Читать книгу My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall - John Major, John Major - Страница 9
4 The First Pioneer
Оглавление‘Only one quality – the best.’
CHARLES MORTON’S MOTTO
Music hall was shaped by the changing social environment, but time and the right set of circumstances were required for it to flourish.
By 1820, one quarter of the world’s population was governed from London, and Britain was evolving from a rural to an urban society. Populations in towns and cities doubled and redoubled. The search for jobs drove teeming throngs of villagers to the towns, where cheap back-to-back hovels were thrown up to house them. But there were improvements: working hours fell, and wages rose.
The choice of amusements was widening. Madame Tussaud’s waxworks opened in 1835. Hampton Court and Kew Gardens were welcoming visitors. The Henley Regatta and the Grand National were both held for the first time in 1839. Football was growing in popularity. Cricket was becoming a national institution as young William Gilbert Grace learned to bat and bowl in his Gloucestershire orchard. It was a new world that set the stage for music hall. One elusive element remained to be put in place, and Parliament was soon to enact it, albeit in muddled form. It would prove to be a catalyst for music hall.
The law and the theatre had been at loggerheads for centuries, and by 1840 the situation had become absurd. The Lord Chamberlain regulated legitimate theatre, but local magistrates were responsible for music and dancing licences. The scope for inconsistency was very wide. The patent monopoly, under which Charles II had granted Drury Lane and Covent Garden the sole right to perform drama, now included the Haymarket, which George III had added to the magic circle. To everyone other than the beneficiaries of the monopoly, this was absurd, and the law was regularly flouted. This led to ludicrous litigation, and the threat of actors being arrested for the heinous crime of performing Shakespeare. Parliament sought to impose order on this chaos, and in 1843 the Theatre Regulations Act abolished the monopoly of the patent theatres. Thereafter, anyone could stage drama if they first obtained the approval of the Lord Chamberlain.
So far, so good. But the Lord Chamberlain’s licence gave permission only to perform drama, not to serve the audience with food and drink, or to allow smoking. The alternative of a magistrate’s licence permitted eating, drinking and smoking, but did not permit the licensee to stage drama. It is clear from reading the (very limited) debates on the Bill that the legislators did not understand custom and practice in the theatres, and gave no consideration to the great diversity of performances beyond legitimate drama. The legislation succeeded only in creating confusion.
The Act was a hotchpotch. It failed to address the provision of food and drink, and left old habits and customs in place. Even the officials responsible for the law were bewildered. When the Lord Chamberlain’s representative was asked to clarify it to a Parliamentary Select Committee more than twenty years later, in 1866, he told them that ‘spirits and refreshments are not to be sold within the audience part of the theatre’, but added, ‘excepting the people who walk up and down the pit with baskets’. They were, of course, selling food and drink.
Some impresarios ignored the law. Sam Lane, who ran the Britannia on a Lord Chamberlain’s licence, sold food and drink, and allowed smoking, but was never censured. It may be that the authorities were content to leave the great unwashed of the East End alone, for if the West End theatres flouted the same rules, they were closed.
The new legislation did at least present a clear choice: an impresario could produce either drama or light entertainment. The wrong choice could mean ruin – as it did for the Grecian Saloon in City Road, when it chose drama and alienated its clientèle – whereas the right choice could mean riches.
Charles Morton’s Canterbury Arms, which opened in Lambeth in 1852, is generally regarded as the first purpose-built music hall. It set a trend that popularised the music hall genre, and was widely copied. Morton, born in Hackney in August 1819, grew up among the poor with an appetite for work and a sharp eye for detail. He saw his neighbours warm to street singers, cluster around peep shows, applaud itinerant performers and, when the pennies permitted, visit the cheaper inns and taverns. The theatre drew him like a magnet, and he attended shows whenever he had the means to do so. Aged thirteen, his first visit was to the Pavilion, Whitechapel – familiarly known as ‘the Drury Lane of the East’ – which specialised in plays catering for sailors and the large Jewish population that thronged the East End. At the nearby Old Garrick Theatre he saw the tragi-comic play Damon and Pythias, starring Charles Freear and William Gomershall, an actor famed for his comic impersonation of Napoleon. The young Charles Morton became a habitué of East End theatres, and grew familiar with public tastes.
Once his elementary education was over he worked as a tavern waiter, and saw at close quarters how entertainment and food and drink brought in the crowds. He earned extra cash, and a reputation for honesty, as a runner for the ‘list men’, the early pub-based bookmakers. At the age of twenty-one, in 1840, he became the licensee of his own pub, the St George’s tavern in Belgrave Road, Pimlico. Pimlico was a brand-spanking-new development, a world away from the East End. It was close to the pleasure gardens at Ranelagh, Cremorne and Vauxhall, where young Morton continued his education by seeing the talent available for hire.
As a licensee, Morton put all he had seen and learned into practice. His guiding principle was excellent service, food and drink, and to these he added a ‘free and easy’ room with amateur talent performing, ‘For Gentlemen Only!’, free of charge. These were common features at many taverns, but Morton’s astute business brain and engaging personality made them very attractive, and as the St George’s became more profitable he hired professional acts to lure more customers. Some of his regulars were servants at Buckingham Palace, and they invited him to dine with them in their quarters. He returned home with a tablecloth full of delicacies from the royal pantry.
