White or Black? : Miss Nancy Renshaw.

 

I'd never heard of Nancy Renshaw until yesterday. But I know a theatrical photo when I see one ..

Wonnder what and who she was. Not quite the looks or figure for a leading lady. An ephemeral chorine?  

Oh, no, very much not so. Nancy was a "spesh". And she trod the British boards for thirty years, at first as a 'vocalist and bone soloist', then as a 'negress and speciality' and a 'laughing negro comedienne and bone soloist' and finally a 'coon comedienne'.'

Who was she? Where did she come from? How did a young girl get to play the bones? Was she from a minstrel family? And was Renshaw her birth name?  Well, I have tried, and the only hint I have found is the 1901 census, where she is in digs in Manchester with her colleagues. It says she was born in London and is 30 years old. Sounds like a landlady's guess to me. And then, later, when The Stage started saying 'happy birthday' to folk, she was greeted for 4 March. But they didn't say which year.

She appears on my radar first in August 1895, as part of the company with Hamilton's excursions publicity diorama. Ah ... no, back a bit, 'the musical Renshaws' are with the company the previous January. Then Mr J Renshaw gets ill, and Nancy goes out as a single. She got an engagement for the Ernest Carpenter pantomime Little Red Riding Hood at Barrow-on-Furness, and another as Pekoe in Aladdin for Hardie and von Leer, she played one or Tom E Murray's daughters in Our Irish Visitors, in which she performed her blackface act, which she also performed with the Riano combination.

In the decade to come, Nancy played many white-faced touring pantomime boys (Dandini at Darwen, Prince Rudolph in Humpty Dumpty for the Ivies, Prince in Beauty and the Beast, Captain Ebert in The Belle of Madrid)and black-faced ladies (Queen  at the Blackpool Tower, Queen Inkyblacko at Glasgow), some white-faced ladies (Princess Piccallili in Robinson Crusoe at Glasgow) and she even ventured into musical comedy, notably in blackfaced roles in The White Blackbird for Tom Murray and The Girl from New York with Constance Bellamy.  I imagine many of these engagements included her 'Spesh', and for the last two decades of her career she returned to the variety stage.

I leave her in 1922, theoretically about 50 years old ... and I know no more about her end than I do her beginning.  But now this is all here, and one day somebody just might find out the answers.

This is Australian coon singer May Robson. Black and white ...

Tom Karl, a gay Irish tenor

 

I was sure I'd published this in one of my books. Maybe I did. But I'm in the Winter Palace, without my books, and only my memory ... and another site has a text which sounds oddly like 'Kurtspeak'. Then, I was sure I had photos, too ...

But google tells me I hav'n't posted Tom, so here goes ...

KARL, Tom ([O’] CARROLL, Thomas Louis) (b Dublin, 19 January 1846; d 51 Prince’s Street, Rochester, NY, 19 March 1916).

 

Tenor Tom Karl’s origins are strangely smudged. During his long and successful career on the American stage, it was established and enshrined in legal print that his name was, in fact, Carroll and that he was Irish born on the precise date above. However. I have found nothing to tell us who his family were, excepting for one sister, who came to live with him and his partner in later life. She, too, was a small-time musician, but not so as to be worth a change of name. And her name was Margaret A O’Carroll. So, take your pick. Or turn up that Irish birth certificate.

 

The story goes that Tom ‘went to England in his youth’. Presumably not too early in his youth, because I don’t find him in the censi of 1851 or 1861. And presumably not with his family, for I have evidence of Margaret (b c1850) as the local music teacher and organist in the settlement of Singleton, NSW, in 1871. So, it seems as if the (O’) Carroll family might have taken the goldrush trip to Australia and Tom stayed home. A Karl biographer, Charles Elliott Fitch, affirms that Margaret had been ‘36 years in Australia’ (in 1902), which would mean she arrived in 1866 … well, several Margaret Carrolls arrived in the colony in that year … but Fitch also ‘records’ some frank untruths, so, take your pick. 

 

My first sighting of Thomas, then, is under his new name: ‘Tom Karl’. He had ended up in Birmingham, studying singing with Henry Phillips ‘for two years’ and made his first visible public appearance in May 1867, in the operatic selections at Day’s Crystal Palace Concert Hall, opposite no less a soprano than Annie Tonnellier. The local press reported of their delivery of an Il Trovatoreselection: ‘Mr T Karl, the new tenor, possesses a melodious and powerful voice which will shortly place him in the highest rank of the profession. He materially assists Madame Tonnellier in her splendid rendering of the grand scena from Trovatore…’.

Tom Karl and Annie were featured at Day’s through the rest of 1867 and into 1868, changing their opera to The Bohemian Girl (encored in ‘The Fair Land of Poland’), Martha (‘M’Appari’ ‘given in a particularly pleasing manner’), Maritana, The Barber of Seville, Faust, Don Giovanni, Acis and Galatea, Ernani, La Sonnambula … and Tom switched quickly from being billed as ‘the new tenor’ to ‘the popular tenor’.

He sang with the local Apollo Glee Club, and I spot him in concert at Birmingham’s Curzon Hall … and then he is gone. To Italy. To study with, of course, Sangiovanni.

