Miss Maud Allan had not yet been ousted from her eminence by the

Russian Ballet and by real dancing, and the repercussion of the cult of

the "all-but-altogether" on fashionable costume is well satirized by

_Punch_ in this year. By reducing materials to an irreducible minimum

this new mania, as _Punch_ logically argues, was likely to be ruinous

to trade as well as to railway porters and carriers, since large trunks

were no longer necessary and a whole wardrobe could be carried in a

handbag or suitcase. Another view of the situation is expressed in the

comment of the wife of the frugal Scot who had protested against the

idea of her taking to this "awfu' gear": "Hoots, mon! Dinna ye see

it's just made wi' aboot hauf the material." Conflicting tendencies

can always be simultaneously illustrated in the vagaries of feminine

fashion, for along with this alarming "skimpiness" went the cult of

huge fur head-dresses and muffs with animals' muzzles thereon. In the

lines quoted above the arrival of the "hobble" or "harem" skirt is

foreshadowed. In 1910 this strange Oriental monstrosity is ridiculed in

the picture of the girl hopping to catch her train, as running was out

of the question, and again in the comment of the navvy who feels that

_he_ is at last in the fashion with his knee-straps.

[Illustration: THE SPARTAN MOTHER]

[Sidenote: _The Perversities of Mode_]

The progress of fashion in the decade 1901-1911 is well illustrated in

the parallel groups given in the latter year and showing the change

from homely comfort to aggressive scantiness. Even better is the

admirable representation--it is hardly a caricature--of the old and new

types of fashion plate; the former insipid and simpering lay figures,

the latter sinister modern Messalinas. Beyond an increasing tendency

to extravagance and eccentricity and the general use of paint there is

little to note in the remaining years of this period. The brief reign

of the "pannier" skirt impelled _Punch_, under the heading of "Pockets

at last," to indicate how use might here be combined with so-called

ornament. The big-hat craze continued; the habit of poking the head

forward--noted in the verses on the "Directoire" style--became so

pronounced that "backbones were out of fashion" and an erect deportment

made a woman "look all wrong"; while the inconsistent perversity of

winter fashions is satirized in the lady with her bodice slit down

to the diaphragm walking with a gentleman in a heavy overcoat and a

thick muffler; and again in the "Spartan mother," swathed in furs,

accompanied by her hatless, bare-legged children. Lastly, on the

very eve of the War, _Punch_ gives a pictorial table of the relative

importance of the persons engaged in the production of a revue. The

costumier heads the list: at the other end are the composer and a group

of authors.

LETTERS AND JOURNALISM

In letters, as in life, the passing of "the old order" was already

apparent at the opening of the period under review in this volume. For

in 1892 the author of the lines immortally associated with the phrase

himself passed away, full of years and honours. _Punch_ had always been

a Tennysonian, even in the days when the Laureate was still looked upon

as an innovator. He had given Tennyson the hospitality of his columns

in 1846 to retort on Bulwer Lytton, who had attacked "School-miss

Alfred" in _The New Timon_. Finally, when Tennyson was laid to rest in

the Abbey, _Punch_ saluted him without reserve as the chief glory of

Victorian minstrelsy. The memorial verses are too long to quote, for

_Punch_ in his elegiac moods was still inclined to prolixity, but they

deal adequately with the spirit and influence, the consummate art,

and the fervent patriotism of one who, after various fluctuations of

prestige, is even now being re-discovered by Georgian critics.

The vacant laureateship was not filled till the close of 1895, when the

appointment of Mr. Alfred Austin by Lord Salisbury unloosed a flood

of ridicule. In the cartoon "Alfred the Little" _Punch_ depicted a

diminutive figure, standing on tip-toe, as he hangs his lyre on the

walls of the Temple of the Muses. The laurelled bust of Tennyson is

shown in the interior, while outside the figures of Sir Edwin Arnold

and Sir Lewis Morris are seen dissembling their disappointment. A few

weeks later the inclusion of the new Laureate amongst the celebrities

of Madame Tussaud's Exhibition prompted the malicious soliloquy of

"Alfred amongst the Immortals."

[Sidenote: _Swinburne and the British Academy_]

Mr. Austin's unfortunate efforts at the time of the Boer war did not

escape _Punch's_ derision, and when his name failed to appear in the

New Year's Honour List of 1901, _Punch_, in a sardonic parody, modelled

on the famous lyric in _Atalanta in Calydon_, represented Swinburne

ironically asking:--

Austin--what of the Knight,

Heavy with hope deferred?

When will he solace our sight,

Panoplied, plumed and spurred?

Swinburne and Meredith, two other "eminent Victorians," both died

in 1909. Towards them _Punch's_ attitude had undergone considerable

vicissitudes. Swinburne's erotic ballads had, as I have noticed in an

earlier volume, excited _Punch's_ vehement disapproval. Yet he paid

him the tribute of constant imitation and parody. When the proposal

for establishing a British Academy was brought forward in 1897,

_Punch_, who "crabbed" the scheme from the outset, was not content with

printing imaginary letters from various aspirants--Hall Caine, Miss

Marie Corelli, Grant Allen, William Watson, "Sarah Grand," and Clement

Scott--but made good play with Swinburne's publicly avowed disgust

at having his name associated with a "_colluvies litterarum_" and a

"ridiculous monster." The exclusion of pure or creative literature from

the British Academy, it may be added, prompted Sambourne's cartoon

in 1902 in which a sour-visaged lady in academical costume is seen

mounting the steps to the Academy, while three graceful figures--Drama,

Romance, and Poetry--are locked out on the other side of the railings.

To return to Swinburne, it should be noted that probably more poems

were written in the "Dolores" stanza throughout this period than in

any other metre. And when he died in 1909, _Punch_, granting him

full amnesty for his violence in controversy, his extravagance and

lawlessness of spirit, forgot the rebel and only remembered the

singer:--

What of the night? For now his day is done,

And he, the herald of the red sunrise,

Leaves us in shadow even as when the sun

Sinks from the sombre skies.

High peer of Shelley, with the chosen few

He shared the secrets of Apollo's lyre,

Nor less from Dionysian altars drew

The god's authentic fire.

Last of our land's great singers, dowered at birth

With music's passion, swift and sweet and strong,

Who taught in heavenly numbers, new to earth,

The wizardry of song--

His spirit, fashioned after Freedom's mould,

Impatient of the bonds that mortals bear,

Achieves a franchise large and uncontrolled,

Rapt through the void of air.

"What of the night?" For him no night can be;

The night is ours, left songless and forlorn;

Yet o'er the darkness, where he wanders free,

Behold, a star is born!

George Meredith was an old friend of _Punch's_ from the days when he

contributed to _Once a Week_, but he was not exempt from criticism on

that account, as I have already shown. In 1894 he was again burlesqued

in a parody of _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_, which ran through three

numbers and was decorated with a portrait of the author as a bull in

the china shop of syntax, grammar and form. _Punch_ in middle age

only dimly appreciated Meredith's genius, and was disconcerted by his

obscurity. _Punch_ erred in good company, for Tennyson is reported to

have said that "reading Meredith is like wading through glue"; but

sixteen years later the mists cleared away, and the verses of May,

1909, reveal insight as well as admiration:--

Masked in the beauty of the May-dawn's birth,

Death came and kissed the brow still nobly fair,

And hushed that heart of youth for which the earth

Still kept its morning air.

Long time initiate in her lovely lore,

Now is he one with Nature's woods and streams,

Whereof, a Paradisal robe, he wore

The visionary gleams.

* * * * *

When from his lips immortal music broke,

It was the myriad voice of vale and hill;

"The lark ascending" poured a song that woke

An echo sweeter still.

Yet most we mourn his loss as one who gave

The gift of laughter and the boon of tears,

Interpreter of life, its gay and grave,

Its human hopes and fears.

Seer of the soul of things, inspired to know

Man's heart and woman's, over all he threw

The spell of fancy's iridescent glow,

The sheen of sunlit dew.

And of the fellowship of that great Age

For whose return our eyes have waited long,

None left so rich a twofold heritage

Of high romance and song.

[Sidenote: "_Eminent Victorians_"]

Nor did _Punch_ allow the minor Victorian poets and authors to pass

without homage, witness his tributes to Coventry Patmore, the "poet

of Home and High Faith," and Jean Ingelow, whose _High Tide on the

Coast of Lincolnshire_ is one of the finest of modern ballads, besides

touching the high-water mark of her achievement. Professor Henry

Morley, who died in 1894, elicited the well-earned tribute, "He made

good letters cheap"; while the heroic industry and distinguished

talent of Mrs. Oliphant--for _The Beleaguered City_ comes very near to

greatness--are fittingly acknowledged in _Punch's "Vale!"_ in 1897.

Sir Theodore Martin, as the joint author of the immortal _Bon Gaultier

Ballads_, had a special claim to grateful remembrance from one who,

like him, had known Astley's Circus in the palmy days of Widdecomb and

Gomersal:--

Comrade of our "roaring 'forties," in your pages still

From the midmost fount of laughter may we drink our fill;

Watch you, Rabelais' disciple, sunshine in your eyes,

Shooting with an aim unerring folly as it flies.

_Punch's_ loyalty to Thomas Hood was testified in a long and perfectly

serious study, in three instalments, of Hood as a poet and satirist,

which appeared in 1896. In 1899 he was moved to sing the praises

of Marryat in the manner of Gilbert's _Captain Reece_; in 1900 he

reiterated his fealty to Walter Scott in verse as unimpeachable in

sentiment as it was undistinguished in execution. I think one may

safely say that nothing so inadequate to the occasion has since

appeared in the pages of _Punch_. But even when the literary quality

of _Punch_ was at its lowest he was capable of welcome surprises, as

for example in the really charming verses, in 1893, on Izaak Walton's

Tercentenary--verses based on intimate and affectionate study of _The

Compleat Angler_.

Another Tercentenary, that of Milton in 1908, prompted the cartoon

in which Shakespeare congratulates his brother poet because every

three hundred years they gave _him_ a banquet at the Mansion House,

while they only talked about a National Theatre for himself. A

Chicago professor had seized the occasion to observe that Milton,

if alive then, would be in favour of every advanced movement except

Woman's Suffrage, and _Punch_ turned the saying to good account in a

mock-heroic sonnet after Wordsworth. One might well have thought that

Charles Lamb's reputation was securely established by 1913, yet in that

year a member of the London Education Committee suggested that the

_Essays of Elia_ was hardly the kind of book to be put in the hands

of young women students. _Punch_ dealt judicially with the offender

in two letters--one from a prudish parent; the other from a humanist

and lover of Lamb who sends a copy of the incriminated volume to his

daughter, together with a report of the protest, and some comments on

the survival of Podsnap:--

He lives, he lives though sorely spent;

We shrug our shoulders, and lament

The tyranny not overpast

Of Philistine and agelast.

[Illustration: SHACON AND BAKESPEARE

HOMER: "Look here, what _does_ it matter which of you chaps

wrote the other fellow's books? Goodness only knows _how_ many wrote

mine!"

