Chapter XIII: Part I: Loyal Toasts (5)

_Punch_ clearly did not believe in temperance propaganda on the stage. Nor did he support the restriction of child performers, maintaining in 1880 that the theatres at Christmas time were admirable infant schools; "even for teaching," he was "open to back the Theatre, while it lasts, against the Board School any day." There was much talk at this time about dramatic schools, but _Punch_ refused to take the movement seriously, preferring to give a burlesque list of lectures by well-known actresses on aspects of acting entirely foreign to their own styles. He joined in the protest against the abolition of the pit at the Haymarket and the general raising of prices in the same year; and Captain Shaw's Treatise on Fires in Theatres found in him an energetic supporter of reform in respect of structural and other safeguards. Laments over the degeneracy of pantomime and the decline of the red-hot poker business still occur, but honourable exception is invariably made on behalf of the famous Vokes family. He had at an early date described the Drury Lane pantomime as "_Vokes et præterea nihil_." _Bluebeard_, at Christmas, 1879, is called "Vokes's Entire." "The family is a necessity at Drury Lane"; and then _Punch_ goes on to embroider his text. Necessity has no Legs, but here the Vokes family have the pull over the Mother of Invention--alluding to the high-kicking exploits of Fred Vokes and other members of that engaging and high-spirited family. If pantomime showed signs of decay, the "sacred lamp of Burlesque" was burning brightly at the Gaiety with John Hollingshead as Lampadephoros and the famous quartet--Nellie Farren, Kate Vaughan, Edward Terry and Royce--as his chief hierophants. Miss Vaughan's secession in 1883, chronicled in a graceful tribute, rendered possible the historic question from the bench, "Who is Miss Connie Gilchrist?" but by 1892 she too had quitted the Gaiety to add histrionic lustre to the pages of Debrett. In 1883 Miss Vesta Tilley was playing in pantomime at Drury Lane; in 1884 Mrs. John Wood was singing "His Heart _was_ true to Poll"; in 1886 the inauguration of the O.U.D.S. at Oxford introduced Mr. Bourchier as Feste in _Twelfth Night_; in 1887 _Punch_ records the _début_ of Miss Violet Vanbrugh.

[Sidenote: _More Gibes at Ibsen_]

Ibsen's _Pillars of Society_, produced at a matinée in July, 1888, is compared by Punch with a melodrama performed at the "Old Vic" before it became "a sort of frisky Coffee Palace," very much to the disadvantage of Ibsen. In the old play the dialogue was crisp and to the point, in the new it was "hopelessly dull." _Punch_ adds that Mr. William Archer's translation seemed excellent, adding, "But what a pity he ever learned Norwegian!" Ada Rehan, the famous Irish-American actress, made her first appearance in London with Daly's company in the summer of 1890, but _Punch_, while delighted by her charming vivacity, thought she was already too old to play _ingénue_ parts. Her successes in Shakespearean comedy were to come later.

MRS. HARRIS: "Yes, William, I've thought a deal about it, and I find I'm nothing but your Doll and Dicky Bird, and so I'm going!"] Three familiar names greet us in the notices of the Christmas pantomimes of 1891. Marie Lloyd, Dan Leno and Little Tich all appeared in _Humpty Dumpty_, but the last-named receives the Benjamin's portion of praise. "Why Marie?" asks _Punch_, who disliked these unnecessary variants, which have since taken a more eccentric form in "Maudi," "Mai," and so forth.

The Court Theatre was drawing the town with its Triple Bill in the spring of 1892, and _Punch_ did not spare his praise of the "Pantomime Rehearsal" which, with Ellaline Terriss, Decima Moore, Weedon Grossmith and Brandon Thomas in the leading parts, is pronounced to be "about the very funniest thing to be seen in any London theatre." Gilbert's brilliant Hamlet burlesque, _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern_, was for a while included in the bill, and _Punch_ describes it as "an excellent piece of genuine fun." It is all that and more. Gilbert never wrote anything wittier than the passage in which Ophelia discusses the various theories of the Prince's "mentality" and synthesizes them in the conclusion:--

Hamlet is idiotically sane,
With lucid intervals of lunacy.

These were stirring years in the realm of music. To take only some of the outstanding events, there was the Wagner Festival at the Albert Hall in 1877, conducted by the composer, which led in due time to something like a revolution in the repertory of grand opera in London; there was the coming of Hans Richter, whose orchestral concerts lent a fresh impetus to the cult of symphonic music already fostered by Manns and Hallé; there were the visits of Rubinstein and Liszt in 1886; the superb performance of Verdi's _Otello_ in 1887 by the Scala Company, with Tamagno and Maurel in the cast; the advent of the de Reszkes and Melba in 1889 and of Paderewski in 1890. Last and assuredly not least, when the test of pleasure and popularity is applied, there was the long and fruitful collaboration of Gilbert and Sullivan which began with _Thespis, or the Gods grown Old_, in 1871, and continued till nearly the close of the period under review.

