3-082-437 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Mr. Corney Grain, 1895. 'Popular Entertainer Recently Deceased. Only nine days elapsed between the date of "the last performance of the season" at German Reed's Entertainment and Saturday, March 16, when the genial entertainer passed peacefully away...He practised [at the bar] until 1870, when he formally joined the German Reed company. He has been for the last quarter of a century the most popular entertainer of the day, but in addition to the musical sketches which made him famous, he composed scores of songs and wrote the music for several of the pieces which had such a vogue at St. George's Hall...He was a brilliant pianist and a "quick study," and would elaborate sudden notions for a sketch in a few minutes...his admirers would have real difficulty in making a choice of their favourite among nearly fifty sketches with which his name is indelibly associated. He thoroughly understood children, to whom he was always a kind friend, and his whimsical mimicry of schoolboys' ways and words was remarkably true to life as well as amusing. He was essentially English - one might almost add, a Londoner...some of his best songs were those in which his sympathy for the poor and downtrodden was the dominant note'. From "Illustrated London News",