Mr Temple of the Savoy ... and lots of other places, too

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TEMPLE, Richard [COBB, Richard Barker]  (b London 2 March 1846; d Charing Cross Hospital, London 19 October 1912)

Richard Temple is a well-known name in the history of the musical theatre, thanks to his long service in the companies of Richard D’Oyly Carte. But his career did exist for nearly a decade before the coming of Messrs Sullivan and Gilbert, and last for another, after the end of his famous career at the Savoy Theatre.

Richard was born in London, the first son of stockbroker Richard Cobb, from Yorkshire, and his wife Eliza Barker (m 20 March 1845) and began his life as a clerk and cashier in a bank. He partook of amateur dramatics, and I spot him in 1868 (9 April) taking part as an actor (‘remarkably animated and voluble’) in a performance ofThe Foster Sister staged at the Haymarket Theatre by Thomas Coe, the city’s foremost acting teacher. One imagines that young Richard (‘Temple’ already) was a pupil.

Even before that, however, I have spotted him singing at the St Patrick’s Benevolent Fund’s beanfeast of 1867 along with the decidedly professional concourse of Rose Hersee, Ellen Lyon, Chaplin Henry and Montem Smith.

He made his professional stage debut in 1869 (31 May) in George Perren’s English opera season at the Crystal Palace, playing Rodolpho in La Sonnambula alongside Perren and Blanche Cole (‘he is evidently a beginner as far as acting is concerned’, ‘a good voice’, ‘Mr Temple’s time to make a strong impression is yet to come’) and went on to sing in Lucia di Lammermoor, as Pablo in The Rose of Castille and the King in Maritana between June and November.

After a few suburban concerts, he joined up with Stanley Betjemann’s little touring opera, playing the popular repertoire on the minor circuits with Fanny Heywood, Bessie Emmett, Bessie Palmer and Furneaux Cook. In February, Betjemann ventured his troupe to London’s St George’s Hall to play Faust and Maritana. Temple was Mephistopheles and the King, and had now joined the management.

When the Crystal Palace operas recommenced in April, he returned to play Rodolpho, the King, Father Tom in The Lily of Killarney, and the Sheriff in Martha, dashing off to Croydon or Portsea between times to sing Luna or Arnheim for Betjemann.

In 1871, he sang a Messiah at the cheap St George’s Hall concerts at which he shared the music with Bessie Emmett, Reed Larwill and a Miss Kennett, but most particularly with ‘electric light’. In March of the year, he trekked to Nottingham where Perren was trying out local composer T Luard Selby’s opera Adela with a view to its production at the Crystal Palace. It didn’t come.

Temple had a full book in 1871: he appeared in concert and in opera (The Night Dancers, The Bohemian Girl etc) at the Crystal Palace, he made further appearance at St George’s Hall, usually with Bessie and illustrating with oratorio excerpts some learned lecture, he appeared at the Alfred Theatre in operetta (Lost and Found) and then the couple – for they were evidently now a couple -- joined up with a little company put together by Fred Sullivan to play Levey’s Punchinello (Marquis), Cox and Box (Bouncer), Breaking the Spell (Old Matthew) et al at Manchester and Liverpool. The musical director for the opening night of the tiny troupe was Arthur Sullivan.

Back to London for The Night Dancers and Il Trovatore with Florence Lancia at Crystal Palace, then on to the St James’s Theatre where Rose Hersee was launching her Royal National Opera. He played Don Pedro and Devilshoof in the unfortunate season, before Miss Hersee took to the road and headed for a season in Dublin. Temple was cast as Mephistopheles, Figaro, Devilshoof et al.

1872 started less busily: the St George’s Hall People’s Concerts and lectures, Rivière’s proms at Cremorne Gardens, until in May he apparently returned to Liverpool, where a rip-off Henry Hersee version of the hit opéra-bouffe Geneviève de Brabant was being put on. But he left quickly as the botched show crumbled. But opéra-bouffe was the rage, and Mr Temple seemed to suit its combination of fine vocalising and robust burlesque acting: he moved instead to the Alhambra to succeed to the role of Pippertrunk in the spectacular Le Roi Carotte, and then to the Opera Comique to play the comic gendarme, Gérome, in L’Oeil crevé.

Julia Mathews

In the new year, he switched briefly back to opera to sing a season with Blanche Cole in Dublin, before (‘late of the English opera company’) joining Julia Mathews in the same city to play opéra-bouffe in the provinces (General Boum, the wizard in Letty the Basketmaker, The Bohemian Girl, The Beggar’s Opera)   until she chucked her whole repertoire to play the gimmick show of the hour, Kissi Kissi.

Mr Temple went back to London, between times, and turned up in April at the Gaiety, playing his habitual role of the King in Maritana alongside Perren and Mme Lancia.

The new hit musical in town was La Fille de Madame Angot, and Mr Temple was not tardy in getting himself and his wife (for he had wed Miss Emmett in Liverpool in 1872) into roles in that show. He played the comic Larivaudière with Emily Soldene at the Gaiety, and then moved to the original production at the Philharmonic to succeed Johnnie Rouse in the same role and then back to Soldene again when she moved the production to the Opera Comique. He caused a splash in the press, when – on the illness of Dick Beverley, who was playing the high-baritone hero, Ange Pitou – he stepped in and made a fine fist of the role.

He was still singing cantatas and oratorio from Brixton to Bow, and in August 1874 he took another turn with Hersee/Perren opera group, but he turned inexorably back to the lighter genre with his Crystal Palace Operetta Company (Once too Often, The Sleeping Queen) and later in the year he took the role of Pluto –alongside Fred Sullivan as Mercury – in the burlesque Ixion Re-wheeled at the Opera Comique as well as appearing in the 1-acters Breaking the Spell and The Love Birds at the Alexandra Palace.

Dublin saw him once more in opera in mid-1875, but then he took over the Philharmonic Theatre – once the glorious home of Soldene and Geneviève de Brabant– to try to repeat the coup with an adaptation of Offenbach’s Les Géorgiennes. He himself took the role of Rhododendron Pasha and directed both that piece and The Zoo as an afterpiece. The show had a mediocre career, adding to a sad year for Temple. His young wife had died 9 May in childbirth.

In 1876, he turned up as Robin in The Waterman, as Bouncer – repeatedly – in Cox and Box, played opera in Dublin once more (Figaro, Devilshoof, Mephistopheles, Don Florio etc) and in Leicester (Caspar in Der Freischützwith Elliot Galer), and comic opera in Manchester when he created the role of Buckingham in Alfred Cellier’s Nell Gwynne and Liverpool, where he played the title-role in the same composer’s The Sultan of Mocha. He also played at the Globe Theatre in Solomon’s little A Will With Vengeance (Carlo Maloni).

