Denvil, Mary Ann, 1809-1889

Mary Ann Denvil (1809-1889); Mary Ann Smith married Henry Denvil in 1823. Henry was of the successful Lancashire merchant Gaskell family, but he had fled to London to become an actor. He was obsessed with Manfred and named their second son after the role he played repeatedly. He became manager of the Royal Pavilion Theatre.

Marianne Smith Denvil (1809-1889), wife of Henry Gaskell Denvil (1804-1866); East End theatre, taken over by Henry Denvil in the spring of 1840; wife Marianne was the house dramatist; At the beginning of 1841, Marianne was pregnant with their seventh child; over the course of 1841, she dramatised four of Prest’s novels while he adapted a fifth; Marianne was roughly the same age as Thomas Peckett Prest; Nothing is currently known of her early life or parentage; According to genealogist Stanley W. Clives, she married Henry Gaskell Denvil in 1823 when she was only fourteen and he was nineteen; she would only be writing to provide for her family; Thomas Frost (1821-1908) names Mrs. Denvil as a Lloyd author, alongside Prest, but I have found no corroborating evidence that she did write novels, let alone for Lloyd; In 1841, Henry and Marianne Denvil lived just around the corner from the Pavilion Theatre on Mount Street, now Mount Terrace, a short street that stretches east from New Road; children: 10-year-old Rosalie, William, 9, Manfred, 7, Isabella, 3, and Alice, 2;
Ela, the Outcast (1840-1841), Prest’s incredibly popular retelling of Hannah Maria Jones’s Gipsey Girl (1836), was first performed at the Pavilion in February 1841, Marianne nevertheless had plenty of material to construct her play; Marianne’s newborn son died during the second half of the year, but she had to keep writing; She ripped her next dramatisation, which premiered in July, from the pages of the Penny Sunday Times, ‘The Death Grasp’; Around the moment Kathleen appeared on stage, Punch made fun of Mrs. Denvil’s dramatisations, implying that she will dramatise anything; In early December 1842, the trustees complained that Henry was not repaying his debt and entered into legal proceedings. He retaliated by packing a full house on Monday 5 December, and then refusing to play. A performer estimated he ‘might have cleared £60, and perhaps more’ that evening. Marianne is mentioned in the account as having publicly supported her husband, shouting from the boxes, where she stood: ‘Bravo, Denvil, don’t play!’; While Henry found short-term employment at a variety of theatres after the Pavilion debacle, Marianne sold her plays to a different set of venues, including a dramatisation of Lloyd’s Helen Porter; or, a wife’s tragedy and a sister’s trials (1847) entitled Pride and Crime presented at the Effingham Saloon (October 1846), midway through the romance’s two-year serialisation.

Mary Ann Denvil; age 80; died in District of Strand, 1889