Death and the burlesque beauty

 

A decade or two ago, I dove deeply into the careers and lives of the young ladies who, in their time, had been member of the celebrated Lydia Thompson troupe of, so-called, British blondes. I wrote up quite a few of them, then published the principal ones in a European scholarly journal, and abandoned the rest of the work.

Then, some years later, I started on a history of burlesque. A factual one was, and is, needed. But I abandoned that too, when a chunk of what I already written was drowned during my computer's encounter with a dish of Dorper Lambjuice. 

Today I came upon a photo of a British burlesque beauty who was never a member of the Thompson troupe, but, rather, was promoted instead as a rival to Lydia. In America. Fatally. For her. Which was very unfortunate, for she was indeed one of the best burlesque girls in her home land ... if only she has stayed home, she might have had a happy career and a happy life. But from the moment she left London town ...

Her name was Elise Holt. Properly Elizabeth Harriet HOLT born 11 July 1847, in St Pancras, the second daughter of one Thomas Holt, who ran a manufactuary of iron bedsteads, and his wife Eleanor or Ellen Ann née Dowdell. 

She apparently learned dancing from 'Madame Louise' (Louise MILLER), a former soloist and maîtresse de danse at Drury Lane and at the Italian Opera House, and the teacher of many a good English danseuse, and is said to have made her first stage appearance under her aegis 'at the Surrey'. Well, Mme Louise hada hand in the panto Old King Cole at the Surrey in 1863, and her featured girlie was Miss Celia Reynolds. Miss Reynolds was to become 'Minnie Venn', best remembered as one of the paramours of composer Teddy Solomon.  But Elise wasn't there. Perhaps she was, earlier. Now she was at the Victoria, playing in Giselle and the Phantom Night Dancers as a little Cupid, and dancing Harlequina. The role of Giselle was taken by Ada Harland, who would become one of the famous 'original big four' in the Thompson troupe. And a certain 'Miss [Nellie] Farren'. Oddly, Celia/Minnie was billed as 'pupil of Madame Louise', but Elise wasn't. Ah, I see that another source says 'the Surrey Gardens'. Not so easily traceable.

Anyway we can count the Victoria as the first meaningful engagement in Elise's career. She would remain there for more than a year, acting, singing, and above all dancing in the variegated programmes produced. At Easter, Madame Celeste came for a season 'supported by the whole strength of the company'. Misses Farren and Maria Daly got the girl's parts. It wasn't till the production of the drama Troubled Waters, or The Family Secret at the end of June that Elise had a noticeable part. A drama? Well, she was cast as Lotti Lawson 'a strolling player in the backwoods' and noticed for her 'saucy little mannerisms and spirited dancing'. 'Miss Daly has a song and Miss Holt a dance' .. and the drama managed to sneak in a negro minstrel act.

Miss Daly was featured in another piece, The Detective, or A Ticket of Leave in which Elise played a boy, and when Miss Daly took the lead in another drama Elise and Ellen Powell featured in a ballet divertissement.  When Life in Lambeth was put forwarded she seconded Miss Powell in a rustic ballet. And then it was panto time, and once again Elise was Harlequina (with Miss Powell as Columbine) as well as 'the Dog Star' in Baron Munchausen, or Harlequin and the Mountains of the Moon. But, come March, it was back to the dramas -- I see Elise cast in The Octoroon -- and at Easter Miss Holt, in one of the few good decisions of her professional life, moved on. 

The wage was 15 shillings a week. But the engagement was at the Swanborough family's Strand Theatre, the bloomingest burlesque house in London's West End. And she opened her stay there in the title role of a 'six-nights only' revival of their hit Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp. Elise had found her metier, and the Strand Theatre had found a player ideally suited to the pieces they produced. 'Excellent', 'saucy', 'lively style and abundant confidence', 'dancing encored'....

Miss Raynham

Aladdin stayed on the bill for an entire month. Of course, Miss Holt was not to be leading lady at the Strand. Ada Swanborough of the management family was in loco stellaris, the top 'boy', Alice Raynham, firmly installed ... but she was not too far below the title. And there, for the best three years of her career, she would remain, occasionally in a play (Snatches in Upstairs and Downstairs, Orange Blossoms) but above all, radiantly out-front in burlesque. The Earl of Surrey in Windsor Castle, the blind fiddler in Mazourka, Oneiza in Mazeppa, Don Alva in L'Africaine, Cupid in Pygmalion, Mercury in Paris, Kenilworth, Pierre Gringoire in Esmeralda, Fra Diavolo, Albert Tell in Tell, Hassan in The Caliph of Baghdad, de Boisey in The Field of the Cloth of Gold. 'One of the cleverest dancers and most piquant actresses on the stage'. One of. The star of the last piece was Lydia Thompson.

And she had arrived at the Strand just as it reached the peak of its powers and prosperity. With Windsor Castle and L'Africaine it had produced what might be regarded as the first English equivalents of the new French opéra-bouffe.  With The Field of the Cloth of Gold it had boosted Lydia Thompson up the next rung towards mega-stardom ..

Elise was not a Lydia Thompson. Indeed, she had similar talents, but a different projection. Let's just say, Elise was more out-front, less subtle, less winning. And that is part of the reason why, especially when she got to America and became broader in her delivery, she played to a different kind of audience. The 50 cent one, rather than the $2 one.

As in Lydia's case, America was the fault of a man. And, yes, eventually a husband. Which was a  bit of a nuisance because whereas Lydia had lost her husband to a racing accident, Elise still had one. And two pre-marital babies. 

He was Henry Gordon Palmer, an Irishman, son of a colonel, briefly attached to the Royal Artillery (he squeaked into Woolwich in last place), and dragged to court in 1864 for theft of a £10 note. Her first child Arthur Henry Holt Gordon was born 17 December 1866, the second, Catherine Elise Holt Palmer on 7 September 1868. After which they got married (23 November 1868). I don't believe they ever divorced, nor do I know what became of the babies, but they both married or 'married' elsewhere ...

But the man who messed up Elise's life had only good intentions. Like, making money. His name was Harry H Wall and I am not going to attempt to unravel him, as there were several Harry Walls (one of whom was the husband of singer Annie Adams) on both sides of the Atlantic. Our one was the one who was a dramatic agent in New York. 27 June 1868 he sailed for London on The City of Paris and returned 7 December bringing with him that latest fashion in the theatre world, a troupe of British blondes. Elise Holt, vocalists Emily and Mary Pitt, Emma Grattan ... and a burlesque from London's Holborn Theatre, Lucrezia Borgia MD or, The Grand Doctoresse.

While Wall announced his troupe for The Olympic Theatre, the New York gossip press fulfilled its part: 'her rare beauty makes her very conspicuous' etc etc. They didn't open at the Olympic. They didn't open 'on Broadway'. They opened indifferently at the Boston Continental. But they trudged on to New York's Waverley Theatre. Indifferently. Elsie had laryngitis. She was 'off'. And 'off'. They fled to Philadelphia. They flopped. Elise's blonde hair and 14 1/2 inch calves (padded?) weren't pulling them in. They fled to California, downmarketing as they went ('her costume consisted of three inches of white silk tightly girt' , 'the most outré kind of burleque'), but persisting with their three-wheeled burlesque in which the title-role had devolved on to Wall. They tried a report that Elise has whipped a newspaper editor ... then they set out for New Orleans, Cincinnati, Albany ... and threw in the sponge.

