House as the favourite target of _Punch's_ ridicule and caricature, and
as the home of all the tendencies which he repudiated in the manifesto
quoted above. His general attitude is very much that of Gilbert in
_Patience_; and Burne-Jones and Rossetti (whom he miscalls "D. S.
Rosetti" as late as 1880) were indiscriminately confounded in dispraise
along with the lesser fry. Tennyson's "Palace of Art" is perverted into
a vehicle for assailing Pre-Raphaelitism. The "Dream of Queer Women"
in 1878 gives prominence to the artistic type, and a visit to the
Grosvenor Gallery in the early summer of the same year inspires "The
Haunted Limbo; a May-night Vision" animated by the same hostility:--
Those women, ah, those women! They were white,
Blue, green, and grey--all hues, save those of nature,
Bony of frame, and dim, and dull of sight,
And parlous tall of stature.
_Ars longa est_--aye, very long indeed,
And long as Art were all these High-Art ladies,
And wan and weird; one might suppose the breed
A cross 'twixt earth and Hades.
If poor Persephone to the Dark King
Had children borne, after that rape from Enna,
Much so might they have looked, when suffering
From too much salts and senna.
Many their guises, but no various grace
Or changeful charm relieved their sombre sameness
Of form contorted, and cadaverous face,
And limp lopsided lameness.
[Sidenote: _Homage to Cruikshank_]
Leighton's "Athlete and Python" in 1877 had been saluted as "a statue
at last," and _Punch_ welcomed his election as P.R.A. in the following
year, with an excellent portrait by Sambourne of "the right man in the
right place." It was in 1878 again that _Punch_ turned aside from the
flagellation of his pet aversions to pay homage to the genius of George
Cruikshank, who died on February 1:--
England is the poorer by what she can ill spare--a man of genius.
Good, kind, genial, honest and enthusiastic George Cruikshank,
whose frame appeared to have lost so little of its wiry strength
and activity, whose brain seemed as full of fire and vitality at
fourscore as at forty, has passed away quietly and painlessly after a
few days' struggle. He never worked for _Punch_, but he always worked
with him, putting his unresting brain, his skill--in some forms of
Art unrivalled--and his ever productive fancy, at the service of
humanity and progress, good works, and good will to man. His object,
like our own, was always to enforce truth and urge on improvement
by the powerful forces of fun and humour, clothed in forms sometimes
fanciful, sometimes grotesque, but never sullied by a foul thought,
and ever dignified by a wholesome purpose.
His fourscore and six years of life have been years of unintermitting
labour, that was yet, always, labour of love. There never was a purer,
simpler, more straightforward, or altogether more blameless man. His
nature had something childlike in its transparency. You saw through
him completely. There was neither wish nor effort to disguise his
self-complacency, his high appreciation of himself, his delight in the
appreciation of others, any more than there was to make himself out
better, or cleverer, or more unselfish than his neighbours.
In him England has lost one who was, in every sense, as true a man
as he was a rare and original genius, and a pioneer in the arts of
illustration.
[Illustration: A LOVE-AGONY. Design by Maudle
(_With verses by Jellaby Postlethwaite, who is also said to have sat
for the Picture._)]
_Punch's_ estimate accords with that of the friend who knew Cruikshank
well and described him as "in every word and deed a God-fearing,
Queen-honouring, truth-loving, honest man," and it is all the more
significant in view of Cruikshank's vehement and even fanatical
espousal of the cause of temperance. Another great illustrator, though
of a very different type, emerged in the following year in Randolph
Caldecott. His genial and graceful commentaries on Nursery Rhymes
were entirely after _Punch's_ heart. He was speedily enlisted as an
occasional contributor up to 1886, the year of his premature death,
when _Punch_ faithfully summed up the gifts of a true benefactor of all
ages:--
We loved the limner whose gay fun
Was ever loyal to the Graces;
Who mixed the mirth of _Gilpin's_ run
With willowy forms and winsome faces;
Who made old nursery lyrics live
With frolic force rejuvenated,
And yet the sweetest girls could give
That ever pencil-point created.
From _Bracebridge Hall_ to _Banbury Cross_
His fancy flew with fine facility.
Orchards all apple-bloom and moss,
Child sport, bucolical senility,
The field full cry, snug fireside ease,
Horse-fun, dog-joke his pencil covers,
With Alderman and hawthorn trees,
Parsons and Squires, and rustic lovers.
But in these years _Punch_ had little time to spare for praise; he was
so busy belabouring Burne-Jones and Rossetti, the Grosvenor Gallery,
the Kyrle Society, or new fashions in house decorations and furniture,
in which he saw nothing but gloom and discomfort. The protest in
1879 of the three Slade Professors--Sidney Colvin, W. B. Richmond
and Legros--against the critics who denied Burne-Jones genius and
greatness on the strength of defective anatomical details, left _Punch_
impenitent. He mocked at their "triune testimonial" as an unconvincing
attempt to convert the callous and captious critics who,
Persisted in belabouring B.-J. with tongue and pen
Whilst Philistia looked on and laughed at those Three Mighty Men.
[Sidenote: _Prigs and Philistines_]
[Illustration: MODERN ÆSTHETICS
(Ineffable Youth goes into ecstasies over an extremely Old Master--say,
Fra Porcinello Babaragianno, A.D. 1266-1281?)
MATTER-OF-FACT PARTY: "But it's such a repulsive _subject_!"
INEFFABLE YOUTH: "'Subject' in art is of no moment! The
_Picktchah_ is beautiful!"
MATTER-OF-FACT PARTY: "But you'll own the _Drawing's_ vile,
and the _Colour's_ beastly!"
INEFFABLE YOUTH: "I'm Cullah-blind, and don't p'ofess to
understand D'awing! The _Picktchah_ is beautiful!"
MATTER-OF-FACT PARTY (_getting warm_): "But it's all out of
_Perspective_, hang it, and so abominably _untrue to Nature_!"
INEFFABLE YOUTH: "I don't care about Naytchah, and hate
Perspective. The _Picktchah_ is _most_ beautiful!"
MATTER-OF-FACT PARTY (_losing all self-control_): "But, dash
it all, man, where the _dickens_ is the _beauty_, then?"
INEFFABLE YOUTH (_quietly_): "In the Picktchah!"
_Total defeat of Matter-of-fact Party._]
It is true that _Punch_ makes some reservations in his "Moral":--
Critics are full of "cussedness," omniscience sometimes slips,
And even triune Oracles may chance to miss their tips.
But his sympathies undoubtedly remain with the critics, and he
virtually identifies himself with Philistia in the plea of the
Philistine in the following year:--
Take away all your adornments æsthetical,
Plates of blue china and bits of sage green,
Though you may call me a monster heretical,
I can't consider them fit to be seen.
Etchings and paintings I loathe and abominate,
Grimly I smile at the name of Burne-Jones,
Hating his pictures where big chins predominate--
Over lean figures with angular bones.
Buy me what grinning stage rustics call "farniture,"
Such as was used by our fathers of old;
Take away all your nonsensical garniture,
Tapestry curtains and borders of gold,
Give me the ancient and solid mahogany,
Mine be the board that will need no repairs,
Don't let me see, as I sit at my grog, any
Chippendale tables or spindle-legged chairs.
Hang up a vivid vermilion wall-paper,
Covered with roses of gorgeous hue,
Matching a varnished and beautiful hall-paper,
Looking like marble so polished and new.
Carpets should all show a floral variety,
Wreaths intermingling of yellow and red;
So, when it enters my home, will Society
Say, here's a house whence æsthetics have fled.
[Sidenote: _Belabouring Burne-Jones_]
The "Lay of the Private View" at the Grosvenor Gallery in May, 1881,
forms a useful supplement to Gilbert and Sullivan's _Patience_,
produced a fortnight before the verses appeared:--
The Grosvenor! the view that's called private,
Yet all the world seems to be there;
Each carriage that comes to arrive at
The door, makes the populace stare.
There's Gladstone, severe of demeanour,
It's plain that the pictures don't please;
And there, with an aspect serener,
Her Highness the Princess Louise.
The Haunt of the very æsthetic,
Here come the supremely intense,
The long-haired and hyper-poetic
Whose sound is mistaken for sense.
And many a maiden will mutter,
When Oscar looms large on her sight,
"He's quite too consummately utter,
As well as too utterly quite."
* * * * *
Here's Whistler paints Miss Alexander,
A portrait washed out as by rain;
'Twill raise Ruskin's critical dander,
To find James is at it again.
The flesh-tints of Watts are quite comic;
There's Herkomer's chaos of stones;
But where is the great anatomic
Improver on Nature, Burne-Jones?
A Grosvenor without him so strange is,
We miss the long chins and knock-knees,
The angel of bronze, who for change is
Tied up to the stiffest of trees:
Limp lads with their _belli capelli_,
Mad maidens with love smitten sore,
Oh, shade of defunct Botticelli,
Burne-Jones comes to startle no more!
I deal in another section with the fashionable cult of æstheticism,
which was now at its zenith. In estimating its artistic importance,
_Punch_ erred in his refusal to discriminate between eccentricity and
independence. He continued to "belabour B.-J.," and brackets him with
Whistler in the ribald suggestion that they were jointly responsible
for the pictures exhibited by the "Screevers" or pavement artists.
Millais is congratulated on breaking away from Pre-Raphaelitism, and
invidious comparisons are drawn in 1886 between his pictures and those
of Holman Hunt:--
There couldn't be a better foil to the manliness of the Millais Show
at the Grosvenor than the pseudo-mediæval-O-quite-too-beautiful-namby
-pamby-gilt-edged-and-gothic-clasped-Church-service style of the
effeminate religious Art of Mr. Holman Hunt. Millais tried it, and,
after a struggle, snapped the Pre-Raphaelite fetters, and escaped.
Yet in the next two years Millais is criticized for sacrificing
character to "prettiness" and desecrating his talent by placing
it at the disposal of the advertiser. Watts's enigmatic "Hope" was
"guyed" in 1887 under the title "Cutting off her head with a saw."
The multifarious activities of Herkomer--painter, etcher, director of
a school of art at Bushey, designer of posters, operatic composer,
etc.--did not escape _Punch's_ amused notice. _Punch_ himself, as might
readily be expected, did not enjoy an immunity from art criticism. In
1883 he had congratulated Ruskin on his second election to the Slade
Professorship at Oxford; at the end of the year Ruskin repaid the
compliment, in his lectures on the Art of England, by a long detailed
and in the main highly eulogistic survey of _Punch's_ artistic work.
