Bringing “The Mikado” to the world – the amazing Salingers

“Tillie” (Matilda) Salinger (1866-1930) at the height of her fame c1895. ^[1]Undated public domain photo from the Internet Archive and California Revealed The background is a photograph of port city of Yokohama, taken in 1876, about ten years before Matilda, Herbert and Helena Salinger performed there. Note the mix of European and Japanese buildings.^[2]Baron Raimund von Stillfried, 1839-1911, photographer. State Library of Victoria Picture Collections

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The Five Second Version
Matilda, Herbert and Helena Salinger, the Australian-born children of a German gold rush immigrant to Australia, first appeared as juvenile performers on stage in Australia and by 1881 had joined Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company. The Pollards 1883 tour of South East Asia and India culminated in wild accusations of child kidnapping, and Mr Nathan Salinger actually travelled to Calcutta to reclaim his children. But instead of returning to Australia, they spent most of 1884-1888 performing to expat colonial audiences in India and Asia. It was their family troupe, the English Opera Bouffe Company, that first performed Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado in Yokohama Japan, in April 1887 – albeit an edited version. By the early 1890s the Salingers had emigrated to the US, where they all pursued musical and theatrical careers, often together and with great success.

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Children of the goldfields

Matilda or “Tillie” (1866-1930), Herbert (1867-1922) and Helena or “Lena” (1869-1946) Salinger were the children of German gold-rush immigrant Nathan Salinger and his English born wife Elizabeth nee Glenister. All three children were born at the family hotel – the Freemason’s, in the gold-mining town of Ararat, in Western Victoria. By the early 1870s, the family had moved to run the Commercial Hotel at 113 Elizabeth Street Melbourne, in the city’s heart. Another son, Magnus, was born there in 1876.^[4]Nathan placed newspaper notices to welcome each birth See Note 1 below regarding the Salinger family

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Joining the Pollards

The three older Salinger children attended the Melbourne Hebrew School, their names sometimes listed as prize winners in reports of the school’s annual awards.^[6]The Argus (Melb) 19 March 1877, P7 We know little about the dynamics of the Salinger family, but we must assume that music and performance were valued and encouraged, because by 1880, Herbert and Tillie were appearing on stage at the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne for Lewis’s Juvenile Pinafore Company.^[7]The Argus (Melb) 8 June 1880, P8 But not long after this, Herbert and Lena (aged 13 and 11 respectively) were signed up by Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company, touring Australia and New Zealand. As the following advertisement shows, the Pollards needed to supplement their troupe, as Pollard family members got older and no longer passed as children. To strengthen numbers they had also signed up other members of Lewis’s company – the Osmond children and “Little” Amy Brooks.^[8]For reasons unknown, Tillie Salinger was not signed up with Pollards Their repertoire included HMS Pinafore and the comic opera Les Cloches de Corneville.

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Amongst all the older Pollard managers (listed at the end of the 1881 Melbourne advertisement above) was a non-family member – Nathan Salinger – the troupe’s business manager. After his hotel ventures Nathan Salinger had turned his hand to other enterprises – including catering and furniture sales, and work for Pollard’s was another.^[10]Years later, Tillie Salinger was understandably inclined to emphasise her father’s role as a theatre company manager rather than a publican. See The Philadelphia Inquirer 29 Dec 1918, P30 But this arrangement appears not to have lasted for very long, perhaps only while they performed in Melbourne.

Bewildered children and angry parents

Reviews of the Pollards were generally positive as they travelled through New Zealand and Australia, and over time the company added new operas. However, there were still challenges with finding available venues and fresh material to perform. By early 1883 the troupe was plodding its way through the provincial towns of northern Queensland, when the adult Pollards managing the troupe made a momentous decision. Attracted by accounts of the success some Australian theatre groups had enjoyed in South East Asia (then called “the Far East”) and India, the Pollards decided to try their luck there too.

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They departed Queensland in June 1883 on the RMS Quetta, bound for Batavia and Singapore, “with thirty-five or so bewildered children” on board. “Bewildered” because, as historian Peter Downes notes, none of the parents or child performers had been consulted about leaving the Australian colonies and at least some accounts suggest the children did not know where they were going until they were at sea.^[12]Downes (2002) P60-63 On the way, senior company members Tom and Charles Pollard wrote home to parents to inform them of their new plans. Charles Pollard’s letter to Eliza Salinger reveals the senior Pollards knew quite well the liberty they had taken in leaving Australia.

