Part 23
rather than the playwright. The hero was "a perplexing creation," and the play "a queer mixture of comedy, extravaganza, farce and tragedy." Even less sympathetic was the first notice of _Peter Pan_, in 1905. As _Punch_ had detected resemblances to _The Overland Route_ and _Foul Play_ in _The Admirable Crichton_, so he now found reminiscences of _Peter Schlemihl_ and _Snowdrop_ in the new play. For the rest, he could find little either to amuse or that could even be acknowledged as new or original in the extravaganza. He could not even tell whether the children present enjoyed it. _Punch_ acknowledges that Barrie was the pet of the critics, and congratulates him on having his pieces perfectly acted by first-rate comedians. He frankly admits that he (_Punch_) was in the minority. A year later _Peter Pan_ is recognized as a popular favourite in a much more sympathetic notice. Mr. Shaw was a much tougher morsel to digest, but here, too, one notes a progressive appreciation from the days when _Punch_ pronounced _Man and Superman_ to be "unpresentable," not on moral grounds, but because it was not a mirror of humanity in point either of character or action. Similar reserves are expressed in the notice of _The Doctor's Dilemma_ in 1906. The general verdict is summed up in the epigram that "unfortunately, by steady abuse of it, Mr. Shaw has long ago forfeited his claim to be taken seriously." Yet the play contains "some very excellent phagocytes which enjoy a strong numerical advantage over its malevolent germs." So, again, _Cæsar and Cleopatra_, while affording in many ways a rare intellectual entertainment, was spoiled by the author's passion for being instructive; the piece fell between two stools, for it was neither frankly sacrilegious nor purely serious.
The ingenious burlesque account of an imaginary meeting of "The Decayed Drama and Submerged Stage Rescue Society" in 1903 is in the main hostile to the societies which confined their activities to the revival of old plays that failed to attract the general public. But _Punch_ was by no means enamoured of all the manifestations of modernity, and the rumour in 1906 that Mr. Seymour Hicks was going to produce a musical comedy based on _As You Like It_ prompted a diverting retort in _Punch's_: "As We Certainly Don't Like It, a Musical Comedy in Two Acts, by Hicks von Rubenstammer and William Shakespeare."
_Punch_ adds the note:--
"Great care has been taken to follow the usual musical-comedy plan of making the Second Act even worse than the first."
His success may be judged by the extract that follows:--
## ACT II
_A wild place in Shepherd's Bush_
_Enter the melancholy_ JAMES (_footman to the banished_ DUKE) _with one or two Lords, like Bushmen_.
_James_ [_looking at his watch_]:
'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine And after one hour more 'twill be eleven; And thereby hangs a song.
[_Sings it._]
[_Mr. Punch_: Excuse me a moment, but is this Act _very_ bad?
_Mr. Hicks von Rubenstammer_: Very bad indeed.
_Mr. Punch_: Personally I fear that I shall not be able to survive it.
_Mr. H. v. R._: Oh, two or three of us will re-write it after the first night, you know.
_Mr. Punch_: Then by all means let us wait for that occasion.]
Irving had met with various vicissitudes of criticism at _Punch's_ hands during his career. But latterly admiration prevailed, and, when the end came, real affection shines through the brief memorial quatrain printed in October, 1905:--
Ring down the curtain, for the play is done. Let the brief lights die out, and darkness fall. Yonder to that real life he has his call; And the loved face beholds the Eternal Sun.
[Sidenote: _Ellen Terry's Jubilee_]
Irving, as _Punch_ noted in his review of Mr. Bram Stoker's Life, was if possible more loved by his company than by the idolizing public. The financial misfortunes which dogged the last years of his life were due more to bad luck than bad management, and did not impair his serenity. He died in harness, and there was more tragedy in the latter years of his contemporary and friend, the famous and prosperous comedian J. L. Toole, for they were clouded by bereavement as well as infirmity; and _Punch's_ farewell to his friend in July, 1906, emphasizes the contrast:--
While Summer's laughter thrills the golden air, Come, gently lay within the lap of earth This heart that loved to let us share its mirth But bore alone the sorrow none might share.
[Illustration: FIFTY YEARS A QUEEN
(_An Author's Tribute._)
(A scheme is on foot for presenting a National Tribute to Miss Ellen Terry on April 28, the fiftieth anniversary of her first appearance on the stage.)]
