Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 4 of 4.—1892-1914

Mr. Marcellus Thom's "Sardine Fishers in the Adriatic," executed in "creosoted truffle stick," is a masterpiece of "suppressed but dignified antinomianism": —

Wonderful though the drawing and the interfiltration of coordinating paraboloids are, it is the psychological content of the picture rather than its direct presentative significance which affects the solar plexus of the enlightened onlooker. The whole atmosphere is summarized and condensed in a circumambient and oleaginous aura… To do full justice to such a picture is unhappily beyond the resources of the most sublime preciosity. It demands the εσωτερικη πφλαρια of Theopompus of Megalocrania or even the intima desipientia distilled in the Atopiad of Vesanus Sanguinolentus.

The new spirit in Art had already been burlesqued by one of Punch's artists in a series of "intelligent anticipations" of the work of Herkomer, Sargent, Leader and La Thangue as executed in the Futuristic Style; and again in Mr. Haselden's Paulo-Post-Impressionist portraits of various celebrities in the Almanack for 1913. In the same year Mr. Sargent's decision to withdraw from portraiture is commemorated in a fancy picture of "an old Chelsea Gateway," where, beneath the name "John S. Sargent" hangs a notice, "No Bottles, No Circulars, No Hawkers, No Portraits." Here, I may add, that Punch had, three years earlier, with the aid of Mr. George Morrow's ingenious pencil, duly chronicled the decay of flattery in contemporary portrait painting.

Three notable additions to the Art Galleries of London were made during this period. The opening of the National Portrait Gallery, in 1896, is recorded in Sambourne's picture of Britannia welcoming British worthies to their new home: "at last we can give you a roof over your heads." The Tate Gallery, opened in the following year, is welcomed with a profusion of puns on the name of the donor; and the installation of the Wallace Collection at Hertford House, in 1900, prompts the observation that "millions after all have their utility." The sensational abduction and recovery of the famous portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire impelled Punch to cry, "Vive la Grande Duchesse!" over the "loss and Gain-sborough picture." Another famous portrait of a Duchess – Holbein's superb Christina of Milan – was in danger of being permanently lost to England in 1909, when Punch, in "Hans across the sea," portrayed an American dealer with a bag of dollars dragging the Duchess away with the comment: "Once aboard the liner, and the gyurl is mine!" The peril, however, was averted, and Christina still remains with us in London.

Tenniel, Phil May and Sambourne

I do not suppose that any of the honours which have fallen to his staff ever gave Punch more unfeigned satisfaction than the knighthood bestowed on Tenniel in 1893. The "Black-and-White Knight," as Punch then called him, did not quit the "Table" until 1901, when he had been a member for fifty years, and the public dinner given in his honour, with Mr. Balfour in the chair, was a national tribute to a great gentleman and great artist. On his death in 1914 the special "Tenniel" number, with personal tributes from his colleagues, was a wonderful memorial of the work of one who "nothing common drew or mean." Tenniel was the Nestor of Punch's staff. When the copyright of Alice in Wonderland expired, a number of artists laid hands on the text, to the disgust of Punch, who regarded this attempt to supplant Tenniel's illustrations as little less than an act of sacrilege. The situation is happily dealt with in Mr. Reed's picture of Alice, surrounded with Tenniel's figures, contemplating the antics of the interlopers, and asking, "Who are these funny little people?" The Hatter replies: "Your Majesty, they are our imitators"; and Alice rejoins: "Curiouser and curiouser." Phil May was only thirty-nine when he died in 1903, and left a gap never quite filled as a brilliant, humorous and masterly delineator of street life and of modern Alsatia. Phil May, who was the soul of modesty and gentleness, and had no enemy in the world but himself, once said, "Everything I know I learnt from 'Sammy.'" "Sammy," as all his colleagues called Linley Sambourne, who succeeded Tenniel as chief cartoonist, was the greatest pride and pleasure of the Table until his death in 1910, and affection and regret still keep his memory green. When one compares his early with his later work, one is inclined to assert that none of Punch's artists ever made more astonishing progress in their art. And for the rest I can only echo what one of his colleagues wrote on his passing: "While Art has lost a noble, sincere and devoted servant, we have lost our merriest friend."

