This is a photograph of a workshop. There are tools, a bench, even a cabinet to hold construction plans. It is a place where a craftsman makes things requiring skill and art. It is a musician's studio. Specifically it is the music room of Miss Winifred Sylvester– her "den". It may look like an occupational still life with instruments, but in fact there are many people here that Winifred would like us to meet.

The foreground is dominated by the side of a grand piano. Behind it along the wall are two violins, two larger violas, and a small parlor-size guitar. Violin bows are propped against the instruments as if to be ready for any moment's inspiration. I suspect that Winifred is standing beside the photographer's camera and checking the arrangement. The many instruments argue that she was a very talented musician. It is her special space and around the walls are framed paintings and photos for us to admire.



This cabinet photograph has no imprint of a photographer's name. However it is nicely signed on the back.



Winifred was born in 1877 in Bombay, India, the only daughter of Matilda and John Henry Sylvester. She was only 18 when she inscribed this photo. Her father John was a surgeon and doctor of medicine assigned to a cavalry regiment in the British Indian army. After his military service in India he brought his family to live at No.16 Melbury Road in Kensington, London.

We will meet the Sylvester family another time. Today the story is about Winifred's musical friends and since there are quite a few people to be introduced, let's begin with the most prominent.






Just above Winifred's violas and violins hangs a large framed portrait of man with an impressive brush of a mustache. The picture is swathed in fabric that initially I mistook for the black drapery of mourning. However this gentleman was very much alive in 1895. A slightly smaller etching of him with his violin is tucked behind the frame on the right.

He is one of the greatest violinists of the 19th century, or indeed of all time. He is Pablo de Sarasate (1844 - 1908),  or as his friends used to call him — Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués.

Pablo de Sarasate (1844 - 1908) Source: Wikipedia

Born in Pamplona, Spain in 1844, Sarasate's father was a bandmaster of a military band. As a child, Pablo was recognized as a prodigy on the violin and gave his first public concert at age 8. He would go on to become one of the most successful violin virtuosos of his time, performing in every major concert hall around the world, including regular recitals in London. His fantastic skill was displayed in incredibly difficult pieces that he composed or arranged himself. Many of today's violin superstars play these same pieces.

As he lived into the era of sound recordings, we can listen to him play. This YouTube video has Pablo Sarasate himself performing his best known encore for piano and violin,  Zigeunerweisen (1878) based on Hungarian gypsy melodies. The recording was made in Paris in 1904 and I recommend it as the perfect accompaniment for reading the rest of the story. Just before the Allegro you can even hear his voice.










The front of the piano lid has been flipped over and the polished surface is shiny enough to reflect this framed portrait of another man with a distinctive hair style.

It is Ignacy Jan Paderewski, (1860 - 1941) the great Polish pianist and composer.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860 - 1941) Source: Wikipedia

Paderewski was also a musically gifted child but his talent took longer to mature as it developed in the Warsaw conservatory and then private study in Berlin and Vienna. But after his debut in Vienna in 1887 his name soon became synonymous with piano virtuosity. Like Sarasate, he gained fame as a brilliant pianist by touring the world. He was a frequent concert artist on the stages of London.











On the other side of the room is another of portrait of Paderewski displayed on the music cabinet. It sits on a small easel festooned with decorative fabric and flowers.

His flamboyant hair is unmistakable but sepia tone photos fail to pick out the red color. Though he was by no means the only musician to fashion his celebrity image around a hairstyle, in the 1890s he was the best known performer of "long-hair" music. 

Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860 - 1941) Source: Wikipedia

Paderewski was living at a time when travel and technology freed artists from the dependency of wealthy patronage which earlier composers like Mozart and Beethoven had needed for survival. But success only came after building a fan base and that meant posing for the camera. Many musicians produced for themselves or licensed photos to be produced for sale as souvenirs. Unlike violinists who can easily pose with their instrument, pianists were rarely pictured at the piano.

Music was not Paderewski's only passion. His place in history was enshrined by his great love for his country of Poland. During the First World War he was a member of the Polish National Committee in Paris, and became a important political activist advocating for the establishment of Poland as a free independent nation. In honor of his tireless efforts and international prestige, he was made Poland's first Prime Minister in 1919, but the hard knock life of politics became too difficult and he left it in 1922 to return to concertizing on the piano. 















Next to Paderewski's second portrait is a small image of a man holding a violin. He appears to have a beard too.

In the 19th century, even this blurry figure would be instantly recognized as a superstar musician. His name is Joseph Joachim (1831 - 1907), a Hungarian violinist who knew all of the famous composers of his time. He too was acclaimed as a musical wunderkind violinist when his early musical training took him to Leipzig to become a protégé of Felix Mendelssohn.

For a time Joachim was concertmaster in Leipzig under Franz Liszt's music directorship. He was a good friend of Robert and Clara Schumann. But it was his close personal relationship with Johannes Brahms that placed his name in music history. Brahms's Violin Concerto, and Double Concerto for violin and cello were written for Joseph Joachim. 

Joseph Joachim (1831 - 1907)

There were a number of photographs made of Joachim, and this one matches the blurred image in Winifred's music room. It was made around 1885 when Joachim was in his 50s. Though he was also a composer like Sarasate and Paderewski, his own music is little known today.

His primary influence came as a violin soloist playing other composers' music. But he is also remembered in the genre of chamber music when his Joachim String Quartet achieved major prominence with world tours. He brought this group to London many times, and it may be how Winifred Sylvester first heard him play, rather than as a soloist with an orchestra.






Joseph Joachim also lived long enough to produce a solo violin sound recording. In fact he was the first, with a disc made one year earlier than Sarasate. This is his arrangement of the Brahms Hungarian Dance No.1, recorded in Berlin in 1903.








Just to the right of Joachims photograph is another unclear image. We can see that it is a woman, but only someone like myself who sits at the back of the orchestra would recognize the silhouette of a violinist's backside.

This musician is definitely someone that a young girl like Winifred would idolize. The violinist in the photo is
Wilma Neruda, (1838 - 1911) also known as Lady Hallé. She was the most famous female musician of the Victorian era, and was a frequent soloist with British orchestras. 








The unclear image matches a copy of a photo of Lady Hallé produced in the 1880s. She was born in 1838 in Brno, Moravia, which was then part of the Austrian Empire. It was a musical family as her father was the organist of the cathedral at Brno. In those days, a violin was not considered a proper instrument for a girl, so Wilma's first music instruction was on the piano. After she was discovered secretly playing her brother's violin, she was allowed to develop her true talent. Her first concert was at the age of 7 performing a Bach violin sonata. 





In 1865 Wilma Neruda married a Swedish pianist Ludvig Norman (1831–1885) who was also a composer and conductor. When Norman died in 1885, she had already been living and performing in London. Just a few years later she married the Anglo-German musician Charles Hallé, noted as a pianist, conductor and the founder of Manchester's The Hallé orchestra in 1858. He was given a knighthood for his service to British music in 1888, and thus she took on the name Lady Hallé.

Wilma Neruda, Lady Hallé (1838 - 1911) Postcard photograph by Bassano, London, c.1885 Source: momh.org.uk

In this age, women had very few avenues to follow for a career in the musical arts. Professional orchestras did not accept women as members, but they would accompany female soloists of the respectable "feminine" instruments – piano, voice, harp, and violin. Lady Hallé had a musical talent and ambitious drive that made her the most visible woman instrumentalist on the concert stages of Europe. By 1901, she had attained such international esteem that Queen Alexandra, consort of King Edward VII, appointed her violinist to the Queen. One can easily imagine how such an artist would inspire a young woman like Winifred Sylvester.

In 1893, the Monthly Musical Record, a London magazine, reported that Dr. Joachim and Lady Hallé performed Bach's Double Concerto at a Saturday concert series at St. James Hall. The audience was described as larger than any previous in the season and demanded an encore of the slow movement. In the same edition were numerous reviews of Pablo Sarasate who also had his own regular concert series at St. James Hall. Likewise Paderewski performed there in 1892 and 1893 too.

A review of an 1895 concert of Joachim found in the Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Volume 79, page 315 included a mention of both Sarasate and Lady Hallé. Since this was the same year as when Winifred Sylvester made a photograph of her music studio, it's quite possible she attended the concert. I don't know the author of this review, but it is a marvelous example of damning with faint praise. 

All Joachim's many shortcomings we cheerfully admit; and then we assert that the man does play at times so as almost to warrant the most encomiastic things said of him by critics of his own race. There are people who have heard him many times and declare that never in their experience did he play well; but for our part we rarely sit through a Joachim concert without ultimately receiving our reward in at least one spell of inspired interpretation. The waiting is often long and dreary, for he is no great fiddler who can cover the weakness of his uninspired moments by wonderful technical displays or uniformly lovely tone: he is no great fiddler, but rather a consummate interpretative musician who fiddles; and when the execution does not come up to his conception he makes matters worse by forcing the pace and thrashing his strings until the jarring sense discord reaches the limits of what human nerves can endure. 

Then unexpectedly the moment arrives, he slips into the right groove, his better genius seems take the bow from his right hand and control the fingers of his left, and the tones come from his violin magnificently strong — not glowing in voluptuous splendour like Sarasate's, nor with the purity of Lady Halle's — but throbbing, alive, with something human in their accent that reminds one that, after all, Joachim has always aimed high and sought to get essential qualities of the human voice into his playing. All exaggeration melts away; the player's technique masterful, his phrasing strong and lucid, his florid passages clean cut, even his intonation fairly true. 

But these points we remember later; at the time we are conscious only of the high gift of expression which Joachim sole amongst modern violinists possesses: the of voicing not the player's but the composer's emotions. Not only is the dramatic accent true, but the tone colour, the "clang tint", is astonishingly appropriate. In the delivery of the "Death and the Maiden' theme in the Schubert quartet played on 25 February (1895) the tone was tragic sinister; in the major variation, which Schubert's way of singing "Surely he takes his fill, Of deep and liquid rest", and thus he ever varies it, when the mood is on him, using only to the finest ends the wonderful capabilities of the violin which lesser men prostitute when they make their instruments crow like cocks, cackle like geese, or shriek unholy dances for witches to dance to. 

To come to an end then: only in his inspired moments is revealed the incomparable artist, the Joachim who is worth admiration; as for the fellow who plays with Bach, takes Beethoven skittishly, and insists upon wearying us with tedious Brahms sonatas, he is a commonplace, rather unskilful mechanic, unfortunately sometimes a pretentious mechanic.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) photograph by Frd. Bruckmann of painting by Carl Jäger Source: BNF.fr

Just to the right of Sarasate's picture are two drawings or etching of composers. The one on the left might be Mozart as it looks like a man wearing a baroque period wig, but it may be a woman's picture. There is too much glare to be sure.

This etching of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by the German artist, Carl Jäger (1833-1887) seems very similar to Winifred's picture.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)    Painting by Carl Jäger (1833-1887) Source: Wikipedia

However the other one is definitely the glowering face of Ludwig van Beethoven, (1770 - 1827) who of course died before the advent of daguerreotype photography. Consequently like Mozart, he is represented only in drawings and paintings, of which there are thousands, and every one shows him with a grumpy frown. This etching of Beethoven, also by Carl Jäger, shows the typical Romantic period interpretation of the composer.

By 1895 music was no longer based on what living composers wrote, as it had been in the time of Mozart and Beethoven. Music publishing had become a big business that enabled any musician anywhere to study the music of composers from any earlier era. Winifred probably had editions of the collected works of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven in her music cabinet. This would have been unheard of only a few decades earlier. 








But the most important picture is the one just under Beethoven in a small gilt frame. It is another picture of a man with a violin. It is the reason I acquired the photo of Winifred's music room.
 
Sometime ago a set of estate photos was put up for auction. On close examination, I found one photo inside another. It was so unusual I could not allow them to be separated, so I bought both.

This photo within a photo is Winifred's most prized memento, "her master", Josef Ludwig.













Across the front is an inscription in ink. It reads:


In the detail of the music room photo, you can just see the faint marks of his handwriting.

Josef Ludwig was a German musician, born in Bonn in 1845. He was one of many German musicians who came to Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria, whose consort, Prince Albert, was from Saxe-Coburg in Germany. The first notices of Ludwig's concerts came from 1869. He became an annual favorite at the Bath Grand Pump Room concerts and played there until at least 1915. As a violinist he seems to have specialized in chamber music rather than orchestral music, as he is described as a soloist rather than a leader or concertmaster.   






On the back of this cabinet photography by Walery, Photographer to the Queen,  184 Regent Street, London is a scrawl in red pencil.


In Italian the word is Maestro. Surely only Winifred could have written this of her violin teacher.  I suspect that same red pencil drew many bowing marks onto her violin music.
 
Josef Ludwig was entered into the 1911 England census, age 66, widower, living with his daughter Christine Ludwig, age 38. His occupation was Professor of Music. His home was at No.10 Howley Place, London, which is only a short walk from the Royal Academy of Music and convenient to the many concert halls in central London. It is also only 2 miles from Melbury Rd. where Winifred Sylvester lived.



I never cease to be amazed at the resources available in the vast library of the internet. In the past I would never have contemplated that we could ever see Winifred's home, but through the magic of Google Maps we can take a virtual tour to No. 16 Melbury Rd., London W14.



Today this narrow red brick house has been divided up into very expensive flats, but at one time in the 1890s a small family of three – father, mother, and daughter (plus a servant or two) called this home. Was Winifred's music den on the ground floor behind the bow windows? Or maybe higher? A piano is big, but it is not impossible to move one to the floor above.