Ellen Terry's Jubilee in the same year was honoured in a cartoon; but a new and formidable rival to the Muses of legitimate Comedy and Tragedy reared its menacing head in the following year. The visit of the _Grand Guignol_ to London in 1907 inspired a prophetic fantasy on the new cult of "Shrieks and Shudders" which has been easily eclipsed by the realities of the Little Theatre. As I write these lines the leading serious weekly, among "Plays worth seeing," includes the "unabated horrors" of the London Grand Guignol. I have spoken elsewhere of the dancing mania. In 1909 the _furore_ excited by Miss Maud Allan led to the following squib in which burlesque is mingled with caustic ridicule:--
HER RETURN
_Being a wholly imaginative anticipation of the Proceedings at the Palace on the historic night._
... Before the dancing began an ode to the artiste from the emotional pen of Sir Ernest Cassel was read by Sir John Fisher, containing these memorable lines:--
Barefooted Bacchanal, would that I were Kipling To celebrate thy marvellous arm-rippling!
... The new dances were four in number, and in them She personated in turn Pharaoh's Daughter in her famous fandango known tastefully as the Bull Rush; Jephthah's Daughter in her final macabre Hebrew fling, on hearing of her father's vow and her own fate; Uriah's wife in her _pas de liberté_ after the battle; and Jezebel in her defiant tarantella before a waxen Elijah--all new and all marvellously restrained (not only in dress) and full of scriptural tact.... At the end of the turn the applause lasted fourteen minutes, and She was led on eleven times. Free restoratives were then distributed in the theatre, ambulances removed those admirers who were too far gone to remain any longer, and the programme proceeded. Late at night She was drawn to her residence at Frognal in a carriage from which the horses had been removed, the Prime Minister, Mr. Walkley, Mr. Alfred Butt and a number of other talented gentlemen taking their places. Never was there such a triumph.
[Sidenote: _The "Follies"_]
Happily there were antidotes to the plague of Biblical Bacchanals; none better than that supplied for several seasons by the late Mr. Pélissier and his "Follies," to whom _Punch_ expressed his gratitude in 1910. It was a "priceless" entertainment, with its "Potted Plays," admirable burlesques of the music-hall stage, opera, the Russian ballet, and on occasion, as in "Everybody's Benefit," really acute satire of the histrionic temperament. "The Follies" have had reincarnations and successors and imitators, but _Punch's_ doggerel is not a bad picture of the troupe at its best, before the late Miss Gwennie Mars left them, and when Mr. Lewis Sydney, Mr. Dan Everard, Mr. Morris Harvey, and Miss Muriel George contributed nightly to the gaiety of the London public:--
When life seems drear and hollow, When Fortune wears a frown, I haste to the Apollo And plank my dollar down. Outside the tempest vollies Against uplifted brollies; I care not, for "the Follies" Are back in London town.
Pélissier, prince of "Potters," You earn our grateful thanks, You and your fellow plotters-- Co-partners in your pranks-- For slating smart inanity, Or Fashion's last insanity, Or histrionic vanity, Or madness _à la_ Manx.
From introspective thinking In every minor key, Good Sydney, grimly blinking, You set my spirit free. If laughing makes one fatter, Then listening to your patter, O very harebrained hatter, Has added pounds to me.
Nor must my brief laudations Omit the genial Dan, Or Harvey's imitations Framed on a novel plan, Or Ben, that priceless super Moustachioed like a trooper, Who plays like Margaret Cooper Were she a Superman.
'Twould need the fire of Uriel To hymn your female stars For Muriel's most Mercurial And Gwennie's surnamed Mars. O Gwennie, you're a miracle Of mimicry satirical, Yet when your mood is lyrical There's not a note that jars.
The "Follies" were benefactors; their satire was in the main most genial; and they did not cause their audiences "furiously to think." These aims accorded largely with _Punch's_ own conception of the function of public entertainers; none the less in his later years he was by no means antagonistic to the serious drama. In 1907 Mr. Galsworthy's _Strife_ is welcomed as a great play, greatly acted. _Punch's_ dramatic critic has nothing but praise for it, though he did not think that the author bothered about a moral. It was his business to make other people uncomfortable, to make them think and "do something." "If _Strife_ has a moral it is simply that the problem of Capital and Labour will have to be settled."
[Illustration: THE ENEMY THAT WAS
CHORUS OF MUSIC-HALL ARTISTS: "Glad you're one of us now, Sir Beerbohm."]