[Sidenote: _Punch the Anti-Wagnerite_]

All these events and many others came under _Punch's_ notice, but it must be confessed that his shortcomings as a critic are nowhere so conspicuous as in the domain of music. It is true that in 1875 he expressed a guarded admiration for _Lohengrin_: he found it good in parts, like the curate's egg. "Though not melodious, it is certainly most musically interesting and abundantly poetical." But the report of his Bayreuth correspondent in 1876 is admittedly a bogus document, compiled from German phrase-books in London, and tells us nothing about the music, for the writer never went to Bayreuth. The Albert Hall Festival is treated much in the same spirit of entirely irresponsible burlesque. _Punch_ is determined at all costs to represent the Festival as a carnival of "Wagnerian waggeries." When it was over he admitted that many who went to scoff remained to praise. "The _Rhinegold_ is a masterpiece," but he, is careful to add "this is not a discovery of mine," and goes on to express his deliberate opinion that the Tetralogy must inevitably be vulgarized by representation on the stage. "Such a _mise-en-scène_ as the _Ring_ demands is impossible," and he turns with obvious relief to discuss Patti in _Dinorah_ and the performance of _Orphée aux Enfers_ at the Alhambra.

In 1882 _Punch_ attended the performances of the _Ring_, and after four nights "deliberately" said, "Never again with you, _Wotan, Siegfried & Co._" He found nothing new in the idea of leading motives: it was as old as the oldest pantomime. A few weeks later _Punch_ heard _Tristan_ done at Drury Lane and was bored to extinction:--

Had it been by a young English composer, or an elderly English
composer of the Hanwellian School, it would not have been tolerated
for half an hour after its commencement. For ourselves, if of two
penances we had to choose one, either to sit out a long, dull sermon
in a stuffy church on an August afternoon, or to hear one Act of
_Tristan and Isolda_, we should unhesitatingly select the former,
where, at all events, there would be the certainty of a tranquil
repose, from which no cruel drum, bassoon, or violoncello, but only
the snoring of our own nose, could rouse us. That there are occasional
snatches of melody is undeniable, but a snatch here and there is not
the grasp of a master hand to hold an audience. Judicious selections
will always be welcome; but that, taken as a whole, it is the
embodiment of stupendous boredom, might be the verdict of all English
opera-goers who delight in the Operas of Rossini, Mozart, Meyerbeer,
Gounod, Verdi, Balfe, Wallace, Bizet, and we are not afraid to add,
even in these days of æsthetic mysticism, art-vagueness, and higher
cultchaw--Bellini.

_Punch_ then proceeds to "guy" the libretto and stage directions and continues:--

This sort of music can never, in our lifetime at least, thank
goodness, become popular with the British public. It may, as Dr.
Johnson said of the violoncello performance, be wonderful, but we only
wish it were impossible. Wagner's lyrical-dramatic music requires
no operatic vocalists at all. Let there be a first-rate orchestra,
a book of the plot in hands of the audience, and tableaux vivants
or dissolving views to illustrate it--as illustration is still
necessary for the illiterate. To ourselves, speaking as mere laics
in the matter, with a fondness for tune, harmony, and good dramatic
situations, it seems that singing and acting are thrown away on such
vocal music and such tedious and unsavoury libretti. Richard Wagner's
Operas will be remembered when the _Barbiere_ and a few more trifles
are forgotten, but not till then.

And then Wagner inconsiderately went and died a few months later, and _Punch_, who was never given to indulging in war-dances over his dead enemies, printed not exactly a palinode, but a liberal acknowledgment that this "arch-revolutionist" of the brood of "Demiurgus militant" was a considerable figure. Given his temperament and aims, _Punch_ asks:--

What wonder
He brought the sword into mild Music's sphere,
And in the clangour of the hurtling spear,
The clashing mail, and the loud battle-thunder,
Missed, sometime, of the finer harmony
The still small voice, known of the subtler ear,
Which outlives all War's clarions? Year on year
May pass ere he is measured. Yet we see
The work of a strong shaper, one whose part
Was with new light to show a newer way.
He stripped the gewgaw'd shams of Opera,
Lord of two spheres, he wedded Art with Art,
And Music, sunned in brighter, larger fame,
May date its nobler dawn from Wagner's mighty name.

[Sidenote: _"The Beggar's Opera" in 1878_]

The splendid Indian summer of Verdi's genius which gave us _Aïda_, _Otello_ and _Falstaff_ is only partially recognized. When Aïda was produced in 1876 _Punch_ was more interested in Patti and Nicolini, the magnificence of the mounting and the chatter of the boxes, than in the music. In the _finale_ "the brass was everywhere, the voices nowhere." _Punch_ was happier in dealing with _Carmen_, in which Nietzsche, after he had abandoned Wagnerism, found the exemplification of his dictum "_il faut Méditerraniser la musique_," and which has won the allegiance of all schools. And it is interesting in view of the wonderful success recently achieved by the revival of _The Beggar's Opera_ to read _Punch's_ eulogies of Sims Reeves, when the famous tenor appeared at Covent Garden as Captain Macheath in 1878. But here again he is more interested in Sims Reeves's singing and acting than in the play or the music:--

It was a treat. But what a stupid play! What a set of sordid, squalid,
ruffianly characters, all, except Polly Peachum, prettily played by
Madame Cave-Ashton, who obtained more than one encore. The chorus of
"Let us take the Road" was very effectively given. I should like to
see _The Beggar's Opera_ with a well remodelled plot, an efficient
cast, to include, of course, Mr. Sims Reeves (it would be nothing
at all without his Captain Macheath) and Madame Cave-Ashton, and
produced under such careful stage-management as was shown by Mr.
Hare in bringing out _Olivia_ at the Court Theatre. However, for the
present, _The Beggar's Opera_, which, I believe, was the result of a
considerable amount of "collaboration," is, as played the other night
at Covent Garden, good enough, by way of a musical treat, for Your
Representative.

What _Punch_ wished to see forty years ago has been achieved under the inspiring direction of Mr. Nigel Playfair, though not exactly on the lines indicated.