This is a very beautiful and quiet section of London that is off of Kensington High St. and below Holland Park. When I first looked it up on a London map I was surprised at how close it was to the Leighton House, the extravagant residence of the great painter Frederic, Lord Leighton(1830-1896), who was an important artist of the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood style. Many years ago I once performed a recital there at the Leighton House Museum when I lived in London and was studying the horn. At one time I might even have walked past No.16 Melbury Rd.


In the gigantic 1902 London Post Office directory, the residence names are also listed geographically by street name. Melbury Road is quite short with only 22 names for 18 numbered houses. Among those names are 8 men whose occupation is listed as artist. Five were members of the Royal Academy of Arts. (R.A.), as was Frederic Leighton. Winifred's neighbors turned out to be some of the most distinguished personages in the Victorian world of art. This was an extraordinary street even by London standards.



This unframed picture is propped up in the left corner of Winifred's studio. I believe it is a group of musicians as there are two violin shapes held by the figures far left and right. But the people are dressed in costume reminiscent of the Elizabethan or Renaissance periods. The English artists of the Pre-Raphaelite were very fond of painting historic subjects in elaborate dress and I believe this may be either a copy of a painting by one of Winifred's neighbors, or a photo of a group of models for such a painting.

Cimabue's Madonna Carried in Procession Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) Source: Wikipedia

This immense painting was painted by Leighton in 1853 and gives an example of the florid colors and fabrics that are a characteristic of this romantic style. When Queen Victoria saw it on the opening day of the exhibition where it was first displayed, she was so impressed she bought it on the spot for 600 guineas. 






But there is one more picture on the wall of Winifred's studio that attracted my attention because it doesn't have a musical subject. Slipped behind the frame of Pablo Sarasate, is a curious image of a seated man. He appears elderly with a white beard and wears a black skull cap. Within the picture are even more paintings. Could this image be connected with one of the artists who lived on Melbury Road?

The internet provides the answer. Yes, this is Miss Sylvester's neighbor, George Frederic Watts (1817 - 1904) who lived at No.6 Melbury Rd.

George Frederic Watts (1817 - 1904) Source: National Portrait Gallery, London

George Frederic Watts was a popular English artist and sculptor who was connected with the Symbolist art movement. This is a photograph of the artist in his home at Melbury Rd. taken by John Caswall Smith. It is found in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery, in London. The museum listing only estimates that this relief halftone photo was taken some time before 1899. Winifred's note proves it was actually before 1895 when Watts would have been about age 78.

Hope, 1886 George Frederic Watts (1817 - 1904) Source: Wikipedia

The sculpture and paintings of Watts were often allegorical in nature and had mythological subjects. His 1886 painting, entitled Hope, hangs in London's Tate Gallery. It shows a blindfolded female figure seated on a globe and plucking a lyre that has only one remaining string. Watts gave this explanation: "Hope need not mean expectancy. It suggests here rather the music which can come from the remaining chord".

This melancholy depiction of hope led the writer G. K. Chesterton to suggest that a better title would be Despair.









I would be remiss if I did not introduce you to
Miss Winifred Sylvester. 

She is age 10 here, about the same year as when Mr. Watts was exhibiting his painting.


The collection of keepsakes in her music room would not be unusual for a girl from any decade. The posters hung on the bedroom wall of a modern teenager are not much different. Except that Winifred was not living in Kansas in 2014.

All of her musical heroes were in their prime as musical artists in 1895. Today they are renown as luminaries of 19th century music. Since it is highly likely that Winifred knew these famous musicians from hearing them perform in London, and may even have taken lessons from them, their presence in her music room helps describe a new powerful culture of concert musicians who precede the age of sound recordings. The beautiful music they made became the sound that filled a young girl's imagination and dreams.




If you return next weekend, I promise to make a proper introduction of Winifred and her parents at No.16 Melbury Rd. She has more stories to tell.

She holds a violin, the fingers of her left hand placed firmly on the strings in that way a violinist has when testing their instrument's tuning. Her short frock has colored bows and layers of lace, while her stockings are decorated with a short stripe that accents the jeweled buckles of her shoes. Her long hair is pulled back  from her shoulders to avoid interfering with her playing. She wears pearl bracelets on both arms. On the chair are a plumed hat and cloak, and a leopard skin lies atop a Persian carpet.

The little girl appears to be about 8 or 10 years old. Her name is Miss Winifred Sylvester and she lives in London.  Last week we had a tour of her music room. Today we will have a proper introduction to Winifred and her parents.



She was born in Mumbai, India, or Bombay as it was known during the British colonial period. Her birth year is uncertain as Winfred's name is found in only three census records. The census of 1891 was when she was still single and the next in 1901 was after her marriage. Both agree that 1870 was the year of her birth. But in the third census of 1911 her age magically diminishes by 7 years while her husband adds 10 to his. While a lady's age is often flexible, 1870-71 seems a more honest estimate.





The cabinet photo was created by the studio:


The negative was No.21967 with Position No.3 which means Winifred had multiple poses. Perhaps some were made without her violin.

The Hill & Saunders studio began in Oxford in 1860, and soon expanded with branches in eight other locations. The London studio opened in 1868 and was at this address from 1868 to 1886. In the university towns like Oxford and Cambridge, their specialty was portraits of scholars and faculty. In London they photographed high society. The elite Appointment to the Queen gave Hills & Saunders a concession to photograph Queen Victoria and her extended royal family. The result was a very large number of portraits, many of which can be found
at the archives of the RoyalCollection.org.uk.

Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein, 1879 Hills & Saunders (photographer) Source: Royal Collection Trust

One of these royal subjects who posed for Hills & Saunders was Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein, who was the eldest son of Princess Helena, third daughter of Queen Victoria. It is unusual because photos of the Queen's family were usually arranged with dogs and horses rather than violins. This image dates from 1879 when the Prince was about age 12.

Clearly this was a very high end London photography studio. It was also quite close to Winifred's home at No.16 Melbury Rd. with a short walk or carriage ride through Kensington Gardens to Porchester Terrace covering only 1 ½ miles. 







Her mother was Matilda White Sylvester pictured here withChloé, the family dog. Her dress with its slim waist, puff sleeves and ruffles is made with a single fabric color that the photo's sepia tone may mistake for white when it was really cream or yellow. In one hand she holds her kid gloves and a dog leash. Chloé sports a rather nice leather collar with metal studs and what may be a dog tag.

Like her daughter, Matilda was also born in the East Indies in about 1851. Her father was probably employed by the East India Company which was the charter merchant group that first established British trading posts in India in 1612. By 1757 the company had independent control over much of the sub-continent which lasted until 1858, when the Crown took over direct rule of India under the British Raj.








This photographer used a rather overstated ornamental  design as a backstamp:

The photographer was William John Naudin whose studio started at No.13 The Terrace in 1883. It moved to No.169 High St. in Kensington, London in October 1894 and was there until 1909.

The phrase Lately Known As suggests Matilda's photo was taken around  1894 to 1895, which was the date written on the back of Winifred's music room photo.











Winifred's father was John Henry Sylvester, and he also posed with Chloé, whose whiskers are no match for her master's impressive mutton chops. His mustache style would not have been considered eccentric in his time, as it served as a badge of his military career. Sylvester had been a horseman in the cavalry, the 11th Bengal Lancers serving in India. He was not an ordinary trooper either, but a surgeon, a medical officer attached to a cavalry regiment of the British Indian Army.


He was born in 1831 in Shipton, Oxfordshire. After passing exams with merit, he was assigned to a cavalry unit as an army surgeon and sent to India, where he soon found himself engaged in some of the most challenging conflicts of Queen Victoria's British empire. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Britain's colonial empire in Asia sustained a long series of wars in the region that is now called Pakistan and Afghanistan. Years later in retirement, Sylvester wrote two memoirs about his military experience. One is available for free on Google books: Recollections of the Campaign in Malwa and Central India: Under Major General Sir Hugh Rose, G.C.B.
Unfortunately the other has not been digitized: Cavalry surgeon: the recollection of Deputy Surgeon-General John Henry Sylvester, Bombay Army.

The first book contains long description of battles and campaigns, but includes Sylvester's observations as a doctor dealing with exotic diseases like cholera and malaria. After promotion from field service, Sylvester stayed in Bombay, which is where he likely met his wife Matilda. He took a position with the Grant Medical College, a teaching hospital founded in Bombay in 1848 to train Indian doctors in the Western methods of medicine. Initially he taught physiology and anatomy, but in the annals of the 1870 edition of Transactions of  the Medical and Physical Society of Bombay, I found his name as a professor of ophthalmic medicine and surgery. In one scholarly article he reports on his success with over 200 operations to remove cataracts.


After 21 years in India, Sylvester left medicine in 1875, returning to London with his wife and daughter. Given his history, he chose an unlikely district for a retirement home.

Surgeon John Henry Sylvester 11th Bengal Cavalry (Probyn's Horse) Oil on canvas by Colin Hunter (1841-1904), 1885. Source: National Army Museum

If you remember from my story of Winifred's music room, the Sylvester house on Melbury Rd. had several neighbors who were prominent artists with membership in London's Royal Academy of Arts. A Scottish painter, Colin Hunter, A.R.A. (1841-1904) lived next door at No.14 Melbury Rd. Though his  work was primarily in landscapes, in 1885 Hunter created a wonderful portrait of John Henry Sylvester wearing his splendid Indian army uniform. It's possible that Sylvester wanted the painting made to celebrate the publication of one of his books.


This colorful painting brought to mind another medical officer, late of Her Majesty's Indian Army — the fictional Dr. Watson, partner to Sherlock Holmes. It is intriguing to think that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was Scottish and a physician, might have used Sylvester as a model for his character of Dr. Watson  in the detective stories of Sherlock Holmes. The first novel, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887.












Winifred has become a young woman in this photograph and yet she holds her violin in the same manner as in her younger photo. However this time the camera focuses on a 3/4 length pose with no distractions, only her. She is dressed in a lustrous gown, her hair coiled up and held by a feathered pin. She looks to be about age 15 or 16. 






The photographer had a prime location in South Kensington for London's high society  clientele.


His full name was Carl Vandyk, a German immigrant from Bremen and this studio on Gloucester Road was his first of several addresses. It opened in 1881 and continued until 1913. Since it was also his residence, that may account for his offer of personal service.

Like the other photographers, Vandyk made several photographs of the Royal Family, many done after he added a studio in 1901 on Buckingham Palace Road, in Westminster.






In 1893 the London Charity Record printed a report about a musical event in aid of the Paddington Green Children's Hospital. It was produced over two January evenings with amateur musicians assisted by some professional artists. On the first night:

Miss Winifred Sylvester was listened to with breathless attention while she performed in a masterly way two lovely morceaux on the violin,"The Nitei Mezzo" (Masiagui), and "The Witches' Dance" (Bazzini), for which she received an encore.

The following year in 1894 a newspaper in Reading, England ran an advert that listed Winifred as a soloist in Miss Murchison's Grand Morning Concert presented at the town hall. A review of the performance was published the next day.

Reading Mercury March 24, 1894

Mr. Arthur Strugnell was the only gentleman who took part in the concert. His powerful and cultivated baritone sounded pleasantly in two oft-heard melodies "The Bedouin love song" and "Farewell, fond heart." The latter sung without notice, when Miss Sylvester in playing Chopin's "Nocturne" was interrupted by the breaking of a string in her violin. Resuming her performance in a few minutes Miss Sylvester played remarkably well, and responded to a well-deserved encore.

Two young ladies also sang a well known air, the "Ave Maria" from Mascagni's opera Cavalleria Rusticana, to which Miss Sylvester supplied the violin obbligato.






No doubt many violinists have experienced this same mortification when their instrument fails at the middle of a bow stroke. It makes the concert memorable for everyone except the soloist who would much rather forget the mishap.



An interesting female musical pioneer of the Victoria period was Helen Countess of Radnor (1845–1929). The daughter of the vicar of Ryhall, Rutland, in 1866 she married William Pleydell Bouverie, soon to be the 5th Earl of Radnor. From this position of wealth and rank she organized a "ladies string band" in 1881 to play for a special charity concert . This short excerpt from Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality explains her background but leaves out that she was also a very gifted musician herself.

Lady Radnor is perhaps better known by her former title of Viscountess Folkestone, under which name she acquired considerable celebrity by her organization of a Ladies Orchestra, which was the outcome of a skating accident at Prince's. Forced to give up hunting and skating, she had recourse, on her recovery, to the promotion and encouragement of music among the people.




Lady Radnor's orchestra was remarkable news even across the Atlantic, as this illustration taken from the London Graphic was reprinted in the August 30, 1884 supplement to Scientific American.

Lady Folkestone organized her string orchestra and choir in 1881 when she gave a concert at Statford House in aid of the Royal College of Music. The band, like the choir exclusively from the gentler sex, numbers many ladies of the nobility, and it comprises fourteen first, and thirteen second violins; eight violas; eight violoncellos; and even three lady players of that cumbrous instrument the double bass. These ladies under the baton of Lady Folkestone played the march from Handel's "Occasional" overture, the "Lullaby" from Mr F. H. Cowen's string suite, "In Olden Time", and the so-called "Concerto Grosso" which is, however, an arrangement by Geminiani of the tenth the twelve violin sonatas written by Corelli at Rome in 1700. The choir sang a chorus from Dr. Ferdinand Miller's "Song of Victory", Mendelssohn's "Now May Again" and Henry Leslie's part song "The Swallow"

It was a very pretty sight to see Lady Folkestone's executants, the instrumentalists dressed in white, with of pink or blue, occupying the platform, while choristers also dressed in white with breast knots of pink, white, or dark red roses, were arranged in tiers of seats at the background. The display of diamonds almost equaled that at a Court concert. The first of Lady Folkestoue's concerts was attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales and two of their daughters, and the Princess Louise, and at the conclusion of the performance the royal party shook hands with and warmly congratulated the fair conductor


Lady Radnor continued producing and conducting these charity concerts every year. The orchestra used only string instruments (though sometimes adding tympani) and the musicians were exclusively women. The main program was conducted by Lady Radnor though sometimes a gentleman was invited to lead the orchestra through one or two compositions. 

