Chapter XII: Act II: A wild place in Shepherd's Bush (1)

_Enter the melancholy_ JAMES (_footman to the banished_
DUKE) _with one or two Lords, like Bushmen_.

_James_ [_looking at his watch_]:

'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine
And after one hour more 'twill be eleven;
And thereby hangs a song.

[_Sings it._]

[_Mr. Punch_: Excuse me a moment, but is this Act _very_ bad?

_Mr. Hicks von Rubenstammer_: Very bad indeed.

_Mr. Punch_: Personally I fear that I shall not be able to survive it.

_Mr. H. v. R._: Oh, two or three of us will re-write it after the
first night, you know.

_Mr. Punch_: Then by all means let us wait for that occasion.]

Irving had met with various vicissitudes of criticism at _Punch's_ hands during his career. But latterly admiration prevailed, and, when the end came, real affection shines through the brief memorial quatrain printed in October, 1905:--

Ring down the curtain, for the play is done.
Let the brief lights die out, and darkness fall.
Yonder to that real life he has his call;
And the loved face beholds the Eternal Sun.

[Sidenote: _Ellen Terry's Jubilee_]

Irving, as _Punch_ noted in his review of Mr. Bram Stoker's Life, was if possible more loved by his company than by the idolizing public. The financial misfortunes which dogged the last years of his life were due more to bad luck than bad management, and did not impair his serenity. He died in harness, and there was more tragedy in the latter years of his contemporary and friend, the famous and prosperous comedian J. L. Toole, for they were clouded by bereavement as well as infirmity; and _Punch's_ farewell to his friend in July, 1906, emphasizes the contrast:--

While Summer's laughter thrills the golden air,
Come, gently lay within the lap of earth
This heart that loved to let us share its mirth
But bore alone the sorrow none might share.

(_An Author's Tribute._)

(A scheme is on foot for presenting a National Tribute to Miss Ellen Terry on April 28, the fiftieth anniversary of her first appearance on the stage.)]

Ellen Terry's Jubilee in the same year was honoured in a cartoon; but a new and formidable rival to the Muses of legitimate Comedy and Tragedy reared its menacing head in the following year. The visit of the _Grand Guignol_ to London in 1907 inspired a prophetic fantasy on the new cult of "Shrieks and Shudders" which has been easily eclipsed by the realities of the Little Theatre. As I write these lines the leading serious weekly, among "Plays worth seeing," includes the "unabated horrors" of the London Grand Guignol. I have spoken elsewhere of the dancing mania. In 1909 the _furore_ excited by Miss Maud Allan led to the following squib in which burlesque is mingled with caustic ridicule:--

HER RETURN

_Being a wholly imaginative anticipation of the Proceedings at the
Palace on the historic night._

... Before the dancing began an ode to the artiste from the emotional
pen of Sir Ernest Cassel was read by Sir John Fisher, containing these
memorable lines:--

Barefooted Bacchanal, would that I were Kipling
To celebrate thy marvellous arm-rippling!

... The new dances were four in number, and in them She personated in
turn Pharaoh's Daughter in her famous fandango known tastefully as the
Bull Rush; Jephthah's Daughter in her final macabre Hebrew fling, on
hearing of her father's vow and her own fate; Uriah's wife in her _pas
de liberté_ after the battle; and Jezebel in her defiant tarantella
before a waxen Elijah--all new and all marvellously restrained (not
only in dress) and full of scriptural tact.... At the end of the turn
the applause lasted fourteen minutes, and She was led on eleven times.
Free restoratives were then distributed in the theatre, ambulances
removed those admirers who were too far gone to remain any longer, and
the programme proceeded. Late at night She was drawn to her residence
at Frognal in a carriage from which the horses had been removed, the
Prime Minister, Mr. Walkley, Mr. Alfred Butt and a number of other
talented gentlemen taking their places. Never was there such a triumph.

[Sidenote: _The "Follies"_]

Happily there were antidotes to the plague of Biblical Bacchanals; none better than that supplied for several seasons by the late Mr. Pélissier and his "Follies," to whom _Punch_ expressed his gratitude in 1910. It was a "priceless" entertainment, with its "Potted Plays," admirable burlesques of the music-hall stage, opera, the Russian ballet, and on occasion, as in "Everybody's Benefit," really acute satire of the histrionic temperament. "The Follies" have had reincarnations and successors and imitators, but _Punch's_ doggerel is not a bad picture of the troupe at its best, before the late Miss Gwennie Mars left them, and when Mr. Lewis Sydney, Mr. Dan Everard, Mr. Morris Harvey, and Miss Muriel George contributed nightly to the gaiety of the London public:--

When life seems drear and hollow,
When Fortune wears a frown,
I haste to the Apollo
And plank my dollar down.
Outside the tempest vollies
Against uplifted brollies;
I care not, for "the Follies"
Are back in London town.

Pélissier, prince of "Potters,"
You earn our grateful thanks,
You and your fellow plotters--
Co-partners in your pranks--
For slating smart inanity,
Or Fashion's last insanity,
Or histrionic vanity,
Or madness _à la_ Manx.

From introspective thinking
In every minor key,
Good Sydney, grimly blinking,
You set my spirit free.
If laughing makes one fatter,
Then listening to your patter,
O very harebrained hatter,
Has added pounds to me.

Nor must my brief laudations
Omit the genial Dan,
Or Harvey's imitations
Framed on a novel plan,
Or Ben, that priceless super
Moustachioed like a trooper,
Who plays like Margaret Cooper
Were she a Superman.

'Twould need the fire of Uriel
To hymn your female stars
For Muriel's most Mercurial
And Gwennie's surnamed Mars.
O Gwennie, you're a miracle
Of mimicry satirical,
Yet when your mood is lyrical
There's not a note that jars.

The "Follies" were benefactors; their satire was in the main most genial; and they did not cause their audiences "furiously to think." These aims accorded largely with _Punch's_ own conception of the function of public entertainers; none the less in his later years he was by no means antagonistic to the serious drama. In 1907 Mr. Galsworthy's _Strife_ is welcomed as a great play, greatly acted. _Punch's_ dramatic critic has nothing but praise for it, though he did not think that the author bothered about a moral. It was his business to make other people uncomfortable, to make them think and "do something." "If _Strife_ has a moral it is simply that the problem of Capital and Labour will have to be settled."

