Many a heart is aching,
If you could read them all;
Many the hopes that have vanished,
After the ball
In my childhood in England in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the golden years of music hall were already long gone. Of course there were vestiges that remained―occasionally on the wireless, more regularly at pantomimes and in ‘variety’ shows at still-functioning end-of-the-pier theatres. These featured former stars of the post-First World War decline. Then at the start of the 1960s came Joan Littlewood’s Oh! What a Lovely War, which debunked the nationalistic patriotism which drove so many young men to sign up and give their lives so unceremoniously. It was packed full of music hall songs, several of them popularised by Florrie Forde.1
Young Florrie Forde While from a young age getting to know so many of Florrie’s songs, I had no idea that she was Australian―although in fact she had featured her origins strongly in her initial years in Britain before the turn of the century. Nor did I realise that she had been such a major star and that she performed continuously between her debut in Sydney in 1892 and her death in Scotland in 1940―just two years short of a half-century on the stage.
Florrie Forde was born Flora Flannagan, probably at 88 (now 122) Gertrude Street in Fitzroy, Melbourne, on 16 August 1875. Her father, (Francis) Lott Flannagan, was previously a stonemason but by then a publican, born in Ireland.2 And in Florrie’s birth certificate, her mother Phoebe Cahill (née Simmons) is said to have been born in the USA. Before Flannagan, whom she married in Melbourne in 1876, Phoebe had been married to Daniel James Cahill (since 1861). With Cahill she had several children, then Lott and Phoebe together had a further nine, only four of whom survived beyond early childhood (Emily b.1868, Francis b.1872, Hannah (Nan) b.1874, Flora b.1875). Flora, the last of the survivors, was named after a sister who had predeceased her.
While her first two husbands were of Irish heritage, Phoebe herself seems to have been Jewish, born in 1846 the daughter of Barnett Simmons and Susan Solomans. Her relationship with Lott Flannagan seems to have been over by the end of the 1870s and in 1883 she married for a third time, declaring herself to be Phoebe Cahill (although Lott Flannagan was still alive―by that time living as a publican in Sydney―and possibly Daniel Cahill too). This time she married a Melbourne-based theatrical and society costumier, Thomas Henry Snelling Ford, who was to take over in 1888 his stepfather’s business (Ford and Son) in Russell Street, Melbourne. Phoebe and Thomas were to have more offspring. While Thomas had a ‘proper job’ in Melbourne, he also moonlighted, playing the banjo in the music halls.3 He also played other stringed instruments―fiddles (which he made) and zithers among them.
That her stepfather played on the halls seems not to have been noticed until recently and it is important in that it will have provided Flora with a practical introduction to the genre. From the start of her performing career, she styled herself Florrie Ford (after her stepfather but initially without an e, which was to be added within six months).
Florrie says that she first went to school at St Peter’s (presumably Eastern Hill), then at St Mary’s Convent (Carlton Gardens). She emphasises that the ‘family’ was as many as nineteen (including all the surviving children of Phoebe’s three marriages) and it has been suggested that several of them (including Flora) were ‘parked out’, so the convent, taking boarders, looks a good bet. And the costumier’s business will have generated the necessary fees.
Florrie will most likely have left school at fourteen―and she writes that she then spent time in her stepfather’s costumier business in Russell Street, where she learned to design dresses―a skill she took into her future performing career.
Clearly, she showed real promise as a singer from childhood. She wrote:
Once I had heard a song I seemed to record the tune in my memory with the precision of a phonograph record.
She described her young voice as contralto, but her mother, having risen in the world, did not see ‘actress’ in her talented daughter’s future. Phoebe insisted that she learn the piano, but Florrie hated it and stopped. ‘Singing made me happy’, she declared.
It is interesting that her first public performances (at 14–15) were to sing for her stepfather’s marionette theatre (another of his talents).