Dublin persisted in casting him in opera, and he visited for a short season in March 1877 with Annie Tonnellier, but then it was back to the lighter stage, and – in spite of still being in debt to the Philharmonic – to a dabble with Cellier in production: Temple’s own version of Geneviève de Brabant with Connie Loseby and Emily Cross, and sister ‘Maria Temple’ (who had been in the chorus of Gilbert and Clay’s Princess Toto) among the cast.

The venture did not last long, and Temple returned to the safety of Blanche Cole, George Perren and Rose Hersee, with their mostly unmoving repertoire of English opera performances at the Crystal Palace, the Alexandra Palace and other venues. 

But Temple’s moment was coming. He was cast in the role of Sir Marmaduke in The Sorcerer, and his relationship with D’Oyly Carte, like that with Sullivan and Cellier, already years old, was cemented. Teamed with the star of the show, Mrs Howard Paul, he scored a success within the success of the show, and sealed his position as part of what would eventually become ‘the Savoy team’. Dick Deadeye in HMS Pinafore, The Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance, Colonel Calverley in Patience, Strephon in Iolanthe. Arac in Princess Ida, the title-role in The Mikado, Sir Roderic in Ruddigore, Sergeant Meryll in The Yeomen of the Guard, plus a number of forepieces, gave him nearly a decade of career…

After refusing the limp role of Luiz in The Gondoliers,he left the Savoy company, but returned from time to time, in London, New York or on the road, to play mostly his original roles.

However, during his time at the Savoy he took plenty of time out for other ventures. He produced an opera season in Dublin in 1879, gave ‘Richard Temple’s Dramatic Recital’ at Peckham in 1881, and the following month took the part of King Portico in a revival of Princess Toto. He played operetta at the Opera Comique (Lovers’ Knots, Quid pro quo) and visited Manchester to create the role of King James in The Lancashire Witches, as well as playing the part of Abdallah in the tryout of Solomon’s Lord Bateman. In September 1882, he returned briefly to the opera, and in 1883 he floated the opera season at the Crystal Palace, seemingly to allow himself to play the role of Rigoletto. 19 May 1886, he remounted that piece at the Gaiety Theatre.

Trial by Jury and, endlessly, Cox and Box at matinees, directing amateurs in Ireland and Gretna Green at the Comedy, giving ‘Ship on Fire’ at the Aquarium and making a music-hall debut at The Trocadero with ‘The Footman’s Lament’ by Fred Bowyer and Georg Jacobi ‘character songs illustrating various phases of a flunkey’s life’, a tour with The Nautch Girl (Pyjama), New York for The Gondoliers (as Giuseppe) and another attempt at being an impresario with a version of Gounod’s Le Medecin malgré lui. A curious choice, commented the press, but clearly made to allow Temple to play Sgnarelle, alongside Susetta Fenn and Effie Chapuy. It was tried at Islington (24 November 1892), then the Globe, sent on the road and later given a performance at the Crystal Palace. He also tried a version of Mozart’s Schauspielendirekor as L’Impresario (Crystal Palace 18 October 1892).

In 1892 he was appointed to the Royal College of Music, where he produced a number of operas with the students (Orphée, his own adaptation of Le Roi l’a dit, Falstaff),and later fulfilled a similar function at the London College of Music (Il Matrimonio segreto, Die beiden Schützen)

But he still continued to perform on the musical stage (Lord Silvertop in The Golden Web, George in Miami, replacing Colin Coop as Sid Fakah in the musical comedy Morocco Bound, taking over as the Baron in Mirette, The Chieftain at the Savoy) as well as producing, directing and starring in a new piece entitled Wapping Old Stairs (Dick Fid, 17 February 1894) which lived a brief life at the Vaudeville Theatre.

He fulfilled a certain amount of work as a director (The Red Spider, Shamus O’Brien) and also set himself up as a reciter. I spot him doing a not very convincing Athaliewith the Queen’s Hall Choir, but his own ‘musical and dramatic recitals’ seemed to go down quite well.

In the 1900s, he appeared in a flop musical The Gay Pretenders, and a Christmas piece, Little Hans Andersen (1903, King of the Copper Castle) which William Greet staged with members of the Savoy Company, and as late as 1906 as Mr Burchell in the comic opera version of The Vicar of Wakefield. In between time, and up till 1909, he still played intermittently at the Savoy.

It had been a busy career, but when Temple fell ill, and became an invalid, the cupboard was bare. Several theatricals subscribed to a fund for him, but when he died at Charing Cross Hospital in 1912 it was, reportedly, ‘in dire poverty’.

His first wife Bessie EMMETT [EMMETT, Elizabeth Ellen] (b 43 Store Street, London 3 August 1846, d 96 Lyndhurst Rd., Peckham 9 May 1875), the daughter of an East End cabinet maker, studied music with J T Calkin and made her debut at the Boosey Ballad Concerts, 4 March 1868, singing her master’s ‘You are Going Willie’ and ‘My mother bids me bind my hair’. She made her first stage appearance with Betjemann under the name of ‘Amy Leigh’ but soon reverted to her real name. She sang second soprano to Fanny Heywood (Siebel, Lisa etc) and was Siebel in the St George’s Hall performance of Faust. She soon took over as prima donna.

From here on, her career was largely in tandem with Temple’s. She played with the Sullivan company, and with Rose Hersee (Leonora, Rosina, Agathe, Lisa, Lazarillo, Gipsy Queen, Nancy). With the Julia Mathews company, she played the Gipsy Queen and Wanda in La Grande-Duchesse.

In 1873 she took over the part of Eurydice in Orphée aux enfers at the National Theatre for John Hollingshead, and then succeeded to the role of Clairette, and subsequently to that of Lange, in the original La Fille de Madame Angot at the Philharmonic Theatre. She repeated the role of Clairette opposite Emily Soldene.

She returned to opera when the couple joined Hersee and Perren (Leonora, Eily), took part in the Crystal Palace Operetta Company performances, played Polly Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera opposite Sims Reeves, and went to Manchester to create the role of Dolly in The Sultan of Mocha.

There is no doubting that the attractive young woman with the uncomplicated, sweet soprano and acting style was ripe for a big career as a light opera leading lady.

She died in childbirth ‘of peritonitis’ at 28 years of age.

The couple’s first son, Richard [William Emmett] TEMPLE jr [COBB] (b 96 Lyndhurst Rd, Camberwell 25 October 1872; d NYC 14 October 1954) made a fine career as a leading man in musical comedy in Britain and latterly in America, playing latterly roles in revivals of the Savoy repertoire. He was the husband of musical theatre star Evie Greene.

PS Richard did not remain a widower. We see him in the 1881 census living with a 'wife' Maria, aged 29 born Kensington, as well as mother and singing sister, Maria. Then, in 1891, he re-entered the ranks of the officially married when he wed Annie Marie Davis, who is clearly the same lady who was 'Maria' in 1881. In 1901 and 1911, she is 'Marie'.

