Hilda Spong (1875-1955), actress, came to Australia with her family when she was thirteen. Walter Spong, her father, was a scene painter who had worked at the Theatre Royal in Bristol and at Drury Lane. Headhunted for the Brough and Boucicault Comedy Company, in 1888 he moved to Melbourne, where he quickly fell in with Tom Roberts (who painted Mrs Spong that year) and Arthur Streeton. Hilda first appeared on stage when she was 14. After taking some acting lessons, she made her speaking debut in 1891 in the B&B production of Dr Bill. In no time she was a great favourite with theatregoers, one of whom wrote a poem in praise of her appearances at the Bijou theatre (in which, inevitably, 'Hilda' was rhymed with 'St Kilda'). In 1892 Roberts wrote to Streeton that he had been 'down at Spong's on Sunday evening . . . Miss S pouring out tea and looking very charming . . . Yes, she looked very pretty.' The following year, in which Hilda is thought to have persuaded Roberts to paint her, Walter Spong established a company to showcase his daughter's talents. On the basis of subsequent triumphs in Melbourne and New Zealand, in 1896 she left Australia to establish her career in London, making her Drury Lane debut in The Duchess of Coolgardie: A Romance of the Australian Gold Fields in September that year. Before long she moved to New York City, where she was to appear in fifty Broadway productions between 1898 and 1940. In all, she spent more than forty years on stage in England and the USA. After visiting Australia to perform before the First World War, Hilda Spong went back to America; she last appeared on Broadway when she was 65, in two seasons of Higher and Higher. She died in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