(_Nods, as usual, and exit._)

]

[Sidenote: _Shakespeare and Shaw_]

The last word has an academic ring, but _Punch_ was probably thinking

of George Meredith's use of it in a letter to _The Times_ in 1877

when he spoke of those "whom Rabelais would have called agelasts or

non-laughers."

A brilliant American essayist, Miss Agnes Repplier, has recently

remarked that the Twentieth Century does not "lean to extravagant

partialities" but rather to "disparagement, to searchlights, to that

lavish candour which no man's reputation can sustain." In the pastime

of hauling eminence down from its pinnacle she awards a pre-eminence

to British critics. It cannot be said that _Punch_ has taken an

active hand in this game. Even Shakespeare had not been exempt from

this "lavish candour." Mr. Bernard Shaw, writing in the _Saturday

Review_ in 1896, had said that "with the single exception of Homer,

there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can

despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare, when I measure my mind

against his." Whether he really meant what he said is a question

passing the wit of the plain person; but the utterance stung _Punch_

into a rejoinder in the form of an imaginary interview with "G. B.

S.," in which the criticism is further developed and obliquely

ridiculed. _Punch_ was equally sensitive where patronage of the bard

suggested self-advertisement, and in 1901, in the "New Genius of

Stratford-on-Avon," he expressed an ironical apprehension lest Miss

Corelli might oust Shakespeare as the tutelary deity of that town. The

Bacon-Shakespeare controversy was again becoming acute and claimed

_Punch's_ attention in 1902, when he published a cartoon bearing on

the issue, and followed it up with a happy burlesque. As he argued,

"If Bacon wrote Shakespeare's Plays, why, in the name of all that is

biliteral, should not Shakespeare have written Bacon's Essays?" Hence

the dissertation "Of Plays and their Authors," from which I may quote

the concluding passages:--

It may be said of such an one that he is a man unlettered, having

little Latin and of Greek no whit. How should he write plays? Whence

hath he lore of law and medicine, of history and science? But there

be handbooks. And a man may learn by enquiry of another, giving to

him the price of half-a-pint. So shall the dramatist acquire such

matters as be necessary, as the names of battles and of Kings and an

imperfect understanding of legal phrases. Moreover, where no copyright

is, he may steal freely from others, appropriating their plots and

embellishing them.... Lastly to conclude this part, he that writeth

dramas must endure with philosophy the investigations of talented

ladies. Being of humble estate he must not murmur should his works be

taken from him and given to a Lord Chancellor. Being himself sane he

must bear with the lunatick fancies of others. And though his words

be twisted into crazy anagrams, and his dramas be made a source of a

scandal about Queen Elizabeth, he must not complain. Generally let the

wise man ignore the bee that buzzeth in another's bonnet.

_Punch's_ "Essay" is not without relevance in its bearing on the recent

"invention" of that highly "talented lady" Miss Clemence Dane.

[Sidenote: _Punch on "R. L. S."_]

To repeat what I said in another volume, the highest qualities of

the literary critic are revealed, not in his loyalty to established

reputations so much as in his attitude to contemporary writers, in his

ability to gauge the durability of their merits, and to distinguish

a passing vogue from a sure title to remembrance. And there was

certainly no lack of material on which to exercise these faculties in

the 'nineties--romantic, realistic, and decadent. _Punch_ had already

welcomed Mr. Kipling and Sir James Barrie, and though his appreciation

of the former varied considerably in the next fifteen years, admiration

of his freshness and invention prevailed on the whole over distaste

for his excursions into politics, his addiction to technicalities,

slang and obscurity. The literary criticism of _Punch_ was probably

at its lowest ebb in 1893, when a review of Stevenson's _Catriona_

is bracketed with a notice of Miss Corelli's _Barabbas_. Punch deals

faithfully with the method of handling Holy Writ adopted in _Barabbas_,

but contents himself with recommending _Catriona_ to those who love

Scots dialect, which he frankly confesses he does not.

When Stevenson died in his early prime in 1894, a very different temper

inspired _Punch's_ tribute to the Great Romancer:--

The lighthouse-builder raised no light

That shall outshine the flame

Of genius in its mellowest might,

That beacons him to fame.

And Pala's peak shall do yet more

Than the great light at Skerryvore

To magnify his name,

Who mourned, when stricken flesh would tire,

That he was weaker than his sire.

Teller of Tales! Of tales so told

That all the world must list:

Story sheer witchery, style pure gold,

Yet with that tricksy twist

Of Puck-like mockery which betrays

The wanderer in this world's mad maze,

Not blindly optimist,

Who wooes Romance, yet sadly knows

That Life's sole growth is not the Rose.

So when in 1901 the late Mr. W. E. Henley published his famous

disparagement of the official life of Stevenson, _Punch_, in an address

to the "Beloved Shade" of R. L. S., uttered an indignant protest

against the attack on his memory.

_Punch_ enthusiastically greeted the Ruritanian romances of "Anthony

Hope" as an antidote to the ultra-realistic novel, and Mr. Kipling's

_Jungle Book_ was welcomed in 1894 with a salvo of puns on the

Kip-lingo of the Laureate of the Jingle-Jungle, the Bard of the

Bandar-log. In 1895 _The Men that Fought at Minden_ is described as

"perhaps the most coarse and unattractive specimen of verse that this

great young man has yet put forth--a jumble of words without a trace of

swing or music. All this Tommy Atkins business is about played out."

In 1898, in the series of "Letters to the Celebrated," "The Vagrant,"

while deprecating the "orgy of Imperialism" which Mr. Kipling had

helped to foster, frankly admitted that he was largely responsible

for "a quickened sense of the greatness of our mother-land, and a new

sympathy for those who fight our battles"; and predicted that his

greatest and most enduring title to fame would rest on his verse. In

1899 Mr. Kipling is rebuked for his glorification of machinery--he is

called "the Polytechnic Poet"--slang and militarism, while the parody

of _Stalky and Co._ is distinctly hostile to what Punch evidently

considered an ignoble travesty of Public School traditions. Punch had

himself repeatedly assailed the fetish-worship of Athletics, but Mr.

Kipling's _Island Race_--with its bitter reference to those who

contented their souls

With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at

the goals--

was more than he could endure. Accordingly his representative conducted

an imaginary interview with "The Director-General of the Empire," who

had added some fresh lines in violent and obscure abuse of rowing-men,

and who explained that he never played games himself, but "spent all

his spare time loafing and scoring off masters"--a further hit at

_Stalky_. This mood of resentment had entirely passed by 1907, when

_Punch_ depicted Mr. Kipling as "A Verry Parfit Nobel Knight"--on the

occasion of his being awarded the Nobel Prize--and in 1910 the perusal

of _Rewards and Fairies_ is compared to reading English history by the

light of a Will-o'-the-Wisp.

The reviewer notes defects in style and lucidity, but ends on a note of

whole-hearted admiration:--

When one considers the quality of Mr. Kipling's invention, the piety

of his patriotism, the freshness and vigour of his style, and his

astounding understanding of men and movements, why, one forgets all

about these little trifling defects and again murmurs, "Wizard."

[Sidenote: _The Yellow Book_]

To return to the early 'nineties, _Punch_ saw no virtue, artistic

or otherwise, in the movement towards unrestrained self-expression

in _belles lettres_ which had its outcome in the _Yellow Book_ and

the _Savoy_, its headquarters at "The Bodley Head," and whose chief

hierophants were the avowed disciples of Baudelaire and Verlaine. To

_Punch_ the movement was wholly decadent. In the verses "Tell it not in

Gath," in 1894, after denouncing "flowers of evil," and the practice of

delving in the drains and dustbins of humanity, the writer declares he

would far rather remain a Philistine than achieve enlightenment by such

unsavoury means. In the same vein he addresses "Any Boy-poet of the

Decadence":--

For your dull little vices we don't care a fig,

It is _this_ that we deeply deplore:

You were cast for a common or usual pig,

But you play the invincible bore.

As in his earlier tirades against the Æsthetes, _Punch_ confounded all

the contributors to the _Yellow Book_ and the _Savoy_ in one common

anathema. The former, with an illustration by "Daubaway Weirdsley," and

"Max" as "Max Mereboom," himself one of the finest literary parodists

of our time, is held up in 1895 to especial ridicule. The _Savoy_ in

1896 becomes "The Saveloy," with imaginary extracts and further attacks

on Max Mereboom, Simple Symons, and Weirdsley; while in the same year

in "The Chaunt of the Bodley Head" (after Praed's _Chaunt of the Brazen

Head_) the Savoy School is condemned for its mephitic atmosphere.

There was in the movement much deliberate eccentricity, much of the

cant of anti-cant, which clamoured for robust satire, but _Punch_ was

more happily inspired in his ridicule of the popular and society

novels of the time--in his parody of _Sherlock Holmes_, which was quite

good enough for the original, and of Dodo, in which the rowdiness and

pseudo-intellectuality of Mr. Benson's heroine are excellently hit

off. It opens well with "'Sling me over a two-eyed steak, Bill,'" said

Bobo." In the sequel the Marquis of Cokaleek, the noble unappreciated

husband, gets killed in the hunting field, but Bobo does not marry

Bill, her fancy man. She jilts him and "got herself married to an

Austrian Prince at half an hour's notice by the A. of C." _Punch_,

let it be recorded, was responsible for the often quoted saying which

appeared in 1894 that "the modern novel is a blend of the Erotic, the

Neurotic and the Tommyrotic."

_Esther Waters_, compared and contrasted with Hardy's _Tess_, is

pronounced in 1894 to be _not_ "_virginibus puerisque_," and a once

famous "emancipation novel," _The Yellow Aster_, by "Iota," long since

hopelessly out-distanced in the reaction against reticence, becomes

_The Yellow Plaster_, by "Iõpna," whose "She-notes" wild are amusingly

travestied in the same year. _The Yellow Aster_ and _Key-Notes_ were

pioneer efforts in the domain of the psychological novel, and the new

jargon is ridiculed in such burlesque phrases as "the woman's voice

came through the envelope of Margerine's subconsciousness, steely clear

as a cheese-cutter." The vogue of _The Green Carnation_, a _roman à

clef_ which created some stir at the same time, is attested in Du

Maurier's picture "How Opinion is Formed":--

HE: "Have you read that beastly book _The Mauve Peony_ by

Lady Middlesex?"

SHE: "Yes, I rather liked it."

HE: "So did I."

[Sidenote: _Unchristian Criticism of Hall Caine_]

Du Maurier's _Trilby_ was naturally treated with benevolence, though

_Punch_ regretted the theological interludes, but _The Sorrows of

Satan_ is rudely dismissed as "a farrago of balderdash and vanity"; the

egotism of the author and of Mr. Robert Buchanan in belabouring their

detractors is severely rebuked; and Mr. Hall Caine's _The Christian_

is recommended only as an absolute _pis aller_ if you hadn't even a

Bradshaw to read. This great work is also parodied as "The Heathen,"

with Alleluia Grouse and Luke Blizzard in the _rôles_ of Glory Quayle

and John Storm. There was still a spice of Bludyer in _Punch_, and on

occasion he could act on the advice of a famous editor, "Be kind, be

merciful, be gentle, but when you come across a silly fool, string him

up." In later years, as the literary quality of his reviews improved,

his clemency to the new-comers approached an uncritical tolerance.

