‘A Good Woman of Business’: The Female Manager in the Portable Theatre

Abstract

The portable theatre embraced and valorised women throughout its 150-year history (from around 1800 to 1950), taking dramatic performances to towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. Mothers, wives and daughters were also actors and managers in these travelling companies, in close family units, and their career paths reflected both their skills and opportunities. Their working lives were physically hard, often organising theatrical licenses and recruiting professionals, as well as performing themselves. Many women combined the leading lady roles with management and caring for their children. Others were forced to relinquish an acting career to concentrate upon business. Mrs Marie Livesey, with six children to care for, fulfilled her late husband’s ambition to build a permanent theatre and did so, in part, with revenue from her portable theatre. Women managers of portable theatres were respected in their business and their achievements challenge the perception that all theatrical women laboured under ‘restricted conditions’.

Keywords

Portable theatre travelling theatre licensing family actress ‘Muster’ John Richardson

Women were no strangers to shouldering responsibility in the portable theatre. Like their sisters on the fairground, they managed theatres, shouldered the hard physical work of the business, were performers and cared for their families. They acted whilst pregnant, nursed their infants in the wings (often bringing them onto the stage to be welcomed into the portable family), grew mature in the theatre and their profession and, in widowhood, frequently inherited the business that they had run with their husband, or took over from brothers or fathers. These women, their talents, idiosyncrasies and stories are, like the portable theatres themselves, virtually unknown today and their theatre lives are contained in a handful of published reminiscences. And yet their names and their theatres were, fifty years ago, as familiar in provincial towns and memories as household words: Kate Breamer, Marie and Sarah Clegg, Mrs Eldershaw, Almena Garrett, Laura Griffiths, Mrs Hord, Mrs Hudson, Mary Johnson, Mrs King, Laura Leah, Mary Livesey, Mrs Orton, Mrs Patch, Mrs Poulton, Mrs Russell and many more. This article, part of a larger project documenting a comprehensive history of the portable theatre and re-establishing its role in British theatre history, begins by signalling and valorising the role of its women as key players in both performance and management. The following selective case studies represent a tiny cast of the women and their theatres who, either as soloists or in partnership, wrestled with the particular exigencies of the travelling show business in an environment which, like their counterparts in the permanent theatres, was almost entirely dominated by men.

This business was a theatre, taken from town to town throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was a wooden structure that needed a large marketplace or field in which to stand and for which permission from a range of authorities had to be sought. Its company, which might range from six to thirty-six, presented to paying audiences a full range of theatrical and musical performances on a stage with scenery and often accompanied by an orchestra. Portable theatres had been in existence since at least the 1820s, when ‘Muster’ John Richardson travelled his famous show throughout the southern counties of England. They flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century and a few were still travelling in the 1930s.

In charge was a proprietor or manager; both terms were in use and were frequently interchangeable. ‘Proprietor’ reflected ownership; ‘manager’ on letters, legal documents and in advertisements was operational and business-like. Whether an individual or in the partnership of a married couple or brother and sister or parent and child, the manager was intimately involved in the daily running of the theatre. Stage management, the nineteenth-century equivalent of the director, might be delegated but little else. In the permanent theatres, Jo Robinson notes, there was a clear distinction between

those managers who also owned the theatres in which they worked, those who were lessees with responsibility for the upkeep and reputation of the premises and those who managed a company within a theatre or theatres owned and leased by someone else.¹

Such demarcation was very rare in portable theatres where managers were almost exclusively the owners.

Tracy C. Davis has argued that since the commercial complexity of the theatre business in the nineteenth century made it difficult for one individual to combine the roles of manager, leading performer and financier, it was, given the additional ‘restricted conditions’ under which they operated, virtually impossible for even successful performing women to embrace that opportunity.² But such restrictions did not, it appears, apply to the women managers of portable theatres, who dealt with the particular challenges of the business, the administrative and licensing work as well as looking after the company and the ‘means of production’, in the same way as their male counterparts did – in their family business or through employment in another portable theatre.³

The stability of the theatres was enhanced by the family bond and made stronger by an old-fashioned spirit of common purpose among the company. By the second half of the nineteenth century they had abandoned the notorious ‘sharing’ principle of distributing the week’s takings among the company, and performers were, for the most part, salaried. But everyone, from the novice to the leading man was expected to invest their energies not only on the stage but in all aspects of the business. People like ‘Old Finch’ of Sam Wild’s company, who was both employee and friend, ‘a man who worked hard for the good of the concern, and … could never bear the idea of it being put down’.⁴ Similarly, Tom Shorrocks was the reliable and loyal performer and stage manager in Sarah Clegg’s Princess Theatre, her right-hand man. His salary reflected his duties: ‘chief tragedian was 30s a week, Mrs Clegg paid him 6s more as stage manager, and another 6s as scene painter’.⁵