London Standard June 27, 1896

In June of 1896 she announced a concert for St. James Hall benefiting the special appeal fund of the Earlswood Asylum for Idiots. It included a women's choir as well as the ladies string orchestra, which brought over 150 performers to the stage. 

London Standard, June 22, 1896

The London Standard of June 22, 1896 published a roster of the Lady Radnor's string band for that year's concert. It lists 72 women's names and in the second column of the first violins, there is Miss Winifred Sylvester.

The newspaper clipping of the concert announcement mentions a new piece by the noted English composer, Sir Hubert Parry. This composition was dedicated to and titled as Lady Radnor's Suite in F for strings. It is lovely music and remains a staple repertoire of youth orchestras around the world today. Winifred Sylvester played it first.

This would be the last concert Lady Radnor conducted and it is unclear why she discontinued this event. Perhaps the novelty of women musicians no longer appealed to the patrons and did not attract the contributions that the earlier ones had solicited. There may have been pressure from the high class society she was part of. Nonetheless, Lady Radnor remained a patron of the Royal College of Music in Kensington and other art institutions. She was a friend of the great English composer,  Sir Edward Elgar who was inspired by her promotion of women musicians to start his own ladies orchestra in his city of Worcester.










The preceding photographs (unless otherwise noted) are all in my collection, and they have the same provenance: a British antique dealer with a specialty in photographs. The detailed sale descriptions placed them as originating from the estate of John Henry Sylvester. However the two photos of the young violinists have no identification marks of any kind. While I believe they are both photographs of Winifred Sylvester, there remains a possibility that this is incorrect. With these limited clues there can never be 100% certainty on artifacts that are 120 years old.

All of the photo stories I write for this website are only about the photographs and postcards in my personal possession. Whenever I add additional pictures or historic material, I make efforts to use only image files from open source archives such as Wikipedia. However for this story of the Sylvester family I am making an exception and adding photos that do not belong to me. The next three images came from the same estate sale, but I do not know to whom they currently belong. Hence I apologize to the owners and trust that they will see the value that these photos add to the story of Winifred, Matilda, and John Henry Sylvester.

From an anonymous collection

Here we can see another side to John Henry Sylvester talents as he stands outdoors at an artist's easel while holding a brush and palette. I do not know the location, but England seems a fair choice. In this era drawing was a skill that many men and women developed, either as a pastime or a vocation. For a soldier and professor of anatomy like Sylvester it would have been a very useful talent.

When he cast off his medical career in Bombay and returned to London, Sylvester may have chosen the house on Melbury Rd. because he wanted to join the small circle of artists who lived on that street.

On the web, there are a just few hints that John Henry Sylvester may have painted and possibly concentrated on military subjects. He has one citation at the National Portrait Gallery for a print made of his 1893 painting of Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts. Since Lord Roberts, one of the most important British military commanders of the Victorian age, made his first reputation during the India and Afghan campaigns, it is possible that he and Surgeon J. H. Sylvester were acquainted.

Ducks on a Pond John Henry Sylvester Source: Blouin Art Sales

Another John Henry Sylvester citation was attached to this watercolor which sold at Christie's auction house in South Kensington, London in 2001 for £ 800. It does not fit the vague image of the painting on his easel, but perhaps one day I will find that match and solve the case.

From an anonymous collection

This last photograph shows John Henry Sylvester in his final years, as both he and Chloe look a bit bedraggled with age. The photography studio is marked
H. & R. Stiles of Kensington High St., London.

1903 UK Probate Records

John Henry Sylvester died on November 29, 1903 at age 73.  His effects were valued at £32,761 10s, 5d which would be worth between £2,980,000 and £3,376,000 in today's money.

Curiously his wife, Matilda Sylvester lived exactly 10 years more, dying on November 28, 1913. Her effects were valued at only £1,829 17s, 8d.



As I have already hinted, Winifred did marry and left the life that was centered on her music room.





This official document of the Diocese of London is dated 5th June 1896 and was found on Ancestry.com. It records the marriage bond between William Morgan Hodder and Winifred Sylvester. This church license was required to be sworn and witnessed prior to the actual wedding ceremony, and the phrase, Twenty one years and upwards, only indicated that the couple were of legal age.

Captain William M. Hodder was a military man, an officer in the Royal Engineers, which must have pleased John Henry. He was born in County Cork, Ireland and was 9 years older than Winifred.

The Morning Post July 24, 1896

The wedding was held on July 22, 1896 and we can imagine that there was suitable music and pageantry for the happy couple. Did any of Winifred's fellow lady musicians perform? Perhaps Josef Ludwig, her master, played a solo.

Did you notice the date?  Only three weeks earlier, Winifred played her concert with Lady Radnor on July 1st. Did her excitement about the wedding temper her nerves about the concert? Or vice versa? Surely she knew that her future was now as a military officer's wife, and her days with the violin and concerts were finished, if not severely limited. Though the musicians roster of the Ladies String Band did have some married women, they were the exception. Society, at least in the circles to which Winifred belonged, could not accept the idea of a married woman performing in a concert hall.

She followed her husband now. By 1901 they lived in Weymouth on the south coast of Dorset. Hodder had made the rank of major, and Winifred was the mother of two daughters, Muriel and Beryl. According to the next census, William Hodder at age 50 had retired as a colonel of the Royal Engineers. This fortunately must have kept him from active service in the Great War, as his death is noted on one family tree as occurring in 1930.

What happened to the violas, the violins, the piano, the guitar, and the other photographs in Winifred's music room? I can offer no answer.

From an anonymous collection

This last photograph was described as signed on the back - Winifred Sylvester Hodder and Becky.  My opinion is that it dates to shortly after her marriage in 1896. Winifred's crushed velvet jacket with fox tail scarf creates an interesting fashion statement next to her neatly clipped poodle. Is she holding a dog treat? Though her face is hidden behind a veil, I think it bears a strong resemblance to the young woman violinist in the Vandyk photo.




It is very uncommon to have the opportunity to research the full arc of a life, and even more rare to include an earlier generation. The story of Winifred and her parents offers an intimate glimpse of the London society and culture that had reached a pinnacle of sophistication at the end of the Victorian era. Because of her parents, Winifred enjoyed a position of wealth and privilege that afforded her an opportunity to study music and excel on the violin. Yet at the end of the 19th century, the world was not ready for a woman to have a professional career in music, or for that matter in art or medicine. It was considered improper for any respectable woman to pursue such a vocation.

Today in the 21st century, we can see how far society has advanced by looking at the roster of any professional orchestra. Not only are there thousands of women violinists and double bassists, but female horn players and percussionists as well. Today that notion that a female musician is inferior to a man, or somehow incapable of attaining the highest virtuosity in the musical arts seems absurd and preposterous. The integration of women into professional music took many more decades. It began with women like Lady Radnor and Winifred Sylvester who bravely ignored conventions and encouraged their audiences to appreciate musical talent without regard to gender.


Winifred died on September 18, 1948 in Worthing, England. No letters, flowers, or mourning.

These cowboys in neckerchiefs and 10 gallon hats are The Swift Rangers– Fred, Ozzie, Leonard, Ben, Ralph, and John, with Mr. Kamp Charles in front of the microphone. For some cowhands a banjo might be a traditional instrument to serenade the cattle, but very few chuck wagons had room to carry an electric organ and a grand piano out onto the range. Instead these musical buckaroos used radio, playing daily for the Swift Roundup hour on radio station WLS in Chicago. 




In 1931, the WLS station published a commemorative album which devoted a whole page to the band using the same photo. The captions reads:

The Swift Rangers who take part in the Swift Roundup each day over WLS. From left to right they are: Fred, who specializes in "songs of long ago;""Ozzie," who plans and directs the programs; Leonard, whose specialty is baritone solos, and "Big Ben" with his banjo. Seated, Ralph Waldo Emerson, organist, and John Brown, pianist. This picture was taken in the Swift Studio, Union Stock Yards.

The sponsor was Swift & Company, one of Chicago's oldest meat packing and food processing companies. Their daily noontime program, presented by announcer Kamp Charles with musical accompaniment from the Swift Rangers, delivered the latest farm reports along with home cooking tips and guest speakers from the agriculture industry to WLS radio listeners.

The broadcast came from one of the first radio stations in the nation. It was owned initially by the Sears, Roebuck & Company which decided in 1924 to get into the new media of radio with their own station. They gave it the initials WLS which stood for World's Largest Store. The programs were first produced in a studio on the 11th floor of the Sears Roebuck building in Chicago with an aim to reach midwest farmers and ranchers and promote the giant Sears Roebuck mail order catalog. With a clear channel signal of 50,000 watts and no other stations their frequency to interfere, their Chicago radio programs could be heard nationwide.

Right from the beginning in 1924, the most popular program on WLS was the National Barn Dance, a Saturday night variety show that featured skits, humor, and country music. This down home style of entertainment generated so much excitement that the station moved its live music performances to a new site on the 6th floor of the Sherman House Hotel which could accommodate a larger audience.

Though the station became identified with country music, it also aired classical music concerts, and in 1927 WLS gave the first broadcast of a complete performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

But Sears Roebuck soon determined that there was more money to be made in retail sales than in radio, and in 1928 they sold WLS to the publisher of Prairie Farmer magazine. Just prior to the purchase, a survey of people in rural communities for their favorite radio stations, gave WLS an incredible 50% market share. The next closest stations, which were also in Chicago, only received 10% or less.





After moving the WLS studio to 1230 West Washington Boulevard in Chicago, the management of the Prairie Farmer retained the station's original rural country character and connected it to their publication's mission of providing farmers aid. The era of the Great Depression which began the following year would have been an entirely different economic and social catastrophe without the magic of radio. Since at the time most Americans lived in rural areas with expensive postal service and limited access to newspapers or libraries, radio was the real start to the modern information age.





On page 11 of the WLS family album the two keyboard players, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Brown were given the spotlight. Emerson had a fair claim to his noteworthy name, as the famous essayist was his grandfather's cousin.

John Brown was the jack-of-all-work musician who played everything from classical music to square dances. He was married to Juanita, one of the Milk Maids who appeared on the Saturday night Barn Dance show.




The Swift Rangers were not the only musicians on staff. There was also the WLS Concert Orchestra of 12 musicians led by Herman Felber, Jr. The WLS weather report came from a small thermometer hung on the back porch.

In the 1920 and 30s, recording technology was not yet up to the quality necessary for broadcasts on these AM frequencies. All the voices, sound effects, and music were produced with live performers in front of a microphone. The limitations of studio space and the electronics of transmitting sound kept the radio orchestras and bands on the small size using instruments that favored the treble and bass.






I could not resist including this page entitled News From Everywhere for the Sepia Saturday mastermind Alan Burnett, whose blog is entitled News From Nowhere.  Our present day world of internet commentary has its roots in the early radio listeners who wrote letters and postcards to the station. The station management encouraged this contact as it gave them a way to judge how far the signal was carrying their programs. WLS heard from people in some pretty strange places. Just like the internet.




Those same listeners considered themselves part of the WLS family, and a few were honored by having their extraordinary photos added to the annual radio album. It seems fair to say that between Mr. J. E. Paxton at 600 lbs. and the 18 children of Mr. & Mrs. G. B. Reeves, the Swift & Company got good value from the Swift Rangers promoting their food products on WLS radio.

Brahms and Liszt. Two celebrated composers enshrined on two ordinary postcards. Herr Dr. Johannes Brahms stares at the handwriting on his postcard with a stern and almost disapproving look.



George and George have left us an intriguing story that we can only imagine. My theory is that since hotel doormen in this era often wore elaborate uniforms not unlike those of soldiers and police officers, George may have put himself into an awkward situation of mistaken identity.




This card was addressed to Mr. Geo. Haage and has a postmark dated 24_5_99 or May 24, 1899 from someplace that begins with B but is not Berlin.





Franz Liszt seems to ignore the handwriting on his postcard, which is just as well, as this message has far too many umlauts to be translatable by me. It may not even be German. I do recognize the Bavarian city name of München or Munich.




The card was sent from Rosenheim to Hern Ferd. Kropf in Dresden on 17.9.99 or September 17, 1899. Rosenheimis southeast of Munich on the way to Lake Chemsee. The postmark is just 13 years after the death of Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886). Most of Liszt's famous music came from early in his life in the 1840s when he toured Europe as a concert pianist. His brilliant music and virtuosic performances were so emotionally charged that his music came to define what is known as Romantic Music. Though Liszt was Hungarian, in the 19th century Hungary was part of the Austrian Empire which was then the largest nation in Europe. He was so widely traveled that his name became associated with Vienna, Paris, Rome, Weimar, as well as Budapest. He was also one of the first musicians to use photographs for self promotion.

When George sent his friend a postcard of Brahms, only two years had passed since the great composer's death. Like Liszt, Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) was a pianist as well as a composer. He first met Liszt in 1853 while on a concert tour accompanying the Hungarian violinist, Eduard Reményi. At this meeting, Brahms reportedly fell asleep as Liszt was playing his great B minor Sonata, and was forced to apologize due to travel fatigue. Brahms's birthplace was Hamburg, Germany but his professional career was made in Vienna. Though he composed many great pieces for solo piano, it is as a composer of symphonies and concertos that he is best known.

