NICOLE ANAE
60 Atay Citron, `Words, Meanings, Pigs - The Struggle of Visual Theatre Against The Larrikin 's Hop: Larrikinism and the Tyranny of the Word', MOTAR Journal of the Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts 6 (June 1998): 260. Online: Late Colonial Popular Theatre http://www.tau.ac.il/arts/projects/PUB/motar/pdf eng/motar6eng.pdf. Accessed 23 November 2006. 61 Ibid. Melissa Bellanta 62 Ibid. 63 Scottish Arts Council, `Theatre and Style: Physical Theatre'. Online: long with the shearer,
`Variety theatre ' is an umbrella term used to denote theatrical entertainment made up of disparate parts. The minstrel show was, in this sense , a form of variety theatre. It typically featured a first act of black-face singing, a second act starring speciality performers such as ventriloquists and dancers, and a third act made up of a comic burlesque or farce.4 Minstrelsy regularly featured in Australia from the mid-1800s, but later in the century it faced stiff competition from other theatrical companies. Many of these incorporated
Australasian Drama Studies 52 (April 2008) 132 MELISSA BELLANTA THE LARRIKIN'S HOP 133 routines from English music halls and/or emerging American vaudeville material incorrectly claimed he was the first performer to portray a larrikin on theatres, and it is with them that the term `variety' is most closely associated.5 stage.12 Lonnen may genuinely have believed himself to be first in this Whatever precise form it took, variety entertainment was a regular, regard, but more likely he was influenced by other larrikin acts in theatres taken-for-granted feature of Australian life in the late Victorian era. Staged small enough to be under the radar of the metropolitan press. Whatever his alike by overseas and local companies, it appealed to diverse audiences. inspiration, a modest swag of larrikin songs appeared in the early 1890s. Some people encountered variety at amateur fund-raising efforts; many more Historians Edgar Waters and Clay Djubal each list a fair number of these, so went to professional shows in the suburbs or country towns. During the I will not repeat all of them here - especially given that the words week, these venues took in a motley of shopworkers, clerks, tradespeople and `Woolloomooloo' and `The Push' featured repetitively in their titles.13 In labourers. Saturday matinees were for women and children; Saturday nights April 1893, for example, an entertainer calling himself Master Zetter sang a were for `the mob', a largely masculine group of labourers and the criminal song called `I've Chucked Up the Push for My Donah', composed by J. C. underclass out for a lark. Upmarket theatres such as the Tivoli catered for an Williamson, at the Alhambra in Melbourne. In 1894, Frank M. Clark sang elegant clientele, but their cheaper seats still included working people out on `The Push' and `Hooligans', while Whitman reprised `The Larrikin's Hop'.14 a spree.6 This is why variety can be called `popular', then: it formed part of Given the paucity of commentary on variety performances, it is hard to the texture of day-to-day living for a broad sweep of the population.? tell exactly what entertainers were doing when they played the larrikin. Descriptions of larrikins first emerged in the 1870s. This was in large There are only a few cases in which the text from their songs survives. part because of the growth of `slummer journalism', in which writers such as Whitman's `Woolloomooloo' is one of these. If it is anything to go by, John Freeman and `The Vagabond' presented gripping insights into the theatrical depictions of the larrikin made little attempt to replicate his speech colonial underworld. These writers described visits to opium dens, bare- or comment on his peculiarities. True, Whitman's standard costume was knuckle prize fights, and the notorious `saddling bars' at the back of some reminiscent of larrikin dress, including greasy hair and bell-bottomed colonial theatres.8 Theatres featured prominently in their commentary, trousers.15 He performed in black-face, however, making it obvious that his especially that on larrikins. Larrikins were often found at `low' concert-halls, was no naturalistic portrayal of the larrikin. `Oh, my name it is McCarty / wrote The Vagabond, where variety acts were followed by giddy dancing And I'm a rorty party', he sang: from the crowd. They also loitered in the vestibules of glitzy theatres, and A larrikin so hearty afterwards packed into the cheap gallery seats upstairs to create mayhem That's a fact, oh, strike me blue! during the show.9 I'm a perfect daisy While the larrikin emerged as a cultural figure in the 1870s, it was not Won't work because I'm lazy really until the 1880s that he achieved a vivid currency in the colonial Gone way along the boozing throng imagination. Fears of street misrule ran hot in this decade, inflamed by angry That loaf round Woolloomooloo ... reactions to Ned Kelly's hanging in 1880, and by sensational rape After spending years in gaol, I began to quail, allegations. The Mt Rennie Case was the most heavily reported of these; it I resolved to live upon a different lay. involved the trial of eleven larrikin youths for a gang rape in 1886; four of Soon I enlisted in the ranks of the Salvation cranks, these youths were later executed.10 At the same time, however, variety You can bet I made the blooming business pay. theatre and much else was booming in the 1880s. It is not perhaps so `Hallelujah!' I yell out, for I know my way about; surprising, then, that larrikins began appearing on the variety stage, not just I kid the mugs that I'm converted too. among its audiences, towards the end of the decade. The first entertainer All the lassies, too, I mash, and I'm never out of cash, known for playing a larrikin was an Australian minstrel singer, Will For I spank the drum all over Woolloomooloo.16 Whitman. Later described as `famous for his larrikin songs', he appears to The image of Whitman's character banging a Salvation Army drum is of a have first performed one around 1887, called `The Larrikin's Hop'. In 1889, piece with many other portrayals of `low life' in English and American he again appeared as a larrikin, scoring `a big hit in Melbourne' with a song popular theatre. Characters who fooled their superiors with improbable hard- called `Woolloomooloo', and a year later, he was once more performing `The luck stories, or who knowingly mugged respectability, appeared regularly in Larrikin's Hop' with two travelling American minstrel companies.tI music halls and minstrel shows. Mockery of the Salvation Army was also an In early 1892, an English entertainer, E. J. Lonnen, worked up a larrikin occasional feature.17 In England, the Salvos opened themselves up as a target act as part of a burlesque at Melbourne's Gaiety Theatre. Promotional for ridicule because of their opposition to the bawdiness of the music halls. 134 MELISSA BELLANTA THE LARRIKIN'S HOP 135 The halls were indeed notorious for their ribaldry. They provided their transform it into something `new'. In this sense, variety's inventiveness audiences, it was said, with `one long streak of rich, corrugated blue'.18 functioned similarly to rap and hip-hop genres, with their knowing re- Given this, it is possible that Whitman made double entendres out of the working of other songs in witty and sometimes surprising ways. From a notion of being `struck blue', if not also of `spanking the drum'. twenty-first-century vantage, a larrikin assuming the guise of a black Variety theatre's seeming lack of interest in `Australianness' has often American minstrel is an historical anomaly. We are accustomed to an been commented upon by observers. Nationalist papers such as the Bulletin unambiguously Anglo image of the larrikin today, waving the flag and spoke about it in aggrieved tones: `in what variety house can Australians hear shouting racist slogans in the midst of a sporting crowd. In the late a reference to their own country?' was a regular refrain.19 This critique has nineteenth century, however, manliness was potently associated with been echoed by historians ever since. Edgar Waters notes in disgust, for whiteness.22 This meant an affinity between blackness and other `unmanly' instance, that after an upsurge of.acts in the early 1890s, the larrikin appears groups operated on the popular stage. It was not uncommon for black-face to have disappeared from the Australian variety stage until he was characters to be substituted for Cockney or Irishmen in minstrel sketches.23 resuscitated by the comedians Stiffy and Mo, in the 1920s. For a time `it had These characters were all shown to resist work, to gull their superiors through looked as though the variety stage might exploit the larrikin as a distinctive sneaky manoeuvres, and to lack manly self-control.24 Australian type', he said. Regrettably, that did not last.20 Popular theatre is a One of the most famous minstrel characters was Zip Coon, an urban frustrating form for anyone looking for naturalist depictions of Australian dandy. Zip Coon was first impersonated in Australia in 1848, and enjoyed life. While there were some pantomimes and plays with Australian locations, regular outings over the following decades. Henry Lawson remembered performances were more frequently set in London. When variety theatricals minstrel songs being sung on the New South Wales goldfields during the did include Australian material, they usually did so by changing the lyrics of 1870s, including one called `Blue Tail Fly', about a Zip Coon-like dandy.25 an imported song. Topical material was an important part of variety Such figures provided inspiration for a range of fast-living `coon' songs performance, but it was generally included in improvised asides or allusions appearing in Australia from the 1880s. Coon songs were fully entrenched on rather than as the focal point of an act. the Australian variety circuit by the end of the century. Such was their To criticise variety for its lack of realism, however - as also for an popularity that various Australian printing-houses published songs such as insufficiency of local detail - is to misunderstand its logic and appeal. `The Lily of Laguna' and `Every Race in the World Has a Flag But the Variety performers were not interested in sitting before a canvas like the Coon'. The coons in these songs boasted of being `black sheep' and ladies' Heidelberg painters, or venturing into gambling dens, notebook in hand, like men. They referred to `red hot' or promiscuous `honeys', and they described the flaneur journalists. Rather than searching for a spurious nationalist dancing, stealing and razor-wielding as typical coon pursuits.26 `authenticity', they were explicit about their imitation of other cultural Like the coons of late nineteenth-century minstrelsy, larrikins were cast products and practices. Indeed, that was the point. A spirit of parody infused as violent and sexually rapacious, ranking beneath the rest of white variety theatre, making it well-practised at the transformation of existing Australians on the evolutionary scale. During the Mt Rennie rape case in texts and styles. 