Cherishing an old-fashioned weakness for a tune, _Punch_ naturally deplored the passing of Offenbach, one of the greatest tune-coiners of the century. The memorial lines in October, 1880, are an admirable summary of the qualities which made Offenbach the musical incarnation of the unbridled gaiety of the Second Empire. But it is rather a surprise to find an allusion to "Golden Schneider" in view of _Punch's_ earlier castigation of that ultra-vivacious lady. For the rest _Punch_ was still true to the tradition expressed in the avowal of the Philistine who said he would rather hear Offenbach than Bach often. Regret of a very different temper inspires the tribute to Jenny Lind, _Punch's_ favourite singer, on her death in 1887. Forty years earlier he had christened her "the Nightingale that sings in Winter," and recognized her unfailing response to all charitable appeals:--

"Dear Jenny Lind!" So then his song addressed her
Who still is "Jenny Lind," and still is dear.
Though Genius praised, and Fashion's crowd caressed her,
She sank not, like some stars, below her sphere
Into those darkening mists
Whose taint the true and tender heart resists.
Her nature fame was powerless to soil,
Whom splendour hardened not, and puffery could not spoil.

How the crowd rushed and crushed, and cheered and clamoured,
Forty years syne, to hang upon her song!
Of _La Sonnambula's_ heroine enamoured,
Thrilled by the flute-like trillings sweet as strong
Of their dear Nightingale.
Amina, Lucia, Alice, each they'd hail
With fervent plaudits, in whose flush and stir
Love of her silvery song was blent with love of her.

And each well earned! The crowd would press and jostle
To hear their favourite warbler, from whose throat,
Clear as the lark, and mellow as the throstle,
The limpid melody would soar and float.
Now like a shattered lute,
The Nightingale who sang in winter's mute;
But long remembered that pure life shall be,
To Music dedicate and vowed to Charity.

"By Mendelssohn, is it not, Miss Prigsby?"

"We believe so."

"One of the 'Songs Without Words'?"

"Possibly. We nevah listen to Mendelssohn."

"Indeed! You don't admire his music?"

"We do not."

"May I ask why?"

"Because there are no wrong notes in it!"

(_Our gallant colonel is "out of it" again._)]

[Sidenote: _Jean and Edouard de Reszke_]

The idols of the operatic world in _Punch's_ earlier days were mainly Italian or trained in Italy. In the period which we have now reached no single nation retained a monopoly of "stars." Madame Nordica, who appeared in 1890, was an American, Madame Melba was Australian-born of Scottish descent, and the two de Reszkes, Jean and Edouard, the chief glories of many recurrent seasons at Covent Garden, were Poles. A hundred years earlier Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, a famous amateur and critic, declared that the French opera singers were excruciating to listen to. In the late 'eighties and 'nineties the best singing was heard from those who had been trained in Paris. The de Reszkes in particular helped to achieve what _Punch_ had declared to be impossible--they made Wagner popular among the fashionable opera-goers by singing his later works as they had never been sung before, turning to them at the zenith of their powers and reputation, a service to art which more self-protective singers have sedulously avoided. Jean de Reszke was great in _Faust_, _Roméo et Juliette_, _Aïda_, _Le Prophète_, but he was greater as Siegfried and Tristan. And so with his brother Edouard, when his Mephistopheles or his Friar Laurence are compared with his Wotan, his Hagen or his King Marke. I have spoken elsewhere of the disastrous National Opera House scheme of Mapleson and the _fiasco_ of the Royal English Opera House in Shaftesbury Avenue. _Ivanhoe_, Sullivan's solitary excursion into the domain of grand opera, which was written for the opening of the last-named building, did not achieve more than a _succès d'estime_. _Punch's_ notice is friendly but not enthusiastic. When it gave place to the _Basoche_, he summed up the situation facetiously but shrewdly enough under the heading, "English Opera as She isn't sung":--

It seems impossible to support a Royal English Opera House with
its special commodity of English Opera, that is, Opera composed by
an Englishman to an Englishman's libretto, and played by English
operatic singers. _Ivanhoe_, a genuine English Opera, by a genuine
English Composer (with an Irish name), produced with great éclat,
has, after a fair run and lots of favour, been Doylécarté, in order
to make room for the _Basoche_, an essentially French Opera, by a
French Composer and Librettist, done, of course, into English, so
as to be "understanded of the people." The _Basoche_ has "caught
on," and our friends in front, including Composer, Librettist, and
Middleman--Druriolanus, who bought it, and Doyly Carty, who bought it
of Sir Druri--are all equally pleased and satisfied. Considered as a
matter of business, what signifies the nationality as long as the spec
pays?--_tout est là_.

"Druriolanus" was _Punch's_ ingenious _agnomen_ for Augustus Harris, who, beginning as a melodramatic actor, had blossomed into a manager and operatic _impresario_ and was knighted in 1891. It was at the close of the same year that Mascagni's _Cavalleria Rusticana_ was first produced in England, scored a success which the composer has never succeeded in recapturing, and established the tyranny of the "Intermezzo," which is not even yet overpast. Verga's powerful story of love and revenge, on which the libretto is based, counted for much, but the crude emotional vigour of the score is not to be denied. _Punch_ adored the "Intermezzo," speaks of the "charm" of the music, but says nothing of the plot. The Italian Company in 1891 were only moderately good; Madame Calvé's marvellously tragic impersonation of Santuzza, in the season of 1892, is inseparably associated in the minds of middle-aged opera-goers with Mascagni's solitary triumph.