Mr and Mrs Wall (as they allegedly now were) headed for London, and the Strand Theatre, where the Swanboroughs welcomed Elise back at £15 per week (and an extra 5 for the husband). Now she was Darnley in The Field of the Cloth of Gold ...  But times had changed, and Elise had undoubtedly coarsened in her delivery since the old days. The theatre closed and Wall sued for wages. He won, but the doors of the Strand would be closed henceforth to them.

Elise played in The Mistletoe Bough at the Adelphi at Christmas 1870, at Bath for panto 1871 (Valentine in Valentine and Orson), took over for Mrs John Wood at the Adelphi briefly, and fulfilled an engagement at the Alhambra playing in Clodhopper's Fortune with Harry Paulton. Christmas 1872 was Birmingham (Dick Tucker in Twinkle Twinkle). I think she may have, by now, been too broad even for Bimingham.

It hadn't worked, ths return to sources. They packed up, and, in September 1873, headed back to New York for an engagement at Wood's Museum (which was thoroughly not what it had been in the days of Lydia and Ixion) ... It was worse than before. They were reduced to minor houses ...  In January 1874, they were playing New Orleans when Elise got ill.

In 1887, when another damsel launched a girlie troupe as 'Elise Holt's Exquisites, the editor of The Clipper remarked : 'not the GREAT Elise'. Well, the only thing 'great' about Lizzie Holt was her (padded?) calves. She had been a fine second boy/girl in good  burlesque who found -- like Lisa Weber and Ada Harland of the Thompson quartet -- that when promoted to top-of-the-bill, she didn't quite cut it. And then, of course, the man ...

Father Thomas died, also, in 1874. He had re-married after Eleanor's death (1863). In the 1871 census Elise's little daughter can be seen living with him in Newington Causeway under the name 'Catherine P Holt'. More than that I cannot tell ...

PS Somewhere in my divan drawers I've got some broadsheets of Elise's greatest Strand successes. I will get them out and add them in here ... another day :-)

Trotting down near Antarctica ...

 

A moment back in the 21st century, on behalf of our little girl .... she goes to the races again tomorrow!

So I popped in to see against who she was racing and ... what a muddle .. I gulped a large whisky and had a wee rant. No one will listen, but I enjoyed the whisky and got it off my (what passes for) a chest.

Something Rotten in trotten in the State of Southland

 

What is happening in the trotting world in Southland? And who is responsible?

 

On Wednesday Invercargill HRC has a meeting. Nine races scheduled of which two are trots: a maiden worth $12,000 and an everybody-else worth $11,000. Anomaly?

 

There are 96 nominations for the combined nine races. so .. about 10 horses per race? Oh no. The maiden trot has 6. The rest-of-them race has 19. 

 

The pacers? The maiden pace -- to be run in two heats -- has, guess, twelve horses racing -- ie six per heat. Oh and $12,000 per half. They can't be topped up from the 1-win heat, ($10,000!!) because that's only got nine nominations ..  

 

There are three more pacing events with a total of 36 nominations. Three ... to share a number of horses not even twice as large as the poor 'all-the-rest' trot.  Who'd be a trotter?

 

It seems to me that whoever is responsible for framing the programmes down Antarctica way is out of touch with reality.

 

But that isn't all in the way of anomalies. The race conditions for 'our' trot (yes, we have a horse nominated) states 'front 35-40; 10m 41-50; 20m 51-57; 30m 58-65'. But the noms include Aveross Majesty (53) off the front? A horse that has won $84,000 in stakes and is nominated for the Green Mile. Its fellow 8 year-old, Cody Banner, which has won a deserved $147K, is off 20. And we? We are on 10, as we were last start. We have won $66K. As for the back marker, the likely favourite, Missile, he has just $43K in the bank ... What's up?

 

Another anomaly. Four of the six maidens are rated 'unruly' and three of the 'bottom' five grown-ups -- who will, doubtless, be dumped into the maiden race, are also 'unruly'. I can see a race like a maiden at Taranaki developing!

 

Right. Fields will be out shortly. Let's see how Invercargill have resolved this mess -- whether it was they or HRNZ who created it ...

 

SO ...

 

Withdrawals. Phil Williamson has, understandably, taken two of his out, leaving 17. Aveross Majesty is still off the front ...  and there are still just six maidens ...  Oh no! the best race of pacing day, the 2yo race, is going to be split ... bah!

 

Still waiting. Less than 48hrs from the meeting and no fields yet. What are they toiling and troubling over down there? Trying to make a race meeting out of ...  Or at HRNZ. Auckland has its fields for Friday up at 3.45. 

 

OK, here we finally are. Three trotters removed from the 'free-for all', down, to the maiden. Which is no longer, thus, a maiden, but an old-style C0 and faster. Why only three? Still fourteen left, in the grownups' race. Ah, I see Aveross Majesty is back to its proper rating ... duuhhhhhh. 

 

Well, they've done amazingly well in making up a decent programme. Nine puntable races. Even if not necessarily the races that were advertised in Programmes.

Sad, that they chose to split the 2yo race (for sexist reasons) instead of the trot. But hey ... you can't fight Town Hall. And definitely HRNZ ....

 

Now we have to wait till race day. Best race, by miles: the grown-up trot. $11K. Well, maybe we'll get a slice of it. Behind MISSILE or CODY BANNER or SHANDON BELLS ... Fingers crossed ...

 

(To be continued, after the race)

I'm a lousy picker.

But it was a queer race.

First shock. Our EMILY was hot (and I mean hot) favourite. I have no idea why. CODY BANNER misbehaved horribly. MISSILE was sabotaged by its own stablemate, a beast named DWINDLE STAR. This creature, which had got in our road in little Em's first Southland race, didn't seem to have learned anything from that experience. It shot to the front, imprinted a fast tempo -- with the result that Em was forced to race parked for the whole race, but also that MISSILE could never make up its 30 metre handicap! Team racing ... NOT!  Em did her damnedest, but as so often in cases of this kind a horse which had sat quietly mid-field bombed them all in the last metres. And a good solid mare which had had a perfect run on the rails ran on for second. EMILY fought womanfully for third ... which is about what I'd looked for, before the gambling world went crazy ....

Meanwhile, up at Addington the magical McClymonts -- RATA and STYRAX -- added two striking metropolitan wins to the Southland total ...  the former beat Emily half a length at her previous start, with the latter down the track. 

No, we are NOT going to Addington. Ever again. EMILY is a Southland girl now and forever!

Agnes Molteno: Melbourne's prima donna

 

MOLTENO, Agnes Maud (b Launceston, Tasmania ?8 October 1867; d London 1947)

 

Agnes Molteno was one of the musical family of a bookseller turned schoolmaster, Frederick James Molteno, and his wife Laura Antoinette née Sheridan. The couple were wed in 1856 (19 March) and in the thirteen years allowed them before Laura’s death produced an almost end-to-end run of children of which the majority participated in music to a professional level.

