ill. Or a sensation scene of surgery perhaps might prove

attractive, and a real leg or arm be amputated nightly, before a crowded house.... Playgoers will thus become familiarized with horrors, which they read of with dismay; and to some minds a calamity may fail to cause regret on the ground of its affording a good subject for the stage.

[Sidenote: _Music-Halls_]

These particular anticipations have, fortunately, not all been fulfilled, though persons who have been tried (and acquitted) on a murder charge have appeared on the boards of recent years, and the deliberate cult of horrors has become the avowed aim of the disciples of the Grand Guignol school at the Little Theatre. The imaginary forecast in 1858 of the possibilities of playbills as a means of advertisement has long been transcended in fact. More interesting than these speculations is the prophecy which grew out of the complaint against long runs in the middle 'sixties. _Punch_ predicts in the summer of 1864 that if the repertory system is kept up in the provinces Londoners will go to Brighton every night for their play or their opera. The actual fact is that the revival of repertory theatres in the provinces has rendered country cousins less dependent on their periodical visits to London in order to keep abreast with the latest dramatic developments. The mention of Brighton recalls a curious episode illustrative of the social code of mid-Victorian times. In the autumn of 1858 _Punch_ rebukes the headmaster of a Brighton school who sent away the son of a distinguished actor lest it should damage his connexion! Today such a pupil is probably an asset rather than a handicap. The attitude of the Church to the Stage was hardly benevolent in the 'sixties: this may account for the satisfaction displayed by _Punch_ over the "exceptionally sensible" sermon preached in 1873 at St. James's, Piccadilly, by Lightfoot, then Canon of St. Paul's, and afterwards Bishop of Durham. Dr. Lightfoot maintained that the stage, well conducted, would be an auxiliary of the pulpit; that it was an enormous and powerful instrument in the hands of Society for good or evil; and, while holding that the present state of the drama was far from satisfactory, he paid all honour to those dramatists and managers who were attempting to raise it by not pandering to the vitiated tastes of some of the public. In all of which sentiments he was vigorously applauded by _Punch_, who could not, however, resist the temptation of making verbal capital out of the preacher's name.

The competition of music-halls with theatres had already begun, and _Punch_ had little or no conception of the length to which it was ultimately destined to be carried. He had no love of the music-hall as then organized, and nothing but contempt for the style of song which flourished in the temples of variety. So when the Bill, promoted in 1865 by Mr. Locke, M.P. for Southwark, for legalizing theatrical performances in music-halls was supported by a "dramatic authors' petition," he fell foul of the petitioners especially in regard to their initial contention:--

"The Lower Middle Class and Working Class have, of late years, developed a large appetite for intellectual amusement, which the number of theatres, and the present construction of theatres (which give no comfortable or proper accommodation for these classes) have failed to satisfy."

Perhaps we may admit that the theatre, as generally conducted nowadays, is not exactly the place in which to satisfy an "intellectual appetite." With our "intellectual appetite," still suffering under the mockery of a Barmecide entertainment, in the shape of a recent course of burlesques, we feel that the intellectual playgoer, like the sheep in Milton's Sonnet, "looks up and is not fed" in our London theatres. But is there not something besides "numbers" and "construction" of theatre to blame here? May not the quality of the theatrical fare provided have a leetle to do with it? And who are the purveyors of that fare but many of the gentlemen who sign this petition.

If they fail so miserably in satisfying the "intellectual appetite" of even "the Lower Middle and Working-Class" in our theatres, how are they to satisfy it better in the music-halls which they wish to open for the unlimited consumption of their viands?

If they have anything better to offer, why not try it in the theatres, where they will, at least, find the cooks--such as they are--in the shape of actors, and the best procurable garnish of scenery, dresses, and decorations, without the distractions of chops and steaks, sherry cobblers, cold withouts, and sodas-and-brandies?

... But the less the demand for the opening of the music-halls to theatrical representations is based on the demands of the "intellectual appetite" of the Lower Middle and Working Classes, the better.

Three years later _Punch_ was unable to notice any great improvement in the variety stage:--

The music-hall gentry had a great gathering the other day, for a purpose which we should approve, if we did not hold that the music-hall, as at present conducted, is so pestilent a nuisance that charity can have nothing to say to it. One of the performers had grace or shame enough to deliver some doggerel in which he deprecated the wrath of _Punch_ on the ground that everybody must live. It is the plea usually heard in the dock, and the answer is: "Yes, but decently." But as it is of no use telling the music-hall folks what gentlemen think of them, perhaps they would like to know what the respectable artisan thinks of them, and of the spirit in which it is not impossible that he may deal with them. Here are the words of the organ of hundreds of thousands of the skilled artisans and the Trades Unions, in fact, and we recommend them to special attention:--

"To these glaring temples of dissipation our youth are nightly attracted; where they are being gradually trained to drinking habits; where their minds are debased by the low songs and vulgar exhibitions provided for them; and where their morals are undermined and corrupted by contact with loose associates, when their blood is fired and their brains bemuddled with drink.... The expenditure incurred in those places of amusement keeps young men poor; causes marriage to be greatly postponed--to the increase of vice; or, if entered into, without the necessary provision for making a comfortable home; while the habits they acquire by going there will too frequently cause them to neglect home and family for their nightly amusements."

So says the _Beehive_ speaking the sentiments of the Working Man. We do not think that he will see much force in the mewing plea of "must live."

The music-halls of to-day do not call for such censure; they have even become fashionable; but one is tempted to wonder whether there is any modern counterpart in Labour journalism to the austerely Puritan _Beehive_.

[Sidenote: _Opera in 1858_]

In the world of opera the domination of the Italian School of composers and singers, though intermittently and not unsuccessfully assailed, remained practically unbroken throughout this period, 1857-1874. Still, the formation of the company for the performance of English operas by Louisa Pyne and William Harrison in 1856 is a landmark that must not be overlooked. The partnership was dissolved in 1862, but the performances given at the Lyceum, Drury Lane, and Covent Garden theatres in those years anticipated the good work done in later years by the Carl Rosa and other companies. The general musical situation in 1858 is not badly summarized in the lines published at the end of June under the heading "Musicians and Maniacs":--

Three _Traviatas_ in diff'rent quarters, Three _Rigoletti_ murd'ring their daughters!! Three _Trovatori_ beheading their brothers, By the artful contrivance of three gipsy mothers!!! Verdi in the Haymarket, Verdi at the Lane, Green's in Covent Garden, and Verdi again! Was ever a being so music be-ridden, Barrel-organ-beground, German brass-band bestridden; What with all the Concerts at all the Halls, And the Oratorios--_Samsons_ and _Sauls_-- Mozart and Mendelssohn, Haydn and Handel-- All lights of the Art in every part, From the blaze of the Sun to a farthing-candle! And the Classical Matinées, With Clauss's touch satiny, That to hear her your heart seems to go pit-a-pat in ye-- And Hallé so dignified, pure and sonorous, And Henry Leslie's amateur chorus, And fair Arabella, so melting and mellow, That she charms the stern judgment of Autocrat Ella, And Rubinstein--rapid and rattling of fist, That one cries out with _Hamlet's_ Papa, "Liszt, Oh Liszt."

Ella was the founder and director of the "Musical Union," which gave Chamber Music Concerts much on the lines of the famous "Pops"; Arabella was Arabella Goddard, the leading British pianist. Henry Leslie's choir for the performance of madrigal music carried off the prize against all comers at Paris in 1867. Wilhelmine Clauss was the Bohemian pianist, known in later years as Mme. Szarvady. To return to opera: it is amusing to find precisely the same charge hurled against Verdi as against Wagner twenty or thirty years later--that he cracked or wore out voices in their vain effort to contend against orchestral din. Grisi was still the chief _diva_, though a new star had arisen in Titiens, whose name spurred _Punch_ to display his metrical prowess:--

We've got a great artist, a lady named Titiens, Whose praises we'd sing, but her name will not rhyme. Stuff! Horace reminds you, with "_Tantalus sitiens_," We've thirsted for music like hers a long time.

[Sidenote: _The Advent of Patti_]

The new Opera House had been opened at Covent Garden, and on the first night patrons complained of getting covered with white, as the paint was still fresh. The "Music of the Future" continues to excite _Punch's_ derision, and at the close of 1858 he seizes the opportunity of running a tilt against _Lohengrin_:--

Meyerbeer's opera of the _Africaine_ seems to be "The Opera of the Future," for there appears but little chance of its ever being played in our lifetime. How many years has it not been locked up in the great composer's portfolio, undergoing a species of African slavery, of which manager after manager has tried in vain to find the musical key. However, we are sorry to find Meyerbeer lending his great name to Messrs. Wagner, Liszt, and other crotchet-mongers of the _Music of the Future_, in support of their inharmonious fallacies, that have lately been aired in a grand pretentious production, called _Lohengrin_. A "grin" seems to be the end of all their Operas, though at best it is but a melancholy one, and anything but flattering to those who provoke it. The Viennese are all _Lohengrinning_ like mad. We wish Meyerbeer would put this band of musical fanatics to shame by allowing his _Africaine_ to become an "Opera of the Present," instead of "the Future," and so prove to these hare-brained gentlemen what good music really is. The best _Music of the Future_ is that which has the elements of vitality in every note of it, so that there can be no doubt about its living several scores of years after its production. The specimen that we know of this class is _Don Giovanni_, and our would-be Mozarts cannot do better than take it as a model.

