Here's another article from my Victorian Vocalists Files.
This one is, I feel, an object lesson. A reaffirmation of my dislike of the so-called 'academic' system of historical writing as practised in University theses and publications and on a more 'popular' level by such as Wikipedia. Sewing together chosen portions of second- or tenth-hand sources is simple a way of perpetuating other folks' errors or, indeed, pretences. All you need is a couple of rotten apples in the barrel and 'history' becomes distorted 'fake history' for ever. I have quoted before the Greek and Persian 'versions' of the Battle of Marathon. And I can say that, in my opinion, theatre history is fuller of lies and fabrications than even Herodotos and co.
I've spent some thirty or forty years in this minefield, trying to winnow the wheat from the chaff, and this piece is one which provided a good example. Not Wikipedia's fault, though I wonder why this gent appears there. The Wikipedia article is lifted bodily from The Dictionary of National Biography. Which is itself lifted from a hagiographic obituary in The Era ... and it is not truthful.
Here's my version. As written a decade and more ago ...
RANSFORD, Edwin (b Bourton-on-the-Water, Glos 13 March 1805; d 59 Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, London 11 July 1876)
I know I’ve said it before. Rather a lot. But, over the years, the makers of the world’s musical, theatrical and biographical reference books –large and small -- really have made some highly idiosyncratic choices over whom to include, or not, in their pages. Successful, and once celebrated, people have been curiously omitted, whilst comparative nonentities, or professionally minor performers have, for one reason or another, been included in preference. And since the invention of the ravenous World Wide Web, the unquestioning Wikipedia at its prow, and hundreds of useless copycat sites following, have now gobbled up the contents of these often very inaccurate works, all sorts of distortions have set in.
This little prelude leads me to Edwin Ransford. I presume he has found his place in the www archives because his biography was at some stage, goodness knows why, included (via Boase and his obituary in The Era) in the British Dictionary of National Biography. I have long scratched my head over the ‘why?’, and I have come up with only two possible answers. He was apparently a very likeable man, and he was around for a long time. Over forty years in fact. Long enough to become a ‘grand old man’ performing ‘grand old’ material, in spite of the fact that he had never been particularly grand or notable in his earlier professional life.
Reading between the lines of the DNB article, the paucity can be seen – it is spotted with names of the famous with whom Ransford was ‘connected’ – but also with some pure misstatements. Preserved, of course, by the cut-and-pasters of the 21st century.
There is no misstatement possible in a description of Edwin Ransford’s background. His family was well documented in his lifetime. Edwin was one of the ten children of Joseph Ransford, a grocer in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire and his wife Mary, née Beal. His parents lived to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, before Joseph died in 1851. His wife, subsequently, extended the business to drapery and to the hops business of one of her sons-in-law.
Edwin himself made his way to London as a teenager. We know this, for on 23 March 1825, he married Hannah Newberry at Lewisham. According to the biographies, he at first worked as an extra and a bass chorister at the King’s Theatre and Covent Garden. Actually, he first worked as a butcher, as the birth records of his children show.
His first performance as a principal on the London stage is given precisely as 27 May 1829, at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, playing the role of Don Cesar (with Shield’s famous song, ‘The Wolf’) in The Castle of Andalusia alongside Vestris, Misses Forde and Cawse, Keeley, Reeve and Blanchard. The fact is, in itself, correct. However, it needs to be qualified. The performance was not part of the regular Covent Garden season, but a one-off Benefit for the Printers’ Pension Society (with which he seems to have had some connection), and the debut of ‘a gentleman, his first appearance on any stage’ (he was not named) was part of the novelty of the performance. I can find no review of the performance, but the piece was repeated on 23 June at Blanchard’s Benefit, and it seems Ransford again took part, although his obituary says, only, that he gave a song from The Freebooters.
‘[he] was engaged soon afterwards by Arnold for the English Opera House (later the Lyceum). During the autumn seasons of 1829 and 1830 he was at Covent Garden, and in 1831 he played leading characters under R W Elliston at the Surrey Theatre, where he won great acclaim’, continues the biography.
