A Victorian vocalist who has never been properly biographised ... So let me do the job.
HUDDART, Fanny [HUDDART, Frances Mary] (b Chatham Place, Locksfields, Newington, 17 October 1826; d Wandsworth, 28 June 1880)
Born into a theatrical and musical family, and equipped with a rich contralto voice, Fanny Huddart had an unusual dual career, becoming, in her young days, the first vocalist to sing in English the role of Azucena in Il Trovatore, and also starring in Shakespeare and in drama.
Fanny was born in London, the daughter of John Huddart, 'professor of music,' and his wife, Charlotte Mary née Griesbach (1801-1880), a piano teacher. The notable theatrical member of her father's family was John Huddart’s sister, Mary Amelia (Mrs Robert William Warner) (b Carlisle, x 29 January 1804; d London, 24 September 1854), who, under the name of ‘Miss Huddart’, and then 'Mrs Warner', had a memorable career in the 1830s and 1840s, both on the dramatic stage and in dramatic management. The music in the family was, however, largely on Charlotte's side. She was a daughter of Johan Friedrich Alexander Griesbach, a member of a prolific clan of prominent German musicians long established in Britain. Fanny was christened for his wife, Frances Mary.
Fanny seems to have begun her career as an actress, rather than a vocalist, at the age of something like sixteen. I spot her first between the years 1842-1844 as a member of the dramatic company at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, before crossing to London and to Sadler’s Wells Theatre, under the management of Phelps and Mrs Warner, where she was engaged for the next three years. Again, she was employed as a young actress (François in Richelieu, Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, Gwendolin in A Blot on the Scutcheon, The London Lady, Patience in Henry VIII, Lady Blanche in King John, Duchess of Orleans in The Honest Man's Fortune, Lady Anne in Richard III, the comedy The Minister of Finance, Evelina in The Castle Spectre, Volante in The Honeymoon, &c), but her singing voice soon started to make waves.
When she played Ophelia to the Hamlet of Macready, with Mrs Warner as Gertrude, the press remarked: ‘Miss Huddart has a rich contralto voice, and sang the exquisite strains of the crazed Ophelia with an intensity of pathos and vocal expression which augurs greatly for her future eminence’, and another ‘Miss Huddart will succeed much better as a vocalist than she ever will as an actress; we had no idea she possessed such high musical capabilities’ while The Era noted: 'one of the most promising young actresses of the day ... her acting and singing are alike excellent. Often as we have heard the beautiful air 'Angels Ever Bright and Fair', we never experienced more satisfaction from any vocalist than Miss Huddart. Her fine-toned contralto voice, and the expression and deep feeling she threw into the simple melody, gave a reality to the scene at once striking and effective'.
She spent a period singing nightly for a two-month season under Jullien at the Royal Surrey Gardens (19 June 1848), in the company of a young lady named Mlle Louvay or Lovany. 'An excellent contralto voice', congratulated the Post. When the ‘competent soprano’, Mlle Louvay, shuffled off to America, she was replaced by Sara Flower, one of the few English vocalists of note with an even deeper contralto than Fanny Huddart.
Fanny’s progress thereafter was one made rather in fits and starts, for the following year (St Mary’s, Lambeth, 30 October 1849) she married John Wilkins Russell, a sometime member of the Royal Navy, and more recently a contra-bass player in various orchestras. In the next years, she bore him a daughter, Frances Elizabeth (‘Lizzie’) (b Ryde 12 September 1850) and a son, [John] Harold (b Pimlico 20 April 1852).
