The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-12-31
HENRY RUSSELL ANECDOTES.
STORIES AND INCIDENTS IN THE
 LIFE OF THE 4 AUTHOR
Of"Cheer Boys, Cheer'' and Eight Hum
 dred Songs.

dred Songs.
 As we briefly announced, MT. Henry Russell, the veteran composer of Cheer, Boys, Cheer" and of upward of
 eight hundred other songs, died in the
 early hours of yesterday morning, in
 his eighty-eights year MT. Russell was
 on the stage as a child as far back as 1915, and in his youth he led busy and
 even eventful life. That his adult ca
 reer was a long one, may be judged by
 the fact that he dedicated a book 'The
 Singers Friend" to the Queen when her
 Majesty was the Princess Victoria and
 a girl of eleven, while at the age of sev-
 enty-five he composed a song, Our
 Empress Queen" for the royal jubilee.
 Born at Sheerness on Christmas eve,
 1872, he used of late years to say that he
 was the only man living who had been
 dandled on the knee and kissed by
 George ". He played at the Surrey in the juvenile opera troupe formed by 1 Elliston of drury Lane, the principal
 works being 'The Nightingale and the Raven and "The Swiss Family" the latter of which achieved the then phe nomenal run of one hundred and twen-
 ty nights. Elliston and his troupe of
 children were commanded" to play be- fore GeorgeI V. at the Brighton Pavil- ion, and after stopping for an afternoon
 at Richmond, where Edmund Kean
 gave them hearty dinner-the great
 tragedian frightening the young folks
 out of their wits by bringing a tame
 lion into the roomt-he children went
 down by coach to the then primitive
 village of Brighton, to play before the
 king, and to be entertained at supper
 by his Maj osty.
 Like so many others of his race, Hen
 ry Russell seemed to take to music
 naturally. While an errand boy in a
 chemists shop he saved up his pocket
 money and had sixpenny music lessons from a man in Seven Dials. Before he
 was fourteen he was an outdoor student at the Conservatoire of Bologna. Then he studied for four months under Rossi- nj at Naples, and after meeting In It. ally Balfe, Bellini, Donizettl and other
 notables, he returned to England, where for a few weeks he was chorus master under LumIey at Her MajeSty's Theater. This, however, was not very lucrative post, and accordingly he re- solved to emigrate to the new world, crossing the Atlantic by sailing yes sel. He was in America and Canada from 1888 to 1S41, and during this peri cd many of his successful songs were composed. No doubt, they owed a great deal to the words, which were from various pens, mostly, however that of Dr. Charles Mackay. But their simple, unsophisticated melodies ap- pealed to the great public, and MT. Hen ry Russell's own sining of them un- doubtedly did a great deal to popular ize them.
 Henry Russell's career was very nearly cut short immediately after he arrived at Toronto, for he was overtak- en by blizzard and was almost ex- hausted, when he ran across a shanty inscribed Ginger Bear Sold Hear, Also Goode Stumbling for Orses And Goode Beds" It was on hearing Henry Clay, the great Kentucky orator, and on mo- ticing the hold he had on popular audi ences by his clear enunclation of the 1 words, that Henry Russell resolved to take up public singing. His first song | was set to Mackay's Wind of the Win | ter Night and shortly afterward came | "Woodman, Spare That Tree" and nu- merous other works, which enjoyed | great celebrity. Henry Russell re- | turned to London in 1S41 and after a l six months tour In the provinces with | Beale, the music publisher and opera I,- I,g at the old Hanover Square rooms, a place which, curiously enough, he was in after life mainly the mears of con verting from a concert hall into a club house. There, and at the Lyceum- which Vestris and Charles Mathews let to him, when they did not require it for themselves-and at other places In London and the country. Russell carried on his entertain nents, till his final retirement about 1865. Occasionally afterward he reap peared on special occasions, the last being the testimonial benefit organized 'or him by the late Sir Augustus Har- is at Covent Garden in 1891, when. al- hough he was too old to sing, he II ssde ! speech of "reminiscences and thanks, the audience, among other hings, that some of the sohgs heard hat night had been written sixty years before. Several of his songs during the entertainment period were avowedly timed at certain public or private grie- ,ances "The Maniac for example, lealt with the iniquities of the lunatic Isylums of the period, and of this song 10th words and music were by Russell himself. "The Ship on Fire" has, to a certain extent been out of date since replaced the old wooden valls. while ''The Gamblers Wife" was
 hit at the dice-playing of the period.
 Many amusing anecdotes are told bout RusselPs singing of these songs i Tor example, at the close of "The Gam ler'S Wife, after the clock has struck | I wo, and three, and four, and as the ice-throwing husband Is still absent, l he wife dies in despair, a woman ( mong the audience, to the great de- I ght of the house, emphatically de- ( Jared; My! Wouldn't have fetched I i'm home" On another occasion, af- S er Russell's singing of "Woodman, ( pare That Tree a gentleman rose in I he gallery and asked, "Was the tree : pared?" On being answered in the he with a sigh of heartfelt V elief, exclaimed, Thank God for 2