Cultural Identity in British Musical

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 PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
BRITISH MUSICAL THEATRE

CULTURAL IDENTITY
IN BRITISH MUSICAL
THEATRE, 1890–1939
KNOWING ONE’S PLACE

BEN MACPHERSON
Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre

Series Editors
Millie Taylor
Department of Performing Arts
University of Winchester
Winchester, UK

Dominic Symonds
Lincoln School of Performing Arts
University of Lincoln
Lincoln, UK
Britain’s contribution to musical theatre in the late twentieth century is
known and celebrated across the world. In historiographies of musical
theatre, this assertion of British success concludes the twentieth century
narrative that is otherwise reported as an American story. Yet the use of
song and music in UK theatre is much more widespread than is often
acknowledged. This series teases out the nuances and the richness of
British musical theatre in three broad areas: British identity; Aesthetics and
dramaturgies; Practices and politics.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15105
 Ben Macpherson

Cultural Identity in
British Musical
Theatre, 1890–1939
Knowing One’s Place
Ben Macpherson
School of Media and Performing Arts
University of Portsmouth
Portsmouth, UK

Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre

ISBN 978-1-137-59806-6    ISBN 978-1-137-59807-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59807-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939086

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For Lauren
 Permissions

All citations for Betty (1915) and The Maid of the Mountains (1917) are
used by kind permission of the Estate of Frederick Lonsdale.
The Better ’Ole (1917), written by Bruce Bairnsfather, © 2017 The
Estate of Barbara Bruce Littlejohn. All rights reserved. Citations used by
permission.
The Dancing Years by Ivor Novello. Play-script published by Samuel
French Ltd, 1953. Citations reprinted by permission of Samuel French
Ltd and Sir Tom Arnold.
Miss Hook of Holland by Paul Rubens and Austen Horgan. Play-script
published by Samuel French Ltd. Citations reprinted by permission of
Samuel French Ltd.
Chapter 4 uses material previously published in ‘Some Yesterdays
Always Remain: Black-British and Anglo-Asian Musical Theatre’, The
Oxford Handbook of the British Musical (eds. Robert Gordon and Olaf
Jubin, 2017), pp. 673–696, published by Oxford University Press and
used with permission.
Efforts were made to contact all copyright holders and estates for the
works used. Where this was not possible, the author offers due acknowl-
edgement to the source material under the statutory provision for fair use
and fair dealing, under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 (USA) and
Section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (UK).

vii
 Acknowledgements

While hours spent in archives and weeks spent writing are, by nature, soli-
tary, this project has nevertheless always been something of a collective
endeavour, in which a small army of friends, colleagues, scholars, students,
and other interested parties, have rendered direct or indirect assistance,
encouragement, or material support over the past six years. First, I want to
express a huge debt of gratitude to Stephen Banfield, from whom I
acquired a large collection of materials upon his retirement from the
University of Bristol in 2014. While the research for this project was
already well underway, this set of resources, including books, scripts,
scores, and several collectable items, proved invaluable in extending my
reach. The collection is now housed in the University of Portsmouth
Library for students and staff, and has given our drama and musical the-
atre students access to some fascinating reference material they would not
otherwise have been able to retrieve.
I have mused with and shared with (and undoubtedly bored) each and
every one of my colleagues at the University of Portsmouth on numerous
occasions. Thanks must therefore be extended to George Burrows, Laura
Doye, Erika Hughes, Colin Jagger, Laura MacDonald, Matt Smith, and
Walid Benkhaled, for putting up with half-formed ideas and meandering
conversations over the past few years. Their support—kindly listening,
reading, challenging, encouraging, or even helping by lightening my
workload during the writing process—was, and is, much appreciated. In
addition, support from my Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries,
which took various forms, has also been useful in the completion of this

