Celebrity for the week ending
Saturday, 11 October 2003

Harriet Coveney (1827-1892)
English actress and vocalist

Harriet Coveney

(photo: Elliott & Fry, London, circa 1870)

Harriet Martha Coveney, born to Henry and Sophia Coveney in London on 1 November 1827, was christened on 27 April the following year at St. Mark's, Kennington, London. She married Charles Albert Jecks on 11 March 1854 at St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, London; their daughter was the actress Clara Jecks (1857-1951). Harriet Coveney died at the age of 64 on 24 February 1912. For further information, see David Stone's Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. * * * * * * * * 'COVENEY, HARRIET (Mrs. [Charles] JECKS), was born in London, and is the youngest of thirteen children, all of whom have appeared on the stage; Miss Coveney's parents [Henry and Sophia Coveney] having been for many years connected with the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. She made her first appearance on the stage, at the age of seven, at the Adelphi theatre, Edinburgh, as Zoe, in The Pet of the Petticoats; and continued to play children's parts there and at other theatres in Scotland for some time, making a decided success at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, in the character of Oliver Twist. She became a very proficient dancer under the instruction of [Charles] Leclercq. Miss Coveney made her début on the London stage at the Victoria Theatre, where she gained considerable reputation as a spirited character dancer, vocalist, and performer of children's parts. After playing in the provinces, she "opened" at the Adelphi Theatre on "Boxing Night" (Christmas), 1849, as Princess Agatha, in the burlesque of Frankenstein, by the Brothers Brough; and in 1850-51-52, and later, appeared at the Surrey and at Drury Lane Theatres in pantomime, in which Miss Harriet Coveney has always excelled. Among her impersonations of more recent years, the following are entitled to mention as having secured special recognition for their artistic excellence, viz. Mother Shipton, in E.L. Blanchard's pantomime The Dragon of Wantley, performed at Drury Lane Theatre, 1870-1; Polly Mittens, in The Water Witches, played at the Globe Theatre, May 1871; the page Adolphe, in Falsacappa, an English version of Offenbach's Les Brigands; the title rôle in R.H. Edgar's extravaganza of Crichton, produced at the Charing Cross Theatre in August 1871; Sunbeam, in E.L. Blanchard's Legend of Spring; or, the Victory of the Sunbeam, performed at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, Easter, 1872. 'In the autumn of 1872, at the Opéra Comique, Miss Harriet Coveney played the part of the Marquise in L'Œil Crève. "Miss Harriet Coveney's part of the mysterious Marchioness is altogether dramatic, or perhaps we ought to say melodramatic. The wonderful thing about it is the manner in which it is played, the performance being, in its way, as good as Rachel's Phèdre or Ristori's Medea – as good, that is to say, as can be imagined. Any sort of liberty is, by convention, allowed to a burlesque actress, but the mysterious Marchioness never steps beyond the strictest limits of her part, which she renders with a burlesque-tragic feeling almost poetical from its intensity." (Pall Mall Gazette, [London,] October 24, 1872.) Miss Coveney is an artist of considerable versatility. For a number of years she has been almost indispensable at Drury Lane in the Christmas pantomime. She has been recently acting the part of Flibbertigibbet in a revival of Andrew Halliday's drama Amy Robsart, at the Adelphi Theatre, London.' (Charles E. Pascoe, editor, The Dramatic List, David Bogue, London, 1880, pp.112 and 113)

Harriet Coveney

(photo: The London Stereoscopic & Photographic Co, London, circa 1865)

'Coveney, Harriet. – This heroine of over a thousand distinct characters on the stage was the thirteenth child of her parents, who was continuously connected with the Drury Lane and Haymarket Theatres for a third of a century. Her father was a renowned Trip and Paul Pry in his day, and lived to the patriarchal age of 94, and her mother was a ;popular actress who shone in singing parts. Miss Coveney's first appearance was at the age of seven, and it led to a series of engagements for children's parts in Shakespearean plays. This brought her into contact with the great [William Charles] Macready, who took an immense fancy to her, and shewed her much kindness, and des describes him as "a most charming companion, but in business a terror." Having grown to woman's estate, Miss Coveney proceeded to take lessons in dancing from Mr. Charles Leclercq, not with any idea of becoming a professional danseuse, but because dancing and deportment were a part of the dramatic curriculum of those days. The course finished, she made her début at the Adelphi Theatre, Edinburgh. A little later she laid the foundation stone of her subsequent success by her dramatic representation of Oliver Twist at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, and this encouraged her to come to London, where she first appeared at the old Adelaide Gallery. She was next engaged as a coryphée to support no less a star than Taglioni, and appeared at her last performance. When the green curtain fell for ever on that Terpsichorean Queen, the great danseuse, with a vanity which had in it something that was pathetic and something that was great, took off her wreath and slippers, and dividing them into pieces, gave the fragments as mementos to those around her. Miss Coveney treasures to this day the souvenir she then received. Her next engagement was with Mr. [Benjamin] Webster at the Adelphi, followed by another at the Surrey, and she then went to pantomime at Drury Lane. After this she gave the music halls a trial, where she was most successful, but at the urgent representation of her relatives and friends, returned again to the higher branch, and accepted an engagement with Mr. [F.B.] Chatterton at Drury Lane, remaining with him for eleven years, during nine of which she appeared in conjunction with the Vokes family, and also with such great artistes as Walter Montgomery, Barry Sullivan, John Ryder, [Samuel] Phelps, Helen Faucit, and Adelaide Neilson, and her connection only terminated in 1879, when poor Chatterton's leesseeship ended and found him encumbered with £36,000 of liabilities. Space forbids to more than briefly recapitulate her subsequent engagements at the Criterion (The Great Divorce Case [15 April 1876]), the Royalty (under Kate Santley), the Princess's, Imperial, Gaiety, Adelphi, Haymarket (in The Yellow Dwarf), and more recently in low comedy parts quite unworthy of her powers, however amusing, in Dorothy and Doris [Gaiety, 25 September 1886, and Lyric, 20 April 1889].' (Erskine Reid and Herbert Compton, The Dramatic Peerage, Raithby, Lawrence & Co Ltd, London, 1892, pp.59-61) * * * * * * * *

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© John Culme, 2003