Violet Vanbrugh

Violet Augusta Mary Bourchier, Barnes (11 June 1867 – 11 November 1942), known professionally as Violet Vanbrugh, was an English actress with a career that spanned more than fifty years.

Vanbrugh was from a family with theatrical connections. The actress Irene Vanbrugh was one of her younger sisters and a brother, Kenneth Barnes, became principal of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

She made her professional debut in an 1886 burlesque. In the same year she had her first West End speaking role and then joined a repertory company in Margate playing leading roles in four of Shakespeare's plays among others. She next played in J. L. Toole's company for two years. In 1889 she joined the Kendals at the Court Theatre and on tour in the US. Two years later, back in London, she joined Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in their Shakespeare company at the Lyceum Theatre. In 1893, she appeared opposite her future husband Arthur Bourchier at Daly's Theatre and soon became his leading lady at the Royalty Theatre and later at the Garrick Theatre, where Bourchier was lessee for the first six years of the 20th century.

Vanbrugh returned to Shakespearean roles in 1906 at Stratford upon Avon, where she played Lady Macbeth to her husband's Macbeth, and in 1910 they starred together in Herbert Beerbohm Tree's London production of Henry VIII. They divorced in 1917, after which Vanbrugh continued acting on stage until 1937 (making some further appearances until 1940) and appeared in films in the 1930s. In her fiftieth season on stage she starred in The Merry Wives of Windsor with her sister in London, and during the Blitz, the two entertained at matinees. She died at her home in London in 1942 at the age of 75.

Life and career Early years

Vanbrugh was born in Exeter, in south-west England, on 11 June 1867, the eldest of six children of the Rev Reginald Henry Barnes, Prebendary of Exeter Cathedral and Vicar of Heavitree, and his wife, Frances Mary Emily, Nation. Her mother was an amateur actress, praised by the stage star Ellen Terry, and there were other theatrical antecedents on the maternal side: W. H. C. Nation, who managed theatres in London, was Violet's uncle and her great-grandfather introduced Edmund Kean to the London stage. Two of her siblings later pursued theatrical careers – the actress Irene Vanbrugh and the principal of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Kenneth Barnes. She was educated in Exeter, France and Germany.

Although her father was at first dismayed by her wish to go on the stage, he eventually gave his consent. She moved to London with , a small legacy she had received, but after three months the money was running out and she had failed to find a theatrical engagement. She was helped by Ellen Terry, a family friend, who invited her to stay at her Chelsea house, He gave Violet her first chance, at his theatre in the West End, in February 1886 in F. C. Burnand's burlesque Faust and Loose as one of what Terry called "an absurd chorus … dressed in tight black satin coats, who besides dancing and singing had lines in unison, such as 'No, no!' 'We will!'" At Terry's suggestion, Violet took the stage name of Vanbrugh.

Early career

Irene Vanbrugh later credited her elder sister with making both their acting careers possible: "Violet, with both hands outstretched, made the opening wide enough to get through herself and when my time came the door was still ajar." Violet's first speaking role was Ellen, in The Little Pilgrim, a dramatisation of a Ouida story, at the Criterion Theatre.

In 1886 Vanbrugh joined Sarah Thorne's theatre company at the Theatre Royal Margate, which gave her – and later her younger sister – what a biographer describes as "an invaluable training, learning a new part every week". Irene recalled, "We played every kind of play there; comedy, farce, and drama of the deepest dye; while at Christmas there came the pantomime so that the Juliet of a week ago might be the Prince Paragon of the Yule-tide extravaganza." For two years Vanbrugh rejoined Toole's company, on tour and in London, playing several roles including Lady Anne in The Butler and Kitty Maitland in The Don, both written by H. C. Merivale and his wife. |

At the Criterion in December 1888 Vanbrugh played Gertrude in the Deputy Registrar, The following year she joined W. H. and Madge Kendal at the Court Theatre as Lady Gillingham in The Weaker Sex by A. W. Pinero, and subsequently travelled with them on their first two tours to the US, making her Broadway début in October 1889 as Lady Ingham in John Palgrave Simpson's comedy A Scrap of Paper. it ran for more than 200 performances. Vanbrugh also understudied Terry as Cordelia in King Lear and Rosamund in Tennyson's Becket. The following year Vanbrugh and Bourchier married. The Evening Standard said of Violet, "Rarely has Miss Vanbrugh been seen to greater advantage. Her portrait of the Chili widow was distinguished throughout by charm, intelligence and womanliness". Other plays at the Royalty were the comedy Mr Versus Mrs, a gory drama, Monsieur de Paris and a Sardou adaptation, The Queen's Proctor.

Bourchier and Vanbrugh toured America beginning in November 1897, heading a company that included Irene Vanbrugh, Henry Vibart, Helen Rous and Mabel Beardsley. During the tour, Violet was taken ill with nervous exhaustion, and Irene temporarily took over her sister's roles. Bourchier closed the tour early and the company returned to England.

Back in London Vanbrugh played the title role in Teresa, which Bourchier produced at the Metropole. This was not among her successes: her notices described her as unsuited to the role and compared her unfavourably with its original player, Mrs John Wood.

After managing several productions with Charles Wyndham, Bourchier became lessee of the Garrick Theatre in September 1900. Over the six years of his management there, Vanbrugh starred in many of his productions, including H.V.Esmond's My Lady Virtue (1902), H. A. Jones's Whitewashing Julia (1903), John Oliver Hobbes's The Bishop's Move (1903), Bernard Miall's, The Arm of the Law (1904), and W. S. Gilbert's The Fairy's Dilemma (1904). None of these had more than moderately successful runs,

At Stratford in 1910 she played Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing; it had been planned that Bourchier would play Benedick, but he was detained in London and Robert Loraine took the part. Later in 1910 Vanbrugh and Bourchier were engaged by Herbert Beerbohm Tree to appear with him in a lavish production of Henry VIII at His Majesty's Theatre, London. Bourchier was in the title role, Vanbrugh played Queen Catherine and Tree played Wolsey. They appeared in a silent film of the production, which played to packed houses in early 1911.

From 1915 the Bourchiers' marriage became dysfunctional. Their colleague Robert Speaight later commented that Bourchier "treated her very much as Henry VIII treated Anne Boleyn – except he didn't quite cut off her head". In 1917 Vanbrugh divorced Bourchier for desertion and adultery. In 1918 he married an actress twenty-four years his junior, Violet Marion Kyrle Bellew; Vanbrugh never remarried.

During the 1930s Vanbrugh made occasional returns to the film studios, in Captivation (1931), Joy Ride (1935), and the 1938 adaptation of Shaw's Pygmalion.

In her fiftieth season on stage, Vanbrugh again starred with her sister as the Merry Wives, at the Ring, Blackfriars, and the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park. The Stage said, "The most exciting feature of the evening was of course the appearance of Irene and Violet Vanbrugh as the Merry Wives … they fairly carried all before them, and gave a brilliant display of the art of comic acting". During the Battle of Britain, the Vanbrugh sisters carried out what a biographer calls "a characteristic piece of war work" by giving, with Donald Wolfit, lunchtime performances of extracts from The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Strand Theatre. and a memorial service was held at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 19 November. The obituarist in The Times wrote of her:

Notes, references and sources