Читать книгу Mr. Punch's History of Modern England - Charles L. Graves - Страница 21
THE DRAMA, OPERA, MUSIC, AND THE FINE ARTS
ОглавлениеOne must not expect to find a detached, impartial, or coldly critical survey of the drama in the pages of Punch. Most of his staff had dabbled in play-writing; Douglas Jerrold was a prolific, accomplished, and, so far as prestige went, a successful dramatist, but he had reaped a singularly meagre reward for his industry and talent. He had fallen out with managers, and his quarrel with Charles Kean was not without its influence on Punch's persistent disparagement of that actor. Yet, when all allowance has been made for these personal motives and the querulous tone which they occasionally inspired, Punch may fairly claim to have rendered valuable service to the British drama in this period. He was sound in essentials: in his whole-hearted devotion to Shakespeare and loyal support of those, like Phelps and Mrs. Warner, who under great difficulties, and with no fashionable patronage, gave good performances of Shakespearean plays at moderate prices; in his unceasing attacks on "Newgate plays," "poison plays," the cult of the criminal whether native or foreign, stage buffoonery, over-reliance on mere upholstery, dramatic clichés, and solecisms in pronunciation.29 He was also a reformer in his advocacy of improvements for the comfort and convenience of the play-goer, such as the abolition of the rule of evening dress. And, as we have seen, he rebuked mummer-worship, holding that "the players' vanity has been the curse of the modern drama." His continued and pointed remonstrance with the Court for discouraging British plays and British-born players has been already noted. It runs through the first ten years of Punch with little intermission and was largely justified. Punch was able to congratulate Prince Albert on subscribing to the fund raised to purchase Shakespeare's house for the nation in 1847, but in the main his grievance was genuine. Foreign artists and freaks were far too freely patronized and encouraged at Court. The balance has long since been redressed, and another grievance—the dependence of managers on translations and adaptations from French plays as set forth in the following extract—has been largely remedied, though the remedy, so far as the importation of American plays is concerned, is by some critics considered worse than the disease:—
Galignani's Messenger says of the French theatre:—
"There were produced in 1842 at the different theatres of Paris, 191 new pieces."
Punch says of the English theatre:—
"There were produced in 1842 at the different theatres of London about ten new pieces; the rest being hashed, fricasseed, devilled, warmed up, from old stock brought from France or stolen from the manufactory of Bentley and others!"
Censure is impartially bestowed on home-made and imported specimens of the Newgate drama—Jack Sheppard and Madame Lafarge.30 Of the latter we read that besides being revolting it was "disgusting and filthy." The play is compared, to its great disadvantage, with The Beggar's Opera, which is defended as being "real satire and not wallowing in vice." George Stephens's tragedy Martinuzzi comes in for frequent ridicule, though the chief rôles were taken by Phelps and Mrs. Warner, and the ridicule seems to have been well deserved. On what grounds Stephens gained a place in the D.N.B. is not evident, as his dramas soon died beyond all possibilities of resurrection. Lord Mahon's "petition" to Parliament on behalf of the drama in the year 1842 met with Punch's support. It amounted to this, that Parliament in the bounty of its wisdom would permit what were then called the minor theatres to play the very best dramas they could obtain; as it was they were only open to the very worst. Douglas Jerrold writing under his signature of "Q" then develops the argument:—
Virtue, decency, loyalty, and a bundle of other excellences, are only valuable in Westminster. In that city of light and goodness, the Lord Chamberlain deputes some holy man to read all plays ere they are permitted to be produced before a Westminster audience. There is no such care taken of the souls of Southwark or Islington. The Victoria audiences may be the Alsatians of play-goers, and laugh, and weep, and hoot, in defiance of Law. They get their Jack Sheppards, unlicensed and unpaid for; but the strait-laced frequenters of the Adelphi and Olympic have the satisfaction of knowing that their Jack Sheppard has been licensed by a Deputy, for a certain amount of Her Majesty's money. There, the beauties of Tyburn are exhibited with a cum privilegio.
Will Lord Mahon's petition have the effect of altering this wickedness, this stupidity, this injustice and absurdity? We hope it may; but, we repeat it, we have little faith in the enthusiasm of Parliament. With the worthy gentlemen who compose it, the playhouse is become low and vulgar. Were they called upon to debate what should be the statute length of Cerito's petticoats, we should have greater hope of their activity, than when the subject involves the true interests of the English dramatist, and the real value of the English stage.
Lord Mahon's Petition
Punch's pessimism was fortunately not justified by the sequel, for in the following year, 1843, the Theatres Act abolished the monopoly of the patent theatres—which for more than a hundred years had confined the legitimate drama to Covent Garden, Drury Lane and the Haymarket—and thus inaugurated a policy of free trade.
Déjazet's London début in 1843 provoked the comment, applied by a later humorist to one of the plays of Aristophanes, that she was "as broad as she was long"; and the production of a ballet on Lady Macbeth in the same year prompted the really prophetic suggestion that the only way to get a five-act tragedy performed was to omit the whole of the dialogue and give the rôle of heroine to a première danseuse. As a matter of fact Taglioni appeared in Electra in 1845.
In 1844 Punch took a very gloomy view of the dramatic outlook; French dishes predominated, Shakespeare was "Cibberized," and comedy vulgarized at the Adelphi and the Olympic. Nor was he cheered by the activities of a society called the Syncretics, "whose boast it is that they can write tragedies which no company can act, and no audience can sit out"—a boast which might be triumphantly re-echoed by similar societies to-day. A Greek play, the Antigone, produced at Covent Garden in 1845 was an early harbinger of the fruitful movement which began at the end of the 'seventies. Punch's spirits, however, had already revived somewhat when "Shakespeare though banished from Drury Lane and Covent Garden found the snuggest asylum near the New River"—at Sadler's Wells under the enterprising management of Samuel Phelps and Mrs. Warner in 1844, and in the following year he notes that Shakespeare, expelled from England to make way for the ballet, had been welcomed in Paris in the person of Macready. The public knowledge of Shakespeare at the time was, according to Punch, confined to "elegant extracts."