Dutiful Nephew (doing the sights of London for the benefit of his aunt from the country): "This is the famous 'Minotaur,' by Watts. What do you think of it?"

Aunt: "Well, it's a short-horn, whatever else it may be!"

DRAMA, OPERA, MUSIC

The period which began with the triumphs of the late Mr. Penley, and ended with those of Mr. Ainley, was more remarkable for dramatic alarums, excursions, innovations, inventions and discoveries than any of those dealt with in my previous volumes. If one were asked to single out the most remarkable event in British Theatrical history in those twenty-two years, pre-eminence might fairly be awarded to the establishment and fruitful work of the repertory theatres in the provinces – Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Dublin. I mentioned in an earlier volume Punch's generous tribute to Calvert's services in Manchester, but if we except his references to the Irish players, little or nothing is said of this decentralizing movement. Where the theatre was concerned Punch, as in many other ways, was first and foremost a Londoner. But, with this reserve, most of the outstanding features of the drama and its presentation are recorded and commented on in his pages. New dramatic luminaries shot into his sphere, some of them too wildly to suit his Victorian tastes. Ibsen remained for a while as his chief bogy and butt, but was supplanted, as a target for caricature, by Maeterlinck, and to a certain extent by Rostand. But as time went on Punch was even more preoccupied with the experiments and achievements of native playwrights. The revival of the poetic or literary drama associated chiefly with the works of the late Mr. Stephen Phillips, met with a not unsympathetic reception at his hands. Mr. Shaw worried him from the very outset, but there is no notice of Arms and the Man in 1894, in which, by the way, Mr. Bernard Partridge, as Mr. Bernard Gould, greatly distinguished himself before he abandoned the boards for black-and-white. Punch contemptuously dismisses the piece with two lines and two villainous puns: "''Ave a New Piece?' They've got it at the Avenue. A shawt criticism on it is 'Pshaw! Absurd!'" It was only by slow degrees that Punch came to recognize the vivacity, the wit and the originality which redeemed Mr. Shaw's perversity, his lapses from taste and his consistent defiance of tradition and convention. It was, if my memory serves me aright, one of Punch's young men who was responsible for a poem, recited at a dinner of the Stage Society, which contained the couplet: —

And if The Lady from the Sea seems foreign,For British matrons there is Mrs. Warren.

A Short Way with Shaw

Towards Barrie as a playwright Punch was at first much less benevolent than he had been to Barrie the novelist, and Mr. Granville Barker's plays depressed more than they impressed him. But for rather more than half the period under review Punch's critiques of plays were primarily a medium for jocular comment, for fun at all costs, for explosions of puns. As a devotee of cheerfulness he resented gloom; as a professional humorist he found himself out of touch with a good deal of the new humour, the new whimsicality, the new wit. These editorial limitations were made good by the oblique methods of parody adopted with brilliant results by some of his collaborators, but it is not too much to say that theatrical criticism was never so impartially and tactfully conducted as under the fifth editor of Punch, the only one who had never written for the stage.

Turning from the creative aspect of the drama to the organization and regulation of the theatre, we have to notice two important factors, one of which was increasingly active throughout these years. Societies for the production of new, and the revival of old plays on a non-commercial basis were already in existence, but an impetus was given to the movement by the establishment of the Independent Theatre by Mr. Grein in the 'nineties, and the Stage Society and other similar bodies have carried it on with undiminished vigour down to the present time. These activities did not always commend themselves to Punch, but at least he did not ignore them.

Arrival of Actor-Manager, Leading Lady, and other members of the cast.

Then there was the Censorship. The Lord Chamberlain intervened pretty frequently in the 'nineties where plays dealing with Scriptural motives came under his scrutiny. Maeterlinck's Mona Vanna was barred on moral grounds, and in 1907 the apparently blameless Mikado was temporarily withdrawn for political reasons. It must be admitted that in these years Punch was less inclined to criticize these interventions when they were aimed at the frank discussion of disagreeable themes than when they sought to restrict the unseemly vivacities of the Variety Stage – witness his continued hostility to the L.C.C. in regard to their licensing policy and his comments on the Puritan protests against the programme at the Empire in 1894. An altered mood, however, is distinctly revealed in a cartoon in 1907 where the Censor is shown preferring the claims of musical comedy to those of the serious drama, and Punch's sympathies are clearly with the latter. Since then, though Scriptural and political plays have not always escaped the ban, restrictions on the didactic drama, where it deals with the "social evil," have been largely withdrawn in deference to modern conceptions of the needs of education and the responsibilities of the State.