But the panegyric was tempered by certain reserves:--
Says Mr. Ruskin, having before him in review one or two selected
specimens of _Mr. Punch's_ cartoons:--
"Look, too, at this characteristic type of British heroism--'John Bull
guards his pudding.' Is this the final outcome of King Arthur and
Saint George, of Britannia and the British Lion? And is it your pride
or hope or pleasure that in this sacred island that has given her lion
hearts to Eastern tombs and her Pilgrim Fathers to Western lands, that
has wrapped the sea round her as a mantle, and breathed against her
strong bosom the air of every wind, the children born to her in these
latter days should have no loftier legend to write upon their shields
than 'John Bull guards his Pudding'?"
And then Mr. Ruskin, as if conscious that the very onward sweep of
his own free fancy has carried him beyond the limits of fair and
reasonable estimate, as it were, harks somewhat back again, and
offering _Mr. Punch_ something in the nature of an apology, acquits
him of all true responsibility for this same terrible and offending
"pudding":--
"It is our fault" (proceeds Mr. Ruskin) "and not the Artist's; and I
have often wondered what Mr. Tenniel might have done for us if London
had been as Venice, or Florence, or Siena. In my first course of
Lectures I called your attention to the Picture of the Doge Mocenigo
kneeling in prayer; and it is our fault more than Mr. Tenniel's if he
is forced to represent the heads of the Government dining at Greenwich
rather than worshipping at St. Paul's."
[Sidenote: _Punch's Virtues as an Art Critic_]
_Punch_ took the criticism in good part, while declaring that he had
found this commonplace nineteenth century and its humdrum materials
pretty well suited to his purpose; and after indulging in a whimsical
dialogue between the editor, Giovanni Tennielo, and Ruskino in
Venice, comes to the conclusion that after all the Queen of the
Adriatic may have had even in her great days something less noble to
lose than that condemned typical "pudding" which John Bull as yet has
fortunately known how to guard. In this context I may add that in 1885
_Punch_ reprinted an advertisement in which a young man, seeking for
a place, stated amongst his credentials that he could "paint and talk
Ruskinesque."
[Illustration: WHAT PORTRAIT-PAINTING IS COMING TO
THE DUKE OF DILWATER: "I--a--have taken the liberty of calling
to say that I shall esteem myself highly honoured if you will be so
very kind as to accept from me a Commission to paint my Portrait, at
any time most convenient to yourself!"
FASHIONABLE ARTIST (_after careful survey of His Grace's
features_): "You must excuse me, Duke, but I really can't. I--a--always
choose my own Subjects now, you know, and I'm sorry to say that your
Grace won't do!"]
As I have not minimized _Punch's_ limitations as an art critic, it is
only fair to add that he was often sound and sometimes even acute. He
said the right thing on the _parvenu_ as art patron, and delicately
hinted his approval of the independence of portrait painters. His
appreciation of the strength of "Phiz" (Hablot K. Browne) as the
illustrator of Dickens and Lever in helping us to visualize and fix
certain types is excellently done, and generous admiration does not
prevent him pointing out "Phiz's" weaknesses--his sketchiness, thin and
skimpy style, and simpering mannerisms. This was said on the occasion
of the show of "Phiz's" drawings in 1883 (the year after his death)
which _Punch_ recommended to "genial Middle-age with memories and
unpriggish Youth without hyperæsthetic prejudices."
Nothing could be better in its way, again, than the castigation of the
"slick" and deliberate eccentricities of Jan Van Beers in 1886. _Punch_
admits the Dutch artist's talent, his capacity for higher work, proved
in historical paintings, and then sets to work to wield the lash:--
Popinjay Art is plentiful enough. It is the trick whereby mediocrity
antics itself into a sort of notoriety, and cynical cleverness
indolently plays the fool with an easily humbugged public. It is
probably calculated--perhaps with some reason--that these stagey
tricks, and limelight effects, and dismal draperies, and bogey
surprises, and peep-show horrors will perplex people into a foolish
wonder, if not into an impossible enjoyment or an honest approval.
Maybe that is all which is aimed at? But what an aim for anything
calling itself Art!
Posturing Pierrots and smirking skeletons, goggling sphinxes and
giggling cocottes, cadaverous surprises and ensanguined startlers,
all the parade of nightmare and nastiness, pall upon the mind, as
the phantasmagoric effects and sickly scents do upon the senses,
of the visitors to the Salon Parisien. Whim and fantasy are all
very delightful in their way. But this is not Wonderland, it is the
world of drunken delirium and the Witches' Sabbath. A girl with
emerald face, purple hair, and vivid vermilion lips, peeping between
amber portières, is an inoffensive though purposeless, and not very
interesting bizarrerie. But such gratuitous ghastlinesses as "Will
o' the Wisp," "_Felo de se_," "_Vive la Mort!_" and particularly
the offensively named "_Ecce Homo_," are simply revolting horrors.
Somebody has hazarded the statement that they are Edgar-Poe-ish.
Pooh! Poe was creepy sometimes, but he was an artist, an idealist,
subordinating even occasional horror to the beautiful in his daring
dreams.
[Illustration: A FORTIORI
PHILISTINE FATHER: "Why the dickens don't you paint something
like Frith's 'Derby Day'--something everybody can understand, and
somebody buy?"
YOUNG GENIUS: "_Everybody understand_, indeed! Art is for the
few, Father, and the higher the art, of course, the fewer the few.
The highest art of all is for _one_. That art is mine. That _one_
is--myself!"
FOND MAMMA: "There speaks my own brave boy!"]
[Sidenote: _Impartial Satire_]
As a rôle _Punch_ was a strong partisan in art; yet on occasion he
could hold the balance. I have illustrated the change in his view
of Whistler, but it never degenerated into abuse. The dialogue,
"Wrestling with Whistler," suggested by the exhibition at the Goupil
Gallery in the spring of 1892, impartially satirizes Whistlerites,
frank Philistines, and the literal and prosaic persons who were
puzzled and bewildered by "arrangements," "harmonies," "symphonies"
and "nocturnes." These simple souls, unable to recognize the objects
depicted, were not helped by the faithful who retorted, "Ah, but it's
the way he saw it!" To-day, as thirty years ago, their point of view is
faithfully expressed in the unconscious irony of the serious elderly
lady:
I've no patience with the man. Look at Gustave Doré now. I'm sure
_he_ was a beautiful artist if you _like_. Did _he_ go and call his
"Leaving the Prætorium" a "Symphony" or a "Harmony," or any nonsense
of that kind? Of course not--and yet look at the _difference_!
It is true that the artist, like the prophet, is often "not without
honour save in his own country and in his own house." The saying
happily does not apply to _Punch_ and his contributors. When Richard
Doyle died in 1883, more than thirty years had elapsed since he severed
his connexion with the paper, but _Punch_ had never forgotten the old
comrade who had designed his cover, and had been equally at home among
the imps of Elfland and the swells and snobs of society:--
Turning o'er his own past pages,
_Punch_, with tearful smile, can trace
That fine talent's various stages,
Caustic satire, gentle grace,
Feats and freaks of Cockney funny--
Brown, and Jones, and Robinson;
And, huge hive of Humour's honey,
Quaint quintessence of rich fun,
Coming fresh as June-breeze briary
With old memories of our youth--
Thrice immortal Pips's Diary!
Masterpiece of Mirth and Truth!
Personally I should invert the epithet "thrice immortal" and apply it
to the "Continental Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson"; otherwise the
verses are a well merited tribute to the winged fancy and graceful
humour of "Dicky Doyle." Charles Keene's death in January, 1891,
removed another good comrade whose association with the paper was
unbroken up to his last illness, and was one of the chief if not the
greatest of its artistic glories:--
Frank, loyal, unobtrusive, simple-hearted,
Loving his book, his pipe, his song, his friend,
Peaceful he lived and peacefully departed,
A gentle life-course, with a gracious end.
[Sidenote: _Ruskin on Leech_]
So much for the man; as for the artist, _Punch_ was hardly overstating
the case when he claimed that the exhibition of Keene's work in the
following May stood for the supreme triumph of black and white in the
achievements of its greatest master.
Ruskin, in the lecture noted above, had described Leech's work as
containing "the finest definition and natural history of the classes
of our society, the kindest and subtlest analysis of its foibles, the
tenderest flattery of its pretty and well-bred ways, with which the
modesty of subservient genius ever immortalized or amused careless
masters." Small wonder was it, then, that _Punch_ appealed for greater
generosity to John Leech's three surviving sisters. Their combined
pensions only amounted to £180--a "dole" which lent point to the
dramatic dialogues in 1881 between a Minister and a Celebrity and
(after the Celebrity's death) between the Minister and his Secretary,
as a result of which the former decides to give the orphan daughter £50.
The cult of Japanese art in the late 'eighties furnished _Punch's_
artists with new formulas and new methods of treating Parliamentary
scenes. It also inspired the following ingenious adaptation of a famous
phrase:--
Madame Roland Re-Edited (from a sham Japanese point of view): O
Liberty! what strange (decorative) things are done in thy name!
_Punch_ had reproached Millais for condescending to the "pretty-pretty"
style, but in 1888 he was moved to caricature the modern fear of the
same tendency--a fear destined to dominate so much of modern art in
later years and to enthrone the Golliwog in the nursery.
DRAMA, OPERA AND MUSIC
_Punch_ was mixed up with the drama from the very beginning. He
drew his name and his initial inspiration from a puppet-show;
all four editors who held the office between 1841 and 1892 were
playwrights--three of them, Mark Lemon, Tom Taylor and Burnand prolific
playwrights--and many of his leading contributors from Douglas Jerrold
onwards owed a double allegiance to journalism and the drama. In these
circumstances one can hardly expect to find in _Punch's_ copious
references to plays and players an entirely judicial or dispassionate
critical attitude. Yet when all deductions have been made on the
score of old loyalties, partisanship and even prejudice, his record,
during the period which opened with the visits of Salvini and ended
with Tree's Hamlet and the tyranny of "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," shows
a creditable readiness to acclaim fresh talent and to applaud a
good thing irrespective of its origin. We find a certain amount of
resentment against the adulation of foreigners, but his patriotism in
this respect is untainted by any Chauvinism--witness his "Salvo to
Salvini" in 1875:--
_Punch_ is rejoiced to see that a representative body of the London
Actors lately made express application to the great Italian Player,
now displaying his art for London's behoof, to give a morning
performance of _Othello_, at which they could be present. Salvini
answered the application with an Italian's courtesy, and an artist's
feeling with his fellows. Remembering how, when _Punch_ was young,
an illiterate English mob once howled and hooted a French company
from the stage of Drury Lane, and how, when the noblest Actor of
his generation, William Macready, published a protest against the
cowardly outrage, in which he associated his brother Actors with
himself, a large body of those Actors disclaimed such association,
and denied William Macready's right to speak for more than William
Macready--_Punch_ cannot but rejoice in the present indication of a
larger and less "parochial" spirit of appreciation.
