Lady Don, born Emilia Eliza "Emily" Saunders[1] (c. 1830 – 29 September 1875)[2] was an English singer and actor who enjoyed great popularity in Australia.
On 24 February they opened at the Theatre Royal, Hobart, and it was at Webb's Hotel, Murray Street in that town that Sir William Don died on 19 March 1862 at age 37.
[9] Lady Don fulfilled her immediate obligations but refused offers of further engagements, though they would have been highly lucrative, and left with her daughter for England by the Lincolnshire on 26 May 1862.
[11] She went on to play Sydney January–March 1865, from which time she was managed by Henry D. Wilton, and her performances were supported by the Howson Family Troupe: Frank, Emma and Clelia.
[14] She returned to Great Britain, where her first engagement was with the Tyne Theatre, Newcastle on 13 April 1868, playing Josephine in The Daughter of the Regiment but lost her voice owing, she said, to a cold.
[15] She was from June 1870 lessee of the Theatre Royal, Nottingham,[2] with Clarence Holt as her stage manager, but had to quit after eight months due to declining health and having lost a great deal of money.
When Sir William Don married her, it was regarded by his friends as a fatal mesalliance, but it turned out for him an excellent investment, looking at it only from a financial point of view, for although he was himself a very good actor, his profitable engagements were rendered much more certain in association with his wife.
His admiration of his art was intense, and his success as an actor appeared to afford him more unalloyed satisfaction than his patrician descent, or his relationship to earls and duchesses.
Possessing a fine sense of humour, a quick perception of the ludicrous sides of life and character, a remarkable talent for mimicry, a strong nerve, a ready wit, and great self-possession, he was thus gifted with many qualifications essential to a good actor, and without arriving at any remarkable eminence as a comedian he was always amusing and frequently invested a character with quaint and fantastic attributes of his own devising[17].At some early date they had a daughter, Harriette Grace Mary Don,[1] who married John Satterfield Sandars.