Vance's Howling Swell

Sheet music for the popular music hall song popularised by Alfred 'the Great' Vance entitled 'Vance's Howling Swell' with lyrics by J. S. Lee and music by R. Coote. The colour lithographed cover by the illustrator Alfred Concanen typically depicts the fashionable 'Great Vance' as a 'swell' with a handkerchief and walking stick. The lyrics of the song recount the character's expensive taste and inability to pay for his lavish purchases: 'I run sich bills, my tradesmen say,- / They're all on ruin's brink.'

The Great Vance was one of the fashionable 'swells' of the music hall, known collectively as the Lions Comiques. The fashionable evening dress of the Lions Comiques performers contrasted greatly with the cloth-cap coster cockney image adopted by many other music hall performers. Along with George Leybourne and Arthur Lloyd The Great Vance had a reputation of living the high life and it was commented, in the late 19th century, that these Lions Comiques were men who set women just a little higher than their bottle.