RECREATION
To amuse oneself is the great art of life. From the English
point of view, the finest kind of amusement is to be obtained by
killing something. Fox-hunting, deer-stalking, grouse-shooting,
pheasant-shooting, pigeon-shooting, and even rabbit-shooting still
stand for a great deal among the best class of Englishmen. Of old, the
masses had their bull-baitings, dog-fights, and cock-fights. These,
however, are no longer regarded as legitimate forms of amusement,
and the masses, being for various reasons unable to hunt foxes and
shoot pheasants, have to fall back on recreations in which killing
takes place only by accident. There is the race-course and the
football-field. The masses are expected to consider themselves happy.
Outside racing and football, however, the come-day, go-day Englishman
has a good many facilities for recreation. Although in most communities
the grandfatherly authorities have abolished the old feasts and fairs,
which provided periodic saturnalia of merry-go-rounds and wild-beast
shows, it is a poor townlet which cannot nowadays boast its permanent
settlement of cocoanut-shies and shooting-galleries, where on Saturday
evenings the true-born Englishman may find substantial joys. Then, for
the Londoner, in addition to this kind of thing, there are from time to
time provided vast orgies at Hampstead Heath, the Welsh Harp, Barnet
Fair, and other choice resorts. Here, again, it is a case of cocoanuts,
shooting-galleries, swing-boats, steam-roundabouts, and aerial flights,
backed up with donkey-rides, a free use of the tickler and the ladies'
teaser, unlimited confetti throwing, and unlimited beer. These
amusements, of course, are on the face of them quite innocent, and
equally English and unintellectual.
Failing merry-go-rounds and cocoanut-shies, the delights of which are
apt to pall, the English masses have still left to them their main
redoubt of rational enjoyment, which, for reasons no man may skill,
is called the music-hall. The English music-hall is practically an
expansion or efflorescence of the old-fashioned "sing-song." Sixty
years ago the man who went out to take a stoup of ale at his inn was
accustomed to be regaled with a little music free of charge. Mine
host had possessed himself of a second-hand piano, and secured the
services of some broken-down musician to play it for him. There was
a great singing of old songs, and the time sped merrily, as it did
in the golden age. These feasts of harmony brought custom, and in
course of time the evening "sing-songs" at certain hostelries became
organised institutions and were run on lines of great enterprise, the
piano being supplemented by an orchestra, and the pianist by a number
of professional singers and entertainers. Within the last fifty years
the "sing-song" has been separated from its parent the alehouse, and
has developed into the music-hall. To-day the English music-halls
are almost as thick on the ground as churches and chapels. In the
metropolis you would have a difficulty to count them. In the provinces
every town of size supports two or three halls, and insists on London
talent and London style. The class of entertainment provided may be
costly and amusing, but it is certainly not edifying. The performers
almost to a man, and one might say to a woman, are persons who can be
considered "artists" only in the broadest sense, and whose ignorance
and vulgarity are as colossal as their salaries.
Roughly, the entertainment may be divided into two sections, the one
concerned with feats of strength, juggling, and the like, and the
other with laughter-making and vocalism. As regards the first of these
sections, a man who can balance a horse and trap on the end of his
chin appears to give great satisfaction to an English audience. Why
this should be so, nobody knows. The good purpose that may be served
by balancing a horse and trap on the end of one's chin is not obvious;
but the English masses are ravished by the spectacle. They also have
a great fondness for the stout lady who catches cannon-balls on the
back of her neck, for the other stout lady who risks her life nightly
on the flying trapeze, for the gentleman who walks about the stage
with a piano under one arm and a live mule under the other, and for
the gentleman who rides the bicycle standing on his head. To the mind
of the English masses these are marvels and well worth the money. They
give a zest to life, they provide material for conversation, and their
attraction seems perennial.
The great stand-by of the halls, however, is the laughter-making and
vocal department. Here shine the great stars whose names are familiar
on English lips as household words. Here is purveyed the culture, the
song, and the humour of the English masses. It is from the music-hall
stage that the vast majority of Englishmen take their tone and their
sentiment. That renowned comedian, Fred Fetchem, strolls on to the
boards of the Frivolity some night, and, assuming a fiendish grin,
exclaims idiotically; "There's 'air!" Next morning and for many weeks
thereafter all England says; "There's 'air!" on any and every occasion.
"What ho she bumps!" "Now, we sha'n't be long," "Not half," "Did he?"
and similar catchwords, all popular and all meaningless, capture the
English imagination in their turn, and for a season, at any rate,
Englishmen can say nothing else. It is the same with the music-hall
song. Always there are current in England three or four "songs of the
hour," which every Englishman worth the name sings, whistles, or hums;
and always these songs, from whatever point of view regarded, are of
the most blithering and bathotic nature. At the present moment the
prime and universal favourite is that pathetic ditty, _Everybody's
Loved by Some One_. For the benefit of the English, I quote the first
stanza and the chorus of this work:
A lady stood within a busy city,
Her darling little daughter by her side;
She'd stopped to buy a bunch of pretty violets
From a ragged little orphan she espied.
The words she spoke were kinder than the boy had heard for years;
And in reply to what she asked, he murmur'd through his tears,
Everybody's loved by some one, everybody knows that's true,
Some have father and mother dear; sister and brother, too.
All the time that I remember, since I was a mite so small,
I seem to be the only one that nobody loves at all.
With this enchanting song the English welkin resounds by day and night.
The great, broad-shouldered, genial Englishman, full of four-ale and
bad whisky, howls it in chorus at his favourite "public," work-girls
sing it in factories, mothers rock their children to sleep with it, and
every English urchin whistles or shouts it at you with unflagging zest.
Of course, there are others; for example, there is _I'm a P'liceman_,
which goes like this:
In the inky hour of midnight, when the clock is striking three,
As I stroll along my beet-root, many curious things I see:
Ragged urchins stagger past me to their mansions in the west;
Millionaires, through cold and hunger, on our doorsteps sink to rest;
Dirty dustmen in their broughams, off to supper at the "Cri.";
Then "Bill Sykes," the burglar, passes, with an eye-glass in his eye.
Such are the sights I witness when I am on my beat,
Filling my heart with sawdust, filling my boots with feet;
Covering half the pavement up with my "plates of meat,"
Though mother sent to say that I'm a p'liceman--
which--need one remark?--is intended for what the Scots are supposed to
call "wut." Also, there is _He Stopped_:
Pendlebury Plum had a wart on his gum,
And he rubbed it with sand-paper hard;
The wart on his gum made Plum fairly hum,
When it stuck out about half a yard.
The wart grew so quick, when he rubbed it with a brick,
Till it looked like a short billiard-cue;
Said Plum to himself, "I shall die on the shelf,
For I'm darned if I know what to do."
So he went and got a pick-axe and shov'd it underneath,
Then he lifted up his jaw, and he swallowed all his teeth;
Then he stopped!
The verses I have quoted are a good, true, and fair sample of the kind
of thing that finds favour among the English masses. I do not think
that anything better is being proffered, and it is pretty certain that
anything less inane would be doomed to failure. The fact is that the
English mind in the lump is flat, coarse, and maggoty, and the English
understanding is as the understanding of a feeble and ill-bred child.
A couple of generations ago the songs popular among Englishmen had
some claim to coherence, decency, and common sense; nowadays, however,
the Englishman admits that "he cannot sing the old songs." He has gone
farther and fared worse, and among the many symptoms of his decadence,
none is more pronounced than his easy toleration of the balderdash that
is being served up to him by the "'alls."