Emily Solden started her improbably varied career in the music halls, where she became a leading lady, producer, director, and impresario. She circled the globe many times, conquering Broadway, touring the Wild West, and sailing to Australia and New Zealand. But it was her final reinvention – as a writer – that is perhaps her most heroic. When the theatrical world turned its back on her, Soldene kick-started her career once more, publishing two books and becoming a successful journalist. She had that rare thing for a Victorian working-class woman: a public voice, which she used to speak fearlessly about issues such as adultery and abortion. Though she despised the suffragette movement, she was the living embodiment of practical feminism that would seem remarkable even decades later.
It was sheer envy that first propelled Soldene onto the stage. Born in 1838 to a bonnet maker in Clerkenwell, London, by her early twenties she found herself married with two young children, living in her mother’s cramped lodgings and with the threat of the workhouse always looming. Having read a glowing review of the Italian opera singer Adelina Patti, the very next day Soldene spied a poster of Patti – with a chin that was “very long and underhung”, as she described it – and marched straight to the house of a singing instructor.
Soldene, it quickly became apparent, boasted an uncommon ability to convey emotion through her singing. Her first reviews were good but she struggled to find paid work, so turned to the music halls. Women who worked in these dens of drinking, sex work and lewd humour had terrible reputations. For Soldene, though, they offered her the chance to escape a life of drab domesticity. Adopting the stage name Miss FitzHenry, she started work at the Oxford Music Hall in Westminster, where she became an instant hit singing tragic ballads.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
A modern icon
IVWWAN MORGAN lauds an insightful and clear-eyed examination of a leader blessed with charisma and quality but also marred by personal flaws
Shipwrecks on Scilly
Beneath the clear waters of the Isles of Scilly lurk treacherous rocks on which more than 1,000 ships have foundered. CLARE HARGREAVES discovers their stories
Medieval sambocade
ELEANOR BARNETT recreates an early cheesecake - a dish with surprisingly long roots stretching back well over two millennia
Greek drama
LLOYD LLEWELLYN-JONES is swept along by an engaging exploration of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt in the final centuries before Rome conquered this ancient land
Unravelling the enigma
JOSEPH ELLIS is impressed by a detailed, colourful and insightful biography of George Villiers, a Stuart royal favourite who made powerful enemies
The Elusive Pimpernel
Some suffragettes marched with banners, or printed and distributed propaganda pamphlets. Others took more direct action. DIANE ATKINSON tells the story of one activist who employed arson to spark awareness of the burning issue of women’s suffrage
A HILL TO DIE ON
In early 1944, the Allied advance in Italy was brought to a halt at a rocky outcrop called Monte Cassino. And at the heart of the bloodbath that followed, writes James Holland, was flawed leadership
How to build a radical
How to build a radical 6 8 The experiences that shaped Guy Fawkes and his gunpowder plot co-conspirators into violent extremists seem all too familiar today. Lucy Worsley tells a story of religious clashes, state-sanctioned torture and comrades-in-arms willing to die for the cause
WHO WAS GREATEST THE US PRESIDENT?
With Donald Trump set to be inaugurated as the 47th president, we asked seven historians to nominate their choice for the most accomplished American leader
Land of make believe?
Marco Polo's adventures in Asia earned him everlasting fame. But are his accounts of his travels essentially works of fiction? Peter Jackson asks if we can trust this medieval travel-writing superstar