Part 16
In the fifty years that had passed since _Punch's_ birth in 1841, "Society," as it was then understood, had undergone a revolution which not only changed its structure but altered the meaning of the word. It had, in Mr. A. B. Walkley's phrase, become one of those "discoloured" words like "respectable" and "genteel," in which the new "connotation" strove with and gradually supplanted the old. "Society," in the old limited sense, stood for a limited, exclusive and predominantly aristocratic set, arrogant at times, but not wanting in a certain self-respect. But by the 'nineties it had become amorphous, unwieldy, cosmopolitan and plutocratic. Du Maurier, the finest and best equipped of the commentators and critics of the old _régime_, who recognized its distinction and its drawbacks, and satirized with impartial ridicule decadent aristocrats and vulgar intruders, was perhaps _felix opportunitate mortis_:--
He brought from two great lands the best of both In one fine nature blent. Lover of English strength and Gallic grace, Of British beauty, or of soul or face, Yet with that subtler something born of race That charm to cleanness lent.
A Thackeray of the pencil! So men said. His reverence high for the great Titan dead Put by such praise with ease; But social satire of the subtler sort Was his, too. Not the shop, the slum, the court, But gay saloons gave quarry for his sport. 'Twas in such scenes as these
His hectoring Midas, and his high-nosed earl, His worldly matron, and his winsome girl, Were found, and pictured clear, With skill creative and with strength restrained. They live, his butts, cold-hearted, shallow-brained. In his own chosen walk Du Maurier reigned Supreme, without a peer.
[Sidenote: _The Social Jungle_]
The tribute was fully earned; but Du Maurier was not one of those who enjoyed plying the scourge, and he was fortunate in that he did not live to see the "Gay Saloon" turned into the Social Jungle, as foreshadowed in _Punch's_ adaptation of Mr. Kipling's poem in 1894, which ends with the couplet:--
Because of his age and his cunning, his grip and his power of jaw, In all that the Law leaveth open the word of King Mammon is Law.
For "Wolf" read "Worldling" for "Jungle" read "Social World" and _Punch's_ parallel "Laws" work out well enough. But in the years that followed it was not so much mammon-worship as the craze for excitement at all costs that dominated the fashionable world. The vulgarity and love of the limelight which Du Maurier had satirized were multiplied tenfold. Society became a romp and a ramp. England began to go dancing-mad in the 'nineties, but the harmless rowdiness of Kitchen Lancers, of the "Barn-dance" and the "Washington Post" developed in the new century into a mania for which historians found a parallel in the "Tarantism" of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We passed through various and mostly distressing phases of the malady from the days of Loie Fuller's serpentine contortions to the introduction of the "Salome" dance by Miss Maud Allan. Skirt-dancing, with a superabundance of skirts, gradually gave place to a style marked by the desire to dispense not only with skirts but with any sort of clothing. The wonderful performances of the Russian Ballet revealed a new world of art and "washed out" a good deal of highly advertised and indecorous incompetence, but in many ways proved a doubtful boon. The cult of the male dancer revived, and the triumphs of Pavlova and Karsavina lured the aristocratic amateur into futile and unseemly competition. This was only one of the many signs of the love of publicity which marked Society when it had ceased to be select. In the 'forties, when the _crême de la crême_ disported themselves at Cremorne, the Gardens were reserved for their exclusive use. Now, "smartness" was the note of Society, and "smartness" does not like to hide its light under a bushel. In the middle 'nineties _Punch_ registered his protest against ladies who begged publicly in the streets--the "merry half-sisters of charity," as he called them. By 1903 he indicated the spread of the new fashion in the ironical remark that "the eccentric habit of dining at home is, I regret to say, steadily spreading." The further course of this anti-domestic movement is correctly shown in the cartoon of Christmas _à la mode_ in 1908, when the butler of a modern English house inhospitably repels Father Christmas with: "Not at 'ome. Her Ladyship is at Monty Carlo; the young gentlemen are in the Halps; and Sir John has taken the other members of the family to the Restorong!" _Punch_ was not content with attacking the organized publicity of social life, with which may be connected his satire of the orgy of Pageants; he was equally vigorous in chastising its organized frivolity and horse-play; the extravagance of the week-end pleasure-hunt; the ostentatious folly of freak entertainments; and other excesses and eccentricities summed up in the two detestable phrases _fin de siècle_ and _de luxe_.
_Punch_ found no traces of a Golden Age in the 'nineties, though he admitted they were Yellow enough. For these were the years of the _Yellow Book_--alternately regarded as typical of _fin de siècle_ decadence (in _Punch's_ view) or as a symbol of literary renascence--of the now forgotten "emancipation novel," _The Yellow Aster_; to say nothing of the Yellow Peril and the Yellow Press. The _Daily Mail_, by the way, was not founded till 1896. As a social satirist _Punch_, throughout all this period, is much more concerned with the material or physical than the mental or spiritual vagaries of the rich and well-to-do. But a notable exception must be made in favour of that famous--or shall I say notorious?--coterie known as "the Souls," who are frequently referred to in 1893 and 1894. Readers anxious for "inside" information may be recommended to consult the _Autobiography_ of Mrs. Asquith, who was one of the number.
[Illustration: KEEPING CHRISTMAS--OUT
BUTLER OF MODERN ENGLISH HOME: "Not at ome. Her Ladyship is at Monty Carlo; the young gentlemen are in the Halps; and Sir John has taken the other members of the family to the Restorong."]
[Illustration: MRS. MONTMORENCY-SMYTHE: "And what were you reading when I came in, my dear? Shakespeare! Ah! What a wonderful man! And to think that he wasn't exactly what one would call a gentleman."]
[Illustration: CULTURE BY THE SEA
"Have you Browning's works?" "No, Miss. They're too difficult. People down here don't understand them." "Have you _Praed_?" "Prayed, Miss? Oh, yes; we've tried that, but it's no use!"]
[Sidenote: _The "Souls"_]
They were most of them highly born and highly gifted. Some afterwards attained eminence in politics and literature; and it must be admitted that they were clever enough to get themselves a great deal talked about without deliberately courting publicity at the time. Their audacities and unconventionalities enjoyed a considerable reputation, but did not often get into the papers. _Punch_ was obviously "intrigued" about them, but ingeniously disguised his curiosity by passing it on to an imaginary American visitor, "high-toned" (the word "high-brow" was a later importation) and inquiring, who came over to study our "Institootions"--Mr. Gladstone also used to pronounce it that way--and wrote down his impressions for a work on _Social Dry Rot in Europe_. So, hearing vague talk of a secret moral institution, the Society of Souls, he set to work to collect authentic information about them, but was everywhere baffled. The nearer he got to the shrine, the more negative and mysterious was the information vouchsafed. But the Philistine view is well burlesqued in his conversation with a fashionable lady who described the Souls as "a horrid stuck-up set of people who did all sorts of horrid things, all read the same books at the same time, sacrificed wild asses at the altar of Ibsen, the Hyperborean Apollo, and were bound by a rule that no Soul might ever marry another Soul." A year or so later _Punch_ noted the report that the Souls had ceased to exist, and would be replaced by a new club--the "No Bodies"--of which the membership would be unlimited. Still the Souls had had their day and, as representing an effort to establish an exclusive social coterie to which intellect or wit formed the chief passport, demand at least a passing word. The satire of fashionable culture dies down and is never very seriously revived even in the days when the late Emil Reich lectured on Plato at Claridge's. "Smart" Society was more active with its heels than with its head or its heart.
