Louisa: a lady of the choicest cloth

 

This is Louisa. Mrs Bradley. Stunning. I simply had to investigate her and her rather splendid outfit. Who and what was she? So I asked my fb friends for thoughts. Their guesses ranged from aristocracy to shopkeeper. I didn't think aristocracy would get photographed in the Goldhawk Road ... but who knows? Actress? Bassano or Elliot and Fry whould be more likely snappers. 

Well, I was right to dismiss the aristocracy and the artistocracy ... this is a 'Sunday best' picture ...

Louisa Briggs Hillier was born in the salubrious city of Bristol and christened there 10 June 1827. Father was Richard Hillier (1782-1843), a grocer, mother was Mary née Day (1795-1870), and they produced no less than thirteen children, beginning with Richard Masey Hillier in 1815 and ending with Amelia Georgiana in 1841. Father died in 1843, mother remarried one Peter Bayley, and the family dispersed far and wide. At least three of them -- Mary Jane (Mrs Daniel Holborow, 1819-1900), James Briggs (1834-1926) and Oliver Oriel (1837-1882) -- emigrated to Australia. I have followed up the brothers and sisters a little, but since at least ten of them seem to have had good to long lives, and most of those wed and bred .. I think I had better just stick to our Louisa for now.

Louisa married Mr Thomas Bradley (x 12 July 1822), linen draper and mercer, initially in partnership with his elder brother, William (x 11 June 1821), at number 6 Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square 

And, latterly, on his own:

NOTICE is hereby given, that the Partnership heretofore subsisting and carried on between us the undersigned, William Bradley and Thomas Bradley, as Linen Drapers and Mercers, at No. 6, Cranbourn-street, Leicester-square, in the county of Middlesex, has been dissolved from the day of the date hereof by mutual consent.— Dated this 27th day of January, 1854." William Bradley. Thomas Bradley.

The couple had four children in the more than thirty years that they lived and worked in Cranbourn Street. Laura Louise Elizabeth, the eldest, died at the age of fourteen, her younger sister, Mary Frances at nineteen, the only son, Thomas William (b 28 April 1861) went into the drapery business and married his cousin, Ada Rosalie Miles. The marriage seems to have been shortlived: in 1911 husband and wife can be seen both running drapery establishments in Bristol. Separately. Thomas died in Bristol 1 May 1913. Then Alice Maud Beatrice .... hang on! I've investigated Alice before! As recently as May 2020! It's Alice of the perched tennis-hat!

"Alice Maud Beatrice BRADLEY (b Soho August 1870; d 9 Webster Gardens, Ealing 3 February 1933) daughter of Thomas Bradley, draper and his wife Louisa Briggs née Hillier. Siblings Laura Louisa, Thomas, Mary Frances ...

Although living in Soho, father was from Kendal, where this photo was taken, so it seems as if Alice was on holiday with family. Witness the props. By 1891, father has become a hosier and haberdasher and the Bradleys are nowliving in Ashchurch Terrace, Hammersmith. By 1901 Louisa is a widow, and Alice, knocking thirty, is ogling the shelf. But in 1908 she married widower John Garnham Mumford, tailor's cutter, and on 9 January 1909, at 10 Disraeli Rd, gave birth to John William Mumford. Mr Mumford went on to become an 'outfitter'. Mr Mumford jr became 'commercial traveller, drapery'. JG died in 1926. Alice in 1933, leaving 5747L."

I can't find the date of Thomas Bradley's demise. But I've picked up the odd bit about Louisa's siblings. I see it was Mary Jane's husband, Daniel (1818-1896) who sponsored her young brothers to go to Australia ... drapery again!

The Holborow family seem to have been the 'achievers' of the Bristol brood. Daniel was alderman and mayor of Ashfield, and the father of Colonel William Hillier Holborow CMG, VD, MLC MP, father of ten ... 

And our Louisa? Well, she was a linen-draper's wife. I guess that is why she was able to make of have made garments of the very choicest stuffs.

Tidying up the ends, and I found this ....

Thomas and William's parents, and two sisters ... in St Thomas's Churchyard, Kendal ...

And look! (Never give up!)  brother-in-law William!  From France, eh? Is that to where he vanished! Bordeaux ...

The Gänzl Gallas brothers strike again ....

 

It was a very good year ... for writing. Unable to go gallivating around Britain (John) and/or the beaches of Yamba, NSW (moi), we let our fingers do the walking, and the talking and, in consequence, between us, we have books scheduled to appear in 2021: two for him, two for me, and one ... together. 

I wonder which will appear first. At the moment, all John's (UK) one of mine (US) and our double-header (UK) are in the hands of their respective publishers ... but I think li'l bro might be in the lead!  Yesterday he sent me goddamit COVER DESIGNS!

My response ...

Well, more news to follow!  

May 2021. Well, John's two are out ... I'm due October ... our double-header is in production ....

Petrus Borel (1809-1859)

RHAPSODIES 1832

 

Blurb

‘Borel was the sun’, said Théophile Gautier,’who could resist him?’

Lycanthrope, necrophile, absurd revolutionary, Paris dandy with a scented beard, flamboyant sufferer: the man with no grave and no memorial. 

His famous red mouth opened briefly ‘like an exotic flower’ to complain of injustice and bourgeois vulgarity; of his own frustration in love and honours;  of his poverty and his blighted fate – then withered in the minor officialdom of Algeria, where he died because he would not wear a hat, in rags and sunstruck, leaving a haunted house and a doubtful name. ‘And now’, says Enid Starkie, ‘he is quite forgotten’.