The responsibility of managing the portable business was rarely delegated except in cases of serious illness. Just prior to the First World War, Mrs Kate King inherited the Alexandra Theatre from her husband, George King who, in 1901, had inherited the theatre from his father.⁶ The Kings fell into an established routine of taking the lead dramatic roles on the stage alongside the day-to-day managerial duties. Both had spent their professional lives in portable theatres; Mrs King (formerly Miss Kate Thornton) was born in her parents’ theatre and served her ‘apprenticeship’ in child, chambermaid and leading lady roles. Even so, it must been a daunting proposition to be suddenly faced with the sole responsibility for the Alexandra when her husband died. Years later, in a letter to Jimmy Lynton’s column, ‘Portables and Fit-ups’ in the World’s Fair, she reflected on the reasons why she was finally forced, through overwork which had led to ill health, to sell the theatre. It is a rare catalogue of some of duties she and other women managers fulfilled – ‘the heavy work of finding suitable towns, arranging standing grounds, gas supplies, haulage and advertising, superintending building up and pulling down, and filling in any breach in the cast at night’ –and signals the topics represented by the short case studies which follow.⁷

Towns and Grounds: Garrett’s Empire Theatre and a Working Partnership

‘Finding suitable towns’, Mrs King noted was ‘heavy work’. It required attention to detail, the ability to write letters and fill in forms, an understanding of the licensing system (particularly after 1881 when local authorities were given the responsibility for the licensing of places of entertainment) and a thorough knowledge of the geographical area. Physical stamina was necessary for travelling to and from county offices to deliver paperwork and to seek out towns with suitable standing ground. It was a task that might be shared between married couples, like proprietors George and Almena Garrett, who travelled their Empire Theatre around the towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1891 until 1917, but documents show that, in fact, it was Mrs Garrett alone who did this ‘heavy work’.

The Empire was a portable of average size: 75 ft long and 22 ft wide, and capable of seating around 550 in gallery, pit and front stall seats. Occupying the width of the theatre was the stage, 22 ft wide and 18 ft deep – a practical if not generous performance space. Like all portables, it was built from wooden shutters, held together by plates and bolts, with a canvas roof or tilt thrown over wooden rafters. The seating consisted of long benches, the front stalls carpeted for comfort, and a ‘bleachers’ style gallery reaching up to the roof. There was no flooring; the portable’s base was the earth on which it stood, liberally scattered with sawdust each day. It was a sectional building, not unlike a modern-day flat-pack shed, transported on wagons (pulled by horses) which then formed the stage. At each town on the route, it was erected on a pre-arranged site, and at the end of a stay, it was dismantled and repacked, when the entire company would move on to the next venue.

Finding and securing those venues was a vital and exacting task. By the mid-nineteenth century, the itinerant strolling player had long disappeared and a theatre could not simply arrive in a town and trust that it would be either welcomed or profitable. There was growing competition not only from permanent theatres, public houses and their singing rooms, small music halls and assembly rooms but also the circuses and travelling exhibitions that regularly visited thriving towns. Additionally, not every town welcomed travelling shows, and proprietors might come up against the local standard bearers of theatrical prejudice when applying for licences. Mr Robert White, clerk to the Worksop Board of Health, ‘a steady-going Methodist [with] a saintly dread of anything theatrical’ was one such, and Mr Wilbraham Tollemarche, Chair of the Nantwich Magistrates Bench and Conservative Member of Parliament for the West Cheshire Division, who made his feelings very clear during John Snape’s application for a theatrical licence: ‘These itinerating Theatres – I won’t call them low Theatres – [formerly] traded upon profligacy, immorality, and sensational representation. I dislike all Theatres, from a penny upwards.’⁸ Suspicion of the travelling population in general was common. George Smith’s Moveable Dwellings Bill (1890) threatened all travelling entertainments with intrusive inspections of their vans, designed to oppress and suppress van-dwellers’ way of life, employment and culture. Among other invasive recommendations, statutory powers of entry to showmen’s living vans (including those belonging to portable theatres) were proposed, under the pretext of sanitary inspection, so that even the mere suspicion of an infectious disease (the evidence for which did not have to be produced) could see the arrival of inspectors at any time between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. Smith’s Bill fed the widespread belief that the children of showpeople and gypsy travellers were ill educated, ill fed and poorly housed, and that the adults of the show community were neglectful, criminal and, like their children, potential carriers of disease. It was this latter which inflamed the imaginations of local officials and prompted their opposition to the granting of dramatic licences. Many were afraid of the long list of contagious diseases that might be spread by ‘strolling players’, as outlined by, for example, Mr Barnes, the Clerk to Denby and Cumberworth Urban District Council:

