While extending salutations to the foreigners _Punch_ was not slow to

acclaim native talent. In 1865 he recognized in Kate Terry "one of the

most consummate actresses of her own range of parts we have ever seen on

the English Stage." That was said of her appearance in _Henry Dunbar_ in

December, 1865, and in June, 1867, in Reade's _Dora_, "a real English

Idyll, sweet, simple, natural and breathing of the country," he found

her completely satisfying in a part unlike her usual stage self. Three

months later _Punch_ bade her farewell on her marriage and withdrawal

from the stage, paying homage to her triple endowment of Genius,

Goodness and Beauty, her "innocent sensitive face," and her gentle,

gracious and womanly presence. Her "delicate influence" was a standing

disproof of the arguments of those who despaired of true art and its

reign on the stage, and she was retiring "from the top of the ladder

reached fairly at last with her laurels still springing and none of them

blighted."

[Sidenote: _The Coming of Irving_]

The rise of Irving from comedy and melodrama to Shakespearean drama is

attentively and sympathetically followed. His performance in the

"nightmare play" of _The Bells_ is pronounced to be a triumph of merit;

the sense of relief experienced on the fall of the curtain was in itself

the highest praise. The programme at the Lyceum ended with _Pickwick_,

with Irving as Jingle. _Punch_ regarded it as an incongruity: he

preferred to see Irving play _The Bells_ without the Jingle. There was

nothing wrong with _Charles I_ but the play. "His make-up was admirable,

his playing of the first and the last Act well-nigh faultless; but

between these two Acts the actor was left to make the best bricks

possible out of the scantiest wisps of straw.... I have no hesitation in

saying that the last Act is as affecting a spectacle as anything I have

ever seen on the stage." With Irving's _Richelieu_, in 1873, _Punch_ was

disappointed, though allowing him some pathetic moments. But Irving, it

is suggested, may have been the victim of the bad traditions attaching

to what was after all a pretentious and "wind-baggy" play. Irving's

_Hamlet_ was another matter altogether, and is treated very seriously

and exhaustively by _Punch_. It was a "genuine and well-deserved

success." No such strong and general sensation had been produced since

Fechter, over whom Irving had the great advantage of speaking as a

native the tongue in which Shakespeare wrote. No impersonation with

which _Punch_ was familiar, including that of Macready, displayed a more

consistent conception, more sustained intention, more intelligent

mastery of this many-sided character. This much granted, _Punch_

severely criticized Irving's cavalier treatment of the text, his

suppressions and omissions, his handling of all the scenes with the

Ghost. The psychological interpretation of Hamlet's madness erred

through over-emphasis on his pathetic and gentle side. The unsound

strain was kept too much in the background, and consistency was attained

at the expense of the text. Sundry scenic innovations are also

condemned, and altogether high praise is tempered with a good deal of

acute and legitimate criticism. On the vexed question of Hamlet's

madness _Punch_ writes intelligently, but without the wit which inspired

the immortal couplet in Gilbert's _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern_:--

Hamlet is idiotically sane,

With lucid intervals of lunacy.

There are some good lines, however, in the issue of December 12, 1874,

on "Hamlet's Right Hair," whether flaxen or raven. After all, as _Punch_

argues, it is not a question of the thatch of Hamlet's upper storey:

... It is a brain

Fitting the part, that's asked to play the Dane.

[Sidenote: "_The Menken_"]

Turning from serious drama to melodrama and comedy high and otherwise,

we find a liberal acknowledgment of the excitement furnished by the

_Colleen Bawn_, Boucicault's bedevilled version of Gerald Griffin's fine

novel _The Collegians_, when it was produced towards the close of 1860.

The plot is fully set forth, and "Jack Easel" confesses that he enjoyed

the evening very much. "Whatever may be the opinion of the learned

regarding Mr. Boucicault as a dramatist, there can be little doubt of

his merits 'on the boards.' I can hardly imagine a better stage

Irishman." But _Punch_, who had no mercy for Boucicault's resentment of

criticism, in March, 1862, printed a mock notice signed "Dion

Boucicault," threatening condign punishment on all who disparaged his

genius or dared to leave the theatre before the curtain fell and D.B.

appeared before the same. And a month later we read a mock trial of an

unfortunate pittite who had ventured to make some unfavourable comments

on the Cave scene. The production of the melodrama founded on Charles

Reade's _Never Too Late to Mend_, in 1865, met with _Punch's_ approval.

Some of the audience hissed the prison scenes: yet Menken had been

tolerated. This was the famous and notorious Adah Isaacs Menken, a

native of Louisiana; dancer, actress, school teacher, journalist and

poetess, married first of all to a Jew, whose faith she adopted, and

then to the "Benicia Boy," Heenan, the prize-fighter. After a chequered

career on and off the stage in America she appeared at Astley's in

_Mazeppa_ in 1864, when _Punch_ made reference to her as "a bare-backed

jade on bare-backed steed." It was certainly a _succès de scandale_, but

"the Menken" made a stir in the literary world and found patrons and

friends in Charles Reade, Charles Dickens (to whom her volume of poems,

_Infelicia_, was dedicated), and Swinburne. In Paris, to which city she

migrated, and where she died in 1869, she enjoyed the friendship of

Dumas and Théophile Gautier. "The Menken" was not intended for a placid

domestic life; she would not have been in her element at a Mothers'

Meeting; but she was a highly educated woman, had studied Latin and

Greek, had played Lady Macbeth, and, though not a Sappho, was a much

better poetess than Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

[Illustration: AT THE FRENCH PLAY

Happy thought: Incognito secured--blushes concealed--and self-respect

preserved (at least outwardly).]

Another actress of the "hectic" type, about whom _Punch_ as an informal

_censor morum_ was much exercised, was the famous Mlle. Schneider, who

incarnated the _canaillerie_ of Offenbach, and was the idol of Paris in

the years in which the Second Empire was dancing to its doom. She

appeared in _La Grande Duchesse_ and _La Belle Hélène_ in London in the

season of 1868, drew the town at the St. James's Theatre, but met with

little encouragement from the Press. _Punch_ declares that Schneider was

far more vulgar in London than in Paris, though on her native heath her

performance was witnessed chiefly by ladies of the faster set; and draws

the moral that they manage these things better in France. He found her

"perhaps scarcely so extravagant in her vulgarity" in _La Belle Hélène_,

but "there is all that excessive grimacing, continual adoption of the

'cad'-tone (which her admirers think so charmingly clever), that

pointless introduction of rough horse-play, hitting and kicking, without

which Schneider would not be Schneider." So _Punch_ notes, as a "natural

consequence" of the indulgence allowed by the Lord Chamberlain to

Schneider to "kick up behind and before," like "Ole Joe," on every

occasion, the production of the notorious and (for the time) audacious

play of _Formosa_ a year later. _Formosa_ was a play of fast life, with

scenes at Cookham (hence the name); a strange amalgam of impropriety and

sentimentality; and _Punch_ dealt faithfully with the ridiculous

situation in which the heroine, discovered by her parents in the most

compromising company, "makes a sudden and miraculous leap from the

lowest vice to the height of most sublime virtue."

[Sidenote: _Comedy and Satire_]

Schneider and _Formosa_ were, however, excrescences on the history of

the British stage. A really characteristic Victorian product was the

series of "drawing-room comedies" by T. W. Robertson, associated with

the Prince of Wales's Theatre in the Tottenham Court Road, and the

management of the Bancrofts. _Punch_ thought _Play_ faulty in

construction and tricky in its effects, but had nothing but praise for

the acting of Marie Wilton, Lydia Foote, Montague, Bancroft and John

Hare. With him the _Play_ was not the thing, but the players; still

Robertson's later comedies, for all their artificiality, gave an

immense amount of harmless pleasure to Victorian audiences. Elderly

playgoers will always retain the pleasantest memories of _School_ and

_Caste_; they were a most amusing "sentimentalization" of a phase of

society which has passed away, and fitted the company to perfection. The

little playhouse in the Tottenham Court Road did excellent work in other

ways, as _Punch_ acknowledged in his dream dialogue with Sheridan, when

_The School for Scandal_ was revived in 1874 with Bancroft as Joseph

Surface, Coghlan as Charles, Hare "a perfect picture" as Sir Peter, and

Mrs. Bancroft admirable in "the rural coquette who had adopted all the

graces and manners of a woman of fashion." Another notable Sheridan

revival was that of _The Rivals_ at the Haymarket in November, 1870,

though _Punch_ notes the disconcerting effect of Buckstone's

personality: people roared with laughter at him before he spoke, or if

he merely winked.

The satiric drama was dormant until 1873, when _The Happy Land_ was

produced at the Court Theatre by Miss Marie Litton on March 17. It was

founded on Gilbert's _Wicked World_, "a fairy comedy," written for

Buckstone and the Kendals, and produced at the Haymarket with only

moderate success on January 4. _The Happy Land_ was designed by Gilbert

himself, but the stage version was mainly worked out by Gilbert Arthur à

Beckett. Gilbert's name did not appear on the bill, on which the piece

was assigned to F. L. Tomline (i.e., Gilbert) and à Beckett. _The Happy

Land_ was a satire on the Gladstonian administration, and three of the

principal actors were made up to caricature Gladstone, Lowe and

Ayrton--so closely that after a few days the Lord Chamberlain intervened

and the make-up was considerably modified. _Punch_ saw the piece before

the Lord Chamberlain's order had been issued, and "crabbed" it heavily.

Unlike most of those who saw the play, he found little wit in it. There

were three or four "palpable hits" in the opening scene, but ten minutes

of it were enough: the satire was of the sledge-hammer order, and the

slain were hewn over and over again to weariness. "For a short time the

First Act was lively; the Second was a faint shadow of the First."

_Punch's_ disparagement is rather odd, in view of à Beckett's connexion

with the paper: it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the estrangement

from Gilbert, referred to elsewhere, may have coloured his judgment.

The year 1873 was marked by the passing of Macready, who died on April

27. His services to Art, his high aims and neglect of fashion are

recognized in the memorial verses, from which we borrow the last

stanza:--

Hail and Farewell--thou last of a great line,

Who in ideal art moved as at home!

Because you bowed at a now empty shrine

Was your faith false? Lo, the believing come!

The sentiment is not easily to be reconciled with the generally hopeful

view of the theatre expounded by _Punch_, or his comparison of Irving

with Macready a few months later. In this personal context it is

interesting to find that _Punch's_ misgivings were at least partially

removed by the emergence of a new star of the first magnitude. He had

already welcomed Ellen Terry as Puck in the revival of _A Midsummer

Night's Dream_ at the Queen's Theatre; he now paid an unreserved tribute

to her performance in _The Wandering Heir_ at the same theatre in March,

1874:--

Considering the present position of our Theatre, such qualities as

spontaneity, grace, the finest truth of accent and emphasis,

tenderness in grave passages, mirthfulness in gay ones, and all

these fused in an atmosphere of buoyancy and brightness which

exhilarates like champagne, and irradiates like light, are

something to be indeed thankful for, when found combined in one

Actress on an English Stage. They are to be seen combined at this

moment in Miss Ellen Terry's impersonation of Philippa, in Mr.

Charles Reade's drama of _The Wandering Heir_, at the Queen's

Theatre. Let those who may doubt if such praise nowadays can have a

solid foundation, go and admire for themselves. A new power of

graceful comedy and womanly sentiment comes to us with the return

to the boards of this young and charming Actress, whose eclipse for

the last few years has been hard indeed upon a Stage that had no

light to spare.

[Sidenote: _Stage Realism_]

In the earlier years of this period _Punch_ was much concerned with the

craze for sensation, and the stage-realism which leaves nothing to the

imagination, but exalts the practical carpenter at the expense of the

dramatic genius. This stock complaint reaches a climax at the close of

1865 in connexion with the announcement in a fashionable paper that in a

play to be shortly produced in Paris there would be "a grand park with a

real waterfall" and "a real river flowing through the stage." _Punch's_

comments, if not very subtle, are at least a sane contribution to the

everlasting conflict over stage illusion waged between "enterprise" and

idealism.