‘Rhapsodies’ contains all Borel’s poems written when he was 20 and 21. At that time he wore a red waistcoat, a wide-brimmed hat with ribbons, a long black cloak thrown over his shoulders, and was followed about by his admirers. ‘These’, wrote Borel, describing his poems, are ‘the slag from my crucible’: ‘the poetry that boils in my heart has slung its dross’.

It is a fabulous and fiery, black-clouded dross: here are captains and cutlasses, castles, maidens, daggers and danger; violent calls to arms, adventure, imagined loves, bitter complaints and howls of injustice. ‘Never did a publication create a greater scandal,’ Borel said, ‘because it was a book written heart and soul, with no thought of anything else, and stuffed with gall and suffering’.

 It was not reviewed. 

                                                         *

(Enid Starkie: Petrus Borel, The Lycanthrope. Faber & Faber 1954).

 

Mary Vernon: a few days a bride

 

I plucked this Staffordshire lassie from today's vast crop on e-bay. There was something about her ..

Also it's hay-in-the-barn day, so I wanted a quickie and she was labelled ...

Mary Vernon, Uttoxeter, married R Fletcher.... born? died? Easy. Mary Vernon married Samuel Richard Fletcher, about July-August 1868.

Mary Fletcher died Uttoxeter 29 August 1868. Why? How? You know, she has 'Sissi' eyes: the knowingly ill-fated regard

So, who was Mary? Mary was born at the beginning of 1842, the first daughter of Mr John Vernon and his second wife, Anne née Petts. Sounds straightforward? Not really. John Vernon, from Burslem, who ran a cork-cutting business, was sixty-five years old. He had been married en premier noces (28 December 1820) to Margaret Willson, by whom he had one surviving son, John (11 September 1825). Margaret died 14 May 1835, and in 1839 John remarried: Anne Petts (1813-1895) was thirty-five years his junior and extremely fertile. Over the next decade she would give him four sons and three daughters:  Thomas 1840-1871), Mary (1842-1868), Henry (1843-1878), Elizabeth (Mrs Pugh 1844-1929), William (1847-?), Margaret (1848-1866), James (1850-1887). Were the drains in Uttoxeter so very bad? Seemingly only one child survived its thirties, and Ann outlived all but her second daughter. And her stepson (d 27 October 1880). John himself died in 1856, and John jt took over the cork-cutting business form the property in Uttoxeter's Balance Street. I see that in 1863 he was flush enough to lend one George Kirk a huge thousand pounds ...

Anyway, they all lived together in Balance Street where they can be seen in the 1861 census -- mother and eight children with a couple of servants. By 1871 the rot had set in. Only John, Thomas and James remain. Mary and Margaret are dead, Elizabeth married ... and shortly after Thomas too would pass away. William and Henry are AWOL, but Henry too had only a half-dozen years to live.

Back to Mary. She married Mr Samuel Richard Fletcher (b Linton, Burton on Trent 1842) ... and died very shortly after.  Richard remarried (Catherine Susan Bull) and bred freely, rose eventually from being a bank clark to a bank-manager with the Burton Union Bank and ultimately Lloyd's Bank, and died a comfortably-off man at Heath Close, Uttoxeter 21 April 1929.

So, who kept poor Mary's photograph? Who annotated it, years after, with her birth name and her briefly-married name, yet didnt know when she was born, or more surprisingly, the rather notable timing and circumstances of her death. 

I don't see any other photos from the same family ...

The hay is spun .... roll on, the baler!!! Ooooh, haymaking is nerve-racking!!!! 

Bérardi: the triumphs of a baby bass-baritone

 

Charles Bérardi. I saw this splendid photo on e-bay, but his name didn't ring a bell. 

So I thought I would look ... Lyon, yes. But so much more ... he was for years a leading baritone at the Paris Opéra. Not too much in the way of clues on the web, but a bit of jigsawpuzzling and some elderly French newspapers and here's what I came up with ...

'Le petit corps [qui] enfermait une voix sonore et vigoreuse'

Charles Bérardi was born in Marseilles around the year 1848. Maybe 1847? It was claimed by some, and denied by others, that it was his uncle, Léon Bérardi (1817-1897), who went into newspapers and created L'Independence Belge, at which he was succeeded by his son, Gaston (1849-1926). 

Kutsch and Riemens tells us nebulously that he made his debut (no date) in Marseilles and sang in 'various opera houses in the French provinces' until 1872 ...

My first sighting of him is in December 1866, and not in the provinces, but in Paris ...

An 1879 article says 'pupil of Depassio, of Momas and Mme Carvahlo ... made his debut at the ex- [Théâtre] Lyrique of the Place du Châtelet (direction: Carvalho) as 'le prieur' in Der Freischütz, then played Capulet then Friar Lawrence in Roméo et Juliette to the Juliette of Mme Miolan-Carvalho, Sarastro in La flûte enchantée with Marimon as the Queen, and Sardanapalus ...' 'barely 20 years old'. Actually, not even. if his age at death is correct.

'From Paris, he headed for the provinces and over the next years was heard at Le Havre, Antwerp, Geneva, Barcelona, Liege, Bordeaux, Ghent, before, in 1872, ending up at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels'.  Seems good. I found him in Antwerp in 1869 making his debut as Brogni in La Juive ('un chanteur d'élite; so succès n'est pas douteux'), one of the plumbing bass roles in which he would appear regularly over the years to come. A Cardinal Brogni in his very earliest twenties is hard to imagine, but Ghent would note 'malgré sa jeunesse, il a une maturité de talent ..'. I spot him in 1870 in Bruges, in concert, but his most substantial employ came in 1871, when he was hired as 'basse de grand-opéra' at the Théâtre de Gand. Amongst the roles he played there were Bertram in Robert le Diable ('il laisse loin derrière la plupart de ses prédecesseurs'), Brogni in La Juive, Don Pedro in L'Africaine, Marcel in Les Huguenots, Falstaff (!!) in Le Songe d'une nuit d'été, Walter in Guillaume Tell, Raymond in Charles VI, and the basso baddie in Un ballo in maschera. 

