The Seventh of May ... My special day.

 

May 7 is a special day for me. 

In 1919, on that date, was born, at Everton NSW, Ian Archibald BEVAN. Ian was my 'partner' for over 30 years, until his death ...  well, it will be 20 years ago soon ...

This is my favourite latter day photo of him.

 

Tonight, we will light the valedictory candles for him on his 105th birthday.

I was hoping for a quiet day, you know, when you are being valedictory. But .. well, anything but ..

Today the 'fire lighting ban' under which we have suffered for months and months was lifted. I was actually in touch with the fire department two days ago, asking what was happening. They told me 'get a new browser'. FENZ get a new website, a new system ... if I can't contact you, then I ignore you.

Anyway, early this morning, I had to take my little car up to the garage, for a 9am appointment. And what?! My neighbour had a huge bonfire going! When I got home, Nick McPherson and Max Macmillan from the Balcairn/Sefton page had spread the news. Ban over. I rushed outside waving a box of what are accounted matches in the 21st century and set alight the reeking six-months old fire pile. 

Oh dear. I am still suffering from my fall. I fell twice into the fire pile. Fortunately, the bit I had not lit. Wendy had an acupuncturist appointment, so I was Fire Chief for two hours ...  I normally cannot stand for two hours, but a pitchfork helps. And I was sort of mesmerised by the fire ...  it was the Gates to the Other World, clothed in fire and smoke ... those buried in the grounds of Gerolstein would rise again, phoenix-like, through the flaming chasms ...

Boofie, Sally and ... Ian.

Wendy emerged after my two hour Feuerwatch ... and I was able to wobble, well-toasted, across to the Acupuncture Room. 

I was a mess. My fall of last week had apparently thrown my body (such as it is) into all sorts of chasms and spasms.  Work began ...

An hour later ... magic!  So much better! 

And 5pm ...

The valedictory candles ... 

Ever remembered, darling man xxx

Lost Cartesians: more bits of the jigsaw

 

The days are getting colder. I dont have much impetus behind me to get outside and pretend to pull weeds.And I'm not finding much on e-bay to inspire grand researches .. so, I've turned back to the jolly old Cartesians to see if I can squeeze a few more answers out of the remaining mystery-folk ... even if it's just a birth-date, a death-date, a marriage or, most desirably, a real name behind a stage-name.

Well, much to my surprise, I've found a number!

So here are the first results.

Sam

SAMUEL REED (b Massachussetts August 1855; d East Boothbay, Maine 11 April 1924) seems to have taken a few years to get into the professional theatre. I see him first in the Baltimore German theatre (ahha! is 'Reed' a pseudonym?) in 1884 in Bettelstudent with the contralto-ised Alice May, prima donna of G&S's original Sorcerer, and her new husband, and a young German soprano of several years leading lady experience, Marie Böckel. At some stage Herr Saml Reed and Fräulein Böckel were wed. And they remained married until Sam's death forty years later.  Both of them would have sound careers, as vocalists, and then as character performers. 

I popped into the Ws, and while I was there, I had a go at Josephine WOODWARD. I doubt that was her real name, but  she came from Edinburgh. I see her  there in 1878 singing in little concerts and acting in amdrams, before she joined the Carte companies (see David Stone's archive). David loses her after the Carte stint, but I don't. She played in Polly (1885) with a heap of other ex-Cartesians, fairy in Robinson Crusoe (always a part for A Vocalist),, with the touring troupe of Falka (1888), and then in a series of good supporting roles in and around Scotland (Mattie then Jean McAlpine in Rob Roy, Lady Margaret in The Lady of the Lake, Miss McKillop in Robert Burns, Tibbie Howieson in Holyrood, Mrs Cregan in The Colleen Bawn, Claire Ffoliott in The Shaughraun). She appeared as Margaret Hay in The Bonnie Briar Bush with Durward Lely at Manchester, and again when the production ventured for 3 weeks to London, and spent three or four years with William Mollison's company, appearing in everything from Shakespeare to death. I see her at Derby in 1912-13, as Ellen Dunlop in Bunty Pulls the Strings ...  And that's it. It's hard tracking down someone when you don't know their real name!

Still W.  Walter Olivant WILKINSON (b Manchester 1852; d NYC 18 May 1908). His participation in the Carte company seems too have been a rare venture. He professed thereafter to be an organist.

William Thompson WRIGHT (b Aldeburgh 1848; d West Ham 1911). After finishing his time with Carte, he worked as a travelling salesman.

