[9] "Si Natura negat, facit indignatio versum."
[RECREATION, SPORT, AND PASTIME]
The second half of the nineteenth century was not only notable for the organization of Labour. It was also the age of the organization of Recreation, the age of Exhibitions. The Exhibition of 1851 was a serious affair in which entertainment was subordinated to the demands of Commerce, Industry and Science. The series of Exhibitions which marked the decade of the 'eighties, though their names and their avowed aims were serious, practical or scientific, were run with an ever increasing tendency to emphasize the spectacular element, to cater for the amusement and entertainment (in all senses) of the public.
Punch summarized this tendency happily enough in the phrase that he applied to the possibilities of the Imperial Institute—"Commerce v. Cremorne." He had already deplored the decline of institutions, such as the Crystal Palace, which beginning with high educational aims, had come to rest their popular appeal on dangerous acrobatics and freak performances. He was even more outspoken in his comments on the degeneracy of the Aquarium at Westminster in 1879 and 1880.
References to "Zazel," the acrobat who was nightly shot from a cannon, and to Zazel's successor, "Zæo," abound in protests not only against the enterprising manager, and the cynical indifference of the Home Secretary, but above all against the public who went simply because of the risk, the chance of seeing accidents. "Zazel's" performance, as a matter of fact, was not as dangerous as it appeared; it proved a theme of fruitful burlesque on the part of Nellie Farren at the Gaiety Theatre; and when it was rumoured that Zazel was going to marry an Archdeacon, Punch did not refrain from a ribald allusion to her passing "out of the mouth of a Canon into the arms of an Archdeacon." At the same time he was equally critical of the ostentatiously labelled "Entertainments for the People" organized as a sort of compromise between High Art, the Penny Reading and the Variety Stage. The efforts of the Kyrle Society to "bring Beauty home to the working-classes" left him cold or facetiously intolerant of patronizing preciosity. So, too, the performances at the Victoria Coffee Music-Hall in 1881 are damned with less than faint praise in a criticism put into the mouth of one of the class they were intended to reach, on the grounds that they were not only teetotal, but third-rate music-hall, and dull at that. The whole thing was spoiled by an atmosphere of conscious edification and of condescending patronage.
Punch's attitude to the series of annual exhibitions which began with the "Fisheries" in 1883, underwent many phases. It began in hope and mild praise, but ended in disillusion, as the side-shows, al fresco entertainments, bands and illuminations, and the everlasting "Welcome Club," became the stereotyped and dominating attractions of each successive show. Punch wanted the site of the Fisheries made into a permanent Public Garden with a shilling gate money. But while he applauded the good intention of the promoters, he represented the West End fishmonger as "none the worse for it": the price of fish had not come down as it was thought it would.
Exhibition Absurdities
The "Healtheries" and "Inventories" followed in 1884 and 1885, and Punch's verdict was that "The Fisheries and the Healtheries were very much the same, especially the Inventories." The Colonial and Indian Exhibition (the "Colinderies" as Punch christened it) in 1886 prompts the usual mock-serious account of the opening ceremony. Some distrust was excited by the suggestion of the Prince of Wales that the Exhibition should be given a permanent existence as an Imperial Institute, to be founded as a Jubilee Memorial, and Punch gave his blessing to a proposal which was carried into effect. The subsequent history of the Imperial Institute affords an interesting commentary on the fear, expressed by Punch in 1888, that it would degenerate into another popular Exhibition, with bands, side-shows, etc. He regarded it at the moment as "a big-sounding name, signifying nothing; to conjure with but nothing more"; and some of the names of the organizing committee filled him with astonishment at the ineptitude of their choice.