Part 20
Du Maurier's _Trilby_ was naturally treated with benevolence, though _Punch_ regretted the theological interludes, but _The Sorrows of Satan_ is rudely dismissed as "a farrago of balderdash and vanity"; the egotism of the author and of Mr. Robert Buchanan in belabouring their detractors is severely rebuked; and Mr. Hall Caine's _The Christian_ is recommended only as an absolute _pis aller_ if you hadn't even a Bradshaw to read. This great work is also parodied as "The Heathen," with Alleluia Grouse and Luke Blizzard in the _rôles_ of Glory Quayle and John Storm. There was still a spice of Bludyer in _Punch_, and on occasion he could act on the advice of a famous editor, "Be kind, be merciful, be gentle, but when you come across a silly fool, string him up." In later years, as the literary quality of his reviews improved, his clemency to the new-comers approached an uncritical tolerance.
The passing of the three-volume novel in 1894 is noted in a Ballade not untinged with regret, to judge from the "Envoi":--
Prince, writers' rights--forgive the pun-- And readers' too forbid the blow; Of triple pleasure there'll be none, Three-volume novels are to go!
[Illustration: "The _Trilby_ mania grows apace. It has reached Peckham. Aunt Maria went to the Fancy Dress Ball of the Peckham season as _Trilby_ in her first costume."--_Extract from letter of Miss M. Br-wn to Miss N. Sm-th_.]
The later manner of Henry James is rather infelicitously described in 1896 as "indifferent Trollopian and second-class Meredithian"; but _Punch_ made no mistake in the following year over Mr. W. W. Jacobs, in whose _Many Cargoes_--studies of those "who go down to the sea in ships of moderate tonnage"--he found a new fount of joy.
_Punch's_ "literary recipes" place Romance first, then follow the Society Novel (with thinly veiled portraits from life); the Detective Story (Gaboriau and water); and the Religious Novel. The plague of Reminiscences had moved _Punch_ to protest as early as 1893, when he wrote:--
That Memory's the Mother of the Muses, We're told. Alas! it must have been the Furies! Mnemosyne her privilege abuses-- Nothing from her distorting glass secure is. Life is a Sphinx; folk cannot solve her riddles, So they've recourse to spiteful taradiddles, Which they dub "Reminiscences." Kind fate, From the Fool's Memory preserve the Great!
Another and a newer aversion was the parasitic patronage of FitzGerald by inferior novelists and writers, which moved _Punch_ to include among "the things that we are still waiting, and it seems, likely to wait for--A Temporary Surcease from Omar Khayyám." This last-named nuisance has ceased to be so vocal of late years, but the plague of "Diaritis" is worse than ever. Mr. H. G. Wells appears on _Punch's_ horizon in 1898, but only as the weaver of circumstantial scientific romances, not as the regulator of the Universe, and discoverer of new Heavens and Hells. _The War of the Worlds_ is parodied in _The Martian_, but the wonderland of science appealed less to _Punch_ than the dream-world of "Lewis Carroll," whose death inspired a graceful tribute to author and illustrator:--
Lover of children! Fellow-heir with those Of whom the imperishable kingdom is! Beyond all dreaming now your spirit knows The unimagined mysteries.
Darkly as in a glass our faces look To read ourselves, if so we may, aright; You, like the maiden in your faërie book-- You step beyond and see the light!
The heart you wore beneath your pedant's cloak Only to children's hearts you gave away; Yet unaware in half the world you woke The slumbering charm of childhood's day.
We older children, too, our loss lament, We of the "Table Round," remembering well How he, our comrade, with his pencil lent Your fancy's speech a firmer spell.
Master of rare woodcraft, by sympathy's Sure touch he caught your visionary gleams, And made your fame, the dreamer's, one with his, The wise interpreter of dreams.
Farewell! But near our hearts we have you yet, Holding our heritage with loving hand, Who may not follow where your feet are set Upon the ways of Wonderland.
[Sidenote: _Magic, Megalomania, and Sham Culture_]
From this wonder world _Punch_ turned to "_le monde où l'on s'affiche_" to castigate the methods of Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. Le Gallienne--the Manx megalomaniac and the Author-Lecturer--and to the realm of blameless banality ruled over by Sir John Lubbock. Sir John's genius for truisms had been guyed in 1894; in 1900 he appears in a special section of "The Book of Beauty" as the author of some enchanting platitudes, e.g. "A man's work will often survive him. Thus, Shakespeare and Watt are dead; but _Hamlet_ and the steam engine survive."