In the latter part of 1891 Florrie left home in Melbourne at just fifteen, travelling to Sydney, intent on a career in the music halls, where she stayed with her older sister Nan (Hannah), recently married to Navy man Alfred Tiltman in Melbourne. Nan and Alfred later transferred to live at the Devonport naval base in southwest England and she and Florrie were to remain close until she died there at 38 in 1912.4
Apprenticeship in Australia
Florrie Forde spent the first five years of her performing life (aged 16 to 21) ―all of it in Australia―fundamentally learning her trade. These years were mainly spent in seasons of three to six months, alternating between Sydney and Melbourne, with one season each in Brisbane and Adelaide, before travelling to try her luck in London. The majority of these engagements were as a music hall singer―one of a list of performers including all sorts of vaudeville entertainers―appreciated by audiences and critics but rarely headlining. Then Florrie extended her experience―as a singing actress in pantomime and musical comedy.
While much of our knowledge of Florrie’s performing career, both in Australia and in Britain, comes from contemporary newspaper reports, she also wrote a series of memoir pieces for publications, the most wide-ranging of them being ‘My Life Story’, told on a weekly basis in seven parts for Thomson’s Weekly News from 16 February 1916. Particularly revealing are the parts dealing with her early performing years in Australia.
While music hall in Britain had grown up in the second half of the nineteenth century in venues principally developed from pubs, in Australia, it had followed suit, but mostly was situated in theatres with proscenium arches. As a consequence, while every town and city in Britain, indeed many suburbs, had a music hall, in Australia it was mostly confined to the major metropolises.5
Many reports on the early performances of Florrie Ford (without the e) have 1 February 1892 as the date of her debut – at the Polytechnic Music Hall underneath the Imperial Arcade in Pitt Street, Sydney―and this was the occasion put out in her lifetime in press reports. Yet by the beginning of February that year, Florrie had already performed (from 9 November 1891) with Arthur Gordon’s Grand Variety Entertainments in the ‘middle of Sydney Harbour’ on the SS Alathea. She was one of twenty ‘artistes’ providing entertainment as they went on a ‘grand trip round the harbour’.
In Sydney, young Florrie was most impressed by the English burlesque actress Billie Barlow, learning to imitate her songs and even her walk. Around the same time, Florrie was introduced to (and auditioned with) the Canadian dancer-impresario, Dan Tracey, who gave her a job as a ‘chair-warmer’, a chorus girl, in Tracey’s company at the School of Arts, Pitt Street. This was to turn into a real solo booking with Tracey some months later.
Florrie’s debut at the Polytechnic was not on 1 February 1892, but in fact six weeks earlier (Saturday 19 December 1891), when she sang a ‘serio-comic’ song, ‘Don’t you believe it’―a ‘great attraction’―and later a duet as the Ford Sisters (‘Florrie and Carrie’), ‘See us dance the polka’.6 Was ‘Carrie’ her sister Nan, who later in England was a dance teacher, or someone else entirely? Someone else, says Florrie, but who?7
Florrie Forde with her sister, Photo by Stewart and Co, Melbourne
State Library Victoria, Melbourne
‘See me dance the polka’
At the supposed Polytechnic debut on Saturday I February, Florrie sang with Amy Olive, together as the Bowery Sisters (no more Ford Sisters, it seems), but in fact she also made another debut on the Sunday―with Steve Adson’s promenade concert at the Port Jackson Pavilion at Chowder Bay.8 For one shilling, the customers were ferried to that bay, together with a brass band on board, the concert itself being free. In order to ward off the wowsers, these Sunday concerts were labelled ‘Sacred and Classical’ and Florrie was to be a featured performer at them through the following months until early June, while continuing on Saturdays, a ‘great favourite’ with the Polytechnic. Again, on Sundays in early June, Florrie sang in the ‘Sacred and Classical Concerts’ at the Centennial Hall in Walker Street, North Sydney.
However, learning of her daughter’s theatrical exploits in Sydney, Florrie’s mother was devastated and sent Florrie’s brother (was this Francis?) up to Sydney to persuade her to cease and desist before bringing the family into disrepute. According to Florrie, mother thought of theatre folk as ‘poor lost souls, not fit for the society of respectable, decent folk.’ Florrie went home immediately to Melbourne in order to try to persuade Phoebe, and ‘[mother] bravely determined to cast aside all her foolish prejudices’, and be proud of her daughter’s success, if that were to come.
At some point that year, Florrie reports, she was approached by the American co-leader of the Montague-Turner Opera Company, impresario and tenor Charles Turner, who had heard Florrie sing and tried to persuade her to abandon the music hall stage and join his opera company. The Montague-Turner company was regularly on tour through Australia and New Zealand, always seeming to be short on resources, human and financial. Florrie turned him down.