English Plays and Foreign Players

To go back to 1893, the three plays which Punch specially singled out for approval were Charley's Aunt, Becket and The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. The nearest approach to criticism is to be found in the notice of the first-named piece, in which, while admitting that Penley was "inimitably and irresistibly funny" throughout two hours of "all but continuous merriment," the writer lays his finger on a real blot – the intrusion of cheap sentimentality. Tennyson's Becket is pronounced a great and genuine success, both for Irving and the author, who had treated the story "with a free hand, a poetic touch and a liberal mind." The opening sentences of the notice, however, illustrate Punch's insuperable inclination to succumb to frivolity. "Becket has beaten the record": and he goes on to speculate how Thomas à Becket would have beaten The Record if that paper had existed in his time and had ventured to criticize him.

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray might be too strong meat for the young person, but it "marked an epoch in our dramatic annals," it was "every inch a play," and revealed in Mrs. Patrick Campbell an actress of exceptional gifts. There is a delightful burlesque of Ibsen in "Pill Doctor Herdal," but Punch did not leave well alone, and in another number furiously denounced The Master Builder (which he had read but not seen). "Of all the weak-kneed, wandering, effeminate, unwholesome, immoral, dashed rot (to quote Lord Arthur Pomeroy in The Pantomime Rehearsal) this is the weak-kneed-est," and so on in the superlative degree with all the other epithets of abuse. This was the year in which Madame Duse made her London début, but Punch did not get beyond a few puns on her name. The visit of Got, Mlle. Reichemberg and other representatives of the Comédie Française is treated less cavalierly, and the rumoured reconciliation of Gilbert and Sullivan suggests the possibilities of a new "Savoy Peace" – "the Reunion of Arts." Sarah Bernhardt, Yvette Guilbert and Réjane were the three bright particular foreign stars in 1894. Sarah Bernhardt was, as we know, an old flame of the susceptible Punch, and though he found Ize l the reverse of exhilarating, homage was paid to the golden voice of the heroine in a graceful cartoon of "Sarah Chrysostoma." Réjane in Madame Sans-Gêne comes in for high but not unqualified praise. She was perfect in the last act, but overdid the canaillerie of her farce in earlier passages, or at least Punch thought so. His tribute to Yvette Guilbert, "the Queen of the 'Café Concert,'" killed two birds with one stone, for it took the form of a very neat and witty adaptation of her famous song, "Les Vierges," at the expense of the "unco' guid" of Glasgow, whose Puritanism had recently aroused the protest of Sir Frederic Leighton and other Academicians: —

Ils défendent tous les desseinsOù l'on peut voir les bras, le sein,à Glasgow.Jamais nus; même dans un bainSont-ils tout habillés enfin?(Parlé) Matin! A Glasgow.Portez des lunett's; l'oeil nuEst absolûment défenduà Glasgow.Des corps nus ils n'ont jamais vusLà, où leurs raisonn'ments sont plus(Parlé) Cornus! A Glasgow.

Irving's Knighthood

The closing of the Empire Theatre on the score of the improper character of the performances inspired a cartoon in which "Miss Prowlina Pry" (the L.C.C.) "hopes she doesn't intrude." The accompanying verses, protesting against the action of the new Bumbledom, compare unfavourably in their heavy-heeled satire with the verses quoted above. Ada Rehan in Twelfth Night is a pleasant memory to middle-aged playgoers. Punch did not acquit her Viola of a certain restlessness, but acknowledged that at times she acted like one inspired. To the same year belongs his tribute to the "imitative charms" of Cissie Loftus in a set of verses alluding to her imitations of May Yohé, Florence St. John, Jane May, Yvette Guilbert and Letty Lind, names that bear witness to the "fugacity" of the years and the transitoriness of stage popularity.

Mrs. Parvenu: "I don't know that I'm exactly gorne on Shakespeare plays."

