Cartesians: a bullseye in the Bartolozzi!

 

One by one they fall before the ruthless (or is that Frederic-less) onslaught of the mightily nosy Kurt Gänzl!

Emilie Petrelli, Lillian La Rue, even Millie Vere ... and the news has reached me that the indomitable Jeff Clarke has breached the granny of them all: 'Geraldine St Maur'!  Arggghhhh. He has promised to write up his research and discovery for this blog.

How could I equal that? I had to try! No sneaking out, chasing momentary minnows ... I had to get a Significant Fish ... one that no one else has ever got near to identifying. Like Geraldine St bloody Maur! And -- tee hee --  I've done it!

I don't know how Mr Carte found his cast for his first all-children Pinafore. A good number seem to have come from theatre-attached families.  The Pickerings and the Grattans and the Presanos we all know about. But the reviews went, very often, for the 'Little Buttercup' of the company: Miss Effie Mason.

My memories of 'Miss Mason' told me that she had been a cute child with a good contralto voice, who didn't do much thereafter. I know now that that was not wholly true. She soldiered on in the adult theatre in her twenties. She was clearly competent, but once the 'cute' was gone, she was just one of many girls traipsing My Sweetheart and its ilk around Britain in 1890s.

But. Who was 'Effie Mason'? That was my job for yesterday: to find out. Starting point: the 1881 census, and there she is, aged 11, with her mother, Jenny, in Scotland with the children's troupe. As Mason. Which was, I soon realised, a stage name. Sigh. 

Many performers tried to gather a glimmer of glory through claiming a relationship to a well-known actor or actress. Sometime it was even true, or sort-of-true. Effie claimed, in sob-story letter to The Era, to be 'a grand niece of the late Charles Mathews'. Yes, husband of the great Eliza Vestris née Bartolozzi. Well, it had to be checked out, but how?

I plugged on. And then a tiny press squiblet in January 1889 told me that Effie had married. No names were given, but her husband was 'son of the vicar of Sykehouse, Selby'. So off I set to Sykehouse where I had no trouble in locating the Rev J W M Milman. High-tail to the marriage records where I find - yay - Ernest Southey McKinley Milman getting wed to Effie Simpson Elizabeth Watkins.  5 January at Tooting. Gotcha girl. And oh! a witness to the wedding is Jane Bartolozzi Watkins ... Bartolozzi! it was true!

The degree of relationship was fair. Jane was the daughter of Joshua Rose Anderson, whose wife was Josephine Bartolozzi, sister to Madame Vestris. So Effie was blood-related to Vestris rather than to Mathews. Jane married one Octavius Charles Watkins of Brunswick Square, Bristol, who seems to have worked in various official jobs before moving to London where in the 1871 census he has beome a photographer. Jane was 'vocalist and confectioner'. Effie was one. Born 4 March 1870.

Effie stayed in the theatre for twenty years. But she never topped her Little Buttercup. She sang at the Aquarium in the spectacle Nelson, she played a child's role in Alex Henderson's successful Rip van Winkle, sang aged 13 at the Trocadero, the South London, in Manchester, in Glasgow. Pantomime became an annual event -- Sanger's, Leeds, Birmingham, Hanley, Newcastle -- and she returned to D'Oyly Carte to play Pitti Sing on tour between 1885-7. In her twenties, she went out in minor companies, topbilled in The Swiss Girl and My Sweetheart ... and that seems to have been it. 

Ernest, who in spite of his vicarage heritage, was an actor, and Effie had a son, who died as an infant, and a daughter Eugenie Effie McKinley (29 October 1894) who sometimes called herself 'Vestris' and was, of course, an actress. And, to tie things up, Jane died in 1909, Ernest in 1936, Effie in 1940. In the 1939 census Effie can be seen 'widow, incapacitated' in Sunbury on Thames with Eugenie. Eugenie didn't marry and died in 1960. 

So, there we are. 

MASON, Effie (WATKINS, Effie Simpson Elizabeth) (b London 4 March 1870; d 1940)

One more intransigent Cartesian outed. Who next ...?

Octavius Watkins photographs Mr Mathews

Annabelle and Thatch: a miracle on w82nd street.

