Braatzed off. Two days work and no cigar!

 

There have been some pretty, leggy ladies hanging around my desktop these last weeks, and I thought they had better have their moment ... so let me introduce you (and me) to Miss Zélia Lagarde 

 'of the Folies-Marigny and the Théatre des Variétés', so 'tis said. 'pupil of Boudeville'. Boudeville? 'Mieux que personne, M Boudeville pourrait écrire l'histoire des petits dames du théâtre, car c'est à lui que s'adressent toutes les cocottes qui veulent monter sur les planches..'

Well, (a) I don't know whether Mons Boudeville existed or if he's just a type ... PS he was real!  (b) I don't see Zélia anywhere but at the Folies-Dramatiques in 1868, as one of the decorative pageboys in Chilpéric, and playing 'une cuisinière in the accompanying playlet. And then she was gone: direction Buenos Aires ... from where she never returned, I imagine.

Rather more durable and, clearly, more talented was the lady known as Alice DE RIZZA. Rather an unprepossessing nom de bataille, but maybe it was real. 

Alice was said to have been a pupil of Révial (at the Conservatoire?) and 'finished by Lamperti'.  She appeared in concert at the Salle Herz, then apparently tootled off to see Cuba and America. I find no trace, but a lot of gels went that way.  On her return, in 1871, she was hired for the Folies-Dramatiques, where she appeared in the prize role of Méphisto in Le Petit Faust, as Fiorella in Les Brigands, Pandore in La Boîte à Pandore .. to pleased notices. Thereafter I see her at Rouen (Césarine in Fleur de Thé, Zanetta in La Princesse de Trébizonde 'voix si expressive, bien vibrante et métallique et séduisante') before she was contracted for St Petersburg (Petit Faust, Boîte de Lait, Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde etc). In 1874 I see her in Brussels (Rothomago), in 1875 playing Albert in Les Pillules de diable at the Châtelet ..

Thereafter, I see her only in the odd concert and her name (there can't have been two thus named!) as lyricist on several published ballads. But she resurfaces in the 1900s, giving declamation and singing lessons from various Paris addresses .. and there I leave her. 

This, however, was the photo which grabbed me.  What a stunning woman!

Who was Emmy Braatz?

Well, I've spent the best part of two days trying to track her details.  Maddening that the back of the photo has been destroyed.  And no date. There is absolutely no problem with identifying her as one of the Braatz family of gymnasts, jugglers and show folks ..  but I challenge ANYONE to put together a family tree for these Braatzes.  Usual showbiz reasons. Some of the boy and girls who appeared with the Braatz entertainment (up to 7 men, 3 girls) probably weren't kosher Braatzes at all. And some of them who may have been, operated under a variety of names ...

Here is my first Braatz: Clara dite Mlle Euphrosine (Frau Ernst Rost, 1844-1871) first spotted (by me) as Euphrosina the 'Königin der Ascension' in 1862. 'seiltänzerin'. Tightrope artist. Estimated to be as good as Marguerite Saqui ... 1868 in Pest ..

She seems to have changed wire names at leisure. But she is out of the picture in August 1871. She fell from her  wire 'forty feet above the ground' in a performance in Arad and died from her injuries. Aged 27.

On her marriage certificate, she confided that her father was named Fritz.

So who are all the others? In 1868 there is Anna Braatz 'well-known in Vienna' wirwewalking in Pest. In the 1870 topbilled at the Orpheum there are 'the sisters Emmy and Anna' juggling. Also billed" 'The Braatz family'. Anna also does wirewalking. They are said to have played 180 nights in Hamburg. They vasried their acts, and came together in a piece  called 'Die 7 Athleten der Zukunft', while the 'brothers Paul and Gustav Braatz performed on the Strabaten-Schwung trapez, and Paul gave the 'gefahrvolle Stuhlpiramide'. Then we have Paul and Otto Braatz doing 'Die beiden Violonisten an der persiche Stange' and an 'entrée comique de deux clowns' while ther two girls continue, each, their specialities. They were retained for the next seaspn when Emmy introduced an act with a bicycle on the highwire. And they advertise a company of fourteen! Gustav and  joined Emmy in their großartige Velocipedefahrt 40 feet above the ground ..