“Dear Mrs Salinger,
You will no doubt know before you receive this letter that the company are going to Calcutta for the Exhibition… ^[13]The Calcutta International Exhibition was held between December 1883 and March 1884 Of course you ought to have been informed, but it [the decision] was made so hurriedly that we…[had] no time to write… You have nothing to blame Herbert or Lena for, so you must blame me… [signed] C.A. Pollard”^[14]The Times of India, Jan 24, 1884, P6

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The children (those who were not Pollard family members) were indentured to the Pollards and their parents were paid an agreed salary, but there was nothing agreed about where they would perform. Even twenty years later, a surviving Pollards contract from 1900 for child actor W. S. Percy is remarkably unclear on this matter.^[15]Downes (2002) P 212

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By the end of 1883, with the troupe by now in India, Australian newspapers were reporting at length on accusations the Pollards had abducted or kidnapped the children.^[17]See The Age (Melb) 17 Dec 1883, P6 Clearly some of the parents were enraged but most could do little about it. However, in December 1883, Nathan Salinger took passage for Calcutta to reclaim his children. The most reliable account of Salinger’s confrontation with the Pollards came via Joseph Bosisto, a colonial politician who was attending the Calcutta International Exhibition. He had been asked by the colonial government to meet the Pollards, check on the children’s welfare and insist on their return. Bosisto also attended court in Calcutta as an observer, when Salinger sought restitution for his expenses in collecting his children from the Pollards and returning to Melbourne.^[18]See Bosisto’s statement to the Victorian parliament in The Argus (Melb) 20 June 1884, P6 Nathan Salinger was clearly a man of determination and financial resources, and the Pollards wisely settled out of court.

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Under pressure from Bosisto, the Pollard troupe departed Calcutta in February 1884, bound for Australia, via performance stops in Rangoon, Penang and Singapore. They tried to negotiate a performance stop in Sydney, but Bosisto would have none of it. (See also Note 2 below)

Salinger’s English Opera Bouffe Company

Within a few months however, reports reached Australian papers that Nathan Salinger had not returned to Australia at all, but was settled in Calcutta, running a hotel^[20]Tasmanian News, 27 Jun 1884, P3 and at least one of the Salinger girls was appearing in theatre there.^[21]Weekly Times (Melb) 5 July 1884, P7 Although the Salinger’s footprints in India are faint today, surviving newspaper reports, show that by January 1885, Herbert and Lena were both performing with Emelie Melville’s touring company at Calcutta’s Corinthian theatre. Although an adult troupe, their repertoire included the very familiar popular operas that the Pollards favoured – Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S. Pinafore and the like. But within a few months, while in India, Melville’s company had collapsed over pay disputes.^[22]Evening News (Syd)14 May 1885 P5 Ever one to seize an opportunity, Nathan Salinger set about establishing the English Opera Bouffe Company, utilising the skills of his four children (including his youngest, Magnus) and employing some of the former Melville company members.^[23]Leader (Melb) 20 Feb 1886, P26

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For the next few years the company of about 14 players performed seasons across India and South East Asia, and to Hong Kong and Shanghai. It was a small but consistently familiar group and included Arthur Rigby, Arthur Fawcett, Elsa Wilson and Frank d’Este. Arthur Fawcett wrote home to Australian papers on several occasions, including in July 1886 – from the refreshing climate of Murree, a hill station (now in Pakistan) where the troupe were about to perform Gilbert and Sullivan’s new opera The Mikado. He claimed the troupe had travelled over 11,000 miles by rail by this time, and played in nearly every garrison theatre and public hall in India – an impressive achievement.^[25]Melbourne Punch 19 August 1886, P8

Interviewed years later, Lena recalled with some pride the family troupe entertaining distinguished Indian nobility and British officials, including at the wedding of the reformist Maharaja Gaekwad of Baroda to his second wife, in late 1885. But she also acknowledged that the troupe’s audiences were often at English outposts and military stations – bored soldiers must have been delighted to see them.^[26]The Washington Post, 8 Oct, 1911, P3. Also contemporary accounts in Melbourne Punch (Melb) 19 August 1886, P8 and The Leader (Melb) 20 Feb 1886, P26 Their repertoire included the familiar favourites – Les Cloches de Corneville, The Little Duke, The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance and H.M.S. Pinafore.

