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Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 June 2020
Abstract
Minnie Cunningham (1870–1954) was a British music hall star and actress whose career spanned nearly forty years. Today she is primarily remembered through paintings made of her by the prominent British artist Walter Sickert (1860–1942) in the early 1890s. Despite her popularity, Cunningham has mostly been overlooked in music hall and theatre histories. Instead, the limited information that is available about her today comes to us primarily through art-history scholarship on Sickert. To fill this gap, this paper offers the first scholarly account of Cunningham by drawing together press notices, published interviews, and other artefacts from her long career. This introduction to Cunningham is framed by a discussion of the unevenness of the cultural transactions taking place between these artists – between the ‘higher’ arts practice of modern painting and the perceived ‘lower’ music hall. I consider how this imbalance played out at the time these artists worked and the impact this has had in the preservation (or lack thereof) of their artistic practices.
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References
NOTES
1 Also produced in this sitting were a smaller oil painting, simply titled Minnie Cunningham, and four drawings. The details of the drawings can be found in Baron, Wendy, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings (London: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 208Google Scholar.
2 For instance, the water colourist Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) produced a series of drawings of theatre interiors dating back to the late eighteenth century; and Sickert's own tutor, James Whistler, the American painter living in Britain, had already by the 1870s begun painting famous stage performers. See, for instance, Whistler's Arrangement in Black, No. 3: Sir Henry Irving as Phillip II of Spain (1876).
3 ‘New English Art Club’, Pall Mall Gazette, 11 April 1888, p. 5.
4 Some aspects of this debate can be found in the following: ‘The Gospel of Impressionism’, Pall Mall Gazette, 21 July 1890, p. 1; ‘Picture Subjects’, Globe and Traveller, 26 April 1889, p. 1; and The Bohemian, ‘Art for the People’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 6 July 1889, p. 85.
5 There are many useful accounts of music hall's development available. Those I have drawn on for this study include (chronologically): Charles Douglas Stuart and A. J. Park, The Variety Stage: A History of the Music Halls from the Earliest to the Present Time (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895); Archibald Haddon, The Story of Music Hall (London: Fleetway Press, Ltd, 1935); Willson Disher, Winkles and Champagne (Bath: Cedric Chivers, 1938); Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, British Music Hall (London: Studio Vista, 1965); Peter Honri, Working the Halls (Farnborough: Hampshire, 1973); D. F. Cheshire, Music Hall in Britain (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1974); Roy Busby, British Music Hall: An Illustrated Who's Who from 1850 to the Present Day (London: Paul Elek, 1976); Peter Bailey, Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986); J. S. Bratton, Music Hall: Performance and Style (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986); Richard Anthony Baker, British Music Hall (Barnsley, Yorkshire: Pen and Sword History, 1988); Tracy C. Davis, Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (London: Routledge, 1991); Michael R. Booth and Joel H. Kaplan, The Edwardian Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); David Russell, Popular Music in England, 1840–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997); and Barry J. Faulk, Music Hall and Modernity (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004).
6 Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (Oxford: Oxford World Books, 2006), p. 53.
7 William Archer, ‘Theatre and Music Hall’, in The Theatrical ‘World’ of 1895 (London: Walter Scott, Ltd, 1896), pp. 96–103, here p. 102.
8 Arthur Symons, ‘To the Editor of the Star’, in Karl Beckson and John M. Munroe, eds., Arthur Symons: Selected Letters, 1880–1935 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1989), pp. 85–7, here p. 85.
9 Ibid., p. 86.
10 As part of this shift, music hall advertising became more sophisticated; and many venues underwent significant remodelling to make them more opulent and accommodating of a more genteel clientele. As Peter Bailey has written, by the 1890s the music hall was clearly a capitalist operation; ‘music hall capitalism for much of this period was capitalism with a beaming human face’. See Peter Bailey, ‘Custom, Capital and Culture in the Victorian Music Hall’, in Robert D. Storch, ed., Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1982), pp. 180–208, here p. 187.
11 The Theatre Regulation Act of 1843, for instance, meant that Justices of the Peace and the Lord Chamberlain became responsible for granting permission to perform theatrical texts, which would affect both music halls and circuses who attempted to put on pantomimes. Other legislative difficulties, including the Law of Theatres and Music-Halls of 1885 which required music halls to obtain licences, are detailed in Cheshire, Music Hall in Britain, pp. 92–6.
12 As the famous case of Laura Ormiston Chant and the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square in 1894 proves. See Faulk, Music Hall and Modernity, pp. 75–110, for an account of Chant and her battle with the Empire over the venue's tolerence of prostitutes.