Well, yes and no. Mr Ransford went, within days, to open in the new season at the English Opera House. But he did not go to play roles such as Don Cesar. The season opened with operas – Tit for Tat, The Freebooters – in which I am sure he took part, but not in any way such as to get his name on the programme. I spot him first playing ‘a Smuggler’ in The Sister of Charity. And Little John in The Maid of Judah. He did, however, during the season, get the odd chance to step from anonymity. When Ries’s The Robber’s Bride was produced, the role of the Robber Chief was cast with the non-singing Perkins. As ‘Antonio’, Ransford provided the music. ‘A Mr Ransford enacted the part of a somewhat rich bass voice to Mr Perkins. It was not always in tune but it seems to have some capabilities and promise’ remarked the Morning Post. He apparently did less well in the little part of Marco in The Vampire: ‘the felicitous perfection with which he contrived to sustain a discordant yell would ensure him a Peerage in [the stock exchange]’. I also notice him taking part in the glee which was a feature of the perennial Gordon the Gypsy.
From the English Opera House, he indeed progressed back to Covent Garden, but there his employ was little better than it had been before. In the 1829-30 season I spot him only in the bit part of Villar in The Night Before the Wedding and the Wedding Night and as ‘a cyclops’ in the Christmas pantomime.
He went to the Surrey Theatre in 1830 and certainly played there (off and on) until the beginning of 1832. However, he equally certainly did not play ‘leading characters’ – I have found only more bits, walk-ons, and singing moments in pieces such as Cinderella (Zelidor), The Vesper Bell, The Rover’s Bride, Eugene Aram (Summers) and Zarga of the Sea. When the theatre celebrated the ‘accession of King William’, in July 1830, Mr Ransford was put up to sing a new song by Mr T Williams, ‘Our King a true British sailor’. The Times commented that it was ‘loudly cheered and encored, but it owed this to the sentiment it contained rather than to the merits of the singer’. Great acclaim, indeed.
The biography continues: ‘Later that same year [1831] he appeared at Sadler's Wells as Captain Cannonade in John Barnett's opera The Convent, or, The Pet of the Petticoats and on 3 November he played Giacomo in the first English production of Auber's Fra Diavolo at Drury Lane. In 1832 he was with Joe Grimaldi at Sadler's Wells, playing Tom Tuck in Andrew V Campbell's nautical drama The Battle of Trafalgar, in which he made a great hit with Barry Cornwall and Sigismund Neukomm's song ‘The Sea’.’ What a mess.
First, let us dispose of the Fra Diavolo story, undoubtedly sprung from the same hagiographic Era obituary. The role of Giacomo was ‘created’ by Thomas Reynoldson, and Ransford was not at Covent Garden in November 1831 (The Era says 1832) when what was, in theory, the second production (but the first of Rophino Lacy’s to-be-standard version), of Fra Diavolo was given.
Edwin Ransford opened as a member of the company at Sadler’s Wells Theatre on 23 July 1832. Not 1831. The manager indeed was in theory the ageing, ill and incompetent Grimaldi, the piece was indeed the ‘new nautical drama’ The Battle of Trafalgar, and Ransford’s role – alongside the George Allheart of star Mr Hunt and the Emily of Mrs Selby -- was as a sailor named Tom Truck. And it would seem that he probably did interpolate the popular ‘The Sea’. ‘The Sea’, however, was far from a new song. It had been written for, and introduced by, Henry Phillips some twelve months earlier and had been sung by basses all round Britain since. Maybe it just hadn’t reached the Wells before. The Wells season was a disaster. Prices dropped immediately, and the nautical drama was soon dropped in favour of the Adelphi drama The Haunted Hulk (with Ransford as Oakum), the operatic drama Meg Merrilees, or the Witch of Ellangowan, The Honeymoon, Eugene Aram, et al, in quick succession. Mr Ransford’s ‘The Sea’ was rescued from the wreckage and sung some nights between the pieces. But not for long. The company fell to pieces after about six weeks, and a new management – Mrs Fitzwilliam and W H Williams – moved in.