_Punch's_ enthusiasm for Piccolomini had so far cooled that when a testimonial to her was suggested in 1860, he declined his support on the ground that she was "a pretty little personage, of good family, who, by force of bright eyes, intelligent acting, and a charming smile, pleased the public into a belief that she was a lyric artist." Moreover, if there was to be a testimonial, Grisi was the proper recipient. The following year was noteworthy for the advent of Patti, unheralded by any strident flourish of trumpets. _Punch's_ first reference to her _début_ in May was brief and ambiguous, and disfigured by a pun on her name. Six weeks later he remains still unshaken in his allegiance to his old heroines--Malibran, Jenny Lind, and Grisi--and suspends his judgment on the newcomer. Patti's arrival coincided with the "final farewell appearances" of Grisi, a mistress of the grand style as singer and actress, queen-like in her gestures and gait, unequalled even by Titiens (in _Punch's_ opinion) in _Norma_ and as Donna Anna; but _Punch_ soon succumbed to the furore for Patti. As Zerlina she was "more charming than he expected," and a year later he celebrated his enslavement in jingling rhyme:--

O charming Adelina! How sweet is thy _Amina_ How bewitching thy _Zerlina_! How seldom has there been a More tunable _Norina_! And have I ever seen a More enjoyable _Rosina_? But to tell the praise I mean a- -Las! there should have been a Score more rhymes to Adelina.

_Punch_ said what he could in 1861 of two forgotten operas--Balfe's _Puritan's Daughter_, with Santley in the cast, and Benedict's _Lily of Killarney_, a tertiary deposit from _The Collegians_--but found more congenial occupation in the spring of 1862 in levelling the shafts of ineffectual, because uninstructed, ridicule against Wagner:--

LE VERITABLE "OPERA COMIQUE"

We read that Herr Wagner is about to compose a comic opera, music and words. We agree with our facetious contemporary, _The Musical World_,[30] that we never heard an opera of Wagner's yet that was not more, or less, comic.... As this gentleman's music is said to belong to "The Future"--and certainly as a Present it is not worth having--we suppose he generally gets it executed by the celebrated Band of "Hope."

[Footnote 30: _The Musical World_ was edited by J. W. Davison, the musical critic of _The Times_, a well-equipped musician, an unflinching champion of Mendelssohn and a bitter and persistent disparager of Wagner and Schumann.]

[Sidenote: _Wagner and Gounod_]

A KING WITH A STRANGE TASTE FOR MUSIC

Herr Wagner, the great composer, "for the future" (A.D. 1962), has received sharp orders from the King of Saxony to return home instantly. Is the King jealous that other parts of the Continent should have so much of the services of his Kapellmeister, and he comparatively so little? He probably wishes to have Wagner all to himself. Far from quarrelling with the desired monopoly, in the cause of music we heartily rejoice at it. The royal edict will have the effect of narrowing the evil of contaminating compositions. It is tantamount to a musical quarantine. Travellers must not venture too near, or else they may be infected with one of his malignant airs, which are not so catching, perhaps, as they are lowering, leaving a fearful sense of depression behind them. Henceforth, the flights of _The Flying Dutchman_ will be restricted to one kingdom instead of half a dozen. We hope Wagner will be confined to Dresden all his life. Our Philharmonic will gain from his imprisonment. It will run no further risk of being nearly knocked on the head from another blow of his erratic baton.

The chief operatic attractions of 1863 are set forth in an excellent mock-Virgilian Eclogue in which the two rival impresarios, Gye and Mapleson, figure as Damoetas and Menalcas and _Punch_ as Palaemon. Patti's popularity is attested in the couplet:--

My little Patti all the world must own The nicest little party ever known.

The list of celebrities includes Titiens, Carvalho, Trebelli, Mario, Tamberlik (a heroic tenor, famous for his "_ut de poitrine_"), Giuglini, Faure, Formes, Santley--all of them long dead, except the last, who had, in 1862, just cast in his lot with Italian opera. He took part in the first performance of _Faust_ in England as Valentine, and with such success that Gounod wrote for him the additional number "Dio possente." _Faust_ is a landmark in the annals of opera in England; because it was the first work which shook the allegiance of the fashionable world to the Italian school, and for fifty years at least enjoyed a popularity equal to that of the early Verdi, of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini, and, judged by the test of performances, greater than that of Mozart or Meyerbeer. _Faust_ was certainly founded on Italian rather than German traditions, but there was much in it that was essentially French, and one turns with curiosity to read how it struck so orthodox and, in some ways, so insular a critic as _Punch_. He treated the opening performance perfunctorily, briefly observing that the opera seemed to suit everyone's taste, but made his _amende_ a month later:--

Thank you, M. Gounod; thank you, Mr. Gye; thank you, Mr. Mapleson.[31] As produced by your exertions _Faust_ is certainly Faust-rate. _Mr. Punch_ makes his apology for not saying so before, but he is not like some clairvoyants who can criticize by foresight. Moreover, such cascades of praise have spouted on all sides that he feared a while to add to the laudatory deluge. Now, having seen and heard and reflected at his leisure, _Punch_ is ready to allow that the shower of superlatives has not fallen undeserved, and he will own that M. Gounod has produced the sweetest, prettiest and pleasantest new opera that, since the first night of _Les Huguenots_, the world has seen brought forth. The only drawback _Mr. Punch_ felt when he witnessed the performance was that M. Gounod had not set the Brocken Scene. With that addition, _Faust_ might have eclipsed _Der Freischütz_, and even without this it is not far inferior.

[Footnote 31: _Faust_ was produced at Her Majesty's Theatre (Mapleson) on June 11 and at Covent Garden (Gye) on July 2.]

[Sidenote: "_Homeric Catalogue of Singers_"]

Many of the greatest singers of the time appeared in these performances. Miolan-Carvalho (the original Marguerite), Faure (the first Mephistopheles), Giuglini, the incomparable Trebelli, and Santley. Patti assumed the _rôle_ of the heroine in the following year with great success; but _Punch_ did not fail to welcome Titiens as Leonora in _Fidelio_, an achievement which he describes as "noble music nobly rendered." It was in 1864 again that the efforts of English opera to raise its diminished head called forth _Punch's_ satire. Foreign opera still held the field, and the only English feature of the venture was the conductor Mellon.

The "Homeric Catalogue of Singers," published on April 1, 1865, shows how formidable was the competition of the foreign singers, headed by Patti, Lucca, and the honey-tongued Miolan-Carvalho, with other prima donnas from Munich, Berlin, Milan, Moscow, and Lisbon, and, amongst men, Mario, Wachtel ("the far-famed shouter of high notes"), Ronconi (a great actor and humorist) Tagliafico, and half a dozen others whose names have fallen into the limbo of forgotten singers.

Meyerbeer's long-promised and posthumous _L'Africaine_ arrived at last in the summer season of 1865, but before its performance on July 22, with Pauline Lucca in the part of Selika, the libretto of this "grand new old opera" is irreverently burlesqued by _Punch_ with delightful pictures by Du Maurier. We can only find room for an excellent travesty of the Song of Inez:--

I go to execution, 'Tis righteous retribution, And by this Constitution All foreigners must die--

and the excellent and well-merited criticism of the execrable singing of the opera chorus (old style).

[Sidenote: _Nilsson and Grisi_]

_Punch_ returns to _L'Africaine_ a couple of months later, but in a vein of irresponsible ribaldry. _Punch's_ notice, however, is valuable because it is a good (if partly unconscious) satire on the attitude of the frivolous opera-goer who goes (or shall we say went) to the opera to be amused and titillated, to see and be seen, to applaud the "stars" in their show songs, but for the rest deaf to the appeal of poetry and passion. _Punch_, at his worst, never sank to this level, witness his appreciation of Jenny Lind and Titiens and Ronconi; but the glamour of good looks and a fine voice seldom failed to touch his susceptible heart. His appreciation of Christine Nilsson on her appearance in 1867 is, with certain reserves, a good estimate of one who in her prime was an almost perfect Marguerite, or perhaps one should say Gretchen, and who might have stepped out of one of the canvases of Kaulbach:--

It is not usual, I know, to wear thick boots at the opera; but I regretted very much that, obeying my young wife, I had put on a thin pair, when I went the other night to hear the new young Swedish singer. I have seldom been more charmed than I was by her fresh voice, fair face, and her agreeable demeanour. She sings in a pure style, with intelligence and taste, and she can hold a long soft note with none of the affected trembling of the voice which of late has been so fashionable. Her tones are clear and full, high but never shrill; and she has no need of French polish to conceal those cracks and blemishes which Verdi makes in thin weak voices. She is very young at present, and must not be crudely criticized; but she seems by nature gifted for the operatic stage, and having ardour and ambition to shine lastingly upon it. Because she happens to be Swedish, people think of their old favourite, and make absurd comparisons between a finished artist in the climax of her fame and a clever débutante who is wishful to be famous. The parallel, though premature, may in one point be permitted, for these Swedes have both the gift of singing not to the ears only, but simply to the heart; and though Christine Nilsson may not be a second Jenny Lind, she is even now among the very first of _prime donne_.

