Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. written by Various
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Various >> Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891.
PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
VOL. 100.
February 14, 1891.
MODERN TYPES.
(_BY MR. PUNCH'S OWN TYPE WRITER._)
NO. XXIII.--THE TOLERATED HUSBAND.
It is customary for the self-righteous moralists who puff themselves
into a state of Jingo complacency over the failings of foreign
nations, to declare with considerable unction that the domestic
hearth, which every Frenchman habitually tramples upon, is maintained
in unviolated purity in every British household. The rude shocks which
Mr. Justice BUTT occasionally administers to the national conscience
are readily forgotten, and the chorus of patriotic adulation is
stimulated by the visits which the British censor finds it necessary
to pay (in mufti) to the courts of wickedness in continental capitals.
It may be that among our unimaginative race the lack of virtue is
not presented in the gaudy trappings that delight our neighbours. Our
wickedness is coarser and less attractive. It gutters like a cheap
candle when contrasted with the steady brilliancy of the Parisian
article. Public opinion, too, holds amongst us a more formidable lash,
and wields it with a sterner and more frequent severity. But it is
impossible to deny that our society, however strict its professed code
may be, can and does produce examples of those lapses from propriety
which the superficial public deems to be typically and exclusively
continental. Not only are they produced, but their production and
their continuance are tolerated by a certain class, possibly limited,
but certainly influential.
[Illustration]
Amongst these examples, both of lapse and of toleration, the Tolerated
Husband holds a foremost place. Certain conditions are necessary
for his proper production. He must be not only easy-going, but
unprincipled,--unprincipled, that is, rather in the sense of having
no particular principles of any kind than in that of possessing
and practising notoriously bad ones. He must have a fine contempt
for steady respectability, and an irresistible inclination to that
glittering style of untrammelled life which is believed by those who
live it to be the true Bohemianism. He should be weak in character,
he may be pleasant in manner and appearance, and he must be both poor
and extravagant. If to these qualities be added, first a wife, young,
good-looking, and in most respects similar to her husband, though of
a stronger will, and secondly a friend, rich, determined, strictly
unprincipled, and thoroughly unscrupulous, the conditions which
produce the Tolerated Husband may be said to be complete.
The Tolerated Husband may have been at one time an officer in a good
regiment. Having married, he finds that his pay, combined with a
moderate private income, and a generous allowance of indebtedness, due
to the gratification of expensive tastes, is insufficient to maintain
him in that position of comfort to which he conceives himself to be
entitled. He therefore abandons the career of arms, and becomes one of
those who attempt spasmodically to redeem commercial professions from
the taint of mere commercialism by becoming commercial themselves.
It is certain that the gilded society which turns up a moderately
aristocratic nose at trade and tradesmen, looks with complete
indulgence upon an ex-officer who dabbles in wine, or associates
himself with a new scheme for the easy manufacture of working-men's
boots. An agency to a Fire and Life Assurance Society is, of course,
above reproach, and the Stock Exchange, an institution which, in the
imagination of reckless fools, provides as large a cover as charity,
is positively enviable--a reputation which it owes to the fancied ease
with which half-a-crown is converted into one hundred thousand pounds
by the mere stroke of an office pen.
The Tolerated Husband tries all these methods, one after another, with
a painful monotony of failure in each. Yet, somehow or other, he still
keeps up appearances, and manages to live in a certain style not far
removed from luxury. He entertains his friends at elaborate dinners,
both at home and at expensive restaurants; he is a frequent visitor at
theatres, where he often pays for the stalls of many others as well as
for his own. He takes a small house in the country, and fills it with
guests, to whom he offers admirable wines, and excellent cigars. His
wife is always beautifully dressed, and glitters with an array of
jewels which make her the envy of many a steady leader of fashion.