They moved on to the Neue Welt in Pest - Emma, Anna, Otto, Paul, Gustav, Richard, Daniel, Alexander ...  were they really all Braatzes? Brothers? Sisters? Related to 'Euphrosine'-Clara or not ...? Children of Fritz, or grandchildren, or not ...

Is it a coincidence that after 1871, and Euphrosine's death, we don't see Anna anymore. I think I have the occasional glimpse of Emmy ...  Paul? The nebulous Daniel and Richard ?

I have found a crinkled photo of ?Emmy said to be taken in Odessa in 1874 ...

There are Alexander and Otto in 1878 doing a Violonduett auf dem musikalische Bambusohr ... whatever that is ...

1883, Gustav (A Gustav anyhow) is doing a gymnastic act with the sisters Alice and Wally ....

Well, there is so little proof of who is who that I decided maybe I should work backwards and maybe that way I would get the family sorted.

OK. This looks promising: Alexander Braatz of Oranienburg nr Berlin patents, in 1902, a property horse for stage purposes ..

Alexander Braatz marries Gisela Antonia Broz (Brosch) in London. Just in time. Gisela was a successful performer. 

Alexander Braatz (wife Gisela) born Berlin 29 May 1864 'artist' takes out American passport. Oh dear, he's 5ft 5ins tall. Children: Alice Gisela (b London 5 September 1888) and Walter (b 10 March 1891). Both became performers.

Alexander and Otto and Frau Elise Braatz 1878

1908 'Alice Dianda' daughter of Alexander and Gisela marries writer Hermann Frey ...

Gisela

How about Otto Alfred Friedrich Braatz born Berlin 30 July 1866 died 30 July 1945. Wife (1) Mathilde Rauch (9 October 1888), Children Nellie Franziska Elvira (7 December 1888) and Werra (29 January 1897) both performers for a time.

And his ?brother Fritz [J G O doubtless for Otto) (b 1 May 1865 Berlin), acrobat, 5ft 8, son of Friedrich Otto Braatz and Anna Johanna Pauline Steinhard. A sister Ella Ottilie Amalia Marie Braatz ...  oyoy there's an Ella coming up  'equilibrist and gymnast' in 1888? Oh. ... Fritz married (19 November 1888) Clara E E Neumann dite Newman .. 

Accompanied ?niece Selma, famous juggler, to Australia in 1913 ... Clara had been a solo dancer in the Kiraly Brothers' revival of Mazulm, the Night Owl, for which 'the Brothers Braatz' were imported from Europe. So Fritz, referred to in 1915 as a crippled acrobat was clearly one of the 'Brothers'.

I don't know how many Braatz Brothers there were in the Kiralfy act. Fritz and Alexander. Maybe only the two. They were doing a hand to hand spesh. Or head to head. Certainly there weren't the seven of the previous decade.

The group was apparently known as the Barra troupe latterly, and Otto was in charge.

Another who has to be accounted for is Elizabeth Braatz. She was doing a pedestal contortion act in 1872. And there's another ?Elizabeth in 1883 doing an act with Marguerite on the high wire.

Well, Marguerite (b 16 February 1856; d 8 November 1941) was kind enough to go on for a long time and to die unwed. The Elizabeth was her younger sister ka Lizzie. There was a brother, George, as well, who became an acrobat ... and they are all recorded in the American censi. 

Well, more or less. George was born 8 June 1873, and died NYC 29 January 1950. He was one of the ten children of Marie née Steinhard(t) (b January 1833; d 1915?) and her husband Friedrich, Frederick or Ferdinand. Steinhardt? Oh-oh. We've already bumped into that name with Fritz. Fritz = Fred??? But his mother was Anna Johanna. Sigh.

