Tuesday, July 30, 2024

The oddest Cartesian of them all.

 

How did I get into this one?

I am used to performers, and especially Cartesians, telling lies about themselves. Their names, their ages ... but this one takes the biscuit. 

The archive says: "Sophie Madeline Lacy was a chorister with D'Oyly Carte Opera Company "D" in the autumn of 1890, when she toured with her husband Edward Bishop. She continued to perform with the Carte organization for the next several years before leaving the stage due to ill health in early 1895".

The first sentence is quite true. Name more or less accurate, But no dates of birth and death, and no clarification of ...

Magdeline Sophia Lacy was a daughter of builder and contractor Robert Linton Lacy and his wife Isabella Maria née Waite. Yes, she was. Born in Chelsea 9 February 1866. Yes, she was. But in later life she denied that. Not the 9 February, but the 1866. She chopped nearly twenty years off her age in the 1939 census, and fooled the death registrar when she died in 1954. 'Aged 76'.  And some ...

But, then, Miss Lacy fooled a few folk in her time. And told many a lie.

I don't know whether she had worked as a vocalist before joining the company, but she lighted on E L D Bishop and married him in 1891 ...

I've blogged poor Teddy.

"Edward Louis Desiré BISHOP (b Marlborough, Wilts x 18 November 1868; d at sea 26 December 1902). The 6ft 3ins Mr Bishop was the son of John Bishop, a customs officer, and his wife Louisa Rosabella née O'Dwyer from Ripon. They moved to Southampton, then to Millbrook ... and apparently he was a member of the Carte chorus from 1890. Anyway, he is on the 1894 paylist. I spot him rarely: at King Edward VI Grammar School, Southampton in 1882-5 (fifth form, second prize mathematics, chemistry, electricity, magnetism .. Cambridge Entrance) ... I don't know when he dumped a savant chemical career in favour of one as a chorusboy, but hereafter I see him mainly in Cartesian cricket teams in the 90s, and, in 1899, as 'Cancan a citizen' in The Lucky Star. However, he did make the faits divers columns when his wife, née Sophie Madeleine Lacy, a Cartesian chorister, sued him, in 1899, for non payment of maintenance. Which was a bit cheeky, because she was the one who was wandering. He'd merely been walked out on (1896). He promptly divorced her (1901) and revealed the name of her paramour, Mr James Yorke Scarlett Rae (1871-1911) of the Edinburgh amdrams. Who had three legitimate children at home. I see Teddy with the company in Bury in 1901, but after that?. And her. And their two children, Charles [Linton] Leslie (b 7 December 1893) and Dorothy [Dora] (?Mrs Pepper, b 23 March 1895; d Chatham 1980). Oh. Died at sea, on the Doune Castle, at 36.30N and 12.24Wheart attack, Edward Bishop, actor aged 34 ... "

She didn't leave the Carte and husband through ill-health. She left to bear her second child ...

Anyway, at the time of the divorce, Mrs Bishop was already elsewhere pregnant. By whom? The married Mr Rae? Or by George Philip Clements (clerk)? Well, the child was born 3 September 1901 as Phyllis Barbara Clements. And Mrs Bishop did get round to marrying Mr Clements a couple of years later. After Teddy's death. And a son was born ...  Philip Gerald (7 February 1904).

The two Bishop children were abandoned to a foster family in Fulham and then largely disappear from my ken. Phyllis stayed with mother, who lived latterly at 15 Stone Street, Brighton, and died 22 February 1990. Philip 'a soldier' got into trouble with the law at 21 (as aka Philip Bishop!), married, fathered a son, and died aged 74 at Cuckfield in 1978. 

There's nowt so queer as folks.





Saturday, July 27, 2024

Cartesians for George


Over the past few years, both for my book and for the G&S Archive, run by David Stone, I have dived deeply into the 'who was'  of many of the early performers of the Gilbert and Sullivan 'operas'.



I've accomplished a few minor miracles of identification, most of which are detailed on this blog, suffered some cingling defeats, and had a lot of fun.

One of the reasons for collecting all this historical information is that fellow scholar/researcher, George Low, is preparing a new edition of the G&S fact-finders' bible, fondly known as 'Rollins and Witts'. He's been at it,  microscopically, ever since I've known him. It's a big job.

Anyway, George has been the third corner of our triangle since I started this exercise. And it was he who, last week, noticed that I'd strayed from my self-imposed 'nineteenth-century-only' area, into post-Victorian years. And he sent me a list of folk on whom facts and dates were needed.

Well, George, I've had a go. I can't answer some of your 'maybe' questions, but I've uncovered the three main ?????s : Mr Hindmarsh Jamieson, Miss Mabel Burnege and Mr George Whitehead (with photo!).

Here goes.

George [Richard] Hindmarsh JAMIESON (b Edinburgh 11 October 1871; d Lismore, NSW 25 July 1953). Son of William Jamieson and his wife Elizabeth. After his term with the Carte organisation, Jamieson emigrated to Australia (1907). He appeared in both amateur and professional theatre, in concerts, and taught music in Kogarah and later Lismore where he died at the age of 52.

Jamieson and small friend

Mabel [Sarah] BURNEGE (b St Sepulchre, London 22 September 1880; d Bray Villae, Berks 2 July 1972), daughter of warehouse manager/provisions merchant Robert Burnege and his wife Emma Lindsay Martin. After her Carte career she appeared in featured roles in such musicals as The Islander (1910), The Laughing Husband (1913) and The Belle of Bond Street (1914) and visited American to play in Night Birds (1912). Sometime thereafter she married a Mr SAVORY but, by 1939, she is a widow, in Hitchin, living with Amy F Batchelor actress. 