A curious sidelight is thrown on the composition of theatrical programmes in the 'forties by the ironical regret expressed at the passing of the old school of comic song: "The old comic song was a description in lively verse of a murder or a suicide or some domestic affliction, and if sung at a minor theatre just after the half-price came in, never missed an encore." At the major theatres, and especially Drury Lane, the cast in spectacular plays was already reinforced by four-footed performers, and processions of animals through the streets were a familiar mode of theatrical advertisement. Managerial enterprise has always had its menagerial side. Foreign bipeds, however, were not always popular, and when Monte Cristo was produced at Drury Lane in 1848, with French performers, there was a patriotic hostile demonstration.
The Passing of Pantomimes
Judged by modern standards salaries were modest. Well-known actors are charged with extortion in demanding £60 a week, but it must be remembered that £60 was exactly all that Douglas Jerrold ever made out of his most popular and successful play—Black Eyed Susan. Those simple souls who lament the decadence of the harlequinade will be comforted to learn that as early as 1843 Punch deplores the triumph of scenery over fun, the supersession of Grimaldi by Stanfield; and he returns to his complaint in 1849 in "Christmas is not what it ought to be":—
Pantomime's quite on the wane,
Though vainly they try to enrich it,
By calling, again and again,
For "Hot Codlins" and "Tippetywitchet."
The stealing of poultry by clown
Has ceased irresistible sport to be,
If he swallowed a turkey it wouldn't go down;
Christmas is not what it ought to be.
The red-hot poker business has at any rate taken an unconscionably long time in dying, and it is not dead yet. But clowns, outside pantomime, have taken on a new lease of life thanks to Marceline and Grock. The present writer ventures to predict wonderful possibilities for harlequinade if revived and developed on the romantic and grotesque lines of the Russian ballet, to say nothing of the opportunities which it affords for satire. The craze for child actors and marionettes in 1852 led Punch to bestow an ironical commendation on the latter on the ground that they never squabbled in the greenroom.
Punch was all for clean plays, but he was no stickler for puritanism or prudery. In this same year of 1852 he indulges in well-deserved satire on the performances in Passion week. All theatres were supposed to be shut, with the result that while the legitimate drama was suppressed, acrobats or mountebanks of any sort could give entertainments. We may note that in 1853 Punch suggested that theatrical performances should begin at 8 instead of 7 p.m.; 6.30 p.m. is mentioned as the usual dinner hour. Besides the actors already noted Charles Mathews and Vestris, J. B. Buckstone and Paul Bedford are constantly mentioned and in the main with good will. The feud with Charles Kean was kept up to the end; Punch speaks of his "touchiness," and certainly spared no means of getting him on the raw. When Kean was made an F.S.A. in 1857 it was maliciously suggested that the initials stood for Fair Second-rate Actor. It was otherwise with Charles Kemble, that "first-rate actor of second-rate parts," as Macready styled the father of the gifted and delightful Fanny, and Adelaide the successful opera singer. After his retirement from the stage Kemble gave readings from Shakespeare at Willis's Rooms and elsewhere in 1844–45, and on his death in 1854, Punch paid him this graceful tribute:—
He linked us with a past of scenic art,
Larger and loftier than now is known;
Less mannered, it may be, our stage has grown,
Than when he played his part.
But where shall we now find, upon our scene,
The Gentleman in action, look and word,
Who wears his wit, as he would wear his sword,
As polished and as keen?
Come all who loved him: 'tis his passing bell:
Look your last look: cover the brave old face:
Kindly and gently bear him to his place—
Charles Kemble, fare thee well!
LABLACHE
The Reign of Italian Opera
A whole volume might be written on the glories, the splendours, and the absurdities of Italian opera in the 'forties and 'fifties as revealed, applauded, and criticized in the columns of Punch. We say Italian opera advisedly, because the domination of Italian composers and singers and of the Italian language was as yet practically unassailed. Germany, it is true, had already begun to knock at the door. Lord Mount Edgcumbe in his Reminiscences mentions the visit of a German operatic company in 1832. Staudigl, who "created" the title-rôle in Mendelssohn's Elijah when it was produced at Birmingham in 1846, is mentioned by Punch as singing in opera in London in 1841. Weber's Der Freischütz was given at the Haymarket in the summer of 1844. But the greater lights in the operatic firmament, judged by the test of fashionable patronage and indeed general popularity, were all Italian. The meteoric Malibran—Spanish by race but Italian in training—died suddenly and tragically in 1836, and Pasta, her great rival, withdrew from the stage shortly afterwards. The retirement of the famous tenor Rubini is mentioned in Punch's first volume, but his popularity was eclipsed by that of Mario, who reigned without a rival in virtue of his triple endowment of voice, good looks, and elegance. His triumphs were shared by Grisi, and the kings and queens of song on the lyric stage in these two decades were either Italians by birth—e.g., Grisi, Alboni, whom Punch likens to a "jolly blooming she-Bacchus," Persiani, and Piccolomini—or trained in the Italian school and distinguished by their association with Italian opera, such as Sontag and Jenny Lind, Duprez the French tenor, and Lablache, who was born and bred in Italy though of Franco-Hibernian parentage, the greatest in bulk, in volume and beauty of voice, in dramatic versatility and in genial humour of all operatic basses. So too with the composers. It was the heyday of Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and the earlier Verdi, whom Punch in 1852 irreverently styles the "crack composer" as he cracked so many voices. Punch cannot be blamed if he failed to foresee in the crude vigour of Nabucco and the hectic sentimentality of Traviata and Trovatore possibilities of that wonderful Indian summer of genius which began with Aïda and culminated in Otello and Falstaff. Michael Costa was the conductor par excellence, who took outrageous liberties with scores, but was none the less a most efficient operatic drill-sergeant. Here our debt to Italy was ingeniously expressed—though not by Punch—in the Latin tag: Costam subduximus Apennino. Balfe, it is true, had scored a resounding success in 1843 with The Bohemian Girl, which still holds the boards. The fact that it is commonly known in the profession as "The Bo Girl" is perhaps the best index to its artistic value. But Balfe was at least equally well known as a conductor of Italian opera. Punch supported the claims of native and national opera, and regretted that Adelaide Kemble, "our first English operatic singer," should not have made an effort in its behalf in connexion with the venture at Drury Lane in 1841, when a Mr. Rodwell was the only native composer represented. The reason alleged for the rejection of other English operas submitted was the badness of the libretti. Italian opera libretti were often satirized by Punch, but those of Fitzball and Bunn were, if possible, worse.