Marie, Marguerite, Lizzie and George can be seen at 23 7th Street for many years .... 

Elizabeth became the wife of Augustus Schumann, acrobat ('Gus Alteno') and lived to 22 November 1946. There was no 'Braatz brothers' nowadays for George to join, so he became one of the so-called Everett Brothers. George Frederick Braatz died, unmarried, in New York.

The most famous of the latter day Braatzes was undoubtedly Selma. Selma is a kind of a mystery. She has been written about a lot by juggling enthuiasts, and generally described as [one of] 'the greatest female jugglers of her lifetime', performing tricks said to be only to be done by males. Her acts are described in detail in 20th century papers and books. Exaggerated? Well, Anna Braatz had been going the juggling-torches act over thirty years before her ?great niece. 

So, I won't linger in detail over what she did, I'm trying to work out who she WAS.  Maybe a by blow? She got the most coverage of her private life when she visited Australia, in 1913-4, allegedly still in her twenties. Even Australia's journalists didn't get birth details. Fritz and Clara were said to be her uncle and aunt. Her birthdate given as 1885. Oh, wait Fritz and Clara weren't wed till 1888, so she couldn't be theirs. But I do wonder why she is listed on an early shiplist as Selma Neumann ...

'Father was one of Bros Braatz'. No one says which one. 'She was trained by her aunts, Clara and Welda ...'.  Who is Welda?  Is she the Mrs Welda Ida Braatz who wed (2) Rudolf Ernest Otto Müller ...  or is the the 'Wally' maybe Braatz at the Tivoli Copenhagen in the 1880s? Or Wally Valeska Alice ...

So nodody can yet divulge Selma's parentage, nor yet her date and place of birth. 

Selma had a long career, always much praised. But she died in 1975 and was buried in an unmarked grave ...

The Braatzes lingered in show business. After Frau Elise there was Madame Braatz's trained horses. Herr(en) Braatz's performing dogs. Alice Dianda's brother Walter (b 10 March 1901; d Bronx 28 March 1983) worked on, wed, had a daughter, Rita who preferred the schreibmaschine to the high wire. 

Two days I've ligered in the cirus ring and on the high wire ... I've come up with quite a few bits of the jigsaw, and I've managed to put quite a few of them together ... but the puzzle is still incomplete. But that's showbiz. And circus is showbizziest showbiz there is. And if (IF) I have identified the original photo correctly, I still don't truthfully know ... who was ELLY BRAATZ?

A STRAIGHT TIP ...who is who?

 

This photo has been sitting on my desktop for a fortnight

OK. This 130 year-old musical comedy, A Straight Tip, was a decided success and ran, round and round the country for several years, but I rather think this photo is from early days. Who, I wondered, were these actors.

I am fairly sure that no2 is the star of the show, Jimmy T Powers. But he is playing the role of 'Dick Dasher, something of a masher, who longs to be a hero'. When he wasn't doing his pantomime imitations or getting into a frock and burlesquing dancer Carmencita. But there aren't many nutcracker jaws around like his ...

'Carmencita'

Now, the piece only had limited forces. Outside Powers there were only eight men in the cast list. I think. Because the 'famous Clipper quartette' were billed. But the members of the said quartette seemed to double in named parts ...

I jumped to the initial conclusion that the 'quartette' pictured were these gentlemen. But if that IS Powers ...

So, back to the drawing board.

Right. We can eliminate Pete Dailey from our candidates, since he is mentioned above as being alongside the quartette and anyway he looked like this

I can make a pretty fair stab at the tall young gent. That is surely Albert WARD as 'A Talltout, well known on the racetrack'. And yes, Mr Ward was the bass singer of the Clipper Quartette.