While Florrie was back in Sydney, her mother Phoebe died at forty-six at her home with Thomas Ford in Bourke Street.9 Unreported in the Australian press, Florrie performed in a minor role (as a fairy) with Billie Barlow in June 1892 at Her Majesty’s in Sydney in the pantomime-burlesque Randolph the Reckless.10 This was produced by George Rignold, who was to play such a crucial role in Florrie’s development as a singing actor in 1894–95.
The young Florrie Forde
State Library Victoria, Melbourne
Billie Barlow, 1892, photo by Falk/H. Walter Barnett
Pantomime was to become a major factor in Florrie’s career, although in the future always in lead roles. Born in London in 1863, Billie Barlow had made her name in the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan in London and New York before touring in Australia (in musical comedy, pantomime and music hall) three times―initially in 1891–93. Florrie was so besotted by Barlow that she took care of Billie’s wigs through the run of Randolph and its successors.
Florrie performed at the Gaiety until mid-August. In late June of 1892, Florrie returned to Melbourne to perform, booked to headline at the Gaiety Theatre with Dan Tracey’s company, opening on Monday 27 June.
On 10 September, Florrie was back in Sydney, this time with Dan Tracey’s other Gaiety company (at the School of Arts in Pitt Street). As before, Florrie juggled two employers―performing for Tracey in the week, while on Sundays going to sing at the Coogee Aquarium, an arrangement that continued through to March 1893. At Coogee, Florrie sang with the Alabama Minstrels ‘in her male impersonations and in her original character “Bubbles”’.
Florrie was married on 2 February 1893 to Walter Bew, an English-born water policeman, at the Mariner’s Church on the Rocks in Sydney. In the New South Wales official register of marriages, Florrie gave her name as Flora Flanagan. And the event was reported in the Free Lance newspaper in Melbourne three years later (on 30 April 1896). They seem not to have co-habited for any length of time, if at all, and the marriage was not mentioned in Florrie’s memoirs of 1916.11
There was a special benefit at the Opera House in Sydney (corner King and York Streets) on Friday 3 March 1893 for the manager of the Vaudeville Minstrel and Specialty Company, Alf Hazlewood, featuring some 70+ performers, ‘six shows in one’ according to the advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald, but in the event, it was Florrie who particularly caught the attention of the Evening News’s reporter:
Miss Florrie Forde sang a witty topical song full of allusions to our late Governor and political situation.
The late Governor of New South Wales was the genial Earl of Jersey, recently returned to London after a somewhat uneventful governorship.
In April Florrie switched to the new vaudeville company at the Alhambra Music Hall (George Street Haymarket), with whom she was to perform over a six-month period until September. Many of the songs she sang at the Alhambra were noted as winners, among them: ‘The Wrong Man’ (sung in England by Marie Lloyd), ‘Oh! Mr Chevalier’, ‘Dear Little Girls’, ‘One of the Light Brigade’ and ‘Life’s Highway’ (sung by Jenny Hill in England).
By October 1893 Florrie was back in Melbourne with the Alhambra Palace of Varieties at the Opera House. The Lorgnette noted: ‘Miss Florrie Forde at the Alhambra is a worthy successor of Miss Billie Barlow on the Melbourne stage.’
On 21 November, The Sportsman, reported on Florrie’s progress in Melbourne:
There may be nothing very elaborate in the music of ‘After the Ball’, but no one can deny that it is ‘catchy’, very catchy. Since Miss Florrie Forde sang it at the Alhambra Theatre all the lads are whistling it―a sure sign of popularity.
The Melbourne public’s response to ‘After the Ball’ was a sign of things to come for Florrie Forde. Composed by Charles K. Harris, it had been published in America the previous year and is said to have sold over a million copies of the sheet music. She was to record it in London forty-one years later (in 1934).
‘After the Ball’
Harry Rickards
Florrie returned to Sydney in January 1894, this time, for the first time, to perform at Harry Rickards’s Tivoli Theatre. Florrie was introduced in publicity in the Sydney Morning Herald as a ‘serio-comic and descriptive singer and impersonator’, terms not so easy to uncode at this distance, but serio-comic was a regular descriptor for singers who were said to combine (as the phrase implies) the weighty with the humorous.