George [Daniel] WHITEHEAD (b New York 1 May 1870; d Sydney 29 August 1923) Son of Daniel Whitehead of Charleston, Mass and his wife Margaret. Attended Harvard University. Six foot-plus bass singer, who appeared in England as 'Brown from Colorado' in The Shop Girl (1898). He subsequently joined the minor 'National Opera Company' (Brunone in The Prentice Pillar), and the remnants of the Carl Rosa (Don Jose in Maritana). He was seen as Billy Breeze in The Belle of New York, and covering Bertram Wallis in that gentleman's concert group. He married Cartesian Joan Keddie (qv) and soon after left for America and, in 1908 for Australia where he had an appreciable stage career. Also, it seems, another wife.



Any more for any more?

George, 'Geraldine St Maur' is for YOU to decipher ..

PS Here is one more. Interesting chap. Herbert Reginald SLEIGH (b Islington 10 February 1895; d Hounslow 1975). Son of John Hamilton Sleigh and his wife Isabella née Marshall. Photographer, singer,  WW1 in the RAF, moving picture technician ...

Addendum: Well, George lured me out of my Victorian paddock, and, while I was there, he slipped me four early 20th century sopranos to identify and clarify. I haven't quite put a gravestone over two of them, but George, here is the fresuky of today's delving.

Olive [Reid] TURNER (b Middleham, Yorks 23 November 1892; d Leyburn 26 May 1970) was a tad tricky because there are several Olive Turners floating around in pre-war years, However, our one was the daughter of solicitor's clerk James Turner and his Scots wife, Christina, a young teenage pupil of Agnes Larkcom at the RAM, where she was decorated with several awards, before going straight into leading roles with Carte. There is a tale that she cracked on a high note, walked off, and never went on the stage again. Which means that the Olive singing lead roles in amateur productions (San Toy, Florodora) in the war years is not she. But she advertises as being 'of the D'Oyly Carte and the Prince of Wales Theatre' so ....

She did not, however, stop singing. She appeared in concert regularly (where a violent vibrato was remarked on), appeared frequently on radio, and took of the composition of ditties and even a couple of musicals. She died, unmarried, in her native Yorkshire in 1970.

Louise TRIMBLE (GITHENS, Mary Louisa) (b Philadelphis 23 October 1882; died 1972). George apparently has an obituary. Anyway, She was the daughter of William H Githens and his wife, Mary, and she raught music and sang in the quartet  of the first Baptist Church before marrying Mr Larry Trimble, filmmaker and dog trainer, with whom she crossed to England in 1915. Mrs Trimble promptly took up leading roles with Carte for six months, but the job was merely a step to greater things. She assumed the name of Louise TRENTON for a career in opera of which there remains evidence in her recordings of Wagner operas (Brangaene to Florence Austral's Isolde, Woglinde, Sieglinde et al). She also sang The Princess in the performances of Stanford's The Travelling Companion given at Bristol.

She had one daughter, Janet ka Zilliacus, by Trimble before he waltzed off to other 'wives'. Mother and daughter can be seen in London's Clifton Hill in the 1939 census. Ah, I see, she died under her stage name in 1972.

Elsie [Mary Martha] CORAM (b Islington 21 December 1891; d Gate Cottages, Chorley Wood 2 January 1969) was another who mislaid her husband. But George hints that it may have been her fault. Anyway, she was the daughter of analytical chemist Henty Conrad Coram and his wife Kate Julia née Kerslake) and she married Henry William Claudius Norris, assistant musical director for Carte, in 1914.  She had a fair career in mostly secondary roles (see archive) and then, in 1922, was hired for a gig in Shanghai and Yokohama as leading lady in a J C Williamson troupe. She and Cartesian tenor, Gordon CROCKER (b Bedminster 17 February 1887; d London 3 April) sailed east 1 September, and they returned in June 1923, having delighted the locals with The Mikado.

I don't know if it is Crocker with whom she is supposed to have had an affair. He was a married man with a child. Anyway, the marriage with Norris was apparently over, and he disappeared into Canada. They were allegedly divorced in 1929 and he remarried ..

Crocker went home to his wife, and became a bookkepper/clerk, Elsie sang in concert and on piers for a number of years into the 1930s. In 1940 her 21 year old son by Norris was lost at sea on the SS Lancastria.

I had the most problems with Marjorie STONE.  But I don't give up easily :-)  She was born in Bournemouth, tick. She married one Archibald Ronald Macintyre. So that means she is the Helen(e) Margery Stone who didn't seem to fit. Daughter of Harry and Elizabeth (née Lambert) Stone and born 16 March 1888 in Christchurch. And died 11 December 1971 in Bournemouth. I got there, but it took a Bournemouth paper to put the seal on it.

Marjorie Stone

She joined Carte after a  number of years singing in concerts and amateur dramatics around Hampshire, and after a few more ventures (The Wags) went back there where she broadcast and played in amateur productions. I see her as the Fairy Queen in 1930, as Carmen no less in 1932, singing 'My Hero' in 1933.

Right, George, I'll take on some more, but NOT post-WW1 :-)


OK. A few more bits!

[Victoria] Blanch SYMONDS (b Dock House, Milwall 5 January 1859; d London 1910) Daughter of John Symonds, metal merchant, and Emma Dalton née Brown.Taught music from her teens and her venture on to the stage seems to have been brief.

John William Maunsell STRINGER (b Dublin 22 May 1883; d London 1934). Son of Henry Stringer and Jane Christian.