_Punch_ still intermittently bewailed the decline of the Harlequinade. His Lament for King Pantomime in 1910 was based on an article in the _Daily Telegraph_ welcoming the beneficent revolution which had substituted _Peter Pan_ for the old Christmas carnival of Clown and Pantaloon. At the same time _Punch_ had himself become more than reconciled to the new children's idol and had compared Maeterlinck's _Blue Bird_ unfavourably with the perennial Peter. The competition of the film play had not yet become acute, and the Music-Hall, which _Punch_ had so frequently and even fiercely assailed in its earlier phases, was now a formidable and fashionable rival of the theatre. In 1908 Harry Lauder's salary, alleged to average £250 a week, is compared with that of the Lord Chancellor. There was no longer any talk of "indignity" in appearing on the boards of the variety stage, and _Punch_ notices Sarah Bernhardt's appearance at the Coliseum, in 1910, as putting the crown on the new movement, and providing the Halls with their apotheosis, for she was "still the greatest star in the Thespian firmament." Her "turn" was in the second Act of _L'Aiglon_; the only other feature in the programme that called for notice was the performance of the "Balalaika Orchestra"; the rest of the "artists" were "very small minnows alongside of this great Tritoness." The "divine Sarah" could do no wrong, but, when Sir Herbert Tree appeared in the Halls, in 1911, _Punch's_ cartoon was certainly not honorific. Nor is the note of "indignity" altogether lacking in the dialogue between the two knockabout comedians in Mr. Townsend's picture in 1912:--
FIRST MUSIC-HALL ARTIST (_watching Mr. J. M. Barrie's "The Twelve Pound Look" from the wings_): "I like this yer sketch; the patter's so good. 'Oo wrote it?"
SECOND M.-H. A.: "Bloke called Barrie, I think."
FIRST M.-H. A.: "Arst for 'is address. 'E writes our next."
The "Balalaika Orchestra," by the way, was a minor sign of the Russian invasion already at its height. Miss Maud Allan had been unfavourably received in 1909 in Manchester, and about the same time the Chicago "Wheat King," Mr. Patten, had been mobbed on the Manchester Exchange, and _Punch_ ingeniously "synthesised" the two events in the following stanza:
The types that make the market mad No doubt inspire the self-same loathing In spots that spin, as those whose fad Is chucking up all kinds of clothing.
[Sidenote: _The March of Music_]
The Russian Ballet was a very different thing from the poses and wrigglings of barefooted Bacchantes, and _Punch_ became lyrical in his eulogies of these "spring-heeled Jacks and Jills." The exquisite romance and fantasy of "The Spectre of the Rose," the "Carnival" and the "Sylphides" were a revelation to those who, like Carlyle, only saw in the old opera-ballet the conversion of the human frame into a pair of animated compasses.
The Russian Ballet furnished _Punch_ in his almanack for 1913 with an excellent formula for caricatures of the idols and butts of the hour, but his admiration for the originals was sincere.
In the years immediately preceding the war the cinema demands an evergrowing if not altogether appreciative attention. _Punch_ pays a left-handed compliment to the versatility of the film actor, but very properly satirizes the extraordinary representations of English life and dress in the foreign films produced for the English market. The invasion of Debrett by chorus girls, recorded in October 1913, is an old story, but if Punch is to be trusted had then reached dimensions unparalleled in the annals of aristocratic condescension.
MUSIC
Music has been called "the youngest of the arts" in view of the fact that, as we now understand it in the Western world, it dates roughly from the year 1600. But the "heavenly maid" had already ceased to be the Cinderella of the Muses, though still condemned in restaurants and places where they feed to the menial function of acting as an _obbligato_ accompaniment to conversation, deglutition, and digestion. A pessimistic observer remarked about fifteen years ago that modern life bade fair to be dominated by music and machinery, and the correlation of the two factors has since been abundantly illustrated by the momentous development of the gramophone and the pianola, the cult of "sonority" and the dynamics of the orchestra. When to these influences are added the successive experiments in harmony and tonality and rhythm associated with the names of Strauss and Debussy, Scriabine and Stravinsky, Ravel and Schönberg, one cannot deny that the ferment in letters has been more than matched by the exuberant activities of musical modernists. In the period under review the "whole tone scale" was partially acclimatized and "rag-time" was domesticated, Wagner ceased to be regarded as an anarch of discord, and the "Music of the Future" became the music of the past. It was no longer a guarantee of enlightenment to worship Brahms or admire Beethoven. Of the three "B's" Bach alone has maintained his prestige, and to-day counts upon the allegiance of all schools. Otherwise, and in spite of the renown of Strauss, Germany ceased to exercise her old musical supremacy, and, even before the war, Russia, France and Italy had entered into a formidable competition with the "predominant partner" in the domain of opera. And though opera is an artificial blend of incompatibles and must always remain on a lower plane than abstract or absolute music--the most transcendental thing in the whole range of art--it claims priority of notice in this record for two sufficient reasons: its social prestige and the amount of space devoted to it by _Punch_.