These postcard writers probably picked out a card from a stationers shop; stopped at a café to scrawl a quick note; and then dropped it into a postbox. In 1899 picture postcards like these were still a novel method of communication. They had not yet been introduced to Britain or the United States for domestic use. Postal services were worried that the cheaper rate of postcards would cut into the revenue from letter rate postage, so they placed restrictions on them, like limiting the area of the card where the message could be written.

What interests  me is the choice of subject – a composer. Here are souvenir portraits that present an image of a well known musical artist, yet the captions give only their names with no description, and Brahms and Liszt are not pictured with their principal musical instrument. No one knew their music from recordings. Both had stopped performing as pianists nearly 50 years before. The only way anyone would recognize their music was to have heard it in a live concert performance. Yet the profiles of Brahms and Liszt were popular enough to be used on the first picture postcards.

Can you name any composer that would rate that kind of celebrity today? I can't. 



Some of my readers may recognize the joke in my title – Brahms & Liszt. But for those unfamiliar with Cockney Rhyming Slang, here is a short YouTube explanation.





This video is part of an online tutorial on the English language found at http://www.iswearenglish.com/.

Do you suppose Johannes and Franz ever heard of this English phrase?

Source: Bergen Public Library

The Sepia Saturday theme this weekend is a photo of the great Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg on a country walk with friends. The Bergen Public Library archive has another photo taken on the same outing. I think Grieg and his friend Frants Beyer knew something about Brahms & Liszt, too. 

He wasn't sure where he was. The lanes twisted around so much that the old man wondered if this was the right direction. At his age there was little reason to come out to this side of the mills but today he needed the money. Years ago when he was a kid this was just woods. Now all these shacks were new to him.

He set down his camera case and paused to catch his breath. The haze from the coal smoke didn't help much. This was a longer hike than he expected. Maybe he should have insisted they come to his shop. But no, they wanted a group photo. Presently he heard people coming up behind him.



"Hello," he said. "Can you tell me if this is the way toward the ..." He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and read slowly, "Kos..tel..ec..ky, Kostelecky wedding?"

The man in front nodded. He wore an odd assembly of metal plumbing around his shoulder. It must be some foreign kind of musical instrument. "Ja, we are coming from there now," said the man. "Was a good time." He gestured to his companion. "Davee and me, we play ompahs in the band."

The old man blinked. "You mean it..it..it's over?" he stammered. "Finished?"



"Nein, nein," said the man, shaking his head. "We soon must start the next shift at the mill. Sunday is still a day of work for some. But the wedding party, that goes on still. The priest will be there at least as long as there is beer and wine." He turned to the young woman next to him. "My sister Margit, she will show you the way." 







The old man's face turned ashen. "Oh my, I'm very late. I must have put down the wrong time. Sometimes I don't hear so well with these strange accents." He picked up the case and tripod.

The girl smiled shyly. "You must not worry. There are still many people there and it is not far. Come, this way," she said, pointing down the gravel road.

Her brother gave a twist to his mustache and laughed. "Ja, Margit is eager to go back and have fun at the dancing. The fiddles and trumpets take over now. No need for bass instruments like me and Davee." 








He poked the other man in the shoulder. "Anyway, maybe soon she and Davee will have their own party, when we unite the great German and Englisher empires."


"Welsh, if you please, Gus," said the short man with the tuba. "Pay no attention to him. He is has more hot air than his helicon. And more noise too. Just like the Kaiser"

Gus scowled. "What it this? The Kaiser does not play a tuba!" Clicking his heels together Gus waved an arm. "He commands it to play for him!" 

They all laughed.





 "August, we must hurry. The whistle will sound," said the young man standing at the back.

"Little brother, there is always time to help a stranger." He turned to the old man. "Would you like Klaus to carry your bags?"

"No, they are not heavy," said the old man. "I'm a photographer and Mr. Kostelecky engaged me for his daughter's wedding. I'm supposed to take a picture of the happy couple with the family group."

He looked down and saw a small  child peeking from behind Klaus. "Who are you? Do you have to go to work at the mill too?" The tiny face frowned and disappeared behind a trouser leg.





"That is Frida," said Gus. "She is my daughter, the first to be born an American." He patted her on the head. "Today she goes to hear the music, but she can not choose which tuba is best. The gold one or the silver one. Silver or gold?" 

Davee blew a quick toot on his tuba. "Why the handsome silver one of course. Not some brassy old steam boiler."
 







They laughed again and started to continue on their way, but the photographer  held up his hand.  "Wait, let me take your picture."  He set his camera onto the tripod, adjusting the lens as he squinted through the view finder. 

"Perfect. Frida can now have both. Silver and gold it is."

 













The preceding is pure invention based on a vintage postcard of three men, a woman, and a child that gives no date, or place, or names. A good guess says they are probably somewhere in America during the first decade of the 20th century. They appear to be outside some working class homes that doubtless were built near some industry or factory. 

The helicon is a brass instrument with rotary valves that was the common bass voice of bands in central Europe. The medallion on the bell is typical of those instruments made in Germany and Bohemia. The wrap allowed the musician to easily march or even ride a horse while playing it. It resembles the American sousaphone but is in fact an older European design. The other instrument is a tuba with piston valves and it is plated in silver. It was the style of bass instrument used by British and American brass bands.

Sunday in the park with trombones. A moment to preserve with a photo postcard. Where would be a good place for a photograph? A monument is always a good choice, so these six musicians chose to pose in front of a pedestal honoring some historic figure.

But who is this heroic person? What is his nationality? I wish I knew because then we might learn where and when this group of trombonists came to stand in front of a camera.




The date of this European postcard image is unknown, but probably 1905-1910.  The men wear suits rather than the uniforms of a military band. They have arranged themselves around a table on which a large goblet or vase is placed in the center. In front is a paper rosette of about 70 cm in diameter that has lettering Posaunen Sextett So...  The word Posaunen is the German word for trombone, and I think this sextet has just been awarded a prize for some musical competition. But though they may speak German, I do not know if they are from Germany. Unfortunately the letters at the bottom of the rosette which might indicate a town name are unclear.

Only the two musicians standing center at the back have traditional slide trombones. The other four have Ventilposaunen or valve trombones, which in this case are the rotary valves common to brass instruments in Germany and central Europe. The older man seated left has a bass valve trombone with doubled coils of plumbing. The valve trombone has a similar sound to a slide trombone and was arguably easier to play with only 3 buttons as opposed to 7 slide positions. Today it is not uncommon in Europe but is rarely played in modern American or British bands.





The mystery with this postcard is the impressive monument behind the musicians. It is a bust of a man with an imperial style beard and flamboyant curly hair. Just below the statue's pediment is what looks like a musical lyre symbol, but the face of the sculpture does not resemble any composer or musician that I am familiar with. He is definitely not Beethoven, nor Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, or any other celebrated composer. The cutaway view of the shoulders limits the shape of his coat, but it looks to be not a military but a civilian fashion and from the 19th century. Men were clean shaven in the first half of the 1800s and did not pick up this chin beard and mustache until after about the 1850s. By 1890 this would seem old fashioned.

The sculptor has depicted a celebrated man of the Romantic era. His tousled hair gives him the air of an artist of some kind, a poet or author as well as musician but he could easily be a revolutionary politician. However his hair style does not resemble that of German intellectuals or Prussian military men of the second half of the 19th century. He doesn't look Austrian either.

Perhaps there is a clue on the back.




The back is signed Gruss Dein E. K. and addressed to Herrn Rud Dryremg_? MinervaStrasse 29, Zürich. Could this group of trombonists be Swiss? There is a sizable portion of Switzerland's population that speaks a variation of the German language.

Wilhelm Baumgartner - Zürich, Switzerland Source: Waymarking.com

Only a very short distance from Minervastrasse is the Platzspitz, a park situated in the center of Zürich on the Limmat river. In the park is a monument of the Swiss composer and pianist Wilhelm Baumgartner (1820-1867)., a composer that seems to have written more music for piano and voice rather than for orchestra. His name is new to me and as far as I know he wrote nothing for trombone. Actually very few composers ever wrote any music for trombone. The instrument was very rarely added to the orchestras of Mozart and Beethoven's time and military bands did not take on the trombone, either the slide or valve kind, until the 1860s.

This photo came from Waymarking.com which is a great resource for treasure hunters. The website has cataloged thousands of public structures from castles to sculpture with photographs, brief descriptions, and GPS coordinates.

Wilhelm Baumgartner - Zürich, Switzerland Source: Wikimedia.org

The vast archives of Wikimedia Commons provides a better photo of Wilhelm Baumgartner. At the base we can see a music lyre emblematic of a musician and composer. It is clear that this is not the same man as the one behind the Posaunen Sextett. But it shows a good example of the sort of monument considered suitable for a distinguished musician.

I don't think these trombonists posed in front of some random statue. While there is only a general resemblance because of the beard, I wounder if E.K., the writer on the postcard, chose to have the photo made in front of a similar statue to the one in Zürich.

There is a hidden meaning, and the stone man is notable for either his art or his connection to this location; or both. Someday a random web search will uncover another image and I will recognize this face and solve the mystery. Until then it's just another day in the park with trombones. We meet only six of them, but seventy more are probably waiting to have their photo taken too.







Special Thanks go to Susanna Rosalie (see her comment below) for quickly solving this puzzle. She unscrambled the foggy last word of the POSAUNEN SEXTETT SONNENBLUME or SUNFLOWER TROMBONE SEXTET. She also identified the monument behind them as a bust of  Ignaz Heim (1818–1880), a German musician from Baden who made his career in Zürich conducting men's choirs. He is celebrated for his vocal compositions and collection of Swiss folk songs. In his honor a monument was placed in Heimplatz in Zürich.

Ignaz Heim (1818-1880) Source:  Zentralbibliothek Zürich

This old gentleman in his fine frock coat is playing an unusual horn. His name is Collins Kellogg, and though his instrument looks like a large trumpet or cornet, it has no piston or rotary valves and is in fact a Keyed Bugle. This hybrid design combined a bugle with the tone hole mechanisms found on early woodwind instruments in order to produce chromatic scale notes than are not possible on the simple bugle. It was used in brass bands from 1800 to the 1850s. But when this photograph was taken in the 1870s, the keyed bugle had become an old fashioned musical instrument and was very uncommon.

So why is Mr. Kellogg playing one? His clothes show that he is no military bandsman. And yet he is not a professional musician either, since when this photo was taken, he was actually employed as a milkman.

Instead his photograph celebrates the occupation he was most proud of.

A boatman on the Erie Canal.

This is the story of Mr. Kellogg and his keyed bugle.

Keyed bugle, ca. 1835–50 Graves and Company Winchester, New Hampshire Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

The keyed bugle is a conical brass instrument that was first devised in Britain around 1800. They were often made of copper with nickel trim like the one pictured above, though some are found in brass and even silver. It is played with a trumpet type mouthpiece and sounds like a bugle, but arranged along its length are between 5 and 11 large tone holes covered by keyed flaps that allow it to change pitch. The design makes it a member of the ophicleide family of brass instruments in that the keys remain closed until opened by pressing a key. This is the opposite way from how flutes, clarinets, and saxophones work. Therefore the fingering system of the keyed bugle does not resemble the keywork patterns of woodwind instruments. This addition of tone holes to the bugle offered military brass bands a novel solo instrument that could play more melodic tunes than what natural trumpets could then produce, since those early brass instruments were limited to a short series of notes in only one musical key.


In the 1830s piston and rotary valves were first attached to brass instruments and it revolutionized music. Now only 3 valves were needed to play a full chromatic scale on a horn or trumpet. The sound became louder and more uniform. Craftsmen focused on changing the length of musical plumbing and introduced many new brass instruments in different sizes from small treble-pitched cornets to large bass tubas. These new sonorities inspired composers of the Romantic era and music was never the same. 

The awkward fingering and softer tone of the keyed bugle never offered a sustaining reward for musicians as the new valve instruments had easier and faster fingerings and produced a more colorful sound. It quickly lost favor in orchestras and bands and was replaced by various instruments like saxhorns and cornets which had valves.







Mr. Kellogg's carte de visite photograph was made by:


And on the back is written in ink:

Collins Kellogg   father
of
K. C. Kellogg    1st
Halsey  "
Albert   "

My research on the name Collins Kellogg offered up several  entries in the Cleveland city directory. In the 1871 edition he was listed as milkman, and in 1873, milk depot. But in following years that description was left out, no doubt because he was getting too old to make the rounds of a milk wagon.

The 1870 census for Cleveland gave his age as 68, birthplace - Massachusetts, trade - Keeps milk depot. His wife was named Anna, age 56. No one else shared their home and the other Kellogg names on the photo did not appear to be living in the Cleveland area. 

By interesting coincidence, I found the name K. C. Kellogg in Lowville, New York which is the location of another musician I have been doing research on. He was a prominent Lowville businessman often mentioned in the local newspapers as K. Collins Kellogg. His full name was Kinsley Collins Kellogg, and he and his younger brother Halsey Kellogg had established themselves in this part of upstate New York along the Black River.

Lowville NY Democrat, April 2, 1881

In 1881 the Lowville Democrat newspaper (there was also a Lowville Republican which ran a shorter article) reported on the death of Collins Kellogg,  father of K. Collins Kellogg, in Cleveland, OH on March 31, 1881 at the age of 79.  It notes he is survived by his second wife (Anna), a daughter, Mrs. Emma Shay, and  two sons, K. Collins and Halsey Kellogg. The third name on the photo, may refer to a younger brother who died at an early age, as Halsey had two sons, one named Albert and the other K. Collins. 

The report places Collins' birthplace in Massachusetts, but mistakenly in West Winfield which is a town in New York. According to family records on Ancestry.com he was born in Hampden, Mass. In 1824 Collins brought his family to Turin, NY, which is 12 miles south of Lowville, and lived there for many years before moving to Cleveland in 1846.



