The music of the popular puppet theatre in 19th-century England

John McCormick
(Irlanda)
(Evora, June 2003)

David Mayer has pointed out that the size of the band in a Victorian theatre could range from a full orchestra to 'a single cornet and fiddle or a wheezy harmonium when luck ran out'.(1)

All this suggests that one cannot really have any absolute view of what might or might not constitute the band of a marionette theatre. Jerome K. Jerome, in the 1890s, as a fit-up actor, recalled visiting towns where piano would be hired to represent the orchestra.(2) Like the travelling actors' theatres, marionette theatres would tend to be at the lower end of the scale. A picture of a fantoccini performance for children at Arundel Castle in 1869 shows a single musician playing a concertina. However, at the other end of the scale, in 1891 we find Thomas Holden preparing a French tour and advertising for a brass band of ten musicians, plus a pianist. Even the street Punch and Judy or the Fantoccini show had their musicians. The drum was indispensable. Often the drummer also had to be able to provide melodies with another instrument - quite commonly Panpipes, or else a fiddle.
If we look at street musicians of the nineteenth century, we will notice a large variety of instruments used.  The Judy of July 10, 1872 has a satirical plate which depicts players of the tambourine, banjo, bagpipes, drums, cornets, flute,  violin, accordion, glass tubes, the inevitable barrel organ and a harp.   In the 1850s harps were still common in the streets of Ireland and Britain, and this instrument occasionally found its way into the band of a marionette show. In 1881,for example, Noakes Marionettes advertised for a Fiddle and a Harp player (Double handed preferred)' adding 'Glad to hear from old friends. Will Mr. Clements write in. A double-handed musician meant a musician who could play more than one instrument.
Often a distinction was made between 'outside music' used for the parade, either through the town, or on the front of the booth, and 'inside music', which related directly to the performance.  Outside music, whose primary function was to attract an audience,  was frequently provided by brass instruments, especially after the middle of the century, whilst the 'inside' music was generally something more geared to melody and the creation of atmosphere.
In the last years of the 19th century some of the bigger travelling shows used a fairground organ as their outside music. Clunn-Lewis was celebrated for his use of a harp to collect an audience for his marionette show. To accompany his shows he engaged one of the Middleton family, who played the cornet and dulcimer.
For a  marionette company a piano was a useful and versatile instrument. In 1873, The marionette performer and later proprietor, Richard Barnard,  joined the Cassidy Company, which consisted of 'three or four workers and a pianist' , whose name was Henri Page. Thomas Holden had fully incorporated a piano into his band by 1888.
Members of a puppeteer's family often had musical talents, and the ability to play an instrument or sing could be crucial to the economy of a family troupe - sometimes a performer had to move from the bridge to the orchestra and back several times during the performance. In a picture of the Tiller booth in 1913. Harriet Clowes identified the various member of the company (mostly family).   On the parade was Arthur Bartholomew, the pianist (standing in the centre), then her two brothers, Edward Clowes, with a cornet, and John with a tenor horn. The fourth figure on the parade is Bert Bowden, who is depicted holding a slide trombone. Harriet specifically commented on their musical skills. After the closure of the theatre, Edward became a bandmaster of the British Legion Band in Littlehampton.

By the end of the century it was possible to hire music for popular plays (and many of the melodramas performed by the marionette companies fell into this category). Mayer has pointed out that Samuel French, as late as 1912, published a list of 'Music on Hire' in their Alphabetical catalogue of the Principal Plays. A piano score cost 4 shillings, whilst ' Full Orchestration ' cost 5. These included a number of melodramas, together with an indication of the number of band-parts.  In this list were Black ey'd Susan (8), The Colleen Bawn (8), The Corsican brothers (6), Lost in London (8), Luke the labourer (8), The Miller and his men (5).  All of these plays were performed on the marionette stage, and the ample evidence of direct use of Dicks and later French's plays as basic texts, would lead one to suppose that the showmen might also have obtained their music from the same source.

Very little is known as to what specific music any marionette company might have used - We therefore have to proceed by hypothetical reconstruction, but even here we must be careful, since the existence of stage music for a particular show is not in itself a guarantee that it was used by the puppet showmen.