CHORUS OF MUSIC-HALL ARTISTS: "Glad you're one of us now, Sir Beerbohm."]

_Punch_ still intermittently bewailed the decline of the Harlequinade. His Lament for King Pantomime in 1910 was based on an article in the _Daily Telegraph_ welcoming the beneficent revolution which had substituted _Peter Pan_ for the old Christmas carnival of Clown and Pantaloon. At the same time _Punch_ had himself become more than reconciled to the new children's idol and had compared Maeterlinck's _Blue Bird_ unfavourably with the perennial Peter. The competition of the film play had not yet become acute, and the Music-Hall, which _Punch_ had so frequently and even fiercely assailed in its earlier phases, was now a formidable and fashionable rival of the theatre. In 1908 Harry Lauder's salary, alleged to average £250 a week, is compared with that of the Lord Chancellor. There was no longer any talk of "indignity" in appearing on the boards of the variety stage, and _Punch_ notices Sarah Bernhardt's appearance at the Coliseum, in 1910, as putting the crown on the new movement, and providing the Halls with their apotheosis, for she was "still the greatest star in the Thespian firmament." Her "turn" was in the second Act of _L'Aiglon_; the only other feature in the programme that called for notice was the performance of the "Balalaika Orchestra"; the rest of the "artists" were "very small minnows alongside of this great Tritoness." The "divine Sarah" could do no wrong, but, when Sir Herbert Tree appeared in the Halls, in 1911, _Punch's_ cartoon was certainly not honorific. Nor is the note of "indignity" altogether lacking in the dialogue between the two knockabout comedians in Mr. Townsend's picture in 1912:--

FIRST MUSIC-HALL ARTIST (_watching Mr. J. M. Barrie's "The
Twelve Pound Look" from the wings_): "I like this yer sketch; the
patter's so good. 'Oo wrote it?"

SECOND M.-H. A.: "Bloke called Barrie, I think."

FIRST M.-H. A.: "Arst for 'is address. 'E writes our next."

The "Balalaika Orchestra," by the way, was a minor sign of the Russian invasion already at its height. Miss Maud Allan had been unfavourably received in 1909 in Manchester, and about the same time the Chicago "Wheat King," Mr. Patten, had been mobbed on the Manchester Exchange, and _Punch_ ingeniously "synthesised" the two events in the following stanza:

The types that make the market mad
No doubt inspire the self-same loathing
In spots that spin, as those whose fad
Is chucking up all kinds of clothing.

[Sidenote: _The March of Music_]

The Russian Ballet was a very different thing from the poses and wrigglings of barefooted Bacchantes, and _Punch_ became lyrical in his eulogies of these "spring-heeled Jacks and Jills." The exquisite romance and fantasy of "The Spectre of the Rose," the "Carnival" and the "Sylphides" were a revelation to those who, like Carlyle, only saw in the old opera-ballet the conversion of the human frame into a pair of animated compasses.

The Russian Ballet furnished _Punch_ in his almanack for 1913 with an excellent formula for caricatures of the idols and butts of the hour, but his admiration for the originals was sincere.

In the years immediately preceding the war the cinema demands an evergrowing if not altogether appreciative attention. _Punch_ pays a left-handed compliment to the versatility of the film actor, but very properly satirizes the extraordinary representations of English life and dress in the foreign films produced for the English market. The invasion of Debrett by chorus girls, recorded in October 1913, is an old story, but if Punch is to be trusted had then reached dimensions unparalleled in the annals of aristocratic condescension.

MUSIC

Music has been called "the youngest of the arts" in view of the fact that, as we now understand it in the Western world, it dates roughly from the year 1600. But the "heavenly maid" had already ceased to be the Cinderella of the Muses, though still condemned in restaurants and places where they feed to the menial function of acting as an _obbligato_ accompaniment to conversation, deglutition, and digestion. A pessimistic observer remarked about fifteen years ago that modern life bade fair to be dominated by music and machinery, and the correlation of the two factors has since been abundantly illustrated by the momentous development of the gramophone and the pianola, the cult of "sonority" and the dynamics of the orchestra. When to these influences are added the successive experiments in harmony and tonality and rhythm associated with the names of Strauss and Debussy, Scriabine and Stravinsky, Ravel and Schönberg, one cannot deny that the ferment in letters has been more than matched by the exuberant activities of musical modernists. In the period under review the "whole tone scale" was partially acclimatized and "rag-time" was domesticated, Wagner ceased to be regarded as an anarch of discord, and the "Music of the Future" became the music of the past. It was no longer a guarantee of enlightenment to worship Brahms or admire Beethoven. Of the three "B's" Bach alone has maintained his prestige, and to-day counts upon the allegiance of all schools. Otherwise, and in spite of the renown of Strauss, Germany ceased to exercise her old musical supremacy, and, even before the war, Russia, France and Italy had entered into a formidable competition with the "predominant partner" in the domain of opera. And though opera is an artificial blend of incompatibles and must always remain on a lower plane than abstract or absolute music--the most transcendental thing in the whole range of art--it claims priority of notice in this record for two sufficient reasons: its social prestige and the amount of space devoted to it by _Punch_.

Wagner's operas were now established in the Covent Garden repertory, and as I have already noticed, their new-found and fashionable popularity was largely due to the appeal of the great singers, notably Jean and Edouard de Reszke and Mlle. Ternina, who proved that Wagnerian melody was all the more effective when sung beautifully and not declaimed or barked as by so many German singers. Moreover when, as in the artists mentioned, this vocal lustre was combined with a splendid presence, dignity of bearing, and dramatic intelligence, the appeal was well-nigh irresistible. I insert the qualification advisedly on behalf of _Punch_ who, in these years at any rate, was never reconciled to Wagner, and when he heard Jean de Reszke and his brother in the _Meistersinger_ in 1897 could not refrain from jocular disparagement of the score.

