I researched and wrote this little piece some years ago, as part of my Victorian Vocalists project. Needless to say, Miss Farrar didn't make the final cut. But today I came upon a grand piece of ephemera in the amazing shop of 'Antiquates Fine and Rare Books' ... and there she was!
FARRAR, Mary Ann (b ?Halifax, c 1807; d 17 Kildare Terrace, Paddington September 1871)
‘Miss Farrar’ didn’t really make it into the Victorian category of vocalists. But she should have.
Her story has been really difficult to unearth: but I have got some of it. And it’s worth telling.
Mary Ann Farrar was born in Yorkshire. At various times she was said to be from York, from Leeds, more convincingly from Halifax, and she, herself, claimed Bradford as her birthplace. I know that she lived in Halifax in her youthful years…
It would help if her breeding were known, but the only document that would have told us whether she was daughter of John, William, Samuel, Simon or A N Other Farrar ‘of Halifax’ is her wedding certificate, and on that she has written tersely just: ‘dead’.
Perhaps she was related to the Mr Farrar whom I spot in the 1810s and 1820s, playing horn, oboe and Patent Kent bugle solos, with a Mr John White from Leeds. Why? Well, Mr White (1779-1831) it was – an eminent Yorkshire musician – who gave Mary Ann her early lessons. Ah, me, I’ll shelve the mystery for the moment.
I first spot Mary Ann as a performer as early as 1820, playing the violin (Mr White was a violinist) in concert in Leeds, and, as a vocalist, in the 1823 York Music Meeting, where she is part of the Halifax chorus. On 6 December 1824, she makes a ‘first appearance’, in White’s concert in Leeds, singing ‘Come, be gay’ with Miss Travis (‘gave great satisfaction’), again on 5 January 1825, and 21 January 1825, she is on the bills with Mr Linley jr at the York concerts. Soon after, she made a debut in Manchester. In June she sang at te Yorkshire Amateur Meeting, giving Arne's 'Hymn of Eve' and Cianchettini's 'Se mai turbo' 'beautifully'.
‘Miss Farrar’ didn’t really make it into the Victorian category of vocalists. But she should have.
Her story has been really difficult to unearth: but I have got some of it. And it’s worth telling.
Mary Ann Farrar was born in Yorkshire. At various times she was said to be from York, from Leeds, more convincingly from Halifax, and she, herself, claimed Bradford as her birthplace. I know that she lived in Halifax in her youthful years…
It would help if her breeding were known, but the only document that would have told us whether she was daughter of John, William, Samuel, Simon or A N Other Farrar ‘of Halifax’ is her wedding certificate, and on that she has written tersely just: ‘dead’.
Perhaps she was related to the Mr Farrar whom I spot in the 1810s and 1820s, playing horn, oboe and Patent Kent bugle solos, with a Mr John White from Leeds. Why? Well, Mr White (1779-1831) it was – an eminent Yorkshire musician – who gave Mary Ann her early lessons. Ah, me, I’ll shelve the mystery for the moment.
I first spot Mary Ann as a performer as early as 1820, playing the violin (Mr White was a violinist) in concert in Leeds, and, as a vocalist, in the 1823 York Music Meeting, where she is part of the Halifax chorus. On 6 December 1824, she makes a ‘first appearance’, in White’s concert in Leeds, singing ‘Come, be gay’ with Miss Travis (‘gave great satisfaction’), again on 5 January 1825, and 21 January 1825, she is on the bills with Mr Linley jr at the York concerts. Soon after, she made a debut in Manchester. In June she sang at te Yorkshire Amateur Meeting, giving Arne's 'Hymn of Eve' and Cianchettini's 'Se mai turbo' 'beautifully'.
It was noted that she was ‘eighteen years old’ when she sang alongside Henry Phillips in Manchester in March 1825. So be it.
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| ... Mr White ... |
In September of the same year she appeared as a soloist at the year’s York Festival (‘a native of Yorkshire of whose talents much commendation is abroad’). She sang ‘Oh, had I Jubal’s Lyre’ and a duet with Deborah Travis, and was deemed to have ‘much promising talent’.
Young Miss Farrar seemed on a fast track to fame. Next February she was engaged for the Covent Garden oratorios and ‘acquitted herself to admiration and was loudly applauded’ in the company of Miss Paton and Miss Stephens. She sang in The Thanksgiving, the Bridesmaid in a Der Freischütz selection, ‘Wise Men Flattering’ in Judas Maccabeus, joined the Cawse sisters in Meyerbeer’s ‘Giovanetto cavalier’, Miss Paton for ‘Come, be gay’ and took a supporting part behind Miss Stephens in Acis and Galatea. Weber was reported to have been quite taken with her.