 

The usual biographical notes – notably Fitch -- claim ‘he remained seven years’ which is patent rubbish. There are other silly statements, too: he was selected by Petrella to create La Contessa d’Amalfi (which was created in 1864) or I Promessi sposi … he wasn’t. However, his first appearance on the stage was seemingly in a production of the well-established La Contessa d’Amalfi in May of 1869. I don’t know where, but the contemporary press related that he had been a late replacement and had had but 8 days to learn the role.

And a few weeks later, he was home, singing Mozart’s 12th Mass in a Birmingham church, and visiting Dublin in concert (‘Spirto gentil’, ‘My Mary of the curling hair’, ‘Dear Harp of my Country’). It was but a brief visit, however. For on 18 August he was back in Italy, as a member of the summer-season troupe at the Teatro Goldoni, Modena, repeating La Contessa d’Amalfi alongside Clarice Ziska. By October he was in Malta, singing Arturo in I Puritani.

Over the next year or so, Tomasso Karl can be seen at Milan’s Teatro Re in Lallah Rookh (Noureddine) and La Contessa d’Amalfi, at La Scala for the one performance that was the lot of Beer’s Elisabetta d’Ungheria (Giorgio), and at the Carcano in I promessi sposi (Renzo). There were doubtless other engagements in the period, but these are all that I can find.

For Tom Karl’s next engagement was to be in America. The young man ‘said to be the Adonis of British tenors; fresh from Italy’ (although the press claimed his last engagement had been in Malta) was hired to share the tenor roles in the Parepa Rosa Company with William Castle, in a troupe including Jennie van Zandt, Edward and Zelda Seguin and the Aynsley Cooks. He made his first appearance in America – mendaciously advertised as having been ‘a favourite at La Scala for three years’ --as Tonio in La Fille du régiment and ‘despite nervousness made a favourable impression’. ‘There can be no doubt of his success. He is young, good looking and prepossessing in manner. His voice is light but by no means weak. It lacks the sensuous quality of the best Italian tenors but it is a clear, bright and withal rather sweet voice, singularly even, and lending itself readily to pathetic strains…’

Karl played Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni and Gennaro in Lucrezia Borgia opposite Parepa, and when the company was strengthened by the addition of Wachtel and Santley, Alphonse in Zampa and the Fisherman in William Tell, as well as second to Castle as Florestein in The Bohemian Girl and Antoni in The Water Carrier.

Then promptly, at the season’s end, he boarded the Cuba to return to Britain and to Europe. During the carnevale of 1872 and the early months of 1873, he can be seen playing at the Teatro Paganini in Genoa (Romeo e Giulietta), then at the Teatro della Commedia, Milan and at the Rossini, Turin, in L’Ombra with Mme Repetto-Suardi, but by the autumn he is back in America ‘visiting friends in Worcester’. Italy was over, and henceforth Tom Karl would settle down and make his home and career in America.

 

I don’t know at exactly what stage Tom encountered publisher and bookseller’s son, Dellon Marcus Dewey, from Rochester NY. Probably not just yet, as Dewey (b August 1850) was pretty young, and still living at home. But by 1880, Tom had moved in to the substantial Dewey home as well, then the two lads moved out together. They would stay together until death did them part, in 1916.

 

Tom was soon on the road, performing with a concert party headed by violinist Camilla Urso, and including Edith Abell and J R Thomas in the last months of 1873. In 1874, he was attached to the Strakosh Opera Company, stars Lucca, Campanini, Nilsson, Capoul et al, with whom he sang Don Ottavio and Gennaro during the opera season, second to Capoul in the Stabat Mater and, afterwards, in various concerts featuring Lucca and Annie-Louise Cary, ending in Boston 20 June.

He then picked up with several members of a collapsed English opera troupe, including Miss Abell and Frank Howson, for a concert tour of Canada. However, this was only a fill-in, as he was already engaged to be principal tenor with the Adelaide Phillipps touring opera, which went out in the autumn.

The Phillipps company had a repertoire adapted to its mezzo-soprano star, and Tom sang during the season the tenor leads in Cinderella, The Barber of Seville, Il Trovatore, Martha, La Favorita, Don Pasquale and L’Ombra. However, the company disbanded when its tenor allegedly fell ill in Hannibal, Mo.

In 1875, the star soprano Therese Titiens visited America and Tom Karl became attached to her service, along with baritone Orlandini. They appeared in concert and in opera, with Karl sharing the tenor roles (Pollio, Alfredo) with the lustier Brignoli.

In 1876, he again went out for several months with Miss Phillips, now sharing the tenor duties in Semiramide, Le Comte Ory, La Favorita, Il Trovatore &c with Tito Palmieri. When he sang Almaviva to Ferranti’s Figaro, the New York press voted him ‘the best representative of Count Almaviva before the public’. At the end of Miss Phillipps’s season, Strakosh teamed him, in the same role, with his newest prima donna contralto, Anna Belocca, before sending the pair, with basso Tagliapietra, to California. There they gave concerts, and, with the conjunction of resident basso Karl Formes, The Barber of Seville and La Favorita.

In October, they played another season in New York.

In 1877, after a short concert tour with Ole Bull, Tom Karl signed up with Strakosh’s Clara Louise Kellogg opera company, sharing the tenor duties with J Graff, alongside Miss Cary, Marie Roze, William Carleton, basso Conly et al. And, intermittently, Ilma di Murska.  Leaving the Manricos and Lucias to Graff, he sang Lionel, Faust, Thaddeus, Elvino, Wilhelm Meister, Don Ottavio et al and, once again was praised for his ‘skill in light opera’. ‘He compensates for a not superior voice by skill in using it, singing always with taste and expression, and can always to be relied on to act and look well…’, ‘Mr Karl never attempts more than he can do, and always does well what he attempts … a smooth and pleasant tenor voice well adapted to the lighter tenor arias while unequal to the more robust. He is an excellent actor and in La Sonnambula and other operas his rendition was worthy of high praise’. However, he did go on as Rhadames, on at least one occasion.

