At the Music Hall: The Belle of Belgrave Square, Late 19th C.

Sheet Music Cover, 19th C.
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This week's music hall song is unusual in that I don't have an audio clip for you since I can't find a recording.  Nevertheless, it fits today's theme.

"The Belle of Belgrave Square" is also kmown as "Lady Audley's Kitchen Maid's Secret."  The song refers to the popular 1862 novel "Lady Audley's Secret," by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.  The book is described as "a lurid and melodramatic tale of bigamy, gold- digging and murder amongst the aristocracy of London’s Belgravia." 

In the book, the young, beautiful and gracious Lady Audley (recently married to the elderly Sir Michael) harbors a sinister secret, and, as these things typically go, only her maid knows the truth. The heroine is driven to increasingly desperate measures in order to hide the truth.  Of course, she eventually goes mad. And, Of course, the book was a wild success.

The song is a parody of the novel, wherein Lady Audley's maid also has a secret - the young man she is seeing. As the kitchen maid's boyfriend creeps through the elegant Belgrave Square house for a secret assignation, he has a noisy accident, that gives him away. The decorative cover of the sheet music includes a short verse that explains the scene:

'Oh! headlong in the dark I went, and with my arms outspread, Down came champagne and port wine bottles, smashing on my head, I felt the Port Wine trickling down my forehead, face, and neck. Then heard a loud voice shouting out a policeman go and get.'