Vesta Tilley

Vesta Tilley, the music hall artist and the greatest male impersonator of her time, was born Matilda Alice Powles in Worcester on May 13th 1864. Much of the information here comes from Mike Casselden's web site, which is a very extensive description of her life, and is reproduced with his permission. Click here to hear a song in Real Audio format.

Vesta Tilley (literally, Vesta, meaning 'virgin' and 'Tilley', a family nickname for Matilda), second of thirteen children, was baptised Matilda Alice Powles at St Peters the Great, Worcester, on 11 September 1864. The parish entry shows that her mother was named Matilda and that her father was William Henry Powles, a china gilder. At some time in the 1860/70's, Tilley's father, William Harry Powles (stage name Harry Ball), was manager of the St George's Music Hall, Nottingham. Gwynedd Sudworth, an author from Worcester, says that, about 1866, William Henry Powles had changed the family name to BALL.

Perhaps at her father's urging, she became a child actor. She made her stage debut at three and by seven was appearing regularly as "The Great Little Tilley." She was making a very respectable £5 per week. By the age of nine, she had begun to appear in male dress and was playing in three theatres in London every night. To her real name, she added Vesta, from the trade name "Swan Vesta" - a widely used brand of matches named after the Roman goddess of fire. As a personal name, it was unique, but at the same time instantly recognizable to the working classes, who were to become her greatest fans.

Tilley was very close to her father, although one might wonder just how dominating he was, given her importance as a vital source of income to this working-class family. Tilley's book implies that, until her mid twenties, her father took careful control over her life and who she met. Her mother, Matilda, no doubt, had an arduous domestic role in the background bringing up thirteen children, largely single-handed, albeit supported by her extended family. As a dressmaker, she probably made Tilley's costumes.

Under her father's management, the core component of Vesta's act consisted of dressing up like a dandified upper-class gentleman and singing songs that poked fun at the rich. At the same time, she parodied the prevailing male power structure. Dressed as a dandy for her famous numbers, such as "Burlington Bertie" and "Following in Father's Footsteps," she stylishly mocked the foppish manners of the rich to the delight of the adoring poor, who saluted her as no less than "The London Idol."

Vesta's father continued as her manager until his death when she was 24. The untimely death of her father seemed an important watershed in her life. Two years later, she married music hall owner Walter de Frece, who became her manager and wrote songs for her. She perhaps gained greater control over her theatrical career. During World War I, Tilley threw herself into recruiting men for the armed forces, singing such songs as "Jolly Good Luck to the Girl Who Loves a Soldier," "The Army of Today's All Right," and "Six Days' Leave." For this effort, she became known as "England's Greatest Recruiting Sergeant."

Walter de Frece became active in politics and served as a Member of Parliament. In 1919, he was knighted as Sir Walter de Frece for wartime service to the country. Tilley became Lady de Frece, involved in politics through the work of her husband as a Conservative MP. She must have been devastated when he died in 1935 in Monte Carlo.

Vesta Tilley died an affluent woman. However, it is said she always acknowledged her humble origins. Her early days as a child performer were surely as tough and demanding as the experiences of many other children facing the everyday world of work, in the Victorian era. The glimpses of her early family life help us to see that the music hall was, for a successful performer like Tilley, an escape from the grinding poverty of working-class life.

Some writers suggest that Vesta's male impersonations were symptomatic of a gender crisis in her life. This is unlikely. During Vesta's life-time, men disproportionately undertook everyday social roles in society. So, as a woman performing these roles on stage (policemen, soldiers and toffs), she merely parodied the prevailing male power structure. Of course, she didn't consciously challenge that. But, in the process of a female parody of the male roles, she not only established herself as a successful woman in a man's world, but importantly signified the inequality of male dominance through her female presence, helping to lay a key foundation for a change in popular attitudes towards the emancipation of women in society.

Vesta was no slap-dash entertainer. She carefully researched and costumed all her roles and sang original music, much of it composed by her husband. She was very popular and recorded many songs. She toured successfully on the vaudeville circuit in the United States and throughout the Empire. Vesta retired in 1920 when she was 56. She retired from the stage the following year and published Recollections of Vesta Tilley in 1934. On her retirement she was presented with a set of books that contained the signatures of some two million fans. She died in London on September 16th 1952 at the age of 88.

Further reading: Vesta Tilley's autobiography 'Recollections of Vesta Tilley' (Hutchinson 1934), Gwynedd Sudworth's 'The Great Little Tilley' (Cortney 1984), and Sarah Maitland's book, 'Vesta Tilley' (Virago 1986)