This class of entertainment not infrequently introduces into a District through the medium of strolling players engaged dangerous and locally expensive forms of epidemic disease such as Scarlet Fever, Measles or Diphtheria necessitating Isolation Hospital or other service with no possibility for costs recovery on this account.⁹

West Riding County Council in Wakefield, Yorkshire administered the licensing of the area in which the Garretts’ Empire theatre travelled, and by the end of the nineteenth century, it had streamlined the cumbersome licensing process to allow proprietors of travelling shows to list on an annual application the towns they intended to visit in any twelve months, after which a blanket licence was issued. The proprietor submitted a written application, together with a plan of the theatre (to a scale of not less than 8 ft to the inch) and sketch plans of all the sites on which it stood. Regulations governed the number and width of the theatre’s entrances and exits, the fire precautions and sanitary provisions, and the site on which it stood. In particular, it had to be in an isolated position and so could not be erected within 30 ft of any building. The onus was upon the manager to show that all the requirements were met in order to be granted a licence.

The sites on which portables theatres stood (from a marketplace to a fair field, yard or area behind a public house) is recorded intermittently by name in newspaper advertisements or reports, but it is rare to find the kind of specific information about the sites supplied by Mrs Garrett in the sketches she submitted to the West Riding authorities with her licensing application. These date from between 1896 and 1917 and are drawn in pen and ink on plain note paper of good quality with a handwritten accompanying letter. Mrs Garrett was not an artist. The sketches are neatly if roughly drawn and, since the purpose was to show the Empire Theatre in relation to its surroundings, particularly buildings, the focus was always the theatre, usually shown face-on, often a simple rectangular box with a roof. The nearby houses and other buildings, walls and roads are given similar treatment. Occasionally, however, she drew her theatre in greater detail. Her application to stand at Selby in 1897 and 1899 shows the Empire with its shaped canopy over the lobby, the exits on the side and ends of the building, all in rough perspective: a miniature view of the portable theatre and, since any images of a portable, whether sketched, drawn or photographed are, like hen’s teeth, very rare. These are early sketches, only six years into the Garretts’ management when, perhaps, Mrs Garrett was still proud of their new venture and wanted to express it by showing those small details like the fancy canopy (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Sketch plan of ground at Selby, Yorkshire and letter submitted to the West Riding County Council by Mrs Almena Garrett, 22 February 1899. WYAS RD1/5/3/53. Source: Reproduced by kind permission of West Yorkshire Archives Service.

In the letters which accompany these sketches, Mrs Garret included local information about the site, the name by which it was known, who owned it and whether it had been used before by portable theatres, showing her knowledge of the area. In her Boston Spa application she wrote, ‘Ground is known as the Royal Hotel Field’, and for Meltham she indicated that she wished to stand ‘On the Ground Called Peg Croft Feast Ground’, carefully underlining the name. At other times, as a means of establishing its suitability, she named the portable theatres that had also previously occupied the site. So in the case of Cleckheaton, not only did she note that the Urban District Council owned the site, she reminded the authorities that ‘the Last Portable Theatre on it was Mr Leybournes Theatre about 12 months ago Last March’. Mrs Garrett labelled the roads, identified the public houses and included local information. She was also aware of the competition: from her management experience she knew there would be little point visiting a town recently worked by another show.

An awareness of where other portables had been or were going was crucial; the theatres operated on a tight budget, dependent upon a regular paying audience and often running so ‘close to the edge’ that any decline in revenue had an immediate and potentially disastrous result. This may have happened to the Garretts, since Mrs Garrett was unusually frank about their difficulties in her letters to the West Riding authorities when she needed to vary the towns listed on her original application. In 1904, sited in Mapplewell, she wrote asking to move ‘as soon as possible’ to Cudworth (about 5 mile away) because ‘trade [was] dropping so bad’. Similarly in 1906 she asked permission to move from Ossett to Mickletown Methley (11 miles away) ‘as we are doing Very bad here’.¹⁰ Strictly, it was not necessary for her to give a reason for removal – she could simply have completed the paperwork and asked to move – but the detail of her polite requests perhaps helped in gaining approval for her application.