1886, the larrikin defendants were condemned as being `more cruel and Whitman's appearance as a black-face larrikin is an example of variety's degraded than savages'. Even before this, a Melbourne paper described a parodic logic at work. `Woolloomooloo' was set to a famous faux-Irish group of larrikins dancing `like savages'. The Australian press often depicted minstrel song, `Killaloe'. It began: African-American men loitering about in larrikin fashion in dark urban I happened to be born on a cold and frosty mom places 27 Given these multiple associations between larrikins and blackness, In the famous suburb known as Woolloomooloo. the idea of a `push' member being portrayed in black-face, singing a song called `The Larrikin's Hop', is not as bizarre as it first appears. This was a direct nod to the original, which began: I happened to be born at the time they cut the corn Another influence on the stage larrikin was the coster, or costermonger, an English music hall character based on itinerant street-hawkers. Costers Quite contagious to the town of Killaloo.21 hauled fruit and vegetables in barrows - their name was said to come The audience would, of course, have known this. Most likely, it would have from costard, an apple - or drove wares in a donkey-drawn wagon. They had been amused by the juxtaposition of the rustic simpleton of `Killaloe' with sometimes been portrayed as Jewish or Irish in early nineteenth-century the cunning slum-child of `Woolloomooloo'. The song's parodic nature was musical theatre. By the 1880s, however, they were far more likely to be part of what made it pleasurable, allowing it to take something `old' and depicted as Cockneys on the English variety stage.28 Cockney costers came MELISSA BELLANTA THE LARRIKIN'S HOP 137
Knocked 'Em in the Old Kent-Road' drawing a `Babel of applause'. In Melbourne, `Wot Cher!' attracted so much applause that Rickards gave a A larrikin and donah lament speech in gratitude.32 changes to New South Wales licensing laws restricting It is hard to know precisely why costers held such an appeal for pubs in the city. Australian audiences. In England, the popularity of Albert Chevalier's coster Note the poster advertising songs has often been attributed to his romantic `take' on the genre., He dancing and alcohol in the provided an endearing Cockney stereotype tailored to respectable background. Bulletin theatregoers - a stereotype which C. J. Dennis was to recycle as his vision of (25 March 1882): 9. the larrikin in The Songs of the Sentimental Bloke (1915).33 This, we are told, appealed to the increasing numbers of bourgeois families frequenting the late Victorian music hal1.34 The same explanation has been offered for the to prominence on the popularity of Rickards' Australian performances. Gae Mary Anderson Australian stage in the suggests that Rickards' coster songs presented `quaint, sanitised, and 1870s. During his sentimental versions of low-class life'. It was for this reason that they 1871-74 tour, English enjoyed a broad appeal, both on the stage and - as sheet music - in `the performer Harry drawing-rooms of polite society'.35 Rickards performed a coster song called Like most broad-brush claims based on class, the explanations just offered are too neat to persuasively account for the coster's appeal. For a `Going to the Derby in start, sentimental versions of the coster were not the only ones available. In My Little Donkey Cart', England, Gus Elen played a grittier version of the coster than did Chevalier, attracting notice from the colonial press. singing of the pitfalls of urban poverty.36 Coster-girl performers such as When he returned to Australia in the 1880s, Rickards continued to gamer Jenny Hill and Marie Lloyd sang about getting drunk at the pub and also, praise for Cockney coster parts, among them a `London costermonger out for allusively, about sex.37 Even the range of Chevalier' s coster acts extended a bank holiday'; Flash Jimmy, `a Whitechapel costermonger'; Rorty Tom, a beyond clownish romanticism, and the same can be said for Rickards' performances Cockney crook; and 'Arry, another egregious Cockney based on stories about . His characters 'Arry, Flash Jimmy, and Kent-road Bill are a vulgar cad in London's Punch during the 1870s.29 indeed better described as `coster swells' than costers per se. Coster swells represented a demotic twist on the swell characters played by English music It is easier to speak about Rickards' performances than other Australian hall performers such as Alfred Vance - and also by performers in Australia, acts, because of the amount of press commentary and advertising variety including Rickards himself.38 In `Clicquot, Clicquot! That's the Wine For devoted to him. Since variety theatre traded in imitation, however, it is most Me', Vance played a hard-partying, champagne-scoffmg toff with a penchant likely that costers made regular appearances in other variety shows. for foppish attire. The coster swell was what Australians today would refer Certainly by 1892, when E. J. Lonnen's London burlesque company toured to as a `bogan' version of this roisterous dandy. He strove for the glamour of the colonies, Australian audiences were well-versed in the genre. The gentleman