Oxford University Press
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Gilbert and Sullivan: A Dual Biography. By Michael Ainger. pp. xxii + 504. (Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, £35. ISBN 0-19-514769-3.)

In 1975 the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company celebrated one hundred years of performing the comic operas of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan; three-quarters of the way through the twentieth century these operas were still virtually the only works by their authors that were known to the general public. Many of the books on 'Gilbert and Sullivan' were simply reminiscences by artists ('Savoyards') who had performed with the D'Oyly Carte company, [End Page 466] although there had been individual biographies of Gilbert and of Sullivan, and attempts to tell the whole story, notably Isaac Goldberg's The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1928) and Leslie Baily's The Gilbert and Sullivan Book (1952), which grew out of a series of radio programmes broadcast in 1947.

Baily had access to sources of documentary evidence that had not previously been properly examined. His book, a landmark in its day, is still very readable, but the intervening years have seen great advances in scholarship, and two important biographies have appeared: Arthur Jacobs's Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician (Oxford, 1984; 2nd edn., 1992), and Jane W. Stedman's W. S. Gilbert: A Classic Victorian and his Theatre (Oxford, 1996). Jacobs had further access to Sullivan's diaries, as Stedman had to the D'Oyly Carte papers, now in the Theatre Museum, London.

Michael Ainger has now written the first dual biography since Baily. He has made full use of all available sources in Great Britain and the United States—original letters and documents, books, articles, pamphlets, and newspapers and periodicals of the day—and has undertaken further research; his book is clearly the outcome of many years' work. Much of the factual detail is new to the literature. We learn about Gilbert's great-grandfather, Sullivan's grandfather's exploits in the Peninsular War, and the contents of Gilbert's grandmother's will, and that, in his last years, Gilbert enjoyed going to the cinema, and kept a diary in a sort of schoolboy 'franglais', noting, one day, that his Rolls Royce had 'quelque trouble dans le gear-box' (p. 430). The relentless parade of detail is not always strictly necessary, and some of it might have been relegated to footnotes. (We are told, for instance, that on the day that he was knighted (15 July 1907) Gilbert was driven to Buckingham Palace in his Darracq (an early car), lunched at the Savoy Grill (where else?!), but was home in time for tea, after which he had a swim in the lake—his second of the day and his forty-third of the year. (He had his ninety-ninth swim on Saturday 24 August, and the season's tally reached 118 on 10 September; see pp. 417-18). At such times there is an oppressive sense of 'information overload'.)

The book has been printed and published in the United States, and British readers will have to accept American spellings that may seem incongruous in such an essentially English context (and from an English author)—'favor', 'theater', and so on. In contrast to references to, for example, 'the duke of Wellington' there is sometimes an overuse of capitals, as in 'Never Mind the Why and Wherefore', 'He Is an Englishman' (both p. 157), and 'He Polished Up the Handle of the Big Front Door' (p. 200): these lines from HMS Pinafore are not song titles. In italic titles of other works by Sullivan, the definite article is sometimes not included, as in 'a performance by Hallé's orchestra of the Tempest' (p. 56) and 'the masque music from the Merchant of Venice' (p. 393). Occasionally, the definite article is added gratuitously, as in a reference to Brunel's famous ship, which is given as 'The Great Eastern' (p. 57), and in the phrase 'accommodated on the HMS Hercules' (p. 200).

There are many mistakes, some of which might have been eliminated by more attentive proofreading. Sullivan's song Edward Gray appears as Edward Grey (p. 175 and index), and the song that may have appeared in the original contract as In the Summer Long Ago (p. 71 and index) was published as In the Summers Long Ago. The composer Alberto Randegger (correctly identified elsewhere) is called Albert on page 197, and Sir Frederic Cowen (correct spelling on p. 312 and in the index) is spelt Frederick on pages 327 and 374, and in note 47 on page 473. The author of the article 'Who was Helen Lenoir' (the question mark is missing) was Paul Seeley, not Sealey, and the article appeared in The Savoyard in September 1982, not February 1983 (p. 458 n. 2); Helen herself (later Helen D'Oyly Carte) did die on 5 May 1913, as Ainger correctly states (p. 445), but aged 60, not 61: she was born on 12 May 1852.

