Beginnings Bond was born in
Camden Town, London, the third of five children (and eldest daughter) born to John Bond Jr, a piano maker, and Elizabeth
née Simson, a lawyer's daughter. Bond and her siblings were given a musical education, and her mother often took the children to see theatre. When Jessie Bond was a young girl, her family moved to
Liverpool, where she grew up. At the age of ten, she played a
Beethoven piano sonata in a concert. To help with family expenses, Bond taught music as a teenager. At the age of sixteen, she began to study singing, which she much preferred to teaching. The same year, at Hope Hall (now the
Everyman Theatre) in Liverpool, she accompanied the music students of professor Isouard Praeger, her piano teacher. The next year, she made her own concert singing debut. the director of a choral society in Liverpool, who she hoped would be able to help Bond's singing career. Schottländer was ten years older than Bond and had travelled, and the teenaged Bond became fascinated by him, breaking off her previous relationship. She soon became the leading
contralto soloist at the Seel Street Benedictine Church (now known as St. Peter's Catholic Church) in the same city. Her father's enquiries revealed that Schottländer was a "bad lot", and he forbade any engagement until Bond was older. On 8 March 1870, by Bond's account, Schottländer abducted the 17-year-old Bond on her way to sing at a church service, took her to a friend's house and forced her to stay the night with him. He convinced her that she was "compromised" and that they must marry. The next day, she was taken to
Manchester, where they were married. The marriage was a terrible experience for Bond, and she became pregnant and ill. "He ill-treated both my mind and my body, he denied me every comfort, often I had not even enough to eat. To add to my wretchedness, the inevitable baby was coming. ... He had been violently ill-treating me, I was a broken, pitiful creature." The couple lived separately for several years, and Bond finally divorced her husband in 1874. Bond stated in her divorce petition that she had been knowingly infected with a communicable disease by her husband. In November 1871, Mr and
Mrs Howard Paul's Benefit at the Queen's Hall, Liverpool, featured
J. L. Toole, and "Miss Jessie Bond and Miss
Pattie Laverne both sing several new ballads". In 1873, she was the contralto soloist in
Mendelssohn's Elijah in
Birkenhead and in
Handel's Messiah in Liverpool. In 1875 at the Liverpool Institute, she sang in
J. L. Hatton's Enchantress. She became friendly with the baritone
Charles Santley, who advised her to move to London to study at the
Royal Academy of Music. Bond did so, studying with
Manuel García and then J. B. Welch, and she continued to sing concerts both in the provinces and in London. For example, in the summer of 1877, she appeared at the
Queen's Theatre in London in at least three of the conductor Jules Rivière's promenade concerts and was widely seen throughout Britain into 1878.
H.M.S. Pinafore In May 1878, Bond made her first appearance on the dramatic stage at the age of 25, creating the role of Cousin Hebe in
W. S. Gilbert and
Arthur Sullivan's
H.M.S. Pinafore. The role had been written for a veteran performer,
Mrs Howard Paul, but Gilbert and Sullivan were unhappy with Mrs. Paul's vocal abilities, which were deteriorating. Finally, with only about a week to go before opening night, Carte hired Bond to play Cousin Hebe. At this stage of her career, Bond was not comfortable with spoken dialogue, and so her character was written out, or given nothing to say, in several scenes. After opening night, however, a portion of the
recitative was converted to spoken dialogue, and Bond would have dialogue in all of the remaining roles that she created. She quickly grew to enjoy character acting. In December 1878, Bond created the part of Maria in
After All!, composed by
Alfred Cellier, when that companion piece was added to the bill with
Pinafore. In fact, the management knew about Bond's abscess, since Sullivan's diary records that both he and Gilbert visited her during her temporary incapacity, and Sullivan paid the doctor's bill. Bond's next role was Lady Angela in
Patience (1881–82). She did not much like the role, writing later that she did not relate to the sentimental lady of luxury indulging in the aesthetic craze. By this time, Bond was becoming known to audiences and attracting the notice of young men. Having had such a bad experience with a man in the past, Bond ignored such attentions. One poem sent to her by an admirer ran in mock-Gilbertian style as follows (in part): :Whene'er I chance/A backward glance,/At times when, off my filbert :With you (my "mash!"),/I blew my cash/On Sullivan and Gilbert! :I loved you then/With all my pen/(My heart's amanuensis), :And folks who read/Sat up and said/"His love for her immense is!" :Nor were they wrong;/Your merry song —/You sing divinely, sweetly! :Your lively dance/And roguish glance/Had captured me completely! :I don't complain!/I'd still remain/A pris'ner now and ever! :From such a Bond/'Tis far beyond/My humble wish to sever! :Now, pray don't scold,/I know I'm bold,/But, still, I'm not a sinner. For, :Remember this,/I've known you, miss,/Since you were in a Pinafore! Bond's first entrance as Iolanthe was across a "stream". She wrote in her memoirs about a performance of
Iolanthe: "Realism can be carried too far, as it was when one night a zealous property man said to me: 'It'll be just like the real thing to-night, Miss Bond. I've put some frogs into the water!' 'Then you'll just have to fish them out again,' I retorted, 'and the curtain won't go up until you do.' They had to catch those frogs in an inverted umbrella. Everybody got splashed and agitated, and the performance was delayed for some time."
Iolanthe was followed by
Princess Ida (1884), in which Bond played the role of Melissa. Bond played the role of Constance in the first revival of
The Sorcerer (1884–85). The role had originally been written for a soprano, and some of the music was transposed down to suit Bond's lower range and
tessitura. Another feature of this revival was the pairing of Bond's character with that of
Rutland Barrington's. The combination was so successful that in later
Savoy operas, Bond and Barrington were generally paired.
The Mikado and Ruddigore Bond next created the role of Pitti-Sing in
The Mikado (1885–87), one of the "three little maids from school". Sometimes, inspiration for plot points in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas was provided by characteristics of the performers themselves. For instance, Gilbert noted in an interview that the fact that the female singers to be engaged for
The Mikado,
Leonora Braham, Bond, and
Sybil Grey, were all of short stature inspired him to make them schoolgirls—three "little" maids—and to treat them as a closely linked trio throughout the work as much as possible. Bond, however, knew how to stand out on stage. During preparations for
The Mikado, she persuaded the wardrobe mistress to make the
obi of her costume twice as big as that of the other "little maids". She wrote: "I made the most of my big, big bow, turning my back to the audience whenever I got a chance, and waggling it. The gallery was delighted, but I nearly got the sack for that prank! However, I did get noticed, which was what I wanted." ,
Braham and Bond in
The Mikado After seven years with D'Oyly Carte, and still earning money from private and concert singing engagements, Bond's salary had risen to the point where she was able to move into a better flat and hire a maid. Though she was happy with her success, Bond (somewhat like Sullivan) longed to devote herself to singing serious music. She wrote that when she was in a thoughtful mood, she would consider the following: I had worked so hard at serious music, I had loved it so much and been so successful, that it was not without a pang that I gave it all up to sing little songs and choruses that were, after all, child's play to me. ...[O]ften my heart ached when I thought of those days when I lived in an atmosphere of music of the highest order, and could express my inmost self in it. ...[S]ometimes when I thought things over I felt how far I had fallen from that first austere ideal, and wished that fame and success could have come in a higher sphere. '', 1887 Bond next created the role of Mad Margaret in
Ruddigore (1887; originally spelt "Ruddygore"), which she regarded as her favourite of all the Gilbert and Sullivan roles, "for it gave me the chance to show what I really could do as an actress." The part was her largest to date, and Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte made her audition it for them to be sure that she could handle the responsibility. Bond recalled: "It was an awful ordeal. I saw the three white faces looming out of the darkness as they sat close together; criticizing me, talking me over, with cold managerial detachment. It nearly killed me. Perhaps it gave an added realism and abandon to my simulated madness, for indeed I was nearly mad with fear – but at any rate I came through triumphantly, they were all three of them delighted." Bond next appeared in the first revivals of
H.M.S. Pinafore (1887–88),
Pirates (1888), and
The Mikado (1888) recreating her earlier roles. She had developed an enthusiastic following among the audiences at the
Savoy Theatre. During this period, Bond also appeared in
To the Death by fellow savoyard
Rutland Barrington (1888) and
Locked In (1889).
Yeomen and The Gondoliers in
Yeomen, 1888 True to Gilbert's word, Bond's next original role was the important role of Phœbe Meryll in
The Yeomen of the Guard (1888–89). Bond wrote, "My share in the most beautiful of all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas was delightfully easy and natural. When Gilbert gave it to me at the first reading he said, 'Here you are, Jessie, you needn't act this, it's you.'"