 

Mr Molteno left Britain for Australia in the gold-rushed year of 1852. His father, John Molteno, a lawyer, had died in 1828, leaving his wife, Caroline, with plentiful children and less money than his position suggested. She can be seen in the 1841 census running a boarding school in Peckham, and with the three youngest still at home. The elder boys set off to foreign parts, to found their fortunes, and it must be said that they succeeded. John Charles (1814-1886) went to South Africa and ended up being Premier and a Sir, while Frank (1816-1869) went south to Australia, and thence to Hawaii, became a whaling Captain, married a local woman and stayed. Frederick followed Frank and sister Alicia (Mrs Arthur Hartley, b 1825; d Maclaren Street Sandhurst 23 April 1857) to Australia. He opened a bookshop and employment agency in Mundy Street, Bendigo, then, after his marriage, changed profession and became a school-teacher at the Geelong National Grammar School, then latterly at the Launceston equivalent. There, in Tasmania, his last two daughters were born on 2 September 1867 and 8 October 1868. One must have died, the other was Agnes. But Lord knows which one. They were baptized without Christian names. So, birth date 50/50. With a slight leaning to the second.

Sir J C Molteno

The first Molteno child to shine in the music world was six-year-old Frederick John (b Pakington Street 28 March 1859), who made a public debut as a violinist at the Melbourne School of Arts on 1 February 1866, accompanied by the usual kiddie prodigy noises. He was well received, and took up an engagement supporting the Lancashire Bellringers on tour. He died during that tour, at William Street, Norwood, Adelaide 2 September (sic) 1866.

 

The next child to come before the public was nine-year old Alice [Edith] (b Melbourne 5 June 1857; d Salisbury 23 February 1931) who appeared at White’s Rooms, Adelaide 1 October 1866 with Mr and Mrs George Loder, top-billed as ‘the Australian juvenile harpist’. Later, she performed with her younger sister, [Laura] Ada (b Emerald Hill 30 January 1861; d Norwich 1927), violinist. The girls would have a juvenile career, which included a brief 1873 visit to America (‘The Miniature Minstrels’ with Lizzie Coote, Humpty Dumpty at the Olympic), leading to a teenage one, before becoming music teachers, and then, respectively, Mrs Wallis (Madame Molteno-Wallis) and Mrs Arthur Isaac Durrant.

Ada

 

Life did not treat Mr and Mrs Molteno very kindly. They lost two baby daughters, and, travelling to Tasmania, to father’s new post, on the Black Swan, they suffered a shipwreck, and lost quasiment their all. A Benefit concert raised them 40 pounds. Finally, the family decided to return to England. They left by the Swiftsure in August 1869. Soon after their arrival, Mrs Molteno also died (4 Belinda House, Cold Harbour Lane, Brixton 11 December 1869). The rest of the family soldiered on.

 

Little Agnes did not, apparently, have the juvenile career that her sisters did. But she was, on the other hand, to have the longest, and most successful, life in music of any family member.

 She first surfaces to my view in 1883, singing with the Peterborough Choral Society (‘Golden Love’, ‘Give me back my heart’, ‘La Serenata’) before, in 1884 she and her sisters all joined Lila Clay’s ladies troupe. Ada played violin, Alice harp and Agnes the harmonium. Apparently, jobs were hard to find, for, in March 1887, Agnes advertised ‘niece to the late Sir Charles Molteno, formerly Premier of the Cape Government. Talented musician with good voice. Situation wanted as companion to a lady’. But she didn’t have to go companioning. After a few dates at the Royal Victoria Ballad Concerts, in May 1887, she was hired for the Oxford Music Hall and there, as ‘Agnes Branson’, she sang nightly until November. That engagement led to another, as a take-over for Violet Cameron in Cellier’s The Sultan of Mocha, for the tag end of its London run.

And then, in December 1888 came the decisive step: she was hired as a principal soprano with Arthur Rousbey’s ambitious touring English Opera Company.

 

She made her first appearance as Arline in The Bohemian Girl, played Countess Almaviva to the Susanna of the company’s other leading lady, Emily Vadini (‘sings better than she acts’) and went on to add Maritana, Marguerite, Zephyrina in Belphegor, Donna Elvira in The Rose of Castille, Leonora in Il Trovatore, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Lucia di Lammermoor, Eily in Lily of Killarney, Gilda in Rigoletto (‘a voice of singular purity and sweetness…’) et al to her escutcheon.

In 1892, she left the company and went on tour with a production of The Sultan of Mocha, before joining up with J W Turner’s Opera Company, with whom she played Lucia, Marguerite, Amina and Violetta, and a four-week season at London’s Standard Theatre.

 

She would rejoin Rousbey for 1894-5, but now in the company of her new husband (10 March 1893), the troupe’s second baritone, Frank [George] Land (1865-1914). On 5 October 1895 she gave birth to a daughter, Eileen Molteno Land, and took up performing again, as Fairy Coraline in the Dublin pantomime.

 

In 1896 (15 April) she appeared as Arline in a brief production of The Bohemian Girl at Drury Lane, before she and Frank turned again to the road, first with Rousbey tenor, W H Hillier, and then back in the Rousbey ranks, and briefly with the Moody-Manners company (Bertha in La Poupée de Nuremberg), before travelling to South Africa with Rousbey, sharing the lead roles (Marie, Santuzza, Lucia, Maritana) with Mrs Rousbey while Frank shared the baritone ones (Alfio, Silvio, Plunkett, Ashton) with Rousbey himself.

 

The death of Rousbey on the homeward journey put an end to the company and the couple’s long-term engagement with it, and they turned to a series of minor jobs, such as the John Ridding opera company, Henry Swinerd’s The Squatter’s Daughter, Harry S Parker’s The Fisher Girl, George Nielson’s very unpretending opera company, as well as singing operatic and ballad music in the music-halls.

 

In 1903, in a last burst of operatic glory, Agnes was called in to play The Bohemian Girl with the Carl Rosa company, at the Queen’s Theatre, Manchester, and then it was the music-halls all the way. And by no means as prima donna. I see her billed in small print under the banner line of the whistler Frank Lawton at Ardwick Green. Elsewhere she is billed underneath performing cats and dogs. Her act consisted of more, however, than singing. It was ‘staged’: ‘The Holy City’ and ‘Ave Maria’, for example, were sung on an electrically-lit set of a church. In 1908-1910, she took out a scena entitled An Old Time Story or A Dolly and a coach, in 1912 she travelled Her Fairy Princess. 

 

In 1912, her daughter Eileen Land (‘a charming comedienne with a sweet voice’) travelled with her. Later, as Eileen Molteno, she would play leading roles in The Arcadians and The Pearl Girl, for Robert Courtneidge, on tour. She apparently retired to become Mrs Frank Ernest Simpkins, and died, at the age of 88, in 1983.

 

I last see Agnes performing, on the radio, in 1924.

 

I don’t know what became of Frank latterly. The couple can be seen playing together in The Fisher Girl but, then, while Agnes turned to the halls and ‘The Holy City’, Frank continued in opera, with the Moody-Manners and Hilton St Just until 1905, after which I lose him, to murmurs of illness. I see references to ‘Frank Land, the Irish baritone’ (apparently, he spent his childhood there) and some of the (unusually diligent) family historians have him buried in 1922 in Limerick. But The Era says otherwise. The issue of 18 November 1914 dutifully records his death ‘aged 50’. Yes, in Limerick. And, just to set the record straight, he was born in Brockhurst, in the Isle of Wight.

I wonder if he is the Frank Land ‘strolling player’ born Tipperary, aged 45 listed in the Irish census for 1911. With a wife Janitza … 42 …

 

 

 

 

 

An American jukebox musical ... Cincinnati, 1878.

 

Oh yes. 