In April 1872, he was hired for the Théâtre de la Monnaie, in the same position. Brussels refused, at first, to be impressed by this everywhere-lauded, far-too-young double-basso when he appeared in Tell, but when they heard his Bertram, the critics had to give in.  Charles would stay the season at Brussels, adding to the inevitable Brogni, Bernard, Marcel, Don Pedro ... anything that dove below the stave, such roles as Mephistopheles in Faust, Félix in I Martiri, Kaspar in Der Freischütz, Landgrave Hermann in Tannhäuser. I also see him singing Jerusalem in Bruges. And everytime for wonderful notices for his voice, and increasingly good ones (age oblige!) for his acting.

From Belgium, he went on to d'Herblay at Lyon (Les Huguenots, Gounod's Le Feu de Ciel, Faust 'la voix est véritablement splendide' with Réboux), then to Husson at the Grand Théâtre at Marseille. Mostly the same old roles. But, it was said, that his range rather faded out out at E or F, which limited opportunities. He made a hit at Marseille in the title-role of Rossini's Moïse ('a pu faire valoir tous ces moyens') and took part in one of the theatre's less brilliant premières, Ivan Quatre.

Mabyethology tells us 'he worked 8-10 years in the provinces before...' Well, seven perhaps. But Halanzier of the Opéra heard the noise coming out of Marseille, and, 30 December 1875,  signed up the young basso for three years at the Paris Opéra. He didn't make a mistake. Charles Bérardi would still be singing at the Opéra until not very long before his death. 

His first appearance 17 August 1876 was as a step-in in Charles Menu's role of Mathisen in Le Prophète, and thereafter he repeated his Brogni (official debut), his Bertram, his Marcel, sang the role of Andrea Cornaro in La Reine de Chypre and 7 October 1878 created the part of Félix in Gounod's unsuccessful Polyeucte. He also succeeded Boudouresque as Timour in Le Roi de Lahore.

In 1880 and 1881 he played a season at Monte Carlo (Faust, La Favorita, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Germont in La Traviata, Marullo in Rigoletto, Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, title-role in Don Pasquale etc, after which he spent two seasons at Nantes (Roi de Lahore, Herod in Herodiade). When he appeared at the Château d'Eau in Il Trovatore, however, he played, now, the rôle of Conte di Luna. The former basso profundo had found two and a half extra notes above the stave, lightened off a tad, and from now on he would be a 'baryton'. And, as a baritone, 30 April 1885 he rejoined the troupe at the Paris Opéra. His new debut was in the title-role of Guillaume Tell, and over the years to follow I see him as the Grand Priest in Sigurd, as Jonas, le sonneur in La Patrie, Nelusko in L'Africaine, Henri III in the disastrous La Dame de Montsoreau, the title-role in Henri VIII, Ashton in Lucia di Lammermoor, Amonasro in Aida, Benvenuto in Ascanio, the title-role in Hamlet, Telramund in Lohengrin, Alphonse in La Favorita and swapping his well-known Huguenots Marcel for Nevers or St Bris. I see him last at the Opéra in early 1893 in Rigoletto, no longer playing Marullo but in the title-role, acclaimed as one of his best portrayals

In 1886 he revisited Brussels in his new capacity (Jacques de Molay in Les Templiers, Harald in Gwendoline) in 1887-8 it was the Marseille Grand Théâtre (Hamlet, L'Africaine, Guillaume Tell, Les Pêcheurs de Perle), and finally the Grand Théâtre de Lyon ..

It was in Lyon that he fell prey to the 'bronchite' which, exacerbated by his lifelong diabetes, 6 January 1894, would prove fatal.

In a career, started early, ended early, Charles, whether as a bass or as a baritone had culled, throughout, magnificnt notices for his natural voice -- large, colourful and expansive -- as well as for his technique and, progressively, for his acting ability which expanded and was given fuller play as he moved into his thirties and, above all, when he graduated to such such roles as Rigoletto.

Of Bérardi's personal life, I know little. 'Bérardi' was allegedly a stage name. His real name was said to be Benou. But he staunchly claimed the relationship with Léon and Gaston Bérardi, who equally as staunchly denied it. His father apparently died in 1879. He must have married, for one obituary referred to 'his elder son ... excellent baritone of the Paris Opéra'. Elsewhere, this Victor Bérardi is referred to as a brother, and his credits are of a lesser order... Rennes, Avignon ... He made his loudest mark whe he sued the singer Muratore for payment for lessons. Alas, by the time judgement was given, Victor was dead. Whoever he was.

Charles's personal life clearly needs a bit of investigation, but his professional life is clear and grand enough, and certainly deserves to be a bit more accurately recorded. I'll have a search for those missing early engagements ..

A Wheeling, Va prima donna given her due ...

 

The name of 'Kate Rolla' doesn't mean much these days. In fact, the one engagement for which she is remembered is one in which she had to be replaced. Mr D'Oyly Carte had made his umpteenth mistake in casting an American beauty soprano at the Savoy ...

But Kate had had some good years, in Europe and in opera, before that bit of miscasting as the heroine of Mirette, and the Rita of The Chieftain ...

Here's her story.

ROLLA, Kate [née WHEAT, Katherine Doane] (b Wheeling, Va 16 June 1859; d Ave de la Motte Piquet, Paris 28 December 1925)

It was once said of the actor Hoskins that ‘the best part of his acting was his looks’. It could be said of many more performers today. I think that it might have been at least partly the case with ‘Kate Rolla’. Her decolletée was lower than her notes were high.

