I was having a day 'off' from Carte-ing. Just fiddling about, after my first trip outside Gerolstein's locked gates in over a month. Fiddling. With the difficult bits and left-over pieces from shiplists and so forth. Picking up the odd fact ...
Nancy FREYNE [TAYLOR, Florence Mary] (b ?Holborn 10 January 1877; d Cuckfield 22 or 24 January 1977)
Theresa RASSAM (b Twickenham x 19 April 1871; d New Sussex Hospital, Brighton 10 July 1938). Daughter of Mesopotamian-born Hormuzd Rassam of HM Indian Civil Service and his Irish wife, Annie Eliza. Sang the lead contralto roles with the Carte tours, married Captain James Donaldson Boswell (1870-1915). Rather too glamorous for Ruth, no ..?
'James Lewis CAMPION' and his wife 'Louise DE MERVALE' wasted me too much time. He was an aspiring writer as well as a chorus singer, she toured in Dorothy before joining Carte. If he weren't related to the bass Thomas Lewis CAMPION (b Durham 27 June 1865) of Durham Cathedral, it was a bit naff of him to pinch his name.
Investigating Richard PURDON (b Ireland 1851; d New York 11 October 1916) in detail was too much, even for me. He seems to have been the son of a mayor of Dublin, and from an early age played in amateur dramatics in that city, in pants or in a skirt, in the early to mid seventies. He came to England when still in his twenties, and played in such pieces as L100,000, Betsy, The Mother in Law, Crutch and Toothpick, A Wet Day, Withered Laves, Confusion, The Heir at Law, Two to One, The Alps, Cousin Johnny on tour and Nicholas Nickelby (Squeers), My Friend (Colonel Battleby), The Colleen Bawn (Corrigan) in the West End, taking time out in between to spend a length of time playing with Carte, or regaling pantomime audiences with his dame act and 'It's all up with Tommy now'. He became a fixture in the London Theatre, in classy productions, in the 1890s, and voyaged thereafter to South Africa and to America (1908) where he played in theatre and silent films until his death in 1916. He can be seen in the 1915 census rooming in West 18th Street, 'aged 65' and as he has been in every census that I can find him in 'married'. A mistake quickly remedied I think.
Frederic(k) William HUNTLY (b Lambeth 29 August 1863 sic; d Los Angeles 1 November 1931) was the son of John James Huntly, a jeweler, and his wfe Emma née Morton. As a teenager he worked as a clerk for a theatrical agent, but soon climbed on to the stage and in 1884-5 toured as a chorister for Carte. It seems that immediately after this he emigrated to America, but I don't spot him until he signs up for the Spanish war, gets naturalised in 1896, married Flora Jackson (yes, Flora not Laura) in Boston in 1903, and returns (?) to the stage playing Bill Blake in Princess of Kensington's Broadway run and Fo hop/Sing Hi in San Toy. As happens so often when folk have more than one country, more than one career (this one, atypically had only one wife) those who know about the first part dont't necessarily tie it up with the second half. And it was the second half of Fred Huntly's career which was to be the successful part. He went back to California, and he got into the moving picture busincess. Over the twenty years and more following he directed an enormous number of films, which you will find listed on the movie databases.
And here I enclose his birth registration and gravestone, showing that he was indeed (pace various websites) his vital details. Thou shallt NOT copy from one another ...
And I kept on with the Hs ...
Claribel HYDE by any other name, only seemingly trod the stage once, in the original cast of Haddon Hall. Otherwise, she had a reasonable career of some fifteen years in minor concerts -- the Aquarium ('RAM medallist') (1891-3), a swathe of dates on Piers (Southsea Pavilion, Clarence , Folkestone Victoria), with the occasional afternoon date at the Crystal Palace or the Albert Hall Sundays, at the Reading or Fulham Town Hall, at a city dinner or for the Freemasons. I spot her singing Bridge's The Cradle of Christ at Caterham, as 'a celebrated London society entertainer' at Prestatyn, giving ' Divine Redeemer' at Clapham and, as late as 1900-2 as soloist with the Blue Hungarian Band of Colchester and 1906 with the Belgrave Choral Society at Caxton Hall (Hiawatha). And in all that time, I didn't pick up one clue as to who she was, or where she came from. Pah!
