Eliza Enriquez. Victorian contralto ...

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ENRIQUEZ, Miss E [HENRI, Eliza] (b 1 Gee St, Somerstown, London 28 August 1848; d 20 Ilchester Mansions, Kensington 15 April 1930) 

 

In 1870, when the celebrated tenor, Mario, was preparing his Farewell Concert Tour of Britain, the tour’s managers, Messrs Rudall, Rose and Carte, announced, as his supporting party, the soprano Luise Liebhart, pianist Antoine de Kontski and violinist Camillo Sivori, with ‘Walter Maynard’ (Willert Beale) as accompanist and the young Mr D’Oyly Carte as company manager. However, come September 5, when the party set out for its three months of dates in all the important cities of Britain, plus a few less important but convenient, there was one additional member to this group. A young, apparently Portuguese contralto, a client of the D’Oyly Carte agency, named Mdlle Enriquez or Enriques, whose name was as unfamiliar to the cities of Britain as those of her companions were familiar.

 

Although Mdlle Enriquez was indeed young – just turned twenty-two, in fact – she was nevertheless not quite a debutante. She had, earlier the same year, already been seen at St James’s Hall as featured vocalist in the Saturday pops (12 February), at the Crystal Palace concerts sharing a bill with Mathilda Enequist (12 March), as the solo singer in the popular concerts of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society (7 April) alongside Joachim, Ries, Zerbini, Piatti and Halle, at the Queen’s Rooms (2 May) with Hermine Rudersdorff in E H Thorne’s concert, and doubtless in a few other places as well. And she was neither a Mademoiselle, nor Portuguese. Prior to her encounter with Mr Carte, the young singer had been just plain Lizzie Henri.

 

Lizzie Henri was born in Somerstown, London, in 1848, the first daughter in the family of a London Jewish cordwainer named George Henri and his wife Rosetta née Cohen (1815-1867).  However, although father George was a shoemaker in 1848, he was no longer professing such by 1861. The census of that year, which finds him, his wife, and children George, Lizzie, Kathleen (?), Louisa and Jane, living at number 9 Lamb’s Conduit Street in Holborn, describes both Georges, father and 15-year-old son, as ‘vocalist’. Well, George Henri senior doesn’t seem to have made any kind of a mark as a singer, and George junior died at the age of just twenty, but the Henri family was ultimately to have its eminent vocalist: ‘Miss Enriquez’, otherwise sister Lizzie.

 

Lizzie, apparently, learned her singing with Henry Deacon – in 1873, a gossip writer mentioned that ‘she has been studying with him for the last four years’ and, indeed, his obituaries claimed Lizzie, Anna Williams and Herbert Thorndike as his prize pupils. But, by 1873, Miss Enriquez had already been performing in public for something like (at least) four years. I do not know where she first stepped onto a concert platform – there are all sorts of ‘Miss Henri’s on the halls, including one at Wilton’s as far back as 1864, another a ‘clairvoyant and vocalist’ -- but my so-far first sighting of her, in a fully-named capacity, is in May 1869 on the bill at the Cambridge Music Hall. Oh! That’s assuming she’s not the ‘Miss Henri’, contralto, of the Alhambra, the Metropolitan et al, which – given that that lady is described as ‘a vocalist of far greater acquirements than usual at the Music Halls’ -- she may very well have been. In August, Miss Lizzie Henri ‘the pleasing ballad vocalist’ was on the programme (with a Mons Henriquez, with his performing dogs and monkeys) at the London Pavilion (‘sweetly warbling sentimental songs’). Also, in August 1869, she can be seen at the Lecture Hall in Derby, where a pair of concerts was given for the benefit of the folk who crowded the city for the annual race meeting. ‘Mr E W Mackney the inimitable nigger singer and dancer’ topped the bill, Henry Nicholson played the flute, Charles Salaman accompanied, and the lady vocalists were Mme Thaddeus Wells, soprano, and Miss Lizzie Henri, contralto. In October, she was giving ‘Il segreto’ at the Bedford, and on Boxing Day, with Mackney and Mrs Wells, at Bristol.

Mr Carte

 

Just months later, Miss Henri was ‘Mdlle Enriquez’, less than twelve months on she was hired to support Mario, instead of Mackney, and from there on, she was on her way to a highly distinguished career on the concert platform. 

