Show business

Whilst searching for more particulars about Yorke and Norton, the framers and picture dealers of 87 Collins-street east, who were certainly active by 1855, earlier today I chanced upon the following advertisement for an ambitious midsummer show at Astley’s, the large theater in Spring Street that was tucked behind the old National Hotel in Bourke Street, in other words roughly where the Princess Theatre is today (Argus, Wednesday, February 14, 1855, page 8). I suppose this is a valuable reminder that while picture frames are one thing, show business was an altogether more ambitious affair in colonial Melbourne, with a far longer and arguably more interesting history.

Astley’s

Sole Lessee and Manager, Mr. G. Lewis.

Treasurer, Mr. H. Birch.

Conductor of the Circle and Ring Master,

Mr. T. Nunn.

 Astounding Success of the magnificent Legendary

 Spectacle of

St. George and the Dragon.

Never was success more decided, encouragement more deserved, or the Manager of a Circus more cause [sic] to be grateful.

Crowded houses night after night

Are the best criterion of all popular entertainments; and it is with the greatest pride, the Proprietor asserts, that he has been singularly fortunate in the production of such entertainments as are adapted to the public taste. For the great support he is nightly receiving, he begs leave most respectfully to thank his kind patrons, and to assure them that every novelty that capital and taste can command, shall, during the season, be brought forward for their amusement.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, February 14^th,

15^th, and 16^th [1855].

Previous to the Performance, a Grand Overture

will be performed by the Band.

Synopsis of the performances:

Terrific encounter of

St. George and the Monster Dragon!

The entertainments will conclude with, first time

this season, the grand legendary spectacle of

St. George and the dragon,

or,

The Seven [sic] Champions of Christendom.

Supernaturals:

Kalaba, the Enchantress, Mrs. T. Lee.

Sycorax, a Fiend, doomed to perpetual torments

for conspiring with other fiends to free St. George,

Master J. Christoff.

The movements of the dragon performed by

Mr. H. Walker.

Mortals:

St. George, Mr. Barlow; Tom of Coventry, a Tinker, afterwards Squire to St. George, Mr. Yeamans; Kate, Mrs. Yeamans; Dame, Mrs. T. Lee.

The Six Champions:

St. Denis of France, Mr. G. Nunn; St. Patrick of Hibernia, Mr. Klaer; St. James of Spain, Mr. H. Walker; St. Anthony of Italy, Mr. Pablo Fanque; St. David of Wales, Mr. Lee; St. Andrew of Scotland, Mr. Smith;

Cavaliers of Coventry, &c., by the company.

Egyptians:

Ptolemy, King of Egypt, Mr. H. Birch; Almandar, King of Morocco, Mr. T. Nunn; Lampthos, a herdsman, Mr. Adams; Princess Sobra of Egypt, Mrs. T. Lee.

Mr. Pablo Fanque, the Eminent Artistic

Rope Dancer!

Florist’s Daughter, Mrs. Yeamans.

French Vaulting by the whole Company.

That Constellation of the Hippo-dramatic Hemi-

sphere, Mr. W. Barlow, will execute on a

Flying Charger his Scenic Act, called

Rinaldo Rinaldini, the Bandit Chief;

Or, The Scourge of Italy.

The Renowned Slack Rope Vaulter, Mr. H. Walker,

will appear as

The Star spangled Sprite of Flying Mercury.

Mr. Klaer as the Bottle Imp.

Comic act of equestrianism by Mr. T. Lee, entitled

The Clown and his Granny!

Mademoiselle Antoinette.

Messrs. Dhering and Stebbing’s Gymnic Feats as

The French Dromios.

Mr. J. L. Smith, the great Trick Act Rider, in his

surprising Equestrian Feats on a Single Horse

at full speed, as

The Bounder of the Rialto…

Persons of improper character will be strictly excluded from the Dress Circle and Side Boxes.

Though this kind of variety program was not especially unusual, on the whole theatrical copy running sometimes on consecutive days in the columns of the Argus was usually a little tighter. Astley’s notice, for example, was immediately followed by the following:

CREMORNE GARDENS.

Cattle show this day.

Madame dalle Case’s

Extraordinary and Terrific Ascent, on the illumi-

nated rope, 400 feet in length, across the

Cremorne Lake,

Every Evening.