 

What is coming over me?

I read very little for pleasure these days. I read for research, for reviewing ... not for fun. Not for enjoyment. And rare, rare is the moment when I get that nice fuzzy, warm feeling of awwwwww. Much less smile out loud. But yesterday ...

I was in my Layzboy intending to watch the dear old Marlborough Harness races. Wendy was on the couch with her iphone. And she was looking at me oddly. I was reading a book and ... I was what? Grinning, giggling, chortling, aaaawing ... and then I laughed out loud. I hav'n't done that since I read Aristophanes, sixty years ago.

So what was this book that was causing such mirth? Such ohhhhh-ing from unimpressible me?

I have known Annabelle and Thatch for a number of years. They made their first appearance on face book as the stars of some darling fictional-factional anecdotes posted by musician and writer, Larry Moore. I always looked forward to the next! And now they have their own book. And it's a book which goes into another dimension.  Here we have the delicious tales of the daily lives of two (extra)ordinary kittens, rescued from the Animal Shelter (which eats little kittens for supper) and brought up in a New York apartment block. But we also have - not incidentally - the story of seventy-something Larry into whose life they bring a huge ray of sunshine ... 

Larry Moore can write. Don't laugh, 50% of people who do, can't. Larry can. The tales roll from his pen (when Annabelle hasn't eaten it) with a joyous facility that commands you to smile, chortle, snigger and laugh. When Annabelle bosses little Thatch "Stop chewing on that crucifix. It's bad for your teeth", I fell off my Layzboy with laughter.

Annabelle, by the way, is not only a bossy big sister. She has ambitions to be a Broadway star ... but you have to read about that in HER book! She would demand 90% commission! Little Thatch is her Sancho Panza ...

There is a wondrous group of supporting characters. The pigeons and sparrows outside the window (what are they saying?), the shitty whingeing neighbour-with-a-bicycle across the hall, Val the caretaker upon whom Annabelle has a crush ('I don't. HE has a crush on ME'), the frightful and frightening man with the python ... but top-billing goes to ... you guessed it! 

It is all quite simply enchanting, adorable, funny ... Annabelle and Thatch deserve to join the Pusstheon of Literary cats .. alongside Dick Whittington's cat, the Cat in the Hat, Alice's Cheshire Cat, Old Deuteronomy, le Chat Botté and other such famous felines.

As for the 140 publishers who rejected this gem in manuscript...  where do publishers find their readers these days?  Still cloning Barbara Taylor Bonker and John Crushem?

Congratulations Moreclacke Publishing and Robert Armin. You gave me my no1 book of 2024 (https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-best-broadway-book-in-decades.html) and now you come up with this one!  Put me on your notification list for coming ventures.

Read it to us, Daddy!

Why hav'n't you written a book about me?

"Don't chew that crucifix ..."  Oh dear, I feel chortles in my chest ..

Back to Cartesia, or a break between books.

 

2026. The HENRY RUSSELL book is on the presses. The LYDIA THOMPSON book is turning into page proofs. Wendy is back from her cruise-holiday. Paul is in the dining room revamping his website ... horses and cats are quiet .. it's time to do 'nothing'. So in between the harness racing from Nelson (where I first became addicted 70 years ago) and some mildly entertaining pre-season tennis on the TV ... I shall while away the morn with a little more disrobe-the-Cartesian fun.

So. Whom do I have here who needs a little elucidation?

Myfanwy NEWELL. Shouldn't be hard. 'of Newport, Wales'. Myfanwy Gwenllian Newell. Actually born in Hertfordshire 4 August 1888, daughter of Evan Cornelius Newell timber merchant and his wife Emily Georgina née EVE.

I see her in 1909 playing in a tour of The Dairymaids ('charming voice') before joining the Carte repertoire tour. After that stint I see but little of her, but she married William Henry BOLAND, became a mother, and died in West Clandon 19 January 1972.

That wasn't too hard. How about Olive TURNER. I think I fouled up on this one last time. She played soprano leads with the Repertory Company while Clara Dow was being Mrs William Vernour Fowlis. Here she is: Olive Mary TURNER. daughter of John Randal Turner and his wife Amy Cotton née STAPLETON. 