[Sidenote: _Foreign Stars and Native Composers_]

Verdi's _Falstaff_ had been produced in 1894, but _Punch_ abstains from any criticism of that exhilarating work, merely pronouncing the performance a success, and a few years later further advertised his inability to recognize the supreme achievements of the later Verdi by declaring that _Otello_ as an opera was "heavy." In opera he was in the main an inveterate _laudator temporis acti_ and chiefly enjoyed himself when opportunities arose for indulging in alliterative quips such as "merry Mancinelli," "beaming Bevignani," or puns on the name of the performers, e.g. "Mlle. Bauermeister-singer." Puccini's operas--_Manon_, _La Bohême_ and _Madama Butterfly_--found favour in his sight; they had sparkle, elegance and _brio_. But he was not impressed with _La Tosca_, holding that the "operaticizing" of successful plays was a mistake; in general his notices are void of musical criticism and only deal with the singing of Melba and Caruso and the admirable Destinn. Still _Punch_ had lucid intervals of vision when he saw a good or great thing and praised it handsomely. The Santuzza of Calvé, in 1894, was "grand and magnificent" and her Carmen "marvellous" and unique. The epithets were fully deserved, but _Punch_ acutely detected that this great artist and actress suffered from the excess of her qualities, and wittily described her Marguerite in _Faust_ as "a _Mädchen_ with a past." Madame Patti's reappearance in opera in 1895 after many years' absence was genially welcomed, none the less so for her choice of _La Traviata_ for her _rentrée_, for _Punch_ was faithful to his old operatic loves. In the next few years English opera and operatic composers claimed _Punch's_ attention. The scheme of a National Opera House was revived in 1899 when _Punch_ represented Music petitioning the L.C.C. for a site, but the sinews of war were not forthcoming. Sir Charles Stanford's _Much Ado about Nothing_, the libretto adapted from Shakespeare by Mr. Julian Sturgis, with Miss Marie Brema, Miss Suzanne Adams, Mr. David Bispham and M. Plançon in the cast, was pronounced "an undisputed success" in 1901. In 1902 there were two native novelties. In Mr. Herbert Bunning's _Princesse Osra_, founded on "Anthony Hope's" novel, _Punch_ found little scope for positive praise: it was "musically disappointing save for accidental reminiscences." Nor was he much more enthusiastic over Miss Ethel Smyth's _Der Wald_, with its lurid plot "of the penny plain, twopence coloured type" and "interminable duets." Over one stage direction, "Peasants turn pale," _Punch_ waxed ribald, and he concludes his notice with the ambiguous sentence: "Miss Smyth was acclaimed vociferously, the Duke of Connaught and the occupants of the Royal box testifying their great pleasure at what may come to be, after judicious elimination, a satisfactory success." The first of the _Salomes_ who de-decorated the lyric and variety stages was not Strauss's but Massenet's version, produced in the summer of 1903. Mme. Calvé was in the cast, but the opera provided no scope for her genius, and _Punch_ damned it with faint praise as not likely to be retained in the repertory, a very safe prediction. In the summary of the season _Punch_ puts Richter at the head of the successes, a well-merited recognition of his direction of the Wagner performances; the list of "stars" includes the "two Vans"--Van Rooy, the Dutch baritone, and Van Dyck, the Dutch tenor--Destinn, Calvé and Melba, Caruso and Plançon. In the winter the San Carlo troupe from Naples visited London, with Sammarco and Caruso--or Robinson Caruso, as _Punch_ liked to call him--as the chief male singers, but no new operas were produced. _André Chénier_ in 1907 is described as of the _Tosca_ or lurid type. A new hand is observable in the notice which acknowledges an unexpected dignity and refinement in Caruso's always brilliant singing and pronounces Destinn "adorable." Wagner's star was still in the ascendant in 1908, and Richter's splendid conducting of the Tetralogy is commemorated in the cartoon of Hans the _Ring_-master; while the "record operatic duel" between Melba and Tetrazzini is similarly honoured a little later. Never before, unless I am much mistaken, had two cartoons with a musical motive appeared in the same year. In 1910 Strauss was the grand and conspicuous portent of the operatic world, for _Elektra_, was produced in the spring and _Salome_ in the winter. The former was hailed by _Punch_ as a supreme manifestation of the _Maladie de Siècle_. His verses are quoted not for their literary merit so much as because they are a fairly compendious record of the fashions and foibles of "England de luxe" at the time:--

[Sidenote: _"Elektra" and "Salome"_]

O sons of the new generation
Athirst for inordinate thrills;
O daughters, whose love of sensation
Is shown in your frocks and your frills--
Come, faithfully answer my queries
If you would completely assuage
The passionate craving that wearies
Both sinner and sage.

Has Ibsen no power to excite you?
Can't Maeterlinck make you applaud?
Do dancers no longer delight you,
Who wriggle about _à la_ Maud?
Are you tired of the profile of Ainley?
The tender falsetto of Tree?
Do you envy each bonnet insanely
That harbours a bee?

Is the Metchnikoff treatment a failure?
Do you weep when you miss your short putts?
Have you ceased with enjoyment to hail your
Diurnal allowance of nuts?
Are you bored by the leaders of Spender?
Or cloyed by the pathos of Caine?
Do you find that "The Follies" engender
A feeling of _gêne_?

Are you sick of Sicilian grimaces?
Unattracted by Chantecler hats?
Are you weary of Marathon races
And careless in choosing your spats?
Are you jaded with aeroplaning
And sated with social reform?
Apathetic alike when it's raining
And when it is warm?

Do you shy at the strains that are sober?
Does Wagner no longer inflame?
Do you find that the music of Auber
And Elgar is equally tame?
Do you read without blushing or winking
The novels of Elinor Glyn?
Do you constantly hanker, when rinking,
For draughts of sloe gin?

If I am correct in divining
The tortures you daily endure,
Don't waste any time in repining,
But try this infallible cure:
With the sharpest of musical _plectra_
Go pluck at your soul till it's raw;
In a word, go and witness _Elektra_--
Give up the jig-saw.

