The connexion of art with architecture was not very happy or impressive in these years. When the Royal College of Music was founded in 1882 with Sir George Grove, Punch's old friend, as Director, it was temporarily and inadequately housed in the buildings of the National Training School of Music, in which it had been merged. The move to the new buildings in Prince Consort Road did not take place till 1894. The annals of opera, so far as architecture is concerned, are positively disastrous. Mapleson, the once famous operatic impresario, projected a grand National Opera House on the Embankment; the first brick was laid by Mlle. Titiens in September, 1875, and the first stone of the building by the Duke of Edinburgh in December. But the patronage of "stars" and Royal Dukes could not conjure money out of the pockets of the investing public. The scheme languished, and in 1881 Punch records that the unfinished Opera House was being converted, not musically, into "flats." By the summer of 1884 the project collapsed entirely, and Punch's comments on "A Beggar's Opera House" are not without their point to-day:—
The sale by auction last week of what the retiring newspaper paragraph chronicling the melancholy fact described as the "materials of the unfinished Grand National Opera House on the Thames Embankment," cannot but afford food even to the least artistic mind for some rather disagreeable reflections. That after a six years' struggle, involving the sinking of something like £100,000 in hard cash, the speculative element, that ought to have been equal to the emergency in the first capital in the world, should have been contented to look on and smile, while, to quote once more the paragraph in question, "157 lots, the principal portion of which consisted of the iron girders and columns used in the formation of the pit and box circles, originally costing, it is said, £40,000," were knocked down for "the small sum of £218" is something not very far removed from a national disgrace.
The building was finally demolished in 1888.
Another scheme which also ended disastrously, though the building survives, was D'Oyly Carte's venture into the domain of serious opera. The new English Opera House in Shaftesbury Avenue opened in 1891 with Sullivan's Ivanhoe, but the analogy of the Gilbert and Sullivan light operas was deceptive: the expectation of a long run was doomed to failure, and the English Opera House was shortly afterwards converted into the Palace Music Hall. Punch's patriotic amour propre was wounded by the fact that where Ivanhoe had failed, the Basoche, its successor, and an essentially French opera, had caught on. Why, he asks, call it the English Opera House? Why not the "Cosmopolitan" or the "Royal Babel Opera House"? But these are questions which do not fall within the scope of our immediate inquiry. It is enough to record the fact that an abortive attempt to establish English opera on a permanent basis succeeded in enriching the variety stage with a new temple, while the site of Mapleson's projected Grand National Opera House is now occupied by New Scotland Yard, generally admitted to be the most successful outcome of the genius of Norman Shaw.
In earlier days Punch had constituted himself an unofficial Inspector of Nuisances for the Metropolis, and he never fulfilled these self-imposed duties with greater zeal and even fury than in the long campaign which he waged throughout the 'eighties against the then Duke of Bedford. London was a "City of Dreadful Dirt" and Covent Garden Market and the small streets around it, in Punch's view, held the palm for filthiness. He had given the Dukes a rest for a good many years, but the scandal of "Mud-Salad Market" revived in him a truculence worthy of Douglas Jerrold:—
Mud-Salad Market
Mud-Salad Market belongs to his Grace the Duke of Mudford. It was once a tranquil Convent Garden, belonging first to the Abbot of Westminster, and finally to the Dukes of Mudford. The property having been let on building leases, it became a small square in the centre of London, bounded on one side by Inigo Jones's church—"The handsomest barn in England"—on another side by a theatre, and warmly supported on other sides by numerous minor taverns. The hot-houses of the old Garden have become the pot-houses of the modern Market. Mud-Salad Market, like its own vegetables, has now sprouted out in all directions. You may start from Cabbage-leaf corner, near the site of Temple Bar, on a market-morning, and may go as far as Turnip-top Square in Bloomsbury, or Cauliflower-place at Charing Cross, and it is all Mud-Salad Market. Houses are barricaded with mountainous carts of green-stuff, cabs lose themselves in vain attempts to drive through the maze of vegetables, the costermonger makes temporary gardens on the pathway, while the roads are blocked with waggons, carts, donkey-trucks, and porters staggering under the weight of huge baskets. Carrots, turnips, vegetable-marrows, potatoes, lettuces, and onions are masters of the situation. Vegetable refuse, ankle deep, carpets the pathway in every direction, mixed with mud and rain-water, and trampled into a pulpy slimy muck by thousands of hob-nailed boots. Leases drop in, old houses are pulled down, great spaces are cleared, new houses of an approved stucco type are built, and no attempt is made to increase the legitimate limits of Mud-Salad Market.