In between times, however, she appeared in a number of London and provincial concerts, beginning, in June 1849, with the second series of the celebrated London Wednesday Concerts at Exeter Hall, performing alongside such established singers as Mrs Alexander Newton, Miss Rainforth, Moriatt O’Connor, Miss Eyles, the Williams sisters and Eliza Nelson. ‘A relation of the well-known actress’, explained the press after her singing of ‘Fairest Land’ (Linda di Chamonix), ‘Alice Grey’ and ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, ‘[she has] a contralto voice of the richest quality with a style of singing by no means devoid of feeling and intelligence, though somewhat monotonous in tone’. 'A contralto voice that can scarcely be exceeded in power and richness'. When the Wednesdays played an unstaged version of Sophocles’s Antigone as a first half, Fanny was cast as Ismene, alongside the Vandenhoffs.
Younger sister Mary now came on the scene, at Sadler’s Wells in September 1849 and also in concert, while Fanny, now billed with her forename, went to Drury Lane (26 December 1849). I see her singing 'I have a silent sorrow here' in The Stranger, playing Lady Lambert in The Hypocrite, Lucy to the Macheath of John Rafter, Celia in As You Like It, Lydia in The Love Chase, Herbert in the 1850 Easter 'grand musical and magical drama'. The Devil's Ring, or the Four Elements singing Rodwell’s ‘The Minstrel of Casel’ opposite Halkett Rafter and Eliza Nelson ('her voice peculiarly fits her for male attire' 'Miss Huddart's performance of the young hero, to say nothing of her wondrous voice in the music, is graceful and prepossessing in the extreme'), up till early 1851.
At the same time, she appeared in concert at the Beaumont Institute alongside Catherine Hayes, at Allcroft’s Exeter Hall spectacular and at Sadler’s Wells, in the topmost company, at the Vauxhall Gardens (30 May 1850) with Leffler and Eliza Nelson, and at Drury Lane for the Theatrical Fund Benefit. She did, however, in spite of her natural gifts, apparently have some way to go to become a finished vocalist: when she appeared at Amelia Hill’s concert in Birmingham, with Sims Reeves and Frank Bodda, the local critic wrote ‘This lady has a fine contralto voice. What a pity she knows so little of its management’. The audience, however, encored her singing of an Alexander Lee song. She travelled to the provinces, not as Miss Huddart of Drury Lane, but as Mrs Russell, late Miss Huddart, of the Exeter Hall and London concerts.
More, when the Musical World, in 1851, listed its choices for the soloists of an ideal English opera group, Fanny Huddart, who had never been seen on the operatic stage, was selected as one of the five ‘ideal’ contraltos alongside Charlotte Dolby and Martha Williams (neither of whom ever would go on the stage), Elizabeth Poole and Helen Miran (who did so only very briefly).
Mary moved on to the Queen’s Theatre, Fanny returned to Sadler’s Wells, where she played Portia, and then to Drury Lane, where she repeated her Ophelia.
After the birth of her son in 1852, Fanny seems to have joined the company at the Plymouth Theatre Royal, for in September and October of the year I spot ‘Miss Huddart’ appearing in Plymouth not only in concert, but in drama and in opera. I assume it is she (‘Miss Huddart’) and not her sister playing Pauline in The Lady of Lyons and Elvira in Pizzaro. It is definitely she singing ‘Il segreto’, and duetting ‘We come to thee Savoy’ with sister Mary and ‘The cauld, cauld Blast’ with Mrs Alexander Newton. And it would seem – though it wasn’t claimed so – to have been her operatic debut when she sang Lazarillo there to the Maritana of Georgina Weiss.
Fanny now began to progress swiftly in the musical part of her profession. On 20 January 1853, she was seen at Exeter Hall with the Harmonic Union, under Julius Benedict, singing Die erste Walpurgisnacht with Willoughby Weiss and George Benson: ‘The contralto solo of the old woman, ‘Know ye not a deed so daring’, is just suited to Miss Huddart whose voice, admired two years ago (at the London Wednesday concerts) for its depth and rare quality, is beginning to be brought more under the control of its owner. With such natural means it will be Miss Huddart’s own fault if she does not attain rank in her profession’. The following night she appeared with the Sacred Harmonic Society, sharing with Charlotte Dolby the contralto music in Elijah; the following month she took, alone, the contralto part in Judas Maccabeus (18 February, 4 March) with the same society, and in March sang the principal solos in Elijah at Leeds (‘a powerful voice if somewhat harsh, some of her low notes are very fine’).
