Clifton, Harry

A motto for every man

Harry Clifton (1832 to 1872) was the son of a carpenter, and a successful songwriter as well as performer. His posthumous reputation as a songwriter centres on three types of song:

• comic songs such as Polly Perkins of Paddington Green and A Dark Girl Dressed in Blue.
• so-called “motto songs” like Pulling Hard Against the Stream, Paddle Your Own Canoe, Wait for the Turn of the Tide, and Work, boys work and be contented.
• Irish songs like The Waterford Boys and Lannigan’s Ball (though the latter was one of the few songs in his repertoire he did not write, see below!)

His motto songs perhaps point to the fact that he was one of the more respectable Music Hall songwriters and his songs often sold well as parlour ballads: sheet music for the respectable middle classes.

To modern readers his motto songs can seem corny, clichéd and to promote a particularly Victorian ethic of hard work as its own reward. One modern author accuses him of accepting payments from local employers, though I haven’t yet seen any convincing evidence. (Though there is some fairly glaring “product placement” in On board o’ the Kangaroo!!) His contemporaries reported that his songs were equally popular with the poorer working class audiences.

The eminent theatre historian, Kathleen Barker, has pulled together a great deal of what we know about Clifton. Steve Gardham and others on the Mudcat forum who have uncovered almost everything we know about his songs. On this page I’m going to attempt to put into context his career and songs – of course, with a particular focus on his material that has ended up in folk/traditional repertoire.

It seems that he began his professional stage life in around 1850, when he and his wife were part of a company of travelling actors in Yorkshire. It was quite common for musical entertainers to begin life with a portfolio career, spending time both in the early music halls and the theatre, and this seems to be the case here. By 1856 he was appearing as an actor at the Woolwich Theatre, but at other times in the 1850s he and his wife were described as “celebrated comedians”. It seems that Harry married as a teenager, but “Mrs H Clifton” is not really mentioned after the about 1852.

Between 1855 and 1861 Harry Clifton was appearing regularly in Ireland, and it was probably in these years that he established himself as a songwriter and comedian. During this period he built up a stock of Irish songs, some that he wrote himself, and others that he obtained from others like DK Gavan and Harry Sydney. His Irish repertoire included: Lannigan’s Ball, The Waterford Boys, Darby McGuire, Where the Grass Grows Green, The Rocky Road to Dublin and The Wedding of Biddy McGrane.

Contemporaries and subsequent writers have assumed that Clifton was claiming to have written all these songs, but the authorship of some of these songs was cleared up by a notice that Clifton posted in the trade newspaper The Era in 1863:

Even at this early point in his short career he was noted for his respectability, and reviews praised him for his avoidance of vulgarity, and his “gentlemanly manner”.

In the late 1850s and early 1860s Clifton more or less stopped touring in Ireland, and established himself as a performer in London and more widely: in Scotland and the North. From September 1857 to January 1858 he managed the Surrey Music Hall in Sheffield, where his topical songs were reputedly very popular.

His appearances in Scotland were often as part of a concert party, taking place in a Concert Hall or Theatre: a more respectable type of venue than the often disreputable Music Halls. This seems to mark something of a break for Clifton, who seemed try to move away from performing in the old music halls. In the 1860s he was increasingly appearing in Temperance Halls, Mechanics Institutes and respectable theatres, often as leader of his own troupe of entertainers, almost always featuring another comic singer: Miss Fanny Edwards (1843-1908).

At the same time as he was partially severing his ties with the Halls, he was writing some of his most successful songs:

• 1862 The Dark Girl Dressed in Blue
• 1863: Polly Perkins of Paddington Green
• 1863: Isabella, The Barbers Daughter
• 1863: Jemima Brown, The Queen of the Sewing Machine
• 1865: A Motto For Every Man
• 1866: Shabby Genteel
• 1866: Paddle Your Own Canoe
• 1867: Pulling hard against the Stream
• 1867: Wait for the Turn of the Tide
• 1869: Put the brake on when you’re going down the hill

Kathleen Barker argues that, whilst Clifton never stopped singing and writing comedy songs, as he became more of a concert hall performer in the mid-to-late 1860s, and that his published repertoire reflected a greater emphasis on the moralistic “motto” songs. My own analysis of the 80 or so songs that we have enough information about confirm that he produced more motto songs (and ballads designed to be sung by Fannie Alexander) in the period after 1866. Having said that, Clifton never completely broke from the Halls – he appeared in them until the end of his life, though no doubt increasingly only in the “better sort” of Music Hall.