 

‘La très belle Kate’ was born into a rich and well-established Virginian family, whose ins and outs are chronicled in books on Important Virginians. Her father was George Keiter Wheat (d 27 June 1913), her mother Fannie Josephine née Doane, and, when applying for a passport, she said she was born variously in 1861 and 1863. Unfortunately for that calculation, the 1870 census shows her as 11 years old, so, shall we say 1859?

 

Of her early life, we know that she took music lessons from a Mrs Golding, married a gentleman named Oscar Rammelsberg (b Cincinnati 3 January 1853), spent the winter of 1878 in the Grand Hotel and the summer at Swampscott, had a son George Frederick (27 March 1879) and, at some stage, set off for France. Whether she is the Madame Rolla who played a small part in Belle Lurette in 1880, I doubt. No, she can’t be, because there she is in June 1880 singing ‘O Know That my Redeemer Liveth’ in church in Wheeling (‘formerly a member of the choir’). The Ohio press says she arrived in Paris in July 1882, is studying with Marchese (sic) but Mrs Oscar Rammelsberg is reported, in 1883, to have ‘lost her voice’. However, she’s back in Cincinnati at the end of the year, staying with her parents, and delivering bits of Aida and La Sonnambula in a private recital. Soon, the report comes ‘Mrs Oscar Rammelsberg of Wheeling Va, twenty-one years of age (sic), has made an impression on local critics by her vocal powers, and in order to begin her career on the stage in proper form she has applied for a divorce from her husband. She charges him with being a professional drunkard’. One part of her life was over, the next was about to begin.

 

1 January 1885, Kate Rolla made her first appearance on the stage. It was at the Carcano Theatre, in Milan, and the opera was Linda di Chamonix. The New York Times reported ‘Miss Kate Rolla, an American young lady, made her debut at the Teatro Carcano this evening in Linda, and achieved a great success. She was recalled four times, and was encored in the second act’. The German press copied the same item: ‘Eine junge Amerikanerin, Frau Kate Rolla, hat im Carcano Theater als Linda glänzend debutirt. Schönheit der Erscheinung, prachtvolle Stimme und gute Schule bewirkten gemeinschaftlich den Erfolg’. The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo got it a bit wrong. They had her doing Lucia and identified her as Mrs Kate Wheat of Rammelsberg, Va. Wheeling clipped a huge piece from the Morning News sent by an unidentified lady from Paris (mother?), which was probably the original text which was, thereafter, copied.

I spot her later singing in Il Guarany in Aquila and Linda in Moscow, and the American press also reports her in Florence, while a letter from her mother places her Palermo in May (Norma) with a coming engagement in Fabrisco. I pick her up at the Teatro Bellini (Lucia di Lammermoor) in Naples, and at the Teatro Rossini in Venice (Rigoletto), but there seem to have been problems elsewhere. She was forced to leave Russia (Micaela in Carmen) because of the climate, she had a nervous breakdown at the Apollo in Rome … and in July 1887 she was back in Wheeling. After a concert (‘The house was packed from top to bottom with a crowd eager to hear their townswoman. Echoes of her foreign triumphs had reached them. When Mme Rolla appeared she received such a reception as has never been ...’). She sailed out 16 September, with the Mapleson troupe (which makes nonsense of the subsequent tale that the impresario hired her on the dock at Dublin) to Britain and, apparently, opened 10 October in Dublin singing Micaela to the Carmen of Minnie Hauck. Colonel Mapleson records in his memoirs that she had ‘a great success’. ‘She was very warmly applauded by the audience, especially for the song in the cave scene’. I see ‘Madame Caterina Rolla’ ‘sang and acted admirably’ as Elvira in Ernani, played Violetta in La Traviata, Donna Elvira to the Zerlina of Miss Hauck/Mme Sinico, and second lady in a very American production of Il Flauto magico, alongside Marie Decca, Louise Dotti and Minnie Hauck. Her reviews were good to fine, and as the short tour continued, she also sang Marguerite in Faust alongside Petrovich and Abramoff. 

 Apparently, she next went then, again, in spite of the climate, to Russia. She returned to the British stage, as ‘from St Petersburg’, under odd circumstances. Margaret McIntyre of Augustus Harris’s Covent Garden company went ill on Don Giovanni night and Kate stepped in and ‘a joué au pied levé donna Elvira de Don Juan, avec un talent qui a surpris les plus difficiles, y compris M A Harris, dont elle a sauvé la recette en lui permettant de ne pas faire relâche’.

 

On 3 June she was brought out as Amelia in Un ballo in maschera with Arnoldson, de Reszke and Lassalle, with fair result: ‘an intelligent style of acting and a voice very sympathetic in the middle register though a trifle shrill in the upper notes’. G B Shaw, on another occasion, would say the same thing in his personal way: ‘As to Miss Kate Rolla, who also sang, she has two accomplishments: she can sing very well; and she can scream like a steam siren. When she screams she pleases herself: when she sings she pleases me’. But she was judged a success and when Augustus Harris’s Provincial Opera Company performed Carmen at Crystal Palace 6 October 1888, Carmen was played not by Trebelli but by Kate Rolla!

On tour, she appeared as the Countess Almaviva to the Susanna of Ella Russell, when Don Giovanni was given she stepped up to play Donna Anna (‘most admirable’), gave her Elvira in Ernani (‘exceptionally artistic singing’) and shared Valentine in Huguenots (‘exceptionally good’) with Miss McIntyre. She also took on Leonora in Il Trovatore while Miss Russell played Aida.

 

In between, on 9 July 1888, ‘Ketti Rolla’ appeared in concert in Moscow.

