PART II

SOCIAL LIFE IN TRANSITION

CROWN AND COURT

In a period of change and transition, in which the decline of the influence of the old "governing classes" was attended by the rise of a new type of statesman, the stability of the throne and the prestige of the Sovereign remained unshaken; the veneration in which the old Queen was held in the last ten years of her reign was based on a respect which rendered her almost invulnerable to criticism. _Punch_, who in earlier years had appropriated the _rôle_ and privileges of the Court Jester, and in the middle Victorian period had frankly regretted the Queen's long seclusion, never alludes to her in the closing years of her reign save in a spirit of gratitude and chivalrous devotion. We hear no more of the "Royal Recluse," for the phrase no longer applied to one who in advanced years was strenuous in the discharge of her duties. There is a pleasant story that when the Queen was informed that she had reigned longer than any of her predecessors, she said: "Have I done well?" and _Punch_ supplied the answer:--

"Have I done well?" Most gracious Queen, Look on the record of your life; Think of What is, What might have been. Empress of Peace 'mid constant strife!

The last year of her reign was sadly clouded by the uncertainties of the South African war, and she paid the inevitable penalty of those who live to fourscore by surviving many of those who were nearest to her; but age brought her consolations as well. The marriage of the Duke of York in 1893 inspired _Punch_ with a genial ode, full of classical tags and headed "Hymen Hymenæe!" He would not "trill a fulsome lay," but contented himself with showing "good will to goodness," typified in his cartoon of the royal pair seated on a Lion led by _Punch_ with a bridle of roses. A year later the birth of the present Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria's great-grandson, is celebrated by an ingenious adaptation of Shakespeare:--

Now is the Winter of our discontent Made glorious by this _Son_ of York.

The customary official congratulations of Parliament did not escape a protest from Mr. Keir Hardie, who was "indisposed to associate himself with any effort to do special honour to the Royal family," though he was "delighted to learn that the infant was a fairly healthy one." This unfortunately-worded concession only served to exasperate the loyalists, and _Punch_ drew a picture of Mr. Hardie, in his deer-stalker cap, severely apostrophizing the royal infant in his cradle. _A propos_ of the Prince's seven names, it may be added that _Punch_ noted the inclusion of all the four patron saints of the United Kingdom--George, Andrew, Patrick and David--a choice which, as he put it, ought to help him to dodge ill luck in after years.

[Sidenote: _Punch on the Duke of Cambridge_]

No charge of courtiership, however, could be brought against _Punch_ for his treatment of the question of the retirement of the Duke of Cambridge in 1895 from the post of Commander-in-Chief. In "All the Difference" Lord Wolseley is shown saying to the Duke: "In September I have to retire from my appointment," and the Duke replies, "Dear me! _I_ haven't." The same idea is developed in some satirical verses glorifying the "Spirit of Eld," which was allowed to dominate the conduct of high affairs of State. But when the Duke did go in November, _Punch_ was more gracious. His "parting salute," put into the mouth of Tommy Atkins, forms a friendly gloss on what Lord Wolseley had said in his first Army order; and when the Duke died in 1904, _Punch's_ four-line tribute is a model of laconic and judicial appreciation:--

The years that saw old customs changed to new Still left his spirit changeless to the end, Who served his kindred's Throne a long life through And died, as he had lived, the soldier's friend.

Modern Royal Annals are largely made up of "marriage and death and division," and laureates, unofficial as well as official, are largely concerned with the two former. The death of Prince Henry of Battenberg from fever incurred while on active service in Ashanti in 1896 enabled _Punch_ to pay decorous and not extravagant homage to the "servant of duty." He had a much better theme in the death of the Prince's brilliant and ill-starred brother Alexander, in 1893, and the verses are not unworthy of one who was too great a gentleman to be a successful adventurer:--

Europe's Prince Charming, lion-like, born to dare, Betrayed by the black treacherous Northern Bear! Soldier successful vainly, patriot foiled, Wooer discomfited, and hero spoiled! Triumphant champion of Slivnitza's field, To sordid treachery yet doomed to yield. An age more chivalrous you should have seen, When brutal brokers, and when bagmen keen Shamed not the sword and blunted not the lance. Then had you been true Hero of Romance.

The coronation of the Tsar Nicholas in 1896 is chronicled in the cartoon in which Peace says to him: "I was your father's friend--let me be yours," and his visit to Balmoral suggests another variation on the same theme. Under the heading "Blessed are the Peacemakers," Nicholas is seen taking an affectionate farewell of the Queen. Ten years later _Punch_ was to realize how vain were the dreams of good will when hampered by infirmity of purpose. For the moment, however, the pleasures and pastimes of Royalty were more in evidence. The Prince of Wales was alleged to have taken to bicycling, and _Punch_, still wedded to an old habit, proposed the new title of "the Prince of Wheels." The Prince is also congratulated on winning his first Derby with Persimmon, and encouraged to pay no attention to the Nonconformist stalwarts of Rochdale and Heywood who had begged him to abandon racing and withdraw from the turf. When Princess Maud of Wales was married to Prince Charles of Denmark, _Punch_ was not content with a loyal cartoon and a suitable Shakespearean quotation. He seized the opportunity to combine humanitarianism with allegiance to the throne by issuing a Plea for the Birds to the Women of England--begging them to discontinue the wearing of egret plumes on this and every other occasion.

[Sidenote: _Jubilee Tributes_]

Tributes to the Queen in the year of her Diamond Jubilee are unqualified in their admiration. Perhaps the most hearty and impressive, if not the most polished, is the "Song Imperial" printed in June:--

Stand up England, land of toil and duty, In your smoking cities, in your hamlets green; Stand up England, land of love and beauty, Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!

Stand up Scotland, up Wales and Ireland, Loyal to her royalty, crowd upon the scene; Stand up, all of us, we who are the sire-land, Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!

Stand up ye Colonies, the joy-cry reaches you, Near lands, far lands, lands that lie between; Where the sun bronzes you, where the frost bleaches you, Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!

Stand up all! Yes, princes, nobles, peoples, All the mighty Empire--mightier ne'er hath been; Boom from your decks and towers, clang from all your steeples God save Victoria, God save the Queen!

Why not? Has she not ever loved and served us, Royal to us, loyal to us, gracious ever been? Ne'er in peace betrayed us, ne'er in war unnerv'd us; Up, then, shout out, God save the Queen!

But now our sun descends, from the zenith westward, Westward and downward, of all mortals seen; Yet may the long day lengthen, though the fall be rest-ward, May we long together cry, God save the Queen!

When in the coming-time, 'neath the dim ocean line, Our dear sun shall sink in the wave serene, Tears will fill these eyes of mine, tears will fill those eyes of thine, Lowly kneeling, all will pray, God save the Queen!

In his "Jubilee Celebrator's _Vade Mecum_" _Punch_ did not spare criticism of the arrangements and the profiteering of speculators in seats. Yet with all deductions and drawbacks the Jubilee "was a gigantic success, for it has shown that a quarter of the world loves and appreciates a blameless Queen, and rejoices to be her subjects." The visit of the Duke and Duchess of York to Ireland in July prompts the usual cartoon attributing to Erin the familiar suggestion of a Royal residence in Ireland, a cure for discontent which _Punch_ was never weary of prescribing. Queen Victoria's eightieth birthday fell in 1899, and in the same number in which _Punch_ welcomes the anniversary he indulges in an unflattering pictorial comment on "Imperial Bruin" breathing forth compliments and pacific professions while carrying on dangerous intrigues in the Far East. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, had renounced the succession to the Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the lifetime of his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, who had succeeded to the title in 1893. _Punch_ in 1899 congratulated the Duke of Connaught on a decision the wisdom of which was amply justified in the sequel. Here _Punch_ made no claims to prophecy: he merely showed the Duke of Connaught waving aside the proffered honour and gave as his motto Gilbert's often-quoted lines:--

In spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman.

_Punch's_ lines on the death of the Duke of Edinburgh in the following year attain to a positively "lapidary" excellence in their discretion and brevity:--

Summoned to lordship in a stranger land, He left his English birthright of the main, Now, swiftly touched by Death's restoring hand, He is the Queen's again.

The cartoon which linked Italy with Britannia as "Sisters in Sorrow"--King Humbert had been assassinated two days before the death of the Duke of Edinburgh--strikes the ceremonial and conventional note avoided in the epitaph quoted above, and noticeable in the cartoon prompted by the Queen's visit to Ireland earlier in the year.

To 1900 also belongs the first appearance in a _Punch_ cartoon of the ex-Crown Prince of Germany. In consonance with German Court tradition he was now about to learn a trade, and as his tastes were said to lie in the direction of typography, _Punch_ offers to take him on as a printing apprentice.

I have spoken elsewhere of the death of Queen Victoria in 1901; for it was a great deal more than an event in Court history; it marked the end of an era. _Punch_, in a commemorative number, reprinted a great many of his cartoons, good and bad, but omitting the disparaging or satirical pictures to which reference has been made in previous volumes; but even with this limitation, the collection is a valuable contribution to the pictorial history of our times. In discussing the National Memorial _Punch_ makes Art express the pious hope that London will get something worthy of a great city and a great Queen, and, as we have seen, in later years he acknowledged that she had done so. The start of the Duke and Duchess of York for their visit to Australia in March forms the theme of the pleasant fantasy reproduced on the preceding page.

In August the Empress Frederick of Germany, the most highly placed, the most gifted, and the most ill-starred of the Queen's daughters, followed her mother to the grave. Here _Punch's_ tribute, in which Germany and England figure as chief mourners, does not represent the hard facts, and overlooks the bitter antagonism of Bismarck to "the Liberal English woman," as he called her, her failure to inspire affection in the German nation, and the estrangement of her meteoric son. But _Punch's_ attitude was natural, for the Kaiser's visit to Osborne during Queen Victoria's last illness had touched the heart of England; and the description of the Empress Frederick as "gentle, brave and wise" was a venial misreading of the character of one whose fortitude, intrepidity and intellectual gifts were beyond question, but whose individuality was too pronounced to accommodate itself to her political surroundings.

[Sidenote: _Coronation Humours_]

The preparations for the crowning of King Edward furnished _Punch_ with material for a display of abundant good will to the Sovereign, tempered by an explosion of irresponsible frivolity. In the "Overflow Fête," designed by _Punch_ as "Bouverie King of Arms," he seized the opportunity of making game of all his favourite butts. A court of "overflow claims" considers the applications of Lord Halsbury, Sir J. Blundell Maple, Mr. Gibson Bowles, "Brer Fuchs" (Emil Fuchs, an Austrian artist much in Court favour but heavily derided by art critics), Mr. G. B. Shaw, Mr. Alfred Austin the Poet Laureate, and many others. Most of their alleged claims are declined, but a few exceptions are made, as, for example, that in favour of Mr. G. R. Sims being allowed to supply the fountains in Trafalgar Square with "Tatcho." A procession of emblematic cars is mainly satirical, and includes a "sleeping car" typical of British industry. The programme of the Gala Performance at the National Opera House introduces Dan Leno, and includes a masque of "Poets in Hades" on the lines of the Frogs of Aristophanes. _Punch_ also added what purported to be an Official Coronation Ode by Mr. Alfred Austin--a masterpiece of deliberate ineptitude--and a "Chantey of the Nations" in which Mr. Rudyard Kipling's imperialism is burlesqued in none too friendly a spirit. _Punch_ provided a jocular epilogue to the masque: he also dedicated a set of serious verses to the King wishing him

health and years' increase, Wisdom to keep his people's love, And, other earthly gifts above, The long-desired, the gift of Peace.

The King is also hailed in a hunting picture as the "King of Sportsmen"; and the grace and kindliness of Queen Alexandra, now as ever, appealed to _Punch's_ chivalry. The dominant "note" sounded in _Punch's_ pages is one of jocularity and good humour. He reproduces the statement that "no fewer than 1,047 poets have sent in Coronation Odes for the prizes offered by _Good Words_"--no longer, it need hardly be added, the _Good Words_ of Norman Macleod. American visitors are maliciously pictured as attempting to buy coronets; and _Punch_ makes great play with the official announcement of the amount of space allotted to peeresses in the Abbey. Duchesses were to have eighteen inches and ladies of inferior rank sixteen; what was wanted, in _Punch's_ phrase, was "A Contractor for the Aristocracy."

[Sidenote: _Death of King Edward_]

The sudden and dangerous illness of the King and the postponement of the Coronation turned all this gaiety to gloom and suspense, happily relieved by a recovery which gave the celebrations, when they were held, the quality of a thanksgiving as well as of a great pageant.

In 1903 the King and Queen visited Ireland, and _Punch_ prefaced his Donnybrook Fair rhymes--a long way after Thackeray--on their entry into Dublin with the audacious but impenitent declaration that he intended to adhere to a method of spelling which bore no sort of resemblance to Irish pronunciation.

Of all the Royal visitors in the years before the war, none was more popular or "had a better Press" than King Alfonso. In 1905 _Punch_ happily contrasted past and present in his cartoon of the Kings of England and Spain in friendly converse, while in the background the formidable shade of Queen Elizabeth remarks with more of amazement than approval: "Odds my life! A King of Spain in England! And right cousinly entreated withal!" King Alfonso's marriage in the following year to Princess Ena of Battenberg is genially commemorated in Sambourne's happy adaptation of Velazquez; and when the infant Prince of the Asturias made his first visit to England, the same artist gave us the wholly delightful picture of Prince Olaf of Denmark pushing the Spanish princelet in his "pram": "Come along, old man," he says; "I'll show you round. I've been here before." Spain was not a royal bed of roses, but it was at least spared the upheaval which convulsed the adjoining kingdom of Portugal. On the assassination of King Carlos and the Crown Prince in 1908, Britannia in _Punch's_ cartoon bade King Manoel take courage: when he was deposed by the Revolution of 1910, he appears as a dignified figure mournfully bewailing the downfall of his House. Simultaneously _Punch_ chronicles the saying attributed to the late Mlle. Gaby Deslys: "I am not ashamed of having the friendship of young King Manoel," and ironically describes it as "the humility of true greatness."

King Edward was born in the same year in which _Punch_ first appeared, and when he died in 1910 the commemorative number goes back to the cartoon of "The First Tooth," published at a time when _Punch's_ comments on the Royal Nursery were more frank than decorous. But whether as a small boy or an Oxford undergraduate, in America or India, in illness or in health, as Prince or King, he had always found a benevolent friend and lenient critic in _Punch_, who now saluted him in death, in the name of Europe, as a Maker of Peace.

To the mass of obituary literature, mostly uncritical, which was inspired by the passing of a great and popular personality _Punch_ contributed an interesting fact. There was nothing surprising in the statement that King Edward never joined in debate in the House of Lords; but it was curious to learn that he never voted--except for the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill. The King's affection for his little dog Cæsar was one of those personal traits which had moved the popular sentiment, and _Punch_ was fortunate in having on his staff a writer who was a poet as well as a lover of dogs:--

Reft of your master, little dog forlorn, To one dear mistress you shall now be sworn, And in her queenly service you shall dwell, At rest with one who loved your master well.

And she, that gentle lady, shall control The faithful Kingdom of a true dog's soul, And for the past's dear sake shall still defend Cæsar, the dead King's humble little friend.

Evidence of the unabated popularity of King Alfonso continue to appear in 1910, when that sovereign's visit to the Duke of Westminster prompted some frivolous rhymes on "the Merry Monarch":--

Oh, why does Eaton all her banners don so? To feast the roving eyes of King Alfonso.

Why was it that the sun last Wednesday shone so? It loved the polo feats of King Alfonso.

What spectacle delights the footman John so? The riding-breeches worn by King Alfonso.

What is it fascinates the Eatonian bonne so? It is the winning ways of King Alfonso.

What puffs the plumage of the ducal swans so? The notice they receive from King Alfonso.

Why are the Kaiser's courtiers jumped upon so? He's sick with jealousy of King Alfonso.

Why does the British Press keep on and on so? It cannot have enough of King Alfonso.

[Sidenote: _Kaiser, King, and Laureate_]

The mention of the Kaiser is ominous. _Punch_ had, for reasons mentioned above, given him a brief respite, but one of his periodical outbursts at Königsberg in August, 1910, provoked a cartoon representing the Imperial Eagle re-entering his cage "Constitution" to the relief of his keeper, whom he reassures with the remark: "It's all right: I'm going back of my own accord. But (_aside_) I got pretty near the sky that time. Haven't had such a day out for two years." This was not exactly respectful treatment, but it was not so frank as _Punch's_ heading "Thank Goodness!" prefixed ten years earlier to the statement made, by an American paper, that in a Boston Lunatic Asylum there were eleven patients, each of whom believed himself to be the German Emperor, but that they had no means of communicating with the outer world.

King George's coronation in 1911 gave _Punch_ another occasion for mingling jest with earnest, loyalty to the Sovereign with chaff of notorieties. The King's serious concern with his country's welfare had already been illustrated in the cartoon in which he is seen, like his namesake saint, attacking a dragon--that of "Apathy." At the time of the coronation _Punch_ lays stress on the heritage of sea-power that had fallen to him, a sailor prince. In July the Prince of Wales was welcomed in his Principality--this time, in _Punch's_ picture, by a dragon the reverse of apathetic.

In June, 1913, the office of Laureate fell vacant by the death of Mr. Alfred Austin. After Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson, the anti-climax had been so painful that _Punch_ may well be excused for the cartoon in which Pegasus appeals to Ringmaster Asquith to disestablish him: the Steed of the Muses was tired of being harnessed to the Royal Circus. There are some who think that, in the best interests of the distinguished author who was appointed, it would have been well if _Punch's_ advice had been followed.

VANITY FAIR

In the fifty years that had passed since _Punch's_ birth in 1841, "Society," as it was then understood, had undergone a revolution which not only changed its structure but altered the meaning of the word. It had, in Mr. A. B. Walkley's phrase, become one of those "discoloured" words like "respectable" and "genteel," in which the new "connotation" strove with and gradually supplanted the old. "Society," in the old limited sense, stood for a limited, exclusive and predominantly aristocratic set, arrogant at times, but not wanting in a certain self-respect. But by the 'nineties it had become amorphous, unwieldy, cosmopolitan and plutocratic. Du Maurier, the finest and best equipped of the commentators and critics of the old _régime_, who recognized its distinction and its drawbacks, and satirized with impartial ridicule decadent aristocrats and vulgar intruders, was perhaps _felix opportunitate mortis_:--

He brought from two great lands the best of both In one fine nature blent. Lover of English strength and Gallic grace, Of British beauty, or of soul or face, Yet with that subtler something born of race That charm to cleanness lent.

A Thackeray of the pencil! So men said. His reverence high for the great Titan dead Put by such praise with ease; But social satire of the subtler sort Was his, too. Not the shop, the slum, the court, But gay saloons gave quarry for his sport. 'Twas in such scenes as these

His hectoring Midas, and his high-nosed earl, His worldly matron, and his winsome girl, Were found, and pictured clear, With skill creative and with strength restrained. They live, his butts, cold-hearted, shallow-brained. In his own chosen walk Du Maurier reigned Supreme, without a peer.

[Sidenote: _The Social Jungle_]

The tribute was fully earned; but Du Maurier was not one of those who enjoyed plying the scourge, and he was fortunate in that he did not live to see the "Gay Saloon" turned into the Social Jungle, as foreshadowed in _Punch's_ adaptation of Mr. Kipling's poem in 1894, which ends with the couplet:--

Because of his age and his cunning, his grip and his power of jaw, In all that the Law leaveth open the word of King Mammon is Law.

