Eliot and the British Music Halls

Weston's Music Hall in the 1880's

Those looking to explore the more complex aspects of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land will find that is filled with an almost overwhelming amount of references, languages and allusions. While some are apparent or explicitly mentioned in the footnotes by Eliot, other inspirations are not as visible without knowledge of the era Eliot lived in. Despite his American heritage Eliot grew enamored with a typical British lifestyle and it is from this he draws much of his inspiration. One example of this is the large role that the British music hall scene played in his social life as well as in The Waste Land. The music halls first began in the 1840's in London and provided a variety show generally following this format:

A "Chairman" acted as master of ceremonies, introducing singers, dancers and specialty acts (magicians, etc.). The halls were everything from huge ornate theaters to stuffy converted basements. All that was required was a stage, audience seating, and a strategically placed bar.

Eliot visited these halls frequently and was a vocal supporter of the performers and the atmosphere. Still, if you don't know what to look for it is hard to make a connection between what Eliot was seeing on the stage and what he wrote. That is why Then You Wink the Other Eye: T.S. Eliot and the Music Hall by Sebastian Knowles is very valuable for its description of music hall life and connecting them with relevant passages from the The Waste Land.

One of the most unique members of the music hall scene was Harry Relph, best known as Little Tich. He performed a variety of comedy, pantomime and female impersonation acts and as Knowles notes:

Little Tich...provided a Waste Land in miniature: In an given Tich number, one could expect patter songs in 'French, German, Italian, and Spanish'; he was also capable of arguments on 'sundry philosophies and e'en upon the world's religions,' and performances of 'very remarkable feats in mathematics'

Even though Relph worked in a field that was considered low art by many, he embraced a cosmopolitan attitude made possible by the mixing of cultures during and after World War I. Despite his intellectual ability his primary purpose was always to entertain. Little Tich is seen here in one of the first sound films, performing his most famous routine, the Big Boot Dance:

Even though Little Tich's performance exemplified many of the techniques found in Waste Land, it was Marie Lloyd that Eliot truly felt a connection with. Matilda Wood, best known as Mary Lloyd was one of the biggest stars in the music hall in the early 1900's. Eliot considered her a paragon of the lower class for her generosity, spirit and her gift for obscenity. In a letter written soon after her death, Eliot claims it was the, capacity for expressing the soul of the people that made Marie Lloyd unique and that made her audiences, even when they joined in the chorus, not so much hilarious as happy. Best known for her mischievous attitude and double entendres, when Mary sang, Knowles continues, songs that originally carried no subversive meaning were performed in a way where "every little word had a meaning of its own."

Below is one of these songs titled When I Take My Morning Promenade. Listen to her playful attitude at the end of the chorus and the way she sings "Do you think my dress is a little bit/Just a little bit..... Well not too much of it,/Though it shows my shape just a little bit/That's the little bit the boys admire. The lyrics themselves are not very risque but Lloyd's voice adds another dimension to the song that makes the meaning much more clear.

Mary Lloyd's specter is present throughout the The Waste Land. She can be seen in the warning Marie,/Marie, hold on tight in the first section and in the hyancith girls selling flowers on the street. While Lloyds was more of a thematic presence , the vaudeville nature of the music hall finds a direct analogy in the cast of characters found in the first two sections of The Waste Land. Knowles notes that the presence of "freaks and queens and psychics and hyancith girls and cockney vaudeville acts," brings to mind the variety of acts, from singers to acrobats to grotesqueries, present at the music hall. Furthermore, in the original facsimile of the The Waste Land, the music hall serves as a driving force for the narrating, beginning the poem with the forgotten music hall songs, 'By the Watermelon Vine', 'My Evaline' and 'The Cubanola Glide'.

Perhaps the most important impact that the music hall had on The Waste Land was the musicality of the words that only become apparent when the poem is read aloud. Below is a video of Eliot reading from The Waste Land.



Like his reading of the Four Quartets in the last post, Eliot brings out renewed meaning from his words. Even when the words do not always seem to make sense, the cadence has an importance of its own, bringing a little of the music hall to all those who listen.