In Florence in April
1848, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, the son of Fanny
Trollope and the older brother of Anthony Trollope,
married Theodosia, the daughter of Joseph and
Theodosia Garrow. His bride, called Theo by her
family to differentiate her from her mother, had
been travelling on the Continent since Autumn 1843
with her parents and half-sister, Harriett Fisher.
The family came from Torquay, where Joseph Garrow
was a magistrate and an active member of the
community.
Trollope's mother-in-law, Theodosia Garrow, has
received very curious treatment from biographers of
the Trollope family. Victoria Glendinning, in her
1992 biography of Anthony Trollope, tells her
readers: 'If the records are correct, Mrs Garrow, 'a
woman of coarse feeling and violent temper', was
fifty-nine when she gave birth to Theodosia'. In her
1997 biography of Fanny Trollope, Pamela
Neville-Sington states that Joseph Garrow 'at
twenty-five, married a Jewish widow twenty-three
years his senior, with two children. Mrs Garrow gave
birth to Theodosia when she was in her fifties -
some say fifty-nine'. At this point, she directs her
readers to The
Trollopes: The Chronicle of a Writing Family
(1947), by L.P. and R.P. Stebbins. There we find 'It
is less difficult to account for the expensive Mr
Garrow's marriage to an elderly, bad-tempered Jewess
with a very comfortable income than it was to
undestand how he made her - at fifty-nine - the
mother of Theodosia'. The Stebbinses then conjecture
that Theo was the illegitimate daughter of Harriet
Fisher and imply that Joseph Garrow was the father.
All this falls to pieces as soon as one discovers
the true facts, particularly the real ages of the
half-sisters. Harriett Theodosia Fisher was baptised
at Plympton, Devon on 4 November 1809 and Theodosia
Garrow was born on 28 November 1816 and baptised at
St Saviour, Tormohan, the parish church of Torquay,
on 1 January 1817. Harriett Fisher was seven when
Theo was born. Both Harriett and Theo were to die in
Florence; they were buried in the English Cemetery
there and the burial records confirm the seven-year
gap between them. Harriett's age was given as 37 at
her death on 12 November 1848 and, 16 years later,
in April 1865, Theo was said to be 46. Their ages at
death were actually 39 and 48, so it seems that they
had both removed two years from their ages at some
stage. The change had the happy effect of making
Theo appear to be 29 rather than 31 when she married
Tom Trollope. That this is the age she admitted is
confirmed by a letter written at the time of the
marriage by Harriet Garnett, a friend of the
Trollopes: 'I wonder that so distinguished a girl as
Theodosia Garrow, who is just 29, should have taken
a fancy to him [Tom]'.
The fantasy of Theo as Harriett Fisher's
illegitimate child, created by the Stebbinses, is
embroidered in two later biographies, Johanna
Johnston's The
Life, Manners and Travels of Fanny Trollope
(1979) and Teresa Ransom's Fanny Trollope: A Remarkable Life
(1995). Johnston states: 'The birth of a daughter to
Mr and Mrs Joseph Garrow in 1825, when Mrs Garrow
was fifty-nine years old, startled everyone who knew
them. In Toquay, where the Garrows had an estate
called The Braddons, people looked at each other in
amazement and surmise and then frequently glanced
towards the self-effacing Harriet Fisher.
Fortunately, Mrs Garrow had enough money to frighten
speculation to a muted whisper'. Ransom states that
there was gossip about the true parentage of Theo,
who was adored by Harriett but disliked by Theodosia
Garrow. Even N.J. Hall, in his scholarly two-volume
edition of the letters of Anthony Trollope (1983),
states that Mrs Garrow was 'said to be' the mother
of Tom Trollope's first wife, and repeats the
conjecture that she was in fact the daughter of
Harriett Fisher.
The Stebbinses' conjecture of Harriett's affair with
her step-father, resulting in the birth of Theo,
arises from Mrs Garrow's supposed age at the birth
and Theo's inheritance of both Jewish features from
her mother's family and Indian ones from her
father's. For Theo Garrow's parents were indeed un
unsual and interesting couple. Her father was born
at Fort St George, Madras, where his father, Joseph
Garrow, was working for the East India Company as
secretary to the Commander-in-Chief. He was also
successful in business affairs and was living with
an Indian woman referred to in his will as Sultana.