The days when the latest hits of the international musical theatre could be pillaged by American 'writers' ...

Of course, the pasticcio musical play had existed forever, but pieces like The Beggar's Opera and La Biche au bois helped themselves largely to ponts neufs, traditional music or elderly tunes ... pieces like this one 'borrowed, the songs from the the latest, still-running hits.

So who was Mr H J Wetherell? Well, I burrowed and I've found him.

Horace Jackson WETHERELL (b Worcester, Mass 29 May 1845; d Oxford, Ohio 22 October 1884). Son of Horace and Sarah Wetherell.  He was in the Cincinatti area by 1864, when he enrolled in the militia at the quoted age of 18, giving his occupation as 'farmer'. By 1873 he was a 'clerk'. But around this time he got involved in local amateur dramatics and music with the local Davenport Dramatic Club. I see him performing in The Contrabandista (1875) and Maritana (1876). 

He became the bass in the choir of the Second Presbyterian Church, and later the 7th Street Congregational, took part in amateur charity and club concerts, played with the Tabernacle Musical Society (The Haymakers), sang with the Cincinnati Choral Society, and in 1878 turned out the four-handed 'operetta' The Admiral's Daughter.

The piece was launched at Riverside, Ohio 4 April 1878 with Wetherell supported by Irish railway agent-tenor John Frank Dunnie who had once been a minstrel, Mrs Robert W (Clara Isabella) Richey (née Hubbell) and Nettie Gordon comprising the cast. It was well-enought liked to be repeated at Avondale 1 May, and then at Cincinnati's Melodeon Hall 7 May. 

Church's published something called 'The Toast' and then, as we see, the whole shebang.

Horace dipped once or thrice into professional theatre. In 1879 he took a turn at playing Dick Deadeye (HMS Pinafore) in a touring company, I see him announced for something called Love's Trials which hogges the music from Pinafore and .. Trovatore!, and again for 'Sheppard's Dramatic Co', but the experiment didnt last. Soon he was back, and set up as a teacher of singing and elocution in Walnut Hills. That didn't last either. Horace died 'aged 38' in 1884.

His wife, Harriet Francelia née Thayer carried on the music-teaching, and died in 1929.

And The Admiral's Daughter? I see it at Lebanon, O in November 1878, Ludlow Ky, 4 February 1879 by the Galaxy Opera at Armory Hall with a Mrs J L Bowman of the place teamed with three original cast members, again with Mrs Richey (now three-acts!), for the Harry Lewis Testimonial at Cincinnati's Grand Opera House ... 

I imagine they all had fun. I hope they did.

Poor Dunnie suffered a stroke in 1884. It seems he died of it. Mrs Amelia Dunnie is listed as 'widow' in 1887.

Mrs Richey (sic) (b Eaton 30 December 1843; d Cincinnati 21 November 1898) lies in Spring Grove Cemetery along with the Wetherells.

I don't know about Miss Gordon. There were lots of Netties.  Contralto and pianist. I wonder what happened to her.

 

LA VIE PARISIENNE: another triumph for Bru Zane.

 

Yesterday a long-awaited recording arrived on my desk-top. 'Long-awaited'? Of course. The latest from the firm of Bru Zane, the greatest of French musical theatre organisations of our era, and the producers of the La Fille de Madame Angot which I went into delirium over a few years back.

 

So, what was it this time. Chilpéric? Geneviève de Brabant? No. La Vie parisienne. Again? There have been soooo many recordings of La Vie parisienne over the years. But here is the twist in the tale. Soon after its Paris opening, the piece was largely trimmed. In fact, slimmed of a whole episode, and reduced from five acts to four. And in that shape it is still played in France.

 So, what happened to the other act? Well, some countries and theatres kept it in. In what form I know not. I suspect 'compresssed'. But at home it suffered the usual fate of off-cuts until -- following the 21st-century mania for sticking back in that which the authors, in their wisdom, had cut out -- it was reconstructed and ... well was it 'in their wisdom' or not? Now we can judge for ourselves, for Bru Zane, in their wisdom have given us the whole five acts.

 

Well, a quarter of a century ago -- when there were still records -- I wrote in my Musical Theatre on Record: 'La Vie parisienne, by its nature, needs to be recorded in its entirety. The play, in this case, is every bit as important as the music, and one without the other is rather like a half-baked cake. Unfortunately, it cannot be said that there is as yet any recording which manages to marry happily the comedy and the music'.

 

Maybe, this time?

 

(Opens booklet)

 

Cry of joy. The two outstanding artists from La Fille de Madame Angot are here again. Mlle Gillet -- in the role written for Zulma Bouffar, the only 'singer' in the original cast -- and Mons Sargsyan are once more before us in major roles. 

 

Eeeeek! It's all very scholarly! Well, fair enough, as long as it's fun as well, lively, and, above all, not oversung.

 

Time to press the 'go' button. Well, I think a nice bottle of French wine might go well with this.

 

Phew. It's half time and I've drunk the whole bottle. It's a long first half (2-3 acts).

 

First impressions. I have no comment to make on the 'version'. These folk know more than I. It has obviously been immaculately researched and reconstructed. One expects nothing less from Bru Zane. What there is, is what we get. I shall read the whole booklet later.

I am really qualified only to comment on the performance ... is it another Angot success? At half-time, not quite, but there's time. For now, I have ingurgitated three acts, and I'm quite exhausted. It is diabolically lively (I'm sure the tempi are taken from the original score), almost lusty. (md: Romain Dumas). Sometimes, rather relentlessly so. Not much gentle singing. But, there, it's first and foremost a comedy, so lively is the way. I'm sure the keys are original too, but it all seems terribly high for 'actors'. And just occasionally rather 'operatic'. Which I am not quite comfortable with. How many people can fit on to the platform at the Gare de l'Ouest? If we are being 'authentic', how many actors (not singers) were on the books of the Palais-Royal?

However, my two adored performers, Sargsyan as Bobinet and Mlle Gillet as Gabrielle, again come out with high-flying colours, and here they are by no means alone. 

 

Gardefeu (Marc Mauillon) is a perfect partner for Sargsyan... crisp and clear in dialogue, deliciously ringing in song ... where do the French get these marvellous heirs to Amade and Devos? This pair get the show off to a grand beginning in the mostly male first act. Then the Scandiavians arrive. The Gondremarcks are clearly played for low comedy funny-voice laughs. I was reminded of Lord and Lady Allcash in Fra Diavolo. I suppose that is all right. But it was somehow a tad hefty among all that superb Offenbachian singing.

Bienvenu to my world, M Mauillon

The two brothers-in-escapade are ten-gold-stars performances for me -- listen to their perfect 'Elles sont triste les marquises' -- and so is the third joyeux luron of the piece. Pierre Derhet makes a real merry mouthful of the Brazilian's patter song. And then he turns up as a really sparky, tuneful Frick, duetting lightsomely with Mlle Gillet in an adorable 'Bottier et Gantière'. And then, just listen to her 'Veuve de Colonel'! 

Et bienvenu M Derhet

I feel horrible being unappreciative, again, concerning Véronique Gens as Métella. But, honestly, in spite of her delicious delivery of dialogue, I just feel that her singing voice is not suited to this sort of music. The Letter Song, in the hands of a Suzy Delair, is the highlight (for me) of the whole show. Here it, alas, is not. I would have cast Elena Galiskaya, who give a first-class rendition of the part and the music of Pauline as Métella. Mlle Gens would, perhaps, have been happier with the fun of the Baronne. Ah ... 'Votre Habit a craqué dans le dos'!  Joy!

