Appendix E: Biographies

Angel

It is difficult to trace Miss Angel before December 1842 and after September 1843. As recorded in Eliza Winstanley’s diary (Appendix D), she wrote her name in Eliza Winstanley’s pocketbook as “Elizth Angel,” but is called in a theater bill announcement, it would therefore seem erroneously, “Miss M. Angel.”1 “Elizabeth Angel” may, moreover, have been her stage name. There is thus little to anchor her with and help find her dates; we can nevertheless present a biography of her for this short period based chiefly on non-genealogical sources.2

A “Miss Angel” appeared in productions at the Theatre Royal, Manchester, from December 1842 to 9 June 1843 before transferring to the Adelphi Theatre, Edinburgh.3 Her first appearance there was on 28 June 1843, when she was referred to in a billing as “Miss M. Angel.”4 Nothing has been found to indicate how long she stayed in Edinburgh, but a “Miss Angell, late of the Theatre Royal, Manchester,” made her first appearance in Birmingham in a production on 25 September 1843.5 On 20 February 1845, a “Miss Angel” performed at the Theatre Royal in Bath.6

At the Theatre Royal, Manchester, in January 1843, Miss Angel appeared as Cora in Pizarro.7 A benefit in her honor, just before her departure from Manchester, was performed on 30 May 1843: she played the role of Mariana in The Wife: A Tale of Mantua, by Sheridan Knowles (1784–1862).8 On Wednesday, 7 June 1843, she was to appear in Knowles’s The Secretary as Lady Laura Gaveston, but she was indisposed.9 On 28 June 1843, “Miss M. Angel” made her first appearance at the Adelphi Theatre, Edinburgh, as Desdemona in Othello.10 On 25 September 1843, she made her first appearance as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet.11 She may also be the “Miss Angel” who performed at the Theatre Royal, Bath, on 20 February 1845, in The Dream at Sea and as “Jane Shore” in The Tragedy of Jane Shore; or, The Royal Favourite.12

Miss Angel’s tutor, “to whom she was apprenticed,” was Edward William Elton (London August 1794 – Lindisfarne 20 July 1843; see Image 76), “the well-known actor of the Theatres Royal Drury-lane and Covent-garden.”13 She lost her tutor when Mr. Elton died in the fatal wreck of the steamer Pegasus off the Holy Island of Lindisfarne on 20 July 1843.14 He left seven motherless children, who became orphans, “the youngest not eight years of age.”15 A subscription in aid of them, which was enthusiastically greeted by the public, was announced in the Morning Post (London) on 7 August 1843.16

Assessment of Miss Angel as an actress varied according to people’s positions as theater reviewers, theater managers, and theater audiences. In December 1842, she was described after her first performance in Manchester, when she played Desdemona, as someone who would “acquire a position of no little eminence in the company,” if she “continue[d] to please as in this her first effort.”17 Her appearance and presentation were described in the same review as follows:

She has a clear, transparent face, through which there is seen a mind of no ordinary cast, whilst her manner is at once easy and graceful, winning upon her audience by its very simplicity. We were glad to find so little stage trick about her (for a professed pupil), and if she would but discard the false mode of pronouncing some of her words (a mode which we know to be very fashionable among many of our leading actors…), we should be mightily pleased with her, – it was indeed the only little blemish we could discover. Presuming her to be but recently acquainted with the stage, her Desdemona was a beautiful performance.18

When her benefit was announced, it was stated that “No member of the corps dramatique of our Theatre Royal is more deserving of the public than Miss Angell … Independently of her great accomplishments as an actress, her ladylike demeanour in social life, and her many excellent qualities of heart and mind, entitle her to general support.”19 “Her style is pure, her manners graceful, and in the lighter shades of tragic character, or in the refinement of high comedy, we know few actresses of the present day who can compete with her. It will be long, we fear, before we have an actress equal to her in merit.”20 It was felt by then that “the higher range of tragedy” was not her forté, that while she was “full of exquisite grace and fine feeling – the very perfection of gentleness – she [was] deficient in the grandeur of tragic passion, more from physical weakness than mental appreciation.” A reviewer’s appreciation of her talent caused him to urge the theater manager, Mr. Roxby, to exhibit “a careful judgement in filling the vacancy” caused by her departure from the company.21

In Edinburgh, to which she had gone with Edward Elton, the theater columnist pointed out that her debut there was considered “far from successful.” He felt that the “indiscriminate applause” and “injudicious praise … lavished upon her in Manchester” had been “fatal to [her] rising talent” and had caused her to wrongly estimate her “present status” as a actress.22

When Eliza Winstanley met her in the coach, Elizabeth Angel had possibly already moved to Edinburgh, but she had not yet made her debut there. She was also deeply distressed at that point by her relationship with Samuel Lennox, who remained behind in Manchester as a comedian at the Queen’s Theatre, but we do not know whether he had already become involved with the Miss Craven whom he married some eighteen months later. Miss Angel mysteriously alluded to her circumstances and seemed not to care whether she lived or died. This is the background for the concern both Eliza Winstanley and the “old Gentleman” felt for her.

Note