The passing of the three-volume novel in 1894 is noted in a Ballade not

untinged with regret, to judge from the "Envoi":--

Prince, writers' rights--forgive the pun--

And readers' too forbid the blow;

Of triple pleasure there'll be none,

Three-volume novels are to go!

[Illustration: "The _Trilby_ mania grows apace. It has reached Peckham.

Aunt Maria went to the Fancy Dress Ball of the Peckham season as

_Trilby_ in her first costume."--_Extract from letter of Miss M. Br-wn

to Miss N. Sm-th_.]

The later manner of Henry James is rather infelicitously described in

1896 as "indifferent Trollopian and second-class Meredithian"; but

_Punch_ made no mistake in the following year over Mr. W. W. Jacobs, in

whose _Many Cargoes_--studies of those "who go down to the sea in ships

of moderate tonnage"--he found a new fount of joy.

_Punch's_ "literary recipes" place Romance first, then follow the

Society Novel (with thinly veiled portraits from life); the Detective

Story (Gaboriau and water); and the Religious Novel. The plague of

Reminiscences had moved _Punch_ to protest as early as 1893, when he

wrote:--

That Memory's the Mother of the Muses,

We're told. Alas! it must have been the Furies!

Mnemosyne her privilege abuses--

Nothing from her distorting glass secure is.

Life is a Sphinx; folk cannot solve her riddles,

So they've recourse to spiteful taradiddles,

Which they dub "Reminiscences." Kind fate,

From the Fool's Memory preserve the Great!

Another and a newer aversion was the parasitic patronage of FitzGerald

by inferior novelists and writers, which moved _Punch_ to include among

"the things that we are still waiting, and it seems, likely to wait

for--A Temporary Surcease from Omar Khayyám." This last-named nuisance

has ceased to be so vocal of late years, but the plague of "Diaritis"

is worse than ever. Mr. H. G. Wells appears on _Punch's_ horizon in

1898, but only as the weaver of circumstantial scientific romances, not

as the regulator of the Universe, and discoverer of new Heavens and

Hells. _The War of the Worlds_ is parodied in _The Martian_, but the

wonderland of science appealed less to _Punch_ than the dream-world of

"Lewis Carroll," whose death inspired a graceful tribute to author and

illustrator:--

Lover of children! Fellow-heir with those

Of whom the imperishable kingdom is!

Beyond all dreaming now your spirit knows

The unimagined mysteries.

Darkly as in a glass our faces look

To read ourselves, if so we may, aright;

You, like the maiden in your faërie book--

You step beyond and see the light!

The heart you wore beneath your pedant's cloak

Only to children's hearts you gave away;

Yet unaware in half the world you woke

The slumbering charm of childhood's day.

We older children, too, our loss lament,

We of the "Table Round," remembering well

How he, our comrade, with his pencil lent

Your fancy's speech a firmer spell.

Master of rare woodcraft, by sympathy's

Sure touch he caught your visionary gleams,

And made your fame, the dreamer's, one with his,

The wise interpreter of dreams.

Farewell! But near our hearts we have you yet,

Holding our heritage with loving hand,

Who may not follow where your feet are set

Upon the ways of Wonderland.

[Sidenote: _Magic, Megalomania, and Sham Culture_]

From this wonder world _Punch_ turned to "_le monde où l'on

s'affiche_" to castigate the methods of Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. Le

Gallienne--the Manx megalomaniac and the Author-Lecturer--and to

the realm of blameless banality ruled over by Sir John Lubbock. Sir

John's genius for truisms had been guyed in 1894; in 1900 he appears

in a special section of "The Book of Beauty" as the author of some

enchanting platitudes, e.g. "A man's work will often survive him.

Thus, Shakespeare and Watt are dead; but _Hamlet_ and the steam engine

survive."

This was the year of the appearance of Lady Randolph Churchill's

_Anglo-Saxon Review_, a sumptuous publication which for a brief period

revived the glories of the _Books of Beauty_ and _Keepsakes_, edited in

the 'thirties and 'forties of the last century by that "most gorgeous"

lady, the Countess of Blessington.

Pseudo-intellectuality was one of the social shams which _Punch_ loved

to pillory, and there is a good example in 1901 in the "Cultured

Conversation" of a lady who observes, "I'm _devoted_ to Rossetti--I

_delight_ in Shelley--and I simply _love_ Ella Wheeler Wilcox."

_Punch_ himself in the same year "delighted" quite sincerely in _Some

Experiences of an Irish R.M._, and "wept tears of laughter" over the

episode of "Lisheen Races." This was apparently his first introduction

to the work of those two wonderfully gifted Irish cousins, Violet

Martin and Edith Somerville, but only towards the end of their long and

fruitful collaboration did he recognize in them far higher qualities

than those of the mere mirth-provoker.

In 1903 he was destined to make acquaintance with one of the most

conspicuous representatives of the opposite tendency, Gorki, the

Russian novelist and playwright. In "The Lowest Depths" _Punch_

parodied the dreary, violent and brutal squalors of _The Lower Depths_,

and incidentally had a dig at the Stage Society for producing it.

It was in the same year that _Punch_ described the "new curse of

Caine"--"to be everlastingly coupled with the name of Miss Marie

Corelli"--and paid them both grateful homage as purveyors of "copy":--

From cutting continual capers

Ev'n Kaisers must sometimes refrain;

But _you're_ never out of the papers--

Corelli and Caine.

At the time of the Boer war poets had been vociferously active. By

1904 a "slump" had set in; and in an interview Mr. John Lane, of the

Bodley Head, had declared that verse had ceased to be remunerative.

Embroidering this text _Punch_ traced the cause to the material

self-indulgence of the public. People dined too well to want to read

rhymes, and poets wanted better pay:--

And this is why no bards occur.

None ever knows that aching void,

That hunger, prompting like a spur,

Which former genii enjoyed;

For all the poets dead and gone,

Whose Muse contrived to melt the nation,

Habitually did it on

A regimen of strict starvation.

[Sidenote: _Notable Newcomers_]

But if verse was at a discount, new forms of prose were emerging, and

the spasmodic discourses of Mr. Bart Kennedy in the _Daily Mail_ moved

_Punch_ to parody what he considered to be a variant on Walt Whitman,

in which sentences were reduced to a minimum and verbs were dispensed

with altogether. Another new writer to whom _Punch_ now paid the homage

of parody was Mr. Chesterton, whose glittering paradoxes are travestied

in a mock eulogy of _Bradshaw_, in the manner of "G. K. C.'s" book

on Dickens. Bradshaw is praised for his splendid consistency, his

adherence to fact, his uniform excellence of style and freedom from

extraneous matter. Moreover, he is a great teacher:--

The last and deepest lesson of Bradshaw is that we must be in time. No

man can miss a train and miss a train only. He misses more than that.

A man who misses a train misses an opportunity. It is probably the

reason of the terrific worldly success of Cæsar and Charlemagne that

neither of them ever missed a train.

Reviews of books, chiefly novels, became a regular feature of each

week's issue in the latter half of this period, and it would be

impossible to deal fully with _Punch's_ critical activities. As an

example of the frank handling of a bad book it would be hard to improve

on the notice of a novel which appeared in 1906: "Anyone who wants to

read a vulgar book in praise of vicious vulgarians should read----,

by--------. All others are counselled to avoid it."

_Punch's_ later and more tolerant mood may be illustrated by his

notices of three typical novels by three representative novelists of

post-Victorian days. Mr. Wells's _Ann Veronica_ in 1908 is received

with guarded praise as that author's first real novel and "a remarkably

clever book about rather unpleasant people." In 1910 _Punch_ shies at

the excessive length and accumulated detail of Mr. Arnold Bennett's

_Clayhanger_, but admits that the author makes wonderful use of

unpromising material in his remarkable work. Thirdly, in 1913,

_Punch's_ reviewer proclaims himself a whole-hearted admirer of Mr.

Compton Mackenzie's _Sinister Street_, finding the hero "a figure to

love," and the whole book marked by passionate honesty, marvellously

minute observation, humour, and a haunting beauty of ideas and words.

In conclusion, he is "prepared to wager that Mr. Mackenzie's future is

bound up with what is most considerable in English fiction," adding,

"We shall see."

[Illustration: THE "SEXO-MANIA"

"We think _Lips that have Gone Astray_ the foulest novel that ever

yet defiled the English tongue; and that in absolute filth its Author

can give any modern French writer six and beat him hollow!"--_The

Parthenon._

FAIR AUTHOR (to her Publisher, pointing to above opinion of

the Press quoted in his advertisement of her novel): "And pray, Mr.

Shardson, what do you mean by inserting _this_ hideous notice?"

PUBLISHER: "My dear Miss Fitzmorse, you must remember that

we've paid you a large price for your book, and brought it out at great

expense--and we naturally wish to sell it!"]

These views are somewhat difficult to reconcile with those expressed

in other parts of the paper about the same time. An eminent conductor

and composer has recently stated that no noise which is deliberately

made can be said to be ugly--e.g. a railway whistle or a boy whistling

in the street. So in letters a similar creed had already come into

fashion--any subject was fit for treatment if it was "arresting" or

"elemental," a doctrine that _Punch_ outside his "Booking Office" found

it hard to swallow. In "The Qualities that Count" one of his writers

applied this principle to the poetry and letters of the hour:--

If you're anxious to acquire a reputation

For enlightened and emancipated views,

You must hold it as a duty to discard the cult of Beauty,

And discourage all endeavours to amuse.

You must back the man who, obloquy enduring,

Subconsciousness determines to express,

Who in short is "elemental," "unalluring,"

But "arresting" in his Art--or in his dress.

Or is your cup habitually brimming

With water from the Heliconian fount?

Then remember the hubristic, the profane, the pugilistic,

Are the only things in poetry that count.

So select a tragic argument, ensuring

The maximum expenditure of gore,

And the epithets "arresting," "unalluring,"

"Elemental" will re-echo as before.

But if your bent propels you into fiction,

You should clearly and completely understand

That your duty in a novel is not to soar, but grovel,

If you want it to be profitably banned.

So be lavish and effusive in suggesting

A malignant and mephitic atmosphere,

And you're sure to be applauded as "arresting,"

"Elemental," "unalluring," and "sincere."