A huge element of his success rested on his relationship with his music publisher: Hopwood and Crew, who from the early 1860s until his death bought the copyright on all his materials and sold his sheet music in huge quantities. Hopwood and Crew would normally credit Clifton with both writing the music and the words, but he often borrowed the music from other contemporary tunes or older melodies. Clifton reputedly preferred his choruses to have tunes that were familiar to his audience. The music for some of his songs was composed by Charles Coote, as explained in a letter from him to The Era in 1899:

Sir, – Your article in last week’s Era respecting the songs sung by Harry Clifton is somewhat inaccurate. The success of Paddle your own canoe was far greater than Pretty Polly Perkins; in fact, Paddle your own canoe was the greatest success Harry Clifton ever had, and the song sells at the present day. I wrote the music of the song Paddle your own canoe, the valse refrain of which is taken from The Queen of the harvest valse, composed by me, and furthermore, the music of the following songs, to many of which Harry Clifton’s name appears as composer, was taken from valses composed by me, viz. ‘Modern times‘, ‘Bear it like a man‘, ‘Could I live my time over again‘, ‘I’m number one‘, ‘Never look behind‘, ‘Motto for every man‘, ‘One of the olden time’ etc. The name of Harry Clifton does appear as composer to several songs of which the music is mine.

Yours faithfully,
Charles Coote (no longer junior)
Managing Director of Hopwood and Crew Ltd

The Era June 10 1899

Clifton’s travelling concert party consisted mainly of singers, and after 1863, always included Fanny Edwards, whom the press started referring to as his wife. At different times his troupe included clog dancers, blackface entertainers, animal imitators, mimics and ventriloquists.

Clifton worked hard to maintain his respectable image, and very little was published about his personal life. He had a child with Fanny Edwards but there is no evidence that they married, indeed his first wife unsuccessfully attempted to contest his will. Fanny kept the money, spent some time as part of the D’Oyly Carte Comic Opera Company, before eventually emigrating to the US in 1889.

Like so many of the first generation of entertainers in the Halls, the lifestyle impacted on his health, and he died of liver disease, only 40 years old, in 1872.

Harry Clifton songs which “became” folksongs

I have tried to pull together the information we have on his songs and their impact on the traditional/folk repertoire in the English-speaking world. A lot of this draws on the work of Steve Gardham, which can currently be found on the Mudcat Forum and Traditional Song Forum websites. Hopefully its useful to have them all in one place. This first list gives (I think) all the songs which Clifton wrote which have become part of the folk repertoire. My rule for “becoming a folksong” is based on the one used by Steve Roud: that the song has been collected from one or more recognised source singers as recorded in the Vaughan Williams Memorial library.

1. A motto for everyman (updated March 2023)
2. As welcome as the flowers in May (updated March 2023)
3. The Calico Printer’s Clerk (updated April 2023)
4. The Dark girl dress’d in blue (updated April 2023)
5. I am one of the olden time (updated April 2023)
6. I’ll go and enlist for a sailor (updated August 2023)
7. Jemima Brown (updated August 2023)
8. My Rattling Mare and I; or My Old Wife and I
9. On board o’ the Kangaroo
10. Paddle your own canoe
11. Polly Perkins of Paddington Green
12. Pulling hard against the stream
13. My Barney (Bonnie) lies over the ocean
14. Seventy Two and Hard as Steel
15. Shabby Genteel
16. Shelling Green Peas
17. Ten minutes too late (updated Aug 2023)
18. Waterford boys, The
19. Up a Tree (updated Aug 2023)
20. Up with the lark in the morning
21. Watercresses (revised June 2023)
22. Weepin’ Willer, The; Miller’s Daughter, The
23. Where the grass grows green (revised Aug 2023)
24. Where there’s a will there’s a way (revised June 2023)
25. Work boys work and be contented (updated March 2023)

Songs in the Clifton repertoire written by others?

Amongst the relatively small number of songs in the Clifton repertoire that were not credited to Clifton himself, I have found a further 2 songs that meet my criteria for becoming folksongs (but see also Darby Maguire):

1. Lannigans Ball
2. The Rocky Road to Dublin

These songs were commissioned by Clifton from DK Gavan.

The other Harry Clifton songs

The full list of 100 or so songs that I have found which are credited to Clifton is available for download below. I have provided Roud numbers and links for the words and sheet music where I can find them. I’m pretty sure there are still hundreds of songs we don’t know about, but these are the ones I can find at the moment. I have another, shorter list in preparation of songs sung by Harry and Fanny, but written by others.

Sources

• Kilgarriff Sing us
• Kilgarriff Banjos
• Kathleen Barker, Harry Clifton
• Mudcat thread on Harry Clifton
• More sources on song pages..

Particular thanks should go to Steve Gardham who suggested I should focus on Clifton when I started out on the site