Cigarette card for the week ending
Saturday, 18 January 2003

G.H. Chirgwin (1854-1922), 'The White-Eyed Kaffir'
English music hall comedian

G.H. Chirgwin

G.H. Chirgwin
'I've Got No Ogdens Cigarettes'

(photo: unknown, ? Hana, London, circa 1898)

This real photograph cigarette card, published about 1900 by Ogden's of Liverpool for its Guinea Gold Cigarettes, features a portrait of George H. Chirgwin. Familiarly known to audiences during his long career as 'The White-Eyed Kaffir,' he began performing in 1861 as part of The Chirgwin Family. After a while touring with one of his brothers as a nigger minstrel duo, he launched himself as a solo turn in 1878 at the Oxford music hall in London.

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Marylebone music hall, London.
'The Brothers Chirgwin next claim our attention. Their musical talents are above the average. One of them, indeed, plays the violincello like an artiste, and both of them by their facility in handling the guitar, the Japanese violin, the banjo, the violin, the flageolet, and other instruments, succeed in winning hearty approval. Their final effort is something after the pattern of [E.W.] Mackney.'
(The Era, London, Sunday, 7 January 1877, p.4d)

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Oxford music hall, London.
'Of Mr. Chirgwin's attainments we have spoken hundreds of times, and always in terms of high praise. Blessed is he who deserveth such things; and Mr. Chirgwin does deserve them.'
(The Entr'acte, London, Saturday, 16 June 1888, p.11a)

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G.H. Chirgwin

Chirgwin at home.

(photo: unknown, circa 1905)

'One black face artiste in particular could have made much capital out of a piano, although he seldom used one, and that was the famous G.H. Chirgwin, the white-eyed kaffir. Chirgwin was a natural droll who possessed a peculiar gift of at once getting on excellent terms with his audience, making his customary salutation with, "How do, people?" and then addressing the galleryites with the anxious enquiry, "How are you on the top shelf?" He would at once proceed to get on friendly terms with individuals in the audience, not forgetting the waiters. Chirgwin was perhaps the most versatile of the musical niggers, varying his performance considerably. Few instruments came amiss to him. At one time he introduced an uncanny-looking instrument. It was a mixture of double bass, African war drum, tympani and one or two other instruments and produced some weird effects. At another time, with the aid of a pair of churchwarden pipes and a tea tray, he introduced an imitation of a clog dancer which was very amusing. Chirgwin could get every ounce out of a comic song and was an expert dancer. In addition, he possessed a remarkably powerful falsetto voice which he used very effectively in his two most popular ballads, "The Blind Boy" and "My Fiddle is my Sweetheart," accompanying himself on the 'cello and violin respectively. For many years he was seldom allowed to leave the stage without a request from the audience for "The Blind Boy," which invariably drew from him the reply that "The Blind boy" was rapidly cultivating whiskers. His gags were invariably topical, amusing, and right up-to-date. Chirgwin, who started his career as one of the Brothers Chirgwin, musical clowns, retired from the stage on the death of his first wife and remained in retirement for a number of years, but eventually returned to find himself even a greater favourite than previously. He could not be replaced. He finally retired after completing fifty years of professional work – truly a remarkable record. He died at Streatham [south London] on November 14, 1922, at the age of sixty-seven.'
(Harry Reynolds, Minstrel Memories, Alston Rivers Ltd, London, 1928, pp.13 and 14)

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'Several other songs that have made music-hall history came from Nigger Minstrelsy… "Pony" Moore wrote the music of "Blind Boy," and Harry Hunter, the Mohawks' interlocutor, the words of "My Fiddle Is My Sweetheart," the most popular songs of Chirgwin, the "White-Eyed Kaffir." No song was ever demanded more insistently than "Blind Boy."… Year after year he had to sing it whether he wanted to or no. "Blind Boy? Yes, I was last night!" he often relied in his thin, piping voice. How the widely-credited story got about that the song was inspired by the blindness of a son of his own, he never knew. Probably there was no more truth in the legend that his lozenge-shaped "white-eye" first took shape through his rubbing the burnt cork away where a fly, one hot night, was trying to settle. He was billed as "The White-Eyed Kaffir," in 1877, and before that he was "The White-Eyed Musical Moke," which takes us back to the days when he was one of the Brothers Chirgwin. He began as one of the Chirgwin family at the Swallow Rooms, Piccadilly, in 1861.
'In the 'eighties he played kings in Sara Lane's pantomimes at the "Old Brit" [Britannia Theatre], Hoxton. King Trickee; or, Harlequin, The Beetle, The Sporting Duchess and The Golden Casket was one, and King Kookoo; or, Harlequin Bon-Bon and The Golden Serpent another. His jubilee was celebrated at the Oxford [music hall, London] in 1911… 'In his early days, when he was "thin enough to go through a barrel," Chirgwin played the banjo. When he grew so corpulent that the black jersey he wore began to stretch, he played the 'cello. But his favourite instrument was the one-stringed fiddle. He would play the violin, too, and other musical instruments we never saw in his hands. Both he and his songs were ranked among "comics," but the two by which he is remembered were not to make us laugh.'
(M. Willson Disher, Winkles and Champagne, B.T. Batsford, London, 1938, pp.70 and 71)

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'Chirgwin earned his salary, not for his make-up as the White-Eyed Kaffir or his substitution of a kerosene tin with one string for a Stradivarius, but for his infallible musical ear, which kept him always exactly in tune.'
(George Bernard Shaw, Musical Times, London, January 1947)

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'Chirgwin played a wide range of musical instruments including violin, cello, bagpipes, piano, banjo, a one-string fiddle, and other strange contrivances of his own invention. He had an extraordinary voice which ranged from baritone to a strangely haunting falsetto. One has only to listen to the recordings of his two great songs, "My Fiddle is My Sweetheart" and "The Blind Boy," to understand why he remained such a firm favourite for 50 years.'
(Roy Busby, British Music Hall, Paul Elk, London and New Hampshire, 1976, p.35)

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Brian Rust (British Music Hall on Record, General Gramophone Publications Ltd, Harrow, 1979, pp.21 and 22), states that Chirgwin committed 'My Fiddle is My Sweetheart' and 'The Blind Boy' to record twice: for Edison Bell cylinders, in London about March 1906, and for Edison Bell discs in London respectively in about September 1909 and about May 1911. In 1896 he made two short films, and another in 1917.

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© John Culme, 2003