This is the clue that explains why Collins Kellogg posed for a photograph while blowing his bugle.

Erie Canal Source: ErieCanal.org

In the 1800s, the Erie canal was the grand idea for insuring the future  prosperity of America by connecting the Hudson River with Lake Erie and making a faster route to the new western states of the Great Lakes region. It was first proposed in 1802, though construction did not begin until 1817 after the settlement of the War of 1812, and it was finished in 1825. Built using only the labor of men and power of animals, this waterway cut through 363 miles of wilderness, and climbed 568 feet up from the Hudson River to Lake Erie by utilizing 18 aqueducts and 83 locks. Many Americans considered it the new 8th wonder of the world. 


When Collins Kellogg was a young man in 1825, the new canal was also a pathway to adventure and wealth. He found a job as the captain of a packet boat, the fastest and most direct way for people to go west in America.
  
Let's have a travel guide from 1825 describe how it worked.

Early Days of Rapid Transit painting by Edward Lamson Henry Source: ErieCanal.org

Fare including board, lodging, and every expense, 4 cents a mile. Way passengers pay 3 cents a mile, exclusive of board, &c., and 37½ cents for dinner, 25 cents for breakfast, or supper, and 12½ cents for lodging.

These Packets are drawn by 3 horses, having relays every 8, 10, to 12 miles, and travel day and night, making about 80 miles every 24 hours. They are ingeniously and well constructed, (though there is yet room for some improvement,) have accommodations for about 30 passengers, furnish good tables, and a wholesome and rich fare, and have very attentive, civil, and obliging captains and crews. It is a very pleasant, cheap, and expeditious mode of traveling, where you have regular meals, pretty quiet rest, after a little experience, say of the first night; and find the time pleasantly employed in conversation, and the variety of incidents, new topics, stories, and the constantly varying scenery. The bustle of new comers, and departing passengers, with all the greetings and adieus, help to diversify the scene, and to make most persons seem to get along quite as fast as was anticipated. I found it so, while twice traversing the whole extent of the Erie Canal Navigation, taking notes for this little thing, which I hope everybody will find an useful, if not an agreeable companion.

Between Albany and Schenectady, 28½ miles, a day is employed, there being so many Locks to pass: but every person is well compensated for the time and expense, of at least one trip, passing 27 Locks, 2 Aqueducts, and an interesting variety of natural scenery.


The Erie canal was only 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide with a single towpath, usually on the north side, that was 10 feet wide. The early locks were 90 feet long and 15 feet wide and meant to accommodate a typical canal boat that was 61 feet long and a bit over 7 feet wide. Packet boats, which could be 60-80 feet long and 14 feet wide, had priority on the waterway, as in addition to passengers, they also carried the mail. With boats traveling in both directions, the boatmen competed with each other to get through the locks as quickly as possible. This required an exchange of tow ropes and horses along with opening and closing the lock gates and became an exercise in efficient teamwork. Borrowing from the stage coach tradition, the boatmen used a coach horn or bugle to signal the lock keeper of their approach. 


Prince Carl Bernhard, (1792–1862), the seventh child of Charles Augustus, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach can tell us what it was like on his 1825 summer holiday in New York.

Source: ErieCanal.org

During the night, as there was a want of births, the beds were placed upon benches, and as I was the tallest person, mine was put in the centre upon the longest bench, with a chair as a supplement. It had the appearance of a hereditary sepulchre, in the centre of which I lay as father of the family. I spent an uncomfortable night on account of my constrained posture, the insects which annoyed me, and the steersman, who always played an agreeable tune upon his bugle whenever he approached a lock.

Source: ErieCanal.org

The packet boat trip from Schenectady to Buffalo took about 3½ days, but of course it stopped in every town and village along the way to pickup and drop off passengers. A good captain would want to alert waiting travelers that a stop was eminent. While a coach horn or bugle would do for signaling on an ordinary canal work barge, for a packet boat something more distinctive was needed. So I imagine the enterprising Captain Kellogg brought a keyed bugle that could not only announce his arrival at the locks with a personal flourish, but also play tunes for his passengers.

Source: ErieCanal.org

An excerpt from Remembering the Genesee Valley Canal, by Richard Palmer says:

... in 1892 Dr. Porter Farley, a Rochester physician, recalled:

The packet boat was a spectacle that never lost its charm to youthful eyes. As it swept through the town it was a sight which compelled attention. Its hull was white with green window blinds; its helmsman was furnished with a bugle which he was wont to blow upon in strains pleasant to hear and in sweet contrast to the hoarse shriek of the locomotive which now resounds throughout the land. 

Source: Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, Volume 29

In the 21st century, floating along the Eire canal seems a quaint and idyllic way to travel. In the 1870s, Collins Kellogg must have thought so too, as the iron horse of the steam train had pulled far ahead of the horsepower of a packet boat. Though the canal remained practical for many decades as a way of transporting material and goods, the railroads must have greatly diminished passenger traffic on the canal by the mid-1840s when Kellogg moved to Cleveland.

Source: ErieCanal.org

Notice that this last illustration is entitled Before the Days of Rapid Transit, while the first canal image was titled Early Days of Rapid Transit. It was all a matter of perspective. 
In my research to find references about this use of bugles and horns by boatmen on the Eire canal, I am indebted to a fantastic website - ErieCanal.org. There you will find many more details about the engineering on the canal and its history. 

Another website that I often use is the Internet Archives, which is where I uncovered this delightful poem by W. R. Freeman from a kind of illustrated children's book that he published in 1894. You can read the original in the embedded viewer below. But I reprint the poem in full because it captures the pastoral quality of living next to the Erie canal and the way that sounds can be part of memory. I think that is what Mr. Kellogg was trying to convey in his photograph. 

REMINISCENCES OF FARM LIFE In Western New York, Seventy Years Ago by W. R. Freeman, 1894

Nothing is ever certain when reconstructing a life from the whispers of history. The full story of Collins Kellogg is impossible to know, and beyond my telling. There might be other reasons for him to pose for a photograph holding a keyed bugle, but I think the clues make my conjecture a good explanation. In 1872, which is about the year when this kind of cdv photo was still made, Mr. Kellogg would have reached the significant age of 70. Surely on such an occasion he would want to give his friends and family back in New York a photo to remember him by. What would be a better gift than a bugle tune from the good old days.    










In the video of the Chestnut Brass there was a brief glimpse of some of the other keyed brass instruments. Click these links for my other posts showing keyed brass:
Serpent and the Ophicleide; Oh Ophicleide, Ophicleide; and Monsieur le Curé and his Ophicleide.

The preceding deconstruction of this 8"x10" glossy photograph of an unknown school band, was inspired by the amazing vernacular photos that are creatively displayed at the blog,
Tattered and Lost.  Click the link to discover more class photos that illustrate the joy of teaching and the wonder of schoolchildren.




We can never know exactly what this band sounded like but thanks to YouTube we can get pretty close.  Here is the Jimmy Blair Accordion Orchestra from Scotland.




Keep in mind that this was supposedly only their first rehearsal!



Since it is a small world after all, we shouldn't be surprised that the musical cultures of China and Scotland would share a mutual enthusiasm for the accordion. But who would expect such a lively rendition of a favorite British march from the Beijing Children’s Palace Baidi Accordion Orchestra.

Texas is usually known for cowboys, not sailors. But in 1917, some 400 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, a children's band from Texas posed for the camera in their best white jumpers and sailor hats. This postcard tells us who they were.



Photos of family bands usually show Father as the bandleader, though many were a Mom and Pop outfit. This band is unusual to have a brother and sister combine their progeny into a performing group. It's a brass band with Mrs. Davis on tuba and W. W. Woodward on clarinet. The oldest boy on cornet looks about age 18, while the youngest on drums might be 6 or 7. Their Permanent Address was Mineral Wells, a small town west of Fort Worth, that was far from the sea, but not from the water.
  



Even very prolific siblings would be hard pressed to make up this 28 piece band on their own, which has added more local musicians to the Woodward & Davis company. The group is posed outdoors on the steps of a rooming house or hotel and the card is captioned: 




This same photo was used in a short report that appeared in the San Antonio Express, Sunday morning, June 1, 1924.

MINERAL WELLS, Tex., May 24.

San Antonio delegates to the recent meeting of the West Texas Chamber of  Commerce at Brownwood were amazed at the quality of music produced by the Junior Rotary Band of Mineral Wells,  one of the remarkable musical organizations of Texas. Ten members of the band belong to two families, and they are related. The band is directed by W. W. Woodward who has five children in  the organization, and his sister, Mrs. E. L. Davis; who has three children playing in it. Only  two of the youngsters in the band are 17 yeas  old, the next in age  being 15, and the youngest being only 8. The average age of the band members is 13 years.
Guy Woodward, oldest boy in the band,  not only is principal cornet player, but can play all other band instruments. He directs the K. of P. band of Mineral Wells, and also the municipal band of Perrin. Dorothy Davis, also a cornetist, teaches piano and violin. Dell Woodward, aged 10, played a cornet solo the last night of the convention at Brownwood. Members of the band also have a jazz orchestra and a  saxaphone quartett.



The Woodward-Davis Family Band was a great feature of Mineral Wells, TX, and clearly the citizens took pride in the group to send them to a convention of the regional Chamber of Commerce. But there was more to it than that. It was all about the water.






This vintage colorized postcard shows Oak Street in Mineral Wells with a trolley car in the center and what looks like two fire wagons participating in a parade. The generous pavement and numerous retail establishments give the town a prosperous appearance. 



The same intersection today in Google Maps street view shows a faded city whose colors are not nearly as vibrant. The sidewalks have narrowed, the street car line has been paved over, and the pedestrian crowds have disappeared to air conditioned malls.

But if you take a virtual walk up Oak St. you will find some businesses remain.




On the left just above the trolley is the Palace Saloon which is still in the same place today. The Poston Dry Goods Co. - The Store With All the Goods is also still on Oak St. but has moved down next to the saloon. And in the distance is a large building with the name, Crazy Well Water Company, painted on the roof line.

Even for Texas that's an odd name for a business.

The back of this postcard provides a clue. It has no postmark but the style of printing puts it in the prewar 1905-1915 era. It was sent to Mrs. Frailey of Joplin, MO with this funny message.



If you would fire those two nurses you have and come down here you could kick the shingles off the chicken house in a few days   
Bart






The Crazy Well Water Company was one of many enterprising businesses that took advantage of a natural resource that made Mineral Wells a tourist destination. In the late 19th century, Texas became famous for its mineral waters which people consumed in a belief that it could cure whatever ailed them. Mineral Wells was only one of over a hundred Texas communities in the decades 1890 to 1920 that advertised the healthful benefits of drinking Texan alkaline water. Bart's enthusiasm was doubtless due to his having imbibed the invigorating waters of Mineral Wells.  


The first water well in this part of Texas was dug in 1880 on a ranch that was four miles from the Brazos River which had previously been the ranch's only source of drinking water. The Lynch family who lived there discovered that their poor health improved despite the water's strange taste, and soon their neighbors noticed this dramatic change too. By 1881 the demand for the curative water was strong enough that more wells were dug. Before the year was finished the boundaries of a new city were surveyed. It was named Mineral Wells, and Mr. Lynch was the first mayor.

The Crazy Well Water building we see in the postcard view, was the site of a well also drilled in 1881. At the time an old woman suffering from some mental disturbance took up a habit of sitting by the well and asking people to bring her some of the water. When her condition improved, the well became known as the Crazy Lady Well and later just the Crazy Water Well.

Some of the waters of Mineral Wells do have a significant amount of lithium. The other minerals that were promoted as medicinal agents­­ – calcium, magnesium, and sulfate­ – supposedly could effect dyspepsia, neuralgia, sore eyes, paralysis, insomnia, liver and kidney problems, rheumatism, scrofula, and improprieties of the blood. In an age when medical science had few cures for disease and chronic ailments, it is no wonder that a magical water would attract people desperate for any product that might restore health.

It is also no wonder that big money could be made selling the water and providing a place to stay while it was consumed.  By 1913, Mineral Wells had 21 water companies; several bath houses and sanitariums; and over 40 hotels and rooming houses. Each well offered different methods for consumption of the water and people visited each establishment to get the full benefits. This drove a boom in recreation services like restaurants, gaming houses, and resort amusements of all kinds. The Woodward-Davis Family Band were a small part of this entertainment industry supporting the many spas of Mineral Wells.  


One of the hotels was also located on Oak Street, just a block past the Crazy Well Water Company. It was called the Delaware Hotel, and on October 16, 1907 it burnt to the ground. Evidently there were limits to the restorative powers of the local mineral water.





Photo postcards have an interesting sub-genre devoted to photographs of disasters and accidents. Fires were a popular subject and here the Mineral Wells photographer has artfully colored the smoke to emphasize the dreadful horror. The firemen's horses and wagons might even be the same ones pictured in the parade on Oak St.    

Oct.16, 1907 Delaware Hotel Fire, Mineral Wells, TX Source: Portal to Texas History

The archives at the Portal to Texas History provide another view of the same hotel fire. It is easy to see how a postcard like this would become a big seller to the tourists who stayed in Mineral Wells. It was still published two years later in 1909 when it was sent to Miss Ida Vinther of Godley, Texas.




Hello Ida   How are
you. I am feeling
all right this morning.
I eat my breakfast  t...(?) mor...(?)  I
don't know when
I will get to come
home. I had
hot eggs for breakfast
they were put in
the hot water and
that was all. I
have a good nurse
Good Bye  (Willie
St. Joseph's Infirmary


We can only hope that eggs poached in Texas mineral water provided Willie with some relief, because I can't believe that they tasted very good. 