[Illustration: Well, Syusan, 'ow did yer like _Aroorer Floyd_ last

night?"

"Oh! so lovely, Jeames--I cried so! that wicked Conyers!... Oh, Jeames,

you won't desert me for _our_ young missus, will you, dear?"]

Over-reliance on scenery and machinery was, however, a venial offence

compared with the exploits of management recorded in the following

year:--

With exquisite good taste a highly enterprising Manager engaged "a

few of the survivors" who were rescued from the wreck of the

_London_, and has been paying them to appear every evening at his

theatre, as a prelude to the gambols of Pantaloon and Clown. With a

similar high notion of the duties of men catering to entertain the

public, another enterprising Manager has hired "kind old Daddy,"

late of Lambeth Workhouse, to exhibit himself nightly in a new

sensation drama, called _The Casual Ward_. "Sweet are the uses of

adversity," when it is utilized in this way for dramatic

exhibition; and flourishing indeed is the condition of the drama,

when such magnets are deemed requisite to make a play attractive,

and to draw a decent house.

If the horrors of the casual ward be thought a fitting subject for

dramatic exhibition, perhaps we soon may see a drama called _The

Union Infirmary_, with a score of real paupers all lying really

ill. Or a sensation scene of surgery perhaps might prove

attractive, and a real leg or arm be amputated nightly, before a

crowded house.... Playgoers will thus become familiarized with

horrors, which they read of with dismay; and to some minds a

calamity may fail to cause regret on the ground of its affording a

good subject for the stage.

[Sidenote: _Music-Halls_]

These particular anticipations have, fortunately, not all been

fulfilled, though persons who have been tried (and acquitted) on a

murder charge have appeared on the boards of recent years, and the

deliberate cult of horrors has become the avowed aim of the disciples of

the Grand Guignol school at the Little Theatre. The imaginary forecast

in 1858 of the possibilities of playbills as a means of advertisement

has long been transcended in fact. More interesting than these

speculations is the prophecy which grew out of the complaint against

long runs in the middle 'sixties. _Punch_ predicts in the summer of 1864

that if the repertory system is kept up in the provinces Londoners will

go to Brighton every night for their play or their opera. The actual

fact is that the revival of repertory theatres in the provinces has

rendered country cousins less dependent on their periodical visits to

London in order to keep abreast with the latest dramatic developments.

The mention of Brighton recalls a curious episode illustrative of the

social code of mid-Victorian times. In the autumn of 1858 _Punch_

rebukes the headmaster of a Brighton school who sent away the son of a

distinguished actor lest it should damage his connexion! Today such a

pupil is probably an asset rather than a handicap. The attitude of the

Church to the Stage was hardly benevolent in the 'sixties: this may

account for the satisfaction displayed by _Punch_ over the

"exceptionally sensible" sermon preached in 1873 at St. James's,

Piccadilly, by Lightfoot, then Canon of St. Paul's, and afterwards

Bishop of Durham. Dr. Lightfoot maintained that the stage, well

conducted, would be an auxiliary of the pulpit; that it was an enormous

and powerful instrument in the hands of Society for good or evil; and,

while holding that the present state of the drama was far from

satisfactory, he paid all honour to those dramatists and managers who

were attempting to raise it by not pandering to the vitiated tastes of

some of the public. In all of which sentiments he was vigorously

applauded by _Punch_, who could not, however, resist the temptation of

making verbal capital out of the preacher's name.

The competition of music-halls with theatres had already begun, and

_Punch_ had little or no conception of the length to which it was

ultimately destined to be carried. He had no love of the music-hall as

then organized, and nothing but contempt for the style of song which

flourished in the temples of variety. So when the Bill, promoted in 1865

by Mr. Locke, M.P. for Southwark, for legalizing theatrical performances

in music-halls was supported by a "dramatic authors' petition," he fell

foul of the petitioners especially in regard to their initial

contention:--

"The Lower Middle Class and Working Class have, of late years,

developed a large appetite for intellectual amusement, which the

number of theatres, and the present construction of theatres (which

give no comfortable or proper accommodation for these classes) have

failed to satisfy."

Perhaps we may admit that the theatre, as generally conducted

nowadays, is not exactly the place in which to satisfy an

"intellectual appetite." With our "intellectual appetite," still

suffering under the mockery of a Barmecide entertainment, in the

shape of a recent course of burlesques, we feel that the

intellectual playgoer, like the sheep in Milton's Sonnet, "looks up

and is not fed" in our London theatres. But is there not something

besides "numbers" and "construction" of theatre to blame here? May

not the quality of the theatrical fare provided have a leetle to do

with it? And who are the purveyors of that fare but many of the

gentlemen who sign this petition.

If they fail so miserably in satisfying the "intellectual appetite"

of even "the Lower Middle and Working-Class" in our theatres, how

are they to satisfy it better in the music-halls which they wish to

open for the unlimited consumption of their viands?

If they have anything better to offer, why not try it in the

theatres, where they will, at least, find the cooks--such as they

are--in the shape of actors, and the best procurable garnish of

scenery, dresses, and decorations, without the distractions of

chops and steaks, sherry cobblers, cold withouts, and

sodas-and-brandies?

... But the less the demand for the opening of the music-halls to

theatrical representations is based on the demands of the

"intellectual appetite" of the Lower Middle and Working Classes,

the better.

Three years later _Punch_ was unable to notice any great improvement in

the variety stage:--

The music-hall gentry had a great gathering the other day, for a

purpose which we should approve, if we did not hold that the

music-hall, as at present conducted, is so pestilent a nuisance

that charity can have nothing to say to it. One of the performers

had grace or shame enough to deliver some doggerel in which he

deprecated the wrath of _Punch_ on the ground that everybody must

live. It is the plea usually heard in the dock, and the answer is:

"Yes, but decently." But as it is of no use telling the music-hall

folks what gentlemen think of them, perhaps they would like to know

what the respectable artisan thinks of them, and of the spirit in

which it is not impossible that he may deal with them. Here are the

words of the organ of hundreds of thousands of the skilled artisans

and the Trades Unions, in fact, and we recommend them to special

attention:--

"To these glaring temples of dissipation our youth are nightly

attracted; where they are being gradually trained to drinking

habits; where their minds are debased by the low songs and vulgar

exhibitions provided for them; and where their morals are

undermined and corrupted by contact with loose associates, when

their blood is fired and their brains bemuddled with drink.... The

expenditure incurred in those places of amusement keeps young men

poor; causes marriage to be greatly postponed--to the increase of

vice; or, if entered into, without the necessary provision for

making a comfortable home; while the habits they acquire by going

there will too frequently cause them to neglect home and family for

their nightly amusements."

So says the _Beehive_ speaking the sentiments of the Working Man. We do

not think that he will see much force in the mewing plea of "must

live."

The music-halls of to-day do not call for such censure; they have even

become fashionable; but one is tempted to wonder whether there is any

modern counterpart in Labour journalism to the austerely Puritan

_Beehive_.

[Sidenote: _Opera in 1858_]

In the world of opera the domination of the Italian School of composers

and singers, though intermittently and not unsuccessfully assailed,

remained practically unbroken throughout this period, 1857-1874. Still,

the formation of the company for the performance of English operas by

Louisa Pyne and William Harrison in 1856 is a landmark that must not be

overlooked. The partnership was dissolved in 1862, but the performances

given at the Lyceum, Drury Lane, and Covent Garden theatres in those

years anticipated the good work done in later years by the Carl Rosa and

other companies. The general musical situation in 1858 is not badly

summarized in the lines published at the end of June under the heading

"Musicians and Maniacs":--

Three _Traviatas_ in diff'rent quarters,

Three _Rigoletti_ murd'ring their daughters!!

Three _Trovatori_ beheading their brothers,

By the artful contrivance of three gipsy mothers!!!

Verdi in the Haymarket, Verdi at the Lane,

Green's in Covent Garden, and Verdi again!

Was ever a being so music be-ridden,

Barrel-organ-beground, German brass-band bestridden;

What with all the Concerts at all the Halls,

And the Oratorios--_Samsons_ and _Sauls_--

Mozart and Mendelssohn, Haydn and Handel--

All lights of the Art in every part,

From the blaze of the Sun to a farthing-candle!

And the Classical Matinées,

With Clauss's touch satiny,

That to hear her your heart seems to go pit-a-pat in ye--

And Hallé so dignified, pure and sonorous,

And Henry Leslie's amateur chorus,

And fair Arabella, so melting and mellow,

That she charms the stern judgment of Autocrat Ella,

And Rubinstein--rapid and rattling of fist,

That one cries out with _Hamlet's_ Papa, "Liszt, Oh Liszt."

Ella was the founder and director of the "Musical Union," which gave

Chamber Music Concerts much on the lines of the famous "Pops"; Arabella

was Arabella Goddard, the leading British pianist. Henry Leslie's choir

for the performance of madrigal music carried off the prize against all

comers at Paris in 1867. Wilhelmine Clauss was the Bohemian pianist,

known in later years as Mme. Szarvady. To return to opera: it is amusing

to find precisely the same charge hurled against Verdi as against Wagner

twenty or thirty years later--that he cracked or wore out voices in

their vain effort to contend against orchestral din. Grisi was still the

chief _diva_, though a new star had arisen in Titiens, whose name

spurred _Punch_ to display his metrical prowess:--

We've got a great artist, a lady named Titiens,

Whose praises we'd sing, but her name will not rhyme.

Stuff! Horace reminds you, with "_Tantalus sitiens_,"

We've thirsted for music like hers a long time.

[Sidenote: _The Advent of Patti_]

The new Opera House had been opened at Covent Garden, and on the first

night patrons complained of getting covered with white, as the paint was

still fresh. The "Music of the Future" continues to excite _Punch's_

derision, and at the close of 1858 he seizes the opportunity of running

a tilt against _Lohengrin_:--

Meyerbeer's opera of the _Africaine_ seems to be "The Opera of the

Future," for there appears but little chance of its ever being

played in our lifetime. How many years has it not been locked up in

the great composer's portfolio, undergoing a species of African

slavery, of which manager after manager has tried in vain to find

the musical key. However, we are sorry to find Meyerbeer lending

his great name to Messrs. Wagner, Liszt, and other crotchet-mongers

of the _Music of the Future_, in support of their inharmonious

fallacies, that have lately been aired in a grand pretentious

production, called _Lohengrin_. A "grin" seems to be the end of all

their Operas, though at best it is but a melancholy one, and

anything but flattering to those who provoke it. The Viennese are

all _Lohengrinning_ like mad. We wish Meyerbeer would put this band

of musical fanatics to shame by allowing his _Africaine_ to become

an "Opera of the Present," instead of "the Future," and so prove to

these hare-brained gentlemen what good music really is. The best

_Music of the Future_ is that which has the elements of vitality

in every note of it, so that there can be no doubt about its

living several scores of years after its production. The specimen

that we know of this class is _Don Giovanni_, and our would-be

Mozarts cannot do better than take it as a model.

[Illustration: MODEST APPEAL

LADY (to big drum): "Pray, my good man, don't make that horrid noise. I

can't hear myself speak!"]