The actors who had the good fortune to see Salvini on Monday have seen
a great artist, in the ideal sense of the word--one whose art "in
the very storm and whirlwind of his passion, can beget a temperance
that gives it smoothness"; whose voice keeps its music even in rage
or agony, and whose action can be graceful, even in its moments of
utmost vehemence; and this without forfeiture of force, or sacrifice
of truth. It is of secondary importance whether or not those who
hear Salvini understand Italian. They are sure to know the text of
_Othello_; and Salvini's look, tone, and gesture speak the universal
language.
[Sidenote: _Salvini, Ristori, Bernhardt_]
They must have marked the breadth and calmness of his style, the
self-restraint that never betrays effort, and the grandeur resulting
from this element of large effect. They will have seen how superior
to points and petty tricks and clap-traps he is from first to last;
how completely the Moor, steeped at first in the stately Oriental
calm that almost looks like languor, till love lights in his eye and
mantles in his face, or doubt begins to torture, and sense of wrong
gathers and glows to fury, and a rage, far more terrible and unsparing
than a wild beast's, works to madness in his brain.
The over-vehemence of Othello's final agony is deprecated, but _Punch_
concludes by recommending all "who wish to know the highest expression
of ideal tragic acting to see this famous Italian actor."
As he had welcomed another glory of Italian art in Ristori, so he
yielded to the versatile enchantments of the "divine Sarah" in her
frequent visits to our shores. The following tribute dates from 1879:--
TO SARAH!
(By an exuberant Enthusiast)
Mistress of Hearts and Arts, all met in you
The Picturesque, informed by Soul of Passion!
Say, dost thou feed on milk and honey-dew,
Draining from goblets deep of classic fashion
Champagne and nectar, shandy-gaff sublime,
Dashed with a pungent smack of _eau-de-Marah_,
Aspasia, Sappho, Circé of the time?
Seductive Sarah!
"Muse"? All Mnemosyne's bright brood in one!
Compound of Psyché, Phryné, Britomarté,
Ruler of storm and calm, Euroclydon
And Zephyr! Slender Syrian Astarté!
With voice the soul of music, like that harp
Which whilom sounded in the Hall of Tara.
How dare Philistines at thy whimsies carp,
Soul-swaying Sarah!!
"_Poseuse_"? Pooh! pooh! Yet who so well _can_ pose
As thou, sweet statuesque slim sinuosity?
"Stagey"? Absurd! "The death's-head and the rose"?
Delicious! Gives the touch of tenebrosity
That lifts thee to the Lamia level. Oh!
Shame on the dolts who hint of Dulcamara,
_A propos_ of _levée_ and picture-show,
Serpentine Sarah!!!
* * * * *
O idol of the hour and of my heart!
Who calls thee crazy, half, and half-capricious?
A compound of _Lionne's_[12] and Barnum's part,
In _outrecuidance_ rather injudicious?
Ah! heed them not! Play, scribble, sculp, sing, paint,
Pose as a Plastic-Proteus, _mia cara_;
Sapphic, seraphic, quintessential, quaint,
_Sémillante_ Sarah!!!!
[Footnote 12: Presumably a reference to Louis XIV's versatile Minister
of that name.]
[Sidenote: _"Pierrot à Londres"_]
[Illustration: THE DIVINE SARAH
(_For whose sake we've all gone wrong_)
FIRST CRITIC (_ætat. 21_): "Beats Rachel hollow in
_Ong-Dromack_, hanged if she don't!"
SECOND CRITIC (_ditto_): "So _I_ think, Old man! And in
_L'Etrong-jair_ she licks Mademoiselle Mars all to fits!"]
This is enthusiasm at high-water mark, though the note of irony is
not absent. Admiration, appreciation, or criticism never lacking in
friendliness mark the notices of other visitors from the Old or the
New World--the Dutch actors from Rotterdam in 1879 whose performance in
_Anne Mie_ impelled _Punch_ to rewrite Canning's dispatch:--
In matters dramatic the charms of the Dutch
Are perfect _ensemble_ and sharpness of touch;
[Illustration: INANITIES OF THE DRAWING-ROOM
"Seen the _Enfant Prodigue_, Mr. Softy?"
"No; waiting till they do it in _English_!"] Modjeska, "a charming and
consummate actress" in 1880; the German Shakespearean actors at Drury
Lane in 1881; Mary Anderson in 1883; Coquelin in 1887; and Mlle. Jane
May in _L'Enfant Prodigue_, that delightful pioneer dumb-show play
which prompted _Punch_ to exclaim in 1891, "Vive Pierrot à Londres!"
with the Victorian _caveat_ "but not a play for children." _Punch's_
views on the transplantation of foreign products were never expressed
more frankly or wisely than in his comments on the abortive attempt
made by Mr. Wybrow Robertson to present selected tableaux from the
Ober-Ammergau Passion Play at the Westminster Aquarium in 1879. The
announcement of the withdrawal of the scheme was followed by a
statement that no native of Ober-Ammergau had anything to do with it,
which gave _Punch_ his cue:--
It is a comfort that one set of people come well out of the mess--the
worthy, simple and pious peasants of the Ober-Ammergau, for whom
the performance of their Passion Play is a religious solemnity, in
performance of a vow made in 1633, when their village was ravaged by
a pestilence. When the performance of Passion Plays was interdicted
in Bavaria in 1779, this one was specially excepted, as being under
the superintendence of the monks of Ettal, hard by, and, besides, in
fulfilment of a vow.
But if the institution of the play stayed the pestilence in 1633
(as these simple Ober-Ammergauers believe), its continuance may
introduce a new pestilence in 1880, should it bring on Ober-Ammergau,
as yet pure and simple, the plague of speculating Managers to tempt
the village Actors, as well as of Cook's tourists and cosmopolitan
audiences, to poison the village life with greed of gain, and take the
sanctity of simple faith from this Passion Play, so turning it--as
there is already fear it has begun to be turned--into a show which, in
becoming popular, must become profane.
The long and consistently hostile campaign which _Punch_ conducted
against Ibsen and the Ibsen plays shows him in a much less favourable
light and on precarious ground. It was open to him to pronounce Ibsen
dreary, disagreeable and didactic; some of his plays were fair game
for the parodist and the opportunity was turned to excellent account.
But the long and acrimonious tirade against the Ibsenites and their
"Arch or Archer-priest" in 1891 is seriously weakened by the writer's
confession that his knowledge of the Ibsen plays was confined to
perusal of "several of them"--that he had never seen one of them on the
stage; and his challenge to the Ibsen-worshippers to test the merits of
their idol by a single performance at a London theatre was rash, to say
the least of it.
[Sidenote: _Actors and Society_]
Turning to native drama, one cannot avoid noticing that _Punch_, who
had followed Irving's career with interest and sympathy from its
modest beginnings in farce and comedy, became increasingly critical
of his later ventures. He is pronounced physically unsuited to the
part of Macbeth in 1875, and _Punch_ did not fail to fasten on the
vulnerable points in his Romeo in 1882. In the same year Irving is
especially blamed for his resort to the "benefit" performance system,
and his defence is pronounced unconvincing in an article ingeniously
headed, "The Doubt of the Benefit," in which Irving is described as "an
admirable Comedian, an occasionally impressive Tragedian, a nervously
painstaking Actor, and, generally, an indifferent Elocutionist." But
_Punch_ had indulged in even more caustic criticism of the popular
actor-manager in the previous year, _à propos_ of an address delivered
at Edinburgh:--
Again the sickening cry is raised about the "social status of the
Actor," and this time _à propos_ of a paper read by Mr. Henry Irving,
at a Philosophical Institution known as The Music Hall in Edinburgh.
The social status of the Actor is that of a well-fed, well-clothed,
well-paid--perhaps over-paid--worker in a curious profession. If
he be amusing and intelligent, and behaves like a gentleman, he is
exceptionally favoured by what is called "Society"; as most people,
except a few fanatics, are interested in the world behind the
footlights. But every Actor is not necessarily amusing, intelligent,
and gentlemanly, and these are the people, probably, who are a
little uneasy about their status. If they are not content with their
pudding, the world is all before them. On the other hand, the more
favoured ones are a little apt to be spoiled by injudicious patronage.
"Society" is a little too ready to treat them like pet poodles.
Why on earth does Mr. Irving yearn for the companionship of Bishops?
Does he want to convert them all to Irvingism, and to come and listen
to him discoursing Shakespearean Inspirations in Unknown Tongues? Does
he require Church Patronage for the Stage, and his Theatre Stalls
filled as those of a Cathedral are with Prebends, Minor Canons and
Greater Guns of the Ecclesiastical Establishment? Is it the height
of an Actor's ambition to swell the crowd of distinguished Nobodies
at the Duchess of Mountrouge's reception, or to appear as a great
attraction of Lady Doubtful's Assemblies, and to be able to exhibit
cards of fashionable "At Homes" in the mirror which is held up to
Nature over his mantelpiece?
Elevation of the Stage forsooth! We should have thought that the Stage
had elevated Mr. Irving above all such twaddle as this.
"Act well your part, there all the honour lies."
Be satisfied with this: Live for your Art, not for that limited,
narrow, uncharitable, scandalmongering section of the great public
which calls itself "Society," and which loves to patronize Art in any
form at the least possible cost to itself.