For "Wolf" read "Worldling" for "Jungle" read "Social World" and _Punch's_ parallel "Laws" work out well enough. But in the years that followed it was not so much mammon-worship as the craze for excitement at all costs that dominated the fashionable world. The vulgarity and love of the limelight which Du Maurier had satirized were multiplied tenfold. Society became a romp and a ramp. England began to go dancing-mad in the 'nineties, but the harmless rowdiness of Kitchen Lancers, of the "Barn-dance" and the "Washington Post" developed in the new century into a mania for which historians found a parallel in the "Tarantism" of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We passed through various and mostly distressing phases of the malady from the days of Loie Fuller's serpentine contortions to the introduction of the "Salome" dance by Miss Maud Allan. Skirt-dancing, with a superabundance of skirts, gradually gave place to a style marked by the desire to dispense not only with skirts but with any sort of clothing. The wonderful performances of the Russian Ballet revealed a new world of art and "washed out" a good deal of highly advertised and indecorous incompetence, but in many ways proved a doubtful boon. The cult of the male dancer revived, and the triumphs of Pavlova and Karsavina lured the aristocratic amateur into futile and unseemly competition. This was only one of the many signs of the love of publicity which marked Society when it had ceased to be select. In the 'forties, when the _crême de la crême_ disported themselves at Cremorne, the Gardens were reserved for their exclusive use. Now, "smartness" was the note of Society, and "smartness" does not like to hide its light under a bushel. In the middle 'nineties _Punch_ registered his protest against ladies who begged publicly in the streets--the "merry half-sisters of charity," as he called them. By 1903 he indicated the spread of the new fashion in the ironical remark that "the eccentric habit of dining at home is, I regret to say, steadily spreading." The further course of this anti-domestic movement is correctly shown in the cartoon of Christmas _à la mode_ in 1908, when the butler of a modern English house inhospitably repels Father Christmas with: "Not at 'ome. Her Ladyship is at Monty Carlo; the young gentlemen are in the Halps; and Sir John has taken the other members of the family to the Restorong!" _Punch_ was not content with attacking the organized publicity of social life, with which may be connected his satire of the orgy of Pageants; he was equally vigorous in chastising its organized frivolity and horse-play; the extravagance of the week-end pleasure-hunt; the ostentatious folly of freak entertainments; and other excesses and eccentricities summed up in the two detestable phrases _fin de siècle_ and _de luxe_.

_Punch_ found no traces of a Golden Age in the 'nineties, though he admitted they were Yellow enough. For these were the years of the _Yellow Book_--alternately regarded as typical of _fin de siècle_ decadence (in _Punch's_ view) or as a symbol of literary renascence--of the now forgotten "emancipation novel," _The Yellow Aster_; to say nothing of the Yellow Peril and the Yellow Press. The _Daily Mail_, by the way, was not founded till 1896. As a social satirist _Punch_, throughout all this period, is much more concerned with the material or physical than the mental or spiritual vagaries of the rich and well-to-do. But a notable exception must be made in favour of that famous--or shall I say notorious?--coterie known as "the Souls," who are frequently referred to in 1893 and 1894. Readers anxious for "inside" information may be recommended to consult the _Autobiography_ of Mrs. Asquith, who was one of the number.

[Sidenote: _The "Souls"_]

They were most of them highly born and highly gifted. Some afterwards attained eminence in politics and literature; and it must be admitted that they were clever enough to get themselves a great deal talked about without deliberately courting publicity at the time. Their audacities and unconventionalities enjoyed a considerable reputation, but did not often get into the papers. _Punch_ was obviously "intrigued" about them, but ingeniously disguised his curiosity by passing it on to an imaginary American visitor, "high-toned" (the word "high-brow" was a later importation) and inquiring, who came over to study our "Institootions"--Mr. Gladstone also used to pronounce it that way--and wrote down his impressions for a work on _Social Dry Rot in Europe_. So, hearing vague talk of a secret moral institution, the Society of Souls, he set to work to collect authentic information about them, but was everywhere baffled. The nearer he got to the shrine, the more negative and mysterious was the information vouchsafed. But the Philistine view is well burlesqued in his conversation with a fashionable lady who described the Souls as "a horrid stuck-up set of people who did all sorts of horrid things, all read the same books at the same time, sacrificed wild asses at the altar of Ibsen, the Hyperborean Apollo, and were bound by a rule that no Soul might ever marry another Soul." A year or so later _Punch_ noted the report that the Souls had ceased to exist, and would be replaced by a new club--the "No Bodies"--of which the membership would be unlimited. Still the Souls had had their day and, as representing an effort to establish an exclusive social coterie to which intellect or wit formed the chief passport, demand at least a passing word. The satire of fashionable culture dies down and is never very seriously revived even in the days when the late Emil Reich lectured on Plato at Claridge's. "Smart" Society was more active with its heels than with its head or its heart.

_Punch_ distrusted the sincerity of fashionable ladies who professed a desire to "elevate the masses" by organizing entertainments which were a hotch-potch of Ibsen, skirt-dancing, exotic sentiment and frank vulgarity. He waxes sarcastic, again, over charitable bazaars, run by women who didn't enjoy them, for causes of which they knew nothing and cared less. Frivolity was the thing that mattered. In the "Letters to a Débutante" which appeared in 1894 _Punch_ assumes the _rôle_ of the cynical mentor, e.g. "It is hardly possible to exaggerate the unimportance of nearly everything that happens": "Laugh when you're thinking what to say. It saves time." In weighing the rival merits of a group of suitors, the preference is given to the rich German-Jew. The decay of ballroom manners was an old subject of complaint with _Punch_, but it was never so persistently harped upon as during the years which began with the Barn-dance and ended with the Bunny-hug. In 1894, _à propos_ of the exuberant agility of a middle-aged Mænad, an old lady in one of Du Maurier's pictures observes that the "Pas de Quatre" should be "Pas du Tout" for Aunt Jane. The "Romping Lancers" are also noted, and in "Association v. Rugby" a breathless young lady beseeches her partner--a famous Rugby half-back--to dance "Soccer" for a little. In 1896, under the heading "The Death of the Dance," _Punch_ takes for his text the remark of a speaker at a recent meeting of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing: "I had rather be old and teach deportment than be young and teach people to romp the Barn-dance"; and he bewails the conversion of the once "light fantastic" into heavy prancing, spasmodic antics, and the general decay of elegance and grace. The arrival in 1897 of "The Washington Post" is greeted with ironical approval: "You take hold of a girl by both hands, try a double shuffle, and then slide off to another part of the room and repeat the performance." In 1898 the lines on "The Lost Art" are based upon the statement made by a provincial mayor that the risk of injury was rather greater in the ballroom than in the football field:--

[Sidenote: _Ball-room Manners_]

Oh! for the days when there were dancers! Oh! for the mazes of the Lancers! With what a nimble step elastic We tripped it on the light fantastic, With a sweet charm which now is not, Through gay cotillion or gavotte, Or, with a grace more regal yet, We stepped a stately minuet, Each man of us a choice assortment Of Turveydropian deportment.

But where is now your ancient pomp? Your dance is but a vulgar romp, Your shocking "Barns" and "Posts"--oh, fie! You only think of kicking high. The men career _sans_ time, _sans_ rhythm, The girls rush helter-skelter with 'em, They charge, they trample on one's toes, Their elbows hit one on the nose, They black one's eyes, still on they come, They butt one in the back and stom-- I mean the waistcoat, till the hall Is more like battlefield than ball.

I'd rather serve in the Soudan, I'd rather fight at Omdurman, I'd rather quarrel with a chum, I'd rather face a Rugby scrum, Nay, by the stars, I'd rather be That hapless wretch, the referee, Most desperate of men, than chance My life and limbs at modern dance.

In 1906 the introduction of the "Boston" waltz prompts one of _Punch's_ artists to depict the sad experience of a young lady whose partners had all learned the new dance from American instructors, and who all danced it in a different way. The band, by the way, is playing "The Blue Danube," for Johann Strauss was still a name to conjure with. References to rowdy dancing are frequent in 1907, when _Punch_ printed designs of various costumes to resist the tremendous wear-and-tear of the ballroom, and in 1908, when he suggests, to meet a "long felt want," that a special space should be railed off for "plungers." _Punch's_ picture of the "Borston" as danced in 1909 belies the ironical title "The Poetry of Motion." Long tight skirts were still worn and are a feature of the series of suggestions, made in the same year, by Mr. Baumer for brightening our ballrooms--the Judy-walk, the Apache Polka, the Salome Lancers and the Vampire Valse. That same acute observer of gilded (and painted) youth includes in his burlesque Coronation Procession in 1911 a member of the aristocracy in the guise of a caracoling Bacchante; and in the same year the male dancer craze is satirized in a series of pictures showing the spread of the infection to policemen, railway porters, scavengers, ticket collectors, etc. The revival of old English dances dates from this period, but if _Punch_ is to be trusted, made little impression on Mayfair. Even the most distinguished and eminent politicians did not scorn the dance. Mr. Balfour gave a ball at the height of the season in 1912, and _Punch_ (who was not there) gave the following wholly apocryphal description of the revels:--

ARTHUR'S BALL

When Parliament, sick with unreason, Was occupied, night after night, With bandying charges of treason, And challenging Ulster to fight, To ease the political tension Prince Arthur determined to call A truce to this deadly dissension By giving a Ball.

The guests were by no means confined to The ranks of the old Upper Ten, For Arthur has always inclined to Consort with all manner of men; So the brainy, though lacking in breeding, Were bidden as well as the fops; The foes of carnivorous feeding, And lovers of chops.

There were golfers from Troon and Kilspindie Discussing their favourite greens; Bronzed soldiers from Quetta and Pindi; Pale pilots of flying-machines; There were débutantes visibly flustered, Calm beauties from over the "Pond"; Sleek magnates of soap and of mustard, And Brunner and Mond.

* * * * *

I saw a delectable Duchess Sit out with a Syndicalist, And a battle-scarred soldier on crutches Hob-nob with a Pacificist; And a famous professor of Psychics-- A Scot who was reared at Dunkeld-- Indulge in the highest of high kicks I ever beheld.

Lord Haldane, whose massive proportions Were gracefully garbed in a kilt, Performed the most daring contortions With true Caledonian lilt; Lord Morley resembled a Gracchus; Lloyd George was a genial Jack Cade, And Elibank, beaming like Bacchus, The revels surveyed.

The music was subtly compounded Of melodies famous of yore, And measures that richly abounded In modern cacophonous lore; There was Strauss, the adored of Vienna, The genius of joyous unrest, And Strauss, who the shrieks of Gehenna Contrives to suggest.

I'd like to describe, but I canna, The envy combined with dismay Aroused by adorable Anna Whom several Kingdoms obey. Her entry produced quite a crisis-- Some prudes were surprised she was axed-- She appeared in the costume of Isis According to Bakst.

It was four of the clock ere I quitted These scenes of eclectic delight; The fogies had most of them flitted, The revels were still at their height; For Garvin was dancing a Tango, His head in the place of his legs; And Spender a blameless fandango Encircled by eggs.

What incidents happened thereafter I only can dimly surmise: But gusts of ecstatical laughter Went echoing up to the skies; And I know from my own observation The guests were agreed, one and all, That Arthur united the nation By giving this Ball.

[Sidenote: _Tango-mania_]

The mention of Anna--the famous Pavlova--was at any rate topical, for the cult of the Russian Ballet was now at its height, and in his Almanack for 1913 _Punch_ exhibited the political and other public celebrities of the hour engaged in appropriate evolutions _à la Russe_. The "Bunny-hug" was very properly gibbeted in a scathing cartoon, and in his hints to social climbers _Punch_ suggests various styles of vulgar and inane dancing as a passport to notoriety. With laudable fairness he admits, in parallel illustrations, that the Tango of fact was a much less lurid thing than the Tango as painted by the fancy of Puritans; but the revival of afternoon dances and the fashion of "Tango teas" met with no approval, and in the cartoon "Exit Tango," early in 1914, _Punch_, rather prematurely perhaps, congratulated the "Spirit of Dancing" on the passing of "the tyranny of the dullest of nightmares."

In one of the last of the references to the dancing craze in this period--February, 1914, to be precise--_Punch_ notes, as one of the reasons why the Tango was already _démodé_, the fact that matrons had taken to it with the utmost fury, after a preliminary stage of acute disapproval. In the words of one of the younger generation:--

Now we may watch our mothers, smiling and flushed and gay, Doing it, doing it, doing it--tangoing night and day.

Stamping a Texas Tommy, wreathing a Grapevine Swirl, Gleefully Gaby Gliding, young as the youngest girl.

We may not laugh at our mothers, for (between me and you) They can out-dance us often--get all our partners too.

[Sidenote: _Matron v. Maid_]

This, however, was no new thing. It was only the latest manifestation of a "movement" which runs right through the social history of the whole of this period, and which may be alternatively described as the Emancipation or the Apotheosis of Middle Age. The earliest references to the change link it up with the coming of the New Woman. For example, in 1894, in a "Song of the Twentieth Century," _Punch_ describes the man of the family as relegated to the shelf by his more energetic female relatives:--

Aunt Jane is a popular preacher, Aunt Susan a dealer in stocks, While Father, the gentlest old creature, Attends to the family socks.

But as time goes on it is in the pursuit of pleasure rather than in the sphere of serious effort that the competition of the middle-aged woman is noted as a new and formidable sign of the times. Thus in 1895 we have Du Maurier's picture of the Sunday caller finding that the mother of the family is playing lawn tennis while the young ladies have gone to church. By 1900 the youthfulness of the older generation is made a source of complaint by the juniors. In "Filia Pulchra, Mater Pulchrior," _Punch_ genially arraigns the mothers who "cut out" their daughters. A paper for ladies had declared that the woman of forty was most dangerous to the susceptible male, and _Punch_ enlarges on the theme in "The Rivals," in which an eligible suitor exclaims, "Take, oh take Mamma away!" In 1903 he recurs ironically to the subject in the lines "De Senectute":--

However pedagogues may frown And view such dicta with disfavour, The folk who never sober down Confer on life its saltiest savour.

The grandmother who wears a cap Incurs her family's displeasure; But if she sets a booby-trap And wears a fringe, she is a treasure.

The old ideal of growing old gracefully had been superseded by a refusal to grow old at all; and the "unfair competition" of matron with maid is pointedly illustrated in _Punch's_ "Country House Hints" in 1908, where, after giving information about tips, dresses, etc., the writer observes that girls are at a discount as guests: "they are not rich enough for Bridge, and they put a restriction on funny stories." They may have done so fourteen years ago; but only a year later, in a burlesque article based on the fulsome Society paragraphs of the contemporary Press, _Punch_ made it clear that the process of emancipation was proceeding apace:--

Wise mothers--and modern mothers are seldom wanting in astuteness--do not keep their young "flapper" daughters buried in the schoolroom until the day of presentation. They prepare them for their complete emancipation by a series of preliminary canters. Thus they take them to dine at the Fitz or the Tarlton while the hair that is hanging down their backs is still their own....

The upbringing of Lady Sarah Boodle has been wholly unconventional, and as her parents spend most of their time in balloons, she is looking forward to her first season with all the _fougue de dix-huit ans_. Until she was sixteen Lady Sarah was allowed to read nothing but the _Sporting Times_ and the _Statist_. This led, not unnaturally, to a violent reaction, and Lady Sarah is now a devoted student of Maeterlinck, Mr. W. B. Yeats and Fiona Macleod. Happily this development has not impaired her healthy enjoyment of Bridge. Last year she won £300 at this winsome pastime.... One may fitly conclude this group of winsome English girls with the mention of two beautiful cousins, Lady Phoebe Bunting and Miss Miriam Belshazzar. By an extraordinary coincidence they are both third cousins once removed of Daphne, Lady Saxthorpe, whose coster impersonations were so marked a feature of her late husband's tenure of office as Governor of Hong Kong. Lady Phoebe, strange to say, never learned her alphabet until she was nearly fifteen, while her cousin had mastered the intricacies of compound interest almost before she could walk. Lady Phoebe is a winsome blonde, while Miss Belshazzar is a _svelte_ brunette whose superb Semitic profile recalls the delicious proboscis of her illustrious grandfather, Sir Joshua Schnabelheimer.

[Sidenote: _Ostentatious Luxury_]

Extravagant expense and ostentation--another old abomination of _Punch's_--were not only rife, but they were constantly written up and discussed with a foolish voice of praise in what purported to be democratic papers. A ducal wedding in the mid-'nineties, which was carefully "rehearsed" before it was actually solemnized, caused a veritable explosion in _Punch_ about the columns of matrimonial gush and statistics--the "haystacks of chrysanthemums"--which deluged the papers. In the picture of coroneted sandwichmen engaged by adroit speculators to puff their schemes, _Punch_ in 1897 was only repeating an old indictment of parasitic peers. He had no quarrel with people who took to trade openly and seriously, disregarding the old fine-drawn social distinctions and contempt for commerce--witness his song of "The English Gentleman of the Present Day" in 1899. But he had no welcome for the newfangled newspaper articles on gastronomy, with _menus_ and prices, puffing well-known hotels and restaurants. The statement of a writer in _The Times_ in 1900 that "the necessaries of life may be purchased for £2,000 a year" provided _Punch_ with food for ironical comment. A year later it was seriously maintained in a popular monthly that, from the point of view of a smart Society woman, it was impossible to _dress_ on £1,000 a year. The standard of high living had gone up by leaps and bounds from the days when to _Punch's_ youthful fancy £1,000 a year represented wealth almost beyond the dreams of avarice.

Another old grievance--needless extravagance in the Army--raised its head in 1900, when a correspondent in _The Times_ complained that the latest regulations issued by the War Office were like a tailor's list, and contained details of seventy-seven kinds of gold lace! No wonder was it, as _Punch_ noted, that the fathers of subalterns in crack regiments had to guarantee them a minimum allowance of £600 a year. This was just before the South African war, which immediately led to a general rise of prices--the universal excuse "owing to the war" foreshadowing what took place fifteen years later. Parallels abound, though on a smaller scale. Marriage is ironically declared to be impossible for self-respecting and self-protective girls owing to the dearth of servants. "Like the Dodo, the domestic servant is extinct," and _Punch_, in his list of suggested exhibits for museums, includes the following:--

_Domestic Servant_ (Mummy).--An extremely rare and finely preserved specimen of a vanished class, whose extinction dates from 1901 A.D. It is therefore of the highest interest to the Anthropologist and the Comparative Anatomist. Its duties are now performed, perhaps more effectively, by the automatic "general" and the electric dumb-waiter. When alive, it commanded the salary of a prima donna, etc.

Aversion from work was already abroad. A fond parent is shown in this year commenting on the recalcitrant attitude of her daughter: "No, she won't work. She never would work. She never will work. There's only one thing--she'll 'ave to go out to service."

