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Title: The Music-Hall Comedian
Author: Harry Graham [
More Titles by Graham]
When the day of toil is ended,
When our labours are suspended,
And we hunger for agreeable society,
The relentless voice of Pleasure
Bids us spend an hour of leisure
In a Music-Hall or Palace of Variety,
Where to furnish relaxation
Ev'ry effort is directed,
Tho' the claims of ventilation
Have been carefully neglected.
There's an atmosphere oppressive
(For the smoking is excessive)
In this Temple of conventional hilarity,
But the place is scarcely warmer
Than the average performer
With his stock-in-trade of commonplace vulgarity.
There is nothing wise or witty
In the energy he squanders
On some quite unworthy ditty
Full of dubious "dooblontonders."
[Illustration: The Music-Hall Comedian]
For the singer labelled "comic"
Is by nature economic-
-Al of humour, and avoids originality;
Like a drowning man he seizes
Upon prehistoric wheezes,
Which he honours with a loyal partiality,
In accordance with the ruling
Of a senseless superstition
Which demands a form of fooling
That is hallowed by tradition.
Dressed in feminine apparel,
With a figure like a barrel,
And a smile of transcendental imbecility,
All the humours he discloses
Of such things as purple noses
Or of matrimonial incompatibility;
While the band (who would remind him
That it never would forsake him)
Keeps a bar or two behind him,
But can never overtake him.
Then he gives an imitation
Of that mild intoxication
Which is chronic in some sections of society,
And we learn from his explaining
How extremely entertaining
And amusing is persistent insobriety;
And we realise how funny
Are the wives who nag and bicker,
While the husbands spend their money
Upon alcoholic liquor.
He discusses, slyly winking,
The delights of overdrinking,
And describes his nightly orgies, which are numerous;
How he comes home "full of damp," too,
How he overturns the lamp, too,
And does other things if possible more humorous.
And we listen con amore,
While our merriment redoubles,
To the truly tragic story
Of his dull domestic troubles.
Next he tells us how "the lodger,"
A cantankerous old codger,
Asks another person's spouse to come and call for him;
How he tumbles from a casement
In an attic to the basement,
Where the lady very kindly breaks his fall for him;
And our peals of happy laughter,
As he lands on her umbrella,
Grow ungovernable after
She has fractured her patella.
'Tis a more polite performance
Than "The Macs" and "The O'Gormans,"
Who are artistes of the "knockabout" variety,
Or those ladies in chemises
Who undress upon trapezes
With an almost imperceptible propriety;
'Tis as worthy of encoring
As the "Farmyard Imitator,"
And a little bit less boring
Than the "Lightning Calculator."
It does not evoke our strictures,
Like those dreadful "Living Pictures"
Which the prurient wrote columns to the press about;
'Tis no clever exhibition
Like that tedious "Thought Transmission"
Which we all of us disputed more or less about.
But the balderdash and babble
Of our too facetious hero,
Tho' attractive to the rabble,
Send our spirits down to zero.
For we weary of his patter,
Growing every moment flatter,
On such subjects as connubial infelicity,
And we find ourselves protesting
Against everlasting jesting
On the tragedies of conjugal duplicity.
And we feel desirous very
Of imposing some restrictions
On the humour that makes merry
Over personal afflictions.
Our disgust we cannot bridle
When we see some public idol,
Who is earning a colossal weekly salary,
Having long ignobly pandered
To the questionable standard
Of intelligence that blooms in pit and gallery.
We are easily contented,
And our feelings we could stifle,
If the comic man consented
Just to raise his tone a trifle.
If he shunned such risky questions
As red noses, weak digestions,
Drunkards, lodgers, twins and physical deformities;
Ceased from casting imputations
On his wretched "wife's relations,"
Or from mentioning his "ma-in-law's" enormities;
If he didn't sing so badly,
And if only he were funny,
We would tolerate him gladly,
And get value for our money!
[The end]
Harry Graham's poem: Music-Hall Comedian
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