Morton was a natural entrepreneur who understood the power of promotion. Bookmaking was a profitable sideline, and he promoted his sweepstakes for big race meetings by advertising in the Era.
Morton worked long hours to earn a more comfortable way of life. He was a very visible host, but, unusually for the time, he was abstemious, having no wish to drink away his profits. He walked and fished for recreation, making plans as he did so. As business prospered he traded up to the Crown in Pentonville, and then to the far more fashionable India House tavern in Leadenhall Street in the City. His credo was to exceed the expectations of his customers. At the India House he abandoned entertainment to concentrate on offering good fare in a congenial atmosphere – ‘Only one quality – the best’ had become his motto, and would remain so throughout his long life. The absence of entertainment defied convention, but in the City, where men met to eat and drink and discuss business, the India House was a haven – and a shrewd business move.
Despite the lack of song and dance at his City tavern, Morton never lost sight of the profit to be gained by feeding mind and body at the same time. He was a regular visitor to every sort of entertainment venue, and made note of money-making opportunities that were missed. He saw that the shows catered only for men: there were no women, no girls with their boyfriends, no families. Half the population was being ignored. Morton saw a huge untapped potential, and pondered how to exploit it without losing male patronage.
The solution was not obvious. Women had little or no money of their own, and even if they had, the social conservatism of the age would prevent them from attending taverns without a male escort. Morton realised that if men were accompanied by their wives or girlfriends, they would spend only the same sum between two customers. There was no extra profit in that. Worse, there might be a loss, since the entertainment mix would need to take account of females in the audience. The dilemma was still unresolved when Morton and his brother-in-law Frederick Stanley bought the Old Canterbury Arms in Westminster Bridge Road (then called Lambeth Marsh) in 1849. It was an ancient alehouse, once owned by the Canon of Rochester, and named as a homage to the medieval pilgrims who fed and watered there en route to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket.
The Canterbury Arms was in a squalid neighbourhood, but it had a theatrical pedigree stretching back three hundred years. It had been a favoured haunt of the Elizabethan actors of Bankside: Burbage, Henslowe, Jonson and Shakespeare were all said to have supped there. At the time of Morton’s purchase it had a regular clientèle who flocked there both to hear amateur talent in the modest music room, and to enjoy the four skittle alleys at the back.
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 gallery at the Grapes in Southwark Bridge Road. He had no scruples in stealing its ideas and improving on them. At first the paintings were lent to Morton by art dealers, but as profits rose he bought some of them. The gallery was not a personal indulgence, it was good business. Morton bought fine paintings in such quantity – including Gainsboroughs and Hogarths – that by 1856 he needed an annexe to house them all. This was celebrated in Punch as ‘the Royal Academy over the Water’, and the publicity was a further boost to Morton’s reputation.
It was in fact much more than a picture gallery, containing a reading room with books, periodicals and newspapers. Oysters, chops, baked potatoes, and bread and butter were among the refreshments that were eagerly consumed for the price of a sixpenny refreshment ticket. The gallery was open seven days a week, including Sunday night – a privilege granted to Morton, presumably because of his reputation, that caused resentment among other theatre managers denied the same indulgence.
Morton continually sought to widen the entertainment he offered. To the usual fare of ballads, comic songs, madrigals and glees, Morton – who had a great admiration for the celebrated Swedish soprano Jenny Lind – added selections from opera. Popular arias from Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Lucia de Lammermoor and Un Ballo in Maschera became a regular part of the evening’s entertainment, sung by Augustus Braham, Signor Tivoli and Miss Russell, an excellent dramatic soprano and a favourite of the audiences. Gounod’s Faust, premiered in Paris in 1859, had never been heard in England, and proved to be a popular sensation when Miss Russell sang excerpts from it. Contemporary rumour suggested that Colonel Mapleson, manager of Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket, brought the celebrated German prima donna Thérèse Tietjens to the Canterbury to see if Faust was worthy of his stage. An opera making its British debut in a music hall added to Morton’s reputation, and helped lure fashionable and wealthy patrons across the river to the dank location of the Canterbury.
Morton was an influential figure in music hall for the rest of his long life. He was probably the first to offer the complete music hall experience, although others were not far behind. His reputation was built on his early work, and enhanced by charitable hindsight. He was a kindly man, bow-tied, long-jawed and with muttonchop whiskers framing his friendly face. On his eightieth birthday in 1899, many prominent members of the profession paid warm tributes to him. An ode recited by Mrs Beerbohm Tree gives the flavour:
His Harbour Light was a vista view of things as they ought to be,
The pleasures of England should be pure and Art, it must be free
He took with pluck this parable up, at Duty’s bugle call
And swore he would lead to paths of peace the dangerous Music Hall!
This depicts Morton as a cross between Sir Galahad and Mr Valiant-for-Truth. He was a good and honourable man, but above all he was an astute businessman with an eye on the main chance and the bottom line. His virtues were real, but were puffed up in a rose-tinted biography by his friend and admirer H. Chance Newton, which was published in 1905, just after his death. In it, Morton is celebrated as the ‘Father of the Halls’. The appellation stuck. Morton’s record was remarkable, and he has an honoured role among the founders of music hall.