Born in London in 1843, Harry Rickards was initially a comic singer in the London music halls before travelling to perform successfully in Australia for the first time in 1871. He returned to London in 1876, where he built a reputation as a ‘lion comique’. He was back in Australia in 1885, where in 1893 he was to purchase the Garrick Theatre in the Haymarket, renaming it the Tivoli and establishing himself as its impresario. From 1894 until the time Florrie left Australia for London, Rickards was to be a major influence on her career.
Florrie continued with his company at the Tivoli in Sydney until June 1894 and, as they did not open on Sundays, she returned to perform on those days at the Coogee Aquarium. On 30 April the Tivoli company went to the Theatre Royal in Brisbane, giving a one-off benefit there for Florrie. The Brisbane event was some kind of try-out and Florrie was to return to the Theatre Royal there for a season a year later (opening on Monday 1 April 1895).
In August 1894 Florrie moved on from the Rickards company at the Tivoli to open with Harry Barrington’s Variety and Burlesque Company at the School of Arts in Pitt Street, remaining there through September and early October, before returning to Melbourne with the Cogill Brothers company at the Oxford Theatre.
However, in December 1894 Florrie for the first time took a major role as a singing actress ― in a Christmas pantomime at Her Majesty’s Theatre (at that time Sydney’s finest)―George Rignold’s The House that Jack Built with Florrie as Jack (the first of many Principal Boys to come). In the cast was a soprano who was to become a regular performer with Florrie both in Australia and England―Melbourne-born soprano Florence Esdaile (a pupil of Lucy Chambers). The role was a breakthrough for Florrie―treating her for the first time as a star commodity―and complimentary cabinet photos of her in role were offered to patrons. Reviewing the opening night (22 December), the Australian Star wrote:
Miss Florrie Forde sang and acted splendidly as Jack, and when she had anything to say she spoke her lines well. Miss Forde has a powerful voice and every item she rendered during the interpretation of a very severe part was encored.
George Rignold was a Birmingham-born Shakespearean actor who had been involved in the building of Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney in 1887―and was the lessee and impresario until 1895. Florrie was able, working with him on theatrical productions, to develop her nascent acting skills. She also befriended the famous English actress Kate Bishop, who was temporarily retired from the stage in order to bring up her talented young daughter Marie Lohr.12 Bishop designed Florrie’s costume as Jack.
George Rignold
State Library Victoria, Melbourne
The young Marie Lohr, 1903, photo by H. Walter Barnett
Following the pantomime, she was retained to perform in a double bill at Her Majesty’s in February 1895: the drama Black Eyed Susan by Douglas Jerrold, followed by a burlesque, Susan with Two Lovely Black Eyes. In the drama George Rignold played the seaman William, a role he had acted extensively in London, while Florrie was to play the same role in the burlesque. The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
Miss Florrie Forde’s confidence and aplomb enabled her to act cheerily and well as William, and she was very properly encored for the rattling song (with chorus), ‘At Four O’Clock in the Morning’.
However, the Herald critic’s praises did not extend to Florrie’s singing: ‘… she must learn to modulate her voice and to sing from the head, as the chest fortissimo throughout an entire piece is apt to become monotonous.’ Was this the first negative feedback for Florrie on her vocal capabilities? And perhaps the last? It was certainly not something she took to heart, her many later recordings being dominated by her distinctive chest voice.
Around February/March 1895 rumours started to circulate (doubtless prompted by her) that Florrie was planning to ‘go home’―to try her luck in London. In the event, two years were to pass before she was to leave, the months filled with more performing work, principally in Sydney and Melbourne, but also taking a season each in Brisbane and Adelaide.
She opened on Monday 1 April 1895 at the Theatre Royal in Brisbane with the Concert Variety and Ballad Company, the season running for some six weeks. One of her colleagues there was a singer with a famous five-octave range (contralto-mezzo-soprano extending up to top F), Ada Colley. Born at Parramatta, and with a career that started in opera but migrated to the music hall, Ada made the journey to England a few months before Florrie, in January 1897.
Ada Colley
Florence Esdaile
State Library Victoria, Melbourne
In May and June 1895 Florrie sang with Frank M. Clark’s Empire Company at the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne, but by the end of June she had returned to Sydney and Harry Rickards’s company at the Tivoli, where a colleague was Florence Esdaile again. In October she moved with Rickards’s Tivoli company to his Melbourne theatre, the Opera House.
