Part 22
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."
[Illustration: AT THE TATE GALLERY
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_.
[Sidenote: _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.
[Illustration: PEEPS INTO BIBLICAL THEATRICAL LIFE
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.
[Sidenote: _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 desseins Où l'on peut voir les bras, le sein, à Glasgow. Jamais nus; même dans un bain Sont-ils tout habillés enfin? (_Parlé_) Matin! A Glasgow.
Portez des lunett's; l'oeil nu Est absolûment défendu à Glasgow. Des corps nus ils n'ont jamais vus Là, où leurs raisonn'ments sont plus (_Parlé_) Cornus! A Glasgow.
[Sidenote: _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.
[Illustration: TRUE APPRECIATION
(Overheard at the Theatre.)
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:--
[Sidenote: _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.
[Sidenote: _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.
[Illustration: 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:--
In musical comedy books (Chiefly frivol and froth) You do not spoil the broth By employing a number of cooks.
With the opening of the new century, the "poetic drama" was revived with a certain measure of success by the production of Mr. Stephen Phillips's plays. Mr. Phillips had graduated as an actor, but _Punch_ found him lacking in the theatrical sense, while acknowledging the pomp and pageantry of his verse. _Herod_, with Sir Herbert Tree in the title _rôle_, is condemned for its repulsive realism, and the lack of any character that engaged sympathy. The notice of _Paolo and Francesca_ in 1902 is long, critical and by no means unfriendly, but the resultant impression is of "a negative achievement" in which the purple patches failed to redeem the lack of consistent characterization or of stage-craft. Mr. Henry Ainley is mentioned, but without any recognition of the qualities which have since earned for him distinction and popularity. _Nero_, by the same author, produced in 1906, is described as "out-heroding _Herod_." There were many fine lines but little dramatic action. _Punch_ praises Miss Constance Collier as Poppaea, but cannot take the part seriously. "She looked the Roman lady, played the unfaithful wife, and died effectively as an invalid after a long and inexplicable illness. Perhaps she was poisoned. Nero knows; nobody else does except, perhaps, Mr. Stephen Phillips." Tree's make-up as Nero was most artistic, but he had not one really fine scene given him; Mrs. Tree was an admirable Agrippina; but _Punch_ was not thrilled by the final conflagration, which he describes as a "weird, maniacal but dramatically unsatisfactory finish."
[Sidenote: _Barrie and Shaw_]
Meanwhile Sir James Barrie and Mr. Bernard Shaw were coming along with leaps and bounds, but neither of them owed much to _Punch_ in the early years of the century. He had nothing but praise for H. B. Irving's
## acting in _The Admirable Crichton_, but it was a triumph for the actor