Woodward Family Band/Gem Theater Band Mineral Wells, TX, circa 1915 Source: Portal to Texas History

The same Texas archives have a photo of the Woodward-Davis musical clan standing in front of the Gem Theater of Mineral Wells. The description dates the photo to 1915 based on the two movie posters behind them - The Diamond From the Sky, and The Wayward Son. Perhaps the films of the 1917 season had a more nautical theme which would explain the band's sailor suits.

Minerals Wells remained a prominent and profitable health spa resort through the years of the Great Depression and WW2, but by the 1950s magic elixirs were no longer a good reason for visiting central Texas, even with air conditioning, and the town's fortunes declined.   

However you can still get bottled Crazy Water, and the brand's website presents a terrific history of this health resort town and its salubrious water.

No doubt the children of W. W. Woodward and his sister Minnie Davis thrived on it and drank it every day. See how musical it made them?

My dog can sing. She's in tune in any key. She's even a good dancer. But she's just an amateur compared to this dog, who was a genuine star of the musical stage. She belongs to the  man gallantly tipping his hat —  Chauncey Olcott— the most famous Irish tenor ever to be not born in Ireland.

This cabinet photograph was produced by Launey of New York City in about 1894-97 to promote Chauncey Olcott,  a new leading actor of Broadway's  theater world. His full name was Chancellor John Olcott, and he was born in Buffalo, NY in 1858. His early musical career began as a ballad singer in traveling minstrel shows, but in 1890 he moved to London to take voice lessons and there he appeared in a few music hall productions.

On his return to New York in 1892, he joined the cast of an Irish themed play called Mavourneen, as a replacement for the actor, W. J. Scanlan, another noted "Irish" tenor who was actually born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Like Scanlan, Olcott sang romantic songs as part of his Irish character, and at some point came up with the novel idea to add his St. Bernard to the cast list.

Dogs work cheap. 



A man of many talents, by 1896 Olcott was writing his own songs to include in his new shows, and they proved to be big hits with the public. The music industry of New York City's Tin Pan Alley was reaching new heights by publishing the latest songs and dances, as it seemed no American household was complete without a piano or a reed organ. Chauncey cleverly cultivated this offstage Hibernian persona to reflect the Irish characters he played on stage. Though his family roots may have originated in Ireland, his spirit of self promotion was all-American, and his celebrity helped to define the stereotypical image of the Irish American in American culture.       

In September 1902, Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, featured an article called Pets of Popular Players, which included a bit on Chauncey and his other dog. I say other, because the St. Bernard that is pictured is much larger and has a darker face than the one pictured in my photo.

Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper Volume 95, September 25, 1902

If "laughter is God's greatest gift to man," then Mr. Chauncey Olcott and his big dog "Prince" are certainly a gifted pair. When they laugh together, if the world doesn't laugh with them, "it is not to laugh" and the world is a sorry place. "Prince" and Mr. Olcott are co-stars between whom there is absolutely no professional jealousy. They even "dress together," and that is saying a most marvelous thing. A dressing room may be ever so spacious, but it is never quite large enough to hold the dignity of a star, and to crowd that dignity — well, I guess not! 
But  Mr.  Olcott and "Prince" are not like that. "Prince" finds the most comfortable place in the room,  where he stretches out and licks and prunes himself while Mr. Olcott turns himself into Garrett O'Magh, or some other Irish laddie of a century since, singing as he does so, little Irish love tunes sotto voce, to which "Prince" whines an approving accompaniment. "Prince" has been an actor so long that he knows the ropes as well as anybody. He knows what the "half hour" and "fifteen minutes" calls mean, and when "overture" is called he invariably gets up and walks to the dressing room door looking back expectantly to see if his master is coming. "All right, old chap. Wait a minute — curtain is not up yet," says Mr. Olcott, and the dog lies down and watches the crack under the door. In some of Mr. Olcott's plays "Prince"  has appeared so often that he has come to know his cues and never has to be led on nor called off. 





The money that Olcott's fame and success provided, allowed him to indulge in a life style that was a long way from his Buffalo origin. According to a book entitled Eminent Actors in Their Homes: Personal Descriptions and Interviews by Margherita Arlina Hamm, Chauncey and his dog kept residence in three homes: a handsome apartment in New York on West 34th Street near Fifth Avenue; a music studio near North Washington Square; and a summer place in Saratoga Springs, NY.  This house was named Inniscarra after the title of one his first big plays - Sweet Inniscarra. and became a very popular postcard image.




This card from 1907 shows the back of a typical two story New England Colonial house that by modern standards seems rather modest, but to Olcott's fans it must have appeared a palatial estate. Note the quaint covered well which resembles the studio prop in Olcott's photograph. 




The veranda of Chauncey's house looked out onto a formal garden pictured on this card postmarked in 1906. Saratoga Springs was another spa town like Mineral Wells, TX which was the location for my story last week. But this spa is much older and dates back to 1776. The geology of this area just north of Albany, NY created a mineral water that was credited with great medicinal powers. Entrepreneurs established dozens of different wells in Saratoga Springs, each claiming that their water had beneficial qualities that would cure various maladies and ailments that doctors could not. Naturally when combined with its pleasant summertime climate, Saratoga Springs became the summer playground of the wealthy and elite society people of New York.






The photographer for this view of Chauncey Olcott's rose garden must have stood in the upstairs bedroom window. This postcard was mailed in 1907 and like the other two, was published by a company in New York but printed in Germany. I don't know if the house and gardens were open to the public, but these cards represent only a few of the dozens of different postcards made of Olcott's home. Judging by the hundreds of similar postcards available on eBay, it was clearly a very popular choice of tourists at Saratoga Springs for many years. Curiously I have not found any postcards of Olcott himself, as most of his publicity material seems to be cabinet card photo reproductions from around 1895-1905. 

Chauncey Olcott Source: NYPL Digital Gallery

This image from Launey Studios was probably made at the same time as the first photo. The dog, (whom I have nicknamed Princess as what else could it be?), is posed reclining with her master on a suitable Gaelic rock. It also proves that she was a real dog and not some photographer's taxidermied mutt.

Between 1899 and 1921, Chauncey Olcott is listed as a composer, lyricist, and/or performer in over 18 Broadway plays. I don't think it would be correct to call them musicals. Perhaps melodramas with music gives a better idea of their style. Most theaters in this era employed orchestras to accompany the plays, and having a character sing a love song was typical of how these light theater shows promoted their stars. 

Chauncey Olcott Source: NYPL Digital Gallery

This image shows Chauncey with his other dog, Prince. Like the previous photo it was found at the digital archives of the New York Public Library. I wonder if Prince had any speaking lines in the plays.



Today we can't escape reading or hearing about celebrities in every kind of media. It was no different 100 years ago, when Fuel Magazine: The Coal Operators National Weekly printed this amusing story in its edition from May 17, 1910. 

Chauncey Olcott is somewhat conscience stricken – a rather unusual thing for an actor – and the cause of his remorse came about in this way:
One afternoon while he was rehearsing his company in his new play, Ragged Robin, at the Broadway theater New York, a young man whom he had noticed in conversation with two other men in front of the theater left his companions and crossing the street said:
" I beg your pardon but are you Chauncey Olcott?"
"No," responded the comedian, "I'm his brother."
"Then I lose my bet," exclaimed the stranger, darting in front of a car and rejoining his companions.
Mr. Olcott saw him hand one of the men a bill, and not wishing the stranger to lose his money, he started in pursuit to explain, but there was a rush of traffic at the moment and he lost sight of them.
An hour or so later Mr. Olcott was walking up Broadway when the same young man approached him with another man.
"Are you Chauncey Olcott?" asked the man.
"Yes, I am, and I want to say that when I told you a little while ago I was not I didn t know you had a bet on it."
"Well, I'll be blowed!" exclaimed the stranger. "That's two bets I've lost on you this afternoon. I just bet 'Jim' here a five spot that you weren't Chauncey Olcott, and I thought I had a cinch." And he turned and walked dejectedly away.

Source: Courtesy of the Irish Fest Collection, Ward Irish Music Archives, Milwaukee Irish Fest

Of the many songs that Chauncey Olcott wrote, Mother Machree, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Goodbye, My Emerald Land, the Wearers of the Green, this one – My Wild Irish Rose– may be his most memorable. It is one of the reasons that Olcott was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, which includes his name with the other great composers of the Tin Pan Alley era, men like Geroge M. Cohan, Sigmund Romberg, and Irving Berlin.

-






The song was written in 1898 after a suggestion from Olcott's wife, Margaret and it featured in Chauncey's play A Romance Of Athlone in 1899. He would sing it many more times, including on a recording he made in 1913. We can hear his voice, courtesy of this video on YouTube. The dog is there too but unfortunately they don't sing a duet.  



The website Irish Sheet Music Archives has a long list of songs written by other composers who tried to find a rose by some other name, but none would achieve the same lasting success as Olcott's song.

• I Am Dreaming Of My Irish Rose
• I Want An Irish Rose
• Little Connemara Rose
• My California Rose 
• My Emerald Isle Rose
• My Galway Rose
• My Killarney Rose 
• My Irish Rose
• My Little Irish Rose
• My Irish American Rose
• My Rose Of Erin's Isle
• My Rose Of Old Kildare
• My Rose Of Tipperary
• My Sweet Derry Rose
• My Wicklow Primrose

It occurs to me that the Chrysanthemum is a neglected flower when it comes to songs. Someone should look into this, as they smell just as sweet. 




Chauncey Olcott died in Monte Carlo on March 18, 1932 – St. Patrick's Day. It would be hard to find anyone else who made such an important and lasting contribution to Irish-American culture.

In 1947 he received the ultimate Hollywood tribute with a bio-pic movie musical called My Wild Irish Rose. It was directed by David Butler. and starred Dennis Morgan and Arlene Dahl. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1948, and has a colorized trailer which is a fabulous example of how movie trailers once used

Very few violinists in my photo collection wear cowboy hats and neckerchiefs. Most are dressed in either a white tie and tailcoat or a long white gown. This postcard of "Cliff" on W.S.B.A.Heard Daily-- 8:30 A.M.-3:30 P.M. offers an alternative image of a fiddle player's attire with his very American western cowboy costume. The caption links him with WSBA, which is spelled curiously and incorrectly as an abbreviation, was an AM radio station in York, Pennsylvania owned by the Susquehanna Radio Corporation, a division of the Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff Company, a kitchenwear company, which ran WSBA radio from 1941 until 2005, when it was taken over by a national radio corporation. If that schedule is right, "Cliff" seems to have worked long hours fiddling around at the station, but at least he took time to sign the postcard.

Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Source: Wikipedia

Source: Billboard July 16, 1949

The herald trumpet has been an symbolic icon of music since ancient times. It is often depicted as the instrument of choice for angels. Surely that is what the photographer had in mind when he arranged two young ladies and young man to point their three trumpets to the sky in this German postcard. The caption tells us that they are the -

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Angel Blowing a Trumpet Source: The Morgan Museum

The trio was frei, that is available, in September at the address of the Walhalla Theater in Magdeburg, Germany. The year is not recorded but this style of postcard is typical of others printed from 1905-1910.


















Some lady trumpeters, like this musician named Olly Marietta, added a Renaissance fashion to the herald theme with a beautiful elaborate costume. Unfortunately in era of sepia tone postcards we can only guess the color, but I would think there is lots of gold thread. Fräulein Marietta adds a detailed caption.


If you look closely, her straight trumpet, like those of the Oliveira Trio, has three small valves to add length to the instrument which would allow more notes to be played. Essentially this is the length of a normal B-flat trumpet if it was assembled without the plumbing bends. She must have been a very talented musician to play so many different instruments, which must have been a changeable number as she left the space blank on the caption and wrote the numeral 7 by hand.






This ladies brass trio has three regular piston valve cornets, but they have dressed themselves in matching 18th century style costumes complete with powdered wigs. The caption tells us they are the


Presumably they are sisters, but possibly not German but French, as the brass instrument tradition in Germany used rotary valve trumpets while the French used piston valves. Again we can only speculate about color, but gold embroidery on white satin would look nice.




The back of the postcard is dated 26.7.15 from Berlin Lichterfelde. There is an additional stamp for the Lazarett Johanniter Siechenhaus which was the Hospital of St. John hospice. I can't translate this but it could be the writing of a soldier recovering from wounds or illness. It also suggests that the Königs Cornet a Piston Trio performed at the hospital and if they were French they may have come from the Alsace region which was then part of Germany.

Wetterfahne auf der Kirche in Nietleben Source: Wikimedia.org

Four young musicians gaze at the camera lens. A young girl sits with a guitar, while two older girls in matching dress and hair styles hold mandolins. A small boy with long curly hair gives a salute with his violin. Behind them stand three large military band glockenspiels. They are the Soeurs Emilia, which is French for the Sisters Emilia, a typical traveling family band that played the theaters and music halls in Europe at the turn of the 19th century. The postcard was printed on pink card paper and slightly askew in Düsseldorf, Germany, but it was never mailed and has no annotation. 

One of the characteristics of images of family bands from this era is that several different photos were usually created over the career of the group since growing children are always changing. We can date this promotional postcard to about 1900 because of the postmark on another postcard of the same group.  






This image of the Sœurs Emilia shows the same four young musicians, though slightly younger I think, holding the same instruments - guitar, violin, and mandolins. However instead of glockenspiels there is a rack of tubular chimes and three tables of hand bells in various sizes. In the message space under Gruss Aus: - Greetings from:  is an enthusiastic note written in German. Any help with a translation is always appreciated.

Clearly these children were a talented bunch. Many European musical groups from the 1900s often show similar impressive arrays of instruments. The postcard was produced in Germany by the same printer - Ed. Lintz, Düsseldorf, but the children's name implies that they are French musicians. They may have come from the French Alsace-Lorraine region which was annexed by Germany after the war with France in 1871. 