The Mario concert-party proved to be an exceptionally fine and successful one, with each and every one of the artists winning praise and encores at each and every concert. This was just as well for, not long after they set out, the nominal star of the affair caught a cold, which developed into a relaxed throat, and he was ‘off’ for some three weeks. The others went on without him (still billed as the Mario concert party!), and the initial disappointment in all the mostly northern dates they covered, during his absence, turned to delight when the concerts were actually given. ‘Nearly every piece was re-demanded’, reported the Chester critic. Lizzie’s contribution included Siebel’s ‘When all was young’ from Faust, Virginia Gabriel’s song ‘She came like a dream’ and – when he was on – the Azucena-Manrico duet from Il Trovatore with Mario. ‘Mdlle Enriquez was more than successful in her songs and was encored in ‘When all was young’’ reported Lancaster, ‘Mdlle Enriquez also came in for her share of favour and deservedly so’, nodded Manchester, whilst Hanley recorded that Liebhart had been recalled three times and Lizzie twice. Margate gave her particular mention: ‘We cannot help but express our gratification at the progress being made by Mdlle Enriquez, an artiste of undoubted promise. Her voice is well trained, powerful and truly musical, her manner is pleasing, and her expression is clear and distinct. She was repeatedly applauded and her songs, especially Gounod’s ‘When all was young’, were loudly encored.’ ‘Progress’? So they had heard her before? 

The tour came to an end with concerts at the Brighton Dome and Ipswich’s New Public Hall, the little company returned to town and, by the end of January, the now thoroughly discovered Mdlle Enriquez was up on the platform at St James’s Hall at the beginning of what was to be an enormously busy year as a performer.

 

The fifth season of the highly successful Boosey Ballad Concerts had already begun when the Mario team returned to town, with Janet Patey, Julia Elton and Anna Drasdil as its featured contraltos. For the fifth of the six concerts (31 January 1871), Mdlle Enriquez was brought in to join Helen Lemmens Sherrington, Edith Wynne, Janet Patey and Charles Santley on a bill which, like the Mario ones, had been shorn of its tenor: Sims Reeves was off for the umpteen-hundredth time. She was, already, at 23 years of age, performing in town-hall company. The Era recorded: ‘Mdlle Enriquez was much applauded in ‘She came like a dream’ by Virginia Gabriel and also in ‘Cherry Ripe’. And the following week ‘Miss (sic) Enriquez sang ‘My own true love’ by Molloy and ‘The Storm’ by Hullah, the latter so well as to gain a vociferous encore. Miss Enriquez also sang Horn’s song ‘On the banks of Allan Water’ very nicely’.

Having performed at St James’s Hall on the Wednesday, she returned on the Saturday to be the featured vocalist at the Saturday Pops, and, the following Monday, to fulfil the same post in the Monday pops, before scooting up to Manchester to do the same for Halle’s concerts at the Free Trade Hall, alongside Joachim, and to Keighley for his concert there ,with Mme Norman-Neruda (‘Che faro’, Handel’s ‘Cangio d’aspetto’ ‘both enthusiastically encored’).

Mme Neruda

 Back in London, in March, John Boosey mounted a one-off Boosey Ballad concert at St James’s Hall, plus a benefit for the series’ conductor, J L Hatton, at Exeter Hall. In each, the bill was Sherrington-Wynne-Enriquez-Patey-Reeves-Rigby-Santley, and Lizzie more than held her own. ‘We have rarely heard Miss Enriquez so successful as in Hullah’s charming song ‘The Storm’… ‘She wore a wreath of roses’ was greeted with as much applause as if it had been a new song’ …  Claribel’s ‘Strangers yet’ was ‘greatly applauded’ … ‘The Banks of Allan Water’ ‘proving herself in everything a genuine artiste’…

 

From now on, Mdlle Enriquez found herself in heavy demand in the concert world. She appeared on Good Friday (5 April), at St James’s Hall, in two concerts (Hatton’s ‘Mercy and forgiveness too’), at the brand new Albert Hall in Michael Costa’s Society of Arts Concerts, sharing the vocal duties with Natalie Carola (Rossi’s ‘Ah! rendimi quell core’, ‘Giorno d’orrore’, ‘Dolce conforto’), at the St George’s Hall for Madame Puzzi’s always fashionable concert (22 May) and the Queen’s Rooms for E H Thorne (26 May), before Boosey announced a fresh one-month series of Summer Ballad Concerts (29 May) featuring the team with which he had finished his previous season. Lizzie gave her ‘Strangers Yet’, Molloy’s ‘My own true love’, Haydn’s Spirit Song, ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’, ‘The Storm’, and Linley’s ‘Constance’, and was voted ‘a most legitimate and accomplished vocalist’.