The conductor of the series was George Smart, and, like most young shooting-star sopranos who came into his orbit, Miss Farrar quickly ended up being billed as ‘pupil of Sir George Smart’.
She took part in a few concerts in London, and then returned north where she sang in the Yorkshire Musical Meeting, a Selby Festival and the Liverpool Festival, in the concerts at Bold Street Music Hall with de Begnis and Sra Cornega, and, in November, made up a quartet for Mr White’s concert at Leeds. She sang, with Knyvett Vaughan and Miss Travis, then picked up her fiddle and played with White and two of his daughters (piano and harp)!
The conductor of the series was George Smart, and, like most young shooting-star sopranos who came into his orbit, Miss Farrar quickly ended up being billed as ‘pupil of Sir George Smart’.
She took part in a few concerts in London, and then returned north where she sang in the Yorkshire Musical Meeting, a Selby Festival and the Liverpool Festival, in the concerts at Bold Street Music Hall with de Begnis and Sra Cornega, and, in November, made up a quartet for Mr White’s concert at Leeds. She sang, with Knyvett Vaughan and Miss Travis, then picked up her fiddle and played with White and two of his daughters (piano and harp)!
1827 followed the same plan: London for the Covent Garden Martyr’s Day concert and the Drury Lane oratorios under Henry Bishop (‘encored in ‘Marvellous Works’’), a few concerts, then back north for a Selby Festival, as a deputy for Harriet Cawse at the Norwich Festival, and at the Liverpool Festival, in the company of Pasta, Miss Stephens et al. She took part in Joseph, Haydn’s second mass, a Linley anthem, Hummel’s Mass, a selection from Israel in Egypt (‘Thou dids’t blow’ ‘tolerably well’), gave ‘Wise men, flattering’ ‘evidently under much embarrassment’ at Norwich, and at Liverpool featured ‘Though from thee I now depart’ and repeated her ‘Marvellous Works’ ‘very agreeably’. At Selby (12-13 September) she shared the soprano music only with Mrs Austin.
She cancelled her engagements for the early part of 1828, but was back 7 May, to take part in the concert given by another of her tutors, the pianist Mrs Anderson, singing alongside Caradori Allan and Mme Stockhausen, and returned to Leeds for the Yorkshire Music Meeting (‘her ‘Ah! come rapida’ excited no less delight than wonder’) and the local Subscription Concerts, before in 1829 repeating the cycle once more – Martyr’s Day, the oratorios, Choral Fund and New Musical Fund concerts, the Societa Armonica, then north for concerts with John Binge, a Wakefield and an Ecclesfield oratorio, and the Chester Festival alongside Malibran, Miss Paton et al. Wakefield averred ‘[she] now stands in the first rank of excellence’, Ecclesfield was less positive and commented on her ‘moderate talents and unaffected manners’.
At the end of the year, she took a Benefit ‘in her native town’ of Halifax. Amongst the audience were the Bronte sisters, who duly recorded the occasion for posterity. And in 1830 she sang at Reading with Margarethe Stockhausen and Henry Phillips, largely billed as ‘pupil of Sir Geo Smart’, and in a Halifax Festival. It seems it was a farewell to Yorkshire.
The following year she removed to Leamington, where she settled as a music teacher. Subsequently, she took over the business of Elizabeth Wagstaff in that town. She appeared occasionally in concerts – and was still worthy of ‘breathless admiration’ in a rare Yorkshire appearance in 1837.
On 1 July 1837, Mary Ann Farrar married a London hatter from Leeds, by name James Walsh. She gave birth to a son, James, and two daughters, Emily (b Belinda Terrace, Southwark 22 February 1840) and Mary Ann (1841-1910), in quick succession, and sometime in the 1850s was widowed. In the 1861 census, her daughters are living with an ‘aunt’, in 1866, Mary Ann jr married (Mrs H R Eyers), and, in 1871, Mary Ann sr can be seen living in Westbourne Park, with Emily and four live-in music pupils.
She died just a few months later, allegedly aged 62. Emily seems to have thereafter run a small school in Paddington .. and oh! is that she in 1901 'paralysed'?
Miss Farrar is just a wee bit of a mystery. She left behind a lot of ‘whys’. For example: after such a fine beginning in the musical world, why did she suddenly close up shop, quit Yorkshire and virtually stop singing in her early twenties?
Maybe I’ll discover the answer eventually.
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