'CHEER, BOYS, CHEER.'

Evening Star, Issue 11455, 24 January 1901, Page 1

'CHEER, BOYS, CHEER. '

DEATH OP HENRY RUSSELL,

[Fsou Oro Special Cobeesponbint.]

LONDON, December 14. A fair number of Australians knew old Henry Russell, who died the other day at the ripe old age of eighty-lhree. He belonged for a time to the defunct St. George’s Club in its palmiest period. Thither all the smart touring Australians and Anglocolonials flocked, and most of them got, to nodding terms ■with old Russell. His delight was to sit in the midst of an admiring circle in the smoking room and reel off yam after yam of his experiences. Even if you’d heard some of them before you could stand them again. A grandson generally accompanied him, and managed to politely prevent too hospitable friends from overwhelming the grand old man with vinous attentions. Like so many others of his race, Henry Russell seemed to take to music naturally. While an errand boy in a chemist's shop he saved up his pocket money and had sixpenny music lessons from a man in Seven Dials. Before ho was fourteen he was an outdoor student at the Conservatoire of Bologna, and later became chorus master under Lumley at Her Majesty’s Theatre. This, however, was not a very lucrative, post, and according he resolved* to emigrate it? .the New World, crossing the Atlantic by sailing vessel. He was in America and Canada from 1833 to 1841, pud during this. period many of his successful songs were composed. No doubt they owed a good deal to the words, which were from various pens, mostly, however, that of. Dr Charles Mackay. But their simple, unsophisticated melodies appealed to the great public, and Mr Henry Rqssell’s own singing of them undoubtedly did a great deal to popularise them. “Henry Russell’s career was (the ‘Daily News’ relates) very nearly cut short immediately after he arrived at Toronto, for he was overtaken by a blizzard, and was almost exhausted, when he ran across a shanty inscribed “ Ginger Bear Sold Hear, Also Goode Stumbling For Orses And Goode Beds.” It was on hearing Henry Clay, the I great Kentucky orator, and on noticing the hold he had on popular audiences by his clear enunciation of the words, that Henry Russell resolved to take up public singing. His first song was set to Mackay’s ‘Wind , of (he winter night,’ and shortly afterwards oame ‘ Woodman, spare that tree,’ and numerous other works, which enjoyed great celebrity. Henry Russell returned to London !| in 1841, and after a six months’ tour of the p provinces with Beale, the music publisher | and opera manager, he opened his entertain- | mont at the old Hanover square Rooms, a | place which, curiously enough, he was in after life mainly the means of converting t from a concert hall into a clubhouse. There, and at the Lyceum—which Yestris and L Charles Mathews let to him, when they did •not require it for themsell’fes—and at other places in London and the country, Russell thenceforward carried on his entertainments, till bis final retirement about 1865. Occasionally afterwards he reappeared on special occasions, the last being the testimonial benefit organised for him by the late Sir Augustus Harris at Covent Garden in 1891, when, although he was too old to sing, he | made a 'speech of reminiscences and thanks, reminding the audience among other things that some of the songs heard that night had been written sixty years before. Several I of his songs, during his “ entertainment ” period, were avowedly aimed at. certain public or private grievances. ‘The maniac,’ for example, dealt with the iniquities of the lunatic asylums of tho period, and of this song both words and music were by Bussell himself. ‘ The ship on fire ’ has to a certain extent been out of date since ironclads replaced the old wooden walls ; while ‘ The gambler’s wife ’ was a hit at the dice-play-ing of the period, i Many amusing anecdotes are told about ’ Russell’s singing of these songs. For example, at the close of ‘ Tho gamblers wife,’ after the clock has struck two. and three, and four, and as the dice-throwing husband is still absent, the wife dies in despair, a woman among the audience, to the great I delight of the house, emphatically declared : “My! wouldn’t I have fetched him home.’ On another occasion, after Bussell's singing of ‘ Woodman, spare that tree,’ a gentleman rase in the gallery and asked ; “Was the tree spared?” On being answered in the affirmative, he, with a sigh of heartfelt relief, exclaimed : “Thank God for that.” After singing the song of ‘ The dog Carlo,’ who jumped off an Atlantic liner and saved a child’s life, Russell was gravely waited upon by a couple of Yorkshire miners, who begged him for a pup. Russell himself has left on record the prices he received for his various songs. They averaged 10s each. For ‘The ship on fire,’ however, he received a guinea ; for ‘ Tho maniac ’ £l, ‘ The gambler’s wife ’ £l, ‘ The ivy green ’ 10s, ‘ There’s a good time coming,*boys, ’ £2, ‘ Cheer, boys, cheer,’ £3, ‘ The slave ship ’ £l, ‘ Man the lifeboat’ £l, and ‘Woodman, spare that tree,’ Bs. There was no “ royalty ” system in those days, bub Russell managed to amass a competence by singing his songs, his entertainments being for a long time most lucrative. Most of his songs were sentimental, and soma were of a, domestic character. ‘ The old arm chair,’ for example, was set to a poem specially written for him by Eliza Cook, whom Russell, knew very well indeed, and of whom he bad many agreeable anecdotes. ‘The ivy green’ was, of course, to Dickens’s words, and was sung—or pretended to be sung—by 'that eminent novelist at his farewell reading at St. James's Hall in 1870. Russell was a personal friend of Dickens, and the dead composer’s mind was also fully stored with recollections of acquaintances, such ns Lady Blessington, Disraeli and Macaulay (whom as a youth he met at Gore House), Samuel Rogers, Bulwcr Lytton, Thackeray, Landseer, and Mark Lemon, besides Fenimorc Cooper, Judge Haliburton, Daniel Webster, John Braham, and President Harrison, whom he met in America. Towards the end of his public career his entertainment was elaborated, and in “The Far West” it was furnished by Mackay with some sort of consistent plot, and. with scenery by Mills. One of his songs.

the words being changed in accordance with the altered conditions, is under the name of ‘Columbia, the Pride of the Ocean.’ now one of the national songs of the United States. In 1889 the compHment was paid him of an Admiralty order to the Royal Marines directing them to use ‘ A life on the ocean wave' as one of their regimental marches.

Sensible to the Last.—Jameson : " I hear your uncle is dead. Pennyless. Was he sensible to the last?” Pennylees: “No, he wasn’t. The last thing, he did was to cut me out cf Ms will!"

There is an auction df human hair in the Department of the Lower Pyrenees, at the village of Merlaus, each Friday. The peasant girls of that district have splendid hair, and they are ready to sell their locks for money to the highest, bidder. They stand in the village street with their hair down for the inspection of the gangs of traders who come to the market. . The hitter have their shears with them, and after a girl has obtained the best price she can for her hair the trader cuts it off there and then with his shears, and pays over the amount of the bid which won the golden or raven locks.