The ‘poor trade’ in Mapplewell and Ossett may have been simply bad luck: audiences were always affected by a colliery strike or closure, poor weather or a flu epidemic. It could have been bad judgement on the Garretts’ part. Certainly they visited Ossett every year, suggesting it was a ‘paying town’, but Mapplewell they visited only once, in 1904, and never again. The decision to give up a town and find another was not taken lightly, however, since there were inevitably costs involved. One or both of the Garretts would have to identify an alternative town not too far distant and ensure that another portable theatre had not played there recently. Mrs Garrett (for it seems to have been her responsibility) had then to visit the town, find a suitable site and go through the ritual of drawing another sketch plan and applying to the authorities for permission to perform. There was the not inconsiderable inconvenience of pulling down the theatre, and the cost of wasted bills already printed, of hiring transportation to move the theatre, and up to a week’s lost revenue whilst it was moved, re-erected and re-advertised, all a drain on an already fragile business economy.

That it was Almena Garrett’s responsibility to manage this clerical as well as operational aspect of the business suggests that their husband and wife partnership was based on abilities and skills. Perhaps George Garrett’s handwriting was poor. Perhaps he was not as literate as his wife. Almena was certainly scrupulous in her attention to the regulations, completing the forms with great thoroughness and always writing an accompanying letter. Although George Garrett, the leading man in the company, was named as the Proprietor or Manager of the Empire when he advertised for performers in the Era and the Stage, it was always Almena Garrett’s name that appeared on the licence.¹¹

The Rules of the Portable Theatre

When Mrs King drew up her list of managerial duties, she did not include the tasks of hiring performers and the management of the company, perhaps because they were so much an accepted part of portable life that they hardly needed stating. And yet the difference between success and failure might rest upon the shoulders of a half-way decent leading man or a versatile comedienne and with company members who understood what was expected of them and were prepared to pull their weight.

In its mythical history, the portable theatre was a school for performers who went on to be stars of the legitimate stage. In reality, most portable actors and actresses spent their entire professional lives travelling with a variety of portable companies.¹² Unless they were obviously talented, novices were not welcomed and advertisements for personnel would demand ‘experience’ since inexperience was too heavy a burden. Whether a novice or a practised professional, however, no one could avoid the heavy physical involvement necessary to ensure the smooth and efficient running of the theatre where every individual had a role. In fact it was so essential that some proprietors felt obliged to remind would-be applicants of their obligations, as in Marie Clegg’s advertisement below:

WANTED, a Gentleman for Old Men and one or two Responsible Gentlemen for stock winter season. Must conform to the rules of a portable theatre.

Lowest terms to Miss Marie Clegg,

Princess Theatre, Todmorden.

P.S. Can join at once.¹³

Implicit in the ‘rules of the portable theatre’ was an understanding that any member of the company might, in addition to performing, be required to do extra tasks. For some, like the actor Horace Howling, it was more work than they were prepared to undertake. In 1886, at Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Howling was summoned by John Hughes, the proprietor of the Victoria portable theatre, for leaving his employment without notice. During the hearing the terms of Howling’s engagement were revealed by the prosecution lawyer: he was not only engaged as an actor but also ‘to perform the duties usually expected of all who were connected with a portable theatre. These duties comprised helping to take down, remove, and erect the theatre whenever necessary, and to distribute bills announcing the performances.’ Howling was given window bills to distribute around Chesterfield, but failed to do so and instead ‘went away’, leaving the town unbilled.¹⁴ To outsiders, the portable’s very visible code of hard work and hands-on involvement in physical labour also distinguished it as ‘business’ rather than ‘art’ and the absence of a dedicated off-stage workforce (which might be found in even the smallest provincial theatre) further signalled its inferiority. The stage actress Maud Gill, who joined a portable company in ignorance, noted with some irony (and distaste) the variety of tasks performed by a female member of the company: ‘[she] combined the offices of check-taker, business manager, and wardrobe mistress. She also draped herself in muslin, put on a helmet and sat on a ginger-beer box holding a tea tray, to represent Britannia in the final tableau.’¹⁵ As well as acting, dancing or singing, women had particular duties which included mending tears in the all-important tilt or canvas roof, making their own costumes (only the men’s were provided) and curtains and, if they had a family, caring for the children. The men of the company were required to make and shift scenery and properties and to put up and pull down the theatre and any other heavy, physical jobs.¹⁶ Everything was done by company members, from the levelling of the site (if it was in a field) to raising the wooden sides of the theatre and the tilt, building the interior – seats, stage, scenery – to creating a path, with begged cinders so that the audience did not get muddy feet, to delivering window bills and ‘posting the town’.