Wagner's operas were now established in the Covent Garden repertory, and as I have already noticed, their new-found and fashionable popularity was largely due to the appeal of the great singers, notably Jean and Edouard de Reszke and Mlle. Ternina, who proved that Wagnerian melody was all the more effective when sung beautifully and not declaimed or barked as by so many German singers. Moreover when, as in the artists mentioned, this vocal lustre was combined with a splendid presence, dignity of bearing, and dramatic intelligence, the appeal was well-nigh irresistible. I insert the qualification advisedly on behalf of _Punch_ who, in these years at any rate, was never reconciled to Wagner, and when he heard Jean de Reszke and his brother in the _Meistersinger_ in 1897 could not refrain from jocular disparagement of the score.
[Sidenote: _Foreign Stars and Native Composers_]
Verdi's _Falstaff_ had been produced in 1894, but _Punch_ abstains from any criticism of that exhilarating work, merely pronouncing the performance a success, and a few years later further advertised his inability to recognize the supreme achievements of the later Verdi by declaring that _Otello_ as an opera was "heavy." In opera he was in the main an inveterate _laudator temporis acti_ and chiefly enjoyed himself when opportunities arose for indulging in alliterative quips such as "merry Mancinelli," "beaming Bevignani," or puns on the name of the performers, e.g. "Mlle. Bauermeister-singer." Puccini's operas--_Manon_, _La Bohême_ and _Madama Butterfly_--found favour in his sight; they had sparkle, elegance and _brio_. But he was not impressed with _La Tosca_, holding that the "operaticizing" of successful plays was a mistake; in general his notices are void of musical criticism and only deal with the singing of Melba and Caruso and the admirable Destinn. Still _Punch_ had lucid intervals of vision when he saw a good or great thing and praised it handsomely. The Santuzza of Calvé, in 1894, was "grand and magnificent" and her Carmen "marvellous" and unique. The epithets were fully deserved, but _Punch_ acutely detected that this great artist and actress suffered from the excess of her qualities, and wittily described her Marguerite in _Faust_ as "a _Mädchen_ with a past." Madame Patti's reappearance in opera in 1895 after many years' absence was genially welcomed, none the less so for her choice of _La Traviata_ for her _rentrée_, for _Punch_ was faithful to his old operatic loves. In the next few years English opera and operatic composers claimed _Punch's_ attention. The scheme of a National Opera House was revived in 1899 when _Punch_ represented Music petitioning the L.C.C. for a site, but the sinews of war were not forthcoming. Sir Charles Stanford's _Much Ado about Nothing_, the libretto adapted from Shakespeare by Mr. Julian Sturgis, with Miss Marie Brema, Miss Suzanne Adams, Mr. David Bispham and M. Plançon in the cast, was pronounced "an undisputed success" in 1901. In 1902 there were two native novelties. In Mr. Herbert Bunning's _Princesse Osra_, founded on "Anthony Hope's" novel, _Punch_ found little scope for positive praise: it was "musically disappointing save for accidental reminiscences." Nor was he much more enthusiastic over Miss Ethel Smyth's _Der Wald_, with its lurid plot "of the penny plain, twopence coloured type" and "interminable duets." Over one stage direction, "Peasants turn pale," _Punch_ waxed ribald, and he concludes his notice with the ambiguous sentence: "Miss Smyth was acclaimed vociferously, the Duke of Connaught and the occupants of the Royal box testifying their great pleasure at what may come to be, after judicious elimination, a satisfactory success." The first of the _Salomes_ who de-decorated the lyric and variety stages was not Strauss's but Massenet's version, produced in the summer of 1903. Mme. Calvé was in the cast, but the opera provided no scope for her genius, and _Punch_ damned it with faint praise as not likely to be retained in the repertory, a very safe prediction. In the summary of the season _Punch_ puts Richter at the head of the successes, a well-merited recognition of his direction of the Wagner performances; the list of "stars" includes the "two Vans"--Van Rooy, the Dutch baritone, and Van Dyck, the Dutch tenor--Destinn, Calvé and Melba, Caruso and Plançon. In the winter the San Carlo troupe from Naples visited London, with