_Punch's_ enthusiasm for Piccolomini had so far cooled that when a

testimonial to her was suggested in 1860, he declined his support on the

ground that she was "a pretty little personage, of good family, who, by

force of bright eyes, intelligent acting, and a charming smile, pleased

the public into a belief that she was a lyric artist." Moreover, if

there was to be a testimonial, Grisi was the proper recipient. The

following year was noteworthy for the advent of Patti, unheralded by any

strident flourish of trumpets. _Punch's_ first reference to her _début_

in May was brief and ambiguous, and disfigured by a pun on her name. Six

weeks later he remains still unshaken in his allegiance to his old

heroines--Malibran, Jenny Lind, and Grisi--and suspends his judgment on

the newcomer. Patti's arrival coincided with the "final farewell

appearances" of Grisi, a mistress of the grand style as singer and

actress, queen-like in her gestures and gait, unequalled even by Titiens

(in _Punch's_ opinion) in _Norma_ and as Donna Anna; but _Punch_ soon

succumbed to the furore for Patti. As Zerlina she was "more charming

than he expected," and a year later he celebrated his enslavement in

jingling rhyme:--

O charming Adelina!

How sweet is thy _Amina_

How bewitching thy _Zerlina_!

How seldom has there been a

More tunable _Norina_!

And have I ever seen a

More enjoyable _Rosina_?

But to tell the praise I mean a-

-Las! there should have been a

Score more rhymes to Adelina.

_Punch_ said what he could in 1861 of two forgotten operas--Balfe's

_Puritan's Daughter_, with Santley in the cast, and Benedict's _Lily of

Killarney_, a tertiary deposit from _The Collegians_--but found more

congenial occupation in the spring of 1862 in levelling the shafts of

ineffectual, because uninstructed, ridicule against Wagner:--

LE VERITABLE "OPERA COMIQUE"

We read that Herr Wagner is about to compose a comic opera, music

and words. We agree with our facetious contemporary, _The Musical

World_,[30] that we never heard an opera of Wagner's yet that was

not more, or less, comic.... As this gentleman's music is said to

belong to "The Future"--and certainly as a Present it is not worth

having--we suppose he generally gets it executed by the celebrated

Band of "Hope."

[Footnote 30: _The Musical World_ was edited by J. W. Davison, the

musical critic of _The Times_, a well-equipped musician, an unflinching

champion of Mendelssohn and a bitter and persistent disparager of Wagner

and Schumann.]

[Sidenote: _Wagner and Gounod_]

A KING WITH A STRANGE TASTE FOR MUSIC

Herr Wagner, the great composer, "for the future" (A.D. 1962), has

received sharp orders from the King of Saxony to return home

instantly. Is the King jealous that other parts of the Continent

should have so much of the services of his Kapellmeister, and he

comparatively so little? He probably wishes to have Wagner all to

himself. Far from quarrelling with the desired monopoly, in the

cause of music we heartily rejoice at it. The royal edict will have

the effect of narrowing the evil of contaminating compositions. It

is tantamount to a musical quarantine. Travellers must not venture

too near, or else they may be infected with one of his malignant

airs, which are not so catching, perhaps, as they are lowering,

leaving a fearful sense of depression behind them. Henceforth, the

flights of _The Flying Dutchman_ will be restricted to one kingdom

instead of half a dozen. We hope Wagner will be confined to Dresden

all his life. Our Philharmonic will gain from his imprisonment. It

will run no further risk of being nearly knocked on the head from

another blow of his erratic baton.

The chief operatic attractions of 1863 are set forth in an excellent

mock-Virgilian Eclogue in which the two rival impresarios, Gye and

Mapleson, figure as Damoetas and Menalcas and _Punch_ as Palaemon.

Patti's popularity is attested in the couplet:--

My little Patti all the world must own

The nicest little party ever known.

[Illustration: SIC VOS NON VOBIS

Literature, Science, and Music at an evening party. Total defeat of the

two former.]

The list of celebrities includes Titiens, Carvalho, Trebelli, Mario,

Tamberlik (a heroic tenor, famous for his "_ut de poitrine_"), Giuglini,

Faure, Formes, Santley--all of them long dead, except the last, who had,

in 1862, just cast in his lot with Italian opera. He took part in the

first performance of _Faust_ in England as Valentine, and with such

success that Gounod wrote for him the additional number "Dio possente."

_Faust_ is a landmark in the annals of opera in England; because it was

the first work which shook the allegiance of the fashionable world to

the Italian school, and for fifty years at least enjoyed a popularity

equal to that of the early Verdi, of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini,

and, judged by the test of performances, greater than that of Mozart or

Meyerbeer. _Faust_ was certainly founded on Italian rather than German

traditions, but there was much in it that was essentially French, and

one turns with curiosity to read how it struck so orthodox and, in some

ways, so insular a critic as _Punch_. He treated the opening

performance perfunctorily, briefly observing that the opera seemed to

suit everyone's taste, but made his _amende_ a month later:--

Thank you, M. Gounod; thank you, Mr. Gye; thank you, Mr.

Mapleson.[31] As produced by your exertions _Faust_ is certainly

Faust-rate. _Mr. Punch_ makes his apology for not saying so before,

but he is not like some clairvoyants who can criticize by

foresight. Moreover, such cascades of praise have spouted on all

sides that he feared a while to add to the laudatory deluge. Now,

having seen and heard and reflected at his leisure, _Punch_ is

ready to allow that the shower of superlatives has not fallen

undeserved, and he will own that M. Gounod has produced the

sweetest, prettiest and pleasantest new opera that, since the first

night of _Les Huguenots_, the world has seen brought forth. The

only drawback _Mr. Punch_ felt when he witnessed the performance

was that M. Gounod had not set the Brocken Scene. With that

addition, _Faust_ might have eclipsed _Der Freischütz_, and even

without this it is not far inferior.

[Footnote 31: _Faust_ was produced at Her Majesty's Theatre (Mapleson)

on June 11 and at Covent Garden (Gye) on July 2.]

[Sidenote: "_Homeric Catalogue of Singers_"]

Many of the greatest singers of the time appeared in these performances.

Miolan-Carvalho (the original Marguerite), Faure (the first

Mephistopheles), Giuglini, the incomparable Trebelli, and Santley. Patti

assumed the _rôle_ of the heroine in the following year with great

success; but _Punch_ did not fail to welcome Titiens as Leonora in

_Fidelio_, an achievement which he describes as "noble music nobly

rendered." It was in 1864 again that the efforts of English opera to

raise its diminished head called forth _Punch's_ satire. Foreign opera

still held the field, and the only English feature of the venture was

the conductor Mellon.

The "Homeric Catalogue of Singers," published on April 1, 1865, shows

how formidable was the competition of the foreign singers, headed by

Patti, Lucca, and the honey-tongued Miolan-Carvalho, with other prima

donnas from Munich, Berlin, Milan, Moscow, and Lisbon, and, amongst men,

Mario, Wachtel ("the far-famed shouter of high notes"), Ronconi (a great

actor and humorist) Tagliafico, and half a dozen others whose names have

fallen into the limbo of forgotten singers.

Meyerbeer's long-promised and posthumous _L'Africaine_ arrived at last

in the summer season of 1865, but before its performance on July 22,

with Pauline Lucca in the part of Selika, the libretto of this "grand

new old opera" is irreverently burlesqued by _Punch_ with delightful

pictures by Du Maurier. We can only find room for an excellent travesty

of the Song of Inez:--

I go to execution,

'Tis righteous retribution,

And by this Constitution

All foreigners must die--

and the excellent and well-merited criticism of the execrable singing of

the opera chorus (old style).

[Illustration: "JUST HINT A FAULT"

Little Tommy Bodkin takes his cousins to the gallery of the Opera.

PRETTY JEMIMA: (who is always so considerate): "Tom, dear, don't you

think you had better take off your hat, on account of the poor people

behind?" you know?"]

[Sidenote: _Nilsson and Grisi_]

_Punch_ returns to _L'Africaine_ a couple of months later, but in a vein

of irresponsible ribaldry. _Punch's_ notice, however, is valuable

because it is a good (if partly unconscious) satire on the attitude of

the frivolous opera-goer who goes (or shall we say went) to the opera to

be amused and titillated, to see and be seen, to applaud the "stars" in

their show songs, but for the rest deaf to the appeal of poetry and

passion. _Punch_, at his worst, never sank to this level, witness his

appreciation of Jenny Lind and Titiens and Ronconi; but the glamour of

good looks and a fine voice seldom failed to touch his susceptible

heart. His appreciation of Christine Nilsson on her appearance in 1867

is, with certain reserves, a good estimate of one who in her prime was

an almost perfect Marguerite, or perhaps one should say Gretchen, and

who might have stepped out of one of the canvases of Kaulbach:--

It is not usual, I know, to wear thick boots at the opera; but I

regretted very much that, obeying my young wife, I had put on a

thin pair, when I went the other night to hear the new young

Swedish singer. I have seldom been more charmed than I was by her

fresh voice, fair face, and her agreeable demeanour. She sings in a

pure style, with intelligence and taste, and she can hold a long

soft note with none of the affected trembling of the voice which of

late has been so fashionable. Her tones are clear and full, high

but never shrill; and she has no need of French polish to conceal

those cracks and blemishes which Verdi makes in thin weak voices.

She is very young at present, and must not be crudely criticized;

but she seems by nature gifted for the operatic stage, and having

ardour and ambition to shine lastingly upon it. Because she happens

to be Swedish, people think of their old favourite, and make absurd

comparisons between a finished artist in the climax of her fame and

a clever débutante who is wishful to be famous. The parallel,

though premature, may in one point be permitted, for these Swedes

have both the gift of singing not to the ears only, but simply to

the heart; and though Christine Nilsson may not be a second Jenny

Lind, she is even now among the very first of _prime donne_.

In 1868 regret is expressed that Royalty bestowed more patronage on

Offenbach than Handel--the Handel Festival coinciding with the

production of _La Grande Duchesse_ in 1868; on the other hand, Patti's

marriage to the Marquis de Caux is thought worthy of a mention under the

heading of "Essence of Parliament"! In 1869 _Punch_ notes the knighthood

conferred on Costa, whom he had once described as "the tamer of wild

prima donnas," and pays homage to Grisi, who died at the close of the

year:--

GIULIA GRISI

Nay, no elegies nor dirges!

Let thy name recall the surges,

Waves of song, whose magic play

Swept our very souls away:

And the memories of the days

When to name thee was to praise;

Visions of a queenly grace,

Glowings of a radiant face,

Art's High Priestess! at her shrine

Ne'er was truer guard than thine.

Were it Love, or were it Hate,

It was thine, and it was great.

Glorious Woman--like to thee

We have seen not, nor shall see.

Lost the Love, the Hate, the Mirth--

* * * * *

Light upon thee lie the earth!

Hervé's _Chilpéric_ is hailed in 1870 as a welcome substitute for the

tyranny of Schneider and Offenbach; as for _Tannhäuser_, _Punch_ was

apparently very much of the same way of thinking as the members of the

Jockey Club in Paris, who received it with whistles and cat-calls in

1861:--

GEE WOE, WAGNER

A Solo by Mr. Crusty, after hearing a Selection from the Opera of

_Tannhäuser_

"The music of the future," eh?

Well, some may think it pleasant!

But when such trash again they play,

I'll for the future hope I may

Not be among the present!

Mario's farewell benefit, on July 19, 1871, when he played Fernando in

_La Favorita_ for the last time in London, was a scene of "roaring and

wreaths" described with mingled humour and emotion by _Punch_, who

hailed the retiring idol as the Prince of Lyric Artists:--

Though lost to ear

To memory dear

I ne'er shall look upon his like again!

[Illustration: TO ARTISTS, COMEDIANS, AND OTHERS

Anyone who wishes to study the true dramatic expression of the Tragic

Muse in the act of drinking the last bitter cup of despair to the very

dregs, should watch a young mother teaching the elements of music to her

first-born.]