One of the rare cases where we have a fairly definite idea of the music to accompany a marionette show was the popular pantomime of Little Red Riding Hood, initially staged by D'Arcs and Bullocks in the 1870s, and later picked up by various other companies. Bullock published a text in 1872 and this was sold as part of the programme. As well as the text of the pantomime, it provides indications of the tunes for the songs and some of the dances. The parallel between this and the ballad operas of over a century earlier is striking.

As we go through the text we come across references to a number of songs and airs well-known at the time, which have been given new words or context:
"Down in the coal mines"
"Few Days"
"Amaryllis"
"If ever I cease to Love"
"Chilperic  Quadrilles (Hervé)."
"We are so volatile"
"March of the pigmies"
"Mollie Darling"

Music for variety acts:

The variety part of the performance could itself be subdivided: one part was the fantoccini, largely consisting of acrobats and trick figures, with the odd comic song. The other part was the black-faced Minstrels, who gave a concert of songs and dances, which generally formed a separate unit of the programme. The Minstrel act, which consisted of a group of black-faced performers on the platform singing songs connected with American plantation life, sometimes performing dances, most notably a breakdown, and telling jokes, had become a significant type of stage entertainment in England by the 1850s and probably first appeared on the marionette stage in 1852 with Brigaldi's version of the Ethiopian Serenaders.
When Bullock presented his troupe at the Crystal Palace in February, 1874, the Minstrels formed the first part of the programme with an overture, a comic song ('Laughing Nigger'), a song ('Belle Mahone'), a plantation song and dance ('The poor old nigger' - old Snowball) and a 'Plantation Walk Round' performed by the troupe.
The fantoccini or variety section of the marionette bill also involved songs
'Chorus Tommy' was one of the most popular acts for a duet and dance. The full version of this popular music-hall song song is entitled 'Oh, cruel were my parients'. It consists of a duet between an old woman (Sal) and her one-eyed, one-legged partner who plays the fiddle and joins in the chorus when she reminds him with a shout of 'Chorus Tommy'.
From the 1860s 'The Perfect Cure' , a music-hall song introduced by J.H. Stead, became a popular number and was adapted for extending and contracting puppets. The puppet act usually consisted of a pair of figures. The Clowes-Tiller figures include a pair of clown 'cures' dressed in red and white striped outfits like that worn by Stead. Later on, as Stead was forgotten, cures might be dressed as guardsmen, sailors, Pierrots or clowns.
Another popular dance act was the Chinese bell-dancers, who, like cures,  appeared in twos or threes and amused audiences with their comic lateral movements of arms and legs. The exact origin of music for the Chinese Bell-dancers is not known, and there is no indication that  there was any one specific air used for the purpose. However, there is Thomas Valentine's  "A Chinese Bell Dance - composed and arranged as a familiar Rondo for the pianoforte", which dates at least from the 1830s, and may have been used on the marionette stage.

The hornpipe had become a popular stage dance in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and one suspects that it's popularity was enhanced if anything by the vogue for nautical melodramas in the nineteenth.. Marionette hornpipe-dancing sailors exist from at least the 1820s. One of the most popular tunes, which may have been used for this act, was "The College Hornpipe" to which an old sailor's song called "Jack's the Lad" was sung. .
The two Irish characters, Pat and Biddy dance a 'rale Irish Jig'. We do not know exactly what the tune was - but something like "The Irish Washerwoman" is quite possible.
At the end of the nineteenth century more and more marionette theatres began to present puppet versions of music-hall stars.
Lottie Collins, who popularised the highly suggestive song  "Ta ra ra boom de ay" appeared on the Barnard stage in1892. Her dance, with its display of petticoats and suspendered legs was very daring at the time and was probably one of the things that a member of the London Borough Council found 'shocking and indecent' in the Barnard performance.
By the early 1900s D'Arcs presented a whole line-up of such figures, with all the great artistes of the day from Marie Lloyd to Vesta Tilly to Harry Lauder to little Tich.
We can therefore see that music was not merely an incidental part of the nineteenth-century puppet theatre, but was one of the key elements. The age of mechanical music meant that in economically difficult times showmen could avoid having to pay musicians, but what was lost was the dynamic link between the live musician and the live stage performance, and this very dynamism had been a vital element of the nineteenth-century puppet show.