Even harsher is the rebuke administered three weeks later to Irving
for his self-laudatory speeches, and the unnecessary autobiographical
reminiscences in which he contrasted his present with his past
earnings, thus creating a false impression of one who was in reality
the most generous of men. The petting of actors by society appealed to
_Punch_ no more than the invasion of the stage by amateurs; he regarded
such favouritism as ministering to their worst infirmity, vanity; and
in 1884 he fell foul of Mrs. Kendal's speech at the Social Science
Congress on the social position of actors, in which she reprobated
self-advertisement (Satan rebuking Sin, according to her critic), but
claimed a recognition which _Punch_ denounced as mere snobbishness. Of
Ellen Terry, who was associated with Irving at the Lyceum from 1878,
_Punch_ remained the affectionate and benevolent admirer, though he
admitted that her conception of Lady Macbeth in 1889 raised a good deal
of legitimate criticism. The lavish mounting of the Lyceum revivals, I
may add, exercised _Punch's_ frugal mind, and reached a climax in the
production of _Henry VIII_ in 1892.
[Illustration: THE NEW CRAZE
Scene--_The Green-Room of the Parthenon, before rehearsal_.
HARD-WORKING BARONET: "Here's the Duke, confound him! Only
been six months on the stage, and getting twenty guineas a week!"
CONSCIENTIOUS VISCOUNT: "Yes, and us only getting six after
ten years of it. I hate these beastly Dukes coming and spoiling the
profession!"
AMBITIOUS EARL: "Ugh! I hate all amateurs, hang 'em, taking
the bread out of one's mouth!"]
[Sidenote: _Idols of the 'Eighties_]
_Punch_, as I have so often insisted, was a Londoner first and
foremost, but he did not exclude the provinces from his survey. The
opening of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon in
1879 was a landmark in the history of the legitimate drama, and _Punch_
did not fail to acknowledge the strenuous local labour and large
local liberality which had carried to completion a worthy scheme for
commemorating the most memorable work ever wrought by mortal brain.
It was in the same year, again, that _Punch_ recorded with sympathy
and admiration the memorial performances given at Manchester for the
benefit of the widow and family of Charles Calvert, the actor-manager
"who did more for the elevation and development of the higher drama,
historical and imaginative, than any provincial manager on record,
and than any metropolitan managers, except Macready, Charles Kean
and Phelps." Phelps and Charles Mathews had both died in 1878, and
Buckstone in 1879. Mrs. Langtry, who had taken to the stage, is
advised to give up acting in 1882. In 1883 Mr. Anstey Guthrie's
immortal _Vice Versâ_ was dramatized and produced with Mr. Charles
Hawtrey as Mr. Bultitude. The evergreen veterans of to-day were already
advancing in fame and popularity. Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson had
appeared as Romeo in 1881. In 1884 the late Mr. Wilson Barrett,
encouraged by his successes in melodrama, essayed the rôle of Hamlet.
_Punch_ maliciously embodies his criticisms in a letter to Irving, then
touring in America, but the general tenor of his remarks is decidedly
reassuring to Irving. The long run of _Our Boys_ in 1877 was equalled
and eclipsed, after an initial failure, by the prodigious popularity
of _The Private Secretary_, also in 1884. Lady Bancroft died only the
other day; Sir Squire is still hale and hearty. Yet it is thirty-six
years ago since they resolved, while still at the zenith of their
popularity and in early middle age, to quit the scenes of their many
triumphs, and _Punch_, in his notice of their farewell performance,
says no more than the strict truth:--
The Bancrofts have done much for the Stage; in fact, the
_mise-en-scène_ at the houses where Comedy is played, owes its
present completeness entirely to them. They, and Mr. Hare with them,
introduced the natural style of acting, thereby supplanting the
theatrical tone and gestures of the old school, which Burlesques had
done good service in laughing off our Stage for ever.
The performance at Cambridge of the _Eumenides_ by "Messrs. Æschylus
and Verrall" in the same year is handled in a vein of friendly
facetiousness. _Punch_ found Sir Charles Stanford's music rather more
than worthy of the occasion, but thinks Æschylus and his very clever
collaborator might have shown more common sense and allowance for
modern feeling.
_Punch_ was less considerate in his treatment of the performance of
Shelley's _Cenci_ by the Shelley Society which had been founded by
"a Dr. Furnivall," the scholar and redoubtable controversialist whom
_Punch_ had already attacked in connexion with the Browning Society.
The performance was described by a member of the society as four hours
of monotonous horror:--
"The actors and actresses in the labour of love did all that could be
done; but the play is proved to be impossible, and so let us leave it
in the hope (shared by many of my fellow-members) that before another
'sixty years' it will be possible to debate the matter calmly, but
_not_ to put '_The Cenci_' on the Stage."
_Punch_ was less hopeful. He regarded "the literary disease of which
the Shelley Society may be regarded as an exemplar" as an ineradicable
malady.
[Sidenote: _"L'Assommoir" in French and English_]
Sir Frank Benson's productions of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The
Taming of the Shrew_ in 1890 come in for more commendation of the
scenic effects than the acting, but a favourable exception is made
in favour of the late Stephen Phillips, afterwards better known as
poet and dramatist. _Punch's_ notice of the late Sir Herbert Tree's
Hamlet in the summer of 1892 is a good specimen of discreetly veiled
disparagement. But it does not quite accord with Gilbert's famous
description, "funny without being vulgar," as _Punch_ considered some
of the new readings and by-play to be tasteless and grotesque. It was
this production that gave rise to that "desperate saying" that to solve
the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, all that was necessary was to let
Tree play Hamlet and then open the two graves and see which of the
mighty dead had turned.
It would be tedious to enumerate all the references to actors and
plays, famous or forgotten, which crowd the pages of _Punch_ in this
period; to quote them in full would be impossible. Toole was one of
his favourites. Boucicault was not, and excites satirical comment for
having written a letter to Disraeli in 1876, puffing his own play
_The Shaughraun_. A little earlier The Great Vance--immortalized
in Stevenson's _Wrong Box_--the "lion comique" of the music-halls,
is rapped over the knuckles for advertising his performances as
"patronized by the Prince and Princess of Wales." _Punch's_ notice of
Zola's _L'Assommoir_ when he saw it in Paris in May, 1879, reflects
a divided mind. He found it fascinating and intolerable. Gil-Naza's
acting as Coupeau was "wonderful, fearful, admirable, awful, infernal."
Yet "the moral to most of those who assisted, the other evening, at
_L'Assommoir_ was, 'I say! Dash it! It's too horrible! Let's go and
drink!' and the biggest drink I've had for a long time--much needed,
I assure you--was after seeing _L'Assommoir_." _Punch_ doubts whether
the play could ever be done in English, but it was produced at the
Princess's Theatre only a few weeks later in Charles Reade's version,
with Charles Warner as Coupeau. The notice in _Punch_ purports to be
written by a working man, who signs himself "one as is a-thinking
seriously of Taking the Pledge, but don't see his Way to it yet."
He acknowledges the terrible realism of Warner's acting, but his
testimonial is invalidated by the final sentences:--
Yes, Sir, _Drink_ is a moral drama if ever there was one. It ought to
do a deal of good. And as I think it over, I feel as I want a little
something just to take the taste on it out o' my mouth.
_Punch_ clearly did not believe in temperance propaganda on the stage.
Nor did he support the restriction of child performers, maintaining
in 1880 that the theatres at Christmas time were admirable infant
schools; "even for teaching," he was "open to back the Theatre, while
it lasts, against the Board School any day." There was much talk at
this time about dramatic schools, but _Punch_ refused to take the
movement seriously, preferring to give a burlesque list of lectures by
well-known actresses on aspects of acting entirely foreign to their own
styles. He joined in the protest against the abolition of the pit at
the Haymarket and the general raising of prices in the same year; and
Captain Shaw's Treatise on Fires in Theatres found in him an energetic
supporter of reform in respect of structural and other safeguards.
Laments over the degeneracy of pantomime and the decline of the red-hot
poker business still occur, but honourable exception is invariably made
on behalf of the famous Vokes family. He had at an early date described
the Drury Lane pantomime as "_Vokes et præterea nihil_." _Bluebeard_,
at Christmas, 1879, is called "Vokes's Entire." "The family is a
necessity at Drury Lane"; and then _Punch_ goes on to embroider his
text. Necessity has no Legs, but here the Vokes family have the pull
over the Mother of Invention--alluding to the high-kicking exploits of
Fred Vokes and other members of that engaging and high-spirited family.
If pantomime showed signs of decay, the "sacred lamp of Burlesque" was
burning brightly at the Gaiety with John Hollingshead as Lampadephoros
and the famous quartet--Nellie Farren, Kate Vaughan, Edward Terry and
Royce--as his chief hierophants. Miss Vaughan's secession in 1883,
chronicled in a graceful tribute, rendered possible the historic
question from the bench, "Who is Miss Connie Gilchrist?" but by 1892
she too had quitted the Gaiety to add histrionic lustre to the pages of
Debrett. In 1883 Miss Vesta Tilley was playing in pantomime at Drury
Lane; in 1884 Mrs. John Wood was singing "His Heart _was_ true to
Poll"; in 1886 the inauguration of the O.U.D.S. at Oxford introduced
Mr. Bourchier as Feste in _Twelfth Night_; in 1887 _Punch_ records the
_début_ of Miss Violet Vanbrugh.
[Sidenote: _More Gibes at Ibsen_]
Ibsen's _Pillars of Society_, produced at a matinée in July, 1888, is
compared by Punch with a melodrama performed at the "Old Vic" before it
became "a sort of frisky Coffee Palace," very much to the disadvantage
of Ibsen. In the old play the dialogue was crisp and to the point,
in the new it was "hopelessly dull." _Punch_ adds that Mr. William
Archer's translation seemed excellent, adding, "But what a pity he ever
learned Norwegian!" Ada Rehan, the famous Irish-American actress, made
her first appearance in London with Daly's company in the summer of
1890, but _Punch_, while delighted by her charming vivacity, thought
she was already too old to play _ingénue_ parts. Her successes in
Shakespearean comedy were to come later.
[Illustration: IBSEN IN BRIXTON
MRS. HARRIS: "Yes, William, I've thought a deal about it,
and I find I'm nothing but your Doll and Dicky Bird, and so I'm
going!"] Three familiar names greet us in the notices of the Christmas
pantomimes of 1891. Marie Lloyd, Dan Leno and Little Tich all appeared
in _Humpty Dumpty_, but the last-named receives the Benjamin's portion
of praise. "Why Marie?" asks _Punch_, who disliked these unnecessary
variants, which have since taken a more eccentric form in "Maudi,"
"Mai," and so forth.