This was the year of the appearance of Lady Randolph Churchill's _Anglo-Saxon Review_, a sumptuous publication which for a brief period revived the glories of the _Books of Beauty_ and _Keepsakes_, edited in the 'thirties and 'forties of the last century by that "most gorgeous" lady, the Countess of Blessington.
Pseudo-intellectuality was one of the social shams which _Punch_ loved to pillory, and there is a good example in 1901 in the "Cultured Conversation" of a lady who observes, "I'm _devoted_ to Rossetti--I _delight_ in Shelley--and I simply _love_ Ella Wheeler Wilcox." _Punch_ himself in the same year "delighted" quite sincerely in _Some Experiences of an Irish R.M._, and "wept tears of laughter" over the episode of "Lisheen Races." This was apparently his first introduction to the work of those two wonderfully gifted Irish cousins, Violet Martin and Edith Somerville, but only towards the end of their long and fruitful collaboration did he recognize in them far higher qualities than those of the mere mirth-provoker.
In 1903 he was destined to make acquaintance with one of the most conspicuous representatives of the opposite tendency, Gorki, the Russian novelist and playwright. In "The Lowest Depths" _Punch_ parodied the dreary, violent and brutal squalors of _The Lower Depths_, and incidentally had a dig at the Stage Society for producing it. It was in the same year that _Punch_ described the "new curse of Caine"--"to be everlastingly coupled with the name of Miss Marie Corelli"--and paid them both grateful homage as purveyors of "copy":--
From cutting continual capers Ev'n Kaisers must sometimes refrain; But _you're_ never out of the papers-- Corelli and Caine.
At the time of the Boer war poets had been vociferously active. By 1904 a "slump" had set in; and in an interview Mr. John Lane, of the Bodley Head, had declared that verse had ceased to be remunerative. Embroidering this text _Punch_ traced the cause to the material self-indulgence of the public. People dined too well to want to read rhymes, and poets wanted better pay:--
And this is why no bards occur. None ever knows that aching void, That hunger, prompting like a spur, Which former genii enjoyed; For all the poets dead and gone, Whose Muse contrived to melt the nation, Habitually did it on A regimen of strict starvation.
[Sidenote: _Notable Newcomers_]
But if verse was at a discount, new forms of prose were emerging, and the spasmodic discourses of Mr. Bart Kennedy in the _Daily Mail_ moved _Punch_ to parody what he considered to be a variant on Walt Whitman, in which sentences were reduced to a minimum and verbs were dispensed with altogether. Another new writer to whom _Punch_ now paid the homage of parody was Mr. Chesterton, whose glittering paradoxes are travestied in a mock eulogy of _Bradshaw_, in the manner of "G. K. C.'s" book on Dickens. Bradshaw is praised for his splendid consistency, his adherence to fact, his uniform excellence of style and freedom from extraneous matter. Moreover, he is a great teacher:--
The last and deepest lesson of Bradshaw is that we must be in time. No man can miss a train and miss a train only. He misses more than that. A man who misses a train misses an opportunity. It is probably the reason of the terrific worldly success of Cæsar and Charlemagne that neither of them ever missed a train.
Reviews of books, chiefly novels, became a regular feature of each week's issue in the latter half of this period, and it would be impossible to deal fully with _Punch's_ critical activities. As an example of the frank handling of a bad book it would be hard to improve on the notice of a novel which appeared in 1906: "Anyone who wants to read a vulgar book in praise of vicious vulgarians should read----, by--------. All others are counselled to avoid it."
_Punch's_ later and more tolerant mood may be illustrated by his notices of three typical novels by three representative novelists of post-Victorian days. Mr. Wells's _Ann Veronica_ in 1908 is received with guarded praise as that author's first real novel and "a remarkably clever book about rather unpleasant people." In 1910 _Punch_ shies at the excessive length and accumulated detail of Mr. Arnold Bennett's _Clayhanger_, but admits that the author makes wonderful use of unpromising material in his remarkable work. Thirdly, in 1913, _Punch's_ reviewer proclaims himself a whole-hearted admirer of Mr. Compton Mackenzie's _Sinister Street_, finding the hero "a figure to love," and the whole book marked by passionate honesty, marvellously minute observation, humour, and a haunting beauty of ideas and words. In conclusion, he is "prepared to wager that Mr. Mackenzie's future is bound up with what is most considerable in English fiction," adding, "We shall see."
