F. ANSTEY.
(From a Photograph by Messrs. Bassano, Limited.)
Mr. Anstey (Guthrie) was already famous for his little series of successful books, "Vice Versâ," "The Giant's Robe," "The Tinted Venus," "The Black Poodle," and "A Fallen Idol," when he was invited to contribute to Punch. In each and all of these stories there had been a clear and original idea, worked out with ingenuity and invested with rich and delicate humour. Their author was clearly a man for Punch. So thought Mr. Burnand, and Mr. Anstey shared the opinion. On November 4th, 1885, therefore, appeared his first contribution "Faux et Preterea Nihil." His work was consistently good, and at the end of 1886 he was called to the Table, taking his place and eating his first Dinner in January, 1887.
Mr. Anstey's writings attracted attention from the beginning, and in their reprinted form have been no less successful—the truest test of quality. Among the most delightful of these was the "Model Music Hall Songs"—songs and dramas virginibus puerisque, adapted to the requirements of the members of the London County Council which sought out and found indecency in a marionette's pursuit of a butterfly. The idea opened up to Mr. Anstey a comic vista, which he has developed for our delectation. The songs and dances, with their words and directions, are for the most part screamingly funny, consisting partly in the perfectly realised absurdity and inanity of the performance, and partly in that quality of absolute truthfulness to life which we are forced to realise in the presentation of them. Laughter is often produced by the mere faithfulness of an imitation, whether the thing copied is funny or not. Simple mimicry has the power to make us laugh; and over that power, in all its phases of motive, act, and talk, Mr. Anstey has absolute control. In addition, he has a genius for plot-making and verse-writing, be it original or parody, which in its own line is unsurpassed in modern literature. In his analysis of character and motive he seems to set before us our own weak selves laid bare, until his voces populi become voces animi, the voice of the people speaking unpleasantly like the voice of conscience.
In this comic reproduction of actual experience Mr. Anstey has travelled over the road pointed out by Mr. Burnand in his "Happy Thoughts" and "Out of Town;" but, adding greatly to the scientific truth of it, he seems to have lost something of the geniality and joviality of the form. Mr. Anstey has placed Society on the dissecting-table, and probing with a little less of the sympathy shown by Mr. du Maurier, he carries his observation, consciously or unconsciously, to a much farther and more merciless point. Not that he has no kindly feeling for his subjects; he has—but he reserves it for his good people. Towards his snobs and cads and prigs he is pitiless; he turns his microscope upon them, and with far less mercy than is to be found in a vivisector he lays bare their false hearts, points to their lying tongues, and tears them out without a pang of remorse. It is all in fun, of course; but it is unmistakable. Still, who shall find fault with what is the essence of justice and truth, which mercy only interferes with to weaken?
The burlesques in the "Model Music Hall Songs" are often as good as their originals—just as some of the Rejected Addresses by the Smiths were as good as the genuine poems they parodied; and the representation of them is placed before the reader with more than photographic truth. In "So Shy!" we see the lady "of a mature age and inclined to a comfortable embonpoint," who comes forward and sings—
"I'm a dynety little dysy of the dingle,
So retiring and so timid and so coy—
If you ask me why so long I have lived single,
I will tell you—'tis because I am so shoy."
It is a notable fact that songs of this sort were driven off the better-class music-hall stage about this time, and there is little doubt that Mr. Anstey, to whom Mr. Bernard Partridge afterwards rendered artistic help, took yeoman's share in the campaign. More certain it is that with "Mr. Punch's Young Reciter" he effectively suppressed the drawing-room spouter. No one with a sense of humour who has read that series can now stand up and recite a poem of a sentimental or an heroic nature from the pens of Mr. Clement Scott or Mr. G. R. Sims without genius to back him; and no one who heard it could retain his gravity to the end. "Burglar Bill" melted almost to repentance by the innocent child who asked him to burgle her doll's house, and whose salvation was finally wrought by the gift of the baby's jamtart—killed the Young Reciter by dint of pure ridicule and honest fun. He has made an unsophisticated reciter as impossible as a sympathetic and sentimental audience.
And in "Voces Populi"—the popular dramas in dialogue, in which the conversation accurately and concisely describes the character, temperament, and tastes of the speaker—there is a humorous verbal photography of extraordinary vividness. 'Arry is no longer a symbol and a type, as he is in Mr. Milliken's hands; he is a definite person in one particular position in life and no other, and what he says could not, we feel, possibly have been said in any other way, nor by any other person. And so along the whole gamut of the classes through which Mr. Anstey leads us. The humour is penetrating, and it is difficult to say where the truth ends and the caricature begins. Who can forget the visit to the Tudor Exhibition, when Henry VIII's remarkable hat was on view? "'Arry," says 'Arriet to her escort; "look 'ere; fancy a king goin' about in a thing like that—pink with a green feather! Why, I wouldn't be seen in it myself!" 'Arry, who is clearly farceur, replies with a pretty wit: "Ah, but that was ole 'Enery all over, that was; he wasn't one for show. He liked a quiet, unassumin' style of 'at, he did. 'None o' yer loud pot'ats for Me!' he'd tell the Royal 'atters; 'find me a tile as won't attract people's notice, or you won't want a tile yerselves in another minute!' An' you may take yer oath they served him pretty sharp, too!" And so it is all through; the talk of the people, of everybody in all sorts of positions in life, is recorded in these "Voces," and in all there is the same quality of nature.
In "Travelling Companions," nearly as amusing and quite as observant, we are made to feel that the two heroes detest each other hardly more than Mr. Anstey detests Culcherd, the more unsympathetic and contemptible of the two. They are nearly as despicable as they are funny, and their creator has little pity for them on that account. There is a "plentiful lack of tenderness," but an abundance of humour to excuse it. This quality is not visible in "Mr. Punch's Pocket Ibsen"—a parody so good that we sometimes wonder if the part we are reading is not really from the hand of the Norwegian master. Nothing, surely, could be truer, nothing touched with a lighter hand than "Pill-doctor Herdal"—an achievement attained solely by a profound study of the dramatist. Again, in "The Man from Blankley's" and in "Lyre and Lancet" we have social satires grafted on to a most entertaining plot—a creation in both cases which may be compared with Keene's drawings for observation, and with Goldsmith's and Molière's plays for the happy construction of these comedies of errors. The plots assuredly would have extorted the admiration of Labiche himself, so complicated and ingenious are they. Besides, everything seems so natural, so inevitable, "so much of a lesson," that it is hardly to be wondered at that "The Man from Blankley's" was on more than one occasion actually given out as the text for a sermon delivered from the pulpit.
Another excuse for music-hall treatment of an exquisite sort is afforded by the story of "Under the Rose," which is inimitable. For example:—