_Punch_ distrusted the sincerity of fashionable ladies who professed a desire to "elevate the masses" by organizing entertainments which were a hotch-potch of Ibsen, skirt-dancing, exotic sentiment and frank vulgarity. He waxes sarcastic, again, over charitable bazaars, run by women who didn't enjoy them, for causes of which they knew nothing and cared less. Frivolity was the thing that mattered. In the "Letters to a Débutante" which appeared in 1894 _Punch_ assumes the _rôle_ of the cynical mentor, e.g. "It is hardly possible to exaggerate the unimportance of nearly everything that happens": "Laugh when you're thinking what to say. It saves time." In weighing the rival merits of a group of suitors, the preference is given to the rich German-Jew. The decay of ballroom manners was an old subject of complaint with _Punch_, but it was never so persistently harped upon as during the years which began with the Barn-dance and ended with the Bunny-hug. In 1894, _à propos_ of the exuberant agility of a middle-aged Mænad, an old lady in one of Du Maurier's pictures observes that the "Pas de Quatre" should be "Pas du Tout" for Aunt Jane. The "Romping Lancers" are also noted, and in "Association v. Rugby" a breathless young lady beseeches her partner--a famous Rugby half-back--to dance "Soccer" for a little. In 1896, under the heading "The Death of the Dance," _Punch_ takes for his text the remark of a speaker at a recent meeting of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing: "I had rather be old and teach deportment than be young and teach people to romp the Barn-dance"; and he bewails the conversion of the once "light fantastic" into heavy prancing, spasmodic antics, and the general decay of elegance and grace. The arrival in 1897 of "The Washington Post" is greeted with ironical approval: "You take hold of a girl by both hands, try a double shuffle, and then slide off to another part of the room and repeat the performance." In 1898 the lines on "The Lost Art" are based upon the statement made by a provincial mayor that the risk of injury was rather greater in the ballroom than in the football field:--
[Sidenote: _Ball-room Manners_]
Oh! for the days when there were dancers! Oh! for the mazes of the Lancers! With what a nimble step elastic We tripped it on the light fantastic, With a sweet charm which now is not, Through gay cotillion or gavotte, Or, with a grace more regal yet, We stepped a stately minuet, Each man of us a choice assortment Of Turveydropian deportment.
But where is now your ancient pomp? Your dance is but a vulgar romp, Your shocking "Barns" and "Posts"--oh, fie! You only think of kicking high. The men career _sans_ time, _sans_ rhythm, The girls rush helter-skelter with 'em, They charge, they trample on one's toes, Their elbows hit one on the nose, They black one's eyes, still on they come, They butt one in the back and stom-- I mean the waistcoat, till the hall Is more like battlefield than ball.
I'd rather serve in the Soudan, I'd rather fight at Omdurman, I'd rather quarrel with a chum, I'd rather face a Rugby scrum, Nay, by the stars, I'd rather be That hapless wretch, the referee, Most desperate of men, than chance My life and limbs at modern dance.
In 1906 the introduction of the "Boston" waltz prompts one of _Punch's_ artists to depict the sad experience of a young lady whose partners had all learned the new dance from American instructors, and who all danced it in a different way. The band, by the way, is playing "The Blue Danube," for Johann Strauss was still a name to conjure with. References to rowdy dancing are frequent in 1907, when _Punch_ printed designs of various costumes to resist the tremendous wear-and-tear of the ballroom, and in 1908, when he suggests, to meet a "long felt want," that a special space should be railed off for "plungers." _Punch's_ picture of the "Borston" as danced in 1909 belies the ironical title "The Poetry of Motion." Long tight skirts were still worn and are a feature of the series of suggestions, made in the same year, by Mr. Baumer for brightening our ballrooms--the Judy-walk, the Apache Polka, the Salome Lancers and the Vampire Valse. That same acute observer of gilded (and painted) youth includes in his burlesque Coronation Procession in 1911 a member of the aristocracy in the guise of a caracoling Bacchante; and in the same year the male dancer craze is satirized in a series of pictures showing the spread of the infection to policemen, railway porters, scavengers, ticket collectors, etc. The revival of old English dances dates from this period, but if _Punch_ is to be trusted, made little impression on Mayfair. Even the most distinguished and eminent politicians did not scorn the dance. Mr. Balfour gave a ball at the height of the season in 1912, and _Punch_ (who was not there) gave the following wholly apocryphal description of the revels:--
ARTHUR'S BALL
When Parliament, sick with unreason, Was occupied, night after night, With bandying charges of treason, And challenging Ulster to fight, To ease the political tension Prince Arthur determined to call A truce to this deadly dissension By giving a Ball.
The guests were by no means confined to The ranks of the old Upper Ten, For Arthur has always inclined to Consort with all manner of men; So the brainy, though lacking in breeding, Were bidden as well as the fops; The foes of carnivorous feeding, And lovers of chops.
There were golfers from Troon and Kilspindie Discussing their favourite greens; Bronzed soldiers from Quetta and Pindi; Pale pilots of flying-machines; There were débutantes visibly flustered, Calm beauties from over the "Pond"; Sleek magnates of soap and of mustard, And Brunner and Mond.
