Harriet Kendall

Harriet Kendall was born in April 1857 in Bowness-on-Windermere, Westmorland, to George and Eleanor Kendall of Belmont House, Bowness. A singer, elocutionist, pianist, poet, and composer of ballads, she pursued formal training at the Royal Academy of Music beginning in 1876, where she studied voice under Manuel García and developed a contralto. Her elocution training came from Walter Lacy and Geneviève Ward.

Kendall earned the Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music in singing performance in 1893, the same year she received an Associate diploma from the Royal College of Music for external examination in singing teaching. The Associate of the Royal Academy of Music designation followed much later, awarded in 1932. She held memberships in both the Incorporated Society of Musicians and the Royal Society of Literature, and she served as a lecturer in elocution at King's College, Ladies Department, while also teaching music at the High School on Park Road, St Margarets. She was an advocate for establishing formal examination standards in elocution, a cause supported by Dr. Wace, Principal of King's College, London, from 1883 to 1897.

Her performing career encompassed dramatic and musical recitals at prominent London venues including the Queen's Hall, Prince's Hall, Royal Albert Hall, and St James's Hall, as well as engagements in the provinces. She appeared in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royalty Theatre, directed by Mrs. Fairfax, the pseudonym of Emily Ernst Bell, who taught elocution at the Royal Albert Hall. Kendall also performed scenes from Shakespeare's plays throughout her career, and in 1930, for Shakespeare's birthday celebration, a portion of her poem on Shakespeare was placed on the official wreath laid at his tomb.

On Broadway, Kendall performed between 1900 and 1912, appearing in the musicals Aunt Hannah and My Best Girl. Her compositions included the ballads A Game of Tennis, published in 1886, and Richmond Park, as well as A Song of Remembrance from 1892, which set Christina Rossetti's poem Remember to music.

As a poet, Kendall published A Lakeland Story in 1888, illustrated by Tom Taylor and Alfred Woodruff and issued by J. Walker and Co. in London. Her collection Synariss, and Other Poems for Recitation followed in 1894, published by Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co. Her poem An Incident in the Marriage Market of Babylon appeared in 1890, and her work was published in various newspapers and magazines.

For nearly fifty years Kendall lived at Elsinore, 8 Park Road, St Margarets, East Twickenham, with her companion Eleanor Piggott, with whom she traveled extensively across Europe. On 4 September 1912, she married Arthur MacDonald, a surveyor from Tring, at St George's, Hanover Square, London, with Dr. Wace officiating. Kendall died on 16 September 1933 in a nursing home in Eastbourne, Sussex, and was buried in Richmond Cemetery. Her will provided her husband with an income until any remarriage, with the remainder left to Eleanor Piggott, who died on 31 March 1937 and is interred in the same grave.

Following her death, a gold medal for elocution bearing her name was established, with the Harriet Kendall Prize awarded from 1934 to 1962.