‘Understanding the rules of a Portable Theatre’, then, marked it out as exclusive but also radical, embracing an ethos of communal labour but where the Proprietor’s word was law. These were unwritten ‘rules’, known by professionals, and they varied, from theatre to theatre, only in the penalties applied for non-compliance. Nevertheless, enforcing them, whether by fines or through verbal discipline or the courts (as Horace Howling discovered) could be a test of a manager’s mettle. When Sam Wild’s authority as the manager of his portable was challenged, he asserted control by formally issuing to the company and pinning up backstage a list of fifteen ‘Rules’ dealing with the behaviours which were seriously affecting his business. The most serious was a fine of 2s 6d for the all too common drunkenness on stage.¹⁷ The survival of a rare printed copy of ‘Rules to be Observed by the Members of Mrs Latimer’s Mammoth Theatre’, dating from around 1860, perhaps drawn up by the lady herself, is suggestive of a similar need to assert managerial authority:

RULES

TO BE OBSERVED BY THE MEMBERS OF MRS LATIMER’S

MAMMOTH THEATRE

All the Male members of the Company to assist in building and pulling down the Theatre.

All are expected to attend at the time called, half an hour allowed for the difference of Clocks, to be fined 3d for every half hour afterwards.

Any Member absenting himself entirely from the Building to be fined 3s.

For a second offence of the same, to be fined double or discharged, at the option of the Manageress.

Any party coming intoxicated to the building or pulling down, or to perform, to be fined his night’s salary; for second offence to be discharged.

The Company are expected to meet every Morning at eleven o’clock, for Rehearsal, a quarter of an hour allowed for the difference of clocks; those parties who keep the Company waiting will be fined according to the time lost, or give a satisfactory reason for not attending.

Quarrelling will not be allowed in the Theatre; all differences must be settled away from the Establishment.

Parties contracting debts in their Lodging, or for Drink, &c., will please to discharge the same, as the Manageress cannot keep those who leave Towns in a dishonourable manner.

All the Ladies to assist in mending the tilt, &c.

FRANCES LATIMER

Mrs Frances Latimer inherited the Mammoth Theatre from her husband, John, at his death in 1858 and continued as its proprietor and manageress to travel it around Wales and the Welsh borders. She married Samuel Eldershaw in 1860 and there is no reason to think she gave up her managerial role.¹⁸ Her ‘Rules’, like Wild’s, are concerned with behaviour and timekeeping, attendance at rehearsals and at the theatre, but also the specific jobs which the male and female members of the company were required to do, and the financial penalties for failure to do so. They are also a reminder of the burden of management she bore alone in the two years before she remarried. As Eldershaw’s wife she shared in the running of the portable for almost thirty years until his death in 1888, and then once again as she operated as a widow-manager until her own death, aged 65, in 1900.

Widow to Manager: Mrs Marie Livesey

John and Frances Latimer and their theatre were a business entity: Latimer’s Theatre. Even after Frances Latimer remarried, the name of Latimer’s Theatre was retained, doubtless because patrons identified with the family name; many portables, like showman’s rides and exhibitions, were named after their owners: Holloway’s Empire, Beckett’s Bijou, Grant’s Pavilion, Vickers’ Alhambra. And as in showman’s families, portables often passed from father to son or husband to wife. Rayner’s portable theatre, which travelled the East Midlands during the nineteenth century, consisted almost entirely of the Rayner family: the patriarch Samuel Rayner, his sons James and Edward and their wives and children, his daughter Agnes and her husband and children. Edward Rayner took charge when his father died. Similarly Joe Hodson proactively deployed members of his extended family to run three portable theatres. Jim O’Marr Priest and Harry Kelso, his sons-in-law, managed their own portables as part of the family empire, referred to as ‘Hodson’s No. 2 and 3’. Family ties were strong and in June 1905 Jim O’Marr Priest requested permission from the authorities to remove his portable from Great Houghton to Thurnscoe, both in Yorkshire, ‘as Mr Hodson is not so well, and at home, we don’t want to be so far away from him’.¹⁹

But there were portable managers who did not have a family background in the business. The Liveseys’ theatrical apprenticeships began in the 1870s when Mary and Thomas were in their twenties and thirties. They were members of good portable theatres travelling in Wales – Warren’s Model Theatre in Mountain Ash in 1870, John Almond’s Star Theatre in Aberdare in 1871, Carl Manges’ Pavilion Theatre in 1872 and John Hord’s Cambrian Theatre in 1873. Within ten years, they were prominent in Tom Lawrence’s Great Allied Theatre where Mr Livesey was the Leading Man, playing Richard III and Hamlet and Mrs Livesey, Queen Elizabeth and Gertrude, the ‘heavy’ roles. Coming from outside the portable family, they entered on a ‘crash course’ to acquire skills and develop their careers whilst growing their family of four boys and two girls (the first child, Gustavus, being born in 1871).²⁰