Still "smart" Society went on its way unheeding. The increasing publicity of social life is satirized under "Public Passion" in the recital of a young wife who writes: "We are _never_ at home. I believe it is fashionable to go to hospitals now and be ill amongst all sorts and conditions of people." The honeymoon was passing because brides could not face the awful loneliness of a _tête-à-tête_ existence, and welcomed a speedy return to a semi-detached go-as-you-please existence amongst their friends. A week-end honeymoon at Brighton is indicated as the maximum period which could be endured by a modern couple. In fashionable speech inanity began to be replaced by profanity. Unbridled language on the part of aristocrats and smart people led in 1903 to the famous conversational opening of a burlesque Society novel: "'Hell!' said the Duchess, who had hitherto taken no part in the conversation"[7]--which _Punch_ takes as his text for a discourse upon further developments and reactions. The device of engineering and paying for personal notices in the papers and simultaneously denouncing the scandalous enterprise of pressmen, and the introduction of "freak" parties from America are noticed and reproved in 1903, when amongst other recreations of the Smart Set we read of "Shinty, a wild and tumultuous version of hockey, in which there are absolutely no rules."

[Footnote 7: The author of this much-quoted phrase was said to have been an Eton boy, but I have been unable to trace his name or subsequent career.]

[Sidenote: _The New Mobility_]

At the beginning of this period bicycling was fashionable. The lines "To Julia, Knight-errant" in 1895 refer in whimsical vein to the brief vogue of bicycling parties by night in the City, organized by "smart" people. Battersea Park was also frequented by fashionable riders; but _Punch_, with a sure instinct, saw that the craze would not last, and in the same year foreshadowed donkey-riding as the next modish recreation. The advent of "mokestrians" was a mere piece of burlesque, suggested perhaps by the popularity of the sentimental coster song introduced by Mr. Albert Chevalier, but the speedy disestablishment of the bicycle as a fashionable means of locomotion was correctly foretold in one of the latest pictures from the pen of Du Maurier. Here one of a group of fair bicyclists in the Park expresses her ardent desire for the passing of a tyranny which she hated and only obeyed because it was the fashion. Motoring was another matter, because it was expensive and luxurious, and _Punch_, philosophizing in 1904 on the probable results of a mode of motion which combined speed of transit with the immobility of the passenger, predicted the advent of an obese and voracious "motorocracy" with Gargantuan appetites and mediæval tastes. In a "Ballade of Modern Conversation" which appeared in 1905, the three outstanding topics are Bridge, motors and ailments, and about this time _Punch_ printed a picture of a gentleman who, when asked what was his favourite recreation, replied, "Indigestion."

The influence and example of American millionaires is a frequent theme of satire. In 1904 _Punch_ had attacked their acquisitiveness in a burlesque account of the contemplated "bodily removal of certain European landscapes." In 1905 he dealt faithfully with a famous "freak" dinner at the Savoy Hotel, costing £600 a head, when the guests were entertained in a huge gondola and the courtyard was flooded to represent a Venetian lagoon. The American "enfant terrible" in 1907, frankly discussing her relations with her parents, supplies an interesting comment on the complexities of divorce, as described a few years earlier by the late Mr. Henry James in _What Maisie Knew_. The unemployment and inefficiency of the Upper Classes were admirably satirized in a set of Neo-Chaucerian verses, suggested by a society chronicler who had anticipated a March of the Upper Class unemployed to the East End. In 1906 the Pageant craze assumed formidable dimensions, and the ubiquitous activities of Mr. Louis Napoleon Parker as Pageant-master are duly if disrespectfully acknowledged. _Punch_ had never been enthusiastic about "dressing up"; it was, in his view, foreign to the temper of the British and essentially one of the things which they managed better abroad. Moreover, he regarded this preoccupation with the past as an evasion of our responsibilities to the future. This view is pointedly expressed in the cartoon "Living on Reputation" in 1908, where Britannia (among the Pageants) remarks: "Quite right of them to show pride in my past; but what worries me is that nobody seems to take any interest in my future." "Smart" people were furiously interested in the things of the present, and for the most part in the things that did not matter. From 1906 right up to the war no feature of the feverish pleasure-hunt indulged in by the idle rich escaped the vigilant eye of "Blanche," whose "Letters," when all allowance is made for a spice of exaggeration and for the wit which the author perhaps too generously ascribes to her puppets, remain a substantially faithful picture of the audacious frivolity, the inanity, the rowdiness and the extravagance of England _de luxe_, unashamed of its folly, yet, at its worst, never inhuman or even arrogant. I don't think that any of "Blanche's" set would have quitted a shooting party because he was asked to drink champagne out of a claret glass, as in the picture of the young super-snob in 1908.

[Sidenote: _Paint and "Pekies"_]

Horse-play as an integral part of the modern idea of pleasure is satirized in 1910 in a series of suggestions for new "Side-shows" at Exhibitions, which should combine the maximum amount of motion, discomfort, and even danger to life and limb. The recrudescence of "beauty doctors" is noted by "Blanche" in the same year, and the increasing use of paint, not to repair the ravages of age, but to lend additional lustre to the bloom of youth, is faithfully recorded by _Punch's_ artists in the decade before the war. Bridge--to which _Punch_ had paid a negative homage on the ground that it kept the drawing-room ballad-monger and the parlour-tricksters at bay--had ousted whist, and in 1913 was threatened by "Coon-Can." On the cult of the "Peky-Peky" _Punch_ spoke with two voices, for while he deprecated the infatuation of their owners, he was fully alive to the charm, the intelligence, and the courage of these picturesque little Orientals.

Extravagance invariably leads to reaction; but in this period the reactions were not always sincere--at least not among the "Smart Set." They intermittently played at being serious, but the motive generally savoured of materialism: they were more concerned with conserving their bodies than with saving their souls. It was an age of new and strange Diets and Cures and food-fads. _Punch's_ "Health Seeker's _Vade Mecum_" in 1893 reflects modern pessimism and uncertainty. In 1904, in "Our Doctors," he recalls Mr. Gladstone's tribute to Sir Andrew Clark, but his appreciation and eulogy of medical worthies was a good deal discounted by his linking the names of Jenner and Gull with those of Morell Mackenzie and Robson Roose. Neurotics were now to be found in unexpected quarters. In 1899 Phil May has a picture of an admiral kept awake all night by a butterfly that went flopping about his room.

The movement for learning "First Aid" had already become fashionable--and to that extent futile--and in 1901, in "Courtship _à la_ Galton," _Punch_ mildly satirizes the creed of Eugenics, as illustrated by the union of two Galtonites, despising sentiment, but possessing diplomas of matrimonial fitness. Romance and Hygiene seldom go hand-in-hand. The "Simple Life" was another favourite cult and catchword; but its votaries were for the most part "affecting to seem unaffected."

[Sidenote: _Smart Simplicity_]

American visitors flooded London for the Coronation of 1902, and _Punch_ makes good play with a statement in a weekly review that "the old-world simplicity of rural life is unique and has an unfailing charm for our Transatlantic visitors." This was and is true of the best of them, but _Punch_ turned the announcement to legitimate ridicule in "Arcady, Ltd.," with its "faked" rusticity, carefully rehearsed and organized to cater for the taste of wealthy explorers. The cry of "Back to the Land" is illustrated in the futile efforts of fashionables pretending to assist in the harvest field: it is ironically commended in 1906 to exhausted _débutantes_ as the best form of cure for the fatigues of the London season. The "Simple Life," as practised by well-to-do dyspeptics and the unindustrious rich, was in his view a complete fraud, for they were really preoccupied with the material side of existence. Hence the adoption of weird unknown foods and clothing. In 1910 "Blanche" gives us to understand that the craze for abstinence had even invaded the "Smart Set":--

A good many people are going in for the No-food cult, the Dick Flummerys among others. Indeed, dinners and suppers seem to be by way of becoming extinct functions. Dick says that till you've been without food for a week you don't know what you're really capable of. I don't think that would be a very reassuring thing to hear from anyone looking as wild and haggard as Dick does now, if one happened to be _tête-à-tête_ with, him and some knives! Dotty tells me that, with their tiny house and small means, they find entertaining much easier now they belong to the No-food set. Their little rooms will hold _twice_ as many no-fooders as ordinary people, she says, and then there's no expense of feeding 'em. No, indeed. At the Flummerys', when your partner asks, "What shall I get you?" he merely adds, "_Hot_ or _cold_ water?"

In general, however, these rigours were confined to intellectual or pseudo-intellectual coteries, of which a good representative is to be found in the hatless and sandalled youth depicted in May, 1912--not unnaturally classed as a tramp by the old Highland shepherd--who evidently belongs to the type ingeniously described as that of the "Herbaceous Boarder." In 1913, in "a chronicle of Cures, with the Biography of a Survivor," _Punch_ briefly traces the progress of fads in food, drink and hygiene in the past half-century. He begins with light sherry, goes on with Gladstone claret, deviates into the water cure, takes to whisky and soda, then to cocoa nibs, and winds up with paraffin. Simultaneously and successively the survivor abandons "prime cuts" for vegetarianism; relapses to carnivorous habits under the auspices of Salisbury (the apostle of half-cooked beef and hot-water) and Fletcher (who found salvation in chewing); then took to Plasmon with Eustace Miles, lactobacilline in accordance with the prescription of Metchnikoff, and finally developed into a full-blown disciple of osteopathy. The list is not by any means complete, for no mention is made of Dr. Haig or of China tea, or the uncooked vegetable cure. But it will serve as a rough survey of the romance and reality of modern dietetics.

When I said that smart people were more concerned with their bodies than their souls, this must not be taken to imply a complete disregard for the things of the spirit. We hear little in _Punch_ of Spiritualism, but a certain amount about occultism. "Auras" and their colours and meanings were attracting attention in 1903, and in 1906 the "mascot" craze had reached such a pitch that _Punch_ was moved to intervene. If, he contends, we _must_ have mascots, they had better be duly examined and licensed. The "Smart Set," again, always anxious to advertise their worship of pleasure, were not immune from the denunciations of popular preachers. The fiery fulminations of Father Bernard Vaughan did not escape _Punch's_ amused notice. In 1907 the results of this crusade are foreshadowed in a series of pictures in which the "Smart Set" are exhibited as converts to decorum, simplicity and sanity. They have taken to serious pursuits--part-singing and photography. They frequent cheap restaurants and, as motorists, develop an unfamiliar consideration for the foot passenger. The irony and scepticism underlying these forecasts is further shown in the burlesque "Wise Words on Wedlock" by "Father Vaughan Tupper," in the following year--a string of extracts from his "great sermon," in which worldly wisdom is mixed with sonorous platitudes.

[Sidenote: _Caste and "The Social Fetish"_]

While complaints of the decline of manners are constant, evidences frequently recur of the worship of "good form" and the efforts made to keep it up. In 1900 _Punch_ pillories an advertisement which offered coaching to "strangers, colonials, Americans and foreigners on matters of high English etiquette and fashion"; but in the same year it requires a certain amount of reading between the lines to dissociate _Punch_ from the sentiments expressed in the verses on Caste:--

"Kind hearts are more than coronets," I know this must of course be true; It is the same old sun that sets On high and low, that rises too. What matters it for whom you buy The ring of diamonds and pearls, A maid whose birth is none too high, Or daughter of a hundred earls?

If you're content that she should be-- Well, not exactly as you are, The trifling difference in degree May only very seldom jar. Intolerance we should suppress, An attribute of fools and churls, Yet I prefer, I must confess, The daughter of a hundred earls.

It may, perhaps, be fair to regard this as a piece of impersonation--a point of view--rather than an editorial pronouncement. Anyhow, _Punch_ was perfectly sound in his ridicule of the aristocratic pseudo-Socialist who wished to have it both ways, and of the gullibility or snobbery of reporters who ministered to her vanity. Suburban pretensions to smartness are also chaffed in the picture of the mother rebuking her daughter for relapsing to "Pa" and "Ma" instead of calling her parents "Pater" and "Mater."

What _Punch_ could not stand, and to his credit never had stood, was the inverted snobbery of those who professed to despise the privileges and the shibboleths of rank, while all the time they took the utmost pains to let you know that they belonged to the class which claimed those privileges and that they were incapable of violating its shibboleths. This old game, revived with considerable skill by Lady Grove in her treatise on The Social Fetish, in which great stress is laid on the test of pronunciation, was mercilessly exposed in its true colours by _Punch_ in 1907. The article is an extremely workmanlike, polite, but damaging criticism of an odious but ancient habit--that of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Another old custom--the mutual abuse in public of politicians who were bosom friends in private--was revived with such gusto in these years as to elicit _Punch's_ comment of "Pals before Party."

Though manners were in a state of flux, etiquette still survived. The orthodox horror felt by the smart man about town at anyone of his own class carrying a parcel in the streets was, if _Punch_ is to be believed, still prevalent in 1908; the characteristic British avoidance of sentiment is illustrated a year later in the salutation, "Hallo! old man. How are you, and how are your people, and all that sort of silly rot?" Characteristic, again, of British understatement is the reply of a V.C. to the question, "Say, how did you get that el'gant little cross?" put to him by a fair American: "Oh, I dunno. Pullin' some silly rotter out of a hole." The change that had come over the relations between Society and professional actors, musicians and authors is shown in the picture of the long-haired genius who remarks, "And is this the first time you've met me, Duchess?" The Duchess is reduced to speechlessness, and takes refuge in a petrifying stare. That was in 1908, and the picture forms a good pendant to the affable Duchess of Du Maurier, who in a similar position had remarked: "You must really get someone to introduce you to me." Writing on the necessary attributes of a Lion of the Season in 1899, _Punch_ placed an interesting personality first: literary lions were no longer popular, as most people now wrote books. Pursuing the inquiry farther, he gives special preference to travellers and athletes:--

[Sidenote: _Social Lions_]

_Q._ Then what is the best mode of becoming a Lion?

_A._ By discovering a new continent or suffering imprisonment amongst cannibals for five or six years.

_Q._ And what is the reward of such a time of misery?

_A._ A fortnight's _fêting_ in Belgravia and Mayfair.

_Q._ Is this sufficient?

_A._ More than enough. The fawning of Society begins to pall after a week's experience of its cloying sweetness.

_Q._ Is there any celebrity other than literary or exploratory capable of securing the attention of Mrs. Leo Hunter and her colleagues?

_A._ Prowess in the cricket field is a recognized path to social success.

_Q._ And has not an amateur cricketer an advantage over other competitors for fashionable fame?

_A._ Yes; he can claim his days for matches and his nights for rest.

_Q._ From the tone of your last answer it would seem that you do not consider the lot of a Society Lion a happy one?

_A._ You are right; but the _fêted_ one has the satisfaction of knowing that the fevered notoriety of a brief season is usually followed by the restful obscurity of a long lifetime.

It is enough, by way of explanation, to add that when _Punch_ wrote, the names of Mr. Walter Savage Landor and M. de Rougemont were on every lip. Fifteen years later, actors, boxers and, above all, dancers, male and female, were the favourite quarry of social lion-hunters. There was nothing very new about this tendency: it was as old as ancient Athens and had its roots in the everlasting human love of variety, in the desire at all costs to escape from dullness and routine. In 1909 a girl at Bristol who attempted to commit suicide received eighteen offers of marriage, and the _Daily Chronicle_ reported that Mme. Steinheil, on the mere suspicion of having murdered her husband, was receiving similar proposals every day. This was at a time when, according to the same journal, there were thousands of young women in Bristol with certificates of competency as teachers, wives, and scholars, many of whom could not find husbands. _Punch_ enlarges on this theme with philosophical irony. Security and respectability were apt to be dreary and monotonous, and it must at least be lively to be married to a poisoner.

Turning back to the minor etiquette of Mode, we note that by 1903 evening dress was no longer insisted on in the more expensive seats at the theatres, though in 1906 the _Lancet_ was alleged to have recommended evening dress as indicative of "tone" and conducive to hygiene. _Punch_ had long before declaimed against the tyranny of paying "calls." In 1907 he alludes to the practice as obsolete, and suggests that ladies, instead of having "At Home" days, should be out on certain days, so as to give their friends a safe opportunity for leaving cards.

_Punch_ had for many years ceased from criticizing the manners of medical students, which occupied so much of his attention fifty years earlier; the most serious of his comments on professional manners were excited by "ragging" amongst officers in the Army. The protest, which he printed in 1896, purported to come from the ranks, and is based on the assumption that leadership was impaired when officers forgot to be gentlemen. At the Universities, _Punch_ was evidently concerned by the multiplication of prigs. Early in the new century Balliol was, as usual, singled out as the principal hot-bed for the propagation of this type, but _Punch_ paid that college a remarkable if reluctant tribute. He enumerated all the different species of undergraduates to be found there; keen laborious Scots, Ruskinite road-builders, and converts to Buddhist, Gnostic and Agnostic theories; but admitted that if Balliol contained all the cranks, it also contained the coming men--the men who would count. That curious Balliol product which emerged about this time, the "intellectual 'blood,'" seems to have escaped _Punch's_ notice. At the end of the last century he notes the invasion of schools by the bicycle, and speculates fantastically on its results. As a matter of fact, bikes were afterwards largely proscribed in public and private schools, and the ban has not even yet been wholly removed.

[Sidenote: _An Appeal to Santa Claus_]

Fashion has many phases; and children's Christmas presents reflect the popular tastes of the moment. In 1908 _Punch_ printed the appeal of a little girl to Santa Claus to help her to avoid getting as many as possible of the same presents. This last Christmas it had been "perfectly absurd"--an endless iteration of _Peter Pan_ story books, Golliwogs and copies of _Alice in Wonderland_, illustrated by Rackham and other artists. The sacrilegious attempt to supersede Tenniel's classical designs naturally met with no sympathy from _Punch_, and, what is more to the point, did not prove a success.

Not a few of _Punch's_ old social butts and pet aversions disappear at the end of the century--including the old "'Arry." One of 'Arry's last efforts was to rejoice over the defeat of women at Oxford, and another was to describe how he was teaching his "best girl" how to pedal. The "Twelve Labours of 'Arry," as depicted by Phil May in the Almanack for 1896, in which he is seen on the rink, the river, hunting, shooting, driving tandem, boxing, playing cricket, golfing, bicycling, etc., introduce a new type indistinguishable from the "new rich" in dress and deportment. The new type of tourist depicted in 1912 lacks the exuberance of the old, and his _nil admirari_ attitude is attributed to the "educative" influence of the "pictures."

FASHION IN DRESS

From the very earliest times the evolution of dress has been governed by two contending principles--Protection and Decoration; and the student of "primitive culture" will find these principles asserting themselves even in our own highly sophisticated times. One need not be an expert in psycho-analysis to trace in modern fashions the survival of the primitive instinct of decoration or the conflict between the irrational and the rational selves which is writ large in the annals of Mode. Profoundly conscious of my own incompetence to deal adequately with this fascinating and momentous subject, I nevertheless venture to submit that Laxity is the outstanding feature or "note" of the period now under review. It is an ambiguous term, but none the less suitable on that account, for laxity in its original sense implies a looseness which conduces to comfort, while, in its later and ethical use, it stands for irregularity, extravagance and eccentricity. Both meanings are richly exemplified in the fashions which prevailed in the years 1892-1914; but it must be admitted that, on the score of a wise laxity, man was more "rational" than woman in endeavouring to reconcile the claims of comfort and adornment. Women's dress is far more various, interesting, amusing and even exciting, but on the principle that one should keep one's cake for the end, I prefer to begin with the mere bread-and-butter of male costume. _Punch_, as my readers may remember, had in his earlier days inveighed against the rigidity and discomfort of men's dress, the tyranny of the top-hat and the strangulation of tight-fitting collars. In middle age, we find him more of a stickler for propriety of costume. Thus in 1893 he describes, with affected amazement, the strange garb adopted by fashionable young men for their morning exercise in the Park between nine and eleven--a straw hat worn on the back of the head, an unbuttoned coat, no waistcoat and flannel trousers. Simultaneously one of his artists depicts the strange and casual attire of M.P.s in the House of Commons in August--tweeds and knickerbockers, sombreros, caps, and even blazers. Yet, with an inconsistency which did credit to his humane instincts, _Punch_, at the close of the same year, assails the high stiff collar worn by young men of fashion and refrains, in 1894, from any serious comment on an article in the _Scotsman_ on the laxity of costume characteristic of modern Oxford. "Straw hats and brown boots appear to abound everywhere," while "bowlers" were gradually discarded. When the centenary of the top-hat arrived in 1897, _Punch_ suggested that its abolition would be a suitable way of celebrating the year of Jubilee. But the "top-hat" had its defenders as well as detractors, and the "pros" and "cons" of the correspondence in _The Times_ are admirably summed up in _Punch's_ article:--

It would be advisable, or inadvisable, as the case may be, to abolish It in the Jubilee Year.