Elena Galiskaya

 

Well, interval over. Here I go on Acts 4 and 5. 

 

More boys (yayy!) -- a bit of funny voice, but ringing singing from our star supported by two more fine performers as Prosper (Carl Ghazarossian) and Urbain (Philippe Estèphe) -- More Pauline, yay! -- oh, she is delightful!  Lots and lots of giggleworthy grotesque comedy from Mme Quimper-Karadec (Marie Gautrot) -- grand ensemble work ...

A glamorous gorgon: Marie Gautrot

 Then the Baronne (Sandrine Buendia) gets her turn. She seems to have stopped being Lady Allcash, and sings now in conventional ballad style. And ... expression! I can see how this number could have been cut. It's rather stuck in. Like 'Vilja' in Die lustige Witwe. Oh, it's not bad, but our show is getting exceedingly long ... and the comic dialogue which gives us the guts of the story is not to be missed. Here, it is delivered with enormous gusto, with the gorgon Quimper-Karadec riding above all like a Katisha on cocaine. And the ensemble ('Ma tête') and galop of the finale is quite delightful. I'm sorry, if I have to give up any of this, I cannot return to the 4-act version ...

 

The gems keep coming in the final act (an act which could easily be slimmed): the duet between Gabrielle and the Brazilian and Gabrielle's Ronde, perfectly delivered by Mlle Gillet and the vast company assembled at the Brazilian's party... Mlle Gens is hugely better, though rather blurty on the high notes, in her waltzing burlesque of grand opera than she was in the Letter scene ... oh! this is really a jolly play! And all ends so merrily. 

 

Well, I posited at the start of things that we were lacking a La Vie parisienne which supplied both the music and the comedy. We now undoubtedly have it. It's a marathon if you want to listen to it all end-to-end, and I probably sha'n't ever do so again, but this recording will join the very small number of CDs on my shelf because, not only must it remain the reference for this show, for all time, but ... I just really enjoyed it, end to end. Even without Suzy Delair.

 

PS If MM Meilhac and Halévy and Offenbach would like my notes on how they might take half-an-hour out of the work for lazy 21st century theatregoers, tell them to write to me. 

 

 

LA VIE PARISIENNE Opéra-bouffe in 4 (originally 5) acts by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Music by Jacques Offenbach. Palais-Royal, Paris, 31 October 1866.

 In the midst of Meilhac, Halévy and Offenbach's dazzling series of successes with the earliest of their famous opéras-bouffes -- La Belle Hélène (1864), Barbe-bleue (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) -- the team collaborated on an equally successful non-burlesque work (which they, nevertheless, on the wings of the current fashion described as an `opéra-bouffe'), which was produced by Plunkett at the Palais-Royal. That house and its company were not in the business of producing opérette, the members of the resident company (only slightly reinforced for the occasion) were not experienced singers, only actors, and the piece -- a farcical comedy of manners which did not make extravagant vocal demands on most of its performers -- was written (and re-written, for it was reduced from five acts to four shortly after its première) accordingly.

 Bobinet (Gil-Perès) and Gardefeu (Priston) are a pally pair of men-about-Paris who have suffered some amour-properly bruising treatment in their affairs with the women of the demi-monde, notably the saucy Métella (Mlle Honorine). As a result they have decided to opt for an affair with a femme du monde instead. Gardefeu poses as a tour guide and picks up the visiting Swedish Baron (Hyacinthe) and Baroness (Céline Montaland) de Gondremarck and, in his attempt to seduce the lady, takes the pair to his own home, pretending it is an hotel. The Baron is hoping for a good Parisian time, and indeed has a letter of introduction to Métella, so Gardefeu gets Bobinet to arrange a jolly party -- with all his servants and their friends dressed up as cavorting aristocratic guests -- to keep the husband happy whilst he chats up the Baroness. However, the Baron has no luck with Métella who instead provides him with a masked friend as company whilst she turns her charms back on to Gardefeu. When the mask finally comes off, the Baron finds he has been charmed by his own wife. As for Bobinet and Gardefeu, they are back where they started.

 Jules Brasseur had a triple rôle as an extravagant Brazilian (Acts I and IV) out to spend a fortune on a fling in Paris, as a bootmaker, disguised as an army major for the Act II party, and as a butler (Act III), Elvire Paurelle was the pretty maidservant, Pauline, who catches the Baron's eye at the party, and Zulma Bouffar -- added to the cast at Offenbach's insistence to give some vocal values -- played Gardefeu's little glove-maker, Gabrielle, who partakes of all the fun and impersonations and ends up on the arm of the Brazilian as everyone prepares to live it up at the isn’t-Paris-wonderful final curtain.

 Offenbach provided a glitteringly light-fingered musical score to go with the wittily concocted high-jinks of the text. The Brazilian gabbled out his joy at being back in Paris all over the railway station (`Je suis brésilien'), the Baron declared gluttonously `Je veux m'en fourrer jusque-là!', Gabrielle trilled into her upper-class disguise (`Je suis veuve d'un colonel') and described sexily how `Sa robe fait frou, frou', whilst Métella had a showpiece letter song -- the letter in question being the `recommendation' of the Baron's once-lucky friend to show the hungry Swede an extremely good time (`Vous souvient-il, ma belle') -- all as part of a score which never left off laughing from beginning to end.

 In spite of a lack of confidence prior to opening, La Vie parisienne -- soon shorn of a fourth act showing what the Baroness gets up to whilst her husband is partying with Bobinet -- was an enormous success, occupying the Palais-Royal for an entire year whilst the show began to spread itself to other parts of the world. Vienna's Carltheater was first off the mark, opening its version of the five-act version (ad Karl Treumann) three months to the day after the Palais-Royal première. Josef Matras (Bobinet), Franz Tewele (Gardefeu), Wilhelm Knaack (Gondremarck), Karl Treumann (Brazilian/Prosper/Frick), Josefine Gallmeyer (Gabrielle), Anna Grobecker (Pauline), Marie Fontelive (Baroness) and Anna Müller (Métella) took the leading rôles, and the piece became an instant favourite. It remained in the theatre's repertoire for many years, being played 126 times (to 11 August 1876) in its first decade, and was brought back in a new production in 1889, with Knaack in his original rôle alongside Emma Seebold (Métella) and Karl Streitmann (Brazilian), which was played for the next four seasons. A major Viennese revival was mounted at the Theater an der Wien in 1911 (28 October) with Louis Treumann (Brazilian etc), Mizzi Günther (Gabrielle), Luise Kartousch (Pauline), Paul Guttmann (Baron), Victor Flemming (Bobinet), Ludwig Herold (Gardefeu) and Ida Russka (Métella) featured through 43 performances.

 Berlin, which followed Vienna in maintaining the five-act version, followed just months behind the Austrian capital, and, although it never became the favourite that Blaubart or Die schöne Helena did, the show did well enough that it was still to be seen on the Berlin stage in 1906 (13 December) when it was produced at the Konische Oper with Karl Pfann (Gardefeu), Brose (Bobinet), Frln Hofmann (Gabrielle) and Frln von Martinowska (Métella) featured.

