| AKA | The cockney garden |
| Lyrics | Edgar Bateman | Music | George Le Brunn | Roud | RN32469 |
| Music Hall performers | Gus Elen 1890s |
| Folk performances |
If you saw my little backyard What a pretty spot you'd cry It's a picture on a sunny summer day Wiv the turnip tops and cabbages Wot people doesn't buy I makes it on a Sunday look all gay The neighbours' finks I grows 'em And you'd fancy you're in Kent Or at Epsom if you gaze into the mews Its a wonder that the landlord Doesn't want to raise the rent Because we've got such nobby, distant views. Oh it really is a werry pretty garden And Chingford to the Eastward could be seen Wiv a ladder and some glasses You could see the 'Ackney Marshes If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between. We're as countrified as can be Wiv a clothes-prop for a tree The tub-stool makes a rustic little style Ev'ry time the blooming clock strikes There's a cuckoo sings to me And I've painted up “To Leather Lane a mile” Wiv tomatoes and wiv radishes wot 'adn't any sale The backyard looks a perffick mass o' bloom And I've made a little beehive Wiv some beetles in a pail And a pitchfork with the handle of a broom. Oh it really is a werry pretty garden And Rye 'ouse from the Cockcroft could be seen Where the chickweed man undresses To bathe 'mong the water cresses If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between. There's the bunny shares 'is egg-box With the cross-eyed cock and hen Though they 'as got the pip and him the morf In a dog's 'ouse on the line-post There was pigeons nine or ten Till someone took a brick and knocked it off The dust cart though it seldom comes Is just like 'arvest 'ome And we mean to rig a dairy up somehow Put the donkey in the wash-house Wiv some imitation 'orns For we're teaching him to moo just like a cow. Oh it really is a werry pretty garden And 'Endon to the westward could be seen And by clinging to the chimbley You could see across to Wembley If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between. Though the gas-works isn't wilets They improve the rural scene For mountains they would very nicely pass There's the mushrooms in the dust hole With the cowcumbers so green It only wants a bit of 'ot 'ouse glass I wear this milkman's nightshirt And I sits outside all day Like the plough-boy cove What's mizzled o'er the Lea And when I go indoors at night They dunno what I say Cause my language gets as yokel as can be. Oh it really is a werry pretty garden And soap-works from the 'ouse-tops could be seen If I got a rope and pulley I'd enjoy the breeze more fully If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between.
Edgar Bateman: ex-printer, heavy drinker, talent scout, a big name in professional Music Hall song writing, lived to be 86. His biggest hit was sung by Gus Elen with music by George le Brunn.
George Brun: born to a coach building father, he added the “le” to his name in order to be taken more seriously as a musician. He wrote an awful lot of music for an awful lot of songs working with amongst others John P Harrington. Richard Baker’s excellent book on music Hall contains this quote from Harrington about LeBrun:
George could compose songs as easily and deftly as another man might write a letter. A rapid glance at the Lyric, a grunted “this is in 6/8 time,eh?” And after a nod of my acquiescence, Presto! his fluid pen would positively fly over the sheet of music paper before you had time to gasp “Geewhiz!”. Seldom, if ever, was so much as a note of altered afterwards and never once was the piano touched, until the melody was completed… Some of our most popular songs were composed in 10 or 15 minutes… Foolishly, at first, I was a little indignant that George earned his money so easily whilst the lyric took me perhaps an hour or two to write.
Gus Elen: ex-egg packer, one-time shop assistant, was one of the great coster comedians. At the height of his fame on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1890s and 1900s, he retired in the first world war. MacQueen Pope considered this the greatest of all his songs:
He saw right through the bricks and chimney pots to Chingford, to Hackney Marshes and other delectable places made dear by odd days of holiday, wondering that the landlord did not raise the rent of the home from which such views might be enjoyed; to heighten the illusion he even went the length of wearing a smock on Sundays and adopting a rustic brogue incomprehensible to his family. This was presumably meant to be a comic song but Elen made much more more of it than that, getting right down to the simple pathos of the words, which were helped by an equally simple, very charming melody. He sang it with his usual somewhat saturnine expression, a choker around his neck, a coster cap, with the peak turned the wrong way round, over his ear, just like the man to be met everywhere, pushing his “barrer”… A true masterpiece of London
MacQueenPope, Melody Lingers,p405
Sources:
- Sheet Music in Bumper Book
- Baker British Music Hall
- Words from monologues.co.uk
- MacQueen Pope Melody Lingers
Gus Himself:
Last Updated on January 24, 2024 by John Baxter | Published: February 9, 2020