Born in New Barnet, apparently thoroughly musically-trained, but seemingly did not make performing a priority, although in the 1939 census she was still listing herself as 'vocalist and composer'. She was also a pretty fair pianist, as I see her playing Liszt duets with her husband. In that 1939 census she also chops 10 years off her age. And the authorities queried it. They allowed her 28 November 1894. They were too kind. It was 1890. But Olive's life seems to have been a tad original. At some stage in ealy 1925 she married musician Henry Baynton Power .. or had a son by him ... he was apparently a divorcé ...   She sang Lola in Cavalleria rusticana  in Norwich in 1927, with him as the orchestra. Anyway she was alive when he died in the Fulham Royal Cancer Hospital 31 August 1952. She inherited £941 14s 4d, but herself died in Hendon 15 October 1953.

Here's one who does not appear in the G&S Archive. But he turns up in the company cricket team! Cyril Leonard Dodsley FLAMSTEAD (var Flamsteed). With a name like that, he was, of course, a clergyman's son. Trained at the Guildhall, sang at St Katherine's Church: he must have been a tenor for I see him in a performance of St Paul in Bristol (1899), he joined the Carte forces in 1902 and remained a chorister until 1914. His war was not happy, and at the end he put himself into St David's home in Ealing, where he died 30 December 1938. The rest of the cricket team? Messrs White, Hewett, Worrall, Frank Steward, Puesch (?!), Morris, Brittain ... I guess that's the Mr White who got into a Scottish carriage accident in July 1910 ...

Others who do not appear in the Archive include Bertha Louisa Susan RISCH (1863-1933) later Mrs Edwin Emery Phillips who can be seen latterly directing G&S in Jarrow where they tell us that she appeared 'in principal contralto roles' with the Carte co, one May HESSIAN soprano from Newport who boasts 'of the D'Oyly Carte', a Lillian TALBOT (Mrs Lillian SUCKLING) from Bolton who adverises similarly, a curious Fred LYTTON 'principal baritone of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Co' and a Madame M Forbes-Wilson who played with and directed amateurs in Whitehaven under a similar tag. As for George WINDOWS 'of the ...'. I have no idea. Nora Prendergast?

Alma [Gwenllian] GRIFFITHS (b Cardiff 13 September 1887; d Ashford 1969) tells us she started her professional career in the Carte at around 1907. She quickly moved on, and had understudied Lily Elsie in The Merry Widow, Isobel Jay in Miss Hook of Holland and played in London's Lady Tatters before she threw it in and shot off to Capetown and a wealthy marriage with one Douglas Christofferson. 

Some folk who are indeed in the Archive I have been able to find additional info on. So ...

[George Richard] Hindmarsh JAMIESON (b Edinburgh 10 November 1871; d Sydney, Australia 25 July 1935) was one of those who promoted himself from chorister to 'principal' when he left England. His career in Australia was run of the mill, but 'of the D'Oyly Carte' featured in his obituary. For yes! He got one.

Another expat was the chap 'baritone of the Savoy Theatre' named Will LANSDOWNE (b 1872?) who emigrated Down Under in 1910. He sang a little, stage im Mikado in Adelaide, and after 1919, I see him not.

Of much more significance was Miss Ethel [Elizabeth] LEWIS (b 11 July 1889; de Dolphin Square, London 10 January 1982). She has definitely made the Archive! But only her professional life. Miss Lewis left the Carte to marry the teenaged [Francis] Geoffrey Pearson, third son of Viscount Cowdray in 1910. Geoffrey was killed 6 September 1914, in France, leaving her with a baby daughter. She appeared as the Hon Mrs Pearson in wartime charity events and in 1916 announced her return to the stage. In 1918 she married another wealthy man of the military, Henry John Francis Hunter. The marriage does not seem to have lasted.

Geoffrey Pearson

Another whose sizeable career with the Carte organisation is treated in the Archive is Fred[erick James] HEWETT (b Bradford 20 August 1872; d Bradford 1957). Originally a stationer and newsvendor, he returned to his original calling in later life, as well as directing amateur local productions. His wife was Cartesian chorister Alice BREWERTON (b Bradford 26 April 1884; d Bradford 1971) who performed lead role with the Bradford amateurs after her eight years with the company.