Edith Wynne

In September 1871, she sang out of town with Charles Santley’s America-bound concert party (Wynne/Patey/Patey/Cummings/Santley), temporarily replacing Janet Patey, and on 11 September joined the little company in Santley’s farewell concert at St James’s Hall. Mrs Patey sang ‘The Storm’, and Lizzie gave Schubert’s ‘The Adieu’ and her Molloy ballad in ‘excellent style’, being ‘greeted in a most flattering manner’. Then, while the concert party crossed the Atlantic, she carried on to Leicester’s Nicholson concerts, to DeJong’s proms at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, on several occasions to Norwich and to places betwixt and beyond, returning to London and St James’s Hall for the Monday pops (27 November, Benedict’s ‘Father whose blessing we entreat’ (St Cecilia), Schubert’s ‘The Question’, ‘Impatience’), the Saturday pops (2 December, Spirit Song, ‘L’Adieu’) and, come the festive season, made her debut with the Sacred Harmonic Society, singing the contralto music in The Messiah (22 December) alongside Lemmens-Sherrington, Vernon Rigby and Myron Whitney. An enormously busy year ended with a trip to Edinburgh for another Messiah (Banks/Enriquez/E Lloyd/W Winn).

Helen Lemmens-Sherrington

1872 would be no less busy. It began with the Boosey Ballad series, which ran from 3 January through to 11 March. At the opening concert, she gave Comyn Vaughan’s (ie Alfred Scott Gatty’s) new song ‘Rest’ and ‘The Old Chimney Corner’ with ‘delightfully sympathetic voice and unpretending style’, and, of the second performance, The Era wrote ‘Miss Enriquez may be sincerely complimented on the decided progress she is making. Her singing of a new song, ‘Sympathy’, by Henriette, was really admirable. The song lends itself readily to an expressive and dramatic style and the encore given was deserved. In ‘Looking back’, Miss Enriquez also sang with genuine taste and expression.’ She joined, as well, in Henry Smart’s trio ‘Queen of the night’ with Blanche Cole and Michael Maybrick. At the third concert, she gave Balfe’s ‘The Green trees whispered’ was ‘greatly applauded in Henriette’s ‘Sympathy’’, which was encored, and sang ‘The meeting of the waters ‘with charming simplicity’; at the fourth Henriette’s ‘Always alone’, ‘The Storm’, Comyn Vaughan’s’ new ‘Spread thy silver wings, O dove’ and the duet ‘As it fell upon a day’ with Blanche Cole; and at the fifth ‘Three Ravens’ ‘Ye Banks and braes’ and ‘Looking back’. ‘Sympathy’ got given several times, and ‘Strangers Yet’ also made a reappearance, and, on the occasion of the Ash Wednesday concert, Lizzie selected the Morning Prayer from Costa’s Eli and joined Edith Wynne, Edward Lloyd and Lewis Thomas in the quartet from Elijah.

In between the ballad concerts, she was also seen at the Albert Hall in oratorio and in concert, appeared with Henry Leslie’s choir (‘Wapping Old Stairs’, ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’ ‘As it fell upon a day’ with Ellen Horne), sang at the Monday pops and also made regular forays into the provinces.

 

In May, Charles Santley returned from his trip to America, and a concert was mounted at St James’s Hall (21 May) to mark the occasion. Florence Lancia, Edward Lloyd and Lizzie took part, she delivering ‘The Storm’ and Mme Sainton-Dolby’s ‘When we are old and grey’ (‘great success ... simplicity and tenderness’) and taking part in the Rigoletto quartet and the Semiramide trio, and in the autumn  – after Mme Lancia, too, had given her matinee musicale (4 June) -- the four of them set out, accompanied by a little Liverpudlian soprano, Louise Cafferata, and pianist Lindsay Sloper, for a long concert party tour of Britain. Lizzie’s new song for the occasion was George Linley’s ‘Why do I love thee yet?’. The tour finished, of course, in time for the festive oratorios, and the team were featured on 13 December as the soloists in the Sacred Harmonic Society’s St Paul. Lizzie also took part, with the same society, in The Messiah on 20 December alongside Clarice Sinico, W H Cummings and Foli.

