Postcard History

This postcard, published by Aristophot Co., London, is simply titled Alexandra Carlisle. It was mailed on January 8, 1909.

Alexandra Carlisle was an English actress born in Hackney in 1886. Although “Carlisle” is a stage name, she was named Alexandra Elizabeth Swift when born. The 1891 census recorded her as a 5-year-old living in Hackney with her parents Henry E. Swift, a teacher and his wife Alexandra. At that time she had a one-year-old sister named Winifred.

Ten years later the family is still in Hackney and Henry E. Swift is now a school master. Alexandra, then 15, had been sent to work as a clerk in a butcher’s shop. It is reasonable to assume the family has improved their residency since almost all their neighbors are of the professional class. There are numerous teachers, musicians, and bankers nearby.

An early newspaper appearance of the name Miss Alexandra Carlisle was in 1903 although her mainstream popularity appears to have started closer to 1906 or 1907. Her roles appear to have been mainly Shakespearean and she was a proper actress, as opposed to a variety show performer.

In the spring of 1905, she married Victor Herbert Miller and started what may be called her collection of husbands. Little has been found concerning her first marriage and Mr. Miller may have been a journalist born in Milan in 1879. Miller was frequently the defendant in legal affairs including one in which he was ‘the gentleman’ cited in a 1921 divorce case where the wife of Colonel James Archibald Innes divorced his wife on the grounds of adultery with one Victor Herbert Miller. In any event Miss Alexandra Swift, or Mrs. Miller would have cared little as she had divorced him by that time. In fact, she divorced Miller in 1907 and in 1908 she married husband number two, the American-born vaudevillian and musical comedy actor Joseph Coyne.

Her marriage to Joseph Coyne started with a secret wedding and was not picked up by the theatre press until much later. She may have been better not to have announced the marriage at all as by October 1912 it had ended in divorce. Also in that month, she married Dr. Albert Pfeiffer, (#3) an American surgeon and dentist. The wedding took place in England and once again it was kept secret. Together they had one daughter, Elizabeth Ann Pfeiffer.

The following is from the Sheffield Daily Telegraph of May 30, 1923: Miss Alexandra Carlisle divorced in America. Dr. Albert Pfeiffer, of the State Board of Health Department, yesterday successfully sued, says a Central News Boston (U.S.A.) message, for a divorce from Alexandra Carlisle, leading woman in “The Fool,” on the grounds of desertion. It was stated they were married in London in 1912. Miss Carlisle, who was born in London in 1886, made her stage debut at 17 years of age, and has appeared at all the best-known theatres in London and the provinces, as well as in America, where she has spent a considerable time. Her last appearance in London was in 1921, when she played the part of Stella in “Three” at the Comedy Theatre.

During the American Presidential election period, August to November 1920, Miss Carlisle was the principal woman speaker elected from the State of Massachusetts, addressing the convention in Chicago and seconding the Republican candidate.”

After three husbands and three divorces surely, that was enough! Well not quite. In 1923 she married an American engineer named J. Elliott Jenkins (#4). Jenkins was one of the finest radio engineers in the country and enjoyed international fame. Despite all that, he died in 1934 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, reputedly due to the failure of a business in which he was a partner. It transpires that J. Elliott and Miss Carlisle were separated, and she was heading for divorce number four.

The following additional information has been found on a theatrical website: Miss Carlisle became a permanent resident of the USA in 1915, where she became a prominent suffragist speaker and Republican Party activist. She was a principal speaker for the state of Massachusetts at the 1920 Republican convention and seconded the nomination of Calvin Coolidge as candidate for the vice-presidency.

In 1932, Carlisle was awarded a Gold Medal for Purity of Diction by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She died in New York City in the Astor Hotel from a heart attack on April 21, 1936. Two days later, on the 23rd, the Daily Herald carried the following: Miss Alexandra Carlisle, the London-born actress, was found in the bathroom of her suite in a New York hotel last night. The cause of death is unknown. Police are trying to solve the riddle. Miss Carlisle was aged 50. Only two years ago her husband, Mr. Elliot Jenkins, a manufacturer of radio equipment, shot himself dead in a Chicago Hotel. Miss Carlisle, who was separated from him was living in the same hotel, 11 floors below. At the inquest it was stated that he was depressed by the failure of a business in which he was a partner.”

How strange that one who enjoyed a career that spanned 30 years could still find time for politics and four husbands.

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Around 1711, Shakespeare wrote in his play, The Tempest, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” The line is spoken by a man who has been shipwrecked and finds himself seeking shelter beside a sleeping monster. The quote was amended in the 1800s to, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”