Hmmmm. Well, he joined the Quartette in 1887 and yes he was still there for The Dazzler in 1894 ... Born December 1866, eh? Strange. Is he not then the tall Al Hart from Liverpool who became a notable character man in movies and died in 1940?? Various websites and his gravestone affirm that that gentleman was born in December 1875.  So is hardly likely to have run away to America aged five! So have we two different men, or one big liar?

Our one, I see in 1885 with Lester and Allen with William Kellogg, Mr Sinclair and ah! Robert McIntyre. McIntyre was an original Clipper ...  anyway, our Albert went on to play in comic opera (I see him in 1915 playing Dick Deadeye!) and in 1918 he started working in films (Judge the Judge) ...  hmmmm ...

Also in the cast we have John Patrick CURRAN (b London 1 June 1859; d Atlantic City 20 November 1930)  'of St Louis', teamster turned tenor, formerly of Haverley's Minstrels was cast here as Bill Katchon 'a bunco and 3 card monte man' as was Howard GRAHAM as Jim Fleese ... I reckon that they could be men 3 and 4. Graham went on to become a theatre manager in Albany.

But. That omits the most important member of the Clippers. Frank T[almadge] WARD (b New York 1849; d NYC 30 April 1921). 'Old Pop Ward'. Baritone. Son of Brigadier J Hobart Ward. Here cast as A Hardupp Beerbohm. I see him with the Clippers as early as 1880 and playing in Little Jack Sheppard, Adonis, The Seven Ages of Man and later The Dazzler with the group. He and Curran ('Ward and Curran') later became a double act, and Ward worked up to the last day of his life. 

So, you see, I have four candidates for three parts. Goldarnit.

Oh, the left overs are an Irish comedian (Dennis Dolan), a soubret (Abner Hawkins) and a third bunco man (Lank Lean). 

Well, what do you think? Who is who?

What a Loder misinformation: Emma Newman-Neville

 

Today's subject attracted me because it has an Australian connection, so -- since I am now the possessor of an ancestry.com subscription -- I went a-delving therein to see if I could clarify the rather messy little bundle of bits of 'fact' to be found about the lady on the www.

This is Miss Emma Jane NEWMAN, comedienne and singer. Her story is brief and not complex, but the family historians have made a really bad, full-of-falsehoods mess out of it. Ancestry trees give her birthdate at anywhere between ... 1829 and 1841.

1829 is correct. Emma was a daughter of a Pimlico boot and shoemaker, William Newman, and his wife Betty nee ?Strotch. They had a lot of children, too many of which died as infants or young. In 1834, William 'of Manor Gardens' had five of his children christened in a batch lot at St Luke's Chelsea. Their births ranged from 1822 to 1833.  Emma Jane was very neatly and precisely noted as having been born on 5 November 1829. I imagine this mass christening was due to the fact that baby Albert Alfred was not a well infant and died a few days later.

I see William and Betty with three daughters -- Lydia, Emma and Ann -- their ages all rounded up to '10' at cottage number 3, Elizabeth St, Belgrave, in 1841. So far, I have not succeeded in winkling them out in 1851. Had Emma yet gone on the stage? It seems not. In 1845 Lydia left home to marry one John Arthur Speed (Emma witnessed the marriage)... don't know about Ann ... but I don't spot Emma in the theatre listings until 1859, aged 30. And by then she is Miss Emma NEVILLE.

How can I tell if she is the plain 'Miss Neville' playing in Shakespeare in the amdrams with the Printers' Dramatic Society, at 57 Dean Street in 1852? Or the one al Bolton winning fine notices later the same year? The Birminghan New Theatre in 1854? At the Marylebone Theatre 1856 is 'the first appearance of Miss F Neville' in My Grandmother's Pet. Plain Miss Neville is supporting Ira Aldrige in the provinces, and another ('ballad singer') is appearing for a lengthy engagement at Sheffield's East Parade Concert Rooms and the Old London Apprentice Concert Rooms. Wot? There's a more likely one, in parallel, at Weston's Music Hall in December 1858 'in other parts' alongside such splendid vocalists and Emma Pearce and William Parkinson? Another Miss N, simultaneously, as Fairy Queen in the Newcastle panto ... and oh no! a fourth one down with Nye Chart at Brighton! Playing Desdemona ('overweighted') and alongside the Alfred Wigans and other visiting 'stars'. Ahha! This looks good 'We regret to hear that Miss Neville, a young actress of considerable promise, is about to leave the company having accepted an engagement with Madame Celeste at the Lyceum.  Gotcha. The Brighton one is she. And she's been at Woolwich, and the Surrey for Leigh Murray's Benefit ...

