In 1903 Punch was seriously perturbed by the glut of prodigies, and in a cartoon addresses the child violinist, "Get thee to a nursery. Go!" Yet in 1905, though "not as a rule favourably inclined to infant phenomena," he makes an exception in favour of the thirteen-year-old Mischa Elman. In 1908, in a burlesque account of "A Day in the Life of a Strenuous Statesman," the diarist records his reply to a Socialist Member that "the Government would think not once but twice before they refused to grant special pensions to the parents of infant prodigies earning less than £5,000 a year." On the compulsory musical teaching of the ingenuous youth Punch held views which may be gathered from his picture in 1911 of the unhappy small boy at the pianoforte, with the legend: "The only thing that comes between us, Mother, is this wretched music!" While Punch was benevolent to the little musician, he was decidedly hostile to the cult of bigness in musical scores and instrumentation, and more than once assails the prevalent "Jumbomania" as illustrated by huge bands and the extravagant explosion of all the sonorities. When Strauss in 1903 was the dernier cri of modernism, Punch addressed him in perversion of a much-parodied model:—
O teach us that Discord is duty,
That Melody maketh for sin:
Come down and redeem us from Beauty,
Great Despot of Din.
PLAY'S THE THING!
Hamlet (Mr. Punch) to Ophidlia (the Danish infant musical prodigy): "Get thee to a nursery. Go!"
Elegies and Eulogies