The world begins to ask, vaguely at first, but with a constantly
increasing persistence, how the thing is done. Respectability and
malice combine to whisper a truthful answer. Starting from the axiom
that the precarious income which is produced by a want of success in
many branches of business cannot support luxury or purchase diamonds,
they arrive, _per saltum_, at the conclusion that there must be some
third party to provide the wife and the husband with means for their
existence. His name is soon fixed upon, and his motives readily
inferred. It can be none other than the husband's rich bachelor
friend, the same who accompanies the pair on all their expeditions,
who is a constant guest at their house, and is known to be both lavish
and determined in the prosecution of any object on which he has set
his heart. His heart, in this instance, is set upon his friend's wife,
and the obstacles in his way do not seem to be very formidable. The
case, indeed, is soon too manifest for any one but a born idiot to
feign ignorance of it. The husband is not a born idiot--he either sees
it plainly, or (it may be, after a struggle) he looks another way,
and resigns himself to the inevitable. For inevitable it is, if he is
to continue in that life of indolence and extravagant comfort which
habit has made a necessity for him. So he submits to the constant
companionship of a third party, and, in order to be truly tolerated
in his own household, becomes tolerant in a manner that is almost
sublime. He allows his friend to help him with large subventions of
money; he lets him cover his wife with costly jewels. He is content
to be supplanted without fuss, provided the supplanter never decreases
the stream of his benevolence; and the supplanter, having more wealth
than he knows what to do with, is quite content to secure his object
on such extremely easy terms. And thus the Tolerated Husband is
created.
It is curious to notice how cheerfully, to all outward appearance, he
accepts what other men would consider a disaster. Before the world
he carries his head high with an assumption of genial frankness and
easy good temper. "Come and dine with us to-morrow, my boy," he will
say to an old acquaintance, "there'll only be yourself and a couple
of others besides ourselves. We'll go to the play afterwards." And
the acquaintance will most certainly discover, if he accepts the
invitation, that the "ourselves" included not only husband and wife,
but friend as well. He will also notice that the last is even more at
home in the house, and speaks in a tone of greater authority than the
apparent host. Everything is referred to him for decision, and the
master of the house treats him with a deferential humility which goes
far to contradict the cynical observation that there is no gratitude
on earth. The Tolerated Husband, indeed, never tires of dispensing
hospitality at the cost of his friend, and though the whole world
knows the case, there will never be a lack of guests to accept what
is offered.
At last, however, in spite of his toleration, he becomes an
encumbrance in his own house, and, like most encumbrances, he has to
be paid off, the friend providing the requisite annual income. One
after another he puts off the last remaining rags of his pretended
self-respect. He haunts his Clubs less and less frequently, and seems
to wither under the open dislike of those who are repelled by the
mean and sordid details of his despicable story. And thus he drags on
his life, a degraded and comparatively impoverished outcast, untidy,
haggard and shunned, having forfeited by the restriction of his
spending powers even the good-natured contempt of those who were
not too proud to be at one time mistaken for his friends.
* * * * *
LABOURS FOR LENT.
_Emperor of Germany_.--To conciliate the great men who have had to
prefix "Ex" to their official titles since he ascended the Throne.
_Emperor of Russia_.--To find a resting-place safe from the Nihilists.
_King of Italy_.--To do without CRISPI, and the Triple Alliance.
_The Emperor of Austria_.--To master the subject of Home Rule as
applied to Austria, Hungary, and the Bulgarian Nationalities.
_King of Portugal_.--To settle the Map of Africa with Lord SALISBURY.
_The President of the French Republic_.--To adapt _Thermidor_ for the
German stage.
_The President of the American Republic_.--To bless the McKinley
Tariff.
_The Marquis of Salisbury_.--To consider with his son and heir the
Roman Catholic Disabilities Removal Bill.
_Mr. W.H. Smith_.--To renew his stock of Copy-book proverbs.
_Mr. Gladstone_.--To compile and annotate a new volume of _Gleanings_,
containing the _Quarterly_ Article on "Vaticanism," and the speech in
support of the Ripon-plus-Russell Relief Bill.
_Mr. Goschen_.--To divide the coming Surplus to everyone's
satisfaction.
