English actor & vocalist. Né George F.H. Arnold. Born 18 April 1876, London, England. Son of JA Arnold and Mrs Blanche Ellerman. Married (1) Florence Beech, 1902, Sheffield, England (div. 1910), (2) Pearl Ladd (actress), 11 September 1916, Wellington, New Zealand. Died 21 May 1921, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

 On stage in Australia, 1914, 1918, 1920.

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, page 227.

American operatic vocalist (baritone). Né William Talleur Andrews. Born 1876, San Francisco, California, USA. Married Vivien Talleur (actress & dancer).

 On stage in Australia from 1911.

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, page 220.

American actress. Née Marie Antoinette Anderson; aka Madame de Navarro. Born 28 July 1859, Sacramento, California, USA. Married Antonio Fernando de Navarro, 1890. Died 29 May 1940, Broadway, Worcestershire, England, aged 80.

On stage in America and England from 1870s. Studied elocution under George Vandenhoff, making first stage appearance in Louisville in 1875. On stage in New York from 1877 and London from 1883. Retired from the stage in 1890 following marriage. Absent from the stage for twenty-seven years, making her re-appearance in 1917 in aid of war charities etc. Wrote two volumes of autobiography: A Few Memories (1890?) and A Few More Memories (1936). Part author of the play The Garden of Allah (1911).

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, page 153.

English operatic vocalist (soprano).

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, page 263.

Canadian dancer. Born 27 August 1873, Toronto, Canada. Unmarried. Died 7 October 1956, Los Angeles, California, USA. On stage in USA and Australia.

 Visited Australia in 1914 for JC Williamson Ltd.

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, page 281.

Canadian operatic vocalist (soprano). Née Marie Louise Emme Cecile Lajeunesse; aka Marie Louise Emma Cecile Albani-Gye. Born 1 November 1847, Chambly, Quebec, Canada. Daughter of Joseph Lajeunesse and Mélina Mignault. Married Ernest Gye, 6 August 1878. Died 3 April 1930, London, England.

On stage in Australia, 1898 and 1903. 

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, page 245.

Lena Ashwell: actress, patriot, pioneer by Margaret Leask, University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield, 2012

Review by Elisabeth Kumm

Lena Ashwell was an actor-manager who enjoyed a successful London career during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before founding her own repertory company in the 1920s. Nowadays she is best remembered for firing Laurence Olivier who joined the ranks of her company as a young and inexperienced juvenile in 1925. But as Margaret Leask contends in her biography of Ashwell, she achieved much more, and deserves to be remembered not only as an actor, but also for her achievements in promoting the drama and for her work entertaining and raising money for the war effort during the First World War.

She was the daughter of a Royal Navy Commander, born Lena Margaret Pocock on 28 September 1869 aboard her father’s training ship, when it was stationed on the river Tyne. Schooled in England, Canada and Switzerland, she returned to London in 1890 to study at the Royal Academy of Music. From her first stage appearance at the Grand Theatre, Islington, in 1891, she gradually rose through the ranks playing small and then leading roles in West End productions. With the staging of Henry Arthur Jones’s Mrs Dane’s Defence at Wyndham’s Theatre in October 1900, in which she played the central role, the thirty-one year old Ashwell became a much sought after leading lady.

A series of theatrical successes followed during the early 1900s with The Mummy and the Hummingbird, Chance, the Idol, Resurrection, and The Darling of the Gods, as well as roles in Shakespeare, performing alongside leading actor-managers such as Charles Wyndham, HB Tree, Forbes Robertson and others.

In a quest to perform more challenging roles, she went into management for herself, initially at the Coronet Theatre where she produced and starred in Marguerite (1904), and later at the New and Savoy Theatres with Leah Kleschna (1905), The Bond of Ninon and The Shulamite (1906). This same year she took The Shulamite and Mrs Dane’s Defence to America.

In 1907, she became lessee of the Great Queen Street Theatre (formerly the Novelty) which she re-named the Kingsway Theatre. Here she furthered her reputation for staging new works by young playwrights, such as Irene Wycherley by Anthony Wharton and Diana of Dobson’s by Cicely Hamilton. Both plays were financial and critical successes. As an actor, Ashwell was commended for her great emotional force and the power of her delivery. Plays such as The Earth, Madame X and The Great Mrs Alloway followed, but by mid-1909 due to a fall in attendance, she was forced to sub lease the theatre and take up acting positions elsewhere including a second tour of America.