[Mary] Louise Githens TRIMBLE (b Pennsylvania 23 October 1882) was the daughter of William H Githens, a Philadelphia cigar-broker. and 'pupil of John Dennis Mehan'.  She married one Laurence Norton Trimble, who ventured as a film producer, and bore him a daughter (1912) before he walked off back to America. Louise stayed in England, worked as a vocalist, and eventually divorced him. I think I did her before. Anyway, she sang with concert parties, took her turn with the Carte, toured in La Poupée, The Pearl Girl, in revue and apparently died in England in 1969 or thereabouts.

Time to go back to work.  There are still a few 'late of the D'Oyly Carte' folks on my desktop.

Doris PASSMORE (daughter of Walter)

Sergeant HARVEY

Alice WADE 'a D'Oyly Carte prima donna'. Not on your Nellie. Chorus. In 1913 she was principal boy in the Exeter panto. Later 'entertainer at the piano'

Rupert MAR who seems to have been Canadian and at one stage in Henry Irving's Company. Died aged 53 at Lewes 29 October 1920.

Lillian CORNER/Marie RUSSELL (real/stage names) who seems to have been a music-hall attendant as a teenager

Shelford WALSH (d Bridport 1943) 'many years of the D'Oyly Carte' ... in what capacity? Solicitor, stage manager, operatic coach, director of the Gloucester amateurs. manager of the Theatre Royal, Bath ..

Good heavens! Ben FULLER of Australian fame says he was a member of the Children's Pirates troupe!

And Walter GILBERT won the Panama lottery!

All for another day when I have nothing to do.

When you start a rabbit running ... it runs this way and that and .. sometimes it finds its burrow.

I gave up on George WINDOWS (by any other spelling), but Jeff Clarke didn't. Tenor George Alfred WINDOWS (b Bristol 18 September 1879) seems to have been very briefly a Cartesian. What he was for much longer was a member of a group called the Wakeman quartette which had the peculiarity of being made up of contralto, tenor, baritone and bass. His name was advertised sometimes as Winders or Wenders or Warders .. but he had a good run with the quartette after which he became a semi-professional. The censi show him working as a cigarette machinist, a clerk, and by 1939 a widower and a fitter's labourer (motor). He died in Bristol aged 73, in 1953.

Thank you Jeff! I'll sort out some more sticky ones for you!!

While Jeff was opening and shutting Windows, I was not idle. Somehow I ended up on the 'M' page of the Archive, and I plumped for 'Eugenie MAYNARD'. The Archive tells us that she was active from 1880 to 1892, and during that time appeared in several Carte/Sullivan/Gilbert productions. She tells us, in the 1900 census that she is 33 (born October 1866), born in New York of Italian immigrant parents as Eugenia MAESTRI. Strange then that the 1870 census lists her as eight years old. By 1877, she is at the Academy of Our Lady of Mercy, being noticed for her musical talents, and by 1879 she is out on the road as a chorus singer in H B Mahn's company, star Jeannie Winston. In 1880 she joined E E Rice's company, and played in Claude Duval in New York, before moving on to the Casino Theatre. She also married Mr Archibald Finn Ackerly (10 August 1882) a well-bred young newspaperman by whom she had two daughters. She followed up by touring in  Brass Monkey and with deWolf Hopper in a supporting role in Wang and Panjandrum, but after her husband's death in 1896 she was less seen. Her surviving daughter died in 1909, but Eugenie lived a widow till her death 19 September 1937.

Camelton: the hilarious book of the musical of the musical ...

 

I don't often read theatre books. Non-fiction, that is. Which cuts out many a soi-disant biography or memoir.

 

Ninety percent of what comes out these days is poor stuff. Rehashed rehashes of old-style 'history' in the University or Wikipedia style. 'Biographies' of 'Famous Names I Have Dropped'. And so forth.

 

But ... happily, there is occasionally a 'but'.

 

I have just four American theatrical books (not counting reference works, which no one publishes any more) on my 'A' shelves. Four books which I have re-read, and will read again, purely for pleasure.