That Christmas, Florrie took a major role with Charles B Westmacott’s company at the Theatre Royal in Sydney as a Gaiety Girl in Pat, or the Bells of Rathbeal―not so much a panto, more a musical comedy―the score originating from half a dozen different composers, the play by Harry Monkhouse. This extended her skills as an actress once more and led on to more theatrical work with that company, Florrie taking the role of Jenny Wibbles, a coster girl, in The Work Girl, a melodrama with songs from London, which was followed by The Enemy’s Camp, where she had a smaller role, Clairette. The latter transferred in April to the Theatre Royal in Melbourne. The dancing in both shows was choreographed and led by Beanie Galletly (wife of baritone Hamilton Hill), who was to become a close friend and business associate of Florrie in England.
In the remaining ten months before she embarked for London, Florrie worked continuously in Harry Rickards’s Tivoli companies―in Melbourne, touring in Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong, then Sydney and then (with Wybert Reeve’s company) at the Theatre Royal in Adelaide. On Tuesday 22 December 1896 there was a Tivoli benefit for Florrie at the Opera House in Melbourne, the star attraction (aside from her) being the ‘White Eyed Kaffir’, G.H. Chirgwin. Born in London in 1854, Chirgwin was a star performer, combining the black-faced minstrel fashion with cockney material. He and Florrie performed on the same Tivoli bill in Melbourne and Sydney through January to early March.
G.H. Chirgwin
SS Gulf of Bothnia
Her apprenticeship complete, it seems that Florrie left Australia (from Sydney or Melbourne?) in the second half of March 1897. She had been encouraged to take this step both by Rickards and by Chirgwin. She tells us that she sailed on the Gulf of Bothnia, mainly a cargo ship with a handful of passengers, arriving in London on 19 May 1897. As Australian poet Victor Daley put it:
They leave us – artists, singers, all―
When London calls aloud,
Commanding to her Festival
The gifted crowd.13
What would the future hold for Florrie Forde?
Getting established in Britain (and Ireland)
While the exodus of talented Australians―principally to London, but also to Paris, Leipzig, Vienna and elsewhere in Europe―had been going on for decades, with musicians and singers, artists and writers, the flood increased dramatically after Nellie Melba’s triumph in 1887 in Brussels. Among them were other pupils of Mathilde Marchesi in Paris, including Frances Saville, Amy Sherwin, Ada Crossley, Amy Castles, Florence Young, Frances Alda and Evelyn Scotney; plus pupils of other singing teachers in Paris and London, including Lalla Miranda, Margherita Grandi, Peter Dawson and Walter Kirby; among pianists, the best went to Leschetizky in Vienna, the finest violinists to Ševčík in Prague.
But Australian singers who came to ply their trade in Europe were not solely working in the opera houses and concert halls. Many were clearly destined for the more egalitarian music halls, which were overwhelmingly located in Britain.
The Australians who rose to stardom in British music halls in the first decade of the new century included comic singers Albert Whelan and Billy Williams, the ‘living statue’ La Milo (Pansy Montague), champion swimmer Annette Kellermann, ‘the world’s greatest liar’ Louis de Rougemont and (above them all) Florrie Forde.
La Milo, photo by Bassano, London
Louis de Rougemont, 1898, photo by H. Walter Barnett
But there were also classically-trained Australian singers who, unable to get regular work in classical venues in Britain, turned successfully to the halls, including Alice Hollander, L’Incognita (Violet Mount) and baritone Hamilton Hill, and four others who had performed with Florrie on bills in Australia―Syria Lamonte, Ada Colley, Florence Esdaile and her sister Stella Esdaile, all sopranos. Many of them were to feature in Britain on the same bills as Florrie.14
Florrie carried with her on the voyage to London a letter of introduction to Mr Charles Morton. Morton, often called ‘the father of the halls’ had transformed the Canterbury Arms in Westminster Bridge Road into a music hall in 1852-54, later taking over the Palace Theatre at Cambridge Circus.15 His programs were by earlier pub standards high quality and Morton introduced ballet and opera into his bills.