swell, dressing in cheap knock-offs of the latter's haute couture Bulletin spoke disparagingly of the `inevitable coster song' appearing in and drinking something less expensive than Clicquot.39 Rickards was performances like Lonnen's. It also noted that the rowdy, `gods' in the evidently drawn by these bogan swells, investing his characterisations of gallery seats were rapt by his `famous "coster song"', "Ave A Glass, Won't them with a `leery affability'.40 Yer?'30 When Rickards again returned to Australia in the early 1890s, his initial success owed much to his coster impersonations. He had secured sole The `imperturbable self-confidence' of the coster swell and coster-girl colonial rights to the music of various coster singers, most notably Albert makes it clear that they were not simply sanitised low-life forms.41 Coster Chevalier and Marie Lloyd. Rickards `hit the blot' singing these songs in swells could provoke snobbish laughter on account of their aspirational airs. 1892, shortly before taking over Sydney's Garrick Theatre and calling it the But at the same time they could burlesque the pretensions of the affluent Tivoli 31 His coster sketches were `encored six times on an average' when he classes, exaggerating them to the point of ridicule. They could also suggest performed them in Sydney, with his rendition of Chevalier's `Wot Cher!, or that anyone `with a bit of luck or initiative' could aspire to a swell life 42 It was for this reason that Cockney swells were so popular among the larrikin 138 MELISSA BELLANTA THE LARRIKIN'S HOP 139 `gods', I suggest - for those who shrieked with delight when Lonnen sang his `famous' coster song. The efflorescence of the stage larrikin must be seen in the context of the coster mania taking place in the early 1890s. Even at the time, larrikins and coster swells were acknowledged as inter-related forms. When Lonnen tried out his larrikin routine, the Bulletin declared it a `decidedly hybrid performance' 43 Lonnen `has. dropped the coster of yore', it reported, `and substitutes for that ancient friend a just passable imitation of the Australian larrikin' 44 Lonnen also performed an `Australian version' of Chevalier's coster song, `Mrs 'Enry 'Awkins', with words written by Lance Lenton, lyricist for `The Larrikin's Hop' and `Woolloomooloo'45 Lenton then wrote an Australian version of `Wot Cher!' for Frank M. Clark. Called `Knocked 'Em on the Brighton Road', it featured a Collingwood swell riding out with his `tart' in a tumbledown horse-drawn cart.46 In each case here, the stage larrikin was recognised as a parody of the coster swell. So far in this article I have pointed out that minstrelsy and music hall had a lot to do with variety theatre's representation of larrikin characters. The `coon' and `coster swell' were closely related to the stage larrikin, and this was likely to have influenced views towards larrikins both on and off the stage. But these characters were also a source of inspiration for larrikins themselves. Variety traditions played a crucial role in the development of the larrikin persona. They provided street-youths with the means to style identities for themselves. It was not just a matter of the stage larrikin imitating other stage characters rather than `real life' larrikins. Since street larrikins themselves imitated theatrical characters, the relationship between `art' and `life' was more complex than that. In contemporary accounts, the defining element of larrikinism was often considered to be larrikins' distinctive dress. Dress and gesture were what made these people `larrikins', rather than some other loafer or criminal. According to travel-writer Gilbert Parker, for instance, Brisbane had no Larrikin in bell-bottoms (Bulletin, 1895). Reproduced in larrikins. There were abundant low characters in the streets; indeed, as Mark Patricia Rolfe, The Journalist Javeelin: An Illustrated History Finnane notes, there was plenty of rowdiness committed by Brisbane's rough of the Bulletin (Sydney: Wildcat Press, 1979) 158. youth. But one did not see evidence of `the slouch-hat, the rakish jib, the boozer, `Flash 'Arty, whose heels make him stand on his toes', drawn features' in Brisbane - all characteristics essential to larrikinism, so far and `Jerry the "gaffer" with short rusty coat/A flaming red tie around his bare throat'.50 as Parker was concemed.47 Nat Gould similarly claimed that, larrikins could While there were thus subtle differences between larrikin types, they styled be identified by their bell-bottomed trousers. These, he wrote, were `the themselves nonetheless through a fairly tight cluster of features. For men, "hall-mark" of genuine larrikinism' 48 these included high-heeled boots, a rakishly tilted hat and lasciviousness of There were, of course, subtle differences in what some larrikins wore. expression. For female larrikins, it included tawdry hats, flounced dresses Some wore bell-bottoms; others, baggy pants. Some were described in and brazenness of face. collarless shirts; others went to dances in frilled shirts, with a velvet collar or cheap tweed suit.49 In an 1882 poem, a number of larrikin types were depicted. Firstly, there were "`fly" Nancy', `brazen-faced Annie' and `leery- faced Sue'. Then there were Tommy, the snappy bookmaker, Billy the MELISSA BELLANTA THE LARRIKIN' S HOP 141 ostrich feathers.53 These varied visual aids formed the props from which larrikins and donahs styled themselves on the street.