[Sidenote: _Mr. Gosse and the Georgian Poets_]

In the same year Mr. Edmund Gosse had indulged in some caustic

criticism of the Poetry of the Future. Mr. Gosse had said that "the

natural uses of English and the obvious forms of our speech will be

driven from our poetry." Also that "verses of excellent quality in

this primitive manner can now be written by any smart little boy in a

grammar school." Hence a squib in which _Punch_ makes disrespectful

fun of "the Sainte-Beuve of the House of Lords," who, it may be added,

has since made his peace with the young lions whom he had treated

so disrespectfully. In 1913 the cult of Rabindranath Tagore had

become fashionable. Here was an Oriental poet who sedulously eschewed

the flamboyant exuberance of the westernized Indian, but _Punch_,

while finding him a less fruitful theme for burlesque than the Babu

immortalized by Mr. Anstey, regarded his mystical simplicity as fair

game for parody, and declined to worship at his shrine. Another foreign

importation, Mr. Conrad--whom in virtue of long residence in England,

marvellous command of our language and unequalled insight into the

magic of the sea and the simple heroism of the British sailorman, we

are proud to call one of ourselves and one of the glories of English

fiction--fascinated _Punch_ in 1900, the year in which _Lord Jim_

appeared. _Punch_ was a little disconcerted at first by Mr. Conrad's

oblique method of narration, but the fascination grew with advancing

years.

[Sidenote: _Farewell to Mark Twain_]

I find few references to Continental authors, but may single out the

"little English wreath" which _Punch_ added to the memorial tributes to

Alphonse Daudet on his death in 1897. Daudet's affinities with Dickens,

always one of _Punch's_ heroes, naturally appealed to him apart from

the humour of _Tartarin_ and the masterly studies of the Second Empire

which Daudet had seen from the inside as one of the Duc de Morny's

private secretaries. Towards American writers _Punch_ was almost

uniformly sympathetic. It is true that he appreciated the earlier and

American manner of Henry James more than the later cosmopolitan phase

which began with _The Portrait of a Lady_. But during the short period

in which _Punch_, in his "additional pages," published a number of

short stories by various authors, Henry James was a contributor, and

_Mrs. Medwin_ appeared in serial form in four successive numbers in

August and September, 1901. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who died in 1894,

is compared to Elia in the graceful memorial stanzas modelled on

"The Last Leaf." Mr. W. D. Howells's papers on London and England in

_Harper's Magazine_ in 1904 prompt a generous acknowledgment of their

reasonableness, sanity and humour, together with an expression of

amazement at the productivity of American short-story writers, mostly

in the manner of Mr. Henry James. _Punch_, both then and afterwards,

refused to take Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox seriously, and described

her essays, _The Woman of the World_, as "high-toned but serenely

platitudinous; 'bland, passionate, but deeply religious.'" Mark Twain,

on his visit to London in 1907, was welcomed with pen and pencil--in

the cartoon "To a Master of his Art," where _Punch_ salutes him over

the punch-bowl and in some verses, _à propos_ of the dinner at the

Pilgrims' Club:--

Pilot of many Pilgrims since the shout

"Mark twain!"--that serves you for a deathless sign--

On Mississippi's waterway rang out

Over the plummet's line--

Still where the countless ripples laugh above

The blue of halcyon seas long may you keep

Your course unbroken, buoyed upon a love

Ten thousand fathoms deep!

Some three years later came _Punch's_ "_Ave, atque Vale_," when Mark

Twain died in April, 1910:--

Farewell the gentle spirit, strong to hold

Two sister lands beneath its laughter's spell!

Farewell the courage and the heart of gold!

Hail and Farewell!

To complete these American references I may add that _Punch_ in 1907

made great play out of the letter addressed by an American "Clippings

Agency" to Petrarch, offering to send him press-cuttings of his works.

But America has no monopoly of these solecisms. Fourteen years later,

when the Phoenix Society revived _The Maid's Tragedy_, a similar

offer was made by a London press-cutting agency to "John Fletcher,

Esq." and "--Beaumont, Esq."

JOURNALISM

Already in the early 'nineties the altered status of journalism and

the journalist had leapt to the eyes of _Punch_, who himself was in a

sense born and bred in the "Street of Ink." I pass over his ironical

disapproval of the _St. James's Gazette_ when that journal, in October,

1892, "sincerely hoped that there was no truth in the rumour that a

paper for children will shortly make its appearance, entirely written

and illustrated by children under fifteen years of age." The project

never materialized, but its spirit has been translated into action

by the literary enterprise of our modern _enfants terribles_. The

adult journalist in the 'nineties was not to suffer from this unfair

competition for a good many years to come. Meanwhile he could at least

congratulate himself that he was better housed and paid: it was not

until 1904 that the "wisdom of the East" began to interfere with his

freedom as a war correspondent.

[Illustration: THE WISDOM OF THE EAST

JAPANESE OFFICER (to Press Correspondent): "Abjectly we desire

to distinguish honourable newspaper man by honourable badge."]

[Sidenote: _The Daily Mail Arrives_]

In 1897 _Punch_ illustrated the change by parallel pictures of the

journalist in 1837, writing in a squalid room in the Fleet Prison, and

in the year of the Diamond Jubilee, seated in a sumptuously equipped

office, fat and prosperous, and smoking a large cigar. In the previous

year _Punch_ had saluted the _Daily News_ on the attainment of its

jubilee. The connexion was an old and intimate one, for the publishers

of _Punch_ had been the first publishers of the _Daily News_, and it

had been renewed in the 'nineties when Sir Henry Lucy ("Toby," of

_Punch_) for a while occupied the chair in which Dickens had sat. A far

more momentous event, however, was associated with the year 1896--the

founding of the _Daily Mail_ by Mr. Alfred Harmsworth, subsequently

described by one of _Punch's_ writers as "the arch-tarantulator of our

times." He was certainly, if unintentionally, invaluable to _Punch_,

and even more stimulating than Mr. Caine and Miss Corelli. By 1900

his genius for discovering a constant succession of scapegoats, and

converting the idol of yesterday into the Aunt Sally of to-day, is

handsomely acknowledged in the lines "Ad Aluredum Damnodignum." Then it

was Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Mr. Balfour, but _Punch_ foresaw that

the habit was inveterate:--

For still, oh hawk-eyed Harmsworth, you pursue

With more than all the ardour of a lover,

From find to check and so from check to view

Your scapegoat-hunt from covert into covert.

As for the test of circulation, _Punch_ betrays a certain scepticism in

his remarks on "The People's Pulse" in 1903:--

The account given by the _Daily Mail_, in Saturday's issue, of its

daily circulation for the last eight months, together with the

leading event of each day, ought to be kept up from time to time as

a Permanent People's Pulse Report. Nothing could be more instructive

than to note, for instance, that while the Delhi Durbar only attracted

844,799 readers, the "Oyster Scare" allured as many as 846,501; while

"Lord Dalmeny's Coming of Age" brought the figures up to 847,080, and

the "Sardine Famine" accounted for a further increase of 14,586. Or,

again, there is a world of significance in the fact that the relative

attractions of the "Poet Laureate's Play" and "Mr. Seddon's Meat

Shops" are represented by a balance of 5,291 in favour of the Napoleon

of New Zealand.

Life was certainly made livelier by the new methods introduced, with

variations, from America, and _Punch_ feelingly contrasts the drab

existence of those who lived before with that of those who lived under

the Harmsworth _régime_:--

Drear was the lot, minus the _Mail_,

Of soldier, sailor, ploughboy, tinker;

And worse, whenever they grew pale,

They had no pills to make them pinker.

It is a nice question whether we owe more to the pink pill or to the

Yellow Press. But there can be no doubt as to the influence of the

new journalism on sport and pastime. Until then, in _Punch's_ phrase,

"cricket was still a childish game and not a penman's serious study."

Henceforth the cricketer fulfilled a double function. He not only

played cricket but he wrote about it--and himself. Under the heading

"The Cricketer on the Hearth," in 1899, _Punch_ publishes an imaginary

interview _à la mode_ with Mr. Slogger. We omit the complacent

autobiographical passages and content ourselves with the sequel:--

"Well, that's pretty well all, I think, except you'll probably want

to print at length my opinions on the Transvaal Question, Wagner's

Music, and the Future of Agriculture. These will have an overpowering

interest for your readers."

"Here are a few photographs of myself--but it's rather too heavy a

parcel to carry. I'll send it round in a van. Of course you'll print

them all. And now I must ask you to excuse me, as it's time to get

into flannels."

I thanked him for his courtesy, and hoped that he'd make a fine score

in the county match. He stared at me in surprise. "County Match?

You don't imagine I've time to play cricket nowadays, do you? No;

I'm going to change because half-a-dozen photographers will be here

directly, and they like to take me in costume. And after that I shall

have to see seven or eight more interviewers. Good morning!"

[Sidenote: _The Cricket Journalist_]

The intrusion of the emotional literary "note" in articles on pastime

came later, and is parodied in the article (in 1904) "Do we take our

amusements seriously enough?" by Mr. C. B. F:--

The frivolity of the Press is only paralleled by the frivolity of the

public. Take the light and airy way in which the spectators at our

great cricket grounds treat the imposing functions provided for them.

Suppose little (but heroic) Johnny Tyldesley runs out to that wily,

curling ball which sunny-faced Wilfred Rhodes pitches thirty-three

and three-quarter inches from the block. Up glides his trusty willow,

and a fortieth of a second after the ball has pitched descends on the

leather. With a wonderful flick of the elbow he chops the ball exactly

between square leg and point. Is the raucous "Well hit, Johnny," of

the crowd a fitting, a reverent salutation? Our Elizabethan dramatists

knew better. Have you not noticed in their stage directions, "A solemn

music"? Two or three phrases of Chopin played, let us say, on the

French horn by the doyen of the Press-box would be a better tribute

to such a miracle of skill. There are, however, elements of better

things in our crowds. Before now I have seen the potent Jessop smite

a rising ball to the boundary with all the concentrated energy of his

Atlantean shoulders, and as the ball reached the ring the spectators

with involuntary reverence prostrated themselves before it.

Nor do our greatest men gain the public honours which are their due.

In ancient Greece a great athlete was a national hero. The name of

Ladas has come down to us through the ages with those of Socrates and

Xenophon. Think of the sad contrast in modern England. Why is not Plum

Warner (I knew him in long clothes) a Knight of the Garter? Why is not

Ranji (exquisitely delicate Ranji--the Walter Pater of the cricket

field) Viceroy of India? There are living cricketers, with an average

of over eighty, and a dozen centuries in one season to their credit,

who have never even been sworn of the Privy Council.

On every side I trace the growth of the same spirit. England is

devoting itself to art, politics, literature and theology, and in

the rush and hurry of our modern life there is a sad danger that

sport will be underrated or overlooked. My countrymen must learn to

concentrate their minds on the things which really matter. In your

nobler moments would you not rather stand at the wicket than at the

table of the House of Commons, or on the political platform of the

City Temple, or on the stage of the Alhambra? Save her sport and you

save England.

Modern journalistic methods are reduced to absurdity in the account of

the staff of a daily paper, who are all football players, cricketers,

clairvoyants, crystal-gazers, music-hall artists, or burglars. In the

verses on "Journalistic Evolution," in 1907, the tendency to condense

everything is specially noted. Leaders have become "leaderettes," and

will in turn yield to "leaderettelets"; the writer prophesies a day

when _The Times_ will only consist of headlines.