She was prominent in the women’s suffrage movement, holding the position of vice president on the Actresses Franchise League from 1908. She was associated with the British Drama League from 1919-1949 and was a vigorous campaigner for the establishment of a national theatre movement.

In January 1915, with Britain at war, she made the first of many visits to Europe for the YMCA delivering entertainment to the troops. During the following five years she was involved in some 6,000 performances, including concerts, dramatic entertainment, lectures and other charitable events. Her work was recognised in 1917 when she was awarded an OBE. With her return to the theatre in peacetime, she gave up acting in favour of direction, making one final stage appearance in 1925 when she appeared in St John Ervine’s The Ship.

In 1919, she founded the Lena Ashwell Players, and for the following decade they performed at town halls and other venues through arrangements made with local boroughs to bring theatre to people living outside of central London. Supported in the main by Esmé Church and Harold Gibson, her company was a training ground and offered employment to many actors who went on to prominence (such as the aforementioned Laurence Olivier). The company also served as a vehicle for the advancement of the national drama (performing works by Shakespeare, Sheridan, Shaw, Galsworthy, etc.) and in line with the tenets espoused by the National Drama League, advocated the ‘development of the art and the theatre’ and the promotion of relations between ‘drama and the life of the community’. Ashwell achieved some moderate success with her Players, but on the whole the venture brought her disappointment and frustration and was eventually disbanded in 1929.

Now in her sixties, Ashwell continued her involvement in the drama, giving occasional lectures, poetry readings and radio appearances, as well as maintaining her association with the National Drama League. During the years of the Second World War, she was involved with ENSA, but by the 1950s had slipped into semi-retirement. In her final years she became a friend and advocate of the playwright Christopher Fry, with his play The Light is Dark Enough being dedicated to her. She died on 13 March 1957, aged 87, at her home in London. Her obituary in The Times acknowledged the immense contribution she had made to the advancement of the drama and her power as an actor.

As the title of Margaret Leask’s book suggests, Lena Ashwell was more than just an actor, though Ashwell herself seems to have been content with this description, as the title of her 1936 autobiography, Myself a Player, attests.

The subtitle ‘actress, patriot, pioneer’ I found a little disconcerting at first. However, as I later learned, this was the dedication that was placed on the door of Dressing Room 2 at London’s Westminster Theatre during the 1960s in Lena Ashwell’s memory. ‘Actress’ is easily understood (even though it is now de rigour to refer to ‘actresses’ as ‘actors’), but the other two terms are not immediately clear, especially the term ‘patriot’. It is such a weirdly out-dated concept and one which I think commands much less respect now than it may once have done. But as Leask convincingly explains, Ashwell received an OBE in 1917 for her work for the war effort – producing thousands of concerts in France, Egypt, and Malta, and at camps and hospitals throughout England. Leask devotes a whole chapter to the chronicling of Ashwell’s enormous achievements during this period; her energy and tireless dedication, demonstrating her bravery and tenacity in what must have been very difficult if not dangerous conditions.

Likewise the term ‘pioneer’ suggests that Ashwell was some sort of a trailblazer and I was not certain prior to reading the book that she deserved such a nomenclature. I suspected that there were probably other women actors equally, if not more deserving, of this title, such as Madge Kendal (also an actor-manager, who championed the work of TW Robertson and naturalist stage settings and acting in the 1870s); or Janet Achurch and Elizabeth Robins (who performed in important English productions of Ibsen); or even Olga Nethersole (who travelled the length and breadth of the USA by train during the 1890s and 1900s taking the works of Suderman and Maeterlinck to a bemused American public). Nevertheless, after reading of Ashwell’s achievements with the Lena Ashwell Players, of her motivated belief in the power of the theatre, of her involvement on committees and lobby groups for the betterment of women and the theatrical profession, I began to understand why this term was fitting. During the 1920s, Ashwell’s activism was untiring, but by the end of the decade she had become disillusioned and in ill health. Through her work with the Players, with the British Drama League and other organisations, she helped lay the foundation for the establishment of a national theatre, though she did not live long enough to see the opening of the Southbank complex in 1976. It is a sad tribute that the 1952 bust of Ashwell by Peter Lamda now languishes in an office at the National Theatre, and that Ashwell’s name is not mentioned in any recent accounts of the theatre’s history. Hopefully Leask’s biography will rectify this omission and assist in giving Lena Ashwell the credit she deserves as a pioneer of modern British theatre.