Italian opera, however, the only opera which really counted in the social world, was the luxury and appanage of the nobility and gentry. The importance and significance of the institution at this time, and for many years afterwards, are really very well summed up in an article which Punch reproduced from the Morning Post in 1843 with italics and comments of his own at the expense of "Jenkins":—
"The Opera is the place of rendezvous of those persons who, de facto, as well as de jure, are, in their several different spheres, the leaders and models of society. It is not only to hear an Opera which they may have seen a hundred times that the distinguished subscribers assemble. There, most men of consequence literary and artistical (pretty egotist) as well as the noble and fashionable, have agreed to meet during the season. There, the fair tenants of the boxes receive those friendly and agreeable visits which do not consist in the delivery of a piece of engraved postcard to a servant. Charming causeries are constantly proceeding sotto voce (of course Jenkins listens), the music filling up the pauses of a conversation which the more often it is interrupted by the bright efforts of the singers—with the more zest and piquancy it is resumed. We, whose office it is to record daily events—things as they are—and hold the glass up to fashion (whilst fashion arranges its evening tie) can but seek to imitate this course of things—and we do so with only one regret—that motives of delicacy compel us to reflect rather the general sentiments that prevail, than those private opinions which have most piquancy."
"Jenkins" as Musical Critic
For sheer ecstasy of flunkeydom "Jenkins" was unsurpassed and unsurpassable, but at least he was capable of recognizing native talent, as may be gleaned from his notice of Semiramide in English in the winter of 1842:—
We cannot omit another little extract from a notice of Semiramide:—
"Of the gems of this sublime opera we must particularly direct attention to Mrs. Alfred Shaw's manner and divinely expressive way of singing her Cavatina, 'Ah! that day I well remember,' where her sublime contralto, controlled by the most scientific skill, and whose soft diapason tones fall like seraphs' harmony, penetrates the heart with chastening ardour and inspiring effect. Again the contralto and soprano duet, 'Dark days of Sorrow,' between Miss Kemble and Mrs. Shaw; what deep pathos! what eloquence discoursing! Mark the clear, brilliant, towering sublimity of expression as Semiramide holds on the C in alt., while the thirds and fifths of Assaca's deep mellow notes from D to G in a full octave and a half are filling in a sublime harmony of melody of the most touching and refined order."
But if extravagant homage was paid to the queens of song much was also expected of them. The truth of this is seen in the episode chronicled under the heading "Persiani at Sea":—
An enthusiastic audience is assembled to hurrah Persiani—to cry brava—to throw bouquets, etc. The crowd open their mouths to receive the honeyed voice of a prima donna, and Doctor Wardrop throws blue pills into them. The following notice proves the truth of our metaphor:—
"Madame Persiani continues to suffer so severely from the effects of sea-sickness, accompanied with violent retching, that it is impossible for her to appear this evening.
"James Wardrop, M.D."
On this, says The Times, "the audience were at first disposed to grumble, and gave many signs of dissatisfaction."
The audience were perfectly right. They were justified in becoming very savage at the violent retching of a sea-sick St. Cecilia; and had she had the effrontery to die, they would, we are convinced, have been perfectly exonerated, by all the laws of English freedom, in breaking the chandeliers and tearing up the benches!
THE SKATING BALLET
The private life of operatic celebrities was as a rule no concern of the opera-going public, but the line was drawn at Lola Montez, whose engagement to dance at Drury Lane in 1843 was cancelled in deference to general protests. The ballet was an integral part and commanding attraction of the old Italian opera. The most wonderful account of this "explosion of all the upholsteries" has been given by Carlyle at a slightly later date. In the 'forties the shining lights were Taglioni—whose skirts were quite long—Cerito, Fanny Ellsler and Carlotta Grisi, cousin of the prima donna, a wonderful quartet on whose gyrations and levitations "Jenkins" showered all the adulatory epithets in his polyglot vocabulary. The skating ballet in Le Prophète, popular in 1849, is the subject of a charming little sketch in Punch, and this production was notable vocally for the appearance of Pauline Viardot-Garcia, the greatest actress, the most accomplished and enlightened musician, and the most interesting personality of all nineteenth century prime donne. Henriette Sontag, however, was the popular operatic heroine of the year, graceful, charming and still handsome, though no longer in her first youth,31 a perfect singer, an incomparable Susanna (as Punch admitted), though lacking dramatic force—Sontag, of whom Catalani said that she was the first in her genre, but that her genre was not the first.
Jenny Lind
Great singers came and went but Punch never wavered in his allegiance to Jenny Lind. Though her career on the lyric stage was brief, she is more often and more enthusiastically mentioned than any other singer, and for reasons which are revealed in the following lines:—
THE NIGHTINGALE THAT SINGS IN THE WINTER
Sweetest creature, in song without rival or peer,
Far more inwardly vibrate thy notes than the ear,
For there speaks in that music, pure, gentle, refined,
The exquisite voice of a beautiful mind—
Of a spirit of earnestness, goodness and truth,
Of a heart full of tender compassion and ruth,
Ever ready to comfort, and succour, and bless,
In sorrow and suffering, in want and distress.
Now this Nightingale rare, in the winter who sings,
Being not yet a seraph, is one without wings;
And her name, which has travelled as wide as the wind,
Is kind-hearted, generous, dear JENNY LIND.
When her retirement was rumoured Punch declared that the Bishop of Norwich should rather persuade her to remain on the stage than quit it, because of her example. Reports of her engagement to a Mr. Harris prompted the remark that "the people would never permit it." Indeed there were some persons as sceptical of his existence as Mrs. Gamp was of his female namesake. Her last appearance was in May, 1849, to assist Lumley, the unlucky impresario, then in difficulties, in response to appeals which were especially vehement in Punch. He asserted that her secession was a national calamity: she "made the stage better without making herself worse"; and Mozart's aid was invoked in an imaginary address from the composer of Don Giovanni.