Thomas [Edward] HODGES (b 6 Barleymow Cottages, City of London 12 August 1850) was the son of a policeman, Joseph Hodges, and his wife Sarah Ann née Linthwaite. He did his stint with Carte around 1881. I don't know for how long. But he was still an actor in 1891, with a wife, Mary Annie née Maskell and a son, Harry Thomas. Harry also became a professional vocalist for a while. By 1911, Thomas is no more and mother and son are living in deepest Penge. And that, to date, is all I've exhumed.
Ina [Isabella] HADDEN (b Tetford Lincs 31 December 1866; d Agate's Lane, Ashstead 2 March 1937) was the daughter of Dr John Hadden of Queen's University, Ireland, and his wife Angelina. She spent a half-dozen years in the Carte chorus and married fellow chorister Walter [William] WELLS
(b Welton-by-Lincoln x 4 March 1858, by William ex Millicent née Spencer). Previously a chemist's shopman in Lincoln, at the birth of their first child, Gerald Walter, 18 July 1892, Walter is dubbed 'singer', but by 1901 he has a better job: as hotel manager of the White Hall, Hampton Court. By 1911, the couple have reitred to Shepparton and are raising chickens.
Harry HALLEY (b Devonshire Rd, Islington 2 February 1859) was the son of a musician, Thomas George Beverley Halley and his wife Harriet nee Tulloch. He started life as a clerk on the stock exchange (elder brother, Thomas, was already a stockjobber) but at age 24 renounced the office stool for the stage and, like so many others of little or no experience, joined the Carte tours. He was on tour from 1883-4, and, again like too many others, too quickly married 20-year-old chorine Amy Sarah Grist who was apparently working as Minnie HARROLD (1862-1937), daughter of William Grist, of the Crystal Palace.
In 1885, he joined the La Grande-Duchesse tour of Gertrude Cave-Ashton, playing the comical Nepomuc, returned to Carte for a second engagement in 1885, and had a son, Douglas Halley, 27 June 1885. The couple toured in On Change, Harry was hired for Mr Barnes of New York at the Olympic, The Union Jack (Tim O'Grady), for the light opera Carina at the Opera Comique and Hands Across the Sea at the Pavilion, before he and the wife went touring in The Silver King. He played Harry Corkett, she coughed and spat.
His next engagement was playing Jesse Pegg in a good tour of The Middleman. Amy stayed home, did a bit at the Opera Comique, and then did a bit too much. A certain Mr Frank Denman otherwise 'Harry Grahame' would be co-respondent in their divorce suit.
The Denmans don't seem to have lasted long in the theatre (next time I see them, he is a shipping clerk), but Harry went on to a fine career with barely a breath between engagements for another fifteen years. He played with Kate Vaughan's company, then with Minnie Palmer (Mr Parker in My Brother's Sister, Col George Washington Snow in My Sweetheart), toured as Champignol in The Other Fellow, in Paul Kauvar, as Dotor Brierley in A Gaiety Girl, and created the role of Admiral Hornblower in the musical Love and War (17 June 1895). A longer job was in the tour of the comedy Tom, Dick and Harry (1895-7) in which he played the 'peppery old soldier', General Stanhope. He did a quick return to Kate Vaughan (Pomponne in The Little Viscount), then headed to South Africa for George Edwardes, playing Rob Dow in The Little Minister.
Back in Britain, over the next few years, he played in The Other Lady (John Jacob Webster), A Run of luck (Charlie Sandown), A Night Out (Mathieu), The Derby Winner (Streatfield), Charley's Aunt (Spettigue), The Mysterious Mr Bugle (Samuel Tote), Oh, Miss! (Tadwell Teague) and took another turn into the Edwardesian musical in tours of The Messenger Boy (Cosmos Bey) and San Toy (1901). He was Mr Pringle in Leedham Bantock's Those Terrible Twins (1902), popped down to South Africa one more time, for Carte (with a different wife), played in Resurrection (1904) and I see him on stage last in Ada Reeve's musical comedy company playing Winnie Brooke Widow (Montague Brent) and Moll, the Rogue (Simon Sourby) (1905). Maybe it is he 'Harry Halley aged 46 actor' heading for America in 1906?
Not many old Cartesians rated a full obituary in The Era, but that's what William HOGARTH (b South Shields c1844; d Brunswick House, Buckingham Rd, Brighton 4 June 1899) earned. The obituary is a model of the genre (with the usual generalisations), so I'll simply paste it in here, adding a few details: Married Sarah Jane Oldland in 1865, 1871 'musician and insurance agent', in Brighton, 1881 'play actor' children Hilda Isabella, Jessie, Kate, William George.