 

At the end of the season the printer’s ink flowed: ‘Kate Rolla has been re-engaged for the Augustus Harris opera for the next three years. Mlle Rolla is now at Enghien, and will probably appear at the Paris Grand Opera this year. Her progress has been very rapid…’. ‘Mr Mapleson has brought out four exceedingly promising vocalists [this season]: Madame Melba, Mdlle de Lussan, Madame Rolla and Miss McIntyre ..’.

 

Mme Rolla was, logically enough, announced for the next Covent Garden season but she didn’t appear. She had reached the most solid position of her career … what happened? Well, one thing that happened in 1889 was the death of her (divorced?) husband. Was that it? But the Wheeling press said nothing. I see her singing Il Trovatore, Rigoletto and Un ballo in maschera with Ravelli and d’Andrade at the Italian opera at Kroll’s Theater Berlin, in April-May 1889 (‘eine dramatische Sängerin von enormer Kraft und gute Schule’)? But, after that? Had she gone off to Russia or somewhere else outside my radar? Or had she had vocal problems again … she would never again have it so good. She was far from finished, but she would never have it so good.

 Mme Rolla comes back into view in early 1891, in England. First at Liverpool in concert, then with Jean Gérardy (‘failed to impress her audience’) and finally back at Covent Garden. She sang Berthe in Le Prophète (‘fairly successful’, ‘sang agreeably’), Carmen and once more as Donna Elvira. The unpredictable G B Shaw decided ‘[the] B flat at the end of her aria was perhaps the most excusable of all the inexcusable interpolations’ but that she was ‘as good as gold’ and the best Elvira since di Murska. Di Murska? Others were more reserved.

 

The following year, she was back in America singing in concert in her ‘dramatic soprano of penetrating quality’ (‘Suicidio’, ‘Still wie die Nacht’, ‘Last Rose of Summer’), at the Chickering Hall, the Casino Theatre concerts alongside Marie Tempest and Hayden Coffin, at various ladies’ clubs, and then came the old call again. This time from the Metropolitan Opera House. Lilian Nordica was ‘off’ would Kate come and sing Donna Elvira alongside Fursch-Madi and Arnoldson. 

Emma Fursch Madi

 ‘Mme Kate Rolla was called upon at extremely short notice to sing Donna Elvira. It was stated semi-officially in the corridors of the Opera House that she had had no rehearsal and that she had not sung the part for three years. It would have been difficult, if this statement had not been made, to believe that she had sung the part for five years. Her performance was of that mediocre kind which is proverbially intolerable to both gods and men. The quality of her voice was not pleasant, and her vocalization was generally angular’. One paper referred to her ‘obvious flare (sic) for publicity’ and it seemingly came once more to her aid when she was improbably cast to play a revised version of Mirette at London’s Savoy Theatre (13 October 1894), followed by the planned revival of The Contrabandista. She didn’t get bad reviews, but neither was she enthused over, and she was soon replaced. Florence St John played Mirette and Rita. Mme Rolla went home.

 

I spot her in the occasional concert, singing for the Elks, and for women’s clubs, and then out of the blue, in 1907, I see her singing La Forza del Destino in Catania! But not long after she is using that gift for publicity telling the press how ‘I have lost my voice … so I said to Lilian [Nordica] do I teach or go into comedy? And she said, by all means…’ . ‘I am positively the only grand opera star who has ever gone into comedy’. And she went on tour as the duenna in The Girl from Rector’s with Grace La Rue and John E Sullivan.

She also appeared in The Return of Eve (1909) and Molly May (1910), but soon devoted herself, rather, to teaching and to high-socialising. For a while, she relocated to Paris, but the war found her back in America. However, it was in Paris where she was to die, in 1925, after an appendicitis leading to peritonitis.

The Paris press wrote: ‘Mme Kate Rolla, du Metropolitan Opéra de New-York, vient de mourir’. Owch.

 

A strangely off-and-on career … but plenty of it.

Mistress Minnie de Gerolstein Victorious!

 

I'm watching you.

If you make one move to attack, I shall tear you to bits

Grrrrrrrrrooooooowllllll ...!

I won. You going to move again?

You did! You did! 

Round two when I've recovered

Ordinary people lead ordinary lives ... and get photographed

A little wander this morning into the world's abandoned photos. Just a little one, before I turn my attention to things theatrical .. three photos .. and see if, just for once, I can pick a trio with no attachment to the Indian army, Debrett, country mansions .... just three nice young people ... two from London, and one from Shaw, in Lancashire ...

Let's start with the lady. 

Well! Couldn't make it easier than that! And here she is. Her eighteenth birthday photograph.

Matilda was born in Hackney, 16 February 1866, the daughter of Robert Nixon, a leather-merchant from Haltwhistle in Northumberland and his wife Matilda née Howard, from Guildford. She was the first child of five -- Kate Howard (d 19 April 1842, Mrs F A East), Herbert Liddell, [Emma] Blanche (1871-1955), George Percy (b 15 August 1872) -- and the family shows up, living in Hackney's Lavender Grove in 1871 and Christie St in 1881.

Matilda was married in 1890 (1 November). Her husband, Samuel Sheppard, was in the fish business. Not catching it, but seemingly doing the book work connected with it after it had been caught. In 1891, the young couple can be seen sharing a home with the newly-widowed Mrs Nixon, and sisters Kate and Emma. Herbert had died in 1888, and George had scarpered to Oklahoma. When he enlisted in the Great War he chopped a couple of years off his age, said he was a tractor driver for Mrs Bixby Bryant in California, and gave unmarried sister Blanche as his next of kin. I see him in 1940, still single, now a carpenter, in Maryville, Cal ... he died 30 December 1940.