_Mr. Balfour_.--To learn to love both wings of the Irish Party.
_Mr. Justin McCarthy_.--To discover his exact position.
_Mr. S.B. Bancroft_.--To regard with satisfaction his gift to General
Dealer BOOTH.
* * * * *
[Illustration: JUNIUS JUDEX.
_A Pindaric Fragment_. (_A long way after Gray_.)]
Awake, O Themis-twangled lyre, awake,
And give to paeans all thy sounding strings!
Here is a triumph joyfuller than Spring's.
JEUNE smacks of Summer rather, and must take
The cake!
As frescoed heroes cloud-borne progress make,
So--happy apotheosis!--advances
Stately Sir FRANCIS!
See how late-knighted Justice moves along,
High, majestic, smooth and strong,
Through Cupid's maze and Neptune's mighty main
(O Wimpole Street, uplift the strain!)
Toward that proudly portal'd door.
Silk gowns and snowy wigs raise the applausive roar!
O Sovereign of the Social Soul,
Lady of bland and comfort--breathing airs,
Enchanting hostess! Business cares
And Party passion own thy soft control,
In thy saloons the Lord of War
Muffles the wheels of his wild car,
And drops his thirsty lance at thy command.
Smoothed by a snowy hand,
Aquila's self, the fierce and feathered king,
With sleek-pruned plumes, and close-furled wing
Will calmly cackle, and put by
The terrors of his beak, the lightnings of his eye.
Thine the voice, the dance obey;
Tempered to thy pleasant sway,
Blue and Buff, Orange and Green,
In polychromatic harmony are seen,
As on a bright Jeune day.
And now JEUNE triumphs in no minor measure.
Judicial Pomp and Social Pleasure
Now indeed make marvellous meeting.
See with suasion firmly sweet
That brisk trio, gaily greeting
To that portal guide his feet.
Neptune's hoarse hails his friend's approach declare,
Probate, the winged sprite, about must play;
With wanton wings that winnow the soft air
In gliding state Lord Cupid leads the way
To where grave Law must mark, assay, reprove
Wanderings of young Desire, and lures of fickle Love!
* * * * *
TOMMY ATKINS'S HARD LOT.
"TOMMY ATKINS," writing modestly enough to the _Daily Chronicle_ of
the 6th February, complains that the coal supplied by the Authorities
for barrack-rooms, is so limited in quantity that "during the winter
this, as a rule, only lasts about two days" in the week, and TOMMY
and his comrades have to "club-up" to supply the deficiency out of
their own microscopical pay. "In fact" (says T.A.) "I have been in
barrack-rooms where the men have had no fires after the first two
days of the week." _If_ this be so, _Mr. Punch_ agrees with TOMMY in
saying, "Surely this ought not to be!" TOMMY ATKINS may reasonably be
expected to "stand fire" at any season, but not the absence of it in
such wintry weather as we have had recently!
If this is poor TOMMY ATKINS's lot,
As TOMMY might say, It is all Tommy-rot!
* * * * *
COLUMBIA ON HER SPARROW.
(_WITH APOLOGIES TO WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT._)
["The Americans have had enough of the Sparrow (_Passer
domesticus_), and the mildest epithet reserved for him seems
to be that of 'pest.'"--_Daily Chronicle_.]
Tell me not of joy,--a hum!
Now the British Sparrow's come.
Sent first was he
Across the sea,
Advisers kind did flatter me,
When he winged way o'er Yankee soil,
My caterpillar swarms he'd spoil;
And oh, how pleasant that would be!
He would catch a grub, and then
_It_ would never feed again.
My fields he'd skip,
And peck, and nip,
And on the caterpillars feed;
And nought should crawl, or hop, or run
When he his hearty meal had done.
Alas! it was a sell, indeed!
O'er my fields he makes his flight,
In numbers almost infinite;
A plague, alas!
That doth surpass
The swarming caterpillar crew.
What I did I much regret;
_Passer_ is multiplying yet;
Check him I can't. What shall I do?
