Whatever Happened to Henry Whale?
By Jonathan L. Hoppe
Residents of the Benedict Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles realized they had not seen actress Yvette Vickers in over year when her body was discovered in her home in April 2011. The news was a sensation in the tabloid press, but to those who knew her, the discovery was not unexpected; they had watched her grow increasingly paranoid and estranged from those who were once important in her life as she retreated into herself. They had come to see her as “a recluse by her choice.” It was in that self-imposed isolation, surrounded by the hoarded debris that had formed the last years of her life, where she died. When news of her passing was announced, many wondered how someone of such talent and promise could have come to such a lonely end.
132 years prior, the same questions were asked in the Philadelphia area after Henry Whale didn’t show himself to his Westtown Township neighbors one cold January morning in 1879.
That he wasn’t out and about that morning in and of itself wasn’t unusual; Whale lived alone in his own quiet way, a veritable hermit. They cared for and respected the old man and his choice to live as he did. They let him be in his choice of solitude, permitting him to reach out to them when he chose to do so. But when there were no stirrings whatsoever from within his little frame house on the Wilmington Pike by late afternoon, his neighbors grew concerned. Whale had told them that if he should some day not show himself at his usual hours, that something must be wrong. Two teenagers, Frank Coburn and Wilfred Cheever, took it upon themselves to check on their reclusive neighbor. Finding his windows locked and doors barred, they secured a ladder and effected entry through a second-story window. There they found him, dead at the threshold of his bedroom; he had had a heart attack in the night. He was 75 years old.
Later, at a public sale of the residue of his estate after his death, Ebenezer Faucett purchased a ratty-looking violin that belonged to the old man for $1.06—less than $30 in today’s money. Faucett would spend a great deal more than that putting the fiddle back into good repair, for it was said to be the favorite instrument of its departed owner—Henry Whale, former child star, musical prodigy, and at one time the most famous teacher of dance in the United States.
What had led a man of such renown to such an ignominious end?
Henry Whale was born on July 14, 1803 near Bath, England, son of dancing Thomas Whale. When Henry was a young child, his father moved his family to London in the hope of finding more of a market for his talents. There, in the spring of 1804, he partnered with a Mr. Wills at his school on Golden Square, Soho, offering regular classes and private lessons to the city’s wealthiest elites. In 1805, Mr. Wills was called to teach the court of King George III at Buckingham Palace, leaving the duties of the school at Golden Square solely in the charge of Thomas Wale.
By 1808, Thomas had dissolved the partnership and was looking for new opportunities. He decided to settle in Philadelphia, then the second-largest city in the United States. In 1809, he removed his family there and opened up his own dancing school on South Front Street. Shortly after their arrival, Thomas attached young Henry New Theater on Chestnut Street—one of the largest and most elegant theaters in the country. There, then-six-year-old Henry took the stage name “The Infant Vestris,” after the famed French ballet dancer Gaétan Vestris—once the dancing master to the ill-fated King Louis XVI—who had died the previous year. After his debut performance at the New Theater, “Infant Vestris” became an overnight sensation. On the 27th of November of that year, The Tangram (a popular theatrical tabloid) said of the young Master Whale, “Considering that Englishmen are not reputed for the elegance and grace of their movements, he promises fair to be the head of his profession, for, laying aside the gentility of his address and the politeness of his phraseology, he powders his hair, which is at least respectably, if not elegantly, done.”
In short time the child prodigy became a hit performer of dance in the City of Brotherly Love. Over the next several seasons “Master Whale” would become such a hit that publishers would printed music from the shows in which he had danced, such as “The Shawl Dance, as danced at the New Theater by Master Whale, the infant Vestris.” By 1810, he had made his father one of the highest-paid performers in the city; by January 1812, he had his own starring ballet solo in a production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale performed at the Olympic Theater, which is today the Walnut Street Theater.
But it was not enough for Thomas Whale; in the summer season of 1812, he moved his family to New York City in search of more lucrative prospects. In October he opened a dancing academy at the City Hotel. There, Henry and his brother William (known as “The Master Whale”) performed a variety of dances at night while his father taught classes and gave lessons during the day. The young brothers would soon ascend to the New York stage, performing solos and in company with one another. Interestingly, during the War of 1812, his father had to register his family as potential “enemy aliens” with the city’s marshals, as the family were naturalized citizens from England. Evidently, their country of origin was enough to cast a pall of suspicion over them during those uncertain times. The war did not dampen their popularity, and both Henry, his brother, and his father continued to enjoy success on the stage and within the city’s social circles.