There are thirty-six pages of notes, although the majority simply document source material; there are few actual footnotes and no appendices. Inevitably there are mistakes here, too. Most of these occur in the later chapters, perhaps suggesting that the amount of material was simply becoming unmanageable. In chapter 14 we are told that Sullivan wrote to his mother from New York regarding the kindness of his hostess, Mrs Grant (p. 176); a note (8, p. 462) says that this letter was dated 10 November 1879. Ainger then states: 'In an earlier letter . . .' (loc. cit.), and the note (9, loc. cit.) gives the date as 21 November. In chapter 17 a letter from Sullivan to Alfred Cellier is quoted (pp. 213-14); a note (36, p. 465) clearly refers to this, but there is no figure 36 in the text. In chapter 23, on either page 291 or 292, reference 28 is missing, and it is also missing from the notes, which run 26, 27, 29, 30 (p. 471); likewise, in chapter 24, reference 26 (p. 299) is missing from the notes, which run 24, 25, 27, 28 (p. 471). These are not the only such instances.

In chapter 25, Ainger refers to a letter that [End Page 467] Sullivan had received from Gilbert (pp. 310-11), but the note (38, p. 472) reads 'AS to WSG'. In chapter 29, we learn that Sullivan heard Nancy McIntosh sing on Monday 8 January 1894 (p. 350); we are then told 'When they met the next day, 10 January'. 'The next day' ought to be 9 January, but it is clear that 'they' now refers to Sullivan and Gilbert, suggesting that part of the original text may have been inadvertently omitted. Note 33 to chapter 29 (p. 477) reads '11 August 1896'—it should be 1895. Note 53 to chapter 30 apparently refers to a letter from Helen D'Oyly Carte to Gilbert in May 1898 (p. 373), although it is given as being from Gilbert to Helen, and dated November 1899 (p. 478).

Generally speaking, Ainger is less sure of himself when writing about music. We are told that, auditioning for the Chapel Royal, when not quite twelve years of age, 'Sullivan . . . sang a piece called "With Verdure Clad"' (p. 26); phrased thus, it implies that the author does not know that this is Gabriel's second solo in Haydn's oratorio The Creation. In writing of Sullivan's symphony, Ainger says: 'on 10 March 1866 at the Crystal Palace, Sullivan conducted his Symphony in E Flat, In Ireland' (p. 59). If the symphony was in that key, this would be shown as 'E flat': it is, in fact, in E, and is correctly noted as such in the index. As regards 'In Ireland', Ainger tells us later that this is a title given to it by Sullivan in 1893 (p. 339), and that after another performance (in 1899) Sullivan wrote to The Times to say that he gave it this title to avoid confusion with Stanford's 'Irish' Symphony of 1867 (p. 377). But it was not called 'In Ireland' in 1866.

There is still work to be done on certain areas of Sullivan's output, and available lists of works (e.g. in New Grove and Jacobs) are not always accurate. Ainger appears to have used these lists, and sometimes makes statements that are wrong, or, at best, misleading. He says that Sullivan 'had published three songs in 1863' (p. 58). If by 'songs' we mean solo songs with piano accompaniment, there were just two: Bride from the North and I Heard the Nightingale. He did also publish The Last Night of the Tear in 1863, but this is an unaccompanied part-song for SATB. We are then told that in September 1864 Sullivan was in Birmingham for the first performance of his cantata Kenilworth and that he 'stayed on with friends in Edgbaston [a suburb of Birmingham]. He had no plans for another serious work, and only published two songs that year, one of them, "Sweet Day, So Cool'" (pp. 58-9). Sweet Day, So Cool may have been written in 1864, but it was not published until 1866. The second song, The Roads Should Blossom, was not published at all. It was written for the daughter of those friends in Edgbaston; it is a mere twenty-four bars long, and the manuscript is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Ainger also repeats an oftquoted but inaccurate statement that Sullivan 'published six Shakespearean songs in 1866' (p. 59). There were just five (published by Metzler) and four of these, Orpheus with his Lute, O Mistress Mine, Sigh No More, Ladies, and The Willow Song, were published in 1865; only the fifth song, Rosalind, was published in 1866. Ainger then refers to 'three songs [sold] to Metzler for 35 guineas' (p. 71). One of these, We Gathered the Roses, was never published and must be presumed lost. But we are not given this information.