In 1868 regret is expressed that Royalty bestowed more patronage on Offenbach than Handel--the Handel Festival coinciding with the production of _La Grande Duchesse_ in 1868; on the other hand, Patti's marriage to the Marquis de Caux is thought worthy of a mention under the heading of "Essence of Parliament"! In 1869 _Punch_ notes the knighthood conferred on Costa, whom he had once described as "the tamer of wild prima donnas," and pays homage to Grisi, who died at the close of the year:--

GIULIA GRISI

Nay, no elegies nor dirges! Let thy name recall the surges, Waves of song, whose magic play Swept our very souls away: And the memories of the days When to name thee was to praise; Visions of a queenly grace, Glowings of a radiant face, Art's High Priestess! at her shrine Ne'er was truer guard than thine. Were it Love, or were it Hate, It was thine, and it was great. Glorious Woman--like to thee We have seen not, nor shall see. Lost the Love, the Hate, the Mirth--

* * * * *

Light upon thee lie the earth!

Hervé's _Chilpéric_ is hailed in 1870 as a welcome substitute for the tyranny of Schneider and Offenbach; as for _Tannhäuser_, _Punch_ was apparently very much of the same way of thinking as the members of the Jockey Club in Paris, who received it with whistles and cat-calls in 1861:--

GEE WOE, WAGNER

A Solo by Mr. Crusty, after hearing a Selection from the Opera of _Tannhäuser_

"The music of the future," eh? Well, some may think it pleasant! But when such trash again they play, I'll for the future hope I may Not be among the present!

Mario's farewell benefit, on July 19, 1871, when he played Fernando in _La Favorita_ for the last time in London, was a scene of "roaring and wreaths" described with mingled humour and emotion by _Punch_, who hailed the retiring idol as the Prince of Lyric Artists:--

Though lost to ear To memory dear I ne'er shall look upon his like again!

[Sidenote: _Popular Songs in 1858_]

Concert music between 1841 and 1857 began and ended, so far as _Punch_ was concerned, with Jullien. To what we have written in the previous volume of Jullien's disasters and death, it may here be added that _Punch_ bade him God-speed on the grand tour in 1858 which was to restore his fortunes, and when the end came was active in canvassing for funds to support his widow and family, who were left totally unprovided for. Also, that he repeated his tribute to Jullien's great services as an educator of the "shilling-paying public." The taste of the musical million was still a matter of concern to _Punch_. His detestation of street bands, Ethiopians, Germans, Tyrolese, and Italians--principally emissaries of Verdi, his pet aversion--amounted almost to an obsession. The names of the popular songs in 1858--"Jim Crow" and "Keemo Kimo" were certainly not romantic. At a concert held in St. James's Hall in June, 1858, a negro song was sung with the delectable refrain: "Flip up in de scidimadinc, jube up in de jubin jube." _Punch_ found some solace, however, in the concerts at Sydenham, where _morceaux_ of Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Handel, served up by Costa, took the sickly taste of _Traviata_ out of his mouth. _Punch's_ own education was advancing, but he had not yet learnt to spell Liszt's name properly. The extravagances of Liszt worship, which certainly reached a pitch never surpassed in the annals of musical idolatry, are burlesqued in a series of paragraphs aimed at Wagner as well as his son-in-law to be. Writing of Liszt's "fearful engagement" in Dresden, in 1859, he facetiously asserts that "Not less than two pianos were killed under him, and upwards of two dozen music-stools severely wounded." The "encore nuisance" had already found in _Punch_ a strenuous critic; and a tumultuous scene at the Surrey Hall, when Sims Reeves had withstood the demands of a rowdy section of the audience for half an hour, provoked an indignant fulmination against the brutal exigencies of concert goers. Sydenham was in the main a centre of musical culture, but there was a slight lapse from grace at the end of this year when the "Calliope" or "Steam Orchestra" was imported from America. It was in reality only a big barrel organ, which gave out more steam than harmony. But the Crystal Palace redeemed itself in the following year by the performance of the _Elijah_, at a Mendelssohn commemoration, by 3,000 performers before an audience numbering 18,000. Sims Reeves, Miss Dolby, and Madame Parepa were the soloists; and _Punch_ could think of no better praise of the last-named singer than to say that she reminded him of his Clara. For there was a Clara in those days, too: Clara Novello, the friend of Charles Lamb, all unmusical though he was, who had won the praise of Schumann at the outset of her distinguished career as a very great and noble oratorio singer. _Punch_ went to hear her last farewell at the Crystal Palace in the autumn of 1860; "went, heard, and for the thousandth time was conquered."

The year 1860 was also noteworthy for the visit of the French _Orphéonistes_, a body of choral singers directed by M. Delaporte. The visit afforded _Punch_ great sport because of the special "Vocabulaire et Guide des Orphéonistes Français à Londres" which was specially issued for their benefit, and contained, amongst other delights, a full transliteration of the National Anthem beginning:--

"God sève aoueur grésheuss Couinn."

[Sidenote: _The "Pops"_]

Blondin's performances at the Crystal Palace, which were a great feature of 1861, suggested to _Punch_ that the concerts might be popularized if the performers appeared on the tight rope. But this was "wrote sarcastic"; the morbid taste of the public for witnessing dangerous performances is repeatedly rebuked, and as a matter of fact Blondin was forbidden to trundle his child in a wheelbarrow along the tight rope.

Orchestral music was still a luxury, but London was waking up. August Manns, who succeeded Jullien at Drury Lane in 1859, had provided the public with "more music and less row than in the Jullienic era"; but his great work was done at the Crystal Palace. The "Pops," which came in the 'fifties and were cordially supported by _Punch_, have gone, and with them St. James's Hall, where for so many years the votaries of chamber music listened to Joachim and Patti, Hallé and Lady Hallé, Madame Schumann, and other great artists: and Exeter Hall, where the Sacred Harmonic Concerts were held, has undergone a startling metamorphosis. Oratorio has lost something of its hold on the British public. But the work done by the "Pops" can never be forgotten; and the multiplication of first-rate string quartets can be traced in great measure to their inspiring influence in the days when they were attended by George Eliot and Herbert Spencer, Browning and Leighton.

Another pioneer whose talents _Punch_ was quick to recognize was John Parry, the first, and as some old critics think, the best of the series of single-handed musical entertainers. Parry began as a serious musician, but soon found that his true bent lay in humorous sketches of the trials and tribulations and futilities of amateurs. After seeing Dundreary for the nineteenth time, _Punch_ was persuaded by a friend to see John Parry in _Mrs. Roseleaf's Party_ at the Gallery of Illustration. He was rewarded by a truly exhilarating impersonation of Mrs. Roseleaf, her little pet daughter, a tender tenor with a chronic cold in his head, a fascinating ringleted "Gusheress," and a matter-of-fact musician--all done by one gentlemanly actor without change of dress. Parry's gifts as a pianist extorted the admiration of eminent artists, and we may pardon _Punch_ for saying that "none but himself can be his Parrylel."

[Sidenote: _Sims Reeves_]

Sims Reeves had been energetically supported by _Punch_ in his refusal of encores. But when he was "conspicuous by his absence, as everybody might have known," on the occasion of a charitable performance in 1864, _Punch_ made bold to observe that "considering how often Mr. Reeves is indisposed, it is high time that a deputy should be permanently hired for him." On this particular occasion "the usual medical certificate was produced and read amid the laughter of the audience, who had clearly come prepared to hear the usual apology which is expected now whenever Mr. Sims Reeves is announced." These are hard words, but the excuse was so frequently made that concert-givers in the provinces were in the habit of posting over their bills the reassuring announcement: "Sims Reeves has arrived." Even then he could not always be reckoned on. The famous tenor had undoubtedly a very delicate throat, and objected strongly to sing if he was not feeling perfectly fit. But his inordinate vanity was also a contributory cause. Sir Charles Hallé used to tell a story how, on one occasion, when Sims Reeves was engaged to sing at Manchester, he failed to appear at rehearsal. Hallé went off at once to his hotel--for he had "arrived"--and was told that Mr. Reeves was too ill to sing; but persisting in his intention, he was admitted to the sick chamber and found that the illness was due to the fact that Sims Reeves's name had been printed in the bills in the same type as the other performers. Sir Charles Hallé accordingly sent for copies, and by a process of accurate measurement succeeded in demonstrating that this awful act of _lèse-majesté_ had not been committed and that "Sims Reeves" was printed in larger capitals than any other name. Whereupon the patient made a wonderful recovery and fulfilled his engagement.

As the "Pops" fulfilled _Punch's_ ideal of a model chamber music concert, so the Saturday concerts at the Crystal Palace, conducted by Manns, with "G" (Sir George Grove[32]) as programme writer, best satisfied his requirements in the domain of the symphony and orchestral music generally. Charles Keene's picture in 1866 of the two enthusiasts, one political and one musical, is a pleasing comment on the growth of musical taste. They both agree that Monday had been a glorious night, but the one was thinking of Gladstone in the House, the other of Joachim in the Kreutzer Sonata.