Entire change of performance every evening.

Vocal and Instrumental Concert.

Equestrian Circus.

Major John Downey, jun.,

And his auxiliary troupe of talented Apes.

Pony Races with Monkey Jockies.

Music and Dancing as in the Old Cremorne;

A new Hungarian Band.

All the World’s Curriculum

Will run, as usual, every quarter of an hour.

Shooting gallery, Chinese skittles, &c.

I am not quite sure what “All the World’s Curriculum” was, but it was clearly a favorite with Cremorne-goers. Perhaps it was some sort of panorama. It had been running since early January when, in addition, “the sagacious Elephant” performed as usual.

The auction

I have been searching for information about picture frames and evidence of frame-making in colonial Melbourne up to the early 1850s. There is a good reason for this. It has to do with my work on Thomas Woolner. My preliminary conclusions are mixed. Before the earliest stages of the Gold Rush and during the first and second years (1851/52/53), it would seem that most if not all gilded picture frames, or any others for that matter, were brought to Melbourne from England, and circulated thereafter as a consequence of auction sales of personal property and chattels. We shall turn to an especially interesting one of those presently.

By the early southern autumn of 1855, however, there is irrefutable evidence of local manufacturing. Two advertisements placed in the Argus newspaper in Melbourne prove this. The first (Wednesday, March 7, 1855, page 8) reads:

PRINT Frame Makers,―The subscriber begs to direct the attention of the trade to his stock of Chance’s Patent Plate and Flatted Sheet Glass, Henry Brooks, 13 Stephen-street, between Flinders-street and Flinders-lane.

A second (Tuesday, April 3, 1855, page 1) is even more unequivocal:

WANTED a Picture Frame Maker and Gilder. Apply Yorke and Norton’s, 87 Collins-street east.

Obviously Mr. Brooks presumed that a picture-framing “trade” in Melbourne was sufficiently established and/or competitive to justify advertising his stock of high-quality glass from Chance Brothers of Smethwick in Staffordshire―they “did” the Crystal Palace―just as Yorke and Norton had reason to believe that it was worth their while to advertise for a frame maker and gilder. The availability of gold was, of course, the least of their concerns. It seems likely that in 1855 they, like everyone else, were suffering from the universal dearth of labor arising from the mass desertion of employees headed for the diggings, but the larger point is that the dizzying growth of the colony between 1851 and 1855 attracted not just people but businesses too, among them picture frame-makers and gilders.

Printed announcements of auction sales such as the following, meanwhile, shine rays of penetrating light into every corner of otherwise scantily documented colonial interiors. We know nothing of the circumstances that led to this fire sale, but it seems likely that the Vandiemonian Mr. R. H. Burbury was one of the many children of Thomas Burbury (?1809–1870), “a cottage-industry weaver who was sentenced to death at the Warwick Assizes for having taken part in burning down Beck’s steam factory at Coventry, where the weavers had been threatened with unemployment through the installation of new machinery.” According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, “this was one of the last recorded examples of industrial ‘Luddism’ in England. On the intercession of Edward Ellice, M.P. for Coventry, the sentence was commuted to transportation for life. Mr. Burbury arrived in Hobart Town in the York on 29 December 1832. His gaol and hulk reports gave him a good character and ‘respectable connexions,’ and the surgeon-superintendent’s report described his conduct on the voyage as ‘excellent’... He was granted a ticket-of-leave in December 1837 and a free pardon on 30 October 1839, also receiving local testimonials to his character, and pecuniary rewards.” He set up a butcher’s shop and mixed business at Oatlands in Van Diemen’s Land, and his sons eventually established themselves in law and business, evidently not without some disasters along the way.