 New York first saw the piece, in French, two years after Vienna, with Rose Bell, Marie Desclauzas and Paul Juignet heading the cast of the four-act version, and La Vie parisienne was subsequently played by Marie Aimée and by other opéra-bouffe companies throughout the country, but the first English-language version (ad F C Burnand) was seen not in New York but in London. Burnand considerably altered, resituated and generally anglicized the script and the result, which he even titled La Vie Parisienne in London, in spite of being played by such actors as Lionel Brough (Baron), Harriet Coveney (Baroness) and Lottie Venne (Polly Twinkle), was not long-lived. But the lesson of the flop was not learned. H B Farnie turned out another English adaptation which called itself simply La Vie (all things Parisian having been again deleted), which was mounted by Alexander Henderson with great fanfare at the Avenue Theatre in 1883 (3 October) with Brough again starred alongside Arthur Roberts, Camille D'Arville and Lillian La Rue. It again proved to be a hamfistedly anglicized and altered version and, again, it was a failure although the production was kept doggedly on for 116 performances. This version was later sent to the country, in a production which reeked more of variety-show than of opéra-bouffe, and it was also produced on Broadway -- duly americanized and its comedy even more roundly lowered -- with Richard Mansfield as Baron von Wienerschnitzel (the name more or less typified the tone of the adaptation) and Fannie Rice as Gabrielle. However, even more disastrous than these was an effort by A P Herbert and A D Adams to `improve' Meilhac and Halévy (and Offenbach) with a feeble patchwork mounted at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1929 (29 April) and England had to wait until 1961 (24 May) and Geoffrey Dunn's witty version for the Sadler's Wells Opera Company to hear an English La Vie parisienne which approximated the original French one. A British production was given in the 1990s by the resuscitated D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.  

 Budapest first saw Pariser Leben in its German version, but Endre Latabár's Párizsi életfollowed and it won much the same success that the French and German versions had. Swedish, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Danish and Czech versions were amongst those that followed. However, it was in France that La Vie parisienne won and maintained its greatest popularity. The show was taken into the repertoire at the Théâtre des Variétés in 1875 (25 September) where Mlle Bouffar repeated her creation alongside such seasoned musical performers as José Dupuis (Baron), Berthelier (Brazilian etc) and Cooper (Gardefeu), and Paris saw regular performances thereafter. Dupuis, Mlle Bouffar and Cooper repeated their performances in 1883, with Baron now appearing as Bobinet and Mary Albert as Métella. In 1889 (18 September) at the Variétés Jeanne Granier was Gabrielle alongside Dupuis and Baron.

 The Opéra-Comique received the piece in 1931, it was staged at the Mogador with Dréan and Urban as the lurons ..

The Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud company revived it at the Palais-Royal in 1958, with its principals appearing as the Brazilian (etc) and the Baroness respectively, a revised version (ad Jean Marsan, Raymond Vogel) was produced at the Opéra-Comique in 1974 whilst, in the desert of musical productions that Paris became in the 1980s, it was nevertheless produced twice (Théâtre du Châtelet 4 November 1980, Théâtre de Paris 16 October 1985). In 1990 further performances were given at the Opéra-Comique (4 December). 

 The characters of the Baron de Gondremarck, Bobinet and Gardefeu were reprised by Victor de Cottens and Robert Chavray in their 1899 Le Fiancé de Thylda in which the fiancé of the title, longing to taste the naughty world before marriage, dreams himself into a whirl round Paris with the folk of Meilhac and Halévy’s tale.

An important vertebra of the French musical theatre repertoire, the show is played regularly and still retains popularity throughout the world in varying forms -- the German-language theatre, for example, still favours the five-act version and now, apparently, others are also casting eyes towards it -- but in the English-language theatre La Vie parisienne has never wholly recovered from its initial poor adaptations and the unfavourable impression they left behind. English and French versions of an inevitably messed-about-with version were filmed in 1935, with Max Dearly featured, and a slightly less cavalier version in 1977. A trendy, underfunny production from Lyon was videofilmed in 1991.

Austria: Carltheater Pariser Leben 31 January 1867; Germany: Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater Pariser Leben 22 May 1867; USA: Theatre Francais (Fr) 29 March 1869, Bijou Theater (Eng) 18 April 1884; Hungary: (Ger) 25 May 1867, Budai Színkör Párizsi élet 1 July 1871; UK: Holborn Theatre La Vie Parisienne in London 30 March 1872, Avenue Theatre La Vie 3 October 1883; Films: Robert Siodmak (1935), Christian Jacque (1977), Videofilm 1991 (CDN).

Recordings: complete (EMI), complete in German (Philips, Klang Forum), complete in Russian (Melodiya), revival cast 1974 (Carrère), revival cast 1958 (Paris), selections (Pathé, Philips etc), English cast recording (HMV)

Mr Mackay of the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh

 

I wandered into unfamiliar waters yesterday. The fault of this piece of sheet music ..

Interesting, thought I. A song -- a theatre song -- published in Scotland ... when? why? And who was Mr Mackay? Why is there no writer's name, no composer's name? Just Mr Mackay ... Is this a trad ballad? Lots of questions there.

Well, apparently the original lyric was written by Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne, who made a hobby of this sort of thing. The music was second-hand, taken, it is said from an older ditty titled 'When she cam' ben, she bobbit'. Lady Nairne's version was published, anonymously, in a set of volumes of songs around 1822. I cannot find any record of it being sung prominently in public until 1826 when it was performed at the Theatre Royal by Mr Mackay ...

The song (already, here, billed as 'old') and the tale went what would now be called 'viral'. It was parodied, adapted, arranged, spoiled, the Laird made the 'hero' of a novel and the name of posh dogs and racehorses, and the little tale of the lass who turned down a lofty suitor became a classic.

Scottish music historians have, I am sure, gone into the history of the song in great detail.  I am here to document Mr Mackay who seems, to all intents and purposes, to have launched the song on its rocket to success.

Many years ago, in my early days of Victorian Vocalisting, I was battling with the history of the soprano 'Claudina Fiorentini' and I came upon a 'biography' of the lady, on line. I wasted time on following up the details in the said article ... and then discovered it was someone playing fiction. I see, à propos, that there is also a published biography of Mackay. But I am older and warier nowadays: it, too, is admittedly fiction. So I, who always do my own primary-sources research, am ignoring anything and everything previously written and getting down to home-made brass facts.

Mr Mackay (always thus billed) was Charles MACKAY. There seems to be some doubt about his year of birth -- quoted, here and there, as anywhere between 1784 and 1787 -- even his gravestone in Old Calton Cemetery doesn't seem to know for sure -- but his father was named Hugh, and the event took place in or around Edinburgh.

At his death, he was granted a vast obituary, which I shall reprint here before double checking it against my own (large) list of professional credits .. because, you know, obits are inclined to be 'selective' ..

OK. Now my version. Facts only, obviously :-)

Our obituarist clearly and/or personally knew something to give Mackay's birthplace as High Street, Edinburgh, and the month as October 1787. So do we accept his say-so? I think so. Because in 1850 Charles signed an affadavit (why?) that he was 'born in one of the houses on the northsaide of the city in the month of October 1787'. Which I daresay is the source for the statement.

But what of his first thirty years? Was he acting? 'made some name at Aberdeen'?  Aberdeen was, at this stage, part of the Northern circuit of Scots theatre, recently come under the management of Mr Corbet Ryder. Alas, I can find no playbills from that place and time. All I know is that, when he was announced for Edinburgh, in 1818, he was said to be 'of the provincial theatres', or 'of the Theatres Royal, Glasgow and Aberdeen'. Glasgow and Aberdeen were 'provincial'??