Clarewnce [James] SOUNES (b Lambeth 1855; d Surbiton 21 October 1921). Son of James Sounes, die sinker and later heraldic artist. In 1893 he married Maria Alice O'Neill, which I imagine is how he became extremely rich, for she was the daughter of an army contractor.

 Constance STANHOPE [TOBIAS, Eliza Constance] (b 51 Cleveland Square 19 February 1860; d Joannesburg 5 February 1892). Daughter of Edmund Myer Tobias and his wife Adeline Miriam née Alexander. Spent a busy nine years in 'comedy, drama and comic opera', which included a trip to America with Charles Wyndham and, in 1888, another to Kimberley's goldfields as leading lady for the local Queen's Theatre. In South Africa she even launched into management for a month's season in Johannesburg. But South Africa proved fatal to her, as to so many other visitors. She went down with peritonitis, but persisted in returning and disease got her.  She died unmarried. She did not marry John Amory Sullivan (who married someone else), and pace the family historians she was not the '[Stella] Constance Stanhope née Markham' 'singer' who soon swapped singing for a life of waitressing. She was Lizzie Tobias of Cleveland Square.

Walter [?George] SUMMERS (?b Bristol 1867; d Balham 22 February 1905) seems to have been the child of another Walter and a Margaret. But maybe not.  He had a multicolored theatre career: in the second half of the 1880s and early 1890s, he is playing stalwart heroes and character leads in drama (Not Guilty, Driven from Home, Devotion for a Life, The Miser's Will, The Octoroon, Round the Ring,  The Village Forge, Underneath the Gaslight) taking time out, each Christmas, to appear in comic parts in pantomime, with a stock of comic and popular songs. In 1890, at Bath, he got in 'The Bogie Man' in 1892 1892 at Bristol he was 'Perkin Popcorn' singing 'The Man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo'. He took a tour with the Blighted Bachelors combination, sharing the comedy with one Walter Passmore, and went on to replace Shiel Barry in Les Cloches de Corneville and tour as Frollo in Miss Esmeradla wirh Madge Rockingham. In 1893, he played in the Manchester panto, Goody Two Shoes, before joining the Carte establishment.

Subsequently, he favoured writing, directing and theatre management over performing. He took the New Theatre, Barnstaple for a season. But he principally turned out pantomime scripts for Yorkshire's Robert Arthur and others. He also ventured into the music hall sketch world (The Sultan of Ranogoo). In March 1904 a Benefit of his of his Lichfield pantomime was put up .. and then the man who was everywhere was suddenly nowhere. I cand find only one provincial paper which records the death of poor Walter, aged 37, in Balham, the next year. 

Ernest RIDGWELL (b 20 March 1883; d Ealing 1963)

married

Dorothy Kate BROWN (b 29 December 1888; d Hillingdon 8 July 1980)

He continued to work as a singer into the 1920s, before reconverting as a wool machinist.

 

Edward William BURGESS (b Marylebone 24 July 1839; d London 1891)  Son of Edward Benjamin Burgess and Sarah née Hobbs.  Originally worked as a house painter before becoming a chorister. He apparently married Mary Anne Susannah Racine, and had issue.

 

Mary (Marie) [Carmichael] BELTON (b London ?1867-1872; d Torquay 28 December 1955). Daughter of barrister Richard Carmichael Belton and his wife Mary Ann née Lewis. For many years a music teacher (see North Cray 1914), in later years she married D'Arcy Wentworth Reeve, who died within the year. 

 

Sophie FARQUHARSON [SMITH, Sophia] (b Islington 1844; d Bexley March 1916)

A daughter of the famous and eccentric basso Robert Smith, known in two hemispheres as 'Farquharson' and his wife Sophia née Butterworth. Her younger sister Alice [Margaret] also made a career, in opera, as a supporting soprano. I see them together in J S Tanner's Opera company in 1884, alongside Sophia's husband W O Billington.

A daughter, Margaret Billington became a music-hall performer.

Sophie had a number of siblings, brothers and sisters, but I see no Annie amongst them.

 

 Henry BURNAND (b Croydon 7 September 1879; said to have died 1950) The 16th child, so it is said, of Lewis Bransby Burnand and his wife Louisa Jane née Davies. A supporting tenor with Carte 1906-7, and subsequently in the Beecham Company at Covent Garden (Ghost in Raymond Roze's Joan of Arc). My last sighting of him is in 1923, touring as Peachum in the Lyric, Hammersmith, version of The Beggar's Opera.  He married in 1913 one Louisa Perrott, but the union seems to have been of short duration.




 

Hugh Carlyle PRITCHARD (b Denbigh 1871; d Derby 26 November 1939). Sang in concert in Wales from the early 1890s. His stint with Carte is the only stage job I have found for him, but he was still singing in concert in 1905. By 1911, he was employed as a travelling salesman, and just before his death in 1939, he was working as a railway clerk. His wife was Annie H Marshall.

 

Edward Alfred PUTTEE (b Aldington, Kent 1872 x 13 October; d Howden, Yorks December 1950). Son of Alfred Puttee of HM Customs and his wife, Emily née Terry. Worked as a commercial clerk into his 30s, then as an organist and music teacher. His venture into the Carte came in his forties. In his fifties (1924) I see him 'of 16 Villiers Rd, Southall' arriving from Kingston, Jamaica, with a theatrical troupe including one Mary Alice Liddell. He married Marion Adelaide Goldsack, three children.

 

William Hugo Penderell PRICE (b Sherborne, Dorset 21 July 1870; d ?)