He died before their only child was three, having
made careful provisions for Sultana in his will,
leaving her his house, a sum of money and a monthly
income. £5000 was left to 'my natural Son born on
the 29th October 1789 whom I call Joseph' to be
invested by trustees in the public funds until he
was 21, with the interest used for his education,
'as good as he is capable of receiving in Europe'.
Tom Trollope, in his 1887 autobiography, What I Remember,
wrote that Joseph Garrow was married to 'a high
caste Brahmin woman,' and that his mother as well as
father died young. Joseph was brought up by his
father's unmarried sister, Eleanora Garrow.
She lived with her father, the Rev. David Garrow,
rector of Hadley, Middlesex, where he ran a
successful school for 50 years. He had taught
Joseph's uncle, William Garrow, a distinguished
lawyer and MP, who became a Baron of the Exchequer
in 1817. Joseph's grandfather and aunt both died
when he was 15. In her will, Eleanora left the 'dear
son of my late worthy Brother Joseph' her miniature
of his father and £1000, which he would receive when
he was 21. Joseph was educated at St John's College,
Cambridge, and entered Lincoln's Inn in 1810. He was
an intelligent and cultured man, a talented amateur
artist and a writer of light verse and was later to
produce a well-thought-of translation of Dante's La Vita Nuova.
He was also very musical, composing and playing the
violin. On 17 March 1812, at the age of 22, he was
married at St Margaret, Westminster, to Theodosia
Fisher, the widow of Thomas Fisher. Thomas Fisher's
son Charles was five and Harriett was two. Harriett
- she and her family spelled her name with a double
T - was named after her mother's older sister, the
singer and composer, Harriett Abrams.
Tom Trollope believed that his mother-in-law's
father (or possibly both parents) had come to
England 'in the suite of some Hanoverian minister'.
The family was Jewish and exceedingly musical: six
of Theodosia's brothers and sisters worked as
professional musicians. Harriett, Miss G
(Georgiana?), Jane, Theodosia and Eliza all sang and
Eliza was also a pianist, while Charles and William
were string players in London orchestres. Only the
oldest sister, Charlotte, and their brother Thomas
seem never to have performed in public. Harriett was
the dominant figure musically. She made her debut on
28 October 1775 at Drury Lane, in a musical
afterpiece specially written for her by David
Garrick with music commissioned from Thomas Arne.
Arne is sometimes said to have been her teacher, but
this appears not to be the case, for a letter exists
from Arne to Garrick, complaining that Garrick had
engaged 'a Jewess' that season, instead of being
satisfied with Arne's pupils. Miss G. joined
Harriett at Drury Lane, taking small singing roles
in the 1778-80 seasons. Harriett's success on stage
was limited by her petite figure and lack of
dramatic projection, and she left Drury Lane in 1780
to become a very successful singer in London consert
series and the major provincial festivals. She
appeared as a solo soprano and in duets, which were
advertised as sung by 'The two Miss Abrams' or 'Miss
Abrams and Miss Abrams, jun.' At first the younger
singer was probably Miss G. and then Jane Abrams,
who was advertised as making her first appearance in
April 1782. (Jane's career did not develop and Miss
G. seems to have married or died.) On 28 April 1783,
the programme book for one of the very select
Concerts of Antient Music named as singers Miss
Abrams, Miss Abrams jun. and Miss T. Abrams, who
sang the contralto part in the quintet from Handel's
Jephtha. Theodosia is the only one of the Abrams
sisters for whom there appears to be no
advertisement giving the date of her first
appearance as a singer. The Concerts of Antient
Music were annual subscription series, without
separate newspaper advertisements, so a debut there
would go unmarked and would preclude a subsequent
'first appearance' announcement. Both Miss Abrams
[Harriett] and Miss T. Abrams sang in the 1784
Handel Commemoratio concerts. Theodosia is listed
last among principla female singers in Charles
Burney's An
Account of the Musical Performances in
Commemoration of Handel (1785). Burney does
not mention her in his description of the concerts,
though he praises Harriett's taste and expression
and comments that although her voice was not
regarded as theatrical she was audible in every part
of Westminster Abbey. The combination of Harriett's
soprano voice and Theodosia's fine contralto was
soon in demand. Eliza Abrams, who was several years
younger than Theodosia, was a solo pianist from 1788
and first sang in a trio with Harriett and Theodosia
on 16 March 1790.