In 1881, the Liveseys bought their own portable theatre, calling it the Paragon: Thomas was forty-two and Mary was thirty-three. It had been a rapid transition from performers to proprietors, but together they made improvements to the theatre (drawing, no doubt, on their experiences) and were successfully travelling it around Yorkshire when, in March 1890, Thomas died aged fifty-one. With six children to support and livelihoods depending on her, Mary Livesey kept the Paragon going (see Figure 2). ‘She was certainly a good woman of business’, recalled a Mexborough resident who knew her well. ‘As proof of this, she ran a team of twelve to fifteen actors and actresses.’²¹ The Paragon had a sound reputation among professionals and was regarded as ‘a good shop’ and was also well thought of among the licensing authorities. A special session of the Barnsley Police Court was arranged to hear Mrs Livesey’s application for licences at Wombwell, Hoyland and Penistone in 1890 shortly after her husband’s death. Her personal sureties (essential for all applications) were provided by the Medical Officer of Health and the Clerk to the Board.²² The ‘good name’ that had been built over years of careful management, scrupulous attention to regulations and a theatre that did not attract adverse attention had paid off. That reputation had also been built among the locals where the Liveseys had given free performances at the Paragon for colliers and their families during a coal strike and when Mrs Livesey provided soup for the children of the strikers.

In the years after Thomas Livesey’s death, Mary kept her family together. The 1891 Census records that she was living with her six children aged between eight and twenty in four caravans on High Street, Mexborough. These caravans (or living vans), standing behind the Paragon, were fixed in the memories of local residents for whom they were a source of fascination:

The fourth living van was built at Swinton and was a very grand one. The back contained a full size bed for Ma and Pa Livesey. During the day it was screened by sliding doors. The front part was Mr Livesey’s study. They all had one door at the front. The vans occupied by the boys and girls had bunks for sleeping in, fixed at the end. So that it left plenty of room. One of them was used for cooking and the boys went in the others for study. The van was occupied by the Livesey’s only. Any other actors or parts of the company had to lodge in the town or village visited.²³

For Mrs Livesey, shouldering the full weight of responsibility for the business and her family, life must have been particularly difficult despite her years in the business. But with grown-up sons, a core of experienced performers and sympathetic patrons, she appeared to find her feet quite quickly. Importantly, there had been settled periods for the Liveseys in Mexborough, a small, thriving town in south Yorkshire which Mrs Livesey adopted as the family’s permanent home. Locals knew them, their children went to school and played together, although they still wore that Otherness which marked out theatricals and travelling families. This was often displayed in an unconscious theatricality, which George Beel’s grandfather recalled when at school the Livesey boys were told to recite the Lord’s Prayer: ‘[They] stood, and said it with such dramatic grace that no one else made a move – not even the vicar’s son(s).’²⁴ Mrs Livesey was noted as a strict parent, eminently respectable, who adhered to the showman’s values of family, community and hard work.

Building a permanent theatre in Mexborough had been the ambition of the Liveseys and when, after her husband’s death, the town became their home it was realised, although with difficulty, by Mrs Livesey. Flying in the face of doubts about whether theatre women ‘were able to acquire the reins of management, raise capital, and take charge of the means of production’, Mrs Livesey raised the money to buy the land and secured a mortgage and, in an expression of the faith they had in her to ‘make good’, local businessmen underwrote the enterprise.²⁵ On the stage of the Prince of Wales Theatre at its opening in December 1893 she declared that, although it had been long in the making, determination and hard work had paid off. But the venture was always a struggle and lost money. Perhaps in an effort to keep the Mexborough theatre afloat, the Paragon was taken to nearby Wombwell and converted to a permanent wooden theatre to be managed by Carter Livesey, Mary’s son. Mrs Livesey’s tenure at the Prince of Wales lasted less than twenty years; in 1910 she sold it to a Dewsbury man who renamed it the Hippodrome and recast it as a variety theatre. Mary Livesey, always a reluctant solo manager, forced to lean upon her sons and the Livesey good name, retired to Dorset to run a seaside cafe.

Actress to Manager: Mythologising Mrs Julia Jennings and Miss Marie Clegg

Although her reputation as the Livesey materfamilias in Mexborough and other Yorkshire mining towns went before her, as an actress, Mary Livesey was not a ‘star’ or a ‘draw’. She was a solid, competent member of the portable companies in which she worked and, like the majority of female performers, never completely consigned to subsidiary roles unless they were entirely without talent. In the portable, the large female chorus of the bricks and mortar theatre was reduced to perhaps two or three performers, who might also, between the pieces, give a dance or a serio-comic song. Women were always visible.