He suffered from the windy nomenclature because he was the son of a provincial clergyman, Hugh Penderell Price, and his wife Mary. He was singing in his twenties in modest concerts (I see him at Derby in 1896 singing Handel, and in 1902 doing a Messiah in Ilfracombe), and the archive has deniched him in several roles after his Carte period.

He is listed in the 1939 census as an inmate of a hospital in Finsbury ....



Thursday, July 25, 2024

The musical Comer family of Bath.

 

I came to this article via this gentleman ...

COMER, John (b Bath c1800; d Ilchester 17 March 1886)

 

When I first, some years back, saw the reasonably-sized obituary for John Comer, ‘a very old member of the musical profession’, in the Era newspaper for 1886, I thought ‘who?’ Principal bass at Her Majesty’s Theatre under John Loder? Five years in Italy? ‘sang in all the principal cities (of Italy)’? How had I missed him all these years? So, I went a-searching. 

 

I didn’t find what I was supposed to find. I think some of it wasn’t there to find. But I found more than enough to decide me to include the Comer family among my (slightly) Victorian Vocalists.

 

We seem to start with a clerical gentleman by the name of Thomas Comer (b 1737; d 32 Milsom St, 17 December 1822). Mr or the Rev Comer’s early years are a bit mysterious to me -- there are a couple of TCs round in the Bath area in the 18th century, but apparently the Rev came originally from Hawkchurch in Dorset. It appears that those early years included at least one marriage and some children, among whom were apparently at least four daughters, and at least two sons. There was a Mary, born 13 April 1774 (or 1777, depending upon whom you believe), an Amelia born in 1789 (why the gap? have I skipped a generation?), there was a Thomas born in 19 December 1790 (ouch! also one baptised 15 October 1890, and what! one in 1769?), a Martha born about 1793, a Jane who taught dancing (‘pupil of Vestris’), and a John, who appears to have been the last child, born in Bath around 1800. How many wives (and indeed Thomases!) provided these offspring, I know not. And where? One family historian insists that Mary was born in Ireland, another footnoter says she was the vicar’s second daughter (but when the above Martha of Milsom Street died, at Hotwells, aged 25, 2 August 1818, it was she who was reportedly the second daughter), a Bath book confirms that Thomas II was born at Bath, thus placing the family there in 1789, and there is general agreement that Mary learned singing from Rauzzini, who was based in Bath for some 40 years. Then, in the 1841 census, I find a 45 (recte: 52) year-old Amelia Comer (‘music teacher’, d Kensington Place, Bath 28 August 1844) living at 4 Kensington Place, Walcot, and saying she was born there … I see a Martha Comer, by Thomas ex Jane, christened at Walcot in 1775 … well, I don’t know exactly when the apparently Reverend Comer came to Walcot, and took up his post as clerk and sexton of the Kensington Place Chapel (I see him there, still, in 1819), but it looks as if he’d been there some time, breeding, latterly with the assistance of a wife named Martha née Rivers, at the usual Clerical rate. Oh dear, I think I had better have another sort of this lot! Too many Toms. 


Anyway, I don’t actually spot any of them in musical action until 10 November 1797, when a Miss Comer (it's Mary 1774) turns up on the bill at the Bath concerts with Miss Poole, Mme Mara, Nield, Florio et al. She became a regular at these concerts, and I spot her also singing at the Three Choirs Festival, at Gloucester, sharing the soprano music with Madame Mara. Shortly afterwards (Cheltenham 19 September 1799), she 'of the Bath Theatre' married the 'celebrated' flautist Andrew Ashe (d Ely Place, Dublin April 1838) and went on, as Mrs Ashe, to make herself a very fine career as a vocalist, in, particularly, the fashionable local Gloucestershire and Somerset concerts, of which Rauzzini, initially, and Ashe, latterly, were for many years the director.





I see her taking a Benefit 21 March 1800 at the Bath New Assembly Rooms. In 1801 (25 March) she sang at the Haymarket oratorios in Rauzzini’s Requiem, in 1804 and 1805 and following years she appeared in Corri’s concerts in Edinburgh ('Sweet Bird', 'Sweet Echo', 'I Know that my Redeemer', 'O Lord Have Mercy'), and at London’s King’s Theatre alongside Mrs Mountain, and in 1805 she featured in the Covent Garden oratorios (The Messiah, The Creation, Acis and Galatea). She returned to London in 1806 for the Vocal Concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms, in 1807 to the Choral Fund and the Antient Concert, as well as singing at Warwick House on the occasion of the 11-year-old Princess of Wales’s birthday and at a variety of other private and fashionable functions. In 1808 she appeared at the Argyle Street Institution, singing in the concerts, and making her acting debut in the burletta Gli Strioni (22 June) with Lanza. 

In 1805ssq we have Mrs Ashe and Miss Comer both appearting at Mr Comer's Benefit in Bath. 'Miss' can be seen in concert till 1812. 

 

In 1810, Mary Ashe sang alongside Catalani in the Salisbury Festival, at the Oxford Installation, and, when The Cabinet was played at the Haymarket for Braham’s Benefit, the two Ashes appeared with him. Thoroughly established as one of Britain’s finest sopranos she continued on, through a mass of pregnancies and children, singing now in Bath, now in London, at Drury Lane, the Philharmonic Society, at Hanover Square Rooms, at the most fashionable of parties, and before Royalty on such occasions as the Queen’s Birthday, and at the Argyll Rooms for her own Benefit, and she still voyaged to Scotland for Corri’s concerts.


