Henrietta Hodson

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Henrietta Hodson (26 March 1841 – 30 October 1910) was an English actress and theatre manager best known for her portrayal of comedy roles in the Victorian era.

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[edit] Biography

Hodson was born at Upper Marsh in St Mary's parish, Westminster, London. She was the eldest daughter of George Alfred Hodson (1822 – 1869), an Irish-born comedian, singer and innkeeper, and Henrietta Elizabeth Noel, an actress and singer. Her two sisters, Kate (later Mrs Charles Henry Fenton, but known on stage as Kate Gordon) and Sylvia (Mrs J. Stripling Blythe), were also actresses. Her cousin was George Musgrove, the theatre producer.

[edit] Early career

Hodson made her first professional stage appearance at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, in 1858. In 1860, she and Henry Irving worked together in Manchester in The Spy, or, A Government Appointment. She joined J. H. Chute's Bath and Bristol companies in 1861 and built a reputation as a popular soubrette and burlesque actress. An 1883 New York Times article calls her "...the cleverest Aladdin in H. J. Byron's piece I remember to have seen."[1] In 1863, in Bath, England, she played the role of Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream under the management of Madge Robertson (later Mrs Kendal), who also starred in the play, and Ellen Terry. In 1864, she married Richard Walter Pigeon, a solicitor and widower from Bristol, England, who had several children, and left the stage. They had one child, George Walter Noel Pigeon, born in 1865.[2] Hodson left her husband, amid rumours of abuse, and returned to acting, using her maiden name.[1][3]

In 1866, Hodson débuted at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in London under the management of Marie Wilton (later Lady Bancroft) and H. J. Byron, as Prometheus in Byron's Christmas show, Pandora's Box, or, The Young Spark and the Old Flame. In 1867, with Charles Wyndham, Irving, J. L. Toole, Lionel Brough and Terry, Hodson joined a new company at Queen's Theatre, Long Acre, and opened with Charles Reade's The Double Marriage. About 1868, she moved in with Henry Labouchère,[4] a member of parliament and later a journalist and playwright, who was one of the founders of Queen's Theatre, but they could not marry until years later when her first husband died.[1] Other roles that season included Arabella Fotheringay in The First Night and Lucy in Byron's Dearer than Life. In addition to roles in other Byron pieces, she acted at Queen's in various extravaganzas and burlesques, including La Vivandière by W. S. Gilbert, The Stranger by Robert Reece, The Gnome King by William Brough, the successful The Turn of the Tide by F. C. Burnand, and Twixt Axe and Crown by Tom Taylor. She stayed with that company for three years.

[edit] Later years

In 1870, she managed the Royalty Theatre for a season, playing in many of its pieces. She starred in Reece's Whittington Junior and his Sensation Cat and other burlesques. Back at Queen's Theatre, she played Ariel in The Tempest and Imogen in Cymbeline. In 1871 she began to manage the Royalty again, starring there in The Honeymoon as Juliana. She instituted the innovation of using a hidden orchestra below the stage. Also in 1871, she played Lady Amaranth in John O'Keefe's Wild Oats, followed by such roles as Nydia the blind girl in John Oxenford's version of Lord Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii (1872), Dick Wastrell in Old London, adapted from Les Chevaliers du Brouillard (1873; a French dramatization of Jack Sheppard), and Jane Theobald in Gilbert's Ought We to Visit Her? (1874). During that play, she and Gilbert had their first quarrel.[5]

In 1875 in Liverpool, Hodson created the title character of Clytie in Joseph Hatton's dramatization of his novel of the same name. That year she also created the lead role of Eliza Smith in Arthur Sullivan's The Zoo in London.[6] She repeated the role at the Olympic Theatre in 1876. In 1877, she played Cynisca in a revival of Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea at the Haymarket Theatre, but she criticized his demanding directing methods in a pamphlet-letter circulated among theatre professionals.[7] In 1878, she returned to Queen's Theatre as Dolores, Countess Rysoor, in Labouchère's Fatherland, an adaptation of Victorien Sardou's Patrie!. She retired from acting soon afterwards and lived in comfort at Alexander Pope's Villa at Cross Deep Twickenham, near London, with Labouchère. However, in 1881, she tutored and mentored Lillie Langtry in her early stage work, accompanying Langtry to America the next year, although the two soon fell out, and Hodson returned to England.

In 1887, she finally married Labouchère, with whom she already had a daughter, Mary Dorothea (1884 – 1944). In 1903 Hodson and her husband moved to Villa Christina, near Florence, Italy. She died there at the age of 69. Her daughter, Mary Dorothea, married Carlo Emanuele Starabba, 2nd Marchese di Rudinì (the son of Antonio Starabba, Marchese di Rudinì, prime minister of Italy) in 1903, then the Prince Gyalma Odescalchi De Szerem, and finally Don Eugenio Ruspoli.[8] Hodson and Labouchère are buried at the cemetery of San Miniato al Monte, Florence.[4]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c NY Times article on Hodson
  2. ^ Baptisim record from International Genealogical Index maintained by the Church of the Latter Day Saints
  3. ^ Information from the Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin, Ireland, December 19, 1871, p. 4, col. 5) about an 1870 lawsuit in which Hodson's husband attempted to wrest control from her of the Royalty Theatre
  4. ^ a b "Labby and Dora" at the Labouchere genealogy site
  5. ^ Ainger, Michael (2002). Gilbert and Sullivan – A Dual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195147693. , pp. 104–05
  6. ^ G&S Archive page on The Zoo
  7. ^ Vorder Bruegge, Andrew "W. S. Gilbert: Antiquarian Authenticity and Artistic Autocracy" (Associate Professor, Department Chair, Department of Theatre and Dance, Winthrop University). Professor Vorder Bruegge presented this paper at the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States annual conference in October 2002, accessed March 26, 2008
  8. ^ Princess Eugene Ruspoli Obituary, The Times, December 4, 1944; p. 6, col. G

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[edit] External links