TO JENNY LIND
FROM PUNCH
The engagement to Mr. Harris was "declared off" immediately afterwards, but Jenny Lind, in spite of Punch's repeated appeals, adhered to her decision to quit the stage. As late as 1856 Punch still hoped she would reconsider her verdict, and her farewell concerts at Exeter Hall in the summer of that year inspired the characteristic remark that "if any sweetening process could purify the building it would be such singing as hers."
Popular Favourites in 1844
In the early 'forties Norma was the opera most frequently mentioned. Punch published the stories of several of the most popular operas in verse. A fragment from Linda di Chamouni may suffice:—
Then Mario warbles a beautiful bar
About the revenge of his cruel mamma,
Who, finding to Linda his faith has been plighted,
Resolves to another to get him united:
He curses his fate in a charming falsetto,
Gives way to despair in a voce di petto.
And, rather than grief in his bosom should fester,
He calls out for death in a voce di testa:
Of life his farewell he seems willing to take,
And gives on addio a delicate shake.
The passage is managed with exquisite skill;
And Linda—acquainted with Mario's trill—
Lets him hold it as long as he's able to do,
Awaiting its finish to take for her cue.
Opera singers were great public favourites, but if Punch is to be believed they did not stand first. In a list of the great features of the season of 1844 he puts the Polka and Tom Thumb first, followed by Cerito (the dancer), Grisi, Mario, Persiani, Lablache and the Ojibbeway Indians, who were "horrid but interesting." The ways and personalities of the operatic stars are genially hit off in an article on "the Migration of the Italian Singing Birds." It is pleasant to find Lablache—Stentor and male Siren in one—put first as a bird unrivalled for the combined power and richness of his song. "He is a bird that can sing, and will sing, never requiring any compulsion to make him sing." Punch alludes to his genial disposition, his magnanimity in undertaking small parts to secure a perfect ensemble, but omits to mention his humour. Lablache was once living in the same house with Tom Thumb, and a stranger who came to visit the "General" strayed into Lablache's room. Aghast at the bulk of the inmate the visitor explained "I thought Tom Thumb lived here." "Yes," said Lablache, "but when I am at home I take it easy." Lablache had as much brains as body, and elsewhere Punch happily quotes in his praise the line of Virgil: ingentes animos ingenti in pectore versat. The notices of Grisi and Mario are worth transcribing:—
"THE GRISI"
Among Italian singing birds the female is equally musical, to say the least, with the male. The song of the Grisi is remarkable for its variety, strength and sweetness. The habits of the Grisi, from what we have been enabled to glean respecting them, seem to be those of a bird that continues, in a considerable measure, to enjoy its own existence. Whether rising with the lark is one of them, or not, we do not know, but we are certain that singing with it is; for the Grisi may undoubtedly be said to vie with the lark, or even the nightingale, in singing. The Grisi is evidently a bird of a kind disposition, and susceptible of affection and attachment; but we should conjecture that she would be apt to peck if ruffled. The kind of food best adapted for this very fascinating songstress is to be obtained at M. Verrey's.
"THE MARIO"
A very pleasant vocalist. He is now regarded as an efficient substitute for the Rubini, to whose note, his own, in point of quality, is somewhat similar. He differs, however, from the latter bird, in singing, like a good bullfinch, the airs which he has acquired without any admixture of certain "native wood-notes wild" which, however well enough in their way, are no embellishment to such music as Mozart's. We lately had the pleasure of hearing him deliver "Il mio tesoro" with very commendable fidelity. He is in the habit of being frequently encored; which is the only habit our knowledge enables us to ascribe to him. So highly are these Italian singing birds prized that many of them fetch, on an average, fifty pounds a night for a mere performance. The sum that would be required to buy one of them up altogether would be enormous. Whether it is the length of John Bull's ears that causes him to pay so dearly for their gratification, we do not know. Would he give as much to relieve the national distress? Perhaps: if it were set to music and sung at the Italian opera.
Musical Grab
The last lines of this passage lend point to a sardonic remark in an earlier volume:—
The following extract is as honest as it is true. It is written by Monsieur Henri Blanchard, in the Gazette Musicale:—
"Are you aware," he asks, "that the Italian singers, the French and German instrumentalists, visit your shores solely for the purpose of exercising that spirit of commerce which presides over everything with you, and not to ask for the opinion of Englishmen on the subject of art? They come to make amends in Paris, as they all say, for the trading system they have been carrying on in England, and to spend the money which they have earned with so much ennui."
Punch begs to lay the above on the reading-desk of his gracious mistress the Queen, and humbly prays that her Majesty will mercifully consider the condition of the French, German and Italian ennuyés—and dispense for the future with their services.
This familiar wail is repeated in 1849 when London was likened to a musical Babel with two Italian, one German, and one French operas; Hungarian, French and other foreign prime donne; Strauss's band and Styrian minstrels. M. Blanchard's view was further confirmed by a curious episode worthy of note for the first introduction of the name Wagner to Punch's readers and indeed to the British public. It was not the great Richard, however, but his niece Johanna, an opera singer of considerable repute, who was concerned. In 1852 she simultaneously accepted engagements at both opera houses, a policy which led to protracted litigation in Chancery. Her father was so frank as to say that "England was worth nothing except for her money," and Punch in his frequent references to the incident employs the term "Wagnerism" to express the point of view of opera-singers who would not abide by their contracts. The unfortunate Johanna, "the wandering minstrel," as Punch called her, never appeared in opera in London, but apparently did sing at Court. The engagement of Richard Wagner to conduct the concerts of the Philharmonic Society in 1855 left Punch not merely cold but pugnaciously antagonistic.
The "music of the future" prompted him to rude remarks about "long-eared musicians," and he returns to the seat of the scornful in a curt notice headed "NOT a Magic Minstrel":—
Herr Wagner, Professor of the "Music of the Future," appears, in conducting at the Philharmonic, to have made strange work with the music of all time. He alters Mozart, it appears, if not exactly as a parish clerk once said that he had altered Haydn for the singing gallery, yet in a manner nearly as audacious, altering "allegro" to "moderato"; "andante" to "adagio"; "allegretto" to "andante"; and "allegro" again to "prestissimo." Wagner would seem strongly to resemble his namesake in Faust, in the particular wherein that Wagner differs from his master—that is, in the circumstance of being no conjuror.
