{"id":6293,"date":"2019-02-18T16:43:43","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T16:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6293"},"modified":"2019-02-18T16:43:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T16:43:46","slug":"laura-wilson-barker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6293","title":{"rendered":"Laura Wilson Barker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Laura Barker\/Window & Grove<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Laura Wilson Barker (1819-1905) was a composer. She is one of my Notable Women of Lavender Hill<\/a> and features in my walk as we stop outside 84 Lavender Sweep in SW London, which is opposite the house that I have lived in for over fifty years.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barker was established as a musician and composer\nby the time she met and married Tom Taylor, and they lived in Lavender Sweep\nuntil he died in 1880. I have written a blog post on Tom Taylor <\/a> as there is a\nlot of information on him but far less on Laura \u2013 not surprisingly, like many\nwomen,  she became a footnote to her husband\u2019s life in articles and\nreferences.  He was a fairly prominent personality as a civil servant,\nlawyer, Professor of English Literature at University College London,\nplaywright, journalist, critic and editor of Punch. It seems he was a\ngregarious chap and was a friend to his neighbour Jeanie Nassau Senior<\/a>, first woman civil\nservant,  another one of those remarkable women who lived in the area of\nLavender Hill.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The house on\nLavender Sweep<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom Taylor was a well-known figure, a prolific\njournalist and dramatist, editor of Punch from 1874 and author of more than\nthirty burlesques and melodramas, including Our\nAmerican Cousin<\/em>, the play President Lincoln was watching in 1865 when he\nwas assassinated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellen Terry, who remembered the Sweep with\n\u2018horse-chestnut blossoms strewing the drive and making it look like a\ntessellated pavement\u2019, called Taylor\u2019s a \u2018house of call for every one of note\u2019,\nfrom politicians, including Mazzini, to artists and actors, all presided over\nby Taylor himself dressed in \u2018black-silk knee-breeches and velvet cutaway\ncoat\u2019. Taylor added a large study \u2018to his own design\u2019. A visitor in the 1870s\nfound every wall in the house, even in the bathrooms, covered with pictures; a\npet owl perched on a bust of Minerva; and a dining room \u2018where Lambeth Faience\nand Venetian glass abound\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few years later, when Taylor\u2019s friend the actor\nJohn Coleman went to look for the house, he found that \u2018not a stone remains \u2026\nand the demon jerry-builder reigns triumphant\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contact\nwith Laura\u2019s descendants<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was contacted by Rupert, who is Laura\nand Tom\u2019s great-great grandson. He is an actor living in Ireland. He\ncommented:  \u201cGreat to find someone who is apparently even better\nacquainted with my great-great grandfather than I or other members of my\nfamily. Have never seen some of these pictures before. Thanks\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I responded and he wrote back: \n\u2018I would also love to resurrect the reputation of Mrs Tom Taylor \u2013 Laura\nBarker, who was a sensational musical talent and I have several of her\ncompositions for the piano and organ. Sadly, when my parents sold our family\nhome back in the early \u201870s another five or six volumes of her work were, for\nsome reason, put into auction and have disappeared into a collection somewhere.\nHer music is really worth hearing and if one could only get some brilliant\nyoung up-and- coming female pianist to champion her cause, I am sure she would\nonce again be restored to her place as one the top British women composers\never, if not the top. In the mid to late 1800s she had as big an entry in the\nDictionary of National Biography as her husband. I was pleased to persuade the Encyclopaedia\nBritannica to restore Tom\u2019s entry a couple of years back. They decided for some\nreason that he was no longer of interest. I soon put them right on that score!\nI would love to do the same for her.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early life<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Miller’s Daughter by Laura Wilson Barker\/https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/mb?a=listis;c=1346310894;pn=7;sort=auth_a<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Laura Wilson Barker was born on 6th March 1819 in\nThirkleby, Yorkshire. She was the sixth daughter of Vicar Thomas Barker, an\namateur musician and painter and his wife Jane Flower. Laura  received her\nfirst musical instruction in violin and piano from her parents and then studied\nprivate composition and presumably also piano with the composer and pianist\nPhilip Cipriani Potter, who taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London from\n1822  till 1832 and became its principal\nin 1832, remaining in the post until 1859. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musical\ninfluences<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a teenager, Laura Barker met\nnumerous musicians in her parents\u2019 home, including Niccol\u00f2 Paganini, with whom\nLaura played, and Louis Spohr.