So, with her prénom now firmly affixed she was installed at the Lyceum, playing the Fairy Good Humour in King Thrushbeard and singing a duet with Julia St George. And on 19 January 1860, she became the second Mrs George Patrick Loder.

She stayed at the Lyceum playing in The Wept of the Wep-ton-wish, in Pets of the Parterre with Lydia Thompson ('sings several pretty ballads', music by George Loder), Handy Andy, Chrystabelle and appeared at the Strand (Appearances, The Volunteer Ball) before the couple emigrated to Australia. George had already travelled to Australia as md to Anna Bishop. Perhaps they didn't really intend to emigrate. But neither of them would ever get back to England. They arrived on the Vortigern in January 1862 'engaged for the Theatre Royal' and made their first joint appearance in an Entertainment entitled The Old House at home (1 February).  They subsequently as Mme Ella Henderson to the act, and from timeto time another performer such as the juvenilr harpist Edith Molteno.

In 1863 they visited New Zealand playing the Entertainment, and the following year again when Loder became conductor of the Lyster Opera Company. Emma was in the company.  However, they eventually retired to Adelaide, where Emma taught singing ... until the typus hit.  Emma went under. She died on 5 December 1867, aged 38. George, already suffering from ill-health and alcoholism, followed, days after a Benefit which he was unable to sit out. He died 15 July 1868.

Some years later, a grave marker was erected over their unmarked resting-places in West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide. It is perhaps the source of some of misinformation surviving! 26 years old, be damned!

Tidy-ups:

I haven't gone into the career of George Loder, or any of those others of the Loder families who were part of English music for so long, and to such good effect. That has been done already by other hands.

This is Emma's article.

The Newmans? Lydia seems to have been the survivor of the ones I know of. After deing divorced by her first husband for constant screwing around, she married the artist Lionel Charles Henley (17 December 1862). I believe that was something of a surprise. He was a little younger than she, and I had thought his propensities were all the other way. Anyway, she had several Speed children, and .. seemingly a Ralph by Henley .. and seems to have died in 1903 ... a much better lifespan than her siblings..

 

Bloggable bits and bobs: Bordèse and Bishop

Just some bits I felt like saving ...

The mini-concert had been given at La Bodinière in December 1896, but some of the songs had had a showing at the Châtelet in the Concerts Colonne (Holmès's 'Ce qu'on entendit dans le nuit de Noel', Paladilhe's 'Premier miracle de Jésus', Widor's 'Non credo' and Fauré's 'En prière'), sung by Blanche de Montalant in December 1890, and by Marcella Prégi ..

The songs and the staging were, indeed, well-liked at the outset, but by the 1920s they seem to have lost some of their charm

Blanche Marchesi (1905)

Addendum: Is this, I wonder the above-mentioned Madame de Montalant?

I'm annoyed that I hav'n't succeeded in identifying or dating the following ladies and their garb. But it's France. And fantastical costumes were the rage there for the whole of the C19th ..

Top one looks like one of those fairy queens from Châtelet days. Bottom one is surely a chorine, presumably trying to be a (show)pony...

It is fashionable these days to prize ephemera from flop shows. Well, here's one I found today. From Drury Lane ...