Girls began their training at a very young age. Gertrude Vickers Meredith, eldest daughter of W. G. Vickers, recounts cutting her teeth on juvenile roles, before progressing to Shakespeare’s heroines, and recalling that ‘the members of the “Royal Alhambra” would stand in the wings and make pungent remarks on my inadequacy.’²⁶ Her position as the precocious daughter of the proprietor was no protection. The female ‘child parts’ ranged from Natz in The Swiss Cottage, played in Payne’s Theatre by Miss Bessie Miles ‘(only 9 years of age)’ to Little Mary in Father Come Home played by ‘the Little Wonder’ Emma Litchfield, daughter of the proprietor of the Victoria Theatre.²⁷

Leading ladies were attractions in themselves, exotic creatures both on and off the stage who were flamboyant and frequently recognisable in towns where there was no permanent theatre or assembly hall. In their repertoire they included roles regarded as essential for the ‘tragic actress’:

Desdemona, Imogen, Cordelia, Lady Macbeth, Constance, Miranda, Rosalind, Beatrice, Portia, Juliet, Hermione, the two Katherines of Padua and Aragon, Julia, Virginia, Belvidera, the ladies Teazle, Townley, and Randolph, Mistress Jane Shore, and a host of heroines of dramas such as Black-eyed Susan, Rachel Heywood, Miami, Cynthia, and the like ….²⁸

The portable theatre’s leading lady perhaps played more Leah’s and Pauline’s than her legitimate counterpart, but for the most part the list of dramatic roles was the same. Most female performers could only dream of playing Desdemona or Leah and spent their entire careers as chambermaids, comic servants and heavy women. For whilst in the legitimate theatre, there was the prospect of a natural progression ‘from walking ladies … to leading business’, and the transition from leading lady to heavy woman, ‘an honourable concession to maturity and experience’, graduation, from lighter roles to more demanding parts, according to age and experience, was less apparent in the portables.²⁹ The heavy woman in particular, whilst not as glamorous as the leading lady, could be a steady line of business, especially for women whose roles were defined by their appearance, voice and perhaps temperament.³⁰ Mrs Johnson, for example, whose acting career spanned at least fifteen years before she devoted herself to being the manager of Johnson’s Theatre, appears only ever to have played heavy woman roles – the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, Gertrude in Hamlet and Mrs Lindenburg in The Slave. Mrs Livesey’s physical appearance clearly predisposed her towards the ‘heavy’ lines of business, although Mr Illsley recalled that she also played the ‘virago’. She had, he recalled, ‘a good speaking voice, stage presence, and action, and as she was a woman with weighty proportions, her realm was limited to those characters that suited a woman of this build’.³¹

Figure 2.

Photograph of Mrs Mary Livesey, c. 1890. Source: Livesey Collection, private. Reproduced by kind permission of Mr J. Flanagan.

Julia Pickering, at twenty-one, was a member of Bennett and Patch’s portable and a rising star in the corner of the Midlands in which that theatre travelled. Her exceptional abilities were noted frequently in newspaper reports when, after her marriage to George Jennings, proprietor of the Alexandra portable theatre, she took on the full range of leading lady roles – Pauline in The Lady of Lyons, Leah in Leah, the Jewess and Parthenia in Ingomar – as well as sharing her husband’s managerial duties. The usually reticent contributor to the Era’s provincial columns allowed himself a fulsome description of her portrayal of the Maniac Mother in the play of that name:

One scene especially calls for remark … which was so worked up that the audience were raised to a degree of enthusiasm seldom seen here. Mrs Julia Jennings, as the Maniac Mother, was, as ever, good. In her melancholy soliloquies on the murder of her husband and loss of her only son, her resolve to revenge, and her joy at the recovery of her lost son, the various passions were depicted with such good judgement and effect as to stamp her at once the artist.³²

Uncharacteristically, the writer did not qualify his praise by reminding the reader that the Alexandra was ‘only’ a portable theatre or that the performances were ‘as good as any found in theatres in the leading towns’. Neither did he mention that Mrs Jennings was still only twenty-five years old. She quickly developed a reputation for breeches roles (a novelty which was a sure draw) to which she returned throughout her career. Hamlet was a particular favourite and she was still performing it in her fifties, often making guest appearances in other portable theatres. In 1890, she was invited by George Giddings, who had bought the Alexandra from the Jennings, to give a special performance, with her daughter, Viola, as Ophelia.³³ An apocryphal story records that Ellen Terry, on holiday in Droitwich in August 1900, visited the Jennings’s Theatre and requested to see Mrs Jennings in her far-famed Hamlet. She apparently so much enjoyed the performance that she sent Mrs Jennings a signed photograph and ‘a letter praising her “excellent representation of the part”’.³⁴

