Smith

Thank God for the odd middle name that falls to the font-dipped child. It makes my life as a researcher possible. The reason for this laudable note is that R.S.Smythe had a nephew, Lancelot Wellesley Smith, whose middle name, and indeed his first made him easy to find among the accursed ubiquity of 'Smith'.

He had a son in turn named Grenfall! and not that but Grenfall Wellesley Smith who up until late last century had been part of the Penrith Archaeological Group! God bless them and HIM. I have written a letter off to NSW in hope that someone there still knows the man and/or the whereabouts of his kin. Human relations are tenuous things as we researchers know; gossamer that looks like chains but with a generation (20 years) can melt into the air as if was never ever there.

____________

As for Octavia Hamilton's second 'husband'; his middle name was Holme, taken from his mother's maiden name no doubt because Thomas Holme Davis' grandfather William Holme Esq. of Norton Folgate was wealthy enough to have a kneeling statue of himself built over his burial in London's St. Swithins, Londonstone, now long destroyed but one of the first of Inigo Jones' Churches. What did Holme do to merit the passage of the family surname with such fidelity? I wonder doubly as no obituary shows up in the times or any of the 19th century on-line newspapers. William Holme c.1763-1835 and wife Mary...who were they? Was he the distiller who was partnered with Thomas Wilson at Upper Thames in 1803? That might certainly account for Thomas Holme Davis career as Victualler.

History is a tease.

Octavia Hamilton again

Octavia Hamilton (Eliza Octavia Scrivenor) the singer. I am trying still to find a picture of her and so an throwing this letter in a bottle onto the vast internet sea.

She and Thomas Holme Davis had several children, one of whom was Beatrice Connaught Davis (Beatrice C. Davis) who married Walter James Slater and Henry J. Pinnock.

By Walter she had two sons, Walter Frank Holme Davis and Wilfred Arthur J. Slater.

Walter F. H. Slater married Doris V. Graves and had one son David Francis Holme Slater who settled eventually in New Zealand, Rangiora. He married three times! Once to Barbara Ann Fink, by whom there were two children, secondly to Pamela Cox, and finally to Valerie S. Dallard. From these unions the following children came into being: Andre paul Slater; Gina Marie Slater and Aaron Holme Slater.

Anyone of whom I would like to contact me for I am still searching for a photograph of "Octavia Hamilton"

Of course, the original Beatrice had siblings: Alice Dora Davis; Alice Mary; Mabel Francis and Ernest Edward Davis any of whom could have left branches down which the ephemera floated.

Please email if you can help.

Msr. Poussard and his Salon pieces

The great grandson of Horace Poussard, Castrogonternerian-Maloin violinist of France, has just returned from a European trip and spent some time in Paris, purchasing a bound book of sheet music stamped with 'Romances" on the spine from a delightful Parisienne named Chantal, being therein contained three pieces by his forebear. Chantal has, god bless her cotton socks has set two of them to midi file. Now mid files are mechanical little buggers but they grant an immediate introduction to the sound of the song. The first piece, "Sur une Roche" (On a Rock) is a sweet sentimental verse and chorus salon song about a girl named Marthe who waits, for years for her true love to return, which he does one day as the Captain of a ship bringing back riches. The pathos of the song is her waiting upon a rock, faithfully. Poussard puts a bit of coloratura when the main refrain moved from minor to major with of even buying dinner first.

Despite Poussard having been a very abrupt composer in his melodic phrasing it's a pretty little song and in the right hands would make a wonderful sweetmeat fro the ear. I am enjoying the midi file and have listened to it several dozen times and I am going to try and get it recorded. The narrative in lyric was by Mlle. Claudine Klotz, one of three musical sisters in Paris, two of whom I think from memory went to the Imperial Conservatory.

The Klotz also wrote, as far as we know and as far as this bound volume indicates, two other songs, "Plus Heureuse qu'en un palais" (Happier in a palace) and "La fleur d'éxilé" (The flower of the exiled). The common theme seems to be the simple fidelity and capacity for contentment of the lower orders which had been long romanced into cotton candy for the consumption of the French classes no longer connected to the land and whose zucker-zeitgeisting of hard farm life seems to have been a national sport amongst the fan flutterers.

But out of it came the Chanson.

Horace Poussard it seems did produce some truly pretty pieces amongst the odd assortment and now I want to look at some of his other works on sheet which I have copied and tucked away. Would it not be nice to have some works of Horace on CD?

