Jimmy Glover, His Book

Abstract

The story of the success of H.M.S. Pinafore does not seem to have been accurately told. It is well known that the First Lord who stuck ‘close to his desk and never went to sea … to be ruler of the Queen’s Navee’ was a sly shaft at the then First Lord of the Admiralty — the late W. H. Smith.² But Pinafore fell flat at first, and in the action which arose over the Opéra Comique lease and the fight which ensued — a real scrimmage, when Rutland Barrington tells me his very Captain Corcoran clothes were torn to shreds — it came out that the second night’s receipts were a matter of only £14 odd.

James Mackey Glover, or ‘Jimmy’ (as he liked to be known), lived from 1861 to 1931. An Irish conductor and organist and composer of ballet and songs, he conducted as Master of Music at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for 30 years. He considered the supreme moment of his life to be the command by King George V on 17 May 1911 that he should arrange a performance of Money, by Lord Bulwer Lytton, to be given in honour of the visit to England of the German Emperor and Empress.