Solo Men

George Leybourne 1842-1884

The idea of the "heavy swell who knew how to " go on the spree was not invented until a mechanic from the Midlands came to London, gained a hearing and became a star. That was George Leybourne, who quickly won a year's engagement at the Canterbury at twenty-five pounds a week, which gave him a taste for champagne.

He wore a glistening topper, and a coat with the largest fur collar in London. He drove about in a carriage and four, accompanied by what were then known as "fair charmers." In "Champagne Charlie " he expressed, genuinely and sincerely, his own sentiments. He decorated his face with monocle and whiskers, and exhorted his hearers to be with the boys "who make a noise from now till day is dawning." At night he took his own advice. Yet he, like the rest, spent money as freely on charity as on the champagne he drank out of pewter pots.

He had a happy instinct for kindly acts, as his treatment of little Jenny Hill, "The Vital Spark," shows.

From Romance of the Music Hall by M.Wilson Disher

Wilson Disher does not elaborate but to save you from having to look further, from the Jenny Hill web page: 

" ...That night she "stopped the show," and Leybourne was kept waiting in the wings. As they continued to applaud, he picked her up in his arms and held her up to view..."  

(This differs from her own version in Scott's EARLY DOORS which will be added in due course. It should be noted that writers often use 'common knowledge' when writing and thereby often spread inaccuracies. I hope escape this charge by quoting my sources. Frederick Denny )