The tour was decidedly successful, even if it spawned some fairly silly press stories, the silliest of which was a publicist’s floater rumouring a marriage between Tom and Miss Kellogg. Mocked by the papers, it quickly was denied. The other had Tom, in Mignon, rescuing Ms Roze from the flames, but being not strong enough to lift her, he had to get the help of the baritone. That piece of publicity was provincial newspaper fodder for far too long, and survived into anecdotic books.

After some concerts with Marie Roze, in late 1878, Karl joined up again with Adelaide Phillipps, alongside soprano Marie Stone and baritone W H Macdonald. Lucia di Lammermoor, Il Trovatore and Martha gave way in April to the newest operatic sensation, HMS Pinafore, with the artists who had been singing Donizetti and Verdi cast in the ‘Boston Ideal Opera Company’: Miss Phillipps as Buttercup and Karl as Ralph Rackstraw. The production, and its follow-up of Fatinitza, with Miss Phillipps as the title hero and Karl as the comical Julian, laid the foundation for what would become the most famous light opera company in American theatre history.

But its first season was just that, a season and, in the autumn, Tom moved on to his next job, sharing the tenor duties with Castle in Messrs Pratt and Morrisey’s Emma Abbott Opera Company. He sang Don Jose to Zelda Seguin’s Carmen, Tonio, Grénicheux and some performances as Paul in Paul and Virginia and Baltimore declared ‘he stands at the head of tenor singers in this country’.

Then, it was back to the Ideals, with a repertoire expanding to include the part of Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance.

 

In 1881 (September 28) he made what was announced as ‘his debut in oratorio’ at the Worcester Festival, but the Ideal company’s success had truly blossomed and, for the next years, Tom Karl’s popularity, all round America, blossomed too, as they played Czar and Carpenter, The Chimes of Normandy, The Mascot, Olivette, The Musketeers (Varney), Barbe-bleue, Giralda, Victor the Bluestocking and Giroflé-Girofla ,as well as the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and more conventional operas such as The Marriage of Figaro, The Bohemian Girl, Adina (L’Elisir d’amore), Fra Diavolo, Mignon or Martha, from one corner of America to another.

The management of the troupe suffered sea-change during this time, and in 1887 Tom Karl and Henry C Barnabee (to be supplemented by W H Macdonald) became officially its owners.

 

The Bostonians, as they subsequently were known, continued in much the same way as before -- The Poachers, Dorothy. Pygmalion and Galatea, Don Pasquale, but also began to produce home-made comic operas. In 1887, the company had been hired for a vanity production of Signor Alfredo Jannotta’s Alidor at St Paul, now they mounted a Suzette by company conductor Oscar Weil, and a Don Quixote by the wealthy Reginald de Koven. Karl was apparently singing as well as ever, but he was now sharing the tenor roles in the company’s productions with Edwin Hoff and it was announced that he had ‘a tumour in the throat’. Nodules, I suspect. From singing Manrico.

 

The American theatro-gossip press, which had him returning to the Emma Abbot company, among other things, was silenced when the Bostonians had their biggest hit since Fatinitza with the production, in 1890, of de Koven’s Robin Hood, with Tom Karl in the title-role. Robin Hood would become the backbone of the company’s repertoire in the 1890s. However, in 1894, Tom Karl sold his interest in the Bostonians to his partners, and at nigh fifty years of age, retired.

 

He would appear again in concert on numerous occasions – in New York, at Vineyard Haven, where he and Dewey had a summer home, even on one occasion with a ‘Tom Karl concert party’, before in 1905 the couple moved their home to California. They put together a light opera troupe, which they called The Californians, but in spite of being made up of sound artists, it lasted but one season, and in 1909 Karl, Dewey and Margaret (now arrived from Australia) shifted back east.

Fitch recounts that his last stage performance was in Patience in Rochester, for charity, in 1913, and his last public performance ‘in 1915 over the wires of the Trans-Continental Telephone Company when, at a dinner of the Rotary Club, he sang to be heard in San Francisco where his voice was distinctly audible to those who had often listened to him on the opera stage in that city. The song that went over the three thousand miles of wire was the old English ballad ‘Drink to Me Only With Thine 

Eyes’.’

 

Tom Karl died in 1916. Dellon ‘removed to New York’ but died at the home of his sister, Fannie, 29 July 1917.

 

Fitch concluded with a sigh: ‘there were few better tenors than Tom Karl and no singer ever surpassed him in personal charm or popularity with the music loving public of this country, Italy or England’. 

 

Abbie Carrington (soprano): she tried but did she lie?

 CARRINGTON, Abbie (née BEESON, Abbie) (b Fond du Lac, Wisconsin 13 June 1855; d 2041 Lyon Street, San Francisco 8 April 1925)

 

A volume entitled A woman of the century, by one Frances Willard, was put out in America, towards the end of the 19th century. It purported to contain biographical notes on 1,400 ‘important’ women of the American last hundred years. Abbie Carrington, for heaven’s sake, was one of those 1,400.