She visited Manchester to sing with Reeves, Winn and Mrs Newton at the Free Trade Hall in a 'Grand Musical Festival' and her rendering of the Walpurgisnacht solo 'Know you not a deed' prompted a similar review: ‘an extraordinary voice which does not seem yet to be fully under control …we never heard any singer express her words more clearly .. great dramatic force and energy .. we trust that she will be able to overcome the harshness that is at present too apparent in some of her tones’.
She continued on to Leeds, Bradford &c concertising with Willoughby Weiss, then it was back to London for the rest of the concert season.
In August she appeared in a twelve-night of opera at Drury Lane singing in Der Freischütz, Lucrezia Borgia and Acis and Galatea, and in October, when Henry Jarrett sent his German opera company, from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Anna Caradori, Karl Formes and Alexander Reichardt at its head, on an extended tour, for the occasion he replaced the contralto Adelaide Weinthal, who had appeared as Orsini in Lucrezia Borgia and Urbino in Les Huguenots in town, with Miss Fanny Huddart. During the four and a half months of touring, Fanny appeared in the two pants parts, and a selection from Acis and Galatea. She was also heard in concert, and in oratorio when Formes and Reichardt guested in Elijah with the Liverpool Philharmonic Society, on the company’s various provincial dates.
The following year she was engaged for the succeeding German company at Drury Lane (Orsini, Arsace to the Semiramide of Caradori), which later continued in the provinces (Urbino, Arsace) and, during a season of 24 nights in Edinburgh, she appeared in the famously mute role of Fenella in Masaniello, a role normally taken by a star dancer and mime.
In between operatic engagements, she kept up her prestigious concert appearances – a repeat of Walpurgisnacht at the Harmonic Union under Benedict, the Choral Symphony with Caradori, Sims Reeves and Weiss at the New Philharmonic concerts, Handel’s unfamiliar Deborah at the Sacred Harmonic Society, Mrs Mouncey Bartholemew’s new oratorio The Nativity at St Martin’s Hall (January 17 1855), and some more modest concerts at which she popularised George Linley’s ballad ‘Ida’. When she sang in Judas Maccabeus for Hullah (15 November 1854) the Post wrote: 'the most striking feature of the performance was the recitative 'From Carphasalama, on eagle's wings I fly' which was declaimed by Miss Huddart with so fine a quality of voice, and in so large and energetic a style, as to rouse the audience to an unusual pitch of excitement ...'
On 8 December 1854, she joined Novello, Dolby and Formes to sing Esther with the Sacred Harmonic Society.
In 1855, the German opera company, which had taken a long tour through Scotland in the new year, was replaced at Drury Lane by an Italian one under the management of E T Smith, and Fanny Huddart was hired to repeat her Orsini to the Lucrezia Borgia of Madame Arga ‘from Paris and Lyon’. Then, when Smith launched the American soprano, Lucy Escott ‘prima donna of the grand operas of Florence and Naples’ on London in the title-role of La Donna del lago, Miss Huddart was cast in what was habitually regarded as the piece’s star role, as Malcolm.
'Miss Fanny Huddart, a lady who of late has made immense progress, admirably sustained the pleasing part of Malcolm Graeme and displayed to the utmost the many beautiful qualities of her rich contralto voice'. (Reynolds). ‘Her rich contralto voce is becoming more and more beautiful; and she is acquiring a clear articulate manner of singing which contraltos frequently want.’ (Daily News). The Era could not forebear to mention Alboni, but noted 'we could scarcely wish for a better delivery of the cavatina 'O quanti lagrimi' ... Miss Huddart sings with excellent expression, the broad style which she adopts being also useful for dramatic purposes'. She also repeated her Lazarillo alongside Miss Escott and Elliot Galer.