Octavia...I knew you couldn't hide

I found her. Yes, I did. It seems that Eliza Octavia Scrivenor aka "Octavia Hamilton" having been seduced under own father roof at age 15 by A. G. Moon broke free of his heavy hand and, leaving a trail of children whose parentage is still unknown lived with a Mr. Davis. In the 1880s he advertised EVERYTHING in his wine seller business for sale with intent to return to England. Mr Davis, and his son Edmund E. Davis went along with the Octavia who settled down in England under her childhood name plus Davis, dying in 1913 in Edmonton after giving him two more children. I do not believe they had ever been married.

Just what happened to the other children I do not know. Moon only acknowledged two of her 18 children as his. She had sent most off to the industrial schools and always paid tuition and other fees on time. It seems she had spent some time with Mr. Davis, much closer to her age, a lover of wine, port, claret and other tipplage as she was. He loved music too. It was, I think, her little patch of unison in a life mostly written for her by other people.

I'm quite fond of her.

Though much maligned in the press, and much of it justified, the whole truth of her circumstances was never outed and the unhappy marriage forced on her by a older Mr Moon under discovery of her father the Solictor was never there to balance the scales.

She was deeply unhappy, angry and out to salvage what she could. And her singing was never slighted. She was a good singer and one of Australia's Earliest.

My favourite quote about reincarnation

"All souls incarnate and reincarnate under the Law of Rebirth. Hence each life is not only a recapitulation of life experience, but an assuming of ancient obligations, a recovery of old relations, an opportunity for the paying of old indebtedness, a chance to make restitution and progress, an awakening of deep-seated qualities, the recognition of old friends and enemies, the solution of revolting injustices, and the explanation of that which conditions the man and makes him what he is."

Octavia my love, where art thou?

Octavia Hamilton was a contralto who flourished in Melbourne in the late 1850s and through the 1860s. She had several children to unknown fathers, shacked up with a gent above a wine shop and made her husband pay for it! She is looked upon generally as a scandalous figure and a model of what was wrong with 'professionals' as stage-folk were then called.

When I dug into the census of 1841 I found something interesting. She was fifteen years old when her future husband, Augustus Graham Moon was lodging with the family. The only lodger. Well, slap-me-happy if they didn't get married that very year. Mr. Moon must have had his way with Octavia under her father's roof. That's gumption.

And all these years I had been feeling sorry for the hard done by Mr. Moon. Was Octavia (Frances Eliza Scrivenor) really Melbourne's operatic tart-in-chief or was her behaviour a long campaign of revenge? I'll never know. She is hard to find. Almost impossible. The only route I have open to the little red-corvette that resides in my brain is the tarmac road of her daughter's descendents who married well and had a large branch here in Victoria. Not only her, but Octavia's wider family also came out as well including brothers and so on. Her father, a Grays-Inn lawyer became insolvent twice and made it out here and earned a better living.

I love wicked old Octavia. Her name is so Roman, so epic, so historic, so made for a bigger stage that her life could contain. Let us hope I can uncover an picture of the woman that was the original O.H!

Research and rescue

It is a well-spring of never ending fresh bubbling astonishment to me that every time I earnestly seek out the identification of some figure who gave their life, or neatly slice portion thereof, in service to public amusement of this country (Australia) during the 19th century, I am almost always confronted with a footnote whose seems to think it's job is to decorate the bottom of a page so the layout of the page does not get bored when it gazes down at it's feet while the reader pours across whatever passage said reader is fixed upon.

It usually happens like this: page 234, "Joshua Archibald Meatcakes then went on to the Bendigo goldfields where he performed with Herr. Schtumpschmaker (1814-1891) who played the violin. The footnote attached to the German fiddler will then say soemthing fo this nature:

"Herr. Mincefondle Von Schtumpschmaker (1814-1891) Native of Cologne. Studied the violin under Noodlepuddle in Leipzig"

Why am I being told this? What possible bearing does this coupling have upon Mr. Meatcakes? If there is a reason, why am I not shown it, or at least if not shown it, why am I not given a delicious detour regarding Schtumpschmaker. I don't mind being waylaid in a text if the scenery is nice and the information is engaging. Authors have lost, in fact, positively jettisoned the art of the anfractuous narrative with regard to biographies. Editors quake in their boot, wishing to confine the reader to just the subject and no more. Biographies are more than just railroads for facts and dates. They should be pleasant affairs infused with the vanilla of affection for the subject and the environment in which they find themselves such as Kurt Ganzl's hard bound affection on Willie B. Gill the broadway stalwart about whom most of us knew nothing.

A biography should be an astronomers map of not only planets, moons and orbits, but constellations, nodes, far-off stars and others comets of interest. It should be RICH. I research just this way and it takes me longer but the stuff that I find is richer. It is damaskene and gossip, fact and fondant. Yummy.