Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/377

 12 8. 1. MAY 6, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

371

Truth, in its issue of Aug. 19, 1880, just after her death, stated that " she was born in the neighbourhood of Leeds, of an English father and a gipsy mother."

' The Cyclopaedia of Names ' (Fisher Unwin), which forms the final and supple- mentary volume of * The Century Dictionary, ' states as follows :

" Born at Leeds, Yorkshire, March 3, 1848 ; died at Paris, France, Aug. 14, 1880. A noted English actress. Her real name was Elizabeth Ann Brown, and her mother having subsequently married a Mr. Bland, she was known as Lizzie Bland."

The nearest approach to the true facts is probably contained in The Theatre of October, 1880. The editorship of that now defunct publication had by this time passed into the hands of the late Clement Scott, who was probably as familiar as any one living with the poor girl's past, and this is what he then wrote :

" The brief memoirs that have already appeared of the life and career of the beautiful but unfor- tunate Lilian Adelaide Neilson teem with in- accuracies and misstatements. According to one this gifted lady ' first saw the light,' &c. [see supra], Betises ! There is not a word of truth in the story ; she was neither Saragossa born nor gipsy-bred. Nor did she visit Italy with her parents .... All this is pure invention. Little of romance was connected with the early life of this strange girl. To tell the truth, she was the illegitimate daughter of a very handsome Spaniard and an Englishwoman, and was born in the year 1849 at a little village some few miles out of Bradford in Yorkshire. From the father she obtained her beauty ; from her mother the North Country accent that never deserted her, and occasionally marred the purity of her diction and elocution. A terribly hard life was in store for the poor child, who came into the world as if she was a burden. Now as a nurse-girl, now as a ' filler ' at a woollen factory, the actress of the future found life hard enough, until one day when, at the age of 16, she discovered the secret of her birth, and fearing any longer to be an incumbrance on those between whom she was an object of anxiety, she ran away from home heart- broken and found some kind of refuge in the world of London. Here her sorrows seemed suddenly to end. She was educated by a generous and kindly disposed gentleman well known to fame, who gave her the first start in life, and in the year 1864 she married Mr. Philip Henry Lee, the eldest son of a Northamptonshire parson squire, who, with his good wife, were devotedly attached to their son's wife. Here, down at the quiet vicarage of Stoke Bruern, Adelaide Neilson passed the happiest days of her life, idolized by the villagers, taking a part at the Sunday school, and forgetting in her new home the cares and troubles of her Yorkshire life. The marriage did not, however, turn out happily, for in the year 1876 Miss Neilson obtained a divorce from her husband in the Supreme Court of New York, the husband and wife being both naturalized American citizens, and held property there. Being under

an engagement to Mr. Max Strakosch, Miss Neilson was unable to confirm the divorce in this country, but she fully intended to do so had she been spared."

I have quoted the above textually, but it would seem that Clement Scott must have got a little mixed with his dates, for if, as he states, Adelaide Neilson was born in 1849, she would have been only 15 at the time he fixes as that of her marriage, whereas in the previous passage he puts her age at 16 when she ran away from her Yorkshire home to London.

In a further long article on Adelaide Neilson' s dramatic career, which appeared in The Theatre of the following month (November, 1880), the writer says:

" Through the misstatements with regard to her origin which, with a pardonable desire to stand well with the public, she allowed to be put forth the truth asserted itself, and the claim to have been born at Saragossa assumed, at first, half in banter is a matter of little moment."

Speaking of her first advent to London, Mr. George R. Sims, who knows most things about many people, in a recent instalment of his interesting life in The Evening News, wrote that Adelaide Neilson " passed her first night in the Great City on the benches in the Park." A writer in a weekly con- temporary, however, took exception to this, and described how an officer in the Cara- bineers found her lying on a bench in St. James's Park, took compassion on her, accommodated her with a bed in his chambers, and subsequently had her trained for the stage. The officer in- question was, I believe, the late Capt. Percy Hewitt.

On her stage career it is unnecessary to dwell in detail. It is fulty and faithfully recorded in many publications. One bio- grapher says she first played Juliet with a strolling company in a Yorkshire village ; another, that at the age of 15 she first appeared as Julia in ' The Hunchback ' at the Theatre Royal, Margate. Her debut in London was certainly as Juliet at the Royalty in July, 1865, and though she attracted but little attention on that occasion, the character was one in which her chief laurels were subsequently earned.

She died a wealthy woman. Truth of Aug. 26, 1880, put her fortune at 30,000?., half of which was made during her visit to America, whence she had returned just before her death. She left her mother the interest of 3,OOOZ. during her life, and at her death the capital was to be divided amongst other relatives. To Mr. Joseph Knight, her old friend, she left 1,OOOZ., and