Sammarco and Caruso--or Robinson Caruso, as _Punch_ liked to call him--as the chief male singers, but no new operas were produced. _André Chénier_ in 1907 is described as of the _Tosca_ or lurid type. A new hand is observable in the notice which acknowledges an unexpected dignity and refinement in Caruso's always brilliant singing and pronounces Destinn "adorable." Wagner's star was still in the ascendant in 1908, and Richter's splendid conducting of the Tetralogy is commemorated in the cartoon of Hans the _Ring_-master; while the "record operatic duel" between Melba and Tetrazzini is similarly honoured a little later. Never before, unless I am much mistaken, had two cartoons with a musical motive appeared in the same year. In 1910 Strauss was the grand and conspicuous portent of the operatic world, for _Elektra_, was produced in the spring and _Salome_ in the winter. The former was hailed by _Punch_ as a supreme manifestation of the _Maladie de Siècle_. His verses are quoted not for their literary merit so much as because they are a fairly compendious record of the fashions and foibles of "England de luxe" at the time:--
[Sidenote: _"Elektra" and "Salome"_]
O sons of the new generation Athirst for inordinate thrills; O daughters, whose love of sensation Is shown in your frocks and your frills-- Come, faithfully answer my queries If you would completely assuage The passionate craving that wearies Both sinner and sage.
Has Ibsen no power to excite you? Can't Maeterlinck make you applaud? Do dancers no longer delight you, Who wriggle about _à la_ Maud? Are you tired of the profile of Ainley? The tender falsetto of Tree? Do you envy each bonnet insanely That harbours a bee?
Is the Metchnikoff treatment a failure? Do you weep when you miss your short putts? Have you ceased with enjoyment to hail your Diurnal allowance of nuts? Are you bored by the leaders of Spender? Or cloyed by the pathos of Caine? Do you find that "The Follies" engender A feeling of _gêne_?
Are you sick of Sicilian grimaces? Unattracted by Chantecler hats? Are you weary of Marathon races And careless in choosing your spats? Are you jaded with aeroplaning And sated with social reform? Apathetic alike when it's raining And when it is warm?
Do you shy at the strains that are sober? Does Wagner no longer inflame? Do you find that the music of Auber And Elgar is equally tame? Do you read without blushing or winking The novels of Elinor Glyn? Do you constantly hanker, when rinking, For draughts of sloe gin?
If I am correct in divining The tortures you daily endure, Don't waste any time in repining, But try this infallible cure: With the sharpest of musical _plectra_ Go pluck at your soul till it's raw; In a word, go and witness _Elektra_-- Give up the jig-saw.
[Illustration: STARS IN OPPOSITION; OR, THE "RECORD" OPERATIC DUEL]
_Salome_, so far as the book was concerned, was a tertiary deposit. Heine, in a few masterly stanzas in his fantastic narrative poem _Atta Troll_, tells the old legend of the unholy love of the daughter of Herodias for John the Baptist. Therein may be found the essence of Wilde's play, adapted to form the libretto of the opera. _Punch_, who attended the dress rehearsal, gives an interesting account of his experiences, but shirks the task of criticizing the opera: for that, as he observes, "no vocabulary could be too large or peculiar." But he mentions one orchestral interlude, in which "there was one sound, painfully iterated, like the chirrup of a sick hen, which appeared to come from some part of the violin that is usually left alone." At the close of June, 1914, Strauss's _Légende de Joseph_ was produced at Covent Garden by Sir Thomas Beecham with the Russian Ballet. _Punch_ abstained from detailed musical criticism, but condemned the "vulgar animalism" of the piece which he regarded as "a false move in every way," and his view cannot be laid down to prudery or Philistinism, since it was shared by many of the most devoted admirers of Strauss. Nor can he be charged with a wholesale depreciation of German music in view of the tribute to Humperdinck's _Hänsel und Gretel_, which appeared in his pages a few months earlier:--
[Sidenote: _Homage to Humperdinck_]
How strange that modern Germany, so gruesome in her Art, Where sheer sardonic satire has expelled the human heart, Should also be the Germany that gives us, to our joy, The perfect children's opera--pure gold without alloy.