English music hall celebrity, Albert Chevalier, dressed as a coster swell for a song called `Mafekin' Night'.54
The `love of mischief for mischief's sake' was widely regarded a salient feature of larrikinism. Larrikins were often described as `dancing mad', and given to larking about. This ethic of pleasure was precisely that celebrated within variety theatre: whether in risque music hall numbers, or in the toe- tapping nastiness of coon dancing songs.55 A sense of the darker pleasures of violence FOR LOVE." and mayhem was 1.«ri•i^:in (^>1rr;iin^/ i. ..` j).-0° is MY DARLING TRUE TO \IF. particularly apparent in Lar,-1.iw,,,.-" YES, THY 11.L:; LI\L; S TRUE TO THEE." PAY FOR THESE BLOOMI NG DRINKS." coon songs, where characters routinely Larrikins in the Melbourne Punch, 30 March 1876. 012.1 thumbed their noses at affluent whites and In an article on literary representations of the larrikin, John Rickard skited of their fighting prowess. 'I`bis kind of threatening braggadocio had wondered at the distinctiveness of larrikin dress. `Where did the larrikin look been a feature of black-face impersonations well before coon songs came to for inspiration?', he asked.51 I cannot pretend to know every influence upon the fore. Jim Crow, the most famous minstrel character, had this to say to the larrikin style, but variety theatre certainly had an important part to play. well-off men in his audiences: Elements of larrikin dress were supplied by a range of variety characters. An' I caution all white dandies, Costers were nearly always depicted in bell-bottoms and neckerchief, for Not to come my way, example, and sometimes also jackets with `pearlie' buttons.52 Swells wore For if dey insult me, fancy suits, colourful cravats, and greased-back hair, and were renowned for Dey'll in de gutter lay.56 the fuss they made of their boots. Coster swells wore even brighter neckcloths, trousers covered in vivid stripes or checks, and hats tipped Further, Irish characters were frequently depicted dealing blows to authority jauntily to one side. Donahs, on the other hand, wore hats covered in huge figures on the variety stage. In a typical song of the late colonial era, Frank M. Clark sang about a group of violent Irishmen out on the town one night: MELISSA BELLANTA THE LARRIKIN 'S HOP 143 `The policeman interfered with us, the man that knocked him down/Was one assumed by some of them for the purpose of self-definition and social McCormack.' 57 resistance during the conflicts of the late colonial era. I have further shown Intimidatory speech of this kind was a key part of the larrikin persona. that popular performance played an important part in this process. Efforts Larrikins were repetitively described as being found on street corners yelling were made to contain the larrikin menace on the variety stage, certainly - but at passers-by.58 Some really did lay white dandies in the gutter, of course, the theatre also functioned as a political resource for larrikins themselves. and in this they may have been encouraged by the aggressive buffoonery routinely featured in popular theatricals. Standard variety acts such as the NOTES Leslie Brothers combined ` acrobatism and grotesqueries ', delivering slapstick violence to one another in black-face guise. No doubt this was what 1 Edward Morris, Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases was involved when they performed `Woolloomooloo', a musical sketch, at and Usages (London: Macmillan, 1898) 259-63; James Murray, Larrikins: 19th Century Outrage (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1973); Peter Grabosky, the Tivoli in 1895 .59 The clowns in pantomimes were even more violent Sydney in Ferment: Crime, Dissent and Official Reaction, 1788-1973 (Canberra: ANU as weapons, flattening policemen in figures, brandishing red-hot pokers Press, 1977) 84-103; Chris McConville, `From Criminal Class to Underworld', .60 The larrikins who reacted mangles, stealing food and chasing pedestrians in Graeme Davison, David Dunstan and Chris McConville, eds, The Outcasts of to Ned Kelly' s hanging in 1880, calling themselves a `second Kelly gang' Melbourne: Essays in Social History (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985) 69-90; and storming shops in Melbourne's Hoddle Street, exhibited an almost Mark Finnane, `Larrikins, Delinquents and Cops: Police and Young People in uncanny similarity to these theatrical figures of misrule.61 Australian History', in Rob White and Christine Alder, eds, Police and Young People in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 7-26; Jan Variety theatre used hackneyed props through which to signal key Kociumbas, Australian Childhood.