The Court Theatre was drawing the town with its Triple Bill in the
spring of 1892, and _Punch_ did not spare his praise of the "Pantomime
Rehearsal" which, with Ellaline Terriss, Decima Moore, Weedon Grossmith
and Brandon Thomas in the leading parts, is pronounced to be "about
the very funniest thing to be seen in any London theatre." Gilbert's
brilliant Hamlet burlesque, _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern_, was for a
while included in the bill, and _Punch_ describes it as "an excellent
piece of genuine fun." It is all that and more. Gilbert never wrote
anything wittier than the passage in which Ophelia discusses the
various theories of the Prince's "mentality" and synthesizes them in
the conclusion:--
Hamlet is idiotically sane,
With lucid intervals of lunacy.
These were stirring years in the realm of music. To take only some of
the outstanding events, there was the Wagner Festival at the Albert
Hall in 1877, conducted by the composer, which led in due time to
something like a revolution in the repertory of grand opera in London;
there was the coming of Hans Richter, whose orchestral concerts lent a
fresh impetus to the cult of symphonic music already fostered by Manns
and Hallé; there were the visits of Rubinstein and Liszt in 1886; the
superb performance of Verdi's _Otello_ in 1887 by the Scala Company,
with Tamagno and Maurel in the cast; the advent of the de Reszkes and
Melba in 1889 and of Paderewski in 1890. Last and assuredly not least,
when the test of pleasure and popularity is applied, there was the long
and fruitful collaboration of Gilbert and Sullivan which began with
_Thespis, or the Gods grown Old_, in 1871, and continued till nearly
the close of the period under review.
[Sidenote: _Punch the Anti-Wagnerite_]
All these events and many others came under _Punch's_ notice, but
it must be confessed that his shortcomings as a critic are nowhere
so conspicuous as in the domain of music. It is true that in 1875 he
expressed a guarded admiration for _Lohengrin_: he found it good in
parts, like the curate's egg. "Though not melodious, it is certainly
most musically interesting and abundantly poetical." But the report
of his Bayreuth correspondent in 1876 is admittedly a bogus document,
compiled from German phrase-books in London, and tells us nothing about
the music, for the writer never went to Bayreuth. The Albert Hall
Festival is treated much in the same spirit of entirely irresponsible
burlesque. _Punch_ is determined at all costs to represent the Festival
as a carnival of "Wagnerian waggeries." When it was over he admitted
that many who went to scoff remained to praise. "The _Rhinegold_ is a
masterpiece," but he, is careful to add "this is not a discovery of
mine," and goes on to express his deliberate opinion that the Tetralogy
must inevitably be vulgarized by representation on the stage. "Such a
_mise-en-scène_ as the _Ring_ demands is impossible," and he turns with
obvious relief to discuss Patti in _Dinorah_ and the performance of
_Orphée aux Enfers_ at the Alhambra.
In 1882 _Punch_ attended the performances of the _Ring_, and after four
nights "deliberately" said, "Never again with you, _Wotan, Siegfried &
Co._" He found nothing new in the idea of leading motives: it was as
old as the oldest pantomime. A few weeks later _Punch_ heard _Tristan_
done at Drury Lane and was bored to extinction:--
Had it been by a young English composer, or an elderly English
composer of the Hanwellian School, it would not have been tolerated
for half an hour after its commencement. For ourselves, if of two
penances we had to choose one, either to sit out a long, dull sermon
in a stuffy church on an August afternoon, or to hear one Act of
_Tristan and Isolda_, we should unhesitatingly select the former,
where, at all events, there would be the certainty of a tranquil
repose, from which no cruel drum, bassoon, or violoncello, but only
the snoring of our own nose, could rouse us. That there are occasional
snatches of melody is undeniable, but a snatch here and there is not
the grasp of a master hand to hold an audience. Judicious selections
will always be welcome; but that, taken as a whole, it is the
embodiment of stupendous boredom, might be the verdict of all English
opera-goers who delight in the Operas of Rossini, Mozart, Meyerbeer,
Gounod, Verdi, Balfe, Wallace, Bizet, and we are not afraid to add,
even in these days of æsthetic mysticism, art-vagueness, and higher
cultchaw--Bellini.
_Punch_ then proceeds to "guy" the libretto and stage directions and
continues:--
This sort of music can never, in our lifetime at least, thank
goodness, become popular with the British public. It may, as Dr.
Johnson said of the violoncello performance, be wonderful, but we only
wish it were impossible. Wagner's lyrical-dramatic music requires
no operatic vocalists at all. Let there be a first-rate orchestra,
a book of the plot in hands of the audience, and tableaux vivants
or dissolving views to illustrate it--as illustration is still
necessary for the illiterate. To ourselves, speaking as mere laics
in the matter, with a fondness for tune, harmony, and good dramatic
situations, it seems that singing and acting are thrown away on such
vocal music and such tedious and unsavoury libretti. Richard Wagner's
Operas will be remembered when the _Barbiere_ and a few more trifles
are forgotten, but not till then.
And then Wagner inconsiderately went and died a few months later, and
_Punch_, who was never given to indulging in war-dances over his dead
enemies, printed not exactly a palinode, but a liberal acknowledgment
that this "arch-revolutionist" of the brood of "Demiurgus militant" was
a considerable figure. Given his temperament and aims, _Punch_ asks:--
What wonder
He brought the sword into mild Music's sphere,
And in the clangour of the hurtling spear,
The clashing mail, and the loud battle-thunder,
Missed, sometime, of the finer harmony
The still small voice, known of the subtler ear,
Which outlives all War's clarions? Year on year
May pass ere he is measured. Yet we see
The work of a strong shaper, one whose part
Was with new light to show a newer way.
He stripped the gewgaw'd shams of Opera,
Lord of two spheres, he wedded Art with Art,
And Music, sunned in brighter, larger fame,
May date its nobler dawn from Wagner's mighty name.
[Sidenote: _"The Beggar's Opera" in 1878_]
The splendid Indian summer of Verdi's genius which gave us _Aïda_,
_Otello_ and _Falstaff_ is only partially recognized. When Aïda was
produced in 1876 _Punch_ was more interested in Patti and Nicolini, the
magnificence of the mounting and the chatter of the boxes, than in the
music. In the _finale_ "the brass was everywhere, the voices nowhere."
_Punch_ was happier in dealing with _Carmen_, in which Nietzsche, after
he had abandoned Wagnerism, found the exemplification of his dictum
"_il faut Méditerraniser la musique_," and which has won the allegiance
of all schools. And it is interesting in view of the wonderful success
recently achieved by the revival of _The Beggar's Opera_ to read
_Punch's_ eulogies of Sims Reeves, when the famous tenor appeared at
Covent Garden as Captain Macheath in 1878. But here again he is more
interested in Sims Reeves's singing and acting than in the play or the
music:--
It was a treat. But what a stupid play! What a set of sordid, squalid,
ruffianly characters, all, except Polly Peachum, prettily played by
Madame Cave-Ashton, who obtained more than one encore. The chorus of
"Let us take the Road" was very effectively given. I should like to
see _The Beggar's Opera_ with a well remodelled plot, an efficient
cast, to include, of course, Mr. Sims Reeves (it would be nothing
at all without his Captain Macheath) and Madame Cave-Ashton, and
produced under such careful stage-management as was shown by Mr.
Hare in bringing out _Olivia_ at the Court Theatre. However, for the
present, _The Beggar's Opera_, which, I believe, was the result of a
considerable amount of "collaboration," is, as played the other night
at Covent Garden, good enough, by way of a musical treat, for Your
Representative.
What _Punch_ wished to see forty years ago has been achieved under the
inspiring direction of Mr. Nigel Playfair, though not exactly on the
lines indicated.
Cherishing an old-fashioned weakness for a tune, _Punch_ naturally
deplored the passing of Offenbach, one of the greatest tune-coiners
of the century. The memorial lines in October, 1880, are an admirable
summary of the qualities which made Offenbach the musical incarnation
of the unbridled gaiety of the Second Empire. But it is rather a
surprise to find an allusion to "Golden Schneider" in view of _Punch's_
earlier castigation of that ultra-vivacious lady. For the rest _Punch_
was still true to the tradition expressed in the avowal of the
Philistine who said he would rather hear Offenbach than Bach often.
Regret of a very different temper inspires the tribute to Jenny Lind,
_Punch's_ favourite singer, on her death in 1887. Forty years earlier
he had christened her "the Nightingale that sings in Winter," and
recognized her unfailing response to all charitable appeals:--
"Dear Jenny Lind!" So then his song addressed her
Who still is "Jenny Lind," and still is dear.
Though Genius praised, and Fashion's crowd caressed her,
She sank not, like some stars, below her sphere
Into those darkening mists
Whose taint the true and tender heart resists.
Her nature fame was powerless to soil,
Whom splendour hardened not, and puffery could not spoil.
How the crowd rushed and crushed, and cheered and clamoured,
Forty years syne, to hang upon her song!
Of _La Sonnambula's_ heroine enamoured,
Thrilled by the flute-like trillings sweet as strong
Of their dear Nightingale.
Amina, Lucia, Alice, each they'd hail
With fervent plaudits, in whose flush and stir
Love of her silvery song was blent with love of her.
And each well earned! The crowd would press and jostle
To hear their favourite warbler, from whose throat,
Clear as the lark, and mellow as the throstle,
The limpid melody would soar and float.
Now like a shattered lute,
The Nightingale who sang in winter's mute;
But long remembered that pure life shall be,
To Music dedicate and vowed to Charity.
[Illustration: THE LATEST FASHION IN MUSIC AT HOME
"By Mendelssohn, is it not, Miss Prigsby?"
"We believe so."
"One of the 'Songs Without Words'?"
"Possibly. We nevah listen to Mendelssohn."
"Indeed! You don't admire his music?"
"We do not."
"May I ask why?"
"Because there are no wrong notes in it!"