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

project, and I am grateful in particular to Esther Sonnet, Deborah

Sugg Ryan, and Deborah Shaw for their direct assistance.
As a member of the British Musical Theatre Research Institute, I have
benefitted from the fact that dear colleagues from around the UK and
elsewhere have championed these ideas for a number of years and shared
initial conversations at several conferences. Specifically, I want to note the
tireless enthusiasm of Robert Gordon and Olaf Jubin, with whom I have
had many conversations and whose interest and support have meant so
much. Encouragement and some fruitful conversations have also been
forthcoming from a range of colleagues, scholars, and friends, including
William Everett, John Graziano, Elizabeth Titrington-Craft, Maya Cantu,
Simon Sladen, Chris Balme, John Snelson, and Christine Berberich.
Thanks should also go to David Linton and Elizabeth Wells for providing
me with access to some of their research, which I had not been able to
otherwise locate; this was specifically relevant for Chap. 6. In addition, I
am very grateful to Mark Warby of the Bruce Bairnsfather Society for sup-
plying me with, at almost lightning speed following a chance email, a host
of materials about Bruce Bairnsfather and the writing of The Better ’Ole.
Mark’s enthusiasm was mirrored by that of Doug Reside, Anne Marie van
Roessel, and the team at the New York Public Library Lincoln Center of
the Performing Arts, and that of Sylvia Wang and the team at the Shubert
Archives in Manhattan. Their assistance, knowledge, and efficiency were
invaluable in the brief visits I made to New York between 2015 and 2017.
Similarly, the research teams at the British Library and the Victoria and
Albert Theatre and Performance Archives in London, along with those at
the Bristol Theatre Archives, the Noël Coward archives, and the University
of Birmingham Cadbury Archives have been a source of expertise, sup-
port, advice, and enthusiasm on every occasion.
Appreciation must also be noted for the twenty-three second-year
undergraduate students that studied an optional unit on British musical
theatre I delivered in 2016, along with those students to whom I have
delivered it subsequently. This class was regularly augmented by a range of
first- and third-year undergraduates along with two postgraduate students,
and served as a test run for many of the arguments here; it was an enjoy-
able opportunity to air these ideas. For an entire academic year, it made
Friday-afternoon teaching a pleasure. In addition, in December 2016, a
group of first-year musical theatre students workshopped Florodora as part
of their course, providing a welcome performance of a key British musical
success. Working with these students, and their creative and production
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
   xi

team, was a fascinating experience which informed the reading I present in

Chap. 2. Despite their initial scepticism, the students enjoyed the chal-
lenge, while I suspect I gained more from the project than they did. All
the students I have worked with have been nothing but enthusiastic and
supportive of this endeavour, and I only hope they benefit from the result
in their studies.
I have also truly valued the personal and professional support given to
me by my collaborator and friend Konstantinos Thomaidis. Even while
this project fell outside our shared area of work and research in voice stud-
ies, his support was much valued and needed throughout the writing and
research of this book, both while he was my colleague at Portsmouth, and
subsequently, after he moved to the University of Exeter. Likewise, Millie
Taylor and Dominic Symonds have been outstanding series editors, giving
advice, support, encouragement, and rigorous feedback, from the initial
discussions until the final submission. Both Millie and Dominic have sup-
ported my development as a scholar and colleague since I first talked with
Dominic about a postgraduate research project during my final year as an
undergraduate. I owe both of them a huge debt of gratitude, and am
proud to be included in this book series, which has been tirelessly sup-
ported by Tomas, Vicky, and the team at Palgrave.
Finally, I want to thank my family and friends, who have given me
encouragement and support when needed, and space to think and write
when necessary—often without my even having to request it. In particular
I would like to thank my parents, and my lovely wife Lauren, who humours
me, encourages me, and has endured too many mornings listening to the
sounds of Edwardian England—on CD, online, and from the piano. I
could not have done this without her quiet support and the never-ending
supply of coffee that was lovingly handed to me in increasing amounts
during the writing process. She is enjoying a welcome break from ‘Sly
Cigarette’ and ‘Chin Chin Chinaman’. It has to be said, she is not the only
one.
 Contents

