Interesting bit of theatrical ephemera today ...
A programme from John Stetson's Boston Globe Theater 1 October 1877 for a play based on a part of the Nibelung saga (here oddly described as 'the German Iliad') and seemingly manufactured to allow the melodramatic actress Fanny Janauschek to appear as Brünnhilde/Brunhild.
The Wolsung saga was in the news. Wagner's tetralogy had been produced in Europe, so it was hardly surprising to see other folk in other countries leaping on to the Scandinavian subject matter.
Boston and Mme Janaushek gave their production a splendid send off, with plenty of explanation for Bostonians not yet familiar with the Wolsungs and their friends
But Mr Ahrendt was not the author of the play. In the small print of the bills, the author was credited as Janet Tuckey of London. Who? How? 'dramatisation by'? An original drama then, and not a translation or adaptation of a German or Scandanavian one? And how did Miss Tuckey, over there in Canterbury, get her play put on by the drama queen of the United States of America?
Well, Miss Tuckey was not quite unknown. And her family, indeed, even slightly notorious.
She was born in Castletownroche, Doneraile, Cork, Ireland, the first daughter of Charles Caulfield Tuckey, the young physician of the local Dispensary, and his wife (9 November 1843), Emily, daughter of William Lloyd of Limerick. Charles progresssed in his career from Donerail to England and ultimately settled in Canterbury, by which time he had established a name as an advocate of homeopathy. Of his two sons, the elder became an event more fervent homeopathic doctor (and hypnotist and all sorts of more or less alternative practices), and the younger took to the church. Of the three daughters, Isabel married (Mrs Crofts) and died in India in her thirties, Debby also eventually wed (Mrs Gason) and survived her sisters, and Janet ...
Much has been written about the Tuckey medical men, and Janet usually gets a mention. But the writers clearly know very little about her. And I have had to dig deep, finding more questions than answers. And of the first thirty years of her life, I have found nothing. Then, in 1875, she surfaces as the co-author of a volume English Gipsy Songs. Written in Rommany with metrical English translations. The other two contributors to the volume were the eccentric American 'gipsy specialist' Charles Godfrey Leland and Edward Henry Palmer, professor of Arabic at Cambridge University. So how does a doctor's daughter from Canterbury get attached to such as Leland and Palmer. How does 'a young lady already known by some vers de société published in Chamber's Journal, learn the Rommany language and/or its Persian and Indian relatives? Maybe some day I will find out.
Anyway, the Gipsy Songs, and Janet's contribution -- notably a piece entitled 'Told Near Windsor' (which got Royalty into its strains) was very favourably noticed ... 'The young lady's work considerably outshines that of her collaborateurs; it is less self-conscious and conventional; it is more spirited, dramatic and forcible ...' (Daily Mail)
The mid 1870s were a time of change for Janet and her family. Mother Eliza died, and father married again. But, what did Janet do next in the literary world? After such praise. More Rommany songs? More poetry? Maybe. But her next major work was to be quite different ... it was Brunhild (sic).
From jolly gipsies to full-scale dramatic theatre. The 5-act tragedy Brunhild. I suspect that this was an Englished version of Emmanuel Siebel's pre-Wagner play which Fanny had played in Germany in the 1860s, but it was neverthless a fine version and, after its April 1871 premiere in Boston, Januschek scored in the role of Valkyrie no 1 all over again in America.
Fanny J went to the well again and produced another of Janet's adaptations, a version of a Swedish novel by Fredrika Bremer, under the title Mother and Son (Booth's Theatre 8 March 1881). Needless to say, it was MOTHER and son. And fitted well in her repertoire alongside Medea, Lady Macbeth, Brunhild e tutti quanti.
In the meanwhile, Janet was preparing another 'heroine' work on her favourite lines. A biography of the lady known as Joan of Arc, the Maid. The work was published by Marcus Ward as number 4 in the 'New Plutarch' series 'one of the very best.. we are glad the work was entrusted to a lady writer, and we fancy few could have been found to do it better than Miss Janet Tuckey has done. She never gushes or rants, but with loving sympathy sets before us the wonderful story ... '
Joan was another success, and the book -- of which the facts (pace George Bernard Shaw) seem to be as admittedly near-enough to what can be known -- is in print in the 21st century.
Janet had had a brief but splendid 'career' as a writer. And it seems clear that she -- unlike too many Victorian lady writers -- really could write. So why do we not know more about her?
I see her occasionally contributing to Female publications in the 1890s ...
By the 1900, after the death of father (1895) and stepmother (1899), she was living with weird brother Charles (1925) at 88 Park Street. Did she write no more ...? Why?
She latterly lived at the Firs, Caterham, and died in the seaside town of Ventnor, Isle of Wight, 8 July 1908.
I feel that I want to know more about her. I've looked in my favourite books of Victorian reference. Nothing. I've scanned ancient newspapers. Strange, that in 2022, when everything Female is so very Fashionable in the world of Academia that 23 undergraduates of Castle Adamant haven't published lengthy 'theses' on Miss Tuckey.
Perhaps someone will. I hope so.
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