Today, 27th August 2016, I have received some cuttings from the Natal Witness. There are three separate items for three dates Friday 1st June 1877, Saturday April 8 1878, and Nov 27th 1878.
This gives us a lot of information.
The first thing it does is date this picture. On Monday 28th May 1877 Charles Guilfoyle Seymour gave a performance as Hamlet. The review tells us this. So this picture, taken by Kitsch Brothers, Durban, Natal Must have been taken around that time.
The review spends several column inches displaying the reviewers knowledge of the play and discussing whether Hamlet was mad or not, before telling us about the performance.
"We should judge that Mr Guilfoyle Seymour, to whose care the part of the Prince of Denmark was entrusted on Monday, inclines to the sane theory which has the advantage, so far as simplicity is concerned. Hamlet, As Mr Seymour reads the part, is oppressed enough by the death of his father and the hasty re-marriage of his mother; but he is free from those darker mental clouds with regard to himself and everything else in the world, to which some well known actors have accustomed us. Viewing the part in this light, Mr Seymour's effort was decidedly praiseworthy, and if he failed to rise into any very high region of tragic acting, he at least suceeded in keeping up an equable tone throughout, and avoiding those pitfalls (and there are not a few of them scattered up and down through the play) into which unwary young actors are so liable to fall..."
Bessie was in the same production:
"Miss Bessie Nathan made up well into a pert and somewhat juvenile Rosencrantz..."
On Tuesday 29th May The company performed W.S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea and the same reviewer had this to say.
"Mr George Yates made a good Leucippe - the honest soldier whose love for Pygmalion's sister Myrine (Miss Bessie Nathan) forms a sort of sub-plot...."
The review continues
"The after piece was the Irish Comic Drama entitled "Handy Andy" - a piece in which the plot, if it can be called a plot at all, is merely used as a peg upon which to hang the extraordinary mistakes and vagaries of an untutored Irish peasant lad in his attempts to discharge the duties of a gentleman's servant. Of course these are laughable enough, but we must confess the utter dulness and stupidity of the whole piece in every other respect seemed to go very far towards neutralizing the amusement caused by Mr Guilfoyle Seymour's delineation of Hibernian characteristics.
The Natal Witness of Nov 27th 1877 tells us that "The Roebuck Company have been performing in Capetown to poor houses. From Cape Papers we see that Miss Bessie Nathan has sued Capt. Roebuck for £15. 8s for part salary, stopped by him. The defendant alleged that the plaintiff was entitled to only half salary while travelling or ill. Judgement was given for the plaintiff, less five shillings fine. A portion of the company, including Miss Nathan, Miss Young, Messrs Yates and Thorne with Mr Wilson as manager for Captain Roebuck, proceed to the Diamond fields to join the company there. They play various towns by the way."
Natal Witness Saturday April 8 1878
"...... Mr Seymour and Mrs Seymour (Bessie Nathan), have seceded from the Roebuck Company at the Diamond Fields. Captain Roebuck is with the other portion of the company at Capetown. Miss Hilda Temple is performing with them. It is expected they will come on to Natal in a few weeks."
Now I have to try and find out if the apparent marriage actually happened in South Africa or whether Mr and Mrs Seymour were simply telling people this because they had been ... getting to know one another.
I believe that the journey from South Africa to England took at least two months in those days so we know that Bessie was "with child" on her journey home.
Goodness me I love this woman!