 

Lizzie Enriquez did not take part in the Boosey ballad concert series of 1873 (the Misses Wynne and Banks and Mrs Patey supplying the feminine music), but she nevertheless kept up her heavy workload. During the course of the year she took part in three provincial musical festivals, as well as appearing at Exeter Hall in concert and oratorio, singing in the Rivière promenade concerts and in any number of personal London concerts (C & A LeJeune, Grace and Jose Sherrington, E H Thorne &c).

 

The first of the festivals was a one-day affair, the Nottingham Festival (6 February), which consisted basically of a performance of Costa’s Naaman given by the local Sacred Harmonic Society at the Mechanics’ Hall. The composer conducted, and the ‘personally selected’ soloists were Natalie Carola, Clara Suter, Lizzie, Vernon Rigby and Santley. The second was the more meaningful Hereford Festival, in September, at which Lizzie performed the contralto part of Storge in Jephtha alongside Edith Wynne, Cummings and Santley, shared the contralto music of The Messiah and Elijah with Zélie Trebelli, gave Mendelssohn’s St Paul with Titiens, Montem Smith and Agnesi, and her Faust song, the Spirit Song and another Sainton-Dolby piece, ‘He thinks I do not love him’, in the Festival’s concerts. 

Finally, in October, came the inaugural Bristol Festival, for which Lizzie and Janet Patey were engaged as contraltos. They shared the relevant music in Elijah and The Messiah, Mrs Patey sang Macfarren’s new John the Baptist and Mdlle Enriquez the Rossini Stabat Mater with Melitta Otto Alvsleben, Vernon Rigby and Santley.

Virginia Gabriel

 Back in town, with pace unslackening, she took part with Elena Corani, Charles Tinney and George Perren in the first performance of Virginia Gabriel’s cantata Evangeline (25 November 1873) at Covent Garden, in Rivière’s concerts, sang one more Messiah with the Sacred Harmonic Society (19 December) alongside Lemmens-Sherrington, Rigby and Lewis Thomas, took part, in the new year, in both the Boosey ballad concerts and the Monday pops, visited Edinburgh (February 1874) for the local Orchestral Festival and introduced Edward Land’s new song ‘Thy guardian never sleeps’ at Edwin Ransford’s concert (24 February) .

There then came a pause, a pause for the birth of Florence Eliza Keppel. For one other event which had taken place in the year of 1873 was that Lizzie Henri had got married. Irish-born Percy Keppel (real name James David Keppel, 1844-1900) was a musician, a flautist of a certain degree of accomplishment. But I was quite taken aback when I saw his portrait – a handsome man with a fine set of whiskers – included in a book of entitled Porträts und Biographien hervorragender Flötenvirtuosen, -dilettanten und –komponisten. There was, sadly, no biography of Percy, he is simply labelled ‘Flautist of the Royal Italian Opera’. He was an orchestral flute player, more accurately described, in an 1877 lawsuit, as ‘a flautist of some repute [who] served in the bands of the Royal Italian Opera House and the Royal Philharmonic Society’. He was, at that time, on five pounds a week as first flute in Sir Arthur Sullivan’s orchestra at the ill-fated Royal Aquarium. However, he did work intermittently as a solo player: I spot him in concert at Margate’s Hall by the Sea in 1870, and later he would travel in a concert party with his wife.

Anyway, Percy had been around for a wee while, for the 1871 census (with Lizzie’s parents now both, apparently, dead) shows, at number 10 Hamilton Terrace, St Pancras, Eliza Henri and her sister, Jane, with a ‘boarder’ Percy Keppel aged 26, artist.

Percy Keppel

 Lizzie was back on the boards by September, when she can be seen singing alongside Patti, Sinico and Foli at one of Kuhe’s concerts in Brighton, and in October she joined Florence Lancia on a concert tour with the Messrs Perren and Maybrick as their partners (for most of the time) and Charlotte Tasca as pianist. In Nottingham, they were joined by Santley to sing Elijah. In December, Lizzie teamed with Edith Wynne, Lloyd and Santley at Liverpool for a performance of the Macfarren John the Baptist, which Janet Patey had created at the Bristol Festival.

