In the Victorian era, the fashion for childish performers, curiosities and theatre and circus 'freaks' was at its peak.
But, mostly, it was a fashion. Few of the too-young and little people actually had memorable talent beyond being 'little'. Occasionally a Louisa Vinning or a Julia Mathews would surface, who took her amazing childish vocal talents into skilled and starry adult years. Or the dwarvish minstrel, Japanese Tommy, who amused audiences with his grotesqueries for a good number of years. There were juvenile opera troupes and there were kiddie shows of all kinds, but rarely did any of these come up to adult standard. Their attraction was that they were kiddies. Or miniature men and women. Giving material normally performed by normally proportioned singers, dancers and actors.
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| Japanese Tommy |
The dwarvish performers who are remembered today are largely those who were poured on to the worlds concert stages in the wake of the 'Tom Thumb' promotion. Publicity pays. P T Barnum's Charles Stratton -- under the name of the famous French fairytale -- resulted in a host of midgetmen displayed as Commodore this, Admiral that, General the other and advertised on a myriad cartes de visite. What did they all do ..? Not very much, it seems, excepted be looked at. And 'Tom Thumb' has been, in modern times, identified with Mr Stratton, rather than with his illustrious predecessor-namesakes.
All this, as preface to ... one little (in inches) man who didn't need to emphasise his height to get splendid review. Because Henry Collard could really sing!
This photo from 1870. Nineteen years of age, 35 inches in height ... taken in his home town in Kent
So who and why was he?
Henry Collard was born in Knowlton, Kent, the son of Edward Collard ('farmer of 192 acres, employing five men..') a member of a wide and well-known farming family, and of his wife Mary [Denne] née Collard (cousin?) which may explain his dwarfery. One other of their children was born similarly afflicted.
But Henry didn't and his family didn't clearly regard him as 'afflicted'. He was put to music, with a young Kingstone man named Richard Rye, and in his mid-teens began appearing as 'Master Collard' in local village concerts. He was not precisely 'Master'. At eighteen, although he was still described as 'a child with the voice of a man', he was not a child. Only in size. His voice? It seems to have been one of those that slips from boy soprano to alto and thence to a species of tenor. However, the quality of Henry's organ was evidently appealingly sweet and soft, his diction exemplary, and Mr Rye's teaching of technique sensibly correct, and the whole made up into the armoury of a pleasing young local singer who was heard in the concerts around Canterbury, Faverham', Dover et environs in the later 1860s. The solo singers were usually amateurs, or the choristers from Rochester Cathedral notably the veteran William Makepeace at whose Faversham concert (15 April 1868) I spot our Henry.
In 1868-9 Henry appeared at a number of such concerts ('The Lover and the Bird', 'Little Nell') where, as far as I can tell, only his singing and not his stature was noticed as being of interest until Show Business came his way in the person of the popular comic vocalist Arthur Lloyd. Mr Lloyd was interested in both Henry's size and his singing. Midgets/dwarves were 'in' thanks to Mr Barnum, and one who could really sing ...? So he hired him for his 1869-70 concert party tour
It proved a happy hiring. If Henry's size was now the initial attraction ('he resembles Tom Thumb') his ballad singing ('I'd nothing else to do') and his 'remarkably good tenor voice' also won encores and plaudits, and he became a major attraction for the little party. 'The star of the evening [was] a youth about eighteen years old and two feet high ... a very pleasing singer' ... 'the greatest curiosity of the age ... smaller than Tom Thumb or Commodore Nutt' ... 'Arthur Lloyd intends to introduce him to the metropolis at the conclusion of his provincial tour.' The 'two feet' was undoubtedly an exaggeration but it seems Henry was indeed smaller than Mr Stratton. Also 'better shaped and much handsomer
The tour made its way through Scotland, Ireland and the North of England . 'Possessed of a fair, frank face, yellow curled hair and a brilliant complexion, the tiny singer at once prepossesses his audience. But when he begins to sing, all sense of the phenomenal is lost ... a really good and pure tenor voice .. singing in a masterly manner...'
It was Easter Monday 1870, at the Royal Music Hall, Holborn that the 'accomplished and agreeable dwarf vocalist' 'the world's smallest singer' appeared in London. 'Besides being a rare and interesting curiosity as a miniature man [he] is an excellent and delightful singer' 'a tremendous success' 'he sings simple ballads ('A Bashful Man', 'Sporting in the Sunshine', 'Happy Be thy dreams') with an evenness and simplicity which are in themselves delightful.
