Tilley, Vesta: Vesta was a striking entertainer

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Vivienne Smith explores the life of Vesta Tilley, one of Britain’s best-loved music hall artistes, whose career began in East Midland pubs and theatres.

Music Hall artiste Vesta Tilley in 1906

Harry Ball, Vesta Tilley’s father

Music Hall entertainer Vesta Tilley

A bill poster publicising an appearance by music hall entertainer Vesta Tilley

Music Hall entertainer Vesta Tilley with her husband Walter de Freece

Music Hall entertainer Vesta Tilley as a principal boy

Music Hall entertainer Vesta Tilley as an officer in the Royal Artillery in 1905

Vesta Tilley at the age of 10 when she became the family’s sole breadwinner

The Station Inn, Midland Road, Derby. In Victorian times it was Tyler’s and hosted variety shows

In the good old days of music hall, Vesta Tilley was one of the country’s best-loved artistes. The greatest of all male impersonators, she was popularly known as the “London Idol”.

Yet her career actually began in the Midlands, when she was just a little girl. And among those entertained by this star-in-the-making were the people of Derby.

Vesta Tilley was born Matilda Alice Powles in Worcester on May 13, 1864, the second of 13 children of pottery worker William Henry Powles and his wife, Matilda.

From an early age, she was known as Tilley, this being the pet form of her first name.

In 1867, her father gave up painting china to become manager of the new Theatre Royal in Gloucester. An entertainer and musician at heart, he duly adopted the stage name of Harry Ball.

It was while the Powles were living in Gloucester that little Matilda first revealed a talent for performing.

She regularly attended rehearsals at the variety hall with her father and, on returning home, would mimic the singers she had heard.

After just a year, however, the family moved to Nottingham. Harry Ball had been appointed manager and master of ceremonies at St George’s Music Hall on Derby Road.

Before leaving Gloucester, he was given a benefit night at which his daughter made her music hall debut.

Dressed in a little white skirt and Red Riding Hood cape, the four-year-old was carried onto the stage by her father. His last-minute advice was: “Don’t be frightened. Sing as if you mean it. Don’t cough, and speak clearly.”

As the band struck up a medley of the songs she intended to sing, the little girl was completely at ease and her performance delighted the audience.

Tilley’s career on the stage had begun.

Billed as “The Great Little Tilley”, she started out by appearing regularly at St George’s Music Hall. But, as word spread of her remarkable talent, the youngster was soon invited to appear in nearby towns, including Derby and Leicester.

Since her father was busy running the theatre, a female neighbour kindly agreed to accompany her to local venues. Usually away for a week or two, they stayed in lodgings together and returned home to Nottingham between engagements.

Unfortunately, in her autobiography, Vesta Tilley failed to record exactly where in Derby she performed.

In the early 1870s, there were no proper theatres in the town.

Although the Corn Exchange and the Lecture Hall of the Mechanics’ Institute sometimes hosted variety acts, they tended to favour drama and opera.

In Derby, as in towns all over the country, it was the public houses which first took up music hall entertainment. Indeed, Vesta Tilley’s own early memories were of performing at venues “filled with tobacco smoke and fumes of beer”.

Singing in taverns had become so popular by mid-Victorian times that many publicans added special rooms to their premises for staging shows. They became known as music halls.

As demand for this kind of entertainment grew, so purpose-built theatres were erected.

The present-day Station Inn, on Midland Road, in Derby, for instance, was then known as Tyler’s and regularly played host to variety shows.

Another popular venue was the Star Theatre and Music Hall on Princes Street, which was destroyed by fire in May 1873.

It was at places like these that The Great Little Tilley first strutted her stuff.

As elsewhere in the Midlands, audiences in Derby must have marvelled at the youngster’s extensive repertoire of songs which ranged from comic numbers to sentimental tear-jerkers.

In those days, entertainers were expected to be on stage for at least an hour, and to make costume changes with every song.

Yet young Tilley never failed to delight.

However, by the age of eight, she began to tire of portraying just female characters and decided to dress as a boy.

It apparently all started after her father found her posturing in front of the mirror wearing his coat and hat.

So he agreed to buy her a little evening dress suit.

For her act, Tilley chose to impersonate a leading tenor of the day called Sims Reeves, who himself was no stranger to Derby audiences. One of his most popular hits was the song Come into the garden, Maud.

Dressed in her suit and sporting an enormous black moustache, the youngster took to the stage at Day’s Concert Hall, in Birmingham, in 1872 billed as “the pocket Sims Reeves”.

This first appearance as a male impersonator was a huge success.

So much so, in fact, that her father resigned from his theatre job and joined her on the road. He appeared as a separate act – “Harry Ball, the Tramp Musician with his wonderful performing dog Fathead”.

For six months every year, they played to packed houses across the Midlands.

But not everyone approved of Tilley’s new look. When she walked onto the stage in male clothing at one particular music hall in Leicester, the master of ceremonies called a halt to proceedings.

He protested: “What are you doing in those trousers? I engaged you as a little girl, not a boy. Take them off at once and put on your skirts.”

This incident aside, Midland audiences found such cross-dressing antics entertaining.

Among the most popular of Tilley’s early male characters was the little orphan boy moved on by a policeman, as featured in the song Poor Joe.

As the music hall star recalled years later: “Sob-stuff was always certain to draw tears from the majority of the audience and earn a vociferous encore.”

By the age of 10, she had become so popular that her father retired from the stage to be her manager and songwriter full time.

The youngster was now the family’s sole breadwinner.

Just three years later came her debut in London where she proved a tremendous hit.

The only problem was that people were confused as to whether she was a girl or a boy – a new stage name was required.

The story goes that Harry Ball chose the name Vesta from the well-known matches, then widely advertised as “a bright spark”.

As time went on, male impersonation increasingly became part of Vesta Tilley’s act. The characters she portrayed included everything from smart young men about town to sailors, clergymen and even Eton schoolboys.

Yet, whatever the part, she always provided good clean family entertainment and was never vulgar.

All her songs, which were sung in a sweet soprano voice, became instant hits. Particular favourites were Following in Father’s Footsteps, Jolly Good Luck to the Girl Who Loves a Soldier and Burlington Bertie. (The latter was later parodied by Ella Shields in Burlington Bertie from Bow.)

By the l890s, Vesta Tilley was Britain’s top earning woman entertainer and the toast of music hall. Theatre managers nationwide were desperate to book the star.

But although she had appeared in Derby as a youngster, no one succeeded in coaxing her back here.

One of those who tried was Thomas Allen Edwardes, owner of both the Grand and the Palace Theatre of Varieties in the early 20th century.

Having purchased the Hippodrome in Stoke-on-Trent in 1910, he managed to secure the artiste for his opening bill. Despite this, his attempts to hire her for the Derby venues came to nothing.

Vesta Tilley made her final stage appearance on June 5, 1920, at the London Coliseum.

After performing her last song dressed as a soldier, she was showered with thousands of flowers from the audience who gave her a 40-minute standing ovation.

In a music hall career spanning 50 years, she had come a long way since those early performances in Derby as a little girl.

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