A ballad for Amy Daniel (1856-1936), merchant adventurer (think Peaky Blinders – series 1 – on sailing ships), playwright, producer, theatre impresaria, timber baroness. Not only did she write plays, she produced them. Not only did she produce them, she built the theatres; not only did she build the theatres she imported the timber with which they were built; and she sent shows of travelling players to the “Wild West”. She was first to produce Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas at her Opera Comique theatre in Soho.
My mother gave me the double entendres
neck of the chicken, rumbleseat ride
and How we all loved Frank Sinatra.
There’s a hole in the bucket Dear Thomas, Dear Thomas,
the Navy-wife life was hard,
in Nissen-hut yards on the western slope,
changing the baby in back of the car.
Ma could have been a Top Bond Girl,
enchanting Comandante Che
in halls with actors’ treasure, every
ship an Ensign’s cavalcade.
Slow rolling foam blown off the top
of a schooner risking the Horn,
with a cargo of steel tools
for Oregon timber ports.
Great grandma was a pioneer,
raised with wagon stock.
Born in Philly in ‘56
She fled the war to Mexico,
little girl in the firelight
putting on a show for sawyers
with nine fingers in the barrel.
Amy grew up in logging camps.
Her father traded iron,
from Philadelphia in Pacific schooners:
complex streams of wood on water,
nothing more than ships and theatre,
let the showgirl shine:
glowing on the boards behind
the rovers driving cargo and players
who sustained them,
brewed the beer, distilled the whisky,
loved and entertained them,
where slippers trod on shoals of cod
and countless danced forgotten.
She arrived in London in ‘71,
travelled as much as anyone,
married a musician and went to work.
Her ships rode past Hispaniola
in the lee of Guantanamo Bay,
making for Veracruz
and the Mexican Railway.
Across the isthmus to Cortez –
nowadays it’s jet-skis skipping
in the bay of Acapulco, crypto
fin-tech, asset-stripping pleasure
off the top, while in the base
mazut lies curdled all that was ever
wrought, as the blades she shipped from England
to mills in the Cascades,
Douglas fir and Oregon pine
built her theatres and music halls,
symphony orchestras, too.
Great colonial redwood beams
holding the gods aloft,
sheds on the shore side of customs,
counting the board-feet off.
She trod it with trotters and hoofers, high-kicking
kittens, daughters in romeo roles
who went round the hills of the new frontier
bringing the timber home.
George Roberts
July 2023
rWorld2 