\nLaura Barker reported: \u2018My father followed Paganini to his concerts at Leeds,\nHull, etc, and made his acquaintance. He took the whole family to Paganini\u2019s\nconcerts at York. I was little more than a child at the time (thirteen years\nold), but had already written some of the phrases which Paganini played, and\nespecially the exquisite variations on \u2018Nel cor pi\u00f9\u2019, which I think impressed\nme more than any of his other wonderful pieces.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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THE TOM TAYLOR STRAD OF 1732<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Later in 1832 we again met Paganini\nin London, and found him just as kind and courteous as before. We met in\nPerronet Thompson\u2019s ( parliamentarian, governor of Sierra Leone and a radical\nreformer) house, and what a genius and a child, playing both on the violin and\nguitar to us, and condescending by his own proposal to extemporize a duet with\nme (the subject of Rossini\u2019s \u2018Di tanti palpiti\u2018\u2018). I played the pianoforte and\nhe violin. He came over to Hampstead with his little son Achillino to spend the\nday with us. He laughed heartily as he heard me imitating some of his\nextraordinary violin feats.\u2019 (Powder 1939, p. 579).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few years later, Laura also met the composer and\nviolinist Louis Spohr: \u2018It was on the occasion of the Norwich Festival in 1839\nthat we had the pleasure of making the personal acquaintance of Spohr. My\nfather took two of my sisters to this interesting meeting, which was a\nmemorable one in our quiet country lives. We met the great man at the house of\nMr. Marshall, the Mayor of Norwich. He was always ready to help me with my\nviolin, and kindly chose a bow for me. He was very friendly and always seemed\nnot only willing but even happy to be able to help someone and as the owner of\nmy wonderful Stradivarii violin, he was very interested in it and marked the\nplaces on my string measure with the string strength, which needed the\ninstrument.\u2019 Later, the Stradivari violin was\nowned and played by the renowned violinist Joshua Bell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early compositions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that Laura was encouraged by her family to\ncompose. Her father sent Louis Spohr one of her compositions in 1836. Her Seven Romances for voice and guitar<\/em> are\ndated 1837 and in 1847 she published an album with six songs for a voice and\npiano. A year later followed the five-part Glee, a traditional English choral\nmovement: Can a Bosom so gentle remain<\/em>?\nThis is according to a text by William Shenstone, which was published in the\nLondon Sacred Music Warehouse <\/em>(The Musical Times<\/em>, April 1, 1848). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the following years, Barker\u2019s compositions were\nreceived enthusiastically by the public and the press; many of her compositions\nare based on texts by the writer Alfred Tennyson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She taught music at the York School for the Blind\nprobably from 1843 until she was married in 1855.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Some of her Six Songs for voice and piano<\/em> are in a\ncollection of mostly 19th- and early 20th-century musical scores by women composers held at the University of Michigan\nMusic Library<\/a>.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A German website on women in music<\/a>\nhas information on Laura. It concludes that more research is needed: \u2018<\/em>Like everything we\u2019ve seen from this\naccomplished author \u2013 who, though an amateur, understands more about art than\nmany professors of rank and name, not to mention her sparkling ingenuity, a\nskill that is not tied to teaching or a professional status.