_Salome_, so far as the book was concerned, was a tertiary deposit. Heine, in a few masterly stanzas in his fantastic narrative poem _Atta Troll_, tells the old legend of the unholy love of the daughter of Herodias for John the Baptist. Therein may be found the essence of Wilde's play, adapted to form the libretto of the opera. _Punch_, who attended the dress rehearsal, gives an interesting account of his experiences, but shirks the task of criticizing the opera: for that, as he observes, "no vocabulary could be too large or peculiar." But he mentions one orchestral interlude, in which "there was one sound, painfully iterated, like the chirrup of a sick hen, which appeared to come from some part of the violin that is usually left alone." At the close of June, 1914, Strauss's _Légende de Joseph_ was produced at Covent Garden by Sir Thomas Beecham with the Russian Ballet. _Punch_ abstained from detailed musical criticism, but condemned the "vulgar animalism" of the piece which he regarded as "a false move in every way," and his view cannot be laid down to prudery or Philistinism, since it was shared by many of the most devoted admirers of Strauss. Nor can he be charged with a wholesale depreciation of German music in view of the tribute to Humperdinck's _Hänsel und Gretel_, which appeared in his pages a few months earlier:--

[Sidenote: _Homage to Humperdinck_]

How strange that modern Germany, so gruesome in her Art,
Where sheer sardonic satire has expelled the human heart,
Should also be the Germany that gives us, to our joy,
The perfect children's opera--pure gold without alloy.

I know there are admirers of the super-normal Strauss
Who hold him, matched with others, as a mammoth to a mouse,
And, though they often feel obliged his lapses to deplore,
His "cerebral significance" increasingly adore.

In parts I find him excellent, just like the curate's egg,
But not when he is pulling the confiding public's leg;
Besides, the height of genius I never could explain
As "an infinite capacity for giving others pain."

No, give to me my Engelbert, my gentle Humperdinck,
Whose cerebral development is void of any kink;
Who represents in music, in the most enchanting light,
That good old German quality, to wit _Gemüthlichkeit_.

I love his gift of melody, now homely in its vein,
Now rising, as befits his theme, to the celestial plane;
I love the rich orchestral tide that carries you along;
I love the cunning counterpoint that underpins the song.

Though scientific pedagogues that golden realm have banned,
He leads us back by pleasant paths to childhood's fairyland,
Till, bald and grey and middle-aged, we watch with childish glee
The very games we learned long since at our dead mother's knee.

* * * * *

There's not a bar of _Hänsel's_ part that's not exactly right;
There's not a note from _Gretel_ that's not a pure delight;
And having heard it lately for (I think) the fifteenth time,
I know I'm talking reason though it happens to be rhyme.

Then let us thank our lucky stars that in a squalid age,
When horror, blood, and ugliness so many pens engage,
One of our master-minstrels, by fashion unbeguiled,
Keeps the unclouded vision of a tender-hearted child.

The sequel is curious, for while the gentle Humperdinck signed the anti-British manifesto issued at the outbreak of the War by leading German professors, men of science and artists, the name of Strauss was conspicuously absent. And as I write Strauss, middle-aged and grey, is revisiting London and, no longer in the van of musical progress, is regarded by our emancipated critics not exactly as a "back number" but certainly as very far from being the "Mad Mullah" of music. Even before the War German operatic music had been superseded in popularity by the Russian school. In June, 1914, Moussorgsky's _Boris Godounov_ was the great feature of the season, and to this, as to Borodine's _Prince Igor_, Chaliapine, in _Punch's_ phrase, "brought that gift of the great manner, that ease and splendour of bearing, and those superb qualities of voice which, found together, give him a place apart from his kind."

In the domain of light and comic opera the severance of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, though a personal reconciliation was effected, was final so far as collaboration was concerned. Composer and librettist both formed new or renewed old associations--Gilbert with Cellier in _The Mountebanks_, and Sullivan with Burnand in _The Chieftain_--but without repeating their old triumphs. When Sullivan died in 1900 his services to art and humanity are read aright in _Punch's_ memorial stanzas:--

In the immortal music rolled from earth
He was content to claim a lowly part,
Yet leaves us purer by the grace and mirth,
Human, that cling about the common heart.

Now on the bound of Music's native sphere,
Whereof he faintly caught some earthward strain,
At length he reads the "_Golden Legend_" clear,
At length the "_Lost Chord_" finds itself again.

In musical comedy the high-water mark of popularity was attained by _The Geisha_ in 1896, but though _Punch_ speaks handsomely of Mr. Jones's tuneful numbers--as they deserved--he makes it clear that the success of the piece was chiefly due to the talent and humour of the performers--Marie Tempest and Letty Lind; Monkhouse, Huntley Wright and Hayden Coffin. In 1907 the devastating popularity of _The Merry Widow_ amounted, in _Punch's_ view, as expressed in his "Dirge" on the waltz of that name, to a tyranny rather than a delight; and in the spring of 1913 he was moved to protest, in the name of Music, against the wholesale importation of American coon songs, "Hitchy Koo!" and rag-time generally.

In the middle 'nineties the banjo was still fashionable, and the amateur singer a source of grief and wonderment to _Punch_:--

WHY DOST THOU SING?

Why dost thou sing? Is it because thou deemest
We love to hear thy sorry quavers ring?
My poor deluded girl, thou fondly dreamest!
Why dost thou sing?

Why dost thou sing? I ask thy sad relations--
They shake their heads, and answer with a sigh.
They can explain thy wild hallucinations
No more than I.

Why dost thou sing? Why wilt thou never weary?
Why wilt thou warble half a note too flat?
I can conceive no reasonable theory
To tell me that.

Why dost thou sing? O Lady, have we ever
In thought or action done thee any wrong?
Then wherefore should'st thou visit us for ever
With thy one song?

_Punch_ gave it up; but in 1910 he declared that "one of the finest efforts accomplished by the gramophone has been the obliteration of the inferior amateur singer."