[Sidenote: _Popular Songs in 1858_]

Concert music between 1841 and 1857 began and ended, so far as _Punch_

was concerned, with Jullien. To what we have written in the previous

volume of Jullien's disasters and death, it may here be added that

_Punch_ bade him God-speed on the grand tour in 1858 which was to

restore his fortunes, and when the end came was active in canvassing for

funds to support his widow and family, who were left totally unprovided

for. Also, that he repeated his tribute to Jullien's great services as

an educator of the "shilling-paying public." The taste of the musical

million was still a matter of concern to _Punch_. His detestation of

street bands, Ethiopians, Germans, Tyrolese, and Italians--principally

emissaries of Verdi, his pet aversion--amounted almost to an obsession.

The names of the popular songs in 1858--"Jim Crow" and "Keemo Kimo" were

certainly not romantic. At a concert held in St. James's Hall in June,

1858, a negro song was sung with the delectable refrain: "Flip up in de

scidimadinc, jube up in de jubin jube." _Punch_ found some solace,

however, in the concerts at Sydenham, where _morceaux_ of Mozart,

Mendelssohn, and Handel, served up by Costa, took the sickly taste of

_Traviata_ out of his mouth. _Punch's_ own education was advancing, but

he had not yet learnt to spell Liszt's name properly. The extravagances

of Liszt worship, which certainly reached a pitch never surpassed in the

annals of musical idolatry, are burlesqued in a series of paragraphs

aimed at Wagner as well as his son-in-law to be. Writing of Liszt's

"fearful engagement" in Dresden, in 1859, he facetiously asserts that

"Not less than two pianos were killed under him, and upwards of two

dozen music-stools severely wounded." The "encore nuisance" had already

found in _Punch_ a strenuous critic; and a tumultuous scene at the

Surrey Hall, when Sims Reeves had withstood the demands of a rowdy

section of the audience for half an hour, provoked an indignant

fulmination against the brutal exigencies of concert goers. Sydenham was

in the main a centre of musical culture, but there was a slight lapse

from grace at the end of this year when the "Calliope" or "Steam

Orchestra" was imported from America. It was in reality only a big

barrel organ, which gave out more steam than harmony. But the Crystal

Palace redeemed itself in the following year by the performance of the

_Elijah_, at a Mendelssohn commemoration, by 3,000 performers before an

audience numbering 18,000. Sims Reeves, Miss Dolby, and Madame Parepa

were the soloists; and _Punch_ could think of no better praise of the

last-named singer than to say that she reminded him of his Clara. For

there was a Clara in those days, too: Clara Novello, the friend of

Charles Lamb, all unmusical though he was, who had won the praise of

Schumann at the outset of her distinguished career as a very great and

noble oratorio singer. _Punch_ went to hear her last farewell at the

Crystal Palace in the autumn of 1860; "went, heard, and for the

thousandth time was conquered."

The year 1860 was also noteworthy for the visit of the French

_Orphéonistes_, a body of choral singers directed by M. Delaporte. The

visit afforded _Punch_ great sport because of the special "Vocabulaire

et Guide des Orphéonistes Français à Londres" which was specially issued

for their benefit, and contained, amongst other delights, a full

transliteration of the National Anthem beginning:--

"God sève aoueur grésheuss Couinn."

[Sidenote: _The "Pops"_]

Blondin's performances at the Crystal Palace, which were a great feature

of 1861, suggested to _Punch_ that the concerts might be popularized if

the performers appeared on the tight rope. But this was "wrote

sarcastic"; the morbid taste of the public for witnessing dangerous

performances is repeatedly rebuked, and as a matter of fact Blondin was

forbidden to trundle his child in a wheelbarrow along the tight rope.

[Illustration: MUSIC IN THE MIDLANDS

INTELLIGENT YOUTH OF COUNTRY TOWN: "Ah say, Bill, 'ull that be Elijah

goin' oop i' that big box?"]

Orchestral music was still a luxury, but London was waking up. August

Manns, who succeeded Jullien at Drury Lane in 1859, had provided the

public with "more music and less row than in the Jullienic era"; but his

great work was done at the Crystal Palace. The "Pops," which came in the

'fifties and were cordially supported by _Punch_, have gone, and with

them St. James's Hall, where for so many years the votaries of chamber

music listened to Joachim and Patti, Hallé and Lady Hallé, Madame

Schumann, and other great artists: and Exeter Hall, where the Sacred

Harmonic Concerts were held, has undergone a startling metamorphosis.

Oratorio has lost something of its hold on the British public. But the

work done by the "Pops" can never be forgotten; and the multiplication

of first-rate string quartets can be traced in great measure to their

inspiring influence in the days when they were attended by George Eliot

and Herbert Spencer, Browning and Leighton.

Another pioneer whose talents _Punch_ was quick to recognize was John

Parry, the first, and as some old critics think, the best of the series

of single-handed musical entertainers. Parry began as a serious

musician, but soon found that his true bent lay in humorous sketches of

the trials and tribulations and futilities of amateurs. After seeing

Dundreary for the nineteenth time, _Punch_ was persuaded by a friend to

see John Parry in _Mrs. Roseleaf's Party_ at the Gallery of

Illustration. He was rewarded by a truly exhilarating impersonation of

Mrs. Roseleaf, her little pet daughter, a tender tenor with a chronic

cold in his head, a fascinating ringleted "Gusheress," and a

matter-of-fact musician--all done by one gentlemanly actor without

change of dress. Parry's gifts as a pianist extorted the admiration of

eminent artists, and we may pardon _Punch_ for saying that "none but

himself can be his Parrylel."

[Sidenote: _Sims Reeves_]

Sims Reeves had been energetically supported by _Punch_ in his refusal

of encores. But when he was "conspicuous by his absence, as everybody

might have known," on the occasion of a charitable performance in 1864,

_Punch_ made bold to observe that "considering how often Mr. Reeves is

indisposed, it is high time that a deputy should be permanently hired

for him." On this particular occasion "the usual medical certificate was

produced and read amid the laughter of the audience, who had clearly

come prepared to hear the usual apology which is expected now whenever

Mr. Sims Reeves is announced." These are hard words, but the excuse was

so frequently made that concert-givers in the provinces were in the

habit of posting over their bills the reassuring announcement: "Sims

Reeves has arrived." Even then he could not always be reckoned on. The

famous tenor had undoubtedly a very delicate throat, and objected

strongly to sing if he was not feeling perfectly fit. But his inordinate

vanity was also a contributory cause. Sir Charles Hallé used to tell a

story how, on one occasion, when Sims Reeves was engaged to sing at

Manchester, he failed to appear at rehearsal. Hallé went off at once to

his hotel--for he had "arrived"--and was told that Mr. Reeves was too

ill to sing; but persisting in his intention, he was admitted to the

sick chamber and found that the illness was due to the fact that Sims

Reeves's name had been printed in the bills in the same type as the

other performers. Sir Charles Hallé accordingly sent for copies, and by

a process of accurate measurement succeeded in demonstrating that this

awful act of _lèse-majesté_ had not been committed and that "Sims

Reeves" was printed in larger capitals than any other name. Whereupon

the patient made a wonderful recovery and fulfilled his engagement.

[Illustration: DRAWING-ROOM MINSTRELS

(What they have to put up with sometimes.)

AFFABLE DUCHESS (to Amateur Tenor, who has just been warbling M.

Gounod's last): "Charming! Charming! You must really get somebody to

introduce you to me."]

As the "Pops" fulfilled _Punch's_ ideal of a model chamber music

concert, so the Saturday concerts at the Crystal Palace, conducted by

Manns, with "G" (Sir George Grove[32]) as programme writer, best

satisfied his requirements in the domain of the symphony and orchestral

music generally. Charles Keene's picture in 1866 of the two enthusiasts,

one political and one musical, is a pleasing comment on the growth of

musical taste. They both agree that Monday had been a glorious night,

but the one was thinking of Gladstone in the House, the other of Joachim

in the Kreutzer Sonata.

[Footnote 32: Grove was then--in 1872--the manager of the Crystal

Palace, and late in that year _Punch_ wrote of him, "The Crystal Palace

has never been so well kept as under the sway of my friend Mr. George

Grove, _Nemorum pulcherrimus ordo_--Grove's rule is most admirable."]

_Punch_ had already saluted John Parry; he extended a similar welcome in

1867 to the German Reed entertainment at St. George's Hall:--

It is really quite a novelty to hear some comic singing done by

English singers, without feeling a strong wish that one had been

born deaf. "Tol de rol," and "Rumti-iddity," and such old English

comic choruses, have long since had their day. Go to the St.

George's Opera if you would know what comic English choruses should

be. In the interests of good music, we thank Mr. German Reed for

giving men a chance of hearing something better, in the way of

comic singing, than "Champagne Charley," or "Costermonger Joe." We

hope his charming little opera-house will tempt people from going

to the vulgar, stupid music-halls, when they want to hear some

singing which may make them laugh.

This, be it remarked, was at the time when the favourite popular songs

were "Champagne Charley," "Not for Joseph," and "Paddle Your Own Canoe,"

and when, in consequence, _Punch's_ complaints of the idiocy of

music-hall songs were both frequent and free.

THE FINE ARTS

[Sidenote: _Depreciation and Discovery_]

_Punch's_ virtual conversion to the principles of Pre-Raphaelitism has

already been noted, and the alliance was confirmed by the enterprise of

his publishers in connexion with _Once a Week_, to which Millais,

Sandys, and Rossetti were regular contributors. So we are not surprised

to find his criticisms of the Royal Academy growing in frankness and

even hostility during the early years of the period now under review. In

June, 1858, he complains of the monotony of the subjects chosen for

treatment at the annual show--endless portraits of a lady or gentleman;

Tom Jones and Sophia; Sancho Panza and the Duchess; Moses and the

Spectacles; Sir Roger de Coverley; Bruce and the Spider. To the same

year belongs his protest against the patronage of foreign sculptors _à

propos_ of the Wellington Memorial Competition. But the point of his

criticism is rather blunted by his failure to acknowledge the merits of

native genius, as represented by Alfred Stevens, that "rare artist, too

little recognized and revered," as a modern writer has truthfully

described him. _Punch_ refers to his design, but misspells his name

"Stephens," and evidently saw nothing uncommon in his work. Against this

lapse may be set the evidence of a true _flair_ two years later. Amid a

wilderness of mediocrities _Punch_ finds an oasis or two at the Academy

Exhibition of 1860. The names of most of the exhibitors are forgotten,

but there is one notable exception:--

One would have expected Mr. Whistler's talents to have been

developed on the flute rather than At the Piano (598). Nevertheless

the painting of that title shows genius. The tone which he has

produced from his piano is admirable, and he has struck on it a

chord of colour which will, I hope, find an echo in his future

works.

[Illustration: THE GREAT EXHIBITION

SARAH JANE: "Lawks! Why, it's hexact like our Hemmer!"]

In 1861 the practice of holding "single picture" shows, charging for the

privilege of beholding one canvas the price of a whole exhibition, comes

in for semi-serious rebuke at the hands of an income-tax payer. But

there was another evil against which _Punch_ inveighed with positive

ferocity in the tirade provoked by the Academy Banquet of 1862. The

Royal Academy was not merely "mean in its local habitation" (the present

exhibition rooms were not built till 1866), it was mean all through:--

Mean in its spirit, its schools, in the quality of the Art it has

most fostered and engendered, mean in the self-seeking spirit of

its rules of exhibition; mean in its treatment of the greatest men

who have belonged to it, and still more, of the painters outside

its pale; mean in the cliques which divide its own ranks, and the

jealousies which distract its councils.

But it reaches the climax of its meanness once a year--at its

Annual Dinner--and at this year's dinner it has capped the climax

of meanness reached by all the dinners of all the years since first

the Academy dined together.

This Academy Dinner is like the banquet which the poor lunatic,

whose story is told by Sir Walter Scott, used to be set down to

every day in his cell at the asylum. He fancied his table spread

with a magnificent dinner of three courses, and ate of this

imaginary feast with great gusto; but "somehow" he used to whisper

to his visitors, "everything tastes of porridge." So at the Academy

dinner everything tastes of toads.

