Albert Chevalier

Together with his brother Charles Ingle he wrote a number of highly successful coster songs to support his act including "Wot Cher!

[n 1] The son of Jean Onésime Chevalier, a French master at Kensington School, and his Welsh wife, Ellen Louisa Mathews;[3] he had five siblings, two of whom died in infancy.

His surviving brothers were Bertram, who in later life became a freelance photographer, and Auguste, who was better known as Charles Ingle, a composer of music hall songs.

[5] In 1869 Chevalier made his amateur debut on the stage performing as Mark Anthony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, at Cornwall Hall in Notting Hill.

[12] The following year the Kendals engaged him to play the part of "Sam Winkle" in the drama The Omadhaun Witness and then in a small role in the comic farce Checkmate.

"[16] Chevalier remained until the end of the tour, after which he was engaged to appear at the Court Theatre, London in the comedy A Scrap of Paper in which he played the role of "Jones".

[19] Towards the end of that year he was chosen by the Kendals to understudy for the main actors in the short plays M. le Duc, The Queen's Shilling and A Regular Fix.

The classical plays, La Somnambula and The Grand Duchess were unsuccessful and the company were forced to raise funds by staging small concerts in rundown theatres in nearby towns.

At the last minute Chevalier stepped in and performed a short ditty as "Sammy Stammers" which, as the title suggests, was a character with a stutter who sang comic songs.

During a break, Chevalier borrowed a box of props from the storeroom and went back on to impersonate the music hall star George H. Chirgwin.

Among the places he visited were Glasgow, Coatbridge and Greenock the latter in which he enjoyed much success in the burlesques False Glitter and the show's after piece, Peebles.

In preparation, he sought advice from Marie Lloyd, an already established music hall singer in her own right and who formed part of the audience on his opening night.

Also in the auditorium was a curious Lewis Carroll, a staunch opposer of music hall entertainment, who had come to hear about Chevalier's debut through friends.

[23] Writing in his memoirs, Carroll thought was "decidedly good as an actor; but as a comic singer (with considerable powers of pathos as well), he [was] quite first rate.

Chevalier based his act upon the performances of Alfred Vance, a cockney comedian from the beginnings of the English music hall tradition.

The changes resulted in Chevalier inventing a new, sentimental variation of Vance's "criminal coster", which was loosely based on a working-class Londoner.

Chevalier justified his move by arguing that audiences were ready for something different and benefitted from support by George Bernard Shaw and the poet Arthur Symons.

[23] Upon his return from America and Canada in 1896, Chevalier decided to reduce his music hall appearances owing to the unpredictability and inattentiveness of the genre's audiences, which he came to dislike.

The characters included a country vicar in "Our Bazaar", a struggling actor in "A Fallen Star", and a west-country peasant in "E Can't Take a Roise out of oi".

[3] Chevalier returned to America in 1906 for a six-week tour with the French singer Yvette Guilbert who described her co-star as being "more skilful than actually talented".

He understood that there was a warm heart under a corduroy jacket, a vein of sentiment even in the lowly costermonger and he gave us the ballads which are now household words.