On 2 June 1791 five Abrams sisters were baptised at
St George, Hanover Square. Charlotte, who was to
marry John Lucas at St Pancras five days later, gave
her age as 33, Harriett as 29, Jane 24, Theodosia 21
and Eliza 14. It is of course possible that the
older sisters, as the next generation of the family
was to do, took a couple of years off their ages.
However, the sequence of ages must be correct and
Theodosia's stated age would make her born in
1769-70, and so 13 at her debut. This might seem
young, but it is by no means unusual at this time,
particularly since she seems to have sung only in
ensembles in the first year or so of her public
appearances. (In 1776, the ten-year-old Nancy
Storace had the role of Cupid specially composed for
her by her teacher Venanzio Rauzzini in his opera L'ali d'amore,
performed at the King's Theatre, London.) The
remarkable singing ability from a young age of Bice
(Beatrice), Tom and Theo Trollope's only child, was
frequently remarked upon. George Eliot described her
as 'a musical genius' when she heard her in 1861:
'She is a delicate little fairy about ten years old,
but sings with a grace and expression that make it a
thrilling delight to hear her.' The youthful vocal
abilities of the Abrams family seem to have
continued into the third generation.
So it is clear that Mrs Garrow was about 47 when she
gave birth to Theo, and not 59. Theodosia Garrow
died on 4 November 1849 and her age on her death
certificate is given as 75. This would indicate that
she was born in 1774, so it seems that Joseph
Garrow, as well as Tom Trollope, thought his wife
was a few years younger than she actually was. She,
too, avoided a dreaded extra decade by giving the
impression that she was under 40, rather than a year
or so over 40 when she married Garrow. The
Stebbinses believed that she was born in 1766 and
used as their source British Musical Biography (1897)
by J.D. Brown and S.S. Stratton. This work indeed
states the date of birth to be 1766, presumably
because they thought she must have been 18 when she
sang in the 1784 Handel Commemoration concerts.
The impression given by the Trollope biographies
that Joseph Garrow, with no money of his own,
married a rich widow for her money is not backed up
by their marriage settlement. There, Theodosia
Fisher is described as possessing £1,300 in 5% bank
annuities. Garrow was to transfer £2,700 of his
stock in the same fund to make up £5,000, to go to
any children of the marriage after the death of both
parents. Her marriage settlement from her first
husband was already secured for the separate use and
benefit of herself and her two children. Harriett
Abrams and William Garrow, who was to be knighted
later that year, were two of the trustees.
The Abrams family sisters did not come from a
wealthy background, for such a family would not have
put two young daughters on the public stage and
trained two sons to become professional
instrumentalists. When she was a young performer in
the theatre, Harriett's fees were paid to her
father, who appears to have died in about 1782. It
is likely that she was taught by a member of her
family, since if she had been apprenticed to a
singing teacher, these early earnings would have
gone to the teacher. Theodosia and her sisters
appear to have become comfortably off by a
combination of talent, cooperation, hard work and
financial common sense. Doane's Musical Directory (1794)
lists Miss Abrams and Theodosia as singers, Charles
as a cellist and William as a violinist, all living
at 73 Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place. Each year
from 1781 to 1796, Harriett organised a concert for
her benefit, first at the Tottenham street home,
where the Antient Music concerts were held, later at
the Hanover Square rooms and for the last two years
in the new Concert Room at the Opera House in the
Haymarket. These concerts show-cased the family
talents and employed the leading singers and
instrumentalists of the day. Joseph Hayden, during
his London visits, 'presided at the pianoforte' for
Harriett's benefits in 1792, 1794 and 1795. the Rev.
Daniel Lysons, in his History of the Origins and Proceedings of
the Meeting of the Three Choirs, published
in 1812, gives a clear account of the careers of the
Abrams sisters.