The British Sparrow won't depart,
His feathered legions break my heart.
Would _he_ away
I would not, nay!
About mere caterpillars fuss.
Patience with grubs and moths were mine,
Would _he_ but pass across the brine.
_I_ call _Passer Domestic Cuss_!
* * * * *
"HERE WE HARE AGAIN!"--There are two Johnnies on the stage. JOHNNY
Senior being J.L. TOOLE (now on his way home from New Zealand), and
JOHNNY Junior, JOHN HARE, both immensely popular as comedians, and
both in high favour with our most illustrious and judicious Patron
of the Drama, H.R.H. the Prince of WALES. It is gratifying to learn
that, after the performance of _A Pair of Spectacles_ at Sandringham,
the Prince presented the Junior of these two Johnnies with a silver
cigar-box. In the right-hand corner of the lid is engraved a hare
looking through a pair of spectacles, and inside is a dedication to
JOHN HARE from ALBERT EDWARD. "Pretty compliment this," as Sir WILL
SOMERS, the Court Jester, might have said,--"to JOHNNY HARE from the
Hare Apparent."
* * * * *
THEIR "IBSEN-DIXIT."
A new set of Faddists has been gradually growing up, not in our midst,
but in the parts about Literature and the Drama. The object of their
cult is, one HENRIK IBSEN, a Norwegian Dramatist, (perhaps it would
be more correct to say, _the_ Norwegian Dramatist,) of whose plays
a pretty sprinkling of scribes, amateur and professional, but all of
the very highest culture, profess themselves the uncompromisingly
enthusiastic admirers. You may not know the Ibsenites or any of their
works, but in their company at least,--that is, supposing yourself so
highly privileged as to be admitted within the innermost circle of the
Inner Ibsen Brotherhood,--_not_ to know IBSEN would be proof positive
of your being in the outer darkness of ignorance, and in need, however
unworthy, of the grace of Ibsenitish enlightenment. Recruits are
wanted in the Ibsenite ranks, so as to strengthen numerically the one
party against the other; for the Ibsenitish sect has so for progressed
as to be at loggerheads amongst themselves; not indeed on any really
essential question, such as would be, for example, any doubt as to
the position of IBSEN as a Dramatist, or as to the order of merit and
precedence to be assigned to his works. No, on such matters they are
apparently at one; but in other matters they are at one another. Thus
the unity appears to be only superficial, a decent plaster hiding the
rift occasioned by one of their number having literally translated
into English IBSEN's latest Norwegian drama, of which translation the
verbal correctness is impugned by another learned Ibsenite.
Not being "a hardy Norseman," and having neither a reading nor
speaking acquaintance with the Norse language, I am unable to decide
abstruse points on which such learned doctors disagree; but not being
altogether without some practical experience of English and French
drama, I venture to call in question not only the dramatic ability of
the dramatist himself, but also, after perhaps allowing him some merit
as a type-writer or character-sketcher, to assert that the style and
matter of most of his work is always tiresome, frequently childish,
and the subject often morbid and unhealthy; and, further, that his
method is tedious to the last degree of boredom; for, as a writer, if
I may judge him fairly by his translators, he is didactic and prosy,
and never more tedious than when his dialogue is intended to be at its
very crispest. As a playwright his construction is faulty. Here and
there he gives expression to pretty ideas, reminding me (still judging
by the translation) of TOM ROBERTSON, not when the latter was in his
happiest vein, but when laboriously striving to make his puppets talk
in a sweetly ingenuous manner.
I have never seen any play of IBSEN's on the stage, but I have read
several of them--indeed, as I believe, all that have hitherto been
translated and published in this country. I was prepared to be
charmed, expecting much. I was soon disillusioned, and great was my
disappointment. Then I re-read them, to judge of them not merely as
dramas for the closet, but as dramas for the stage, written to be
acted, not to be read; or, at all events, as far as the general public
were concerned, to be acted first, and to be read afterwards. As
acting dramas, it is difficult to conceive anything less practically
dramatic. I do not know what the pecuniary result of his theatrical
productions may be in his own country--where, I believe, he doesn't
reside--but, out of his own country (say, here in London), I should
say that a one-night's performance, with a house half full, would
exhaust IBSEN's English public, and quite exhaust the patience of
those who know not IBSEN.
Years ago we had the Chatterton-Boucicault dictum that "SHAKSPEARE
spelt failure." Now, for SHAKSPEARE read "IBSEN," and insert the words
"swift and utter" before "failure," and you have my opinion as to how
the formula would stand with regard to IBSEN. I should be sorry to
see any professional Manager making himself pecuniarily responsible
for the success of such an undertaking, a word which, in its funereal
sense, is of ill omen to the attempt. Let the Ibsenites club
together, lease a theatre, and see how the public likes their show.
There's nothing doing at the Royalty just now; let them pay rent
in advance, and become Miss KATE SANTLEY's tenants; then, if the
IBSEN-worshippers, with their Arch-priest, or ARCHER-priest, at their
head, come to a temporary understanding with the Gosse-Ibsenites,
they could craftily contrive to be invited as guests to a dinner at
the Playwreckers' Club. The _dilettanti_ members of this association
the United Ibsenites could flatter by deferring to the opinions of
their hosts, while inculcating their own, thus securing the goodwill
and patronage of the Playwreckers, a plan nowadays adopted with
considerable success by some of our wiliest dramatists, eager to
secure a free course and be glorified; and so, by making each one of
these mighty amateurs feel that the success of IBSEN in this country
depended on him personally, that is, on his verdict or "_Ibsen
dixit_," a run of, say, perhaps three nights might possibly be
secured, when they could play to fairly-filled houses. One "nicht wi'
IBSEN," one night only, would, I venture to say, be quite enough for
most of us. "Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!" "Oh, that my
enemy would bring out an Ibsenite play," and try to run it! Perhaps he
will. In which case I will either alter my opinion or give him a dose
of ANTI-FAD.
* * * * *
[Illustration: MR. GLADSTONE'S NEW HOUSE.
"The house which Mr. GLADSTONE has just taken in Park Lane is, it is
reported, the selection of Mrs. GLADSTONE, who recommends it with a
view to her husband's opportunities for exercise."--_Daily Paper_.]
* * * * *
SULLIVANHOE!
_BRAVISSIMO_, Sir ARTHUR SULLIVAN of Ivanhoe, or to compress it
telegraphically by wire, "_Bravissimo Sullivanhoe!_" Loud cries of
"ARTHUR! ARTHUR!" and as ARTHUR and Composer he bows a solo gracefully
in front of the Curtain. Then Mr. JULIAN STURGIS is handed out to him,
when "SULLIVAN" and "JULIAN"--latter name phonetically suggestive of
ancient musical associations, though who nowadays remembers "Mons.
JULLIEN"?--the composer and librettist, bow a duet together. "Music"
and "Words" disappear behind gorgeous new draperies. "All's swell
that ends swell," and nothing could be sweller than the audience on
the first night. But to our tale. As to the dramatic construction of
this Opera, had I not been informed by the kindly playbill that I
was seeing _Ivanhoe_, I should never have found it out from the first
scene, nor should I have been quite clear about it until the situation
where that slyboots _Rebecca_ artfully threatens to chuck herself
off from the topmost turret rather than throw herself away on the bad
Templar _Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert-sans-Sullivan_. The Opera might
be fairly described as "Scenes from _Ivanhoe_," musically illustrated.
There is, however, a continuity in the music which is lacking in the
plot.
[Illustration: All Dicky with Ivanhoe; or, The Long and Short of it.]
The scenic effects are throughout admirable, and the method, adopted
at the end of each _tableau_, of leaving the audience still more in
the dark than they were before as to what is going on on the stage, is
an excellent notion, well calculated to intensify the mystery in which
the entire plot is enveloped.