Joseph Stammers followed up by presenting Miss Escott at the Lane as prima donna of an English opera season, and then, when Miss Escott elected to appear as Galatea in Acis and Galatea, Fanny ('engaged expressly') was cast opposite as her, as Acis, with the company’s nominal first tenor, Elliot Galer, as Damon. The production caused ‘a furore’ and Fanny was voted a 'charming' principal boy.
At the close of the opera season, Fanny Huddart returned to concerts and the provinces – concerts in Edinburgh ('an old favourite') and Liverpool, Elijah in Leicester, The Messiah in Nottingham, Ash Wednesday at Covent Garden – until Easter Monday, when James Tully and Frederick Kingsbury opened the latest English opera season at Drury Lane. And on 24 March 1856, they opened with nothing less than England’s first English-language Il Trovatore, starring Misses Escott and Huddart and Augustus Braham. The two ladies scored the hits of the night: 'Miss Huddart, too, agreeably surprised us by her intelligent impersonation of the demented gipsy. She recited the long and difficult description of the child-burning with truthful and well-sustained expression; her part of the duet with Manrico, 'Thou art all too weak and weary', was also delivered in a highly praiseworthy manner, but best of all was Miss Huddart's execution of the simple melody 'Home to our mountains' in the last scene, which really left nothing to desire.' (Morning Post) 'The gipsy Azucena was played by Miss Huddart with decided success. She looked the part well and aced it with the picturesque wildness and impetuosity appropriate to the gipsy character. Her fine voice told with great effect ...' (Morning Chronicle)
The popularity of Il Trovatore meant that it held the bills at the Lane through Smith's season, but in May the company produced the English version of Cinderella, with Fanny Huddart in the title-role, singing the contralto music instead of the soprano which had become the habit in England. 'she always sings like a cultivated musician, and with an excellent dramatic style' commented the press on what was judged a successful revival.
On 21 July, Fanny Huddart took a Benefit at Drury Lane, and the last act of Il Trovatore was its culminating point. ‘We do not possess too many singers of her peculiar order’, sighed the press, referring to Fanny’s doubling of acting and singing talents. Truth to tell, at this point in time, she was probably the only woman in England capable of taking leading operatic and dramatic roles on the stage of the country’s national theatre.
During the season, she continued to appear in concert, and took part with the New Philharmonic Society in the performance of Wylde's Paradise Lost (18 June 1856).
After a visit to the Bradford Festival, where she shared the contralto billing with Alboni and Viardot Garcia, and shared the Elijah and Messiah ('He shall feed his flock') music with Viardot, she accompanied the ‘National English Opera Company’ (managers: Tully and Kingsbury) on the road, took part in a concert party tour, in the company of Balfe, Marian Enderssohn, Sims Reeves and George Case ('The Summer Bloom', 'The Reaper and the Flowers'), and also introduced May Day to Manchester and Liverpool.
Around this time, she also produced her third child, William Harold (b 1857), later to be known in the theatre as Harold Russell.
In 1857 (18 May) she joined Augustus Braham in a spectacular production of Il Trovatore at Astley’s Amphitheatre, sang further London Walpurgisnachts with the Vocal Association, and took another concert tour with Mrs Enderssohn. When that lady made an operatic debut at Sadler’s Wells as Lucrezia Borgia (April 1858), Fanny Huddart was there to sing Orsini.
She travelled the country in concert with a repertoire ranging from ‘Il Segreto’ and ‘Si la stanchezza’ to ‘Katey’s Letter’, ‘The Reaper and the Flowers’ and ‘Savourn Deelish’, joined on occasion by sister Mary, who had been recently singing regularly at St Martin’s Hall.