Henry Whale continued to perform on the theater circuit throughout his teenage years. By his early twenties he had grown weary of the grueling pace of that life; he longed for the city of his childhood. In September 1825, notice was given in the Philadelphia papers that “Henry Whale, known some twenty years ago as the Infant Vestris,—having danced on the Philadelphia stage with much e’clat, though very young then,—now proposes to open a dancing academy." The ad stated that he had been teaching dancing in New York and Albany. He opened his dancing school at the northwest corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets which would run for many years to come.
As he had in his youth, Henry Whale found high praise in the City. Dressed faultlessly and stylishly, Whale taught dancing, put on lavish cotillions and performances, composed music (such as a series of military quadrilles selected from various operas, arranged and dedicated to Captain George Cadwallader and the officers and members of the Philadelphia Grays, a regiment of the Pennsylvania State Militia). He was said to have inspired his pupils with a sense of pride that they had been accepted as his students. Such was his popularity and talent he grew quite wealthy—and that money he poured into real estate. Like many wealthy Philadelphians, fearing the annual yellow fever epidemics the warmer months brought to the City, he built his own summer house in the county. For its location, he decided on West Chester. He built a large and handsome brick residence at the southwest corner of Miner and New Streets. Additionally, he purchased a 43-acre farm in West Goshen Township, near McCall’s Station on the railroad (now Fern Hill). where he built a stone farmhouse. During the summer season, he gave dances and recitals in the borough and taught classes to local residents. Everything seemed to have come together in his life.
But then, something changed in him, or, perhaps, made itself a more prominent part of his personality. He began to give fewer and fewer dances and recitals. In 1847, he sold off the farm in West Goshen. Soon the big house in West Chester was disposed of, and a few other properties he had. Whale purchased considerable acreage in Westtown, ostensibly to become a gentleman farmer. Neighbors expected him to build a stately manor house in the township in which to retire, as other wealthy Philadelphians like Joseph Hulme and had done. All in all, they had every reason to expect Whale would build attractive ornament to the neighborhood which would become a local landmark
And indeed, he did build a fine stone house on Wilmington Plank Road near Darlington’s Corner—surrounded by, it was later said, the first iron fence in the neighborhood—which he occupied. But after a few years of farming, he gave up the practice entirely. In 1852, he disposed of the house and most of the land he had purchased, sold his farming equipment and many of his personal goods at a public sale, burrowed into an old wooden frame tenant house that stood on the land he had purchased, and disappeared from the public eye. He lost his tasted for most human contact, it seems, caring not for his once-faultless appearance. He allowed himself to become unkempt and slovenly, and the formerly trim and polished man that many had once known became a shadow of his former self—recognizable, it was said, only by his polite and impeccable manners.
Having no children, his last contact with his family came in the summer of 1878, when his sister Esther Marsden and her husband called on him, traveling all the way from Quebec, Canada. The couple begged the self-imposed hermit to come live with them—if not for his sake, then for hers. Their family had scattered across the continent years ago, and she and Henry were, at that time, the last of the surviving children of Thomas Whale. She was evidently persuasive, for it was said that he had been making plans to do join them in Canada.
He never did. He died alone, leaving only a few salvageable household goods and the residue of his estate over which his distant relatives would squabble for years to come, and a number of old-timers to mourn his passing. He was buried at Oaklands Cemetery under a modest monument belying the fame and prominence he had once attained.
So whatever happened to Henry Whale? Some blamed failures in the affairs of the heart, others for reasons entirely different. Perhaps it was an undiagnosed mental illness, or perhaps years of being in the spotlight from the earliest age had taken their toll. His estate finally settled, his household and goods disposed of, Henry Whale faded into obscurity. His home at Darlington’s Corner was torn down and the plot converted back to farmland; today, the Westminster Presbyterian. Church sits near where the house once stood. His stately home on Miner Street was eventually purchased by wealthy merchant J. Curtis Smith, whose wife, Mary Schreiner Smith, greatly enlarged the home after her husband’s death and converted into Fontgarth Hall, a boarding school for girls. The home did not gain its signature columned portico until the 1960s. Hidden now behind its fanciful façade is the wealth and the elegance of that forgotten personage that made it all possible—Mr. Henry Whale, of the village of Bath, England—dancing master and musical prodigy.