Charles Morton
Not wasting time, Florrie went to see Morton the Monday after she landed and had an audition with him at the Palace two weeks later. Unusually, performing for an audience of one, Florrie was afflicted with stage-fright. But Morton reassured her and asked her to start again. He liked her but was clear that her style was not suited to his theatres and she should go try her luck with ‘syndicate halls’.
She did just that and was about to audition with Harry Lundy, when Harry Rickards, on one of his regular trips from Australia, met up with Lundy and was surprised to learn that he was about to audition Florrie. ‘Is she any good?’ Lundy wanted to know. Any good? ‘She’s the Marie Lloyd of Australia,’ said Rickards. The outcome was that Florrie was given a contract at £8 a turn, starting with an opening night in London at three different ‘syndicate’ halls on the evening of August Bank Holiday.
Previously published summaries of the performing career of Florrie Forde assert that she made her debut in London on Monday 2 August 1897 (August Bank Holiday) at three different music hall venues in the capital―the South London Palace, the London Pavilion and the Oxford. And this is indeed the case. But not mentioned is that she had performed through the previous month in Britain―first at Oswald Stoll’s Empire Theatre in Cardiff (from 2 July) and then (from 10 July) at the Star Palace of Varieties at Barrow-in-Furness in the far north-west of England.
Oswald Stoll
Harry Lauder
Of her Cardiff debut, the Music Hall and Theatre Review reported that it had been an unusual evening. The audience ‘could not cease applauding … there was more applause on Monday than I have ever heard at Mr Stoll’s splendid hall.’ And he/she went on to note:
Florrie Forde, an Australian vocalist, sang a couple of songs in capital style, they were catchy songs, and the refrains were taken up most enthusiastically.
On the same bill in Cardiff was the celebrated Scottish singer-comedian Harry Lauder. The Era reported more modestly that the audience at Barrow had given Florrie a ‘flattering reception’. Altogether a highly encouraging start to Florrie’s new life in Britain―and with her famous three London debuts in one evening yet to come.
The three London debuts on August Bank Holiday 1897 were: the London Pavilion (on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Coventry Street at Piccadilly Circus) with Dan Leno, James Fawn and Vesta Victoria; the Oxford (corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road (again with Dan Leno); and the South London Palace (London Road, Lambeth). Two venues in the heart of the West End of London (theatreland) and one in Cockneyland. All went well. The Daily Telegraph reported on her turn at the Oxford:
Miss Florrie Forde from Australia … has a fascinating appearance, good enunciation and a finished style.
The Oxford Music Hall, Oxford Street
The London Pavilion, Piccadilly Circus
An accolade for the still twenty-one-year-old. In reality, Florrie had a cold and was afraid that she would be unable to perform, something that doesn’t happen in Australia, according to her. Anyway, ‘cold or no cold, they gave me a good reception.’ It must have been good enough as Florrie was given a five-year contract with the Moss and Stoll circuits.
She continued at the three London music halls through August and September before opening on the south coast at the Empire Theatre in Brighton, returning to the capital in October, this time to Norton’s Canterbury Theatre, south of the river on Westminster Bridge Road. On the same bill at the Canterbury were G.H. Chirgwin, the White-Eyed Kaffir (who had encouraged her move to London when they performed together in Australia), comedian R.G. Knowles (who will have seen Florrie perform there), Charles Godfrey and the young George Robey. Alongside the Canterbury, Florrie also appeared at the Paragon Theatre in the Mile End Road in the East End of London.
Florrie’s re-acquaintance with R.G. Knowles was fortuitous in that he agitated on her behalf, recommending her for the pantomime he was about to appear in at Birmingham. However, this was not to be―Moss and Stoll held her to her contract with their music halls―so she had to wait a year before making her debut in Britain in pantomime.
Several of the London halls that Florrie had performed in between August and November 1897 were controlled by ‘the syndicate’, managed by George Adney Payne (1846–1907)―the London Pavilion, the Oxford, the South London Palace, the Metropolitan, the Canterbury and the Paragon in the Mile End Road.
George Adney Payne
Well-established by this time in London, Florrie returned to major regional cities, opening first in late November in Liverpool at the New Empire Theatre in Lime Street (owner Edward Moss) with coster comedian Gus Elen, followed by Glasgow (with her Australian colleague Florence Esdaile), Newcastle, Hull, Sheffield and Birmingham.