Dasent's _Life of Delane_ appeared in 1908, and _Punch's_ reviewer

reminds us of the commanding position occupied by that great editor,

who was consulted by all Premiers, except Gladstone, and to whom

Palmerston actually offered office. The gist and sting of the review,

however, is to be found in a sentence not merely true but almost tragic

in its bearings on the history of English journalism:--

Delane accepted the favour of contributions by Cabinet Ministers to

his news-chest, but he recognized that the power and influence of _The

Times_ were based upon the foundations of public spirit, concern for

national interest, and absolute impartiality in dealing with statesmen.

[Illustration: PENNY WISDOM

("In view of the grave importance of the present political situation,

_The Times_ will be reduced in price to a penny."--Press Association.)]

_The Times_ passed under the financial control of Lord Northcliffe at

the beginning of 1908, and in the spring of 1914, "in view of the

grave importance of the political situation," its price was reduced to

one penny. _Punch's_ comment took the form of a cartoon in which the

new Dictator of Printing House Square is shown as a salesman at the

door of the "Northcliffe Stores" with the legend on a slate, "Thunder

is cheap to-day."

[Sidenote: _Homage to Andrew Lang_]

By way of contrast with hustling methods _Punch_ had noted with regret

the passing in 1905 of _Longman's Magazine_, in whose pages Mr. Andrew

Lang had for many years presided so gracefully "At the Sign of the

Ship":--

Formerly, when, sated by sensation,

Gentle readers sought an air serene,

Refuge from the snapshot's domination

Might be found in _Longman's Magazine_.

There at least the roaring cult of dollars

Never took its devastating way;

There the pens of gentlemen and scholars

Held their uncontaminating sway.

There no parasitic bookman prated,

No malarious poetasters sang,

There all themes were touched and decorated

By your nimble fancy, Andrew Lang.

True, some hobbies you were always riding,

--Spooks and spies and totemistic lore;

But so deft, so dext'rous was your guiding,

No one ever labelled you a bore.

But alas! the landmarks that we cherish,

Standing for the earlier, better way,

Vanquished by vulgarity must perish,

Overthrown by "enterprise" decay.

Still with fairy books will you regale us,

Still pay homage to the sacred Nine,

But no more hereafter will you hail us

Monthly at the Ship's familiar Sign.

There no longer faithfully and gaily

Will you deal alike with foes and friends,

Wherefore, crying "Ave, atque vale!"

_Punch_ his parting salutation sends.

_Punch_ had his own losses to deplore, for in August, 1897, the death

of Mr. E. J. Milliken removed a most valuable and fertile member of his

staff. Mr. Milliken was not only the creator of "'Arry," and a fluent

and dexterous versifier, but he combined with a retentive and accurate

memory "the rare talent of most happily applying past literature,

whether in history or fiction, to the illustration of contemporary

instances," and for a long time had been the chief cartoon-suggester.

A longer and more distinguished connexion with _Punch_ was severed in

1906 by the retirement of Sir Frank Burnand after forty-three years'

service. He joined in 1863, as the youngest of the staff, and held the

editorship for over twenty-five years. In "Just a Few Words at Parting"

he defines the aim of the editor in words worthy of remembrance. If

_Punch_ was to hold securely the position he had achieved, it should

and must be "to provide relaxation for all, fun for all, without a

spice of malice or a suspicion of vulgarity, humour without a flavour

of bitterness, satire without reckless severity, and nonsense so

laughter-compelling as to be absolutely irresistible from its very

absurdity." The precept hardly covers the higher function assumed by

_Punch_ in "The Song of the Shirt," but, as it stands, had assuredly

been faithfully carried into practice by the master of exhilarating

burlesque, the intrepid parodist, the author of the immortal _Happy

Thoughts_. As for the personal affection that he inspired in his staff,

it is truly expressed in the farewell lines addressed to him by "R. C.

L.":--

Dear Frank, our fellow-fighter, how noble was your praise,

How kindly rang your welcome on those delightful days

When, gathered in your presence, we cheered each piercing hit,

And crowned with joy and laughter the rapier of your wit.

And if our words grew bitter, and wigs, that should have been

Our heads' serene adornment, were all but on the green,

How oft your sunny humour has shone upon the fray,

And fused our fiery tempers, and laughed our strife away!

FINE ARTS, DRAMA AND MUSIC

I have noticed in earlier volumes with what asperity _Punch_ assailed

the conventionalities of academic and Royal Academic Art; how he

became, for a while at any rate, a convert to Pre-Raphaelitism; how,

later on, the exhibitors at the Grosvenor Gallery superseded the

exponents of fashionable orthodoxy at Burlington House as the targets

of his satire; and with what unremitting and undiscriminating zeal he

"belaboured" all representatives of the Æsthetic movement. The further

progress of this reaction can be traced throughout the first half of

the period now under review. In the 'nineties Aubrey Beardsley was

his special _bête noire_; in the early years of the new century the

Impressionist school, and by 1910 the Post-Impressionists, furnish

him with unfailing matter for caricature. It was not that those who

stood on the old ways were exempt from criticism. Year after year

the annual summer show at Burlington House never failed to receive

a punctual tribute from pen and pencil. But for the most part these

notices are inspired by irresponsible frivolity--a desire to extract

fun by burlesquing the titles and subjects and treatment quite foreign

to the spirit in which _Punch_ had addressed himself to the task in

the 'fifties, and even later. The private view of the Academy became

for _Punch_ an annual excuse for an explosion of punning, and the

illustrations were a faithful counterpart of the text. Yet criticism

occasionally emerges from this carnival of jocularity, as when Mr.

Sargent's cavalier treatment of details is noted in 1895; or when

_Punch_ in 1902 suggests that the formidable congestion of pictures at

the R.A. might be relieved by hanging some of them in the refreshment

room; or when he writes in 1904:--

An interesting exhibit at the Royal Academy is a drawing executed by

the artist when he was only sixteen years of age. Quite a feature of

the show, too, is the number of pictures by artists over that age

which have the appearance of having been painted by artists under that

age.

In 1908 _Punch_ satirized a then prevalent fashion in his drawing

of the "Problem Room" at Burlington House, crowded with perplexed

spectators dropping their solutions into a box marked "Puzzle Picture

Syndicate." When the "Rokeby Venus" was damaged by a militant

suffragist in 1914, _Punch_ suggested that the offender ought to be

made to serve her term of imprisonment in the Royal Academy--a remark

quite in the spirit of his old art-critic, Charles Eastlake.

The oblique and ironical method is admirably employed in the dramatized

conversations of visitors to the Academy and other exhibitions. In

the sketch "Round the R.A." in 1893 the schoolmistress and her bored

pupils, the complacent Briton giving himself away at every turn to his

French friend, and the prosaic and practical person, are all drawn

from the quick. The orthodox verdict is "quite up to the average--such

delightful puppies and kittens," while the rebellious pupil of the

edifying Miss Pemmican remarks, "Bother the beastly old Academy. I wish

it was burnt, I do!"

From the same hand, seventeen years later, comes an

equally illuminating sketch of the visitors to the Grafton

Galleries--art-student, precious young painter, young City man,

high-brow critic, matter-of-fact lady, and the frank and immortal

Philistine only moved to unseemly mirth when his friend remarks,

"Drawing to the Synthesist is entirely unimportant in solving the

problem how the artist may best express his own temperament." _Punch_

often found himself driven into the ranks of the Philistines in

self-defence; anyhow, he always preferred the way of Gath to that of

gush. In "An Old Master's Growl" in 1895 the speaker declares that the

mass of the people only enjoyed the annual summer show; the few who

came to see the Old Masters mostly came to be seen. But the ancients

were not annoyed, it was only what they expected:--

We expect it--I said just as much to Vandyck--

There's but one in a hundred that comes who'll descry

The Beauty of Art. It's the sham I dislike:

Well--good-bye!

[Sidenote: _Leighton and Millais_]

From the other end of the scale comes another "growl" in the same

year--that of the professional model, in Phil May's picture, against

Burne-Jones who had recently made a drawing of Labour for the _Daily

Chronicle_: "I reckon 'e'll be on the pavement next." Personalities,

rather than principles or theories, interested _Punch_ at this period,

and in 1896 and 1897 the circle of his eminent Victorian friends was

reduced by the passing of three ornaments of British Art, all of them

Academicians and two successively presidents of the Academy. Of the

two sets of verses on Leighton, the second is much the better. _Punch_

takes for his text Watts's saying that Leighton had painted many

pictures, but that his life was nobler than them all:--

_Noblesse oblige_: his manners matched his art;

Fine painter-skill, the bearing of a prince.

The writer alludes to the malignant disparagement indulged in by his

detractors and sums up:--

Great if not quite among the greatest, here

A noble artist of a noble life

Rests with a fame that lives, and need not fear

Detraction or the hour's ephemeral strife.

Leighton's generosity and munificence to brother artists deserved all

and more than all that _Punch_ said: his fame as an artist has hardly

borne out the prediction of the last couplet. Sir John Millais, his

successor, was linked by more intimate ties from the days of _Once a

Week_. Du Maurier was one of his dearest friends, and _Punch_ claimed

to have been alone, save for the _Spectator_, in acclaiming the genius

of his early work. As he happily says, "from P.R.B, to P.R.A.--that

tale is worth the telling." Millais only lived a few months to enjoy

his honour, and on his death in the summer of 1896 _Punch_ dwelt on his

triple endowment of health, heartiness and power, his entirely English

spirit, his mastery as a painter, and his genius for friendship.

Sir John Gilbert, who died a year later, was an old comrade and

contributor. He had designed the fourth wrapper in January,

1843--Doyle's final design was not adopted till six years later--and

contributed intermittently to _Punch_ down to 1882. His robust and

spirited talent as an illustrator is acknowledged in _Punch's_

tribute:--

The faded history of courts and kings

Touched by your spell took on its former hue;

You made the daily art of common things

Fresh as the morning dew.

A deeper note is sounded in _Punch's_ salutation of Watts on his

death in 1904, when he recognizes the fidelity of that illustrious

artist to his conception of the high mission of Art and his well-known

repudiation of the maxim "Art for Art's Sake":--

His means were servants to the end in view

And not the end's self; so his heart was wise

To hold--as they have held, the chosen few--

High failure dearer than the easy prize.

Now lifted face to face with unseen things,

Dimly imagined in the lower life,

He sees his Hope renew her broken strings,

And _Love and Death_ no more at bitter strife.

[Sidenote: _Punch on Aubrey Beardsley_]

To retrace our steps to the 'nineties, it must be admitted that

_Punch_ enjoyed himself more in belabouring Beardsley than in saluting

established reputations. Seeing nothing in his work but a wilful,

exotic and decadent _bizarrerie_, _Punch_ assailed him under various

_aliases_, all of them grotesque and uncomplimentary. In 1893 the

famous Beardsley "poster" for the Avenue Theatre inspired the lines

headed "Ars Postera," which begin:--

Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,

You're getting quite a high renown;

Your Comedy of Leers, you know,

Is posted all about the town;

This sort of stuff I cannot puff,

As Boston says, it makes me "tired":

Your Japanee-Rossetti girl

Is not a thing to be desired.

Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,

New English Art (excuse the chaff)

Is like the Newest Humour style,

It's not a thing at which to laugh:

But all the same, you need not maim

A beauty reared on Nature's rules;

A simple maid _au naturel_

Is worth a dozen spotted ghouls.

[Illustration: THE DISCOMFITURE OF THE PHILISTINES

On being presented with artful and crafty puzzle by artistic friend.

(Query--Is it the right way up? And, if so, _what_ is it?)]

_Punch_ pursued his pet aversion from pillar to post--or poster--with

caricatures of his types, compared to "Stygian Sphinxes, Chimæras

in soot, problems in Euclid gone mad." Mr. Beardsley, however, was

not the only emancipated artist who came under _Punch's_ lash. In

a notice of an Exhibition at the Dudley Gallery, Mr. Sickert's

picture of "The Sisters Lloyd" prompts the comment, "To be more

original than the originals is to paint the piccalilli and gild the

refined ginger-bread." By 1901 _Punch_ had become much impressed and

exasperated by the modern cult of ugliness, and in 1902 began the

first of a succession of travesties of modern impressionist art--"The

Garden Party," "The Picnic," "A Dutch Landscape," in which all the

negligible features are accentuated and the important ones left

out. Another ingenious series belonging to the same year is that of

illustrations of "Mary had a Little Lamb" in the style of Marcus

Stone, Goodall, Clausen, Alma-Tadema, Dana Gibson, Albert Moore,

John Collier, Briton Rivière, etc. These are executed in a spirit

of friendly burlesque, very different from the notice of Mr. Gordon

Craig's drawings, which is a masterpiece of adroit belittlement.

"His drawing-power as an actor," we read, "is only equalled by his

drawing-power as an artist"; and _Punch_ kindly recommends him "to

confine, or extend, his art almost entirely to designing nursery

wall-papers."

The exuberances of "_nouveau art_" had already elicited the cry of the

visitor (in Du Maurier's picture in 1894) on being shown round her

friend's new house: "Oh, _Liberty_, how many crimes are committed in

thy name!"--a joke repeated from an earlier volume.[8] Nine years later

the angularities of the new "Artful and Crafty" furniture are held up

to well-merited ridicule. But it is only right to add that in 1897, in

"The Pendulum of Taste"--an imaginative forecast of the sale of old

furniture in the year 1996--_Punch_ indulges in a comprehensive and

entirely damaging review of the monstrosities of Victorian furniture

and decoration: groups of fruit in wax; hideous gaseliers; terrible

chromolithographs; a tea-cosy embroidered with holly-berries in crewel

work; a kneeling statuette of the infant Samuel; chairs and sofa in

mahogany, upholstered in horsehair; a Kidderminster carpet "with a

striking design of large nosegays on a ground of green moss"; and a

complete set of antimacassars in wool and crochet. Mr. Galsworthy's

minute description of the "Mausoleum," in which old Timothy Forsyte,

the last and most long-lived of his generation, lived or rather

vegetated down to and through the War, is much on the same lines. But

_Punch_, being nearly twice as old as Mr. Galsworthy, had spent a good

part of his life amid these surroundings.

[Footnote 8: The Botticelli joke in the same year was new. One man

is afraid he made an ass of himself because, when asked if he liked

Botticelli, he had said that he preferred Chianti, and his friend

kindly explains that Botticelli is not a wine but a cheese.]

[Sidenote: _Art Definitions_]

The principles and theory of art-criticism, as I have noted above, did

not trouble _Punch_ greatly in the first twelve or fifteen years of

this period. He was mainly concerned with the robust expression of his

likes and dislikes. But by 1908 he had become slightly infected by the

new psychology of art, and by way of clarifying the atmosphere launched

the following list of definitions:--

ART

(A glossary for the opening of the R.A.)

An Artist is a person who paints what he thinks he sees.

An Amateur is a person who thinks he paints what he sees.

An Impressionist is a person who paints what other people think he

sees.

A Popular Artist is a person who paints what other people think they

see.

A Successful Artist is a person who paints what he thinks other people

see.

A Great Artist is a person who paints what other people see they think.

A Failure is a person who sees what other people think they paint.

A Portraitist is a person who paints what other people don't think he

sees.

A Landscape Painter is a person who doesn't paint what other people

see.

A Realist is a person who sees what other people don't paint.

An Idealist is a person who paints what other people don't see.

The Hanging Committee are people who don't see what other people think

they paint.

A Royal Academician is a person who doesn't think and paints what

other people see.

A Genius is a person who doesn't see and paints what other people

don't think.

A Critic is a person who doesn't paint and thinks what other people

don't see.

The Public are people who don't see or think what other people don't

paint.

A Dealer is a person that sees that people who paint don't think, and

who thinks that people who don't paint don't see. He sees people who

don't see people who paint; he thinks that people who paint don't see

people who see; and he sees what people who don't paint think.

FINALLY

A Reader is a person whose head swims.

The art critics accredited to the daily Press, like their musical

colleagues, could no longer be accused of lagging behind the modernist

tendencies of the times: they aspired to be in the van of progress.

In 1913 _Punch_ burlesques the wonderful phraseology of _The Times_

art critic in one of his "Studies of reviewers," which deals with the

exhibitors at the Neo-British Art League. It may suffice to quote the

appreciations of Mme. Strulda Brugh and Mr. Marcellus Thom. The method

of the former, as illustrated by her "Pekinese Puppies," is contrasted

with that of the Congestionist school in that she "deanthropomorphizes

her scheme of pigmentation into nodules of aplanatic voluminosity":--

When therefore we have to assume a fluorescent reticulation of the

interstitial sonorities, a situation is developed which might well

baffle any but an advanced expert in transcendental mathematics. As a

result the modelling of the puppies' tails is lacking in curvilinear

conviction; their heads fail in canine suggestiveness, their fore-paws

in prehensile subjectivity.

Mr. Marcellus Thom's "Sardine Fishers in the Adriatic," executed

in "creosoted truffle stick," is a masterpiece of "suppressed but

dignified antinomianism":--

Wonderful though the drawing and the interfiltration of coordinating

paraboloids are, it is the psychological content of the picture rather

than its direct presentative significance which affects the solar

plexus of the enlightened onlooker. The whole atmosphere is summarized

and condensed in a circumambient and oleaginous aura.... To do full

justice to such a picture is unhappily beyond the resources of the

most sublime preciosity. It demands the [Greek: esôterikê phlyaria] of

Theopompus of Megalocrania or even the _intima desipientia_ distilled

in the _Atopiad_ of Vesanus Sanguinolentus.

[Illustration: The Hanging Committee _Sir Hubert Herkomer_, R.A.]

[Illustration: Portrait of Miss Guldheimer _J. Sargent, R.A._]

[Illustration: The Young Squire's Wedding _H. H. La Thangue, A.R.A._]

[Illustration: "The red orb sinks, the toiler's day is done" _B. W.

Leader, R.A._]

The new spirit in Art had already been burlesqued by one of _Punch's_

artists in a series of "intelligent anticipations" of the work of

Herkomer, Sargent, Leader and La Thangue as executed in the Futuristic

Style; and again in Mr. Haselden's Paulo-Post-Impressionist portraits

of various celebrities in the _Almanack_ for 1913. In the same year

Mr. Sargent's decision to withdraw from portraiture is commemorated

in a fancy picture of "an old Chelsea Gateway," where, beneath the

name "John S. Sargent" hangs a notice, "No Bottles, No Circulars, No

Hawkers, No Portraits." Here, I may add, that _Punch_ had, three years

earlier, with the aid of Mr. George Morrow's ingenious pencil, duly

chronicled the decay of flattery in contemporary portrait painting.

Three notable additions to the Art Galleries of London were made during

this period. The opening of the National Portrait Gallery, in 1896, is

recorded in Sambourne's picture of Britannia welcoming British worthies

to their new home: "at last we can give you a roof over your heads."

The Tate Gallery, opened in the following year, is welcomed with a

profusion of puns on the name of the donor; and the installation of the

Wallace Collection at Hertford House, in 1900, prompts the observation

that "millions after all have their utility." The sensational

abduction and recovery of the famous portrait of the Duchess of

Devonshire impelled _Punch_ to cry, "_Vive la Grande Duchesse!_" over

the "loss and Gain-sborough picture." Another famous portrait of a

Duchess--Holbein's superb Christina of Milan--was in danger of being

permanently lost to England in 1909, when _Punch_, in "Hans across the

sea," portrayed an American dealer with a bag of dollars dragging the

Duchess away with the comment: "Once aboard the liner, and the gyurl

is mine!" The peril, however, was averted, and Christina still remains

with us in London.

[Sidenote: _Tenniel, Phil May and Sambourne_]

I do not suppose that any of the honours which have fallen to his staff

ever gave _Punch_ more unfeigned satisfaction than the knighthood

bestowed on Tenniel in 1893. The "Black-and-White Knight," as _Punch_

then called him, did not quit the "Table" until 1901, when he had been

a member for fifty years, and the public dinner given in his honour,

with Mr. Balfour in the chair, was a national tribute to a great

gentleman and great artist. On his death in 1914 the special "Tenniel"

number, with personal tributes from his colleagues, was a wonderful

memorial of the work of one who "nothing common drew or mean." Tenniel

was the Nestor of _Punch's_ staff. When the copyright of _Alice in

Wonderland_ expired, a number of artists laid hands on the text, to the

disgust of _Punch_, who regarded this attempt to supplant Tenniel's

illustrations as little less than an act of sacrilege. The situation

is happily dealt with in Mr. Reed's picture of Alice, surrounded with

Tenniel's figures, contemplating the antics of the interlopers, and

asking, "Who are these funny little people?" The Hatter replies: "Your

Majesty, they are our imitators"; and Alice rejoins: "Curiouser and

curiouser." Phil May was only thirty-nine when he died in 1903, and

left a gap never quite filled as a brilliant, humorous and masterly

delineator of street life and of modern Alsatia. Phil May, who was

the soul of modesty and gentleness, and had no enemy in the world but

himself, once said, "Everything I know I learnt from 'Sammy.'" "Sammy,"

as all his colleagues called Linley Sambourne, who succeeded Tenniel

as chief cartoonist, was the greatest pride and pleasure of the Table

until his death in 1910, and affection and regret still keep his memory

green. When one compares his early with his later work, one is inclined

to assert that none of _Punch's_ artists ever made more astonishing

progress in their art. And for the rest I can only echo what one of his

colleagues wrote on his passing: "While Art has lost a noble, sincere

and devoted servant, we have lost our merriest friend."

[Illustration: AT THE TATE GALLERY

DUTIFUL NEPHEW (doing the sights of London for the benefit of

his aunt from the country): "This is the famous 'Minotaur,' by Watts.

What do you think of it?"

AUNT: "Well, it's a _short-horn_, whatever else it may be!"]