GERMAN TENOR WARBLES:--

"I'll not leaf zee, sow lone von,
To bine on ze Schtem!
Zins ze lôfly are Szchleebingk,
Coh! szchleeeb sow fiz dem!
Zos ghyntly I schgadder
Zy leafs on the bet,
Vair zy maids of ze karrten
Lie schentless and tet!"
]

[Sidenote: _Gilbert and Sullivan_]

When we turn from grand to comic opera, the names of Gilbert and Sullivan confront us throughout the entire period under review in a light that sheds a still undiminished lustre on native art. Of each of the two partners in this long and fruitful collaboration it may be said, in the often quoted phrase, that if not absolutely great he was great in his _genre_. Between them they created an entirely new type of light opera. Moreover, it was an entirely English or British product in its spirit and structure, and relied entirely on British performers. _Punch_ welcomed the venture from the outset, and in 1880, in some verses modelled on the Judge's song in _Trial by Jury_, and anticipating Sullivan's knighthood in 1883, he happily summarizes the career of the composer, with whom, by the way, Burnand had been associated in _Cox and Box_ in 1866:--

As a boy I had such a musical bump,
And its size so struck Mr. Helmore,
That he said, "Though you sing those songs like a trump,
You shall write some yourself that will sell more."
So I packed off to Leipsic, without _looking back_,[13]
And returned in such classical fury,
That I sat down with Handel and Haydn and Bach--
And turned out _Trial by Jury_.

But W.S.G. he jumped for joy
As he said, "Though the job dismay you,
Send Exeter Hall to the deuce, my boy;
It's the _haul_ with me that'll pay you."
And we hauled so well, mid jeers and taunts
That we've settled, spite all temptations,
To stick to our Sisters and our Cousins and our Aunts--
And continue our pleasant relations.

[Footnote 13: The title of one of Sullivan's most popular songs.]

In 1885, on the occasion of the production of the _Mikado_, which _Punch_ bracketed with _Pinafore_ as the best of all the series, there are some excellent observations on the dual autocracy exerted to admiration at the Savoy:--

Rarely, if ever, have Composer and Author produced piece after piece
under conditions so favourable to success as have Messrs. Gilbert and
Sullivan at the Savoy. They are their own Managers, the theatre is
practically theirs, the Members of the Company, from the soprano and
tenor down to the latest novice in the chorus, or among the "extras,"
depend mainly, if not entirely, upon the Composer and Author for
their engagements. This Beaumont and Fletcher of Eccentric Opera can
order rehearsals when they choose, can command the scene-painters and
property-men, and, what is much more to the point, be obeyed. They
have jointly and separately the authority of the Centurion: the Author
is the autocrat of the acting and the Savoy stage generally; the
Composer is the autocrat of the music, vocal and instrumental.

[Sidenote: _The Savoy Autocrats_]

At other theatres an Author may try to assume the autocrat, but,
unless he can be absolutely independent, and able to take his
piece out of the theatre without damaging his chance of earning a
livelihood, the attempt is only a ridiculous and palpable failure.
True that times have changed, considerably for the better, since
Albert Smith said that "there was only one person in the theatre lower
than the call-boy, and that was the Author," yet, in spite of much
improvement, a young Dramatist will still sympathize with the spirit
of Albert Smith's observation; and, ordinarily, the most experienced
Playwright, if not, as I have said, absolutely independent, has, in
almost every instance, to accommodate himself to the exigencies of
the theatre, and to the tempers of the Actors. From the moment he
has a piece in rehearsal, there is no peace for him on the Stage. He
is promised what he will never obtain; he has to accept just what he
can get; he has to humour the ideas of others and sacrifice his own;
he has to make the best of unintentional mistakes and deliberately
intentional alterations; he has to accede to the Manager's date for
producing the piece, and its first night of public performance is, in
the majority of cases, really and truly only a dressed rehearsal, and,
in some cases, it is the first real rehearsal the piece has had.

Now nothing of this sort ought to take place at the Savoy. There
Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan have only themselves to please, only
themselves and their piece to consider; they are monarchs of all they
Savoy--I should say "survey"--they are masters of the situation, and
if they allow any piece of theirs to be produced in a hurry, with
incomplete appointments, with inappropriate scenery, faulty dresses,
or after insufficient rehearsal, on their own heads be it and on
no one else's. The Actor-singers are only intelligent puppets in
their Showman's hands, and the more faithfully they carry out the
instructions given them by their masters, the greater their individual
and collective chance of success.

It delights me to see the precision of the action on the Stage of the
Savoy, the result of a carefully-thought-out plan and well-regulated
drill. The principals have been judiciously selected for the work,
and they are suited by the two clever fellow-workers who, having
taken their measure to a nicety, give them just what they can do,
and no more; and who insist on their original conceptions being
executed exactly according to their ideas. The result is that the
ensemble is about the most effective thing in London--or in Paris for
that matter--because the individuality of the Actor-singer is not
destroyed, but is judiciously made use of, and worked up, as valuable
material for the character he has to represent.