Most of the company were dismissed, but Ransford held his place, to sing ‘The Sea’ between Eugenia, The Cabinet Secret, The Magician of the Ruby Mines, May and December et al, with which the new managers held the stage as they prepared their ‘new opera’ by John Barnett. The ‘new opera’ was a version of the French vaudeville Vert-Vert, produced under the title The Pet of the Petticoats, with Mrs Fitzwilliam starred, and Mr Ransford, the singer, was cast as the military Captain Cannonade with a Bacchanalian song and duet to give. It was to be the opportunity and the high-point of his career. He gave his ‘Bacchus in Tuscany’ song (‘Away with all water, whenever I come’) with vigour and the Athenaeum wrote ‘Mr Ransford as the senior captain of the regiment, with his grey head, grey moustaches, and ramrod back, forms a prominent figure in this military picture; and he sings a clever bass song of Mr Barnett’s with great spirit and correctness’. The Pet of the Petticoat was played nearly sixty times at Sadler’s Wells before (1 October) Mrs Fitzwilliam transferred it to the Adelphi, with its original cast (including Ransford) almost intact.
Ransford would return to his original role again, for a Benefit performance for Mrs Fitzwilliam at Drury Lane in 1834 (19 June), but the now established piece, and role, were quickly taken up by other players, as Ransford returned to Covent Garden and his position as a supporting player. In the 1832-3 season I spot him as ‘a Grand Templar’ in The Vision of the Bard, as ‘a bacchant’ in Comus, as Ozrides in The Israelites in Egypt, Dorval in The Invincibles and as Moreno in The Coiners, as well as playing bits in plays such as The Wife (Hugo).
In the closed season, he went with others of the company to the Victoria Theatre (The King’s Fool, Major Galbraith in Rob Roy, the Doge in Venice Preserved, Master Heartwell in The Hunchback, Earl of Lindsay in Mary Queen of Scots, singing ‘The Water Drinker’ A Bacchanalian Song, composed by Aaron Fry, in The Heiress of Bruges et al), before a seasonal return to Covent Garden. Amongst his roles in the 1833-4 season, he took over as Count de Horn in Gustavus III (but was, in turn, replaced by Seguin), played a small part in The Challenge and, in the absence of Phillips, gave some performances as Hecate in Macbeth.
After a further season at the Victoria (Cedric of Rotherwood in The Maid of Judah, Caught Courting, Zameo or the White Warrior, Hecate, ad lib performances of ‘The Sea’), he appeared episodically round London – most frequently at city dinners and charity festivals – before, on 27 October, he took a Benefit at the English Opera House, once more in The Castle of Andalusia, prior to announcing his departure for Dublin and a contract at the local Theatre Royal. I see he played Jerry in Tom and Jerry with Hudson as Tom.
The following year, he resurfaced at Covent Garden, in a further run of supporting roles in plays and operas – Sir Harry in School for Scandal (when it wasn’t Mr Collins), Thalaba the Destroyer, Julius Caesar, Hecate, Clopin in Quasimodo, Blue Peter in Black-Eyed Susan (when it wasn’t Mr Collins), Clover in Petticoat Government, Bardes in False Colours, Maxwell in Strafford, Shamp in The Woodman’s Hut, the Duke of Suffolk in Henry VIII, Norfolk in Richard III) whilst giving ‘The Sea’, ‘The Outlaw’, or his new song, Sydney Nelson’s ‘The Gipsy King’, as required, to fill a gap in the programme (‘To fill up the blank till the afterpiece of The Country Squire could be got ready, Mr Ransford, the baritone vocalist, who was cast for a small part in the tragedy, came on in private dress to sing ..’).
