EVELYN DOVE Britain’s Black Cabaret Queen

Nonfiction

A grand Victorian, nearly forgotten

EVELYN DOVE
Britain’s Black Cabaret Queen
By Stephen Bourne

160 pp. Jacaranda Books

Reviewed by Sala Wyman

Biographies of performing artists are my guilty pleasure. I enjoy stories that that carry me along the roads leading to an artist’s career. And perhaps because I've been a performer myself, stories about performers remind me of the grit it takes to make and leave a mark in the world. Those who make it and are remembered must be very, very tough and resilient. They appear to have a particular kind of toughness. I call it the “killer instinct.”`

In Stephen Bourne’s Evelyn Dove, Britain’s Black Cabaret Queen, he gives a portrait of an artist who apparently did not have that instinct. More interesting, however, and even more importantly, he documents the growth of the black theater movement in Europe and the forgotten role that Evelyn Dove played in that movement.

I expected Bourne’s portrait of Dove to be linear, with a beginning, middle and an end—a story. Bourne is a Caucasian British social historian specializing in black culture—a surprise for me. He’s a researcher, and a good one who documents data, not emotional life. That being said, I filled a teapot and shifted my emotional gears a bit; Bourne is not a storyteller.

Long before the Internet, Twitter, Facebook and all the variations of social media, brilliant artists with extensive performance careers slipped into eternity unknown. Thanks to Bourne, Evelyn Dove has received a level of notoriety she deserves. Someone needed to speak for her, and Bourne stepped up to the plate. 

Dove’s death in a nursing home in 1987 went completely unnoticed by the public. One old friend and two nursing home staff people attended her funeral, and no obituaries were published—anywhere. It was a heartbreaking end for a woman so admired during her performing career.

Bourne’s skill as a researcher is impressive. With very little paper trail, much like an anthropologist excavating a site, he whittled away at every lead he could find. As much as I prefer romanticism in a performer’s life, I was drawn in by history. 

Interview by painstaking interview, article by article, and photograph by exquisite photograph, Bourne puts together the picture of a biracial cabaret singer in the early twentieth century England, a world as racially complex as our world, in the United States, is today. 

There were no laws against interracial marriage at the close of Victorian England, and Evelyn Dove’s mother, Augusta Winchester, a middle-class white woman, married a successful African lawyer from Sierra Leone, Frans Dove. The children, Evelyn and her brother Frank, apparently flourished. They enjoyed private schools, and Evelyn was trained at a prestigious musical academy. Bourne’s work gives the impression that they were protected enough to reach adulthood with a degree of self-confidence that enabled Evelyn to move comfortably within European performing circles, and her brother to achieve prominence in the military. 

Dove entertained audiences in Europe, the United States, and India and, as the first female black singer to broadcast on the BBC, became the first to have her own radio show on the BBC in 1946. Her roles in theatrical performances included work with Eartha Kitt and Josephine Baker (an adversary), and reviews ran the gamut from moderate to great, yet she died penniless and alone.

Bourne’s search for relatives and performers who knew Dove yielded few, with sometimes vague and rambling memories, even from family. In 2002, when Bourne contacted Evelyn's niece Olive, Frank's daughter, she told Bourne: 

I was fascinated to read all the information you have gathered about my aunt, Evelyn Dove, and the rest of the Dove family much of which was unknown to me. When I was a child, it never occurred to me to ask questions… Of course I do have odd memories of Evelyn. She was very grand, like her mother Augusta, who was a Victorian lady; very austere... But also remember going to see her when she was in “South Pacific.” Strangely enough I have no memory or idea why the family lost contact with her in the 50s and, unfortunately, there is no one left to ask.

Bourne was able to locate, befriend, and interview two of Dove’s good friends before they died. Isabelle Lucas and Adelaide Hall both were Dove’s performance colleagues, but even Hall was somewhat limited in memory, saying: 

She was a really lovely girl and a very smart looking girl… I think Evelyn was English, born in this country and she joined up with her company… I remember Evelyn Sang well and looked good…

Isabelle Lucas was the friend who attended Dove’s funeral.

Bourne’s focus on black culture is respectful and laudatory. With little access to people who actually knew Dove, Bourne has done a good job of piecing together her role in the growth of the black theater movement and musical performance in England. 

But equally as important, the book reveals Bourne’s skill as a social historian. Dove’s story, while an interesting read, is skillfully woven into the larger world of British black arts and culture. 

I began this book looking for a leisurely read about a jazz artist from the 1930s and realized pretty quickly that it was also a history lesson. I was inspired to search the Internet for any recordings by Dove, and found two—the only two that Bourne was able to retrieve.

In the end, I liked the book although I found some of the extensive family histories dry and uninteresting. I also found that some of the quotes from people who knew about or worked with Dove lacked the kind of depth and spiciness that could have given me a real picture of her personality. Bourne’s work, however, is worth reading.