My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall. John Major

the vast explosion of theatre-building after 1850, Matcham was the leading figure. He was not the first Victorian architect to specialise in designing theatres: that distinction goes to C. J. Phipps, who built the Garrick and Her Majesty’s in London, as well as regional theatres including the ill-fated Theatre Royal, Exeter. But Matcham become the pre-eminent architect of music halls, and was responsible for the design of more than two hundred theatres. His first success was the Elephant and Castle Theatre in south London, which introduced elephant motifs and the Moorish and Indian styles that went on to characterise so many Victorian and Edwardian buildings. His designs were in huge demand. In 1888 alone he was working on the Alhambra, Brighton; the Mile End Empire and the Grand Theatre, Islington, in London; a major remodelling of the Grand Theatre, Douglas, Isle of Man; and preparatory work on theatres in Blackpool, Bury, Halifax and St Helens. It was exhausting, but Matcham was changing the face of theatre. The Matcham style spread even more swiftly once he began to build for the syndicate-owners Oswald Stoll and Edward Moss in around 1890.

      Matcham introduced many innovations: more and better exits to reduce fire risk, push-bar bolt exit locks, and the use of steel to support balconies, which brought to an end the need for pillars that obstructed sightlines. His style had important aesthetic benefits, with curved tiers that seemed to float on air and were visually very attractive. He increased the number of seats, much to the delight of the owners. Matcham’s greatest attribute was his ability to create a different ambience for each theatre. He used a dazzling array of styles, both interior and exterior, drawn from all manner of historical and cultural sources. He was able to create theatres of such elegance and style that even the largest auditorium felt intimate. Sadly, many of his palaces have fallen victim to German bombs and soulless planners. Unenlightened eyes saw his theatres as gaudy, kitsch and deserving of demolition; others, sometimes too late, regarded his designs as temples of pleasure as worthy of preservation as a Roman bath complex. Matcham worked consistently until 1920, leaving a legacy of theatres including the Coliseum, the London Palladium, the Victoria Palace and the Grand Theatre, Blackpool.

      Just as architecture and design were changing, so too were music hall performances. Between 1870 and 1890 the chairman disappeared. He had become an anachronism who slowed down the show. Scenery was introduced. Glees were dropped from the programmes and the number of opera selections fell away. Novelty acts, comedians and comic-ballad singers became ever more popular. To increase capacity, rows of theatre seats replaced tables for eating and drinking. As refreshment moved from the auditorium to the bars, the audience became static and quieter. Waiters and cigar-sellers disappeared. Seats were raked to improve sightlines. The house lights were lowered to increase the focus on the performers.

      These organic changes, which were commercially motivated, focused attention upon the stage and the performers. The audience might not have been aware of it, but music hall was entering a ‘golden age’, when a new breed of artistes with extraordinary talents would explode into people’s hearts and minds.

* It was subsequently cared for by the London Music Hall Society, and later by Broomhill Opera and the Wilton’s Music Hall Trust. It was reopened as a performance space in 1997, but not for music hall, although in 2009 Dame Norma Major staged a charity performance for Mencap featuring Elizabeth Mansfield as Marie Lloyd.

† Astley’s Equestrian Amphitheatre was reputedly illuminated by 200,000 gas jets.

6

       The Swells and the Costers

      ‘The main thing is catchiness. I will sacrifice everything – rhyme, reason, sense, sentiment, to catchiness. There is … a great art in making rubbish acceptable.’

      FELIX MCGLENNON, LYRICIST AND SONGWRITER, THE ERA, 10 MARCH 1894

      Music hall was, first and last, an intimate medium, in which performers and audience were locked in an enduring embrace. Today we can only glimpse this symbiotic relationship through grainy black-and-white photographs and tinny gramophone records in which the singers, mostly past their prime at the time of recording, struggle to perform in the absence of the factor that made them great – the audience.

      That bond between artiste and audience – the secret heart of music hall – was so profound that many artistes were not allowed to leave the stage until they had sung their ‘signature’ songs. Their public would join in, and would then whistle them all the way home. Refrains such as:

      A sweet tuxedo girl you see

      A queen of swell society

      or

      Oh! I’m in such a mess – I don’t know the new address –

      Don’t even know the blessed neighbourhood

      or

      Observed by each observer with the keenness of a hawk,

      I’m a mass of money, linen, silk and starch

      are largely forgotten now, but a Victorian music hall audience would await each with the greatest anticipation. Popular songs entered the national canon, and even today we know their choruses: ‘Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay’, ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Van’, ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’.

      From the early days of music hall the songs, and the artistes who performed them, were the backbone of every bill. When appearing at Evans’ or the Cyder Cellars, artistes such as Sam Cowell and W.G. Ross invariably sang ‘The Ratcatcher’s Daughter’ or ‘Sam Hall’, and the audience expected to be indulged over and over again with encores. In an era before recorded music, the live experience was all there was.

      It was the combination of singer and song that created stars, and a colossal business sprang up around them. Artistes bought their songs from songwriters, often for a pittance, and those that struck a chord with the audience became closely identified with the artiste throughout their lifetimes, and are today our only remembrance of them. Hall-owners paid handsomely for artistes to sing the songs that had caught the public imagination, and the sheet music was sold with the artiste featured prominently on the cover.

      One such singer was Charles Coborn, born Charles Whitton McCallum into a relatively prosperous family in Stepney, east London, in 1852. His father was a shipbroker and a Freeman of the City of London. Coborn’s early life was a model of middle-class convention. He was privately educated, and employed in clerical jobs in the City between 1866 and 1871, subsequently becoming a commercial traveller in women’s accessories. If it were not for his yearning to perform, he might have been just another name in the births, marriages and deaths columns.

      After a brief flirtation with the legitimate stage, his early music hall act was based on an impersonation of a drunken man. Its success brought him a debut at the Alhambra, Greenwich, in 1872, under the name Charles Laurie, but this was swiftly changed to Charles Coborn – apparently after Coborn Road, Poplar – because McCallum believed it sounded more sophisticated. He struggled at first to find work, and had to wait three years for his first week-long engagement at the Gilbert Music Hall, Whitechapel. Thereafter, word-of-mouth spread quickly, and he was given the soubriquet ‘the Comic of the Day’ by the Oxford Music Hall manager J.H. Jennings.

      Coborn’s first big hit was ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’, which he is said to have co-written with Edmund Forman in 1886. It is a cautionary tale explaining why it is wise not to get too closely involved in party politics. After receiving ‘two lovely black eyes’ from political enthusiasts for arguing about policy, he warns:

      The moral you’ve caught I can hardly doubt,

      Never on politics rave and shout.

      Leave it to others to fight it out

      If you would be wise.

      Better, far better it is to let

      Liberals and Tories alone you