Because all the scarecrows in the country are already fitted.

Because It is the hall-mark of human dignity, and, combined with a smile, is sufficient by Itself, without any other costume, to stamp the wearer as one of Nature's Noblemen, whether he be a Missing Link or a King of the Cannibal Islands.

Because It is indispensable, as part of the stock-in-trade of conjurers, for the production of live rabbits, pots of flowers, interminable knotted handkerchiefs, and other useful and necessary articles.

Because no Harrow boy is happy till he gets It.

Because It is a decided protection in a street fight, or when you fall out hunting or coming home late from the Club.

Because It only needs to be carefully sat on to make an excellent and noiseless substitute for the concertina.

Because no self-respecting Guy, Bridegroom, or 'Bus-driver is ever seen without one.

Because It is a very effective counterpart of the Matinée hat at Lord's, and similar gatherings.

Because, to be at all in the fashion, and to look decently dressed, you require a fresh one every day. This is good for the trade.

Because It stimulates the manufacture of umbrellas, eye-glasses, hansom-cabs, frock-coats, hair-restorers, and forcible language.

Because no one has yet ventured to wear It on the all-prevalent bicycle.

Because no statue has ever had the face to sport It, with very few deplorable exceptions.

Because It is really the most becoming headgear hitherto devised.

Because It is really the most unbecoming headgear hitherto devised.

Because, after a hundred years, it is time we had a change.

Because, when a thing has been running for a century, it is a pity to abolish It.

Because, if It is abolished, the custom of raising It to ladies will perish as well, and there will follow the Extinction of Manners for Men, the Decadence of Church Parade, the General Cutting of Acquaintances, the re-introduction of Thumb-biting, Nose-pulling, Duelling, and Civil War, the disappearance of Great Britain as a first-class Power, the establishment of a Reign of Terror, and much inconvenience.

Because I have recently purchased an Extra Special Loyal and Up-to-Date Jubilee Tile, which I hope to wave, throw up, and generally smash and sacrifice on the Great Occasion.

But that is not another story.

[Sidenote: _Fashions in Hats_]

_Punch_ had already referred to Its disuse on the cricket field. The mention of statues in top-hats is not an effort of imagination: Dr. Grigor, to whom Nairn owes so much of its popularity as a health resort, is thus attired in the stone effigy of him which stands in the centre of the town. The tall hat, though now seldom seen except at weddings and funerals, has survived its centenary; but new fashions in headgear date from 1897, when _Punch's_ "Stifled Stockbroker" rejoices, when the thermometer stood at ninety in the shade, in the relief afforded by his Panama and Pyjamas.

The appearance of the Homburg Hat is chronicled in 1900, but not in a complimentary manner. "Bertie's new hat," according to a satirical young lady, "looks as though somebody had begun excavating to find his brains, and had given it up in despair." There was another heat wave this year, and _Punch_ notices that straw hats were worn at Sandown, while the horses in Paris were "wearing straw bonnets to protect them from the heat," a practice adopted in subsequent years in London. The "boom" in sandals in 1901 belongs more to Hygiene than to Fashion, but, if _Punch_ is to be believed, it was not confined to health cranks and children; and in the Sapphic stanza of Canning's "Needy Knife-grinder" he gives voice to the indignant protest of the London shoeblack. Another sartorial centenary, that of trousers, fell in the year 1902, but _Punch's_ appeal to the poets to celebrate it in song remained unanswered. Meanwhile a young peer was credited by a society journal with the intention of forming a League in order to differentiate men's evening dress from that of a waiter, but _Punch_ failed to see in the venture any sign of _noblesse oblige_. By 1902 the Panama Hat had been vulgarized by 'Appy 'Arry; and a year later _Punch_ speaks of "the late Panamania." It had gone out of fashion in New York, being superseded by the ordinary stiff straw hat, and _Punch_ anticipated that the "slump" would also cross the Atlantic.

[Sidenote: _Novelties v. Revivals_]

There is one grand distinction between men and women in regard to dress. Women (or those who dictate their fashions) are divided between novelties and revivals, and the revivals are generally of the most outrageous absurdities. It is otherwise with the simple male. He deals far less in revivals, and when he hits upon a good novelty he generally sticks to it. In this category I would unhesitatingly include the brown boot, to which _Punch_ devoted the following instructive article, modelled on the style of the _Daily Mail_, in the year 1903:--

THE CULT OF THE BROWN BOOT

No serious student of dermatology can have avoided noticing the enormous increase in the use of brown boots in the last quarter of a century. In 1879 a clubman would no more have thought of walking down Pall Mall in brown boots than of flying. But now even archdeacons frequent the Athenæum Club in that ubiquitous footwear.

Necessity is probably the mother of invention, as Lord Avebury has pointedly remarked, and the introduction of the brown boot is due, according to a well-known Bond Street maker, to the exigencies of a retired General, who, finding it difficult to get his boots adequately blacked at his chambers, suggested, as a solution of his embarrassment, that it might be possible to devise a form of boot in which blacking could be entirely dispensed with. The example at once provoked imitation, and now it is estimated by Dr. Nicholson Roberts in the _Bootman_ that in London alone 1,250,000 pairs of tawny-coloured footgear are sold in the year.

Boots, it may not be generally known, are made from the hides of various animals, terrestrial and marine. The skin is removed after the animal has been slaughtered, not before, and is then subjected to a variety of preliminary processes of a mollifying character, of which the most important is that of tanning. Tan, or tannin, as it is more correctly called, is a substance of a friable texture and a highly pronounced but hygienic odour. It is principally found in Indian tea, whence it is extracted by machinery especially designed for the purpose, and stored in tanyards. It is also occasionally used to deaden the sound of traffic and provide equestrians with a substratum calculated to minimize the wear and tear of their horses' hoofs. Dogs of certain breeds are also technically described as being "black and tan."

The process of bootmaking, of which the headquarters is at Northampton, will be familiar to all who have attended the performances of Wagner's opera _Die Meistersinger_. It involves the use of powerful cutting instruments, cobbler's wax, needles, thread, and other implements, and the principal terms in its somewhat extensive terminology are vamp, welt, upper leathers, and nether sole. Bootmakers, like tailors, commonly sit cross-legged at their work, and hold pronounced political views; hence the term freebooter. But it has been noted that the makers of brown boots incline to Liberal Unionism. Their patron saint is Giordano Bruno, and in theology they affect latitudinarianism.

The term "brown boots," it should also be noted, is a misnomer, as it includes shades of yellow, orange, and russet. Army men affect the latter, while stockbrokers and solicitors prefer the former.

In conclusion it may be worth while to record certain established rules, the disregard of which may have untoward consequences. Black laces do not harmonize well with brown boots, nor is it _de rigueur_ to wear them with a frock-coat, or when in evening or court dress.

The information here imparted must be accepted with certain reserves, and the same remark holds good of _Punch's_ picture of Church Parade in 1906, where hatless "nuts" smoking pipes, wearing Panama hats, knickerbockers and even dressing-gowns, are shown mingling with more correctly attired pedestrians. But, allowing for exaggeration, the picture reflects a real tendency--towards greater comfort and less convention in dress. The "nut" depicted in 1907 wears a coat with a pronounced waist, and highly coloured hose, but in 1910 _Punch_ descants lyrically on the announcement, made by the _Daily Express_, that "the reign of the passionate sock is over," though a man might "still let himself go in handkerchiefs." The poet ironically bewails the fiat which dooms our socks henceforth to silence:--

There is a power, my friends, That disciplines our loud-hued nether ends.

Still, he consoles himself with the reflection that he still can wear his heart "up his sleeve," thus recalling the new definition of a gentleman given some years earlier in suburban circles as one who wore his handkerchief up his cuff.

[Sidenote: _Passionate Socks and Knickerbockers_]

Owing to the increasing skimpiness of skirts and the cult of slimness, the approximation of male and female attire reached a point in 1911 which suggested to one of _Punch's_ artists a new Sex Question puzzle. But while the female "nut" was becoming indistinguishable from the male, the male golfer had come to affect a bagginess of knickerbockers recalling the exuberance of the female cyclist of two decades earlier, and, as _Punch_ showed, exceedingly ill-suited for progress in a high wind.

Throughout this period whiskers remained in disfavour with all men of fashion, though they lingered on among the elderly and the middle-aged. Pianists, artists and literary geniuses still wore their hair long. The value of a beard in correcting an imperfect profile was admirably illustrated in Du Maurier's picture of the complacent Admiral in 1894, and naval officers, then and now, availed themselves of a privilege denied to the other Service, without any loss of trimness and smartness of appearance. The "toothbrush" moustache dates back to pre-War days, and its popularity was not impaired when early in 1914 the General commanding the Prussian Guards Corps forbade its adoption as "not consonant with the German national character." Waxed ends to the moustache were now only worn by policemen, taxi-drivers and Labour leaders. But the outstanding feature of male _coiffure_ during the latter part of this period was the adoption of the practice of liberally oiling or pomading the hair and brushing it right back over the head without any parting. Whence the practice came I do not know, but it became almost universal amongst "nuts," undergraduates and the senior boys at our public schools. _Punch_ did not admire the fashion, but it must have been a gold mine to all dealers in bear's grease, brilliantine, Macassar's "incomparable oil," and all manner of unguents simple or synthetic.

[Sidenote: _Revival of Crinoline Threatened_]

_Punch's_ chronicle of feminine fashion opens in 1893 with the menace of a return of the crinoline, the bare mention of which was enough to upset his equanimity, for his seven years' war against it had by his own admission been more or less of a failure:--

CRINOLINE

Rumour whispers, so we glean From the papers, there have been Thoughts of bringing on the scene This mad, monstrous, metal screen, Hiding woman's graceful mien. Better Jewish gaberdine Than, thus swelled out, satin's sheen! Vilest garment ever seen! Form unknown in things terrene; Even monsters pliocene Were not so ill-shaped, I ween. Women wearing this machine, Were they fat or were they lean-- Small as Wordsworth's celandine, Large as sail that's called lateen-- Simply swept the pavement clean: Hapless man was crushed between Flat as any tinned sardine. Thing to rouse a Bishop's spleen, Make a Canon or a Dean Speak in language not serene. We must all be very green, And our senses not too keen, If we can't say what we mean, Write in paper, magazine, Send petitions to the Queen, Get the House to intervene. Paris fashion's transmarine-- Let us stop by quarantine Catastrophic Crinoline!

Du Maurier, in a picture which serves as a pendant to one which appeared in November, 1857, contrasts the Misses Roundabout's inflated circumference with the graceful lines of the normal skirt, but the warning was happily unnecessary and the threatened danger never materialized. Another revival, that of the "Coal-scuttle" bonnet, was not nearly so formidable, but it enabled _Punch_ to indulge in a characteristic gibe at the headgear of the "loud Salvation lasses." The mania for expansion had ascended, and the fashion of large puffed sleeves in the same year prompted the criticism of the little girl: "Oh, Mummy, have you been vaccinated on _both_ arms?" For many years huge hats continued to offend _Punch's_ sense of proportion. In 1893 he contrasts the small flat sailor-hat worn at the seaside with the monstrosities in vogue in London, and in 1894 I note the first of his many tirades against the "Matinée Hat." In the 'fifties _Punch_ had derided "Bloomerism"; now he was momentarily converted to the introduction of "rational" dress for women cyclists. Thus in 1894 he defended the innovation with pen and pencil against the protests of Mrs. Grundy, that "great Goose Autocrat, the Palladium of Propriety, the Ægis of social morality," and attacked her inconsistency in banning knickerbockers while she acquiesced in audacious _décolletage_. The lady in knickerbockers portrayed in 1895 is a distinctly attractive figure though she owns that she had adopted them not to ride a bicycle, but because she had got a sewing machine.

[Sidenote: _Matinée Hats and Russian Blouses_]

Hats and balloon sleeves occupy a good deal of notice in 1895 and 1896. In an ingenious parody of Keats's "_La Belle Dame sans Merci_," _Punch_ denounces the use of "mixed plumes" in women's hats, and the poet is left

alone and sadly loitering While the sedge shakes not with the glancing plumes And no birds sing.

The nuisance of the matinée hat had roused the ire of the male playgoer. _Punch_ compared it to the Eiffel Tower and to a Tower of Babel on top of a garden bed. The obstruction in Parliament was nothing to it; and on reading that large theatre hats had been prohibited in Ohio, he was ready to admit that here, at any rate, we might Americanize our modes to good purpose. Floral decorations had reached such a pitch of extravagance as to warrant the remark of the loafer to a lady wearing a huge beflowered hat: "Want a _gardener_, Miss?" Signs of sanity, however, were recognized in the announcement that Parisian _couturières_ had issued a fiat against wasp waists, and were going to take the Venus of Milo henceforth as their model, though _Punch_ was rather sceptical of the results of this bold move, which in his view would cause consternation in the ranks of the fashion-plate designers. The Venus of Milo, by the way, has in 1922 been "turned down" by a fashionable Chicago lady as utterly early Victorian.

Passing over the introduction of the "bolero" coat and the brief revival of the early Victorian bonnet in 1897, we come in 1898 to one of the first instances of the Russian invasion--the appearance of the Russian blouse. _Punch_ describes it as the same back and front, with a kind of ruff below the waist which sticks out stiffly all round. It required four times as much stuff as was necessary, but provided room to stow away a fair-sized sewing machine without detection. The "Medici Collar," another novelty, or revival, of the year, is caricatured in a picture which gives the impression of a "bearded lady"; while the enormously lofty trimmings of hats are reported (on the authority of the _Daily Telegraph_) to have obliged carriage-makers to lower the seats of many closed vehicles. Knickerbockers had already gone out of fashion, even for bicycling, and _Punch_ unchivalrously compares them with the baggy nether-wear of Dutchmen.

Skirts were still worn tight but very long, so long that the shade of Queen Bess is invoked to express her wonder how the modern woman could walk at all, and _Punch_ suggests a new occupation for the London street boys as trainbearers. In 1899 the new colour was "_rouge automobile_," described as _très-chic_ or _teuf-teuf_--the Parisian argot for the noisy motor of the hour.

The _Hairdresser_ announced that "this year hair is to be worn green," but the statement appears to have been premature. _Punch_ again fulminates against the persistent Plumage Scandal--this time in a picture of the "Extinction of Species," typified by a ferocious fashion-plate lady with a plumed hat surrounded by plucked egrets. _A propos_ of headgear, it may be added that in the Coronation year of 1902 _Punch_ issued a Proclamation to all women not to wear large hats at the ceremony and so cause annoyance, vexation, desperation and profanity to sightseers. His Schedule comprises Gainsboroughs, Bergères, Tricornes, Plateaux, Lady Blessington, Rustic, Picture and Matinée hats--a tolerably comprehensive list.

From 1903 onwards large bag-shaped muffs came prominently into view, and _Punch_ ungallantly emphasizes their value as a means of hiding large hands. The outstanding feature of this and the next year is the influence of motoring on dress. Here, according to _Punch_, decoration was entirely sacrificed to comfort: the motorist swathed in furs is compared to the bear, the mountain goat, the chimpanzee and the Skye terrier. In 1904 he notes the universal adoption of the motor-cap, even by those who never owned or rode in a motor-car. For the rest, the "clinging style" of dress, with long skirts and long hanging sleeves, was generally in vogue. Mrs. Roundabout fears that it would make her look "so dreadfully emaciated," but rotundity of figure had ceased to be the rule even with the middle-aged. Fashionable women, apart from their motor costumes, continued to display their wonderful disregard for the rigours of the climate, a trait which is faithfully dealt with in _Punch's_ verses on the "Pneumonia Blouse."

[Sidenote: _Revival of the Directoire Style_]

By 1904 skirts were beginning to be appreciably shortened, but, as a set-off, fashionable women indemnified themselves by the length and expansiveness of their sleeves:--

Her sleeves are made in open bags Like trousers in the Navy; No more she sweeps the streets, but drags Her sleeves across the gravy.

Elaborate bathing dresses, exhibiting a gradual tendency to reduce the amount of material, are henceforth a frequent subject of illustration. In 1905 _Punch's_ fair bathers remain on the shore and never enter the water as it would absolutely spoil their dresses. We hear less of the matinée hat, but the enormous _coiffures_ depicted in 1907 proved hardly less objectionable to those who sat behind them; and as for hats, the more grotesque and absurd they were the stronger was their appeal. The new hats in 1907, with the brim large at the back, have a sort of sou'-wester effect; and the towering monstrosities depicted at the close of the year make "busbys" look small: Mars is eclipsed by Venus. In 1908 _Punch_ chronicles the advent of the latest importation from France, the revived "Directoire" costume as worn at Longchamps:--

Long languid lines unbroken by a frill, Superfluous festoons reduced to nil, A figure like a seal reared up on end And poking forward with a studied bend;

A shortish neck imprisoned in a ruff, Skin-fitting sleeves that show a stint of stuff, A waist promoted halfway up the back, And not a shred that's comfortably slack;

A multitude of buttons, row on row, Not there for business--merely made for show; A skirt whose meagre gores necessitate The waddle of a Chinese lady's gait;

A "busby" toque extinguishing the hair, As if a giant hand had crushed it there-- Behold the latest mode! and write beneath, "A winter blossom bursting from its 'sheath.'"

[Sidenote: _Fashion Plate Heroines_]

Miss Maud Allan had not yet been ousted from her eminence by the Russian Ballet and by real dancing, and the repercussion of the cult of the "all-but-altogether" on fashionable costume is well satirized by _Punch_ in this year. By reducing materials to an irreducible minimum this new mania, as _Punch_ logically argues, was likely to be ruinous to trade as well as to railway porters and carriers, since large trunks were no longer necessary and a whole wardrobe could be carried in a handbag or suitcase. Another view of the situation is expressed in the comment of the wife of the frugal Scot who had protested against the idea of her taking to this "awfu' gear": "Hoots, mon! Dinna ye see it's just made wi' aboot hauf the material." Conflicting tendencies can always be simultaneously illustrated in the vagaries of feminine fashion, for along with this alarming "skimpiness" went the cult of huge fur head-dresses and muffs with animals' muzzles thereon. In the lines quoted above the arrival of the "hobble" or "harem" skirt is foreshadowed. In 1910 this strange Oriental monstrosity is ridiculed in the picture of the girl hopping to catch her train, as running was out of the question, and again in the comment of the navvy who feels that _he_ is at last in the fashion with his knee-straps.

[Sidenote: _The Perversities of Mode_]

The progress of fashion in the decade 1901-1911 is well illustrated in the parallel groups given in the latter year and showing the change from homely comfort to aggressive scantiness. Even better is the admirable representation--it is hardly a caricature--of the old and new types of fashion plate; the former insipid and simpering lay figures, the latter sinister modern Messalinas. Beyond an increasing tendency to extravagance and eccentricity and the general use of paint there is little to note in the remaining years of this period. The brief reign of the "pannier" skirt impelled _Punch_, under the heading of "Pockets at last," to indicate how use might here be combined with so-called ornament. The big-hat craze continued; the habit of poking the head forward--noted in the verses on the "Directoire" style--became so pronounced that "backbones were out of fashion" and an erect deportment made a woman "look all wrong"; while the inconsistent perversity of winter fashions is satirized in the lady with her bodice slit down to the diaphragm walking with a gentleman in a heavy overcoat and a thick muffler; and again in the "Spartan mother," swathed in furs, accompanied by her hatless, bare-legged children. Lastly, on the very eve of the War, _Punch_ gives a pictorial table of the relative importance of the persons engaged in the production of a revue. The costumier heads the list: at the other end are the composer and a group of authors.

LETTERS AND JOURNALISM

In letters, as in life, the passing of "the old order" was already apparent at the opening of the period under review in this volume. For in 1892 the author of the lines immortally associated with the phrase himself passed away, full of years and honours. _Punch_ had always been a Tennysonian, even in the days when the Laureate was still looked upon as an innovator. He had given Tennyson the hospitality of his columns in 1846 to retort on Bulwer Lytton, who had attacked "School-miss Alfred" in _The New Timon_. Finally, when Tennyson was laid to rest in the Abbey, _Punch_ saluted him without reserve as the chief glory of Victorian minstrelsy. The memorial verses are too long to quote, for _Punch_ in his elegiac moods was still inclined to prolixity, but they deal adequately with the spirit and influence, the consummate art, and the fervent patriotism of one who, after various fluctuations of prestige, is even now being re-discovered by Georgian critics.

The vacant laureateship was not filled till the close of 1895, when the appointment of Mr. Alfred Austin by Lord Salisbury unloosed a flood of ridicule. In the cartoon "Alfred the Little" _Punch_ depicted a diminutive figure, standing on tip-toe, as he hangs his lyre on the walls of the Temple of the Muses. The laurelled bust of Tennyson is shown in the interior, while outside the figures of Sir Edwin Arnold and Sir Lewis Morris are seen dissembling their disappointment. A few weeks later the inclusion of the new Laureate amongst the celebrities of Madame Tussaud's Exhibition prompted the malicious soliloquy of "Alfred amongst the Immortals."

[Sidenote: _Swinburne and the British Academy_]

Mr. Austin's unfortunate efforts at the time of the Boer war did not escape _Punch's_ derision, and when his name failed to appear in the New Year's Honour List of 1901, _Punch_, in a sardonic parody, modelled on the famous lyric in _Atalanta in Calydon_, represented Swinburne ironically asking:--

Austin--what of the Knight, Heavy with hope deferred? When will he solace our sight, Panoplied, plumed and spurred?

Swinburne and Meredith, two other "eminent Victorians," both died in 1909. Towards them _Punch's_ attitude had undergone considerable vicissitudes. Swinburne's erotic ballads had, as I have noticed in an earlier volume, excited _Punch's_ vehement disapproval. Yet he paid him the tribute of constant imitation and parody. When the proposal for establishing a British Academy was brought forward in 1897, _Punch_, who "crabbed" the scheme from the outset, was not content with printing imaginary letters from various aspirants--Hall Caine, Miss Marie Corelli, Grant Allen, William Watson, "Sarah Grand," and Clement Scott--but made good play with Swinburne's publicly avowed disgust at having his name associated with a "_colluvies litterarum_" and a "ridiculous monster." The exclusion of pure or creative literature from the British Academy, it may be added, prompted Sambourne's cartoon in 1902 in which a sour-visaged lady in academical costume is seen mounting the steps to the Academy, while three graceful figures--Drama, Romance, and Poetry--are locked out on the other side of the railings.

To return to Swinburne, it should be noted that probably more poems were written in the "Dolores" stanza throughout this period than in any other metre. And when he died in 1909, _Punch_, granting him full amnesty for his violence in controversy, his extravagance and lawlessness of spirit, forgot the rebel and only remembered the singer:--

What of the night? For now his day is done, And he, the herald of the red sunrise, Leaves us in shadow even as when the sun Sinks from the sombre skies.

High peer of Shelley, with the chosen few He shared the secrets of Apollo's lyre, Nor less from Dionysian altars drew The god's authentic fire.

Last of our land's great singers, dowered at birth With music's passion, swift and sweet and strong, Who taught in heavenly numbers, new to earth, The wizardry of song--

His spirit, fashioned after Freedom's mould, Impatient of the bonds that mortals bear, Achieves a franchise large and uncontrolled, Rapt through the void of air.

"What of the night?" For him no night can be; The night is ours, left songless and forlorn; Yet o'er the darkness, where he wanders free, Behold, a star is born!

George Meredith was an old friend of _Punch's_ from the days when he contributed to _Once a Week_, but he was not exempt from criticism on that account, as I have already shown. In 1894 he was again burlesqued in a parody of _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_, which ran through three numbers and was decorated with a portrait of the author as a bull in the china shop of syntax, grammar and form. _Punch_ in middle age only dimly appreciated Meredith's genius, and was disconcerted by his obscurity. _Punch_ erred in good company, for Tennyson is reported to have said that "reading Meredith is like wading through glue"; but sixteen years later the mists cleared away, and the verses of May, 1909, reveal insight as well as admiration:--

Masked in the beauty of the May-dawn's birth, Death came and kissed the brow still nobly fair, And hushed that heart of youth for which the earth Still kept its morning air.

Long time initiate in her lovely lore, Now is he one with Nature's woods and streams, Whereof, a Paradisal robe, he wore The visionary gleams.

* * * * *

When from his lips immortal music broke, It was the myriad voice of vale and hill; "The lark ascending" poured a song that woke An echo sweeter still.

Yet most we mourn his loss as one who gave The gift of laughter and the boon of tears, Interpreter of life, its gay and grave, Its human hopes and fears.

Seer of the soul of things, inspired to know Man's heart and woman's, over all he threw The spell of fancy's iridescent glow, The sheen of sunlit dew.

And of the fellowship of that great Age For whose return our eyes have waited long, None left so rich a twofold heritage Of high romance and song.

[Sidenote: "_Eminent Victorians_"]

Nor did _Punch_ allow the minor Victorian poets and authors to pass without homage, witness his tributes to Coventry Patmore, the "poet of Home and High Faith," and Jean Ingelow, whose _High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire_ is one of the finest of modern ballads, besides touching the high-water mark of her achievement. Professor Henry Morley, who died in 1894, elicited the well-earned tribute, "He made good letters cheap"; while the heroic industry and distinguished talent of Mrs. Oliphant--for _The Beleaguered City_ comes very near to greatness--are fittingly acknowledged in _Punch's "Vale!"_ in 1897. Sir Theodore Martin, as the joint author of the immortal _Bon Gaultier Ballads_, had a special claim to grateful remembrance from one who, like him, had known Astley's Circus in the palmy days of Widdecomb and Gomersal:--

Comrade of our "roaring 'forties," in your pages still From the midmost fount of laughter may we drink our fill; Watch you, Rabelais' disciple, sunshine in your eyes, Shooting with an aim unerring folly as it flies.

_Punch's_ loyalty to Thomas Hood was testified in a long and perfectly serious study, in three instalments, of Hood as a poet and satirist, which appeared in 1896. In 1899 he was moved to sing the praises of Marryat in the manner of Gilbert's _Captain Reece_; in 1900 he reiterated his fealty to Walter Scott in verse as unimpeachable in sentiment as it was undistinguished in execution. I think one may safely say that nothing so inadequate to the occasion has since appeared in the pages of _Punch_. But even when the literary quality of _Punch_ was at its lowest he was capable of welcome surprises, as for example in the really charming verses, in 1893, on Izaak Walton's Tercentenary--verses based on intimate and affectionate study of _The Compleat Angler_.

Another Tercentenary, that of Milton in 1908, prompted the cartoon in which Shakespeare congratulates his brother poet because every three hundred years they gave _him_ a banquet at the Mansion House, while they only talked about a National Theatre for himself. A Chicago professor had seized the occasion to observe that Milton, if alive then, would be in favour of every advanced movement except Woman's Suffrage, and _Punch_ turned the saying to good account in a mock-heroic sonnet after Wordsworth. One might well have thought that Charles Lamb's reputation was securely established by 1913, yet in that year a member of the London Education Committee suggested that the _Essays of Elia_ was hardly the kind of book to be put in the hands of young women students. _Punch_ dealt judicially with the offender in two letters--one from a prudish parent; the other from a humanist and lover of Lamb who sends a copy of the incriminated volume to his daughter, together with a report of the protest, and some comments on the survival of Podsnap:--

He lives, he lives though sorely spent; We shrug our shoulders, and lament The tyranny not overpast Of Philistine and agelast.

[Sidenote: _Shakespeare and Shaw_]

The last word has an academic ring, but _Punch_ was probably thinking of George Meredith's use of it in a letter to _The Times_ in 1877 when he spoke of those "whom Rabelais would have called agelasts or non-laughers."

A brilliant American essayist, Miss Agnes Repplier, has recently remarked that the Twentieth Century does not "lean to extravagant partialities" but rather to "disparagement, to searchlights, to that lavish candour which no man's reputation can sustain." In the pastime of hauling eminence down from its pinnacle she awards a pre-eminence to British critics. It cannot be said that _Punch_ has taken an active hand in this game. Even Shakespeare had not been exempt from this "lavish candour." Mr. Bernard Shaw, writing in the _Saturday Review_ in 1896, had said that "with the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare, when I measure my mind against his." Whether he really meant what he said is a question passing the wit of the plain person; but the utterance stung _Punch_ into a rejoinder in the form of an imaginary interview with "G. B. S.," in which the criticism is further developed and obliquely ridiculed. _Punch_ was equally sensitive where patronage of the bard suggested self-advertisement, and in 1901, in the "New Genius of Stratford-on-Avon," he expressed an ironical apprehension lest Miss Corelli might oust Shakespeare as the tutelary deity of that town. The Bacon-Shakespeare controversy was again becoming acute and claimed _Punch's_ attention in 1902, when he published a cartoon bearing on the issue, and followed it up with a happy burlesque. As he argued, "If Bacon wrote Shakespeare's Plays, why, in the name of all that is biliteral, should not Shakespeare have written Bacon's Essays?" Hence the dissertation "Of Plays and their Authors," from which I may quote the concluding passages:--

It may be said of such an one that he is a man unlettered, having little Latin and of Greek no whit. How should he write plays? Whence hath he lore of law and medicine, of history and science? But there be handbooks. And a man may learn by enquiry of another, giving to him the price of half-a-pint. So shall the dramatist acquire such matters as be necessary, as the names of battles and of Kings and an imperfect understanding of legal phrases. Moreover, where no copyright is, he may steal freely from others, appropriating their plots and embellishing them.... Lastly to conclude this part, he that writeth dramas must endure with philosophy the investigations of talented ladies. Being of humble estate he must not murmur should his works be taken from him and given to a Lord Chancellor. Being himself sane he must bear with the lunatick fancies of others. And though his words be twisted into crazy anagrams, and his dramas be made a source of a scandal about Queen Elizabeth, he must not complain. Generally let the wise man ignore the bee that buzzeth in another's bonnet.

_Punch's_ "Essay" is not without relevance in its bearing on the recent "invention" of that highly "talented lady" Miss Clemence Dane.

[Sidenote: _Punch on "R. L. S."_]

To repeat what I said in another volume, the highest qualities of the literary critic are revealed, not in his loyalty to established reputations so much as in his attitude to contemporary writers, in his ability to gauge the durability of their merits, and to distinguish a passing vogue from a sure title to remembrance. And there was certainly no lack of material on which to exercise these faculties in the 'nineties--romantic, realistic, and decadent. _Punch_ had already welcomed Mr. Kipling and Sir James Barrie, and though his appreciation of the former varied considerably in the next fifteen years, admiration of his freshness and invention prevailed on the whole over distaste for his excursions into politics, his addiction to technicalities, slang and obscurity. The literary criticism of _Punch_ was probably at its lowest ebb in 1893, when a review of Stevenson's _Catriona_ is bracketed with a notice of Miss Corelli's _Barabbas_. Punch deals faithfully with the method of handling Holy Writ adopted in _Barabbas_, but contents himself with recommending _Catriona_ to those who love Scots dialect, which he frankly confesses he does not.

When Stevenson died in his early prime in 1894, a very different temper inspired _Punch's_ tribute to the Great Romancer:--

The lighthouse-builder raised no light That shall outshine the flame Of genius in its mellowest might, That beacons him to fame. And Pala's peak shall do yet more Than the great light at Skerryvore To magnify his name, Who mourned, when stricken flesh would tire, That he was weaker than his sire.

Teller of Tales! Of tales so told That all the world must list: Story sheer witchery, style pure gold, Yet with that tricksy twist Of Puck-like mockery which betrays The wanderer in this world's mad maze, Not blindly optimist, Who wooes Romance, yet sadly knows That Life's sole growth is not the Rose.

So when in 1901 the late Mr. W. E. Henley published his famous disparagement of the official life of Stevenson, _Punch_, in an address to the "Beloved Shade" of R. L. S., uttered an indignant protest against the attack on his memory.

_Punch_ enthusiastically greeted the Ruritanian romances of "Anthony Hope" as an antidote to the ultra-realistic novel, and Mr. Kipling's _Jungle Book_ was welcomed in 1894 with a salvo of puns on the Kip-lingo of the Laureate of the Jingle-Jungle, the Bard of the Bandar-log. In 1895 _The Men that Fought at Minden_ is described as "perhaps the most coarse and unattractive specimen of verse that this great young man has yet put forth--a jumble of words without a trace of swing or music. All this Tommy Atkins business is about played out." In 1898, in the series of "Letters to the Celebrated," "The Vagrant," while deprecating the "orgy of Imperialism" which Mr. Kipling had helped to foster, frankly admitted that he was largely responsible for "a quickened sense of the greatness of our mother-land, and a new sympathy for those who fight our battles"; and predicted that his greatest and most enduring title to fame would rest on his verse. In 1899 Mr. Kipling is rebuked for his glorification of machinery--he is called "the Polytechnic Poet"--slang and militarism, while the parody of _Stalky and Co._ is distinctly hostile to what Punch evidently considered an ignoble travesty of Public School traditions. Punch had himself repeatedly assailed the fetish-worship of Athletics, but Mr. Kipling's _Island Race_--with its bitter reference to those who

contented their souls With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals--

was more than he could endure. Accordingly his representative conducted an imaginary interview with "The Director-General of the Empire," who had added some fresh lines in violent and obscure abuse of rowing-men, and who explained that he never played games himself, but "spent all his spare time loafing and scoring off masters"--a further hit at _Stalky_. This mood of resentment had entirely passed by 1907, when _Punch_ depicted Mr. Kipling as "A Verry Parfit Nobel Knight"--on the occasion of his being awarded the Nobel Prize--and in 1910 the perusal of _Rewards and Fairies_ is compared to reading English history by the light of a Will-o'-the-Wisp.

The reviewer notes defects in style and lucidity, but ends on a note of whole-hearted admiration:--

When one considers the quality of Mr. Kipling's invention, the piety of his patriotism, the freshness and vigour of his style, and his astounding understanding of men and movements, why, one forgets all about these little trifling defects and again murmurs, "Wizard."

[Sidenote: _The Yellow Book_]

To return to the early 'nineties, _Punch_ saw no virtue, artistic or otherwise, in the movement towards unrestrained self-expression in _belles lettres_ which had its outcome in the _Yellow Book_ and the _Savoy_, its headquarters at "The Bodley Head," and whose chief hierophants were the avowed disciples of Baudelaire and Verlaine. To _Punch_ the movement was wholly decadent. In the verses "Tell it not in Gath," in 1894, after denouncing "flowers of evil," and the practice of delving in the drains and dustbins of humanity, the writer declares he would far rather remain a Philistine than achieve enlightenment by such unsavoury means. In the same vein he addresses "Any Boy-poet of the Decadence":--

For your dull little vices we don't care a fig, It is _this_ that we deeply deplore: You were cast for a common or usual pig, But you play the invincible bore.

As in his earlier tirades against the Æsthetes, _Punch_ confounded all the contributors to the _Yellow Book_ and the _Savoy_ in one common anathema. The former, with an illustration by "Daubaway Weirdsley," and "Max" as "Max Mereboom," himself one of the finest literary parodists of our time, is held up in 1895 to especial ridicule. The _Savoy_ in 1896 becomes "The Saveloy," with imaginary extracts and further attacks on Max Mereboom, Simple Symons, and Weirdsley; while in the same year in "The Chaunt of the Bodley Head" (after Praed's _Chaunt of the Brazen Head_) the Savoy School is condemned for its mephitic atmosphere. There was in the movement much deliberate eccentricity, much of the cant of anti-cant, which clamoured for robust satire, but _Punch_ was more happily inspired in his ridicule of the popular and society novels of the time--in his parody of _Sherlock Holmes_, which was quite good enough for the original, and of Dodo, in which the rowdiness and pseudo-intellectuality of Mr. Benson's heroine are excellently hit off. It opens well with "'Sling me over a two-eyed steak, Bill,'" said Bobo." In the sequel the Marquis of Cokaleek, the noble unappreciated husband, gets killed in the hunting field, but Bobo does not marry Bill, her fancy man. She jilts him and "got herself married to an Austrian Prince at half an hour's notice by the A. of C." _Punch_, let it be recorded, was responsible for the often quoted saying which appeared in 1894 that "the modern novel is a blend of the Erotic, the Neurotic and the Tommyrotic."

_Esther Waters_, compared and contrasted with Hardy's _Tess_, is pronounced in 1894 to be _not_ "_virginibus puerisque_," and a once famous "emancipation novel," _The Yellow Aster_, by "Iota," long since hopelessly out-distanced in the reaction against reticence, becomes _The Yellow Plaster_, by "Iõpna," whose "She-notes" wild are amusingly travestied in the same year. _The Yellow Aster_ and _Key-Notes_ were pioneer efforts in the domain of the psychological novel, and the new jargon is ridiculed in such burlesque phrases as "the woman's voice came through the envelope of Margerine's subconsciousness, steely clear as a cheese-cutter." The vogue of _The Green Carnation_, a _roman à clef_ which created some stir at the same time, is attested in Du Maurier's picture "How Opinion is Formed":--

HE: "Have you read that beastly book _The Mauve Peony_ by Lady Middlesex?"

SHE: "Yes, I rather liked it."

HE: "So did I."

[Sidenote: _Unchristian Criticism of Hall Caine_]

Du Maurier's _Trilby_ was naturally treated with benevolence, though _Punch_ regretted the theological interludes, but _The Sorrows of Satan_ is rudely dismissed as "a farrago of balderdash and vanity"; the egotism of the author and of Mr. Robert Buchanan in belabouring their detractors is severely rebuked; and Mr. Hall Caine's _The Christian_ is recommended only as an absolute _pis aller_ if you hadn't even a Bradshaw to read. This great work is also parodied as "The Heathen," with Alleluia Grouse and Luke Blizzard in the _rôles_ of Glory Quayle and John Storm. There was still a spice of Bludyer in _Punch_, and on occasion he could act on the advice of a famous editor, "Be kind, be merciful, be gentle, but when you come across a silly fool, string him up." In later years, as the literary quality of his reviews improved, his clemency to the new-comers approached an uncritical tolerance.