Thus, the following announcement appeared in the Argus on Monday, February 23, 1852 (page 4):

DALMAHOY CAMPBELL

Has received instructions from R. H. Bu[r]bury, Esq., to sell by public auction, at his residence, Williams Town, THIS DAY, 23rd. INST., At Twelve o’clock precisely, All his valuable Furniture, and Household Effects, consisting of―Loo [i.e. lanterloo, the card game], work, writing, dining, rosewood and other tables, bedsteads; Cheffonier, mahogany couch, wardrobes, book cases, chairs; Looking glasses, gilt picture frames, folding screen, wash hand stands; Carpets, oil cloth, hearth rugs, table covers, damask window curtains, with trimmings and draperies, azimuth compass, medicine chest, glass ware, eight day clock, &c., &c.; A very sweet toned Piccolo Pianoforte; Richly plated coffee and tea pots, cream jug, sugar basin and cruet stand; Breakfast, dinner, dessert, and tea services; Saddlery, harness, water casks, buckets, garden tools; Frames and hand glasses, kitchen utensils, patent mangle, &c., &c.; About 80 plants, in pots, consisting of Magnolias, Cactus, Fuchsias, &c.; A large lot of Geraniums from the best plants, in V. D. Land; Bulbs, assorted, in great variety, &c., &c., &c.; Terms Cash. Catalogues can be obtained at the Auctioneers Rooms.

Now, Mr. Burbury’s family household was obviously a prosperous one, with servants—note the folding screen. The family’s firm link with Tasmania is made clear towards the end, as are the many hints toward respectability and culture and some evidence of daughters (“hand glasses,” plural). This was a household of books, botany, science, music-making, writing, games of cards, and, significantly, art, in all probability reproductive engravings surrounded by gilded frames. What, I wonder, became of the family of Burbury in their distress? Perhaps they were not in distress. The hyperinflation of the Gold Rush made the procurement of services such as the shipping of household goods prohibitively expensive, so families moving from one colony to another often found that it was cheaper to sell everything prior to their departure and start from scratch in the other place. However, in this instance the listing of easily portable items such as the azimuth compass and the hand glasses suggests a more drastic set of of circumstances. How one would love to peruse that melancholy, presumably printed auction catalogue. As far as I can see only one such document survives in the collection of the State Library of Victoria, and it is in manuscript, viz. “[Sale of furniture, account sheet], 1852, November 11 [manuscript]. 1852 MS BOX 134/5(b),” covering sundry articles of furniture sold by Messers. Dalmahoy, Campbell & Co. on account of a Mr. Lyall.

Brownie

We go the whole way back, my bear and I.

His name is “Brownie,” though I’m not sure why:

The threads are dappled grey, not brown, with which

Aunt Anne designed and made him, stitch by stitch,

Before my birth, love’s labor unremitting:

She never shone more brightly than when knitting.

I miss her still, my thrilling, clever aunt,

Her many skills she never wished to vaunt:

The semaphore she learned and trained to guide

Our ships past Rottnest Island, served with pride

In wartime—Russia was our ally then;

Her letters, and the sharpness of her pen,

But funny too; she taught me how to swim.

Her work was therapy, not mind but limb,

A physio, and “farmer’s wife” as well,

Admittedly far better in that shell

Than Uncle Henry handled sheep or cattle,

Through flood and drought with courage she did battle;

Like Mum, she built in winter massive fires,

Dispatched whole trees, killed snakes with fencing wires.

In town from time to time Aunt Anne would see

A play or concert, kindly taking me:

That’s how aged six or seven at the Palais

I saw Nureyev leap in my first ballet!

To Paris and l’Étoile she took me straight,

And climbed the arc, then let me stay up late.

Though shy, dear Brownie knows these things by heart,

Reminds me, too, how well she learned the art

Of complex origami from Japan.

How lucky that our smashing lives began,

My bear and me, not part of any plan,

But soon enough to know and love Aunt Anne!

The unstoppable telephone calls

For many months I have received almost daily pre-recorded telephone calls at home and on my mobile phone from an organization that refuses to identify itself, but purports to offer reduced interest rates on a credit card that I do not have.

These telephone calls are identical but never come from the same number twice. The numbers are scattered the length and breadth of the continental United States, and I receive them despite having been for several years on the Federal Trade Commission’s helpful “do-not-call” registry; having also lodged formal complaints about this unwelcome intrusion with the FTC and the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection—more than once to each, using both their online facilities and their telephone processes. However, as at today’s date the harassment continues.

