Thirty or forty years ago, I was researching my mega-biography of opéra-bouffe star, Emily Soldene. As part of that research, I delved into the 'who was' of her co-workers, and collated details of their careers. Some of that got into the book, much didn't. Other pieces, in some form or other, ended up on this blog.
E-bay turned up a grand photo today: William H HAMILTON as the Mikado in America in 1885
He worked with Emily a number of times over the decades, from Regent Street to San Francisco. Why have I not detailed him before? Well, way back, Mr Hamilton had got me in an awful mess. Because the world, and even the theatrical world, even the musical theatrical world on both sides of the Atlantic, seems to have been crowded with Hamiltons, W Hamilton, W H Hamiltons ...
There was even a William H Hamilton, baritone singer, whose real name was Grosvenor, who committed suicide by drinking prussic acid in San Francisco in the 1860s ..
And of course, there was Lord William Hamilton, husband of the notorious Lady Hamilton.
So, there was I with pages of decades-old notes on 'W Hamilton', 'W H Hamilton', 'William Hamilton' et al which, I see, I signed off 'there were evidently two William Hamiltons. Or even three'. I was being conservative.
So, those notes went into storage. I see I took them out once, and added a whole lot more credits (most of which were the wrong Hamilton), posted a version of his tale on this blog, and put them away again. I imagine, in discouragement. But the discovery of this photo encouraged me to try one more time. And now, I'm going public with what I've found since last time. It's not everything, but well, I'm quite proud of it. And someone else may find the missing bits!
Well, William's real name was not, unsurprisingly, 'Hamilton'. It was Lugg. William or William Henry Lugg. And he was not born, as his death record tells, us in 1842, but some five years earlier. Apparently 6 July 1837. In Chudleigh, Devon. His parents were William Lugg and his local wife, Mary. There were several such couples in the area, but I have, nevertheless, found little Willie in the 1841 census 'aged three'. Maddeningly, he is not at home, but in the home of the Hayes family: Thomas (agricultural labourer) and Mary and their children, in the poorer part of Chudleigh. How do I know it is he? Because Willie had a younger brother, Joseph William Hayes Lugg. Family connection? Was mother Mary a Hayes? Seems not. But ... well, there I hit a wall ...
William and Mary were, seemingly, up and gone to the big city, for brother Joseph was born, in 1843, in Charles Street, Kensington. And his father's profession was given as 'butler'. Which may be why they were in Kensington and Willie was 'farmed out'. For how long? Alas, I now lose them for 15 years. 1851 census fruitless. And by the time I find them again William jr has assumed the name 'Hamilton' and married (1859) a teenaged Irish lass by the name of Kate Margaret Lamb. They (too) promptly had a son: William Henry Ernest Hamilton (sic) (bapt 14 December 1859). Three further children would follow: Mary Ada (20 June 1861), Frederick Joseph (26 August 1863) and Edward Albert Denham (1867), by which time William had long become 'vocalist'.
He is 'professional singer' in the 1861 census at 10 Great Ormond Street, with wife, baby, mother, brother Joseph and two 'visitors': Mary Ann Ledger and yes, 13 year-old Louisa Hayes from Chudleigh. I wonder when that started. And where. And, of course, what he had been doing before 1861. He comes into view in 1864-6, already in his late twenties, as a pupil at the Royal Academy of Music -- bass-baritone, singing Mozart, Rossini, Verdi et al, and much liked as such. So where had he been vocalising professionally? The answer is in the mostly unadvertised purlieus of Evans's Supper Rooms. Maybe as a soloist? Maybe as a member of that establishment's choir. In late 1866 he advertised, finally, as 'R.A.M. and Evans's, Covent Garden'.
But still, he appears rarely on the concert bills of the nation. An engagement with the Dover Catch Club, appearances with an ephemeral Cecilian Quartet, Myddleton Hall. In 1868, however, he moved into gear under the aegis of William Holland, current supremo of the Canterbury Music Hall, Holland's Minstrels and the North Woolwich Gardens. When Holland staged The Beggar's Opera (Macheath: Emily Soldene) Hamilton was Matt, he delivered 'Memory's Golden Shore', 'The Soldier's Death', 'A Good Flowing Glass', 'The Village Blacksmith', 'I Never Can Forget', 'John Barleycorn', 'Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still' and 'Nil Desperandum' as he became 'the eminent baritone' and chairman at the Canterbury. He played The Swiss Cottage with Hetty Tracy and some performances as Siegbert in Chilpéric, took a turn at the Holborn Music Hall and then .. why? How? A Benefit at Holborn (25 January 1870) 'prior to his departure to New York..'.
And he went. Leaving behind, at Ravensdon Street, Kennington, his wife, their four children, brother Joe and his wife ... and at Millman Street, Marylebone the widowed Mary Lugg .. why? how? He was doing well enough, it seemed ... Brighter prospects in the USA? Family problems? I don't know. His only return for England in future years coincided with his eldest son's marriage, and father was a witness .. Another mystery.