I see him in India in 1875
then singing ('baritone') at the Oxford, Brighton in December 1877 and playing in pantomime in Sheffield, playing and singing 'The Wolf' alongside Violet Melnotte in Little Bo Peep. In 1878 he turns up in concert at the Margate Assembly Rooms. He went touring as Corcoran in HMS Pinafore, with Richard Mansfield and the Broughs, in 1879-80, played Baron Bumperino in the Edinburgh Cinderella of 1880, in Les Cloches de Corneville in 1881, at the Alhambra in Babil and Bijou in 1882 and in concert at the Aquarium ('an aria from Alceste') in 1883, before he teamed up with Shiel Barry, who had made his name and fame as Gaspard in London's Cloches de Corneville, to tour the record-breaking comic opera. That tour, which stretched on and on, made the career of both men. At various times, the main piece was varied by pieces such as Gipsy Gabriel (3 November 1887), built to showcase the two men, and The Black Squire (5 November 1896), but it was Les Cloches which was to, eventually, have Hogarth's name as much as Barry's attached to it through the 1880s and 1890s.
A few quibbles: I cannot find him 'making his mark in comic opera' in London in the 'seventies, King Comet (in which he was scheduled to play the title-role) was burned out and never happened ...
For all that he came late to the musical theatre, William Hogarth made himself a fine place therein.
From the pretty sublime to the totally ridiculous. Mr HORSPOOL. 'Professor Horspool' 'voice scientist'. He came to the Carte chorus after having held a similar spot in the Emily Soldene company and, consequently, he has been in my consciousness for thirty years. And he makes a disproportionate appearance in my Soldene biography from which herewith a page:
'The other name in the cast that is interesting -- well, interesting is perhaps the wrong word -- is that of Mr J Horspool. Joel Horspool (b Southwell, Notts 22 January 1853; d 1918, in anonymity) was a chorus singer, and for many years he made a fair enough career as such, notably with D’Oyly Carte’s La Fille de Madame Angot tour, at the Alhambra, and at the Comedy Theatre under Violet Melnotte. As well as for more than two years (he claimed it was six), including the whole of the 1882 tour, with Emily. But Mr Horspool then lost his voice, retired from the stage and from his choirstall at Lincoln Cathedral and became instead a prompter, an orchestrator and allegedy (I can find nothing by him) a ‘composer of music’. Finally, in the first years of the new century, he went trumpetingly public as no less a personage than a ‘Professor’. Mr Horspool took up teaching other folk how (not) to lose their voices and displayed himself and his pupils at such venues as the Steinway Hall, lecturing on ‘One Right and Many Wrong Methods’ ( .. [he] condemned the usual practice of taking a deep breath and ridiculed the advice generally given about throwing the voice .. we ought to take our breath as a dog does’). The Professor gathered round him a little group of passionate devotees – notably one well-off Miss Jane Mossop aetat 47 and ‘niece of Thomas Woolfield who in 1838 with the first Lord Brougham and Vaux founded the English colony in Cannes’ - who were persuaded to invest in his great discovery, the ‘discovery’ that the great music academies had scorned, and, thus financed, he launched himself and his ‘method’ as a limited company, The Horspool Natural Voice Academy (Ltd). He also launched Vocal Discovery of the Century: Alpha and Omega of Voice Production (1904) and A Collection of Muscular Exercises (1905) and rashly but confidently (and commercially) announced to the world via the pages of the major newspapers that he had developed a ‘perfect singing technique’. A singing technique which didn’t even require lessons. You could learn (for an average of about thirty-one pounds ten shillings) from his treatises (‘The system taught in this book is entirely original and of such simplicity that the student will be able to acquire a perfectly produced voice without personal tuition .. 7s6d net’) and via the post. As Emily described sarcastically:
“Professor Horspool, once a chorus singer at the Savoy, lost his voice. Having done that with success, he looked around and discovered a ‘system’ -- a system by which everyone, no matter how old or inaudible, might acquire a ‘perfect singing voice’. Consequent on this discovery the ‘professor’ got up a company, and exploited with financial success ‘the perfect voice’. Perfect for singing, perfect for elocution, etc. People with no voice at all guaranteed one by correspondence (fees in advance); in fact the dumb were invited to rise up and call the professor blessed...”
