(WITH THE SPELLING CORRECTED, THE GRAMMAR
LOOKED TO, AND THE LANGUAGE TOUCHED UP BY
A LITERARY FRIEND.)
Y name is John Dobbs. In the year ’58
I was born in a street which I fear was fifth-rate.
My pa was a gent who had had a reverse,
And my ma took in other folks’ babies to nurse.
Thus early my life-long acquaintance began
With the folks who are first in Society’s van;
In the cradle next mine slept the son of a peer,
Who had gone to the dogs all through skittles and beer.
At six I developed a beautiful voice,
Which made the fond hearts of my parents rejoice;
I was sent out to sing with a man in the street,
But I plied my vocation among the élite.
We sang in the squares where proud nobles reside;
And often a duchess’s face I espied,
As she peered o’er the blind at the little artiste;
Thus I grew to mind duchesses not in the least.
I pass o’er my youth, merely pausing to state
That I met many folks who were famous and great,
And it frequently happened my supper I took
With a tip-top celebrity’s housemaid or cook.
I was just in the twentieth year of my age
When I made my début on the music-hall stage;
And ’twas there that I soon made a very big name,
And earned all my subsequent fortune and fame.
I’d a song with a chorus of “jammy jam-jam,”
That was sung from Southend to Seringapatam;
And often, when singing my song at the halls,
I have seen lords and marquises smile in the stalls.
Lord Beaconsfield once I’d the honour to meet—
His lordship was walking up Parliament Street—
By the merest of chances I trod on his toe,
And his lordship looked up and remarked to me “Oh!”