The sudden disappearance of that Italianized Westphalian, the fiery Cruvelli, was a nine days' wonder in the operatic world in 1854 and is duly chronicled in Punch. Towards the end of this period Piccolomini, a singer of small calibre but attractive personality, achieved great popularity in the rôle of the consumptive heroine of La Traviata, and Punch celebrated the craze of "Piccolomania," as he called it, in the following travesty:—
Art is long and time is fleeting,
But of genius the soul,
Ordinary talent beating,
Reaches at one stride the goal.
In the operatic battle,
In the Prima Donna's life
Quit the herd—the vocal cattle,
Be a Grisi in the strife.
Trust no promise, howe'er pleasant,
Not who may be, but who are;
Piccolomini at present,
Is the bright particular star.
JULLIEN'S DESPAIR
Jullien
Outside the opera houses, music in the period under review in this volume may be said to begin and end with Jullien, so far as Punch is concerned. Jullien is roughly handled in the very first number of Punch. In the autumn of 1857 satire has given place to affection and generous recognition. And Punch was right, for underneath all his superficial buffooneries Jullien was a great educator and reformer. The present writer vividly remembers an anecdote told him by the late Sir Charles Hallé in the 'eighties. After giving a description of Jullien's flamboyant attire—on one occasion he wore a shirt front embroidered with a picture of a nymph playing a flute under a palm tree—and his habit, after performing a solo on his golden piccolo, of flinging himself with a beau geste of exhaustion into a gorgeously upholstered armchair, Sir Charles Hallé went on to recall how Jullien had once said to him: "To succeed in music in England, one must be either a great genius like you, or a great charlatan like me." Now Jullien had been a failure as a student at the Paris Conservatoire—but so had Verdi at Milan. But there is no warrant whatever for Punch's statement that he was "a ci-devant waiter of a quarante-sous traiteur." Of the charlatan side of Jullien, the love of noise and, again to quote Carlyle, of the "explosion of all the upholsteries," Punch gives a graphic if severe picture in the verses which appear in his first number:—
MONSIEUR JULLIEN
"One!"—crash!
"Two!"—clash!
"Three!"—dash!
"Four!"—smash!
Diminuendo,
Now crescendo:—
Thus play the furious band,
Led by the kid-gloved hand
Of Jullien—that Napoleon of quadrille,
Of Piccolo-nians shrillest of the shrill;
Perspiring raver
Over a semi-quaver;
Who tunes his pipes so well, he'll tell you that
The natural key of Johnny Bull's—A flat.
Demon of discord, with moustaches cloven—
Arch-impudent improver of Beethoven—
Tricksy Professor of charlatanerie—
Inventor of musical artillery—
Barbarous rain and thunder maker—
Unconscionable money taker—
Travelling about both near and far,
Toll to exact at every bar,
What brings thee here again
To desecrate old Drury's fane?
Egregious attitudiniser!
Antic fifer! com'st to advise her
'Gainst intellect and sense to close her walls?
To raze her benches,
That Gallic wenches
Might play their brazen antics at masked balls?
"GENTS" AT THE PROMENADE CONCERT
Early Promenade Concerts
But when Punch assails Jullien for leaving his "stew-pans and meat-oven To make a fricassee of the great Beet-hoven" and "saucily serve Mozart with sauce-piquant," and bids him "put your hat on, coupez votre bâton, Bah, Va!!!"—Punch was both rude and ungenerous. From the very first at his Concerts d'Eté and then at the Promenade Concerts, Jullien was a popularizer of good music. He gave his public waltzes, "Row Polkas," and explosive Army Quadrilles, but he also sandwiched Beethoven and Mozart between the coarser viands of his musical menu. So while he was credited with the intention of bringing out Stabat Mater waltzes—by no means a difficult feat with Rossini's work—and a Dead March gallopade, we must never forget that he was the first conductor to introduce symphonic music to the masses and the authentic pioneer of the movement which Sir Henry Wood has carried on at the Queen's Hall for the last twenty years and more. Modern music strikes heavily on the naked ear, but Jullien was in the habit of reinforcing instruments of percussion with explosives, and Punch suggests in 1849 that his Concerts Monstres should be held on Salisbury Plain to give elbow room for his "stunning performances." His chevelure, his waistcoats and waistbands were too conspicuous to escape Punch's vigilant eye, and Jullien was no doubt content that it should be so, for he was a master of the art of réclame. He is habitually alluded to as "the Mons," primarily as the diminutive for "Monsieur," but mainly because he was "the Mont Blanc of Music." The excesses of Jazz Bands of to-day are foreshadowed in a description of the "tongs and bones" music at the Promenade Concerts. But the author of the notice of Jullien32 in the D.N.B. conveys a wrong impression when he speaks of Punch as only ridiculing Jullien. Already Punch had learned to recognize his merits, and, while rebuking him for his extravagant conducting of flashy and trashy pieces, renders homage to his reverence for good music. Thenceforward the references to "the Mons" are in the main friendly. The Almanack for 1852 speaks of the "Julian (Jullien) Era" in music. Jullien's opera Peter the Great is tenderly handled in the autumn of the same year, and, when he set out for his tour in the States, Punch sped the parting minstrel in some verses which are an admirable and faithful summary of his services to musical education in England:—
FAREWELL TO JULLIEN
Composer of Peter the Great,
Ere over Atlantic's broad swell
The steamer shall carry thee, proud of her freight,
Let me bid thee a hearty farewell.
With ophicleides, cymbals, and gongs
At first thou didst wisely begin,
And bang the dull ears of the popular throngs,
As though 'twere to beat music in.
With national measures of France,
With polka, with waltz, and with jig,
The "gents" thou excitedst to caper and dance,
As Orpheus did ox, ass, and pig.
Then, leading them on, by degrees,
To a feeling for Genius and Art,
Thou mad'st them to feel that Beethoven could please,
And that all was not "slow" in Mozart.