In 1907 in the course of a public lecture, the former tenor, William Hayman Cummings, now the highly respected head of the Guildhall School of Music, rubbished Horspool’s methods as ‘quackeries’. He ‘said voices were born, not made’, and our Mr Horspool sued him. Emily, relating this event in her newspaper column of the time didn’t admit that the ‘Professor’ had ever had anything to do with her. She just stuck with the ‘Savoy chorister’ qualification. Horspool vs Cummings came up at the Royal Courts of Justice, London, in February 1908. Sir Milsom Rees, the famous throat specialist, gave evidence in favour of the ‘born-not-made’ theory (pronouncing that for elasticity of the vocal chords, Mme Melba out-elasticised all her contemporaries) and testified to the bloodied and bowed state of the larynxes of some of the Professor’s pupils, Sir Charles Santley added his tuppenceworth on what went to make up a singer, and Horspool was never in with a chance. Verdict for the defendant. It was, officially, not libel to say that Horspool was a quack. The Professor fought back briefly, now heading his advertisements ‘magna est veritas et praevalebit’ and featuring references from a reverend gentleman and an amateur actress whose voices he had raised from the dead, but it was no use. The lawsuit, the L850 costs of which he was unable to pay, had effectively spelled the end of the ‘Professor’ and his perfect voices. For the general public, anyway. But not for some of the faithful. In 1938, when Mrs Jane Horspool (née Mossop) passed on, her death notice billed her as ‘widow of Professor Horspool’. Once a Professor always a Professor.' (Emily Soldene: In Search of a Singer)
Mr Horspool's brother, Amos (1853-1922), also worked as a chorister, seemingly, with Carte and William Greet. He billed himself in the 1901 and 1911 censi as 'author'; in 1891 as 'music publisher'. In 1881 he was a cordwainer and machinist.
One other singer who came to my notice for the first time via Madame Soldene was the bass baritone William HAMILTON (b ?Devon c 1842; d Los Angeles 7 April 1897). I have had copious notes on him on my computer(s) since Amstrad days, and they somehow survived. However, I haven't gone biographically into print about him up till now, because, fascinating as he has always been, there has always been A Problem about him. Written across the top of my notes is 'there are clearly two William Hamiltons, if not three ..'. I was under-estimating. And as I proceded, it got worse, because our man billed himself initially as 'William Hamilton', later as 'William H Hamilton' or 'W H Hamilton', and showbusiness in the C19th held a load of these: starting with the one who was leading man at Merthyr Tydvil theatre in the 1860s, going on to the well-known American baritone vocalist (yes!) who killed a man in horseplay and committed suicide by prussic acid some years later (25 March 1864), to another who ... well, you see my problem. Sorting out who's who has been the very devil. And, even now, there are one or two credits that I'm not sure of ... but, after 30 years, here I go, at last.
I don't know if and where he was born in Devon, nor indeed under what name. He was mean enough to emigrate to America when they'd just had their 1870 census, and just before England had its 1871 one. And in 1861 he hadn't yet started singing visibly. My first sighting of him, in 1864, is as a student at the Royal Academy of Music. He appears in reviews of their concerts singing selections from the Stabat Mater and Hummel's Mass in E Flat. However, at the same time (and probably before) he had a money-making job, at Evans's Supper Rooms. His name appears also in 1866 as a member of 'the Cecilian Quartet' and of an Alfred Lee group:
before he comes under the management of William Holland, supremo of the Canterbury Music Hall and the North Woolwich Gardens. At the Gardens, he appeared on stage for the first time, as Matt o' the Mint in The Beggar's Opera, at the Canterbury he sang with his first Minstrel show ('Memory's Golden Shore'). He was now a solid part of the Music-Hall fraternity, and when their Sick Fund gave its fundraiser concert, he appeared as Max in Le Châlet in an unlikely threesome with Hetty Tracey and Fred French.
But in January 1870 came an announcement of a Benefit for William Hamilton, 'for many years a popular singer at Evans's and recently engaged at the Canterbury' prior to his departure for America. William sang 'The Village Blacksmith', 'I never can forget', 'John Barleycorn', Her bright smile haunts me still' and 'Nil Desperandum', but he had one more, brief London engagement to fulfil, at the Lyceum. The three gentlemen successively hired to play Siegebert in London's ground-breaking production of Chilpéric had either been sacked or died, and William stepped in ...