[Footnote 32: Grove was then--in 1872--the manager of the Crystal Palace, and late in that year _Punch_ wrote of him, "The Crystal Palace has never been so well kept as under the sway of my friend Mr. George Grove, _Nemorum pulcherrimus ordo_--Grove's rule is most admirable."]

_Punch_ had already saluted John Parry; he extended a similar welcome in 1867 to the German Reed entertainment at St. George's Hall:--

It is really quite a novelty to hear some comic singing done by English singers, without feeling a strong wish that one had been born deaf. "Tol de rol," and "Rumti-iddity," and such old English comic choruses, have long since had their day. Go to the St. George's Opera if you would know what comic English choruses should be. In the interests of good music, we thank Mr. German Reed for giving men a chance of hearing something better, in the way of comic singing, than "Champagne Charley," or "Costermonger Joe." We hope his charming little opera-house will tempt people from going to the vulgar, stupid music-halls, when they want to hear some singing which may make them laugh.

This, be it remarked, was at the time when the favourite popular songs were "Champagne Charley," "Not for Joseph," and "Paddle Your Own Canoe," and when, in consequence, _Punch's_ complaints of the idiocy of music-hall songs were both frequent and free.

THE FINE ARTS

[Sidenote: _Depreciation and Discovery_]

_Punch's_ virtual conversion to the principles of Pre-Raphaelitism has already been noted, and the alliance was confirmed by the enterprise of his publishers in connexion with _Once a Week_, to which Millais, Sandys, and Rossetti were regular contributors. So we are not surprised to find his criticisms of the Royal Academy growing in frankness and even hostility during the early years of the period now under review. In June, 1858, he complains of the monotony of the subjects chosen for treatment at the annual show--endless portraits of a lady or gentleman; Tom Jones and Sophia; Sancho Panza and the Duchess; Moses and the Spectacles; Sir Roger de Coverley; Bruce and the Spider. To the same year belongs his protest against the patronage of foreign sculptors _à propos_ of the Wellington Memorial Competition. But the point of his criticism is rather blunted by his failure to acknowledge the merits of native genius, as represented by Alfred Stevens, that "rare artist, too little recognized and revered," as a modern writer has truthfully described him. _Punch_ refers to his design, but misspells his name "Stephens," and evidently saw nothing uncommon in his work. Against this lapse may be set the evidence of a true _flair_ two years later. Amid a wilderness of mediocrities _Punch_ finds an oasis or two at the Academy Exhibition of 1860. The names of most of the exhibitors are forgotten, but there is one notable exception:--

One would have expected Mr. Whistler's talents to have been developed on the flute rather than At the Piano (598). Nevertheless the painting of that title shows genius. The tone which he has produced from his piano is admirable, and he has struck on it a chord of colour which will, I hope, find an echo in his future works.

In 1861 the practice of holding "single picture" shows, charging for the privilege of beholding one canvas the price of a whole exhibition, comes in for semi-serious rebuke at the hands of an income-tax payer. But there was another evil against which _Punch_ inveighed with positive ferocity in the tirade provoked by the Academy Banquet of 1862. The Royal Academy was not merely "mean in its local habitation" (the present exhibition rooms were not built till 1866), it was mean all through:--

Mean in its spirit, its schools, in the quality of the Art it has most fostered and engendered, mean in the self-seeking spirit of its rules of exhibition; mean in its treatment of the greatest men who have belonged to it, and still more, of the painters outside its pale; mean in the cliques which divide its own ranks, and the jealousies which distract its councils.

But it reaches the climax of its meanness once a year--at its Annual Dinner--and at this year's dinner it has capped the climax of meanness reached by all the dinners of all the years since first the Academy dined together.

This Academy Dinner is like the banquet which the poor lunatic, whose story is told by Sir Walter Scott, used to be set down to every day in his cell at the asylum. He fancied his table spread with a magnificent dinner of three courses, and ate of this imaginary feast with great gusto; but "somehow" he used to whisper to his visitors, "everything tastes of porridge." So at the Academy dinner everything tastes of toads.

[Sidenote: _The R.A. Banquet_]

The writer proceeds to drive home this indictment of Sir Charles Eastlake's[33] fulsome flattery of noble patrons and the niggardly encouragement of real talent by the familiar device of a dream. At the dinner of his vision great foreign painters are welcomed, and the solidarity of the Arts confirmed by the invitation of illustrious musicians and men of letters. Then comes the awakening:--

The newspaper reports of the Academy dinner lay before me, with its small list of distinguished statesmen, its long bead-roll of Titled Nobodies who never bought a picture or gave a commission to a painter; its absence of every one of the distinguished artists by rare chance assembled in London; its ignoring of foreign letters, and its scanty recognition of the respect due to native literature; its utter passing by of the claims of the Sister Arts--Music and the Drama; the fulsome fulness of its laudations of all who can influence its fortunes by favour; its sycophancy of rank and title and outward influence, and that in the face of a series of cool contemptuous disclaimers of all knowledge or interest in Art by the men before whom in succession the Academic speaker knocked his forehead on the ground; and lastly, as if to sum up in one unmeaning act the stupid snobbishness that marks the whole of this Academic entertainment, the toast of "Literature and its prospects and influences on Art" relegated to the very end of the feast, when every other institution which it can enter into the heart of a respectful and awe-stricken Academician to bow down to has been honoured, and when the lordly guests whom the bad dinner has disagreed with, or the President's eloquence has bored, have left the spaces at the tables, lately filled by their august heads, vacant.

[Footnote 33: Another Charles Eastlake, the namesake and nephew of the P.R.A., for many years contributed art-criticism to _Punch_ over the signature "Jack Easel," but was clearly free from the suspicion of family bias.]

The Royal Academy has, in many respects, reformed itself out of all recognition as the institution which provoked and justified this explosion. It is only one of the many evidences which go to prove how much more than a merely comic journal _Punch_ was that he should have contributed as damaging an attack as was ever penned against the principles and policy of the R.A. in the days when it laid itself most open to criticism.

There are not many events in the art world in the 'sixties dealt with in so serious a vein. When Frith's _Railway Station_ was purchased in 1863 for £20,000 by a Mr. Flatou, _Punch_ contented himself with calling the purchaser a "Flatou Magico." There are friendly and well-merited memorial notices of John Phillip, R.A., in 1867, and of Alexander Munro, the Scottish sculptor, in 1871, while in 1870 _Punch_ supported the appeal for funds to put up a tombstone to George Cattermole, who died poor.

English etching was "up in the market" in 1871. _Punch_ has high praise for Seymour Haden, higher still for Whistler, his "brother-in-law and etching master." The peculiar quality and historic interest of the etchings contained in the portfolio issued by Ellis, of King Street, Covent Garden, have seldom been better described than in this appreciation:--

Whistler has etched the tumble-down bank-side buildings of Thames, from Wapping and Limehouse and Rotherhithe to Lambeth and Chelsea, above-bridge--great gaunt warehouses, and rickety sheds, and balconies and gazebos hanging all askew, and rotting piles and green weeded quays and oozy steps and hards, where masts and yards score the sky over your head, and fleets of barges darken the mud and muddy water at your feet, and all is pitchy and tarry, and corny and coaly, and ancient and fishlike.

Such etchings of this queer long-shore reach and marine-store dealers, and ship-chandlers, bonded warehousemen, and boat-builders, ancient mariners, and corn-porters, wherry-men, and wharfingers, Thames-police, and mud-larks, are all the more precious because the beauties they perpetuate are dying out--what with embankments and improvements, increased value of river frontage, and natural decay of planking and piling. Whistler has immortalized Wapping, and given it the grace that is beyond the reach of anything but art. Let all lovers of good art and marvellous etching who want to know what Father Thames was like before he took to having his bed made, invest in Whistler's portfolio.

[Sidenote: _Academy Pictures in 1872_]

_Punch_ was a great Londoner, and his enthusiasm for an artist who was able to perpetuate the romance and magic of the "ancient river" carries weight. He scores some palpable hits, again, in the "Academy Rhymes," published in 1872, which begin:--

Bad pictures hot! Bad pictures cold! Bad pictures such a lot! So well sold!

This shaft is especially aimed at Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., and Mr. James Sant, R.A. Millais's famous _Hearts are Trumps_ is neatly hit off in the quatrain:--

Liz, Di, and Mary, cool and airy, How does your garden grow? Azaleas in clumps, and hearts for trumps, And three pretty maids in a row.

_Punch_ was in no doubt as to the merits of one of the famous pictures of the year:--

About "Harbours of Refuge," no year But some M.P.'s a valuable talker; But my "Harbour of Refuge" is here And its C.E. is A.R.A. Walker!

But he was sadly to seek in his disparagement of Mason's beautiful _Harvest Moon_:--

Sweet, but scamped in every part, Such half-work most students guide ill: The free-masonry of Art Asks more labour, e'en in Idyll.