[Sidenote: _Pioneers and Prodigies_]

The musical education of the million advanced apace. No more potent agency for the diffusion of a taste for orchestral music has existed in our times than the Promenade Concerts, directed since 1895 by Sir Henry Wood. The creation of this new audience is described with sympathy and delightful humour in _The Promenade Ticket_ by the late and deeply lamented Arthur Hugh Sidgwick. While recognizing these new and beneficent activities, _Punch_ did not forget the splendid pioneer work done by forerunners--notably Sir August Manns, whose seventieth birthday in 1895 is affectionately celebrated in punning verse. The action of the L.C.C. in 1897, which threatened to put a stop to the Queen's Hall Sunday Concerts, reawakened _Punch's_ anti-Sabbatarian zeal. Not much account is taken of serious native composers, but the rise of Elgar's "star" is acknowledged as early as 1904 in the picture of Richter conducting _The Dream of Gerontius_.

(Richter interprets Elgar's _Dream_.)]

In 1903 _Punch_ was seriously perturbed by the glut of prodigies, and in a cartoon addresses the child violinist, "Get thee to a _nursery_. Go!" Yet in 1905, though "not as a rule favourably inclined to infant phenomena," he makes an exception in favour of the thirteen-year-old Mischa Elman. In 1908, in a burlesque account of "A Day in the Life of a Strenuous Statesman," the diarist records his reply to a Socialist Member that "the Government would think not once but twice before they refused to grant special pensions to the parents of infant prodigies earning less than £5,000 a year." On the compulsory musical teaching of the ingenuous youth _Punch_ held views which may be gathered from his picture in 1911 of the unhappy small boy at the pianoforte, with the legend: "The only thing that comes between us, Mother, is this wretched music!" While _Punch_ was benevolent to the little musician, he was decidedly hostile to the cult of bigness in musical scores and instrumentation, and more than once assails the prevalent "Jumbomania" as illustrated by huge bands and the extravagant explosion of all the sonorities. When Strauss in 1903 was the _dernier cri_ of modernism, _Punch_ addressed him in perversion of a much-parodied model:--

O teach us that Discord is duty,
That Melody maketh for sin:
Come down and redeem us from Beauty,
Great Despot of Din.

[Sidenote: _Elegies and Eulogies_]

HAMLET (_Mr. Punch_) to OPHIDLIA (the Danish infant musical prodigy): "Get thee to a _nursery_. Go!"]

Many heroes and heroines of the Victorian musical world passed away in these years. I have already spoken of Sullivan, but may note the tribute to Rubinstein in 1894 and the song to Sims Reeves in 1895, in which _Punch_, who had on occasion handled him severely for his failures to fulfil his engagements, was now only concerned to chronicle the triumphs, in ballad and oratorio, of "the king of the tenor tribe" who had fallen in old age on evil days. Sims Reeves, when well over seventy, had been reduced to singing in the Music-Halls, and in 1897 _Punch_ cordially supported the appeal for funds issued by the _Daily Telegraph_. The results of this public subscription, supplemented by a Civil List pension, helped to relieve his few remaining years.

Corney Grain's death in 1895 removed the most popular musical "entertainer" of the time. _Punch_, in his farewell salute, gave him the highest possible praise by describing him as having successfully succeeded to John Parry. In 1896 _Punch_ bestowed the bâton of musical Field-Marshal on Lieut. Dan Godfrey on his retirement from the post of bandmaster to the Grenadier Guards, which he had held for fifty years. Dan Godfrey was the first bandmaster who ever held a commission in the army, and had rendered conspicuous service to the cause of military music. _Punch's_ honour was well merited, and Dan Godfrey's son, Dan the Second, conductor of the admirable Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra for nearly thirty years, has added fresh lustre to the family name. In the same year _Punch_ records the presentation, at Marlborough House, of a testimonial to Lady Hallé (Madame Norman Néruda). His account of the proceedings border on the burlesque, but there is nothing but admiration for the brilliant artist who had delighted British audiences ever since the days of her _début_ as a prodigy nearly fifty years before, and who had been one of the glories of the "Pops" in their golden prime. Nor did _Punch_ forget to add his congratulations to Henry Bird when that fine artist, respected and loved by all who knew him, celebrated his Jubilee in 1910:--

Minstrels, like bards, are irritable folk
Whom trifles oft provoke
To sudden fury or unseemly tears;
But you, blithe spirit, from your earliest years
Have been undeviatingly urbane,
Free from all frills, considerate, courteous, sane,
And to the end will so remain.
Wherefore, with deepest reverence imbued
For your supreme pianofortitude,
And by melodious memories rarely stirred,
_Punch_ hails your Jubilee, O tuneful Bird!

The author of those lines, on another occasion, rendered Mr. Bird a serious disservice. _A propos_ of the invasion of the Music-Halls by serious performers, he had published a purely fictitious announcement that Mr. Henry Bird would shortly appear on the Variety stage as "The Terrible Transposer"--an allusion to his notorious skill in that direction. This was copied into the parish magazine of St. Mary Abbot's, Kensington, where Mr. Bird had been for many years organist, but the editor's ironical comment was misinterpreted, and the announcement was taken seriously, with the result that Mr. Bird was bombarded with inquiries from applicants for the post. A man with a less angelic temper would have been annoyed; but Mr. Bird was only amused.

SPORT AND PASTIME

The chronicles of sport and pastime from the early 'nineties down to the outbreak of the War are one long and instructive commentary on the old saying that in the long run the pupil always beats his master. At the opening of this period, though assailed in the domain of athletic sports by the Americans, and in that of cricket by the Australians, Great Britain still led the world in games and most forms of sport. At its close there was no form of organized physical effort, whether individual or collective, in which we had not been effectively challenged or defeated by the superior skill or endurance of competitors from overseas. In cricket, football, rowing, golf, polo, yachting, lawn tennis and boxing, we had met our match and more than our match; and the insular complacency which prevailed in the 'nineties had given place in certain minds to a mood of depression, made vocal in the Duke of Westminster's letter to _The Times_ in the autumn of 1913, in which he described our failure to take the Olympic games seriously and the loss of championships as "a national disaster." In the interval sport and pastime had become an international preoccupation. _Punch_ in earlier years had been strongly in favour of international contests as a means of promoting international good will. He was not so certain on this point by 1913, but it is to his credit that he viewed the whole subject in its true perspective, recognizing that the spirit in which a game was played was a truer test of sportsmanship than the achievement of success; that the best sportsmen were "good losers"; and, above all, that national efficiency did not vary directly with the number of athletic championships collected by the nation. As early as 1892 these principles emerge in his reference to a boat-race at Andrésy on the Seine, when the English crew were defeated by the French. The title of the verses, "Froggie would a-rowing go," is not promising but their spirit is excellent:--

For in spite of the brag and the bounce and the chaff,
Heigho for Rowing!
The Frog beat the Bull by a length and a half,
With your Mossop and James, licked by Boudin and Cuzin,
Heigho! says R. C. Lehmann!