_Patience_ in 1881 specially appealed to _Punch_ because it was aimed against the æsthetes. His general appreciation of the Savoy Operas was, however, tempered by criticism. For example, he pronounces _Iolanthe_ in 1882 to be "not within a mile of _Pinafore_ and not a patch upon _Patience_." _The Gondoliers_ in 1890 is placed third in order of excellence after the _Mikado_ and _Pinafore_. The unfortunate temporary estrangement between the collaborators which led to the severance of their partnership in the same year, and which was alleged to have grown out of a dispute over a carpet, is treated in "A Chapter of Dickens up to Date," with Gilbert as Mrs. Gamp and Sullivan as Mrs. Prig. _Punch's_ view of the merits of the dispute may be gathered from the fact that he gives the last word to Mrs. Prig, who, after alluding to a tempest in a teapot, observes: "Wich I don't believe there's either rhyme or reason in sech an absurd quarrel!" Yet when the _Court Circular_ of March 9, 1891, recorded the performance at Windsor Castle of _The Gondoliers_, "a Comic Opera composed by Sir Arthur Sullivan," with full details of the programme, performers, etc., but no mention of Gilbert at all, _Punch_ rubs in this conspicuous absence in his most sarcastic vein.

Mr. D'Oyly Carte, it seems, was presented to the Queen after the performance, and _Punch_ goes on:--

Did R. D'Oyly think of mentioning that "the words" were by W.S.G.?
And then it is told how D'Oyly refused to take any payment for the
performance. Noble, generous-hearted, large-minded and liberal D'Oyly!
Sir Arthur Courtly Sullivan's name was to the Bill, and so his consent
to this extra act of generosity may be taken for granted. But what
said Sir Brian de Bois Gilbert? By the merry-maskins, but an he be not
pleased, dub me Knight Samingo! Will D'Oyly be dubbed Knight? And what
sort of Knight? Well, remembering a certain amusing little episode
in the more recent history of the Savoy Theatre, why not a "Carpet
Knight"?

If _Punch_ kept most of his friendships in good repair, it must be admitted that he also displayed on occasion a positive genius for impish malice.

[Sidenote: _Liszt, Rubinstein, Pachmann_]

Among the musical celebrities who visited us in these years _Punch_ had a special word for Joachim, to whom England was almost a second home, and Madame Schumann, whose portrait with that of the great violinist appears in 1881. M. Pachmann's performance at a concert in 1883 is described with more fidelity than reverence:--

Then came a M. Vladimir de Pachmann, who, in consequence of his long
hair, and a bulkiness about his waist and coat-tails suggestive
of concealed fish-bowls, to be presently produced from under a
handkerchief, I at first set down as a Conjurer. He wasn't, however,
being a Pianist of considerable skill, with an overpowering propensity
for getting the most out of every note, and listening in rapt
admiration to its dying away in the distance, and then slowly raising
his left hand as if pronouncing a blessing on the instrument as he
went along.

Liszt and Rubinstein (who once said that compared with Liszt all other pianists, including himself, were mere wood-choppers) both visited England in 1886--Rubinstein still in the full possession of his powers, which he displayed in his remarkable cycle of seven historical recitals; Liszt, full of years and honours, but claiming attention as a composer, not as a performer, though he did play once or twice in private. The mention of the performance of his oratorio _St. Elizabeth_ in St. James's Hall comes home to the present writer, who was a humble member of the chorus. _Punch's_ notice is an adroit blending of facetiousness and respect. In his Postscript he observes, "How tired Liszt must be of hearing his own music! Fancy Pears being treated for a whole week to nothing but his own Soap!" I wonder whether _Punch_ knew, what was the fact, that Liszt fell asleep in the performance of his own oratorio. Three months later he died at Bayreuth, having never recovered from the exhaustion caused by the lionizing hospitality of his English admirers. Rubinstein survived his visit for eight years. _Punch_ was not far out in describing him in 1886 as the first player in the world. He was then fifty-seven, and his playing of Beethoven's Op. 57--the _Appassionata_ Sonata--beggared description. Rubinstein used to say that in these recitals he played enough wrong notes to make a symphony; he was at times violent and extravagant and took strange liberties with the text. But here he was Titanic, and _Punch's_ welcome was well deserved, though the critic erred in ranking Rubinstein the composer on the same plane with Rubinstein the performer. It is amusing to read, in the reference to the last recital, that the programme included works by

--such small contemporary deer as Liadoff, Balakireff,
Rimsky-Korsakoff, and César Cui. My gracious! What names! Familiar,
too, don't they seem? In the same category the patronymic of
Tschaikowski rings refreshingly as that of an old friend.

The spelling of foreign musicians' names had always been a stumbling block to _Punch_, and I have revised his versions of two of the composers mentioned above, but by 1886 he had at least learned to spell Liszt correctly.

Hans Richter had shared the duties of conductor at the Wagner Festival of 1877 with the great composer himself. The concerts which made his name a household word in the musical world began in 1879. His leonine appearance and Olympian calm, his wonderful memory, which enabled him to conduct the great masterpieces, classical and modern, without a score; and the dignity and authority of his interpretations soon gained for him an admiration which survived his repudiation in 1914 of all the honours and distinctions conferred on him by the country in which for many years he had made his home. There are still a good many orchestral players amongst us who have a warm corner in their hearts for the "Doctor," and a profound respect for his mastery of the high art of conducting. His quaint sayings are legion, and ought to be collected. One of the best is his rebuke of his band at a rehearsal of the _Venusberg_ music: "Gentlemen, you play it as if you were teetotallers, _which you are not_."

_Punch_ acclaimed him as a master in 1886, and his tribute is all the more remarkable because it is coupled with an unexpected acknowledgment of the genius of Brahms, whose Fourth Symphony, a very tough nut to crack in those days, is contrasted with the "howling balderdash" of other moderns. Paderewski, who made his first appearance in the spring of 1890, is handsomely extolled. His first concert, which the present writer attended, only attracted a meagre audience, but the effect on his hearers was electrifying and the _crescendo_ of popularity was immediate and abiding. _Punch_, of course, made puns on his name, but in these years he was so consistent an offender that he might very well have appropriated the old doggerel confession:--

If for every pun I shed
I were to be punishèd,
I could not find a puny shed
Wherein to hide my punnish head.