Of Church Hymns: With Tunes, which Sullivan edited in 1874, Ainger writes: 'He published thirty-six new hymns in the course of the year and the hymnal contained forty-five tunes either composed by Sullivan or arranged by him' (p. 106). He appears to have used the list of hymns in Jacobs (op. cit., 460-2) to arrive at a total of thirty-six 'new' hymns although this list includes original tunes and arrangements of existing material. His tally of forty-five tunes 'composed . . . or arranged by [Sullivan]' seems to be a misreading of a statement by Jacobs: 'During the 1870s he wrote at least 45 hymns' (op. cit. 74). There are, in fact, no fewer than sixty-eight tunes in this hymnal, which are identified as having been 'harmonized or arranged by the Editor' (Church Hymns, p. xxi). This is uncharted territory, and Ainger would have been wiser to avoid it.

The illustrations are rather disappointing: they are few in number and not particularly unusual, one exception being a self-portrait of Gilbert, dating from 1893 (p. 301). Several of them are recent snaps of surviving London properties inhabited by, or associated with, Sullivan and (mainly) Gilbert, although there is no photograph of one of Gilbert's more spectacular homes, 39 Harrington Gardens, SW7. Some specially prepared maps are useful in identifying sites mentioned in the text, and there are extensive family trees. The select bibliography, while including a biography of the Duke of Wellington, a history of the Peninsular War, and no fewer than three books by or about Lady Randolph Churchill, omits the only full history of the D'Oyly Carte company: Tony Joseph, The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 1875-1982: An Unofficial History (Bristol, 1994).

With the general absence of footnotes the author has missed an opportunity to expand [End Page 468] on points that arise in the text. We are told that Sullivan's grandfather's army pay was 'a shilling a day' (p. 6); we might have been told that this phrase was the title of one of Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads—'Shillin' a Day' (a remuneration that was still being paid, long after the Peninsular War). On page 170 we read of Auguste van Biene, then (1878) musical director of the Comedy Opera Company; Van Biene (1850-1913) was later much better known as the composer of the enormously popular The Broken Melody. On page 421 there is a letter from Gilbert, referring to interpolations in The Mikado, specifically Ko-Ko's High tiddley high ti!' (sic); Hi-Tiddley-Hi-Ti was a well-known music hall song. We find (p. 438) that Gilbert met 'the agent Henry Mapleson'; it could have been pointed out that this Mapleson was the son of a more celebrated father, the impresario James Henry Mapleson (1830-1902). Lady Gilbert died on 12 December 1936 (p. 446): it would have been useful to be reminded that she lived long enough to celebrate Gilbert's centenary on 18 November. We are also told that the tenor Durward Lely, who took over the role of Frederic (in The Pirates of Penzance) in November 1880, died on 29 February 1944 (p. 447); Ainger might have mentioned that the plot of The Pirates of Penzance hinges on the fact that Frederic was born on 29 February ('In 1940 I of age shall be').

All these complaints and quibbles aside, Michael Ainger's book is, on the whole, an impressive achievement, particularly in the marshalling of an enormous quantity of material. As suggested above, it includes just about every known fact, from just about every known source. There is little or no critical appraisal of the authors' work, although, in fairness, it is of course a biography that Ainger has written, 'appealing perhaps to the wider audience of those who are drawn to the names Gilbert and Sullivan in collaboration, the reason for their enduring fame' (pp. viii-ix). [End Page 469]

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