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Above - Part of Walter Lambert's vast canvas ‘Popularity’ Held at the Museum of London. - Reproduction Courtesy the Museum of London

The extract below is from 'REMINISCENCES OF THE ‘LLOYD/KING’ THEATRE FAMILIES by

HARRY POWELL LLOYD (Arthur Lloyd's grandson) (12 December 1979)

Transcribed and Edited by Norman King Lloyd

Early in the 1900’s, Walter Lambert painted a vast canvas which he called ‘Popularity’. Lambert, himself a music-hall artist, had a female impersonation act and called himself for this purpose, Lydia Dreams. This painting, measuring thirteen-feet in length and five-feet, six-inches in height, is of no great value as a work of art, but as a record of the great days of the British Music hall, it has a place in social history. It shows 231 figures, many of them instantly recognisable to any lover of the old ‘halls’; all the figures are named in a numbered key. Arthur Lloyd is seen in the lower right-hand corner of the picture talking to Charlie Coburn (The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo). Arthur Lloyd is being offered a bunch of violets by the artist’s wife who is dressed as a flower-girl while he himself is dressed in morning-coat and wearing a top hat. Most of the other artists in the picture are dressed in their stage costumes and the scene is one of the places known as ‘Poverty Corner’ where the unemployed pro’s met to swap stories and to see their agents, whose offices were in or near the Waterloo Road. There were several other… (unintelligible text) to old Waterloo Bridge… not the present bridge but Rennie’s bridge which was replaced in the 1920’s by the new Waterloo Bridge. The houses also disappeared in the late 1950’s when all the South Bank alterations were made. From where Grandfather Lloyd stands in the picture he could be looking across the road to the opposite corner of the ‘Old Vic’ which still stands there in spite of many narrow escapes of destruction which have included improvement plans, financial stringency’s and Hitler’s bombers. Arthur Lloyd would not have had any reason to think that his grandson would one day be performing on that stage.