For my own pleasure (I do not know whether it was for other people's), I used to sing the comic songs, "Johnny Sands," "The Cork Leg," and "The Lost Child," to my own pianoforte accompaniment. I was never taught the tunes or words of these songs, but picked them up as children do, and reproduced them at the piano in a fashion of my own.
One delightful consequence of this was, that the number of my invitations to juvenile parties was considerably increased. I added to my stock of songs of course, and so found I was kept up to a late hour—at grown-up parties, too. Though not too young to learn and sing these songs, I was not old enough to always understand their purport.
There was a song, about this time, which was all the rage in London. The tune was heard on every organ and band, in every ballroom and theatre. I bought a penny song-book with the words, which I learned off by heart, and, as usual, picked out my accompaniment on the piano. One evening I launched it before the grown-up people who always turn up at the latter end of a juvenile party, and some of whom generally requested that I should be kept and made to sing to them. My friend Frank Burnand, in his incomparable Happy Thoughts, tells how he was singing a comic song before an unsympathetic audience, and suddenly remembering a verse was not quite proper, backed out of it. In my own case, I had no notion that the verse was risque. I did not even understand it; so out it came with the full force of my penny-whistle voice. I never heard so much laughter in a room before. There was a general request for the song to be encored; but this was just a little too much for the feelings of my fond and hitherto proud mother, who made a dash at me, and shut me and the piano up at the same moment.
There is a period when the voice breaks, but I do not think I ever had a voice to break; at all events, I never remember the time when I ceased singing comic songs.
When half-way through my teens I began to write snatches of songs and illustrations, and received much help and encouragement from my father. He used to take me to the old Gallery of Illustration, to hear the inimitable John Parry; and this infused not only a new life, but a totally different style, into my work. Still in my teens, I used to be asked to the grown-up parties of Mr. Toole, Mr. Charles Millward, Mr. Henry Neville, and Mr. John Hollingshead, the last-named of whom, only the other day, reminded me that I never could be persuaded to sing before supper, excusing myself on the ground that the songs always went so much better after supper. So they did, and so they still do.
At Mr. Hollingshead's I first met Mr. Henry S. Leigh, then a contributor to Fun, and the author of "Carols of Cockayne," "Gillott and Goosequill," &c. He was himself a great admirer of John Parry; and when I became intimate with him, in after years, used to show me how Parry sang "Wanted, a Governess," "The Old Bachelor," "The Dejeuner a la Fourchette," &c., all of which I have myself sung at times, after a fashion. At Hollingshead's (in Colebrook Row), Leigh sang "The Twins," which became an enormously successful song, and he gave me a copy of it. Subsequently, I sang most of Leigh's songs en amateur; and after my appearance as a professional entertainer, he specially wrote "The Seven Ages of Song" and "The Parrot and the Cat" for me.
As a boy, I used, at certain evening parties, to accompany Toole in "A Norrible Tale" and "Bob Simmons," and considered it a high honour. I used to sing some of the songs of Henry J. Byron, a constant visitor to my father's house, and received much encouragement from him; also from John Oxenford, the dramatic critic of The Times; Andrew Halliday; T.W. Robertson, the dramatic author, and scores of others. It will be seen, therefore, that though I commenced on my own account, I was destined to be brought up in an atmosphere of literature and art. But neither my father nor myself was the first representative of the family on the public platform.
Judge Talfourd, the author of Ion, had heard my father recite over and over again, and strongly advised him to take up lecturing and reading as a profession. He followed the popular judge's advice, and gave his first lecture, entitled "Wit and Humour," on the day of my birth, at Reading, his native town. In a speech on the occasion of my coming of age he made use of these felicitous words: "I went down to Reading to make my first appearance in public at my native place, and, on my return, found my eldest son had made his first appearance in private at his native place."
That was forty years ago; but I propose presenting my readers with a copy of a programme, having reference to an uncle, dated twenty-five years before that. The programme is quaintly illustrated with tiny blocks of very primitive engravings, illustrating the characters personated: