This is the latest e-bay photo to set me off on voyage of discovery into little-known (to me) places. And what a fun voyage!
I've not investigated the so-called 'Gaiety Girls' of the 1890s and 1900s. They're just on the cusp of my period of 'interest and expertise'. In the past, however, John Culme and others have investigated some of the more newsworthy damsels, so I have never been inspired to look into many of those shapely ladies who were more Victorian than Vocalists. But, today ...
All I really knew about Miss M' Nulty was that she was (Irish-)American by birth, came to Britain with Henry Dixey's Adonis company in 1886, and thereafter had a twenty-year career as first as a beauty, then as a supporting player, culminating as a useful character actress. Simple? No.
Miss M' Nulty is said to have been born in Boston. She filled in her marriage certificate as Mary McNulty. I suspect the M' Nulty is correct. That is, if it is real. I can find no record of her birth, parentage or early years.
She surfaces before my eyes for the first time in 1884, when she succeeded to a role in E E Rice's production of Orpheus and Eurydice
She was noticed newsworthily when she, successfully, vamped the son of President Arthur and had to turn him off. She subsequently joined Rice's Adonis troupe, decorating the stage as one of four showgirls who were christened Lady Mattie, Lady Pattie etc.
12 May 1886 the Adonis troupe headed for London, and Jennie went with it. In spite of its record-breaking success in America, England found the piece old-fashioned and lowbrow, and it closed after a disappointingly short run, leaving the company to trudge home. Except for Jennie who was said to have been so greatly admired that 'she had drawn more money to the show during its last month than Dixey himself'. Adonis had been a fill-in at the popular Gaiety Theatre, and Mr George Edwardes, head of the enterprise, persuaded (without much difficulty, I suspect) the bright Bostonian beauty to join his company.
It was clear what her main value was but she was capable of taking minor parts in Monte Cristo jr (Albert), Dorothy (Lady Betty), Miss Esmeralda (t/o Ernest), Frankenstein (Risotto), and forepieces, then larger ones -- Siebel in Faust-up-to-date, Winifred Wood in Little Jack Sheppard in the Gaiety tour -- as she was noticed driving up front in a carriage with the Duke of Portland ... but Portland married someone else ..
She appeared in the 1889 pantomime Babes in the Wood at Manchester alongside Phoebe Carlo, and scored a success as the rumbustious Polly in Nat Goodwin's production The Bookmaker. 'Nothing could be better in its way than the Polly of Miss Jennie McNulty. The preliminary suavity, and subsequent fierce outburst of brazen impudence when, having unexpectedly visited Harborough Castle, she finds herself coldly received, was a triumph of acting'. She followed up as 'Mrs Huntley, a grass widow', in Sweet Nancy, as Talbot in Joan of Arc for Edwardes at the Opera Comique, appeared as Corisandre in the English adaptation of Ma Mie Rosette, and -- now 'a little stouter than in Gaiety days' -- created the role of the Irish Comtesse de la Blague with her walloping drinking song in the hit musical Morococo Bound. When the provincial The Lady Slavey was brought to the Avenue Theatre, Jenny was cast in the plum role of the brash music-hall singer, Flo Honeydew.
All seemed to be going exceptionally well in Jennie's development from sexy stage sylph to buxom beauty. But then came a hiccough. He called himself 'William Victor Paulet' and he was a 45 year-old widowed habitué of London's nightlife 'living on his own means'. Those means were to be exposed as non-existent. And any connection with the Marquis of Winchester (family name: Paulet) was totally ficticious. Jennie didn't do her homework before she married him ...
Mr 'Paulet' (b Hornsey 1849) was born William Hippolyte Hieronyme Pasierbski the son of a Polish immigrant, Platon Hippolyte Pasierbski and his wife (6 September 1836) Anna Maria née Bird. The family's tale was a strange one. Platon and Anna had a swathe of children alomost all of whom died as infants. Then Platon went off to Poland to fight in the war against Russia. He was reported as a prisoner of war, executed, dead. So Anna Maria remarried (4 February 1851) a dissenting minister named Ebenezer Cornwall, apparently of Ryton in Durham. And then, one day, Platon turned up on the doorstep, very much alive .... I can't find the family in 1851 but I see that Anna Maria died in 1866. I suspect Willliam may have been the William Henry Paulet, clerk, sentenced to nine months, for larceny and receiving, in 1869. And the William V Paulet 'annuitant' living in London's Howland St in 1871. He was certainly the William Paulet who ('clerk') joined the Freemasons in Aberdare in 1873 where he was calling himself Count Wilhelm Heromem Hippolyte Vernon Victor Platon Paulet Pasierbski of Cracow , and married Ada Louise Smith of Fairfield, Connecticut 22 September 1875 in Manhattan. They had issue before Ada died in 1887. Allegedly in Salzburg. What?
Thus, in 1891, Mr Paulet can be seen living in an hotel in Jermyn Street 'on his own means', a widower .. . and somewhen in his nightlifing he encountered Miss M'Nulty and, for some reason, she married him. It would later be said that they hardly saw each other after their wedding, except when Jennie, coming down for breakfast, encountered Billy coming up the stairs after a night on the town. Needless to say, she soon realised that she had misjudged her husband's financial worth, and the moneylenders quickly entered the picture.
In 1897, Jennie crossed to America to be at the bedside, so it was said, of her dying father. When she returned, she found the moneylenders had helped themselves to the contents of her home, to cover her husband's debts. She called her lawyer.
The resultant lawsuit made the press world wide. And Jennie came out, if slightly soiled, triumphant. The moneylenders were condemned to pay her a thousand pounds. The furniture was deemed to belong entirely to Jennie. The following year, the affairs of Mr Pasierbski-Paulet 'of the Orleans Club, King's Street' were wound up, and he vanishes from our tale.
Jennie carried on her career as a character actress, playing pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, playing the comedy maid alongside Weedon Grossmith in My 'Soldier Boy' at the Criterion, on tour with Mrs Langtry as Mrs Bennett-Boldero in The Degenerates and, as late as 1905 and 1906 as Countess Anstruther in The Orchid and in The Spring Chicken.
She did not remarry and died, at her home, 91 Winchester Street 18 March 1927, allegedly aged 65.
I wonder who she really was. Perhaps, truthfully, Mary M'Nulty from Boston. Can someone find me some documentation?
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