[Sidenote: _Sir Edwin Landseer_]

Landseer had often been severely handled by _Punch_ for his accommodating courtiership, but when he died in the autumn of 1873, the long set of memorial verses which appeared on October 11 overlook this infirmity and concentrate on Landseer's services as a teacher of sympathy between man and brute. He was the first of painters who "give dumb things a soul"--in the faithful collie in the lone shieling with his head on his master's coffin; in his St. Bernards and antlered monarchs of the glen. It may be objected that the soul which Landseer gave his animals was a human soul and a sentimental one at that, and that Bewick had forestalled him with a more accurate diagnosis; but the insistence on Landseer's services as a promoter of the _entente cordiale_ between man and beast is well justified. Landseer at the moment of his passing was probably, as _Punch_ contends, "our best-known name in Art." The writer of the verses traces the official recognition of artists abroad:--

Till even upon this, our little isle That looms so large in light of various fames, The fair Queen deigned at last, though late, to smile And dubbed her Knights--a few but glorious names.

But surely this is to overlook the knighthoods of Van Dyck and Lely (both from the Netherlands), to say nothing of Sir Joshua.

The campaign directed against the extravagances of aestheticism by Du Maurier belongs in the main to a later decade, but even in the early 'seventies the vagaries of preciosity had already begun to furnish him with fruitful subjects for genial satire.

FASHION IN DRESS

In the period under review in this volume England was dominated by two monstrosities, the crinoline and the Claimant. Fortunately they were not concurrent or England might have succumbed beneath the double incubus. The former was pronounced "gone" in 1867, the same year in which the arrival and recognition of the so-called Sir Roger Tichborne as the rightful heir was announced in the columns of _Punch_. The historic trial soon loomed large on the horizon, though it did not open till 1871. Of this portent some notice will be found elsewhere. Of the crinoline it is no exaggeration to say that _Punch_ waged war against it for ten solid years; his pages resolve themselves into a sort of _Crinoliniad_; and when the monster fell it was not by force of arms assisted by guile as in the parallel campaign against Troy, but by its own absurdity and through the weariness of its supporters. With _Punch_ it was a positive obsession. The extravagances of the crinoline dominate his "social cuts" from 1857 onwards. In 1858 he tells us that "Fops' Alley" at the opera is to be rechristened "Petticoat Lane"; and that the Ladies' Gallery in the House of Commons is to be enlarged as a concession to the lateral expansion of women's skirts. The popular negro song "Hoop de Dooden Doo" is re-written to fit the prevailing fashion, and a classical lyric, "My Flora," is perverted to suit the same purpose. Even at this early stage, however, _Punch_ seems to have recognized the futility of his crusade. As he puts it:

The more you scoff, the more you jeer, The more the women persevere In wearing this apparel queer.

[Sidenote: _Crinoline Absurdities_]

He applauds the railway companies for their alleged determination to charge for ladies' trunks by size, not weight, but adds: "It's no use trying to laugh or reason women out of it (crinoline). In all matters of dress and in that of crinoline especially, the mind female is impervious to ridicule and reason. The only argument to use with them is the _argumentum ad pocketum_."

_Punch_, though pessimistic, was persevering, if inconsistent, and continued to rely largely on the weapon of ridicule, and he had no lack of material. Thus we read in December, 1858:--

Visitors to the Cattle Show, at least those who go in Crinoline, would do well before they start to read the following short paragraph, which we extract for their perusal from a country print:--

"The Show was attended by several of the fair sex, for whose admission special means of entrance were provided. Through a pardonable neglect on the part of the Committee, this was neglected to be done at first, and a highly amusing incident occurred through the omission. Within a very few minutes of the Show being opened, a distinguished party of ladies and gentlemen arrived, and on coming to the turnstile (which was then the only entrance) it was discovered that the ladies, who we need not say were dressed in all the amplitude of fashion, could not possibly squeeze through so limited a space. In this dilemma, as the turnstile could not possibly be widened to the width that was required, the only course was, obviously, to throw open the great gates, through which the ladies, not without a titter, sailed majestically Show-wards in the wake of the prize beasts."

Ridicule, again, inspires the caricature of crinolines in the park chairs, or the account of children in crinolines. In 1861 _Punch_ describes a child of four at an evening party who was fully six times and a half as broad as she was long, and reads a homily on the danger of implanting such follies in the mind of susceptible youth, since the child is the mother of the woman as well as the father of the man. There is, too, a burlesque picture of a modern governess giving a geography lesson on a globe formed by her own inflated skirts. But often he struck a serious note, and his suggestion of a crinoline hospital was not so absurd in view of frequent accidents, such as the following:--

CRINOLINE AND ITS VICTIMS

Notwithstanding all that _Punch_ has said upon the subject, the accidents from Crinolines are, it would seem, upon the increase. Half a score at least have occurred through fire since Christmas, and several others we could cite have taken place from other causes. One of the last we saw reported was occasioned by a dress being caught up by a cab-wheel while the wearer was crossing a street at the West End. Here the victim was so fortunate as to escape with merely a bad fracture of her leg; but in most cases the sufferers have lost their life by their absurdity in wearing the wide dresses which are now accounted fashionable.

[Sidenote: _Length Succeeds Breadth_]

So the campaign went on for years and years, though _Punch_ was magnanimous enough to record in 1864 that the much-abused monster had been the means of saving a girl's life by acting as a parachute and breaking her fall. In 1865 the fashion was already on the wane, but very long dresses were in vogue, to the great annoyance of _Punch_:--

LADIES AND THEIR LONG TAILS

Crinoline at length is going out, thank goodness! but long, trailing dresses are coming in, thank badness! In matters of costume lovely woman rarely ceases to make herself a nuisance; and the length of her skirt now is almost as annoying as, a while ago, its width was. _Robes à queue_ they call these draggling dresses; but it is not at Kew merely that people are tormented by them. Everywhere you walk, your footsteps are impeded by the ladies, who, in Pope's phrase, "drag their slow length along" the pathway just in front of you. "Will anybody tread upon the tail of my petticoat?" This seems to be the general invitation they now give. Sad enemies to progress they are, in their long dresses; and a Reform Bill should be passed to make them hold their tails up.

But the new nuisance was trifling compared with the old, and relief predominated in the "Rhymes to Decreasing Crinoline" published a few months earlier. It was not, however, until 1867 that crinolines practically disappeared in fashionable circles, and that long skirts were curtailed to reasonable dimensions.

Though chiefly preoccupied with skirts, _Punch_ bestowed a good deal of attention on the vagaries of feminine headgear. In 1857 the huge round hats in vogue moved him to protest. They were discredited, in his view, when worn by elderly ladies, but he allowed them the negative merit of having displaced the "ugly." The "dear little Spanish hat, so charming and so much more sensible than a horrid bonnet" shown in the picture of a stout lady of uncertain age, justifies the reservation "on some people." But the hat was entering into a serious competition with the bonnet, and by 1860 the "pork-pie hat," so indelibly associated with Leech's portraits of mid-Victorian girls, was firmly established in favour and gradually ousting the spoon-shaped bonnet which disappeared in 1865. This growing popularity of the hat trimmed with feathers, as opposed to bonnets trimmed with ribbons, had the result of causing considerable distress in the ribbon trade in Coventry. _Punch_, though "no lover of extravagance," found himself accordingly driven to urge his lady readers to flock to their dressmakers and drapers and purchase as many hat-ribbons as possible. They could justify their action by singing in the slightly adapted words of the old song,

All round my hat I wear a new ribbon, All round my hat a new ribbon every day, And if anyone should ask of me the reason why I wear it, "'Tis to help the poor of Coventry who are wanting work," I'll say.

The appeal was followed up a week later by an ingenious and graceful picture of the new Lady Godiva riding through Coventry in a costume composed entirely of ribbons.

[Sidenote: _Chignons_]

Bonnets held their own but in dwindling dimensions, their minuteness being specially noticed in 1867. This is attributed by _Punch_ to the fashion of the chignon, on which he bestows ironic praise in 1869 as needing very small and therefore cheap bonnets. In 1871 "Dolly Varden" hats, flower-trimmed and with one side bent down, named after the character in _Barnaby Rudge_, engage _Punch's_ pencil; a year later Mr. Austin Dobson wrote in _St. Paul's Magazine_: "Blue eyes look doubly blue beneath a Dolly Varden."

Turning from headgear to hairdressing, we find _Punch_ a vigilant critic of _coiffure_. In 1858 he attacks the vagaries of mode as shown in hairdressing _à la Chinoise_ "pulled up by the roots," and the fashion of wearing coins. To judge from Leech's pictures he greatly preferred the simpler style of braids and hair nets. The great event of the mid-'sixties, however, was the advent of the chignon, which proved only second to the crinoline as an incentive to caricature and criticism. In the ironical verses addressed to a "Young Lady of Fashion," the chignon stands first in the list of the artificial enhancements of beauty resorted to half a century back:--

I love thee for thy chignon, for the boss of purchased hair, Which thou hast on thine occiput the charming taste to wear. Oh, what a grace that ornament unto thy poll doth lend, Wound on what seems a curtain-rod with knobs at either end!