Back in Hackney, Sam continued his career in fish, and Matilda produced children: Douglas Samuel (1891-1915), Kathleen Florence (1892), Percy Howard (b Hackney 2 February 1897). They lost Douglas, I have lost Kate, and the couple can be seen, 'retired fish salesman', living in Romford in 1939. Percy is up in Skipton, York, as a police constable.

Sam died at 16 Station Road, Romford 1 June 1949 (probate: L752 18s 9d). Matilda ka Florence was buried 30 June 1954 at Havering. Blanche died in 1955.

Well, I wanted 'ordinary' and that's what I got. Still a few "I wonder"s in there. Why did teenaged George rush off to America? What happened to young Douglas? Ah well. I wonder who sold this photo. It seems to be a single...

On to the next. Smart looking wee chappie from Lancashire. Granddad Taylor, born 17.3.1872 says the verso. Then a 'Dennis' is added. Yep. All good.

Dennis Taylor, born Rochdale. Son of Daniel Taylor, cotton weaver/loom jobber/etc (d 1909) and his wife Alice née Mills. Mills by name and by trade: the whole family was -- like so many folk in the area -- involved in spinning, weaving and associated trades. Daniel and Alice (m 11 February 1861) had a daughter, Elizabeth Ann, lost a little Frank, and then nine years later, another son: our 'Grandfather Dennis'. And guess, what here the four of them are!

Well, father, mother and Elizabeth all stuck with stuff. Elizabeth married a fustian cutter, from Shaw, by name John William Smith and had Wilfred, Arnold, Eveline (1879-1970) and Clifford (1902-1923), all of whom, again, seem to have followed their parents profession. But Dennis got out.

In the 1901 census, he has become a (married) tobacconist, by 1911 he is a greengrocer in Glodwick Rd, Oldham .. His wife was Sarah Alice Sutcliffe, their children Alfred, Hilda, Norman and Dora. How am I going to track them? Which of the four was the parent of whoever wrote 'grandfather' on these cards. Since that person wrote 'Grandfather Taylor', I have a suspicion it may be a child of Hilda or Dora. Did they marry?

First clue. Family grave in the cemetery at Crompton on a plot bought by Daniel at the death of his Alice ..

In that plot are interred Daniel and Alice, Dennis (1936) and Sarah Alice (1964) and Hilda Entwistle (1984). I hope the grave is well-tended. Who lives round Crompton?

So Hilda Taylor (b 17 August 1899; d 22 May 1984) married Alfred L Entwistle in 1942 ... children? They would be my age. Oh dear, a good reason for a clean-out ... or ....

And lastly, O J Bowles 1866. Yes, a bit earlier than the other two. He looks like a wee laddie in his first suit. Going for his first day at work as a clerk in some sort of an office. Well, he was actually a whole twenty years old.

Octavius John Bowles was born in Holborn on 15 October 1846, the son of stationer James Bowles 'of High Holborn' (1801-1849) and his wife Caroline née Cox (1807-1884) who had been wed in 1825 (28 December), at which time father was just a 'vellum binder of Boswell Court'. By about child number six he was 'bookbinder of Seymour Street'. But through the 1840s he was 'Stationer of High Holborn'.

Occy was indeed an eighth son. However, Caroline's practically-permanent pregnant married life of 24 years, before not she, but her undoubtedly exhausted husband sank under the weight at 49 years of age, included 3 Carolines and two Alfreds ... in the 1841 census they have only Elizabeth (12), Henry (4) and Alfred (0) at home ..

James 6 November 1826; Elizabeth 15 January 1829; Charles 19 December 1831; Caroline 30 July 1832; Caroline 13 February 1835; Henry 4 December 1836; Ellen 25 March 1839; Alfred 27 March 1841; William 2 October 1842; Frederick 1 January 1844; Alfred 3 July 1845; Caroline Sarah 19 October 1848; Thomas James 26 November 1849 ... yes, father was working at it till his last gasp. And I'm sure I've missed some.

Anyway, Caroline took over the business at her husband's death, and we see her at 188 High Holborn in 1851 with Elizabeth and Charles helping in the business, plus Henry, William, Frederick, Occy, Caroline and Thomas. Thomas would die that same year. Productivity was evidently not equal to edurance in the Bowles family. Oh! James is next door with wife and just-born son. So that makes nine survivors.

So, Occy? Well, I guess that was his shopman's gear. For he remained 'a man in a stationer's shop' his whole life of 62 years. Yes, he married. Mary Myra. Yes, they had children. Albert John (20 January 1876), Horace Willian Charles (14 March 1877), Beatrice Caroline Mary (Mrs Sanders, 18 May 1878), Reginald Sharp (11 September 1881; d 6 June 1952) and Harold Sydney (21 May 1891; d 1961). And those children bred (it was a family trait, evidently) .... so I can't guess whether it was Hilda or Olive Sanders, or one of those Bowleses who dumped grandpa's picture on e-bay ...

Bit cruel

I am awfully tempted to chase up some of those other Bowles, but there must be millions of descendants out there ...

5.30pm. End of working day. Muggy eveninng. Iced rosé in order .... and tomorrow is Monday when I am going to see my wee trotting filly do her stuff .. and less happily, face up to the unsympathetic Australian tax department. Rosé, definitely!

Hey! I got my three 'ordinary people'!!!!!

Two Belles of the Parisian theatre ... and nightlife?

They keep on arriving on my desk. So I guess the only way to get them off is to see who they are ...

ALICE ROGER.  Hmmm. A modest career in the theatre, followed by a longer one in the caf' conc', until, apparently, she ceased to please her audience ...

Théâtre Déjazet 1862 ... 'congratulation to M Déjazet to have retained Mlle A Roger who is a charming woman and a hard-working member of the company'. 