13 ‘New English Art Club’, Pall Mall Gazette, 11 April 1888, p. 5.
14 Davis, Actresses as Working Women, p. 142.
15 Baron, Sickert, p. 163.
16 Between 1887 and 1892, Sickert would paint popular performers Ada Lundberg, Queenie Lawrence, Dot Hetherington, the Sisters Lloyd and Vesta Victoria, among others. See Baron, Sickert, pp. 162–87 and pp. 208–15 for a comprehensive overview.
17 In this category of British art, one finds work by Michael Ayrton, David Bomberg, J. D. Ferguson, David Gommon, Duncan Grant, Spencer Gore, Gerald Kelly, Thérèse Lessore and Laura Knight, among many others, depicting scenes from the circus, music halls or other popular entertainments from this period.
18 Stuart and Park, The Variety Stage, p. 222.
19 Haddon (1935), Disher (1938), Mitchenson and Mander (1965), Honri (1973), Cheshire (1974) and Busby (1976), for instance, do not include Cunningham in their accounts of the music hall at all, though most include references to some of her female colleagues, Marie Lloyd, Vesta Victoria and, less frequently, Katie Lawrence. Baker (1988) mentions Cunningham once but focuses rather sensationally on modern rumours about Sickert being the Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper. See Baker, British Music Hall, p. 183.
20 The letter referenced here is quoted in Baron, Sickert, p. 208. We know that the date was in the spring, and most likely in May, because Symons mentions in a letter on 25 May 1892 that he was glad to hear that Cunningham had finally ‘done his bidding and given a sitting to Sickert’. See Arthur Symons, ‘To Ernest Rhys [Letter]’, in Karl Beckson and John M. Munroe, eds., Arthur Symons, Selected Letters, 1880–1935 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1989), pp. 95–6, here p. 95.
21 Robert Upstone, ‘Walter Richard Sickert, Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford’, 2009, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/walter-richard-sicket-minnie-cunningham-r1139296, accessed 29 November 2018.
22 Baron, Sickert, p. 208.
23 Symons, ‘To Ernest Rhys’, p. 96.
24 We know the actual date of her birthday because both The Era and The Stage usually included Cunningham in their weekly birthday greetings column. On her death certificate, dated 21 January 1954, she was listed as eighty-four years old. See ‘Minnie Cunningham’, death certificate (London: Register Office, Hackney, 21 January 1954).
25 ‘London Music Halls’, Entr'acte, 2 August 1873, p. 3.
26 ‘Birmingham Concert Hall [advertisment]’, Aris's Birmingham Gazette, 3 February 1877, p. 4.
27 ‘Star Music Hall’, The Era, 1 September 1883, p. 8.
28 ‘Abbreviated Skirts: Belfast Pantomime Sequel’, Northern Whig, 7 May 1909, p. 12. An opaque reference to Cunningham's mother also appears in a letter Symons wrote to his friend Ernest Rhys on 17 February 1892, when he describes her as ‘very pretty, very nice, very young and has a Mamma’. See Symons, ‘To Ernest Rhys’, p. 95.
29 ‘Footlight Gossip’, Illustrated Police Budget, 15 April 1899, p. 14.
30 For the Manchester engagement, see ‘Manchester Star Music Hall [advertisement]’, The Era, 14 November 1880, p. 22. For Leeds, see ‘Princess Palace [advertisement]’, The Era, 16 December 1880, p. 1.
31 ‘Aldershot Cavalry Brigade Music Hall [advertisement]’, The Era, 26 February 1881, p. 21.
32 ‘Music-Hall Celebrities: Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, 2 February 1899, p. 9.
33 Advertisements and reviews support some of this narrative. For instance, in 1884, Cunningham was appearing as the Fairy King in the pantomime Dick Whittington and His Wonderful Cat at the Theatre Royale in Birkenhead. See ‘Provincial Theatricals’, The Era, 5 January 1884, p. 3.
34 A serio-comic typically delivered humorous monologues, sang and danced. Their musical repertoire varied, but could range from serious ballads to comic songs. Songs were often situation-based, telling stories often about domestic and/or working life.
35 The story of her London debut is repeated in press interviews, press profiles and even her own obituary.
36 ‘Music-Hall Celebrities: Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, p. 9.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 As the ‘interviewer’ acknowledges in each of these very staged interviews, following that moment Cunningham became a ‘universal favourite’. See ‘Music-Hall Celebrities: Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, p. 9; and ‘Chats with Celebrities: Miss Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, 27 October 1893, n.p.