Leask’s biography is an extremely well researched work, brimming with information and detail. If I have one slight criticism of the writing, it is that sometimes the detail gets in the way of the story, and one can get lost in the density of material being covered, and the acronymic references to organisations and dates of committee meetings can get a little too didactic. On the whole Leask’s book is a great read and a thorough telling of Lena Ashwell’s career and motivations. Perhaps a little more detail concerning her origins and her two marriages might have been welcome – and I notice that her affair with actor Robert Taber (included in her Wikipedia entry) has not been mentioned – but then Leask’s work is a serious discussion of Lena Ashwell, the actress, patriot and pioneer, not a scurrilous account of love affairs and misdemeanours.

Leask offers more than just a chronological telling of Ashwell’s life story. She also provides good background about the people with whom Ashwell was associated and places the events of her career against their historical backdrop with skill and understanding. Drawing on unpublished papers and letters, as well as Ashwell’s autobiography and other writings, Lena Ashwell is presented as a sensitive and talented performer with a great conviction and love of the theatre and the people with whom she worked. She had a guiding belief in the positive powers of the drama, and was outspoken on political and social issues.

My particular interest is in the theatre of the Victorian and Edwardian era, and I found the information contained in the early chapters compelling and informative.  But just as interesting were the latter chapters which illuminated an era in theatre history of which I know much less – the impact of the Great War on the acting profession, the difficulties faced by serious practitioners of the drama during the post war years, and how the work of dedicated individuals and movements had a profound effect on the drama of today.

Although a slim book in appearance, there is a lot of information packed into its 300 pages, including four appendices providing details of plays, roles and schedules, as well as a complete alphabetical listing of all the members of the Lena Ashwell Players – an excellent historical document in its own right. The biography is also well illustrated, with pictures of Ashwell in many of her important roles including Mrs Dane’s Defence, Leah Kleschna, The Shulamite and The Sway Boat, as well as details of programmes and playbills, and other ephemeral items. There is also a very good index which makes for easy navigation and reference. The bibliography is also substantial and the list of published plays and anthologies a welcome and useful addition.

Lena Ashwell: actress, patriot, pioneer is a handsome book. The paper is good, with the right level of gloss to show off the pictures and the text is clear and easy to read: a worthy addition to any home library, theatrical or otherwise. On my book shelf it will be filed next to my recently purchased copy of Lena Ashwell’s autobiography, alongside Margaret Anglin, William Archer and Peggy Ashcroft for company.

Pattie Browne as herself. Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.Pattie Browne was a darling of the Australian stage – a pet of the public; an Australian-born actress and singer, whose specialty was saucy serving wenches and cheeky soubrette roles. She was variously described as ‘a huggable bundle of charms', ‘the daintiest and sauciest of comediennes’ and ‘the spoiled darling of the Antipodes’. (1) She enjoyed a career that spanned some thirty years, making her first stage appearance in 1882 when only  eighteen years of age. By twenty she had performed before audiences in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane; and at the age of twenty-one underwent an impetuous marriage. Still not twenty-five, she was involved in a messy divorce, and as a young divorcee became betrothed to a highly regarded actor-manager for whom she worked, though the engagement was broken off. In 1892, she left for England where she became a popular comedienne on the London stage, appearing in plays by Pinero and other leading playwrights. Following a return visit to Australia, she married a successful London stockbroker, and apart from performing a key role in a new play by J.M. Barrie in London and New York, settled into comfortable married life and faded from public gaze. She died in 1942 aged 78 and despite the accolades lauded on her during her youth, her passing remained unrecorded in the press.

Pattie Browne was born Sarah Ann Brown in 1864 in Parramatta when it was still a semi-rural area of market gardens and orange groves. Her father Emanuel Trabshaw Brown died in 1886, leaving behind a wife, Ann (née Gallagher), and at least seven adult children. (2) When she was eighteen, Pattie and her older sister Molly decided to try their luck in the theatre. Pattie made her first stage appearance at Sydney’s Theatre Royal in 1882 under the newly-formed management of Williamson, Garner and Musgrove. Some four months later, she moved across to the Queen’s Theatre, then under the management of G.R. Greville ‘where she was occasionally entrusted with parts suited to her years’. (3) One of her first credited roles was in July 1882 as the Messenger in a revival of King Lear, when tragedian W.E. Sheridan made his first appearance in Australia. During these early years she performed under the name of Miss S. Brown.
Pattie Browne, c.1889. State Library of Victoria, Melbourne.

