Click on arrow to hear the song performed by Derek B. Scott, Professor of Critical Musicology, University of Leeds, to his own piano accompaniment c. 1985.

This song was written, composed and sung by music-hall star Arthur Lloyd. It is evident that this particular Cockney dandy has learned from the Viennese popular style, since his song is a polka. The character who calls himself Immenseikoff is a would-be swell who needs to be careful with his money. He has given up going to Henry Poole (still in business today at 15, Saville Row, London) and, instead, found a tailor who lets him have clothes cheaply because he shows them off. That is not such an incredible claim as it may sound – tailors sometimes made deals with music-hall performers. It would be another two decades before Lucile (Lady Lucy Duff Gordon) instigated the fashion show with the “mannequin parades” held at her London shop. — Derek B. Scott

Bibliography

Scott, Derek B. The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour. 2nd ed. Aldershot, Hampshire; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001.

Scott, Derek B. Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.


Last modified 7 February 2020