[Sidenote: _The R.A. Banquet_]

The writer proceeds to drive home this indictment of Sir Charles

Eastlake's[33] fulsome flattery of noble patrons and the niggardly

encouragement of real talent by the familiar device of a dream. At the

dinner of his vision great foreign painters are welcomed, and the

solidarity of the Arts confirmed by the invitation of illustrious

musicians and men of letters. Then comes the awakening:--

The newspaper reports of the Academy dinner lay before me, with its

small list of distinguished statesmen, its long bead-roll of Titled

Nobodies who never bought a picture or gave a commission to a

painter; its absence of every one of the distinguished artists by

rare chance assembled in London; its ignoring of foreign letters,

and its scanty recognition of the respect due to native literature;

its utter passing by of the claims of the Sister Arts--Music and

the Drama; the fulsome fulness of its laudations of all who can

influence its fortunes by favour; its sycophancy of rank and title

and outward influence, and that in the face of a series of cool

contemptuous disclaimers of all knowledge or interest in Art by the

men before whom in succession the Academic speaker knocked his

forehead on the ground; and lastly, as if to sum up in one

unmeaning act the stupid snobbishness that marks the whole of this

Academic entertainment, the toast of "Literature and its prospects

and influences on Art" relegated to the very end of the feast, when

every other institution which it can enter into the heart of a

respectful and awe-stricken Academician to bow down to has been

honoured, and when the lordly guests whom the bad dinner has

disagreed with, or the President's eloquence has bored, have left

the spaces at the tables, lately filled by their august heads,

vacant.

[Footnote 33: Another Charles Eastlake, the namesake and nephew of the

P.R.A., for many years contributed art-criticism to _Punch_ over the

signature "Jack Easel," but was clearly free from the suspicion of

family bias.]

[Illustration: ART _v._ NATURE

SITTER: "Oh, I think this position will do; it's natural and easy."

PHOTOGRAPHER: "Ah, that may do in ordinary life, ma'am; but in

photography it's out of the question entirely!"]

The Royal Academy has, in many respects, reformed itself out of all

recognition as the institution which provoked and justified this

explosion. It is only one of the many evidences which go to prove how

much more than a merely comic journal _Punch_ was that he should have

contributed as damaging an attack as was ever penned against the

principles and policy of the R.A. in the days when it laid itself most

open to criticism.

There are not many events in the art world in the 'sixties dealt with in

so serious a vein. When Frith's _Railway Station_ was purchased in 1863

for £20,000 by a Mr. Flatou, _Punch_ contented himself with calling the

purchaser a "Flatou Magico." There are friendly and well-merited

memorial notices of John Phillip, R.A., in 1867, and of Alexander Munro,

the Scottish sculptor, in 1871, while in 1870 _Punch_ supported the

appeal for funds to put up a tombstone to George Cattermole, who died

poor.

English etching was "up in the market" in 1871. _Punch_ has high praise

for Seymour Haden, higher still for Whistler, his "brother-in-law and

etching master." The peculiar quality and historic interest of the

etchings contained in the portfolio issued by Ellis, of King Street,

Covent Garden, have seldom been better described than in this

appreciation:--

Whistler has etched the tumble-down bank-side buildings of Thames,

from Wapping and Limehouse and Rotherhithe to Lambeth and Chelsea,

above-bridge--great gaunt warehouses, and rickety sheds, and

balconies and gazebos hanging all askew, and rotting piles and

green weeded quays and oozy steps and hards, where masts and yards

score the sky over your head, and fleets of barges darken the mud

and muddy water at your feet, and all is pitchy and tarry, and

corny and coaly, and ancient and fishlike.

Such etchings of this queer long-shore reach and marine-store

dealers, and ship-chandlers, bonded warehousemen, and

boat-builders, ancient mariners, and corn-porters, wherry-men, and

wharfingers, Thames-police, and mud-larks, are all the more

precious because the beauties they perpetuate are dying out--what

with embankments and improvements, increased value of river

frontage, and natural decay of planking and piling. Whistler has

immortalized Wapping, and given it the grace that is beyond the

reach of anything but art. Let all lovers of good art and

marvellous etching who want to know what Father Thames was like

before he took to having his bed made, invest in Whistler's

portfolio.

[Sidenote: _Academy Pictures in 1872_]

_Punch_ was a great Londoner, and his enthusiasm for an artist who was

able to perpetuate the romance and magic of the "ancient river" carries

weight. He scores some palpable hits, again, in the "Academy Rhymes,"

published in 1872, which begin:--

Bad pictures hot!

Bad pictures cold!

Bad pictures such a lot!

So well sold!

This shaft is especially aimed at Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., and Mr.

James Sant, R.A. Millais's famous _Hearts are Trumps_ is neatly hit off

in the quatrain:--

Liz, Di, and Mary, cool and airy,

How does your garden grow?

Azaleas in clumps, and hearts for trumps,

And three pretty maids in a row.

[Illustration: A POSER

ENTHUSIASTIC YOUNG LADY: "Oh, Mr. Robinson, does not it ever strike you

in listening to sweet music, that the rudiment of potential infinite

pain is subtly woven into the tissue of our keenest joy?"]

_Punch_ was in no doubt as to the merits of one of the famous pictures

of the year:--

About "Harbours of Refuge," no year

But some M.P.'s a valuable talker;

But my "Harbour of Refuge" is here

And its C.E. is A.R.A. Walker!

But he was sadly to seek in his disparagement of Mason's beautiful

_Harvest Moon_:--

Sweet, but scamped in every part,

Such half-work most students guide ill:

The free-masonry of Art

Asks more labour, e'en in Idyll.

[Illustration: AESTHETIC WITH A VENGEANCE

TOM: "I say, old man, now you've got that stunning house of yours, you

ought to be looking out for a wife!"

RODOLPHUS: "Quite so. I was thinking of one of those Miss Gibsons, don't

you know."

TOM: "Ah! Let me recommend the _tall_ one, old man. She'll make the best

wife in the world!"

RODOLPHUS: "Quite so. But the _short_ one seems to harmonize better with

the kind of _furniture_ I go in for--_buhl_ and _marqueterie_, don't you

know."]

[Sidenote: _Sir Edwin Landseer_]

Landseer had often been severely handled by _Punch_ for his

accommodating courtiership, but when he died in the autumn of 1873, the

long set of memorial verses which appeared on October 11 overlook this

infirmity and concentrate on Landseer's services as a teacher of

sympathy between man and brute. He was the first of painters who "give

dumb things a soul"--in the faithful collie in the lone shieling with

his head on his master's coffin; in his St. Bernards and antlered

monarchs of the glen. It may be objected that the soul which Landseer

gave his animals was a human soul and a sentimental one at that, and

that Bewick had forestalled him with a more accurate diagnosis; but the

insistence on Landseer's services as a promoter of the _entente

cordiale_ between man and beast is well justified. Landseer at the

moment of his passing was probably, as _Punch_ contends, "our best-known

name in Art." The writer of the verses traces the official recognition

of artists abroad:--

Till even upon this, our little isle

That looms so large in light of various fames,

The fair Queen deigned at last, though late, to smile

And dubbed her Knights--a few but glorious names.

But surely this is to overlook the knighthoods of Van Dyck and Lely

(both from the Netherlands), to say nothing of Sir Joshua.

The campaign directed against the extravagances of aestheticism by Du

Maurier belongs in the main to a later decade, but even in the early

'seventies the vagaries of preciosity had already begun to furnish him

with fruitful subjects for genial satire.

FASHION IN DRESS

In the period under review in this volume England was dominated by two

monstrosities, the crinoline and the Claimant. Fortunately they were not

concurrent or England might have succumbed beneath the double incubus.

The former was pronounced "gone" in 1867, the same year in which the

arrival and recognition of the so-called Sir Roger Tichborne as the

rightful heir was announced in the columns of _Punch_. The historic

trial soon loomed large on the horizon, though it did not open till

1871. Of this portent some notice will be found elsewhere. Of the

crinoline it is no exaggeration to say that _Punch_ waged war against it

for ten solid years; his pages resolve themselves into a sort of

_Crinoliniad_; and when the monster fell it was not by force of arms

assisted by guile as in the parallel campaign against Troy, but by its

own absurdity and through the weariness of its supporters. With _Punch_

it was a positive obsession. The extravagances of the crinoline dominate

his "social cuts" from 1857 onwards. In 1858 he tells us that "Fops'

Alley" at the opera is to be rechristened "Petticoat Lane"; and that the

Ladies' Gallery in the House of Commons is to be enlarged as a

concession to the lateral expansion of women's skirts. The popular negro

song "Hoop de Dooden Doo" is re-written to fit the prevailing fashion,

and a classical lyric, "My Flora," is perverted to suit the same

purpose. Even at this early stage, however, _Punch_ seems to have

recognized the futility of his crusade. As he puts it:

The more you scoff, the more you jeer,

The more the women persevere

In wearing this apparel queer.

[Sidenote: _Crinoline Absurdities_]

He applauds the railway companies for their alleged determination to

charge for ladies' trunks by size, not weight, but adds: "It's no use

trying to laugh or reason women out of it (crinoline). In all matters of

dress and in that of crinoline especially, the mind female is impervious

to ridicule and reason. The only argument to use with them is the

_argumentum ad pocketum_."

[Illustration: "IN THE BAY OF BISCAY, O!"

The last sweet things in hats and walking sticks at Biarritz.]

_Punch_, though pessimistic, was persevering, if inconsistent, and

continued to rely largely on the weapon of ridicule, and he had no lack

of material. Thus we read in December, 1858:--

Visitors to the Cattle Show, at least those who go in Crinoline,

would do well before they start to read the following short

paragraph, which we extract for their perusal from a country

print:--

"The Show was attended by several of the fair sex, for whose

admission special means of entrance were provided. Through a

pardonable neglect on the part of the Committee, this was neglected

to be done at first, and a highly amusing incident occurred through

the omission. Within a very few minutes of the Show being opened, a

distinguished party of ladies and gentlemen arrived, and on coming

to the turnstile (which was then the only entrance) it was

discovered that the ladies, who we need not say were dressed in

all the amplitude of fashion, could not possibly squeeze through so

limited a space. In this dilemma, as the turnstile could not

possibly be widened to the width that was required, the only course

was, obviously, to throw open the great gates, through which the

ladies, not without a titter, sailed majestically Show-wards in the

wake of the prize beasts."

Ridicule, again, inspires the caricature of crinolines in the park

chairs, or the account of children in crinolines. In 1861 _Punch_

describes a child of four at an evening party who was fully six times

and a half as broad as she was long, and reads a homily on the danger of

implanting such follies in the mind of susceptible youth, since the

child is the mother of the woman as well as the father of the man. There

is, too, a burlesque picture of a modern governess giving a geography

lesson on a globe formed by her own inflated skirts. But often he struck

a serious note, and his suggestion of a crinoline hospital was not so

absurd in view of frequent accidents, such as the following:--

CRINOLINE AND ITS VICTIMS

Notwithstanding all that _Punch_ has said upon the subject, the

accidents from Crinolines are, it would seem, upon the increase.

Half a score at least have occurred through fire since Christmas,

and several others we could cite have taken place from other

causes. One of the last we saw reported was occasioned by a dress

being caught up by a cab-wheel while the wearer was crossing a

street at the West End. Here the victim was so fortunate as to

escape with merely a bad fracture of her leg; but in most cases the

sufferers have lost their life by their absurdity in wearing the

wide dresses which are now accounted fashionable.

