Calico Printer’s Clerk, The

AKA She was very fond of dancing
First published 1865
Lyrics Harry Clifton Music Harry Clifton / Charles Coote Roud RN13210

Music Hall performers Harry Clifton 1860s
Folk performances Source singer
Mrs Margaret Gillespie, c1900, Scotland
Modern Performances
Harry Boardman 1960s
Houghton Weavers 1970s
Dave Moran 1990s
Other modern versions see Mainly Norfolk		 

In Manchester that city, of cotton, twist and twills
Lived the subject of my ditty, and the cause of all my ills
She was handsome, young and twenty, her eyes are azure blue
Admirers she had plenty and her name was Dorothy Drew.

She was very fond of dancing,
But allow me to remark,
That one fine day she danced away
With a calico printer's clerk.

At a private ball I met her in eighteen sixty-three
I never can forget her, though she was unkind to me
I was dressed in the pink of fashion, my lavender gloves were new
I danced the Valse Circassian with the charming Dorothy Drew.

We Schottisched and we Polka'd to the strains the band did play
We valsed and we Mazurka'd, til she valsed my heart away
I whispered in this manner as around the room we flew
Doing Varsovianna, "How I love you, Dorothy Drew."

For months and months attention unto her I did pay,
'Til with her condescension, she led me quite astray;
The money I expended, I'm ashamed to tell to you
I'll inform you how it ended with myself and Dorothy Drew.
 
I received an intimation she a visit meant to pay
Unto a near relation, who lived some miles away
In a month she'd be returning, I must take a short adieu
But her love for me was burning, deceitful Dorothy Drew!

At nine o'clock next morning, to breakfast I sat down
The smile my face adorning was soon changed to a frown
For in the morning paper, a paragraph met my view
That Jones, a calico printer's clerk, had married Miss Dorothy Drew.

In Manchester that city, of cotton, twist and twills
Lived the subject of my ditty, and the cause of all my ills
She was handsome, young and twenty, her eyes are azure blue
Admirers she had plenty and her name was Dorothy Drew.

A comic song from Harry Clifton that became popular in the folk revival. He seems to have started performing the song in 1865 – it is first mentioned in newspaper notices in February 1865

Feb. 26, 1865; The Era 

Clifton wrote songs that follow patterns. Many of his comic songs involve the character of an aspiring white-collar working man suffering at the hands of smart aspiring women. His characters sometimes expressed frustration that they are losing out either to men higher up in the social hierarchy of Victorian England, or shockingly (as in Polly Perkins) to someone lower in the hierarchy.

Songs like this one, Polly Perkins and Isabella, The Barber’s Daughter, The Commercial Man and Dark Girl Dressed in Blue all tend to follow this theme: reflecting both the growing importance of a relatively well-to-do white collar section in the working class, and the beginning of hints of greater independence for women in a similar social class. They of course also represent Clifton’s tendency to appeal to the respectable sections of the Music Hall audience.

Greig and Duncan were turn-of-the-century folksong collectors who unlike their contemporaries did not impose their tastes on the songs they collected, but simply wrote them down. It’s therefore not surprising that one of their singers recalled this popular Music Hall song. The song then seems to have disappeared until it was discovered as a broadside in the 1960s and set to a new tune, becoming very popular in the Lancashire folk clubs during the folk revival. It can still be heard there today and thanks to the work of Mark Dowding and others, you may also hear it sung to the original Music Hall tune.

The song featured in The Manchester Ballads – a collection of broadside ballads put together by Roy Palmer and Harry Boardman to illustrate the history of Manchester.

Mark Dowding sings it to the original tune:

Sources: