Blanche Owen: A Girl in Advance of the Times

 

I was rather surprised to run across this piece of music today.  Quality too. Published by Ben Williams, with an illustrated cover by Concanen. Sung by Miss Blanche Owen of Howard Paul's Entertainment. Mr Howard Paul, you notice, not the vastly superior outfit lead by his wife. 

And yes, Blanche Owen was for several seasons a part of Howard Paul's troupe, along with Nelly Ford (piano) and variously changing vocalists who included such lasses as the young Laura Joyce (qv), Louise Beverley, Agnes Lyndhurst (later, briefly, of the Soldene troupe) and -- most infamously, the future musical comedy star, Letty Lind. Since Paul was bonking Miss Lind -- a child was the result -- I was going to assume that he wasn't bonking Blanche. But with Howard Paul one can't be sure. Anyway, what seems to have been the first and longest of her professional engagements, seems to have been her best.

Back to square one. Miss Owen was, of course, not Miss Owen. She was born in Stepney in 1851 as Blanche Thomas, to a printer named Henry Thomas and his wife Susannah Mary née Owen. I suspect that Mr Thomas, when not printing, played piano, for I see in 1869 

Maybe, maybe not. Shortly after (December 1869) we have him for sure. And the teenaged Blanche

Is he then the Henry Thomas accompanying at St James's Hall? I don't know. But I think not.

Over the next two or three years, Blanche is to be seen in local concerts in Brentwood, Hackney, Marylebone, Islington, Braintree and the East End, sometimes with her parents, and latterly with her younger sister, Lucy Thomas (pianist). 'A very pretty lady with a ringing soprano voice and a marvellous set of teeth'. She also took part in amateur dramatics, and performed the celebrated War Songs of the Franco-Prussian War.

And around the beginning of 1872, she became a pendant to Howard Paul. 

'This young lady is a bright, sunny, clever little actress of considerable personal beauty, with an archness of manner that may be described as 'very taking'. She sang three songs in costume, one of which 'Norah's Coutship', a serio comic ballad, was loudly re-demanded, while another song 'A girl in advance of the times' was also greatly applauded'. So there it is. A Concanen cover for her first real job.

Or was it? Who is the 'Blanche Landre' of Vance's operetta company who sang this song in 1870, and midlands amateur soubrettes had been singing it since.  Anyhow the rest of her repertoire included Beautiful Isle of the Sea', 'Charlie is my darling', 'Come, where my love lies dreaming' and a topical song 'The Latest News' dressed as a newsboy. But why is this popular song not credited? It appears the words were by one H W Sweeney, and the tune by Alfred Lee. And it was published elsewhere as 'sung by Milly Howard'. In America it was claimed by E Mack. I see Milly Howard touring with Mr Lee in Vance's Party between 1868 and 1870 .. So I think it is safe to credit the beginnings of the song (as so many others) to the Vance party. Mr Paul (not unexpectedly) has pirated it.

Blanche returned to the Halls and Institutes of Northern and Eastern London. Burdett Hall, Mr Norris's concerts at Greenwich (with photgrapher Mr Frederick Bathurst who signs her wedcert and wed sister Kate), Holloway Hall, on the odd music hall ... and she wed a bookbinder by name James Bolton. The Boltons were to breed seven children in years to come, but that didn't stop Blanche from singing. Over the next fifteen years 'Madame Blanche Owen' apppeared in lesser concerts and sketches, grandly billed, around the south of England. She was also occasionally billed as 'of' the German Reed company, Exeter Hall, Crystal Palace ...  Oddly, I can't find these.

I spy her last, on the platform in south London in 1889 ...

Her family? Henry died in the 1870s. Kate, Lucy and Samuel King Thomas ..

Well, Lucy performed at Brentwood from a young age. She is billed as 'from the London concerts' playing 'high class music' at Hastings in 1875, with Walter Cole and his 'Merry Folks' troupe, she's still tinkling in 1882 and in 1887 she's accompanying at St Austell ... and we are told she's RAM! I think that might a local Lucy ... 

Kate (Mrs Bathurst d London 1891) seems to have confined herself to amateur dramatics -- although her husband had more visible ambitions - and Sydney became a clerk. Kate had children, but Blanche's five surviving children must have surely seen the family into the 21st century ... be nice to find this piece of music sheet a home!