Reviews of the small troupe varied – but the young Salingers were often singled out for praise. For example, the Shanghai North China Herald‘s review of Pirates of Penzance complemented Tillie for her “very attractive soprano voice… as good a light soprano as one could hope to hear in Shanghai, her voice is round and sweet” while “Lena Salinger is little less than a genius… so bright so full of vivacity… .” Herbert, “as Sergeant of Police was greeted with great applause, but he was quite cut out by …his corporal, Master Magnus.”^[27]The North China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette (Shanghai) 16 Mar 1887, P300

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Performing The Mikado in Japan

Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Mikado opened in England in March 1885 and was quickly a success. Today, modern audiences may find it dated and the characterisations offensive. Michael Cooper has described it as “one of the most passionately debated stage works of our time… A droll satire of Victorian England? A racist caricature of Japan? Some amalgam of the two?”^[29]Michael Cooper, New York Times, Dec 25, 2016 Even in April 1887, the Salingers must have been aware they were taking a risk performing the play anywhere in Asia – but particularly in Japan, even though Yokohama, where it was to be performed, was a treaty port with numerous western merchants.

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It was Sir Francis Plunkett, the British representative in Tokyo, who insisted on changes to the play, including its title,^[31]to Sotyugo Shita Sannin no Otome, roughly translated as Three Little Maids from School to avoid causing offence.^[32]Lavery (2016) P224-225 It finally opened in Yokohama on April 30, 1887 and was repeated several days later, reportedly bringing in “more money than had six of any other work[s] in the company’s repertory.”^[33]Civil and Military Gazette (Lahore) 16 Aug 1887, P6 Samuel L Leiter states that the Salinger troupe then repeated performances in Kobe and Nagasaki.^[34]These cities were also treaty ports that allowed Western access to Japan While the choice of city to perform suggests Salinger wanted to present a new play that English-speaking expats had not yet seen, we are assured by Leiter that there were also Japanese in the audiences – although with the passage of time, their reactions seem unclear.^[35]Leiter (2009) P128 Despite suggestions that the Salingers “wanted the distinction of singing the new Mikado… for the first time… in that country,”^[36]The Boston Globe, 25 July 1895, P8 it would seem equally likely that Nathan Salinger’s decision to perform The Mikado in Japan was an entirely commercial one. Years later, Tillie Salinger recalled that Plunkett’s intervention had actually helped advertise the performance and improved audience numbers.^[37]The San Francisco Call and Post 14 Mar 1895, P6

Following a performance season in Hong Kong in July 1887, the Salingers finally returned to Melbourne, Australia.^[38]The Lorgnette(Melb) 29 June 1887, P2 They had run their travelling troupe for almost three years through India and the Far East.

In Australia, they were soon on stage again and touring familiar Australian towns. Rejoining the popular Emelie Melville again, they were listed as “Miss Tilly Sarony, the favorite soprano, Miss Lena Salinger, the imitable soubrette [and] Mr. Herbert Salinger, the versatile comedian.”^[39]Euroa Advertiser (Vic.), 22 Jun 1888, P3 Although they were soon working independently of each other, they had re-established themselves as Australian stage favourites. Nathan Salinger now described himself as a Theatrical Agent.^[40]See for example, Rate Book entry for 46 Brunswick St, Fitzroy in 1890 Inevitably, after several years back home, the young Salingers decided to try their luck in North America.

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A snapshot of three US careers

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Tillie Salinger was the first of the family to depart for the United States. She boarded the RMS Alameda bound for San Francisco in October 1890 and was on stage with the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco within weeks.^[43]The San Francisco Chronicle, 24 Nov 1890, P8 Her reception proved to be a very positive one and this would have encouraged the rest of the family to follow. Only a few years later, the Music Editor for The San Francisco Chronicle, reported on her in these glowing terms: “Miss [Tillie] Salinger’s repertory is perhaps the largest of any singer, and her experience most unusually varied… Miss Salinger has a clear soprano voice of unusual volume and purity. It is powerful and well controlled... Miss Salinger is, therefore, entitled to serious consideration as a prima donna and many women have reached great prominence with far less genuine merit to recommend them.”^[44]Peter Robinson in The Boston Globe, 25 July 1895, P8

