RODEN, Constance [PROTHEROE, Louisa Roden] (b Clifton, x 23 February 1821; d Ingmanthorpe Hall, Wetherby, Yorkshire 25 March 1886)
From time to time, there appears on the musical scene an artist who seems destined for a major career and considerable fame, but who simply, voluntarily, turns his or her back on such possibilities. The lady who called herself ‘Constance Roden’ was one such.
The real identity of ‘Miss Roden’ was clearly no secret in her own time, at least, not in the Bristol area from which she and her family hailed, but with that mock modesty which characterised the period and its press, it was pushed behind local lace curtains. A girl of ‘good family’ taking to the public platform, it was considered, had the right to shield her family name from any possible disgrace involved. So ‘Miss Roden’ was allowed to be Miss Roden, and only occasionally did a clever journalist venture ‘she is a native of Bristol, in which her family at one time held a commanding position’ or, worse, ‘without trenching on the privacies of life…’, and spouting the usual tale of a family fortune depleted, a father dead .. 'she is the daughter of an eminent merchant in one of our chief commercial towns, who was reduced to poverty by a failure in business, and then died..’
Well, the fortunes of the family Protheroe of Clifton, Gloucestershire, doubtless, were depleted in the hands of Thomas Skyrme Prothero (b Clifton, 10 February 1781; d 15 Meridien Place 1 February 1864), son and merchantman-business-partner of the wealthy Thomas Protheroe of Abbotsleigh, and some kind of descendant of Welsh royalty. But there had been quite a lot to deplete from. Actually, Thomas was not dead when the tired old tale was launched by the Gloucestershire gossip press, simply old and retired, and living at 15 Meridian Place in Clifton, with his wife and three of his five daughters. And there is little question that daughter number four, Louisa, did not go on the stage to earn a living, as her career and its unambitious shape bear witness.
Louisa studied singing with Crivelli, and, after his death, with a Signor [Leonardo] Perugini of 9 Ebury Street, who advertised that he spent ‘a few hours a day perfecting the style of amateur vocalists’. And, in spite of the quality of her voice, an amateur vocalist was what ‘Miss Roden’ was, and would remain.
She was already well over thirty when she made her first appearance in a London concert room, in April of 1857, at the amateur concert series which had the previous year seen the debut of a young lady by the name of Helen Sherrington. Miss Roden made quite as enormous an effect, and the music press was all agog: ‘a rich mezzo soprano voice very fresh and pure it is what may be termed a sympathetic voice and remarkably so. Her intonation is correct, her pronunciation distinct, she sings with expression with a good methode and has that rarity, a remarkably open and beautiful shake. To this young lady I can safely say, as of Miss Sherrington, that she bids fair to be a great acquisition to the profession’.
However, unlike Miss Sherrington, Miss Roden did not set out swiftly towards the heights. She appeared in a second amateur concert, giving Spohr’s ‘Quanto vagi’ and ‘Dove sono’, alongside the young Lucy Leffler, and that was it, until the following year.
She appears to have made her first ‘professional’ appearance on 6 March 1858, at the Crystal Palace, sharing the vocals with Mathilde Rudersdorff. Her inexperience apparently showed, and the vastness of the auditorium was not in her favour, but, nevertheless, the new singer won all votes.
Then, three weeks later, Miss Roden made her debut on the London stage. Ben Webster mounted a version of Boieldieu’s The Caliph of Baghdad at the Adelphi (29 March 1858) and, in the leading roles, he cast two neophytes, Mr Fourness Rolfe and Miss Constance Roden. Mr Rolfe was well received, but Miss Roden was the hit: she ‘promises to be an acquisition to the lyric stage’, ‘her voice is of remarkably fine quality’, ‘her method of singing betrays professional education of the most judicious sort, demonstrated in the facility of her execution, the dramatic intention indicated in her style, and the appositeness of her expression. She is tall and has a fine figure, with features not regularly handsome but sweet and intelligent, and there is a corresponding sweetness in the tones of her voice, both in speaking and in singing. She is evidently quite without experience on the stage and her movements, consequently, were timid and constrained but without awkwardness. Indeed, her whole demeanour had a natural and ladylike grace which was very interesting… In short it is a long time since we have witnessed a more interesting debut than Miss Roden’s.. .’ (Daily News) Her ‘perfect trill’ gave the music writers quite a turn.
The Caliph of Baghdad was succeeded by Guy Mannering, with Miss Roden playing alongside Mary Keeley, Paul Bedford, Webster and Madame Celeste as Meg. She introduced ‘The Soldier’s Tear’ and ‘The Queen of the Seas’ into the proceedings, and won unbounded praise. On the last night of the season, for Webster’s Benefit, she appeared between the pieces to sing ‘The Waters of Elle’.
Her decidedly successful debut, however, was not followed up. When she came before the public again, in January 1859, it was at the Polytechnic, with a lecture on The Beggar’s Opera. Miss Roden and tenor Thorpe Pede sang the music, and George Armytage Cooper (later replaced by Lennox Horne) read the text. The entertainment was a great success and Miss Roden’s Polly won the highest accolades; ‘We have heard many Pollys in our time, both before and since Miss Stephens, and bearing in mind the difference between stage representation of a character and the conventional tameness of concert-room singing, we confess we never heard the music and words of Polly’s portion of the opera more exquisitely or artistically given’. ‘Rarely has the well-known music of Polly been more charmingly rendered…’. After sixty performances in Regent Street, Miss Roden took her piece to the Cavendish Rooms, to the Lecture Hall Greenwich, to Hounslow and a whole series of other dates. On 15 November 1860 she appeared at the Victoria Rooms in Clifton, with Peed, Horne and one of the Misses Rowcroft RAM, in a double bill of The Beggar’s Opera and a concert.
