Miss Carlisle (Marie Othilie Amélie Mariot De Beauvoisin)
(1848-1884), ActressSitter in 2 portraits
Miss Carlisle (Marie Othilie Amélie Mariot De Beauvoisin)
after Lock & Whitfield
woodburytype, (published 1875)
NPG Ax7703
Miss Carlisle (Marie Othilie Amélie Mariot De Beauvoisin)
by Unknown photographer
woodburytype, 1870s
NPG x5639
Comments back to top
We are currently unable to accept new comments, but any past comments are available to read below.
If you need information from us, please use our Archive enquiry service . Please note that we cannot provide valuations. You can buy a print or greeting card of most illustrated portraits. Select the portrait of interest to you, then look out for a Buy a Print button. Prices start at around £6 for unframed prints, £16 for framed prints. If you wish to license an image, select the portrait of interest to you, then look out for a Use this image button, or contact our Rights and Images service. We digitise over 8,000 portraits a year and we cannot guarantee being able to digitise images that are not already scheduled.
John Culme
01 June 2020, 12:19
Miss Carlisle, whose real name was Marie Othilie Amélie Mariot De Beauvoisin, was the elder daughter of Auguste Mariot de Beauviosin (1821?-1879), a well-known professor of languages and author of The French Language acquired in Four Months (London, 1842), A Summery of the French Verbs (London, 1862) and other books, and his wife, Amelia (née Lewis, 1821?-1900). She was born in London on 17 January 1848 and baptised the following 21 May at St. Nicholas Acons, City of London. A pupil of Julius Benedict (1804-1885), she made her debut as a pianist as Mlle. Mariot de Beauviosin at a concert at Willis's Rooms, St. James's on 7 May 1864. After flourishing in that role she emerged as Miss Carlisle to make her debut as an actress at the Princess's Theatre, Oxford Street, playing Lady Emmeline in Escaped from Portland, a drama adapted from the French, Le Mangeur de Fer, which opened on 9 October 1869.
Thereafter, Miss Carlisle's career saw her in a number of Shakespearian roles and various dramas, including a revival of Tom Taylor's The Ticket-of-Leave Man. She disappeared from view in June 1884 and is thought to have died later that year.
The mystery over Miss Carlisle's ultimate fate and the date of her death arises from several facts. Although the last mention of her in the Press is in June 1884 there is no reference to her retirement, marriage or death after that date. There were several other actresses at that time with the surname of Carlisle but they are usually distinguished by a first name. A death registered in early 1885 in the Civil Registration for England and Wales in the name of Marie Autilie Amelie Wilson must surely be Marie Othilie Amélie Mariot De Beauvoisin (Miss Carlisle); there appears to be no other reference to an individual with those or similar forenames and the surname Wilson, apart from the record of the Camden burial of Marie Autilie Amelie Wilson on 20 January 1885. A photograph of a headstone in Highgate Cemetery, Borough of Camden on findagrave.com finds among those interred in that grave 'MARIE de BEAUVOISIN died 1884,' together with Ernest Wharton Pringle, William Henry Pringle, Alice Freese and James Parker Henry, none of whom appear to be related to the de Berauvoisin family.
The Woodburytype of Miss Carlisle in the NPG's collection is from an original photograph by Lock & Whitfield, published about 1875 in an edition of The Saturday Programme and Sketch-Book.