Mrs Jennings, as leading lady as well as manager, assumed centre stage and her ‘star quality’ clearly enhanced the commercial success of the Alexandra, although it seems likely that performance rather than business was her forte, at least in the early years of her marriage.³⁵ Marie Clegg, daughter of Sarah and Abraham Clegg who owned the Princess portable, similarly went from child actress to leading lady in her parents’ theatre. She later owned, managed and performed in her own theatre, also called the Princess, based in Todmorden, Yorkshire before returning in 1890 to briefly manage the Princess portable theatre on the death of her mother.³⁶ Both Sarah, the mother and Marie, the daughter, were business women of some distinction although, like Julia Jennings, it was Marie’s acting ability for which she was widely recognised. When she died tragically young in April 1893, her obituary in the Morley Observer read:

Miss Clegg was a young lady who was possessed of great histrionic talents, and would have undoubtedly held high position if she could have been persuaded to leave her home, but she could not. At an early age she gave herself up entirely to the study of the drama, and at age of 17 she played an entire round of Shakesperian parts, such as Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Portia, Ophelia, Desdemona, &c.³⁷

Her attachment to family and the locality may have prevented Marie Clegg from realising her acting potential further afield, but that focus also contributed to her mythology. She was noted for her northern forthrightness, her broad Yorkshire accent, her no-nonsense approach to the business. When a local asked her how many actors she employed, she is said to have replied, ‘Well, lad, I don’t reightly know, but I tell thee what – just get a gallon of beer and put it down in that there pit and in five minutes thou’lt see every b––- one of them.’ And when an actor applied to her for an engagement the conversation apparently went,

Marie Clegg: Canst thou play ‘Soldiers and Sailors’?

Actor: Oh yes, madam, I’d be pleased to play ‘Sailors and Soldiers’.

Marie Clegg: Then thou are the lad for my brass. All my so-and-so actors want to play Kings and Queens.³⁸

In the resume of her career at her death, Marie Clegg was valorised as daughter and sister, actress and business woman; the fact that she retained her maiden name is telling. On the day before she died, Marie drove to the West Riding Council Offices in Wakefield with her husband (Mr Hodgkinson) to renew their licence for the Princess theatre and, although ill, she performed that evening in the popular melodrama Routh’s Wife; or Murder Will Out. The death of her brother, Charles, from the same pneumonia which would, within a day, kill her, affected her very deeply and she died in her caravan on 2 April 1893, aged thirty-four.³⁹ Part of the double funeral of Charles and Marie Clegg was performed in the Princess Theatre and they were buried together in Heckmondwike Cemetery.

Conclusion

Women in the portable theatre, like their legitimate counterparts, could not always be ‘separated from either their marital state or their particular marriage partners’ or, it might be added, their family connections as daughters, but this did not prevent them from stamping their particular mark upon the business.⁴⁰ Many were known for their fairness with the company and generosity to locals, their thoroughness in administering the business of the portable or their reputations for keeping good order in their theatres. If they were joint proprietors and managers of the portable, they might continue their stellar acting careers but the responsibilities of management were heavy, particularly when they could not be shared. Then the actress might be forced to yield to the business woman and the manager.

The incursion of moving pictures into the showman’s world affected the portable theatres directly. Many lamented the rise of the ‘flickers’ and fought against it, but some, like the Haggars of South Wales, embraced the new entertainment and became film-makers themselves, at first using members of their family company as performers. By the time of the First World War and with companies depleted of men, many remaining managers, male and female, found their businesses untenable, and although women did rise to the challenge and resolutely travelled their portables and continued to give performances (one such was a production of Jane Shore at Holloway’s portable where all the roles, female and male, were played by women) few survived into the twenties and beyond.⁴¹ But in reminiscences in trade newspapers and provincial publications throughout the 1920s and as late as the 1950s, they were remembered, and women, with their particular brand of tenacity and professionalism, are recalled with affection and admiration. ‘Nothing’, wrote one resident of Batley in support of Sarah Clegg’s Princess portable theatre then standing on the marketplace, ‘is more calculated to promote the culture and raise the tone of a people than a good theatre’.⁴²

Footnotes

Notes

Dr Ann Featherstone has published articles and book chapters on Victorian pantomime, music hall and circus. She published The Victorian Clown with Jacky Bratton (CUP, 2006) and The Journals of Sydney Race 1892–1900: a Provincial View of Popular Entertainment (STR, 2007). She has written two historical novels set in the world of nineteenth-century entertainment, Walking in Pimlico (2009) and The Newgate Jig (2010), both published by John Murray. She is an Honorary Research Fellow in Theatre History at the University of Manchester.