The passing of the three-volume novel in 1894 is noted in a Ballade not untinged with regret, to judge from the "Envoi":--

Prince, writers' rights--forgive the pun-- And readers' too forbid the blow; Of triple pleasure there'll be none, Three-volume novels are to go!

The later manner of Henry James is rather infelicitously described in 1896 as "indifferent Trollopian and second-class Meredithian"; but _Punch_ made no mistake in the following year over Mr. W. W. Jacobs, in whose _Many Cargoes_--studies of those "who go down to the sea in ships of moderate tonnage"--he found a new fount of joy.

_Punch's_ "literary recipes" place Romance first, then follow the Society Novel (with thinly veiled portraits from life); the Detective Story (Gaboriau and water); and the Religious Novel. The plague of Reminiscences had moved _Punch_ to protest as early as 1893, when he wrote:--

That Memory's the Mother of the Muses, We're told. Alas! it must have been the Furies! Mnemosyne her privilege abuses-- Nothing from her distorting glass secure is. Life is a Sphinx; folk cannot solve her riddles, So they've recourse to spiteful taradiddles, Which they dub "Reminiscences." Kind fate, From the Fool's Memory preserve the Great!

Another and a newer aversion was the parasitic patronage of FitzGerald by inferior novelists and writers, which moved _Punch_ to include among "the things that we are still waiting, and it seems, likely to wait for--A Temporary Surcease from Omar Khayyám." This last-named nuisance has ceased to be so vocal of late years, but the plague of "Diaritis" is worse than ever. Mr. H. G. Wells appears on _Punch's_ horizon in 1898, but only as the weaver of circumstantial scientific romances, not as the regulator of the Universe, and discoverer of new Heavens and Hells. _The War of the Worlds_ is parodied in _The Martian_, but the wonderland of science appealed less to _Punch_ than the dream-world of "Lewis Carroll," whose death inspired a graceful tribute to author and illustrator:--

Lover of children! Fellow-heir with those Of whom the imperishable kingdom is! Beyond all dreaming now your spirit knows The unimagined mysteries.

Darkly as in a glass our faces look To read ourselves, if so we may, aright; You, like the maiden in your faërie book-- You step beyond and see the light!

The heart you wore beneath your pedant's cloak Only to children's hearts you gave away; Yet unaware in half the world you woke The slumbering charm of childhood's day.

We older children, too, our loss lament, We of the "Table Round," remembering well How he, our comrade, with his pencil lent Your fancy's speech a firmer spell.

Master of rare woodcraft, by sympathy's Sure touch he caught your visionary gleams, And made your fame, the dreamer's, one with his, The wise interpreter of dreams.

Farewell! But near our hearts we have you yet, Holding our heritage with loving hand, Who may not follow where your feet are set Upon the ways of Wonderland.

[Sidenote: _Magic, Megalomania, and Sham Culture_]

From this wonder world _Punch_ turned to "_le monde où l'on s'affiche_" to castigate the methods of Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. Le Gallienne--the Manx megalomaniac and the Author-Lecturer--and to the realm of blameless banality ruled over by Sir John Lubbock. Sir John's genius for truisms had been guyed in 1894; in 1900 he appears in a special section of "The Book of Beauty" as the author of some enchanting platitudes, e.g. "A man's work will often survive him. Thus, Shakespeare and Watt are dead; but _Hamlet_ and the steam engine survive."

This was the year of the appearance of Lady Randolph Churchill's _Anglo-Saxon Review_, a sumptuous publication which for a brief period revived the glories of the _Books of Beauty_ and _Keepsakes_, edited in the 'thirties and 'forties of the last century by that "most gorgeous" lady, the Countess of Blessington.

Pseudo-intellectuality was one of the social shams which _Punch_ loved to pillory, and there is a good example in 1901 in the "Cultured Conversation" of a lady who observes, "I'm _devoted_ to Rossetti--I _delight_ in Shelley--and I simply _love_ Ella Wheeler Wilcox." _Punch_ himself in the same year "delighted" quite sincerely in _Some Experiences of an Irish R.M._, and "wept tears of laughter" over the episode of "Lisheen Races." This was apparently his first introduction to the work of those two wonderfully gifted Irish cousins, Violet Martin and Edith Somerville, but only towards the end of their long and fruitful collaboration did he recognize in them far higher qualities than those of the mere mirth-provoker.

In 1903 he was destined to make acquaintance with one of the most conspicuous representatives of the opposite tendency, Gorki, the Russian novelist and playwright. In "The Lowest Depths" _Punch_ parodied the dreary, violent and brutal squalors of _The Lower Depths_, and incidentally had a dig at the Stage Society for producing it. It was in the same year that _Punch_ described the "new curse of Caine"--"to be everlastingly coupled with the name of Miss Marie Corelli"--and paid them both grateful homage as purveyors of "copy":--

From cutting continual capers Ev'n Kaisers must sometimes refrain; But _you're_ never out of the papers-- Corelli and Caine.

At the time of the Boer war poets had been vociferously active. By 1904 a "slump" had set in; and in an interview Mr. John Lane, of the Bodley Head, had declared that verse had ceased to be remunerative. Embroidering this text _Punch_ traced the cause to the material self-indulgence of the public. People dined too well to want to read rhymes, and poets wanted better pay:--

And this is why no bards occur. None ever knows that aching void, That hunger, prompting like a spur, Which former genii enjoyed; For all the poets dead and gone, Whose Muse contrived to melt the nation, Habitually did it on A regimen of strict starvation.

[Sidenote: _Notable Newcomers_]

But if verse was at a discount, new forms of prose were emerging, and the spasmodic discourses of Mr. Bart Kennedy in the _Daily Mail_ moved _Punch_ to parody what he considered to be a variant on Walt Whitman, in which sentences were reduced to a minimum and verbs were dispensed with altogether. Another new writer to whom _Punch_ now paid the homage of parody was Mr. Chesterton, whose glittering paradoxes are travestied in a mock eulogy of _Bradshaw_, in the manner of "G. K. C.'s" book on Dickens. Bradshaw is praised for his splendid consistency, his adherence to fact, his uniform excellence of style and freedom from extraneous matter. Moreover, he is a great teacher:--

The last and deepest lesson of Bradshaw is that we must be in time. No man can miss a train and miss a train only. He misses more than that. A man who misses a train misses an opportunity. It is probably the reason of the terrific worldly success of Cæsar and Charlemagne that neither of them ever missed a train.

Reviews of books, chiefly novels, became a regular feature of each week's issue in the latter half of this period, and it would be impossible to deal fully with _Punch's_ critical activities. As an example of the frank handling of a bad book it would be hard to improve on the notice of a novel which appeared in 1906: "Anyone who wants to read a vulgar book in praise of vicious vulgarians should read----, by--------. All others are counselled to avoid it."

_Punch's_ later and more tolerant mood may be illustrated by his notices of three typical novels by three representative novelists of post-Victorian days. Mr. Wells's _Ann Veronica_ in 1908 is received with guarded praise as that author's first real novel and "a remarkably clever book about rather unpleasant people." In 1910 _Punch_ shies at the excessive length and accumulated detail of Mr. Arnold Bennett's _Clayhanger_, but admits that the author makes wonderful use of unpromising material in his remarkable work. Thirdly, in 1913, _Punch's_ reviewer proclaims himself a whole-hearted admirer of Mr. Compton Mackenzie's _Sinister Street_, finding the hero "a figure to love," and the whole book marked by passionate honesty, marvellously minute observation, humour, and a haunting beauty of ideas and words. In conclusion, he is "prepared to wager that Mr. Mackenzie's future is bound up with what is most considerable in English fiction," adding, "We shall see."

These views are somewhat difficult to reconcile with those expressed in other parts of the paper about the same time. An eminent conductor and composer has recently stated that no noise which is deliberately made can be said to be ugly--e.g. a railway whistle or a boy whistling in the street. So in letters a similar creed had already come into fashion--any subject was fit for treatment if it was "arresting" or "elemental," a doctrine that _Punch_ outside his "Booking Office" found it hard to swallow. In "The Qualities that Count" one of his writers applied this principle to the poetry and letters of the hour:--

If you're anxious to acquire a reputation For enlightened and emancipated views, You must hold it as a duty to discard the cult of Beauty, And discourage all endeavours to amuse. You must back the man who, obloquy enduring, Subconsciousness determines to express, Who in short is "elemental," "unalluring," But "arresting" in his Art--or in his dress.

Or is your cup habitually brimming With water from the Heliconian fount? Then remember the hubristic, the profane, the pugilistic, Are the only things in poetry that count. So select a tragic argument, ensuring The maximum expenditure of gore, And the epithets "arresting," "unalluring," "Elemental" will re-echo as before.

But if your bent propels you into fiction, You should clearly and completely understand That your duty in a novel is not to soar, but grovel, If you want it to be profitably banned. So be lavish and effusive in suggesting A malignant and mephitic atmosphere, And you're sure to be applauded as "arresting," "Elemental," "unalluring," and "sincere."

[Sidenote: _Mr. Gosse and the Georgian Poets_]

In the same year Mr. Edmund Gosse had indulged in some caustic criticism of the Poetry of the Future. Mr. Gosse had said that "the natural uses of English and the obvious forms of our speech will be driven from our poetry." Also that "verses of excellent quality in this primitive manner can now be written by any smart little boy in a grammar school." Hence a squib in which _Punch_ makes disrespectful fun of "the Sainte-Beuve of the House of Lords," who, it may be added, has since made his peace with the young lions whom he had treated so disrespectfully. In 1913 the cult of Rabindranath Tagore had become fashionable. Here was an Oriental poet who sedulously eschewed the flamboyant exuberance of the westernized Indian, but _Punch_, while finding him a less fruitful theme for burlesque than the Babu immortalized by Mr. Anstey, regarded his mystical simplicity as fair game for parody, and declined to worship at his shrine. Another foreign importation, Mr. Conrad--whom in virtue of long residence in England, marvellous command of our language and unequalled insight into the magic of the sea and the simple heroism of the British sailorman, we are proud to call one of ourselves and one of the glories of English fiction--fascinated _Punch_ in 1900, the year in which _Lord Jim_ appeared. _Punch_ was a little disconcerted at first by Mr. Conrad's oblique method of narration, but the fascination grew with advancing years.

[Sidenote: _Farewell to Mark Twain_]

I find few references to Continental authors, but may single out the "little English wreath" which _Punch_ added to the memorial tributes to Alphonse Daudet on his death in 1897. Daudet's affinities with Dickens, always one of _Punch's_ heroes, naturally appealed to him apart from the humour of _Tartarin_ and the masterly studies of the Second Empire which Daudet had seen from the inside as one of the Duc de Morny's private secretaries. Towards American writers _Punch_ was almost uniformly sympathetic. It is true that he appreciated the earlier and American manner of Henry James more than the later cosmopolitan phase which began with _The Portrait of a Lady_. But during the short period in which _Punch_, in his "additional pages," published a number of short stories by various authors, Henry James was a contributor, and _Mrs. Medwin_ appeared in serial form in four successive numbers in August and September, 1901. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who died in 1894, is compared to Elia in the graceful memorial stanzas modelled on "The Last Leaf." Mr. W. D. Howells's papers on London and England in _Harper's Magazine_ in 1904 prompt a generous acknowledgment of their reasonableness, sanity and humour, together with an expression of amazement at the productivity of American short-story writers, mostly in the manner of Mr. Henry James. _Punch_, both then and afterwards, refused to take Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox seriously, and described her essays, _The Woman of the World_, as "high-toned but serenely platitudinous; 'bland, passionate, but deeply religious.'" Mark Twain, on his visit to London in 1907, was welcomed with pen and pencil--in the cartoon "To a Master of his Art," where _Punch_ salutes him over the punch-bowl and in some verses, _à propos_ of the dinner at the Pilgrims' Club:--

Pilot of many Pilgrims since the shout "Mark twain!"--that serves you for a deathless sign-- On Mississippi's waterway rang out Over the plummet's line--

Still where the countless ripples laugh above The blue of halcyon seas long may you keep Your course unbroken, buoyed upon a love Ten thousand fathoms deep!

Some three years later came _Punch's_ "_Ave, atque Vale_," when Mark Twain died in April, 1910:--

Farewell the gentle spirit, strong to hold Two sister lands beneath its laughter's spell! Farewell the courage and the heart of gold! Hail and Farewell!

To complete these American references I may add that _Punch_ in 1907 made great play out of the letter addressed by an American "Clippings Agency" to Petrarch, offering to send him press-cuttings of his works. But America has no monopoly of these solecisms. Fourteen years later, when the Phoenix Society revived _The Maid's Tragedy_, a similar offer was made by a London press-cutting agency to "John Fletcher, Esq." and "--Beaumont, Esq."

JOURNALISM

Already in the early 'nineties the altered status of journalism and the journalist had leapt to the eyes of _Punch_, who himself was in a sense born and bred in the "Street of Ink." I pass over his ironical disapproval of the _St. James's Gazette_ when that journal, in October, 1892, "sincerely hoped that there was no truth in the rumour that a paper for children will shortly make its appearance, entirely written and illustrated by children under fifteen years of age." The project never materialized, but its spirit has been translated into action by the literary enterprise of our modern _enfants terribles_. The adult journalist in the 'nineties was not to suffer from this unfair competition for a good many years to come. Meanwhile he could at least congratulate himself that he was better housed and paid: it was not until 1904 that the "wisdom of the East" began to interfere with his freedom as a war correspondent.

[Sidenote: _The Daily Mail Arrives_]

In 1897 _Punch_ illustrated the change by parallel pictures of the journalist in 1837, writing in a squalid room in the Fleet Prison, and in the year of the Diamond Jubilee, seated in a sumptuously equipped office, fat and prosperous, and smoking a large cigar. In the previous year _Punch_ had saluted the _Daily News_ on the attainment of its jubilee. The connexion was an old and intimate one, for the publishers of _Punch_ had been the first publishers of the _Daily News_, and it had been renewed in the 'nineties when Sir Henry Lucy ("Toby," of _Punch_) for a while occupied the chair in which Dickens had sat. A far more momentous event, however, was associated with the year 1896--the founding of the _Daily Mail_ by Mr. Alfred Harmsworth, subsequently described by one of _Punch's_ writers as "the arch-tarantulator of our times." He was certainly, if unintentionally, invaluable to _Punch_, and even more stimulating than Mr. Caine and Miss Corelli. By 1900 his genius for discovering a constant succession of scapegoats, and converting the idol of yesterday into the Aunt Sally of to-day, is handsomely acknowledged in the lines "Ad Aluredum Damnodignum." Then it was Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Mr. Balfour, but _Punch_ foresaw that the habit was inveterate:--

For still, oh hawk-eyed Harmsworth, you pursue With more than all the ardour of a lover, From find to check and so from check to view Your scapegoat-hunt from covert into covert.

As for the test of circulation, _Punch_ betrays a certain scepticism in his remarks on "The People's Pulse" in 1903:--

The account given by the _Daily Mail_, in Saturday's issue, of its daily circulation for the last eight months, together with the leading event of each day, ought to be kept up from time to time as a Permanent People's Pulse Report. Nothing could be more instructive than to note, for instance, that while the Delhi Durbar only attracted 844,799 readers, the "Oyster Scare" allured as many as 846,501; while "Lord Dalmeny's Coming of Age" brought the figures up to 847,080, and the "Sardine Famine" accounted for a further increase of 14,586. Or, again, there is a world of significance in the fact that the relative attractions of the "Poet Laureate's Play" and "Mr. Seddon's Meat Shops" are represented by a balance of 5,291 in favour of the Napoleon of New Zealand.

Life was certainly made livelier by the new methods introduced, with variations, from America, and _Punch_ feelingly contrasts the drab existence of those who lived before with that of those who lived under the Harmsworth _régime_:--

Drear was the lot, minus the _Mail_, Of soldier, sailor, ploughboy, tinker; And worse, whenever they grew pale, They had no pills to make them pinker.

It is a nice question whether we owe more to the pink pill or to the Yellow Press. But there can be no doubt as to the influence of the new journalism on sport and pastime. Until then, in _Punch's_ phrase, "cricket was still a childish game and not a penman's serious study." Henceforth the cricketer fulfilled a double function. He not only played cricket but he wrote about it--and himself. Under the heading "The Cricketer on the Hearth," in 1899, _Punch_ publishes an imaginary interview _à la mode_ with Mr. Slogger. We omit the complacent autobiographical passages and content ourselves with the sequel:--

"Well, that's pretty well all, I think, except you'll probably want to print at length my opinions on the Transvaal Question, Wagner's Music, and the Future of Agriculture. These will have an overpowering interest for your readers."

"Here are a few photographs of myself--but it's rather too heavy a parcel to carry. I'll send it round in a van. Of course you'll print them all. And now I must ask you to excuse me, as it's time to get into flannels."

I thanked him for his courtesy, and hoped that he'd make a fine score in the county match. He stared at me in surprise. "County Match? You don't imagine I've time to play cricket nowadays, do you? No; I'm going to change because half-a-dozen photographers will be here directly, and they like to take me in costume. And after that I shall have to see seven or eight more interviewers. Good morning!"

[Sidenote: _The Cricket Journalist_]

The intrusion of the emotional literary "note" in articles on pastime came later, and is parodied in the article (in 1904) "Do we take our amusements seriously enough?" by Mr. C. B. F:--

The frivolity of the Press is only paralleled by the frivolity of the public. Take the light and airy way in which the spectators at our great cricket grounds treat the imposing functions provided for them. Suppose little (but heroic) Johnny Tyldesley runs out to that wily, curling ball which sunny-faced Wilfred Rhodes pitches thirty-three and three-quarter inches from the block. Up glides his trusty willow, and a fortieth of a second after the ball has pitched descends on the leather. With a wonderful flick of the elbow he chops the ball exactly between square leg and point. Is the raucous "Well hit, Johnny," of the crowd a fitting, a reverent salutation? Our Elizabethan dramatists knew better. Have you not noticed in their stage directions, "A solemn music"? Two or three phrases of Chopin played, let us say, on the French horn by the doyen of the Press-box would be a better tribute to such a miracle of skill. There are, however, elements of better things in our crowds. Before now I have seen the potent Jessop smite a rising ball to the boundary with all the concentrated energy of his Atlantean shoulders, and as the ball reached the ring the spectators with involuntary reverence prostrated themselves before it.

Nor do our greatest men gain the public honours which are their due. In ancient Greece a great athlete was a national hero. The name of Ladas has come down to us through the ages with those of Socrates and Xenophon. Think of the sad contrast in modern England. Why is not Plum Warner (I knew him in long clothes) a Knight of the Garter? Why is not Ranji (exquisitely delicate Ranji--the Walter Pater of the cricket field) Viceroy of India? There are living cricketers, with an average of over eighty, and a dozen centuries in one season to their credit, who have never even been sworn of the Privy Council.

On every side I trace the growth of the same spirit. England is devoting itself to art, politics, literature and theology, and in the rush and hurry of our modern life there is a sad danger that sport will be underrated or overlooked. My countrymen must learn to concentrate their minds on the things which really matter. In your nobler moments would you not rather stand at the wicket than at the table of the House of Commons, or on the political platform of the City Temple, or on the stage of the Alhambra? Save her sport and you save England.

