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My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall. John Major
Читать онлайн.Название My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007450152
Автор произведения John Major
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
Morton took over the Canterbury Arms’ licence in February 1850, but little was heard of him in the press for over two years, apart from a brief burst of publicity when a notorious skittle sharp, Joseph Jones, attracted police attention for his activities there. Morton’s uncharacteristic reticence ended as soon as his new hall was complete. In the Era of 16 May 1852 he promoted his new venture by funding a competition to determine the ‘champion swimmer of England’ between George Pewters and Frederick Beckwith. ‘Money ready’ for the winner, it said, at ‘Mr Morton’s Canterbury Arms, Lambeth’. In the news section of the same edition there is an entry: ‘The Canterbury Arms. A new and elegantly fitted up hall … and rumour speaks highly of all the arrangements.’ These news snippets suggest that Morton had delayed promoting his venture until he was completely satisfied with all the preparations. Now his vision was in place, and a notice the following week informed readers that ‘The Canterbury Music Hall offers superior talent … every attention paid to comfort and amusement … suppers, chops, steaks, etc etc. Admission by refreshment ticket, sixpence each person.’
The music room was adapted to a club room, where ‘free and easy’ concerts were held on Thursdays and Saturdays. With his usual attention to detail Morton set about providing excellent value in food and drink, but he was careful not to make changes that alienated the existing customers. More comfortable furniture and better lighting were introduced, and the walls were decorated with paintings and prints. There were roaring fires in the hearths, and spills to light pipes, cigars, and later the cigarettes popularised by soldiers returning from the Crimean War. Morton’s Canterbury was a warm and congenial environment, far more appealing than the cold, damp, cramped back-to-back houses that were home to so many of his customers. So they came and they stayed and they spent. As his profits grew Morton commissioned a new hall, to be built over the ramshackle skittle alleys.
He also hit upon an idea to attract women to the Canterbury without losing his existing customers. Rather than facing down social convention, Morton decided to bypass it. The admission fee of sixpence, which included drinks, was his answer to the conundrum of how to profit from women patrons. Since women rarely drank their full entitlement this proved a lucrative form of entry, and he actively encouraged them to attend his hall. A ‘Ladies Night’ was introduced in the club room once a week, which was a triumph. Morton’s brother Robert, a charmer with an excellent tenor voice, compèred evenings of entertainment that were packed to capacity. The mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, fiancées and girlfriends thoroughly enjoyed it, and their menfolk asked for the ladies to be admitted on other nights as well. Morton acquiesced, the objectors were outfoxed, and no one was offended.
Soon performances were staged every night, not just twice weekly. The Canterbury was no longer a pub, but a music hall. The package was complete: payment for entrance, refreshments available, entertainment based around comic ballads but with a wide variety of acts supporting them – and joyous, often uproarious participation from an audience of both sexes. The evening’s entertainment began at 7 p.m. and ended at midnight. And the money rolled in.
The Canterbury’s success was instant and overwhelming. Night after night seven hundred seats were sold and disappointed customers were turned away. Morton lined the walls with ‘lists’ of horses and race meetings so that customers could place bets while enjoying the show. ‘Lists’ were very popular, and the affinity between the turf and music hall remained strong until an Act of 1853 outlawed them.
Morton was a micro-manager who supervised everything. He booked the acts and was present at every performance. He formed his own resident choir, some members of which, including Haydn Corri, Edward Connell, St Clair Jones and Mrs John Caulfield, went on to enjoy successful solo careers in music hall. Nothing escaped his eye, and nothing was left to chance. He supervised the mobile ovens that baked potatoes, sometimes serving them to customers himself, with lashings of butter and seasoned with salt and pepper. Morton had an eye for detail, and nothing was overlooked.
The performers at the Canterbury were paid well – far more than the few shillings and free beer that were typical elsewhere – and under Morton’s patronage they became stars. His most glittering performer was Sam Cowell, he of ‘Villikins’ and ‘The Ratcatcher’s Daughter’ fame, who had been sacked from Evans’ by Paddy Green. Much Sam cared: he knew his value, and found a better berth with Morton, who paid him lavishly – up to £80 a week at his peak – and let him draw in the crowds.
Cowell’s story does not end happily. A man of weak constitution, he wasted too much of the money he earned on drink. In 1859 he returned from a gruelling twenty-month tour of America a very sick man. Long-distance travelling had left him poorly nourished, and temptation and free drinks had made him an alcoholic. His money was almost all gone. At Blandford, near Poole, he fell so ill that his wife was summoned from London, and he died in 1864, at only forty-four years of age, leaving his family nearly destitute. It was a sad ending for a man who ranks among the greatest of all music hall artistes.
Cowell was not the only refugee from the supper clubs. The old cigar con man Herr von Joel appeared, as did the mimic Charles Sloman, and song-and-supper-club regulars such as Robert Glindon and the wonderfully funny Jack Sharp. The comic singer Tom Penniket, an embryonic Dan Leno, was a frequent performer, and the tenor John Caulfield became the compère and chairman, with his son Johnny as the resident harmonium player. Many other popular artistes, such as the comedians Elija Taylor and Billy Pells, also delighted the Canterbury’s audiences. The basso-profundo St Clair Jones was in and out of favour with Morton for sloppy timekeeping, much as Sam Cowell had been at Evans’. Eventually Morton dismissed him, but the wily Jones then reappeared onstage to sing ‘I Cannot Leave Thee Yet’. The audience was won over – as was Morton – and Jones was reinstated.
Morton surveyed his full houses and his growing bank balance, and decided to expand. He had room to do so on his current site, but he had no wish to dismantle his theatre, lose a year’s revenue, and risk his regular audience developing other loyalties. He overcame this dilemma with a radical plan to build a bigger hall literally over and around the existing premises. While building proceeded, the shows continued with no loss of income, and when the new, larger outer shell was complete, the inner walls were removed. It was a seamless transition, and the plush new Canterbury Music Hall was open for business just before Christmas 1854. It was a sumptuous sight, with a horseshoe-shaped balcony supported on pillars and accessed via a grand staircase. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and on either side of the imposing stage stood a harmonium and a grand piano. At a long table immediately below the stage the chairman sat with ‘’is ’ammer in ’is ’and’, his cigar and a bottle of wine.
Admission was sixpence to the body of the hall, and ninepence to the gallery. Tables seating four or more patrons were set in neat rows on the ground floor, where customers could eat and drink for a shilling and men could smoke pipes or cigars. No food or drink was served in the gallery, which made the extra threepence a worthwhile expense to the fastidious. Lavishly printed programmes announced the running order for the evening, and included the words of the songs, to encourage the audience to join in the choruses. The regulars loved it, and the increased capacity of fifteen hundred meant that they were soon joined by those who had previously been unable to get seats. Demand was enhanced by the extension of street lighting and the introduction of horse-drawn omnibuses, which allayed fears over venturing far in the dark evenings.
Morton continued to engage the best artistic talents. One of the cleverest was the Scotsman Tom Maclagan, who could sing in any style, serious or comic, dance and play the violin. Sam Collins was a regular, as was E.W. Mackney – billed by Morton as ‘the Great Mackney, Negro Delineator’ – one of the first artistes to ‘black up’ and sing what in those days were known as ‘coon’ songs. Among the popular female singers, billed with Victorian formality, were Miss Pearce, Miss Bramell and Miss Townley.
An additional attraction was a ‘fine arts’ gallery. Morton had noted the success of the National Gallery, which had opened a quarter of a century earlier and attracted ‘respectable’ society. Nor did he fail to notice the popularity of the picture