 

The case of Mrs Carrington is a fine example of that peculiarly American journalistic penchant (of that time, of course) to make ‘celebrated prima donna’s, with allegedly important European careers, out of ordinarily endowed hometown girls with a small or even no career. Abbie Carrington was one. She didn’t have ‘no’ career. She was employed on the stage for a few years as, mostly, a subsidiary lead soprano, by an impresario whom she ended up (apparently typically) suing … but, with a lot of help from her friends … well, here we go.

 

Abbie Beeson was born in Fond du Lac, a daughter of Edward Beeson, a printer, and his wife Susan Emily (née Bell), and she became Abbie Carrington by her marriage to Adalbert Rowland Carrington, at the age of seventeen (5 December 1872). Their daughter Mary was born, in Fond du Lac, the following year  (b 17 March 1873; d 28 March 1962). Shortly after, they moved to Boston, where Abbie took singing lessons from local musician, J Harry Wheeler, before heading on to Italy, equipped with a new name ‘Iole Barbo’. She said, later, that she studied in Milan with Giuseppe Perini (perfectly possible) and made her debut in La Traviata in that city, and Ms Willard follows up with a perfectly reasonable – but wholly undocumented -- series of other engagements at Cervia (November 1878), Ravenna, Turin, Brescia and Venice. No theatres or artists or impresarii named anywhere, and try as I may, I can’t find a trace of any of this, even in the extremely voluble Italian musical press, which reported operatic performances in the tiniest of towns. No announcements. No reviews. I can find only ‘reports to home’, to a gullible hometown newspaper (editor: Mr Beeson?), which claim that she sang Marguerite, Violetta, Lucia, Elvira, Gilda … and Arline in The Bohemian Girl! At Ravenna? As for Traviata in Milan, well, at that period I can see a bundle of other striving, American girls giving their Violettas in Europe -- one of them was the young Albani, another Minnie Hauk, then there was ‘Bianca Lablanche’, Avonia Bonney, ‘Caterina Marco’, ‘Giglio Nordica’, ‘Laura Bellini’ … but I see no Barbo. And Traviata was indeed played in Milan at this time: at the Dal Verme by Flaminia Munari, Carolina di Monale, Rosina Isidor and Giuseppina de Senesplada, at La Scala by Marie Heilbronn, Mme Léon Duval and Adelina Patti… but I see no Barbo. 

 

Anyway, in the US press, copied eagerly from one paper to another, this all developed into ‘the celebrated prima donna … sung in all the main cities of Italy …’ and so forth. I am, frankly, severely doubtful of the veracity of the whole lot. I can find the other girls, why not – even once – Signora Barbo? Although, I must say, performances at Cervia would escape all but the most minute operatic reporter. Not so, Milan, Turin and Ravenna. 

 

Whang! Finally! I got one! Jolè Babó as Gilda! Guess where? Teatro Communale, Cervia, November 1878. With Dante del Papa and Francesco Tirini, Well, if one is true .. Yes! Teatro Mariani, Ravenna, November 1879, with the same team … Eh? Well, that means that Ravenna wasn’t young del Papa’s debut, as biographized, and that Jolè was on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time. But, at least, if not in ‘the greatest theatres in Europe’ her little engagements weren’t fictional! And her young tenor would go on to a fine career.

 

She was said to be back in Boston by August 1879 and, apparently, performed there before making her New York debut under Theodore Thomas in October at the Philharmonic Concerts. ‘Her success was fair. In the first selection, ‘Hear ye, Israel,’ she was prevented by nervousness from doing herself justice. She sang the ‘Shadow Song’ from Dinorah, and as an encore the Bolero from the Sicilian Vespers’ …’. Thomas was quoted as saying he’d never heard the Shadow Song sung like it. I wonder if his tongue was in his cheek.

 

She sang at Gilmore’s concerts at the Grand Opera House (‘Let the Bright Seraphim’) and, in spite of typical newspaper rumours that she would join Mapleson for opera in Boston, continued on to a Stabat Mater in Baltimore and Messiah in Washington. She sang at Koster & Bial’s for Levy’s Benefit and then set out on a concert tour with the Boston Mendelssohn Quintette Club. Again she flourished her Shadow Song and won some fans (‘The Club never played better, and Miss Carrington captivated the audience with her artistic efforts. The freshness, purity, and skilful management of the voice, clear and distinct enunciation, together with the unaffected naturalness of the singer …’) and some reactions a little more distant (‘the substantial prima donna … cultivated and pleasant but not phenomenal’). ‘Miss Abbie Carrington has proved an excellent vocalist for the club during their tour, and won favor throughout the western circuit’. Well, not quite throughout. At St Paul she didn’t turn up, and after waiting an hour for her, the Quartette had to borrow a local lassie. Someone said she was down in Chicago singing The Creation.

 

Finally, came that operatic engagement. Clarence Hess, one of the era’s best touring opera managers, hired Miss Carrington (sic) for a tour. Germany’s Ostava Torriani and France’s Marie Roze, first-class leading ladies, both, topped the soprano bills, with the Misses Schirmer and Carrington of Boston behind. But Miss Carrington didn’t want to be behind. She sulked her way through Fra Diavolo while Ostava triumphed in Aida and Faust, and while Roze gave her Carmen, with Schirmer as Micaela, and she wasn’t even contented when she was handed some The Bohemian Girl and Mefistofele performances. So she stirred. She pouted ‘favouritism’ (Torriani, she alleged, was sharing a bed with co-manager Strakosch), told the press that she was going to take over the management of the company to re-organise things, and when that pronouncement didn’t have any effect, she sat down in Cleveland and would go no further.

