Yesterday, I went looking for a bit of information for a friend. And found, instead, a little something I'd looked for for my Victorian Vocalists listings ...
So, as Andrew Lamb always insists, I'm blogging the article concerned so that it doesn't die with my computer and me ...
Pictures will come, from somewhere, one day.
PEARSON, J[ohn] H[enry] (b Oxhill 1846 x Wasperton 27 April 1851; d St Peter's Home, Meadow Rd, Lambeth 20 December 1912)
Tenor singer, who made a good name for himself during the 1870s.
J H Pearson was born in Warwickshire, apparently in about 1846. His background is a touch fuzzy: it seems that he's the child 'aged 6' farmed out ('pauper'), in company with his brother, in Kinnerton in the 1851 census, and, by the time he turns up in the equivalent document of 1861, living in Johnson Street, Aston, there is no father in evidence, mother Harriet (who was already listed as ‘widow’ and ‘schoolmistress’ in 1851) is now just ‘widow’, elder brother Charles aged 19 is a cooper and John is an edge-tool maker.
However, a little further exhumation turns up an Edward Pearson, saddler, living in Oxhill, Warwickshire, with a wife named Harriet, and one George Parker, in the census of 1841, and -- since Harriet (née Parker) and John Henry's elder brother, Charles Edward, list themselves as 'born Oxhill' -- I confidently put forward this couple as the parents of our vocalist. And now I see that their son, John Henry, was christened at Wasperton, 27 April 1851. Mother Harriet was, at that stage … ‘schoolmistress’ and father was ‘deceased’. Ah, yes, Edward died 1846. Got him.
But not for long. Mr Pearson is frustratingly elusive. What did he do between 1861, edgeing tools in Birmingham, and 1870 in London? I would have expected him to sing at some stage, some where. Well, if he did, I can’t find him. There’s Mr J H Pearson, organist, up in Hull. There’s Mr J H Pearson the famous bareback rider. There’s Mr Pearson singing tenor with Mr Ashton’s modest English Glee Union. But he is Mr T Pearson, or a typo…
Young Mr J H Pearson first comes into view on the London musical scene in September 1870, when he appeared in concert at the Workmen’s International Exhibition at the Agricultural Hall alongside Annie Sinclair, Julia Derby, Walter Reeves, the conductor's daughter, Camille Reyloff (later to be Camille Dubois), and John Cheshire’s band of harps. He apparently had no qualms about his value, for he chose to sing on, one occasion, Braham’s great song, ‘The Bay of Biscay’, and on another to give the Il Trovatore ‘Miserere’ with Miss Sinclair. His culot, however, paid off: ‘A great success was ‘The Bay of Biscay’, sung by Mr J H Pearson who has a tenor voice of very pure quality and who sings in time and with great spirit … The encore given to his song was well deserved.’
Nothing seems to have been said at the time, but it appears that Pearson was a pupil of Frederic Kingsbury (who also taught Miss Derby), who resurfaces regularly in his professional life.
I don’t sight Mr Pearson out again until the following Good Friday, when he surfaces at the Holborn Amphitheatre, again in the company of Misses Sinclair and Derby, and others, singing oratorio music. Once again, he was scarcely shy. He gave ‘If with all your hearts’ and ‘Comfort Ye’ and ‘particularly distinguished himself’. A fortnight later, the three young singers were the soloists, with Lewis Thomas, in the Croydon Sacred Harmonic Society’s Messiah. Conductor: Frederic Kingsbury.
Pearson got his big chance on 15 December 1871. The Sacred Harmonic Society was performing The Mount of Olives with Cora de Wilhorst, Sofia Vinta, Anna Drasdil, Vernon Rigby and Lewis Thomas as soloists. But Rigby scratched, and young Mr Pearson went on in his place.
The Era gave him credit for ‘a pure and sympathetic voice and his intonation is excellent’ and Kingsbury went quickly into the advertising columns of the trade press: ‘Mr J H Pearson who made so successful a debut at the concert of the Sacred Harmonic Society at Exeter Hall on Friday the 15th may be engaged for oratorios, concerts etc..’
And he was. On 31 December he sang the Stabat Mater at St George’s Hall with Arabella Smythe, Jenny Pratt and George Marler, on 23 February 1872 he returned to Exeter Hall, for a real engagement with the Sacred Harmonic Society, singing the Imperial Mass, The Last Judgment and Lauda Sion with Mme Lemmens-Sherrington, Julia Elton and Myron Whitney. ‘Mr Pearson sang the music allotted to him quite as eloquently as upon the occasion of his first appearance’ approved the Post.
In March he sang selections from The Messiah at the St George’s Hall Sunday Evenings for the People, and in April sang the Stabat Mater there, as illustration to Mr J K Applebee’s lecture on The Poetical Expression of Moral and Religious Thought in Shakespeare.