[Sidenote: _The Plague of Prodigies_]

London has never been free from the plague of prodigies, but the epidemic was acute in 1888, and _Punch_ treated the matter in a style which has a strangely familiar ring--when allowance is made for the usual puns:--

That there is a regular flood of these musical prodigies threatening
to sweep over every concert-hall platform, there is not a doubt; and
while the public rush in applauding crowds to welcome them, it is not
easy to see where it is to stop. As long as the fever lasts, their
parents, whatever their weight, may be counted upon to keep hurrying
them to the "scales," and set them down to the key-board practising
till they are often literally laid on their _Bachs_. Meantime, while
the infants struggle, it is becoming a serious question for the
regular adult performers, who will find their occupation gone, and
certainly not know what to do with themselves, if the former are to
have it all their own way. For them, whatever the public may think of
it, the matter will undoubtedly be no mere "child's play," and they
will surely hail any signs indicating that this recent determined
invasion of the concert-room by the nursery is at all on the wane,
with every expression of unfeigned delight.

The subject is handled more judiciously in one of the admirable "_Voces Populi_" series; best of all in Du Maurier's "Happy Thought":--

MRS. TRIPLETS: "And how is your concert getting on, Herr
Pfeiffer?"

EMINENT VIOLINIST: "Pudiful, as far as de Brogramme is
goncerned--Beethoven--Schumann--Brahms! But ze dickets don't zell!!
Ach! Py ze vay, Mrs. Triplets, you don't happen to haf zoch a zing
as a Moozicalish Infantile Venomenon apout you zat you could lend me
for ze occasion. Ja? Gonzertina! Pantscho! Pones! Gomb! Anyzing vill
blease ze Pritish Boblic, if ze berformer is onter vife years olt!"

_Punch_ was in his element when Eduard Strauss--son of Johann the elder, and brother of the most famous of all the Viennese Waltz-Kings, Johann Strauss of the _Blue Danube_ and the _Fledermaus_--brought his band to the Inventions Exhibition in 1885. In these days waltzing was still popular, and on the page overleaf I give two phases in its evolution as recorded by the pen of Du Maurier. Eduard Strauss wrote many delightful waltzes, and was an inspiring if somewhat exuberant conductor. _Punch_, who had sat under Jullien in his boyhood, compares the methods of the two, and pronounces the performance of dance-music by Strauss's band to be a revelation. "It unvulgarizes even the polka, and, from time to time, imparts an elevating tone to that ungraceful and prosaic dance." Finally _Punch_ rewrites C. F. Adams's "Leedle Yawcob Strauss" in honour of the Waltz-King:--

He hops und schumps und marks der time,
Und shows such taste and nous,
Dot dere's to equal him no vun,
Mine clever Eduard Strauss.

* * * * *

He dakes der viddle in his hands,
Und he schust blay it, too!
He dake der schtick to beat der time,
Mine gracious, dot vos drue.

Und ven der beeble hear dot band
Dey at each oder glance,
Den vag deir heads, den move deir veet,
Und vish dot dey might dance.

Und ven dey blay der "Danube Blue,"
Vich vos vor an encore,
Dey velcome it as zomtings new,
Und call for it vonce more.

Der beeble listen as dey blay
As guiet as a mouse,
Dere's none vor dance tunes any day
Like leedle Eduard Strauss.

The cult of Berlioz, started by Hallé at Manchester in 1880, was now in full swing, and his _Faust_ figures constantly in the programmes of choral concerts and festivals, with Henschel and Santley (who had abandoned opera for oratorio), Mary Davies and Edward Lloyd in the principal rôles. _Punch_ did not overlook the provincial festivals in the days when the standard quartet was made up of Mmes. Albani and Patey--whose likeness to Handel was noted by Samuel Butler--Edward Lloyd and Santley. He was present at Leeds in 1886 when Sir Arthur Sullivan conducted his _Golden Legend_, and Stanford his exhilarating _Revenge_. Sullivan is saluted as "the English Offenbach," a somewhat two-edged compliment, though meant sincerely. At Gloucester, in 1889, _Punch_ praises the music of Parry's _Judith_, but damns the libretto: "_Punch_ and _Judith_ can never agree." No subject, sacred or profane, was secure from _Punch's_ puns. _The Golden Legend_ and _The Prodigal Son_, both by Sullivan, were included in the programme at Gloucester, and are turned to characteristic account in the following comment:--

The _Golden Legend_ is a traditional tale of a fortune amassed at
Gloucester by an hotel-keeper during the Festival week; while _The
Prodigal Son_ is the sad story of a young man who, in spite of his
father's warnings, lived an entire week at a Gloucester Inn.

DISTINGUISHED FOREIGNER: "Voulez-vous me faire l'honneur de Danser cette Valse avec moi, Meess Matilde?"

MISS MATILDA (_an accomplished waltzer_): "Avec plaiseer, Monsieur. Quelle est voter Forme--le '_Lurch de Liverpool_,' le '_Dip de Boston_,' ou le '_Kick de Ratcliffe Highway_'?"

(We have feebly tried to represent the "Ratcliffe Highway Kick," which at present is only danced in the very best society, and confers a great air of distinction on the performers.)]

