Emma Beasley

When I began getting involved with my Victorian Vocalists, I determined that I would (a) not write about the 'famous' names, who had already had large studies or autobiographies devoted to them. I would, rather, investigate those performers who had not been previously 'done'. Duly, when my book Victorian Vocalists was published, containing a selection from the 1000 singers to whom I had devoted an article, it contained everything from negelected stars to risible failures, and everything in between. 

Of course, I have an awful lot of articles left over, and it seems silly to waste them .. but .. time!  Well, as from this week I am 'between books', so I'll launch a few, ebfroe I get drowned in proofs ...

Here goes!

BEASLEY, Emma Louisa (b Smethwick, North Harborne, Staffs x 25 June 1854; d 76 Ashworth Mansions, Elgin Avenue 29 March 1926)

 

Emma Beasley had a largely local career, in the 1870s, before retiring to private life.

 

Emma was born in Smethwick, the daughter of Benjamin Beasley (d George Hotel, Huntingdon 11 February 1907), variously an ironmaster’s clerk and a gun-maker, and his wife Sarah Julia née Brierley (d Brampton Park 21 October 1900). She was enrolled, as a teenager, at the Royal Academy of Music, where, under the teaching of Randegger, she held the Westmoreland Scholarship 1872-4, and was awarded a silver medal. Her first public appearances seem to have been during her Academy days – I spot her playing dates with fellow student Henry Pope at Euston (Stabat Mater) and Tunbridge Wells (The Rival Beauties), at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge, with another student, Gertrude Bradwyn, round Wales (Denbigh, Ruthin, Rhyl), and in concert with Vernon Rigby in Birmingham and Walsall ( 'From Mighty Kings', Sullivan's 'Guenevere', Braga Serenade) and fellow Randegger-pupil, Orlando Christian, in Buckinghamshire. The concerts proliferated, in Sheffield with Sims Reeves (‘From Mighty Kings’, ’Bid me discourse’, ‘When I Remember’), at Albury ('A Day Dream'), in Buxton ('The Legend of the Rose', 'The Old Cottage Clock'), Worcester ('Softly Sighs'), Coventry, and, above all, in Birmingham where she appeared with Edward Lloyd (‘I will extol thee’, ‘Be with me still’, ‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington’), in Smart’s Jacob with Shakespeare and Fanny Poole, in the Stabat Mater with Sinico, Rigby and Whitney, and The Creationalongside Pearson and Wadmore.

 

In July 1876, she made a rare return to London, to sing at the Philharmonic Society (‘From Mighty Kings’, Raubert’s ‘Cradle Song’) before returning to her native places to sing in concerts, in Judas Maccabeus, Elijah, the cantata John Gilpin, and -- in a stage first -- an amateur operetta, as Araminta in A Majority of One, or the Fatale Vote (26 April 1877) by the Anderton brothers. She briefly made the transition to the professional stage, appearing as Clara in The Siege of Rochelle with Carl Rosa, and subsequently as Arline in The Bohemian Girl in the English provinces.

However, in spite of good notices, she did not continue her operatic career, but returned to local concerts. She visited Wales, to sing again for Miss Bradwyn, in the company of Mr William Edward Fisher, a local amateur tenor, whose day job was as a fitter and engineer. On 9 August 1879, Emma would become Mrs Fisher. 

 

In the meanwhile, she sang The Seasons with Lloyd and Foli at Wolverhampton Festival, at the Birmingham Popular Concerts and in their Christmas Elijah, at Manchester (‘Soflty Sighs’,‘In questo semplice’) alongside McGuckin and Santley, at Huddersfield, Norwich (The Fairy Ring), Edinburgh with Carlotta Patti, Glasgow, Sheffield, and in Lincoln, giving Mendelssohn’s Loreley.

 

She visited London for some smaller concerts (Bow and Bromley with Brocolini, Jenny Viard Louis, Albert Hall, Stedman’s at the Birkbeck Institution) and ventured to Belfast for a Creation, and to Chesterfield, but, as ever, sang chiefly in her home region – the Harp Festival with Reeves, Judas Maccabeus, Elijah. She seemed to be dropping out of the musical world, following her marriage, but in September 1882 came a surprising announcement: Miss Beasley was to take the lead role, created by Florence St John, in Richard Barker’s tour of the comic opera Les Manteaux noirs. And she did. She played Girola alongside Madge Stavart, Arnold Breedon and C A White to an excellent reception. But once again, when that tour ended, nothing happened. Except, of course, babies.

 

She advertised in the trade press, but her one essay in theatrical comic opera was to remain just that. One.

 

Over the next 18 months she surfaced periodically. In a minor Messiah, in a Manchester concert, and I last spot her in late 1884, advertising ‘Madame Emma Beasley’s Concert Party’ in her home areas. They weren’t really ‘home areas’ anymore. The family had relocated to Willesden, London. Father was now a ‘wine merchant’ and a little Dora Julia Marie and Elsie Emmeline had been added to the family.

 

But the Beasley family was to undergo a change of fortune. Father Ben had been, throughout his life, a stutterer. He had cured himself, and now he set out to teach others how to overcome their handicap. At a price. In 1889, he took on Brampton Park House, in Huntingdonshire, as a school for stutterers and, with his wife and his sons-in-law as ‘professors of elocution’, ran a successful establishment for twenty years. He published two books and numerous treatises on his speciality, and maintained a lavish lifestyle at Brampton and at the ‘office’ in Willesden, which the family seems to have shared periodically.

 

I don’t know what happened next, but in 1901 and 1911 there is no sign of Mr Fisher. Emma can be seen in Brampton with boss Benjamin ('specialist and surgeon') and London respectively, in the censi, but no William Edward. Dora had married well (Mrs Thomas Greaves Waterhouse) in 1907, Elsie, the year after and even better, fringing the aristocracy as Mrs Cecil Massy Collier. Fitness-freak Leslie went off to the east to do something in rubber. But 1907 had been terrible year. Ben Beasley had died in a pub (which some said was appropriate) in Huntingdon, and Brampton Park House was hit by a massive fire. 

 

In 1911, Emma is living in Great Tichfield Street with her remaining daughter, Daisy Gertrude (b 7 November 1887; d Hendon 2 April 1969), who the census tells us is a vocalist. She is ‘married’ but there is no William. Daisy married actor Samuel George Herbert Mason in 1914, and in 1915 (14 August) son Lieutenant Leslie Benito Fisher (b 27 June 1885) was killed in France. He was listed as the son of the late William Edward Fisher, accountant, and Emma Louisa Fisher of Brampton Park. And Daisy says the same on her marriage banns. So does Elsie. 

 

Edgar? Accountant? Sigh. Well, William Edward is said to have died in Fulham 22 January 1912 leaving his £92 will to be executed by an ironmonger’s wife Florence Martha Dixon. Not his wife or his son? Had William Edward had done the classic mid-life thing and jumped ship? I think this must be another William Edward, though the family historians have taken him on board. And have also left us the portrait of Emma here included.

 

In 1921, Emma can be seen living at Broome Lodge, Sunninghill, with the Waterhouse family.

 

Emma died in 1926. Daisy’s husband executed her will. For what it was worth. She left a little over a hundred pounds.

 

Emma was a clearly worthy Victorian Vocalist. A rather wasted one, perhaps. She was still calling herself ‘vocalist’ in the 1911 census, long after she had ceased to sing. She was also chopping a decade off her age. Strange, this story. And Ben the stuttering gun-barrel-maker turned boozy pseudo-medico … evidently quite a character!