The other Mr Temple: from 'Pinafore' to 'Grand Duke'

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Temple. Why did so many performers choose the stage-name ‘Temple’? From Mrs Harriet Major of Exeter Hall and the Italian opera, to endless little chorus girls and of course the celebrated Savoyard known as Richard Temple. But there was, of course, another ‘Temple’ who played in many of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, at the Opera Comique, the Savoy, and in the provinces.  He was not a veritable ’Temple’ either, but neither was he a performer to be ignored. It’s my theory that George Temple has suffered a bit from the  big Cartesian shadow cast by Richard, so I thought I’d bring him out of the shadows for once. Because he’s an interesting chap. A versatile actor and capable vocalist, who has the particularity of playing in whole lot more Gilbert than Sullivan.

There was no secret that ‘George Temple’ was born James George Rexworthy, in Clifton, Gloucestershire, in early 1842, the son of James Hill Rexworthy (1811-1865), a brush maker and his wife Eliza née Edwards (1809-1887). The family can be seen in Bristol in the 1851 and 1861 census, with the daughters into sewing, brother John an assistant pawnbroker and George an apprentice brush maker.

While he brushed, George also sang, and I get the odd glimpse in the press of Mr Rexworthy in concert: at the Hannah More School (5 March 1861), with E Brison & Co’s Artizans’ Band at the Broadmead Rooms (24 February 1863), at Mr and Mrs Brennan’s concert at Henham (‘Nil desperandum’, ‘Suoni la tromba’ September 1864), with the Bristol Ethiopian Serenaders at Chipping Sodbury (October 1864), Walter Fisher’s concert (4 September 1865) …

However, by 1865, George Rexworthy had given up his father’s trade, and had become the lessee of the Old Duke Tavern, wine and spirit vaults, in King Street. He had also married (with some local fanfare) Mrs Harriet Bedford née Wedlake. The marriage would last longer than the pub. On 7 August 1867, George went bankrupt. And within months had launched himself on a stage career: as Mr George Temple. 

His first engagement seems to have been at one of Glasgow’s minor houses, the Royal Colosseum and Opera House, where I see him playing George Peyton in The Octoroon in March 1868. He spent six months with the company (Squire Langley in The Gipsy Sailor, Ray Trafford in Under the Gaslight, The Miller and his men &c) in Glasgow and Paisley, before moving on to Newcastle. At Christmas he played Snowfall to the Robinson Crusoe of Lady Don.

George quickly found his way to London, securing an engagement for the company at Bradwell and Field’s newly revamped Charing Cross Theatre. He began as Jackson Goodchild in the drama Edendale (‘especial praise is due …’), but although he was billed for the accompanying burlesque W S Gilbert’s The Pretty Druidess, I think Richard Barker played the only male role. Emily Fowler then took over the management, and George was retained. He played Faust to her Mephisto in Very Little Faust and More Mephistopheles, and carried on through Won at Last, Little Fibs, Room for the Ladies, Twin Sisters, Illusions … but was not cast in the musical The Gentleman in Black. By W S Gilbert.

He played the rest of 1870 at the Globe (Captain Dudley de Vigne in Ecarté, King Dawdle in The White Cat, took a turn with Edward Sothern to Newcastle, and then joined Emily Thorne’s company, playing The Palace of Truth. By W S Gilbert. He was cast as Prince Philamir, and went on to play the role with the Kendals at Liverpool.

He returned to the Charing Cross as Rochefort in Shadows (‘roars of laughter’), visited the Prince’s, Manchester, to play The Merchant of Venice with Charles Calvert, and joined the Company at London’s Gaiety Theatre for a season (Ralph in Shilly Shally, Arragh na Pogue with Boucicault). During this time he evinced a seemingly photographic memory... There were many matinées – tryouts, vanities, Benefits – played in the London theatres of the time: George took part in an unconscionable number of such one-off performances and would continue to do so.

His next engagement, however, was anything but a one-off. Covent Garden mounted a vast, no expense spared, opéra-bouffe féerie entitled Babil and Bijou and George was cast in a featured spot as Lord Dundreary ‘expressed in action not in speech’. An imitation of Sothern which apparently was most successful. He also played a little forepiece No One Round the Cornerwith Gaston Murray. After another trip to Manchester, and an appearance as Tom Pogson in Henry Byron’s Time’s Triumph, he appeared briefly at the Queen’s Theatre in Black-Eyed Susan, at the Crystal Palace as Hastings in She Stoops to Conquer and Captain Absolute in The Rivals before joining the company at the Haymarket (Ben in The Heir at Law), then the Globe with Harry Montague (Family Jars, Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady, Still Waters Run Deep, The Rendezvous, Two Flats and a Sharp, Fred Fairfoot in Wig and Gown, Meacock in Our Clerks and the Adelphi this time as Dick Dowlais in The Heir at Law(‘the very best piece of acting he has yet given us’).

Between 1874-5 he returned to the Haymarket for a goodly stint with Sothern: Lt Vernon in Our American Cousin, Charles Surface, Captain Absolute, Young Marlowe, Dundreary Married and Settled, after which the Charing Cross in Brought to Book, the Opera Comique as Sir Edward Mortimer in A Tempting Bait and as Gnatbrain with Pattie Oliver and Danvers in Black-Eyed Susan and in 1876 the Gaiety again (Tottles, Fortunio, Charley Garner in Dearer than Life, Joe Lennard in Uncle Dick’s Darling, Sebastian to the Malvolio of Phelps in Twelfth Night, Francis in The Stranger &c). He ended at the Gaiety in August 1876, and set out on tour with Mr and Mrs Chippendale’s Comedy Company playing the Haymarket repertoire. He appeared in Liverpool (Freemantle in Stolen Kisses) and at Newcastle where his roles ranged from Hawkshaw in The Ticket of Leave Man via Hamlet and Richard III to the King in Hop o’ my Thumb with Rebecca Isaacs …

Mrs Chippendale

It can be clearly seen that Mr George Temple, actor, who, up till now, had made very little use of Mr Rexworthy’s ‘fine baritone voice’, was altogether more successful than had been Mr Rexworthy, as a brushmaker and publican. And he seemed to be able to play any kind of role -- straight juveniles, comic juveniles, husbands serious and comical, pantomime Kings or clowns – in any kind of play, dramatic or comic, and in the very best of company – Toole, Brough, Montague, Sothern et al – and in theatres such as the Haymarket, the Gaiety or the Manchester Prince’s.

But I think something must have happened in 1877. Between March and November, I lose him. And when he surfaces, he is a member of the company at the distinctly second-rate rate Park Theatre. For something like a year, he played everything imaginable at the Park – classics, Shakespeare, Mazeppa, Tom Tug in The Waterman, pantomime with Rose Bell, William in Black-Eyed Susan, Peep o’Day and even the title-role in the barely successful comic opera, Pom which Mdlle Bell had played on the road… and then I lose him again.

