Skylark (11 page)

To make matters worse, the
Spectator
had been out of print since the earthquake. No hope then of a review of her brand new playbills from London.

‘You will come also, Lily,' added Mrs Foley, before retiring backstage for a lie-down.

No question whether I might have a choice. She liked to have me around to carry her things and practise her lines, for I was a quick learner: almost as speedy as she at grasping the words and tucking them into memory. Mrs Foley, for all her faults, must have had at least thirty plays ready to be recalled, every word pat, at any one time. She taught me some of her memory tricks: the rhymes and connections. But you had to have a quick mind, too, which I had. I was useful also as her replacement when needed. It is not too boastful to say that when I painted my face, donned a wig and costume, and boomed my voice in imitation of that lady, the audience could be fooled nine times out of ten.

Mr Foley had lured his wife to Auckland by announcing that the great Mr Buckingham would be joining him in the theatre venture, and that he and the Buckingham family would perform in the new company.

So began a new chapter in my theatrical life: my fateful meeting with Miss Rosetta Buckingham.

[Archivist's Note: Historians claim that Mrs W.H. Foley gave her theatrical debut in Auckland at her husband's Theatre Royal. The Alouette journal gives us a different picture. Mrs Foley was performing in Wellington during the disastrous earthquake. An absence of theatrical reviews has concealed this interesting fact until now. E. de M.]

S
CENE
:
Theatre Royal, Victoria Street East, Auckland, and the Venetian Saloon, 1856

Enter the Buckinghams

Oh, those Buckinghams! They were quite nauseatingly clever with their musical talents. Soon after our arrival in Auckland, the Foleys and I, Tommy Bird (who could sing as well as perform on the slack wire), and young Harry Jackson, a new comic performer in our theatrical group, were invited to attend a musical soirée at the Buckinghams’ home. Maria was left behind to mind the baby. Her nose was properly out of joint again with this new entente between the Foleys, but I assured her it would not last. Mrs Foley was not one to settle. Quite apart from her quest for new worshipful audiences, her rather large nose was always on the scent for a fresh adoring male to take the lead role in her life. Mr Buckingham would be too old, let alone too happily married, and Harry Jackson, not yet in need of a barber, was in any case a comedian. Mrs Foley favoured handsome tragedians.

Well, the grandly named Venetian Saloon was simply a large room at the back of the Buckinghams’ new premises in Princes Street. It boasted pleasant red velvet curtains, uncomfortable chairs, a table and a grand piano. The windows looked out onto a back garden newly planted in roses and a selection of trees from the old country.

We sat on the hard little chairs and endured a succession of young Buckingham children playing and piping and singing all manner of musical medleys. Mr Buckingham and his wife had produced nine children and were obviously still at it. The poor wife, large with number ten, dragged around, serving her special
cordial and home-made cakes in the interlude, beaming with pride at the accomplishments of her tribe. Every one of those offspring, from young George and Miss Rosetta to a tiny mite of three years old, could play the piano. Master George also sang in a rich baritone although his voice surely would not long have broken. He played the flute amazingly well. Rosetta sang like a little angel, eyeing the gentlemen most provocatively. I found out later she was only fourteen, though you would have put her a good five years older. And so it went on. Walter played the fiddle, young Conrad piped a few songs and then danced a hornpipe. Mrs Buckingham sat at her piano and accompanied her husband in a long comic song which I had to admit was beautifully performed, and then went straight into ‘Villikins and his Dinah’!

I nudged Tommy. ‘Look at Mrs Foley,’ I whispered, giggling. ‘Storm clouds gather!’

Sure enough, Mrs W.H. could not bear to watch a fine performer like Mr Buckingham ‘steal’ her signature song. After the third chorus of ‘Tu la lol’ etc., where we all joined in, she rose majestically from her little chair, sailed to the front of the room and, with a poisonous nod to her host, took over, singing the sad part about the ‘cup of cold pizen’ in a voice that would have reached most of the neighbouring homes, let alone the back row of the Venetian Saloon.

Mr Buckingham held his peace, but led her back to her seat with a firm hand at the end of the item. No outsider was allowed to overshadow his prodigious family!

Perhaps that was the beginning of the falling out between the Foleys and the Buckinghams. Money came into it, of course, but you’d be mad to expect Mrs Foley to play second fiddle to anyone, especially juveniles. It wasn’t more than a couple of months before she was off back to Wellington, Nelson and Lyttelton, spreading her fame like a jewelled cloak across the colony.

