Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 3 (of 4).—1874-1892

LETTERS AND JOURNALISM: DRAMA AND MUSIC Mistress of Hearts and Arts, all met in you The Picturesque, informed by Soul of Passion! Say, dost thou feed on milk and honey-dew, Draining from goblets deep of classic fashion Champagne and nectar, shandy-gaff sublime, Dashed with a pungent smack of eau-de-Marah , Aspasia, Sappho, Circé of the time? Seductive Sarah! "Muse"? All Mnemosyne's bright brood in one! Compound of Psyché, Phryné, Britomarté, Ruler of storm and calm, Euroclydon And Zephyr! Slender Syrian Astarté! With voice the soul of music, like that harp Which whilom sounded in the Hall of Tara. How dare Philistines at thy whimsies carp, Soul-swaying Sarah!! " Poseuse "? Pooh! pooh! Yet who so well can pose As thou, sweet statuesque slim sinuosity? "Stagey"? Absurd! "The death's-head and the rose"? Delicious! Gives the touch of tenebrosity That lifts thee to the Lamia level. Oh! Shame on the dolts who hint of Dulcamara, A propos of levée and picture-show, Serpentine Sarah!!! O idol of the hour and of my heart! Who calls thee crazy, half, and half-capricious? A compound of Lionne's [12] and Barnum's part, In outrecuidance rather injudicious? Ah! heed them not! Play, scribble, sculp, sing, paint, Pose as a Plastic-Proteus, mia cara ; Sapphic, seraphic, quintessential, quaint, Sémillante Sarah!!!! "Pierrot à Londres" THE DIVINE SARAH ( For whose sake we've all gone wrong ) First Critic ( ætat. 21 ): "Beats Rachel hollow in Ong-Dromack , hanged if she don't!" Second Critic ( ditto ): "So I think, Old man! And in L'Etrong-jair she licks Mademoiselle Mars all to fits!" 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 Dutch Are perfect ensemble and sharpness of touch; INANITIES OF THE DRAWING-ROOM "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. THE NEW CRAZE 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. IBSEN IN BRIXTON 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 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. "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. THE LATEST FASHION IN MUSIC AT HOME "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. ) 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. AN IRISH MELODY TRANSPLANTED 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!" 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. 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. 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.

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