I love thee for the roses, purchased too, thy cheeks that deck, The lilies likewise that adorn thy pearly-powdered neck, And all that sweet "illusion" that, o'er thy features spread, Improves the poor reality of Nature's white and red.

I love thee for the muslin and the gauze about thee bound, Like endive that in salad doth a lobster's tail surround. And oh! I love thee for the boots thine ankles that protect, So proper to the manly style young ladies now affect.

The chignon was no new invention, but a revival of a fashion mentioned by the _Lady's Magazine_ for 1783, and described twenty-five years later by Maria Edgeworth as a combination of hair natural and false "plastered together to a preposterous bulk and turned up in a sort of great bag or club." But the fashion attained its apogee in the middle and late 'sixties, and afforded endless opportunities to the pencils of Du Maurier and Sambourne. One of the most ludicrous of the many caricatures to which the habit gave rise is that in which Du Maurier represented a lady riding on a pony with its mane and tail fluffed out to harmonize with her stupendous chignon. Later developments of the chignon are ridiculed by Sambourne in 1871.

[Sidenote: _Madame Rachel_]

The second stanza of the poem quoted above furnishes not an unfair summary of the arts of facial adornment of which that amazing adventuress Madame Rachel was the most notorious and expensive high priestess. Her beginnings were obscure and even ignominious. Her maiden name was Russell, but it is not certain whether she was born near Ballinasloe in Ireland or in London. Her first husband was a chemist's assistant in Manchester, from whom she had probably learned something of the compounding of cosmetics; her second and third husbands were both Jews--James Moses who was lost in the _Royal Charter_, October 26, 1859, and Philip Leverson. She kept a fried-fish shop in Vere Street, Clare Market, for a while, then started as a hair restorer in Conduit Street, and from 1861 to 1868 was in business in New Bond Street under the name of Madame Rachel (probably borrowed from that of the famous tragedian) as an enameller and vendor of cosmetics. She professed, in the phrase eternally associated with her name, to make women "beautiful for ever," but it was a costly process. Under the heading, "The Trials of Beauty," _Punch_, who had referred to her cosmetics as early as the winter of 1858, writes in 1862:--

The wife of a Captain has been called upon to pay near upon £1,000 for having been enamelled by Madame Rachel. Ladies take warning. Be natural rather than artificial. Never appear in society with a mask on, no matter how beautiful the mask may be. From the above you should learn in time how much it may cost you for being double-faced.

The warning, however, was unheeded, and Madame Rachel continued to flourish exceedingly for more than five years, living in an elegant house in Maddox Street and paying £400 in 1867 for a box at the opera. The first crash came in 1868, when she was tried for swindling Mrs. Borradaile, the widow of a colonel in the Madras Cavalry, out of £5,300 on the pretence of making her "beautiful for ever" and fitting her to be the wife of Viscount Ranelagh. In September of that year she was sentenced to five years' penal servitude, and she was burnt in effigy on Guy Fawkes' day. In the following March her house, furniture and effects came to the hammer, and _Punch's_ description affords a good clue to the extent of her profits:--

The lady's business having been knocked down by the Judges, her effects are about to be knocked down by the auctioneer. The catalogue and sale bills are quite overpowering to the imagination. The drawing-rooms and principal apartments are said to "present splendour and magnificence difficult to describe." There are candelabra (brass and lacquer probably) formerly belonging to the Emperor Napoleon, and incense-burners once the property of the King of Delhi! "Dispersed through the house are numerous works of Art and articles of virtu, many of them presentations from Madame Rachel's distinguished patronesses."

[Sidenote: _Fashions in Coiffure_]

_Punch_ headed his remarks "Madame Rachel's Last Appearance," but the heading was premature. Released on a ticket-of-leave in 1872 Madame Rachel boldly renewed her operations in Duke Street, Portland Place, in 1873, and continued them till 1878, when she was sentenced a second time to five years' penal servitude for swindling another client, and died in Woking Prison on October 12, 1880. The curious may turn for further details to the reminiscences of Serjeant Ballantine and Montagu Williams. Both Serjeant Ballantine and Montagu Williams appeared for the prosecution in the Borradaile case. There were two trials: in the first, held in August, the jury disagreed. It is perhaps not unfair to say that the heavy sentence passed by Mr. Commissioner Kerr was due more to Madame Rachel's demerits and her record than to the merits of the case. But she had not merely obtained money under false pretences: she was a forger and a blackmailer as well. Ballantine, who could not be accused of squeamishness, had known of her in earlier days and describes her as "one of the most filthy and dangerous moral pests that have existed in my time and within my observation."[34] Montagu Williams, who gives a full account of the trial, calls her a "wicked old woman," but contents himself with observing that the case "afforded a striking illustration of the vanity of some women, and of what tricks can be played upon them by the artful."[35] Madame Rachel does not appear in the D.N.B., though less remarkable impostors have found a niche in that comprehensive temple of native talent, and her fame was not confined to one hemisphere. One of the springs on the shores of Lake Rotorua in New Zealand was named "The Madame Rachel Bath" in virtue of its medicinal and rejuvenating qualities.

[Footnote 34: _Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life._]

[Footnote 35: _Leaves of a Life._]

In 1866 the rage for dyeing the hair auburn seems to have been at its height. "Mr. Frizzle," a _coiffeur de dames_, is represented in one of Du Maurier's pictures as saying to a customer, "Black hair is never admitted into really good society." Enlarging on this theme in another place in the same volume, _Punch_ observes that the maxim "Never say Dye" is completely abandoned, and suggests daily changes of complexion to suit the dresses worn. In 1864 we read of small dogs being dyed to match their mistresses' colouring! By 1867 the pendulum seems to have swung in the opposite direction and brunettes are again in vogue. The picture (also by Du Maurier) of fashionable ladies with short hair can hardly be taken seriously; it is probably not more than an unconscious prophecy of the "bobbing" habit of recent years. In 1869 _Punch_ was much exercised by learning, on the authority of an American paper, that "nearly all the brilliant complexions seen among the fashionable women of New York are the result of eating arsenic. Since the introduction of the blonde fashion, arsenic-eating has become almost a mania." Tirades against tight-lacing date back to 1859, but they culminated in the ponderous irony of the "Wanton Warning to Vanity" published ten years later:--

Indeed the _Morning Post_ ought to be ashamed of itself. That journal, which we used to call our fashionable contemporary, publishes a paragraph, headed "Tight-Lacing," which reports the particulars of an inquest held at the College Arms, Crowndale Road, Camden Town, on the body of a young woman, aged only nineteen, and whereby, if they see it, our dear girls who take in such instructive journals as the _Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine_ will be terrified to no purpose by the information that--

"She was out three hours with a perambulator, in which was one child, and as she neared her destination she fell down insensible. She was taken to 10, Polygon, where upon examination by Dr. Smellie she was found quite dead. It was discovered that she was very tightly-laced, and Dr. Smellie stated that death was caused by effusion of blood on the brain, caused by fatty heart, accelerated by compression of the chest produced by tight-lacing. The jury returned a verdict in those terms."

This statement, so inconsistently published by our once, and, we hitherto supposed, our still fashionable contemporary, is calculated to have a most unfashionable effect, namely, that of deterring girls from following the revived fashion of lacing as tight as they can stand, and tighter than they are sometimes able to go. But a propensity, which seems a law of their nature, happily compels them, for the most part, to follow the fashion regardless of consequences. The typical and average woman can no more deviate from the dress of the day than an animal can choose to change its skin or its spots. There is no fear that any girls accustomed to tight-lacing will ever be induced to relinquish that practice which renders them such delightful objects to one another, if ridiculous and repulsive to stupid men, by any such nonsense as a report of the verdict of a coroner's jury ascribing death to the effect of tight-lacing in accelerating fatty degeneration of the heart.

[Sidenote: _The Grecian Bend_]

High heels are not noticeable in Leech's pictures or before the middle 'sixties. The "manly style" of boots mentioned in the lines of the "Young Lady of Fashion" quoted above probably refer to the stout laced-up "Balmorals" which Frederick Locker refers to in his _London Lyrics_. The advent of tailor-made garments for women in the summer of 1864 is looked upon as a curiosity. Towards the end of the period under review a mode of carriage known as the "Grecian Bend," celebrated in a comic song of the time, is more than once noted and caricatured in _Punch_; faint echoes of the "Grecian Bend" still linger in the memories of the elderly; the "Roman Fall" is merely the shadow of a name. By the 'seventies the æsthetic movement had already begun to exert an influence on dress, but it was confined to a small coterie, to the _précieux_ and _précieuses_ who worshipped old china and wore waistless dresses of sage green. On the general question of "the Influence of costume and fashion on High Art," which was discussed in a manifesto issued by "The Artists of the Nineteenth Century," _Punch_ wrote sensibly enough:--

The declaration is signed by a great number of eminent men at home and abroad, and its point is to insist that people of the present day dress so hideously that they will not make pictures. A transitional change is recommended, and the Declarers affectionately remind the public that so long as they make Guys of themselves at the instigation of tailors and milliners, portraits have no value except as family memorials, whereas, if we dressed properly, the artists would make us into tableaux which the whole world should admire. All this is perfectly true, but what is to be done? How are we to extricate ourselves from the tyranny of the tailor and the milliner? This the Declarers do not tell us, nor was it to be expected perhaps that they should advise us how to conduct a rebellion. But why do they not tell us how they would like us to dress? Men, for instance. Are they to come out with a choice array of colour, and with a picturesquely cut garb, and that general ampleness and nobleness in treatment of costume, which bespeaks the grand and heroic in the wearer?