Wonderful times followed. I stayed in Auckland, taking a new theatre name: Miss Rosa Fisher (from Sydney and Melbourne!). What bliss to be on stage in my own right, and not filling in for
any ailing amateur lady who fancied a night off. We professionals knew how to play through illness and pain. For better or worse, as the saying goes.

Three nights a week I performed in the Theatre Royal, riding in Foley’s Circus down near Freeman’s Bay whenever the circus was in town and best of all being free from the demands of Mrs Foley. The Foleys had left their Theatre Royal to young Harry Jackson, a poisoned chalice if ever there was one, for the audiences in Auckland were reluctant to part with good money to see the plays. Harry could draw a laugh from the most surly of audiences, never fail. We could pull the tears from the hardest businessman or farmer. The reviewers were more than kind; but the crowds remained thin. Some said our prices were too high. Harry lowered them. Five shillings for the
parquette
and only seven for a dress box. Pit, two shillings. That made a difference for a while. I played the romantic leads, performing all the most loved melodramas and farces, but week after week the theatre struggled to make ends meet.

Auckland was more gentrified than Wellington. Farmers and local gentry don’t fancy the theatre. They prefer pretty musical evenings such as the Buckingham Family entertainments. Mrs W.H. knew the lie of the land. Off she went to the rougher communities further south.

Dear faithful Jack had turned up, of course. With the Foleys often away on tour, I was lonely for my circus ‘family’, especially Maria. I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing the first day Jack arrived at my boarding house door, his face alight with love and a bunch of roses in his hand. He hooked his arm in mine, wiped away the tears with his spotless handkerchief and led me down to the sea where we sat, watching the natives gathering shellfish and the townspeople promenading. I felt so happy to see him that day that I would have married him there and then, but of course there was a play to perform that night and a season of entertainment at one of the saloons where I was booked and billed. It is not easy for an artiste to live a normal life.

Jack soon had his own business, breaking in horses for the gents and ladies, and was doing well. So he was busy too. ‘Marry
me, marry me,’ was his everlasting refrain. ‘Wait a bit, wait a bit,’ was mine.

But the fateful evening of the Buckingham Family’s Musical Entertainment for Governor Gore Browne set in train a new direction for me — and for Jack. That night would lead to more than one disaster.

The Governor of New Zealand had agreed to patronise the evening, which was to be at the Odd Fellows Hall, an imposing building in Victoria Street, which could house a
decent-sized
audience. Mr Buckingham had drawn up an impressive programme, featuring his four oldest children, and of course himself. Advertisements were plastered in shop windows and in the
Southern Cross
newspaper. Getting the Governor along was a coup as he was not known for his interest in the gentler arts.

The morning before the grand occasion there was a knock on the door of my room at the new Shakespeare Tavern in Wyndham Street. I was breakfasting in bed after a rather disappointing
evening
at the theatre. Jack came in, looking serious, puffing slightly, his hair not its usual gleaming sheen and his chin unshaven.

‘Lily,’ he said, plumping his backside down on the bed, causing my cup of tea to splash all down my nightdress, which did not start the conversation well. ‘Lily, there is a disaster in the Buckingham household and I am sent to see if you can help.’

What concern was this of Jack’s, I wanted to know? Why was he the messenger? Jack tried to brush away my questions, in such a lather was he, to give the disaster air, but in the end he explained that he was teaching the young Buckinghams to ride like proper ladies and gents, and was commissioned to break in and provide three riding horses and one good hackney for the family. He had arrived early that morning to find the mother in tears, the father in a panic and all those musical children moaning and carrying on as if the world was at an end.

‘Rosetta is down with a terrible fever,’ said Jack solemnly. ‘All she can manage is a croak. The doctor says she must not attempt to sing or even set foot out in the cold air for at least a fortnight. Mr Buckingham is beside himself. Rosetta is his star performer.’

Jack took a deep breath and looked at me with shining eyes. ‘The Buckinghams are asking if you will stand in for her.’

‘For a fourteen-year-old?’ I asked. ‘I am a grown woman!’

‘Lily Alouette,’ he said, smiling in his fondest manner, ‘you are not yet eighteen, and Miss Rosetta is very grown-up in manner and stature.’

He said this with such pride, as if the girl were one of his fillies! I looked at him sharply. But his gaze was steady.