(_Our gallant colonel is "out of it" again._)]
[Sidenote: _Jean and Edouard de Reszke_]
The idols of the operatic world in _Punch's_ earlier days were mainly
Italian or trained in Italy. In the period which we have now reached
no single nation retained a monopoly of "stars." Madame Nordica, who
appeared in 1890, was an American, Madame Melba was Australian-born of
Scottish descent, and the two de Reszkes, Jean and Edouard, the chief
glories of many recurrent seasons at Covent Garden, were Poles. A
hundred years earlier Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, a famous amateur and critic,
declared that the French opera singers were excruciating to listen
to. In the late 'eighties and 'nineties the best singing was heard
from those who had been trained in Paris. The de Reszkes in particular
helped to achieve what _Punch_ had declared to be impossible--they
made Wagner popular among the fashionable opera-goers by singing his
later works as they had never been sung before, turning to them at the
zenith of their powers and reputation, a service to art which more
self-protective singers have sedulously avoided. Jean de Reszke was
great in _Faust_, _Roméo et Juliette_, _Aïda_, _Le Prophète_, but he
was greater as Siegfried and Tristan. And so with his brother Edouard,
when his Mephistopheles or his Friar Laurence are compared with his
Wotan, his Hagen or his King Marke. I have spoken elsewhere of the
disastrous National Opera House scheme of Mapleson and the _fiasco_
of the Royal English Opera House in Shaftesbury Avenue. _Ivanhoe_,
Sullivan's solitary excursion into the domain of grand opera, which was
written for the opening of the last-named building, did not achieve
more than a _succès d'estime_. _Punch's_ notice is friendly but not
enthusiastic. When it gave place to the _Basoche_, he summed up the
situation facetiously but shrewdly enough under the heading, "English
Opera as She isn't sung":--
It seems impossible to support a Royal English Opera House with
its special commodity of English Opera, that is, Opera composed by
an Englishman to an Englishman's libretto, and played by English
operatic singers. _Ivanhoe_, a genuine English Opera, by a genuine
English Composer (with an Irish name), produced with great éclat,
has, after a fair run and lots of favour, been Doylécarté, in order
to make room for the _Basoche_, an essentially French Opera, by a
French Composer and Librettist, done, of course, into English, so
as to be "understanded of the people." The _Basoche_ has "caught
on," and our friends in front, including Composer, Librettist, and
Middleman--Druriolanus, who bought it, and Doyly Carty, who bought it
of Sir Druri--are all equally pleased and satisfied. Considered as a
matter of business, what signifies the nationality as long as the spec
pays?--_tout est là_.
"Druriolanus" was _Punch's_ ingenious _agnomen_ for Augustus Harris,
who, beginning as a melodramatic actor, had blossomed into a manager
and operatic _impresario_ and was knighted in 1891. It was at the
close of the same year that Mascagni's _Cavalleria Rusticana_ was
first produced in England, scored a success which the composer has
never succeeded in recapturing, and established the tyranny of the
"Intermezzo," which is not even yet overpast. Verga's powerful story of
love and revenge, on which the libretto is based, counted for much, but
the crude emotional vigour of the score is not to be denied. _Punch_
adored the "Intermezzo," speaks of the "charm" of the music, but says
nothing of the plot. The Italian Company in 1891 were only moderately
good; Madame Calvé's marvellously tragic impersonation of Santuzza,
in the season of 1892, is inseparably associated in the minds of
middle-aged opera-goers with Mascagni's solitary triumph.
[Illustration: AN IRISH MELODY TRANSPLANTED
GERMAN TENOR WARBLES:--
"I'll not leaf zee, sow lone von,
To bine on ze Schtem!
Zins ze lôfly are Szchleebingk,
Coh! szchleeeb sow fiz dem!
Zos ghyntly I schgadder
Zy leafs on the bet,
Vair zy maids of ze karrten
Lie schentless and tet!"
]
[Sidenote: _Gilbert and Sullivan_]
When we turn from grand to comic opera, the names of Gilbert and
Sullivan confront us throughout the entire period under review in a
light that sheds a still undiminished lustre on native art. Of each
of the two partners in this long and fruitful collaboration it may
be said, in the often quoted phrase, that if not absolutely great he
was great in his _genre_. Between them they created an entirely new
type of light opera. Moreover, it was an entirely English or British
product in its spirit and structure, and relied entirely on British
performers. _Punch_ welcomed the venture from the outset, and in 1880,
in some verses modelled on the Judge's song in _Trial by Jury_, and
anticipating Sullivan's knighthood in 1883, he happily summarizes
the career of the composer, with whom, by the way, Burnand had been
associated in _Cox and Box_ in 1866:--
As a boy I had such a musical bump,
And its size so struck Mr. Helmore,
That he said, "Though you sing those songs like a trump,
You shall write some yourself that will sell more."
So I packed off to Leipsic, without _looking back_,[13]
And returned in such classical fury,
That I sat down with Handel and Haydn and Bach--
And turned out _Trial by Jury_.
But W.S.G. he jumped for joy
As he said, "Though the job dismay you,
Send Exeter Hall to the deuce, my boy;
It's the _haul_ with me that'll pay you."
And we hauled so well, mid jeers and taunts
That we've settled, spite all temptations,
To stick to our Sisters and our Cousins and our Aunts--
And continue our pleasant relations.
[Footnote 13: The title of one of Sullivan's most popular songs.]
In 1885, on the occasion of the production of the _Mikado_, which
_Punch_ bracketed with _Pinafore_ as the best of all the series, there
are some excellent observations on the dual autocracy exerted to
admiration at the Savoy:--
Rarely, if ever, have Composer and Author produced piece after piece
under conditions so favourable to success as have Messrs. Gilbert and
Sullivan at the Savoy. They are their own Managers, the theatre is
practically theirs, the Members of the Company, from the soprano and
tenor down to the latest novice in the chorus, or among the "extras,"
depend mainly, if not entirely, upon the Composer and Author for
their engagements. This Beaumont and Fletcher of Eccentric Opera can
order rehearsals when they choose, can command the scene-painters and
property-men, and, what is much more to the point, be obeyed. They
have jointly and separately the authority of the Centurion: the Author
is the autocrat of the acting and the Savoy stage generally; the
Composer is the autocrat of the music, vocal and instrumental.
[Sidenote: _The Savoy Autocrats_]
At other theatres an Author may try to assume the autocrat, but,
unless he can be absolutely independent, and able to take his
piece out of the theatre without damaging his chance of earning a
livelihood, the attempt is only a ridiculous and palpable failure.
True that times have changed, considerably for the better, since
Albert Smith said that "there was only one person in the theatre lower
than the call-boy, and that was the Author," yet, in spite of much
improvement, a young Dramatist will still sympathize with the spirit
of Albert Smith's observation; and, ordinarily, the most experienced
Playwright, if not, as I have said, absolutely independent, has, in
almost every instance, to accommodate himself to the exigencies of
the theatre, and to the tempers of the Actors. From the moment he
has a piece in rehearsal, there is no peace for him on the Stage. He
is promised what he will never obtain; he has to accept just what he
can get; he has to humour the ideas of others and sacrifice his own;
he has to make the best of unintentional mistakes and deliberately
intentional alterations; he has to accede to the Manager's date for
producing the piece, and its first night of public performance is, in
the majority of cases, really and truly only a dressed rehearsal, and,
in some cases, it is the first real rehearsal the piece has had.
Now nothing of this sort ought to take place at the Savoy. There
Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan have only themselves to please, only
themselves and their piece to consider; they are monarchs of all they
Savoy--I should say "survey"--they are masters of the situation, and
if they allow any piece of theirs to be produced in a hurry, with
incomplete appointments, with inappropriate scenery, faulty dresses,
or after insufficient rehearsal, on their own heads be it and on
no one else's. The Actor-singers are only intelligent puppets in
their Showman's hands, and the more faithfully they carry out the
instructions given them by their masters, the greater their individual
and collective chance of success.
It delights me to see the precision of the action on the Stage of the
Savoy, the result of a carefully-thought-out plan and well-regulated
drill. The principals have been judiciously selected for the work,
and they are suited by the two clever fellow-workers who, having
taken their measure to a nicety, give them just what they can do,
and no more; and who insist on their original conceptions being
executed exactly according to their ideas. The result is that the
ensemble is about the most effective thing in London--or in Paris for
that matter--because the individuality of the Actor-singer is not
destroyed, but is judiciously made use of, and worked up, as valuable
material for the character he has to represent.
_Patience_ in 1881 specially appealed to _Punch_ because it was aimed
against the æsthetes. His general appreciation of the Savoy Operas was,
however, tempered by criticism. For example, he pronounces _Iolanthe_
in 1882 to be "not within a mile of _Pinafore_ and not a patch upon
_Patience_." _The Gondoliers_ in 1890 is placed third in order of
excellence after the _Mikado_ and _Pinafore_. The unfortunate temporary
estrangement between the collaborators which led to the severance of
their partnership in the same year, and which was alleged to have grown
out of a dispute over a carpet, is treated in "A Chapter of Dickens
up to Date," with Gilbert as Mrs. Gamp and Sullivan as Mrs. Prig.
_Punch's_ view of the merits of the dispute may be gathered from the
fact that he gives the last word to Mrs. Prig, who, after alluding
to a tempest in a teapot, observes: "Wich I don't believe there's
either rhyme or reason in sech an absurd quarrel!" Yet when the _Court
Circular_ of March 9, 1891, recorded the performance at Windsor Castle
of _The Gondoliers_, "a Comic Opera composed by Sir Arthur Sullivan,"
with full details of the programme, performers, etc., but no mention of
Gilbert at all, _Punch_ rubs in this conspicuous absence in his most
sarcastic vein.
Mr. D'Oyly Carte, it seems, was presented to the Queen after the
performance, and _Punch_ goes on:--
Did R. D'Oyly think of mentioning that "the words" were by W.S.G.?
And then it is told how D'Oyly refused to take any payment for the
performance. Noble, generous-hearted, large-minded and liberal D'Oyly!
Sir Arthur Courtly Sullivan's name was to the Bill, and so his consent
to this extra act of generosity may be taken for granted. But what
said Sir Brian de Bois Gilbert? By the merry-maskins, but an he be not
pleased, dub me Knight Samingo! Will D'Oyly be dubbed Knight? And what
sort of Knight? Well, remembering a certain amusing little episode
in the more recent history of the Savoy Theatre, why not a "Carpet
Knight"?
If _Punch_ kept most of his friendships in good repair, it must be
admitted that he also displayed on occasion a positive genius for
impish malice.