Later the same year, he took part in the People’s Concerts and the oratorio concerts at the Albert Hall (Lobgesang with Lemmens-Sherrington and Patey), and appeared at the Crystal Palace both in concert (16 November, ‘Dalla sua pace’, ‘Once again’ ‘a tenor of great promise’) and, in December, in oratorio (St Paul with Lemmens-Sherrington, Elton, Smythson and Marler).
In between times, he and Lucy Franklein appeared at the Surrey Gardens, on a programme made up largely of music hall artists.
During 1873 he took part in Rivière’s proms at Covent Garden ('made a great hit and gained an encore for 'Norah, the Pride of Kildare'), taking part in the infamous Feu de Ciel of Guimet, but mostly he took to the provinces, singing in oratorio, cantata and concert around the major cities – amongst the dates I have picked up are The Ancient Mariner and Acis and Galatea in Plymouth, The Woman of Samaria for Kuhe in Brighton with Edward Lloyd, G H Russell’s concert at Croydon (‘Goodbye Sweetheart’ and ‘Come into the Garden, Maud’ ‘very sweetly and with good feeling’), de Jongh’s concerts at Manchester and a Liverpool, Chester, Preston and Belfast series of Messiahs with Pauline Vaneri … but the singer’s assiduous advertising in the trade press show that these were but a few of many such engagements.
In February 1874, Pearson went out in a concert party with Pauline Rita and Amélie Deméric-Lablache, under the management of the flautist Radcliff, and billed as ‘the new tenor who has been so successful at the Sacred Harmonic Society’s concerts at Exeter Hall, at the Crystal Palace Concerts, Rivierè’s concerts, Covent Garden etc’. It was a bit of a mouthful, but it was fact. Pearson had in, seemingly, his first few seasons in the business, indeed sung in all those venues and, indeed, with success.
In 1873-1874, Pearson’s name was included in the prospectus for the Crystal Palace operas, and he apparently made an operatic debut, singing Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni alongside George Fox, Ida Gilliess and Alice Barth. But the operatic experience, seemingly, didn’t stick, for he was soon back on the concert platform, notably at Hervé’s Covent Garden proms where he sang the tenor role of the Ashantee Bard in the premiere of Hervé’s ‘choral symphony’, The Ashantee War, with the composer at the baton. He also launched a new ballad by Hervé entitled ‘Golden Dreams’ and, at Emily Mott’s concert, Kingsbury’s ‘Our Morning Star’.
The Covent Garden proms, indeed, proved to be a particularly fertile hunting ground for Pearson, for he returned to take part in the series of 1875 and 1876 (‘Dalla sua pace’, ‘My own, my guiding star’, ‘The Pilgrim of Love’, ‘Laura’ etc).
He also returned on a couple of occasions to the Sacred Harmonic Society (Mozart’s Mass, oratorio selections), gave Messiahs at Manchester, Brighton and elsewhere, sang in concert at the Crystal Palace, St James’s Hall (‘Eily Mavourneen’) and the Alexandra Palace, visited Dublin, and became a regular in the concerts and oratorios given at the Royal Aquarium.
In August 1876, he joined George Fox, Frances Brooke and Marie Schott-Villiers to create Fox’s cantata The Jackdaw of Reims at Margate.
He returned, in August 1877, for a second try at the stage, singing again at the Crystal Palace with Rose Hersee’s company, in Don Pasquale and in The Lily of Killarney. His final essay in the dramatic sphere was a concert performance of Trial by Jury given at the Aquarium, in October 1877, singing the role of the Defendant alongside Kate Rivers, James Fawn and Federici. Since the Aquarium was unlicensed, it was shortlived.
I spot him singing ‘under the direction of Kingsbury’ in a glee party, giving the Stabat Mater (17 November 1877) at the Alexandra Palace, and The Ancient Mariner in Dundee, I spot him in 1878 at the Brompton Oratory, where he appears to have joined the choir, at again 4 January 1879 singing The Messiah at Edinburgh. In between, he appeared at a number of concerts, giving, as always, the most famous or newly popular of tenor songs from ‘My sweetheart when a boy’ to ‘Alice, where art thou’: but they were not the kind of concerts which his early exposure might have presaged.
In 1880 he took part in two more of George Fox’s cantatas, The Fair Imogen and Lord Lovel, at Margate, and in a concert of Aguilar’s The Bride of Triermain at Bedford, but his name had by now slipped irredemiably from the concert bills of the West End.
In 1880 he is advertising singing lessons during his stay on the Sussex coast.
In the 1881 census he described himself still as ‘tenor vocalist’, but it seems that his work was now almost entirely confined to choral work. Yet, only a decade before, he had been hailed as a coming man. Well, he'd come, and now he was gone.
Pearson was married in 1878 to the pianist Ada Lester, with whom he had shared a bill as far back as 1873, in Rivière's Covent Garden Proms. Mrs Pearson can be seen living in Hastings in the 1901 census, with their younger son, John (15, errand boy), while elder son Hughes (1881-1948) is in the army. However, in 1911 Mr Pearson ‘professor of music and singing’ is alone in Walworth: ‘widower’.
He died the following year.
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