Grace Pauline WOLLASTON (b Allahabad 27 July 1867 ; d 29 Spencer Rd, 2 March 1952). Born and married (Ernest Ouseley ELLIOT) in India. Returned to England, some time after 1899 (when she can still be seen prominently in concert in India)  after which she made her foray into the theatre. I sight her little after her Carte stint, only that she stopped being Mrs Elliot after one short-lived child and he went back to India where the child died (in whichever order) ... 

Pause for sherry, saucisson and sleep.

Harry [Henry] PEPPER (b Nottingham 10 October 1857; d Philadephia 29 December 1945). I am assuming this is the right Harry. There can't be many Harry son of Harrys who married a Susan ....

If so, he was a framework-maker in Nottingham, and didn't work in England before he got a job in 1882 at the Boston Museum playing Dunstable in Patience. He repeated the role at Tony Pastor's and with Lillian Russell and from there it was theatre and concerts ('not a better ballad singer in New York') all the way. Apparently the move was not definitive, because Susan gave birth back in England in 1888 (infant died), and Harry would latterly claim to have moved to the USA in 1888 ..

When his busy performing career was over, Harry apparently went back into fabrics. He is latterly listed as 'knitter in a hosiery mill'.

Pause for merlot, marketing and horse racing

Noone seems ever to have looked into 'Miss Twyman' of the original Princess Ida cast. Well, I have, and I can tell you that she was Lily TWYMAN born in Margate  in 1868; died Canterbury 13 July 1920, one of the large family of a seagoing man and his second wife. She allegedly attended the RAM from a pre-teen age, practised as a vocalist for a few years both on the stage (Savoy, Tommy at the Avenue, Croydon in panto, An Adamless Eden  at St George's Hall) and concert platform before in 1905 married Henry Fairbrass, a farm worker, and had a son ...

Next day. I have failed to find the real name of Arthur MARCEL, a man who seems to have lived much of his life in the 'bohemian', woman-less clubs of London. He was clearly a competent performer, touring between 1884-1888, much of the time, as leading man to Mrs Bernard Beere. Inn the musical theatre (he was the possessor of a fine baritone) he played, as well as his Gondoliers Luiz, in the musical comedy Iduna, and for a lengthy tour in Hayden Coffin's role in Dorothy. In 1891, he essayed the music-halls but  the death of his father, that year, seems to have put an end to his career, if not his frequenting of the clubs.

I did rather better with "Mr W D Marks" who played the Pirate King in America. He was in fact, an Englishman, born Woolf David MARKS or Marx in 1846, to a Jewish East End cap-maker, Isaac MARKS and his wife, Phoebe. Woolf worked as a book-keeper after the family emigrated to America in about 1849, and began singing, it seems, around 1876, at New York's Caledonian Club. That same year, he made appearances with an English Opera Company built around one Gertrude Corbett, with a not wholly negligable cast (Alice Hosmer, Christian Fritsch, Eugene Clarke, Alcuin Blum). Blum, of course, was primo basso. Apart from his Pirates of Penzance engagement, I see he played Lt Montgomery in the 1880 production of Deseret, and sang in occasional concerts in Brooklyn (''Honour and Arms', Rigoletto  quartet). Is he the same W D Marks (there were a few of them about!) who thereafter arranged and conducted music for Booth, Barrett, Irving and Margaret Mather?  Well, by 1891 he was listed as an 'agent', then once more a bookkeeper. The theatre adventure had not lasted very many years. He married a lady named Leah, had a daughter christened Phoebe (1905-1966) and died in 1915. It's not much, but more than we had before!

High Society Amdrams: Vienna 1869.

Often, in the past, I've found that some wonderful photographic records have survived of Amateur Theatricals... when they have been the sport, especially, of the aristocracy or the military. 

Such as this 1864 York set from Garrison playacting ... which I was able to tie up with a newspaper report of the occasion

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2021/09/corporal-shorter-short-strut-and-fret.html

Or this, from Algeria in 1865 

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2022/09/amateur-aristocratic-dramatics-algeria.html

Well, I've just happed on the loftiest lot of all. Vienna, 1869. It really was a lucky strike, because it was just a matter of strolling through an ebay shop (the 20th or 30th today) until something caught my eye. Lots of aristo photos. Normal. There are always lots of aristopix. Apparently folk bought them. But one of them was labelled 'Baron de Bourgoing Treumann'. Treumann? In 1869 there was only one Treumann in Vienna for me ... the great Karl Treumann of the Theater am Franz Josef-Kai. I looked at the photo ... Well, unless we have a very bent Baron on our hands, that fat lady is none other than he!