Tillie remained associated with San Francisco’s Tivoli Opera for a decade, and married baritone Philip Branson, another Tivoli artist, in October 1893. The rest of the Salinger family emigrated to the US in mid 1891, with Lena also debuting at the Tivoli Opera that year. Thanks to Tillie’s talents and a life of continuous touring of the US, she became very well known. She was usually on stage in company with her husband Phil, in an endless stream of the ever popular light operas. As time went by Tillie and Phil were seen in supporting roles to newly rising stars – like Mitzi Hajos in 1911-12, and Australian Ivy Scott in 1917-18. Tillie and Phil punctuated this busy life with a short return to Australia in August – October 1900. She retired to Ridgefield Park, New Jersey in the early 1920s.

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After a stint with the opera in San Francisco, Lena Salinger performed on tour with various companies throughout the US. Although inevitable comparisons with her older sister were made when she arrived, the view was that she was a mezzo soprano with “a voice of wide range and great power.”^[49]Great Falls Tribune, (Montana) 3 May 1895, P4 Like her older sister, Lena appeared in a string of popular musical comedies – The Bohemian Girl, The Three Twins, La fille de Madame Angot and Telephone Girl. While touring with the Pike Opera Company in cities of the US north-west, she married fellow actor Harry R Hanlein (or Hanlon) – at the end of a performance, in Montana, in 1895.^[50]San Francisco Chronicle, 23 May 1895,·P5 Like Tillie, she often toured with her husband, although as time went by, her roles were often supporting ones. After her marriage she usually styled herself Helena or Helen Salinger.

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In April 1917 Helen was announced as part of the large cast being gathered for Sam Goldwyn’s forthcoming but as yet unnamed film.^[54]Star-Gazette (New York) 4 April 1917, P2 After some speculation that it would feature popular actor Maxine Elliot, it ended up being called Polly of the Circus, and featured Mae Marsh and Vernon Steele. Helen’s role turned out to be a minor one.^[55]The film survives and a low definition copy can be see here, at the Silent Hall of Fame Channel on Youtube Movies may have seemed an exciting change to a life of performance touring, but many actors at the time commented how professionally unrewarding film work was. For whatever reason, this appears to have been Lena’s only film. Performing increasingly in New York, she took supporting stage roles well into the 1930s.

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Like his sisters, Herbert Salinger began his US stage career touring in musical theatre, and amongst his first performances were roles he knew well, such as the Sergeant of Police in Pirates of Penzance,^[57]The Salt Lake Tribune, 7 May 1893, P7 and Ko-Ko from The Mikado.^[58]The Buffalo Sunday Morning News, 23 Nov 1902, P6 Herbert is most commonly associated with the Manhattan Opera, which he managed and directed from about 1903. The Manhattan Opera also operated from the Rorick’s Glen Theater in the summer months. Well established in New York by 1902, he married fellow performer Odette Bordeaux in August.^[59]Several years later, following the dissolution of their marriage, Odette was murdered apparently by one of her new husband’s trusted Prisoners. He was a Prison Warden Again, at times, Tillie, Helen and their husbands also performed at Rorick’s Glen.^[60]Star-Gazette (New York) 19 May 1913, P6

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After 1909, Herbert took to managing (and performing in minor roles in) touring productions, apparently working for New York’s Shubert brothers.^[63]Star-Gazette (New York) 7 May 1921, P11 The musicals Princess Pat and Maytime were typical of the large scale productions taken on the road for prolonged tours. Herbert remarried in 1920, and turned some of his efforts to working the land. He took a part-interest in a property in Cody, Wyoming. Unfortunately he took ill and died there, aged only 55, in August 1922. The cause of death was given as peritonitis.^[64]Star-Gazette (New York) 11 Aug 1922, P20

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Tillie Salinger also died relatively young, following a series of strokes, in New Jersey in 1930.^[66]The Record (New Jersey), 2 June 1930, P2 Lena Salinger died at her home in Brooklyn, New York in October 1946.^[67]New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949 database, via FamilySearch