A HOLIDAY TASK
Scene—Mud-Salad Market
Duke of Mudford: "Sweet pretty place, ain't it?"
Mr. P. (Inspector of Nuisances): "No, my Lord Duke, it isn't pretty, and it isn't sweet! Here, take this broom, and make a clean sweep of it!"
It is not too much to say that Mud-Salad Market is a disgrace to London, a special disgrace to his Grace of Mudford, and about the greatest nuisance ever permitted in a great City of Nuisances.
Rather different this account of Mud-Salad Market from Leigh Hunt's description of a certain Covent Garden Market in his day, when "it was the most agreeable in the metropolis," and when it had been "raised" into "a convenient and elegant state by the noble proprietor." Let his Grace of Mudford take a leaf from that Duke's tree, and, if he can't "raise" Mud-Salad Market, let him "raze" it, and give us a new one.
Grant, your Grace, a new broom to some one, let a clean sweep be made of Mud-Salad Market, and your petitioners will never again pray anything any more.
That was written in August, 1880. A fortnight later Punch renews and enlarges his attack:—
THE DUKE OF MUDFORD IN GLOOMSBURY
The Duke of Mudford's grip upon London extends far beyond Mud-Salad Market. As Lord Cul-de-Sac and the Earl of No Thoroughfare, he claims and exercises a right of blockade in Gloomsbury. London is a very peculiar city. It is said to be sixteen miles long and eight miles broad, and is supposed to contain a population of four millions. Its parochial rulers for the last ten years have devoted all their energy to the improvement of the great avenues of communication from East to West, but the cross avenues are in much the same condition as they were in the days of Dr. Johnson. The Strand and Fleet Street have been improved, Oxford Street, Holborn, Newgate Street, etc., have been widened, a noble Embankment has been made, and a great serpentine roadway, extending from Waterloo Bridge to Whitechapel, is in course of formation. While this is done, or being done, there is not a thoroughfare worthy of the name from South to North, from Park Lane to Chancery Lane. Berkeley Street, Bond Street, St. Martin's Lane, and other cross streets have to get rid of their northern traffic by dodging round corners. The most central and most important thoroughfare from South to North, is composed of Waterloo Bridge (a bridge from which the halfpenny tax on suicide has just been removed), Wellington Street (which stands on a hill, and is adorned by the Thalia and Melpomene Theatres), Bow Street (which might be called Bow-legged Street, where criminals are tried), Endell Street (where they grow the criminals who are tried at Bow Street), and Gower Street, which belongs to the Duke of Mudford.
A Ducal Defaulter
At the north end of Gower Street the traffic is stopped by a ducal barrier, and turned round several narrow streets, to find its way to the Euston Road as best it can. Three of the largest railway termini—the North Western, the Midland and the Great Northern lie in this direction; but the Duke of Mudford, Lord Cul-de-Sac, and Earl of No Thoroughfare claims his right to stand between these railways and their floods of traffic. The line must be drawn somewhere, and it is drawn at Gower Street. It was Mrs. Partington's mission to try to mop back the Atlantic: it is the Duke of Mudford's mission to push back four millions of people.
By the way, Mud-Salad Market was at its dirtiest and filthiest last Thursday. Such a standing nuisance in London ought to be as impossible as it is impassable.
When the Duke of Westminster helped to start a cheap eating-house with beds and baths in Bow Street, Punch invidiously contrasted his philanthropy with the recalcitrance of the Duke of "Mudford." Nor was he content with agitating for the improvement of Covent Garden, but followed up his attack by a similar exposure of the filthy condition of Billingsgate, maintained by force of vested interests, where the overcrowding led to the destruction of large quantities of fish and the consequent enhancement of prices.[5] In 1883 the Duke of Bedford had apparently been goaded into offering Covent Garden Market to the Municipal Authorities, but they declined to relieve him of his responsibilities, and the campaign continued. Punch was not the only paper which attacked the Duke for neglecting his London property, but it was the most outspoken and persistent. The Duke had the reputation of being an improving landlord on his country estates, but over a million sterling had been added to the ducal revenues in his time by fines exacted on leases falling due on his Bloomsbury estate, and, in view of this fact, the scandal of Covent Garden inevitably exposed him to hostile comment, from which his successors have been wholly immune.