So the Baron did Amdrams. But wait, there's a whole bunch of photos labelled and unlabelled, all evidently from the same photo session. 

Anna Strachwitz

Anna Walkenstein

Gräfin Salbe

Marquis de Vauquelas

Prince de Polignac

Prinzessin Scylla

Prinzessin Furstenberg

Alice Flarnoncourt

Seems as if they all attended the same 'do', and that a society photographer was brought in to record the affair ..

So I looked, and I found this ...

My German is to put it politely ropey. It was forbidden in our childhood home, from which everything German and Austrian was carefully excluded. But I can tell that we have a 'Benefit' performance at the Schwarzenburg's Palace at which the lofty Lustpielers got to do their stuff. Either playing or parading.

The opened with a vaudeville in which Vauquelas was featured, followed up by a pantomime -- evidently the source of the unlabelled Pierrot picture above. I see Mrs Salve and Furstenberg had 'thinkiing' parts. The third piece was a vehicle for the Baron, with Mmes Furstenberg and Strachwitz and the Marquis in suport. 

A Gräfin with a nice voice sang Gounod, Schumann and Mozart, to gloved applause, and proceedings ended with the Baron and Treumann performing a German version of Fleur de ligne et Perle d'Alsace (music: Strebinger) in which Bourgoing played a Regimentstambour and Treumann ... an old market woman. Well, none of the Gräfins and Prinzessins wouls have wanted to play old and ugly and low comic!  And that, of course, is the photo above.

So, I think I can safely say that this is the occasion on which were taken the set of photos for sale from Bits of Our Past, in dear old Stockport ...

Emily. The nitty gritty!

 

It is rather a while since I've written about the horses. No they hav'n't been 'resting' ... Kurty has been up at Kyle Cameron's place, running solidly round in circles with no fuss and not a lot of forwardeness. He will not, says Kyle, 'make a young horse'. His great-uncle came 4th in the Trotting Stakes and ran (or got knocked over) in the Jewels in his year .. then we brought the French stallion Love You into the blood line and ...  well, Kurty's mama was an exceptionally tall mare, legs up to her chin, which were her undoing ... please, don't say this wee chappie is going to be a giant.

Anyway, we went up last weekend to see him do his lazy loop round the track. He's beautiful. But, alas, with racehorses 'beauty is as beauty does'. And then he came home, and is peaceably eating our green grass (yes, much of Canterbury is beige to yellow, but we always have grass), and lying down an awful lot. I hope he's not growing more ..

 

And then there is Emily. Last season we had great hopes of Emily. Her 3 year-old form was excellent, and she came back with a smashing win at Ashburton. That was at the end of last year. Since then she had had ten starts. Apart from the odd 'accident', she has not run what you might call 'badly' and she has finished mostly on the tail of some nice horses (and some who have made remarkable improvement). But ... well, But.

Well, if she were not to be competitive in Canterbury, I decided we would have to send her where she WAS competitive. Contacts were made with trainers in both islands. She had Ashburton (again) and two races at Rangiora to show us that she still had the "it" that our dear, late Murray Edmonds had spied in her.

Wendy, more practically, said 'get her blood done'.

The blood analysis showed that she had muscle tie-up and ... treatment ($$$) went into action immediately.

A week later it was Ashburton. Same old rivals and we were the rank outsider of ten!  And drawn two, next to my favourite horse (except ours) in New Zealand: PRINCE TEKA!  Driven by .. Kyle Cameron. Hah! I said to him, 'lead and trail?'  Wendy said the same to our then default driver, Jimmy.

And guess what! That's exactly what happened. We got out first, Kyle came round and we trotted merrily and briskly around in front ... well, you can watch it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJEcPlBFF5w&t=4s

Rank outsider? Insult. She showed them! 

That's her, in yellow ... 

So, now we are 27 April. She will run tomorrow at Rangiora, from a filthy draw. And without Jimmy who has jumped off her (for the second time) in favour of another horse. OK. Fair enough. But I think we need a new default driver ....  Em will be driven for her next two starts by the (slightly-going-to-fat) junior driver, Tom Bamford, who drove such a nice race on her in the Darren de Filippi Memorial. 

Two more races and then ... is 'home' still Motukarara?  Or is it Bulls or Invergiggle ...?

Watch this space!

Later: 

Well we've had one nitty run and one gritty. I'll be brief.