So in 1893 he hailed the appearance of the French crew at Henley:--

_Punch_ greets you with cheers, may your shades ne'er diminish,
Though you row forty-four from the start to the finish.

Only friendship could result from such contests. At the same time, in "The British Athlete's Vade-Mecum," he rebukes his countrymen's contempt for the foreigner's idea of sport. When Oxford beat Yale in the inter-University sports in 1894, _Punch_ was wise enough to foresee that the triumph was not final:--

Come again, Yale, come again, and again;
Victors or vanquished such visits aren't vain.
One of these days you will probably nick us.
We don't crow when we lick; we won't cry when you lick us!

A similar spirit animates the cartoon on the Cambridge and Harvard boat-race in 1906, in which Father Thames, as "The Jolly Waterman," takes pride in both crews, while the accompanying verses on "Light Blue and Crimson" emphasize that _camaraderie_ of rowing which the writer, "R. C. L.," did so much to foster. The races for the America Cup were, in their earlier stages, when Lord Dunraven was the challenger, more productive of friction than cordiality. Sir Thomas Lipton's indefatigable persistence in his efforts to "lift the Cup" from 1901 onward does not pass unacknowledged, but _Punch's_ consolation is not free from irony:--

Bear up, Sir T.; remember Bruce's spider;
Build further _Shamrocks_ through the coming-years;
Virtue like yours, though long retirement hide her,
Ends in the House of Peers.

[Sidenote: _Cups, Championships and Olympic Games_]

So an element of ridicule is not wanting in the burlesque diaries published in 1903 of "Lipton Day by Day" and "Lipton Minute by Minute," or in the mock-heroic cartoon of Sir Thomas as "The Last of the Vikings and the First of the Tea-kings."

Lawn tennis in the middle 'nineties was still a predominantly British pastime. In his account of the Northern Tournament in 1895 not a single American or foreign competitor is named, and _Punch_ bewails the absence of the old heroes, the Renshaws and Lawford, and the defection of Miss Lottie Dod, who had already given up lawn tennis for golf. In 1906 the prowess of Miss May Sutton, the American girl who carried off the Ladies' Championship at Wimbledon, is celebrated in eulogistic "Limericks." But it was still a far cry to the Wimbledon of even seven years later, when French and German, as well as American and Australian players, entered the arena. Uncle Sam had been busy collecting championships in the interval, and in August, 1913, _Punch_ represented him, carrying a model yacht, a tennis racket and a polo stick (he might have added a golf club in view of Mr. Travis's triumph at Sandwich in 1904), saying to a rather rueful-looking John Bull in cricketing costume: "Say, John, what's this game, anyway? Cricket? Well, see here; mail me a copy of the rules, with date of next international championship. I'm just crazy on Cups." The Olympic Games _furore_ left _Punch_ cold. The Duke of Westminster's letter on the "national disaster" of 1912 prompts a satirical cartoon in which John Bull, "prostrate with shame," remarks: "My place in the Council of Europe may be higher than ever, but what's the use of that when the Olympic palm for the kneeling high jump is borne by another?" The "Olympic Catechism," published in the following number, is a bitter but not wholly undeserved criticism of the spirit, organization and results of these contests, and the evasion by their promoters of the difficulty of discriminating between professionals and amateurs. To the question, "How is the Olympic spirit acquired?" _Punch_ supplies the following answer:--

_A._ By taking part in the Olympic games; by subscribing to the
Duke of Westminster's fund; by devoting oneself to the discovery of
champions; by advertising; by organizing a boom; by promising a
public reception to successful athletes; by paying their expenses;
by----

_Q._ I see. Then I suppose Great Britain has no athletics at present?

_A._ No, none of the right sort.

_Q._ What is the right sort?

_A._ The sort that is imbued with the Olympic spirit.

_Q._ Does everybody like the Olympic spirit?

_A._ Yes, everybody who is anybody.

_Q._ But if somebody says he dislikes it?

_A._ Then he is a crank.

_Q._ What is a crank?

_A._ One who has not got the Olympic spirit.

_Q._ Are the subscriptions coming in?

_A._ I refuse to answer further questions.

The search for Olympic talent inspired a succession of burlesque pictures; and the fostering of the "Olympic Spirit" is reduced to absurdity by the drawing of the lady presenting a classic wreath to the winner of the sack-race in some village sports.

The introduction of base-ball in 1892 is chronicled pictorially in a grotesque illustration of the attitudes of the players. But the interest now taken in the game, and reflected in the publication of "base-ball results" on the tape and in the sporting columns of the Press, was essentially a post-war product. Cricket reigned paramount in _Punch's_ affections, at any rate in the 'nineties. When Mr. C. I. Thornton was presented with a silver trophy during the Scarborough Week in 1894, as a memento of the great part he had taken in the Scarborough Festival since its institution in 1869, _Punch_ paid lyrical homage to "Buns," the "great slogger of sixes." The Preface to vol. cviii. (1895) is headed by a picture of _Punch_, "W. G." and the shade of Alfred Mynn. Reference is made in the text to the National Testimonial to Grace which was got up this year, and _Punch_ suggests that "W. G." ought to receive a knighthood. He was not alone in the suggestion, for _The Times_ subsequently referred to "Dr. W. G. Grace, whose name has been everywhere of late--except where it might well have been, in the Birthday Honours List," and _Punch_ improved on the text in June:--

[Sidenote: _Gentleman and Players_]

True, _Thunderer_, true! He stands the test Unmatched, unchallengeable
Best At our best game! Requite him! For thirty years to hold first
place And still, unpassed, keep up the pace Pleases a stout,
sport-loving race. By Jove! "Sir William Gilbert Grace" Sounds
splendid. _Punch_ says, "_Knight him!_"

In the same summer "W. G." is glorified in "The Cricket Three":--

Men of one skill though varying in race,
Maclaren, Ranjitsinhji, Grand Old Grace.