He visited the English Opera House in the autumn, and returned to Covent Garden for the 1837-8 season, playing Beppo in Fra Diavolo, Dandie Dinmont in Guy Mannering, First Apparition in Macbeth (for Phillips was there to play Hecate), William in No Song, No Supper and other bits and pieces. When The Marriage of Figaro (English re-make) was done, he played what was left of the part of ‘Basil’. There were rumours afloat that Mr Ransford had suffered some kind of a stroke, but he was there on the Covent Garden stage 16 May 1838, to play Don Diego in The Padlock for his own Benefit. But, in fact, it was to be the end. Mr Ransford played out his stage career, seemingly in the role of Beppo, and, come the end of the Covent Garden season, he definitively left the stage. A decade of small parts, understudies and ‘The Sea’, enlivened in a notable fashion only by the creation of Captain Cannonade. Which others soon took from him. A career barely worth recording, even in as broad a collection as this one.
But if Edwin Ransford’s career on the stage was ended, his career as a vocalist, and in the world of music, still had more than three decades left to it. Three decades more of songs like ‘The Sea’ and ‘The Gipsy King’, published by Charles Jefferys with a portrait of the Covent Garden bit-part player on its cover. Three decades more in which Mr Ransford would be seen and heard on the concert platforms and at the city dinners and festivals of London, as he developed into the ‘good old boy’ of what John Boosey would later, aptly, call the ‘Old King Cole school of convivial English music’. ‘I’m a merry gipsy King, ha-ha!, ha-ha!!, ha-ha!!!’.
For a half-dozen years following his withdrawal from the stage, Ransford was principally seen and heard singing at the multitude of city dinners and festivals, where he became a fixer and organiser of the musical entertainments, for everything from the Licensed Victuallers Association to the Buckinghamshire Conservative Association to the Butchers' Charitable Institute (haha!!!!), the Amicable Society of Waiters, the East London Pension Society and others of the ilk, where his style of singing and music, leavened with part-songs, and sometimes with items from his talented daughter, Mary Elizabeth, and his son William Edwin, was popular. He also turned up regularly on the bills of the Benefits for the various theatrical charities, at the various Literary Institutes, and in concerts from Store Street to Fleet Street to Beulah Spa, and occasionally at one of the London theatres, with Bishop’s ‘Fast into the waves’, ‘Oak and Ivy’, Clement White’s ‘The Days that are near’, Stephen Glover’s ‘The Monks of Old’ (‘ha-ha!, ha-ha!!, ha-ha!!!’ ‘written especially for Mr Ransford', Blewitt’s ‘The Captain of the Age’, ‘The Jolly Friar’, and numbers of his own such as ‘The Laurel Tree’, each and all examples of the kind of music with which he was now firmly associated.
When he gave his own concert at Store Street in 1843 (12 December) – an event which the Morning Post reviewed unsympathetically as ‘an odd mixture of styles and schools’ lasting through 37 piano-accompanied numbers -- he made a rare venture into the classical, giving ‘Suoni la tromba’ with Seguin. In contrast, he gave Cooke’s ‘The Army and the Navy’ … with Braham! The bill elsewhere included Miss Rainforth, Miss Poole, Miss Dolby, John Parry and Giubilei. Mr Ransford’s conviviality already had him in good company. He would follow up with many another ‘grand concert’, often in equally celebrated company.
In the early 1840s, Ransford also launched himself as a music publisher, and – latterly with partners, notably his son William (b Kingsland Road, 8 August 1886; d 48 Carlton Hill 21 September 1890) – his enterprise carried on until the 1890s and William’s death. Amongst his publications was a song, ‘A Gent is not a gentleman’, which he advertised as written by his father, composed by himself, dedicated to his mother and published by himself.