28 April. Horrendous draw and start ... but Em got away best of the back row .. which thanks to the dumb starter wasn't a second row, but a 10-20 metres handicap. Starters round here are getting less and less competent. We need the French system .. anyway she ran anonymously ... Invergiggle loomed ...

5 May.. Tom got sidelined by domestic issues. So Carter Dalgety took the bike for the Junior drivers race. We were 5/5 in the betting at 20/1. We're getting used to that. Well, after an iffy start (losing 6-7  lengths), Carter gave her every chance. She loomed up on the turn, was third with yards to run, but got zapped by the waiters and finished 5th.

Young man with horn

 

I couldn't resist this 1868 photograph that I spotted on e-bay today ... 

Frosty morn, so let's have a little dig ..

This should be easy. Well, it wasn't.

Like so many German Jewish families, they changed their name, not once but several times.

Clint is 21 years old here. And he should know how to spell his own name, yes? And he says he is Clinton Benjamin SCHWER. Born 18 September 1847. Son of Bavarian immigrant labourer Mathias Schwer and his Pennsylvanian wife Julia/Julie/Julianne née GLATFALLTER ..

Clint became a lifelong shoemaker. He married Hannah Elizabeth née Kline. Or Cline. With their name varying from SCHWIER to SCHWEIER to SCHWEIRS to SWOYER et al, they moved to Scranton where Clint plied his trade and produced a vigorous supply of babies: Annie (26 August 1871), Ma(r)y, James Albert (6 January 1875) , Edith R (18 August 1878), Edwin Everhart (19 May 1880), Grace Gertrude (31 March 1882), Lillie Logan (11 January 1884), Florence Isabella (9 April 1889), Cornelia Wells (7 March 1887)... and who is F Harold Schwiers living with the widowed Hannah, Florence and Lillie at 1335 Adams, Scranton in 1908? I see they lost one child in 1896 ...

Anyway, I guess Clint had given up the horn! Oh. I see in 1898 that he was a janitor ...

I've followed up one or two of the daughters. Cornelia became Mrs Elmer A Fenne, Grace became Mrs Snyder, Florence became Mrs Cooper and then Mrs something else, Lillie became Mrs Smith, Annie seems to have been Mrs David F Walton and a multiple mother, James wed and bred and died in 1957  .. but the variants of the surname defeated any further efforts.

Clint died 30 November 1905. Hannah 20 June 1921 ...

I've posted this photo on findagrave ... maybe a descendant will see it.

Christine Bennett turned up this splendid 1869 chart ...

And this photo popped up ...

Autumn in Gerolstein, or 'Not Yet, Nannette'

 

25th April. Well and truly autumn ... says the sheoak outside my window ...

But if the trees are autumning, the flowers are saying 'not yet, Nannette'!

                     

The day I was born ... on Broadway!

 

When I was born, my mountaineering father put a pebble from the top of Mount Egmont in my tiny fingers.

Well, I tried. I climbed Hochstetter Dome when 12 or 13 ... but the magic wore off. Dad ought to have put a quill pen, or the latest theatre listings in that newborn hand.

The listings, on that fatidic 15 February 1946, included -- at New York's New Century Theater -- a musical comedy entitled -- in the revusical manner of the time -- Are You With It? And, in the revusical manner of the time it included a featured vocal quartet, the Plantation Minstrels, five 'arrangers', circus performers et al. It was allegedly based on a novel but I suspect not a lot of plot was left between the turns!

Anyway, it was entertaining enough to get a transfer, after five months, to the Shubert Theater for the last two months of its run, and closed after a brave 267 performances.

Looking down the cast list (courtesy of Richard Norton) I see that much of the score was cornered by two young ladies well-remembered by all: Miss Joan Roberts and Miss Dolores Gray. The titles included 'You Gotta Keep Saying 'No'' sung by Miss Gray as 'Bonny La Fleur' and 'This is My Beloved' duetted by Miss Roberts and Johnny Downs, while June Richmond warbled about 'Just Beyond the Rainbow'. Well-used titles?

Dance was heavily featured, with Kathryn Lee, Buster and Olive Shaver, Ray Arnett, Bunny Briggs and Hal Hunter all having bits of Jack Donaghue's dances. And then there were the choruses

Is that slightly-clad lass Miss Roberts? Is that Miss Gray, with her trademark blonde boucles? ... They don't look like backline babes ... I don't know. I was only four months old when the show closed 

But I'm sure someone will!

Minutes later Stephen Cole came back with ..

So Ms Gray was not yet blonded (I'll bet that's her understudy) and these are, apparently, chorines. Maybe that's Kathryn Lee?