On 30 August 1858, Tully sent out yet another ‘New National English Opera Company’, Lucy Escott now being replaced by Maria Comte Borchardt as prima donna, but with many of the old company still in place. Fanny repeated her Azucena, and when Tully hastened on the first (by a whisker) English performance of Martha, Fanny Huddart was cast as Nancy. However, the performance which caused a sensation came when Tully mounted Guy Mannering, and cast Fanny Huddart as Meg Merrilees. ‘A wonderful performance’ gasped the press, still not accustomed to seeing a woman they considered as a vocalist as an actress.
The Huddart sisters spent Christmas 1858 giving concerts and opera recitals in Manchester (and I notice that ‘Mr J Russell from the Italian opera’ with his contra basso took part as well), but come March Fanny was back at Drury Lane, playing Bella Primrose in Tully’s attempt to operaticise Black-Eyed Susan as William and Susan, with Catherine Lucette as its star. The piece failed, and Tully retreated to Sadler’s Wells to play Martha until his venture collapsed in ruin.
In June, Fanny and Mary joined up with such of her frequent colleagues as Henry Haigh and Edmund Rosenthal in Frederick Kingsbury’s attempt to float a touring opera company with his pupil Clara St Casse as star. Miss St Casse soon cried off, and Fanny sang more Azucena, Nancy and Lazarillo (and Mary went on for her when she caught cold) alongside Lizzie Dyer, as Tully’s former associate tumbled to the same state of bankruptcy as his old partner.
In the later months of 1859, she played an operatic season, in which Azucena and Nancy again featured large, at the East End Pavilion and Standard Theatres, and on 15 October she migrated once more to Drury Lane to give her Azucena opposite Marietta Piccolomini in that lady’s Farewell Performance of the season.
Opera continued to feature on Fanny’s programme again in 1860, but not as frequently as the critic oft the Manchester New Year’s Eve concert saw fit: ‘That this lady is absent from a leading operatic company is not the fault of the public, but of managerial stupidity. There is no English vocalist possessing the dramatic faculty ... deep in tragic power and full of the richest and happiest colouring'.
She moved on through a morass of Elijahs and Messiahs, and regular appearances at St Martin's Hall and at the Manchester concerts, to a performance of Son and Stranger and a programme of Vincent Wallace selections at the Crystal Palace, another Acis and Galatea – this time as Damon! – at Liverpool, a season with Elliot Galer’s company in Jersey, to an engagement with E T Smith at Her Majesty’s Theatre where she created the role of Elsie in Wallace’s newest opera The Amber Witch (26 February 1861). 'Miss Fanny Huddart enacts the malignant sorceress with considerable tragic power and her deep contralto voice is effective in the concerted music'.
Around the same time, Mary fulfilled an engagement with the Pyne and Harrison troupe, playing supporting roles in The Rose of Castille and The Night Dancers, and leading to a proliferation of 'Miss Huddart's in the West End.
Now, however, Fanny Huddart took a reef in her operatic activities, and between 1861 and 1864 (a period which included the birth of her fourth child, Alice) she appeared largely in concert, most particularly in concerts under the management of her husband, for John Russell had abandoned the contra basso for the life of an impresario. It was to be a decision which would make quite a mark on the British theatre.
For the moment, however, Russell’s ambitions and activities centred on the concert hall, and most particularly on the vast Agricultural Hall in Islington, where he produced a long series of concerts in which Fanny Huddart was regularly featured. In March 1863 there was a ‘Danish concert’ in honour of the Royal Wedding, in Passion week he mounted a large performance of The Messiah with Sims Reeves, Parepa and Charlotte Dolby, in May Marietta Alboni topped the bill, in July Carlotta Patti. At one concert in which Reeves, Fanny, Parepa and Lewis Thomas sang, it was estimated that the audience reached 7,000. In the autumn, Russell sent out a concert party with Carlotta Patti supported by Fanny and Alexander Reichardt, which ended its peregrinations back in Islington. In April 1864, he mounted a Shakespeare tercentenary concert, and, as on each other occasion, Fanny Huddart was on the programme.