Miss Abrams (who
possessed a voice which, though not so powerful as
some of her contemporaries, was sweet and of good
quality, and sung with great taste and
expression,) maintained a very respetable station
at the London concerts for a considerable time,
and, with her two younger sisters, Theodosia and
Eliza, for several years delighted the audience at
the Ladies' Catch and Glee Concerts, and at
numerous private parties in the first circles of
fashion, with the sweet harmony which proceeded
from three voices constantly in the habit of
singing together, and uncommonly well blended.
Theodosia, the second sister, now the widow of
Capt. Fisher, of the Devonshire Militia, had a
peculiarly deep contra alto voice, which had an
admirable effect in the under parts. Mis Abrams
was the composer of several beautiful glees,
&c. and very popular ballads, some of which,
particularly those of the Orphan's Prayer, and
Crazy Jane, were sung with most impressive effect
by her sister Theodosia. These ladies, having
invariably possessed the admiration and esteem of
the public, have been some years retired, to enjoy
the well earned emoluments of their profession.
It is evident from the wills of Harriett and Eliza
Abrams that the 'well earned emoluments' had been
invested in property or in public funds.
Harriett Abrams was a successful composer of songs,
duets and trios, published individually and in four
collections, the last of which was dedicated to
Queen Charlotte, 'with Her Majesty's most Gracious
Permission', in 1803. The dedication page gives
Harriett's address as Park Lane. There is no
contemporary scandalous gossip about the sisters and
little information about their private lives. We
know that they were friends of the leading actor,
John Philip Kemble, for his memorandum book records
that in April 1799 he, his actor brother Charles and
Mr Siddons, husband of their sister Sarah, the great
actress, spent the evening and supped with the Miss
Abramses. Harriett, Jane, Theodosia, Eliza, Charles
and another Abrams brother were all present. On
Sunday 16 June the Earl and Countess of Mount-
Edgecumbe, Mr and Mrs Siddons, Charles Kemble and
the Miss Abramses were among Kemble's supper guests.
He was in Margate that August to play leading roles
at the theatre for a couple of weeks and the day
before his first night there he travelled over to
Broadstairs to dine with the Miss Abramses, who were
presumably taking a seaside holiday.
By 1894 the sisters were spending at least part of
the year in Devon, and on 6 August Theodosia married
the 21-year-ol Thomas Fisher at St Maurice,
Plympton. He came from Little Torrington, in North
Devon, where his father had been rector for 30 years
until his death in 1803. The Abrams sisters remained
on friendly terms with Thomas Fisher's widowed
mother and six unmarried sisters, who were left
small bequests in the wills of both Harriett and
Eliza Abrams. Fisher's death at Teignmouth was
reported in the Gentleman's Magazine of June 1810,
where he was described as 'late captain and adjutant
in the North Devon militia'. After less than 6 years
of marriage, Theodosia became a widow with a
3-year-old son, Charles, and a 6-month-old daughter,
Harriett.
The Abrams sisters continued to live mainly in
Devon, since Theodosia's home was in Torquay when
she married Joseph Garrow. But they had not
abandoned London completely, for Jane Adams was 'of
Park Lane . . . but also of Teignmouth' when she
died in 1814. Garrow could have encountered them
socially, or he could have been taking violin
lessons from one of their brothers. Harriett and
Eliza Abrams were to live with the Garrows until
their deaths. Harriett's will, made in 1819, two
years before she died, praises her 'dearly dearly
beloved Brother in Law Joseph Garrow', whose
'parental attention [and] affection towards his Son
and Daughter in Law Charles & Harriett Fisher
were sufficient to ensure him my utmost gratitude
and love. Added to his his affection for his wife
myself and every part of my Family has indeared him
to me as a Brother and Friend'. The family became
closely involved in the music of St. John's Chapel,
a few minutes walk from their home. In the late
1830s Joseph Garrow's Sacred Music, selected from that
usually sung in St John's Chapel, Torquay, arranged
in an easy manner for four voices was printed in
London and published by subscription. It was
dedicated to John Sheepshanks, Arcdeacon of
Cornwall, 'as a mark of friendship & esteem, and
of gratitude for his kind assistance while curate of
St John's Chapel, Torquay, in originally forming the
choir. By his attached friend, The Author'. As well
as music by Beethoven, Mozart, Weber and others, the
volume includes an anthem for Christams Day and
eight hymn tunes by J. Garrow and tunes or chants by
Miss E. Abrams, Mrs Garrow, Miss Garrow and Miss
Fisher. (Harriett Abrams had died before the choir
was formed.)