I have on many occasions “pressed 1” in an attempt to beg the panhandler at the other end to stop calling, but, when finally connected to real people, they invariably hang up on me. This is simply infuriating. However, once I took a rather different approach, and engaged the consultant in lengthy conversation feigning extremely poor, broken English, successfully detaining him for 45 fruitless minutes. During this time I was able to furnish incorrect and misleading personal information in response to his requests for my own, and tantalized him by reciting an eleven-digit credit card number, only to re-read it patiently and add another digit. As well, there were invented addresses, tedious wire-crossing, etc. At a certain point when my amusement began to wane, I broke back into perfect English and threatened to waste even more of his and his colleagues’ time if they ever called me again. Very satisfactorily, he lost his temper and roared expletives and other abuse down the line—however this was apparently not enough to eliminate the nuisance. It continues.

I have today been told by the FTC and the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection that there is nothing that can be done to stop this extremely irritating form of harassment, which, because they say it is perpetrated illegally, is paradoxically beyond the reach of the authorities who are charged with taking action against offenders. They seemed to be saying that only if the callers were legitimate would they be able to prevail upon them to stop. I find this impossible to understand. One likes to think that when offences are committed every effort will be made to bring those responsible to account.

However, according to the FTC and the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection my only options now are: (a) to change my telephone numbers, although there is no guarantee that similar calls will not eventually catch up with me; (b) to pay the telephone company to block each and every telephone number from which these calls are made—which is bound to fail because, as I stated earlier, they never come from the same number twice; or (c) to stop using the telephone. None of these options hold much attraction, except the last. I have always found speaking on the telephone to be a profoundly second-rate experience.

So there it is. What is to be done? I obey the law. I pay my state and federal taxes. I do not bother anyone if I can possibly avoid it. Why then should I or anyone else have to endure unending interruptions to my day, intrusions upon the privacy of my home, or irritating disturbances in my office—distractions that are becoming more intolerable as they continue, and as all efforts to stop them prove totally fruitless?

Private Lives

One thing leads to another. A Talent to Amuse, the seventieth birthday tribute to Noël Coward lately issued on CD—contains a snippet from Act I of Private Lives (1930), played in this instance by the youthful Susannah York and Richard Briers, but originally conceived as a vehicle for Coward himself and his great muse Gertrude Lawrence. It is so good that I have since then tracked down and devoured the whole play. The writing is, of course, brilliant—consistently clever and funny throughout—but encased in the substructure is a rich vein of defiance. “It doesn’t suit women to be promiscuous,” declares Elyot. “It doesn’t suit men for women to be promiscuous!” retorts Amanda with feeling. There is a presumption throughout that all four characters’ social credentials are impeccable. At one point in Act II Amanda refers to performing a “Court curtsey,” so we may assume that she has had occasion to deploy it. On the other hand, Amanda knows that the specter of a second divorce will put them in a “Hell of a mess socially.” There is not the merest hint at the Great War, although we may assume that Elyot and Victor are easily old enough to have fought in it and survived. In other words, there is much here of interest to anyone in search of an essentially Edwardian frame of mind, just as it surely exists in comparable novels by P. G. Wodehouse, Vita Sackville-West, and the work of any number of artists (visual or not) steering a parallel course through the 1920s and beyond. True, Amanda and Elyot profess absolutely no faith in anything. They do not believe in Heaven or Hell, merely, as Amanda puts it, “in being kind to everyone, giving money to old beggar-women, and being as gay as possible.” Even here, however, one detects an echo of much earlier but no less shockingly anti-Victorian frivolities, just as one may see the pompous veneers of Art Deco and fads such as silk dressing-gowns, nightclubs, golf, cocktails, and the gramophone all deriving much nourishment from a root system firmly embedded in the Edwardian decade. Coward himself, after all, served his dramatic apprenticeship to Sir Charles Hawtrey. Two other tiny but telling flecks of detail strengthen this impression and they concern diamonds and flamingoes.

