FV St Clair (1860-1922) was an extremely successful music hall performer and song-writer in the 1890s and 1900s . He wrote a huge number of songs, many of which he sang himself – of these around 100 seem to have survived in print or online. I can find out very little about his life as he rates only passing mentions in the standard histories of the halls . This page is largely based on material from contemporary material in the British press and a survey of his songs .
Many of his songs were topical, with a particular emphasis on a pride in the British character and a robust defence of the British Empire. One could argue that St Clair was exactly the sort of jingoistic performer that gave music Hall a bad name!
He wrote and performed a great many martial, nationalist numbers – the titles alone give some indication of their content (links will take you to the sheet music on external sites)
- Gladstone is Captain of the Ship John Bull (1881)
- John Bull’s Letter Bag (1899)
- Heroes of the Transvaal war (1900)
- Follow the Drum (1914)
- Kitchener! Gone but not forgotten (1916)
His success was such that he had a fishing trawler named after him, an honour not awarded to any other music hall artist that I’m aware of..
Compared to other successful songwriters of this period like Fred Leigh or Worton David, relatively few of his songs seem to have entered the traditional singing – I could find only 4. This may be because so may of his songs were topical, but also might reflect a reluctance on the part of collectors to collect his often nationalistic songs, or of singers to sing them to collectors. Here are the four songs which appear to have entered traditional singing:
- Cheer up, Buller! (2413)
- Here’s to Private Tommy Atkins
- I’m going to sing a song (21971)
- Ship that will never return, The : the loss of the Titanic (37314)
A list of his published songs:
Sources:
- Kilgarrif Sing Us
- Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism And Music: Britain 1876-1953
- Details of the wreck of the fishing trawler FV St Clair
Last Updated on April 26, 2022 by John Baxter | Published: June 1, 2021