[Sidenote: _The Briton Abroad_]

At this point _Punch_ deviates into absurdity. But the main argument is sound. As a transition, however, to the subject of men's dress, another deliverance serves our purpose even better. _Punch_ loved to criticize and even carp at his countrymen and countrywomen, but he did not easily suffer any infringement of his prerogative. And so, when a correspondent of _The Times_ fell foul of the dowdiness of Englishmen and Englishwomen abroad, he was up in arms at once:--

_The Times_ abuses John Bull, and Madame son Épouse, for going about on their travels got up as Guys--for shocking foreign prejudices, and showing their contempt for foreign opinion, by sporting eccentric shooting-coats, flaming flannel shirts, reckless wide-awakes--and worse still on the ladies' part, by the general shabbiness and ugliness of their travelling toilettes and headgear.

Now, making every allowance for the desperate necessities of newspaper writers in the dead season, and admitting that British travellers--male and female--include specimens both of the Guy and the Gorilla, _Mr. Punch_ must put in his protest against any such wholesale indictment as this of his compatriots en voyage. On the contrary he is prepared to maintain, after surveying mankind from Calais to Calatafimi ... that, as a rule, the wearer of the best travelling suit (for stuff, cut, and condition together), the cleanest shirt, the least ragamuffin or ridiculous hat, the soundest and shapeliest foot-covering, is a Briton.

Englishmen turn neater and sweeter out of a railway carriage after a night's rattle, restlessness and frowst than any other people; they are more presentable, more like gentlemen, after an Alpine scramble among glacier and moraine, crevasse and couloir; they present better brushed hair, and cleaner hands and faces and whiter linen at the Table d'hôte under difficulties, and fall into less profound abysses of misery and degradation in sea-going steamers, than the natives of any other country.

I, _Punch_, am speaking now of the men. For the ladies--bless them!--I am compelled to admit they don't understand dress as an art so well as their French sisters. Millinery and dressmaking have their home and headquarters in France, just as cooking has; and for the same reason--because the inferiority of the raw material makes the elaborate and well-studied dressing of it a matter of sheer necessity.

But, apart from their national shortcoming in the art of dress, I maintain that Englishwomen, on their travels, deserve as much good said of them as Englishmen. Bless their fresh faces, and smooth hair, and clean cuffs and collars! In these particulars, what French or German woman can hold the candle to 'em?

I admit that the plain British female looks plain on her travels, and maybe dowdy ... But this I will maintain, that an attractive Englishwoman loses less of her attractiveness under the necessities and accidents of travel than any of her Continental rivals. She has a quality of purity and freshness about her which seems to repel all soil, whether material or moral, as the oil in the duck's tail-gland drives off the water-drops from his plumage; and, as a rule, her clothes, and her way of wearing them, have the same merits of freshness and purity in comparison with those of her rivals.

This, then, is the first proposition I am prepared to maintain against all comers: that English travellers, of both sexes, are, as a rule, the best-dressed travellers in the world.

My next proposition is like unto it, viz.: that the English abroad are the best-mannered travellers, and at home the best-mannered dealers with travellers, to be found in the circle of civilized nations.

[Sidenote: _Masculine Dress_]

Throughout the period dealt with in the previous volume man, in _Punch_, was the predominant partner in the domain of dress. From 1857 onwards the balance is handsomely redressed in favour of the women. And as _Punch_ was staffed by men, we may fairly attribute this change to the standardizing of male attire which dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. The difference between the dress of men to-day and in 1860 is immensely less than that between the dress of women at the same two dates. Beaver hats were still worn in 1858; they are even now exhibited in the shop front of a well-known hatter's in St. James's Street; but the silk chimney pot had already come to stay. The evening dress suit was indistinguishable from that now worn. There was not much difference in the cut of morning coats. Only in the "nether integuments" is the flux of fashion really marked. "Peg-top" trousers were in vogue in 1858 and for a few years subsequently, and _Punch_ attributes their shape to mimicry of the crinoline, though in one passage he professes to derive it from the _contours_ of the Cochin China fowl. The "Peg-top," however, did not last. It was otherwise with the introduction of knickerbockers, so-called from the resemblance to the knee-breeches of the Dutchmen in Cruickshank's illustrations to Washington Irving's _History of New York_.

In a letter to _The Times_ in May, 1859, Lord Elcho recommends "nickerbockers"--so he spells the word--as a substitute for trousers for volunteers. Charles Kingsley in the same year derived them from country-made--and badly made--puffed trunk-hose. But their utility and convenience for country wear and sport were soon established, though the dreadful abbreviation "Knickers" did not come into use for some twenty years. The shortening of ladies' dresses and the bagginess of men's knickerbockers afforded _Punch_ some excuse for professing to be unable to distinguish the sexes at a distance, but the actual assumption of knickerbockers by women belonged to a later generation.

[Sidenote: _Lord Dundreary_]

It is rather in the fashion of wearing their hair than in their dress that the changes effected in the appearance of men in the last sixty years can be best studied. Beards came in after the Crimean War, but they were not universally popular. The Bishop of Rochester took up so strong a line on the subject in 1861 that _Punch_ was moved to protest:--

Good Doctor Wigram (Rochestere), At Parsons' beards is raving: We sadly fear that we shall hear The Bishop's _head_ needs shaving.

But whiskers were the great feature of the 'sixties. They had been "ambrosial" before, but now the thing became a monstrosity in its profuse luxuriance. For this was the age of "Piccadilly Weepers," and of Lord Dundreary, the eccentric stage peer created by Sothern in _Our American Cousin_. Sothern, be it remembered, was a hunting-man and a _persona grata_ in fashionable circles; and allowing for the element of caricature in his impersonation, it was at least based on firsthand knowledge of the type satirized. There is an interesting notice of the first production at the Haymarket of _Our American Cousin_ in which Lord Dundreary is described as "a double eye-glassed dandy, with dyed whiskers which he paws and throws over his shoulder," but the critic admits that in spite of all Mr. Sothern's "funny and fantastic caricaturing, there is a something true to nature in his almost every touch." The hold that Sothern's impersonation took upon public fancy is shown by the fact that for several years _Punch_ adopted "Dundreary" as a synonym for a vacuous, solemn, well-bred and prodigiously whiskered dandy, and in the Preface to Vol. xlii. Lord Dundreary is introduced as interlocutor in the usual dialogue.

Tailors' pseudo-classical nomenclature was already a frequent theme with _Punch_. In the same year _Punch_ quotes a tailor's advertisement of a "Negligé Milled Tweed suit, consisting of cape jacket, vest and trousers for £2 2s. 0d.," which arouses the envy of the post-war Englishman. Hair-brushing by machinery is noted as a novelty in the autumn of 1863; we trust that the customers contrived to keep their whiskers out of the way of the brush. For the rest, we may briefly note the advent of the "Ulster" in 1871, and the prevalence of the single eye-glass in 1873.

SPORT AND PASTIME

In the region of sport fox-hunting continues to dominate the scene. Leech's pictures are largely devoted to satirizing cockney sportsmen, but they render full justice to the enterprise and intrepidity of the younger generation and of hard-riding young ladies. He is less happy or at any rate less genial in ridiculing the irregularities of the "Mossoo" in the hunting field. The exploits and adventures of the ubiquitous Mr. Briggs form an agreeable pendant and supplement to the novels of Surtees. Mr. Briggs was not an aristocrat, but he was more of a gentleman if less of a personality than Jorrocks. But Leech's premature death left a tremendous gap, for both in humour and draughtsmanship the artists who took his place as delineators of the chase were immeasurably his inferiors. In connexion with the "noble animal" we may note that the advent of Rarey, the famous horse-tamer, was warmly welcomed by _Punch_ and Leech in 1858. The possibilities of the treatment are developed in a variety of ways, but there is more than mere burlesque in the suggestion that it could be profitably applied to stablemen and horsebreakers. And here we may note a crude foreshadowing of winter-sports in Leech's picture of the frozen-out foxhunter who builds a "treboggin" and, with his groom seated behind, careers down hill and across country in a machine about 12 feet long and not 2 feet wide with a splash-board in front.