The change of scene--of course highly recommended by the leech
in attendance on the suffering _Ivanhoe_--from the little
second-floor-back in the top storey of the castle tower, where the
stout _Knight of Ivanhoe_ is in durance, is managed with the least
possible inconvenience to the invalid, who, whether suffering from
gout or pains in his side,--and, judging by his action, he seemed
to feel it, whatever it was, all over him,--found himself _and_ his
second-hand lodging-house sofa (quite good enough for a prisoner)
suddenly deposited at the comparatively safe distance of some three
hundred yards or so from the burning Castle of Torquilstone, in which
identical building he himself, not a minute before, had been immured.
So marvellous a flight of fancy is only to be found in an Arabian, not
a Christian, Night's Entertainment.
The Tournament Scene is a very effective "set," but practically an
elaborate "sell," as all the fighting on horseback is done "without."
Presently, after a fierce clashing of property-swords, sounding
suspiciously like fire-irons, _Ivanhoe_ and _Sir Brian_ come in,
afoot, to fight out "round the sixth, and last." There is refreshing
novelty in Mr. COPLAND's impersonation of _Isaac of York_, who might
be taken for _Shylock's_ younger brother who has been experimenting
on his beard with some curious kind of hair-dye. This comic little
_Isaac_ will no doubt grow older during the run of the piece, but
on the first night he neither looked nor behaved like _Rebecca's_
aged and venerable sire, nor did Miss MACINTYRE--who, by the
way, is charming as _Rebecca_, and who is so nimble in skipping
about the stage when avoiding the melodramatic _Sir Brian de
Bois-Guilbert-sans-Sullivan_, and so generally active and artful as
to be quite a _Becky Sharp_,--nor, I say, did Miss MACINTYRE seem to
treat her precocious parent (_Isaac_ must have married very young,
seeing that _Becky_ is full twenty-one, and _Isaac_ apparently
very little more than twenty-eight, or, say, thirty) with any
great tenderness and affection; but these feelings no doubt will be
intensified, as she becomes more and more accustomed to her jewvenile
father during the run of the Opera, and he may say to her, as the
Bottle Imp did to his victim, "Ha! Ha! You must _learn_ to love me!"
[Illustration: The game of "Becky my Neighbour." The Stout Knight lays
low.]
I have not time to enumerate all the charming effects of the Opera,
but I must not forget the magic property-harp, with, apparently, limp
whip-cord strings, "the harp that once," or several times, was played
by those accomplished musicians, _King Richard_, and _Friar Tuck_,
the latter of whom has by far the most taking song in the Opera,
and which would have received a treble [or a baritone] encore, had
_Barkis_--meaning Sir ARTHUR--"been willin'." The contest between
_Richard_ and the _Friar_ is decidedly "Dicky." Nor must I forget the
magnificent property supper in the first scene, at so much a head,
where not a ham or a chicken is touched; nor must "the waits" between
some of the sets be forgotten,--"waits" being so suggestive of music
at the merriest time of the year. Nor, above all, must I omit to
mention the principal character, _Ivanhoe_ himself, played by Mr. BEN
DAVIES, who would be quite an ideal _Ivanhoe_ if he were not such
a very real _Ivanhoe_--only, of course, we must not forget that he
"doubles" the part. There is no thinness about "_Ben Mio_," whether
considered as a man, or as a good all-round tenor. I did not envy
_Ivanhoe's_ marvellous power of sleep while Miss MACINTYRE was singing
her best, her sweetest, and her loudest. For my part I prefer to
believe that the crafty Saxon was "only purtendin'," and was no more
asleep than _Josh Sedley_ on the eve of Waterloo, or the Fat Boy when
he surprised _Mr. Tupman_ and _Aunt Rachel_ in the arbour, or when he
pinched _Mr. Pickwick's_ leg in order to attract his attention. But,
after all, _Ivanhoe_ and _Rowena_, as THACKERAY remarked, are a poor
namby-pamby pair, and the real heroine is _Rebecca_. The Opera ends
with a "Rebecca Riot." Every one wishes success to the new venture.