DRAMA, OPERA, MUSIC

The period which began with the triumphs of the late Mr. Penley, and

ended with those of Mr. Ainley, was more remarkable for dramatic

alarums, excursions, innovations, inventions and discoveries than

any of those dealt with in my previous volumes. If one were asked to

single out the most remarkable event in British Theatrical history

in those twenty-two years, pre-eminence might fairly be awarded to

the establishment and fruitful work of the repertory theatres in the

provinces--Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Dublin. I mentioned in

an earlier volume _Punch's_ generous tribute to Calvert's services

in Manchester, but if we except his references to the Irish players,

little or nothing is said of this decentralizing movement. Where the

theatre was concerned _Punch_, as in many other ways, was first and

foremost a Londoner. But, with this reserve, most of the outstanding

features of the drama and its presentation are recorded and commented

on in his pages. New dramatic luminaries shot into his sphere, some

of them too wildly to suit his Victorian tastes. Ibsen remained for a

while as his chief bogy and butt, but was supplanted, as a target for

caricature, by Maeterlinck, and to a certain extent by Rostand. But as

time went on _Punch_ was even more preoccupied with the experiments

and achievements of native playwrights. The revival of the poetic

or literary drama associated chiefly with the works of the late Mr.

Stephen Phillips, met with a not unsympathetic reception at his hands.

Mr. Shaw worried him from the very outset, but there is no notice

of _Arms and the Man_ in 1894, in which, by the way, Mr. Bernard

Partridge, as Mr. Bernard Gould, greatly distinguished himself before

he abandoned the boards for black-and-white. _Punch_ contemptuously

dismisses the piece with two lines and two villainous puns: "''Ave a

New Piece?' They've got it at the Avenue. A shawt criticism on it is

'Pshaw! Absurd!'" It was only by slow degrees that _Punch_ came to

recognize the vivacity, the wit and the originality which redeemed Mr.

Shaw's perversity, his lapses from taste and his consistent defiance of

tradition and convention. It was, if my memory serves me aright, one of

_Punch's_ young men who was responsible for a poem, recited at a dinner

of the Stage Society, which contained the couplet:--

And if _The Lady from the Sea_ seems foreign,

For British matrons there is _Mrs. Warren_.

[Sidenote: _A Short Way with Shaw_]

Towards Barrie as a playwright _Punch_ was at first much less

benevolent than he had been to Barrie the novelist, and Mr. Granville

Barker's plays depressed more than they impressed him. But for rather

more than half the period under review _Punch's_ critiques of plays

were primarily a medium for jocular comment, for fun at all costs, for

explosions of puns. As a devotee of cheerfulness he resented gloom; as

a professional humorist he found himself out of touch with a good deal

of the new humour, the new whimsicality, the new wit. These editorial

limitations were made good by the oblique methods of parody adopted

with brilliant results by some of his collaborators, but it is not too

much to say that theatrical criticism was never so impartially and

tactfully conducted as under the fifth editor of _Punch_, the only one

who had never written for the stage.

Turning from the creative aspect of the drama to the organization and

regulation of the theatre, we have to notice two important factors, one

of which was increasingly active throughout these years. Societies for

the production of new, and the revival of old plays on a non-commercial

basis were already in existence, but an impetus was given to the

movement by the establishment of the Independent Theatre by Mr. Grein

in the 'nineties, and the Stage Society and other similar bodies have

carried it on with undiminished vigour down to the present time. These

activities did not always commend themselves to _Punch_, but at least

he did not ignore them.

[Illustration: PEEPS INTO BIBLICAL THEATRICAL LIFE

Arrival of Actor-Manager, Leading Lady, and other members of the cast.]

Then there was the Censorship. The Lord Chamberlain intervened pretty

frequently in the 'nineties where plays dealing with Scriptural motives

came under his scrutiny. Maeterlinck's _Mona Vanna_ was barred on moral

grounds, and in 1907 the apparently blameless _Mikado_ was temporarily

withdrawn for political reasons. It must be admitted that in these

years _Punch_ was less inclined to criticize these interventions when

they were aimed at the frank discussion of disagreeable themes than

when they sought to restrict the unseemly vivacities of the Variety

Stage--witness his continued hostility to the L.C.C. in regard to their

licensing policy and his comments on the Puritan protests against

the programme at the Empire in 1894. An altered mood, however, is

distinctly revealed in a cartoon in 1907 where the Censor is shown

preferring the claims of musical comedy to those of the serious drama,

and _Punch's_ sympathies are clearly with the latter. Since then,

though Scriptural and political plays have not always escaped the ban,

restrictions on the didactic drama, where it deals with the "social

evil," have been largely withdrawn in deference to modern conceptions

of the needs of education and the responsibilities of the State.

[Sidenote: _English Plays and Foreign Players_]

To go back to 1893, the three plays which _Punch_ specially singled

out for approval were _Charley's Aunt_, _Becket_ and _The Second

Mrs. Tanqueray_. The nearest approach to criticism is to be found in

the notice of the first-named piece, in which, while admitting that

Penley was "inimitably and irresistibly funny" throughout two hours of

"all but continuous merriment," the writer lays his finger on a real

blot--the intrusion of cheap sentimentality. Tennyson's _Becket_ is

pronounced a great and genuine success, both for Irving and the author,

who had treated the story "with a free hand, a poetic touch and a

liberal mind." The opening sentences of the notice, however, illustrate

_Punch's_ insuperable inclination to succumb to frivolity. "_Becket_

has beaten the record": and he goes on to speculate how Thomas à Becket

would have beaten _The Record_ if that paper had existed in his time

and had ventured to criticize him.

_The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ might be too strong meat for the young

person, but it "marked an epoch in our dramatic annals," it was "every

inch a play," and revealed in Mrs. Patrick Campbell an actress of

exceptional gifts. There is a delightful burlesque of Ibsen in "Pill

Doctor Herdal," but _Punch_ did not leave well alone, and in another

number furiously denounced _The Master Builder_ (which he had read but

not seen). "Of all the weak-kneed, wandering, effeminate, unwholesome,

immoral, dashed rot (to quote Lord Arthur Pomeroy in _The Pantomime

Rehearsal_) this is the weak-kneed-est," and so on in the superlative

degree with all the other epithets of abuse. This was the year in which

Madame Duse made her London _début_, but _Punch_ did not get beyond a

few puns on her name. The visit of Got, Mlle. Reichemberg and other

representatives of the Comédie Française is treated less cavalierly,

and the rumoured reconciliation of Gilbert and Sullivan suggests the

possibilities of a new "Savoy Peace"--"the Reunion of Arts." Sarah

Bernhardt, Yvette Guilbert and Réjane were the three bright particular

foreign stars in 1894. Sarah Bernhardt was, as we know, an old flame

of the susceptible _Punch_, and though he found _Ize l_ the reverse of

exhilarating, homage was paid to the golden voice of the heroine in a

graceful cartoon of "Sarah Chrysostoma." Réjane in _Madame Sans-Gêne_

comes in for high but not unqualified praise. She was perfect in

the last act, but overdid the _canaillerie_ of her farce in earlier

passages, or at least _Punch_ thought so. His tribute to Yvette

Guilbert, "the Queen of the 'Café Concert,'" killed two birds with

one stone, for it took the form of a very neat and witty adaptation

of her famous song, "Les Vierges," at the expense of the "unco' guid"

of Glasgow, whose Puritanism had recently aroused the protest of Sir

Frederic Leighton and other Academicians:--

Ils défendent tous les desseins

Où l'on peut voir les bras, le sein,

à Glasgow.

Jamais nus; même dans un bain

Sont-ils tout habillés enfin?

(_Parlé_) Matin! A Glasgow.

Portez des lunett's; l'oeil nu

Est absolûment défendu

à Glasgow.

Des corps nus ils n'ont jamais vus

Là, où leurs raisonn'ments sont plus

(_Parlé_) Cornus! A Glasgow.

[Sidenote: _Irving's Knighthood_]

The closing of the Empire Theatre on the score of the improper

character of the performances inspired a cartoon in which "Miss

Prowlina Pry" (the L.C.C.) "hopes she doesn't intrude." The

accompanying verses, protesting against the action of the new

Bumbledom, compare unfavourably in their heavy-heeled satire with

the verses quoted above. Ada Rehan in _Twelfth Night_ is a pleasant

memory to middle-aged playgoers. _Punch_ did not acquit her Viola of

a certain restlessness, but acknowledged that at times she acted like

one inspired. To the same year belongs his tribute to the "imitative

charms" of Cissie Loftus in a set of verses alluding to her imitations

of May Yohé, Florence St. John, Jane May, Yvette Guilbert and Letty

Lind, names that bear witness to the "fugacity" of the years and the

transitoriness of stage popularity.

[Illustration: TRUE APPRECIATION

(Overheard at the Theatre.)

MRS. PARVENU: "I don't know that I'm exactly _gorne_ on

Shakespeare plays."

(_Mr. P. agrees._)

]

In 1895 _Punch_ waxed lyrical over Tree as Svengali and Miss Dorothea

Baird in the title _rôle_ of the dramatized version of _Trilby_. He

bestowed the "highest order of histrionic merit" on Irving for his

Corporal Brewster in Conan Doyle's _Story of Waterloo_, and, in the

cartoon recording his knighthood, congratulated him in the name of

the profession through the mouth of David Garrick. Pinero's play,

_The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith_, is described as "a drama of inaction"

owing to the length of the speeches, but praise is liberally bestowed

on Hare, Forbes-Robertson and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. The popularity

of a now forgotten work of advanced fiction--_Keynotes_, by "George

Egerton"--is attested by _Punch's_ perversion of the title of the piece

into "_The Key-note-orious Mrs. Ebbsmith_." The revival of _Romeo and

Juliet_ served as the occasion for jest seasoned with shrewdness:--

Mrs. Patrick Campbell's "Juliet" takes the poison but not the

cake. Her "Juliet" has over her the shadow of Paula Tanqueray....

Watching Forbes Robertson as "Romeo" I could not help thinking what

an excellent "Hamlet" he would make; perhaps when I see him in that

character I shall remember how good he was in "Romeo."

_Cymbeline_ was the next of the Shakespearean revivals, and its

production at the Lyceum, with Irving as Iachimo and Ellen Terry

as Imogen, prompted eulogies of the performance and a burlesque of

the plot. Mrs. Stirling (Lady Gregory), famous in her prime as Peg

Woffington, incomparable in her old age as the Nurse in _Romeo and

Juliet_, awakened gracious memories in _Punch_ when she died at the

close of 1895. Sir Augustus Harris was little more than half her age

when his crowded and in the main prosperous life ended some six months

later. The memorial verses to "Druriolanus," the ingenious _agnomen_

of _Punch's_ coining, render full justice to one who began as an

indifferent melodramatic actor and ended as a successful impresario,

and throughout served "amusement's motley world" with unfailing energy

and resourcefulness. But to call him the Showman and Solon of the stage

was at once to exaggerate his defects and his merits.