So, I scoured some more and I found just a few crumbs:

'left Edinburgh for Glasgow when about nine years of age, where he sojourned for five years, thence he became a wanderer in many lands ...'  That sounds like a masterpiece of blurifcation. There is a suggestion that he had been, in his youth, a soldier. Anyway, the article which claims this then jumps a decade to Rob Roy in 1819. Nearly two decades. Well, I can do just a little bit better:

May 1818 'Mr Mackay from the Theatre Royal, Glasgow. First appearance in Perth': Teazle in School for Scandal.

But also: married 18 December 1816 in Greenock: Charles Mackay. To a young actress named Charlotte O'Keeffe. Greenock, eh? So he is already on the 'provincial' stage, it seems, in 1816.

Not much, is it? Anyhow, Charles Mackay was over thirty years old when he made his debut at the theatre of his own hometown, and there he would make his fame.

He made his first appearance at the Theatre Royal on 24 December 1818, playing Old Russet in The Jealous Wife, and, in the new year, he followed up in other roles of the 'old men' line --  Sir Robert Bramble in The Poor Gentleman, Sir George Thunder in Wild Oats, Donald Ramsay in The Wanderer, Fitzherbert in Which is the Man? ...

And then, came Rob Roy. The 'opera' had been produced at Covent Garden in 1818, with Liston featured in the role of Bailie Nicol Jarvie of the Sautmarket 'son of the worthy Deacon Nicol Jarvie'. And with enormous success. In February 1819, it came to the boards at Edinburgh, with comparable success. Hamerton (Rob Roy), theatre manager Harriet Siddons (Helen McGregor), the singing juvenile lady (Miss McAlpine) all fulfilled their roles laudably, Mr Duff scored as the Dugald Cratur ... but the huge honours of the evening went to Mr Mackay, as the Bailie:

'The Bailie could scarcely have fallen into better hands ... The odd humour, honesty and benevolence, the blended courage and fears of the original Nicol Jarvie, werer well conceived and delineated without the slightest approach to biuffoonery and cariacature. He seemed, indeed, to be the indentical merchant and magistrate of the Salt Market, Glasgow, so admirably painted by the unknown author of the novel ..' 'the life and spirit of the piece' ...

Mackay as Nicol Jarvie

The role of the Bailie would stay with Mackay throughout his career, indeed, his life ... he performed it at the greatest theatres in the British Isles to tumultuous receptions and amazing reviews ... and he assumed the character on stage and off for the enjoyment of all concerned.

But, for now, he was a member of Mrs Siddons and William H Murray's repertoire company, and the theatre's playbill, of course, changed every few nights. I've picked up the following pieces and roles amongst those that he played (in no particular order) in the remaining months of 1819:

Lord Mayor in Richard III

Farmer Enfield in The Falls of Clyde

Doctor Gullem in Mr H

Touchstone in As You Like It

Somno in The Sleepwalker

Clown in Twelfth Night

Sir Francis Wronghead in The Provok'd Husband

Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice

Old Fickle in The Weathercock

Polonius in Hamlet

Roque/Lope Tocho in The Mountaineers

Anothony Absolute in The Rivals

Starvemouse in Rochester

Chronicle in The Young Quaker

Job Thornberry in John Bull

Baron de Blusterville in A Short Reign and a Merry One

Mr Mackay was not hired as a vocalist, but, as he would prove time and again, he could put over a song most effectively. The Provok'd Husband is the first time I see him, here, with a song ('A woman is like to', originally sung two decades earlier in Lock and Key).

The plays and the roles rolled over manifold into 1820, and brought Mackay a second huge hit. A second role provided by the still anonymous 'author of Waverley'. This time it was Scott's Heart of Midlothian ..

The role of the Lord of Dumbledike was to be another enduring part for Mackay. 

PS I notice that the adaptor is not named, and feel that this version may have been more axed on the men rather than the later favourite Jeannie and Effie Deans, and Madge Wildfire, here played by Miss Rock, the house vocalist. Note Mrs Mackay in the small part of Lady Suffolk.

Donald in The Steward

Sir Solomon Cynic in The Will

Shelty in The Highland Reel

Aberdeen Lingo in The Agreeable Surprise

Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor

Hallowe'en or The Vampire and the Water Kelpie

Edie Ochiltree in The Antiquary

Growley in The Budget of Blunders

Picard in Therese the Orphan of Geneva

Pinceau in Henri Quatre

Grand Chamberlain in John of Paris

Jacob in Calas, the Merchant of Toulouse

The Edinburgh Theatre did not run twelve months of the year. In the summer it made 'relâche' and the artists were free to take engagements elsewhere

In 1820, Mr Mackay's 'other' engagement was at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane 

He was also seen as Dominie Sampson in Guy Mannering and as Dumbledike in The Heart of Midlothian and his reputation, henceforth, was not just a local one, but a national one.

Back in Edinburgh, it was more of the same. Not only repeated repeats of his two big hits, but the usual run of other pieces:

Shallow in Henry IV

Don Pedro in The Wonder

Sir Francis Gripe in The Busybody

Andrew Mucklestone in The Warlock of the Glen 

Jemmy Green in Life in London

The Governor of Siberia in The Desert of Siberia

Captain Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwackett in The Legend of Montrose with trio 'Green Grow the Rashes, O'

Lord Scratch in The Dramatist

Sir Pryer Oldencourt in The Duel

Sie Walter Weathercock in The Dead Alive

Cuddie Headrigg in The Battle of Bothwell Bridge

Marral in A New Way to Pay Old Debts

Bartolo in The Barber of Seville

Friar Tuck in Ivanhoe

Osmyn in The Sultan

Bryce Snailsfoot in The Pirate
Sir Bashful Constant in The Way to Keep Him

Caleb Baldestone in The Bride of Lammermoor

I notice that the role of Nicol Jarvie now had a song: 'Bailey Nicol Jarvie's Journey to Aberfoil'. 

In the off-season, Mackay went to Kilmarnock on 50% of the profit terms!

Jobson in The Devil to Pay

Restive in Turn Out

Plainway in Raising the Wind

Snarl in The Village Lawyer

Brummagem in Lock and Key

Mr Pritchard Flail in The Irish Tutor

The Baron of Brawardine in Waverley

Dominique in Paul and Virginia

Lord Duberly etc in The Heir at Law

Squire Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer

Giuseppo in Native Land

Sir John Contrast in The Lord of the Manor

Mr Solomon in The Stranger

Old Mirabel in The Inconstant

Captain Bertram in The Birth-Day

Motley in The Castle Spectre

Gabriotto in The Sleeping Draught

Abednego in The Jew and the Doctor

Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet

Governor Heartall in The Soldier's Daughter

Antonio in The Marriage of Figaro

Robin in No Song, No Supper

Lord Danberry in To Marry or not to Marry

Governor Tempest in The Wheel of Fortune

Marvell in A New Way to Pay Old Debts

Captain Gorgon of the "Thunderbomb" in Love Among the Roses

Admiral Franklin in Sweethearts and Wives

Christopher in Der Freischütz

2nd Citizen in Julius Caesar

Dogberry in Measure for Measure

Lockett in The Beggar's Opera

Quake in The Rendezvous

Mr Tresylian in Dog Days in Bond Street

Mr Aldwinkle in The Spectre Bridegroom

Stanley in Mrs Smith

Duke of Murcia in The Child of Nature

Mr Denhamster Clackit in The Guardian

Justice Woodcock in Love in a Village

Tag in The Spoil'd Child

And, amongst all this, came the third Walter-Scottish triumph of Mackay's career. An adaptation of the tale St Ronan's Well, or the House of Mowbray in which he took the role -- in skirts, for a rare occasion -- of Meg Dodds, the landlady of the Cleikum Inn. So great was 'her' success, that the play was forthwith renamed The Cleikum Inn. And he had a song 'There Cam' a Young Man to my Daddy's Door'. This number was another which, under various titles ('The Brisk Young Lad', 'The Cauldrife Wooer'), was already a favourite, and has become a part of Scottish 'traditional' minstrelsy.