Last years on stage 1891 duo act|thumb|left|upright After
The Gondoliers closed, Gilbert and Sullivan were estranged for a time, and Carte hired Bond to play Chinna-Loofa in
Dance,
Desprez and
Solomon's
The Nautch Girl (1891). Although her salary continued to rise, she was less happy at the Savoy after Gilbert's departure. She took a three-month leave from the D'Oyly Carte organisation in August 1891, together with Rutland Barrington, performing a series of "musical duologues" and sketches, written mostly by Barrington and composed by
Edward Solomon, on a provincial tour, where they received good notices and profits. Bond also did some of the writing. She passed up the opportunity to create a role in Gilbert's next opera,
The Mountebanks at the
Lyric Theatre (1892), as she was still under contract to Carte. She and Barrington returned to the Savoy in November, but Bond left the D'Oyly Carte organisation at the end of the run of
The Nautch Girl in January 1892, as there was no role for her in the next
Savoy opera,
The Vicar of Bray. Bond was unwilling to accept the part offered to her in the next Savoy piece,
Haddon Hall (1892).
Poor Jonathan (1893),
Corney Courted (1893), a revival of
Pickwick by Solomon and
F. C. Burnand (1893) and others. In 1894, she also played in
Wapping Old Stairs, by Stuart Robertson and
Howard Talbot (with
Courtice Pounds and
Richard Temple), and
Pick-me-up at the
Trafalgar Square Theatre (with
George Grossmith, Jr. and
Letty Lind). During these years, Bond owned a
fox terrier named Bob. She returned to the Savoy to play Pitti-Sing in the revivals of
The Mikado that ran off and on from November 1895 to February 1897. When the revivals were over, Bond left the stage. Bond wrote of her feelings at the end of her last performance: "Twenty years of hard work, twenty years of fun and frolic and jolly companionship, twenty years of living in an atmosphere of tuneful nonsense, with the glare of the footlights in my eyes and the thunders of applause in my ears. How terribly I should miss it all! And domesticity, that all my life I had fled from, had caught me at last." Bond and Ransome moved near the new factory to a large house in
Farndon. Initially reluctant to leave London, Bond reported, "We entertained a good deal, and gave hunt lunches and shooting parties of our own, so my time was well filled up, and I missed London less than I could have believed." Together with
George Power,
Leonora Braham and
Julia Gwynne, she was one of four artistes of the original
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company who attended a reunion at the
Savoy Hotel in 1914. The four then posed for a group photograph beside the
Arthur Sullivan Memorial in the
Victoria Embankment Gardens (see photo below). Her husband died in May 1922, after 25 years of marriage. Two years later, Bond moved out of the large house to
Newark-on-Trent and later to
Worthing, Sussex, and often visited London. In the 1920s, Bond wrote several articles about her memories of Gilbert and Sullivan and her years with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for
The Strand Magazine and
The Gilbert & Sullivan Journal. Her autobiography,
The Life and Reminiscences of Jessie Bond, the Old Savoyard, was published in 1930. In that book, she expressed great admiration particularly for Gilbert, but also for Sullivan and D'Oyly Carte, and she bemoaned overacting by performers in the "modern" era. In March 1930, the Gilbert and Sullivan Society invited the original three little maids to a reunion in London to celebrate the 45th anniversary of
The Mikado. In her last years, Bond entertained wounded
World War I servicemen, playing the piano and singing at a south coast home for disabled soldiers and sailors. An obituary in the
Evening Standard reported: "Every day for more than a year, until just recently, she was taken out in her wheelchair. After a breath of sea air ... she would always go into her favourite hotel for a drink and would often sit down at the piano and entertain the company with some of her old Gilbert and Sullivan tunes. She often used to go to a home for wounded ex-servicemen of the last war [and] would give an impromptu entertainment, playing and singing her old songs. She liked to go to parties and would always play and sing." The
Worthing Gazette stated that Bond continued to be much loved in her later years, and people came to see her from all over Britain to pay homage in her old age. The
Worthing Herald wrote: "Despite her great age, Miss Bond preserved a quick and active mind, and hated to be fussed over." She died in 1942 at age 89 in Worthing. ==Notes==