At the end of January 1898, Florrie came back to London, again appearing at several music halls―the Hammersmith Theatre of Varieties, the London Pavilion (again), the Oxford (again), the Metropolitan (in the Edgware Road, Paddington) with the great Marie Lloyd, and the London Theatre at Shoreditch with Katie Lawrence.
Marie Lloyd
Gatti’s Hungerford Palace of Varieties: Second Turn of Miss Katie Lawrence, Walter Sickert, 1887-88
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Altogether Florrie Forde’s first six months in Britain had started with a bang and had steadily built her reputation as a promising top-flight music hall artist, both in London and in several major towns and cities of England and Wales. In a piece that was to foreshadow so much of Florrie Forde’s emerging career, the Echo in London (on 11 March), reviewing her recent appearances, observed:
This week at the Oxford she celebrates on the virtues of the worker’s daughter. The song in question is unambitious, but it boasts of a good chorus. And Miss Florrie sings it with gusto, and in her blue tights makes as gallant a figure as Miss Harriet Vernon.16
In the remaining months of the century―from April 1898―Florrie established a pattern that was to serve her well going forward. She toured outside London for several months, followed by months back in the capital, where she performed nightly at three or even four halls. And over the Christmas season, she was ‘principal boy’ in a major pantomime either in London or in the regions.
In April she made her debut in Scotland at the Empire Palace in Edinburgh (with the famous beauty Lily Langtry, a mistress of the Prince of Wales, also on the bill),17 followed by Empire Theatres at Newcastle and Liverpool (with Langtry again), and Empire Palaces at Sheffield and Birmingham. All of these theatres were part of the burgeoning provincial network run by Edward Moss.
Back in London in May, Florrie made a return south of the Thames to the Canterbury, where a star-studded cast included Dan Leno, Lily Langtry and her Australian compatriot Florence Esdaile. On the same nights she was at the Tivoli (with Leno, Vesta Tilley, Eugene Stratton, George Robey and the ‘Jersey Lily’), and at the Paragon in the Mile End Road and (later) the London in Shoreditch. Of Florrie at the Paragon, the Era reported:
Miss Florrie Forde, looking very handsome in a principal boy’s costume, sang in an interesting fashion of the humble love of a coster, of a girl who is quite good enough for him.
At the turn of the century, the infinite gradations of the British class system were still being rehearsed in East End music halls. Notices in newspapers started to appear regularly stating that Florrie was fully booked until 1900.
In mid-August, Florrie left London again, briefly this time, for more Empire theatres belonging to Moss―at Nottingham and Cardiff (where she had made her UK debut), But in September she was back in London at the three theatres where she had made her London debut: the Oxford, the South London and the London Pavilion. Sharing the bill with her was a galaxy of music hall stars, including Dan Leno, George Robey, Charles Coborn, and two she had previously shared the bill with, in Australia, Billie Barlow and G.H. Chirgwin.
Remaining in London in October, Florrie performed with Marie Lloyd at the Collins, and also at the Metropolitan in Edgware Road, before leaving for the Palace Theatre at Manchester and the Empire Palace at Leeds. Booked for the first time in Britain as principal boy for a major pantomime, Cinderella, at the Shakespeare Theatre in Clapham, she started rehearsals in mid-December, where she was to be ‘sprightly and charming’.
Cinderella at the Shakespeare
The South London Press, 28 January 1899, p.5
However, Cinderella at Clapham was not the bed of roses she might have anticipated. Handed the script, she learned her part as principal boy and was disappointed that it contained only three rather indifferent songs. And she was not thrilled with her costumes. It gradually became apparent to her that both the management of the theatre and her performing colleagues regarded her as an untried beginner―a potential dud―and worked effectively to sideline her. In the event, of course, she was triumphant and over time she was given more and better songs and dialogue.
The last year of the century continued the pattern for Florrie. Cinderella at Clapham closed early in February, followed by a week at the Lyric in Dublin, ‘storming all hearts’, her debut in Ireland. Did she make play of her (part) Irish ancestry there?