By 1820, inflation was adversely affecting the
household at Torquay and the three sisters sent a
petition to George I, asking for an official
position for Joseph Garrow. The king's response was
very positive, but we do not know exactly what
resulted; however; they all continued to live at The
Braddons in middle-class comfort. Joseph Garrow was
certainly not idle, for in addition to his duties as
a magistrate, he became a member of the Select
Vestry for the parish, Vice-President of the Torquay
Mechanics' Institute and chairman of the Newton
Abbot Board of Guardians. When gas lighting was
introduced into Torquay shops in 1834 he wrote an
amusing verse celebration, full of ludicrous puns on
the names of the shop owners. Walter Savage Landor
visited Torquay in 1837 and became a friend of the
family and a correspondent of 'genial, hospitable
Garrow'. The following year, the 32-year-old
Elizabeth Barrett was advised by her doctor to leave
London and she moved to Torquay for three years. The
Garrows sent her fruit and vegetables from their
garden and Harriett and the 22-year-old Theo visited
the invalid. In a letter to Mary Russell Mitford,
Barrett gossiped about Joseph Garrow's illegitimacy
and his Indian mother, 'the "dark ladie" - To the
darkness his own complexion is said to signify - but
he is a sensible intelligent man & an active
magistrate & useful citizen, sufficiently so to
put his pedigree out of people's heads!' Of his wife
she reports nothing except: 'You are aware perhaps
that Mrs Garrow was a public singer'. Elizabeth's
sister, Henrietta, who mixed in Torquay society, had
clearly not picked up any scandal about Theodosia or
Joseph Garrow, but found some disapproval of Theo,
whom she thought affected and with 'a leaning to
light flirty manners'. Barrett became irritated by
Landor's excessive praise of Theo's poetry, which
was being published in the Countess of Blessington's
annuals, but admired the young woman's linguistic
ability in German and Italian. She defended Theo
from the charge of affectation and acknowledged her
musical skill: 'She composes & performs fl &
there is genius in each'. They shared the same
doctor in Torquay, a man who, according to Barrett,
thought writing poetry was bad for the health,
particularly for ladies, and attributed
Barrett's invalidism and Theo's bouts of ill-health
to the practice. He forecast Theo's death in two
years, but as Barrett wrote in 1845: 'she was
dancing quadrilles then . . . (& has lived to do
the same by the Polka)'. It was Fanny Trollope, not
Mrs Garrow, whom Robert Browning described to his
wife as 'that coarse, vulgar Mrs Trollope' and 'that
vulgar, pushing, woman who is not fit to speak to
you', when he encountered both families in Italy in
1847, soon after his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett.
Initially, Theo's parents were strongly opposed to
her marriage and, according to Tom's diary, there
were 'harsh letters' and then 'terrible scenes' with
Garrow. However, as Theo had only £1,000 at that
time and Tom had lived with his mother for many
years with no steady income of his own, most 19th
century parents would have reacted in the same way.
Although Tom, in his autobiography What I Remember,
described the opposition to the marriage as a matter
of 'ordinary prudence', he never really forgave his
in-laws. He became somwhat reconciled to Joseph, who
lived with the Trollopes for several years after
Theodosia's death, but still described him as 'a
jealously affectionate, but very exacting father'.
He never came to terms with Theodosia, who died
within two years of his marriage, and his portrait
of her lies behind all the later descriptions. He
wrote: 'Mrs Garrow, my wife's mother, was not, I
think, an amiable woman. She must have been between
70 and 80 when I first knew her; but she was still
vigorous, and had still a pair of what must once
have been magnificent, and were still brilliant and
fierce black eyes. She was in no wise a clever woman
. . . I am afraid that Mrs Garrow did not love her
second daughter at all . . . She was a very fierce
old lady, and did not, I fear, contribute to the
happiness of any member of her family'.