[Sidenote: _Length Succeeds Breadth_]

So the campaign went on for years and years, though _Punch_ was

magnanimous enough to record in 1864 that the much-abused monster had

been the means of saving a girl's life by acting as a parachute and

breaking her fall. In 1865 the fashion was already on the wane, but very

long dresses were in vogue, to the great annoyance of _Punch_:--

LADIES AND THEIR LONG TAILS

Crinoline at length is going out, thank goodness! but long,

trailing dresses are coming in, thank badness! In matters of

costume lovely woman rarely ceases to make herself a nuisance; and

the length of her skirt now is almost as annoying as, a while ago,

its width was. _Robes à queue_ they call these draggling dresses;

but it is not at Kew merely that people are tormented by them.

Everywhere you walk, your footsteps are impeded by the ladies, who,

in Pope's phrase, "drag their slow length along" the pathway just

in front of you. "Will anybody tread upon the tail of my

petticoat?" This seems to be the general invitation they now give.

Sad enemies to progress they are, in their long dresses; and a

Reform Bill should be passed to make them hold their tails up.

[Illustration: A REMARKABLE STUDY FROM NATURE]

But the new nuisance was trifling compared with the old, and relief

predominated in the "Rhymes to Decreasing Crinoline" published a few

months earlier. It was not, however, until 1867 that crinolines

practically disappeared in fashionable circles, and that long skirts

were curtailed to reasonable dimensions.

Though chiefly preoccupied with skirts, _Punch_ bestowed a good deal of

attention on the vagaries of feminine headgear. In 1857 the huge round

hats in vogue moved him to protest. They were discredited, in his view,

when worn by elderly ladies, but he allowed them the negative merit of

having displaced the "ugly." The "dear little Spanish hat, so charming

and so much more sensible than a horrid bonnet" shown in the picture of

a stout lady of uncertain age, justifies the reservation "on some

people." But the hat was entering into a serious competition with the

bonnet, and by 1860 the "pork-pie hat," so indelibly associated with

Leech's portraits of mid-Victorian girls, was firmly established in

favour and gradually ousting the spoon-shaped bonnet which disappeared

in 1865. This growing popularity of the hat trimmed with feathers, as

opposed to bonnets trimmed with ribbons, had the result of causing

considerable distress in the ribbon trade in Coventry. _Punch_, though

"no lover of extravagance," found himself accordingly driven to urge his

lady readers to flock to their dressmakers and drapers and purchase as

many hat-ribbons as possible. They could justify their action by singing

in the slightly adapted words of the old song,

All round my hat I wear a new ribbon,

All round my hat a new ribbon every day,

And if anyone should ask of me the reason why I wear it,

"'Tis to help the poor of Coventry who are wanting work," I'll say.

The appeal was followed up a week later by an ingenious

and graceful picture of the new Lady Godiva riding through

Coventry in a costume composed entirely of ribbons.

[Sidenote: _Chignons_]

Bonnets held their own but in dwindling dimensions, their

minuteness being specially noticed in 1867. This is attributed

by _Punch_ to the fashion of the chignon, on which he bestows

ironic praise in 1869 as needing very small and therefore cheap

bonnets. In 1871 "Dolly Varden" hats, flower-trimmed and

with one side bent down, named after the character in _Barnaby

Rudge_, engage _Punch's_ pencil; a year later Mr. Austin Dobson

wrote in _St. Paul's Magazine_: "Blue eyes look doubly blue

beneath a Dolly Varden."

[Illustration: STUPENDOUS TRIUMPH OF THE HAIRDRESSER'S ART!

The very last thing in chignons.]

Turning from headgear to hairdressing, we find _Punch_ a

vigilant critic of _coiffure_. In 1858 he attacks the vagaries of

mode as shown in hairdressing _à la Chinoise_ "pulled up by

the roots," and the fashion of wearing coins. To judge from

Leech's pictures he greatly preferred the simpler style of braids

and hair nets. The great event of the mid-'sixties, however,

was the advent of the chignon, which proved only second to the

crinoline as an incentive to caricature and criticism. In the

ironical verses addressed to a "Young Lady of Fashion," the

chignon stands first in the list of the artificial enhancements of

beauty resorted to half a century back:--

I love thee for thy chignon, for the boss of purchased hair,

Which thou hast on thine occiput the charming taste to wear.

Oh, what a grace that ornament unto thy poll doth lend,

Wound on what seems a curtain-rod with knobs at either end!

I love thee for the roses, purchased too, thy cheeks that deck,

The lilies likewise that adorn thy pearly-powdered neck,

And all that sweet "illusion" that, o'er thy features spread,

Improves the poor reality of Nature's white and red.

I love thee for the muslin and the gauze about thee bound,

Like endive that in salad doth a lobster's tail surround.

And oh! I love thee for the boots thine ankles that protect,

So proper to the manly style young ladies now affect.

The chignon was no new invention, but a revival of a fashion mentioned

by the _Lady's Magazine_ for 1783, and described twenty-five years later

by Maria Edgeworth as a combination of hair natural and false "plastered

together to a preposterous bulk and turned up in a sort of great bag or

club." But the fashion attained its apogee in the middle and late

'sixties, and afforded endless opportunities to the pencils of Du

Maurier and Sambourne. One of the most ludicrous of the many caricatures

to which the habit gave rise is that in which Du Maurier represented a

lady riding on a pony with its mane and tail fluffed out to harmonize

with her stupendous chignon. Later developments of the chignon are

ridiculed by Sambourne in 1871.

[Sidenote: _Madame Rachel_]

The second stanza of the poem quoted above furnishes not an unfair

summary of the arts of facial adornment of which that amazing

adventuress Madame Rachel was the most notorious and expensive high

priestess. Her beginnings were obscure and even ignominious. Her maiden

name was Russell, but it is not certain whether she was born near

Ballinasloe in Ireland or in London. Her first husband was a chemist's

assistant in Manchester, from whom she had probably learned something of

the compounding of cosmetics; her second and third husbands were both

Jews--James Moses who was lost in the _Royal Charter_, October 26, 1859,

and Philip Leverson. She kept a fried-fish shop in Vere Street, Clare

Market, for a while, then started as a hair restorer in Conduit Street,

and from 1861 to 1868 was in business in New Bond Street under the name

of Madame Rachel (probably borrowed from that of the famous tragedian)

as an enameller and vendor of cosmetics. She professed, in the phrase

eternally associated with her name, to make women "beautiful for ever,"

but it was a costly process. Under the heading, "The Trials of Beauty,"

_Punch_, who had referred to her cosmetics as early as the winter of

1858, writes in 1862:--

The wife of a Captain has been called upon to pay near upon £1,000

for having been enamelled by Madame Rachel. Ladies take warning. Be

natural rather than artificial. Never appear in society with a mask

on, no matter how beautiful the mask may be. From the above you

should learn in time how much it may cost you for being

double-faced.

[Illustration: "THE BURDENS OF FASHION"

What we _must_ come to before long!]

The warning, however, was unheeded, and Madame Rachel continued to

flourish exceedingly for more than five years, living in an elegant

house in Maddox Street and paying £400 in 1867 for a box at the opera.

The first crash came in 1868, when she was tried for swindling Mrs.

Borradaile, the widow of a colonel in the Madras Cavalry, out of £5,300

on the pretence of making her "beautiful for ever" and fitting her to be

the wife of Viscount Ranelagh. In September of that year she was

sentenced to five years' penal servitude, and she was burnt in effigy on

Guy Fawkes' day. In the following March her house, furniture and effects

came to the hammer, and _Punch's_ description affords a good clue to the

extent of her profits:--

The lady's business having been knocked down by the Judges, her

effects are about to be knocked down by the auctioneer. The

catalogue and sale bills are quite overpowering to the imagination.

The drawing-rooms and principal apartments are said to "present

splendour and magnificence difficult to describe." There are

candelabra (brass and lacquer probably) formerly belonging to the

Emperor Napoleon, and incense-burners once the property of the King

of Delhi! "Dispersed through the house are numerous works of Art

and articles of virtu, many of them presentations from Madame

Rachel's distinguished patronesses."

[Sidenote: _Fashions in Coiffure_]

_Punch_ headed his remarks "Madame Rachel's Last Appearance," but the

heading was premature. Released on a ticket-of-leave in 1872 Madame

Rachel boldly renewed her operations in Duke Street, Portland Place, in

1873, and continued them till 1878, when she was sentenced a second time

to five years' penal servitude for swindling another client, and died in

Woking Prison on October 12, 1880. The curious may turn for further

details to the reminiscences of Serjeant Ballantine and Montagu

Williams. Both Serjeant Ballantine and Montagu Williams appeared for the

prosecution in the Borradaile case. There were two trials: in the first,

held in August, the jury disagreed. It is perhaps not unfair to say that

the heavy sentence passed by Mr. Commissioner Kerr was due more to

Madame Rachel's demerits and her record than to the merits of the case.

But she had not merely obtained money under false pretences: she was a

forger and a blackmailer as well. Ballantine, who could not be accused

of squeamishness, had known of her in earlier days and describes her as

"one of the most filthy and dangerous moral pests that have existed in

my time and within my observation."[34] Montagu Williams, who gives a

full account of the trial, calls her a "wicked old woman," but contents

himself with observing that the case "afforded a striking illustration

of the vanity of some women, and of what tricks can be played upon them

by the artful."[35] Madame Rachel does not appear in the D.N.B., though

less remarkable impostors have found a niche in that comprehensive

temple of native talent, and her fame was not confined to one

hemisphere. One of the springs on the shores of Lake Rotorua in New

Zealand was named "The Madame Rachel Bath" in virtue of its medicinal

and rejuvenating qualities.

[Footnote 34: _Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life._]

[Footnote 35: _Leaves of a Life._]

[Illustration: FASHIONS FOR THE COMING SEASON

From the "Journal des Coiffeurs."

(_The ladies have already begun._)]

In 1866 the rage for dyeing the hair auburn seems to have been at its

height. "Mr. Frizzle," a _coiffeur de dames_, is represented in one of

Du Maurier's pictures as saying to a customer, "Black hair is never

admitted into really good society." Enlarging on this theme in another

place in the same volume, _Punch_ observes that the maxim "Never say

Dye" is completely abandoned, and suggests daily changes of complexion

to suit the dresses worn. In 1864 we read of small dogs being dyed to

match their mistresses' colouring! By 1867 the pendulum seems to have

swung in the opposite direction and brunettes are again in vogue. The

picture (also by Du Maurier) of fashionable ladies with short hair can

hardly be taken seriously; it is probably not more than an unconscious

prophecy of the "bobbing" habit of recent years. In 1869 _Punch_ was

much exercised by learning, on the authority of an American paper, that

"nearly all the brilliant complexions seen among the fashionable women

of New York are the result of eating arsenic. Since the introduction of

the blonde fashion, arsenic-eating has become almost a mania." Tirades

against tight-lacing date back to 1859, but they culminated in the

ponderous irony of the "Wanton Warning to Vanity" published ten years

later:--

Indeed the _Morning Post_ ought to be ashamed of itself. That

journal, which we used to call our fashionable contemporary,

publishes a paragraph, headed "Tight-Lacing," which reports the

particulars of an inquest held at the College Arms, Crowndale Road,

Camden Town, on the body of a young woman, aged only nineteen, and

whereby, if they see it, our dear girls who take in such

instructive journals as the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ will

be terrified to no purpose by the information that--

"She was out three hours with a perambulator, in which was one

child, and as she neared her destination she fell down insensible.

She was taken to 10, Polygon, where upon examination by Dr. Smellie

she was found quite dead. It was discovered that she was very

tightly-laced, and Dr. Smellie stated that death was caused by

effusion of blood on the brain, caused by fatty heart, accelerated

by compression of the chest produced by tight-lacing. The jury

returned a verdict in those terms."