[Sidenote: _In Praise of the Ring_]

_Punch_ was in the main a supporter of "muscular Christianity" and had already noted, with more sympathy than hostility, the encouragement of boxing as an integral part of the education of the ingenuous youth. Disraeli's Parliamentary duel with Palmerston in 1858 is described in pugilistic terms, in which the victory is given to the former "on points." But, in view of his generally humane and humanitarian outlook, he had hardly prepared us for his remarkable eulogy of the Prize Ring in the year 1860. For it was in that year that the historic fight took place between the American Heenan (the "Benicia Boy") and Tom Sayers at Farnborough on April 17, and it was chronicled at full length in _Punch_. "The Fight of Sayerius and Heenanus: A Lay of Ancient London" in the style of Macaulay occupies a whole page. Its chief interest to modern readers resides in the fact that it is "supposed to be recounted to Great-grand-children, April 17, A.D. 1920, by an Ancient Gladiator." The narrative is put in the mouth of "Crawleius" well known "in the _Domus Savilliana_[36] among the sporting men," presumably a relative real or imaginary of Peter Crawley, a well-known prize fighter. But the speaker did a gross injustice to the next generation but one when he wrote:--

'Tis but some sixty years since The times whereof I speak, And yet the words I'm using Will sound to you like Greek. What know ye, race of milksops, Untaught of the P.R., What stopping, lunging, countering, Fibbing or rallying are?

What boots to use the _lingo_ When you have not the _thing_? How paint to _you_ the glories Of Belcher, Cribb, or Spring, To _you_, whose sire turns up his eyes At mention of the Ring?

[Footnote 36: Savile House, on the north side of Leicester Square, originally the residence of Sir George Savile, Burke's friend, was in its latter days rebuilt as a place of entertainment and became a resort of Bohemians and fast men about town. It was burned down in 1865 and the site is now occupied by the Empire Theatre.]

The train journey to Farnborough in the grey dawn, the company, and the fight itself are, however, described with spirit:--

Not only fighting covies, But sporting swells besides-- Dukes, Lords, M.P.'s and Guardsmen, With county beaks besides; And tongues that sway our Senators And hands the pen that wield Were cheering on the Champions Upon that morning's field.

We pass over the details of the fight--how Sayers was floored nine times, and had his right arm crippled; how Heenan had both eyes put in mourning--to come to the last stage:--

Two hours and more the fight had sped, Near unto ten it drew, But still opposed--one-armed to blind-- They stood, the dauntless two. Ah me! that I have lived to hear Such men as ruffians scorned, Such deeds of valour brutal called, Canted, preached down and mourned! Ah, that these old eyes ne'er again A gallant mill shall see! No more behold the ropes and stakes, With colours flying free! But I forget the combat-- How shall I tell its close, That left the Champion's belt in doubt Between those well-matched foes? Fain would I shroud the tale in night,-- The meddling Blues[37] that thrust in sight,-- The ring-keepers o'erthrown;-- The broken ring,--the cumbered fight,-- Heenanus' sudden, blinded flight,-- Sayerius pausing, as he might, Just when ten minutes used aright Had made the fight his own!

[Sidenote: _Bull Fight at Islington_]

This curious document, valuable as contemporary evidence, worthless as prophecy, serves to show how strangely _Punch's_ humanitarianism was leavened and influenced by primitive instincts in the domain of sport.

[Footnote 37: Policemen.]

Pigeon-shooting and bull-fighting were another matter altogether. In 1870 an abortive attempt was made to introduce the latter at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, and the Islington-Spanish bull-fight is treated with a happy mixture of ridicule and contempt in a contribution to _Punch's_ "Evenings from Home." The proceedings appear to have been tame enough, and the bulls were probably "doped," yet enough of the real thing remained to warrant the hostile reception which the entertainment received. At its close the "Islington Spaniards" dispersed to the Islington public-houses. _Punch_ returned to the subject a month later. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had interfered to good purpose. The Islington bull-fighters had been summoned before a magistrate and fined, and their "entertainment" had been stopped. _Punch_ seized the occasion to add a comment which, on the very day on which, in 1921, I write these lines, is as timely as it was more than fifty years ago:--

From Islington to Wormwood Scrubbs is not far, and it is much to be feared by the tame-pigeon-shooting nobility and gentry that the officers of an impartial Association, vigilant to protect poor animals from cruelty, will as soon as possible be down upon the Gun Club.

[Sidenote: _Cricket and Football_]

Turning to cricket, we find that "over-hand bowling flung from the elbow" was mentioned by _Punch_ as a novelty in the late 'fifties. Cricket was still played in tall hats at that time; but by the 'sixties caps had come in. The dangers of the game are a not infrequent subject of comment, and, before the days of billiard-table pitches, the ball was capable of a good deal of awkward bumping; but to judge from _Punch's_ pictures the resultant contusions were regarded with equanimity by the players as part of the day's work or play. Cricket was extending its domain, and _à propos_ of the establishment of clubs at Lisbon and Oporto _Punch_ quotes an entertaining account of a game between these clubs by a Lisbon sporting journalist for the instruction of his countrymen. The incident is taken by _Punch_ as an occasion for suggesting international games of cricket: Turks and Chinamen, Dutch and Japanese. The Dutch have long been votaries of cricket; and though it has not caught on with the Japanese and Chinese, both these races have of late years cultivated lawn tennis with considerable success. Here, then, as so often happens, a mock prophecy is fulfilled in a way in which the prophet never expected. A critical year in the annals of Lord's was reached in 1864 when there was a danger of the ground being sold for building purposes. A sum of £10,000 was needed to secure the interests of cricket, and _Punch_, in an imaginary dialogue between a countryman and a cockney, represents the former as ready to contribute 5s. to avoid a national disgrace and "zave Lard's cricket ground."

References to football are confined to comments, mostly humorous but occasionally serious, on the practice of shinning or hacking. The Rules of the "West Shynnington Football Club" are conveniently used as a vehicle for a number of bad puns, but the trials of the modern referee are foreshadowed in the suggestion that "a Police Magistrate should always be in attendance to dispose of all charges made by players." _Punch_ in more serious mood discerns in the letter of "A Surgeon" to _The Times_ the disastrous results of hacking as then permitted by the Rugby code. "Hacking," in _Punch's_ view, was simply an unfair form of fighting and should be abolished.

The outstanding event in rowing circles during these years was the famous race between the Oxford and Harvard fours on August 27, 1869. _Punch_ celebrated the victory of Oxford in a notice giving the names of those who took part in the contest, congratulating Oxford, and wishing health to both crews, the accompanying cartoon representing a gigantic brawny John Bull shaking hands with a muscular but comparatively slim Uncle Sam, both in rowing trim, with the legend "Well Rowed All!" _Punch_, as umpire, remarks: "Ha, dear boys, you've only to pull together to lick all the world!" The sentiment is better than the treatment. Unluckily the race led to some acrimonious comment in the New York papers on British sportsmanship, and _Punch_, in his rejoinder, was more vigorous than polite. River "aquatics" have not always been free from recrimination. The origin of the famous retort to bargees, "Who ate puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?" is obscure; but it is mentioned as far back as the Almanack for 1858.

[Sidenote: _Croquet and Flirtation_]

"Golf Sticks" are alluded to in January, 1858, but during the rest of this period I find no further mention of golf. Of social pastimes archery is still in favour, but croquet is by far the most frequently referred to. To judge from the pictures, croquet, then in its unscientific infancy, was played on lawns innocent of mowing machines or scythes. It was mainly an excuse for flirtation between Charles and Clara; and the cheating earlier mentioned was regarded as quite fair game. _Punch_ dealt with it in a serial poem of heroic proportions in the year 1863. This epic--for it was little less--ran to seven numbers, but it is not memorable apart from its length. When the Croquet Tournament was held at Wimbledon in 1870, _Punch_ was ready to acknowledge the presence of Queens of Beauty, but could not accord the men players a higher title than that of Carpet Knights.

[Sidenote: _Lawn Tennis_]

"Aunt Sally"--alleged to have been introduced by the Duke of Beaufort--is portrayed as a novel adjunct to the amenities of garden parties in 1860 by Leech. Roller-skating came in about 1873, and about the same time lawn tennis having survived its early name of "Sphairistikè," began to attract the attention of _Punch's_ artists. The implements employed have a prehistoric appearance, but the pastime, thought still in its insular, garden-party and "pat-ball" stage, inspired some graceful lines in 1874:--

LAWN TENNIS

Now the long shadows of September come, And idle for a time the scribbler's pen is, He passes from the Town's discordant hum, From garrulous gossip of the kettle-drum,[38] From orators who should have been born dumb, To watch upon green lawns the girls play tennis.

Robins are trilling in the faded trees, The flitting swallows of their voyage chatter, Testing their wings before they dare the seas, For Nile's dun marge or blue-girt Cyclades; The sportsman's shots come frequent on the breeze, The flying balls keep up a pleasant clatter.

Croquet's a merry game for those who flirt (Who doesn't, pray--_Punch_, poet, peer, or parson?), But Tennis, when the ladies are alert, Follow the swift ball with a looped-up skirt, Strike it on high with graceful arm expert, Burns up the masculine heart with sudden arson.

So, pour some icy fluid in a glass Tinged with deep mulberry stain, true work of Venice: And _Mr. Punch_ will let the soft hours pass, Watching with tranquil eyes each lovely lass Flit like an Oread o'er the smooth green grass, And win his old heart as she wins at Tennis.

[Footnote 38: "Drum"--a crowded social reception--dates back to the days of Pope. The Victorian "kettle-drum" was a tea-party.]

_A complete Index will be found in the Fourth Volume._

PRINTED BY

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE,

LONDON, E.C.4

F100.621