American sheet music of the 19th century. Once upon a time I had a vast collection of the better quality stuff of the kind. It's now happily enshrined in the Harvard Music Library: since my 'accident' I can no longer play the piano.
But I still love to linger over the items that turn up on the web, and have a bit of a giggle over the mendacious title pages and credits. Today, I giggled a bit too soon. And stopped mid-giggle....
Prince Poniatowski and Maria Hayes's extraordinarily popular baritone song 'The Yeoman's Wedding' seemed to me to have been around a long, long time. But I checked. And it came out in 1871..
And Mr Ditson does not lie. I don't know about it's being 'composed expressly for' Charles Santley, but Santley was the first to sing it in public. Place: St James's Hall, London. Occasion: Boosey's Wednesday Concerts Date; 8 February 1871. He sang two other familiar items ('The Bell Ringer', 'The Vagabond') and duetted the famous 'All's Well' with, of course, Sims Reeves. The Era reported that the new song was 'received heartily .. and will assuredly become very popular. It is extremely effective and Mr Santley sang it with so much spirit and animation that it was .. encored'. The encore was apparently a song titled 'The King and I'.
The press was quite right. With the enormous aid of Santley ('he sang [it] as no one else can', 'He has made this song his own') the song became a part of every lusty baritone's artillery, just as songs such as 'The Village Blacksmith' had in earlier days, and gave the musical Prince a popular success he had not previously had.
It was still being sung, around the world more than half a century later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDMIEGOOiHw
Oh, the words? They were by Maria X Hayes. Otherwise Miss Maria Ximena Stanley Hayes or Heys. Born in London around 1841 under whatever name and of whatever breeding I wist not. I can find her only in the 1881 census, where she describes herself rather fulsomely as 'lyric author translator of poetical works musical composer'. She is living at 20 Edwardes Square in the company of another maiden lady.
Well, yes. She was a lyricist. I would say something of an impenitent lyricist. And a translator from a selection of languages. She must have translated (or adapted) day and night for over her dozen years of impenitence to have turned out the amount of songwords that she did ('Sixty songs by Schubert ...'). She had a go at French opera and opérette too.
How she linked up with the composer Prince, Lord only knows. But he was the least of the names with whom she shared a title page! Her original efforts, in the early 70s,were 'noted for their great simplicity' and 'decidedly commonplace', but she carried on ... songs with Crouch, Balfe (he was dead), Pinsuti, Massé, Gollmick ... and a host of versions of musicians Russian, Italian and even superb songwriters such as Wekerlin. Well, if you are game to tackle 60 Schubert songs ...
Miss Hayes or Heys died at the age of 44, in 1885. Her ashes lie in Brompton Cemetery. But I still have no idea who she was or whence she came. Clergyman's daughter? Some Iberian connection (given the 'Ximene'?), one of the General Stanley's daughters ... Watch this space. And 'help!' if you can.
Addendum: Bryan Kesselman has found our lady in the 1871 census. At the same address! 'Aged 30, lady literary'. She is confirmedly HEYS and has a Spanish boarder. (So maybe not a clergyman's daughter. Maybe the offspring of an Englishman and a Spanish lady ...?). Anyway that leads me to Maria S Heys, 23, public singer, boarding in Birmingham in 1861, who is vraisemblably the Miss Heys, soprano, singing at Burnley in 1863, and Sunderland, Bradford and Newcastle in 1868 ...
Second addendum: The lady wasn't Spanish. Nor was she married. Maria's mother's name was Rosa Isabella Heys. She admitted all when she had Maria christened, aged 20 ...
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