Miss Elvira Behrens
(1837- 1910)
23 March 1861
Volume 2, page 345, sitting number 2671.
[Identified only as ‘Miss Behrens’ in the Silvy daybooks, an inked inscription verso in a period hand reads ‘Mlle Elvira Behrens / my singing mistress / at Miss Lewis’s, Putney / 1861.’]
She appears as ‘Elvina [sic] Behrens’ on the 1861 census, a 24-year-old ‘Artist Vocalist’ visiting Theodosia Kirke, a 25-year-old ‘Teacher of Music’ who lived at 2, Holly Bush Hill in Hampstead, London. Elvira's place of birth is recorded as ‘Sambleben, Germany,’ which is a village east of Hanover.
Her name is mentioned in numerous newspapers during the 1860s since she appeared as a singer at various concerts and oratorios. When she sang in Handel’s Messiah at Birmingham Town Hall on 27 December 1862, the other principal vocalists were Euphrosyne Parepa and Sims Reeves, so she was clearly a singer of some calibre.
On 6 October 1864 at St Marylebone’s she married Thomas Mather of ‘Holywell in the County of Flint.’ Her marriage certificate gives her full name which was Hedwig Louisa Elvira Behrens. According to the certificate, her father was Carl Heinrich Behrens, a Lutheran minister.
‘MATHER - BEHRENS - 6th inst, at the church of Marylebone, London […] Thomas, eldest son of the late Thomas Mather, Esq., of Glyn Abbot, near Holywell, North Wales, to Elvira, eldest daughter of Pastor Behrens, of St Pauli, Hamburg’ (Chester Chronicle, 8 October 1864).
On the night that the census was taken in 1871, Thomas was at home in London at 26 Lansdowne Crescent in Kensington. Also present on the night of the census were a cook, a housemaid and a kitchenmaid. Elvira was elsewhere that night. For his profession Thomas gave ‘Income from investments.’ The census return includes the information that Thomas was blind (although this condition is not included on the 1861 census, which also had a column specifically for this sort of information).
On 8 October 1871 in the parish of Holywell in Flint, ‘Anna Hilda Mather, the adopted child of Thomas & Elvira Mather’ was baptised.
Thomas Mather died on 17 December 1876 in a railway accident in the South of France. He left an estate valued at £14,000.
‘MATHER — On the 17th ult. (his 37th birthday), killed together with his servant, in the terrible railway collision near Aix-les-Bains, Savoy, Thomas Mather, Esq., of 64, Seymour-street, Portman-square, London, eldest son of the late Thomas Mather, Esq., of Glyn Abbot, Flintshire’ (Wrexham Guardian and Denbighshire and Flintshire Advertiser, 13 January 1877).
When Elvira’s daughter sang in London during the 1890s, several journalists recalled the mother:
‘Miss Anna Mather, who makes her first appearance in London this afternoon at Mrs Willard’s matinée, is the daughter of Madame Elvira Behrens, a name that frequenters in days gone by of oratorios and concerts will recall, for the young Hanoverian in those days before her marriage was the most popular artiste of her time’ (Westminster Gazette, 8 June 1893).
‘Her mother, before she retired from the boards, was known as Mdlle. Elvira Behrens, a popular concert and oratorio singer. Miss Mather’s uncle, Conrad Behrens, was also a noted singer, being first bass at Her Majesty’s (under the Mapleson management) in the time of Tietiens, Trebelli, and Christine Nilsson’ (The Stage, 26 December 1895).
Elvira Hedwig Louise Mather, a widow of 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury, died on 25 March 1910, leaving an estate valued at £1245. Her executor was Harriet Katinka Johanne Louise Boult, also a widow.
‘MATHER — March 25, at 4, Taviton-street, Gordon-square. Elvira (née Behrens), widow of Thomas Mather, of 62 Seymour Street, Portman-square, in her 75th year’ (The Era, 2 April 1910).
‘GREAT CONTRALTO DEAD — By the death of Mrs Elvira Mather, who, to the regret of legions of admiring friends, young and old, passed away at her London residence on Good Friday, another link is lost with the musical world of the Victorian era. As Miss Elvira Behrens, Mrs Mather, when a young woman, enjoyed a most brilliant career as a contralto, singing with Sims Reeves, Charles Santley, and other vocal celebrities of her time at the first Popular Concerts, and receiving on several occasions words of compliment and encouragement from Queen Victoria. The late singer was the mother of Miss Anna Mather, the well-known reciter’ (Northern Daily Telegraph, 29 March 1910).
[The book propped upside-down against the flowerpot on the plinth on the left is Silvy's photographic treatise on the Sforza manuscript, which was published in 1860.]