Over the next few years, Miss Roden turned up spasmodically in the concert room. She sang ‘Home, Sweet Home’ at the Royal Society of Musicians, ‘Cease your funning’ and the serenade from Paisiello’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia on several occasions, Kücken’s ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘The Waters of Elle’ at the Vocal Association, and was seen also on such occasions as Madame Puzzi’s well-reputed concert, giving ‘Voi che sapete’ (‘very effective and successful’) at Wilhelm Ganz’s concert, and on several programmes at the Monday pops (‘Cease your funning’, Cherubini’s ‘Ave Maria’, ‘Voi che sapete’, the Paisiello). ‘She is too seldom heard’ complained the press, ‘an extremely clever vocalist whom we should be glad to welcome more frequently to the concert room’.
Their wishes were not to be granted.
I spot Miss Roden at Windsor, 9 January 1863, singing with the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal – ‘Cara adorata imagine’ ‘with remarkable brilliancy’,‘The Home Song’ by Bristol’s George Rennie Powell and George Frederick Powell, ‘The Waters of Elle’ ‘which she has made completely her own’ --, at the National Melodies concert at St James’s Hall – ‘Dermot asthore’, ‘The Waters of Elle’, ‘Till Killarney's wild echoes had borne it away’ (‘Miss Roden’s upper notes are as clear and pure as her softer ones are dulcet and melodious’) and, back in the Entertainment world, singing the illustrations to David Fisher’s Facts and Fancies. At one moment she would be at the Polytechnic, giving Virginia Gabriel music in a ‘bijou concert’, the next, at Drury Lane on the glamorous bill for Joseph Swift’s concert. On 29 July 1864 she even joined with pianist Eleanor Ward to present a matinee of their own, at a private home in Cadogan Place (‘her pure voice and clearness of pronunciation mark her a vocal artiste of the first order’).
On 9 November 1864, Miss Roden returned to the Adelphi Theatre and Ben Webster. She played a custom-built part in a 1-act Lennox Horne ‘musical drama’ entitled The Baron Abroad and the Rustic Prima Donna, which existed solely to give its leading lady, maidservant Susette, the opportunity to give selections from Bellini (Sonnambula, Norma), Weber (Freischütz), Rossini (Gazza Ladra, Barbiere di Siviglia), Barnett (Mountain Sylph), Mozart (Don Giovanni) and Verdi, as well as, at some stage, some newer songs by Miss Gabriel and by Ernest Gaston. The Times applauded ‘without having had much practice on the stage, yet naturally graceful, Miss Roden never offends by awkward action, and is remarkable for her clear diction whether speaking or singing. Miss Roden is likewise famed for an extremely even and sweet-toned voice, and probably the most manageable and brilliant shake possessed by any singer… it is not too much to ascribe the success of the piece to the talent of Miss Roden’.
Two years later, she returned once more to the Adelphi and played another series of performances of The Baronet Abroad, before replacing it with a new vehicle, Garibaldi in Sicily. This time there was no Verdi nor Mozart in the score, it was a home-made book of music composed by J L Hatton and J G Callcott. Although the score was estimated ‘devoid of merit’, Miss Roden’s performance kept the piece on the bills for 102 performances, before she switched back to The Baronet Abroad.
Although her name appeared, from time to time, in concert, it was 1869 before Miss Roden came back into full view. This time, it was as manageress as well as star. She took the Olympic Theatre ‘for a short season, for light operatic entertainments’, and presented herself, with Elliott Galer, Fanny Reeves, Eugene Dussek, J G Taylor and Lennox Grey, in a production of Boieldieu’s John of Paris (31 July). For once, things were less than perfect. On opening night, the star had a cold. Also, she had infiltrated a stripped-down version of the French score with ditties by Bristol musician, W F Taylor. The result was imperfect, even though Miss Roden and her ‘singular taste and refinement’ were still as admired as ever. But the ‘short season’, duly completed, was to be the lady’s last appearance on the London stage.
In fact, I think it was her last appearance on any stage. The only engagement which I can find for Miss Roden thereafter, is an appearance at the opening of Galer’s new theatre in Reading, in October of 1869.
Then, she simply and gently eclipsed into another world, after what cannot really be called ‘a career’. There is no doubt that she could have had one. A career. Maybe an exceptional one. But she simply didn’t care to.
The story of Miss Roden doesn’t end there. The Victorian vocalist story, yes, but not the full story. Alas, the end is a puzzlement. And there has to be a story in it, if only I could decipher it.
In the 1881 census, Louisa Protheroe, along with her widowed sister and a niece, can be found at Ingmanthorpe, ‘visitors’ in the home of Andrew Montagu (1815-1895), the vastly rich and aristocratic sometime mortgagee of Covent Garden Theatre, who, in his time, had poured money into the Gye regime of Italian opera, and who was a significant supporter of the Conservative Party, to the extent of rescuing Disraeli from debt. He had, also, been the finance behind Miss Roden’s management at the Olympic Theatre. Montagu was a bachelor. Louisa was a spinster (and her sister a widow). And they remained that way. But ‘remained’ is what I mean. Louisa Protheroe remained at Ingmanthorpe until her death in 1886. Her sister and niece stayed on even thereafter, apparently up till Montagu’s death. Some ‘visitors’.
Louisa Roden Protheroe (spinster) late of 96 St George's Square, Middx died 25 March 1886 at Ingmanthorpe Hall in the County of York. Administration was granted on 11 January 1887 to Sophia Maria Cameron (widow and sister) at Ingmanthorpe Hall. She left a mighty £15,953 12s 6d. Did daddy not really waste away his patrimony? Or is there another explanation?
What is the story? Even though I’ve uncovered much of the truth about ‘Miss Roden’, I think there is still something to be found.
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