[Illustration: THE "SEXO-MANIA"
"We think _Lips that have Gone Astray_ the foulest novel that ever yet defiled the English tongue; and that in absolute filth its Author can give any modern French writer six and beat him hollow!"--_The Parthenon._
FAIR AUTHOR (to her Publisher, pointing to above opinion of the Press quoted in his advertisement of her novel): "And pray, Mr. Shardson, what do you mean by inserting _this_ hideous notice?"
PUBLISHER: "My dear Miss Fitzmorse, you must remember that we've paid you a large price for your book, and brought it out at great expense--and we naturally wish to sell it!"]
These views are somewhat difficult to reconcile with those expressed in other parts of the paper about the same time. An eminent conductor and composer has recently stated that no noise which is deliberately made can be said to be ugly--e.g. a railway whistle or a boy whistling in the street. So in letters a similar creed had already come into fashion--any subject was fit for treatment if it was "arresting" or "elemental," a doctrine that _Punch_ outside his "Booking Office" found it hard to swallow. In "The Qualities that Count" one of his writers applied this principle to the poetry and letters of the hour:--
If you're anxious to acquire a reputation For enlightened and emancipated views, You must hold it as a duty to discard the cult of Beauty, And discourage all endeavours to amuse. You must back the man who, obloquy enduring, Subconsciousness determines to express, Who in short is "elemental," "unalluring," But "arresting" in his Art--or in his dress.
Or is your cup habitually brimming With water from the Heliconian fount? Then remember the hubristic, the profane, the pugilistic, Are the only things in poetry that count. So select a tragic argument, ensuring The maximum expenditure of gore, And the epithets "arresting," "unalluring," "Elemental" will re-echo as before.
But if your bent propels you into fiction, You should clearly and completely understand That your duty in a novel is not to soar, but grovel, If you want it to be profitably banned. So be lavish and effusive in suggesting A malignant and mephitic atmosphere, And you're sure to be applauded as "arresting," "Elemental," "unalluring," and "sincere."
[Sidenote: _Mr. Gosse and the Georgian Poets_]
In the same year Mr. Edmund Gosse had indulged in some caustic criticism of the Poetry of the Future. Mr. Gosse had said that "the natural uses of English and the obvious forms of our speech will be driven from our poetry." Also that "verses of excellent quality in this primitive manner can now be written by any smart little boy in a grammar school." Hence a squib in which _Punch_ makes disrespectful fun of "the Sainte-Beuve of the House of Lords," who, it may be added, has since made his peace with the young lions whom he had treated so disrespectfully. In 1913 the cult of Rabindranath Tagore had become fashionable. Here was an Oriental poet who sedulously eschewed the flamboyant exuberance of the westernized Indian, but _Punch_, while finding him a less fruitful theme for burlesque than the Babu immortalized by Mr. Anstey, regarded his mystical simplicity as fair game for parody, and declined to worship at his shrine. Another foreign importation, Mr. Conrad--whom in virtue of long residence in England, marvellous command of our language and unequalled insight into the magic of the sea and the simple heroism of the British sailorman, we are proud to call one of ourselves and one of the glories of English fiction--fascinated _Punch_ in 1900, the year in which _Lord Jim_ appeared. _Punch_ was a little disconcerted at first by Mr. Conrad's oblique method of narration, but the fascination grew with advancing years.