 

And who would believe it? When Adelaide Randall went sick, the next season, they hired her back as a replacement, and Strakosch hired her again, with Maria Leslino and Blanche Roosevelt, for the 1881-2 season. Abbie’s version was that she and Etelka Gerster would sing the high and light repertoire alternately. Of course, they didn’t. But, this time, she didn’t sit down in Cleveland, she stayed and sang with the company at Booth’s Theatre in February 1882, before touring onwards. I catch up with them in Boston in May. Gerster now had Minnie Hauk and Clara Louise Kellogg as co-donnas. So Abbie pouted some more. She’d been promised Pamina and Filina, she told the press, and she’d only got Micaela, and it wasn’t her fault she’d got sick the night Carmen was played. And, anyway, she wasn’t staying, she was going to Europe. Seemingly, she didn’t. She put out the Abbie Carrington Concert Company touring from Walukesha to Green Lake, and with her singing and her husband’s drumming (of which more anon) featured.

 

But who would credit it, at the end of 1882, Hess hired her yet again. But this time in more modest company. No Torriani, Roze or Gerster. She was assoluta. Emma Elsner was the second prima donna, with Rose Leighton and Lizzie St Quinten from British musical comedy ranks. There was a reason, though. There was no Aida, no Carmen. The repertoire included Maritana, Fra Diavolo, The Bohemian Girl, Martha, Faust … HMS Pinafore, Iolanthe, Les Cloches de Corneville, La Mascotte, Fatinitza …  Chicago wasn’t impressed by the latest Hess company: ‘He has one good soprano in Emma Elsner, and a fair one in Abbie Carrington, but the latter is too fat for most roles. It is pitiable to see her waddling, as Arline, through The Bohemian Girl.’

 

So Hess took his company to Mexico. The first tenor was George Appleby, a former bit part player from Britain’s Emily Soldene company. Abbie must have done something right, even if only journalistically, because the worldwide press soon reported that she’d been offered marriage, money et al down Monterey way. If it were true, she might have helped Hess. The Mexican season was a financial disaster.

 

Now here we meet a decidedly problematic bit. The papers (briefly) and the imaginative Ms Willard (doggedly) claimed that Abbie went, on two separate occasions, to England, once to sing at the Covent Garden Italian Opera and, again, even more improbably, at Her Majesty’s Theatre. I’m not sure where these ‘visits’ are supposed to fit in, but unless she had yet another pseudonym up her capacious sleeve, I will state categorically: she simply did not! I have been able to find only one possible instance of the lady singing in England. ‘Madame Carrington’, with an amateur male quartet, at the Colston Hall, Bristol on 24 November 1886.

 

Mind you, perhaps she is the Mdlle Jole Grando who can be seen singing with prima donna Fanny Rubini-Scalisi in Nice in early 1885. Aida? The off-stage Priestess, maybe?

 

But, back home, she did again get her own company. Variously under the cognomen of the Abbie Carrington Concert Co or the Abbie Carrington Grand Opera Co (manager: Mr Carrington). And she persisted. In 1891, I see her giving The Rose of Castile in Montana with a total personnel of seven (‘the greatest…’), a piano accompaniment, no scenery and of course, no chorus.

 

At some stage, as what passed for a career foundered, so did a marriage. I thought Adalbert must have died, but he didn’t. Which makes Abbie’s 1899 wedding to British pianist Emlyn Lewys (as Abbie Iola Beeson Carrington) reasonably bigamous.

 

Mr and Mrs Lewys settled in San Francisco. The ‘celebrated prima donna’ who’d ‘sung at the best opera houses in Europe and England’ (pardi!) and, more factually, who’d quarreled with, or sued, some of the best touring opera managers in America, mostly for not giving her starry parts, taught music. And gave her Shadow Song occasionally …

 

Exit ‘Iole Barbo’.

 

‘Mme Abbie Carrington (Mrs Emlyn Lewys) Prima Donna Soprano Voice Posing and COMPLETE OPERATIC TRAINING Mr Emlyn Lewys, BA Pianist and Teacher of Scientific Technic and Interpretation. Studio: 1712 Bush St., near Gough.’

 

Mr Carrington, however, seems to have had an hour of dubious glory in latter days. He stayed in Chicago, while his wife ‘remarried’. And, in 1890, a census-taker made a discovery. Adalbert was the famous ‘Drummer Boy of Shiloh’, the 11 year-old who had shot a General … or whatever. The news went viral (he had actually joined up, in 1861, as a ‘musician’) and it seems as if he may have, latterly, taken his drumming act on the music halls. Of course, there were a few other drummer boys who claimed to be the Shiloh boy…

 

I should add, in conclusion, that daughter Mary Carrington attempted a career as a singer …

 

End of story. And that’s one of the 1,400 most notable women of the American 19th century? I think not. But myths persist: now, Abbie Carrington has, for heaven’s sake, an entry on Wikipedia! With all the likely lies and phony claims intact! How to fake history, indeed. But I suppose it helps when Papa has a newspaper …

Found years later ...

Gonzalez. A gift to posterity.

 

As usual, I've been started off on a old-time theatrical archeological dig by a photo. This slightly alarming photo

Adelaida Gonzales.

