Ada
Page 21
Ada Delroy skipping drawing, ‘Champion Lady Dancer – England’s little gem, Australia’s favourite now performing at the Gaiety, Brisbane, with the Harry Rickards Company’. Artist unknown; Queensland Figaro, 2 March 1889. Clipping digitised by Trove, National Library of Australia.
Harry Rickards, c1895. Talma Studios, Melbourne. State Library of New South Wales.
Wood Engraving of Parer’s Crystal Café by Albert Charles Cooke, published in Australian Illustrated News, 30 April 1887. State Library of Victoria Pictures Collection.
Opening image collage
Ada Delroy fire dance poster, c1890s. Artist unknown; courtesy Joy Bell and the Bell family.
Zeno & Hall, juggler/equilibrist, and comedian, c1908; unknown newspaper clipping (probably from The Argus or The Age) from a theatre collection scrapbook, State Library of Victoria Pictures Collection.
Woodblock print poster for music-hall bill at the Theatre Royal in Hobart, featuring Madam Marzella, Ada Delroy and James Bell, 1904, State Library of Tasmania.
The White Mahatma showing ‘Samri’ Baldwin, c1890s.
Loïe Fuller Folies Bèrgeres poster, by Alfred-Victor Choubrac.
Irving Sayles, c1910. Photographer unknown.
‘The Gaiety Girl’ Skirt dance sheet music cover, supplied by Kristin Otto.
Witch of Endor Mrs Baldwin poster showing Kitty Russell (aka Kitty Baldwin) in butterfly brooches, c1890s.
Closing image collage
Butterfly dancer in costume c1890s. Photographer unknown.
‘The Gaiety Girl’ Skirt dance sheet music, supplied by Kristin Otto.
Music written by Thomas Edward Bulch or Charles Rawlings writing as Theo Bonheur, 1890s–1910s.
‘Theatrical Company Upset’ news clipping from The Advertiser, Adelaide, 21 January 1908. Digitised by Trove, National Library of Australia.
Lillie May Bryer’s handwritten motto inscription in May Bryer’s autograph book, dated 25 April 1909, State Library of Victoria.
Architectural drawings for the new Opera House Tivoli Theatre commissioned by Harry Rickards, architect William Pitt, State Library of Victoria Pictures Collection.
Loïe Fuller Folies Bèrgeres poster, by Jean de Paleologu.
I began researching Ada when I was Creative Fellow at the State Library of Victoria 2013–2015, the moment I saw her photograph pasted in the ‘Gordon Ireland Theatrical Scrapbook’, which is held in the Library’s manuscript collection. Special thanks are due to Joy Bell, family researcher for the Bell family, and her husband Rodney, for their hospitality and generous sharing of information and photographs relating to Bell’s Minstrels and the Ada Delroy Company. (Jim Bell was Rodney’s great-uncle.)
This novel contains many facts, but its version of history is speculative. In 1921 a nineteen-year-old maid called Beryl Bell from Gawler in South Australia married a 26-year-old bootmaker, Robert Sherwell, in Collingwood, Victoria. On her marriage certificate, Beryl listed her parents as ‘Ada Delroy and Robert Bell, professional’. The only other evidence of her parentage is DNA testing of her descendants that shows a link to an unknown person in the Bell family. My thanks to Beryl’s descendants, Ann Sherwell and Pamela Coad, who kindly shared what they had been told or discovered about their family history.
The book could not have been written without the digitised newspaper records on the National Library of Australia’s Trove website and on the National Library of New Zealand’s site PapersPast. Research material was found in every state library collection in Australia. At the State Library of Victoria I thank Pictures Collection oracles Madeleine Say and Gerard Hayes, who drew my attention to many useful photographs and objects. The indefatigable Mr Hayes helped me to identify and understand details in photographs, and to avoid many errors. Thanks also to Kerri Hall and Katie Flack (Theatre Collection); Dominique Dunstan (The W.G. [Will] Alma Conjuring Collection); Peter Johnson (architect and heritage consultant, plans and drawings); Paul Dee (Newspaper Archives); Des Cowley (Rare Books); and Lucy Bracey (consultant historian).
Lily Brett injected welcome rigour and encouragement, and generously provided a place to stay, work and think during some of the writing. Graeme Haigh, of Grajohn Genealogical Services, is an efficient corker. At New Zealand Archives Auckland, Sarah Mathieson and Wendy Goldsmith found the original papers and an exhibit photo for Edwin Montague’s 1913 divorce, and helped me decipher them.
Historian and theatre specialist Dr Mimi Colligan and Australian music-hall maven Frank Van Straten, and their books, were invaluable. Australian vaudevillian veteran Shirley Broadway shared her memories of performing in her Serpentine costume. Elaine Marriner provided a tour of the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. Magic assistance came from Australian magician Doug Tremlett, and US magician and Professor Baldwin historian Dennis Laub. Dr Justin Denholm, medical director of the Victorian Tuberculosis Program, advised on some medical matters.
For consulting on Indigenous issues, thanks to anthropologist Professor Marcia Langton, foundation chair in Australian Indigenous Studies at the
University of Melbourne, and Professor Nick Evans from the Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific, director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language.