I'm not referring to the hugely successful (and hugely butchered) Masaniello, which is still played to this day, nor to the popular comedy The Rent Day ...  but to the 'domestic opera' which preceded them on the Drury Lane bill. The Tyrolese Peasant. Clearly, I have never read the text or heard the music, but the London press did and told us about it

The text, which some libraries (and William Winter) have credited to J Howard Payne, was obviously not deemed worthy of being claimed: the playbill, you will notice, credits (if that is the word) nobody with the spoken part!

Howard Payne

This critic was doubtless right: The Tyrolese Peasant was simply a vehicle for launching Henry Bishop's voluminous bundle of songs and music. And apparently some by other hands..

It doesn't appear to have been a very effective launch pad. Anyway, after a handful of performances during the next three weeks, the Peasant vanished for good. But what is this?

Is this where the Howard Payne story came from? John Sinclair (who partnered Lydia Pearson in other pieces) certainly didn't play the hero at Drury Lane. Templeton did. Sinclair was in America, where this partition was published. I refuse to believe that the opera was produced on the other side of the Atlantic. What's up?  

Oh! the autograph manuscript score survives! In the Royal College of Music library! 157 folios of it. 26x31 cm. Salvaged from the wreckage by the good old Sacred Harmonic Society. 'unpublished except for one song' ... really? Which song was that? Apparently Bishop himself had Miss Pearson's 'The mother of a young lamb died' published. 

I wonder if that manuscript has been opened since 1832.

A Benefit concert in 1852 ... Buckstone, Keeley and Rose Braham

 

If you spend hours combing the darkest recesses of ebay, the most amazing things turn up ...

I have found, over the years, that the most difficult ephemerides to discover are Victorian concert programmes. Probably because they are one-night-only affairs, rather than from the run of a theatre piece.

But today I found this one ...

The Haymarket Theatre, no less. And with that theatre's leading players taking part. Buckstone and Keeley as Cox and Box. One presumes their services were paid for by the Post Office Orphans, why would all those folk donate their services? And a new play by Mark Lemon. With 25 characters!

Mark Lemon

Of course, it is the musical part of the programme which interests me. An Auber overture .. hardly a novelty. Some waltzes by Alfred Mellon which publisher Jullien wants heard ('as played at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket') and a polka by conductor Dan Spillane ... a pianist, a fiddler and a flautist of rank .. and five vocalists.

John Sinclair, a proven tenor and leading man was given top billing. He was, however, now over sixty years old and his choice of ballads on this programme was, shall we say, 'careful'.

The name of Mrs Alexander Newton (née Emily Ward) permeates the popular concert world and its programmes during the bright years of her middle career: the popular concert world, but rather less that part of the ‘fashionable’ concert scene where she would probably have had to have been Signora Alessandro Nutoni to gain an entrée. As a vocalist, it is clear, she had little or nothing to render to the best British sopranos of her era and she goes down to history as one of such. 'Qui la voce' and 'Lo, Here the Gentle Lark' were her staple diet. 

The Brougham sisters were actually sisters, by the name of Broom. In the 1850s and 1860s, when the Victorian passion for part-music was at its height, and composers of the celebrity of Mendelssohn turned out sets of duets written especially for two female voices, the Misses Brougham were amongst the most popular of the ‘singing sisters’ teams who appeared regularly in the best of London’s concerts. Nowadays, if they are mentioned it is usually in connection with their descendants: from Violet Cameron to Arthur Lloyd.

And then there was Rose Braham. No 'Qui la voce' here. Rose was a genuine ballad singer. A 'pupil of Mrs Newton'. And her facts have had me stymied for decades.