This is not an example of the Struggle for Existence--it is merely "The Valse," as we have lately seen it danced at Suburban Subscription Balls, etc.]

The Royal College of Music was founded in 1882. George Grove, the first director, the "dear 'G'" of countless friends in all walks of life, was an old ally, and the venture, in which the Prince of Wales took from the very outset an active and energetic part, received _Punch's_ benediction, though an element of genial chaff is not absent in the picture of the Prince conducting his orchestra of royal and noble minstrels, with the Duke of Edinburgh as first violin. _Punch_ showed a truer insight into the potentialities of the new institution when he suggested that it might help to solve the problem of National Opera. By its annual operatic performances so admirably directed for some thirty years by Sir Charles Stanford, and by the training of first-class instrumentalists and singers, the R.C.M. has done an amount of spade-work which has more than fulfilled _Punch's_ prediction.

[Sidenote: _Popular Songs_]

On the educative value of the music-halls _Punch_ in earlier years had maintained an attitude of scepticism, not to say hostility. He had been careful to draw invidious distinctions between the vulgarity of music-hall comedians and the entertainments provided by the German Reeds and Corney Grain, in whom he recognized "one in ten thousand" and a true follower of John Parry, the father and perhaps the greatest of all musical entertainers, whose _vis comica_, allied to unfailing good taste and reinforced by remarkable musicianship, had won the admiration of Lablache and Malibran. I have noted elsewhere _Punch's_ disparagement of the efforts to improve the music-halls. He displays a certain lukewarm approval of the prospectus of the "Coffee Music Hall Company, Limited," issued in 1879 under the auspices of Lord and Lady Cowper, Mr. and Mrs. Cowper-Temple, Sir Charles Trevelyan and Canon Duckworth; the names of Mr. and Mrs. German Reed and Sir Jules Benedict, however, inspired him with more confidence than their aristocratic co-patrons.

The popular songs of the hour seldom failed to attract _Punch's_ vigilant censure. In 1887 "Two Lovely Black Eyes" enchanted the million. It was well parodied in the series of "Popular Songs Resung" by "Miss Virginia Bowdler" in 1891, and in 1889 _Punch_ published his excellent "Model Music-Hall Songs." The song that broke his heart in 1891 was "Hi-tiddly-hi-ti"; in 1892 a "Melancholy Muser" is plunged into despair by the "Ta-ra-ra" boom:--

I am shrouded in impenetrable gloom-de-ay,
For I feel I'm being driven to my doom-de-ay,
By an aggravating ditty
Which I don't consider witty;
And they call the horrid thing, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!"

Every 'bus-conductor, errand-boy, and groom-de-ay,
City clerk, and cheeky crossing-sweep with broom-de-ay
Makes my nervous system bristle
As he tries to sing or whistle
That atrocious and absurd "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!"

So I sit in the seclusion of my room-de-ay,
And deny myself to all--no matter whom-de-ay--
For I dread a creature coming
Whose involuntary humming
May assume the fatal form, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!"

Oh, I fear that when the Summer roses bloom-de-ay,
You will read upon a well-appointed tomb-de-ay:
"Influenza never lick'd him,
But he fell an easy victim
To that universal scourge--'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'"

The amazing popularity of Mr. Albert Chevalier's coster songs is acknowledged in 1892, but _Punch_ hardly does justice to the talents of the creator of what was virtually a new and specialized type of comic song heavily larded with sentiment.

HEROES AND WORTHIES

In the course of these chapters mention has not infrequently been made of the homage paid by _Punch_ to his special heroes and heroines. Memorial verses had always been a feature of the paper, and in the beginning of this period they assumed formidable dimensions: at its close there was a welcome reaction towards brevity; but in the following anthology I have not always quoted these tributes in full, preferring to extract the stanzas or lines which seemed to me to come nearest the mark in truth of portraiture or felicity of expression. Thus, while other features of Charles Kingsley's work in life and letters are noted in the verses printed on his death in 1875, his achievement in the domain of historical romance is much the most happily treated:--

He raised strong Saxon Hereward from death
In his grey shroud of mist from mere and fen;
Called up the England of Elizabeth,
With Drake and Raleigh, chief of Devon men.

To 1878 belong the lines on the "Christian athlete" Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand and afterwards of Lichfield:--

At length from work he rests, and to the bier
His good deeds follow him, and good men's love;
And one true Bishop less we reckon here,
And one good angel more they count above.

The epitaph on Lord John Russell, who died three weeks after his golden wedding in 1878, applauds his consistency but is not memorable, though he is well described as a fighter for freedom "in spite of what was done in Freedom's name."

The lines on the great John Lawrence in July, 1879, contain one good stanza:--

A simple mannered, rude and rugged man,
But true and wise and merciful and just.
Of all these monuments, when all we scan,
Which rises o'er more justly honoured dust?

[Sidenote: _Rowland Hill, Stanley, and Darwin._]

Rowland Hill, always one of _Punch's_ special heroes, was buried in the Abbey in September of the same year. Here _Punch's_ best tribute is in prose, when he speaks of him as

One of the greatest benefactors to his country and to the civilized
world that it ever produced; now inhabiting an abode among the band of
departed worthies who in this life were heroes and saints and bards of
the better sort:--

_Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes_.

