Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 3 of 4.—1874-1892

This is enthusiasm at high-water mark, though the note of irony is not absent. Admiration, appreciation, or criticism never lacking in friendliness mark the notices of other visitors from the Old or the New World – the Dutch actors from Rotterdam in 1879 whose performance in Anne Mie impelled Punch to rewrite Canning's dispatch: —

In matters dramatic the charms of the DutchAre perfect ensemble and sharpness of touch;

"Seen the Enfant Prodigue, Mr. Softy?"

"No; waiting till they do it in English!"

Modjeska, "a charming and consummate actress" in 1880; the German Shakespearean actors at Drury Lane in 1881; Mary Anderson in 1883; Coquelin in 1887; and Mlle. Jane May in L'Enfant Prodigue, that delightful pioneer dumb-show play which prompted Punch to exclaim in 1891, "Vive Pierrot à Londres!" with the Victorian caveat "but not a play for children." Punch's views on the transplantation of foreign products were never expressed more frankly or wisely than in his comments on the abortive attempt made by Mr. Wybrow Robertson to present selected tableaux from the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play at the Westminster Aquarium in 1879. The announcement of the withdrawal of the scheme was followed by a statement that no native of Ober-Ammergau had anything to do with it, which gave Punch his cue: —

It is a comfort that one set of people come well out of the mess – the worthy, simple and pious peasants of the Ober-Ammergau, for whom the performance of their Passion Play is a religious solemnity, in performance of a vow made in 1633, when their village was ravaged by a pestilence. When the performance of Passion Plays was interdicted in Bavaria in 1779, this one was specially excepted, as being under the superintendence of the monks of Ettal, hard by, and, besides, in fulfilment of a vow.

But if the institution of the play stayed the pestilence in 1633 (as these simple Ober-Ammergauers believe), its continuance may introduce a new pestilence in 1880, should it bring on Ober-Ammergau, as yet pure and simple, the plague of speculating Managers to tempt the village Actors, as well as of Cook's tourists and cosmopolitan audiences, to poison the village life with greed of gain, and take the sanctity of simple faith from this Passion Play, so turning it – as there is already fear it has begun to be turned – into a show which, in becoming popular, must become profane.

The long and consistently hostile campaign which Punch conducted against Ibsen and the Ibsen plays shows him in a much less favourable light and on precarious ground. It was open to him to pronounce Ibsen dreary, disagreeable and didactic; some of his plays were fair game for the parodist and the opportunity was turned to excellent account. But the long and acrimonious tirade against the Ibsenites and their "Arch or Archer-priest" in 1891 is seriously weakened by the writer's confession that his knowledge of the Ibsen plays was confined to perusal of "several of them" – that he had never seen one of them on the stage; and his challenge to the Ibsen-worshippers to test the merits of their idol by a single performance at a London theatre was rash, to say the least of it.

Actors and Society

Turning to native drama, one cannot avoid noticing that Punch, who had followed Irving's career with interest and sympathy from its modest beginnings in farce and comedy, became increasingly critical of his later ventures. He is pronounced physically unsuited to the part of Macbeth in 1875, and Punch did not fail to fasten on the vulnerable points in his Romeo in 1882. In the same year Irving is especially blamed for his resort to the "benefit" performance system, and his defence is pronounced unconvincing in an article ingeniously headed, "The Doubt of the Benefit," in which Irving is described as "an admirable Comedian, an occasionally impressive Tragedian, a nervously painstaking Actor, and, generally, an indifferent Elocutionist." But Punch had indulged in even more caustic criticism of the popular actor-manager in the previous year, à propos of an address delivered at Edinburgh: —

Again the sickening cry is raised about the "social status of the Actor," and this time à propos of a paper read by Mr. Henry Irving, at a Philosophical Institution known as The Music Hall in Edinburgh. The social status of the Actor is that of a well-fed, well-clothed, well-paid – perhaps over-paid – worker in a curious profession. If he be amusing and intelligent, and behaves like a gentleman, he is exceptionally favoured by what is called "Society"; as most people, except a few fanatics, are interested in the world behind the footlights. But every Actor is not necessarily amusing, intelligent, and gentlemanly, and these are the people, probably, who are a little uneasy about their status. If they are not content with their pudding, the world is all before them. On the other hand, the more favoured ones are a little apt to be spoiled by injudicious patronage. "Society" is a little too ready to treat them like pet poodles.