What makes this postcard interesting is the postmark on the back – 19.9.99 or 19 September 1899, which makes it one of the oldest postcards in my collection. 




The postcard was sent from Crefeld, Germany, or Krefeld as it is now spelt, to Herrn Ulrich Keigen in the village of Söflingen, now part of the city of Ulm in Baden-Württemberg.

The first postcards in Germany with printed advertisements and illustrations were made in 1874. The German printing industry quickly became the dominant leader for picture postcards and produced millions for many other countries. Therefore the family home of the Sisters Emilia may have been anywhere in Europe.

A search for Sœurs Emilia did not turn up any citations, but a search for Sisters Emilia did bring one brief mention in a theater review published in the Birmingham Daily Mail, on January 17, 1905.

Birmingham Daily Mail January 17, 1905

THE GAIETY - "The Mysterious Lilith", who supplies one of the best "turns" on the Gaiety programme this week, certainly does not belie her description. While in a hypnotic trance this lady ascends from the stage into mid-air, where without any apparent aid, she gives an exhibition of skipping. The performance is a remarkable one, and last night considerably mystified a large audience. Other attractive items include the Five Sisters Emilias, who are responsible for a really smart musical entertainment, while Rose Elliott, a favourite with Gaiety audiences, scores well with several new songs. Professor Harcourt further puzzles "the house" by a series of clever feats of magic; and the Rayfords and Harry Lynn and Co. give a couple of amusing sketches, which are well appreciated. Among others who merit commendation for their share in the programme are Miss Lilian Warren in her illustrated songs, the Sisters Oswald, song and dance artistes, and Hamilton Hill, the Australian baritone.




It would seem that there was another sister! Or maybe a brother. In any case, this report of a family musical group with an English version of the Emilia name could be a coincidence. But the date of 1905 still makes the youngest musician from these two postcards - the violinist, only 12 to 16 years old, so I think it must be the same group. What music did they play in their 18th century courtier costumes? Did the boy imitate the violin solos of Mozart or Paganini?


What we can not see of course is Monsieur and/or Madame Emilia. Imagine being show business parents traveling with 4 or 5 young children in 1899. Every week, or even every day, there would be trunks to pack with their costumes, mandolins, guitars, hand bells, and glockenspiels. There were tickets to book for the coach, the train, or the ship; accommodation to arrange at hotels and inns; and countless postcards to send to theater agents. Though the children's variety act was maybe only 15 to 30 minutes long, there were  probably two or three performances every day during a run at some provincial music hall. Any entertainment has to keep fresh to be successful so there would always be new music to learn. And being on the road meant there was no formal school for the children. Did the Sisters Emilia have a tutor or did they limit their concert tours to only the summer months? Show dates in September in Crefeld and January in Birmingham suggests they likely played throughout the year. So many questions that will never have answers but at least we know that they were "a really smart musical entertainment."

This closeup photo of a dark haired boy with his violin has a modern look but his sailor suit dates him to an earlier time when such uniforms were the standard fashion for a boy violin soloist. His name is Andreas Weißgerber and he is 13 years old. We know this because this postcard provides his name, birthday and birthplace on the back.




The card was posted on 30.3.13 ~ 30 March 1913 and is captioned



At age 13, young Andreas Weißgerber was already an accomplished violinist and would go on to a successful solo career. As a boy he once performed for the Ottoman court in Istanbul, where Sultan Abdul Hamid II was so impressed that he rewarded Andreas with a gift of five parrots. In 1913 Andreas' nationality was identified with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire but like many violin prodigies of this time he studied in several places. First in Athens, then Budapest, Vienna, and finally Berlin.  

He made several recordings and this one dates from 1921. It is the famous gypsy melody Zigeunerweisen by Pablo de Sarasate.



Andreas Weißgerber was also Jewish and in the 1930s like many other musicians in Germany, he was subject to the cruel race laws enacted by Hitler and the Nazi party. Fortunately in 1936 he managed to escape Germany with his brother, a cellist, and become a founding member of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. This orchestra was organized by Bronisław Huberman (1882 - 1947), a Polish violin soloist (and also once a child prodigy) who recognized that the rise of the Nazi regime would lead to a great catastrophe for the Jewish people in Europe. Huberman's inspiration was to create an orchestra in Palestine of Jewish musicians from around Europe. The inaugural concert was conducted by Arturo Toscanini in Tel Aviv on December 26, 1936. Today the Palestine Symphony Orchestra is known as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Weißgerber was one of those courageous musicians who helped to preserve the musical heritage of the Jewish people in Palestine. Sadly he died of a heart attack in Tel Aviv exactly 5 years after that concert on December 26, 1941.






We have met this next boy violin soloist before on this blog, but these are new postcards to add to his history. His name is Arpad Kun or in Hungarian - Kun Arpad, and he was born in Budapest, Hungary then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. This postcard is another copy of the one featured in Arpad Kun's first story, but this card has a postmark. It was mailed on 10.4.02 ~ 10 April 1902 to Herrn Th. Müller, Kammermusiker or chamber musician of Braunschweig, Germany. The card notes that Kun was only 7 years old but because of the postmark this makes him older than Weißgerber, with a birth year of 1894.

Chicago Daily Tribune July 12, 1903

Beginning in 1901 this Hungarian "boy wonder" violinist was frequently mentioned in newspapers all across America. Even small town papers in Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Utah ran reports of his phenomenal talent. In 1903 at age 9, Arpad embarked on a tour of the United States which was to start with an engagement in New York City at Madison Square Garden. It did not go well.

I won't repeat Kun Arpad's complete story here, but his widowed mother did not see her son make the grand debut that had been promised by their music agent. New York and other major US cities were under increasing pressure to prevent children from being exploited in theatrical entertainments. Kun Arpad's premiere became entangled in the politics and he was unable to perform concerts as expected. The Chicago Daily Tribune ran a promotion with his picture, but I don't believe Arpad ever made the grand American tour. By February 1904 he was back in Paris playing for French society soirees.

The following snarky review appeared in the September 1903 edition of Everybody's Magazine, published by The Ridgway-Thayer Company of New York City. It seems some people were a bit tired of incessant sensational reports of child musicians.
 

Mayor  Low of New York, did a real service to musical art recently when he refused to allow the ten-year-old Hungarian violinist, Kun Arpad. to play in public. The little chap had been heralded as another "musical prodigy."  He was said to have had an endorsement from Jean de Reszke, and Heaven knows who else, among European musicians of eminence. He played once and showed himself to be in truth a child fiddler in tone, technique, and intelligence. We have had an overdose of this sauce of "unripe fruit" of late years, and it is about time for rational music lovers to set their faces against further repetitions. Musical "prodigies" of this sort, if they must exhibit,  should be relegated to circus side shows and freak museums. They injure the cause of art and give false ideas to the uncultivated. Their performances do not justify the admission fees, and their exploitation during years of immaturity in nearly every case prevents their healthy development. The world, doubtless, has lost many an excellent artist because money-loving parent or guardian foisted him a patient public as a "wonder child." The solution of the problem is to refuse patronage to "musical prodigy" concerts. 









Back in Europe where he could be appreciated and allowed to play, Arpad's postcards now displayed a more romantic image of a solo violinist,  though he still wears a sailor suit. On some of the earlier postcards of Arpad, there was a caption that said he was also a composer. So far I have found only one reference to one of his compositions, a short recital piece for violin and piano. His music may not have found a publisher. Here his name is printed in a cursive font and without any other labels. The implication being that he is now famous enough to need no additional description.

.  







This postcard was mailed on 12.10.08 ~ 12 October 1908 to Fräulein Martha Reinländer (?) of Plettenberg, Germany. The writer makes note of the 14 year-old violinist. That would seem to be the age limit for boys in sailor suits.

Source: 1912 Wer ist Wer? Vol. 6

Evidently Kun Arpad was a gifted young musician in the first decade of the 20th century. He even rated an entry in the 1912 German version of the encyclopedia of Who's Who? - Wer ist Wer? Vol. 6. page 887, which gives his date of birth as 12 VII 94 Budapest, V: (Father) Dr. Kun Arpad Bürgermeister. Using some Hungarian terms I discovered a Hungarian website page that has the history of a mayor of Mezőtúr, Hungary who was named  dr. Kun Árpád (1865-1947). At the bottom of the blog page is a postcard of his son, the violinist Kun Arpad and a clipping from a New York newspaper of 1903. It also  says, if I am translating the Hungarian correctly, that Mayor Kun divorced his first wife in about 1899 for rather scandalous reasons. This may explain why the American newspapers described Kun Arpad's mother as a widow.

By 1912, Arpad is 18 and surely wearing long trousers. The Who's Who entry lists his address as in Berlin. But after this date he disappears. Did he survive the Great War? Did he become a successful violin soloist? His adult history remains a mystery.







For contrast I present one more child prodigy of the violin. In this postcard he is also dressed in a sailor suit. He is also a Hungarian, with Budapest his birthplace too. His name is Franz von Vecsey or in Hungarian – Vecsey Ferenc, and he was perhaps the most successful of these three boys. He was born in 1893 just one year before Kun Arpad. Like Arpad, Vecsey first studied in Budapest and then moved to Berlin which had become the center for violin teaching.

In 1905 at age 12, Vecsey's musical gifts were recognized by the great Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, who dedicated his revised Violin Concerto in D minor to him after having problems with the concerto's premiere and the first performers. Vecsey would play it many times as his solo career continued into adulthood. He was also a composer who wrote several virtuosic pieces for the violin.





This postcard was sent to William Biddle in Berlin on 15.10.04 or 15 Octorber 1904. I'm not sure if the short message on the front might not refer to a concert of the young violinist. 






One reasons that Berlin became the focal point for child violinists in this era was that it was the home of Joseph Joachim (1831 – 1907) who was one of the great figures of violin music and music pedagogy. He was one of the eminent violin soloists of the 19th century. He was also Hungarian and had once been a child prodigy. So naturally every young violinist from this era tried to study with him. However not Andreas Weißgerber who was probably too young to have taken lessons before Joachim's death in 1907. And Kun Arpad's encyclopedia entry would surely have mentioned Joachim if he had been accepted by Joachim as a student. Only Franz von Vecsey won an opportunity to play for the great Joachim and the moment was celebrated in a photograph.   

Joseph Joachim and the young Franz von Vecsey Source: Wikipedia

There is the sailor suit again, Vecsey looks to be about the same age as the postcard photo. Maybe white was worn for spring and summer while the dark suits were for autumn and winter. Did Joachim ever wear the same naval collar when he was a young wunderkind? For a story I wrote in 2011 on another trio of German boy violinists, also all in sailor suits, click here. Some of them might have sat on Joachim's lap too. 

Franz von Vecsey toured Europe and the US (first in 1905) as a concert violinist well into the 1920s. At one point his piano accompanist was the composer Bela Bartok. But travel proved fatiguing and was not helped by a bad heart condition. By the 1930s his aim was to become a conductor, but he was overcome by illness and died in a Rome hospital in 1935.


Vecsey made a number of recordings, but this one is remarkable because of the date of the recording. It was made in London on 15 July 1904  only three months before the postcard was mailed. Franz was just 11 years old.  It is Bizet's Carmen Fantasia arranged by Hubay, op.3, no.3.

And only a few months later, he would be playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto. 

There's something very odd about this band's photo. Despite their proper posture the 49 musicians of the Ladies' Concert Band, Iowa State Normal, of Cedar Falls, Iowa appear to be sliding off the stage. There's also something peculiar about the big bone girls of the low brass section at the back who must tower over their petite companions in the woodwinds.

It's another early Photoshop fail, but say don't this dazzle your eyes?




That's what C.C. wrote to his/her friend A. M. Perry in Waterloo, Iowa on August 29, 1907. The band was one of the musical ensembles of the Iowa State Normal School which was the first name of the institution now known as the University of Northern Iowa. It was established in Cedar Falls in 1876 as a training school for public school teachers. Iowa was very progressive in offering equal education opportunities for both men and women, when in 1855 it became the first state to establish a coeducational public college system.





This second postcard view shows the Iowa State Normal School Ladies Band playing on a more level platform. The band is smaller with only 31 musicians and beneath the conductor's feet is a caption. I.S.N.S. 1906 and a message, perhaps for the spring break: Easter Greetings from Abbie.









An alternate photo was made into another postcard in 1906. This time the young ladies have their instruments down in their laps and the conductor stands in the shadows at the back of the band. The message reads:



Was Anna a member of the band? If so she did not provide her friend, Miss Mella Long of Kalona, Iowa with an X over her position in the photo. 










The band has the full assortment of brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments that would be typical of a concert band. The one man standing at the back is Professor Frank A. FitzGerald who was the director of an orchestra and two bands at the Iowa State Normal School – one for men and the other for young ladies. FitzGerald introduced a ladies band shortly after joining the Normal School as a music instructor in 1896 but his credentials, despite his title of Professor, were not like the other academics at the college. This short bio comes from Illustrated Iowa (page 81) published in 1898 by the Iowa State Teachers College.

Mr. Fitzgerald's education was obtained in the old school of musical study or that of experience under various masters from whom he took private lessons before the day of well-equipped conservatories. He was four years with Gilmore's Band, six years in charge of the Illinois Watch Company's Band at Rockford, Illinois, and for sometime was assistant director of the Apollo Club, of Chicago. Mr. Fitzgerald, besides his work at the Normal, instructs and leads the famous Cedar Falls A. O. U. W. Band, the organization that had the honor of accompanying the Iowa G.A.R. to both the Louisville and Buffalo National Encampments as official band, and also lead the Methodist church choir and gives lessons in vocal and instrumental music to many private pupils in the city.