My next sighting of him is in April. Mr W Hamilton operatic baritone. On the bill of Risley's Company at the Hippotheatron in 14 Street. My next sighting is not until November, and it is at the Arch Street Opera House, Philadelphia when the 'fine voices of Messrs Hamilton and Briscoe' are heard with Simmons and Slocum's Minstrels. In February 1871 he is still the baritone of Simmons and Slocum's Minstrels' ('Dear Little Shamrock', 'The Day When You'll Forget Me'). They closed in May and went on the road. I see Hamilton singing 'Dear, dear friends of old' in Cincinnati 28 July 1871. However, by September, they were back in Philadelphia ('The Mariner's Daughter'). But 20 March 1872, the Arch Street burned down. In 1872, he is at the Chestnut Theatre, Philadelphia and seemingly with Frank Moran [and Dixey's] Minstrels at the 11th Street. He sang what seems to have been the Emily Soldene hit 'Man the Lifeboat' as was 'nightly greeted with warm applause'.
I think he may have stayed quite a while in Pennsylvania. I spot him singing with the local Männerchor (29 July 1872) and playing Gabriel in Guy Mannering at a Benefit (7 May 1873), he married a local girl, Mary Kate ****, and his daughter, Lillie W, was born there circa 1879. Where he went in 1873 is fuzzed a bit. Is he the W H Hamilton at the Grand Opera house with G L Fox, playing supporting roles in everything from A Midsummer Night's Dream (Starveling) to The Wandering Jew, The Haunted House, Richard III, Robert Macaire and, of course, Humpty Dumpty (Dr Nitrous Oxide Gas Cureall) and the Rothomago rip-off Humpty Dumpty Abroad? I rather doubt it, for when the indubitable he turns up again he is said to be 'late of Simmons and Slocum's Minstrels'. And there he is, back at the Arch Street (rebuilt?) with Lew Simmons in May 1873 giving 'Speak to Me' et al. And in September with 'Clasping Hands', 'Passed Away'. He was still with Simmons in September 1874.
But in October 1874, he took a different tack and turned up as a baritone-bass principal in Clara Louise Kellogg's opera company. His roles, during her next two seasons, included Ferrando in Il Trovatore, the King in Maritana, Giacomo in Fra Diavolo, Plunkett in Martha, Arnheim in The Bohemian Girl, Don Pedro in The Rose of Castille, Bartolo in The Marriage of Figaro, Mr Corrigan in The Lily of Killarney, Nevers in Les Huguenots and, doubtless, others.
From the opera, Hamilton returned to the world of Minstrelsy, and joined the classy San Francisco Minstrels ('The Mariner's Daughter', 'Where art thou?', 'Have courage my boy to say no', 'Margaretta', 'The Prodigal', 'The Old Arm Chair', 'I stood on the Bridge at Midnight', 'The Old Arm Chair', 'Only a Face at the Window'), and in June 1877 sang for a season at Gilmore's Gardens with Julia Rivé before, in December, leading a concert party (including Blanche Reive-Wilmot and Tom Bartleman) to Canada. I think it is our other fellow who played in 1878 with Fanny Davenport.
The arrival of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and their ilk opened up opportunities for W H Hamilton. He played HMS Pinafore in Boston (1879) and New York, where in a series at the Fifth Avenue Theatre he played Corcoran, the Judge in Trial by Jury, Kantschukoff in Fatinitza and Pierre in The Rose of Auvergne. He played Zapeter in Princess Toto and Christopher Crab in Billee Taylor at the Standard Theatre and the title-role in The Sultan of Mocha (1880) ... and then took another trip with the Minstrels ('Flowers from Mother's Grave', 'Why Did She Leave Him?', 'Once Again', 'London Bridge', 'Sweethearts', 'Twickenham Ferry'). He was soon back, however, on the comic opera stage, playing Billee Taylor at Niblo's, Patience at the Standard, Police Sergeant in Pirates of Penzance at Booth's and Cotignac in the Comley-Barton Madame Favart.
But he had now become something of a star in the world of Minstrelsy, and he once again joined Charley Backus and Billy Birch for another round (1881-2) . The Minstrels produced a burlesque Iolanthe, and William played the Lord Chancellor. He returned to the legit with a troupe called the Boston Comic Opera Co, playing alongside John Brocolini, the inevitable Henry Laurent and Gertrude Franklin at Booth's Theatre in The Pirates of Penzance and Billee Taylor, but, in June of '82, 'William H Hamilton of the San Francisco Minstrels' sailed for England.
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| Christopher Crab |
I don't know why he and his wife (and daughter?) went. They were happily installed in Bayonne, NJ, work was flowing ... perhaps something of a personal or family nature?