Why on earth does Mr. Irving yearn for the companionship of Bishops? Does he want to convert them all to Irvingism, and to come and listen to him discoursing Shakespearean Inspirations in Unknown Tongues? Does he require Church Patronage for the Stage, and his Theatre Stalls filled as those of a Cathedral are with Prebends, Minor Canons and Greater Guns of the Ecclesiastical Establishment? Is it the height of an Actor's ambition to swell the crowd of distinguished Nobodies at the Duchess of Mountrouge's reception, or to appear as a great attraction of Lady Doubtful's Assemblies, and to be able to exhibit cards of fashionable "At Homes" in the mirror which is held up to Nature over his mantelpiece?

Elevation of the Stage forsooth! We should have thought that the Stage had elevated Mr. Irving above all such twaddle as this.

"Act well your part, there all the honour lies."

Be satisfied with this: Live for your Art, not for that limited, narrow, uncharitable, scandalmongering section of the great public which calls itself "Society," and which loves to patronize Art in any form at the least possible cost to itself.

Even harsher is the rebuke administered three weeks later to Irving for his self-laudatory speeches, and the unnecessary autobiographical reminiscences in which he contrasted his present with his past earnings, thus creating a false impression of one who was in reality the most generous of men. The petting of actors by society appealed to Punch no more than the invasion of the stage by amateurs; he regarded such favouritism as ministering to their worst infirmity, vanity; and in 1884 he fell foul of Mrs. Kendal's speech at the Social Science Congress on the social position of actors, in which she reprobated self-advertisement (Satan rebuking Sin, according to her critic), but claimed a recognition which Punch denounced as mere snobbishness. Of Ellen Terry, who was associated with Irving at the Lyceum from 1878, Punch remained the affectionate and benevolent admirer, though he admitted that her conception of Lady Macbeth in 1889 raised a good deal of legitimate criticism. The lavish mounting of the Lyceum revivals, I may add, exercised Punch's frugal mind, and reached a climax in the production of Henry VIII in 1892.

Scene —The Green-Room of the Parthenon, before rehearsal.

Hard-working Baronet: "Here's the Duke, confound him! Only been six months on the stage, and getting twenty guineas a week!"

Conscientious Viscount: "Yes, and us only getting six after ten years of it. I hate these beastly Dukes coming and spoiling the profession!"

Ambitious Earl: "Ugh! I hate all amateurs, hang 'em, taking the bread out of one's mouth!"

Idols of the 'Eighties

Punch, as I have so often insisted, was a Londoner first and foremost, but he did not exclude the provinces from his survey. The opening of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon in 1879 was a landmark in the history of the legitimate drama, and Punch did not fail to acknowledge the strenuous local labour and large local liberality which had carried to completion a worthy scheme for commemorating the most memorable work ever wrought by mortal brain. It was in the same year, again, that Punch recorded with sympathy and admiration the memorial performances given at Manchester for the benefit of the widow and family of Charles Calvert, the actor-manager "who did more for the elevation and development of the higher drama, historical and imaginative, than any provincial manager on record, and than any metropolitan managers, except Macready, Charles Kean and Phelps." Phelps and Charles Mathews had both died in 1878, and Buckstone in 1879. Mrs. Langtry, who had taken to the stage, is advised to give up acting in 1882. In 1883 Mr. Anstey Guthrie's immortal Vice Versâ was dramatized and produced with Mr. Charles Hawtrey as Mr. Bultitude. The evergreen veterans of to-day were already advancing in fame and popularity. Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson had appeared as Romeo in 1881. In 1884 the late Mr. Wilson Barrett, encouraged by his successes in melodrama, essayed the rôle of Hamlet. Punch maliciously embodies his criticisms in a letter to Irving, then touring in America, but the general tenor of his remarks is decidedly reassuring to Irving. The long run of Our Boys in 1877 was equalled and eclipsed, after an initial failure, by the prodigious popularity of The Private Secretary, also in 1884. Lady Bancroft died only the other day; Sir Squire is still hale and hearty. Yet it is thirty-six years ago since they resolved, while still at the zenith of their popularity and in early middle age, to quit the scenes of their many triumphs, and Punch, in his notice of their farewell performance, says no more than the strict truth: —

