Nell de Silva

Nell de Silva (a.k.a. Nell Dasilva, Nina de Silva, and Lady Martin-Harvey) was an English actress who was the wife of John Martin Harvey (later styled Sir John Martin-Harvey) and the mother of actor Michael Martin Harvey and actress Muriel Martin-Harvey. She was born Angelita Helena Margarita de Silva Ferro on August 28, 1869 in Chile and became a "friend" of Lewis Carroll when she was a young girl, after her family moved to England. She met her husband when both were members of Henry Irving's famous acting company at the Lyceum Theatre. Irving was indisputably the greatest actor of his generation, but he had kept John in minor roles for 14 years. At the close of the 19th century, the thespian couple decided to strike out on their own; all they lacked was a suitable property. While participating in Irving's North American tour of 1897-98, Nina chose Charles Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" as the property that would launch their careers independent of Irving. They began writing their own adaptation in Chicago, and when they got back to London, they hired the playwright Freeman Wills's to continue the adaptation of the classic novel into a dramatic property. The couple managed to obtain financing for the play, called "The Only Way", and were able to rent the Lyceum itself to stage it in. "The Only Way" was a very liberal adaption of the novel, and the character of Sydney Carton's French maid was created to give the 30-something Nell a part as she was too old to play the teenager Lucie Manette. (John Martin Havey, of course, was Carton.) The play opened to good reviews and good business in London in February of 1899 and made the couple's reputations, but business soon fell off. The Martin Harvey company's 1900-01 London season was poor, likely as they were using plays and and acting techniques that were seen as old-fashioned at the dawn of the 20th Century by sophisticated Londoners. Reeling from poor houses in London, a friend advised Harvey Martin to go on a provincial tour with "The Only Way". He did and made a great success of it, so much so that he became known as "The King of the Provinces." By 1921, he had notched the 2,000 performance of "The Only Way" and played another 1,000 by his own account. (One account claims the play was staged 5,000 times by Martin Harvey.) John Martin Harvey proved to the "The King of the Provinces" in North America, too, literally. His 1903 tour of The States was a disaster and it was re-routed to Canada where he again was a great success in the Provinces of the Dominion. He returned to Canada in the fall of 1919 and often toured there for the following 15 years. The Canadians of the time were not off-put by his old fashioned productions; they saw Martin Harvey, his wife and their company as a link to the culture of "The Old Country". During World War One, John Martin Harvey toured the country giving military recruitment lectures and raising money for the Red Cross and other charities, raising the princely sum of 25,000 pounds (approximately $1.5 million in 2012 money). The most notable charity he and his wife supported was the Nation's Fund for Nurses, which had been established in 1917 by the British Women's Hospital Committee to support the newly created College of Nursing with the aim of providing relief for sick or disabled nurses. John and Nell Martin Harvey raised enough money to buy a building for the College of Nursing in 1920 which became a rest home for nurses. When he was knighted in the New Year's Honours List of 1921, her husband hyphenated his name, styling himself Sir John Martin-Harvey. She became Lady Martin-Harvey. They continued to appear on stage and tour the provinces and Canada well into the 1930s. Sir John shuffled off his mortal coil in 1944 and she followed him in 1949.