Autograph request
Envelope sent by Bray to (Cigarette card featuring G.H. Chirgwin) on 11th May 1901 requesting his autograph.
Before you read any further I wish to point out that I am not comfortable with some of the details in the biography but it is a statement of its time and, despite the current trends, you cannot rewrite history. I offer my sincere apologies to anyone who finds certain information distasteful.
G. H. Chirgwin (born George Chirgwin, 13 December 1854 - 14 November 1922) was a British music hall comedian, singer and instrumentalist, billed as "the White-Eyed Kaffir", a black face minstrel act.
Born in the Seven Dials area of London, he was one of four children of a circus clown, of Cornish descent. He first appeared with other family members in the Chirgwin Family troupe in 1861, when they imitated touring minstrel shows. The family became regular music hall performers, until 1868 when George Chirgwin first appeared as a solo act, singing "Come Home, Father" in a summer engagement at Margate. Born simply George Chirgwin, he took the initials G. H. in his stage name from those of G. H. MacDermott, but in later life sometimes used the name George Henry Chirgwin.
He worked for a while as a busker, and as a musical instrument salesman, gradually extending the range of instruments on which he performed to include piano, violin, cello, banjo, bagpipes, and one-string "Jap fiddle".[citation needed] He also sang in a falsetto voice. In the 1870s he toured with his younger brother, Tom, as the Brothers Chirgwin. He made his first solo stage appearances in London in 1877, and was immediately successful.
He was noted for his unusual stage appearance, appearing in a cloak, tightly fitting jumper and tights, and an exaggeratedly tall top hat. Rather than using a fully blacked-up face as other blackface minstrels did, Chirgwin chose to adapt this by making one large white diamond over one eye. This meant that his stage character was only partly inside the blackface minstrel tradition, and was using the tradition in a somewhat ironical manner; and indeed his material included cockney material as well as straightforward blackface songs and sketches. He said that the make-up originated from an occasion when he was performing in the open air at Gloucester.
"A storm got up in the middle of the performance, and a lot of dust was blown into my right eye. The pain was so great that I naturally set to work rubbing my eye and when I faced the audience again there was a shriek of laughter. I had rubbed a patch of the black off round my eye, and the effect was so peculiar that I stuck to it ever since. Though, of course, it was some time before I adopted the diamond shaped patch as a distinctive mark."
