After years of struggling, Beecham has made it possible for an English singer to sing to English audiences under his English name, and has proved what theatrical and music-hall managers never attempt to prove: that England can produce her own native talent in music and drama, without taking the fourth-rate and fifth-rate, as well as the first-rate, material of America and the Continent. He has shown himself at once a philanthropist and a patriot. In none of his productions do we find signs of that cheap philosophy that "anything will do for war-time." Before the arrival of his company, opera in London was a mere social function which (except from the point of view of the galleryite) had little to do with music. People went to Covent Garden not to listen to music, but to be seen; just as they went to the Savoy or to the Carlton to be seen, not to procure nourishment. The Beecham opera is first and last a matter of music.
So, Sir Thomas, a few thousand of us take off our hats to you. I think we should all like to send you every morning a little bunch of violets, or something equally valueless, but symbolic of the fine things you have given us, of the silver lining you have disclosed to us in these overclouded days.
VODKA AND VAGABONDS
Last year London lost two of its quaintest characters—Robertson, of Australia, that pathetic old man who haunted the Strand and carried in his hat a clumsily scrawled card announcing that he was searching for his errant daughter, and "Please Do Not Give Me Money"; and "Spring Onions," the Thames Police Court poet.
Now the race of London freaks seems ended. Craig, the poet of the Oval Cricket ground; Spiv Bagster; the Chiswick miser; Onions and Robertson; all are gone. Hunnable is confined; and G. N. Curzon isn't looking any too well. Even that prolific poet, Rowbotham, self-styled "the modern Homer," has been keeping quiet lately. It took a universal war, though, to make him nod.
I met "Spring" (privately, Mr. W. G. Waters) once or twice at Stepney. He was a vagrant minstrel of the long line of Villon and Cyrano de Bergerac. His anniversary odes were known to thousands of newspaper readers. He was the self-appointed Laureate of the nation. He celebrated not only himself, his struggles and successes, but the pettier happenings of the day, such as the death of a king, the accession of a king, or the marriage of some royal couple. You remember his lines on the Coronation of Edward VII:—
The King, His Majesty, and may him Heaven bless,