Well, one thing that seems to have happened was that his marriage had died. Mrs Rexworthy was still living at 42 Gaisford Street, Kentish Town, their long-time home, but Mr Rexworthy was down at 7 High Street, Bloomsbury where he would be joined by an ‘Annie Temple, musician’ in the 1891 census. In the 1881 George is censused at both addresses. Hmmm.

When I do pick up George again, in 1879, he has an unusual (for him) job. Mr D’Oyly Carte was staging a five weeks’ season at the Standard and Park (aha!?) Theatres of his Opera Comique hit HMS Pinafore. He plucked his cast for the occasion from here and there (and that’s a whole other story) and as Captain Corcoran he hired George Temple. He ‘did himself credit both as a vocalist and an actor’, and Carte promptly moved him to the main production. Conventional wisdom says he went to replace a holidaying Rutland Barrington as Corcoran, but the cast-lists ‘under the clock’ seem to indicate that it was Richard Temple who was on holiday. All these Temples! As confusing as Abu Simbel. At one stage both, and Barrington, are all ‘under the clock’.

He went out briefly on tour as Corcoran, with Emilie Petrelli and James A Meade, but returned to the Opera Comique, playing in the afterpieces After All and In the Sulks and, doubtless, covering. Thus, he was on hand when The Pirates of Penzancewas given its London production, and he was cast in the role of Samuel. His name appeared in the cast list right next to Richard Temple, as the Pirate King, and I’m sure 12 year-old I was not the only one who assumed they were related. George deputised for Richard on occasion, and ‘poured the pirate sherry’ for the run of the show.

Aside: when will someone stage Pirates with the men drinking their aristocratic sherry from sherry glasses instead of beer-tankards?

One would have thought there might have been a role for George in Patience,to follow, but he was off to join the cast of La Boulangère at the Globe, appearing as the Commissioner of Police (‘decidedly comic’) and as Samuel Pribble its companion comedy Seeing Frou-Frou. When the Offenbach piece failed to run, he switched to the Alhambra and its mish-mash of The Bronze Horse, and then back to the Opera Comique (Jamilek in Princess Toto, Quid pro Quo with Emily Cross, Jacaway in The Mother-in-law, Vulcan in Pluto, Bosun in Wreck of the Pinafore). 

1883 seems to have been a lean year, unless I have missed something. I see him only in more matinee tryouts. 1884 saw him in Edgar Bruce’s unfortunate revival of The Palace of Truth at the new Prince’s Theatre. Kyrle Bellew played George’s old part of the Prince. He was Zoram. But not for long. He was off north to play Count Pomposo in a new musical entitled Estrella. Estrella is yet another story.

He joined Herman Vezin as the Sieur de Beringhan (‘played his part really well’) in Richelieu at the Imperial, went north to play Leonard Lavender in Harry Paulton’s Lilies,went on tour with Mrs Saker to play Pygmalion in Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea with an insufficient May Fortescue, toured in Thomas Thorne’s Open House and joined Willie Edouin and Li Brough at the Novelty in Moneybags … but nothing seemed to last for long. And all the time there were these matinee try-outs and vanities …

1886 saw him engaged by Claude Marius for the Empire Theatre, where he played in the songs-and-scenery shows Round the World (Wolfe the captain of the Henrietta) and The Palace of Pearl, before he developed a relationship with Miss Priscilla Cartland (Mrs Murray). One item says he was her ‘teacher’, but she had been long on the stage. But ‘Miss Grace Hawthorne’ was from Bangor, Maine, so maybe he was teaching her to speak English. Anyway, he was at the lady’s side when she took the Olympic Theatre, and played Maurice de la Tour to her ‘Miss Multon’ when she produced an adaptation of that French play as The Governess. It was judged well-done, but too grim. He had a less good role as Wilfred Meredith in A Ring of Iron before Miss Hawthorne’s season ended. She would go wildly bankrupt for some 3000 pounds.

The following year, he returned to comic opera, touring for Carte first, it seems, as a brief Pooh Bah, and then as an excellent Sir Despard to the Margaret of Annie Montelli. That saw him through 1887, but there was a gap before he joined a second-rate touring troupe of Les Manteaux noirs (‘a pillar of strength’ as Don Phillip). In 1889, he appeared in the tryout of a Faddimir (Baron Krazinski) of which the only retrospective point is that it was the debut of lyricist ‘Adrian Ross’, and joined the Carl Rosa troupe at the Prince of Wales. Another musical, the antiquated Gretna Green (Justice Nettle), was not a success.

In 1890 he was recalled by Carte, to introduce the Duke of Plaza Toro to America. But America didn’t care for The Gondoliers, and George returned home ilico presto to give his Duke to the British provinces and, in place of the original, Frank Wyatt, at the Savoy Theatre. But there still was not a semi-permanent spot for him in the Carte ranks. At Christmas he went to Drury Lane, where, alongside Vesta Tilley, Belle Bilton and Dan Leno he gave ‘Hush, the Bogie’ as the King of Beauty and the Beast until April.

And then he is AWOL again. But this time I know where he went. South Africa. I don’t have the details, but when I was researching ‘Agnes delaPorte’ I found her down under singing in Rip van Winkle with George in the title-role.

In 1893 he was back, touring as the Marquis in Captain Thérèse with Miss Emmott Herbert, in 1884 in something called Held in Slavery! before in October he took the role of A Sentry in His Excellency (libretto: W S Gilbert) at the Lyric Theatre.

He must have like South Africa, for the following year he returned. With May Fortescue. Details unknown. But the manager was Luscombe Searelle, composer of The Wreck of the Pinafore and Estrella!

Back in London, he took his last major job, touring for Carte, once more, playing Ben Hashbaz in The Grand Duke. The end of that tour, November 1896, was virtually the end of George’s career.  He played the odd matinee, and even went out in a lowbrow piece called The Sorrows of Satan ..

J G Rexworthy, ka Temple, died back home in Clifton, Bristol, at Lower Redland Road, of heart failure 8 December 1899. His seemingly abandoned wife had died the year before. I don’t know what happened to ‘Annie Temple’. But someone called 'Julie' left a fond death notice ..

Well, five pages. But he deserves it. A thorough Victorian man of the theatre. From Charles Surface to ‘Hush the Bogie’. Via the G&S catalogue, from Pinafore to Grand Duke …

I like Mr Rexworthy!

Lisa Walton: why, wherefore and whence?