40 ‘South London Palace’, Sporting Life, 14 December 1885, p. 1
41 ‘Parthenon, Greenwich’, The Era, 16 January 1886, p. 10.
42 ‘Oxford Palace of Varieties’, The Era, 27 February 1886, p. 15.
43 She appears at the Folly Variety Theatre in Manchester in October 1886 and is back there again in December, and in Liverpool at the Bijou Opera House in November where it is noted in the Liverpool Mercury that she enjoyed ‘a good share of applause for the charming way she sang’. See ‘Bijou Opera House’, Liverpool Mercury, 11 November 1886, p. 5.
44 ‘The Paragon’, The Era, 30 January 1892, p. 16.
45 For example: ‘Minnie Cunningham charms everybody with her graceful and clever dancing’; see ‘Manchester – The Palace’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 7 December 1894, p. 17. And again: ‘Miss Minnie Cunningham is not a powerful vocalist, but her dancing is the very essence of grace, and she prospers exceedingly well’. See ‘The Paragon’, The Era, 2 January 1892, p. 16.
46 ‘Chats with Celebrities: Miss Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, n.p.
47 Ibid.
48 Sometimes high kicking appeared in numbers that may not have always worked for the act. For instance, in a review of a performance given in Islington in 1889, it is noted that Cunningham ‘in an “all-forlorn” song, expressed her emotion by considerable high kicking’. See ‘Dramatic & Musical Gossip’, The Referee, 18 August 1889, p. 2.
49 ‘Miss Minnie Cunningham’, The Music Hall, April 1892, p. 8.
50 Arthur Symons, ‘The Primose Dance: Tivoli’, London Nights (London: Leonard C. Smithers, 1895), p. 22.
51 Roderick Random, ‘The Diary of an Idler’, Watford Observer, 3 December 1892, p. 3.
52 Italics in original. Harry Lynn, ‘Give Us a Wag of Your Tail Old Dog’, arranged by Bertram Isaacson (London: Bertram Isaacson Pianoforte and Music Rooms, n.d.).
53 Other songs she is known to have performed include ‘Don't Make a Mountain Out of a Molehill’, ‘Castles in the Air’, ‘Friends’, ‘He Lives in a World of His Own’, ‘I've Got a Beau!’, and ‘Just a Girl!’.
54 See, for instance, ‘Miss Minnie Cunningham’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, April 1892, p. 8.
55 Indeed, one critic in an otherwise positive review of a performance Cunningham gave in 1892 wrote that, in general, ‘her songs are rather stupid’. See Random, ‘The Diary of an Idler’, p. 3.
56 ‘Music-Hall Celebrities: Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, 2 February 1899, p. 9.
57 Upstone, ‘Walter Richard Sickert, Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford’, n.p. She is performing as a comic schoolgirl as early as 1886, for it is mentioned it a review appearing in The Era: ‘That she is not wanting in spirit and brightness became evident in her school-girl song “I Won't”’. See ‘Parthenon, Greenwich’, The Era, 16 January 1886, p. 10.
58 Davis, Actresses as Working Women, p. 119.
59 Peter Bailey, ‘“Naughty but Nice”: Musical Comedy and the Rhetoric of the Girl, 1892–1914’, in Michael R. Booth and Joel H. Kaplan, eds., The Edwardian Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 36–60, here p. 48.
60 For the full poem, see Anna Gruetzner Robins, ‘Sickert “Painter-in-Ordinary” to the Music-Hall’, Sickert: Paintings (London: Royal Academy of Art, 1992), pp. 19–20.
61 See ‘Music-Hall Celebrities: Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, 2 February 1899, p. 9.
62 Richard Morton, ‘Bridget and Mike’ (London: Francis, Day and Hunter, 1899).
63 See ‘Empire’, Northern Whig, 14 August 1907, p. 1.; and ‘Her Majesty's Theatre of Varieties’, Walsall Advertiser, 8 September 1906, p. 4.
64 ‘Empire Theatre [advertisement]’, Dublin Daily Express, 9 November 1914, p. 4.
65 Russell notes that much of the material produced exploited rural Irish and working-class hardships. Russell, Popular Music in England, p. 128.
66 In a feature appearing in the Music Hall and Theatre Review, it is noted that by the time Cunningham met Sickert, she had already appeared in several pantomimes, including Bluebeard and Mother Goose in Manchester and Bluebeard in Birmingham; and she played the part of the principal boy in Aladdin in Brighton in 1890. See ‘Miss Minnie Cunningham’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 9 April 1892, p. 8. She continues to play in pantomime until her retirement.