1863 Théâtre des Champs Elysées Un amour de garçon, Genufa in Marius Boullard's Nédel

1864 Le Vengeance de Pistache, Deux permissions de dix heures

1865 Trouville Le Duel aux mauviettes

1866 Déjazet Maigriotte in Nos bonnes villegoises, Lili/3eme canard in L'Évênement

1868  "Plusieurs débuts ont eu lieu aussi : Mlle Alice Roger, une charmante dugazon, qui a longtemps fait partie de la troupe du théâtre Déjazet, a été très-remarquée...' The début was at tha Alcazar d'été. She sang 'Le Postillon', 'La Marchande d'éventails' and 'Le Panier à salades' and the critic noted 'elle chante fort bien'. 

1869 Concert des Familles. 'J'en suis pour mes frais', 'J'ose pas', 'La Rigolade', 'Tout ça, c'est à moi'' 'Allons y donc', 'La fiancée de Brikmoi', 'Au Bal'

1873 Alcazar d'été 'gracieuse et spirituelle'

1874 Concert de la Pépinière

1875 Alcazar d'Été

1876 Alcazar 'Madame Jacasse', 'La gardeuse d'oies', 'Bavardages', 'Bildard', 'L'amour a coup de poings'

What about MARIE FILLION? Daughter of actor (Odéon, Gaîté), and later manager of the theatre at Roquefort, Eugène Fillion (d 1878)

Marie started in the theatre as a small child, appearing with her father during the 1840s. I see her in the mid-1850s playing at Dijon before she was engaged at the Déjazet. She played ('joli voix') the title-rôle in the opérette Le Diable Rose, and was featured in a quadruple part in La Famille Robinet without wholly satsfying ('une petit mine charmate a la ville, mais à la scène elle n'a pas de voix, prononce mal et ne chante pas juste'. elle mimât mieux qu'elle chante'). Others were kinder ('ue bonne volonté mais insuffisament de moyens'), and she was voted 'gracieuse et charmante' in the revue Doigt dans l'oeil. I spot her at the Châtelet in 1865, the Folies-Dramatiques -- where it was noted that she had put on weight, but was still a 'boulotte appétisante' -- in 1866, and at the Bouffes-Parisiens in 1867-8 (La Veuve Beaugency, Le Cousin Montagnac) after which, it is said, she and Léonide Leblanc were engaged for Constantinople.

In the seventies, I spy her at Bordeaux, Saint-Étienne, Pau et al, but also in a journalist's list of 'poules' 'coquettes au ramage affriolant' headed by the well-know courtesans Schneider and Silly. Ah, well, that explains a lot ... as does this less modest photo

The Clock Shop: Marble and Chip

 .

Today's e-baysical treasure. From the stock of the Heffner Trading Co, Pennsylvania.

New York, 1915.

John L Golden will present two new sketches The Clock Shop and The River of Souls at the Lambs' Gambol June 4 and 5.

And he did, with considerable success. Which was scarcely surprising as the cast for the occasion included such well-known played as Clifton Crawford (the Clockmaker), Pat Rooney (the Cuckoo Clock), Frank Moulan (the False Alarm Clock) and Frederick Stanley and Ernest Truex as the little Dutch Clocks, Hans and Gretchen.

Morris Gest promptly bought the rights to the sketch, but before he got it on to the stage he had ceded his interest to the popular vaudeville duo, Mary Marble and Sam Chip, purveyors of 'Dutch' sketches to the world of variety (In Old Edam, In the Land of the Dykes) 

I would imagine that this picture shows them as the little Dutch clocks

although the piece apparently developed and slimmed over the two years that they played it:

Alas, Sam died in Rochester 'from a heart attack following acute indigestion' on 11 April 1917. The newspapers noted that he was 40 years old and had been 25 years on the stage. During the last 18 he had been teamed with Miss Marble. They also noted that his real name was Samuel Kornblum.

Mary carried on. She survived an on-stage broken leg, bankruptcy through a venture into the restaurant business ... and seems ultimately to have given up the halls in the early 20s.

Mary Emma Marble Dunne was born in Chicago 28 March 1873 (Who's Who chops 3 years off) into a theatre family. Her father was Dan[ford] Marble (d 4 December 1900) her mother Matilda née Le Page. Father was a post office worker, but the Marble family were involved widely in the theatre, and, well, this is what WWITT says about Emma ('Mary'):

She went directly from the convent to the stage, making her first appearance in Boone, Iowa, in a play called "Inshavogue" under the management of William Marble. She made her first marked success as Dimples, with Eddie Foy, in "Off the Earth," and she afterward appeared as the Orphan in Hoyt's "A Milk White Flag,"Jane in "Babes In Toyland," and Phyllis in "Wonderland." The season of 1907-8 Miss Marble starred in Joe Weber's production,"Dream City," under the management of her husband, John Dunne, to whom she was married in 1898. For four years she was featured with the Bijou Musical Comedy Company, a well-known stock organization, touring the South. 

Well, they left out the 'tiny comedienne's' starring tour in Nancy Brown, her stint in Tuxedo ... William Marble was Mary's uncle. But, um...   what about her youthful (15 September 1892) Iowa marriage to actor Willis G Oglesby alias Willis Marble?

John Wallis Dunne (b Onondaga 27 October 1852; d San Francisco 9 November 1932) was a busy actor and producer who had previously been married to the ill-fated performer 'Patti Rosa' (eig Jessie Buckingham 1858-1894). 

Patti Rosa

The couple were apparently wed in Octoberish 1898. Dunne's newsworthy career would fill a volume. Suffice it here that he became the husband of our girl.

I see her in the 1930 census, aged 57, father born Connecticut, mother French Canadian, married 19 years, living/staying with her aged aunt Emma Marble in Manhattan. Dunne is in California with his family.

Mary died 5 February 1965. 

Now wait a moment ... 14 June 1918 ...