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WALTON, Lisa [WATKIN, Elizabeth Isabella] (b Newcastle upon Tyne, 5 December 1857; d 11 Priors Terrace, Tynemouth 26 August 1879)

Lizzie Watkin didn’t really have a career. She didn’t have time. But whereas some artists with long and solid histories are forgotten, ‘Lisa Walton’ survives in the memory of some. And for reason.

Lizzie was born in Tynemouth in 1857. Her father was Robert Watkin (x Tynemouth 6 February 1831; d 3 Hood Street, Newcastle 15 June 1860) and her mother Mary née Craig. Robert died when Lizzie was two, and her brother John Craig but a baby – Mary and her infants can be seen in the 1861 census – but, by the time 1871 comes around, John is being cared for by his grandmother, and Mary and Lizzie are gone.

When Lizzie surfaces again, in is 1876, London, she has become ‘Lisa Walton’ and is the prize pupil of vocalist and teacher Gustave Garcia.

Garcia put the eighteen year old Lizzie up in public for the first time 28 June 1876 at his own concert, alongside Marie Roze and Thekla Friedländer and, in November, the pair of them went on show at the Royal Aquarium concerts alongside another northerner, Carina Clelland.

The following year, I spot her singing at Exeter College Hall, Oxford, at the Covent Garden Proms, and performing Hoffmann’s The Legend of Melusine at one of Garcia’s concerts, She was praised for her ‘care and precision, although she appeared to be lacking in dramatic force’.

She made a first appearance at Crystal Palace (1 December 1877) tackling ‘On mighty pens’ and Beethoven’s ‘Neue Liebe’ and although her ‘fresh and sympathetic quality’ was liked, a certain ‘throatiness’ was criticised. From a Garcia pupil?

She sang at the Albert Hall holiday concerts, and at Irish night in Manchester, and then came the engagement for which she is remembered. Arthur Sullivan’s comic opera The Sorcerer was running better than had been hoped for at the Opera Comique. Leading lady Alice May was being switched to another (and, hopefully, even more successful) show, and Giulia Warwick was being upped from the ingenue role of Constance to take over the principal part of Aline. And the totally untried Lizzie was cast as Constance. She played the role, as well as the Plaintiff in Trial by Jury, for four months, till the end of the season.

Following the closure, she went on to appear with Garcia in concert, and then disappeared from the scene. A year later, the news came in a brief newspaper notice. Lizzie Watkin had died, aged just 21, back in Tynemouth.

I don’t know who lived at 11 Prior's Terrace. Father and, seemingly, mother had predeceased her … maybe I’ll find out one day. It seems to have been the local MP. Maybe I’ll find out why she died so young, too, if one of the world’s Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts feels like splashing out on a death certificate. But I make them a present of the facts, free. Now they know why Lisa Walton didn’t play again for Mr D’Oyly Carte.

Cartesian couples: no4 Change for a (dud) tenor ...

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I wrote this a few years ago. I’m not quite sure why. If I were writing it today, I should turn it round. The (second) wife was the star … the husband was something of a mediocrity …

COVENTRY, Gerard  [REYNOLDS, Alfred] (b Nottinghamshire c 1849; d Westcliffe, Whitstable 1928)

‘Mr Coventry studied at Milan under the elder Lamperti…’

Did he? So many British singers claimed a Milanese education or experience which they never had. If he did go to the Milan Conservatoire, it would have been for a decidedly short  term,because Mr Alfred Reynolds first comes before my eyes in 1873, singing in the school concerts staged by George Lansdowne Cottell, to display his pupils to the public. I spot him on 19 November at the Eyre Arms on a bill topped by pianist ‘Juanita Prytherique’ (Miss Harriet Jane Prytherch, a doctor’s daughter from Ruthin) and 10 February 1874 with another pianist, the Australian-born Maggie Okey (later to be Marguerite de Pachmann) and a selection of ephemeral singers.

In 1874, Mr Reynolds married Miss Prytherch, and decided, like her, to give himself a more romantic nomenclature. He became ‘Gerard Coventry’ (so was he born in Coventry?). Mr and Mrs Coventry appear on the bill for another singing teacher, a certain Signor Torretti, in May 1875, but by the time he is engaged at Liverpool, next up, he is ‘of the Milan Conservatoire’. Well, maybe. For the odd week.

In the years that followed, he appeared occasionally at the Royal Aquarium Concerts (‘Once Again’, ‘Come into the Garden, Maud’, Ignace Gibsone’s ‘She sleeps, my lady sleeps’), at the Polytechnic, at various church concerts and in the Langham Hall recital of Glover’s The Deserted Village, and ventured onto the stage in the unfortunate operatic Bjorn, playing a Norwegian earl.

In August 1878, Wilfred Esmond, playing the role of Alexis in D’Oyly Carte’s The Sorcerer tour, caught cold. Was it the Aquarium connection? Mr Coventry was summoned, ‘studied the score on the train on his way from town in the afternoon’ and played that night at Sheffield. He didn’t get to keep the role, but when a single matinée was given at the Opera Comique, 24 August, he was again called upon, to play with most of the original stars. He would later claim to have played ‘in the original run of the show’, which I suppose technically he did. Was he some sort of a standby?

He appeared at Parry Cole’s concert, in Fridolin at Brixton, sang Fleetwood in The Puritan’s Daughterat the Alexandra Palace with Blanche Cole, at the Blackpool North Pier, the Polytechnic and a number of times at the Aquarium. He also sang in a semi-professional Lord of the Isles at Wickham Park, before landing his best engagement to date, playing the singing role of Amiens in Marie Litton’s production of As You Like It at the Imperial Theatre at the Aquarium. On 16 June 1880 he staged his own concert at St George’s Hall, with a modest bill featuring Alice Fairman and G H Snazelle.

In October 1880, he returned to the Carte management when he was given the part of Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance on tour, playing opposite the talented and already established young soprano, Laura Clement – they can be seen, already, sharing digs in Leeds in 1881 --  and in 1882, when Miss Clement was cast in the new and successful Les Manteaux Noirs at London’s Avenue Theatre, playing alongside Henry Bracy; Coventry and she played The Sleeping Queen as a curtain raiser.

On 2 August 1882, Harriet Reynolds-Coventry died, at the age of 33, and early in 1884, ‘Gerard Coventry’ married Laura CLEMENT (real name, b Vassall Road, Brixton 19 February 1858; d Bronx, New York 4 November 1932 as ‘Laura Coventry’).

 In 1883, Coventry again stepped in, this time for John Child, in the touring Pirates of Penzance, after which he and Miss Clement joined Andrew Melville at the Birmingham Grand playing little pieces such as The City Guard and At the Seaside. In 1884, they toured for Harry Jackson in Nell Gwynne, Coventry initially in a small role but later taking over as principal tenor. At Christmas, they returned to Birmingham and played in pantomime, after which they joined forces with Howard Paul for a tour of holiday resorts (Locked Out, The Rose of Auvergne).