Ranji was "champion cricketer" of the year in 1896, and _Punch_ indited an "Ode to the Black Prince" with a portrait by Sambourne. Yet the cricket world was not without its frictions and difficulties. In this year the professionals had claimed a higher rate of pay than the regulation £10 for taking part in matches against Australia, and _Punch_ intervenes in a cartoon in which he gives Grace, Abel and Trott the toast of the Three F's--"Fair Play, Fair Pay and Friendliness." _Punch_ a year earlier had congratulated the Committee of the Rugby Union on their decision that "Professionalism was illegal," thus showing their determination to "keep the ball out of the Moneygrub's sordid slime." But while he deplored the prospect of strikes and lock-outs in the cricket world, he clearly held that here, at any rate, the status of the professional was securely established and deserved considerate treatment. England won the rubber, rather unexpectedly, in 1896, and _Punch_ singles out Grace, Peel, Hearne and Abel for special honour. The English visiting team were defeated in Australia in the winter of 1898, and _Punch_, in his "Eleven Little Reasons Why," genially satirizes those critics who tried to explain it away:--

Because of course they play cricket in Australia all the year round.

Because it was too hot for anything, and of course the English team
were unaccustomed to the heat.

Because there was a chapter of accidents from the first, and everyone
had bad luck.

Because the coin never would come down the right side on the top, and
consequently the British could not go in first.

Because the ground got hopelessly out of order by the time that the
first innings of the Australians was over.

Because the constant travelling and occasional _fêting_ were enough to
put everyone out of form.

Because there ought to have been more extra men to fill up the ranks
on emergencies.

Because at least one admirable cricketer was left at home whose
services on several occasions would have been invaluable.

Because the tea interval coming after the luncheon pause was confusing
to the Mother Countrymen.

Because the glorious uncertainty of cricket is proverbial, and success
may be deserved, but cannot on that account be always attained.

Lastly, and probably the right reason, because the other side had the
better men.

Loving cricket as he did _Punch_ was yet fully alive to the English tendency to think that success with the bat or ball qualified a man for anything, and made good capital out of a letter in _The Times_ in 1899, in which the writer, "LL.B. and M.A., London," had written of the late Sir Michael Foster, then a candidate for the representation of the University in Parliament: "Michael Foster was a capital cricketer. He kept wicket for the first eleven.... No better candidate could possibly be found." I have elsewhere noted his reference to the clergyman who in the same year had declared that what his village really needed in a curate was "a good fast bowler with a break from the off." Towards the new type of cricketing journalist which emerged about the close of the century _Punch_ was not exactly benevolent; the duplication of functions was remunerative, but could not conduce to impartial reporting when the writer was also a performer. In the last ten years of this period _Punch's_ references to cricket are much less frequent, but we may note his excellent Latin joke in 1906 on the discomfiture of the Players at Lord's--_urgentur ... longa Nocte_, i.e. by long Knox, the famous amateur fast bowler. The triumph of Warwickshire--champion county in 1911--is commemorated in the cartoon, "Two Gentlemen of Warwickshire," with the ingenious legend:--

MR. F. R. FOSTER (Captain of the Warwickshire XI): "Tell Kent
from me she hath lost." (II Henry VI, iv, 10.)

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: "Warwick, thou art worthy!" (III Henry
VI, iv, 6.)

[Sidenote: _Lord's and Ladies_]

Cricket was increasingly played by girls, but both at the beginning and the end of the period the female spectator left much to be desired. After the Oxford and Cambridge match in 1896 _Punch_ wrote some verses on the attraction of "Lord's" for ladies, which end on a note of severe remonstrance:--

If, Phyllis, you your place _must_ take
Between me and the wicket,
Don't chatter, and for goodness' sake
Sit still and watch the cricket.

In 1912 appeared the picture, "At the Eton and Harrow Match." Here an "important lady" addresses deep square-leg, standing near the boundary, "Would you kindly move away? It's quite impossible for my daughter to see my nephew, who is batting."

SUBALTERN: "Well, I thought we should get our fighting done by luncheon-time, and then we should have the afternoons to ourselves and could get a game of polo!"]

If cricket claims less notice in _Punch's_ pages, it must not be taken to imply any lessening of his love. The reason is to be found in the richer field for satire and ridicule provided by other pastimes. The immense development of Association football as a spectacular game, and the wholesale importation of hireling players to represent a district to which they did not belong, found no favour with _Punch_. His picture of Football Fever in the Midlands on Saturday afternoon in 1892 is deliberately grotesque and hostile. By 1904 the achievements of the Dominions and of Wales in the Rugby game lend point to _Punch's_ burlesque forecast of the "Football of the Future." International matches are to be "refereed" by well-known statesmen; Esperanto is to be spoken; and Great Britain is represented by a team of fourteen New Zealanders and one Welshman. In 1910 a weekly paper advocated weeping for men as "the true elixir of energy and the greatest of Nature's restoratives." This pronouncement was turned to good account in "A Cup Tie Episode," relating how a team, with three--love against them at half-time, turned the tables on their opponents after a copious outburst of tears. Again, when a daily paper in 1913 conducted a referendum amongst its readers to ascertain what subjects of public interest were insufficiently treated in its columns, _Punch_ asserts that "to the Editor's question 465,326 readers replied, football; 235,473, golf; 229,881, flying; and 2, foreign politics." The burlesque snapshots published in the same year if reprinted to-day would hardly be an exaggeration of the latest inanities of the camera in the football field.

While _Punch_ might plead guilty to an "insufficient treatment" of professional football, and glory in his guilt, he could not be charged with a similar neglect of golf. As a solace to the unsuccessful lady lawn-tennis player it is recommended, as early as 1894, in an audacious travesty of Goldsmith:--

When lovely woman tries to volley,
But finds that men refuse to play,
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What game can take her grief away?