In 1864, however, Russell’s career changed. He was appointed as acting manager for the limited liability company which called itself The Opera Company (Limited) and which had taken over the operatic activities, formerly run by Louisa Pyne and William Harrison, at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. The new company headlined Helen Lemmens-Sherrington, Charles Adams, Henry Haigh, Euphrosyne Parepa, 'Alberto Laurence' and, as principal contralto, Fanny Huddart.
The Opera Company began operations 15 October 1864, and on the second night Martha was played with Lemmens-Sherrington as Harriet and with Fanny 'who has been absent from the London stage some years' cast in her original role of Nancy. 'Although the part is quite unsuited to her, she exhibited much of that histrionic ability for which she was formerly celebrated'. Formerly?
When Linas Martorelle was put up in Il Trovatore she repeated her Azucena, when Benedict’s little The Bride of Song was premiered (5 December 1864) she created the role of Beatrix, and towards the end of the season, when a production of Gounod’s The Mock Doctor was mounted, Fanny played the part of Jacqueline the nurse.
There was, by the way, no possibility of muddling the Miss Huddarts this time. Mary was up north playing in burlesque with Lydia Thompson.
Fanny went on tour with the Russell company in the summer, but she did not return to the struggling Opera Company (Limited) the following year. In fact, for the next couple of seasons, in spite of the usual spattering of Messiahs and Elijahs at the festive season, in spite of appearances at Covent Garden in her husband’s promenade concerts, and a return to Drury Lane to play Helen McGregor to the Rob Roy of Phelps, she was comparatively little seen.
She also produced her fifth and last child, May Constance Russell.
During this period, however, John Russell came into his own. When the Opera Company collapsed, he personally took over the management of the Covent Garden theatre, and there, in December 1867, he masterminded the landmark London production of Offenbach’s opéra-bouffe La Grande-Duchesse. The success of La Grande-Duchesse set John Russell up as a producer, and he was soon on the road at the head of one the most substantial and profitable operatic touring companies in the land. Fanny accompanied him, playing in the non-musical supporting pieces, and when The Bohemian Girl was put on for a few performances, with the Grande-Duchesse’s star, Julia Mathews, as Arline. Fanny took up the part of the Gipsy Queen.
With the year of 1869, however, Fanny Huddart turned her back for the nonce on music. In January, she announced her ‘Dramatic tour’ with a repertoire of tragedies and a new play, entitle Face to Face, written by Gilbert a’ Beckett. And, after a turn by Drury Lane, where she played Emilia to Phelps’s Othello, and while Russell pushed on with his Grande-Duchesse tours, she set out from the Prince of Wales Theatre in Liverpool, with the support of ‘Mr H[enry] Sinclair of Drury Lane’, playing Lady Macbeth (and, for good measure, Hecate) and Portia. In July, she appeared at the Standard Theatre in Macbeth with Sinclair, and also performed Meg Merrilees and Helen McGregor alongside Sims Reeves.
Her dramatic credentials thoroughly (re-)established, she now mixed performances in Shakespeare and tragedy with musical engagements.
In 1870-1 she sang at the Alhambra in various spectaculars and operatic selections, including repeating her Azucena in a ‘four hundred voices’ Trovatore, she took part in ballad concerts at the Agricultural Hall and, after a stint in Jersey playing ‘her favourite dramatic parts’, joined J M Bellew at the Standard Theatre for drama and the occasional ‘The Minstrel Boy’. One week she was starring above the title as Lady Macbeth at the Liverpool Amphitheatre, the next she was in Margate at the Hall by the Sea. In 1871 she played the drama Watch and Wait at the Surrey Theatre, in 1872 she played Lady Macbeth with Phelps, the Duchess of York in Richard III and Gertrude in Hamlet at the Princess’s Theatre.