In December 1882, she joined Emelie Melville’s Comic Opera Company, touring with them throughout Australia. This was Emelie Melville’s second visit to Australia. The young American prima donna had previously performed in Australia during the 1870s. Pattie remained with Melville for some twelve months, playing minor roles in Fatinitza, Boccaccio, The Royal Middy, Girofle-Girofla and The Little Duke. She scored her first big success in October 1883 as Prince Paul in The Grand Duchess at Melbourne's Princess's. As the Argus noted:

Miss Brown played the part of Prince Paul in such way that if she had been the creator of the role in Melbourne the standard would have been looked upon as fixed, but Miss Brown is quite young and very pretty, and very naive in her manner, and although comparisons must necessarily be made between her and those who have preceded her, the intelligence she displays and her genial bearing content in the fullest way even those of largest experience. (4)

It was during the run of The Grand Duchess that Miss S. Brown was transformed into Miss Pattie Browne. Significant roles in La Belle Helene and La Perichole followed. Her engagement ended November 1883 when she re-joined WG&M’s company in support of George Leitch, who was making his first appearance in Australia. On 17 November 1883 at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne, she was seen as Finette in Coming Home; and later, in December as Annette in The Bells.

At Christmas 1883 she performed in her first pantomime, Aladdin, at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne. In this production she played Ho-Li, the principal girl, opposite the Aladdin of Maggie Moore.

Pattie was equally at home in drama, comedy, pantomime and opera bouffe, and during her years with the Triumvirate was given opportunities to prove her versatility as an actress. During the early part of 1884, she performed in It’s Never too Late to Mend (featuring Alfred Dampier), Rip Van Winkle (supporting J.C. Williamson and Maggie Moore), and the highly successful drama The Silver King (with G.S. Titheradge in the lead). She also supported visiting English tragedienne Genevieve Ward, appearing in The Queen’s Favourite and Macbeth in Melbourne and Sydney. On 23 August 1884, as a member of the Royal Comic Opera Company, she created the role of Lord Johnnie in the first Australian production of The Merry Duchess, in which she was reunited with Gracie Plaisted, who had performed with Emelie Melville’s company the previous year. She also played the small role of the Page when Estrella was given its first performance in Melbourne. The year ended with a spot in the annual  Christmas pantomime, Red Riding Hood, at the Sydney Theatre Royal, in which she played Irradianta, the Good Fairy of the Fable, the principal boy and girl characters being taken by Emma Chambers and Alice Deorwyn.

Towards the end of the pantomime season on 29 January 1885, twenty-one year-old Pattie married William George Baumann, a young man who had aspirations to run a hotel or a catering business. Pattie next performed in the Australian premiere of Nita’s First, a farcical comedy by T.G. Warren, playing the small role of Jane, when it was presented at the Theatre Royal in Sydney by WG&M’s Royal Dramatic Company on 7 February 1885.

For the next year she was absent from the stage. During this period the couple moved from Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne to Tasmania, where Baumann pursued various occupations, including a hotel business in Brisbane. It was while Baumann was in Tasmania that Pattie decided to return to the stage. Her relationship with her husband began to crumble and despite numerous attempts by Baumann to keep the marriage together, Pattie no longer cared for him. The two would later divorce when Baumann applied for a decree nisi citing Pattie’s ‘misconduct’ with the actor Philip Beck as mitigating circumstances. The case was made even more scandalous as Beck had committed suicide in 1889. Baumann married again – his first wife died in childbirth, while his second was left a widow after his premature death from pneumonia in 1909. He died aged 48, the proprietor of a successful Sydney institution called Baumann’s Café.
As Peggy in The Country Girl. Photo by Falk. Private Collection.

Pattie returned to Sydney in August 1886, where she re-joined WG&M’s Royal Comedy Company in support of Harry St Maur and Alfred Maltby. Over the next couple of months she performed in The Great Divorce Case, Pink Dominoes, Truth, Betsy, Two Too Many, The Candidate and Jim the Penman; many of these plays being performed in Australia for the first time. Seasons in Melbourne and Adelaide followed, with the company returning to Sydney in December.

She next appeared in the Christmas pantomime, The Sleeping Beauty, which opened at the Theatre Royal on Boxing Night, with Pattie as Progressa, one of Princess Beauty’s fairy godmothers.