 

(1) Wesker, Arnold SHYLOCK and the DEATH OF ZERO MOSTEL. A classic and a masterpiece. It has even ousted from its place as Best Theatre Memoir Ever number (2)

(2) Hart, Moss ACT ONE which others before me have accoladed

(3) Dunn, Don THE MAKING OF NO, NO, NANETTE. A frothy bit of Broadway-backstab stuff which has the ring of truth to it ...

 

And today I am adding a fourth. It is entitled CAMELTON. No, not HAMILTON, though the parody is intentional. Like Wesker's tale, it is a playwright's retelling of how his piece came to the stage, through what vicissitudes, and in what shape. But whereas Wesker is serious and tragic, Stephen Cole of CAMELTON is hilarious. How could he not be?: the musical that this book deals with was staged in Qatar in the earliest decade of the century and, yes, anything you can imagine DID happen. But the story doesn't end there. Because Cole and his musical partner, David Krane, later turned the incredible history of the making of their Arab spectacular into ... a musical! Where, years ago, I got to know it ...  And now THE ROAD TO QATAR, as that piece was titled, has become a one-man-show and a memoir as CAMELTON.

 Well, I'm sure that I'm not the only one who gets much more enjoyment out of reading such as the vivacious and veracious theatre stories of Cole and Krane (with very few names dropped), fresh, different and original, than one more book of ten-times-told and dubious Broadway tales. I have read the whole 240pp of this one in one sitting .. and CAMELTON takes its place on my 'A' shelf.

 

Actually, if Stephen Cole keeps on turning out books like this, and his Broadway burlesque novella Mary, Ethel and Mikey Who, which I dubbed the Best Broadway Book of 2024 ... I may have to create a shelf A (a) ...

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-best-broadway-book-in-decades.html

Keep 'em coming Mr Cole!  You are the Best-Fun-Broadway-Writer in ages.

Hay-day, 2026

 Important annual event in a farmer's life. 

We don't make as much hay these days as in the past, but we're still talking about a couple of thousand dollars worth. And if it rains in the small window of time in which your hay is mown, dried, turned, baled an got into the barn ... well, even the not-so-picky beasts on the farm will turn their muzzles up at it ..

This year, in spite of all the comings and goings at Gerolstein, we got it just right! Hurrah!

Yesterday neighbour Si came by with his Machinery ...

Dear friends Jen and Trevor came by with rolled up sleeves ...  Wendy hove to with a will and the farm bike ..

At the approach of dusk, 200-plus bales were in the shed ... 

Then it rained.

So that's that over till 2027 ...

Finding Mrs Franklin

 

Six hours into 2026. Grey, cool, wet ... cats have nibbled at their breakfast and snuggled up to snooze ... Wendy is sailing into Nouméa ... yes, I'm 'Home alone'. Well, I promised to, at some stage, enlighten the world (and myself) concerning the Anglo-American soprano Mrs Franklin, so this seems a perfect day to put together what I've managed to discover about the lady whom John Braham described as 'the best oratorio singer in America'.

It has been a very curious search. With strangely incomplete results.

The lady really was a Mrs Franklin, and my delvings have produced a forename. Mrs Jane Mary Franklin. Wife of one William Franklin, who was in the typographical industry. I even have a birthdate for her. 6 June 1803. But not a birth name! How? Because her husband put her birthdate on her funerary notice.

Both of the spouses Franklin were born in Britain. Where? Don't know. I also don't know where and when they were married. I can also see no sign of Jane singing in England. But since I don't know her maiden name ...

However, the name of Mrs Franklin was a well-known one in musical circles. Mrs Anna Maria Franklin (née O'Leary, dite Leary) had been 'the siren of Vauxhall' from the 1780s through into the 19th century, known for her 'white gloves and three ostrich plumes' and as the creatrice of many songs by the Vauxhall Gardens's composers, notably Theodore Hook

My initial thought was that our Mrs F had borrowed the name of her predecessor. But then I discovered William and their children...