At first seen only at the Royal, he then appeared at the North Woolwich Gardens, the South London Palace, the Bedford, the Sun in Knightsbridge, as well as in concerts in his own Kentish area about the time that our photo was taken
35 inches sounds more probable.
In March 1871 he was cast in a Drury Lane production of The Dragon of Wantley, as a miniature blacksmith, at Easter at the Princess's as a little fiddler in the fantasy The Man in the Moon, singing 'Come Back to Erin, he played the Olympic, the Cambridge ('Thou art so near and yet so far', 'She wore a wreath of roses'), the Manchester Alhambra, the Liverpool Music Hall and then with W J Hill's Omnifarious concert party, before he was recalled to Drury Lane to take to title-role in the pantomime Tom Thumb. His rather abusive cognomen of 'le petit Sims Reeves' was emphasised by his singing 'My Pretty Jane'.
Another 'novelty' casting came in June 1872 at Liverpool, when he was put up as Tom Tug in The Waterman. Obviously he could sing the songs. The sight of a 3-foot Tom romancing a 5ft Wilhelmina must have been odd. But The Waterman had been subjected to all sorts of weirdisms over the years. And Henry's version clearly went down all right, for he repeated it on a number of occasions.
His next venture was a 'novelty' one. Jarrett and Palmer of the newly rebuilt Niblo's Garden, New York, formerly the home of The Black Crook, decided to have a shot at repeating their legs-and-scenery show and its long-running success and, just as with the former show, lined up a set of dancers, acts and vocalists from Britain and Europe to feature as its main attractions. Thus, for the 'grand spectacular dramatic romance' Leo and Lotos they arranged to import star dancers Katti Lanner and Jeanne Pitteri from the Alhambra, Crystal Palace prima donna Marie Rossetti (Miss Brennan from Norwich), Lizzie Kelsey, Laura Joyce, Bessie Sudlow and ... Henry Collard to feature alongside the performing dogs, a ventriloquist, a drum soloist, a child violonist billed as 'the coming Mozart', a panorama of 'Paris under the commune', the obligatory transformation scene et al. Henry was cast as Kohinoor, the King of the Realm of Jewels alongside one very large Mrs Edward Wright as his Queen. He was billed to give his 'imitations of Sims Reeves'. 'The miniature Mario, the smallest and sweetest singer living...'. Some of the New York press were not impressed: 'a piping, childish, treble voice ... the dexterity with which he manages it does not compensate for its general feebleness and immaturity'. They affirmed that he was 40 inches tall; and 20 years old. Leo and Lotos was made over, but stayed on stage for only four months, then sank. On 2 April, Henry returned to the UK.
But the adventures were not quite over. He took an engagement singing Irish songs between the trick for Maskelyne and Cooke at the Egyptian Hall, and then was hired for a month by Heinrich Hoffmann at the Schützenhaus in Hamburg. 'The smallest tenor and comedian in the world'. Yes, his light comic acting ability had been recognised. But now the adventures were touching their end. He went back to Liverpool for more performances of The Waterman and to play King Williwag, the dwarf king, in the panto The King of the Golden Valley, sang at Vance's Varieties and again at the Egyptian Hall, then visited Nottingham to play yet more Waterman and Tom Thumb in the pantomime Little Bo Peep and Boy Blue, or Tom Thumb and the Norfolk Giant. The last professional credit I can find for Henry in 22 September 1877, when he was hired for a spot to sing 'Maids Must Marry' as Sir Geoffrey Hudson in the play England at Drury Lane.
He returned, as ever, to Kent, sang once again in local concerts (Canterbury, Chislet, Ash etc) in church, at the cricket club and in 1879 he married. He and Agnes née Wood would have three children. I have no idea whether she and they were of 'normal' size, but Henry -- now a considerable farmer and timber-merchant/builder in Margate -- would not live to see them grown to adulthood. On 13 April 1888, at his home in Myrtle Villas, Tivoli Road he went upstairs to bed ... and died.
In my humble opinion, Henry Collard is one of the period's few dwarvish performers of the Victorian stage and platform who deserves to be remembered for anything but his size ... when he is remembered.
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