Vera Beringer

Vera Beringer (1878-1964) was an actress and playwright who also wrote under the name Henry Seton. Allardyce Nicoll, English Drama 1900-1930, lists nineteen plays by her between 1908 and 1930. The Stage, 6 February 1964, published her obituary: ‘Vera Beringer, the actress, died at Hove on January 29, aged *84. Daughter of Oscar Beringer, the composer, and his wife Aimée Daniell, author and novelist, she made her first appearance on the stage at the age of nine, as Jack in her mother’s play “Tares” and was the original Little Lord Fauntleroy in Mrs. Burnett’s dramatisation of her own story. She played for several seasons in the companies of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Edward Terry, Paul Arthur and George Edwardes, and in 1896 she appeared as Juliet at the Prince of Wales, when her sister Esmé played Romeo at a special matinée production. After playing in “The Broken Melody”, “Fanny and the Servant Problem”, “The Blue Stockings” and other plays, she left the stage in 1916 until 1930, when she returned as Mrs. Ditchwater in “The Man from Blankley’s” at the Fortune. In 1938 she played Gertrude to her sister Esmé’s Hamlet at the Arts. During the war years the two sisters toured the West Country in Shakespeare and modern recitals. She is survived by Esmé, her senior by three years’. [*The Civil Registration Birth Index shows that birth of Vera Beringer was registered at Marylebone in April-June 1878; her ages on the 1891 and 1911 census returns, 13 and 33, are consistent with that. The 1939 Register shows her birth date as 2 March 1881 which must be incorrect. The Civil Registration Death Index shows that she was 86 when she died but she was probably 85.]