In 1885, the couple went to America, and Coventry advertised himself c/o D’Oyly Carte, at the Fifth Avenue Theatre. It was, however, only Laura who was engaged by Carte for New York. Instead, Coventry went to Washington to play twice-daily G&S, to Brooklyn in summer season and appeared in New York in Koster and Bial’s version of The Pirates of Penzance. In 1887, the pair went to California with a troupe starring Alice Harrison, and Laura was engaged to play at the popular Tivoli Theatre. Coventry, who had now virtually renounced performing, did some stage directing. One of the productions was a musical version of She written by a company member and musicked by W W Furst, with the beauteous Laura cast in the title-role. Al Hayman took the piece to Broadway, and Laura repeated her role to admiration there.

In 1889, Coventry produced Genee’s Nanon, a decided hit in America, in England, with Laura starred and himself as director. He launched the piece at the Birmingham Grand (16 September 1889) and it closed on the road, taking his investment with it.

Back in America, while Laura kept the family flag afloat with a fine run of successful comic opera roles, and repeated seasons of She, Coventry slowly launched himself as a director of burlesque and extravaganza (Off the Earth, 1999) and hit gold when he was hired to restage The Belle of New York for what turned out to be its memorable London transfer. For the next half dozen years, he navetted between America, England and Australia, restaging the London hit A Chinese Honeymoon for the Shubert Brothers at the Casino Theatre, Broadway’s Dolly Varden in London, lending a hand with the out-of-town closure Winsome Winnie, and initiating two shows for Broadway: The Runaways (which was restaged by Fredrick Ranken after an unpromising opening) and the successful Piff Paff Pouff (1905). He is said, in his potbiogs, to have restaged other pieces such as the very successful The Burgomaster, Madame Sherry and The Pink Lady, perhaps for the touring circuits, and … well … perhaps not at all.

This seems to have been his last effort in New York, for he then headed off to Australia where he re-staged The Merry Widow for its local premiere (1908) and established himself as ‘the Prince of pantomime producers’. In 1911 he returned to America and was reported to be ‘living in retirement on a farm in Long Island’.

He had long divested himself of the successful Laura, who remained in America, working as a singer and an actress, into her fifties, and had instead paired up with a new ‘Mrs Coventry’ by name Jessie Beatrice Hall (b Soho 6 July 1874), a singer and the daughter of a London builder, whom he ‘married’ in Washington DC in 1895, and by whom he had at least one child.

They settled at Whitstable in Kent, where Mr Reynolds-Coventry died (as Gerard Coventry) in 1928. Jessie is visible in 1935, living in Red Lion Square, and in that same year is registered as ‘insane’. She seems to have died in 1968.

Coventry’s two partially successful careers, maybe, made up into one satisfying one. Reynolds’s second wife, however, can be credited with a wholly successful professional life as a vocalist and actress, although apparently (she lists herself in 1915 as ‘single’) not a personal one. In 1930, she is censussed in the New York Actors Home, aged 72, and professing ‘widow’, and died two years later.

Cartesian couples: no 3 Together wherever we go … and go, and go …

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For thirty years, maybe nearly forty, the name of Richard Cummings decorated the programmes of the British and, briefly, American stages. And, for much of that time, it was accompanied by that of his wife, Theresa. Comic opera, pantomime, grand opera, operetta … their names popped up everywhere as performers, and Richard on several occasions tried his hand as a provincial manager, as well.

Except on those self-produced occasions, the couple rarely (and usually in an emergency) appeared in leading roles, but they were clearly of that most desirable (to managers) breed – the ‘very useful company members’ who could and would play whatever they were asked and always with capable and well-liked results.

This breed, of course, is not really likely to attract biographers and, had they not entered into the service of Mr D’Oyly Carte, I imagine that even I wouldn’t have spent all of today on them. But their names have become old friends to me over the last 40 years, so when, yesterday, J Donald Smith sent me a photograph of Theresa … and another, unidentified, which I am fairly certain is Richard … I decided the time had come. And here is the result.

So first, who were they?

I haven't yet proved this is Richard, but I'm fairly certain ..

Richard Cumming (no ‘s’) was born at Ryde in the Isle of Wight, christened at Niton (29 November 1846, the fourth of four sons of James Cumming (1809-1865), an innkeeper in Ventnor’s High Street, and his wife, Sarah née Bright: George William (1838-1888), Walter James (1840-1928), Harry (1844) and Richard (1846).

Richard's birth place. Educated at a public ... house!

By 1861, they have moved to Fulham: father has become a builder, George has become an architect and wed and bred, and Richard is 14 years old. However, by 1871 it is just George, wife, children and mother. Father is dead, Walter has fled to Western Australia, Harry is a linen draper, married to Sabina Ridgway Mansell from Ireland and starting a family, and Richard is a 25 year-old schoolteacher down in Kent with – what! – a wife, Emily Anne née Walker. Yes, married 1867 … Cumming with no ‘s’… she died in Kensington 1872. Oh dear. Well, I guess that was the end of Richard’s first life. Pretty soon, he’d be on to the next bit, the theatrical bit.

Theresa as a decidedly young and pretty Hebe 

Theresa Baetens was born in the Netherlands and she, unlike Richard, was of decidedly musical stock. Her father was the well-known viola player and composer Charles Nicholas François Baetens who, when Therese/a (b Hague, c 1849) was an infant, shifted his wife Maria and family to Lancashire, where he became, for many years, principal viola with the Halle orchestra. You can read all about Charles on the website http://harmonicorde.com/baetens.html. Theresa made her debut as a singer in 1869 at the Manchester Gentlemen’s Concerts (‘Voi che sapete’, Gumbert’s ‘Ye happy birds’).

By 1871 the family has shifted to Camberwell: Charles, born Leyden, Mary plus Theresa ‘vocalist 25’, Louisa, Charles and Francis … all from the Hague.

Charles Baetens

So, I guess it was around the singing spots of 1872-3 London that widowed basso Richard met soprano Therese … and, there, they were swiftly wed.

The following year Mr R Cummings (with the ‘s’) and Miss R Cummings were on the comic-opera road, with Mrs Liston’s La Fille de Madame Angot company, he playing Louchard and she very little, until star Pattie Laverne was off, and Therese was promoted to the star role of Clairette.

At Christmas, they went off to play Demon King (‘uses his fine bass voice to advantage’) and ‘Nancy’ in Robinson Crusoe at Leicester, then returned to Mrs Liston as the Pirate Chief and Pedro in Giroflé-Giroflà for five months, and took part in a season of Geneviève de Brabant at the Park Theatre …

And here is the moment to post a warning. There are TWO Richard Cummingses around. Do not mistake the one with snooty academic pretensions for our one. Alas, I did so in my Soldene book, and I was wrong. The Park Theatre Richard is our one.