Do I scent bigamy? Or ... oh! These theatricals! Have I lost a Marble? There were rather a lot of them ... see this obit of Mary's father from 1900

Dan jr (1879-1929) married performer 'Marie Fanchonetti' .. and ah! 1900 census: there are William and Ellen rooming back in Chicago, with son Willis G actor, 27 'single'. Well, that marriage didn't last long! 

Serenade of a Soviet Girl to her Tractor: Musical Theatre in Communist Europe

Yesterday, a surprising book arrived on my desk. POPULAR MUSIC THEATRE UNDER SOCIALISM. 

I guessed straight away that we weren’t talking about Lloyd George and Harold Wilson, and, sure enough, there is a subtitle inside: ‘operettas and musicals in the Eastern European states 1945 to 1990’. So 'socialism' is a euphemism for the nowadays discredited 'communism'? 

The book runs to 235 pages! Articles by a baker’s dozen of 'scholars'! But surely, behind the iron curtain, they ‘did nothing for years’? Except by compunction? Have I missed something? Sure, I know about Russia’s Dunaievsky and East Germany’s Natschinsky, whom I included in my Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre, I have played through some Commoperette numbers, which I discovered in Hungary … but that is and was just about it.

Truthfully, I had a limited interest in musical-theatre of an apparently limited quality, written as propaganda to prop up a political régime. And, anyway, what was born behind the iron curtain almost wholly stayed behind the iron curtain, so we westerners really didn’t get a chance to see and hear it. Our conception of the communist stage resumed into something like Peter Sellers’s The Seven Brave Tractor Drivers and the ‘Soviet Girl’s Serenade to her Tractor’.  Preconceptions put on hold, I started to read. And was pulled up very short. The book is written in English. A sort of English. The sort of English that sounds as if it came from Googletranslate. Why? The authors, in varying degrees, seem to be not native English speakers, and the text comes over, in varying degrees, as stilted, awkward and just plain unreadable. In the first few lines of the introduction, ‘period’ is misspelled, ‘scientific’ is used a non-English manner, and horror! there is that word ‘methodology’ which was invented by University-sponsored folk to prove that they were ‘above’ using normal everyday English. 

I had a cup of tea and determined to continue. When I got to a stodgy bit, a bit that was just too impenetrable, I skipped. It was damned hard work! But it was worth it, because inside the stodgy, ill-baked cake, there were and are some real plums. A heap of laughs (the seven brave tractor-drivers aren’t nearly as hilarious as the real thing!), and a truly gruesome horror-story of art and entertainment perverted by a government to its own ends. And so, so, clumsily! At one stage, we are told five pieces from the debauched west were declared ‘OK’ for the de-eroticized Commoperette stage. They included La Mascotte and Giroflé-Giroflà, two of the most sex-based libretti in the French repertoire! With a king, a prince, a princess … well, I guess they were de-royalised as they crossed the border.

I found the most interesting sections – and the most approachable – of the work to be those which related to things I did know something about.

The amazing stories of the vast rewrites made to what had been the classic Die Csárdásfürstin and La Grande-Duchesse to render them prosetylising pap to feed the People left me aghast. Yes, I knew this kind of disembowelling happened, but when you are given details of just how drastic the disembowelling was …! And the results …

Then, Hungary. If I know little about Russia, Roumania, Czechoslovakia and Poland, I do know something about Hungary. Yes, Gänzl was originally Gánsl. Fortunately the family was well out of Móor before the second war (they had spent the first in Székesfehérvár). And then, Hungary had been, for pre-communist decades, the source of much of the greatest Operette music of all time, and the birthplace of so many great theatre musicians. And from there, it tumbled down to churning out dollops of didactic pieces … the equivalent, to me, of today’s bloated television commercials, for various shades of political opinion. The commercials are probably less distasteful: at least there are various shades, not a state-imposed single one. 'Social realism' they called it, 'realism', oh dear, they had to be joking. But they fooled a lot of the people a lot of the time.

'Every piece of art has the purpose of morally changing people in the spirit of socialism'. Frightening, isn’t it. Big brother. 'You stupid People, we have ways of making you change your ways to our ways …'

West Side Story is described as 'an effete product of the West and sensationalist American consumer goods',  and so it goes on.

The last word comes from the editor of the volume. The attempt to force art into an uncomfortable alliance with the Communist dictatorship failed ..

'Comecon dissolved, the economic infrastructures, also in theatre life, collapsed, the formerly state-owned publishing houses were privatized, new contracts had to be concluded with the authors of the stage works all over, and the previously comparatively inexpensive works from Eastern Europe had to be paid for on terms similar to those of the Western titles. The international nature of the repertoire collapsed as well. The theatres sought to assimilate very quickly to the conditions in Western Germany. The development of theory also came to an abrupt end. Since then, new musicals from Eastern Europe have become an exception on the German stages'.

I have learned about a whole slice of musical-theatre history from these 235pp. I would have learned more pleasantly, had the book been proffered in more enjoyable and accessible English. Or in French. Or even in German. I have fine dictionary for the big words, although maybe not the University-speak which, happily, cools down in the better articles.

The question is, of course, is it a slice of musical-theatre history that is worth such labours as these scholars have devoted to it? Well, yes. Once. For the facts, which are always good to know. And for the tales of the ‘adaptation’ techniques of the Communist regime. But I’m afraid those iron-curtained-off years produced nothing in the way of musical theatre that would enthuse the world in general. They really did do ‘nothing for years’ behind that curtain, except provide ephemeral panem et circenses for a captive audience.

Some earlier examples of Russian Hollywood clones can be seen at 7https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_3q68Pjd_c&list=PLSNy-__-xf1n0M4EHS9kroOK-kH7XMCqV&index=7