Mlle Beatrice

A carte-de-visite portrait of an actress identified verso as 'Mlle Beatrice.'

The V&A has an uncoloured example of this portrait; the inscription on the back identifies the sitter as 'Madame Beatrice / Beatrice Binda.' The National Portrait Gallery gives her full name as 'Marie Beatrice Binda' and gives her dates as 1839 to 1878.

At the time of the 1871 census, she was a 'Dramatic Artist' living with her sister at 9 Royal Crescent in Brighton. She was born in Italy.

According to what may well be a fanciful account, as a young man her father had been private secretary to Joachim Murat, made King of Naples by his brother-in-law Napoleon Bonaparte, but was seized by the Austrians and sentenced to death. ‘At that time there happened to be in Mantua an English nobleman whose name and house are intimately associated with much of the most brilliant and intellectual political history of England, and interested by the name this youth bore, by his courage and love of his country, he procured his liberation, and in the carriage of Sir Humphrey Davy, then accidentally in Mantua, he escaped. For a great many years the father of Mlle Beatrice lived in London, and his writings and exertions for the regeneration of Italy — always the engrossing hope of his life — procured him the intimacy and regard of the great Whig politicians of the day […] A few years ago, when in Paris, he was seized with paralysis and lay dangerously ill for some time. Neither his family nor any of his friends in this deep trouble made the slightest application to the French Emperor; but one of the Ministers of Napoleon III, having accidentally named to the French Emperor this sad case, his Imperial Majesty, without any unnecessary delay, accorded him a pension of 12,000 francs per annum. After the death of her father and mother, one-quarter of this pension, by the laws of France, continued to Mlle Beatrice and her sister. Mlle Beatrice then studied the French language, entered the Conservatoire of Paris, and succeeded in taking the first prize, and for one year appeared on the French stage; but, persuaded by an noble English lady, who throughout a long life had taken a warm interest in the fortunes of Mlle Beatrice’s family, she was induced to visit England. Her début in London has been very successful, and she has been spoken of in terms of warmest praise by the Times and other leading papers’ (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 10 May 1866).

The actress-manager Marie Beatrice Binda died on 22 December 1878 at 102 Earls Court Road in South Kensington. She left an estate valued at £3000.

Photographed by the Southwell Brothers of London.