed the Ernest Stoneley String Quartet on Irish radio in the 1920s.


Now I have come upon a second photo of the company. The three in the back row, extreme right, look to me like the same three as in my photo – Myra, Gustave, and perhaps Mr Adams, then? The wild-eyed girl in the smock (Beatie?) is there again, and if that IS Madame Lloyd in the white ruffles, she looks rather older. Yet …. The sunhat is still there, and the costume of the seated lass on the left … I’ll have to dig a little more, into the era when the ‘animated pictures’ came to town.

Little Beatie apparently became Mrs Anthony. Ah, yes. Here she is in Fulham in 1911. Born Gloucester. 'Aged 30'. Wife of George [Matthew Barcham] Anthony 'theatrical manager'. ?Brother Bert Edmunds 'music hall artist'. Son Gerald Anthony aged 3. Which makes her actually Miss Alice Beatrice Clayton born Cornwall 23 September 1877. Not so 'little' then? Died 1972.

Ah, look! Here they are -- well, some of them -- at Eastbourne in 1901. Mr Galpin, Beatrice Edmunds from Rotherham (?!), Fannie Sanderson (b Tine, Lincs) aged 33, Ida McQualter (b London) aged 20, Lillian Stanley and Mary Young from Manchester, Emmie and Lillian St Albyn from Sheffield (groan!) ... 

OFF TO THE TYROL ...

Originally, I stuck here 'Who are these, I wonder ...'


Well, now I know, so here goes!  They are what you might call the successors to 'the originals'. Simon Holaus's Tyrolean Singers. This photo taken when the group was of six. It had in the 1850s been four. Later it would swell to eight.



The droopy moustache is Simon Holaus (bass), the lady with the air of Janet Patey is his wife (soprano). The others ...?
Well, Cyrus Voss Bark of Clifton seems to have gone into business in 1868. Aged 20.  And in 1868 the troupe visited Britain for the first time in seven years. And sang, as usual for the Queen at Windsor Castle. The composition of the group was Simon Holaus, Frau Holaus, one of the Meickels (tenor), Samuel Margreiter (gigilira) and a Herr Holwarth (tenor). Sometime Frau Meickel and Frau Margreiter were also billed. 
Sadly, the were in Scotland when the 1871 census took place, but they show up in digs: Herr and Frau Holaus, Sam Margreiter (33) and wife (23), Jakob Meickel (36) and Franz Hollrath (22, I suspect this is Holwarth). Looks like the stout man is Margreiter or Meickel. Or even Holwarth.
The only other clue, and it points to Holwarth, is that photo 2 is taken after 1875 ... which would point to the period of the group's final British appearances in 1877. Herr and Frau Holaus, Holwarth, Herr Hansberger, Herr Mungenast, Frln Marie Stigler ...  two ladies ... not three! Grrrrr ...

Oh, that's not the only problem. Simon Holaus appears on my radar as early as 1839 in a team with Ludwig Rainer, Margarethe Sprenger (Frau Rainer) and Helene Rainer. In 1840, an unnamed group of Tirolean singers appears at London Polytechnic. In 1851 the Gebrüder Meister and Holaus lead another party of five, and Simon Holaus and Veit Rahm from Zell am Zillerthal and Ludwig Rainer and Simon Klir from Rattenberg, with Frln Franziska Margreiter can be seen in Innsbrück ... and then it is England. Holaus, L Rainer ('stout and robust'), Klier, Rahm and Fanny M.

But what is this? 20 December 1852. Ship from Rotterdam bearing folk from Mannheim: Alois Holaus, Anton Margreiter, Johann Einhauser, Johann Dremel, Balthasar Larch, Felix Rahm, Andreas Gredler ...


The 'B' team? What's up. Soon the Holaus team would leave for South Africa and Australia ... but we find no shiplist.  Just an advertisement ... ahha! Only Holaus and Rahm from the A team! Gredler, Dremel and Einhauser from the reserves. 'Who performed before Queen Victoria'. Yes, well two of them did. And no females.

Holaus ('powerful and mellow bass voice') is definitely the centrepin of the team. Rahm was the zither and gigilira player .. the rest are movable parts. We take a break while the group, with varying members, tour around Europe, with a visit to the Queen in 1861, and in 1863 I see them at Baden: Holaus now has a Frau and Sam Margreiter, is with Frau (his?) and a Fräulein, and Jakob Meickel has acquired a lady as well ... and who is Holzhausen? Is he the same as Holzeiner with Peter Meister's team?  Oyyyyyyy ...  

Simon Holaus died in Zell am Ziller in April 1895. He was said to have been the brother of Blasius Holaus (von Hopfgarten nach Oberau), dean of the cathedral. I wouldn't know. I have no idea about his wife F[anny] nor his son Wilhelm ..
I have no idea, either, about the other members of the troupe, excepting Simon Klier who died in Rattenberg 5 February 1904. 'Only Rahm is still alive' quoth the local press ...

Enough. And I still don't know who the (other) folk in the photos are. Yet. But I see some other stuff