Hamilton didn't stick around in New York. I see him there playing at the Circus with a Risley troupe in April 1870, while the horses were on tour, but it was Philadelpha where he next elected home base. He was employed at St Stephens Episcopal Church, he sang in concerts ('the popular vocalist') with Anna Bishop and Frank Gilder, with the local Männerchor et al, but mostly he appeared with Simmons and Slocum's minstrels at their newly built Arch Street Opera House ('I never can forget', 'Dear Little Shamrock'). At one Benefit he played Tom Tug in The Waterman, at another he was Gabriel in Guy Mannering. In late 1872, he swapped to Frank Moran and Dixey's Minstrels ('The Victim', 'Man the Lifeboat', Cinderella burlesque with Eugene and Unsworth), then swapped back. He seemed fixed on a life in blackface. But in October 1874 'he will join the Kellogg Opera Company in Chicago'. And he did. And for a twelve-month he played leading roles (alongside another music-hall escapee, Annie Tremaine) in the Kellogg repertoire: King in Maritana, Ferrando in Trovatore, Giacomo in Fra Diavolo, Plunkett in Martha, Corrigan in Lily of Killarney, Don Pedro in The Rose of Castille, Bartolo in Nozze di Figaro, Mignon, Nevers in Les Huguenots et al).
But opera was not to be his career. In 1876, he was back in black, with the San Francisco Minstrels, delivering his baritone ballads ('The Mariner's Daughter', 'By the sad sea waves', 'Only a Face at the Window', 'Have the courge, my boy, to say no', 'Margaretta', 'The Old Arm Chair', 'I stood on the bridge at midnight', 'No one knows how fair that place is', 'What flower is this', 'The Prodigal') with solid success. And when the Minstrels were hors saison, he tacked together jobs -- 'the Parisian Varieties touring one-nighters, a concert party for Canada with Bartleman and the dreaded Blanche Rieves-Wilmot, appeared in performances such as a recital (one night) of Operti's effort to musicalise Gilbert's Dan'l Druce (25 April 1877). He sang in concert with Julia Rivé at Gilmore's Gardens before, in 1879, someone had the excellent idea of casting him in musical theatre. Corcoran with Jennie Yeamans at Boston, and in what seems to have been a Henri Laurent company, in New York where he also played the Judge in Trial by Jury.
The musical theatre credits followed: Timofey in
Fatinitza, Zapeter in
Princess Toto, Sultan in
The Sultan of Mocha ... perforated by more Minstrels ('Flowers from Mother's Grave', 'London Bridge', 'Twickenham Ferry', 'Sweethearts', 'Once Again', 'Why did she Leave Him?') ... Colonel in
Patience, Police Chief in
Pirates of Penzance, Cotignac in
Madame Favart, Crab in
Billee Taylor .. more Minstrels ... Brancaccio in
Satanella with Alice May
It wasn't all work. I have no confirmed idea what happened to wife Kate. But, by 1879, he seems to have acquired a new wife or 'wife', confusingly also named 'Kate', actually Mary Catharine Mecke (b Philadelphia, 5 December 1843; d New Rochelle 6 February 1900) from Philadelphia. Their daughter, Lillie, was born in 1879.
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| Wambold instead of Hamilton |
Hamilton, as he was inclined to do, didn't content himself with singing. Again, he got involved in management. To the extent of $10,000 And it ended in tears and a lawsuit. And -- once again, I don't know why, -- he left America for home. And there he found work. He -- mendaciously billed as 'his first appearance in Britain' -- played the 'devil' in Solomon's
Virginia at the Gaiety, then went to the Comedy Theatre as Boleslas in
Falka and as take-over as Buckingham in
Nell Gwynne. But he didn't stay. By August 1884 he was back in America, and permanently.
In the following years, he worked with musical-theatre and sometimes operatic companies round America, amongst which the Duff production of The Mikado which provided our photo. When the over-named 'American Opera Company' lived, he played Papageno, Nicolai's Falstaff, Amonasro, Sir Tristan, Baptista in Götzel's Taming of the Shrew, then went on the road as Squire Bantam in Dorothy ..
And so it continued. He continues both to sing and to fiddle with management into the 1890s -- he did a fine stint at the San Francisco Tivoli alongside the ageing Emily Soldene (Orpheus and Eurydice, Faust Fatinitza), put out a company with Lizzie Annandale, seemingly took a troupe to Jamaica, and returned to New York and the Casino Theater to play Louis XIV in La Basoche and Don Alhambra in The Gondoliers ... In 1894-5 he played with the little Marie Tavary Opera Company (Faust, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Rigoletto), and appeared at Chicago's Schiller Theater in Little Robinson Crusoe ...
He was still in the saddle, after more than thirty years of a busy career, when he died, unexpectedly, apparently of a stroke, in Los Angeles 7 April 1897. Kate the second followed him in 1900. I'm not sure about Kate the first. His children? Lillie became Mrs L D Huntington. Presumably one of the L D Huntingtons of New Rochelle. Which is where Kate II died, and Hamilton is buried. The English children? WHE vanishes after his marriage. America? Frederick Joseph married young and died young, aged 34, in 1898. EAD (waiter) married in 1887 ... was lodging in Kempsford Gardens (7 shillings a week) thereafter .. in 1901 a groom in Newington Green Road, claiming born Chudleigh and calling himself Albert rather than Edward ... hmmm. Mary Ada. No idea. The whole family seems just to disappear. I think I'll just leave them there ...
But, after something like 40 years tersegivation, I've finally put my version of the life and work of Mr 'Hamilton' on paper. Now other folk can take him from there!