In 1819 the Ashes appeared, with two of their daughters (piano and harp), before the Price Regent at ‘the Persian Ambassador’s Concert’, and Mary Gertrude and Honoria Maria Ashe became a part of the family act as known, appearing with their parents in aristocratic drawing rooms, at the Argyll Rooms (1814), on the stage of Drury Lane, and in many a concert in between. At the same time, Mary established Mrs Ashe’s Musical Academy at 35 Belvedere, Bath, where pupils were given an hour at a time: half tutored in singing by Mary, and the other half either in harp or piano by the daughters. 8 guineas for three months, two lessons a week.


Ashe died in 1838, and Mrs Ashe in 1843. Mary Gertrude Honoria married (1822) Edward Carlton Cumberbatch, the ‘black sheep’ son of a wealthy Barbadoes family, and died in 1847, Honoria Maria Olympia married a Captain Frederick Webber Smith and seems to have survived till 1888. The rest of the family – ‘nine or ten’ of them, so their father related – are a little off my patch. So, we leave Mary Ashe, and get back to the Comers.

 




Father Thomas also appears round this time, and it is evident that as well as being a fertile cleric, he was also a musical cleric. I see him, in the early 1800s, promoting concerts of sacred music at his Chapel in Walcot, with Mrs Ashe prominently featured, and in 1808 (10 November) his concert bill 'before the Duke of Gloucester' includes Mrs Ashe, Miss [Amelia?] Comer and Miss M[artha] Comer, all singing, and Mr T[homas] Comer junior playing the violin. In 1810, an article about the generosity of Catalani, mentions that she sang for the ‘very aged’ Mr Comer round about that time, and though, after 1811, Thomas junior ceases to be ‘junior’, father lived till 1822.


But Thomas junior continues. When Ashe puts on a Christmas Messiah with Catalani top-billed, Mr Comer is among the soloists. It has to be Thomas, because father is too old and John is too young. He appears regularly as a soloist in local concerts over the next half-dozen years, often featuring as a violinist as well. ‘Miss Comer’ seems to vanish after 1812, but Mr sings in the Cornwall Music Festival, The Messiah and The Mount of Olives at Bath, in many a concert given by Ashe, visits Margate and then stops. He stops simply because he has gone to the join the company at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. For the next decade, Thomas ‘the bass singer’ played bit parts on the stage at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, as well as at Birmingham, Worthing et al in between seasons. Amongst the roles he played were Dirk Hatterick in Guy Mannering, Ruthven in The Warlock of the Glen, Lopez in The Libertine, McStuart then Dougal in Rob Roy, Guido in The Vespers of Palermo, The Sentinel in Pizzaro, Lodovico and later Cassio in Othello, Corporal Standfast in The Battle of Waterloo, Sebastian in what passed for The Marriage of Figaro, Oliver in As You Like It, Rodolph in William Tell, Jocoso in Clari, Conrad in Much Ado About Nothing, Montolio in Faustus, Mesrour in Aladdin, Jorum in The Sleepwalker, Omar in Bishop’s The Fall of Algiers… as well as playing in pantomime, singing between the pieces, and playing violin when required. And then, in 1827, that stops too. 


Why? Because Thomas lit out for America. He headed for Boston, where he worked again as an actor, a singer and as a musician – I spot him conducting the Boston Musical Union  and The Handel and Haydn Society in the 1830s, he conducted the Woods and Brough, the Seguins, and Mrs Austin, in opera, and took the baton at the Boston Museum in the 1840s, supplying the house with various ‘composed and arranged by’ scores, as required, at the Boston Theater at its opening in 1854, and Howard Athenaeum as late as 1857; I see him playing Dandini in Cinderella and singing ‘Now Heaven in fullest glory shone’ in the oratorios of 1838; he composed choral music, founded the Musical Fund Society in 1847 – and many a tale of ‘Honest Tom Comer’ is included in Clapp’s A Record of the Boston Stage.

He can be seen in the 1860 census living in a residential hotel, ‘musician’, aged 69.  He died in Boston on 27 July 1862.







But just as Thomas quits England, a new Comer surfaces in Bath. Mr J Comer. At last, here is ‘little’ John. By 1827, obviously, something like 27 years old. For I assume all the ‘Mr Comer’s before that are Thomas. And where do I first see John? Why, in a concert in Bristol (29 November 1827) where the bill includes Pasta, Miss Forde, Brambilla, Curioni …

That obituary piece (which looks queerer, every step one takes into Comer-land) says he’d been singing in concert in Bath since 1821. Well it’s possible, maybe even likely, but if it were so it has been privately and away from the press. And even now, I don’t see a lot of him.


Following the queer obit’s say-so, he now went, in 1830, to Italy for five years. Well, if he went for five years it wasn’t in 1830. Because one thing I have exhumed is an advertisement for a Bath concert given by Henry Field in 1833 (18 April) which is his ‘first appearance since his return from Italy’. So, I’ve searched in sunny Italy. And guess what!? I’ve found him!

Teatro Privato Loup Bologna dateline 15 May 1829: ‘Il signor [Giovanni] Comer di Scuola Inglese, che disimpegna la parte Assur e dotato di una bella voce di basso. Nulla veramente lascia a desiderare nella essecuzione di tutti I suoi pezzi …’  A rave review. But what is this production? Ah .. ‘a company of young amateurs…’. Tebaldo in Vaccai's La Guilietta e Romeo with the sisters Ghedini at Macerata. But it gets a little better. Teatro di Fuligno 30 January 1830. La Donna del lago. ‘Il signor Comer con le sue corde profonde ed intonate ha guistamente meritato reiterati applausi’ as … well, it must be Duglas! Then bass at the San Luca, Venice. Eduardo e Cristina 'omogeneo voce e precisione di canto', Elisa e Claudio 'riusci con plaudo'. At Ravenna he is Elmiro in Otello 'bella voce di basso' ..., at Fermo in Il Pirata ..