Modern journalistic methods are reduced to absurdity in the account of the staff of a daily paper, who are all football players, cricketers, clairvoyants, crystal-gazers, music-hall artists, or burglars. In the verses on "Journalistic Evolution," in 1907, the tendency to condense everything is specially noted. Leaders have become "leaderettes," and will in turn yield to "leaderettelets"; the writer prophesies a day when _The Times_ will only consist of headlines.

Dasent's _Life of Delane_ appeared in 1908, and _Punch's_ reviewer reminds us of the commanding position occupied by that great editor, who was consulted by all Premiers, except Gladstone, and to whom Palmerston actually offered office. The gist and sting of the review, however, is to be found in a sentence not merely true but almost tragic in its bearings on the history of English journalism:--

Delane accepted the favour of contributions by Cabinet Ministers to his news-chest, but he recognized that the power and influence of _The Times_ were based upon the foundations of public spirit, concern for national interest, and absolute impartiality in dealing with statesmen.

_The Times_ passed under the financial control of Lord Northcliffe at the beginning of 1908, and in the spring of 1914, "in view of the grave importance of the political situation," its price was reduced to one penny. _Punch's_ comment took the form of a cartoon in which the new Dictator of Printing House Square is shown as a salesman at the door of the "Northcliffe Stores" with the legend on a slate, "Thunder is cheap to-day."

[Sidenote: _Homage to Andrew Lang_]

By way of contrast with hustling methods _Punch_ had noted with regret the passing in 1905 of _Longman's Magazine_, in whose pages Mr. Andrew Lang had for many years presided so gracefully "At the Sign of the Ship":--

Formerly, when, sated by sensation, Gentle readers sought an air serene, Refuge from the snapshot's domination Might be found in _Longman's Magazine_.

There at least the roaring cult of dollars Never took its devastating way; There the pens of gentlemen and scholars Held their uncontaminating sway.

There no parasitic bookman prated, No malarious poetasters sang, There all themes were touched and decorated By your nimble fancy, Andrew Lang.

True, some hobbies you were always riding, --Spooks and spies and totemistic lore; But so deft, so dext'rous was your guiding, No one ever labelled you a bore.

But alas! the landmarks that we cherish, Standing for the earlier, better way, Vanquished by vulgarity must perish, Overthrown by "enterprise" decay.

Still with fairy books will you regale us, Still pay homage to the sacred Nine, But no more hereafter will you hail us Monthly at the Ship's familiar Sign.

There no longer faithfully and gaily Will you deal alike with foes and friends, Wherefore, crying "Ave, atque vale!" _Punch_ his parting salutation sends.

_Punch_ had his own losses to deplore, for in August, 1897, the death of Mr. E. J. Milliken removed a most valuable and fertile member of his staff. Mr. Milliken was not only the creator of "'Arry," and a fluent and dexterous versifier, but he combined with a retentive and accurate memory "the rare talent of most happily applying past literature, whether in history or fiction, to the illustration of contemporary instances," and for a long time had been the chief cartoon-suggester. A longer and more distinguished connexion with _Punch_ was severed in 1906 by the retirement of Sir Frank Burnand after forty-three years' service. He joined in 1863, as the youngest of the staff, and held the editorship for over twenty-five years. In "Just a Few Words at Parting" he defines the aim of the editor in words worthy of remembrance. If _Punch_ was to hold securely the position he had achieved, it should and must be "to provide relaxation for all, fun for all, without a spice of malice or a suspicion of vulgarity, humour without a flavour of bitterness, satire without reckless severity, and nonsense so laughter-compelling as to be absolutely irresistible from its very absurdity." The precept hardly covers the higher function assumed by _Punch_ in "The Song of the Shirt," but, as it stands, had assuredly been faithfully carried into practice by the master of exhilarating burlesque, the intrepid parodist, the author of the immortal _Happy Thoughts_. As for the personal affection that he inspired in his staff, it is truly expressed in the farewell lines addressed to him by "R. C. L.":--

Dear Frank, our fellow-fighter, how noble was your praise, How kindly rang your welcome on those delightful days When, gathered in your presence, we cheered each piercing hit, And crowned with joy and laughter the rapier of your wit.

And if our words grew bitter, and wigs, that should have been Our heads' serene adornment, were all but on the green, How oft your sunny humour has shone upon the fray, And fused our fiery tempers, and laughed our strife away!

FINE ARTS, DRAMA AND MUSIC

I have noticed in earlier volumes with what asperity _Punch_ assailed the conventionalities of academic and Royal Academic Art; how he became, for a while at any rate, a convert to Pre-Raphaelitism; how, later on, the exhibitors at the Grosvenor Gallery superseded the exponents of fashionable orthodoxy at Burlington House as the targets of his satire; and with what unremitting and undiscriminating zeal he "belaboured" all representatives of the Æsthetic movement. The further progress of this reaction can be traced throughout the first half of the period now under review. In the 'nineties Aubrey Beardsley was his special _bête noire_; in the early years of the new century the Impressionist school, and by 1910 the Post-Impressionists, furnish him with unfailing matter for caricature. It was not that those who stood on the old ways were exempt from criticism. Year after year the annual summer show at Burlington House never failed to receive a punctual tribute from pen and pencil. But for the most part these notices are inspired by irresponsible frivolity--a desire to extract fun by burlesquing the titles and subjects and treatment quite foreign to the spirit in which _Punch_ had addressed himself to the task in the 'fifties, and even later. The private view of the Academy became for _Punch_ an annual excuse for an explosion of punning, and the illustrations were a faithful counterpart of the text. Yet criticism occasionally emerges from this carnival of jocularity, as when Mr. Sargent's cavalier treatment of details is noted in 1895; or when _Punch_ in 1902 suggests that the formidable congestion of pictures at the R.A. might be relieved by hanging some of them in the refreshment room; or when he writes in 1904:--

An interesting exhibit at the Royal Academy is a drawing executed by the artist when he was only sixteen years of age. Quite a feature of the show, too, is the number of pictures by artists over that age which have the appearance of having been painted by artists under that age.

In 1908 _Punch_ satirized a then prevalent fashion in his drawing of the "Problem Room" at Burlington House, crowded with perplexed spectators dropping their solutions into a box marked "Puzzle Picture Syndicate." When the "Rokeby Venus" was damaged by a militant suffragist in 1914, _Punch_ suggested that the offender ought to be made to serve her term of imprisonment in the Royal Academy--a remark quite in the spirit of his old art-critic, Charles Eastlake.

The oblique and ironical method is admirably employed in the dramatized conversations of visitors to the Academy and other exhibitions. In the sketch "Round the R.A." in 1893 the schoolmistress and her bored pupils, the complacent Briton giving himself away at every turn to his French friend, and the prosaic and practical person, are all drawn from the quick. The orthodox verdict is "quite up to the average--such delightful puppies and kittens," while the rebellious pupil of the edifying Miss Pemmican remarks, "Bother the beastly old Academy. I wish it was burnt, I do!"

From the same hand, seventeen years later, comes an equally illuminating sketch of the visitors to the Grafton Galleries--art-student, precious young painter, young City man, high-brow critic, matter-of-fact lady, and the frank and immortal Philistine only moved to unseemly mirth when his friend remarks, "Drawing to the Synthesist is entirely unimportant in solving the problem how the artist may best express his own temperament." _Punch_ often found himself driven into the ranks of the Philistines in self-defence; anyhow, he always preferred the way of Gath to that of gush. In "An Old Master's Growl" in 1895 the speaker declares that the mass of the people only enjoyed the annual summer show; the few who came to see the Old Masters mostly came to be seen. But the ancients were not annoyed, it was only what they expected:--

We expect it--I said just as much to Vandyck-- There's but one in a hundred that comes who'll descry The Beauty of Art. It's the sham I dislike: Well--good-bye!

[Sidenote: _Leighton and Millais_]

From the other end of the scale comes another "growl" in the same year--that of the professional model, in Phil May's picture, against Burne-Jones who had recently made a drawing of Labour for the _Daily Chronicle_: "I reckon 'e'll be on the pavement next." Personalities, rather than principles or theories, interested _Punch_ at this period, and in 1896 and 1897 the circle of his eminent Victorian friends was reduced by the passing of three ornaments of British Art, all of them Academicians and two successively presidents of the Academy. Of the two sets of verses on Leighton, the second is much the better. _Punch_ takes for his text Watts's saying that Leighton had painted many pictures, but that his life was nobler than them all:--

_Noblesse oblige_: his manners matched his art; Fine painter-skill, the bearing of a prince.

The writer alludes to the malignant disparagement indulged in by his detractors and sums up:--

Great if not quite among the greatest, here A noble artist of a noble life Rests with a fame that lives, and need not fear Detraction or the hour's ephemeral strife.

Leighton's generosity and munificence to brother artists deserved all and more than all that _Punch_ said: his fame as an artist has hardly borne out the prediction of the last couplet. Sir John Millais, his successor, was linked by more intimate ties from the days of _Once a Week_. Du Maurier was one of his dearest friends, and _Punch_ claimed to have been alone, save for the _Spectator_, in acclaiming the genius of his early work. As he happily says, "from P.R.B, to P.R.A.--that tale is worth the telling." Millais only lived a few months to enjoy his honour, and on his death in the summer of 1896 _Punch_ dwelt on his triple endowment of health, heartiness and power, his entirely English spirit, his mastery as a painter, and his genius for friendship.

Sir John Gilbert, who died a year later, was an old comrade and contributor. He had designed the fourth wrapper in January, 1843--Doyle's final design was not adopted till six years later--and contributed intermittently to _Punch_ down to 1882. His robust and spirited talent as an illustrator is acknowledged in _Punch's_ tribute:--

The faded history of courts and kings Touched by your spell took on its former hue; You made the daily art of common things Fresh as the morning dew.

A deeper note is sounded in _Punch's_ salutation of Watts on his death in 1904, when he recognizes the fidelity of that illustrious artist to his conception of the high mission of Art and his well-known repudiation of the maxim "Art for Art's Sake":--

His means were servants to the end in view And not the end's self; so his heart was wise To hold--as they have held, the chosen few-- High failure dearer than the easy prize.

Now lifted face to face with unseen things, Dimly imagined in the lower life, He sees his Hope renew her broken strings, And _Love and Death_ no more at bitter strife.

[Sidenote: _Punch on Aubrey Beardsley_]

To retrace our steps to the 'nineties, it must be admitted that _Punch_ enjoyed himself more in belabouring Beardsley than in saluting established reputations. Seeing nothing in his work but a wilful, exotic and decadent _bizarrerie_, _Punch_ assailed him under various _aliases_, all of them grotesque and uncomplimentary. In 1893 the famous Beardsley "poster" for the Avenue Theatre inspired the lines headed "Ars Postera," which begin:--

Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers, You're getting quite a high renown; Your Comedy of Leers, you know, Is posted all about the town; This sort of stuff I cannot puff, As Boston says, it makes me "tired": Your Japanee-Rossetti girl Is not a thing to be desired.

Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers, New English Art (excuse the chaff) Is like the Newest Humour style, It's not a thing at which to laugh: But all the same, you need not maim A beauty reared on Nature's rules; A simple maid _au naturel_ Is worth a dozen spotted ghouls.

_Punch_ pursued his pet aversion from pillar to post--or poster--with caricatures of his types, compared to "Stygian Sphinxes, Chimæras in soot, problems in Euclid gone mad." Mr. Beardsley, however, was not the only emancipated artist who came under _Punch's_ lash. In a notice of an Exhibition at the Dudley Gallery, Mr. Sickert's picture of "The Sisters Lloyd" prompts the comment, "To be more original than the originals is to paint the piccalilli and gild the refined ginger-bread." By 1901 _Punch_ had become much impressed and exasperated by the modern cult of ugliness, and in 1902 began the first of a succession of travesties of modern impressionist art--"The Garden Party," "The Picnic," "A Dutch Landscape," in which all the negligible features are accentuated and the important ones left out. Another ingenious series belonging to the same year is that of illustrations of "Mary had a Little Lamb" in the style of Marcus Stone, Goodall, Clausen, Alma-Tadema, Dana Gibson, Albert Moore, John Collier, Briton Rivière, etc. These are executed in a spirit of friendly burlesque, very different from the notice of Mr. Gordon Craig's drawings, which is a masterpiece of adroit belittlement. "His drawing-power as an actor," we read, "is only equalled by his drawing-power as an artist"; and _Punch_ kindly recommends him "to confine, or extend, his art almost entirely to designing nursery wall-papers."

The exuberances of "_nouveau art_" had already elicited the cry of the visitor (in Du Maurier's picture in 1894) on being shown round her friend's new house: "Oh, _Liberty_, how many crimes are committed in thy name!"--a joke repeated from an earlier volume.[8] Nine years later the angularities of the new "Artful and Crafty" furniture are held up to well-merited ridicule. But it is only right to add that in 1897, in "The Pendulum of Taste"--an imaginative forecast of the sale of old furniture in the year 1996--_Punch_ indulges in a comprehensive and entirely damaging review of the monstrosities of Victorian furniture and decoration: groups of fruit in wax; hideous gaseliers; terrible chromolithographs; a tea-cosy embroidered with holly-berries in crewel work; a kneeling statuette of the infant Samuel; chairs and sofa in mahogany, upholstered in horsehair; a Kidderminster carpet "with a striking design of large nosegays on a ground of green moss"; and a complete set of antimacassars in wool and crochet. Mr. Galsworthy's minute description of the "Mausoleum," in which old Timothy Forsyte, the last and most long-lived of his generation, lived or rather vegetated down to and through the War, is much on the same lines. But _Punch_, being nearly twice as old as Mr. Galsworthy, had spent a good part of his life amid these surroundings.

[Footnote 8: The Botticelli joke in the same year was new. One man is afraid he made an ass of himself because, when asked if he liked Botticelli, he had said that he preferred Chianti, and his friend kindly explains that Botticelli is not a wine but a cheese.]

[Sidenote: _Art Definitions_]

The principles and theory of art-criticism, as I have noted above, did not trouble _Punch_ greatly in the first twelve or fifteen years of this period. He was mainly concerned with the robust expression of his likes and dislikes. But by 1908 he had become slightly infected by the new psychology of art, and by way of clarifying the atmosphere launched the following list of definitions:--

ART

(A glossary for the opening of the R.A.)

An Artist is a person who paints what he thinks he sees.

An Amateur is a person who thinks he paints what he sees.

An Impressionist is a person who paints what other people think he sees.

A Popular Artist is a person who paints what other people think they see.

A Successful Artist is a person who paints what he thinks other people see.

A Great Artist is a person who paints what other people see they think.

A Failure is a person who sees what other people think they paint.

A Portraitist is a person who paints what other people don't think he sees.

A Landscape Painter is a person who doesn't paint what other people see.

A Realist is a person who sees what other people don't paint.

An Idealist is a person who paints what other people don't see.

The Hanging Committee are people who don't see what other people think they paint.

A Royal Academician is a person who doesn't think and paints what other people see.

A Genius is a person who doesn't see and paints what other people don't think.

A Critic is a person who doesn't paint and thinks what other people don't see.

The Public are people who don't see or think what other people don't paint.

A Dealer is a person that sees that people who paint don't think, and who thinks that people who don't paint don't see. He sees people who don't see people who paint; he thinks that people who paint don't see people who see; and he sees what people who don't paint think.

FINALLY

A Reader is a person whose head swims.

The art critics accredited to the daily Press, like their musical colleagues, could no longer be accused of lagging behind the modernist tendencies of the times: they aspired to be in the van of progress. In 1913 _Punch_ burlesques the wonderful phraseology of _The Times_ art critic in one of his "Studies of reviewers," which deals with the exhibitors at the Neo-British Art League. It may suffice to quote the appreciations of Mme. Strulda Brugh and Mr. Marcellus Thom. The method of the former, as illustrated by her "Pekinese Puppies," is contrasted with that of the Congestionist school in that she "deanthropomorphizes her scheme of pigmentation into nodules of aplanatic voluminosity":--

When therefore we have to assume a fluorescent reticulation of the interstitial sonorities, a situation is developed which might well baffle any but an advanced expert in transcendental mathematics. As a result the modelling of the puppies' tails is lacking in curvilinear conviction; their heads fail in canine suggestiveness, their fore-paws in prehensile subjectivity.

Mr. Marcellus Thom's "Sardine Fishers in the Adriatic," executed in "creosoted truffle stick," is a masterpiece of "suppressed but dignified antinomianism":--

Wonderful though the drawing and the interfiltration of coordinating paraboloids are, it is the psychological content of the picture rather than its direct presentative significance which affects the solar plexus of the enlightened onlooker. The whole atmosphere is summarized and condensed in a circumambient and oleaginous aura.... To do full justice to such a picture is unhappily beyond the resources of the most sublime preciosity. It demands the [Greek: esôterikê phlyaria] of Theopompus of Megalocrania or even the _intima desipientia_ distilled in the _Atopiad_ of Vesanus Sanguinolentus.

The new spirit in Art had already been burlesqued by one of _Punch's_ artists in a series of "intelligent anticipations" of the work of Herkomer, Sargent, Leader and La Thangue as executed in the Futuristic Style; and again in Mr. Haselden's Paulo-Post-Impressionist portraits of various celebrities in the _Almanack_ for 1913. In the same year Mr. Sargent's decision to withdraw from portraiture is commemorated in a fancy picture of "an old Chelsea Gateway," where, beneath the name "John S. Sargent" hangs a notice, "No Bottles, No Circulars, No Hawkers, No Portraits." Here, I may add, that _Punch_ had, three years earlier, with the aid of Mr. George Morrow's ingenious pencil, duly chronicled the decay of flattery in contemporary portrait painting.

Three notable additions to the Art Galleries of London were made during this period. The opening of the National Portrait Gallery, in 1896, is recorded in Sambourne's picture of Britannia welcoming British worthies to their new home: "at last we can give you a roof over your heads." The Tate Gallery, opened in the following year, is welcomed with a profusion of puns on the name of the donor; and the installation of the Wallace Collection at Hertford House, in 1900, prompts the observation that "millions after all have their utility." The sensational abduction and recovery of the famous portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire impelled _Punch_ to cry, "_Vive la Grande Duchesse!_" over the "loss and Gain-sborough picture." Another famous portrait of a Duchess--Holbein's superb Christina of Milan--was in danger of being permanently lost to England in 1909, when _Punch_, in "Hans across the sea," portrayed an American dealer with a bag of dollars dragging the Duchess away with the comment: "Once aboard the liner, and the gyurl is mine!" The peril, however, was averted, and Christina still remains with us in London.

