Emily Soldene: still in my life .....

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You spend 20 years researching and writing a book of theatrical biography ... then you make the mistake of living 20 years longer ...

Mistake? Of course.

When I wrote EMILY SOLDENE: IN SEARCH OF A SINGER, I travelled the world, seeking out even the most infintesimal fragments on the lady's life, family, work ... and it all came together in two vast volumes of richly-illustrated 'life and times' ...

I solved most of the family secrets: I found and visited the unnamed-by-her Hertfordshire village where Emily was brought up, I found her mother, Catherine Swain, her ancestors, her fathers -- both the bigamous London law clerk, and the biological illegitimate one -- 

Half-sister Clara Vesey

I followed (half)sister, cousins of all degrees, aunts, uncles through the generations, and recorded all in the pages of my books ...

The odd uncle vanished without trace into the mid-1800s ....  or, so I thought ... until descendants of the Swain family surfaced in the 21st century ... with ... this! Taken in Sydney, Australia ...

Emily's Uncle Stephen Swain. Born 1820. Married 1841. And the day after the wedding he and his new wife sailed for Australia ...

So, when Emily visited Australia, and marked forever the history of the musical theatre in that continent, she had family there. She mentioned the 'uncles' in her childhood memories, but she didn't record that she had found one of them on the other side of the world!

Anyhow, Uncle Stephen lived into the new century, and died in Sydney in 1901 (15 April). He is buried in Waverley Cemetery ... and his descendants live in Australia to this day ...

Nice to have tracked him down, but I wish it could have been BEFORE the book came out and not after!