This statement, so inconsistently published by our once, and, we

hitherto supposed, our still fashionable contemporary, is

calculated to have a most unfashionable effect, namely, that of

deterring girls from following the revived fashion of lacing as

tight as they can stand, and tighter than they are sometimes able

to go. But a propensity, which seems a law of their nature,

happily compels them, for the most part, to follow the fashion

regardless of consequences. The typical and average woman can no

more deviate from the dress of the day than an animal can choose to

change its skin or its spots. There is no fear that any girls

accustomed to tight-lacing will ever be induced to relinquish that

practice which renders them such delightful objects to one another,

if ridiculous and repulsive to stupid men, by any such nonsense as

a report of the verdict of a coroner's jury ascribing death to the

effect of tight-lacing in accelerating fatty degeneration of the

heart.

[Illustration: THE GRECIAN BEND

Does not tight-lacing and high heels give a charming grace and dignity

to the female figure?]

[Sidenote: _The Grecian Bend_]

High heels are not noticeable in Leech's pictures or before the middle

'sixties. The "manly style" of boots mentioned in the lines of the

"Young Lady of Fashion" quoted above probably refer to the stout

laced-up "Balmorals" which Frederick Locker refers to in his _London

Lyrics_. The advent of tailor-made garments for women in the summer of

1864 is looked upon as a curiosity. Towards the end of the period under

review a mode of carriage known as the "Grecian Bend," celebrated in a

comic song of the time, is more than once noted and caricatured in

_Punch_; faint echoes of the "Grecian Bend" still linger in the memories

of the elderly; the "Roman Fall" is merely the shadow of a name. By the

'seventies the æsthetic movement had already begun to exert an influence

on dress, but it was confined to a small coterie, to the _précieux_ and

_précieuses_ who worshipped old china and wore waistless dresses of sage

green. On the general question of "the Influence of costume and fashion

on High Art," which was discussed in a manifesto issued by "The Artists

of the Nineteenth Century," _Punch_ wrote sensibly enough:--

The declaration is signed by a great number of eminent men at home

and abroad, and its point is to insist that people of the present

day dress so hideously that they will not make pictures. A

transitional change is recommended, and the Declarers

affectionately remind the public that so long as they make Guys of

themselves at the instigation of tailors and milliners, portraits

have no value except as family memorials, whereas, if we dressed

properly, the artists would make us into tableaux which the whole

world should admire. All this is perfectly true, but what is to be

done? How are we to extricate ourselves from the tyranny of the

tailor and the milliner? This the Declarers do not tell us, nor was

it to be expected perhaps that they should advise us how to conduct

a rebellion. But why do they not tell us how they would like us to

dress? Men, for instance. Are they to come out with a choice array

of colour, and with a picturesquely cut garb, and that general

ampleness and nobleness in treatment of costume, which bespeaks the

grand and heroic in the wearer?

[Sidenote: _The Briton Abroad_]

At this point _Punch_ deviates into absurdity. But the main argument is

sound. As a transition, however, to the subject of men's dress, another

deliverance serves our purpose even better. _Punch_ loved to criticize

and even carp at his countrymen and countrywomen, but he did not easily

suffer any infringement of his prerogative. And so, when a correspondent

of _The Times_ fell foul of the dowdiness of Englishmen and Englishwomen

abroad, he was up in arms at once:--

_The Times_ abuses John Bull, and Madame son Épouse, for going

about on their travels got up as Guys--for shocking foreign

prejudices, and showing their contempt for foreign opinion, by

sporting eccentric shooting-coats, flaming flannel shirts, reckless

wide-awakes--and worse still on the ladies' part, by the general

shabbiness and ugliness of their travelling toilettes and headgear.

Now, making every allowance for the desperate necessities of

newspaper writers in the dead season, and admitting that British

travellers--male and female--include specimens both of the Guy and

the Gorilla, _Mr. Punch_ must put in his protest against any such

wholesale indictment as this of his compatriots en voyage. On the

contrary he is prepared to maintain, after surveying mankind from

Calais to Calatafimi ... that, as a rule, the wearer of the best

travelling suit (for stuff, cut, and condition together), the

cleanest shirt, the least ragamuffin or ridiculous hat, the

soundest and shapeliest foot-covering, is a Briton.

Englishmen turn neater and sweeter out of a railway carriage after

a night's rattle, restlessness and frowst than any other people;

they are more presentable, more like gentlemen, after an Alpine

scramble among glacier and moraine, crevasse and couloir; they

present better brushed hair, and cleaner hands and faces and whiter

linen at the Table d'hôte under difficulties, and fall into less

profound abysses of misery and degradation in sea-going steamers,

than the natives of any other country.

I, _Punch_, am speaking now of the men. For the ladies--bless

them!--I am compelled to admit they don't understand dress as an

art so well as their French sisters. Millinery and dressmaking have

their home and headquarters in France, just as cooking has; and for

the same reason--because the inferiority of the raw material makes

the elaborate and well-studied dressing of it a matter of sheer

necessity.

But, apart from their national shortcoming in the art of dress, I

maintain that Englishwomen, on their travels, deserve as much good

said of them as Englishmen. Bless their fresh faces, and smooth

hair, and clean cuffs and collars! In these particulars, what

French or German woman can hold the candle to 'em?

I admit that the plain British female looks plain on her travels,

and maybe dowdy ... But this I will maintain, that an attractive

Englishwoman loses less of her attractiveness under the necessities

and accidents of travel than any of her Continental rivals. She has

a quality of purity and freshness about her which seems to repel

all soil, whether material or moral, as the oil in the duck's

tail-gland drives off the water-drops from his plumage; and, as a

rule, her clothes, and her way of wearing them, have the same

merits of freshness and purity in comparison with those of her

rivals.

This, then, is the first proposition I am prepared to maintain

against all comers: that English travellers, of both sexes, are, as

a rule, the best-dressed travellers in the world.

My next proposition is like unto it, viz.: that the English abroad

are the best-mannered travellers, and at home the best-mannered

dealers with travellers, to be found in the circle of civilized

nations.

[Illustration: A HINT FOR TAILORS

This is John Jones, who has kindly selected Mrs. de Cotillon's _Thé

Dansant_, to display his idea of what the alterations in evening dress

(said to be meditated by a certain R-y-l P-rs-n-ge) ought to be.]

[Sidenote: _Masculine Dress_]

Throughout the period dealt with in the previous volume man, in _Punch_,

was the predominant partner in the domain of dress. From 1857 onwards

the balance is handsomely redressed in favour of the women. And as

_Punch_ was staffed by men, we may fairly attribute this change to the

standardizing of male attire which dates from the middle of the

nineteenth century. The difference between the dress of men to-day and

in 1860 is immensely less than that between the dress of women at the

same two dates. Beaver hats were still worn in 1858; they are even now

exhibited in the shop front of a well-known hatter's in St. James's

Street; but the silk chimney pot had already come to stay. The evening

dress suit was indistinguishable from that now worn. There was not much

difference in the cut of morning coats. Only in the "nether integuments"

is the flux of fashion really marked. "Peg-top" trousers were in vogue

in 1858 and for a few years subsequently, and _Punch_ attributes their

shape to mimicry of the crinoline, though in one passage he professes to

derive it from the _contours_ of the Cochin China fowl. The "Peg-top,"

however, did not last. It was otherwise with the introduction of

knickerbockers, so-called from the resemblance to the knee-breeches of

the Dutchmen in Cruickshank's illustrations to Washington Irving's

_History of New York_.

[Illustration: HARRY TAKES HIS COUSINS TO SEE THE HOUNDS MEET

_Enter_ Mamma and Aunt Ellen.

MAMMA (to old woman): "Pray, have you met two ladies and a gentleman?"

OLD WOMAN: "Well, I met three people--but, la! there, I can't tell

ladies from gentlemen nowadays--when I was a gal, etc., etc."]

[Illustration: AFTER DUNDREARY

FIRST SWELL: "A-a-wah! Waw! Waw! How did you like him?"

SECOND DITTO: "Waw-waw-waw. No fellaw evaw saw such a fellaw. Gwoss

cawicature-waw!"]

In a letter to _The Times_ in May, 1859, Lord Elcho recommends

"nickerbockers"--so he spells the word--as a substitute for trousers for

volunteers. Charles Kingsley in the same year derived them from

country-made--and badly made--puffed trunk-hose. But their utility and

convenience for country wear and sport were soon established, though the

dreadful abbreviation "Knickers" did not come into use for some twenty

years. The shortening of ladies' dresses and the bagginess of men's

knickerbockers afforded _Punch_ some excuse for professing to be unable

to distinguish the sexes at a distance, but the actual assumption of

knickerbockers by women belonged to a later generation.

[Sidenote: _Lord Dundreary_]

It is rather in the fashion of wearing their hair than in their dress

that the changes effected in the appearance of men in the last sixty

years can be best studied. Beards came in after the Crimean War, but

they were not universally popular. The Bishop of Rochester took up so

strong a line on the subject in 1861 that _Punch_ was moved to

protest:--

Good Doctor Wigram (Rochestere),

At Parsons' beards is raving:

We sadly fear that we shall hear

The Bishop's _head_ needs shaving.

But whiskers were the great feature of the 'sixties. They had been

"ambrosial" before, but now the thing became a monstrosity in its

profuse luxuriance. For this was the age of "Piccadilly Weepers," and of

Lord Dundreary, the eccentric stage peer created by Sothern in _Our

American Cousin_. Sothern, be it remembered, was a hunting-man and a

_persona grata_ in fashionable circles; and allowing for the element of

caricature in his impersonation, it was at least based on firsthand

knowledge of the type satirized. There is an interesting notice of the

first production at the Haymarket of _Our American Cousin_ in which Lord

Dundreary is described as "a double eye-glassed dandy, with dyed

whiskers which he paws and throws over his shoulder," but the critic

admits that in spite of all Mr. Sothern's "funny and fantastic

caricaturing, there is a something true to nature in his almost every

touch." The hold that Sothern's impersonation took upon public fancy is

shown by the fact that for several years _Punch_ adopted "Dundreary" as

a synonym for a vacuous, solemn, well-bred and prodigiously whiskered

dandy, and in the Preface to Vol. xlii. Lord Dundreary is introduced as

interlocutor in the usual dialogue.

[Illustration: THE NEW AND DELIGHTFUL METHOD OF BRUSHING THE HAIR WITH

MACHINERY]

Tailors' pseudo-classical nomenclature was already a frequent theme with

_Punch_. In the same year _Punch_ quotes a tailor's advertisement of a

"Negligé Milled Tweed suit, consisting of cape jacket, vest and trousers

for £2 2s. 0d.," which arouses the envy of the post-war Englishman.

Hair-brushing by machinery is noted as a novelty in the autumn of 1863;

we trust that the customers contrived to keep their whiskers out of the

way of the brush. For the rest, we may briefly note the advent of the

"Ulster" in 1871, and the prevalence of the single eye-glass in 1873.

SPORT AND PASTIME

[Illustration: A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK

GRANDPAPA: "Bless his heart--just like me! Spare the _Nim_rod--spoil the

child, I say."]

In the region of sport fox-hunting continues to dominate the scene.

Leech's pictures are largely devoted to satirizing cockney sportsmen,

but they render full justice to the enterprise and intrepidity of the

younger generation and of hard-riding young ladies. He is less happy or

at any rate less genial in ridiculing the irregularities of the "Mossoo"

in the hunting field. The exploits and adventures of the ubiquitous Mr.

Briggs form an agreeable pendant and supplement to the novels of

Surtees. Mr. Briggs was not an aristocrat, but he was more of a

gentleman if less of a personality than Jorrocks. But Leech's premature

death left a tremendous gap, for both in humour and draughtsmanship the

artists who took his place as delineators of the chase were

immeasurably his inferiors. In connexion with the "noble animal" we may

note that the advent of Rarey, the famous horse-tamer, was warmly

welcomed by _Punch_ and Leech in 1858. The possibilities of the

treatment are developed in a variety of ways, but there is more than

mere burlesque in the suggestion that it could be profitably applied to

stablemen and horsebreakers. And here we may note a crude foreshadowing

of winter-sports in Leech's picture of the frozen-out foxhunter who

builds a "treboggin" and, with his groom seated behind, careers down

hill and across country in a machine about 12 feet long and not 2 feet

wide with a splash-board in front.