The engagements followed thick and fast: Vance’s Varieties, Leicester’s Temperance Hall, Richard South’s comic opera company, supporting Alice May, Amy Grundy, Ted Beverley et al in La Fille de Madame Angot, La Grande-Duchesse and La Belle Hélène, a season in town at the Royalty Theatre where Richard played the Burgomaster in Kate Santley’s production of La Marjolaine, while Theresa went to sing at Liverpool …

In 1878 the duo were cast in the first touring company of The Sorcerer. Theresa was Constance, Richard was the Notary and also played Counsel in Trial by Jury. When HMS Pinafore was added to the repertoire, Richard was Bobstay and Theresa was Hebe. While Theresa took time out to give birth to daughter Clara Adelaide May (b Liverpool 30 March 1879; d 1894), Richard Bobstayed on, playing Pennyfather in After All, until his wife returned, to complete what seems to have been, surprisingly, her last employment with the company.

Christmas brought Cinderella at the Liverpool Prince of Wales, with Richard as another Demon King, then another Cinderella at York, and then a tour with Mr Hughnott’s company in Die Fledermaus. Richard was Falke, Theresa was Ida, and the show not at all liked: ‘The union of a poverty-stricken and impure libretto with music more remarkable for inequality than ingenuity does not constitute a comic opera ... (the artists) strove but with little success to give the thing buoyancy enough to keep its head above water’. It didn’t, for long.

Richard continued to Manchester’s Theatre Royal to create the role of the Marquis de Brabazon in the new opera The King’s Dragoons, before they spent Christmas 1880 at Hull in Little Red Riding Hood. He was the Wolf, she was the Spirit of Good Humour, and the production featured the debut of one ‘Elsie Cameron’.

1881 saw them touring as Casimir and Zanetta in the successful Joseph Eldred production of The Princess of Trébizonde and supplying the vocal values (Sir Peregrine Peppertop, Eulalie Duchess of Perpignan) to the low comic acrobatics of the Milton Ray troupe in a perversion of Les Cent Vierges entitled Blighted Bachelors. They took time off to play Babes in the Wood at Liverpool before rejoining the Milton-Rays, visiting Liverpool briefly for more Angot and a Benefit Trial by Jury (Richard as the Usher, this time), before Richard launched himself, seemingly for the first time, into management, in partnership with tenor W H Woodfield, with a musical entitled Innocents Abroad. Having seemingly got a taste for management he then produced La Fille de Madame Angot and Blind Beggars, and Theresa brought out her Clairette to the Lange of Duglas Gordon for a few dates.

They joined Eldred again for La Grande-Duchesse (General Boum) and he played Demon King at the Theatre Royal, Manchester, and, 13 May 1882, at Liverpool, Theresa produced another child: Richard Henry Charles. Father Richard rejoined Carte, touring again as Bobstay and as Samuel in The Pirates of Penzance for a few months.

Another Manchester panto, then they set out on tour with Gertrude Cave-Ashton, after which Richard mounted a Cloches de Corneville company: Theresa played Serpolette and Richard was Gaspard!

In early 1885, he apparently deputised on occasion at the Savoy, in The Mikado, but in October he was back on the road, playing Spread Eagle in The Noble Savage with Alice Barth, and touring with Theresa in a production of Fun on the Bristol, before the couple joined up with J W Turner’s English Opera Co. I see Richard playing Lord Allcash in Fra Diavolo, Devilshoof in The Bohemian Girl, and giving Operatic Gems at the Winter Gardens, Morecambe Bay. The company played at the Crystal Palace and the Standard Theatre in September 1886, and Theresa replaced Lucy Franklein as Lady Allcash in a comic team with her husband. In 1887 the company mutated into the Arthur Rousby troupe.

However, on the London revival of HMS Pinafore (12 November 1887), Richard returned to the Savoy Theatre to take up his old part of Bobstay. He was much liked -- ‘Nothing in the whole representation is better in its way than the Bill Bobstay of Mr R Cummings’ -- and followed up with more Samuel in The Pirates of Penzance (17 March 1888) and then as Pish Tush in The Mikado (7 June 1888) before being shipped off to America to succeed Fred Solomon as Shadbolt in Rudolph Aronson’s tour of The Yeomen of the Guard for a couple of months. I see that he also appeared for Aronson as the Chevalier de Brabazon in Erminie (1889).

Back at home, he put The Doctor of Alcantara on the road, played his umpteenth Demon King at Sheffield, toured with ‘Ilma Norina’, sent out another and then another Angot tour, with Theresa now a forty year-old Clairette, with time out for pantos at Glasgow, Bootle and Liverpool…

And then he returned (with Theresa to start with) to the Turner Opera. Monterone in Rigoletto, Montefiore in Maritana, Don Florio in The Rose of Castille, Devilshoof then Florestein in The Bohemian Girl, Hortensius in Satanella … I think she dropped out quite soon. He didn’t. He remained a comprimario bass with the company for ten years.

Maybe there was more. But my last sighting of him is 16 March 1903 playing Don Florio at Crouch End. Although in the 1911 census, boarding in Ashton under Lyne, the couple both still list themselves as ‘operatic vocalists’. Son Richard ‘musician’, his wife Elizabeth ‘vocalist’ and their 4 year-old Patricia are down the road. Oh my gosh, there’s Richard with the Turner company at Coventry in … 1911!

Theresa apparently died (as Cummings with the 's') in 1924, aged 75. I’m not sure about Richard … I was given a date, but … I think he may have predeceased her (1913, aged 66 without the 's'?).

And now, that little set of photos. Theresa as Hebe with Madge Stavart as Buttercup and Nellie Duglas Gordon as Josephine, Ryley as the Admiral … when in 1879ish did that lot all appear together? … if I can find THAT out, then the four unlabelled photos ought to be identifiable… the photographer had studios in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Wrexham, Wigan, Bootle and Stoke-on-Trent. So I guess that’s our choice …

'I'm called little Buttercup' (haha! no, I'm not!)

Madge Stavart has come into my life before. 

She played at the Gaiety Theatre with Emily Soldene, briefly, so she makes an appearance in the pages of my In Search of a Singer. But Madge spent many more months and years working for Mr D’Oyly Carte than for Emily, so I thought I had better look into her properly. I mean, ‘Madge Stavart’ had to be her real name (who would choose it?), so the facts and figures ought not be difficult to find.

Well, the reason that there was no article yesterday was that I spent the entire day trying to solve the ‘who was’ of Miss Madge Stavart. For that was not her real name, at all. Not by a long way. Did I solve it? Half. I can tell you when and where she died, and under what name. I can tell you where she was born, but … well, she was calling herself something different then, and I’m fed up with trying to put salt on her tail, so I’m going off half-cocked in the hope that someone else may work out her truth … (addendum: they did!)