1 The British Musical in Seven Stories   1

Part I Domestic and Personal Identities  29

2 Nation: Modernity and Mythology  31

3 Femininity: Cinderellas and Caretakers  63

4 Manliness: Domesticity and Defence  91

Part II Imperial and Ideological Identities 119

5 Empire: Ornamentalism and Orientalism 121

6 Conflict: Continuity and Change 155

7 Peace: Nostalgia and Nationhood 181

xiii
xiv Contents

8 The English Musical in Many Stories 209

References 215

Index 233
 Author’s Note

Because of the nature of using extensive archival material, some of the

references between different archival volumes may differ in their detail. In
particular, with regards to the use of the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays
Collection (British Library), several of the play-scripts were in volumes
specified by year and folder, rather than licence number. I have included as
much information as appropriate per reference.
Secondly, in the brief excerpts from the works under consideration,
dialogue is featured in lowercase, while lyrics are indicated using uppercase
letters. I have attempted to retain as much of the original typesetting and
spelling as possible, only adapting it in a number of instances for the sake
of consistency.
Finally, an acknowledgement of intent. In the words of Stephen
Banfield, ‘[t]he real problem with the scripts of the West End’s golden age
of musical comedy […] is that we have not bothered to study them’
(2017, p. 131). This book is intended to offer critical discourses by means
of close textual analysis of play-scripts, using over forty sources from archi-
val and published materials. To this end, while there are a number of refer-
ences to the scores and musical performances throughout, I do not
pretend to offer rigorous musical analysis as part of this study.

xv
 CHAPTER 1

The British Musical in Seven Stories

The history of the world is made up of stories. When told by enough

people, these stories take on an air of inalienable truth: they become
mythologies. These mythologies—and the stories we tell that use them—
are as important as they are dangerous. As Roland Barthes once said, the
mythologies that arise from commonly rehearsed stories allow a particular
historical reality to emerge, whether or not that reality is true or accurate
(2000, p. 142). Nevertheless, the imperative to tell stories as a way of
making meaning from experience is a fundamental facet of the human
condition; even neuroscience suggests that storytelling is embedded
within human biology.1 It is also a fundamental part of this book.
This book is made up of stories. These stories intertwine, inform each
other, contradict one another, and together, create a rich narrative that
allows a particular historical reality to emerge. In seeking to tell the story
of early British musical comedy as a cultural phenomenon that reflected,
commented upon, and critiqued British society, the chapters in this book
all tell slightly different stories. There are seven stories altogether: ‘A
History of British Musical Theatre’, ‘Britishness (According to the
English)’, ‘Knowing One’s Place’, ‘Nation’, ‘Personal Identity’, ‘Empire’,
and ‘Nostalgia’. Three of them begin in this chapter. This is the first.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

B. Macpherson, Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre,
1890–1939, Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59807-3_1
2 B. MACPHERSON

A (Very Brief) History of British Musical Theatre

In his potted history of British musical theatre, Stephen Banfield suggests
that after the success of the Savoy comic operas created by Arthur Sullivan
and William Schwenk Gilbert between the years 1875 and 1889, ‘a riot of
“gaiety” overtook the West End, as befitted the “naughty nineties” and the
frivolous, heartlessly capitalist Edwardian era that followed’ (Banfield, 2017,
p. 117). This ‘riot of “gaiety”’ was led by impresario George Edwardes and
a roll call of talented writers, directors, and artistes whose names are, today,
hardly remembered. ‘The cuckoo in the nest was Broadway, first importing
British musical comedies [and then] by the 1920s exporting its own to the
West End’ thereby ushering in an era of ‘American superiority coupled with
the built-in generic obsolescence of topical musical comedy’ which saw ‘gai-
ety’ effectively disappear, and with it an entire era of shows that have been
long since forgotten, full of ‘tunes no longer hummed or even remembered
except in tiny pockets of cultural nostalgia’ (Banfield, 2017, p. 117).
This story—as recounted by Banfield—offers a sweeping summary of
musical theatre in Britain from 1875 to the mid-1920s. It ends on a some-
what bitter note, suggesting that this form, synonymous with frivolity,
reached ‘obsolescence’ sometime in the first half of the twentieth century.
As Banfield observes, this narrative necessitates ‘cross-examination’
because at its zenith British musical comedy was vital, modern, and noth-
ing short of a ‘cultural phenomenon’ (2017, p. 118). However, the sense
of obsolescence and the easy attribution of frivolous modernity means that
a large, formative part of British musical theatre history—indeed, musical
theatre history at large—has routinely been overlooked in scholarship,
receiving ‘precious little sustained’ critical or cultural analysis (Banfield,
2017, p. 118).
While Banfield is right to note the scarcity of scholarship on musical
comedy, it is nevertheless the case that—along with a few general-interest
publications by journalists and enthusiasts—there have been a number of
works published that have considered discrete aspects of this story.2 These
are often disparate, compartmentalised, or removed from a sense of broad
cultural context, but together they do provide compelling evidence that
musical comedy is worthy of the detailed attention Banfield champions. For
example, Tracy C. Davis’ Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity
in Victorian Culture (1991) re-evaluated the social position of women as
working actresses during the fin de siècle, while Erika Diane Rappaport’s
(2001) more recent study of women in London in the 1890s articulates
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 3