In May 1873 she was Gertrude to the Hamlet of Steele Mackaye at the Crystal Palace, and a few months later she went out once again, under the management of Richard D’Oyly Carte, in three weeks of concert-partying with Carlotta Patti. The following year she was back at the Covent Garden proms, giving her ‘Minstrel Boy’ and ‘Katey’s Letter’ and ‘O Rest in the Lord’.
In 1874 she took part in another Russell venture, an entertainment entitled Caple’s Cabinet of Caricature, in 1875 she was seen in concert at the Surrey Gardens and in 1876 she made one more appearance at Drury Lane, in Macbeth and as the Duchess of York Richard III with Barry Sullivan. This time, however, Mrs Vezin was Lady Macbeth, and Fanny played only Hecate.
On 8 September 1877, she once again took the part of Meg Merrilees in Guy Mannering, this time alongside Henri Corri and Bernard Lane in the Crystal Palace opera season, in 1878 (28 October) she is Hecate, once more, at Drury Lane and on December 4 she appeared at a Benefit as the Queen in Cymbeline.
With her fiftieth birthday past, Fanny Huddart’s career ended. Fanny Russell survived less than two years her final performance. She died at her home in Battersea, at the age of fifty-two. The press described her as 'a well-known vocalist and actress of bygone days'. Heavens, how long does it take to get bygone? The Scots press commented 'she was the original Fenella in Masaniello on the Edinburgh stage’.
John Russell survived her, but I’m not sure for how long.
Two of the five Russell children took, more or less, to music and the theatre.
Elizabeth Frances [Lizzie] Russell began as a child performer, and was featured in supporting pieces in her father’s tours. She was later seen in opéra-bouffe productions and in burlesque at the Vaudeville Theatre before marrying, in 1875, musician Alfred Bracebridge Allen (1855-1908).
[William] Harold Russell began as a baritone at the Covent Garden proms, and later toured with D’Oyly Carte in comic opera. He married (?) Florence Webb in about 1880, but thereafter seems to have abandoned her and their son, Claude Harold Russell, who would later, in his turn, briefly take to the stage. However, he declares in 1918 that he is a ‘professional billiard player’. Harold turns up (if it is he) at various times in Australia (1890-3) where he is said to be the husband of Elsie Cameron (née Elizabeth Towler, Mrs George Byron Browne), the Gilbert and Sullivan contralto, in America, and around the beginning of the 1900s in London where he and Elsie can be sighted playing in Chilpéric at the Coronet Theatre in 1903. The contemporaneity of one or maybe two Harold Russells muddy his career; and his personal life seems to have been what one can only describe as murky. I presume it is he, actor, aged 60, ‘rooming’ in a theatrical digs in West 45th Street, New York in 1915.
Mary [Amelia] Huddart (b Camberwell, 30 March 1828; d Wentworth, Ont 30 October 1890) married Alfred Bernard Viner, 'theatrical agent', in 1860 (3 July). She is the Miss Huddart in the burlesque Rumpelstiltskin at the Liverpool Prince of Wales in 1864, and as principal boy at Birkenhead, where she played in 1865 and 1866, but she would then appear to have left the stage. My last sightings of her are in concert at the Hope Hall, on a music hall bill, 8 May 1867 and at the Lord Nelson, Liverpool 15 June 1868 at the Benefit of the husband who was soon to be no husband. At some stage, she seemingly left England for Canada, where she can be seen teaching music in the village of Burlington in 1881. Alfred (19), Florence Mary (15) and Charles (13) complete the household. Elder son, Alfred Huddart Viner (b London 10 July 1863; d Big Rapids 29 August 1911), ended up an evangelist. Daughter Mary Florence died aged 23 (27 April 1891) of typhoid. Viner seems to have remarried bigamously in 1884 (and again, legally, in 1892), so Mary is doubtless the Mary Viner who died in Wentworth, Ontario, of epithelioma of the uterus allegedly ‘aged 56’.
There.
I'm stopping now, because the hayfever season has thrown half a beach in my eyes ... but I'll find some more pix later ...
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