[Sidenote: _Liszt, Rubinstein, Pachmann_]
Among the musical celebrities who visited us in these years _Punch_ had
a special word for Joachim, to whom England was almost a second home,
and Madame Schumann, whose portrait with that of the great violinist
appears in 1881. M. Pachmann's performance at a concert in 1883 is
described with more fidelity than reverence:--
Then came a M. Vladimir de Pachmann, who, in consequence of his long
hair, and a bulkiness about his waist and coat-tails suggestive
of concealed fish-bowls, to be presently produced from under a
handkerchief, I at first set down as a Conjurer. He wasn't, however,
being a Pianist of considerable skill, with an overpowering propensity
for getting the most out of every note, and listening in rapt
admiration to its dying away in the distance, and then slowly raising
his left hand as if pronouncing a blessing on the instrument as he
went along.
Liszt and Rubinstein (who once said that compared with Liszt all other
pianists, including himself, were mere wood-choppers) both visited
England in 1886--Rubinstein still in the full possession of his
powers, which he displayed in his remarkable cycle of seven historical
recitals; Liszt, full of years and honours, but claiming attention as
a composer, not as a performer, though he did play once or twice in
private. The mention of the performance of his oratorio _St. Elizabeth_
in St. James's Hall comes home to the present writer, who was a humble
member of the chorus. _Punch's_ notice is an adroit blending of
facetiousness and respect. In his Postscript he observes, "How tired
Liszt must be of hearing his own music! Fancy Pears being treated for
a whole week to nothing but his own Soap!" I wonder whether _Punch_
knew, what was the fact, that Liszt fell asleep in the performance of
his own oratorio. Three months later he died at Bayreuth, having never
recovered from the exhaustion caused by the lionizing hospitality of
his English admirers. Rubinstein survived his visit for eight years.
_Punch_ was not far out in describing him in 1886 as the first player
in the world. He was then fifty-seven, and his playing of Beethoven's
Op. 57--the _Appassionata_ Sonata--beggared description. Rubinstein
used to say that in these recitals he played enough wrong notes to make
a symphony; he was at times violent and extravagant and took strange
liberties with the text. But here he was Titanic, and _Punch's_ welcome
was well deserved, though the critic erred in ranking Rubinstein the
composer on the same plane with Rubinstein the performer. It is amusing
to read, in the reference to the last recital, that the programme
included works by
--such small contemporary deer as Liadoff, Balakireff,
Rimsky-Korsakoff, and César Cui. My gracious! What names! Familiar,
too, don't they seem? In the same category the patronymic of
Tschaikowski rings refreshingly as that of an old friend.
The spelling of foreign musicians' names had always been a stumbling
block to _Punch_, and I have revised his versions of two of the
composers mentioned above, but by 1886 he had at least learned to spell
Liszt correctly.
Hans Richter had shared the duties of conductor at the Wagner Festival
of 1877 with the great composer himself. The concerts which made his
name a household word in the musical world began in 1879. His leonine
appearance and Olympian calm, his wonderful memory, which enabled him
to conduct the great masterpieces, classical and modern, without a
score; and the dignity and authority of his interpretations soon gained
for him an admiration which survived his repudiation in 1914 of all the
honours and distinctions conferred on him by the country in which for
many years he had made his home. There are still a good many orchestral
players amongst us who have a warm corner in their hearts for the
"Doctor," and a profound respect for his mastery of the high art of
conducting. His quaint sayings are legion, and ought to be collected.
One of the best is his rebuke of his band at a rehearsal of the
_Venusberg_ music: "Gentlemen, you play it as if you were teetotallers,
_which you are not_."
_Punch_ acclaimed him as a master in 1886, and his tribute is all the
more remarkable because it is coupled with an unexpected acknowledgment
of the genius of Brahms, whose Fourth Symphony, a very tough nut to
crack in those days, is contrasted with the "howling balderdash" of
other moderns. Paderewski, who made his first appearance in the spring
of 1890, is handsomely extolled. His first concert, which the present
writer attended, only attracted a meagre audience, but the effect on
his hearers was electrifying and the _crescendo_ of popularity was
immediate and abiding. _Punch_, of course, made puns on his name, but
in these years he was so consistent an offender that he might very well
have appropriated the old doggerel confession:--
If for every pun I shed
I were to be punishèd,
I could not find a puny shed
Wherein to hide my punnish head.
[Sidenote: _The Plague of Prodigies_]
London has never been free from the plague of prodigies, but the
epidemic was acute in 1888, and _Punch_ treated the matter in a style
which has a strangely familiar ring--when allowance is made for the
usual puns:--
That there is a regular flood of these musical prodigies threatening
to sweep over every concert-hall platform, there is not a doubt; and
while the public rush in applauding crowds to welcome them, it is not
easy to see where it is to stop. As long as the fever lasts, their
parents, whatever their weight, may be counted upon to keep hurrying
them to the "scales," and set them down to the key-board practising
till they are often literally laid on their _Bachs_. Meantime, while
the infants struggle, it is becoming a serious question for the
regular adult performers, who will find their occupation gone, and
certainly not know what to do with themselves, if the former are to
have it all their own way. For them, whatever the public may think of
it, the matter will undoubtedly be no mere "child's play," and they
will surely hail any signs indicating that this recent determined
invasion of the concert-room by the nursery is at all on the wane,
with every expression of unfeigned delight.
The subject is handled more judiciously in one of the admirable "_Voces
Populi_" series; best of all in Du Maurier's "Happy Thought":--
MRS. TRIPLETS: "And how is your concert getting on, Herr
Pfeiffer?"
EMINENT VIOLINIST: "Pudiful, as far as de Brogramme is
goncerned--Beethoven--Schumann--Brahms! But ze dickets don't zell!!
Ach! Py ze vay, Mrs. Triplets, you don't happen to haf zoch a zing
as a Moozicalish Infantile Venomenon apout you zat you could lend me
for ze occasion. Ja? Gonzertina! Pantscho! Pones! Gomb! Anyzing vill
blease ze Pritish Boblic, if ze berformer is onter vife years olt!"
_Punch_ was in his element when Eduard Strauss--son of Johann the
elder, and brother of the most famous of all the Viennese Waltz-Kings,
Johann Strauss of the _Blue Danube_ and the _Fledermaus_--brought his
band to the Inventions Exhibition in 1885. In these days waltzing
was still popular, and on the page overleaf I give two phases in its
evolution as recorded by the pen of Du Maurier. Eduard Strauss wrote
many delightful waltzes, and was an inspiring if somewhat exuberant
conductor. _Punch_, who had sat under Jullien in his boyhood, compares
the methods of the two, and pronounces the performance of dance-music
by Strauss's band to be a revelation. "It unvulgarizes even the polka,
and, from time to time, imparts an elevating tone to that ungraceful
and prosaic dance." Finally _Punch_ rewrites C. F. Adams's "Leedle
Yawcob Strauss" in honour of the Waltz-King:--
He hops und schumps und marks der time,
Und shows such taste and nous,
Dot dere's to equal him no vun,
Mine clever Eduard Strauss.
* * * * *
He dakes der viddle in his hands,
Und he schust blay it, too!
He dake der schtick to beat der time,
Mine gracious, dot vos drue.
Und ven der beeble hear dot band
Dey at each oder glance,
Den vag deir heads, den move deir veet,
Und vish dot dey might dance.
Und ven dey blay der "Danube Blue,"
Vich vos vor an encore,
Dey velcome it as zomtings new,
Und call for it vonce more.
Der beeble listen as dey blay
As guiet as a mouse,
Dere's none vor dance tunes any day
Like leedle Eduard Strauss.
The cult of Berlioz, started by Hallé at Manchester in 1880, was now
in full swing, and his _Faust_ figures constantly in the programmes
of choral concerts and festivals, with Henschel and Santley (who had
abandoned opera for oratorio), Mary Davies and Edward Lloyd in the
principal rôles. _Punch_ did not overlook the provincial festivals in
the days when the standard quartet was made up of Mmes. Albani and
Patey--whose likeness to Handel was noted by Samuel Butler--Edward
Lloyd and Santley. He was present at Leeds in 1886 when Sir Arthur
Sullivan conducted his _Golden Legend_, and Stanford his exhilarating
_Revenge_. Sullivan is saluted as "the English Offenbach," a somewhat
two-edged compliment, though meant sincerely. At Gloucester, in 1889,
_Punch_ praises the music of Parry's _Judith_, but damns the libretto:
"_Punch_ and _Judith_ can never agree." No subject, sacred or profane,
was secure from _Punch's_ puns. _The Golden Legend_ and _The Prodigal
Son_, both by Sullivan, were included in the programme at Gloucester,
and are turned to characteristic account in the following comment:--
The _Golden Legend_ is a traditional tale of a fortune amassed at
Gloucester by an hotel-keeper during the Festival week; while _The
Prodigal Son_ is the sad story of a young man who, in spite of his
father's warnings, lived an entire week at a Gloucester Inn.
[Illustration: WHAT OUR WALTZING IS COMING TO
DISTINGUISHED FOREIGNER: "Voulez-vous me faire l'honneur de
Danser cette Valse avec moi, Meess Matilde?"
MISS MATILDA (_an accomplished waltzer_): "Avec plaiseer,
Monsieur. Quelle est voter Forme--le '_Lurch de Liverpool_,' le '_Dip
de Boston_,' ou le '_Kick de Ratcliffe Highway_'?"
(We have feebly tried to represent the "Ratcliffe Highway Kick," which
at present is only danced in the very best society, and confers a great
air of distinction on the performers.)]
[Illustration: STUDIES IN EVOLUTION
This is not an example of the Struggle for Existence--it is merely
"The Valse," as we have lately seen it danced at Suburban Subscription
Balls, etc.]
The Royal College of Music was founded in 1882. George Grove, the
first director, the "dear 'G'" of countless friends in all walks of
life, was an old ally, and the venture, in which the Prince of Wales
took from the very outset an active and energetic part, received
_Punch's_ benediction, though an element of genial chaff is not absent
in the picture of the Prince conducting his orchestra of royal and
noble minstrels, with the Duke of Edinburgh as first violin. _Punch_
showed a truer insight into the potentialities of the new institution
when he suggested that it might help to solve the problem of National
Opera. By its annual operatic performances so admirably directed for
some thirty years by Sir Charles Stanford, and by the training of
first-class instrumentalists and singers, the R.C.M. has done an amount
of spade-work which has more than fulfilled _Punch's_ prediction.
