When you record history, and especially biography, in the way I try to do -- original sources only, no oft-repeated anecdotes, no University thesis or Wikipedian patchworks of fifth-hand material (erroneous or even correct) -- you, necessarily, miss a dimension in an the portrait of an artist. Any after-the-event biography does. The personality of your subject ...
Thus, today, I was particularly thrilled to come upon, this week, a four-page letter written by one of my very favourite Victorian vocalists: Mrs Isabelle Paul.
Mrs Paul ... aka Isabelle Hill, aka Miss Featherstone in her early days .. was probably the most outstandingly talented actress-singer of her generation. Nip and tuck with Priscilla Reed. Everything from opera, opéra-bouffe, spectacular and oratorio to high comedy and Shakespeare.
I'm not going to describe her career. I've done that, in detail, in more than twenty overflowing pages, in my book Victorian Vocalists.
I'm just going to preserve this little bit of the 'real' Mrs Paul. Words from her own pen ...
There is more than enough internal evidence to date the note. Chatterton, Phelps, 'the change', tradition ...
It is February 1869, when Isabelle Paul appeared at Drury Lane as both Lady Macbeth and in the singing (bass) role of Hecate, king of the witches. Which apparently involved that '90 second change'.
The first night wasn't perfect ... she was right!
Soon, however, she got into her stride, and her tour de force was recognised as just that.
So, to whom was the letter written. Charlotte somebody? Small pencil scribble. Miss Lister? Omigod ... Leclerq. Carlotta Leclercq ... Lottie ...
What a super piece of 150 year-old theatrical ephemera!
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