I suppose he did more yet in his three active years in Italy, but this is all I have found. The obit says he got a Doctorate of Music from the Musical Academy of Bologna. So, maybe he did.


Back in England, in 1833, and … ‘he was the principal bass singer in Italian opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre, then under the management of Mr John Loder’. Well, that escapes me completely. I don’t know if and when Loder ran London’s Italian opera, and since Comer called himself by his own name in Italy, I presume he would have in England, too. And I see him not.

 

I do see him in an 1835 concert party, with Misses Forde and Turpin, Edward Loder and Millar, and singing in the Loders’ Bath subscription concerts. Had he been a primo basso at the Italian opera, I am sure it would have said so on the bills!

 

Anyway, he moved to Bridgwater, took up the superintendance of the local society for vocal and instrumental music, and continued to sing, through the early 1840s, in Bath and in Taunton, where he took part in the 1845 Festival, with the Williams sisters, Maria Hawes and Hobbs, and to where he later removed, taking over the running of the Taunton Madrigal society and teaching at the Independent College into the 1880s.

 

John married at some stage and had a daughter named Eliza Jane, ‘professor of music’. I guess she is the Eliza Jane born 1829, of John Comer and Eliza[beth] née Pain (m 23 May 1824). Mrs Comer must have died, because, by the 1841 census, at King's Square, Bridgwater, he has a Bristol-born wife named Jane, and the next year a son, George. A local Taunton obituary identifies John’s wife as one Jane Wingrove (b 1796) 'a relation of the lady of that name well-known in all musical circles in this town'. The John who married Miss Wingrove did so in 1832, when our John was said to be in Bologna. Obviously he wasn't! But ...


 Jane is a ‘teacher of dancing’. This is awkward, because John also has a maiden sister named Jane (d 49 New King Street, Bath, 15 June 1889), who is also a ‘teacher of dancing’ ('Miss Comer's Dancing Academy 32 Milsom St' in 1816) and who, at her death, named niece Eliza Jane (now Mrs Charles Bluett) as her executor. Anyway, Jane, the ‘second wife’ seems to have died in 1876 (9 June) at the age of 77. Apparently, she taught dancing into her seventies. John remained active into his eighties.

 

John and Jane were, as said, the parents of George Comer, and George carried on the theatrical side of the family. He started in the business as an actor – I see him in 1875 with Eliot Galer at Leicester doing ‘walking gents and juveniles’, then at Cambridge, and touring for over two years with Craven Robertson’s Caste company – before switching to writing. He appeared to specialise in the most melodramatic of melodramas – beginning with Drifting, Woman’s Rights, Honours Even, Les Voyageurs Comiques, Morality, and achieving some success with Hard Lines (14 April 1883) at the Queen’s, Manchester, The Main Hope, and several pieces (Till Death do us part, Dead Beat) for Conquest at the Surrey Theatre. Pieces such as The Right Man, Darkest London, Homeless, The Red Barn (which made it to Broadway), flooded provincial and colonial stages for some years, and George was still writing into the twentieth century.

 

There would be no next generation from George, who lived and died a bachelor. Eliza Jane Bluett, after her wine-merchant husband’s death (14 October 1888), worked as a ‘professor of singing’. She died in Paris, 19 January 1908.

 

So that is the tale, or what part of it I have been able to exhume, of the Comers of Walcot, a large percentage of whom took part in the musical and theatrical world of the nineteenth century. Whether anyone really sang in the Italian opera or not.

 

Footnote: John Loder was first violin at the Lyceum, then a second violin at the Italian opera. He was concertmaster in various orchestras thereafter. But the report saying Comer sang 'under' him at Her Majesty's came, of course, from a Bath newspaper. Hometown boys need a little hupppppp!.

 

Which Miss Comer is advertising 'organist, piano-forte, harp and singing lessons' from 32 Milsom in the 1830 Bath 'book of useful information'?  Amelia, I guess? Oh, the Loders were at no 46. Propinquity :-) And Mrs Comer died 'at an advanced age' at the same address in January 1823 ... and another, aged 71, June 2 1836 at Hillsbridge Parade ...  

 


Tuesday, July 23, 2024

The Pic Nic. 1834.

 





All the three names -- author Bayly, musician Hodson and I presume this is Mr Williams of the London Theatres -- are well-known but I have yet to find a record of this comical musical monologue being performed. 

PS The subject, however, seems to have been a recurrent one ...


Samuel E[dward] Clark (b Redcar 25 January 1863) was 'the composer of the Chiff Chaff Waltz' (1890). He apparently came from Redcar ('Coatham House, Coatham'). He seems to have published locally in the early 20th century, an amount of occasional musicand was much puffed by the local Gazette. He died in October 1940, aged 77, at Redcar. Other than that, I know naught of him.


Sunday, July 21, 2024

A new American musical. 1852.


Came upon this today.





Yes, it's a musical. Clearly from the lists of characters and the opening 'comic duet' not what one would today call an 'opera'. 

Written and published in 1858, and made it to the stage 2 July 1859 the following year at New York's Metropolitan Theater. Seemingly for a two-night Benefit performance .. with quite a cast!


Adelaide Phillipps, Catherine Lucette, Lucy Escott, William H Cooke and Charles Guilmette ...