[Sidenote: _Popular Songs_]
On the educative value of the music-halls _Punch_ in earlier years
had maintained an attitude of scepticism, not to say hostility. He
had been careful to draw invidious distinctions between the vulgarity
of music-hall comedians and the entertainments provided by the German
Reeds and Corney Grain, in whom he recognized "one in ten thousand"
and a true follower of John Parry, the father and perhaps the greatest
of all musical entertainers, whose _vis comica_, allied to unfailing
good taste and reinforced by remarkable musicianship, had won the
admiration of Lablache and Malibran. I have noted elsewhere _Punch's_
disparagement of the efforts to improve the music-halls. He displays
a certain lukewarm approval of the prospectus of the "Coffee Music
Hall Company, Limited," issued in 1879 under the auspices of Lord
and Lady Cowper, Mr. and Mrs. Cowper-Temple, Sir Charles Trevelyan
and Canon Duckworth; the names of Mr. and Mrs. German Reed and Sir
Jules Benedict, however, inspired him with more confidence than their
aristocratic co-patrons.
The popular songs of the hour seldom failed to attract _Punch's_
vigilant censure. In 1887 "Two Lovely Black Eyes" enchanted the
million. It was well parodied in the series of "Popular Songs Resung"
by "Miss Virginia Bowdler" in 1891, and in 1889 _Punch_ published his
excellent "Model Music-Hall Songs." The song that broke his heart in
1891 was "Hi-tiddly-hi-ti"; in 1892 a "Melancholy Muser" is plunged
into despair by the "Ta-ra-ra" boom:--
I am shrouded in impenetrable gloom-de-ay,
For I feel I'm being driven to my doom-de-ay,
By an aggravating ditty
Which I don't consider witty;
And they call the horrid thing, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!"
Every 'bus-conductor, errand-boy, and groom-de-ay,
City clerk, and cheeky crossing-sweep with broom-de-ay
Makes my nervous system bristle
As he tries to sing or whistle
That atrocious and absurd "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!"
So I sit in the seclusion of my room-de-ay,
And deny myself to all--no matter whom-de-ay--
For I dread a creature coming
Whose involuntary humming
May assume the fatal form, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!"
Oh, I fear that when the Summer roses bloom-de-ay,
You will read upon a well-appointed tomb-de-ay:
"Influenza never lick'd him,
But he fell an easy victim
To that universal scourge--'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'"
The amazing popularity of Mr. Albert Chevalier's coster songs is
acknowledged in 1892, but _Punch_ hardly does justice to the talents of
the creator of what was virtually a new and specialized type of comic
song heavily larded with sentiment.
HEROES AND WORTHIES
In the course of these chapters mention has not infrequently been made
of the homage paid by _Punch_ to his special heroes and heroines.
Memorial verses had always been a feature of the paper, and in the
beginning of this period they assumed formidable dimensions: at
its close there was a welcome reaction towards brevity; but in the
following anthology I have not always quoted these tributes in full,
preferring to extract the stanzas or lines which seemed to me to come
nearest the mark in truth of portraiture or felicity of expression.
Thus, while other features of Charles Kingsley's work in life and
letters are noted in the verses printed on his death in 1875, his
achievement in the domain of historical romance is much the most
happily treated:--
He raised strong Saxon Hereward from death
In his grey shroud of mist from mere and fen;
Called up the England of Elizabeth,
With Drake and Raleigh, chief of Devon men.
To 1878 belong the lines on the "Christian athlete" Selwyn, Bishop of
New Zealand and afterwards of Lichfield:--
At length from work he rests, and to the bier
His good deeds follow him, and good men's love;
And one true Bishop less we reckon here,
And one good angel more they count above.
The epitaph on Lord John Russell, who died three weeks after his golden
wedding in 1878, applauds his consistency but is not memorable, though
he is well described as a fighter for freedom "in spite of what was
done in Freedom's name."
The lines on the great John Lawrence in July, 1879, contain one good
stanza:--
A simple mannered, rude and rugged man,
But true and wise and merciful and just.
Of all these monuments, when all we scan,
Which rises o'er more justly honoured dust?
[Sidenote: _Rowland Hill, Stanley, and Darwin._]
Rowland Hill, always one of _Punch's_ special heroes, was buried in the
Abbey in September of the same year. Here _Punch's_ best tribute is in
prose, when he speaks of him as
One of the greatest benefactors to his country and to the civilized
world that it ever produced; now inhabiting an abode among the band of
departed worthies who in this life were heroes and saints and bards of
the better sort:--
_Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes_.
The verses on Dean Stanley in July, 1881, are not quoted in his _Life_
by Lord Ernle, so I make no excuse for printing them here:--
With clear, calm eye he fronted Faith, and she,
Despite the clamorous crowd,
Smiled, knowing her soul-loyal votary
At no slave's altar bowed.
With forward glance beyond polemic scope
He scanned the sweep of Time,
And everywhere changed looks with blue-eyed Hope,
Victress o'er doubt and crime.
But inward turning, he, of gentle heart,
And spirit mild as free,
More gladly welcomed, as life's better part,
The rule of Charity.
_Punch's_ most generous acknowledgment of the genius of Charles Darwin
was published in 1877:--
THREE ILLUSTRATIONS OF A THEORY
Though dogmatists and dullards long opposed
His Theory with venomous persistence,
Darwin may now consider it has closed
Its--"Struggle for existence."
To calm research, not fierce polemic raid,
Truth yields her secrets. After fair inspection
The age twixt Science and her foes has made
A--"Natural selection."
Thou canst not, Zealotry, as blind as hot,
Truth's champion slay, however hard thou hittest.
Darwin outlives detraction. Is this not
"Survival of the fittest"?
When Darwin died in April, 1882, _Punch_ had entered on a phase in
which the claims of science to solve the riddle of the universe excited
his misgiving, and his obituary lines are of a non-committal order,
save for one admirable couplet:--
Recorder of the long Descent of Man
And a most living witness of his rise.
There are no reserves in his valediction to Henry Fawcett in November,
1884:--
No braver conquest o'er ill fortune's flout
Our age has seen than his who held straight on,
Though the great God-gift from his days was gone,
"And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out"--
Held on with genial stoutness, seeing more
Than men with sight undarkened, but with mind
Through prejudice and Party bias blind.
Another statesman of equal fearlessness and independence was W. E.
Forster; but here the whole virtue of _Punch's_ salutation in April,
1886, is summed up in the two lines:--
A sturdy lover of a sturdy land,
He served it, zeal at heart and life in hand.
I pass over the "In Memoriam" lines on the good Lord Shaftesbury in the
previous year. They render full justice to his splendid and life-long
service on behalf of the "helpless thralls of trade" and the "all
unchildlike children" "victims of modern Molochs," "all who creep or
fall on poverty's rough road or crime's steep slope"; but they are
otherwise laboured and diffuse. Sincerity is no guarantee of literary
excellence. _Punch_ shows to greater advantage in the lines on Newman
in August, 1890, who is lauded, not as a great Cardinal nor as one
Above all office and all state,
Serenely wise, magnanimously great;
Not as the pride of Oriel, or the Star
Of this host or of that in creed's hot war,
But as the noble spirit, stately, sweet,
Ardent for good without fanatic heat,
Gentle of soul, though greatly militant,
Saintly, yet with no touch of cloistral cant;
Him England honours, and so bends to-day
In reverent grief o'er Newman's glorious clay.
[Sidenote: _Lord Granville and W. H. Smith_]
Two statesmen, widely differing in birth, temperament and character,
are commemorated in 1891. Of Lord Granville _Punch_ writes:--
Bismarckian vigour, stern and stark
As Brontë's self, was not his dower;
Not his to steer a storm-tost bark
Through waves that whelm, and clouds that lower.
Temper unstirred, unerring tact
Were his. He could not "wave the banner,"
But he could lend to steely act
The softly silken charm of manner.
Mr. W. H. Smith was a much harder subject for eulogy, for he was not a
"dæmonic genius," an orator, or a romantic figure, but simply a good
plain honest servant of his country. Yet _Punch's_ verses, if not
inspired by high poetic rapture, are something more than adequate in
their appreciation of Mr. W. H. Smith's solid qualities:--
A capable, clear-headed, modest toiler,
Touched with no egoist taint,
To Duty sworn, the face of the Despoiler
Made him not fear or faint.
O'erworn, o'erworked, with smiling face, though weary,
The tedious task he plied;
Sagacious, courteous, ever calm and cheery,
Unsoured by spleen or pride.
As unprovocative as unpretentious,
Skilful though seeming slow;
Unmoved by impulse of conceit contentious
To risk success for show.
O rare command of gifts, which, common branded,
Are yet so strangely rare!
Selflessness patient, judgment even-handed,
And spirit calmly fair!
To turn from grave to gay, I may round off this collection with two
zoological elegies. When "Jumbo," the famous elephant at the Zoo, whose
purchase by Barnum and departure from London had provoked a grotesque
explosion of sentimentality, was killed by a railway accident in
America in 1885, Punch recorded his decease in the following epigram:--
Alas, poor Jumbo! Here's the fruit
Of faithless Barnum's greed of gain;
How sad that so well-trained a brute
Should owe his exit to a train!
The elegy on Charles Jamrach, the celebrated naturalist and
menagerie-keeper of St. George's-in-the-East, who died in September,
1891, at the age of seventy-six, was better deserved. Charles
Jamrach, the most notable of the dynasty which for three-quarters of
a century enjoyed a practical monopoly of the trade in wild animals
in this country, was a "stout fellow": Frank Buckland describes his
single-handed struggle with a runaway tiger in 1857; he appears in the
D.N.B.; and _Punch_, in his lines on "The King of the Beasts," after
describing the lamentations of the animals at the Zoo, ends up on a
note of genuine regret:--
O Jamrach! O Jamrach! Woe's stretched on no sham rack
Of metre that mourns you sincerely;
E'en that hard nut o' natur, the great Alligator,
Has eyes that look red, and blink queerly.
Mere "crocodile's tears," some may snigger, but jeers
Must disgust at a moment so doleful;
For Jamrach the brave, who has gone to his grave,
All our sorrow's sincere as 'tis soulful!
PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.4.
_A complete Index will be found in the Fourth Volume._