Back to square one. Of course, I don't know at what ages Jane and Wiliam left Britain for America. And if they were wed when they did. I don't know much about their early lives at all. Except for that birthdate. Jane Mary born 9 June 1803. Well, I actually found one: Jane Mary Peacock of Hatton Garden ... but is that she? Lord knows. And I'm afraid I never will.

I first see the Franklins in 1829. In Philadelphia. Both, allegedly, in their twenties. Married, it appears. Seemingly no children. They would come in a a few years. Odd that. Anyway, having spent many hours trying to find out their back-story, with no success, I'll just start in 1829. 12 March to be exact.

The Musical Fund of Philadelphia had been for some time staging a series of concerts at their Hall. They weren't rubbish. Alongside the local musos (many of whom were German) they featured some fine (most English) singers. Amelia George, her sister Ellen Gill, Elizabeth Austin, and for goodness' sake .. Elizabeth Feron. Philly 1828 must have been blooming: apparently the artistes got twice the money they did back home.

Amongst those lured to greenbacked pastures, were some ... well ... mediocrities. One of these was a Mr Thomas Mercer, a useful second-string actor ('not claiming to be great, he is always respectable') and musician at the Theatre Royal, Lancaster, and then for five seasons at Drury Lane. Mercer , who emigrated in 1827, had three daughters and three sons whom he launched on Philadelphia en masse. The one who got the most push-n-shove was the eldest boy, who worked as 'Master Mercer' and on 12 March 1829 he -- billed as 'of Drury Lane'! -- hosted a concert at the Musical Fund Hall. 

And there she is. With no explanation. No 'pupil of', no 'first time here', no 'late Miss So and So', no clarification at all. Yes, I've looked and looked and looked. I've looked at concert programmes, shiplists, directories ... she seems to spring fully-armed from .. where?

It is not a very enterprising concert. Father -- a very indifferent singer -- has a jolly song, 13 year-old Master some familiar bits, and the lady gives the hackneyed 'Tell Me, My Heart' and a pretty London show song of a couple of years ago. 

Can I find a review of this concert? No. Anything to tell us whether Mrs Franklin was liked? No. Except that she -- as anonymous as ever -- was asked back to the Musical Fund the following month (29 April), sharing the vocals, alongside a clutch of mostly German musicians, with Elizabeth Austin. She trotted out her 'Tell Me, My Heart' again and Horn's 'Hasten by the Starlight' alongside Mrs Austin's Freischütz and 'Dolce concento'. 21 May she sang at flautist John Krollman's concert ('The Mocking Bird', 'Auld Robin Gray', 'Should he Upbraid'). Mrs Franklin was established as good value, and on 7 October she took to the stage, playing the title-role in Rosina at the Arch Street Theatre. She followed up as Diana Vernon in Rob Roy, returned to the Musical Fund for their next concert ('Lo here the gentle lark', 'Rise gentle moon') and then came to the end of the Pennsylvania episode. The couple removed to Washington DC, and there they would spend most of the rest of their lives.

It is possible that the move was caused by an engagement, for on 9 February 1830, at the Washington Theatre, both Mrs and Mrs Franklin are on the bills in The Dramatist and The Rendezvous in which Amelia George has the bulk of the singing. Norah and Dermot in The Poor Soldier, Medium and Narcissa (Walter Scott's 'The Bonnie Blue Cap') in Inkle and Yarico, Maria in The Spoil'd Child, he as Richard in Raising the Wind while she sings 'I know a bank' (with Miss George), 'O merry row the bonny bark' and the Butterfly song, Sir James Elliot and Kitty in The Liar, Gardener and Vanilla in The Weathercock, Mary Copp in Charles II  ..

If it seemed that the Franklins were to have a career as stock company players, that notion was soon dispelled. It seems William went back to printing, and Jane turned to giving concerts and teaching. And motherhood. Her concerts attracted some attention: 'a vocalist of extraordinary powers ... the rich melody of her voice is unequalled by any of her professional rivals in this country and her style and execution are of the highest order of excellence'.  Puff or real praise? But Jane was now featured 'as sung by' on sheet music covers ('I will come to thee', 'Fly away ladybird', 'Bonny Blue Cap', 'Light is gthe Heart'), and -- as she carried on her teaching ('Miss Heaney's Academy' &c) -- she gave and appeared at intermittent concerts with sacred music ('The Widow of Nain', 'Let the Bright Seraphim'). She was also, seemingly, soprano at Trinity Church.  William was advertising as a music copyist. 