Mr. Henry Arthur Jones cannot be said to have been exactly a favourite

with _Punch_ in these years. Indeed, the title under which _Punch_

habitually alluded to him--'Enery Author Jones--was the reverse of

honorific. Yet in 1897 _The Liars_, with Charles Wyndham in the

principal _rôle_, was cordially welcomed as "an exceptional play with

the prospect of an exceptionally long run." Praise from such a source

was praise indeed. The tragic death of William Terriss at the hand of

a lunatic robbed melodrama of its brightest ornament, and _Punch's_

memorial verses, though melodramatic in their emotion, are a faithful

reflection of popular sentiment. _Aladdin_ at Drury Lane impels _Punch_

to pay a well-deserved compliment to Mr. Oscar Barrett for maintaining

the best traditions of pantomime. From first to last it was "very funny

without being in the least vulgar," and _Punch's_ notice is embellished

by an admirable portrait of Dan Leno as "The Second Mrs. Twankyray."

In 1898 Rostand swam into our ken with _Cyrano de Bergerac_, but

_Punch_ took decidedly a minority view in crediting Coquelin with a

"nasal victory over difficulties of his own choice." The author "had

much to be thankful for," and the play is pronounced overweighted with

verbiage which was neither brilliant nor helpful. _Punch_ was much

happier in his burlesques of Maeterlinck, "the Belgian Shakespeare,"

and the travesty of _Hamlet_, with "Ophelaine" and "Hamelette," and

the dialogue, re-written in Ollendorffian sentences abounding in

endless iteration, makes excellent reading, though perhaps eclipsed

by the brilliant condensed American version of the same tragedy, in

which prominence is assigned to the members of the Elsinore University

Football Team. In 1899 the claims of the Celtic Drama begin to assert

themselves, but _Punch's_ "recipe" for the construction of this new

type, founded on Mr. Martyn's play, _The Heather Field_, shows little

sympathy for the aims or methods of the new school:--

[Sidenote: _Rostand and Maeterlinck_]

Choose for your scene an Irish bog. Among brutal Saxons the

theory still lingers that Ireland is all bog, and this will give

_vraisemblance_ to your picture. If you require an Interior, an

Irish cabin will be most appropriate, for there is another curious

superstition on this side of the St. George's Channel that all

Irishmen live in cabins.

For the subject of your drama select something gloomy and

Scandinavian. It is true that _The Times_ says that "Lunacy and

surface drainage are not cheerful subjects for drama," but your

Celt knows better. Everything depends on the treatment. Did not

Ibsen contrive a drama of enthralling interest on the subject of the

drainage of a watering-place? And they say Ibsen is a Scotsman by

descent, which is next door to being a Celt.

Let your characters be crazy or neurotic. You will find Ibsen's

works a perfect storehouse of these, and if you "lift" one or two

of them nobody is likely to detect the theft. _Rita Allmers_, or

_Mrs. Borkman_, or that sweet thing _Hedda Gabler_, would all come

in useful, and, as your scene is an Irish bog, there is an obvious

opening for a Wild Duck.

If the plot of your play is gloomy, the dialogue should be even

gloomier. Irish humour would be quite out of place on this occasion.

No one must flourish a shillelah or sing "_Killaloe_" to lighten up

the proceedings, and the stirring strains of "_The Wearing of the

Green_" must be rigidly banished. This paramount necessity for gloom

will probably place you in a somewhat difficult position, and may

make it necessary for you to banish the Irish brogue altogether from

your cast. Long experience has shown that a Saxon audience invariably

associates a brogue with latent humour, and if anybody laughed it

would be all up with the Celtic Renascence.

_Punch's_ charity--or tolerance--did not, however, begin at home.

London dramatic critics fared no better at his hands than Irish

playwrights; witness the essay which begins "Dramatic critics are of

three kinds. They may either write about themselves, or about the

play, or about Macready." The first were egotistic, the second wholly

unjudicial, the third laboriously and tediously reminiscent. But the

sting of the satire is in the last paragraph:--

In criticizing the acting of a play, you should be guided wholly by

the status of the actors. Thus the performance of the highly salaried

players should receive unstinted praise, and that of the actor-manager

(it is not the least blessing of his happy position) adulation. Less

known performers may be mentioned with less enthusiasm, and minor

personages may even be alluded to with marked disfavour. This will

lend to your judgments that air of fine discrimination which will add

to their weight.

[Sidenote: _Punch and "the Duse"_]

Loyalty to old favourites was another matter, as when _Punch_, under

the heading "Little Nell," pleaded in support of the "Nellie Farren"

Benefit on behalf of that famous Gaiety heroine in 1898; or when in

1899 he offered his parting salute to Mrs. Keeley, who throughout her

long career in burlesque, melodrama, and legitimate drama had never

been vulgar or tawdry, but always brave and gay, and who lived to the

patriarchal age of ninety-four. Sardou's _Robespierre_, written for Sir

Henry Irving and his company, gave _Punch_ the opening for a graceful

compliment to father and son, for Mr. Lawrence Irving translated the

play and appeared in the part of Tallien. Sarah Bernhardt's _Hamlet_ is

regarded rather as a _tour de force_ than a legitimate interpretation,

and _Punch_, who could not accept her reading of the Prince as a

mischievous, spoilt and conceited boy of eighteen, suggested, in a

whimsical picture, that she ought to get Irving to play the part

of Ophelia. The same year, 1899, was notable for the coming of the

_Revue_. The pioneer effort, which was launched at the Avenue Theatre,

was more or less on French lines, but even at the outset the Variety

element was prominent in a series of imitations of popular actors

and actresses. Tree's production of _King John_, with Lewis Waller

as Falconbridge and Miss Julia Neilson as Constance, is pronounced

"a superb revival," but the English version of _Cyrano de Bergerac_

failed to convert _Punch_ to the majority view, though he now admitted

that the piece contained brilliant poetry. He preferred Wyndham to

Coquelin, but liked neither of them in the title _rôle_, and he sums up

by declaring the piece to be a fine dramatic poem _not_ to be acted,

but read. Still, _Punch_ was never wholly insular or inaccessible to

new and foreign influences. He describes in 1900 how an enthusiastic

friend accosted him in broken Anglo-Italian and swept him off to see

Mme. Duse in the Italian version of _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_.

_Punch_ began by scoffing at the grotesque costumes of the cast, but

succumbed to the magic of this wonderful actress, who owed nothing to

physique, discarded all make-up, even in a part where artificiality was

in keeping with the character, and triumphed by sheer force of genius.

[Illustration: CONVERSATIONALIST: "Do you play Ping-Pong?"

ACTOR: "No, I play _Hamlet_!"]

The vogue of musical comedy was now at its height. _Punch_ has some

amusing suggestions in 1900 for adapting _The School for Scandal_ and

Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's _Mrs. Dane's Defence_ to suit the fashion of

the hour, with appropriate casts, including Dan Leno and Miss Marie

Lloyd. His rhymed extravaganza on "The Evolution of Musical Comedy"

accurately describes the prevalent method in this quatrain:--

In musical comedy books

(Chiefly frivol and froth)

You do not spoil the broth

By employing a number of cooks.

With the opening of the new century, the "poetic drama" was revived

with a certain measure of success by the production of Mr. Stephen

Phillips's plays. Mr. Phillips had graduated as an actor, but _Punch_

found him lacking in the theatrical sense, while acknowledging the pomp

and pageantry of his verse. _Herod_, with Sir Herbert Tree in the title

_rôle_, is condemned for its repulsive realism, and the lack of any

character that engaged sympathy. The notice of _Paolo and Francesca_ in

1902 is long, critical and by no means unfriendly, but the resultant

impression is of "a negative achievement" in which the purple patches

failed to redeem the lack of consistent characterization or of

stage-craft. Mr. Henry Ainley is mentioned, but without any recognition

of the qualities which have since earned for him distinction and

popularity. _Nero_, by the same author, produced in 1906, is described

as "out-heroding _Herod_." There were many fine lines but little

dramatic action. _Punch_ praises Miss Constance Collier as Poppaea,

but cannot take the part seriously. "She looked the Roman lady, played

the unfaithful wife, and died effectively as an invalid after a long

and inexplicable illness. Perhaps she was poisoned. Nero knows; nobody

else does except, perhaps, Mr. Stephen Phillips." Tree's make-up as

Nero was most artistic, but he had not one really fine scene given him;

Mrs. Tree was an admirable Agrippina; but _Punch_ was not thrilled by

the final conflagration, which he describes as a "weird, maniacal but

dramatically unsatisfactory finish."

[Sidenote: _Barrie and Shaw_]

Meanwhile Sir James Barrie and Mr. Bernard Shaw were coming along with

leaps and bounds, but neither of them owed much to _Punch_ in the early

years of the century. He had nothing but praise for H. B. Irving's

acting in _The Admirable Crichton_, but it was a triumph for the actor

rather than the playwright. The hero was "a perplexing creation," and

the play "a queer mixture of comedy, extravaganza, farce and tragedy."

Even less sympathetic was the first notice of _Peter Pan_, in 1905. As

_Punch_ had detected resemblances to _The Overland Route_ and _Foul

Play_ in _The Admirable Crichton_, so he now found reminiscences of

_Peter Schlemihl_ and _Snowdrop_ in the new play. For the rest, he

could find little either to amuse or that could even be acknowledged

as new or original in the extravaganza. He could not even tell whether

the children present enjoyed it. _Punch_ acknowledges that Barrie was

the pet of the critics, and congratulates him on having his pieces

perfectly acted by first-rate comedians. He frankly admits that he

(_Punch_) was in the minority. A year later _Peter Pan_ is recognized

as a popular favourite in a much more sympathetic notice. Mr. Shaw was

a much tougher morsel to digest, but here, too, one notes a progressive

appreciation from the days when _Punch_ pronounced _Man and Superman_

to be "unpresentable," not on moral grounds, but because it was not

a mirror of humanity in point either of character or action. Similar

reserves are expressed in the notice of _The Doctor's Dilemma_ in 1906.

The general verdict is summed up in the epigram that "unfortunately,

by steady abuse of it, Mr. Shaw has long ago forfeited his claim to be

taken seriously." Yet the play contains "some very excellent phagocytes

which enjoy a strong numerical advantage over its malevolent germs."

So, again, _Cæsar and Cleopatra_, while affording in many ways a

rare intellectual entertainment, was spoiled by the author's passion

for being instructive; the piece fell between two stools, for it was

neither frankly sacrilegious nor purely serious.

The ingenious burlesque account of an imaginary meeting of "The Decayed

Drama and Submerged Stage Rescue Society" in 1903 is in the main

hostile to the societies which confined their activities to the revival

of old plays that failed to attract the general public. But _Punch_

was by no means enamoured of all the manifestations of modernity, and

the rumour in 1906 that Mr. Seymour Hicks was going to produce a

musical comedy based on _As You Like It_ prompted a diverting retort

in _Punch's_: "As We Certainly Don't Like It, a Musical Comedy in Two

Acts, by Hicks von Rubenstammer and William Shakespeare."

_Punch_ adds the note:--

"Great care has been taken to follow the usual musical-comedy plan of

making the Second Act even worse than the first."

His success may be judged by the extract that follows:--