‘Say you will, Lily. Think of it, to sing in front of Governor Gore Browne and his lady!’

I was already thinking of it. I had seen the programme — who in town hadn’t? Two of the songs — ‘I Love the Night’ and ‘Queen of my Soul’ — I knew. But the others were new to me. And there was the large matter of the piano solos.

Jack was ahead of me there. ‘Mrs Buckingham will play the piano accompaniment and Master Walter will do the
piano-lesson
duet. It is just the singing cannot be managed. The next little Buckingham girl is not secure enough yet.’

You would think Jack was one of the family, the detail he could rattle off! I admit to a small twang of pique.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said, though of course I knew very well. I loved to sing and here was an opportunity to make a name for myself.

Jack knew too. Up he jumped and gave me a quick kiss. ‘I will wait outside while you dress. The Buckinghams’ trap awaits you at the door, Miss Rosetta!’

And out he marched before I could say another word. So that was the way the land lay. I was to perform as Miss Rosetta Buckingham, not Miss Rosa Fisher. No doubt I would be decked out in Rosetta’s best dress, my hair — which was dark like hers — curled into ringlets, and my voice trained, over the course of a few hours, to sound like a sweet young miss instead of my own rich womanly tones.

So it turned out. Mr Buckingham was apologetic, polite, but firm. The public wanted to hear Miss Rosetta. They had paid good money to hear her. The public loved the idea of a talented
family and would feel disappointed, even tricked, he said, if they thought outsiders were part of the act.

‘Just this once,’ he said, and then after a moment’s thought, ‘or perhaps for a little longer, until she regains her health. Eh? You will be paid well, my dear. And I am prepared to give you free singing lessons for the rest of the year, if you agree.’

If he thought I needed lessons, why was he asking me to stand in for his precious Rosetta? I knew my voice was better than hers. Rosetta had a sweet voice but it lacked power. Mr Buckingham had chosen light English folk songs (‘I Love the Merry Sunshine’, for one) that suited her voice. But how would she cope with a noisy audience once the Governor was gone and a normal crowd turned up to drink and cheer?

Well, I agreed, for all my misgivings, and donned a pretty dress and an innocent face and sang my sweet songs and the audience loved Miss Rosetta. It was fun in a way. A piece of theatre. To pretend to be young and provocative, to pout and pose like the Buckingham children, was a new challenge. I got away with it, too. The family and Jack were sworn to secrecy and no one suspected the truth. Miss Rosetta Buckingham was greatly praised, though the reviewer was disappointed that ‘a slight injury to her hand meant that her piano pieces were performed by other members of this prodigiously talented family’.

Rosetta was a sweet thing — or so I thought at that time — but not strong. She was prone to colds and fevers. On more than one occasion over the next few months I stood in for her. We were almost exactly the same height with similar dark hair and eyes. It amused me to imitate her winsome ways. Once I scored my own secret triumph. At one of the Buckingham soirées in the Venetian Saloon, as Rosetta lay in bed, coughing and wheezing, and I was singing one of her favourites (‘Queen of the Night’) I took breath and slowly began to increase the volume and depth of my voice. By the end of the song it was the full power of Rosa Fisher (or Lily Alouette) who reduced the audience to tearful silence, and then rapturous applause. I curtseyed sweetly and walked off stage. Mr Buckingham’s face was a picture: both worried and thoughtful.
I gave him an innocent little smile, as if unaware of what I had just done. Next day the reviewer spent half a column praising the ‘astonishing development of Miss Rosetta’s voice’ and her ‘undoubted future as a first-class singer and entertainer’.

There are times in all our lives when we are faced with difficult decisions. Should we go this way or that? Usually the hard choices are between continuing along the safe and comfortable path or taking a strange, exciting, but perhaps dangerous side-branch. Such a choice was offered me by the Buckinghams. I took my problem to dear Maria, who was with the circus down at Freeman’s Bay at the time.

How well I remember walking down towards the harbour that morning, my hair piled on my head with a few ringlets escaping over my ears, the blessed sun warm on the bare nape of my neck, a song humming through my body in time with my feet. Along the shore the English soldiers were exercising their horses, with much jingling of spurs and flashing of uniforms. ‘Rosa!’ called one young fellow, touching his whip to his cap, and I waved back, happy as the lark for which I am named to be saluted by such a gallant.