My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall

The papers say that Charlie’s gay‡ (#litres_trial_promo)

Rather a wilful wag!

This noble representative

Of ev’rything good in Chelsea

Has let the cat – the naughty cat

Slip out of the Gladstone bag.

The song caused a serious stir, but, undeterred, Gilbert and MacDermott continued to add new verses as more information came out in court.

Onstage, MacDermott was a great exponent of the ‘call and response’ idiom, where he would involve the audience in dialogue. In ‘Not Much (It’s Better Than Nothing at All)’ he would sing, ‘Not what?’ and the audience would sing back, ‘Not much!’ His ‘Dear Old Pals’ was a lasting hit, and far more mellow than his more controversial songs. When MacDermott retired from the halls he became a theatrical agent and hall manager, and unlike many contemporaries died comfortably well-off, in 1901.

MacDermott’s collaborator G.W. Hunt wrote for many artistes. One of his biggest hits, ‘The German Band’, was written for the last of the ‘big four’ lions comiques, Arthur Lloyd, and transformed Lloyd’s fortunes. Lloyd was one of the most popular artistes of his day, and his songs, many of which he wrote himself, sold in their thousands – yet outside music hall circles he is barely remembered.

Arthur Lloyd was born in Edinburgh in 1839 into a theatrical family, and toured the country as a straight actor, a comic and a singer before arriving in London in 1862. He made his debut at the Sun Music Hall, Knightsbridge, playing the Marylebone Music Hall and the Philharmonic Music Hall in Islington later the same evening. His impact was immediate, and in a matter of months he was appearing at the Pavilion, the Oxford and the Canterbury. In 1868 he became one of the first music hall artistes to perform before royalty – in his case the Prince of Wales at a private party in Whitehall, together with Jolly John Nash and Alfred Vance. An interview he gave the Era offers a flavour of the occasion:

We were not required until two o’clock in the morning, and when we were, a screen formed by curtains made a sort of sanctum between us and the audience. The Prince was seated with a blue sash round him in a lounge chair, whilst the rest were all ranged round him with their chairs turned behind-before, and the occupants leaning over the back. Nash was very nervous and persuaded me to go first. I went and sang a song, of which the chorus ran ‘It’s the sort of thing you read about but very seldom see.’ After two or three verses I sang the following: ‘I must now award a word of praise to a gent who’s sitting there/I mean that worthy party who so ably fills the chair,/See how sweetly now he smiles, as pleasant as can be,/It’s a sort of smile I read about but very seldom see.’

As I sang it the Prince leant forward to listen, and all those round him turned and clapped their hands towards him. He seemed immensely amused, and when I had finished the last verse he applauded very good humouredly.

It is a vivid vignette of Victorian deference to the future King.

Arthur Lloyd wrote most of his own material, and was deeply frustrated when it was ‘stolen’ by other performers. In July 1863 he published a warning in the trade press: ‘Comic singers who steal the ideas and songs of others, look out for your time is short.’ The warning was justified, but ineffective.

Lloyd was a highly accomplished man, but not all his offstage enterprises were successful. He ran a successful touring company, and took a three-year lease on the Queen’s Theatre in Dublin in 1874, but when he bought the Star Music Hall in Glasgow in 1881 the remodelling costs and artistic failure reduced him to bankruptcy in only fourteen weeks. Notwithstanding such setbacks, he remained a successful performer and songwriter. His self-composed hits ‘Not for Joseph’, ‘The Song of (Many) Songs’, ‘Pretty Lips’ and ‘Immensikoff, the Shoreditch Toff’, not to mention his breakthrough hit ‘The German Band’, were hugely popular. While ‘The Dark Girl Dressed in Blue’ was successful for George Leybourne, Lloyd’s ‘Not for Joseph’, which tells of a swell who is careful with his money, was the first comic song to sell 100,000 copies:

I used to throw my cash about,

In a reckless sort of way;

I’m careful now what I’m about,

And cautious how I pay:

Now the other night I asked a pal,

With me to have a drain,

‘Thanks Joe,’ said he, ‘let’s see, old pal

‘I think I’ll have Champagne’

[Spoken: ‘Will ye,’ said I, ‘oh, no –’]

CHORUS:

Not for Joe, not for Joe,

If he knows it, not for Joseph,

No, no, no, not for Joe,

Not for Joseph, oh, dear no.