* * * * *
I saw a delectable Duchess Sit out with a Syndicalist, And a battle-scarred soldier on crutches Hob-nob with a Pacificist; And a famous professor of Psychics-- A Scot who was reared at Dunkeld-- Indulge in the highest of high kicks I ever beheld.
Lord Haldane, whose massive proportions Were gracefully garbed in a kilt, Performed the most daring contortions With true Caledonian lilt; Lord Morley resembled a Gracchus; Lloyd George was a genial Jack Cade, And Elibank, beaming like Bacchus, The revels surveyed.
The music was subtly compounded Of melodies famous of yore, And measures that richly abounded In modern cacophonous lore; There was Strauss, the adored of Vienna, The genius of joyous unrest, And Strauss, who the shrieks of Gehenna Contrives to suggest.
I'd like to describe, but I canna, The envy combined with dismay Aroused by adorable Anna Whom several Kingdoms obey. Her entry produced quite a crisis-- Some prudes were surprised she was axed-- She appeared in the costume of Isis According to Bakst.
It was four of the clock ere I quitted These scenes of eclectic delight; The fogies had most of them flitted, The revels were still at their height; For Garvin was dancing a Tango, His head in the place of his legs; And Spender a blameless fandango Encircled by eggs.
What incidents happened thereafter I only can dimly surmise: But gusts of ecstatical laughter Went echoing up to the skies; And I know from my own observation The guests were agreed, one and all, That Arthur united the nation By giving this Ball.
[Illustration: THE POETRY OF MOTION, 1909
The "Borston"]
[Illustration: HE: "Very interesting, these Morris-dances. Have you ever seen any before?" SHE: "No. I don't even know who Morris was."]
[Sidenote: _Tango-mania_]
The mention of Anna--the famous Pavlova--was at any rate topical, for the cult of the Russian Ballet was now at its height, and in his Almanack for 1913 _Punch_ exhibited the political and other public celebrities of the hour engaged in appropriate evolutions _à la Russe_. The "Bunny-hug" was very properly gibbeted in a scathing cartoon, and in his hints to social climbers _Punch_ suggests various styles of vulgar and inane dancing as a passport to notoriety. With laudable fairness he admits, in parallel illustrations, that the Tango of fact was a much less lurid thing than the Tango as painted by the fancy of Puritans; but the revival of afternoon dances and the fashion of "Tango teas" met with no approval, and in the cartoon "Exit Tango," early in 1914, _Punch_, rather prematurely perhaps, congratulated the "Spirit of Dancing" on the passing of "the tyranny of the dullest of nightmares."
In one of the last of the references to the dancing craze in this period--February, 1914, to be precise--_Punch_ notes, as one of the reasons why the Tango was already _démodé_, the fact that matrons had taken to it with the utmost fury, after a preliminary stage of acute disapproval. In the words of one of the younger generation:--
Now we may watch our mothers, smiling and flushed and gay, Doing it, doing it, doing it--tangoing night and day.
Stamping a Texas Tommy, wreathing a Grapevine Swirl, Gleefully Gaby Gliding, young as the youngest girl.
We may not laugh at our mothers, for (between me and you) They can out-dance us often--get all our partners too.
[Illustration: THE "BUNNY-HUG"
MODERN YOUTH (to Terpsichore): "My hug, I think." MR. PUNCH: "My kick, I know!"]
[Sidenote: _Matron v. Maid_]
This, however, was no new thing. It was only the latest manifestation of a "movement" which runs right through the social history of the whole of this period, and which may be alternatively described as the Emancipation or the Apotheosis of Middle Age. The earliest references to the change link it up with the coming of the New Woman. For example, in 1894, in a "Song of the Twentieth Century," _Punch_ describes the man of the family as relegated to the shelf by his more energetic female relatives:--
Aunt Jane is a popular preacher, Aunt Susan a dealer in stocks, While Father, the gentlest old creature, Attends to the family socks.