[Sidenote: _Tenniel, Phil May and Sambourne_]

I do not suppose that any of the honours which have fallen to his staff ever gave _Punch_ more unfeigned satisfaction than the knighthood bestowed on Tenniel in 1893. The "Black-and-White Knight," as _Punch_ then called him, did not quit the "Table" until 1901, when he had been a member for fifty years, and the public dinner given in his honour, with Mr. Balfour in the chair, was a national tribute to a great gentleman and great artist. On his death in 1914 the special "Tenniel" number, with personal tributes from his colleagues, was a wonderful memorial of the work of one who "nothing common drew or mean." Tenniel was the Nestor of _Punch's_ staff. When the copyright of _Alice in Wonderland_ expired, a number of artists laid hands on the text, to the disgust of _Punch_, who regarded this attempt to supplant Tenniel's illustrations as little less than an act of sacrilege. The situation is happily dealt with in Mr. Reed's picture of Alice, surrounded with Tenniel's figures, contemplating the antics of the interlopers, and asking, "Who are these funny little people?" The Hatter replies: "Your Majesty, they are our imitators"; and Alice rejoins: "Curiouser and curiouser." Phil May was only thirty-nine when he died in 1903, and left a gap never quite filled as a brilliant, humorous and masterly delineator of street life and of modern Alsatia. Phil May, who was the soul of modesty and gentleness, and had no enemy in the world but himself, once said, "Everything I know I learnt from 'Sammy.'" "Sammy," as all his colleagues called Linley Sambourne, who succeeded Tenniel as chief cartoonist, was the greatest pride and pleasure of the Table until his death in 1910, and affection and regret still keep his memory green. When one compares his early with his later work, one is inclined to assert that none of _Punch's_ artists ever made more astonishing progress in their art. And for the rest I can only echo what one of his colleagues wrote on his passing: "While Art has lost a noble, sincere and devoted servant, we have lost our merriest friend."

DRAMA, OPERA, MUSIC

The period which began with the triumphs of the late Mr. Penley, and ended with those of Mr. Ainley, was more remarkable for dramatic alarums, excursions, innovations, inventions and discoveries than any of those dealt with in my previous volumes. If one were asked to single out the most remarkable event in British Theatrical history in those twenty-two years, pre-eminence might fairly be awarded to the establishment and fruitful work of the repertory theatres in the provinces--Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Dublin. I mentioned in an earlier volume _Punch's_ generous tribute to Calvert's services in Manchester, but if we except his references to the Irish players, little or nothing is said of this decentralizing movement. Where the theatre was concerned _Punch_, as in many other ways, was first and foremost a Londoner. But, with this reserve, most of the outstanding features of the drama and its presentation are recorded and commented on in his pages. New dramatic luminaries shot into his sphere, some of them too wildly to suit his Victorian tastes. Ibsen remained for a while as his chief bogy and butt, but was supplanted, as a target for caricature, by Maeterlinck, and to a certain extent by Rostand. But as time went on _Punch_ was even more preoccupied with the experiments and achievements of native playwrights. The revival of the poetic or literary drama associated chiefly with the works of the late Mr. Stephen Phillips, met with a not unsympathetic reception at his hands. Mr. Shaw worried him from the very outset, but there is no notice of _Arms and the Man_ in 1894, in which, by the way, Mr. Bernard Partridge, as Mr. Bernard Gould, greatly distinguished himself before he abandoned the boards for black-and-white. _Punch_ contemptuously dismisses the piece with two lines and two villainous puns: "''Ave a New Piece?' They've got it at the Avenue. A shawt criticism on it is 'Pshaw! Absurd!'" It was only by slow degrees that _Punch_ came to recognize the vivacity, the wit and the originality which redeemed Mr. Shaw's perversity, his lapses from taste and his consistent defiance of tradition and convention. It was, if my memory serves me aright, one of _Punch's_ young men who was responsible for a poem, recited at a dinner of the Stage Society, which contained the couplet:--

And if _The Lady from the Sea_ seems foreign, For British matrons there is _Mrs. Warren_.

[Sidenote: _A Short Way with Shaw_]

Towards Barrie as a playwright _Punch_ was at first much less benevolent than he had been to Barrie the novelist, and Mr. Granville Barker's plays depressed more than they impressed him. But for rather more than half the period under review _Punch's_ critiques of plays were primarily a medium for jocular comment, for fun at all costs, for explosions of puns. As a devotee of cheerfulness he resented gloom; as a professional humorist he found himself out of touch with a good deal of the new humour, the new whimsicality, the new wit. These editorial limitations were made good by the oblique methods of parody adopted with brilliant results by some of his collaborators, but it is not too much to say that theatrical criticism was never so impartially and tactfully conducted as under the fifth editor of _Punch_, the only one who had never written for the stage.

Turning from the creative aspect of the drama to the organization and regulation of the theatre, we have to notice two important factors, one of which was increasingly active throughout these years. Societies for the production of new, and the revival of old plays on a non-commercial basis were already in existence, but an impetus was given to the movement by the establishment of the Independent Theatre by Mr. Grein in the 'nineties, and the Stage Society and other similar bodies have carried it on with undiminished vigour down to the present time. These activities did not always commend themselves to _Punch_, but at least he did not ignore them.

Then there was the Censorship. The Lord Chamberlain intervened pretty frequently in the 'nineties where plays dealing with Scriptural motives came under his scrutiny. Maeterlinck's _Mona Vanna_ was barred on moral grounds, and in 1907 the apparently blameless _Mikado_ was temporarily withdrawn for political reasons. It must be admitted that in these years _Punch_ was less inclined to criticize these interventions when they were aimed at the frank discussion of disagreeable themes than when they sought to restrict the unseemly vivacities of the Variety Stage--witness his continued hostility to the L.C.C. in regard to their licensing policy and his comments on the Puritan protests against the programme at the Empire in 1894. An altered mood, however, is distinctly revealed in a cartoon in 1907 where the Censor is shown preferring the claims of musical comedy to those of the serious drama, and _Punch's_ sympathies are clearly with the latter. Since then, though Scriptural and political plays have not always escaped the ban, restrictions on the didactic drama, where it deals with the "social evil," have been largely withdrawn in deference to modern conceptions of the needs of education and the responsibilities of the State.

[Sidenote: _English Plays and Foreign Players_]

To go back to 1893, the three plays which _Punch_ specially singled out for approval were _Charley's Aunt_, _Becket_ and _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_. The nearest approach to criticism is to be found in the notice of the first-named piece, in which, while admitting that Penley was "inimitably and irresistibly funny" throughout two hours of "all but continuous merriment," the writer lays his finger on a real blot--the intrusion of cheap sentimentality. Tennyson's _Becket_ is pronounced a great and genuine success, both for Irving and the author, who had treated the story "with a free hand, a poetic touch and a liberal mind." The opening sentences of the notice, however, illustrate _Punch's_ insuperable inclination to succumb to frivolity. "_Becket_ has beaten the record": and he goes on to speculate how Thomas à Becket would have beaten _The Record_ if that paper had existed in his time and had ventured to criticize him.

_The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ might be too strong meat for the young person, but it "marked an epoch in our dramatic annals," it was "every inch a play," and revealed in Mrs. Patrick Campbell an actress of exceptional gifts. There is a delightful burlesque of Ibsen in "Pill Doctor Herdal," but _Punch_ did not leave well alone, and in another number furiously denounced _The Master Builder_ (which he had read but not seen). "Of all the weak-kneed, wandering, effeminate, unwholesome, immoral, dashed rot (to quote Lord Arthur Pomeroy in _The Pantomime Rehearsal_) this is the weak-kneed-est," and so on in the superlative degree with all the other epithets of abuse. This was the year in which Madame Duse made her London _début_, but _Punch_ did not get beyond a few puns on her name. The visit of Got, Mlle. Reichemberg and other representatives of the Comédie Française is treated less cavalierly, and the rumoured reconciliation of Gilbert and Sullivan suggests the possibilities of a new "Savoy Peace"--"the Reunion of Arts." Sarah Bernhardt, Yvette Guilbert and Réjane were the three bright particular foreign stars in 1894. Sarah Bernhardt was, as we know, an old flame of the susceptible _Punch_, and though he found _Ize l_ the reverse of exhilarating, homage was paid to the golden voice of the heroine in a graceful cartoon of "Sarah Chrysostoma." Réjane in _Madame Sans-Gêne_ comes in for high but not unqualified praise. She was perfect in the last act, but overdid the _canaillerie_ of her farce in earlier passages, or at least _Punch_ thought so. His tribute to Yvette Guilbert, "the Queen of the 'Café Concert,'" killed two birds with one stone, for it took the form of a very neat and witty adaptation of her famous song, "Les Vierges," at the expense of the "unco' guid" of Glasgow, whose Puritanism had recently aroused the protest of Sir Frederic Leighton and other Academicians:--

Ils défendent tous les desseins Où l'on peut voir les bras, le sein, à Glasgow. Jamais nus; même dans un bain Sont-ils tout habillés enfin? (_Parlé_) Matin! A Glasgow.

Portez des lunett's; l'oeil nu Est absolûment défendu à Glasgow. Des corps nus ils n'ont jamais vus Là, où leurs raisonn'ments sont plus (_Parlé_) Cornus! A Glasgow.

[Sidenote: _Irving's Knighthood_]

The closing of the Empire Theatre on the score of the improper character of the performances inspired a cartoon in which "Miss Prowlina Pry" (the L.C.C.) "hopes she doesn't intrude." The accompanying verses, protesting against the action of the new Bumbledom, compare unfavourably in their heavy-heeled satire with the verses quoted above. Ada Rehan in _Twelfth Night_ is a pleasant memory to middle-aged playgoers. _Punch_ did not acquit her Viola of a certain restlessness, but acknowledged that at times she acted like one inspired. To the same year belongs his tribute to the "imitative charms" of Cissie Loftus in a set of verses alluding to her imitations of May Yohé, Florence St. John, Jane May, Yvette Guilbert and Letty Lind, names that bear witness to the "fugacity" of the years and the transitoriness of stage popularity.

In 1895 _Punch_ waxed lyrical over Tree as Svengali and Miss Dorothea Baird in the title _rôle_ of the dramatized version of _Trilby_. He bestowed the "highest order of histrionic merit" on Irving for his Corporal Brewster in Conan Doyle's _Story of Waterloo_, and, in the cartoon recording his knighthood, congratulated him in the name of the profession through the mouth of David Garrick. Pinero's play, _The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith_, is described as "a drama of inaction" owing to the length of the speeches, but praise is liberally bestowed on Hare, Forbes-Robertson and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. The popularity of a now forgotten work of advanced fiction--_Keynotes_, by "George Egerton"--is attested by _Punch's_ perversion of the title of the piece into "_The Key-note-orious Mrs. Ebbsmith_." The revival of _Romeo and Juliet_ served as the occasion for jest seasoned with shrewdness:--

Mrs. Patrick Campbell's "Juliet" takes the poison but not the cake. Her "Juliet" has over her the shadow of Paula Tanqueray.... Watching Forbes Robertson as "Romeo" I could not help thinking what an excellent "Hamlet" he would make; perhaps when I see him in that character I shall remember how good he was in "Romeo."

_Cymbeline_ was the next of the Shakespearean revivals, and its production at the Lyceum, with Irving as Iachimo and Ellen Terry as Imogen, prompted eulogies of the performance and a burlesque of the plot. Mrs. Stirling (Lady Gregory), famous in her prime as Peg Woffington, incomparable in her old age as the Nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_, awakened gracious memories in _Punch_ when she died at the close of 1895. Sir Augustus Harris was little more than half her age when his crowded and in the main prosperous life ended some six months later. The memorial verses to "Druriolanus," the ingenious _agnomen_ of _Punch's_ coining, render full justice to one who began as an indifferent melodramatic actor and ended as a successful impresario, and throughout served "amusement's motley world" with unfailing energy and resourcefulness. But to call him the Showman and Solon of the stage was at once to exaggerate his defects and his merits.

Mr. Henry Arthur Jones cannot be said to have been exactly a favourite with _Punch_ in these years. Indeed, the title under which _Punch_ habitually alluded to him--'Enery Author Jones--was the reverse of honorific. Yet in 1897 _The Liars_, with Charles Wyndham in the principal _rôle_, was cordially welcomed as "an exceptional play with the prospect of an exceptionally long run." Praise from such a source was praise indeed. The tragic death of William Terriss at the hand of a lunatic robbed melodrama of its brightest ornament, and _Punch's_ memorial verses, though melodramatic in their emotion, are a faithful reflection of popular sentiment. _Aladdin_ at Drury Lane impels _Punch_ to pay a well-deserved compliment to Mr. Oscar Barrett for maintaining the best traditions of pantomime. From first to last it was "very funny without being in the least vulgar," and _Punch's_ notice is embellished by an admirable portrait of Dan Leno as "The Second Mrs. Twankyray." In 1898 Rostand swam into our ken with _Cyrano de Bergerac_, but _Punch_ took decidedly a minority view in crediting Coquelin with a "nasal victory over difficulties of his own choice." The author "had much to be thankful for," and the play is pronounced overweighted with verbiage which was neither brilliant nor helpful. _Punch_ was much happier in his burlesques of Maeterlinck, "the Belgian Shakespeare," and the travesty of _Hamlet_, with "Ophelaine" and "Hamelette," and the dialogue, re-written in Ollendorffian sentences abounding in endless iteration, makes excellent reading, though perhaps eclipsed by the brilliant condensed American version of the same tragedy, in which prominence is assigned to the members of the Elsinore University Football Team. In 1899 the claims of the Celtic Drama begin to assert themselves, but _Punch's_ "recipe" for the construction of this new type, founded on Mr. Martyn's play, _The Heather Field_, shows little sympathy for the aims or methods of the new school:--

[Sidenote: _Rostand and Maeterlinck_]

Choose for your scene an Irish bog. Among brutal Saxons the theory still lingers that Ireland is all bog, and this will give _vraisemblance_ to your picture. If you require an Interior, an Irish cabin will be most appropriate, for there is another curious superstition on this side of the St. George's Channel that all Irishmen live in cabins.

For the subject of your drama select something gloomy and Scandinavian. It is true that _The Times_ says that "Lunacy and surface drainage are not cheerful subjects for drama," but your Celt knows better. Everything depends on the treatment. Did not Ibsen contrive a drama of enthralling interest on the subject of the drainage of a watering-place? And they say Ibsen is a Scotsman by descent, which is next door to being a Celt.

Let your characters be crazy or neurotic. You will find Ibsen's works a perfect storehouse of these, and if you "lift" one or two of them nobody is likely to detect the theft. _Rita Allmers_, or _Mrs. Borkman_, or that sweet thing _Hedda Gabler_, would all come in useful, and, as your scene is an Irish bog, there is an obvious opening for a Wild Duck.

If the plot of your play is gloomy, the dialogue should be even gloomier. Irish humour would be quite out of place on this occasion. No one must flourish a shillelah or sing "_Killaloe_" to lighten up the proceedings, and the stirring strains of "_The Wearing of the Green_" must be rigidly banished. This paramount necessity for gloom will probably place you in a somewhat difficult position, and may make it necessary for you to banish the Irish brogue altogether from your cast. Long experience has shown that a Saxon audience invariably associates a brogue with latent humour, and if anybody laughed it would be all up with the Celtic Renascence.

_Punch's_ charity--or tolerance--did not, however, begin at home. London dramatic critics fared no better at his hands than Irish playwrights; witness the essay which begins "Dramatic critics are of three kinds. They may either write about themselves, or about the play, or about Macready." The first were egotistic, the second wholly unjudicial, the third laboriously and tediously reminiscent. But the sting of the satire is in the last paragraph:--

In criticizing the acting of a play, you should be guided wholly by the status of the actors. Thus the performance of the highly salaried players should receive unstinted praise, and that of the actor-manager (it is not the least blessing of his happy position) adulation. Less known performers may be mentioned with less enthusiasm, and minor personages may even be alluded to with marked disfavour. This will lend to your judgments that air of fine discrimination which will add to their weight.

[Sidenote: _Punch and "the Duse"_]

Loyalty to old favourites was another matter, as when _Punch_, under the heading "Little Nell," pleaded in support of the "Nellie Farren" Benefit on behalf of that famous Gaiety heroine in 1898; or when in 1899 he offered his parting salute to Mrs. Keeley, who throughout her long career in burlesque, melodrama, and legitimate drama had never been vulgar or tawdry, but always brave and gay, and who lived to the patriarchal age of ninety-four. Sardou's _Robespierre_, written for Sir Henry Irving and his company, gave _Punch_ the opening for a graceful compliment to father and son, for Mr. Lawrence Irving translated the play and appeared in the part of Tallien. Sarah Bernhardt's _Hamlet_ is regarded rather as a _tour de force_ than a legitimate interpretation, and _Punch_, who could not accept her reading of the Prince as a mischievous, spoilt and conceited boy of eighteen, suggested, in a whimsical picture, that she ought to get Irving to play the part of Ophelia. The same year, 1899, was notable for the coming of the _Revue_. The pioneer effort, which was launched at the Avenue Theatre, was more or less on French lines, but even at the outset the Variety element was prominent in a series of imitations of popular actors and actresses. Tree's production of _King John_, with Lewis Waller as Falconbridge and Miss Julia Neilson as Constance, is pronounced "a superb revival," but the English version of _Cyrano de Bergerac_ failed to convert _Punch_ to the majority view, though he now admitted that the piece contained brilliant poetry. He preferred Wyndham to Coquelin, but liked neither of them in the title _rôle_, and he sums up by declaring the piece to be a fine dramatic poem _not_ to be acted, but read. Still, _Punch_ was never wholly insular or inaccessible to new and foreign influences. He describes in 1900 how an enthusiastic friend accosted him in broken Anglo-Italian and swept him off to see Mme. Duse in the Italian version of _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_. _Punch_ began by scoffing at the grotesque costumes of the cast, but succumbed to the magic of this wonderful actress, who owed nothing to physique, discarded all make-up, even in a part where artificiality was in keeping with the character, and triumphed by sheer force of genius.

The vogue of musical comedy was now at its height. _Punch_ has some amusing suggestions in 1900 for adapting _The School for Scandal_ and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's _Mrs. Dane's Defence_ to suit the fashion of the hour, with appropriate casts, including Dan Leno and Miss Marie Lloyd. His rhymed extravaganza on "The Evolution of Musical Comedy" accurately describes the prevalent method in this quatrain:--

In musical comedy books (Chiefly frivol and froth) You do not spoil the broth By employing a number of cooks.

With the opening of the new century, the "poetic drama" was revived with a certain measure of success by the production of Mr. Stephen Phillips's plays. Mr. Phillips had graduated as an actor, but _Punch_ found him lacking in the theatrical sense, while acknowledging the pomp and pageantry of his verse. _Herod_, with Sir Herbert Tree in the title _rôle_, is condemned for its repulsive realism, and the lack of any character that engaged sympathy. The notice of _Paolo and Francesca_ in 1902 is long, critical and by no means unfriendly, but the resultant impression is of "a negative achievement" in which the purple patches failed to redeem the lack of consistent characterization or of stage-craft. Mr. Henry Ainley is mentioned, but without any recognition of the qualities which have since earned for him distinction and popularity. _Nero_, by the same author, produced in 1906, is described as "out-heroding _Herod_." There were many fine lines but little dramatic action. _Punch_ praises Miss Constance Collier as Poppaea, but cannot take the part seriously. "She looked the Roman lady, played the unfaithful wife, and died effectively as an invalid after a long and inexplicable illness. Perhaps she was poisoned. Nero knows; nobody else does except, perhaps, Mr. Stephen Phillips." Tree's make-up as Nero was most artistic, but he had not one really fine scene given him; Mrs. Tree was an admirable Agrippina; but _Punch_ was not thrilled by the final conflagration, which he describes as a "weird, maniacal but dramatically unsatisfactory finish."

[Sidenote: _Barrie and Shaw_]

Meanwhile Sir James Barrie and Mr. Bernard Shaw were coming along with leaps and bounds, but neither of them owed much to _Punch_ in the early years of the century. He had nothing but praise for H. B. Irving's acting in _The Admirable Crichton_, but it was a triumph for the actor 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:--