How, why? ... Lucy Escott had appeared at the 1858 Mount Vernon Festival ... Catherine Lucette had only been in America since May ... Guilmette was lecturing in Brooklyn on 'Voice Physiology' .. Miss Phillipps had been singing in opera, but not seen recently ... 

Mr Cooke? 'A young man not twenty years of age who sings in the choir of Dr Osgood's church' who was to be America's Brignoli. Hmmmm. Mr Ward's protégé?

It seems to have been a cobbled together group. And it was Miss Phillipps who played the title-role. I wonder who paid the bills.

Ah! May 1858. Private performance: The musical dilettanti of our city have been treated to a rare entertainment—a private opera, privately performed in one of the most aristocratic mansions of University Place, the residence of Dr. Thomas Ward, the author of the words and music, and one of the leading performers of his own charming production. The title of the opera is “Flora; or, The Gipsy's Frolic.” It is in three acts, and the scene is laid in France, in the time of Louis the XIV. The plot is romantic and pretty; the characters numerous and the action lively."

Aristocratic? Ah I guess Dr Ward paid the bills, then.


I wonder if anyone followed up this production with its fine cast and imprimatur.

Oh, Lord. What a laugh. I see his little piece has been picked up by one of those firms which reprints out-of-copyright plays (to order, I imagine). Well, I wont be ordering one ...


PS this is apparently where it happened!

https://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-1847-thomas-ward-house-866-broadway.html?m=1&fbclid=IwY2xjawELzYpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHQo5m8Fy4DkryUPzfnupcBaEpcl4L_FJVU68xHM102OKSppTY1yBZc9YOA_aem_t_w6NpojhmZuisHHmuQ1BA


 


Saturday, July 20, 2024

Spooky Beach and its kooky inhabitants

 

Paulie and I are really in Yamba for quiet, sunny, peaceful, lazy ... work. I tap away at this machine, in my flat, turning out deathless prose and theatre articles which no one will ever read; across the courtyard in my other flat P has installed a musicians studio where he is turning out compositions and arrangements ...

We only really go out for marketing, massage and the odd meal. 

However, today dawned so bright and fair that we decided a little jaunt to the adjacent village of Angourie was called for. I haven't been there for a while, since its classy retaurant moved out, and we had joyous memories of our last visit, where we ran into a very large and sleepy snake curled up in the tree over the path down to the beach.



It is a little more difficult for me to clamber down to the sands these days, but with a strong left arm to aid me, I did it ...


And oh! was it worth the effort!

Spooky is one of the scenic joys of our area. From there, you look across the waters back to Yamba ...

Or out to sea where, far off, the yachts dip and dive, and the occasional whale does a splashy somersault ...

Yes, see those steps? I climbed them right up ...

Well, there was no snake this time. Yes, I checked carefully. But there was a most wonderful floor show. Ornithological. As we reached the car park, this little feller came up to greet us ...


Followed by his slightly larger companion.


What a show. Camera clicked fifty times... every time you thought 'that's a super one', they posed a little better, came a little closer ...





Nature is truly wonderful.

We trundled on out to the Angourie lookout. Delightful. But no floor show. 

Time for a wee snack, then back to base.

The snackeries in the village have shrunk in recent years. All three places at which I have eaten in the past have gone. Closed and empty. Looks a bit sad. But in the 'ruins' there is another arisen. So we sat down and had very nice toasted sandwich (me) and salad taco (P) ... and another little visitor came to sing to us

Apparently he's figbird. But he's not as trusting or as pose-perfect as the kookaburras!

He flew off as we departed and headed back home to Yamba ...

Thank you, Angourie, and specifically Spooky and kookys ... a gorgeous wee adventure!

PS Back in New Zealand, with a souvenir of the day ... he sits on my bedroom windowsill, and of course he is named 'Spooky'



I visit the (19th century) circus ....

 

I had no intention of doing so. But, having finished my latest chunk of musical theatre writings, I was wandering around e-bay and saw this fellow. He was named, so I thought to fill in a few minutes finding out who he was ...


Traugott KREMBSER (1833-1889) voltigeur, horseback rider ... one of a celebrated family of circus folk.





I see the large family (I presume all that bore the name were kosher Krembsers) is lavishly written about on the web. Anyway, nice to have this gent pigeonholed. That's when I should have left the room ... but then I saw the some other photos had the same verso. Other members of the company? Different costumes, but ...




No names. The last two look as if they belong to a drama rather than a circus. But maybe there was a swordsmanship exhibition included.And here'sanother ...


These ar'n't from 1868 though because they reference 1870 .. or have no No5.






These and more can be found for sale at the marvellous on line shop of photo-discovery.com  Anyone collecting 1860s-1870s circus material needs to hurry there. 

Here are couple of chaps in rather alarming outfits. Crochet? What if it got snagged on an apparatus and unwound?


And I think someone's blind mother must have sewed this set of bloomers!


Maybe she'd make this poor chappie some too .


I think he's not from Russia, though. Italy perhaps?

Italy rendered up the best find, though. Trieste and Milan. Two named performers. English athletes and horsemen ... as, indeed so many of the performers in Continental circuses were

This is John WHITELEY


This is Harry WARD


And from evidence of furniture and frock, this will be Harry's offsider ... alas, unnamed ... but possibly Joseph Reed ..


Well, these three lads were all members of the famous Circus Renz troupe in Vienna in 1868. 



And then with the Delavanti troup in 1870 ...  as was what, I imagine, was another Englishman, George Early ...  Ward specialised in the double somersault. I think 'John Delavanti' was his catcher .. so ... maybe ..

Well, I have not discovered a huge amount about these fellows.