67 This was common practice for music hall stars, particularly in the 1890s. In way of example, in one evening in April 1894, Katie Lawrence – one of Cunningham's colleagues and another of Sickert's music hall subjects – was appearing in three venues: the Eastern Empire at 8.45pm; the Cambridge at 9.30pm; and Gatti's (at Charing Cross Road) at 10.30pm. See ‘Katie Lawrence [advertisment]’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 13 April 1894, p. 5.
68 This is an estimate based on (1) her known earnings from two Irish engagements and (2) the earning figures known for Marie Lloyd, another music hall celebrity who, in 1890, was comparable to Cunningham. But Lloyd's wages skyrocketed after 1891 to upward of £80 per week. Cunningham is unlikely to have achieved such high sums.
69 Eugene Watters and Matthew Murtagh, Infinite Variety: Dan Lowrey's Music Hall, 1879–1897 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1979), p. 154.
70 She withdrew, allegedly, because of the length of a skirt she was to be forced to wear, although later in court it emerged that she may have been upset with the management for making her share the bill with a rival, Dorothy Ward. See ‘Abbreviated Skirts: Belfast Pantomime Sequel’, p. 12. The article also includes information pertaining to her fees.
71 Baker, British Music Hall, p. 107. Baker also notes that she was contracted for £250 per week for an Australian engagement in 1901; and $1750 per week for an American engagement in 1913 (ibid., pp. 87 and 124).
72 These dates are confirmed in press accounts. See ‘Bank Holiday Attractions’, Entr'acte, 2 August 1890, p. 6.
73 Ibid.
74 The tour of O'Dowd's Neighbors began in the spring of 1891. Written and staring Murphy, the performance contained a loose plot about a neighbourhood of Irish residents organized around gags and musical numbers. See Gerald Bordman and Richard Norton, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 125. By August 1891, Cunningham is back in England, at Chatham, at the Gaiety Theatre of Varieties. See ‘Gaiety Theatre of Varieties’, Chatham News, 29 August 1891, p. 2.
75 The first invitation was for a twelve-month tour starting in March 1892. (See Harry Rickards ‘Letter to Miss Cunningham’, Peter Charlton Private Collection, 9 January 1892.) She declined the opportunity and gave it to her colleague Alice Leamar instead (‘Miss Minnie Cunningham’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, April 1892, p. 8). Later, she claims to have been invited to play the role of the French Girl in the musical comedy The Belle of New York when it was set to tour Australia, but she turned that down as well (‘Music-Hall Celebrities: Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, p. 9.)
76 ‘Music-Hall Celebrities: Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, p. 9.
77 Ibid.
78 ‘Eliza Ann Cunningham’, death certificate (London: Register Office, Hackney, 8 June 1916).
79 ‘Belfast’, The Era, 13 December 1916, p. 9.
80 ‘Death of Minnie Cunningham’, The Performer, 28 January 1954, p. 4.
81 ‘The Late Minnie Cunningham’, The Performer, 4 February 1954, p. 4.
82 Her mother is mentioned as accompanying her daughter in the press. She was even in attendance at the interview given to The Encore (1899) which has been frequently cited throughout this article. At the end of the interview, the interviewer notes: ‘Here, with a smiling au revoir, she vanished with her mother, who was present with her on a former occasion when THE ENCORE had the pleasure of an interview some four years ago’. See ‘Music-Hall Celebrities: Minnie Cunningham’, The Encore, p. 9.
83 The Irish Home Rule crisis began in 1912 with the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill in the British Parliament, which would grant powers of self-governance to Ireland, and would end in 1923 when Ireland was declared a republic following the Irish War for Independence (1919–22).
84 That she moved homes can be seen on her death certificate. See ‘Minnie Cunningham’, death certificate (London: Register Office, Hackney, 21 January 1954).
85 St John Ervine, ‘Man Who Set Belfast People Singing’, Belfast Telegraph, 21 July 1944, p. 4.
86 Ibid.
87 Ross's Belfast, ‘Musings of a Mineral Water Manufacturer’, Belfast News-Letter, 15 December 1950, p. 6.
88 Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, p. 53.
89 See Baron, Sickert, 2006, pp. 563–5 and 567–8.
90 Clark, T. J., The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), p. 230Google Scholar.
91 Ibid. My emphasis.
92 Hall, Stuart and Whannel, Paddy, The Popular Arts (London: Hutchinson Educational, 1964), p. 56Google Scholar.
93 Ibid.
94 This would still be true now, even if the live element is no longer necessary. Indeed, it could be argued that this on some level has reversed: most popular performers become known primarily through mediated contact with their audiences through film, television or recorded music, and live encounters – like concerts – serve to reinforce and expand their popularity.