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was\nonly after the death of her husband in 1880 that Laura Barker published further\ncompositions, including the Songs of Youth<\/em>, which were published in 1884\nby Stanley Lucas, Weber & Co. in London. In the Musical Times<\/em> a\nreviewer wrote, \u2018This volume of songs is a welcome contribution to the\nhigh-class vocal music of the day. With the exception of The Owls<\/em>,\nthe words of which are by the composer, the poetry is not selected from the\nworks of any living author; but all the subjects are well-chosen and admirably\nadapted for musical setting. Mariana\u2019s Song<\/em>, from Shakespeare\u2019s Measure\nfor Measure<\/em>, and the Dirge, Yes, thou may\u2019st sigh<\/em>, from Scott\u2019s Fair\nMaid of Perth<\/em>, are excellent compositions; but this song with songs is a\nwelcome contribution to today\u2019s world-class vocal music.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday\nsalons<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Laura Wilson Barker and son Wycliffe<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Laura and Tom held regular Sunday music concerts and were noted for their hospitality. Tom Taylor\u2019s home was one of four grand houses between Lavender Hill and Battersea Rise. Among his friends and visitors to Lavender Sweep were Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Reade, Alfred Tennyson, Henry Irving and Lewis Carroll, who took a number of photographs of the house. Artists, musicians and politicians and many of these celebrities attended their Sunday soir\u00e9es.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The actress Ellen Terry was another\nof the many visitors to the house. In her autobiography she wrote: \u2018it<\/em> clearly became the home from home\nfor the people from all the walks of literary, artistic and theatrical life\nthat Taylor was part of\u2019.  <\/em>Ellen was\nevidently fond of the Taylors and Laura painted her and her sister Kate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was during this time that Ellen Terry\nmarried George Watts, when she was just sixteen. Watts\u2019s friends advised him\nagainst the union. The marriage lasted less than a year and did not seem to\ncause harm for either of them, but it probably was the subject of gossip\namongst this earlier \u2018Lavender Hill mob\u2019. \nThis would have included another neighbour, Marie Spartali<\/a> , the Pre-Raphaelite artist and\nfriend of Jeanie Nassau and another of my Notable Women.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can only speculate that Jeanie, who besides being\nthe first woman civil servant was also a trained singer, and Marie and her\nsister Christina, another talented singer, who lived in The Shrubbery nearby.\nwould have attended and contributed to these musical parties. We know that\nClara Schumann was a friend and accompanied Jeanie Senior singing  so I\nthink it likely that they met up at the Taylors for what in Ireland is called a\n\u2018session\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paintings<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kate Terry, later Mrs Arthur Lewis (1844-1924) as ‘Beatrice’ and Dame Ellen Terry (1847-1928) as ‘Hero’ in William Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ by Laura Taylor. The Church scene. c.1860.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Laura was obviously also a talented\nartist. Her paintings are all at Ellen Terry\u2019s house at Smallhythe Place, owned\nby the National Trust.  According to Rupert Stutchbury: \u2018She was indeed an\nexcellent water colourist and so were her sisters. They were all very talented\nin several artistic directions and were called \u2018the phenomenons\u2019 by their\ncontemporaries, I believe.\u2019 http:\/\/members2.boardhost.com\/MusicWebUK\/msg\/1417718280.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*  *  *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura died in March 1905. She had gone to live in\nPorch House, Coleshill, Berkshire, with her daughter Lucy Taylor and two\nservants, Barbara Nugent and Jane Elizabeth Blake, both of whom had worked for\nthe Taylors in London before the family moved to Coleshill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lucy Taylor died in 1940. Her Memoir was published\nin 1939 and contained entries from Laura\u2019s diary but does not seem to be\navailable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura\u2019s music is awaiting a young singer and a\npianist to rediscover this forgotten Victorian composer and to bring her to new\naudiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura Barker is the only one of the Notable Women\nof Lavender Hill who has not got a Wikipedia entry and now I hope that this\nwill be rectified and will be the start of her being given the recognition and\nacknowledgement as a significant Victorian female composer, and of her\ncompositions played again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeanne Rathbone<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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