WHITELEY I spot first in 1860. Playing Harlequin in the pantomime with the Bell's Hippodrome Circus at Portland Street, Belfast. 'The pantomimic equestrian', 'bareback rider' through 1862 ..  if he is not the Master John Whiteley at Ward's End in 1866, I don't see him again till Vienna 1869 'der ausserordienlichen Voltigitübungen za Pferde'. After that he is in Berlin with the Delevanti troupe, then in Graz, and then joins the brothers Hadwin 'of London' and Williams in a Grand English Equestrian Company ('40 horses, 70 performers, 10 English clowns ... the finest company in Italy' (1877). In 1879-80 he is in Paris ... 
This is my last sighting


Family or 'family'?  And Mr Hadwin ...? I guess he was of the Brothers act 'comic niggers' in 1860 Bristol 'nephews and pupils of the great Mackney'. Really? ... Gosh, it's true. George Hadwin m Ann Mackney 1847 Stockport! 

WARD I see not after his stints with Renz and Delavanti, Joseph REED likewise ... George EARLY ... one never knows what their real names may have been. George DELEVANTI was actually George CRIPPEN (b Stepney 1848; d Plymouth 3 May 1889). John may or may not have been a brother ...

I should have left it there.

But I didn't. I had a go at some of the other English srtists and troupes in Europe ...

There are the BRIDGES family. Brothers James [West] (1835-1900) and Anthony [O'Neill] (1833-1879), born into the equestrian family of Reuben Bridges. James was most successful until he fell into the bottle, abandoned his wife ...


Gertrude Agnes (1846-1888) was their niece, daughter of Selim Bridges, another performer ..  she (ka Agnes), worked as 'Mlle Gertrude' and married Charles Avolo (eig Charles WINCOTT)  ... and got me into half-a-day's digging, because she wasn't the only 'Mlle Gertrude' ...

So here we go again!  On a huge safari ... which leads me .... to the seaside city of Kingston-upon--Hull, Yorkshire. And family and troupe known as SILBON. Their name was, shall we say, mobile. Silarbon, Silabon, Syllaborn .. but they'd been in the Sculcoates area for a goodly while. We have to hone in on George SIL(A)BON, a cooper turned publican, who married an Ann Taylor. Ann was illiterate, but fecund. She gave George 11 children before giving up the ghost. And of those eleven ... somehow ... half became equestrians and acrobats. The various internet websites and family trees are a little wonky, so I give my version of Ann's offspring (performers in bold):

Geo Taylor 1849-1905

Cornelius Robinson 1851-1891 m Kate Victoria Newbold 

Anne Eliza 1854 -1891 m John RIAL ka 'John d'Osta'

Maud 1856-1918 m George Henry Clarkson 

Louisa 1858-1887 m Edward Clark

Alfred Hugh 1859-1929, 'Le Petit A'Don' m (1) Caroline Alexandrine Elizabeth Jeunet (2) Paulina Emilie Schubert ka 'Mme Carola' -1900

Kate 1862-1941  aka 'Lilla' or 'Zilla' m Edward Mylett (ps Silbon)

Walter 1865-1903 'le petit Walter', m Minnie L King

Fred 1867-1876, 'Little Ebor'

Albert 1870- 18 November 1884 drowned 

Eugene 1872- 7 December 1943 m Everilda Southgate


Anyway, 1870. Mlle Gertrude .. teenaged Gertrude GREGORY .. who was trouping an act with gymnastics and trained French poodles, joined forces in 1870 with 'the brothers de Osta' (or sometimes d'Osta') in a troupe briefly ... Gertrude pulled out and went off to Australia to wow the colonies as 'the Queen of the Air'. So Alberto d'Osta and Silbon d'Osta took over .. yes, the brothers d'Osta were Cornelius Sil(a)bon from Hull and his pal John Rial. No not Rial as in Portuguese, Rial (var Ryall) from Sculcoates. John married Cornelius's sister Ann Eliza ..




Well, it's a detailed tale but Cornelius trained up his younger siblings and advertised as their father. The children had various stage names ...  but they were all real and actual little Sil(a)bons 




Cornelius and little Alfred, Walter the clown, and Kate ...


I don't know why Fred didn't join the act, but went out as 'Little Ebor' .. alas, not for long, for he died in Oran, Algeria before his tenth birthday. He was, confusingly, described as the brother of 'J[ohn] R[ial] d'Osta ...


The act travelled as far as Australia and South America ... where tragedy struck. Walter was injured in a train smash and Cornlieus died from causes unreported, at sea,, off Acapulco. The act carried on ... but it was no onger the same




Kate, Walter and his wife Minnie ... but no Alfred .. and 'Eddie Silbon' was actually another lad from Hull by the name of MYLETT. He married a gymnast named Eugenie (Jennie) ALFONSE in Guatemala, and they took it on themselves to continue latterly the 'Silbon' name and act.


"Jennie Siblon' Mylett





'original' ... sigh ..



I've gathered pages of Silbonneries. Real, half-real and assumed .... and latter day photos when the Silbon name was just a brand name ...


Anyway, Walter and Minnie went back to England, where he took on the management of a venue in Bradford. They did not live to a great age. 

Alfred seems to have married two gymnastic ladies in succession, and bore a son, Marius who died in his thirties. He himself lived till 1929.

Kate stayed in America. Married a James Rollins, then a Tom HERBERT ...



Oh dear, there are many a gymnastic tendril to this family ...


But I must stop ....


I don't think I want to know who this is.



Or even this ..




But someone may ....


Circussed out!  Ginger tea and bed I think .....