John Hullah
The end of the poor "Mons" was pitiful. He was, when he chose to lay aside his mountebankery, an excellent and inspiring conductor. But he was hopelessly extravagant and improvident, and always in money difficulties. In the fire which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre in 1856 he lost all his musical library and other possessions, and a disastrous venture at the Royal Surrey Gardens completed his ruin. There is no "ridicule" in the tribute paid to the unlucky Jullien in the autumn of 1857, when Punch describes him as "a most worthy fellow, at whose eccentricities I have made good fun in his days of glory, but whom I have always recognized as a true artist and a true friend to art." But things went from bad to worse with the eccentric artist, and Jullien died bankrupt and insane in a lunatic asylum in Paris in 1860, at the age of forty-eight.
Another musical pioneer on far more orthodox lines whom Punch recognized was John Hullah, whose singing classes for the people at Exeter Hall in 1842 prompted the comment: "If music for the people be a fine moral pabulum, is the drama for the people to be considered of no value whatever?" More sympathetic is the reference, under the heading of "Io Bacche," to the performance of Bach's Mass in B minor at one of Hullah's monthly concerts in St. Martin's Hall in March, 1851. Hullah, who devoted his life to popular instruction in vocal music, well deserved the commendation: no fewer than 25,000 pupils passed through his singing classes between 1840 and 1860. The standard of taste in vocal music was not high in the early 'forties: Punch satirizes the prevalent sentimentality in songs by suggesting in 1842 as a title "Brush back that briny tear." On the instrumental side we have to note the entrance of the banjo in the same year. Musical eccentricities and monstrosities are duly noted. There seems to have been a special effervescence of them in 1856, when a performer who hammered out tunes on his chin, and Picco, the blind Sardinian penny whistler, enjoyed a fleeting popularity. In the same year American negro dialect ballads were much in vogue, a tyranny from which we are not yet relieved. The concertina became fashionable much earlier, in 1844, owing to the remarkable performances of the Italian virtuoso Giulio Regondi, but is seldom heard nowadays outside of music halls. Turgenieff said that the zither always reminded him of a Jew trying to sing through his nose. Without going so far as that, one may say that it would be hard to carry out Sir Edward Elgar's favourite expression-mark nobilmente on the concertina. With regard to fashionable music Punch complains in 1849 that execution was everything, composition little or nothing. He only anticipated the complaint of a later satirist who wrote:—
Spare, execution, spare thy victim's bones—
Composed by Mozart, decomposed by Jones.
MANNERS AND CVSTOMS OF YE ENGLYSHE IN 1849
A FEW FRIENDS TO TEA AND A LYTTLE MVSYCK
TASTE IN 1854—VILLIKINS AND HIS DINAH IN THE DRAWING-ROOM
Young Lady (who ought to know better): "Now, William, you are not low enough yet. Begin again at 'he took the cold pizen.'"
"Punch's" Taste in Music
Specimens of fashionable musical criticism have already been given under the head of opera. Punch had the root of the matter in him but was lacking in technique, and confesses himself unable to make out what a critic meant by alluding to a new tenor's "admirable portamento." He was on much more sure ground when he attacked Balfe for mangling Beethoven at the Grand National Concerts at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1850, when trivial rubbish was sandwiched between movements of the Eroica Symphony. A second visit, however, enabled him to withdraw his censure, as the Eroica and C minor Symphonies were performed without being cut in two. Punch had "no use for" Wagner, as we have seen, but he fully appreciated his romantic forerunner Weber; his salutation of Spohr and Hummel as classics was perhaps a trifle premature. The names of the various musical celebrities who figure in the pages of Punch in this period afford a striking illustration of the transitoriness of the fame of the executant. Who but experts in musical biography know of Sivori and Ole Bull now? Even the laurels of the great Thalberg, the most "gentlemanly" of all the great pianists, author of the most fashionable variations, have withered sadly in the last half century. Punch does not seem to have been specially impressed by Liszt, the greatest of them all, and misspells his name "Listz" on the occasion of a perfunctory reference to him in 1843. The favourite composers of waltzes were Strauss, the founder of the dynasty of the Viennese waltz-kings, and Labitzky. To the present generation the name Strauss has totally different associations; and we live so fast that an enlightened writer has recently declared that the once redoubtable Richard is also dead. It would be an overstatement to say that conductors were of no account in the 'forties and 'fifties, in view of the notoriety of Jullien and the prestige of Costa, who was both an autocrat and a martinet, but they did not loom nearly so large in the public eye as the great singers. The balance of repute has long since been decisively redressed and the popular conductor of to-day has no reason to complain of lack of homage, whether in the form of applause or official recognition.
Turner as Painter and Poet
The low opinion which Punch entertained of contemporary architects and sculptors and of their ability to design or execute a public building, a monument, or a memorial, has been noted in our brief survey of London. He made an exception in favour of Paxton, but does not seem to have recognized the genius of Alfred Stevens, and here at any rate was not in advance of public or expert opinion of the time. Stevens's design for the Wellington monument was only placed sixth in order of merit by the adjudicators of the competition in 1857, and though ultimately the execution of the monument was entrusted to him, it was not placed in the position intended for it till twenty-seven years after his death. As a judge of painting and painters Punch showed greater independence, intelligence and enlightenment. His earlier volumes abound in references to forgotten names, but he was at least no indiscriminate worshipper of established reputation. In a notice of the Suffolk Street Gallery in the autumn of 1841 he prints a most trenchant criticism of Maclise's "Sleeping Beauty" as showing "a disdain for both law and reason and avoiding an approximation to the vulgarity of flesh and blood in his representation of humanity." Landseer falls under his lash for his "courtier pictures" at the R.A. in 1844, and in the same article we find the first of many satirical references to Turner's poetic titles. Punch, we regret to say, wholly failed to recognize that a bad poet might be a very great painter. In his "Scamper through the Academy" we read:—
No. 77 is called Whalers, by J. M. W. Turner, R.A., and embodies one of those singular effects which are only met with in lobster salads, and in this artist's pictures. Whether he calls his pictures Whalers, or Venice, or Morning, or Noon, or Night, it is all the same; for it is quite as easy to fancy it one thing as another. We give here two subjects by this celebrated artist.
VENICE BY GASLIGHT GOING TO THE BALL
MS. "Fallacies of Hope"
(An Unpublished Poem).—Turner.