In Act II, warming up to one of their bitter rows, Elyot quizzes Amanda about one of her male friends. “You took presents from him,” he accuses. “Presents? Only a trivial little brooch,” she replies defensively. “I remember it well,” Elyot continues: “Bristling with diamonds in the worst possible taste.” “Not at all. It was very pretty. I still have it and I wear it often,” says Amanda with a hint of provocation. There are a few clues in the play as to whose taste is the more reliable, Elyot’s or Amanda’s. Elyot made sure he saw the Taj Mahal in the moonlight. Amanda always suspected that it might look like a biscuit box. Nevertheless, the question in the mind of this middle-aged art museum curator, so recently and thoroughly immersed in the study of Edwardian diamonds, is this: What might a little brooch, ca. 1930, trivial or not, that is “bristling with diamonds in the worst possible taste” actually look like—one, moreover, that Amanda describes as “very pretty”? Was the lapse in taste somehow connected to the number and concentration of the stones, or in their cutting, setting, size, or even colour—fancy pink, perhaps, or intense fancy yellow, or even blue? Or is the problem located nearer to the form of the jewel, some perch-dwelling parrot, for example, or a spray of fuchsias, a miniature pineapple, or something equally vulgar? Not perhaps an issue to lose sleep over, but it is intriguing, because in the design and manufacture of precious jewels one detects one of the most striking curves of stylistic and market continuity extending from ca. 1905 to ca. 1925 and beyond, as if the Great War had simply never happened. This is one of the most interesting aspects of our exhibition, now barely seven weeks away—Heavens!—in which we have plotted several other such curves, all of which appear to defy many of the more conventional, currently accepted rules of Modernism in art and design.

As for the flamingoes, we also learn in Act II that travel throughout the empire did nothing to diminish the pain of Elyot’s divorce from Amanda. “I saw such beautiful things,” he says wistfully lying next to her on the sofa: “Moonlight shining on old temples; strange barbaric dances in jungle villages; scarlet flamingoes flying over deep, deep blue water—breathlessly, love, and completely unexciting because you weren’t there to see them with me.” “Take me, please,” she gushes, “take me at once. Let’s make up for lost time.” “Next week?” he suggests. “Tomorrow,” she urges. “Done!” And for emphasis Amanda adds: “I must see those dear flamingoes.” So the ne plus ultra of Edwardian aestheticism, with its strong, even insistent art nouveau prompt, our old friend the sinuous flamingo, glides over the waters and right into the heart of the mental and emotional décor of Coward’s scene almost as if nothing had disturbed it over the previous twenty years. It might almost be a direct paraphrase of Edwin Austin Abbey’s bizarre painting here at Yale. How interesting! I wonder if Noël Coward ever met Syd Long. In this respect at least, quite apart from the obvious, they had much in common.

A Talent to Amuse

To usher in the New Year, this morning I have been listening with complete fascination to A Talent to Amuse, a rare live recording of excerpts from the “midnight matinee,” which was staged on December 16, 1969, at the Phoenix Theatre in London in honour of Noël Coward on his seventieth birthday. The show was a marathon, with a cast of almost 200, and ran to 4 o’clock in the morning, but the excerpts here have been perfectly chosen and amount to just a fraction more than an hour and fifteen minutes. The CD has been made possible by the agreement and permission of the performers, their agents and, of course, in many cases, their executors and estates, as well as by the Noël Coward Society and Must Close Saturday Records (www.must-close-saturday-records.co.uk) (MCSR 3048). Dear Richard Warren put me onto this gem just before he died, but I haven’t had a chance to listen to it before now. Silly me, for it is wondrous. Highlights include John Gielgud in his prime reciting “The Boy Actor”; the great Irene Worth playing the brilliantly funny telephone sketch “Early Mourning”; Joyce Grenfell singing “If Love Were All”; Maggie Fitzgibbon singing “Why Do The Wrong People Travel?” and the marvelous Cyril Ritchard doing “Nina”—“She said ‘I hate to be pedantic but I’m driven nearly frantic / When I see that unromantic, sycophantic lot of sluts, / Forever wriggling their guts: / It drives me absolutely nuts!’” As well there are ravishing performances of “Mad About the Boy” by Cleo Laine and John Dankworth—again in their prime; “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart” by Patricia Routledge, and “That is the End of the News,” the batty ensemble from Sigh No More nimbly executed by Avril Angers, Hy Hazell, Stella Moray, and the great June Whitfield. Perhaps most moving of all, Celia Johnson recites “I’ve Just Come Out From England,” lines composed for imperial troops in Cairo, shortly before Noël Coward’s departure for Southeast Asia in 1943, and first printed in the Egyptian Mail. Seventy years is not such a long time, but these lines proclaim an English outlook, mood, and soul that might as well be 700 years farther distant.