[Illustration: THE FROZEN-OUT FOX-HUNTER

Sporting Militaire recalls to mind his Canadian experiences (the ground

being deep with snow), builds a treboggin, and for the moment ceases to

swear at the frost, or to regret the six hunters he has eating their

heads off in the stable.]

[Sidenote: _In Praise of the Ring_]

_Punch_ was in the main a supporter of "muscular Christianity" and had

already noted, with more sympathy than hostility, the encouragement of

boxing as an integral part of the education of the ingenuous youth.

Disraeli's Parliamentary duel with Palmerston in 1858 is described in

pugilistic terms, in which the victory is given to the former "on

points." But, in view of his generally humane and humanitarian outlook,

he had hardly prepared us for his remarkable eulogy of the Prize Ring in

the year 1860. For it was in that year that the historic fight took

place between the American Heenan (the "Benicia Boy") and Tom Sayers at

Farnborough on April 17, and it was chronicled at full length in

_Punch_. "The Fight of Sayerius and Heenanus: A Lay of Ancient London"

in the style of Macaulay occupies a whole page. Its chief interest to

modern readers resides in the fact that it is "supposed to be recounted

to Great-grand-children, April 17, A.D. 1920, by an Ancient Gladiator."

The narrative is put in the mouth of "Crawleius" well known "in the

_Domus Savilliana_[36] among the sporting men," presumably a relative

real or imaginary of Peter Crawley, a well-known prize fighter. But the

speaker did a gross injustice to the next generation but one when he

wrote:--

'Tis but some sixty years since

The times whereof I speak,

And yet the words I'm using

Will sound to you like Greek.

What know ye, race of milksops,

Untaught of the P.R.,

What stopping, lunging, countering,

Fibbing or rallying are?

What boots to use the _lingo_

When you have not the _thing_?

How paint to _you_ the glories

Of Belcher, Cribb, or Spring,

To _you_, whose sire turns up his eyes

At mention of the Ring?

[Footnote 36: Savile House, on the north side of Leicester Square,

originally the residence of Sir George Savile, Burke's friend, was in

its latter days rebuilt as a place of entertainment and became a resort

of Bohemians and fast men about town. It was burned down in 1865 and the

site is now occupied by the Empire Theatre.]

The train journey to Farnborough in the grey dawn, the company, and the

fight itself are, however, described with spirit:--

Not only fighting covies,

But sporting swells besides--

Dukes, Lords, M.P.'s and Guardsmen,

With county beaks besides;

And tongues that sway our Senators

And hands the pen that wield

Were cheering on the Champions

Upon that morning's field.

We pass over the details of the fight--how Sayers was floored nine

times, and had his right arm crippled; how Heenan had both eyes put in

mourning--to come to the last stage:--

Two hours and more the fight had sped,

Near unto ten it drew,

But still opposed--one-armed to blind--

They stood, the dauntless two.

Ah me! that I have lived to hear

Such men as ruffians scorned,

Such deeds of valour brutal called,

Canted, preached down and mourned!

Ah, that these old eyes ne'er again

A gallant mill shall see!

No more behold the ropes and stakes,

With colours flying free!

But I forget the combat--

How shall I tell its close,

That left the Champion's belt in doubt

Between those well-matched foes?

Fain would I shroud the tale in night,--

The meddling Blues[37] that thrust in sight,--

The ring-keepers o'erthrown;--

The broken ring,--the cumbered fight,--

Heenanus' sudden, blinded flight,--

Sayerius pausing, as he might,

Just when ten minutes used aright

Had made the fight his own!

[Sidenote: _Bull Fight at Islington_]

This curious document, valuable as contemporary evidence, worthless as

prophecy, serves to show how strangely _Punch's_ humanitarianism was

leavened and influenced by primitive instincts in the domain of sport.

[Footnote 37: Policemen.]

[Illustration: UPPER CLASS: "Winged him, my lord!"]

[Illustration: LOWER CLASS: "There's another, 'Arry!"]

Pigeon-shooting and bull-fighting were another matter altogether. In

1870 an abortive attempt was made to introduce the latter at the

Agricultural Hall, Islington, and the Islington-Spanish bull-fight is

treated with a happy mixture of ridicule and contempt in a contribution

to _Punch's_ "Evenings from Home." The proceedings appear to have been

tame enough, and the bulls were probably "doped," yet enough of the real

thing remained to warrant the hostile reception which the entertainment

received. At its close the "Islington Spaniards" dispersed to the

Islington public-houses. _Punch_ returned to the subject a month later.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had interfered to

good purpose. The Islington bull-fighters had been summoned before a

magistrate and fined, and their "entertainment" had been stopped.

_Punch_ seized the occasion to add a comment which, on the very day on

which, in 1921, I write these lines, is as timely as it was more than

fifty years ago:--

From Islington to Wormwood Scrubbs is not far, and it is much to be

feared by the tame-pigeon-shooting nobility and gentry that the

officers of an impartial Association, vigilant to protect poor

animals from cruelty, will as soon as possible be down upon the Gun

Club.

[Illustration: "TO MEMORY DEAR"

ENTHUSIASTIC CRICKETER: "Ah, last season was a good one! I'd both eyes

blacked in one match, and two fingers smashed in the return match the

same week! But give me 1870 over again. I got the ball on my forehead at

'short leg,' and was senseless for three-quarters of an hour!"]

[Sidenote: _Cricket and Football_]

Turning to cricket, we find that "over-hand bowling flung from the

elbow" was mentioned by _Punch_ as a novelty in the late 'fifties.

Cricket was still played in tall hats at that time; but by the 'sixties

caps had come in. The dangers of the game are a not infrequent subject

of comment, and, before the days of billiard-table pitches, the ball was

capable of a good deal of awkward bumping; but to judge from _Punch's_

pictures the resultant contusions were regarded with equanimity by the

players as part of the day's work or play. Cricket was extending its

domain, and _à propos_ of the establishment of clubs at Lisbon and

Oporto _Punch_ quotes an entertaining account of a game between these

clubs by a Lisbon sporting journalist for the instruction of his

countrymen. The incident is taken by _Punch_ as an occasion for

suggesting international games of cricket: Turks and Chinamen, Dutch and

Japanese. The Dutch have long been votaries of cricket; and though it

has not caught on with the Japanese and Chinese, both these races have

of late years cultivated lawn tennis with considerable success. Here,

then, as so often happens, a mock prophecy is fulfilled in a way in

which the prophet never expected. A critical year in the annals of

Lord's was reached in 1864 when there was a danger of the ground being

sold for building purposes. A sum of £10,000 was needed to secure the

interests of cricket, and _Punch_, in an imaginary dialogue between a

countryman and a cockney, represents the former as ready to contribute

5s. to avoid a national disgrace and "zave Lard's cricket ground."

References to football are confined to comments, mostly humorous but

occasionally serious, on the practice of shinning or hacking. The Rules

of the "West Shynnington Football Club" are conveniently used as a

vehicle for a number of bad puns, but the trials of the modern referee

are foreshadowed in the suggestion that "a Police Magistrate should

always be in attendance to dispose of all charges made by players."

_Punch_ in more serious mood discerns in the letter of "A Surgeon" to

_The Times_ the disastrous results of hacking as then permitted by the

Rugby code. "Hacking," in _Punch's_ view, was simply an unfair form of

fighting and should be abolished.

The outstanding event in rowing circles during these years was the

famous race between the Oxford and Harvard fours on August 27, 1869.

_Punch_ celebrated the victory of Oxford in a notice giving the names of

those who took part in the contest, congratulating Oxford, and wishing

health to both crews, the accompanying cartoon representing a gigantic

brawny John Bull shaking hands with a muscular but comparatively slim

Uncle Sam, both in rowing trim, with the legend "Well Rowed All!"

_Punch_, as umpire, remarks: "Ha, dear boys, you've only to pull

together to lick all the world!" The sentiment is better than the

treatment. Unluckily the race led to some acrimonious comment in the New

York papers on British sportsmanship, and _Punch_, in his rejoinder, was

more vigorous than polite. River "aquatics" have not always been free

from recrimination. The origin of the famous retort to bargees, "Who ate

puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?" is obscure; but it is mentioned as far

back as the Almanack for 1858.

[Illustration: PRACTISING FOR A MATCH

LEONORA: "Dear! Dear! How the arrow sticks!"

CAPTAIN BLANK (with a sigh of the deepest): "It does, indeed!"]

[Sidenote: _Croquet and Flirtation_]

"Golf Sticks" are alluded to in January, 1858, but during the rest of

this period I find no further mention of golf. Of social pastimes

archery is still in favour, but croquet is by far the most frequently

referred to. To judge from the pictures, croquet, then in its

unscientific infancy, was played on lawns innocent of mowing machines or

scythes. It was mainly an excuse for flirtation between Charles and

Clara; and the cheating earlier mentioned was regarded as quite fair

game. _Punch_ dealt with it in a serial poem of heroic proportions in

the year 1863. This epic--for it was little less--ran to seven numbers,

but it is not memorable apart from its length. When the Croquet

Tournament was held at Wimbledon in 1870, _Punch_ was ready to

acknowledge the presence of Queens of Beauty, but could not accord the

men players a higher title than that of Carpet Knights.

[Illustration: CROQUET

CHORUS OF OFFENDED MAIDENS: "Well! If Clara and Captain de Holster are

going on in that ridiculous manner--we may as well leave off playing."]

[Illustration: LAWN TENNIS

MISS MAUD: "How do we stand?"

CAPTAIN LOVELACE: "They are six to our love; and 'love' always means

nothing, you know."

MISS MAUD: "Always?"]

[Sidenote: _Lawn Tennis_]

"Aunt Sally"--alleged to have been introduced by the Duke of

Beaufort--is portrayed as a novel adjunct to the amenities of garden

parties in 1860 by Leech. Roller-skating came in about 1873, and about

the same time lawn tennis having survived its early name of

"Sphairistikè," began to attract the attention of _Punch's_ artists. The

implements employed have a prehistoric appearance, but the pastime,

thought still in its insular, garden-party and "pat-ball" stage,

inspired some graceful lines in 1874:--

LAWN TENNIS

Now the long shadows of September come,

And idle for a time the scribbler's pen is,

He passes from the Town's discordant hum,

From garrulous gossip of the kettle-drum,[38]

From orators who should have been born dumb,

To watch upon green lawns the girls play tennis.

Robins are trilling in the faded trees,

The flitting swallows of their voyage chatter,

Testing their wings before they dare the seas,

For Nile's dun marge or blue-girt Cyclades;

The sportsman's shots come frequent on the breeze,

The flying balls keep up a pleasant clatter.

Croquet's a merry game for those who flirt

(Who doesn't, pray--_Punch_, poet, peer, or parson?),

But Tennis, when the ladies are alert,

Follow the swift ball with a looped-up skirt,

Strike it on high with graceful arm expert,

Burns up the masculine heart with sudden arson.

So, pour some icy fluid in a glass

Tinged with deep mulberry stain, true work of Venice:

And _Mr. Punch_ will let the soft hours pass,

Watching with tranquil eyes each lovely lass

Flit like an Oread o'er the smooth green grass,

And win his old heart as she wins at Tennis.

[Footnote 38: "Drum"--a crowded social reception--dates back to the days

of Pope. The Victorian "kettle-drum" was a tea-party.]

_A complete Index will be found in the Fourth Volume._

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