More on Guisborough's link to Lewis Carroll's Alice

In September, I picked up once more the story of Henry Savile Clarke of Guisborough & Lewis Carroll's Alice.

I mentioned in the piece Clare Imholtz' fascinating article on the child actress Phoebe Carlo.  She played Alice in the original production of Henry Savile Clarke's adaptation of the books for the musical stage.

Clare gave a talk at the Lewis Carroll Society of North America's (virtual) meeting in Autumn 2021.  It's entitled 'Alice Takes to the Stage: Carroll’s Letters to Henry Savile Clarke' and that link will take you to the talk on youtube.

It's a real treat and I enjoyed it so much.

Poor Henry Savile Clarke!  I hadn't realised that writing the drama and collaborating with the composer was only the beginning of his labours.  He was caught between the power of the theatre managers and Lewis Carroll's rather demanding – increasingly demanding! – requirements.  No easy task.

Henry Savile Clarke of Guisborough & Lewis Carroll's Alice

A few years ago I wrote about Henry Savile Clarke of Guisborough (1841-93), who produced the first stage musical of Lewis Carroll's Alice.

Phoebe Carlo 1887

Over a series of blogposts, I told the story of Henry Savile Clarke, his artist wife Helen (also from Guisborough) and their daughters Clara the novelist, Maggie the beautiful "skirt-dancer", and Kitty the society beauty.  They moved in high artistic circles, knew Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley and died young and rather tragically.

The Lewis Carroll Resources website gives an amazingly full account of Savile Clarke's production, with the rave reviews, details of the parts and performers and even links to the original music (you can listen to 1941 recordings of some of the songs on youtube).

And for the history of the surprising career of young Phoebe Carlo, the first child actress to play the part of Alice, go to Clare Imholtz' article in December 2020 edition of The Carrollian.

Phoebe in the photographs of the time doesn't really suit our ideas of a child star and we might think they can't possibly do her justice.  She was Lewis Carroll's choice (readers today might find the descriptions of his interest in her a little unsettling) and she was a terrific hit, the reviewers commenting on her vivacity, drollery and wonderful ability.  

She had a remarkable and rather mysterious life after she left the stage.  She won a 'Smartest Lady' competition in 1903, was described by the Chicago Tribune as "famous for her smart dresses and graceful carriage", and was, Clare Imholtz writes, "a walking advertisement for diamonds"!

"On the wondrous trail of Alice"

Alice in Wonderland, that is.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chris Lloyd (deputy editor of the Northern Echo) wrote a beautifully concise and evocative account of Carroll's links to the North East and the ways in which his years spent here may have provided inspiration for Alice.

He mentions, too, Henry Savile Clarke whose story, and that of his wife and daughters, can be found earlier on this blog, and who created the first stage adaptation of the books.

You can find "On the wondrous trail of Alice" here on the Northern Echo website.

(I think you can get 10 free articles a month before a subscription is needed).

I don't know why we let Oxford take all the credit, when both Lewis Carroll and the Liddells (Alice Liddell being the main inspiration for the books) had such firm roots here!

Lewis Carroll & the North East

Don't miss Alice in Teesside, Simon Farnaby's programme on Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland!

It was broadcast on Radio 4 last Thursday and is now on iplayer.

I can't help but think that their shared roots in the North East must have made for an extra bond between Carroll and Henry Savile Clarke, who wrote the first stage adaptation of the Alice books.

For the remarkable story of Henry Savile Clarke, go to my earlier blog posts - there are four of them, and this is the first.

Henry Savile Clarke (1841-93)

Henry Savile Clarke was the eldest child of the Rev Henry Clarke of Guisborough (1813-61) and his wife Catherine Dawson (c1819-52).  Baptised by his father on the day of his birth, 14 February 1841, he spent the first months of his life at the house then called Long Hull.  At that time there was no parsonage house for the vicar of Guisborough, and Henry Clarke must have rented Long Hull from the Chaloner family.  We know it now as Gisborough Hall.

By 1842, the Clarkes had moved to Sunnyfield House on Westgate, with ample room for the five children who followed – four sons and a daughter – before the untimely death of their mother in 1852 at the age of 33.

Henry’s brother “Jock” Clarke [1] (baptised John William), was a year his junior.  He became agent for the Guisborough estate and was well known for his rather malicious wit.  Arthur Dawson Clarke was born a year later.  He became a clergyman, lecturer and tutor, writing books on geography and mathematics for candidates for Army, Woolwich and Civil Service examinations.  Francis Savile Clarke was the next child; he studied music in London and returned to Guisborough to teach.  Cecil James Clarke was born in 1846; he became an estate agent and lived in the South of England.  Lastly, there was the only daughter, Kathleen Ann Augusta Clarke.  She left the North East and married Arthur Edward Prescott, a land agent.  She was left a widow with four children at the age of 40.

Henry Savile Clarke was blessed with good looks, energy, ability and a private income from his late mother.  He went to Edinburgh to study medicine and there became caught up in the world of journalism. 

Guisborough’s link to Lewis Carroll: Henry Savile Clarke (1841-93) and his family

While my original piece on Annie Weatherill’s 1863 diary (for which, see my blog post of 1 December 2012) was to be found on my previous website (www.jakesbarn.co.uk) I was contacted by Dr Tony Nicholson of Teesside University.

Tony provided me with fascinating information regarding Henry Savile Clarke, the husband of Annie’s cousin Helen Weatherill.

In particular, he told me of Lewis Carroll’s correspondence with the Savile Clarke daughters, and of the further connection that linked the Savile Clarkes to President Franklin D Roosevelt.

This was such exciting news!  I have at last been able to complete my own research on it, which I'm going to start posting. 

I think it is a story especially worth telling because there are inaccuracies in some already published accounts – in particular, writers have confused Helen Weatherill with her daughter Clara Savile Clarke – and also because Clara deserves wider notice.

All the family – including the younger sisters Maggie and Kitty – attracted press attention in their day, but with Clara's early death, a promising literary talent was lost.

Certainly a great deal of research remains to be done into the Savile Clarkes, and I hope someone will do it – my work has been done from the warmth of home and the comfort of the sofa, and largely limited to internet resources.  In particular, I have found the British Newspaper Archive very useful.

(Subscribers to www.findmypast.co.uk have access to the archive, but a much better search facility is available through a subscription to the archive’s own website.)

My account includes numerous hyperlinks, and I hope you find them useful.

I think they are especially valuable in linking to work by Clara Savile Clarke that would otherwise be hard to find, but I have also made full use of them to reduce the number of footnotes, and to convey a wider picture of the times to readers who perhaps may not be familiar with the period.


Part 2 of this series of posts is here