Covina CA Argus May 25, 1907

In 1907, F. A. FitzGerald retired from his teaching position in Iowa and moved to Covina, California where he owned an orange orchard. The Covina Argus which was clearly proud to have this talented musician move to the area, published a very flattering report on him and his distinguished musical career. He was described as teaching both band and string instruments at the Iowa State Normal School and giving the school a wide reputation for meritorious musical production and ... the Normal Ladies' Band, the largest band equipped wholly with women. 

The hyperbole, if not the unfortunate phrasing, was understandable in this era when female musicians were restricted from performing with traditional all-male bands and orchestras. Surely Professor FitzGerald was very proud of his talented young women, and maybe he even considered them better musicians than those in the boy's student band. 








Certainly one of his students in the cornet/trumpet section was a special source of pride. When she graduated from the Iowa State Normal School she was offered a music teaching position in Correctionville, Iowa as the new high school band director. Her name was Miss Edna B. Straw and the news of a female band leader merited a picture in the paper.

Sioux Valley News (Correctionville, Iowa) August 13 and October 15, 1908

The first report in August 1908 tells how the superintendent of  Correctionville schools went to Cedar Falls to inquire about suitable teachers and Miss Edna Straw was given an enthusiastic endorsement by the faculty. By October, she had organized a band of 24 musicians for the high school – all boys.

The newspaper states that Edna had played first cornet for three years in Cedar Falls, but in the second article on the Correctionville band she is singled out as the solo trumpet with seven boys listed as playing cornets. Looking at the three images of the Ladies Concert Band, I believe she is the woman seated far right in the second rank, and that she is playing a trumpet and not a cornet. The difference is very subtle and not completely clear, but her instrument has a long slender shape compared to the short round cornet seen in the first ranks. If Edna's instrument was in fact a trumpet and not a cornet, she was on the cutting edge of how brass bands were evolving in the new 20th century. For decades prior, the cornet had been the principal solo band instrument but it lacked the brilliant tone color of the trumpet. By the 1940s the trumpet would takeover the lead position in bands of all kinds and today the cornet is played only rarely in wind ensembles, the one exception being the British Brass Band tradition. 






In 1908 Edna Straw was no doubt paid much less than a male teacher. And there was probably a clause in her contract that terminated her employment if she were to marry. Yet in the 1909 Alumni Registry for the Iowa State Normal School, Edna B. Straw was listed as Third Assistant Principal and Music Teacher for Correctionville.

That kind of success would dazzle the eyes too.

The Middlesex Gazette Dec. 26, 1908

The Middlesex Gazette Nov. 20, 1909

English Spinet Source:  Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments

Trade Card for A. Bergert & Cie. Source: Wikepedia

This postcard set of humorous French characters was produced by the publisher Albert Bergeret (1859 - 1932) of Nancy, France. Each one was postmarked from 1903 to 1904 during the height of the postcard craze in France. In 1900 Bergeret's company printed 25 million postcards. Only three years later it tripled to 75 million making his firm one of the largest postcard companies in the world. Such production numbers came about with the development of the French collotype method of mechanical printing. The company ceased printing activity in 1926.

After the Franco-Prussian war of 1871, Nancy marked the eastern point of France as Prussia, the victor in this war, had annexed the region of Alsace-Lorraine. Most of the photo postcards Bergeret made were of the architectural and scenic sites of Nancy and the Lorraine province. But he also created many comical cards which proved to be very popular as they used actors and costumes to tell a short story on a theme and came in sets of 6 to 10 cards. In this case the Chanteurs des Cours or Singers of Coins represent the kind of street balladeers or buskers that were a familiar entertainment to people all over France.





The appeal of the sets was that they could be sent sequentially to a friend or relation for a postcard-a-day surprise. Most of these cards were sent by Raoul to his cousin, Mademoiselle Stephanie Jourdan of Rennes. Though I have a full set of 10 cards from him, No. 5, 6, 8, and 9 are from other writers to provide some contrast with the way messages were inscribed on the cards.

These buskers in their colorful bohemian costumes would not look out of place today on the streets of Paris or London. (Though I believe they were just actors and probably not real street musicians. In fact I think all 14-15 minstrels are portrayed by only 4 players. Follow the hats and trousers and you'll see that the faces repeat.) The string instruments – guitar, violin, mandolin – still remain standard equipment for street musicians, except for the man honking a brass instrument on No. 4. He blows an Ophicleide which I featured in 2011 using another copy of this same postcard. Readers can learn more about this odd and now obsolete instrument on my post entitled Oh Ophicleide, Ophicleide!  For the French public of 1900, it would not have been unfamiliar as it was still occasionally found in churches as a support for the low voices of the choir. But the sound of the ophicleide is rather unrefined and would strike most people as a rather discordant instrument. Hence its use as a clownish instrument.       

My attempt at a translation using internet resources (along with the valuable assistance of my wife) may not be exactly correct as there are some dialect words and old style contractions that are not used in the current French language, but I hope it conveys the wit and charm of these whimsical singers even if the subtle jokes remain unknown. Any improvements to the meaning are of course, always appreciated. 

It was Wednesday about 4:00 in the afternoon. First it was the sound of all the motors that alerted people that something was happening. Then it was the band music. Everyone hurried so they wouldn't miss them. The Herington and White City Commercial and Auto Clubs and Bands had come to town. Such an occasion merited a souvenir postcard and the photographer had the automobiles, bands, club members, and citizens pose in a big semi-circle across the main street of White City. It was April 13, 1910.  

Not long afterward, Vinie Kilchen sent the postcard to her sibling. 










It was a big crowd for such a small town as White City, which had a population of 800, but this was an unusual event. The motorists in their caps and goggles had driven up from Herington, Kansas, which was about 19 miles to the southwest, as part of a two day tour of three Kansas counties by the Herington Commercial Club. A notice appeared in the Daily Capital newspaper of Topeka.

Topeka KS Daily Capital April 12, 1910

The Herington Comercial Club (which may have been a fraternal/professional society) had 50 members and 12 to 15 automobiles. Their reported purpose was "to come in closer touch with the people" of Dickinson, Morris, and Marion counties. They had quite a rigorous schedule to visit 16 townships. Considering that this was travel over Kansas dirt roads, they were probably in closer touch with the dust than the people.

There were no car radios then, so the Commercial Club brought along the Herington Brass Band to play music at each stop.












The band had 10 musicians with brass instruments and drums. They are dressed in typical bandsmen uniforms with military style hats. The name on the bass drum reads Herington Citizens Band. Since there was no band bus, they must have divided themselves up to ride  along with the club members.





The White City Ladies' Band was half again as large with 15 musicians, also all brass with two drums. The gentleman with a bowler hat at the left of the women is their band leader, Mr. Alfred Musgrave. More about him later. The women have no uniforms but wear white shirts and long skirts.







The White City Ladies' Band had already earned a fine reputation in the state capital when the Topeka newspaper reported on the band in 1908 and included a photograph. The town had previously supported a gentlemen's band but it had "winked out" in 1906. But the women of White City were determined to have music so they organized their own female band in July 1907. It had 18 musicians under the direction of Miss Cordelia Thornley, a local school teacher.

Other newspaper reports from 1908 to 1911, had the band playing for county fairs, Chautauquas, and other community events throughout this region of Kansas that is south of Junction City and Ft. Riley. and northeast of Wichita.








On that spring day there were 17 automobiles on the main street of White City. All except one had open tops providing no  protection from dirt, sun or rain. The autos or otos, as Vinie spelled it, were a new innovation of transportation for the rural population of Kansas, that was more accustomed to using trains and horse wagons to traverse the prairies. Each automobile had a badge of the manufacturer on the brass radiators. The one on the far right is not clear enough to read, but the one next to it is a Buick, a General Motors brand still made in the USA but without the wood spoke wheels and running boards.

1909 advert for Buick Model 10 Collinson Automobile Co., Arkansas City, Kansas

In 1910 a new Buick Model 10 touring car would cost $1050. It had two bench seats that could seat 4 tuba players or more, and was promoted as being so easy to operate that a six year old could drive one. And start it with the hand crank too!






Today the main route through White City is on Kansas State Road 4, known locally as MacKenzie Street. On the far right of the photograph there is a sign for the White City post office. Assuming that government property has not changed location, the Commercial Club Automobiles are arranged near the intersection of MacKenzie and Adolph St.

If we pan to the right in Google Maps Street View we can see the White City post office building of 2014. It seems that in the intervening decades White City has seen some tough times. The population is down to around 600, and none of the 1910 street front appears to have survived into the 21st century. Though at some point the town did achieve enough prosperity to pay for red bricks to pave the street.




Back in 2011, I posted a story on another postcard of the White City Ladies Band that dates from later that same year in October 1910. In this formal photo the 17 female musicians wear fancy embroidered uniforms with military hats and hold brass instruments and two drums.

This past year I was contacted by the granddaughter of the band director who stands in the center on the back row. His name was Alfred Musgrave (1874-1947). His wife Mamie Baird Musgrave (1877-1975) is standing far left on the back row with a tuba. In the 1910 census Alfred listed his occupation as Photographer, own shop, and most likely took this studio photograph and the outdoor photo of the bands and autos too.

 According to his granddaughter:

 He directed several bands in many small towns in the area.  He was also a band teacher in the local school and a photographer.  He may have taken this photo as he had a cable that enabled him to when he was also in the shot.  He often made postcards of his bands to sell to the members.  I think he is holding a trumpet or cornet, and I know he often played along with the bands.  The woman in the far left of the back row in your photo (holding an upright tuba) is my grandmother, Mamie Baird Musgrave (1877-1975).  She usually accompanied him when he went to those other towns, and she often played along as well, even with the men’s bands.   They needed a bass instrument, and her husband was the director.  What could they say?  As their kids grew up, they went along also.  I have several photos of my teen-age aunt playing cornet with men’s bands.  

Alfred W. Musgrave (1874-1947) Source: Musgrave Family Collection

The White City Ladies' Band White City, Kansas Source: Musgrave Family Collection

In another message she adds:

  My grandfather, in addition to directing and teaching bands, was a piano tuner.  When my aunt married and moved to Steamboat Springs, CO, my grandparents would drive from White City across Kansas to eastern Colorado to visit his brother and then to northwest Colorado.  To pay for the trip, he would tune pianos along the way.  Many people had  pianos, and they needed a yearly tuning, I guess.  I think he made about $12 a tuning, which for the times and the Depression has always seemed pretty good to me.   When they were in Steamboat, they had a tent, and after a while a home-made trailer.  The   family had the makings of a band, and they gave concerts there.  My grandmother and aunt on tuba and cornet, Mom played the xylophone (bells), and son-in-law Russ the drums.  Grandpa directed, with help from his small granddaughter.

The White City Ladies' Band White City, Kansas Source: Musgrave Family Collection

In 1900 he accepted an offer to return to the US Navy and become the new bandmaster of the Portsmouth Naval Yard Band. His commission was to train the best band in the US Navy. Reinewald, like many bandmasters of this era, was a self-taught musician who had no academic degree but came up through the ranks based on his reputation as a talented musician and composer.

In the navy, an admiral's flagship would always have a band to provide shipboard entertainment for officers, sailors and guests. Most navy band musicians could play string instruments as well as traditional wind instruments and they were equally adept at playing orchestral, opera, and dance music as military marches.

US Naval Band, Portsmouth, New Hampshire circa 1908 Source: ibew.org.uk

Portsmouth, NH Herald  June 16,1900

Ralph L. Reinwald 1852-1934 Portsmouth, NH Herald  February 15, 1934

Bandmaster Reinewald was a celebrated musician for good reason. He was clearly an important teacher for countless navy musicians as well as a honored performer in the Portsmouth area. He represents a tradition of musicianship and professionalism that was part of American military culture at the turn of the 19th century.



When photos like these are sold, they are rarely kept together. Undoubtedly there were other interesting photos in the adjacent pages of the Reinewald photo album from which these were taken, but we will never see them. But even more rare is the following bit of ephemera that came with the photos. It celebrates a special occasion in Ralph Reinewald's life – his marriage. It may even be the reason he once posed for a camera dressed in white tie, tail coat, and bowler hat.

It was 137 years ago on a Tuesday. June 19th, 1877 to be exact, that young Ralph L. Reinewald married Alice Gertrude Adams of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We can only guess how long the ceremony took, but surely the party afterwards lasted much, much longer. He was a sailor after all. There was food, music, drink, more music and speeches. One of Ralph's fellow bandsmen delivered a poem that day. Sadly time has torn his name from the old paper, but his clear fine handwriting gives him a voice to tell the story of a young man about to embark on a voyage of discovery.

- - -

T'was so; and in the mid'st there was,
One by who's timid carriage!
Showed he was going to be tied,
In bonds of holy marriage.

Now when [he] close to me had [come]
In accents loud I bawled
That chap! why dont you know
T'is little Ralph Reinewalde
And sure enough, the man w...
Frightened, and pale, did stan[nd]
Was Ralph, the well known Lea[der of]
The Dover Cornet Band.

For seven long years, he on the br[ink]
Of matrimony stood!
And shivered, and shook first s...
But now At last he said he would.
So now the've both made up thei...
That f... ... will be bet...
To sail the stormy seas of life,
As man and wife, together.

That health, and wealth, and happiness,
In this life they will see!
This is the wish of all the boys,
That play in the D. C. B.
And now to both, I'd like to say,
Ere the pen falls from my hand.
I hope they'll have a little Ralph.
To play in the Dover Band.
    1877

Alice and Ralph Reinewald were able to celebrate their 50th anniversary together in 1927. As far as I know they never had a little Ralph, but they did have a daughter, Asa. Did she ever learn to play a musical instrument? With a bandmaster father, what do you think?