They didn't stay long. In September he was back a-Minstrelling ('The Cavalier's Farewell', 'I left my Love', 'Tally ho'), and with intent. He agreed to pay $10,000 to purchase a one-third interest in the San Francisco Minstrels, but in February 1883 there was some sort of disagreement, and having paid already more than half the money he pulled the plug and returned to the theatre, to HMS Pinafore and Patience at the Standard Theatre, to a wee spell with Fay Templeton, and a briefer one with the Alice May production of Satanella (Bracaccio) at the Standard. And then he set sail again, and weeks later he was on stage at the Gaiety Theatre, London, playing the role of Nicholas de Ville in Edward Solomon's Paul and Virginia, opposite Lillian Russell.
He stayed a little longer this time, long enough to sing Bartolo for Richard Temple at the Crystal Palace and play Boleslas in Falka and Buckingham in Nell Gwynne at the Comedy Theatre, but 'after a year's absence', 17 August he was back in America, contracted for the Boston Bijou. Unfortunately, the manager died before his ship docked.
His first appearances were as Don Jose in Maritana and Arnheim in The Bohemian Girl, before he was hired by John McCaull to help stage Nell Gwynne for America. That ended in lawsuits as well. Hamilton headed to Florida with a concert version of The Bohemian Girl, and ended up taking over the management of the company -- including Adelaide Randall, Harry Pepper and Carrie Tutein -- for a tour as 'the Bijou Opera Company', but by August 1885 he was back in New York, playing the title-role in The Mikado for John Duff. He left that job, however, for one that promised much better: the American National Opera Company, set up with much puffing, but not destined for greatness. Through 1885-6 he played Papageno, Amonasro, Sir Tristan in Martha, Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew, the High Priest in Nero &c until the company folded.
A job in a repertoire season at Louisville also folded due to money problems, and he returned to the safety of the Standard Theatre to play Squire Bantam in Dorothy. He seems to have taken a turn in the show Circus in Town but in 1888 he went to St Louis for W S Rising, who was promoting a season of comic opera at the Pompeian Amphitheatre. There was lots of press but limited action, but they got HMS Pinafore on. Hamilton, this time, was Dick Deadeye and the Josephine, Lord protect us, was Loie Fuller! Hamilton clearly had producing ambitions: he had brought back three H S Leigh adaptations from England, he had spoken of producing a new musical at Atlantic City; what he finally did get up and running was W H Hamilton's New York Choir Opera Company, repertoire Maritana, The Bohemian Girl, The Mikado and Ruddigore. How long and far it ran, I can only guess.
In 1889 he was a member of Daly's company (The Golden Widow, As You Like It) but he withdrew to go to San Francisco's Tivoli Theatre. There, he featured (28 April 1890) in Orpheus and Eurydice with Emily Soldene, as Kantschukoff in Fatinitza and Mephistopheles in Faust, before he again put his managerial hat on and took a company 'to the interior' and then to Honolulu. The Honolulu experience was enjoyable enough that he returned in March 1891.
In June, he played a season of Washington 'sumer opera' with Laura Clement, Lizzie Annandale and Charley Campbell, and he and Miss Annandale subsequently took a company out from Richmond, Va. In 1892 he and Jay Rial took a troupe to Jamaica and the West Indies. If it looked as though his career was somewhat running down, he still had a few cartridges to fire. In 1892-3 he was back in New York, featuring at the city's mecca of comic opera, the Casino, as King Louis in La Basoche, Don Alfonso in The Gondoliers, he played Mars to the Venus of Camille d'Arville, and in 1894-5 he played with the modest opera company bearing the name of Marie Tavary (Mrs Hashim). I see him singing Sparafucile, King Henry in Lohengrin and the Landgrave in Tannhäuser My last sight of him as a performer is in 1895, at Chicago's Schiller Theatre, replacing Harry Norman as the Pirate King in Little Robinson Crusoe.
In August 1896, he opened an Academy in Los Angeles and 'Professor Hamilton' was heard singing at the local Presbyterian Church. Eight months later, he suffered a stroke and died. Allegedly 51 years of age. He was buried in New Rochelle, which seems to have been some sort of headquarters for the family. I don't know what became of Mrs and Miss Hamilton ...
It's been hard enough finding William and sorting him out from his comperes ... one of the same name died 12 April 1907, another at Worcester, Mass 30 September 1910 ... but I think I've done it, if not completely, at least pretty precisely. At last.
And that's enough 'H' for now. 'H' for Huge.
PS Bryan Kesselman turned up this! It is Amos. Don't worry, the M Piccolomini isn't the classy Marietta!
PS Bryan Kesselman turned up this! It is Amos. Don't worry, the M Piccolomini isn't the classy Marietta!
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