...which effectively is about all I've been doing for the last two weeks. Whenever I THINK I'm getting somewhere, the more I wonder and need to know about.
So far, I think I've identified about half of the people on the photograph but it isn't a very exact science, using the very small amount of pictorial evidence available, much of it from twenty or so years later. (I'm also not brilliant with faces: something to do with being very short sighted, I think.) People can change a lot in twenty years. Oscar Asche is unmistakable. Marion Terry looks so much like Ellen, her more famous sister, that there's little doubt who she is either.
Other photographs from different sources have helped a little: there's a photo in Trewin's book which seems to have come via Elisabeth Kirby. ALthough she dates it as 1895, it was clearly taken on the same day as the V&A photograph because the subjects are wearing identical clothes, standing beside the Gower statue. It helped to confirm the identities of Nicholson, Clarence, Harcourt Williams and Garnet Holme. Cast lists have given me names to search, but Google isn't always able to find images which aren't of performers in a role: for example, about the only picture I can find of H.R. Hignett is not much use at all in identifying him in 'every day life'!
The most frustrating thing has been coming across other brilliant photos which aren't actually correctly labelled, either with the source, or the people on them! For example, there's a fabulous photo of the Benson football team in 'Victorian Stratford upon Avon in Old Photographs' but it is simply dated '1890s' and the only people named are Benson, Constance Benson, Oscar Asche, O.B Clarence (wrongly 'O.P') and Richmond, Benson's valet. Some of the faces are recognisable from the V&A photo - Asche, Nicholson and Clarence are easy enough to recognise, but others are much less so I am certain that Hignett is also on the photo - but then again, I can't be sure which of three people is him - he's hard to recognise without all the fake hair!
However, during my hunting some interesting stories have started to emerge to fill in the background of these names and I am definitely going to feature some of them here. Most interesting from a local perspective is an actor called Edwin Ling who moved to Sunderland because of its connection with Henry Irving and was very vocal in trying to get a permanent memorial in the town to commemorate the actor's first professional performance. He played Irving on stage in the 1920s and toured in Shakespeare with Henry Baynton's company until his death in 1930. I'm pretty sure he died in Sunderland and I'm now trying to track down details of his burial. I feel it would be rather nice to have a Bensonian in the town!
My final 'breakthrough' this week was the discovery that Nora Nicholson - sister to Hubert Nicholson and a member of the Benson Company from 1912 - had written an autobiography - 'Chameleon's Dish'. A second hand copy is on its way here and I am very anxious to read it! Nora Nicholson became better known in the 1960s and 70s because of her television work - most notably in The Forsyte Saga where she played Aunt Juley, but she began her career with Benson, playing Puck and Anne Ford amongst other roles. Even as an elderly woman, her smile is almost identical to her elder brother's.