[Sidenote: _Farewell to Mark Twain_]
I find few references to Continental authors, but may single out the "little English wreath" which _Punch_ added to the memorial tributes to Alphonse Daudet on his death in 1897. Daudet's affinities with Dickens, always one of _Punch's_ heroes, naturally appealed to him apart from the humour of _Tartarin_ and the masterly studies of the Second Empire which Daudet had seen from the inside as one of the Duc de Morny's private secretaries. Towards American writers _Punch_ was almost uniformly sympathetic. It is true that he appreciated the earlier and American manner of Henry James more than the later cosmopolitan phase which began with _The Portrait of a Lady_. But during the short period in which _Punch_, in his "additional pages," published a number of short stories by various authors, Henry James was a contributor, and _Mrs. Medwin_ appeared in serial form in four successive numbers in August and September, 1901. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who died in 1894, is compared to Elia in the graceful memorial stanzas modelled on "The Last Leaf." Mr. W. D. Howells's papers on London and England in _Harper's Magazine_ in 1904 prompt a generous acknowledgment of their reasonableness, sanity and humour, together with an expression of amazement at the productivity of American short-story writers, mostly in the manner of Mr. Henry James. _Punch_, both then and afterwards, refused to take Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox seriously, and described her essays, _The Woman of the World_, as "high-toned but serenely platitudinous; 'bland, passionate, but deeply religious.'" Mark Twain, on his visit to London in 1907, was welcomed with pen and pencil--in the cartoon "To a Master of his Art," where _Punch_ salutes him over the punch-bowl and in some verses, _à propos_ of the dinner at the Pilgrims' Club:--
Pilot of many Pilgrims since the shout "Mark twain!"--that serves you for a deathless sign-- On Mississippi's waterway rang out Over the plummet's line--
Still where the countless ripples laugh above The blue of halcyon seas long may you keep Your course unbroken, buoyed upon a love Ten thousand fathoms deep!
Some three years later came _Punch's_ "_Ave, atque Vale_," when Mark Twain died in April, 1910:--
Farewell the gentle spirit, strong to hold Two sister lands beneath its laughter's spell! Farewell the courage and the heart of gold! Hail and Farewell!
To complete these American references I may add that _Punch_ in 1907 made great play out of the letter addressed by an American "Clippings Agency" to Petrarch, offering to send him press-cuttings of his works. But America has no monopoly of these solecisms. Fourteen years later, when the Phoenix Society revived _The Maid's Tragedy_, a similar offer was made by a London press-cutting agency to "John Fletcher, Esq." and "--Beaumont, Esq."
JOURNALISM
Already in the early 'nineties the altered status of journalism and the journalist had leapt to the eyes of _Punch_, who himself was in a sense born and bred in the "Street of Ink." I pass over his ironical disapproval of the _St. James's Gazette_ when that journal, in October, 1892, "sincerely hoped that there was no truth in the rumour that a paper for children will shortly make its appearance, entirely written and illustrated by children under fifteen years of age." The project never materialized, but its spirit has been translated into action by the literary enterprise of our modern _enfants terribles_. The adult journalist in the 'nineties was not to suffer from this unfair competition for a good many years to come. Meanwhile he could at least congratulate himself that he was better housed and paid: it was not until 1904 that the "wisdom of the East" began to interfere with his freedom as a war correspondent.
[Illustration: THE WISDOM OF THE EAST
JAPANESE OFFICER (to Press Correspondent): "Abjectly we desire to distinguish honourable newspaper man by honourable badge."]
[Sidenote: _The Daily Mail Arrives_]
In 1897 _Punch_ illustrated the change by parallel pictures of the journalist in 1837, writing in a squalid room in the Fleet Prison, and in the year of the Diamond Jubilee, seated in a sumptuously equipped office, fat and prosperous, and smoking a large cigar. In the previous year _Punch_ had saluted the _Daily News_ on the attainment of its jubilee. The connexion was an old and intimate one, for the publishers of _Punch_ had been the first publishers of the _Daily News_, and it had been renewed in the 'nineties when Sir Henry Lucy ("Toby," of _Punch_) for a while occupied the chair in which Dickens had sat. A far more momentous event, however, was associated with the year 1896--the founding of the _Daily Mail_ by Mr. Alfred Harmsworth, subsequently described by one of _Punch's_ writers as "the arch-tarantulator of our times." He was certainly, if unintentionally, invaluable to _Punch_, and even more stimulating than Mr. Caine and Miss Corelli. By 1900 his genius for discovering a constant succession of scapegoats, and converting the idol of yesterday into the Aunt Sally of to-day, is handsomely acknowledged in the lines "Ad Aluredum Damnodignum." Then it was Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Mr. Balfour, but _Punch_ foresaw that the habit was inveterate:--
For still, oh hawk-eyed Harmsworth, you pursue With more than all the ardour of a lover, From find to check and so from check to view Your scapegoat-hunt from covert into covert.