The family’s youngest member – Magnus Salinger, having moved to the US with his parents in 1891, became a musician for the San Francisco Symphony, and was long active in the Musicians Union. His heart was soon in his newly adopted country – he became a US citizen and served in the US army in 1898-1899, during the Spanish American war. In late 1924 he returned to Australia with his wife and daughter, presumably to visit his cousins. He lived a long and successful life, dying in California in 1958, aged 82.^[68]Daily Independent Journal (CA) 11 Dec 1958, P8

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Note 1 – The Salinger family come to Australia

Herz and Henriette Salinger brought their family from Germany to Australia in August 1858 during the Gold rushes. Nathan Salinger was their oldest son. The family were not typical of the great wave of migrants – who were often single men without family and mostly from the British Isles. By chance, the manifest for the ship Tornado has survived and shows the entire, mostly adult, Salinger family – of 5 daughters and 2 sons, travelling from Germany to Australia, via England. In Victoria, Herz and Henriette made their home at Pleasant Creek (Stawell) and later Ararat, major goldmining towns in Western Victoria.

Herz and his two sons Nathan and Emanuel may have tried mining, but records show the family soon moved into commerce – storekeeping, hotel keeping and later the local wine industry. Nathan’s brother Emanuel and his five sisters all stayed in Australia.

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Note 2 – The Pollard Tour of 1880-1884

Peter Downes has documented the Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company tour of 1880-1884 at some length.^[69]Chapters 6-9, Peter Downes (2002) While this tour established the practices of the later Pollards troupes, it could not have been regarded as a success at the time. Apart from the bad publicity surrounding the alleged “kidnapping” of children, in 1883 and 1884 it suffered several other serious blows. While in Rangoon, oldest son of the Pollard family Jim had shot himself^[70]by accident or act of self harm, it no longer seems clear and family patriarch James Joseph Pollard, father to 18 children by two wives and owner of the Pollards, became seriously ill, diagnosed with dropsy,^[71]probably heart failure at about the same time. He died soon after their return to Australia. As Downes notes, the company continued performing in Australia and New Zealand until they were disbanded in mid 1886. In 1891 a Pollard’s juvenile troupe was re-established by Tom Pollard.

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References

Primary Sources

• National Library of Australia, Trove
• State Library of Victoria
• State Library of New South Wales
• Ancestry.com
• Victoria, Births Deaths & Marriages
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers
• Newspapers.com
• Hathitrust.com
• The Internet Archive
• Society of California Pioneers. Managed by California Revealed

Other links

• Salinger’s Cafe at Great Western, North West of Ararat, was originally built by Nathan Salinger’s younger brother Emanuel in the 1860s as a store. It remained in the family until the 1940s. It continues to operate today as a restaurant and gourmet food-store, a quaint reminder of this pioneer family. See https://salingers.com.au/about/

Text

• The Queen’s Empire, A Pictorial and Descriptive Record. (1899), Cassell & Co Ltd.
• Michael Cooper (2016) “Reviving The Mikado in a Balancing Act of Taste” in The New York Times, December 25, 2016. Via Proquest newspapers
• Peter Downes (2002) The Pollards. Steele Roberts, Wellington NZ.
• James Jupp (2001) The Australian people: an encyclopedia of the nation, its people and their origins. Cambridge University Press
• Joseph Lavery (2016) “The Mikado’s Queer Realism: Law, Genre, Knowledge.” Novel, A Forum on Fiction. Vol 49, No 2, August 2016, P291-235. Duke University Press
• Josephine Lee (2010) The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert & Sullivan’s the Mikado. University of Minnesota Press.
• Samuel L Leiter (2009) “Performing the Emperor’s New Clothes: The Mikado, The Tale of Genji and Lese Majeste on the Japanese Stage.” Rising from the Flames: The Rebirth of Theater in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952. (Ed) Samuel L Leiter. Lathan, Lexington Books, P125-171
• Victoria and Its Metropolis, Past and Present. Vol IIA Country Districts, 1888. McCarron Bird & Co, Melb.

Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

• James Griffin, ‘Bosisto, Joseph (1824–1898)’, published first in hardcopy 1969, accessed online 18 December 2023.
• Peter Boyce, ‘Kennedy, Sir Arthur Edward (1810–1883)’, published first in hardcopy 1974, accessed online 18 December 2023.