- A History (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997) character types: burnt-cork for the negro minstrel, a feathered hat for the 128-9, 142-3; John Rickard, `Lovable Larrikins and Awful Ockers ', Journal of coster girl, a champagne bottle for the swell. By providing countless versions Australian Studies 56 (1998): 78-85; Cameron White, `Promenading and of these stock characters, but each time representing them in subtly different Picnicking: The Performance of Middle-Class Masculinity in Nineteenth-century ways, it gave its audiences an education in the nuances of role -play. As Sydney', Journal ofAustralian Studies 89 (2006): 27-40. social historian Patrick Joyce puts it, variety theatre was a kind of `laboratory -2 Social commentary cited in the secondary literature includes: John Stanley of social style and self-definition', in which both old identities and `new James, The Vagabond Papers (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1969); possibilities' were explored.62 Audiences were continually given examples of R. M. Twopeny, Town Life in Australia (London: Stock, 1883); Ajax (pseud.), performers taking a well-known act, adding to it local or idiosyncratic `Larrikinism', Sydney Quarterly Magazine 1.2 (January 1884): 207-15; Ambrose features, and thus making it their own. They were also aware that while Pratt, "`Push" Larrikinism in Australia', Blackwood's Magazine MXXIX.CLXX (July 1901): 27-40. Literary parody was not necessarily subversive, it was available to be used in this examples are : Henry Lawson, `Captain of the Push', in Verses Popular and Humorous (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1997) way. By providing an education of this kind, variety theatre contributed to 90-1 and `Jones' Alley', in While the Billy Boils (Sydney: University of Sydney the creation of larrikin identity. And this has a nice irony about it, given that Library, 1998) 171-81; Ethel Turner, The Little Larrikin (London: Ward, Lock, variety has been criticised for its failure to develop `authentic' Australian 1896); A. B. Paterson, `In Push Society', in An Outback Marriage: A Story of characters on stage. Australian Life (Sydney: University of Sydney Library, 1998) 12-18. Concern about larrikinism reached its pitch in the mid-1880s, when 3 For scant exceptions, see Edgar Waters, `Some Aspects of the Popular Arts in sensational reportage of the Mt Rennie Case inflamed fears of lawlessness in Australia, 1880-1915' (PhD Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra, the streets. This concern shows that a struggle was taking place over 1962) 189-237; Clay Djubal, `What Oh Tonight: The Methodology Factor and Pre-1930s Australian Variety Theatre' (PhD Thesis, University concepts of citizenship, public space, social order and moral values at the of Queensland, 2005) 184-5; Richard Fotheringham, Sport in Australian Drama time. Related struggles were also taking place within the theatre over the (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 132; Susan Priestley, `Larrikins and the Law, behaviours deemed acceptable there.63 In the past, social historians have 1849-1874', Victorian Historical Journal 74. 2 (2003): 247. focused on authorities' efforts to contain the larrikin menace. They have 4 Richard Waterhouse, From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville: The Australian Popular talked about the fact that `larrikin' was a moniker imposed upon unskilled Stage 1788-1914 (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1990) 2-3. young men. Cultural historians have also focused on attempts to make 5 Waterhouse 118; Djubal (2005 ) 100-63. popular theatre more respectable, ensuring that it catered for a modern mass 6 Djubal (2005) 17, 76-7. audience rather than a rowdy plebeian one.64 In this article, however, I have focused on larrikinism not just as a label imposed upon `low' youth, but as 144 MELISSA BELLANTA THE LARRIKIN'S HOP 145