BRAHAM, Rose [BRAHAM, Rosina] (b Upper Gloucester Place, Hyde Park c1831; d Sunbury 1922) 

 

Pretty little Rose Braham arrived from apparently nowhere, to win a decided success on the London concert stage in the early 1850s. There has surely to be a reason for her subsequent eclipse, but, if there were, I haven’t succeeded in winkling it out. Nor have I succeeded in provably pinning Rose down factually, although I have my theories, and she is there, unashamedly, in the British census returns for 1841, 1851, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911 …

 

According to the 1891 census, Rose was born in Upper Seymour Street, Portland Square. That was, indeed, where she lived for many years, but, by the time of the 1841 census, she and her family hadn’t yet got there. Elizabeth Braham (b Aldgate), independent, married, aged 35, and her two daughters, aged 11 and 16, are to be found at Upper Gloucester Place. Rose is the eleven-year-old, the 16 year-old is her sister Rebecca. There is no father. It seems that Elizabeth Braham brought up her two daughters alone, although Rebecca married, in 1842 (11 May), a monstrous and much-incarcerated swell named George Miles Weston, at which time she, at least, was domiciled at 48 Upper Baker Street, and let us know that her father was ‘Joseph Braham Esq’. Not THAT Joseph Braham, surely? Esquire? Grosvenor Place? Was Elizabeth the Elizabeth Ann Mary who … well, were Rose and Rebecca sisters to America’s famous songsmith, David Braham …? It seems not. That’s another Joseph and Elizabeth, and they are in the 1851 census too. And in the Old Bailey reports for 1835 … more searching to be done ..

 

In 1851, at 22 Upper Seymour Street, our Elizabeth is an engraver, still married and still with no visible husband, but two servants. Rebecca is married and likewise husbandless, and Rosina (sic) is 20. There is also a lodger, a naval gentleman named William Cole. By 1851, however, Rose had already begun to make a name for herself as a vocalist, and she made a professional debut (‘pupil of Mrs Alexander Newton’) singing ‘O charming May’ and ‘The Cavalier’ at the seventh London Wednesday Concert at Exeter Hall on 10 April 1850, alongside Sims Reeves, Charlotte Lucombe, Rosalia Lanza and Henri Drayton. She was wholly liked: ‘during the winter, she has been frequently spoken of in amateur circles … she has a good-toned and flexible voice … in personal appearance Miss Braham is favoured beyond the usual average’ … ‘decidedly pretty’… ‘a success’.

She appeared in others of the concert series (1 May, 22 May, ‘Where the bee sucks’), however, when the Wednesday Concert series came to its end, I lose Rose, and she does not appear to my eye again until 21 October, when she is announced in concert for Stammers’s Benefit at the Haymarket Theatre. She shows up at the Misses Alexander’s concert at Crosby Hall in November, and the following April at the Marylebone Theatre, at Mr Jarrett’s concerts, and then acting with amateurs at the Soho Theatre (‘a very superior voice of fine soprano quality’). In December of 1851 the press confided: ‘Miss Rose Braham of London Wednesday Concert fame has returned to London after a continental tour of 4 months’. What?

 

In February 1852, when the new series of Wednesday Concerts started up, Rose was back at her post, and strongly featured in a series of which the great attraction was the return of the aged John Braham to the concert platform. She was ‘highly successful in a new Spanish serenade ‘Sweet love arise’ by Paul Henrion’ and, when a selection from Howard Glover’s Aminta was given, she sang ‘What a thing is love’, popularised at the Haymarket Theatre by Louisa Caulfield. During the Exeter Hall season, she also sang at outside concerts (Esther Jacobs Concert, City of London Institute, at the Haymarket Theatre with Mrs Newton &c) and at the end of the series, on 7 July, she promoted her own concert at Exeter Hall with many of the favourite performers from the concert series included on the bill.

In December 1852, Rose Braham made a first attempt on the stage, playing Daphne to the Apollo of Rebecca Isaacs in Midas, at the Strand Theatre. The experience was evidently not a success, as it was not repeated. Rose returned to her natural habitat, the concert room, and to ballads. During 1853, I spot her at Hackney, Woolwich, Reading, Ramsgate, at Dalston and at Canterbury, where she was acclaimed ‘one of the best ballad singers we have heard for some time’. She sang at the Olympic Theatre in Passion Week, and at a number of Benefits (‘Where the bee sucks’), but the promise of her debut at Exeter Hall seemed to be fading away.