The couple had issue. Just how many children and when is a mystery. In the 1850 census we see them with a 16 year-old Edward, a 14 year-old 'J' ... and some very curious ages ...

William's will names a son Benjamin. And confirms that son Joseph William was already dead. I've given up on 'Edward'. The children were born in New York? Yes. It was the latest place for work. In 1834, Jane was hired as a soprano soloist for the New York Sacred Music Society, along with Mr and Mrs Wood and Pearson, and as ballad and sacred singer at Niblo's Gardens. I see that William rode along with her as a member of glee groups or a minor soloist on occasison. She was the vocalist on the night of the famous trumpet 'duel' between Gambati and Norton. 

The list of songs which she ran through is long but featured largely the works of Horn, Lee, Luff, Hargreaves, Sidney Nelson, Rodwell, Bishop and other English composers, alongside pieces from the works of Handel and Haydn. Rare was the Italian bravura or the like heard from her: 'Lo! Here the Gentle Lark' and a bit of frilly Bishopry was the most decorated she got. And that seems to have been the basis of her appeal. 'Amongst the most meritorious concert singers of the times', nodded the press.

So, it seems that between 1834 and 1839, for much of the couple's time, while Jane's reputation grew largely, New York was, at least in season, their home. They would return to Washington, but for the interim, it was New York. And ... one, two, three children?

In 1839 (5 February) she appeared in The Messiah with the New York Society. This time her partner was not Mary Ann Wood, but the imperial Rosalbina Caradori Allan ... I wonder how the music was shared! The New York Review summed up: 'Mrs Franklin is not, indeed, generally considered a star. She is certainly not as a Meteor or a Comet which blaze for a short period and then retire, leaving the horizon in darkness; on the contrary, she is as one of the fixed stars, shining not with lurid glare, but with a steady and permanent brightness ..'. Nicely put.

But she was still moving onwards and upwards. Jane Franklin was hired by Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, and in 1840 the little menage headed Massachussetts-ward. The history of that august Institution has been recorded in detail. Suffice it to say Jane was welcomed largely by the capital of American music, in multiple appearances at the Melodeon and with the Society (Creation, David, the new Mount Sinai), and therein she performed for the first time (seemingly 20 November 1840) with John Braham. She sang oratorio with him, and a piece by ... Arne.  They sang together on programmes thereafter ...  solos and duets ...

She seems to have remained based in Boston for some years -- in 1845 she is sill referred to as 'of Boston' ...  and a New York paper sulked that 'she has exiled herself to to Boston' -- but it seems that, soon after, that the Franklins returned to Washington. I see Mrs F still performing in 1846, - and indeed in 1855 (stilll, the Echo Song) --  but she is, once more, mainly teaching. In 1860, back in Washington she is dubbed 'one of Washington's best lady teachers' and sheet music still bore the legend 'as sung by Mrs Franklin'. And occasionally she brought out her Echo Song, her 'Rejoice Greatly' or 'Angels Ever Bright and Fair' ... 'just as in her palmiest days'.

Jane Franklin was surely one of the most accomplished singers of her era, and to all evidence, one of the most unassuming. She performed along with 'international stars' such as Braham, Mrs Wood, and Caradori Allan .. Henry Russell and Dempster ... and was always better than a 'supporting' act. I get the feeling that she was a gloriously pleasing singer. I also get the feeling that she was a very nice person. And her husband .. I wish I knew more about their home life. 

It all came to an end in a rush. Jane died 6 August 1873. A few weeks later, son Joseph (23 October 1873) followed, and in the New Year (3 April1874) it was William ..

Well, I wanted to know about Mrs Franklin. This is my best effort! I'll have another go sometime ... but, for now: Jane Franklin, I know I would have liked you and your truly musical singing.

The three of them lie in Glenwood Cemetery, Washington. Section Q Lot 230. Site 5. Their graves are unmarked. How sad ...