SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: The Shakespeare family in Croydon had multiple musical talents. From a portrait of a Victorian soprano, DAVID MORGAN traces the local connections to a small boy playing the organ at St Andrew’s and beyond in a career lasting more than half a century
Canterbury tales: the exhibition at The Beaney continues until Oct 4
The 2025 summer exhibition at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury is called Lives in Motion: Stories of migration from the 11th Century to the present day.
Running until October 5, the exhibition consists of 51 portraits from the National Gallery, each with a story to tell about someone who has moved to this country, permanently or temporarily.
One of the paintings in the exhibition is of the Spanish soprano Adelina Patti, who moved to this country from Spain as a child prodigy and became a favourite on the London stage in the 19th Century.
As an opera singer, she became one of the highest earners of her day. With her great wealth. she purchased and lived in a Welsh castle, Craig-y-Nos, in the Brecon Beacons. She even had her own theatre built on the site. There is the Patti Pavilion today in Swansea, named after her, a venue hosting many kinds of live performances.
Patti’s portrait has two significant Croydon links.
The first was that it was painted by James Sant, one of the great Victorian artists, who was born in Croydon, with his grandfather and aunt buried in the churchyard of Croydon Parish Church (now Croydon Minster).
Soprano portrait: celebrated opera singer Adelina Patti was painted by James Sant in 1886. She also worked in music with Croydon’s William Shakespeare
Sant specialised in portraits of women and children, and was appointed official portrait painter to Queen Victoria in 1872.
His portrait of Patti was first exhibited in 1886. You can read more about Sant by clicking here.
Patti’s second Croydon connection was that she worked with William Shakespeare, the Croydon musician and professor of singing, who was related to the people running the long-established firm of undertakers (rather than his namesake, the Bard of Stratford).
Croydon’s William Shakespeare was actually christened John William, though he went by his middle name for most of his performing career. He, like Patti, was also something of a child prodigy.
Born in Croydon in 1849, he was three years older than his brother James, who went on to found the JB Shakespeare funeral business. Their mother, Jemima Perrin, was a local girl but their father, William, a tailor, had been born in Polesworth, Warwickshire. William and Jemima were married in All Saints Church, Croydon, in 1848. In the early years of their marriage they lived in Queen Street.
As a boy, William sang in the choir at St Andrew’s Church and, aged 12, he became the church organist there, having received a few lessons from WH Monk, the author of the Anglican hymnal Hymns, Ancient and Modern. Young William’s precocious musical talent was celebrated by the local congregation and the following year, when 13, he entered the Royal Academy of Music.
Portrait of the artist: William Shakespeare, photographed early in his singing career
A local newspaper report credited a Mr Frederick Lambert with discovering Shakespeare’s musical talent. Lambert, who lived on the Brighton Road, first heard a young red-headed boy playing on a tin whistle near his home. He spoke to the boy and thus began Lambert’s nurturing of a talent which would see Shakespeare win a scholarship to the Royal Academy.
Even when Shakespeare began his studies at the Academy, his abilities set him apart from the other students. In 1866, he was awarded the King’s Scholarship.
Studying with Sir Sterndale Bennett, Shakespeare composed several pieces of music which were well-received. Among those were a piano sonata in F, a symphony in C minor and a capriccio for piano and orchestra.
In 1871, he was chosen by the Academy as the Mendelssohn scholar, the most prestigious musical prize of his day. The previous winner of this award was Arthur Sullivan.
Shakespeare travelled to Leipzig to study musical composition at the Conservatoire there.
Just before he left for Germany, Shakespeare received a letter from the renowned French composer Charles Gounod, who had heard one of his pieces played in a concert by the Philharmonic Society. Gounod described it as “très remarquable”. It must have boosted Shakespeare’s confidence and reputation to have received such a positive endorsement of his work.
From time to time, Shakespeare returned home to Croydon and when he did so, he visited St Andrew’s. The congregation were fascinated to see how Shakespeare had changed. He spoke with an “accent” and seemed thoroughly continental in both style and manner. They thought he had the makings of a brilliant pianist.
‘Eminent tenor’: an ad for a concert in 1878
While Shakespeare was in Leipzig, the tutors there felt he was wasted studying composition, as he had such a fine tenor voice. Consequently, his mentors back at the Academy in London agreed that he should go to Italy and study singing under the great Italian musician, Francesco Lamperti, in Milan.
The matter of him having a fine voice was never in question. Shakespeare, though, doubted whether he had the physicality necessary to consistently create the big sound expected by the opera elite.
Shakespeare spent almost three years in Milan before returning to England in 1875 to begin his singing career. He engaged the services of an agent, Messrs Cramer and Co, with offices in Regent Street, to handle his bookings.
That summer, Shakespeare sang in the popular Monday Concerts at the Crystal Palace as well as other London venues, as well as in Croydon.
Always favouring subtlety over power, Shakespeare made a niche for himself singing solos in the many oratorios which were performed at the time.
Shakespeare married in 1875, to Louise Wieland, whom he met when he was studying in Leipzig. The couple were married in Dresden.
In 1878, he was appointed Professor of Singing at the Royal Academy. Two years later saw him appointed as conductor of their choir and orchestra.
Well-received: a review is of Shakespeare’s concert in Croydon in 1880
He was the tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah which was held in the Public Hall in in Croydon in April 1880, where there was a “crowded audience”.
Shakespeare’s singing career never quite blossomed. While being appreciated for his oratorio work, the lack of real power in his voice, as he had suspected, never took him to the heights of fame. He achieved much more as a teacher of singing, helping many to find their voice.
The 1881 Census revealed him living in Brompton Square, Kensington (handy for the Royal Academy of Music) with his wife Louise, a son, a daughter, two servants and a cook. His occupation was given as “Professor of Music”.
His daughter delighted in the name Susanna Frederique Antonietta Marie Louise Shakespeare. She was known as Mary, later as Minnie. She followed her father into a life of music and was listed in the 1911 Census as a pianist. By then she was married, recorded as Minnie Cassels Brown.
During the 1890s, Shakespeare moved to 15 Hamilton Terrace, St John’s Wood, where he was living at the time of the censuses of 1901 and 1911.
‘A great musician’: a local newspaper’s obituary for William Shakespeare from 1931
In later life, he gave lectures and wrote books, including The Art of Singing, a three-part series which came out in 1898 and 1899, Singing for Schools and Colleges (published in 1907) and Plain Words on Singing (1924).
Shakespeare went on lecture tours of the United States. Kate Field, a prominent American journalist and feminist, received singing lessons from Shakespeare and was said to be “his favourite pupil”.
When Shakespeare died in 1931, aged 82, it marked the end of an era.
He was a man who lived his whole life steeped in music. From his time in Germany, he personally knew Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms, two of the great European composers of the late 19th Century.
Arthur Rubenstein, the great 20th-Century classical concert pianist, was a friend, and Shakespeare also worked with two of the biggest names in the singing world, Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti.
Not bad for a little red-haired lad heard being tuneful on a tin whistle in the streets of South Croydon!
David Morgan, pictured right, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Shakespeares who made music part of their family business
- When ‘Rinkomania’ skated up Park Lane to delight Croydon
- George Street family business that put Croydon in the picture
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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