In 1845, Ransford branched out in one further direction: as a lecturer and Entertainer. Over the years, and notably through Sidney Nelson’s song of the Gipsy King, Ransford had associated himself with the popular idea of the gipsy. Now he put together a programme, based around what was allegedly an history of the romany race, but liberally laced with ‘stage gipsy’ songs – ‘The Gipsy’s Tent’, ‘The Dark-Eyed Gypsy Maid’, ‘A Gipsy’s Life for Me’, ‘The Gipsy Poacher’, ‘The Gipsy’s Laughing Song’, ‘The Gipsy Boy’, ‘The Gipsy Monarch’, ‘The Merry Gipsy Band’, ‘The Gipsy’s Lament’, ‘The Gipsy Miller’. He introduced the programme – with Ellen Lyon (soprano) and Ransford-published pianist, Louis Emmanuel or Mr R J Edwards, in support – at the Store Street Music Hall in January and subsequently took it round the country, under the title The Wandering Gipsy Tribe, ‘the Gipsies Entertainment’ -- latterly with daughter Mary Elizabeth as his soprano co-adjutator.
The later 1840s saw the rise of Miss Ransford as a successful concert vocalist, and she and her father appeared together in concert, on frequent occasions – Ransford’s speciality now becoming – after the surfeit of gipsies – the utterly English ‘Simon the Cellarer’.
In 1854 (27 February) Ransford gave a Benefit at Drury Lane in which Macbeth was given with Gustavus Brooke in the title-role. Ransford – for the one night (‘his first appearance on the stage these sixteen years’) took up, again, the role Hecate.
At not yet fifty years of age, Edwin Ransford was thoroughly established as the prime example of the olde Englishe vocalist and, as such, he found himself in demand for some of the fashionable concerts to which he had never had access as a young singer. During the mid-1850s, he appeared on a number of occasions at Exeter Hall, at the E T Smith promenade concerts at Drury Lane, in George Case’s spectacular, at the Royal Society of Musicians, at the Royal Surrey Gardens … and when he gave his 1855 Benefit at the Haymarket Theatre, Clara Novello topped the bill, with Anna Thillon and Karl Formes.
In 1859 (6 December) – over a decade after the first -- he launched a second Entertainment. This one was ‘a new nautical entertainment’ entitled Tales of the Sea and the musical part was made up of the songs of Dibdin and his kind (‘When First I went to Sea’, ‘The Token’, ‘The Sea is England’s Glory’ ‘The Sailors Journal’ ‘Tom Bowling’, ‘True Courage’, ‘One Morn in May’, ‘I Left the Shore’, ‘Blow High blow Low’, ‘The King of the Sea’, ‘Tom Tough’, ‘The White Cliffs of England’, ‘The Nancy’). Soon after its launch, however, he met with an accident in Brighton, dislocated an ankle, and was out for several months. However, he brought the entertainment back, and toured it periodically over the following years. The press spoke of him as ‘the veteran Ransford’ and as ‘one of the most frank and homely singers of frank and homely English melody’.
As such, he had his following, a strong following, as he delivered ‘Tom Tough’ ('which he delivers with wonderful gusto and meaning and in a style that may veritably denominated ‘saline’ and which moreover he is expected at sing at every concert he gives. It is common property, yet he has so individualised it that few singers would [attempt] it after him’), ‘Sunny days will come again’, his own ‘A Winter’s Night’, ‘True Courage’ and ‘Honest John Blunt’ to his own particular audiences, and just occasionally to something that quaintly resembled the fashionable.
Mr Ransford’s concerts continued through into the 1870s, and he mounted one in 1875 (23 March) on the occasion of his golden wedding. That of 1875 (14 April) was, however, the last. The Era’s obituary – surely the source of many of the exaggerations about Ransford – seems to have been reasonably on the ball when it reported ‘Within a few months of his decease he was capable of singing ‘My name d’ye see’s Tom Tough’ with a force of expression and depth of pathos that would make the words sink deep into the hearts of a sympathetic audience’.
‘A sympathetic audience’ was what The Era was, and what, as a result, those that – without ever having seen or heard Ransford – folk took for gospel. All thanks to the lyrical, loving column that its journalist wrote.
If I beg to find the valuation of the vocalist – as opposed to that of the man – more than a little overcooked, maybe I am just going by the record, rather than the feel, of his history.
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