The Bancrofts have done much for the Stage; in fact, the mise-en-scène at the houses where Comedy is played, owes its present completeness entirely to them. They, and Mr. Hare with them, introduced the natural style of acting, thereby supplanting the theatrical tone and gestures of the old school, which Burlesques had done good service in laughing off our Stage for ever.

The performance at Cambridge of the Eumenides by "Messrs. Æschylus and Verrall" in the same year is handled in a vein of friendly facetiousness. Punch found Sir Charles Stanford's music rather more than worthy of the occasion, but thinks Æschylus and his very clever collaborator might have shown more common sense and allowance for modern feeling.

Punch was less considerate in his treatment of the performance of Shelley's Cenci by the Shelley Society which had been founded by "a Dr. Furnivall," the scholar and redoubtable controversialist whom Punch had already attacked in connexion with the Browning Society. The performance was described by a member of the society as four hours of monotonous horror: —

"The actors and actresses in the labour of love did all that could be done; but the play is proved to be impossible, and so let us leave it in the hope (shared by many of my fellow-members) that before another 'sixty years' it will be possible to debate the matter calmly, but not to put 'The Cenci' on the Stage."

Punch was less hopeful. He regarded "the literary disease of which the Shelley Society may be regarded as an exemplar" as an ineradicable malady.

"L'Assommoir" in French and English

Sir Frank Benson's productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew in 1890 come in for more commendation of the scenic effects than the acting, but a favourable exception is made in favour of the late Stephen Phillips, afterwards better known as poet and dramatist. Punch's notice of the late Sir Herbert Tree's Hamlet in the summer of 1892 is a good specimen of discreetly veiled disparagement. But it does not quite accord with Gilbert's famous description, "funny without being vulgar," as Punch considered some of the new readings and by-play to be tasteless and grotesque. It was this production that gave rise to that "desperate saying" that to solve the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, all that was necessary was to let Tree play Hamlet and then open the two graves and see which of the mighty dead had turned.

It would be tedious to enumerate all the references to actors and plays, famous or forgotten, which crowd the pages of Punch in this period; to quote them in full would be impossible. Toole was one of his favourites. Boucicault was not, and excites satirical comment for having written a letter to Disraeli in 1876, puffing his own play The Shaughraun. A little earlier The Great Vance – immortalized in Stevenson's Wrong Box– the "lion comique" of the music-halls, is rapped over the knuckles for advertising his performances as "patronized by the Prince and Princess of Wales." Punch's notice of Zola's L'Assommoir when he saw it in Paris in May, 1879, reflects a divided mind. He found it fascinating and intolerable. Gil-Naza's acting as Coupeau was "wonderful, fearful, admirable, awful, infernal." Yet "the moral to most of those who assisted, the other evening, at L'Assommoir was, 'I say! Dash it! It's too horrible! Let's go and drink!' and the biggest drink I've had for a long time – much needed, I assure you – was after seeing L'Assommoir." Punch doubts whether the play could ever be done in English, but it was produced at the Princess's Theatre only a few weeks later in Charles Reade's version, with Charles Warner as Coupeau. The notice in Punch purports to be written by a working man, who signs himself "one as is a-thinking seriously of Taking the Pledge, but don't see his Way to it yet." He acknowledges the terrible realism of Warner's acting, but his testimonial is invalidated by the final sentences: —

Yes, Sir, Drink is a moral drama if ever there was one. It ought to do a deal of good. And as I think it over, I feel as I want a little something just to take the taste on it out o' my mouth.

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

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.

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 wonderHe 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 harmonyThe still small voice, known of the subtler ear,Which outlives all War's clarions? Year on yearMay pass ere he is measured. Yet we seeThe work of a strong shaper, one whose partWas 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.

"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: —