Then came four months in London, playing at most of the top music hall venues with the greatest stars of the day. First came the Collins, the Metropolitan and the London at Shoreditch, then the Tivoli, the Canterbury and the Paragon, and finally the London Pavilion, the Oxford and the South London―she was back to where she had started. The Era reported of Florrie at the Pavilion that she ‘proclaims in song her intention of becoming a society lady.’ Some hope! Regular co-performers on her bills were Dan Leno, George Robey, G.H. Chirgwin and Bransby Williams.
And on 9 May 1899 a special performance was given at the Oxford to greet the touring Australian cricketers – with Alma Obrey, Florence Esdaile, Billie Barlow and Florrie all performing.18 The St James’s Gazette reported: ‘… as a mark of honour most of the performers wore the Australian colours―green and old gold.’
From July to early October Florrie returned to a demanding weekly regime through Moss’s northern circuit of Empire Theatres―Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, South Shields, Leeds, Hull, Bradford, Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester.
However, in October 1899 the Boer War broke out in South Africa and music hall programs were adapted to reflect patriotic priorities―sometimes with the inclusion of a recitation of Kipling’s specially written poem, ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’.19 Florrie was now back in London at her usual venues, before starting rehearsal in December for her next pantomime―Cinderella again, but this time at the Grand in Newcastle.
In December, Edward Moss and Oswald Stoll merged their chains of theatres, many of them at that time outside of London, forming a virtual monopoly of regional music halls and its emerging mutation, ‘variety’. Stoll was to run the business, Moss Empires Ltd, which in time expanded its London presence and overall had more than 50 venues.
To be continued ...
Endnotes
1. I saw the film when it came out in 1969; Oh! What a Cast: Maggie Smith, Dirk Bogarde, John Gielgud, John Mills, Kenneth More, Laurence Olivier, Jack Hawkins, Corin Redgrave, Michael Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm, Nanette Newman, Phyllis Calvert, Edward Fox, Susannah York, John Clements …
2. Lott Flannagan sold his stonemasons business in Williamstown in 1872, taking the United Service Club Hotel in Gertrude Street Fitzroy with its ten rooms; he had been declared insolvent in 1869 and was again in 1882, by which time he was lessee/publican at the United Service Club Hotel at Castlereagh Street in Sydney
3. Table Talk (Melbourne), 12 February 1903, p.14
4. The Royal Australian Navy only became independent from the Royal Navy in 1901 (the year of federation)
5. It has been estimated that in 1875 there were 375 music halls in London and 384 in the rest of England; in 1888 there were 473 in London
6. The managing director at the Polytechnic was John Saville Smith, who had previously been the husband and manager of soprano Frances Saville; she took his name, having been Frances Simonsen
7. A likely candidate is another beginner on the halls, contralto Carrie Ford
8. On the same bill at Chowder Bay was the ‘serio-comic’ singer Alma Obrey (and husband Bob Baxter), who was to reappear frequently with Florrie in Australia and Britain; Obrey had arrived in Melbourne from London in late 1889 and returned to London in 1896
9. Was Phoebe pregnant again?
10. Florrie revealed her role in Randolph the Reckless in a brief memoir in The People’s Journal, 21 March 1914; the epithet was later used to characterise the Australian writer Randolph Bedford
11. Perhaps Florrie suspected that Bew’s former wife Eleanor Jane Rogers from 1882 (Harrison, p.11) was still alive?
12. This writer saw Marie Lohr as Lady Bracknell in Half in Earnest at the Belgrade, Coventry in 1958
13. ‘When London Calls’ by Victor Daley: first published by The Bulletin, 8 December 1900
14. Another Antipodean who appeared in Britain with Florrie was New Zealand-born siffleur (whistler) Borneo Gardiner
15. Currently home to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
16. Harriet Vernon was a veteran music hall and pantomime artist, famous for her figure in tights
17. Or was she Langtry’s fake music hall double?
18. 1899 was the first cricket tour of England by Australia to include five test matches; the Australian team included Victor Trumper (his test debut), while for England the first test at Trent Bridge saw the last appearance of W.G. Grace and the first of Wilfred Rhodes
19. ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’ was written by Kipling in October 1899 as a patriotic piece with the specific aim of raising funds for British soldiers and their families.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks (for help of various kinds) to Christine Davies and colleagues (Templeman Library, University of Kent), Elisabeth Kumm, Tony Locantro, Tony Martin-Jones, Penelope Upward, Sophie Wilson