Gonzales only rings a bell in my head for Pancho Gonzales, and the cartoon character 'Speedy Gonzales'. I rattled the brain a little more and, yes .. there was a lady named Gonzales in the American opera world back in the 1860s ... 

Check aged notes. Fanny Gonzales. Born in England as Fanny RICHARDSON or MULLEN in 1841, married in 1864 Hispano-Irish musician, music-seller, actor Charles Gonzales. Sang supporting roles with Caroline Richings, Emma Juch, Campbell and Castle, Gustave Hinrichs et al between 1869 and 1896 (Barbarina, Martha in Faust, Alice in Lucia). Five children of whom four survived and one, Margaret (b Pennsylvania 1872), followed in mother's footsteps as 'Maggie Gonzales'. In the 1900 census he declares he is a widower, and Fanny is living with Maggie and her husband. He spent his last eight years in the Actors' Home before his death 12 March 1912. Fanny had died the previous month (New York 7 February 1912).

Maggie married the musician Max Siegfriend WITT (b Stettin 12 November 1871; d 10 April 1914). He, apparently, makes it into Who's Who is America. He and Maggie wrote a song 'You are the Girl I Love' together in the year of their marriage (16 October 1895). Maggie survived him but I lose her.

Of course, the photo is neither Fanny nor Maggie, both of whom, in their time, had a legitimate place in the world of music. But having dug up all those details, I was damned if I were going to zap them, and I bequeath them to posterity, even if posterity doesn't want them.

It is, as it says, Adelaide (or variant). Whose place in showbiz was much less legitimate. She called herself 'actress', but on a rare mention a newspaper man said that she was vaguely attached to the music hall world. Anyway, the only mention I can find of her is in 1885, when her ex-husband committed suicide in an asylum hospital .. Frank M Cottrill (b 24 October 1848; d Ellenborough 21 March 1885) was on to wife two by then ... and Adelaide invisible to me.

So that's that.  Try another tomorrow.

Getting closer ... I think I can ...

 

Its three weeks today since I arrived at my Winter Palace.

Every day I have gazed out at the Reckitt's blue sea, and down at our beautiful beach ... but although they are within a few hundred metres of my doorstep, I hav'n't yet made it down for a paddle. Why? Because those maddening metres are downhill. And I, alas, don't do downhill. Especially when it's ramps..

But things are looking up. After three mega-sessions with Amanda Brightwell, my world's champion masseuse, I am not only walking without my stick upwards, but ready to face the downhill challenge ...

And since today dawned blue-white-and-not too hot I decided to have a go. The lovely kiosk by the beach, with its 'bar' overlooking the sands, was my target. And guess what, I made it! Proof!

I sat at the 'bar, with a nice long coffee and the Kiosk's always-grand cheese'n'ham toastie (oh André, no ham off the bone anymore?) and gazed. Watched the happy folk bathing, surfing ... and since Mrs Woke of Wokingham and her naked baby weren't around, this year, snapped merrily away. The whales were running in numbers, but every time I went to photograph one doing a backflip, I was too late.

The sea was only the beach-width away. Dared I? Some one would arm me down the boat ramp ... No. Slowly slowly catchee monkey. Next time. I'll get that photo of my feet in the ocean, very soon.

PS for those who don't know the story of Mrs Woke, here is the tale from three years back ...

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2021/05/yamba-freedom-of-man-versus-modern.html

Yorkshire's default prima donna 1880-1900. Fannie Sellers.

 

No. I didn't know anything about her, either. I don't know how I missed her, in my shrimp-netting years among Victorian vocalists, but I did.

Even now, I've had to scrape the bottom of the boat to discover much about her. Much more, that is, however than a vast list of engagements, of credits, ranging over two decades and filling four pages of notes on my computer.

So why have a suddenly seen fit to discover Miss Sellers all of a sudden? Because of this ..

I'll get a better photo from my collector friend who snapped this up (well, I signalled him!) later. And there is Fannie.

Who was she? Well, she lived most of her life in the lovely Yorkshire village of Knaresborough, near the once fashionable spa-town of Harrogate. But she was born in Trafalgar Street, Leeds, the child of William Sellers, tanner and currier, ad his wife Sarah. The family removed to Karesborough when Fanny was a wee thing, and there they lived and died. Although Fanny/Fannie voyaged incessantly till the end of the 20th century.. father William died in 1872 , but mother Sarah lived into the 20th century, sharing Crag Cottage or Rockville Cottage with he unmarried daughter until her death in 1904.

Fannie SELLERS (b Leeds 7 December 1853; d Knaresborough 1939)

So, what about Fannie's singing career? Well, I spot her for the first time in 1879. Twenty-six? Surely she must have sung before that. Or not? Maybe that's why her voice lasted so long, inimpaired. So I guess she is not the Miss Sellers singing in Yorkshire in 1865; but undoubtedly the Miss Sellers giving, with Miss Storey their 'annual concert' in Knaresborough in 1879.  So, I go on from there.

I am not going to list all the hundreds of concerts in which Fannie appeared, as principal soprano ... over 20 years, to unvaryingly fine notices. Beginning in Leeds, Knaresborough, Harrogate, Spofforth, Wetherby, Leyburn, Middlesborough, Ripon, Boston Spa, Blyth, Rochdale, Newcastle and reaching to Belfast, Dundee, Doncaster ..   I'll just point out some of the more substantial works in which she appeared. And I exclude the interminable Yorkshire Messiahs ...