With the pantomime season over, Pattie joined the ranks of WG&M’s Royal Dramatic Company for the first Australian production of Harbour Lights at Melbourne's Princess's. The large cast included Philip Beck as Lieutenant David Kingsley, with H.H. Vincent, Frank Cates, William Elton, Isabel Morris and Louise Davenport in supporting roles. Pattie performed the soubrette part of Peggy Chudleigh. Harbour Lights played for a sterling 54 performances from 26 February until 29 April 1887, after which the same company took the piece to Adelaide and Sydney.

Over the following months, the Royal Dramatic Company performed revivals of Human Nature, The Silver King, The Streets of London, Rip Van Winkle, Eureka and Nita’s First.

In November 1887, the company presented another new play – The Red Lamp, a Nihilist drama set in Russia, with G.W. Anson as Paul Demetrius, the Chief of the Secret Police, the role created by Herbert Beerbohm Tree at the Haymarket Theatre in London earlier in the year. Philip Beck portrayed a Russian Prince and Pattie that of Olga. When the play was withdrawn on 24 November, both Pattie and Phil Beck both seceded from WG&M’s management and joined the ranks of the Brough-Boucicault Comedy Company.

Pattie as Miss Fauntleroy in Dr Bill. Photo by Falk. State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.The B&B Company was only six months old, having been formed the previous July by Robert Brough and Dion (Dot) Boucicault, two actors who had originally been brought out to Australia by WG&M; Brough to play the Lord Chancellor in the first Australian production of Iolanthe, and Boucicault as a member of his father, Dion Boucicault senior’s company. The company comprised many members of the two actor-managers’ families including Brough’s wife, Florence Trevelyan, his mother, Miss E. Romer, and sister Brenda Gibson, as well as Dot’s sister Nina Boucicault, and Florence Brough’s sister, Emma Temple.

Pattie made her first appearance with the B&Bs at Melbourne’s Bijou Theatre on 26 December 1887, playing Honor in the first Australian production of Sophia, a dramatisation by Robert Buchanan of Fielding’s novel Tom Jones. When she performed the role in Adelaide in February 1888, the South Australian Advertiser observed:

Of the ladies next the heroine the character of Honor, by Miss Pattie Browne, stands out with most distinctiveness, and the adapter has judiciously converted her into a smart soubrette who knows how to humour her mistress in her various moods…The comic scene, in which the waiting maid attacks the phlebotomist in a fit of the tender passion, and virtually secures him for a husband, is irresistibly funny, and fairly brought down the house; and Miss Browne’ acting throughout was so clever and appropriate as to be convincing that she will achieve a very high place in her profession, as well as in public favour. (5)

For the most part Pattie was entrusted with the ‘ingénue’ roles, which suited her perfectly, and over the following years she performed in many of the B&B’s productions in which her ‘saucy audacity’ and coquettish behaviour charmed audiences and added to the success of the plays. Following her triumph as Honor in Sophia, she was seen in a round of characters including Thomas Jefferson Thursby in Hans the Boatman, Susan in Bachelors, Miss Vere in The Balloon, Nora Fitzgerald in Havest, Peggy in The Schoolmistress, Jane in Jane, Miss Fauntleroy in Dr Bill, and Peggy in The Country Girl. She was also seen in revivals of Captain Swift (as Mabel Seabrook), Betsy (as Betsy), The Candidate (as Lady Clarissa Oldacre), Caste (as Polly Eccles), School (Naomi Tighe), The Schoolmistress (Peggy Hesselrigge), The Jilt (Phyllis Welter), Sunlight and Shadow (as Maud Latimer), Led Astray (Matilda), and Captain Swift (Mabel Seabrook).

In December 1891, she was given the opportunity to indulge her love of pantomime when she was ‘lent’ to George Musgrove for his mounting of The Forty Thieves at the Theatre Royal in Sydney. On this occasion she played Ganem opposite the Morgiana of Rose Dearing, an English performer especially engaged for the production. In addition to creating many of these characters for Australian audiences, she also infused new life into many of the revival characters she portrayed, such as Naomi Tighe and Polly Eccles in T.W. Robertson's 'cup and saucer' comedies.

With Rose Dearing in The Forty Thieves. Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.In 1890, after seeing Pattie performing in School at the Criterion Theatre in Sydney, visiting English comedian J.L. Toole offered her a position with his London company. Pattie was tempted to accept, but declined on the basis that she still had more to learn in Australia. London could wait.