VENICE BY DAYLIGHT—RETURNING FROM THE BALL
MS. "Fallacies of Hope"
(An Unpublished Poem).—Turner.
And again:—
We had almost forgotten Mr. J. M. W. Turner, R.A., and his celebrated MS. poem, the Fallacies of Hope, to which he constantly refers us as "in former years," but on this occasion he has obliged us by simply mentioning the title of the poem, without troubling us with an extract. We will, however, supply a motto to his Morning—returning from the Ball, which really seems to need a little explanation; and as he is too modest to quote the Fallacies of Hope, we will quote it for him:
"Oh! what a scene!—Can this be Venice? No.
And yet methinks it is—because I see
Amid the lumps of yellow, red and blue,
Something which looks like a Venetian spire.
That dash of orange in the background there
Bespeaks 'tis Morning! And that little boat
(Almost the colour of tomato sauce)
Proclaims them now returning from the ball!
This in my picture, I would fain convey,
I hope I do. Alas! what FALLACY!"
But there is some good "horse sense" mixed up with frivolity in an article on the canons of criticism a few pages later:—
GENERAL MAXIMS
I. The power of criticism is a gift, and requires no previous education.
II. The critic is greater than the artist.
III. The artist cannot know his own meaning. The critic's office is to inform him of it.
IV. Painting is a mystery. The language of pictorial criticism, like its subject, should be mysterious and unintelligible to the vulgar. It is a mistake to classify it as ordinary English, the rules of which it does not recognise.
V. Approbation should be sparingly given: it should be bestowed in preference on what the general eye condemns. The critical dignity must never be lowered by any explanation why a work of art is good or bad.
CHARACTERISTICS OF PARTICULAR STYLES
Rules for Art Critics
1. To criticise a Picture by Turner.—Begin by protesting against his extravagance; then go on with a "notwithstanding." Combine such phrases as "bathed in sunlight," "flooded with summer glories," "mellow distance," with a reference to his earlier pictures; and wind up with a rapturous rhapsody on the philosophy of art.
2. To criticise a Picture by Stanfield.—Begin by unqualified praise; then commence detracting, first on the score of "sharp, hard outline"; then of "leathery texture"; then of "scenic effect of the figures"; and conclude by a wish he had never been a scene painter.
3. To criticise a Picture by Etty.—Begin by delirious satisfaction with his "delicious carnations" and "mellow flesh-tones." Remark on the skilful arrangement of colour and admirable composition; and finish with a regret that Etty should content himself with merely painting from "the nude Academy model," without troubling himself with that for which you had just before praised him.—N.B. Never mind the contradiction.
4. To criticise a Picture by E. Landseer.—Here you are bound to unqualified commendation. If the subject be Prince Albert's Hat or the Queen's Macaw, some ingenious compliment to royal patrons is expected.
Punch will be happy to supply newspaper critics with similar directions for "doing" all the principal painters in similar style.
He subjoins some masterly specimens of artistic criticism:—
The "facile princeps" of daily critics of art (he of the Post) has the following, in a criticism of Herbert's Gregory and Choristers:—
"There is a want of modulative melody in its colours and mellowness in its hand (whose?), pushed to an outré simplicity in the plainness and ungrammatical development of its general effect. The handling is firm and simple, though in the drapery occasionally too square and inflexible."
MANNERS AND CVSTOMS OF YE ENGLYSHE IN 1849 YE EXHYBITYON. AT YE ROYAL ACADEMYE.
The neglect and rough handling of the treasures of the National Gallery, where pictures presented to the nation were buried in a vault, is a frequent source of indignant comment throughout this period—note for example "The Pictures' Petition" in 1853. But in another sense contemporary pictures were roughly handled by Punch. Thus in 1849 he puts in an effective plea for realism as against Wardour Street "Old Clo'," and appeals to artists to "paint human beings instead of clothes-horses." There is indeed a strangely familiar ring in "Mr. Pips's" notes on the R.A. Exhibition of the year:—
"The Exhibition at large I judge to be a very excellent middling one, many Pictures good in their kind, but that Kind in very few cases high. The Silks and Satins mostly painted to admiration, and the Figures copied carefully from the Model; but this do appear too plainly; and the action generally too much like a Scene in a Play."
The same complaint recurs in the following year, when Punch is moved, as the result of visiting all the exhibitions then open to ask certain questions:—
Is painting a living art in England at this moment?
Is there a nineteenth century?
Are there men and women round about us, doing, acting, suffering?
Is the subject matter of Art, clothes? Or is it men and women, their actions, passions and sufferings?
If Art is vital, should it not somehow find food among living events, interests, and incidents? Is our life, at this day, so unideal, so devoid of all sensuous and outward picturesqueness and beauty, that for subjects to paint we must needs go back to the Guelphs and Ghibellines, or to Charles the Second, or William the Third, or George the Second?
CONVENT THOUGHTS
The P.R.B.
But much more interesting than these generalities—sound and sensible though they are—is the first reference to "certain young friends of mine, calling themselves—the dear silly boys—Pre-Raphaelites" in the same volume. It must certainly be admitted that in his earlier criticisms of the P.R.B.'s Mr. Punch managed to dissemble his affection pretty effectively. The initial compliment in the notice of 1851 is largely discounted by what follows:—
Our dear and promising young friends, the Pre-Raphaelites, deserve especial commendation for the courage with which they have dared to tell some most disagreeable truths on their canvases this year. Mr. Ruskin was quite right in taking up the cudgels against The Times on this matter. The pictures of the P.R.B. are true, and that's the worst of them. Nothing can be more wonderful than the truth of Collins's representation of the Alisma Plantago, except the unattractiveness of the demure lady, whose botanical pursuits he has recorded under the name of CONVENT THOUGHTS. … By the size of the lady's head he no doubt meant to imply her vast capacity of brains—while by the utter absence of form and limb under the robe, he subtly conveys that she has given up all thoughts of making a figure in the world.
Mr. Millais's "Mariana in the moated Grange" is obviously meant to insinuate a delicate excuse for the gentleman who wouldn't come—and to show the world the full import of Tennyson's description:—
then said she, "I am very dreary."
Anything drearier than the lady, or brighter than her blue velvet robe, it is impossible to conceive.