 

She appeared in the new year on several occasions in Liverpool, in the Monday pops and in sacred music, and she visited Manchester for Rivière’s proms there, while back in London she made a number of appearances at the Alexandra Palace both in concert (‘When all was young’, ‘The Storm’ ‘the applause following this latter being only what this excellent artiste merited’) and oratorio. On 5 June she performed the Stabat Mater with Lemmens-Sherrington, Rigby and Foli and, on 6 November, the ‘first performance of Handel’s Esther since 1757’. Mme Nouver, Rigby and J L Wadmore were the other soloists, and the reviewer wrote ‘Miss Enriquez sang the contralto solos admirably; in fact this lady always does the amplest justice to sacred music, which she sings with the expression and devotional character which should properly belong to it’. On 10 May, she sang the contralto part in Beethoven’s Choral Symphony with the Philharmonic Society, alongside Blanche Cole, Henry Guy and Wadmore, and at the end of the year returned to the Sacred Harmonic Society for the Mozart Requiem (26 November with Jessie Jones, Lloyd and Wadmore) and for The Messiah (10 December), sharing the contralto music with Julia Elton. On the concert front, she seemed to stick largely to her proven numbers, from ‘Cangio d’aspetto’ to ‘The Storm’ and Henriette’s ‘Sympathy’ and ‘Always alone’, but on St Andrew’s Night’s Scotch concert at St James’s Hall, she made a particular hit with … Reichardt’s ‘Dream of Home’.

Blanche Cole

 In the years that followed, Lizzie Enriquez fulfilled pretty much the same round of engagements: a mixture of sacred music and ballad concerts, leavened with a little operatic material of, mostly, the more classic kind. In 1876, she took part in the Balfe Memorial concerts at the Alexandra Palace, appearing in a selection from his Il Talismano with Nilsson, Marie Roze and Edward Lloyd, delivering her regular ‘Green trees whispered’ and joining Nilsson and Roze in the trio from the composer’s Falstaff; in the Hereford Festival (12-15 September), she shared the Elijah contralto music with Trebelli (‘The duet Zion spreadeth her hands’ has rarely been better sung than by Madam Wynne and Miss Enriquez’) and performed The Last Judgment  with Wynne, Cummings and Lewis Thomas. She sang in the Stabat Mater at the Albert Hall (19 October) and in The Messiah with the Sacred Harmonic Society (22 December) and this last drew her an encomium from the paper Public Opinion: ‘A special feature was the singing of Mdme Enriquez, to whom the contralto music was entrusted. This young and conscientious artist’s deep voice of bell-like purity, her clear enunciation and perfect execution, combined to make this performance, so far as her part was concerned, one of the finest that has been given of late years in this hall where so many vocalists have won their triumphs’.

Luise Liebhart

 In 1877, she returned once more to the Boosey Ballad concerts (‘She wore a wreath of roses’ &c), to Rivière’s proms and the Crystal Palace, and took part in the Albert Hall oratorios and in Luise Liebhart’s concerts at the Agricultural Hall, while in 1878 she spent a large part of the year on her own concert tour, with Percy Keppel playing flute solos, and with a bagful of ballads old and new, including, most popularly, Roeckel’s ‘Angus MacDonald’, Ignace Gibsone’s ‘Her Voice’ and Mme Sainton Dolby’s ‘The Life that might have been’. She returned to town in May to take over, in emergency, from a disabled Anna Williams in the Sacred Harmonic Society’s new version of Mose in Egitto and she also sang what seems to have become an annual Christmas Messiah (20 December, B Cole, Rigby, L Thomas) with the same Society. In 1879, the same pattern was followed. A mixture of concert and oratorio (Last Judgment, 12th Mass), including a share with Mrs Patey in the contralto parts at the Hereford Festival (Elijah, Messiah, Purcell’s Te Deum,), an autumn of provincial concerts (Smart’s ‘The Lady of the Lea’, Roeckel’s ‘Won by a Rose’ &c) topped by December-tide oratorios at the Sacred Harmonic Society (Messiah) and the Albert Hall (Stabat Mater).

