Autobiography, Again

From the preface to Six Lectures on Theology and Nature (1860), one of EHB's earliest works:

In brief, then, I was born in London, England, and up to the age of twelve years, was educated in the quiet seclusion of "sweet home." The death of a noble father, and the entire disruption of family ties, sent me out into the world at this early period of my life, first as a teacher of music in a school, and subsequently as a concert player and vocalist. I beg, distinctly, once and for all, to claim, that I never went to school in my life as as student; that the common branches of English education were received only in the family circle of accomplished English ladies, and the life page of good society; and that in no science but the theory of music, and the all-absorbing page of harmony and composition, did I ever receive any instruction, or pursue any study. From the age of twelve, my public life commenced [editorial emphasis]; and any one who has become acquainted with the severe studies which musical artistes are called upon to pursue in Europe, (especially when in addition I had to provide a home for myself and my mother by my teaching, etc. [editorial emphasis]) will scoff at the idea that any leisure could have been afforded me for those metaphysical and scientific studies in which certain of my American friends confidently affirm "my youth was absorbed" [sic]. With the exception of a little dabbling in astrology, pursued under the auspices of merry gipsying parties, I never heard of, much less studied, any "ology" in my life. From six to eight hours' practice of vocal and instrumental music each day, and the gay soirees in which musical artistes form the chief feature in European aristocratic curcles, -- this passed my early life, until the complete loss of my singing voice, and chronic difficulties with my throat, compelled me to adopt speaking instead of singing for a profession, and the drama instead of the opera [editorial emphasis]. From this period, I remained in one London theatre for seven years, and except on rare occasions, never during that period passed more than a week at a time exempt from the arduous and all-engrossing duties of a London actress' life. (pp. 7-8)

Reading this text, we can see the genetic material of subsequent versions of this period told by EHB, culminating in the dark hints of the Autobiography, but I'm struck by several things in this passage that -- unless we accord EHB the foresight of knowing where she would be, psychologically and commercially, 30 years in the future -- we'll have to credit as fundamental statements of fact.

1. Living in London: I have a record of a Mrs. A. Floyd, and an Emma D. Floyd, living in St. Mary's, Lambeth, alone, in 1841. Mrs. A. S. Floyd, is listed as age 30 (inconsistent with her marriage in 1819) and Emma D. Floyd's age is listed as 8: also inconsistent. Tantalizing, nonetheless. More on this in a moment.
2. Studying music, as a pupil and a teacher: entirely consistent with (a) other autobiographical assertions made at various times in her life, and with what we have been able to determine about life as a student of Thomas Welsh, the man who was likely her music teacher and (what word to use?) promoter.
3. Public life starting at age twelve: Emma's father was a sometimes schoolmaster, and her occupation as teacher would not qualify, for Emma, as a "public" life. This statement strongly suggests, to me at least, that we should find Emma (as Miss Floyd, I suspect) in recitals promoted and organized by Welsh in 1835/6 and after. Evidence of those recitals and performances has yet to be found -- but I feel can be found -- in the public record.
4. Emma as primary breadwinner. I believe Emma's older sister, Frances Ann, was married before or at the time of Ebenezer Floyd's death, to a man named Jackson, and I believe Margaret was sent to live with Frances at the time of her father's death. I believe Tom was sent out, at about the same time, to Floyd relatives in the maritime trade (ending, as we known, by taking ship in 1841 and sailing off to China, and his death), leaving Emma to take care of her mother, in London. Given that neither Ann nor Emma ever, to my knowledge, accurately stated their ages on a public document, I'm inclined to treat the record of an Ann and Emma Floyd in Lambeth in 1841 as a trace of our Ann and our Emma, post-Thomas.
5. astrology, and gipsies: I am reminded of the section of Ghost Land during which Marx and the Chevalier stay in a Romany encampment. This is a far cry from the piano demo-dolly/French mesmeric subject and "Orphic Circle" revelations of the Autobiography.
6. the transition from opera to drama: now that I've accepted the Miss Emma Harding = Emma Hardinge Britten equivalency, and laid out a record of Emma's performances in the 'dramatic theatre', as I understand it at present, her claims to have been fully occupied for a long period of time as a dramatic actress are in my view fully justified. The significance of Sadler's Wells advertising Miss Emma Harding (in an extra-textual singing role in Macbeth) as late of the Princess's Theatre is also, now, underscored, as it's highly likely that it was at the Princess's Theatre, from its (re)opening in 1842 until her move to the Adelphi in 1844, that Emma did opera, and experienced problems with her voice (if indeed those problems were real). What is more interesting, however, is the first of a series of repetitions, on EHB's part, of seven years as the duration of her time on the dramatic stage. That time corresponds, roughly, to the last period she spent at the Adelphi (August 1848 to July 1854) -- after working at the Princess's Theatre (1842?-1844?), moving briefly to Sadler's Wells (May 1844), then the Adelphi for a good period (August 1844-August 1847), then the Haymarket briefly (August 1847-September 1848). Possibly it becomes necessary for her to shorten this period -- actually, some 12 to 13 years -- to seven in order to deal with the nearly-a-decade age discrepancy between her real and her advertised age.
7. London. No Paris. No Milan. I become more and more convinced that her reference to time in Milan in the Philadelphia Press letter of 1873 is a fabrication, suitable for the context -- a throw-away line. And the trauma of the failed Walleck Company production in Paris -- nothing to call attention to a scant half-decade later.

A picture is emerging for me, of struggle and of trauma, for Emma between the time Ebenezer dies in 1835 and the time she lands in New York with her mother in 1855. I am convinced that the throat injury -- oft-cited but nearly always with varying details -- is some kind of psychic stand-in, an emblem of a trauma deeper, and harder to heal. Newspaper reporters in Boston and New York in the 1860s heard Emma sing, and -- though none too kind in their coverage of her lectures' substance -- remarked on her singing abilities.

Hypotheses on A Theatre Career

1. 1835: Ebenezer dies, and the family (exact constitution unknown) moves from Bristol to London
2. 1836: Emma goes out to work, as a pupil-teacher for Thomas Welsh
3. 1840-2: Emma perhaps does some work at Covent Garden
4. 1842: Emma is placed in the Princess's Theatre, perhaps by Welsh, and participates in the then-current fare of operatic works, comedy, farce and burlesque
5. 1844: Emma 'moves up' from the Princess's Theatre, to the Theatre Royal at Sadler's Wells (episodic), the Haymarket (episodic) and the Adelphi (regular work)
6. 1848 or after: Emma does some work at Covent Garden, meeting Michael Costa
7. c 1850: Emma's earnings are sufficient to move from wherever she has been living (which she describes as an area of hideous squalour in other works) to 12 Tufton Street, Westminster, where she can afford a housekeeper
8. c. January 1855: Emma is blackballed out of the theatres by the "baffled sensualist" and "millionaire" who keeps her for some unknown period of time before she is "rescued" by the opportunity to go to Paris with the Walleck company for the (as it turns out) disastrous performances of Macbeth
9. 1855: Down and out in Paris, Emma is rescued by the manager of the Broadway Theatre with a nine-month contract to appear in New York. The manager has evidently done some serious head-hunting while in Paris, as there are other actresses, from Paris, aboard the Pacific when it brings "Mrs. Harding" and "Miss Harding" to New York in August of 1855

Many holes and suppositions, yet.

Plus those two stays in Paris, and one in Milan, via Monte Carlo, yet to fit in.