MARIANA IN THE MOATED GRANGE
But Punch makes the amende most handsomely in 1852:—
Commercialism in Art
Before two pictures of Mr. Millais I have spent the happiest hour that I have ever spent in the Royal Academy Exhibition. In those two pictures [Ophelia and The Huguenot] I find more loving observation of Nature, more mastery in the reproduction of her forms and colours, more insight into the sentiment of our greatest poet, a deeper feeling of human emotion, a happier choice of a point of interest, and a more truthful rendering of its appropriate expression, than in all the rest of those eight hundred squares of canvas put together.
In 1852 Punch singles out, from a wilderness of niggling landscapes and highly-coloured and meretricious upholstery, Watts's "marvellous chalk drawing of Lord John Russell." For the rest,
Art is more of a trade now, than it was when Raphael's studio had no other name than bottega—in English, shop; and moreover, it is an emasculate and man-milliner sort of a trade, instead of one demanding strong brains, and a brave and believing heart. It is a trade mainly conversant with miserable things and petty aims—with vanity, and ostentation and vulgarity, and sensuality and frivolity—no longer dealing with themes of prayer and praise, with the glories of beatitude, or the horror of damnation, with the perpetuation of family dignities and devotions, the recording of great events, the dignifying of public and national, or the beautifying of private and individual life. It is a trade in ornament, and its Academy is a shop, and its Exhibition a display of rival wares, in which the best hope and the sole aim of the many is to catch the eye of a customer; and he who "colours most highly, is sure to please."
As a comprehensive indictment of the commercialism and triviality of Victorian art this leaves little to be desired. For an illustration of Punch's altered opinion of the P.R.B.'s it may suffice to quote his palinode in 1853:—
Will you consider me ridiculous or blind when I assure you, on my honour as a puppet and a public performer, that these young gentlemen have written for me this year four of the sweetest and deepest and most thoughtful books I have read since I laid down Mr. Millais's historical romance of The Huguenot, last year? I am sensible of the omniscience of the daily, and some of the weekly papers, and I am aware that this is an opinion which should not be breathed within ear-shot of places where they take in The Times, and the Morning Post, and the Examiner. But I am a sort of chartered libertine, and nobody will believe anything I say is serious, so I can enjoy the luxury of saying what I feel, having no character to keep up. Then I tell you frankly—not forgetting Edwin Landseer's two grand cantos of his Highland Poem, Night and Morning by the Lochside, or Stanfield's noble paean-picture of the Battered Hull that carries the body of Nelson, like a Viking with his ship for bier—not forgetting these and other picture-books well worth reading—I tell you that Hunt's Claudio and Isabella is to me the book of the collection, though it records in colours what Shakespeare has written in words; and that little, if at all after it, comes Millais's Order of Release, and then the Strayed Sheep and Proscribed Royalist of the same authors. I do not mean to put either after the other, so I bracket them."
In accepting the principles of the P.R.B.'s Punch shows all the zeal of the convert, as may be gathered from the following discourse published shortly afterwards:—
Art must adapt itself to the conditions of the time and the life it has to reflect.
See what follows.
If pictures are to be hung in rooms instead of churches, and public halls and palaces, they must be small.
Work on a small scale, being meant for the satisfaction of a close eye, must be highly finished.
These conditions did not affect the old painters and must affect the moderns, and these conditions my young friends the Pre-Raphaelites appear to be conscious of and to submit to, for which I cannot blame them, but praise them rather, for wisely recognising the necessity of adapting Art to surrounding circumstances.
What have they recognised besides?
That the truest representation and grandest creation may and must be combined by the great artist; that as man works in a setting of earth and air, all the beauties and fitness of that setting must be rendered—the more truthfully the better—and that the most accurate rendering of these need not detract from the crowning work—the creation of the central interest which sums itself in human expression.
The practice of painting hitherto has seemed to challenge the possibility of combining these two things—human expression and accurate representation of inanimate or lower nature. These young men take up the gauntlet, and say, "We are prepared to do this—at least to try and do it." Their first-fruits are before the world, and already it has felt that the undertaking is new and startling and cheerfully courageous: nay, more: that to a certain point—and further than might be expected from such beardless champions—it has already succeeded.
So God speed these young Luthers of the worn-out Art-faith; they have burnt the Bull of the Painter-Popes of their time. They have still enough work before them, such as their spiritual father before them went through—devils of their own creating to hurl their palettes at, and many mighty magnates to wrestle with, and confute, and put to shame—by trust in their gospel truth that Accurate Representation is the first requisite of Art.
Enthusiasm of a Convert
It may be added that when French medals were conferred on English artists in 1855, Punch complained that the newer school, i.e. the P.R.B.'s, had been overlooked in favour of Court painters such as Landseer. As a set-off to these examples of Punch's artistic and aesthetic flair and enlightenment, it must be owned that in 1854 he had expressed high praise for Frith's Ramsgate Sands (which was bought by the Queen) on account of its realism. But it may be accounted to him for righteousness that he supported Lord Stanhope's National Portrait Gallery Bill in 1856, and entered a vigorous protest against the vile "Germanism" of the title "Art Treasures Exhibition" instead of "Treasures of Art" for the show at Manchester in 1857. The more modern and equally vile Germanism "Concert-Direction Smith" or whoever the musical agent may be, has apparently been washed out by the War of 1914.
With all deductions and limitations Punch's record as a critic of the fine arts acquits him handsomely of the charge of Philistinism.
29. See the protest against "skee-yi," "blee-yew," "kee-yind," "dis-gyee-ise," for "sky," "blue," "kind," "disguise."
30. Madame Lafarge (1816–52) achieved a sinister immortality by the famous poisoning case which bears her name, "one of the most obscure in the annals of French justice" (Larousse). After being imprisoned for twelve years she was released and died in 1852.
31. She had already been twenty-five years on the stage and was a link with Beethoven, having sung the soprano part in both the Ninth Symphony and the Mass in D at the historic production of these great works in Vienna in 1824. Lablache's generous homage to Beethoven's genius on the occasion of his funeral is too well known to need more than a passing word of grateful recognition.
32. Jullien was, we assume, a naturalized British subject, though he appears in Larousse.
