Abstract
Goron investigates the late-Victorian Savoy Theatre as a workplace, by examining ways in which the moral behaviour of employees was enforced and maintained by the management. He investigates the premise that, by regulating the lives of female performers, Victorian entrepreneur Richard D’Oyly Carte created a company image which concurred with, and reinforced, the moral preoccupations of the ‘respectable’ middle classes. The chapter explores the notion of increasing middle-class female participation in late-Victorian theatre, and ways in which the D’Oyly Carte Company accommodated this demographic change. The kinds of moral strictures imposed by the Savoy management and those based on emphasising female allure, practised by George Edwardes, manager of the rival Gaiety Theatre, are compared to explore the specificity of the culture of morality at the Savoy.
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Notes
- 1.
1. A search through complete online editions of the comic papers Punch, Judy, Moonshine and Fun for the period 1881–1884 (British Library Nineteenth Century Newspaper and Periodical database) has, as yet, revealed no press coverage of this event. This is, of course, not conclusive evidence, as there may have been other papers that ran the story. Similarly, using ‘Jessie Bond’, ‘Opera Comique’ and ‘Savoy’ for keyword searches may be problematic if the characters and places involved were referred to pseudonymously.
- 2.
2. Era, 16 February 1884.
- 3.
3. London County Council Metropolitan Archive (GLC/AR/BR/19/0047)
- 4.
4. Greater London Record Office, 5 January 1899.
- 5.
5. Greater London Record Office, 14 October 1889.
- 6.
6. Richard D’Oyly Carte’s inaugural address, written for the opening of the Savoy Theatre, 6 October 1881.
- 7.
7. These references were supplied in a private email message on 6 February 2009 by Dorothy Kincaid following my public lecture ‘The D’Oyly Carte Boarding School: Gilbert, Sullivan and Victorian Values: 1877–1903’, given at the Society for Theatre Research in January 2009.
- 8.
8. The rustic rural dialect of the chorus of villagers in Act Two of The Sorcerer or Dick Dauntless’s nautical speech patterns in Ruddigore are some examples of deliberately indicated non-standard pronunciation.
- 9.
9. ‘Workers and Their Work: Mr W.S. Gilbert.’ Daily News, 21 January 1885.
- 10.
10. Letter from WSG to Helen Carte, 19 December 1895 (DC/TM).
- 11.
11. The Musical World, 6 July 1892.
- 12.
12. Press interview with RDC, The Million, 10 December 1892.
- 13.
13. It should be noted that Platt (2004) disagrees with Bailey’s interpretation of Edwardes’s promotional activities, rejecting the notion that ‘generalises the musical comedy actress into the victim role, positioned at the mercy of a patriarchal […] culture’ (p. 124). This is perhaps an overreaction. Platt is keen to stress the individual agency of Edwardes’s female performers, but cites female stars, who inevitably possess greater bargaining power, rather than chorus members, as his examples (p. 125). Regular pay and longevity of employment were likely to have encouraged adherence to managerial injunctions. The manipulation of an image is not necessarily concomitant with the manipulation of individuals outside the workplace, and in any case would partially rely on the willingness of the employee to conform to company policy. Similarly, public image does not determine personal behaviour or opinion when the performer is removed from the workplace.
- 14.
14. Letter from RDC to Leonora Braham, 18 July 1885 (DC/TM).
- 15.
15. Saturday Review, 30 October 1909.
- 16.
16. There may have been other, more personal reasons for Bond’s amatory reluctance. Early in the autobiography Bond presents a melodramatic account of her abduction and forced marriage, at the age of 17, to her concert agent, Herr F.A. Schotlaender. She was both attracted and repelled by this Svengali-like figure who managed to convince her that she had been sexually ‘compromised’ and so must marry him. The marriage was miserable and a son was born who died shortly afterwards. Bond reports how a divorce was easily obtained, allowing her to pursue her career (Bond 1930, pp. 18–22). Despite constant proposals over the years, Bond maintains her aversion to married life, until the point at which she is ready to retire from the stage. What is not reported in her memoir is the fact that that she contracted syphilis from the violent and adulterous Schotlaender. Documents held in the Metropolitan Archive relating to Bond’s subsequent divorce reveal that syphilis was the cause of death entered on the death certificate of her son Sidney Arthur Charles Schotlaender, who died aged six weeks in 1871. Her affidavit states that Schotlaender ‘knowingly and wilfully communicated to me a certain pestilent and loathsome disease which caused the death of our infant child’ (Bond, J., London Metropolitan Archive UK Civil Divorce Records, 1858–1911). Residual symptoms of this illness may account for Bond’s frequent indisposition and absences from the stage. Attention was drawn to this archival source by Savoynet contributor Chris Goddard.
- 17.
17. Contract of Employment between Harriet Everard and the Comedy Opera Company, 1878 (DC/TM), my italics.
- 18.
18. The leadership passed to Helen Carte’s stepson, Rupert, after her demise in 1913. His daughter, Bridget D’Oyly Carte, ran the company after Rupert’s death in 1948 until its closure in 1982.
- 19.
19. ‘A Rehearsal at the Savoy: How the New Opera Is Prepared.’ The Westminster Gazette, 6 October 1893.
- 20.
20. There is no record of Sullivan personally promoting any kind of ‘respectable’ behaviour at the Savoy. As a part of the top level of management, we might assume he publicly supported a prevailing moral regime that differed so markedly from his personal habits. See Arthur Jacobs, Arthur Sullivan. A Victorian Musician (1984), for information on Sullivan’s gambling and womanising.
- 21.
21. See Grossmith, A Society Clown, 1888, pp. 92–4, for a first-hand account.
- 22.
22. Clause 7 in the contract of employment for HMS Pinafore in 1878 stipulates: ‘No Artist will be paid Salary for any days on which the theatre is not open, and no Salaries will be paid for rehearsals.’ Contract of Employment between Harriet Everard and the Comedy Opera Company, 1878 (DC/TM).
- 23.
23. The furore surrounding its publication led to Scott’s dismissal as theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph. See Davies 1991, pp. 93–7, for a considered discussion of the controversy surrounding this article.
- 24.
24. ‘“Does the Theatre Make for Good?” An Interview with Mr Clement Scott’ (Blaythwayte 1898, pp. 3–4).
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Goron, M. (2016). ‘The D’Oyly Carte Boarding School’: Female Respectability at the Savoy*. In: Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Respectable Capers'. Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59478-5_6
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