7 Clay Djubal, `From Minstrel Tenor to Vaudeville Showman : Harry Clay, "A 25 Henry Lawson, `The Songs They Used to Sing', in On The Track (Sydney: Friend of the Australian Performer"", Australasian Drama Studies 34 (April University of Sydney Library, 1998) 8; cf Barbara Lewis, `Daddy Blue: The 1999): 23. Evolution of the Dark Dandy', in Bean et al. 257-72. 8 Graeme Davison and David Dunstan, "`This Moral Pandemonium": Images of 26 Lewis 267; James H. Dormon, `Shaping the Popular Image of Post Low Life', in Davison et al. 32-3, 37-43. Reconstruction American Blacks: The "Coon Song" Phenomenon of the Gilded 9 James 29-30; John Freeman, Lights and Shadows of Melbourne Life (London: Age', American Quarterly 40.4 (December 1988): 452-9; Waterhouse 89-91; Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1888) 71; Priestley 247. Leslie Stuart, `The Lily of Laguna' (Sydney: J. Albert & Son, 1898); Will A. 10 David Walker; `Youth on Trial: The Mt Rennie Case', Labour History 50 (May Heelan and J. Fred Helf, `Every Race in the World Has a Flag But the Coon' 1986): 28-41. (Sydney: Albert's Music Stores, 1900): cf the abundant coon songs in Joe 11 Charles Norman, When Vaudeville Was King: A Soft Shoe Stroll Down Forget- Slater's Imperial Songster, e.g. `Hot Stuffin no. 15: 36, 52; `De Warm'st Baby Me-Not Lane (Melbourne: Spectrum, 1984) 58; Waters 211-12; Djubal (2005) in Dis Town', `I'm a Hot Thing', no. 29: 54, 56; `You Ain't So Warm', no. 34: 184. 12-13. 12 Lorgnette (March 1892): 6; cf Waters 213. 27 Grabosky 92; Melbourne Punch (1 June 1876): 219. 13 Waters 211-15; Djubal (2005) 184-5. 28 D. B. Scott, `The Music-Hall Cockney: Flesh, Blood or Replicant?', Music and Letters 83.2 (2002): 242-7. 14 Lorgnette (May 1894, 4th series, no. 173). 29 Gae Mary Anderson, `Harry Rickards: A Performance-centred Portrait from 15 Norman 58. Music Hall to Vaudeville' (PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 1998) 5, 79, 167; 16 . Woolloomooloo', in Waters 211. For the lyrics of other songs referring to Brisbane Courier (22 October 1888): 5; (29 October 1888): 6; Bailey 122-3. larrikins, and/or their social conditions, see: `At Black Wattle Swamp I Met My 30 Bulletin (17 September 1892): 8; (22 October 1892): 6. Doom, Parody on Molly Riley-O', and `The Blow It Nearly Killed Father', in Joe Slater's Imperial Songster (Sydney: n.d.) no. 15: 26, 33; no. 33: 54. 31 Lorgnette (March 1893): 6. 17 Waterhouse 88-9. 32 Anderson 227; Argus (22 August 1892): 7. 18 Peter Bailey, `Champagne Charlie and the Music-Hall Swell Song', in his 33 Albert Chevalier, `On Costers and Music Halls', clipping in Robbins Stage Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City (Cambridge : Cambridge Magic Collection, Acc. No. 614, Mitchell Library, Sydney. C. J. Dennis was a University Press, 1998), 125; J. S. Bratton , `Jenny Hill: Sex and Sexism in the variety theatre enthusiast, and undoubtedly based his larrikin Bill from Songs of Victorian Music Hall', in J. S. Bratton, ed., Music Hall: Performance and Style the Sentimental Bloke on the Chevalier-style costers he encountered on stage. (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986) 106-7; Bulletin, in Waters 147. For an appreciative and evidently educated account of variety performance, see C. J. Dennis, `Variety' (handwritten script for the Gadfly), 19 Waters 220. 6 February 1907, CY 2422, Mitchell Library, Sydney. 20 Ibid 225. 