During the early 1890s she was romantically linked with Dot Boucicault and after eight years of courtship, wedding bells were in the offing. However, the marriage was not to be. According to an interview in 1898, Pattie admits to breaking off the engagement. (6)

A portrait piece in the Illustrated Sydney News called her ‘the Lottie Venne of the colonies’, the same writer going on to say:

Since her appearance with Messrs Brough and Boucicault, her progress has been most marked; here was her legitimate field, and she has taken root, as it were, amidst many memorable and artistic productions, with which her name and clever impersonations must ever be associated. Pattie Browne has her fortune in her own hands. Her name is in the hearts of the public, of whom she is yet destined to be the inevitable pet. (7)

Of the many roles she performed with the B&B, perhaps her most popular was as Peggy in The Country Girl, the last part she played prior to being tendered a farewell benefit at the Bijou Theatre on the afternoon of 8 July 1892. Looking back at the early days of the B&Bs, Florence Brough described Pattie as ‘one of the cleverest and most attractive little soubrettes we ever had’ and ‘if she did not actually start with us, got most of her early experience in our company, and was able to take her place immediately on the London stage when she went home.’ (8)

Ellaline Terriss, Lily Hanbury and Pattie Browne in The Amazons. Photo by Alfred Ellis. Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.It was through Boucicault that she got her first London opening when he recommended her for the role of Lady Thomasin Beltubet in A.W. Pinero’s The Amazons, which was scheduled for production at the Royal Court Theatre. Thus, in June 1892, she embarked for England, but on arriving in London she fell seriously ill and was forced to delay her début by some nine months. Eventually, in March 1893, she made her first appearance at the Court Theatre.

As Tommy in The Amazons, the Sydney Morning Herald (15 April 1893), quoting the London Standard, recorded:

Miss Brown, who comes from Australia, made an exceedingly promising first appearance in England, as ‘Tommy’, her bright, vivacious, and always natural performance showing her to be a soubrette actress of a very pleasing order.

After a seven month run, she enjoyed successes with various managements, at the Strand, Comedy, Criterion and Vaudeville Theatres. Roles included Agnes Champignol in The Other Fellow; Mrs Lappett in Dick Sheridan; Mrs Martlett in The Candidate; and Victorine in A Night Out. The role of Victorine was a small part, but it gave her the opportunity to introduce the ‘kangaroo dance’ which she had performed with such success in Dr Bill in Australia. She was subsequently given the more senior role of Madame Pinglet in the same production.

From September 1894 to December 1897, Pattie was at Drury Lane, appearing in a succession of long-running productions including The Derby Winner (as Annette Donelly), Cheers, Boys, Cheer (as Kitty Parker), and The White Heather (as Fanshaw). In May 1895, she assumed, at short notice, the role of Madame Amelie in An Artist’s Model, replacing Lottie Venne, who was incapacitated.

By January 1898, she returned to the Royal Court to appear in Pinero’s Trelawney of the ‘Wells’. As Avonia Bunn, her co-stars included Dot Boucicault, Irene Vanbrugh and Hilda Spong. This was the first production of Pinero’s comedy, which was staged under the direction of Dot Boucicault. Two years earlier, Boucicault returned to England and would subsequently enjoy a successful career as a London actor-manager. Towards the end of the run, Pattie left the cast and was replaced by May Edouin, having arranged with Harry Rickards to make a starring tour of Australia; her first visit to her homeland in six years.

Pattie made her reappearance at Princess Theatre, Melbourne on 4 June 1898, playing Lady Babbie in the first Australian production of The Little Minister by J.M. Barrie. She was reunited with ex-B&B actor Cecil Ward, who played the role of the Reverend Gavin Dishart, and Athena Claudius, who played Micah Dow. Her sister May Browne was also in the cast. Pattie subsequently appeared in Sweet Nancy (as Nancy Gray); in A Bit of Old Chelsea (as Alexandra Victoria Belchamber); in The Dove-cote (as Eva); and in Jane (reprising the role she had played with the B&Bs in 1891); also performing seasons in Sydney and Adelaide and other centres. She concluded her Australian tour by playing Ganem in Williamson and Musgrove's 1898 Christmas pantomine, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, appearing opposite the principal girl of Carrie Moore.