1881 (8 January) Leeds Phil Soc Benjamin in Macfarren's Joseph behind Anna Williams, Frederic King and Frank Boyle

1881 Leyburn The Ancient Mariner

1882 Hartlepool The Rose Maiden; Ripon The May Queen

1883 Leeds Festival Elijah quartets and Barnby's 97th Psalm; 

1884 Ripon Oberthür's The Pilgrim Queen

1885 Hunslet J F Barnett's The Building of the Ship; Middlesborough Gaul's Holy City

1886-7 Edward Oxenford's The Crown of Roses, Alfred Halstead/J Allanson Benson The Water Nymph, L N Parker's Sylvia; Pudsey Choral Union Samson, Brighouse Choral Soc Acis and Galatea/Stabat Mater, Ripon Athalie, Sheffield Barnby's Rebekah, Penrith Golden Legend

1888 Headingly Vocal Society Christensen's The Discontented Maidens, Gall's Ruth

1889 Rawmarsh and Parkgate Elijah

1891 Huddersfield The Rose Maiden

1892 Malton Gaul's The Erl King's Daughter; Ripon J Allanson Benson's King Hezekiah; Chesterfield Acis and Galatea

1893 Malton Choral Society Haul's Joan of Arc, Sheffield Stainer's Mary Magdalene, Blyth van Bree's St Cecilia's Day

1898 Harrogate Armes's St John the Evangelist ..

And that's just a slim selection.

In later years she slowed down a tad, but I see that she sang Clairette in Derby in a concert performance of La Fille de Madame Angot in 1897!

After her mother's death, she took, in 1909, a widower husband, William Clark Bentley of Aldborough (but originally of Knaresborough), a cashier, with an unmothered daughter, Catherine. 

She lived another thirty years, but her hectic days of music were past.

Somebody has posted a photo of her in her later days 

and of her grave. TLC needed ...?

I hope its tended. She deserves that much from musical Yorkshire.

PS for Sullivan fans: in concert she sang various of Sullivan's songs, notably 'The Lost Chord', 'Let me Dream of thee' and, at Dawson's concerts, 'Brightly shines our wedding day'.

I got caught, of course, and ended up investigating the tenor, Edward KEMP (b Batley, Yorks 1854; d Levett's Field, Lichfield 18 August 1922). Kemp was the last child of Edward [William?] Kemp, a woollen worker ('woollen cleaner') from Soothill, Yorks, and his wife, Ann Taylor. He was so much the last that I am not whether he was born before his father's death (30 September 1854). His elder siblings worked in the wollen industry ('mill hand', 'power loom weaver', 'woollen spinner'), and Edward too worked as a factory hand before he became a gas meter inspector, married (1876) Mary Willoughby from Pudsey and began a family.  Then Kemp turned professional tenor, first at Southwell Minster (11 April 1878), then at Chester Cathedral (15 February 1879), and finally at Lichfield Cathedral (3 November 1881). He would remain there for some forty years, up to his death.

At the same time, he fulfilled a multitude of concert and oratorio engagements -- at Chester with the local orchestral Society and the Cathedral Philharmonic Society, and once installed at Lichfield, widely in the West Midlands of England and of Wales. As with Fannie Sellers, I have a vast list of engagements listed in the 1880s and 1890s, performances of The Messiah, Elijah, The First Walpurgisnacht, The Crusaders, The Sleeping Beauty, Lobgesang, St John the Baptist, Acis and Galatea, Gade's Spring Message, The Ancient Mariner, St Paul, Joan of Arc, The Seasons ...

From 1900, he became involved in local Unionist politics and in 1915 finally got himself on to the city's council. However, he made most news when in 1920 he performed a duet at Lichfield with his grandson, Charles, son of younger daughter Edith Florence Mercer.

His two sons both became choirboys at the Cathedral. George Frederic Handel (26 January 1877-13 February 1950) and Francis Joseph Haydn (1878-1911). Their first sister was named Clara Novello Kemp.  

Yamba: Luncheon at the Sandbar with Renée

 

Life is gooooood!

Wendy and I sussed out the Sandbar, the once-a-caff, now a delightful light retaurant, right next to my Palace...

I posted a pic of my delicious lunch of charred prawns (the best I've had anywhere) on the web and bzzzangg .. the family responded!

Today, sister-in-law Renée drove down from Grafton and we headed straight for the Sandbar and the prawns. Festive time!!!! Reunion of two like souls after the rampages of Covid ..

Yes. Photographic evidence. Whereas I usually accompany my Sandbar delicacies with a coldie light Coopers, today we went silly -- as we are inclined to do when together -- and downed a whole bottle of delicious rosé ...

Ah! Quel délice! Simple and soooooo good.  Happy man!

TRIUMPH! My best bit of theatrical teckery yet!

All is quiet on the Yambanese foreshore. The sun is white, the sky and sea couldn't be bluer. Only the occasional birdsong, a passing car or the screech of an irrepressible power tool breaks the blissful silence. Wendy and Jen have headed up the coast for some sight-seeing before heading back to New Zealand, so although I am back on kitchen duty, I have spent the whole rest of the last few days sitting in my 'office' playing my favourite game: 'outing' nineteenth-century theatricals. 

