Entertaining Mr Coppin
George Coppin was an actor, politician, philanthropist and theatrical entrepreneur in pre-Federation Australia whose tireless work to promote the performing arts helped to transform and legitimise the burgeoning industry. From building grand new theatres to bringing out the brightest British and American stars to perform on Australian stages, Coppin was the kind of man who thrived on taking big risks – risks that only sometimes paid off.
In 1864, Coppin embarked on his biggest gamble yet: a two-year theatrical tour of the United States in the company of eminent British actors Charles and Ellen Kean. It is this extraordinary period of an extraordinary man’s life that is the subject of a new book by writer and researcher Simon Plant, called Entertaining Mr Coppin: An antipodean showman in Civil War America.
‘He was the most successful and audacious showman of mid-19th century Australia,’ explains Plant. ‘There were others who were just as active, but he was, without a doubt, the best known and perhaps most beloved.’
Plant’s book, published by Theatre Heritage Australia, takes a purposefully limited approach to its subject. ‘Biographies try to tell the story of a life,’ he says, ‘but sometimes a much narrower vision gives you just as good a story, an intense distillation of that character.’ By zooming in on this particular period of Coppin’s life, Plant tells a story that is at once highly granular and much larger, providing a vivid window into the tumultuous world of Civil War-era America and a front row seat to world-changing events like the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
‘I believe Coppin is the only Australian colonist that we know of who left behind firsthand evidence and commentary on events like the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s funeral,’ notes Plant. ‘He has interesting jottings in his private journal about how he saw the casket arrive and went to the funeral, but in his letters to The Herald, in Melbourne, he goes into it a bit more detail about what it means for America to have lost Lincoln. He was obviously very shaken by it and quite thoughtful about it.’
The book is the culmination of Plant’s longtime interest in this fascinating character and was made possible by the extensive archival material held in State Library Victoria’s Coppin Collection, accessioned into the State Collection between 1935 and 1965, and now extensively digitised. The Coppin Collection includes over a thousand playbills, as well as original and printed scripts, posters, programmes, hundreds of photographs and a wealth of set and costume designs.
‘When I delved in to the collection, it convinced me quite quickly that there was a great book in it,’ says Plant. Key to his research was a leatherbound album of carte de visite photographs collected by Coppin and showcasing the people he met or admired in the US, as well as Coppin’s personal diaries and the extensive letters he sent to his wife, Lucy Coppin, while travelling.
Supported by State Library librarian and Coppin Collection expert Olga Tsara, Plant was able to use these resources to not only reconstruct Coppin’s journey through America but also gain insight into his state of mind.
‘Everything is in these diaries – all the hardships and all the challenges,’ explains Plant. One thing that particularly stood out to him in is just how hard Coppin had to work to survive in the theatrical industry: ‘It was a really hard life, having to learn multiple roles, the rigours of touring, being paid and not being paid, and getting ill and having people be rude to you. At that time, particularly in Australia, acting was considered a very lowly profession.’
For Plant, it was charting Coppin’s emotional journey that proved to be the most fascinating. ‘You see him changing and growing, and by the time he came back to Australia, he was a different man,’ he says. ‘When he gave talks about his time in America, people sat up and took notice. He finally gained the legitimacy he was chasing.’
Plant hopes that his book will illustrate just how deeply Coppin left a mark on Melbourne’s theatrical industry. ‘He introduced the colonies to so much entertainment that they would never have seen or been exposed to – from Shakespeare to minstrels to opera to comic drama to farce,’ he says. ‘He believed that theatre was about improving, educating and entertaining. He believed that the colonies had a real future and he wanted to be part of it.’
Entertaining Mr Coppin: An antipodean showman in Civil War America by Simon Plant is out now. It is available to purchase via Theatre Heritage Australia.