'Stately as a galleon' and Other Songs and Sketches

by Joyce Grenfell, John Ward (Illustrator)

This collection of two dozen of Joyce Grenfell's best-known sketches and song-lyrics includes many of her favourite characters. The Women's Institute Lecturer, The Vice-Chancellor's Wife, Shirley's Girl Friend (here involved in a festival of early music), Mrs Moss, the odd, old woman in a rocking-chair in Virginia, recalling Lally Tullett, and many others. The songs range from the pregnancy of 'Dear Francois' through the charming absurdity of the title song about about middle-aged ladies 'dancing bust to bust' and the ferocity of 'Ethel' to the sheer joy of 'I'm Going to See You Today'. John Ward's illustrations, more delicate but no less apposite than those in 'George - Don't Do That', are once again a delightful complement to the text

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 21, 1978

About the author

Joyce Irene Grenfell, OBE (née Phipps; 10 February 1910 – 30 November 1979) was an English actress, comedienne and singer-songwriter.

Reviews

[Sportyrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am no theatre queen but this was an amusing collection of theatre songs and monologues.

Like plays, many of them set the scene and prompted the reader to get the accent right by getting us to try and talk with the tongue in front of the teeth and so on. It was fun trying.

Each one had a point to make. My favourite one was about an old ladies meeting of some sort in the early 1900s. The main topic is trying to kick out a chorister who sounds awful but who makes the most financial contribution. They wangle her out of the next performance by putting her on the door for the event. But it ends with the current door member (who sucked in the last performance) saying that she can rejoin now. And they realise the plan is back to square one.

So it’s cute and amusing. It got me thinking of how much I enjoyed drama at school.

[Teaspoon Stories · Rating 3 out of 5]

Old Time dancing – or “Olde Tyme” when spelt quaintly – was a national pastime in the 1950s. The phenomenon became such a popular institution that even its doughtiest supporters could recognise its comic potential.

As well as writing this little ditty, super-talented, posh comedienne Joyce Grenfell also regularly performed it as a comedy act, set to music by her composer chum, Richard Addinsell, who wrote the music scores to famous films of the time including “Blithe Spirit” and “Gaslight” (yes, indeed, Patrick Hamilton’s cod-Victorian potboiler about a woman being what we now call “gas lit” by her scheming, sadistic husband).

“Stately as a Galleon” is a monologue that tells the droll story of two single ladies of a certain age. Mrs Fanshaw and Mrs Tiverton together faced, and overcame, the perennial problem of the under-represented male on the dance floor:

“I’ve joined an Old Time Dance Club. The trouble is that there
Are too many ladies over, and no gentlemen to spare.”

This would have been a problem for my Grandma Lilian too – who enjoyed Old Time dancing as much as she’d loved the Shimmy and the Charleston in her youth. But my grandfather was very much not inclined to spend drafty evenings of Old Time at the local drill hall.

So Lilian found her own Mrs Fanshaw/Mrs Tiverton, in the form of a neighbour called Mrs Olivant. Mrs Olivant – her first name forever unrevealed and unspoken, reflecting the formality of that generation – was an older widow with a well-corseted embonpoint.

Partnered together, my grandma and Mrs Olivant sailed across the floor as stately as two galleons. Those elegant Old Time dances, the Military Two-step, the Valetta and The Lancers, can seldom have been performed with such mesmerising grace and dignity.

So actually, like so much of Joyce Grenfell’s observational humour, the monologue is more moving and thoughtful than laugh-out-loud comic.

[J Grimsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really enjoyable book of snippets with sadness and laughter mixed together in equal measure. You can also see if there are films of Joyce on YouTube to watch (there are some)

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joyce Grenfell was a wonderful performer and writer. "First Flight", one of the monologues contained in this collection, is one of my favorites about family and acceptance.