PUNCH,

Or the London charivari.

Vol. 102.

April 2, 1892.

“’Tis merry in Hall.”

[Illustration:  “Knock’d ’em!”]

“What’s in an ’at without an ’ed?” DISTAFFINA de Cockaigne was wont to inquire, and “what’s an ’all” (of Music like the London Pavilion) “without a Ned” in the shape of Mr. Edward SWANBOROUGH, the all-knowing yet ever-green Acting Manager at this place of entertainment, who possessing the secret of perpetual youth in all the glory of ever-resplendent hat and ever-dazzling shirt-front, ushers us into the Stalls in time to hear the best part of an excellent all-round show.  It is sad to think that, probably as we were disputing with the cabman, the celebrated Miss boom-Te-re-Sa, alias Lottie Collins, Serio-Comic and Dancer, was “booming” and “teraying” before the eyes of a delighted audience.  Strange that we should not yet have heard the great original.  But as she is not (so to adapt a line from the “Last Rose of Summer”) “left booming alone,” we have not escaped hearing several of her male and female imitators who, by her kind permission and that of her publishers, trade on her present exceptional success.  However, when we entered the Stalls, Miss boom-Te-re-Sa had disappeared, and somebody with a song had “intervened”—­a mode of proceeding not necessarily limited to the Queen’s Proctor—­before the object of our visit walked on to the stage, and when he did come a pretty object he was too, seeing that it was Mr. Albert Chevalier, the unequalled and inimitable Comedian of the Costermongers.  He is a thorough artist in this particular line, and no indifferent one in others; but his Coster ballads are artistically first rate.  The fashion of calling English singers by Italian names is on the wane, otherwise Mr. Albert Chevalier, of French extraction, would find an excellent Italian alias, closely associated with the operatic and musical professions, and most appropriate to the line he has adopted, in the name of “Signor Costa.”  The melody of Mr. CHEVALIER’s “Coster’s Serenade,” of which, I rather think, he is the composer as well as librettist, is as charming as it is strikingly original.  After the Chevalier sans peur et sans approche had retired, clever and sprightly Miss Jenny hill gave as a taste of lodging-house-keeperism, following whom came the Two MACS belabouring each other in their old hopelessly idiotic, but always utterly irresistible style; and then Lieutenant W. Cole—­King Cole we “crowned him long ago”—­gave his ventriloquial entertainment, who, with his troop of talking dolls, should have his address at Dollis Hill.  There were many “turns” yet to follow when we left, at a comparatively early hour; “and so,” to quote old Pepys, “home with much content.”