page_title: Gus Elen
section_title: Musical performances
hierarchical_section_title: Gus Elen / Biography / Musical performances
caption_attribution_description: English: - ! Page&#160;!! Caption}
context_page_description: Ernest Augustus Elen was an English music hall singer and comedian. He achieved success from 1891, performing cockney songs including "Arf a Pint of Ale", "It's a Great Big Shame", "Down the Road" and "If It Wasn't for the 'Ouses in Between" in a career lasting over thirty years.
  Born in Pimlico, London, Elen had worked as a barman and a draper's assistant and had packed eggs for the Co-op before becoming a singer. He began busking at an early age and found a position singing in a minstrel troupe. His solo success began in 1891 when he started performing in public houses, singing songs in a manner similar to many cockney fruit sellers of the time, known as costermongers - from the old word 'costard', meaning apple. Because of this, he became known as a "coster comedian". For the stage persona he had created, Elen dressed in a coster uniform of striped jersey, peaked cap turned towards one ear and a short clay pipe in the side of his mouth. His characters adopted a persona of being constantly bad tempered and pugnacious. In 1907 he starred in a short film called Wait Till the Work Comes Round.
context_section_description: The movements for each of Elen's songs were carefully rehearsed so that the performances themselves were clean and precise. Each gesture was powerfully distinct and could be seen from the back of the largest theatre.
  Many of Elen's songs spoke of the living conditions of ordinary workers and about the cramped housing conditions of the East End. Commenting on the overcrowded poor parts of London, in one of his songs, he takes on the persona of a proud tenant boasting about the dismal place he lives in, and in particular the view from his 'garden':
  The lyrics to "If It Wasn't for the 'Ouses In Between" were written by Edgar Bateman, who later wrote two more of Elen's songs: "She's Too Good to Live Is Mrs. Carter" and "The Postman's 'Oliday." The music to the songs was written by George Le Brunn, who wrote a vast number of music-hall songs and accompaniments for Marie Lloyd and Dan Leno, and also for Gus Elen's "It's a Great Big Shame". Chance Newton, a friend of Elen, spoke of his habit of leaving scores he was working on at the various pubs he visited en route to the particular hall he was travelling to.
  "If It Wasn't for the 'Ouses In Between" is perhaps Elen's most recognisable song and is about the little backyards of London houses which are hemmed in by row upon row of other houses in all of the other streets in the neighbourhood. It is set in a typical working day of an east end costermonger.
caption: The Coster's Mansion, 1899 sheet music
exif: {}