Lewis Waller and Florence West, a couple of Victorian actors

 

I discovered the show business couple of Florence West and Lewis Waller thanks to a postcard posted on Twitter by MissHistoryGal.  Starting their careers a little earlier than the Edwardian actors I usually research I hadn’t been aware of their interesting lives.

Florence Isabella Brandon was born in Chiswick in December 1859, the eldest daughter of Horatio Brandon a successful solicitor. She had 6 sisters and 2 brothers. She was a keen amateur actress who decided to write to the famous comedian J L Toole to ask for employment with his theatrical company. Having convinced him that she was a serious actress he gave her a trial. Using the stage name of Florence West, she can be found on the billboards of Mr Toole’s company in London and touring England in 1882. In that same year she had quietly married William Waller Lewis, also a keen amateur actor. When a fellow cast member fell ill, she suggested her husband take the part. For several years, Florence continued using the stage name Florence West, perhaps not wanting to affect the matinee idol image which Lewis had acquired along with a host of young female fans. However they were frequently partners on stage.

Lewis was born William Waller Lewis in Bilbao Spain. His father William James Lewis was English, his mother Carlotta Vyse, Spanish. For 5 years he was employed in the city of London, but he always wanted to use, “his fine rich voice,” on stage. His romantic good looks soon made him popular in swashbuckling roles. Florence’s sister, (Constance) Margaret, who as Mrs Clement Scott became theatre critic of the John Bull magazine, described Lewis thus,

“He lived in Cloudland as an enthusiast, a romanticist, a bit of a Don Quixote, a splendid, honest, straightforward, virile man.”

Harry Esmond described Waller’s school of plays as, “The Sword and Caper drama.”

In the mid-1890s he was actor/manager of the Royal Haymarket Theatre and he later impressed with his Shakespearian characters.

The couple had two children, Edmund Lewis Waller born in 1884 who followed his father on stage and Nancy Waller born in 1896. 

In the 1890s as Mrs Lewis Waller, Florence started her own touring company of actors.  In 1904, Florence objected strongly to, “the advertisement of soaps and corsets,” between acts on the screened stage. “I object to half-dressed people being thrown on the screen.”  Such was her influence that the practice stopped during her performances. One of the actresses Florence employed was Ethel Warwick, a famous artists’ model. Ethel later married Edmund Waller Lewis but sadly the marriage ended in divorce.

Both Florence and Lewis died young, Florence, aged 53, in 1912, while her husband was in New York and Lewis of pneumonia, aged 55, in 1915 after a long tour of America, Canada and Australia, with his daughter Nancy by his side.

#SilentSunday Winter Trees

Ethel Sydney, a Gaiety girl #EdwardianActress #Postcards

 

I discovered Ethel Sydney from someone who responded to my post about The Gaiety Girls and what an interesting discovery she was.  Most Victorian and Edwardian actresses came from theatrical families or at least were supported by their mothers at the outset of their career but Emily Beatrice Lloyd, as she then was, ran away from home to go on stage. Having been born in Burma in 1874, the youngest daughter of Lt-Colonel Malcolm Lloyd of HM Madras Staff Corps she was brought to England at the age of two, by her mother Louise, after her father’s sudden death. In 1893, nineteen year old Ethel married Sydney Douglas Edward Hall, whose father had been an officer of the Bengal cavalry and from this point her acting name was Ethel Sydney. It is in this name that she is listed in the programme of George Edwards’ production of “A Gaiety Girl”.  In newspaper articles she is praised for her ability as a comedy actress as well as her fine singing voice.

When interviewed by The Sketch in 1894 she told of a gold medal awarded to her as champion Lady swimmer of Portsmouth 5 years earlier but now all her ambitions were in musical comedy. 

After playing the title role in The Shop Girl on Broadway in 1895 there was a pause in her career for the birth of her son in 1898. In the 1901 census Ethel is listed in her married name, accompanied by her son Durham Hall staying at the South Shore Hydro, Blackpool along with the cast of the play in which she was performing.  But her marriage did not survive as in 1902 she divorced Sydney Hall, citing his denial of conjugal rights and she later married Samuel Robinson Oliver, a man of independent means. 

However, in 1911 allegations of adultery with John Upton Gaskell were made against Ethel by her husband, Samuel. Guy Oliver, the child she and Samuel Oliver had in 1905, remained in his father’s custody. Once the divorce was finalised, she married John Gaskell and in 1913 they had a son, Peter Upton. At her last three marriages Ethel gave misinformation about her age, probably because she was considerably older than her spouses.

Ethel’s last husband, Alistair Ian Matheson, was at 25, half Ethel’s age but on the marriage certificate in 1924, she is listed as “of full age”. 

  Alistair Matheson had been a 2^nd  Lieutenant during the First World War and then became a commercial artist specialising in animation including the Bonzo cartoon for New Era Films.  Despite the age difference Ethel and Alistair remained together for the rest of her life. Ethel died in London in 1967, her husband a year later.