I happed on the songwriter and comic known as "F V St Clair" while looking for another Cartesian. They were sharing digs in 1881. Of course, as I habitually do, I got sidetracked and, when I discovered this well-known music-hall man was related, by ways undiscovered, to the family of a really lovely variety act, the 'Wychwoods', with whom I had worked in 1968 at the Victoria Palace ... that was me trapped. Thanks to Ian Howell's  splendid web-page Variety, Summer Shows, Panto and a Bit of Everything, I encountered the present day generation of the family and got some vital bits of information to speed me on my quest to disrobe this chap.  Come on, nobody from Ripponden, Yorks is called 'Frank Verity St Clair'.  I've been speeding for two days. And, yep, I finally hit the target. 

Mr F V St Clair, I can now reveal to readers and the family, was born in Ripponden 23 November 1858 as John Weig(he)l WRAY. The Weighel was the maiden name of his mother, Rachel, who had married (3 December 1857) Frank Robert Wray (b 6 December 1833). The 1861 census shows John, aged 2, living with his aunt, Sarah Hannah née Wray, and her husband, Benjamin Verity. Rachel had died soon after the birth of her child.

Frank quickly got himself another wife, Jane Whiteley, promptly fathered a Sarah (31 October 1865) who was baptised along with little John, and later maybe a Thomas Arthur ... but John, seemingly, stayed with the Veritys through his childhood, although I see father is there, as well, in 1871. Had he and missus no2 split up? She bore a Thomas Arthur the next year (20 September 1872). And then married a gentleman named Haddock. Bigamy? She took Sarah with her, when she waltzed off.

Father Frank eventually ended up, alone, as a jobbing garden in Stanley Street, Ulverstone, where he died in 1916. I wonder what he thought of his son's fame and wealth and gong (OBE).

I'm not sure when John, who had donned the moniker of St Clair, and swapped his birth name for his father's, made his first appearances as a 'topical vocalist', but by 1880 he was doing the rounds of the northern houses most successfully. And he would remain a feature act til the end of his days. And a prolific writer of topical songs. To read elsewhere.

Part 2. The wife. I don't think anyone had delved into 'F V St Clair' before, but his wife's family? Yes. Normally. Because it holds rather more folk of interest than the Wrays or the Veritys.

In a little memoir, Mark Raffles (yes, THAT Mark Raffles) revealed that he was descended from Samson Fox of Harrogate, JP, 12 servants ... the same family which is the background of (give or take a touch of illegitimacy) the acting family Fox of the 20th century. Now, I'm prepared to believe that all those Foxes were somehow related, but sorting them out is a little problematic. Especially as every generation had its William!

Start with Samson, of the Leeds Forge Company. Son of Jonas Fox (and Sarah Pearson), son of Samson.  Samson II apparently had two brothers: William (b 1841) and James (b 1845). William joined him in his firm, married Maria Blakeborough, 3 children, and died in Harrogate in 1891. And James ...? That's the sticky bit. Apparently James Fox was a boatbuilder. Is he related to the one of that name operating from Limehouse Hole in 1843? Anyway this James's son, William (grr) was of that trade, and it is him in whom we are interested. He fathered the ladies who link the family to St Clair and to my Wychwoods. Not Samson's son, but Samson's nephew.

Of course, just to be awkward Samson did have a son named William. He died as a child. But he called a later child Arthur William ('Willie'). It is this Willie Fox who married the actress Hilda Hanbury-Alcock and deserted her after their fourth child. And one of those four was Robin Fox .. and take it from there. So, here the Fox branches part ...

So, back to the boatbuilder, William son of James. Married Martha Wild. Children:

Elizabeth 1863

Mary Ann 10 June 1865

James 15 August 1867

Amelia 15 November 1869

William Henry 9 August 1872;  d 24 June 1942

Frank 1 November 1874; d 25 February 1953

Harry said to be 9 March 1875. ?died 1894

Martha 2 September 1878 (Mrs Theodore Walker)

The oft-repeated story tells us that no1 sister, Elizabeth, married an Irish music hall artist, Tom TRAYNOR, and they had one daughter, Amelia, before Tom's untimely death aged 34, in 1891.

Elizabeth and Tom Traynor

In the meanwhile, Traynor and FVStC had shared a bill at Manchester, and Traynor introduced John/Frank to his wife's younger sister. Polly, a machine hand. Pollie? Bloody nicknames. Took me hours to discover that 'Polly' was Mary Ann. Martha was far too young, and Amelia ...???  But this put the cap on it

Elizabeth remarried Thomas HESFORD in 1891, had two more children, gave birth to Charlie in 1891 (24 December)" 'Uncle Charlie' of the Post Office to the next generation, Arthur in 1904, and seems to have died in 1929. Charlie died in Rhyl 25 August 1969. Arthur and family emigrated to Australia.

The person who leads us to the present day, to my old friend 'Mark Raffles' and my new friend Tim Raffles-Taylor, is little Amelia TRAYNOR (b 27 May 1888). Amelia, who had been playing piano in the family pub since childhood, married an Albert TAYLOR, foreman bricklayer/furnaceman in 1914 ... from which marriage was born Albert TAYLOR jr (22 June 1922; d 18 September 2022) ... later to be a Wychwood and a celebrated magician. Which is another story ...

The wonderful Wychwoods

There are heaps more. Many documents .. but for now. Mission accomplished.

Oh. I see a TV programme has 'done' this family. I wonder if they got it right, or if they mixed up their Willies ..