The means her spirits to recover,
To still the jeers of those that scoff,
To fascinate the tardy lover,
And gain his favour is--to Golf.

[Sidenote: _Punch and Tom Morris_]

FIRST CADDIE: "Who're ye foor this morning, Angus?"

SECOND CADDIE: "A'm foor the petticoats."]

Sacrilegious hands are laid on Mrs. Browning, in 1902, in the lament of "The Golf Widows"--i.e. women whose husbands do nothing but play or talk golf--an excellent satire on the selfishness, the "shop," and the strong language of the "strong man off his game." But there are golfers and golfers; and _Punch_ recognized one of the real heroes of the game in his "Royal and ancient friend," old Tom Morris, whose resignation of his post as green-keeper at St. Andrew's inspired this genial salutation:--

Well have you borne your fourscore years and two,
Faithful in service, as in friendship true;
Now, pacing slowly homewards from the Turn,
Long may it be before you cross the Burn,
And, ere you tread your well-loved links no more,
May eight-two (plus twenty) be your score.

The popularity of golf in France has led to the framing of a complete glossary of French equivalents for the terminology of the game. _Punch_, as a good humanist, essayed a similar task at a time when the revival of Latin for conversational purposes was proposed by some hardy classicists. As he justly remarks: "The advantages of Latin in this context will not have escaped the notice of even the most superficial observers. Thus the bad effect on caddies of using strong language in the vernacular is entirely obviated. Again, when the ball is lying dead, only a dead language can render justice to the situation."

"'I can only emphasize the fact that I consider that physically, morally, and socially, the benefits that cycling confers on the men of the present day are almost unbounded.' (_Aside_) Wish I were on a 'Safety'!!"]

[Sidenote: _Bicycling, Croquet, Swimming_]

Of the brief vogue of bicycling among the "smart set" I have spoken already. The abuse of this indispensable machine inspired a new version of "Daisy Bell, or a Bicycle Made for Two"--"Blazy Bill or the Bicycle Cad"--of which it may suffice to quote the last stanza:--

Blazy! Blazy!
Turn up wild wheeling, do!
I'm half crazy,
All in blue funk of you.
The "Galloping Snob" was a curse, Sir,
But the Walloping Wheelman is worser;
I'd subscribe half a quid
To be thoroughly rid
Of all Bicycle Cads like you.

As a set-off, however, in "_Facilis Descensus_" _Punch_ sings gaily and genially of the "dear little Bishop" who had bought a new "bike" and found that in the joys of the wheel nothing could come up to "coasting." The picture of Mr. Gladstone on the old "ordinary" is not a representation of fact, but I print it as a reminder of the appearance of that remarkable and perilous-looking machine. Croquet, which had led a submerged existence for several years, reasserted itself in 1894, and _Punch_, in affected astonishment, asked, "Are we back in the 'sixties again?" The revival was attributed by the _Pall Mall Gazette_ to the abolition of "tight croqueting," a phrase which gave _Punch_ openings for facetious comment. In the previous year he had disrespectfully spoken of croquet as the "feeblest game," and yet admitted that, given a pretty partner, it beat golf and polo. Swimming, in its heroic form, loomed large in 1905, and in _Punch's_ picture the Channel is black with male and female athletes, while an article is devoted to a fictitious account of an hotel at Dover specially equipped to meet their needs. Women had by now taken so kindly to all kinds of sport and pastime that _Punch_ sought to reduce their competition to absurdity in the dialogue of two stalwart young men who preferred arranging flowers to shooting or golfing, because they had become "so effeminate." The sporting woman, by the way, was no favourite of Du Maurier's. Ten years earlier he had portrayed an odious specimen of the new womanhood in Miss Goldenberg, who, in reply to the question of the charming vicar's wife whether she had had good sport, replies jauntily: "Oh, rippin'! I only shot one rabbit, but I managed to injure quite a dozen more!" The "Ballad of the Lady Hockey-player" in 1903 ascribes to her a distinctly matrimonial purpose:--

And to-day I'm so excited that I feel inclined to scream,
But a certain sense of modesty prevails;
For this very afternoon I am to play against a team
That will be composed of eligible males.
Though I do not care two pins
Which side loses, or which wins,
I may get some introductions if I hit 'em on the shins.

Winter sports in Switzerland make their _début_ in _Punch_ in 1895 in an article on tobogganing dated "_Canton des Grisons_." Mention is made of curling, "bandy" and figure-skating, but nothing is said of ski-ing, which though practised as a sport in Norway from 1860, did not reach Switzerland till the end of the century. Another foreign importation, this time from Japan, was ju-jitsu, to the value of which _Punch_ pays a dubious tribute in 1899 in a burlesque interview with a burglar on whom a householder had ineffectually tried the new art of self-defence. In the same mood are the farcical suggestions for dealing with various awkward situations in 1905, and the overthrow of a butler by a page-boy, to the petrifaction of the servants' hall. There was a recrudescence of roller-skating in 1909 which _Punch_ deals with in pictures, prose and verse. The inexpert and self-protective lover sings, after Ben Jonson:--

Rink with me only with thine eyes,
And do not clutch my frame;
Clasp yonder expert's hand instead,
And I'll not press my claim.

[Sidenote: _The Tyranny of Ping-pong_]

There are many allusions to "Rinkomania," but not nearly so many as to Ping-Pong, which attained the proportions of a pestilence in 1901, 1902 and 1903. _Punch_ began by calling it a "ghastly game," but kept in close touch with its progress until the tyranny was overpast. He gives us pictures of ping-pong in the kitchen; of people searching beneath the table and in corners for missing balls; a sketch of a ping-pong tournament, with local champions and devotees of all ages and callings.

In his "Cry of the Children" the younger generation lift up their voices in protest:--

We shall never know what peace is till we land upon that shore
Where the fathers cease from pinging and the mothers pong no more.

In 1902 the _Table Tennis Gazette_ issued its first number, and _Punch_ speculates on the contents:--