Moore, continued to please all classes of the
people, whether their nationality were English,
Scotch, or Irish; and shared with many newer
favourites, who endeavoured to follow in the
path they had shown, the applause of the town.
Madame Vestris, Mrs. Humby, Mrs. Waylett,
Mrs. Honey, Miss Love, Miss Foote, Miss
Maria Tree, and others, though they lent
their sweet voices to comic, as well as to
sentimental song, never lent them to vulgarity, or
soiled their lips with the slang of swellmobsmen;
and such singers of the other sex as
Incledon, Braham, Sinclair, Wilson, Phillips,
Templeton, and Russell, endeavoured to elevate
and adorn the art to which they devoted their
lives, and never pandered to a crapulous and
depraved taste. But in this respect we have
changed for the worse. The most notable
characteristic of the public songs of our days, as
far as the Music Halls are concerned, is their
utter intolerance of sentiment. If a tender or
ennobling thought has to be expressed before a
popular audience it has to be rendered acceptable
to the debauched palates of cynics and
rowdies by a touch of farce, such as is supplied
by the simple expedient of translating it into
the vulgarest idiom, or blackening the face and
hands of the singer. To the negro minstrel, or
to white men masquerading in negro character,
has been relegated all the tender and romantic
sentiment of popular song; as if it were
derogatory to the business-like character, and
to the high intellect of a man with a white skin
to sing sentimentally of anything so "spoony"
as genuine affection or youthful faith and
simplicity. These simulated negro songs,
contemptible as they are in some respects, have
a certain humour and pathos which render them
superior to the comic songs which men with
unblackened faces permit themselves to sing.
There is here and there to be found in them a
touch of manly and simple nature, which not
even the garb or paint of "niggerism" can
wholly degrade. But when we come to the
songs of the very funny vocalists whose business
does not require them to blacken their
faces, and who conceive that the affectionate
public loves them best under the familiar
names of "Joe," or "Tom," or "Fred," or
"Charlie," as the case may be; we find an
absence alike of nature, of pathos, of humour,
and of wit. They are not able to approach
even to the boundaries of farce: and in order
to understand their descriptions, accurate or
inaccurate, of the manners of the day, the reader
or hearer has to be familiar with the lowest
phases of life in the metropolis; and be thus
enabled to sympathise with the pursuits, feelings,
modes of thought, of cadgers, costermongers,
the least respectable class of servant girls, and of
others of their sex still less respectable than
they. By referring to the advertisements in the
public press we find that three "splendid songs"
called respectively "Champagne Charlie,"
"Moggie Dooral," and the "Chickaleery
Cove," which are described as having been
sung before the Prince of Wales, at some
Music Hall unnamed, "by the special request
of His Royal Highness." We turn to the
collection in which these alleged favourites
of royalty appear; and find it described in
the publisher's preface as "a collection of gems
that have called down upon the singers the
most vociferous applause, that have found
their way to the barrel organs, and been sung
at the corners of every street." We are thus
enabled to pass judgment upon the taste and
humour which grace the comic muse of London
in our day, and which are supposed to find
admirers not alone among the needy and the seedy,
the illiterate and the vulgar, with an occasional
sprinkling of "cads and swells," who may be
vulgar but are not illiterate, but among the
highest and best educated classes. "Champagne
Charlie" the first in the series, is the
description of a disreputable "swell," with
more money than brains, who haunts all the
"supper rooms" of London "from Poplar to
Pall Mall," and treats any girl with whom he
comes in contact with as much champagne as
she can drink.

       Champagne Charlie is my name,
       Good for any game at night, my boys,
       Who'll come and join me in a spree?

The "lady's version" of this composition—
said to be sung by a "lady" in public, and to be
adapted to the use of "ladies" in private, varies
the chorus:

      Champagne Charlie was his name,
      Always kicking up a frightful noise,
      Kicking up a noise at night, my boys,
      And always ready for a spree.

Comment upon such a song is as needless
as any remark upon the taste and manners
of the so-called "ladies" who either applaud
or sing it.

"Moggie Dooral" is stupider, if possible,
than "Champagne Charlie;" but as it was
originally a song of the "negro minstrels," and
came from the other side of the Atlantic, it
cannot be fairly placed to the discredit of
London, unless for the minor offence of extending
its favour and popularity. The first stanza
will suffice as a specimen:

              Once a maiden fair,
               She had ginger hair,
      With her tooral, looral, la! di! oh!
              And she fell in love,
              Did this turtle dove,
        And her name was Dooral,
                Moggie Dooral,
                Cockie Dooral,
                Hoopty Dooral,
                Tooral, looral,
            Silly noodle, oh! my!

This "nigger" song depends for its success
on the blackened faces and hands, and on the
good comic acting of the singers, who endeavour
—and not unsuccessfully—to make it
grotesque.

The "Chickaleerie Cove," or the "Chickaleerie
Bloke"—it is known under both titles—is