The verses on Dean Stanley in July, 1881, are not quoted in his _Life_ by Lord Ernle, so I make no excuse for printing them here:--

With clear, calm eye he fronted Faith, and she,
Despite the clamorous crowd,
Smiled, knowing her soul-loyal votary
At no slave's altar bowed.
With forward glance beyond polemic scope
He scanned the sweep of Time,
And everywhere changed looks with blue-eyed Hope,
Victress o'er doubt and crime.
But inward turning, he, of gentle heart,
And spirit mild as free,
More gladly welcomed, as life's better part,
The rule of Charity.

_Punch's_ most generous acknowledgment of the genius of Charles Darwin was published in 1877:--

THREE ILLUSTRATIONS OF A THEORY

Though dogmatists and dullards long opposed
His Theory with venomous persistence,
Darwin may now consider it has closed
Its--"Struggle for existence."

To calm research, not fierce polemic raid,
Truth yields her secrets. After fair inspection
The age twixt Science and her foes has made
A--"Natural selection."

Thou canst not, Zealotry, as blind as hot,
Truth's champion slay, however hard thou hittest.
Darwin outlives detraction. Is this not
"Survival of the fittest"?

When Darwin died in April, 1882, _Punch_ had entered on a phase in which the claims of science to solve the riddle of the universe excited his misgiving, and his obituary lines are of a non-committal order, save for one admirable couplet:--

Recorder of the long Descent of Man
And a most living witness of his rise.

There are no reserves in his valediction to Henry Fawcett in November, 1884:--

No braver conquest o'er ill fortune's flout
Our age has seen than his who held straight on,
Though the great God-gift from his days was gone,
"And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out"--
Held on with genial stoutness, seeing more
Than men with sight undarkened, but with mind
Through prejudice and Party bias blind.

Another statesman of equal fearlessness and independence was W. E. Forster; but here the whole virtue of _Punch's_ salutation in April, 1886, is summed up in the two lines:--

A sturdy lover of a sturdy land,
He served it, zeal at heart and life in hand.

I pass over the "In Memoriam" lines on the good Lord Shaftesbury in the previous year. They render full justice to his splendid and life-long service on behalf of the "helpless thralls of trade" and the "all unchildlike children" "victims of modern Molochs," "all who creep or fall on poverty's rough road or crime's steep slope"; but they are otherwise laboured and diffuse. Sincerity is no guarantee of literary excellence. _Punch_ shows to greater advantage in the lines on Newman in August, 1890, who is lauded, not as a great Cardinal nor as one

Above all office and all state,
Serenely wise, magnanimously great;
Not as the pride of Oriel, or the Star
Of this host or of that in creed's hot war,
But as the noble spirit, stately, sweet,
Ardent for good without fanatic heat,
Gentle of soul, though greatly militant,
Saintly, yet with no touch of cloistral cant;
Him England honours, and so bends to-day
In reverent grief o'er Newman's glorious clay.

[Sidenote: _Lord Granville and W. H. Smith_]

Two statesmen, widely differing in birth, temperament and character, are commemorated in 1891. Of Lord Granville _Punch_ writes:--

Bismarckian vigour, stern and stark
As Brontë's self, was not his dower;
Not his to steer a storm-tost bark
Through waves that whelm, and clouds that lower.
Temper unstirred, unerring tact
Were his. He could not "wave the banner,"
But he could lend to steely act
The softly silken charm of manner.

Mr. W. H. Smith was a much harder subject for eulogy, for he was not a "dæmonic genius," an orator, or a romantic figure, but simply a good plain honest servant of his country. Yet _Punch's_ verses, if not inspired by high poetic rapture, are something more than adequate in their appreciation of Mr. W. H. Smith's solid qualities:--

A capable, clear-headed, modest toiler,
Touched with no egoist taint,
To Duty sworn, the face of the Despoiler
Made him not fear or faint.

O'erworn, o'erworked, with smiling face, though weary,
The tedious task he plied;
Sagacious, courteous, ever calm and cheery,
Unsoured by spleen or pride.

As unprovocative as unpretentious,
Skilful though seeming slow;
Unmoved by impulse of conceit contentious
To risk success for show.

O rare command of gifts, which, common branded,
Are yet so strangely rare!
Selflessness patient, judgment even-handed,
And spirit calmly fair!

To turn from grave to gay, I may round off this collection with two zoological elegies. When "Jumbo," the famous elephant at the Zoo, whose purchase by Barnum and departure from London had provoked a grotesque explosion of sentimentality, was killed by a railway accident in America in 1885, Punch recorded his decease in the following epigram:--

Alas, poor Jumbo! Here's the fruit
Of faithless Barnum's greed of gain;
How sad that so well-trained a brute
Should owe his exit to a train!

The elegy on Charles Jamrach, the celebrated naturalist and menagerie-keeper of St. George's-in-the-East, who died in September, 1891, at the age of seventy-six, was better deserved. Charles Jamrach, the most notable of the dynasty which for three-quarters of a century enjoyed a practical monopoly of the trade in wild animals in this country, was a "stout fellow": Frank Buckland describes his single-handed struggle with a runaway tiger in 1857; he appears in the D.N.B.; and _Punch_, in his lines on "The King of the Beasts," after describing the lamentations of the animals at the Zoo, ends up on a note of genuine regret:--

O Jamrach! O Jamrach! Woe's stretched on no sham rack
Of metre that mourns you sincerely;
E'en that hard nut o' natur, the great Alligator,
Has eyes that look red, and blink queerly.
Mere "crocodile's tears," some may snigger, but jeers
Must disgust at a moment so doleful;
For Jamrach the brave, who has gone to his grave,
All our sorrow's sincere as 'tis soulful!

PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.4.

_A complete Index will be found in the Fourth Volume._