34 Gareth Stedman Jones, `The "Cockney" and the Nation', in David Feldman and 21 Robert Martin, `Killaloe', (n.d.) Digital Collections at Middlebury College, Gareth Stedman Jones, eds, Metropolis London: Histories and Representations Middlebury,Vermont.Online: tp://maozi.middlebury.edu/cdm4/ item_viewer.php? Since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1989) 299; D. F. Cheshire, Music Hall in CISOROOT=/flanders&CISOPTR=265&REC=1 Accessed 11 October 2007. Britain (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974) 67; cf C. J. 22 Marilyn Lake, `White Man's Country: The Trans-National History of a National Dennis, Songs of the Sentimental Bloke (Sydney: University of Sydney Library, Project', Australian Historical Studies, 122 (2003): 346-63. 2003). 23 William J. Mahar, `Ethiopian Skits and Sketches: Contents and Contexts of 35 Anderson 252. Blackface Minstrelsy, 1840-1890', in Annemarie Bean, James V. Hatch and 36 Scott 251, 255. Brooks McNamara, eds, Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth- 37 Bratton 106-7. century Blackface Minstrelsy (Hanover, New England: Wesleyan University Press, 1996) 179-84; cf Dagmar Kift, The Victorian Music Hall: Culture, Class 38 E. W. Cole, Cole's Funniest Song Book (Melbourne: n.d.) 213; `The King Street and Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 45-6. On the Swell and the Domain Tramp' in Joe Slater's Imperial Songster, no. 22: 21-3; `unmanliness ' of larrikins, see White 34-9. and `Australian Champagne', in Frank M. Clark's New Folly Songster (Melbourne: n.d.) 5. 24 Eric Lott, `Blackface and Blackness: The Minstrel Show in American Culture', in Bean et al. 9-10. 39 Bailey 122-3. 146 MELISSA BELLANTA THE LARRIKIN'S HOP 147
40 Bulletin (24 December 1892): 8. For other examples of `low' swells played in Thesis, University of Sydney, 1996); Judith Walkowitz , City of Dreadful Australia, including coon swells, see `Looking For a Coon Like Me', `Can't Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: Stop! Can't Stop! Can't Stop!', `The Dandy Coon's Reply', `The Irish Swells', University of Chicago Press, 1992). and `George McGee', in Joe Slater's Imperial Songster, no. 15: 36, 79; no. 22: 64 McConville 82-90; Grabosky 103; Finnane ; Waterhouse 127, 138-43; Robert C. 8-9, 12-13; no. 34: 33; 'Lah-di-dah', in Bent and Bachelder's Christy Minstrels' Allen, Horrible Prettiness : Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill: Song Book (Sydney: 1882) 14; `The Man With the Seal-Skin Pants', in Clark University of North Carolina Press, 1991) 45-78; Kift. and Ryman's Minstrel Songster (San Francisco: Francis, Valentin, 1888) 13. 41 Star, in Cheshire 75. 42 Bailey 120-3; Kift 50. 43 Bulletin, cited in Waters 213. 44 Bulletin (3 December 1892): 6. 45 Bulletin (10 December 1892): 9. 46 `Knocked 'Em on the Brighton Road', in Frank M. Clark's New Folly Songster. 47 Gilbert Parker, in Morris 262; Finnane. 48 Nat Gould, Town and Bush: Stray Notes on Australia (London: George Robertson, 1896) 105. 49 Gould 105; Murray 33; Melbourne Punch (4 May 1876): 178; (1 June 1876): 219; Paterson, `In Push Society', 4; Lawson, `Captain of the Push', 90. 50 Bulletin (17 June 1882): 5. 51 Rickard 84, n. 5. 52 Anderson 80, 231-2. 53 A reference to donahs' hats appears in many variety songs, including "That's 'Ria!' (`If she's got an ostrich feather down to here/That's 'Ria'), Joe Slater's Imperial Songster, no. 26: 22; cf Ambrose Pratt, King of the Rocks (London: Hutchison, 1900) 143. 54 Albert Chevalier, Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier d'Industrie (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901) 179. 55 Sir George Stephen, in Morris, 261; Melbourne Punch (1 June 1876): 219; Cheshire 68. 56 `Jim Crow', in Lott 12. 57 McCormack, in Frank M. Clark's New Folly Songster 10-11. 58 Kociumbas 118. 59 Djubal (2005) 185. 60 Kelly, `Introduction' to Garnet Walch, Australia Felix, or, Harlequin Laughing Jackass and the Magic Bat: A Pantomime, ed. Veronica Kelly (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1988) 6. 61 Lorgnette (4 October 1890): 6; McConville 74. 62 Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 225-6. 63 On these struggles, see n. 64 below, and also: Ian Hoskins, `Cultivating the Citizen: Cultural Politics in the Parks and Gardens of Sydney, 1880-1930 (PhD