Paul Rubens (composer)

Paul Alfred Rubens (29 April 1875 – 5 February 1917) was an English songwriter and librettist who wrote some of the most popular Edwardian musical comedies of the early twentieth century.

He began writing songs for shows at the age of 10 and had his first major success with "The Little Chinchilla" for the hit musical The Shop Girl when he was 19 years old.

[1] He intended, at first, to practise law, but he soon gave it up to write songs for the stage, including for a production of Alice in Wonderland, while still at Oxford, in which Lewis Carroll collaborated.

[2] In the years that followed, he wrote songs for Arthur Roberts for Dandy Dan the Lifeguardsman (1898, "There's Just a Something Missing"); for Milord Sir Smith; for Little Miss Nobody ("Trixie of Upper Tooting", "A Wee Little Bit of a Thing Like That", "We'll Just Sit Out", and "The People All Come to See Us"); and for the hit musical San Toy (1899, "Me Gettee Outee Velly Quick") for producer George Edwardes.

During the same year, he wrote the play Young Mr Yarde (1898, with Harold Ellis) and co-wrote a burlesque, Great Caesar (1899, with George Grossmith, Jr.), which was produced on the West End, but both were failures.

[3] In 1899, he wrote songs for L'amour mouillé and the international hit, Florodora (1899: "Inkling", "Tact", "When I Leave Town", "I Want to Marry a Man", "When an Interfering Person", "Queen of the Philippine Islands", and "When We're on the Stage"), which brought him wider fame.

They began a relationship and ultimately became engaged, but Rubens who had suffered severe ill-health through virtually his whole career, became too sick to marry, and so the couple separated.