US choreographer and dancer Jody Sperling (timelapsedance.com), reinterprets and extends the work of Loïe Fuller, and I saw her company dance in New York City. Jody kindly answered questions about Serpentine dance choreography and the costume, and showed me posters and ephemera.
I’m indebted to author and senior curator at Museum Victoria Charlotte Smith for her expertise about Melbourne’s 1880s exhibitions. Marion Parker, textiles conservator at the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation at the University of Melbourne shared knowledge of fabric weighted with metal salts, including ‘tin silk’. The lorgnette style of opera glasses being a ‘dirty look on a stick’ comes from a 1963 UK trade journal article called ‘Vision, Supplement to the Optical Practitioner’ by R. Bennet, found by Vanessa Brown and quoted in her book The Cool Shades: The History and Meaning of Sunglasses. Gail Davidson helped us with an early version of the cover design; thanks also to feather.com.au.
For research assistance or encouragement, thanks to Philippa Hawker, Fiona Wood, Glenda Jones, George Cooke, Georgina Ogilvie, Sue Broadway, Pene Durston, Kristin Otto and Robyn Annear.
I’m grateful to my steadfast co-conspirators, commissioning publisher Ben Ball, whose response to the book was patient and insightful; editor Rachel Scully; book designer Adam Laszczuk; proofreader Katie Purvis; and senior publicity manager Anyez Lindop, with whom I’ve shared many a book tour and the companionship of the road.
Music hall and vaudeville
The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi by Andrew McConnell Stott.
Gaiety: Theatre of Enchantment by Walter Macqueen-Pope.
The Story of the Music Hall by Archibald Haddon.
British Music Hall: An Illustrated History by Richard Anthony Baker.
Tivoli King: The Life of Harry Rickards Vaudeville Showman by Gae Anderson.
Circus and Stage: The Theatrical Adventures of Rose Edouin and G.B.W. Lewis and Canvas Documentaries: Panoramic Entertainments in Nineteenth-Century Australia by Mimi Colligan.
‘Florrie Forde’ and Tivoli by Frank Van Straten.
When Vaudeville Was King: A Soft Shoe Stroll Down Forget-Me-Not Lane by Charles Norman.
Act as Known by Valentyne Napier.
Dames, Principal Boys … and All That: A History of Pantomime in Australia by Viola Tait.
Leann Richards’ articles on early pantomime and theatre, available at hat-archive.com.
Australian Theatre Variety Archive, ozvta.com.
Travelling Shows in Rural Australia, 1850–1914 and From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville: The Australian Popular Stage, 1788–1914 by Richard Waterhouse.
Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895 by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff.
Little People by Jane Sullivan.
India Dark by Kirsty Murray.
Magic and circus
Magical Nights at the Theatre: A Chronicle by Charles Waller, edited by Gerald Taylor (100 years of Melbourne performances by magicians).
Circus: The Australian Story by Mark St Leon.
The Sawdust Ring by Rupert Croft-Cooke and W.S. Meadmore.
Loïe Fuller
Body Stages: Metamorphosis of Loïe Fuller, edited by Aurora Herrera Gómez.
Fifteen Years of a Dancer’s Life: With Some Account of Her Distinguished Friends by Loïe Fuller (mostly fibs).
American vaudeville
From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830–1910, edited by Robert M. Lewis.
The Marx Brothers by Kyle Crichton.
Much Ado About Me by Fred Allen.
Vaudeville: The Book by Caroline Caffin.
No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous by Trav S.D.
Nineteenth-century England
London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew.
How to be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life by Ruth Goodman.
The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon, BBC.
Australia 1888–1910
Capital: Melbourne When it Was the Capital City of Australia 1901–27 and Yarra: A Diverting History by Kristin Otto.
The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne by Graeme Davison.
Black Kettle and Full Moon: Daily Life in a Vanished Australia by Geoffrey Blainey.
Larrikins: A History by Melissa Bellanta, and bellanta.wordpress.com.
Melbourne Street Life: The Itinerary of Our Days by Andrew Brown-May.
Madame Brussels: This Moral Pandemonium by L.M. Robinson.
MacRobertsonland by Jill Robertson.
Making Modern Melbourne by Jenny Lee.
Visions of Colonial Grandeur: John Twycross at Melbourne’s International Exhibitions by Charlotte Smith and Benjamin Thomas.
E.W. Cole: Chasing the Rainbow and Utopian Man by Lisa Lang.
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume.
About the Author
A former reporter and cartoonist, Kaz Cooke is the author of the bestselling books Up The Duff, Kidwrangling, Girl Stuff, Girl Stuff 8–12, Women’s Stuff, and the children’s picture books Wanda-Linda Goes Berserk and The Terrible Underpants, which is not entirely autobiographical. This novel grew out of her research and exhibition during a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria, 2013–2015.
kazcooke.com.au
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2017
Text copyright © Kaz Cooke 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover design by Adam Laszczuk © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Text design by Adam Laszczuk © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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ISBN: 978-1-74348-375-6
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