(Mr. P. agrees.)

In 1895 Punch waxed lyrical over Tree as Svengali and Miss Dorothea Baird in the title rôle of the dramatized version of Trilby. He bestowed the "highest order of histrionic merit" on Irving for his Corporal Brewster in Conan Doyle's Story of Waterloo, and, in the cartoon recording his knighthood, congratulated him in the name of the profession through the mouth of David Garrick. Pinero's play, The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, is described as "a drama of inaction" owing to the length of the speeches, but praise is liberally bestowed on Hare, Forbes-Robertson and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. The popularity of a now forgotten work of advanced fiction —Keynotes, by "George Egerton" – is attested by Punch's perversion of the title of the piece into "The Key-note-orious Mrs. Ebbsmith." The revival of Romeo and Juliet served as the occasion for jest seasoned with shrewdness: —

Mrs. Patrick Campbell's "Juliet" takes the poison but not the cake. Her "Juliet" has over her the shadow of Paula Tanqueray… Watching Forbes Robertson as "Romeo" I could not help thinking what an excellent "Hamlet" he would make; perhaps when I see him in that character I shall remember how good he was in "Romeo."

Cymbeline was the next of the Shakespearean revivals, and its production at the Lyceum, with Irving as Iachimo and Ellen Terry as Imogen, prompted eulogies of the performance and a burlesque of the plot. Mrs. Stirling (Lady Gregory), famous in her prime as Peg Woffington, incomparable in her old age as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, awakened gracious memories in Punch when she died at the close of 1895. Sir Augustus Harris was little more than half her age when his crowded and in the main prosperous life ended some six months later. The memorial verses to "Druriolanus," the ingenious agnomen of Punch's coining, render full justice to one who began as an indifferent melodramatic actor and ended as a successful impresario, and throughout served "amusement's motley world" with unfailing energy and resourcefulness. But to call him the Showman and Solon of the stage was at once to exaggerate his defects and his merits.

Mr. Henry Arthur Jones cannot be said to have been exactly a favourite with Punch in these years. Indeed, the title under which Punch habitually alluded to him – 'Enery Author Jones – was the reverse of honorific. Yet in 1897 The Liars, with Charles Wyndham in the principal rôle, was cordially welcomed as "an exceptional play with the prospect of an exceptionally long run." Praise from such a source was praise indeed. The tragic death of William Terriss at the hand of a lunatic robbed melodrama of its brightest ornament, and Punch's memorial verses, though melodramatic in their emotion, are a faithful reflection of popular sentiment. Aladdin at Drury Lane impels Punch to pay a well-deserved compliment to Mr. Oscar Barrett for maintaining the best traditions of pantomime. From first to last it was "very funny without being in the least vulgar," and Punch's notice is embellished by an admirable portrait of Dan Leno as "The Second Mrs. Twankyray." In 1898 Rostand swam into our ken with Cyrano de Bergerac, but Punch took decidedly a minority view in crediting Coquelin with a "nasal victory over difficulties of his own choice." The author "had much to be thankful for," and the play is pronounced overweighted with verbiage which was neither brilliant nor helpful. Punch was much happier in his burlesques of Maeterlinck, "the Belgian Shakespeare," and the travesty of Hamlet, with "Ophelaine" and "Hamelette," and the dialogue, re-written in Ollendorffian sentences abounding in endless iteration, makes excellent reading, though perhaps eclipsed by the brilliant condensed American version of the same tragedy, in which prominence is assigned to the members of the Elsinore University Football Team. In 1899 the claims of the Celtic Drama begin to assert themselves, but Punch's "recipe" for the construction of this new type, founded on Mr. Martyn's play, The Heather Field, shows little sympathy for the aims or methods of the new school: —

Rostand and Maeterlinck

Choose for your scene an Irish bog. Among brutal Saxons the theory still lingers that Ireland is all bog, and this will give vraisemblance to your picture. If you require an Interior, an Irish cabin will be most appropriate, for there is another curious superstition on this side of the St. George's Channel that all Irishmen live in cabins.

For the subject of your drama select something gloomy and Scandinavian. It is true that The Times says that "Lunacy and surface drainage are not cheerful subjects for drama," but your Celt knows better. Everything depends on the treatment. Did not Ibsen contrive a drama of enthralling interest on the subject of the drainage of a watering-place? And they say Ibsen is a Scotsman by descent, which is next door to being a Celt.