Dromio of Syracuse in A Comedy of Errors

Mons Bonhomme in Two Galley Slaves

Richard Moniplies in George Heriot

Sir Christopher Curry in Inkle and Yarico

Roby Allsprice in The Way to Get Married

Don Jerome in The Duenna

Linco in Cymon

Druggett in Three Weeks after Marriage

Sir John Bull in Fontainbleau

Master Anthony Forster in Kenilworth

Rolama in Clari

Colonel Hardy in Paul Pry

Bras de Fer in Tekeli

Crabtree in School for Scandal

Baptista in The Banditti of Rosenwald

Sandy Macfarlane in Mary Stuart with song 'Bid ye yer'

John Howison of Braehead in Cramond Brig

Shilric in Malvina

Captain Copp in Charles II

Benjamin in Maid or Magpie (aka The Magpie or the Maid)

Bruhl in The Woodman's Hut

Hardy in The Belle's Stratagem

Briefwit in The Weathercock

Mr Harold Grainger in The Miller's Maid

Don Christoval de Tormes in Brother and Sister

Peter in The Cabinet

Sir Harry Sycamore in The Maid of the Mill

Colonel Hardy in Paul Pry

Don Scipio in The Castle of Andalusia

Darby in The Poor Soldier

Titus in Virginus

Lord Sands in Henry VIII

Sir Leatherlip Grossfeeder in Jonathan in England

It was in this period that he sang, on occasion, 'The Laird o' Cockpen' as an addition to whatever play was billed, and the piece was published by the Music Saloon, 47 Prince's Street. Alas, our copy dinna seem to have a publisher's imprint, but I have a feeling this was it. And, no, I have no idea who Alexander Robertson was. There were a vast number thus named, most of whom seem to have been hanged, murdered or otherwise hard done by.

It was also at this period that he essayed the role of Sir Pertinax MacSycophant in The Man of the World. Which puts paid to the last anecdote in the obituary, which (as so often) thus makes one unwilling to rely on the rest of the eulogy. It was judged not a wise choice, so perhaps he chose to pretend it hadn't happened.

It was also at this period that the Theatre Royal published its salary list. For the 35 weeks of the year that the theatre was open, Mr and Mrs Mackay were paid £4 per week. Mr Jones was top dog at 4 guineas, Calcraft was on 3 guineas, and Mr Duff, the Dugal Cratur of Rob Roy, but 2gns. 

It was also at this period that Walter Scott came out of the closet and admitted that he was 'the author of Waverley'. Apparently there was a merry face-to-face between he and Mackay ... the latter in the character of the Bailie. It made a fun story for the press, whether factual or not.

Yussuf in The Siege of Belgrade

Sir Matthew Scraggs in Englishmen in India

Baron de Boncoeur in The Rencontre

Bygrove in Know your own Mind

Drainemdry in Giovanni in London

In the off-season of 1828, Mackay went to Liverpool to give his Rob Roy. He may very well have visited before, but this is the first time I have caught him there. The Gastspiel was a distinct success, and he would henceforth visit Liverpool for a number of years with his main hits, as well as appearing in the usual number of other plays, at home and away:

Commander Hurricane in No!!

General d'Aumont in Henri Quatre

Mr Solus in Everyone Has His Fault

Mr Sterling in The Clandestine Marriage

King Arthur in Tom Thumb

Astley in The Castle Spectre

Mr Primrose in Popping the Question

Jock Muir in Gilderoy

After fifteen years at Edinburgh, he was now seen more often further afield. Manchester also became a regular date and I spot him doing starring engagements at Carlisle, Dumfries, Aberdeen, Belfast, Newcastle, Dundee  ...

Grumio in Katherine and Petruchio

Midas in Midas

Uncle John in Uncle John

1st Witch in Macbeth

At Edinburgh, he had a new role with a song: Caleb Quotem in the 1808 piece The Review, or the Wags of Windsor (I'm Parish Clerk, I'm Sexton Here') ... 

and, playing now at the local Adelphi, continued on his way

Pickwick in Scraps from Pickwick

Stephano in The Tempest

Landlord in The Ferry of Tobolsk

Old Rapid in Cure for the Heartache

Peter Trot in Town and Country

Poor Peter Peebles in Red Gauntlet

Duncan MacLoom in The Paisley Weaver singing 'The Laird o'Cockpen'

David Damper in Single Life

Peachum in The Beggar's Opera

Shylock in The Merchant of Venice ..

Baldy in The Gentle Shepherd 

I see him in Liverpool in 1842, in Dublin in 1843 and at Liverpool, again, later at the Dunlop Street Theatre, Glasgow (Bailie, Jock Howison) and in Cupar in 1848 ... I see his wife taking a Benefit at Dundee in 1849 ...

He officially retired from the permanent company of the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh (a different building, now, from that of 1818) in 1841, and altogether, on 25 April 1848, signing out with a farewell performance of Cramond Brig, but, alas, my last sighting of Charles Mackay 'the celebrated representative of Scotch characters' on a playbill is at Inverness in 1842, still playing Meg Dodds, still singing 'Daddy's Door' ...

'Retired' or not, he worked on, into the 1850s. And, in 1852, he appeared at the Edinburgh Adelphi in The Man of the World. This time, the reviews were laudatory. 'We are not aware of his appearing in the role before' commented the local press. Which is probably where the error in the obituary originated. Rob Roy, Cramond Brig and Gilderoy followed, with Rebecca Isaacs as leading lady .. 

Charles and Charlotte had three surviving children. Their daughter Charlotte (Mrs Shiels) died aged 27. Elder son, Charles Graham, lived into the 20th century while younger son, Hector (b 1826), essayed himself on the stage, with the ghastly 'son of' tag attached. He doesn't seem to have made a mark. Anyway, he ran off to Canada, became a constable, got arrested for murder of a prisoner, condemned to death ... and commuted to seven years' in prison. After that ...

As you can see, I have spent many hours immersing myself in the doings of Mr Mackay. I have found a good deal, but also interesting is what I have NOT found. Nowhere in the thousand contemporary newspapers and playbills that I have scanned have I ever seen him referred to as 'the real Mackay'. Mythology? He was celebrated nationswide as 'Mr Mackay', why would he need an adjective? Yes, latterly there was another Charles Mackay, a successful poet who billed himself thus ... well, maybe I have just looked in the wrong thousand places.

I'm sure there is much, much more to be exhumed concerning Mr Mackay. I've enjoyed digging up this much. Any additions greatly received.