As Tweeny in The Admirable Crichton. Drawing by Charles A. Buchel. Private Collection.On her return to England, she replaced Ada Reeve in the role of Lady Holyrood in the  musical comedy Florodora, which was doing huge business at the Lyric. She performed the role until the return on Ada Reeve of 26 March 1900, after which time she remained ‘at liberty’ for a number of months. On 26 June 1900, she joined what seemed to be the full complement of expatriate Australian actors, musicians, singers, authors and artists when an Australian Benefit Matinee was held at the Alhambra in ‘Aid of the Widows and Families of Australians who have Fallen in South Africa’.

At Christmas 1900, she appeared in The Thirty Thieves at Terry’s Theatre, a musical extravaganza by W.H. Risque, with music by Edward Jones. Pattie played Rhoda, the Lord Mayor’s daughter, with other roles by Florence Perry, Aubrey Fitzgerald and Sidney Howard. Not quite a pantomime and with an overlong second act, the piece was soon withdrawn.

In early 1901, she took to the road with a touring production of The Silver Slipper, replacing Connie Eddis who had created the role of Miss Jimper in London. The following year, she scored a success in the musical The Toreador at the Gaiety Theatre.

Mid-1902 saw her in South Africa, in The Little Minister, reviving her role of Lady Babbie. Later the same year, she scored a success playing Tweeny in The Admirable Crichton, when Barrie’s fantasy was first produced in London in November 1902. Her co-star in this play was Irene Vanbrugh, who in July 1901 had married Dot Boucicault. As Tweeny, The Times declared Pattie ‘capital as the serving wench’! (9) The Admirable Crichton ran for an amazing 326 performances, and following year Pattie played Tweeny on the New York stage when the comedy opened at the Lyceum Theatre on 17 November 1903, chalking up another 144 performances.

In 1903, during the run of The Admirable Crichton, Pattie married Hamilton Allen Stoneham, a London stockbroker. At the end of the season, she retired from the stage for a period. The couple took a flat in Victoria Street, Westminster, London. In 1906, she told an interviewer on the British Australian:

I have not left the stage. I am only enjoying a rustic existence – for the present. I have several plans for the future and several tempting offers. I shall certainly play again before long. (10)As Mrs Lappett in Dick Sheridan. Photo by Alfred Ellis. The Theatre (London), June 1894.

It would be another two years before Pattie made her re-appearance, playing the minor role of Maggie in The Two of Us, a new play by Rachel Crothers which opened at Terry’s Theatre in London in June 1908. Included in the cast was Australian Cyril Keightley and the American actress Fannie Ward, the latter becoming a close associate of Pattie’s.

Fannie Ward was instrumental in arranging Pattie’s next stage appearance, which took place at London’s Aldwych Theatre in November 1912, when an American drama called The Price was performed for the first time in England. Although the piece was criticised for being ‘poor material’, Pattie was said to have made ‘charming chambermaid’. (11)

Pattie’s final stage appearance, it seems, took place in America, when she played Belle D’Aube in Madam President, a French farce that featured the ubiquitous Fannie Ward in the principal role. The piece played for a rollicking 128 performances at New York’s Garrick Theatre, from 13 September 1913, before embarking on a short tour of New York State.

After this glorious send off, Pattie returned to London, where it may be surmised that she settled down into private life as Mrs Hamilton Stoneham. In 1914, Pattie was only fifty, but she lived for another twenty-eight years, dying on 29 November 1942 at her home at 12 Lancaster Drive, Hampstead Heath. She predeceased her husband by four years. She was seventy-eight years old at the time of her death. As no obituary notices recorded her passing, it is not possible to know the full details without obtaining a copy of her death certificate. All we do know for sure, is that Pattie was a remarkable performer, whose charm, piquancy and slight naughtiness thrilled a generation of playgoers in Australia, London and New York.

Footnotes

(1) Sketch (London), 5 April 1893, p. 594.

(2) I am grateful to Steven Parker for providing me with the correct BMD information.

(3) Town and Country Journal (Sydney), 2 March 1889, p. 30.

(4) Argus (Melbourne), 12 October 1883, p. 7.

(5) Advertiser (Adelaide), 6 February 1888, p. 6.

(6) Otago Witness, 25 August 1898, p. 46.

(7) Illustrated Sydney News, 20 June 1891, p. 5.

(8) Advertiser (Adelaide), 12 December 1923, p. 10.

(9) The Times (London), 5 November 1902, p. 10.

(10) Advertiser (Adelaide), 3 December 1906, p. 8.

(11) Illustrated London News, 30 November 1912, p. 792.