 In 1880, however, there were a few variations to the routine. Firstly, Lizzie got herself a new agent. Mr Percy Keppel of 221 Regent Street, corner of Maddox Street. Percy announced Vernon Rigby and Barton McGuckin and the violinist, Carrodus among his other clients, and he also subsequently announced Keppel & Co, music publishers. The music publishing business seems to have lasted into 1882, the agency rather less. During its existence, Keppel & Co published a number of Lizzie’s new songs: Cotsford Dick’s ‘The Gates of Paradise’, Pinsuti’s ‘Heaven and Earth’, the duet ‘In Sunny Spain’ by Harriet Maitland Young, Blumenthal’s ‘Our Ships at Sea’, Lohr’s ‘It cannot be’ and ‘I would not wear a golden crown’ by one Ethelreda Marwood. There was no Festival engagement this year, and the Christmas Messiah was at the Alexandra Palace. Mary Cummings sang the Sacred Harmonic Society one, but Lizzie would be back the following year. This year she sang The Last Judgement with them. In the autumn she went a-concerting in the provinces with Helen Lemmens-Sherrington (Roeckel’s ‘Won by a rose’, Sainton-Dolby’s ‘Somebody Knows’, Milton Wellings’s ‘Some Day’ &c).

 In the 1880s, Mdlle (now more often Mme) Enriquez was seen out each season in prestigious circumstances. I’ve spotted her at the Philharmonic Society (24 February 1881, ‘Cangio d’aspetto’), with the Sacred Harmonic Society in Moses In Egypt (20 May 1881) and The Messiah (23 December 1881), in six consecutive annual series of the Covent Garden promenade concerts between 1882-1887 (‘Voi che sapete’, ‘Quando a te lieta’ Roeckel’s ‘Lord Mayor Whittington’, ‘Angus Macdonald’, ‘The Minstrel Boy’, ‘Rose softly blooming’, The Lady of the Lea’, ‘Heaven and Earth’, ‘She wore a wreath of roses’, Paul Rodney’s ‘Alone on the Raft’, Tosti’s ‘For ever and ever’, ‘Cherry Ripe’, ‘Robin Adair’ ‘Inflammatus’ (Stabat Mater)), as well as at two further Hereford Festivals (1885, 1888) and the corresponding Worcester Festival of 1884, doing her usual duties in Elijah and The Messiah plus Samson, Spohr’s ‘Vater unser’ or Cherubini’s Mass.

In 1882, she sang the Good Friday Messiah at the Albert Hall, in 1883 she appeared at the same venue in a Burns Night concert which, for some reason, included the Garden Scene from Faust, and in 1884 performed Athalie and The Resurrection with Mr Willing’s Choir and The Messiah with the Royal Society of Musicians. However, at forty, she was now singing in public rather less often than she had at twenty, even if, apparently, with undiminished powers.

I spot her doing a Messiah at Covent Garden in 1891 alongside Fanny Moody, Charles Manners and Edward Lloyd, and regularly at the annual Post Office Orphans concerts of the 1890s, as well as in the Royal Society of Musicians 150th anniversary concert at the Queen’s Hall of 11 November 1898, alongside such representatives of a newer generation in Clara Samuell, Esther Palliser and Giulia Ravolgi. My last sighting of her as a public performer is in 1908, at a concert given by Roberto Biletta at Stafford House, some forty years on from those days as ‘Lizzie Henri’ of the music-halls, in concert with Mackney, and the Mario tour.

 

Like Janet Patey, to whom she was in her time perhaps the nearest, and certainly one of the nearest, competitors among the ranks of British contraltos, Lizzie Enriquez was a concert singer pure and simple. She never appeared on the dramatic stage and rarely was it that she brought out an operatic piece such as the ‘Si la stanchezza’, which she had performed with Mario in her earliest days. Her successes came almost entirely in the world of sacred music and of the English ballad, in both of which areas she accomplished a career second, of her contemporaries, only to that of Madame Patey.

 

Percy Keppel died in 1900, and Lizzie lived out her days in a succession of London suburbs (in 1901 she is in the heart of it at 51 Upper Gloucester Place) as a ‘teacher of music’ with her daughter Florence. She died at the age of 77, at 20 Ilchester Mansions, Kensington, and her will revealed that she had lived out her days in relative comfort. Her probate came to over five thousand pounds.

Florence, given still as ‘of 20 Ilchester Mansions, Abingdon Rd, Kensington W8’, died unmarried on 24 April 1936.

 

Amongst the other songs credited as ‘sung by Mdlle Enriquez’ are included ‘The Blind Boy’ (S Clarke), ‘The Infant’s Burial’ (Lord Lytton), ‘On a faded violet’ (E H Thorne), ‘Gather ye rosebuds’ (Raymond Yorke), ‘At her wheel’ (Lady Lindsay), ‘Turn where I may my tearful eyes’ (Taylor), and several songs by Alfred Plumpton. Though this undated Australian one looks a little odd ... a different Madame, I feel ...