Over the next few years, I notice her name on concert bills only a handful of times per season, occasionally at concerts given by George Case or by old colleagues, Esther Jacobs and George Tedder. When Joseph Stammers started up his Saturday Concerts at St Martin’s Hall (21 January 1857), Rose was amongst the ‘veterans’ of the London Wednesdays who returned to take part. In September 1857 she can be seen singing at the Surrey Gardens, after which, nothing.

Surrey Gardens 1856

Nothing for eight years.

 

There has to be a reason. Discouragement? Marriage? Illness? Family duties? Or just well-off and/or not amused? The mystery is complicated by the fact that, come the 1861 census, down at Upper Seymour Place, we find mother Elizabeth (now a lodging house keeper), still listed as married, and another seafaring friend, Mr Benjamin Barnet of the navy … but no Rose. Where was she? Touring the Continent again? She was ‘in London’ in October 1861, when she scratched from a concert in Birmingham. Because she did come back. To music, I mean. 

 

Edwin Winter Haigh

In 1864, she turns up at Mackney’s Concert Room, Norwich ... but she seems to have relocated to Bristol. I spy her singing at Bristol’s Thiodon’s Palace of Amusement, with Edwin Haigh and his wife, in January 1865, and in music hall in Aberdare, and she even advertised for work from 2 Ashton Street, Clifton. Later in the year, she is seen appearing ‘for some time’, in tandem, at Avonmouth Gardens, with comic singer, Mr Frank Howard. ‘The well-known London vocalist will sing several of the most popular songs of the day’. They are there again in 1866. And in 1867.

By later 1867, however, she is back in London, living with mother, and off on tour with a music hall concert party headed by Jolly John Nash and Mrs George Ware. In 1869, she can be seen touring an entertainment called Something New and featuring ‘The Phantascope’. From Hereford, a critic reported that she sang ‘some beautiful ballads’. She is still advertising ‘concerts, theatres or entertainments’ from 51 Ordnance Road, St John’s Wood, in 1870.

My last sighting of Rose as a singer is in November 1871, singing in a concert in Finchley. Then she seems finally to have called it a day.

 

I don’t know what became of her thereafter. In 1881 she is boarding at Cole’s Cottages, Aylesford, describing herself as a 49 year-old single ‘actress’, in 1891 she’s still ‘unmarried’ and living ‘on her own means’ in Wraysbury. In 1901 and 1911 it’s Sunbury. Barnes Villas, Vicarage Road. Boarding in a humble household. And admitting to a birthplace of Gloucester Place, Hyde Park. And there, in Sunbury, she appears to have died in 1922.

I'd love to finally fill in the gaps ....

 

 

PS Here's another Haymarket Benefit. Some of the same players. And not only a 'unrivalled young prima donna' (no bullshit!) singing that warhorsical coloratura vehicle known as Rode's Air and Variations: the splendid Louisa Pyne! Then there is England's favourite bass (well, back him for a place) Willoughby Weiss .. OK the tenor is the competent Donald King .. but ouch. That 'pupil of' thing again. Katherine or Kate Hickson pupil of Signor Garcia, overreaching herself with 'In questo semplice' ... AND playing Jessica in The Merchant of Venice. Oh well, that's Benefit performances. Miss Hickson had been being plugged since mid-1851, and headlined a concert at the Hanover Square Rooms 'in aid of the funds of the Hungarian Committe and of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland'. She gave 'Nobil donna' and 'Il segreto'. The next year she gave another at the rather less prestigious Beethoven Rooms ... and then came this affair in July 1852. Then was advertised her 'first appearance in public' at the Lyceum! Er .... wot? Same Kate, different Kate? In 1853 she was still being called in by the Haymarket ... and apppeared as Katherine in Henry V!  She turns up next at the St  James's Theatre, now as an actress ... but then, sometime, married a Mr Cameron