As for the test of circulation, _Punch_ betrays a certain scepticism in his remarks on "The People's Pulse" in 1903:--
The account given by the _Daily Mail_, in Saturday's issue, of its daily circulation for the last eight months, together with the leading event of each day, ought to be kept up from time to time as a Permanent People's Pulse Report. Nothing could be more instructive than to note, for instance, that while the Delhi Durbar only attracted 844,799 readers, the "Oyster Scare" allured as many as 846,501; while "Lord Dalmeny's Coming of Age" brought the figures up to 847,080, and the "Sardine Famine" accounted for a further increase of 14,586. Or, again, there is a world of significance in the fact that the relative attractions of the "Poet Laureate's Play" and "Mr. Seddon's Meat Shops" are represented by a balance of 5,291 in favour of the Napoleon of New Zealand.
Life was certainly made livelier by the new methods introduced, with variations, from America, and _Punch_ feelingly contrasts the drab existence of those who lived before with that of those who lived under the Harmsworth _régime_:--
Drear was the lot, minus the _Mail_, Of soldier, sailor, ploughboy, tinker; And worse, whenever they grew pale, They had no pills to make them pinker.
It is a nice question whether we owe more to the pink pill or to the Yellow Press. But there can be no doubt as to the influence of the new journalism on sport and pastime. Until then, in _Punch's_ phrase, "cricket was still a childish game and not a penman's serious study." Henceforth the cricketer fulfilled a double function. He not only played cricket but he wrote about it--and himself. Under the heading "The Cricketer on the Hearth," in 1899, _Punch_ publishes an imaginary interview _à la mode_ with Mr. Slogger. We omit the complacent autobiographical passages and content ourselves with the sequel:--
"Well, that's pretty well all, I think, except you'll probably want to print at length my opinions on the Transvaal Question, Wagner's Music, and the Future of Agriculture. These will have an overpowering interest for your readers."
"Here are a few photographs of myself--but it's rather too heavy a parcel to carry. I'll send it round in a van. Of course you'll print them all. And now I must ask you to excuse me, as it's time to get into flannels."
I thanked him for his courtesy, and hoped that he'd make a fine score in the county match. He stared at me in surprise. "County Match? You don't imagine I've time to play cricket nowadays, do you? No; I'm going to change because half-a-dozen photographers will be here directly, and they like to take me in costume. And after that I shall have to see seven or eight more interviewers. Good morning!"
[Sidenote: _The Cricket Journalist_]
The intrusion of the emotional literary "note" in articles on pastime came later, and is parodied in the article (in 1904) "Do we take our amusements seriously enough?" by Mr. C. B. F:--
The frivolity of the Press is only paralleled by the frivolity of the public. Take the light and airy way in which the spectators at our great cricket grounds treat the imposing functions provided for them. Suppose little (but heroic) Johnny Tyldesley runs out to that wily, curling ball which sunny-faced Wilfred Rhodes pitches thirty-three and three-quarter inches from the block. Up glides his trusty willow, and a fortieth of a second after the ball has pitched descends on the leather. With a wonderful flick of the elbow he chops the ball exactly between square leg and point. Is the raucous "Well hit, Johnny," of the crowd a fitting, a reverent salutation? Our Elizabethan dramatists knew better. Have you not noticed in their stage directions, "A solemn music"? Two or three phrases of Chopin played, let us say, on the French horn by the doyen of the Press-box would be a better tribute to such a miracle of skill. There are, however, elements of better things in our crowds. Before now I have seen the potent Jessop smite a rising ball to the boundary with all the concentrated energy of his Atlantean shoulders, and as the ball reached the ring the spectators with involuntary reverence prostrated themselves before it.
Nor do our greatest men gain the public honours which are their due. In ancient Greece a great athlete was a national hero. The name of Ladas has come down to us through the ages with those of Socrates and Xenophon. Think of the sad contrast in modern England. Why is not Plum Warner (I knew him in long clothes) a Knight of the Garter? Why is not Ranji (exquisitely delicate Ranji--the Walter Pater of the cricket field) Viceroy of India? There are living cricketers, with an average of over eighty, and a dozen centuries in one season to their credit, who have never even been sworn of the Privy Council.