Frances Eleanor Trollope, whom Tom married after
Theo's death in 1865, wrote a hagiographic biography
of Fanny Trollope, Frances Trollope, Her Life and Literary
Work, published in 1895. Both Fanny
Trollope and Joseph Garrow had died before her
marriage to Tom, who died in 1892. Repeatedly, and
perhaps unconsciously, she highlights the
sympathetic behaviour of Fanny by making the Garrows
as unpleasant as possible. So, Joseph's reaction to
the marriage is 'simple selfishness', while Fanny's
desire that Tom and Theo should live with her is
admirable. Joseph Garrow becomes a man of 'very
quick, though shallow, intelligence', who was
'intensely and unmitigatingly selfish', while
Theodosia turns into 'a woman of coarse feeling and
violent temper'.
Tom and Frances Eleanor's comments are repeated or
magnified by later writers. Theodosia is described
as 'not very bright', yet Tom Trollope wrote in What I Remember
that the composer and pianist John Baptist Cramer
(who had appeared as a soloist at Harriett's benefit
concerts from 1782, when he was 11) had told him
admiringly that Theodosia could pick out a wrong
note on any instrument in a full orchestre.
Theodosia's 'coarse feeling and violent temper',
found only in F.E. Trollope, is accepted as a fact.
It seems strange that a household found hospitable
by Landor should have included such a harridan, and
it is worth noting that she had an admirable ability
to keep her servants. John Tope was with the family
from at least 1819 until they left for Italy. Mary
Ann Coombs was left legacies in the wills of
Harriett Abrams (1819), Eliza Abrams (1831) and
Harriett Fisher, who called her 'my old nurse', and
she registered Theodosia Garrow's death at Torquay
in November 1849.
Theodosia Garrow's life after her daughter's
marriage was not a happy one. Her elder daughter
died suddenly from smallpox in Florence only seven
months later and she herself was in her late 70s and
becoming ill. The Garrows returned to England and
the local paper reported that they were back in The
Braddons by 4 July 1849. Charles Fisher had joined
them by the 18th and stayed until after his mother's
death. Tom and Theodosia, summoned from the
Continent, were in Torquay before the end of August.
On 3 October, Fanny Trollope wrote to Tom asking
that he and his wife should visit her 'for a few
weeks' and this has led to the assumption that
Theodosia died in September, since it has been
assumed that Fanny would only have written in this
way after Theodosia's death. In fact, Theodosia
Garrow died of 'Deranged Digestion, Abscess and
Exhaustion' on 4 November. Her desire for Theo's
constant presence, deplored by Tom's mother, would
seem to contradict the belief that she had no love
for her younger daughter. After her mother's death,
Theo was advised by her doctor to move to a warmer
climate and it was quickly agreed that Joseph Garrow
should share a house in Italy with Theo, Tom and
Fanny Trollope. By 5 December The Braddons was
empty.
Tom Trollope and his mother were, perhaps
understandably, biased against Theodosia Garrow.
However, her musical friends saw her in a different
light. The Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe was an
enthusiastic and discriminating lover of opera and
concerts through his life. His Musical Reminiscence
of an Old Amateur, first published in 1834,
has a final chapter on English music and the leading
English singers, which ends:
There is by one name
more that I shall mention, and that very slightly,
but but when excellence in music is the subject,
it cannot be omitted. It is that of the Misses
Abrams, who were unrivaled in their more direct
line, and whose united voices formed the very
perfection of harmony. But of them I shall not
permit myself to speak, private friendship might
make my praise appear too partial. I
restrain myself with the less regret from
saying what I feel, because their talents (still
fresh in the remembrance of many) and their merits
of every kind are too widely known to need my
panegyrics, and too universally acknowledged to
admit of the possibility of contradiction.
In a note added to the final edition, in 1834, he
wrote:
Of the three sisters
one only survives, Miss Theodosia, now Mrs Garrow,
whose voice was the most beautiful contralto I
ever heard.
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