But as time goes on it is in the pursuit of pleasure rather than in the sphere of serious effort that the competition of the middle-aged woman is noted as a new and formidable sign of the times. Thus in 1895 we have Du Maurier's picture of the Sunday caller finding that the mother of the family is playing lawn tennis while the young ladies have gone to church. By 1900 the youthfulness of the older generation is made a source of complaint by the juniors. In "Filia Pulchra, Mater Pulchrior," _Punch_ genially arraigns the mothers who "cut out" their daughters. A paper for ladies had declared that the woman of forty was most dangerous to the susceptible male, and _Punch_ enlarges on the theme in "The Rivals," in which an eligible suitor exclaims, "Take, oh take Mamma away!" In 1903 he recurs ironically to the subject in the lines "De Senectute":--
However pedagogues may frown And view such dicta with disfavour, The folk who never sober down Confer on life its saltiest savour.
The grandmother who wears a cap Incurs her family's displeasure; But if she sets a booby-trap And wears a fringe, she is a treasure.
The old ideal of growing old gracefully had been superseded by a refusal to grow old at all; and the "unfair competition" of matron with maid is pointedly illustrated in _Punch's_ "Country House Hints" in 1908, where, after giving information about tips, dresses, etc., the writer observes that girls are at a discount as guests: "they are not rich enough for Bridge, and they put a restriction on funny stories." They may have done so fourteen years ago; but only a year later, in a burlesque article based on the fulsome Society paragraphs of the contemporary Press, _Punch_ made it clear that the process of emancipation was proceeding apace:--
Wise mothers--and modern mothers are seldom wanting in astuteness--do not keep their young "flapper" daughters buried in the schoolroom until the day of presentation. They prepare them for their complete emancipation by a series of preliminary canters. Thus they take them to dine at the Fitz or the Tarlton while the hair that is hanging down their backs is still their own....
The upbringing of Lady Sarah Boodle has been wholly unconventional, and as her parents spend most of their time in balloons, she is looking forward to her first season with all the _fougue de dix-huit ans_. Until she was sixteen Lady Sarah was allowed to read nothing but the _Sporting Times_ and the _Statist_. This led, not unnaturally, to a violent reaction, and Lady Sarah is now a devoted student of Maeterlinck, Mr. W. B. Yeats and Fiona Macleod. Happily this development has not impaired her healthy enjoyment of Bridge. Last year she won £300 at this winsome pastime.... One may fitly conclude this group of winsome English girls with the mention of two beautiful cousins, Lady Phoebe Bunting and Miss Miriam Belshazzar. By an extraordinary coincidence they are both third cousins once removed of Daphne, Lady Saxthorpe, whose coster impersonations were so marked a feature of her late husband's tenure of office as Governor of Hong Kong. Lady Phoebe, strange to say, never learned her alphabet until she was nearly fifteen, while her cousin had mastered the intricacies of compound interest almost before she could walk. Lady Phoebe is a winsome blonde, while Miss Belshazzar is a _svelte_ brunette whose superb Semitic profile recalls the delicious proboscis of her illustrious grandfather, Sir Joshua Schnabelheimer.
[Sidenote: _Ostentatious Luxury_]
Extravagant expense and ostentation--another old abomination of _Punch's_--were not only rife, but they were constantly written up and discussed with a foolish voice of praise in what purported to be democratic papers. A ducal wedding in the mid-'nineties, which was carefully "rehearsed" before it was actually solemnized, caused a veritable explosion in _Punch_ about the columns of matrimonial gush and statistics--the "haystacks of chrysanthemums"--which deluged the papers. In the picture of coroneted sandwichmen engaged by adroit speculators to puff their schemes, _Punch_ in 1897 was only repeating an old indictment of parasitic peers. He had no quarrel with people who took to trade openly and seriously, disregarding the old fine-drawn social distinctions and contempt for commerce--witness his song of "The English Gentleman of the Present Day" in 1899. But he had no welcome for the newfangled newspaper articles on gastronomy, with _menus_ and prices, puffing well-known hotels and restaurants. The statement of a writer in _The Times_ in 1900 that "the necessaries of life may be purchased for £2,000 a year" provided _Punch_ with food for ironical comment. A year later it was seriously maintained in a popular monthly that, from the point of view of a smart Society woman, it was impossible to _dress_ on £1,000 a year. The standard of high living had gone up by leaps and bounds from the days when to _Punch's_ youthful fancy £1,000 a year represented wealth almost beyond the dreams of avarice.