Ernest Reinhold (Again)

Readers will remember Lewis Spence's assertion (undocumented), that Emma wrote music, music criticism, or both, under the name of Ernest Reinhold in the period between her father's death in 1834 and her move to the US in 1855.

I've now found five more traces of Ernest Reinhold, or E. Reinhold, publishing music in the period 1849 to 1852.

First item of interest: every one of these snippets is from the Bristol Mercury, and notices of Ernest Reinhold, or E. Reinhold, appear nowhere else but the Mercury in the British Library's newspaper database.

Second item of interest: the link to Francis Henry F. Berkeley, Liberal member of Parliament for Bristol, to whom one of the pieces is dedicated, and who is obviously promoting Reinhold's work.

Third item of interest: the dedication "with permission" of another piece to the Duke of Beaufort.

So let's assume that Lewis Spence knew something we do not -- even if he did garble what he knew -- and that Emma = Ernest Reinhold.

The first item of interest -- mentioned only in Bristol -- makes sense. Emma's ties to the Bristol musical performance scene I've already touched on; it's where her career was launched.

The link between Emma and Francis Henry F. Berkeley is a bit difficult to dig out, but we can find it in this passage on Berkeley's initial election in Bristol, in 1837, from John Latimer's Annals of Bristol (1887):

At the general election in July, caused by the demise of the king, the two Conservative members of the previous Parliament retired into private life....The Liberal Party selected the Hon. Francis Henry F. Berkeley. After an exciting contest, the poll was declared on the 25th July, as follows: Mr. Miles, 2828; Mr. Berkeley, 3312; Mr. Fripp, 3156. In lieu of the old ceremony of chairing, the Liberals celebrated their victory by a procession of the trades of the city, in which some thousands of artisans took part. A petition against the return of Mr. Berkeley was presented on behalf of (Mr. Fripp). It alleged extensive bribery and treating, and further affirmed that certain agents of Mr. Berkeley, being also Charity Trustees, had been openly guilty of corruption and undue influence, bu giving or promising charity gifts in order to secure votes against Mr. Fripp.

Readers may recall that the Charity Trustees employ Ann Sophia Floyd at about this time.

And if that connection's not strong enough, there's this: Francis Henry F. Berkeley was intimately connected with the London theatre, and with the Royal General Theatrical Fund, as were (dum-de-dum-dum) Edward Bulwer (Lytton) and Charles Dickens.

I cannot find, as yet, a connection between Emma and Henry Somerset, 7th Duke of Beaufort, one-time Lord of the Admiralty, and High Steward of Bristol (horse racing and theatre enthusiast), to whom E. Reinhold dedicated "with permission" the ballad "Oh bid me live". But Somerset was more than a bit of a rake, and it appears that Somerset served in the lower house of Parliament, as member for Gloucestershire West, with the Honorable George Berkeley, who I believe was the elder brother of FHF Berkeley.

Rank Speculation: The Unknown Fiance

From Emma's Autobiography:

I had a certain and somewhat solemn engagement in "the Old Country," as I had learned to call England, and one day, in answer to a letter from the party in question, urging my return, I sat down to write, purposing to inform my correspondent of my intention to be with him again in a month's time. In place of making this announcement, however, I deliberately wrote, and that whilst in the full possession of my senses, a description of a very rich lady who had herself made my correspondent an offer of marriage. I told him of some heavy financial difficulties he was then in, and bid him at once marry the lady who had offered herself to him, and think no more of me, for "I should never return to England for many long years to come." Although deeming myself infatuated, if not insane, to write such a letter, write it I did, and sent it.

Despite the faux coyness, it's clear that EHB is alleging a fiance in England in this passage. The question is -- as with the question of her keeper when she was an actress -- who?

I'm posting this to remind myself as much as anything else, and it's a rank (as in stinking) speculation, but...

It may be Howard Staunton, the famous mid-Victorian chess master. Why? (1) If Emma Harding = Ernest Reinhold, then they were both writers for the Court Gazette at the same period; (2) Staunton was a Shakespeare editor, and a good one, and claimed to have been a Shakespearean actor in his youth; (3) Staunton married a rich widow (of an attorney) with a large brood of children at a time in his life when he was in financial difficulties.

Problem: he married the widow in 1849.

The theory works only if this passage from the Autobiography is another example of Emma's loose handling of time. An engagement made and broken in the 1840s, followed by a period as the kept woman of a "baffled sensualist" and "millionaire" with significant pull among theatre company owners, and who may also have been a practicing occultist (if "sensualist" should be read "sex magician", for example), isn't out of line.

Rank.

Ernest Reinhold = Emma Hardinge?

I think I've found the origin of Mathiesen's claims about Emma's work as a "music critic" under the pseudonym Ernest Reinhold. It's to be found in Lewis Spence's Encyclopedia of Occulism and Parapsychology:

Interestingly enough, there does appear to be evidence (yet to be tracked down) that this claim is valid. Richard Kitson's vast The Musical World: 1836-1865 contains at least two references to music written by an Ernest Reinhold in that period: one, a popular song called "Pray for me, Gabrielle" (published by T. Boosey and Company, a London-based publisher operating continuously from the 1820s until the late 1850s) and another represented by the cryptic string "64:440r REINHOLD Professor Longfellow, the music composed by Ernest Reinhold (C. Jefferys)"

This second reference I find particularly intriguing because the Library of Congress holds the earliest published (musical) work known by EHB, The footsteps of angels: recitative and air (New York: H Waters, 1856), which appears in this advertisement from the Auburn (New York) American for some as-yet-undetermined date in 1858:

As the ad clearly indicates (which the LOC catalog entry does not), the words of the song are almost certainly those of this poem of Longfellow's.

If the same words and music can be identified published under both Emma Hardinge and Ernest Reinhold, then we have a link that I think justifies trolling through the volumes of the Court Gazette for the years 1835-1842 looking for Reinhold's critical pieces.

Dig, dig, dig....and find this....now purchased for the Archive.

The Court Gazette and Fashionable Guide (one of two places Mathiesen locates Ernest Reinhold's musical criticism, was (published in Catherine Street, and ran from April 7, 1838 until January 4, 1840, when it changed its name to New Court Gazette: A Fashionable Guide for January 1840 through December 26, 1840, when it became Court Gazette: The Only Fashionable Family Newspaper (January 1841 - August 1841), before folding.