‘Madge’ first came to theatrical notice at what was said to have been seventeen years of age (she was 22) as a ‘clever, vivacious’ Denis in the panto, St George and the Dragonat Manchester’s Theatre Royal at Christmas 1872. There, she came under the eye of Mr Henry Brougham Farnie, and when Angelina Claude took time off from the leading role in his hit musical Nemesis, it was Madge who was whisked into her London debut (7 July 1873) as Rosalie Ramponneau (‘a young lady who has been well received in the provinces made her first appearance in London at the Strand...) for two months. From there, it was the Gaiety to play Charles Martel in Geneviève de Brabant (‘good looks intelligence and very agreeable voice’), and off to another Gaiety, in Dublin, to play Prince Amabel in Turko the Terrible, alongside Annie Sinclair (‘My Mary of the curling hair’).

Panto done, she went on the road as Clairette in Joseph Eldred’s La Fille de Madame Angot company before returning to town to feature as Medor in a sloppily mounted version of Hervé’s Les Chevaliers de la table ronde. The production may have dreadful, but the cast was quite good: Mr J H Ryley and his wife were beginning their transformation from ‘Dancing Quakers’ into comic opera players, and they were supported by one Fred Sullivan.

Christmas 1874 was spent as principal boy at the Liverpool Prince of Wales (The Invisible Prince), before what seems to have been a less interesting few seasons in which, apart for her 3-months chunk of annual panto (King Arthur in Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star at Manchester, Sinbad at Birmingham, Prince Bonbon in Sleeping Beauty at Manchester, Robinson Crusoe at Liverpool), I see her only at the Alexandra, in concert in Margate and playing Clairette and Wanda for Elliot Galer at Leicester. 

She would later call herself a widow, so maybe this was when she was being married.

 In 1879, she was back in view playing Polly Peachum to the Macheath of Frank Celli in Birmingham and London, Feramoz in Lallah Rookh in Plymouth and advertising for a pantomime. But she wasn’t going to need one. Mr Carte hired her for a few weeks of Little Buttercupping at Birmingham, and when that was done, transferred her to the Opera Comique production, to cover Buttercup and play Mrs Nankeen Worcester in Cups and Saucers. After a couple of months she was again transferred to the road, playing Buttercup and Lady Sangazure for the next fifteen months. And after a little break for illness (or salary increase?) she joined up once again.

Madge as Buttercup, courtesy of J Donald Smith

1881 was of course census year, the company was at Preston, and though many of the company don’t seem to have been censused, Madge was. As Madge Stavart, aged 26, born London. Huh! And look, with her is Mrs Henrietta Stavart, 60 born … India! Well, I wasted a lot of time on the Indian lady. If Madge was born in London in 1855, I would expect to find mother and child in the 1861 and 1871 censi. And I can’t. 

The Pirates of Penzance was added to the repertoire, with Madge as Ruth, before a little break. It was paragraphed that she was to play Lady Betty in Claude Duval but she returned briefly to Carte before leaving to take the role of Buttercup in the disastrous attempt to stage The Wreck of the Pinafore. It closed after four nights.

She played Queen Isabella with Richard Barker’s Manteaux Noirs company, joined Ethel Pierson in London’s Prince Methusalem and did one more round as Buttercup and Ruth before, on 8 September 1883, she played her last performance in the Savoy repertoire.

Not yet thirty, she was next cast in the plum role of Palmatica in the vast Alhambra production of The Beggar Student (12 April 1884), played Christmas as the Queen in the extravaganza Ching-ma-ree at Brighton. She went down well in Brighton: the following year she played Cups and Saucers and sang the Rossini Stabat Mater there ..

When Les Manteaux Noirs was revived at the Avenue Theatre she was again cast as the Queen, but the next month she was seen in Battersea Park singing ballads alongside the exhibition of the ‘Blondin Elephant’ and ‘extraordinary jumping feats, twice a day’ by a lady who could manage 6 feet. She seemed to have taken a turn for the ballads, for she followed up at Hastings’s Pier Pavilion, the Eastbourne Floral Hall, the Brighton Aquarium, the Royal Aquarium with the Vaidis Sisters on the Revolving Trapeze, the Palace of ten-thousand lights, and Miss Nydia Bleiken and her French chansonettes …

She played Martha in a Mephisto which topbilled Connie Gilchrist, returned to Manchester for the 1886 panto Bluebeard, and went again on the road with Les Manteaux Noirs, as Bianca in two versions of Count Tremolio, as Lady Alicia in Marjorie … and Marjorie’s producer, Carl Rosa, engaged her for a single performances as the Marchioness in La Fille du régiment given at Balmoral, but now the advertisements for ‘Miss Madge Stavart, disengaged’ were becoming rather frequent. My last sighting of our lady is playing a musical sketch, The Jabberwock, at Gatti’s Music Hall in December 1897 and the advertisements stop at the end of 1900.

But they had one advantage. They had given an address. Brooklyn Road, Shepherds Bush. 16? 12? Now, looking for a place in Shepherd’s Bush is like … well … looking for a shepherd in a bush, because according to the census takers and transcribers, it doesn’t exist. It’s just shoved in, latterly as part of Hammersmith. Happily, however, as a young singer, I briefly lived just down from Shepherd’s Bush Green, so I knew to follow the Goldhawk Rd. When I could find it. 

 That’s what took the time. I finally lighted on 1901. George A Highlander actor and his wife at number 1, Florence Perugini, actress … but at no 16 were a mechanical engineer and a confectioner’s foreman, and at number 12 an elderly cabinet-maker named Wippling and his family. No Henrietta. No Madge. Oh. There are three apartments at no 12. A widow ‘living on own means’ aged 43. Violet H M Rowe. H? Henrietta? M? Madge …

Not quite. Violet Henrietta Mary Rowe. It is she. She had simply retired. Violet I can now tell you died 28 Marloes Rd, Kensington 5 March 1921 aged 66. And she appears living with a lady friend, Selina Baker, in the 1911 census at 2 Benbow Road … where Violet tells us that she was born in the parish of All Saints, Margaret Street. Yes, dear, but under what name? And who and when was Mr Rowe? And what happened to Mamma? And Papa, for that matter. And why ‘Madge Stavart’? And was Mamma really born in India?

Lots of questions. But I’ll leave them to you. I’m Madged-out …

STOP PRESS!!!!!! A problem shared is a problem solved! Andrew Lamb has rocketed back with the truth. To wit!  Violet(ta) Henrietta Mary Postlethwaite born September quarter 1850 (I should have known!) in Marylebone. Daughter of Henry James William Postlethwaite of HM 26th Cameronians (d 1861) and Henrietta née Nelson Richardson, married Calcutta (yes!) 2 February 1839. Married Richard Rowe 'artist' 29 June 1887 ...

'Madge' indeed!!!!!