Let your characters be crazy or neurotic. You will find Ibsen's works a perfect storehouse of these, and if you "lift" one or two of them nobody is likely to detect the theft. Rita Allmers, or Mrs. Borkman, or that sweet thing Hedda Gabler, would all come in useful, and, as your scene is an Irish bog, there is an obvious opening for a Wild Duck.

If the plot of your play is gloomy, the dialogue should be even gloomier. Irish humour would be quite out of place on this occasion. No one must flourish a shillelah or sing "Killaloe" to lighten up the proceedings, and the stirring strains of "The Wearing of the Green" must be rigidly banished. This paramount necessity for gloom will probably place you in a somewhat difficult position, and may make it necessary for you to banish the Irish brogue altogether from your cast. Long experience has shown that a Saxon audience invariably associates a brogue with latent humour, and if anybody laughed it would be all up with the Celtic Renascence.

Punch's charity – or tolerance – did not, however, begin at home. London dramatic critics fared no better at his hands than Irish playwrights; witness the essay which begins "Dramatic critics are of three kinds. They may either write about themselves, or about the play, or about Macready." The first were egotistic, the second wholly unjudicial, the third laboriously and tediously reminiscent. But the sting of the satire is in the last paragraph: —

In criticizing the acting of a play, you should be guided wholly by the status of the actors. Thus the performance of the highly salaried players should receive unstinted praise, and that of the actor-manager (it is not the least blessing of his happy position) adulation. Less known performers may be mentioned with less enthusiasm, and minor personages may even be alluded to with marked disfavour. This will lend to your judgments that air of fine discrimination which will add to their weight.

Punch and "the Duse"

Loyalty to old favourites was another matter, as when Punch, under the heading "Little Nell," pleaded in support of the "Nellie Farren" Benefit on behalf of that famous Gaiety heroine in 1898; or when in 1899 he offered his parting salute to Mrs. Keeley, who throughout her long career in burlesque, melodrama, and legitimate drama had never been vulgar or tawdry, but always brave and gay, and who lived to the patriarchal age of ninety-four. Sardou's Robespierre, written for Sir Henry Irving and his company, gave Punch the opening for a graceful compliment to father and son, for Mr. Lawrence Irving translated the play and appeared in the part of Tallien. Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet is regarded rather as a tour de force than a legitimate interpretation, and Punch, who could not accept her reading of the Prince as a mischievous, spoilt and conceited boy of eighteen, suggested, in a whimsical picture, that she ought to get Irving to play the part of Ophelia. The same year, 1899, was notable for the coming of the Revue. The pioneer effort, which was launched at the Avenue Theatre, was more or less on French lines, but even at the outset the Variety element was prominent in a series of imitations of popular actors and actresses. Tree's production of King John, with Lewis Waller as Falconbridge and Miss Julia Neilson as Constance, is pronounced "a superb revival," but the English version of Cyrano de Bergerac failed to convert Punch to the majority view, though he now admitted that the piece contained brilliant poetry. He preferred Wyndham to Coquelin, but liked neither of them in the title rôle, and he sums up by declaring the piece to be a fine dramatic poem not to be acted, but read. Still, Punch was never wholly insular or inaccessible to new and foreign influences. He describes in 1900 how an enthusiastic friend accosted him in broken Anglo-Italian and swept him off to see Mme. Duse in the Italian version of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. Punch began by scoffing at the grotesque costumes of the cast, but succumbed to the magic of this wonderful actress, who owed nothing to physique, discarded all make-up, even in a part where artificiality was in keeping with the character, and triumphed by sheer force of genius.

Conversationalist: "Do you play Ping-Pong?"

Actor: "No, I play Hamlet!"

The vogue of musical comedy was now at its height. Punch has some amusing suggestions in 1900 for adapting The School for Scandal and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's Mrs. Dane's Defence to suit the fashion of the hour, with appropriate casts, including Dan Leno and Miss Marie Lloyd. His rhymed extravaganza on "The Evolution of Musical Comedy" accurately describes the prevalent method in this quatrain: —