the ascent of actresses in musical comedies, within a broader context of a

growing consumer culture and the rise of the (sub)urban middle classes.
Elsewhere, Brian Singleton (2004) and Martin Clayton and Bennett Zon
(2007) have published collections that include considerations of musical
comedy as a popular cultural product of the British Empire, examining
strategies employed to anglicise ‘Otherness’ in the music, production val-
ues, narratives, and performances of these shows. Jacky Bratton (1986) and
Peter Bailey (1994, 1996) have explored connections between the class and
gender politics of music hall and the growth of musical comedy into a
respectable art form.3 In addition, far from the genre’s representing some
kind of frivolous stopgap between Gilbert and Sullivan’s last collaboration
in 1899 and the predominance of the American musical in the early 1940s,
the resonance of musical comedy was felt on an international scale, with
many productions successfully transferring from London to America,
Australia, Europe, India, and elsewhere; Len Platt, David Linton, and
Tobias Becker (2014) curated a collection of essays that demonstrate some
surprising Anglo-German interactions between 1890 and 1939.4
While these various histories offer evidence of the rich and diverse
nature of early British musical comedy, none offer a full overview of the
subject thematically or chronologically. In fact, until now Len Platt’s
Musical Comedy on the West End Stage 1890–1939 has represented the only
sustained and full-length study of the form. Platt tells the story of a culture
preoccupied with capitalist modernity and imperialism, and asserts that
modernity—characterised socially by a rejection of tradition, increased
secularisation, the growth of the free market, urbanisation, and
­nationalism—was inextricably linked with the cultural phenomenon of
musical comedy; a phenomenon that ‘lasted for a very long time and
included a large number of texts’ (2004, p. 2). He acknowledges the cul-
tural impact of the form arises from the fact that ‘musical comedies, like all
cultural products, are constitutive and have an explicitly reflexive relation-
ship with the societies from which they stem’ (2004, p. 19), and suggests
that—to the contemporary eye and ear—the popular successes of the late
Victorian and Edwardian period may now seem ‘quaint, small-scale and
“British” in a stereotypical way’ (Platt, 2004, p. 3).
At the time, of course, this was far from being the case. As the studies
listed above demonstrate—and as Platt and Banfield have shown—musical
comedy was seen as complex, contemporary and metropolitan; it was a trans-
atlantic genre that dominated the international stage for decades. For exam-
ple, Florodora was the first musical to be produced for gramophone record in
4 B. MACPHERSON

1900, acting as a forerunner of the modern-day cast recording. As a popular

phenomenon in its own right, Florodora enjoyed success worldwide, includ-
ing a number of performances in 1936 at Randall’s Island Municipal Stadium,
New York, which held up to 10,000 spectators, in an early iteration of some
contemporary arena performances of musical theatre. Elsewhere, the war-
time musical Chu Chin Chow set a world record for the longest run when it
played at His Majesty’s Theatre, London, for 2238 continuous performances
between 1916 and 1921. While he does not refer to these two examples,
Platt’s story similarly demonstrates and celebrates the sheer scale of such a
phenomenon.
However, while challenging contemporary ideas of the quaint or the
small-scale, one part of Platt’s statement is left largely undefined, demand-
ing further examination. Beyond the advent of commercial consumption
during the fin de siècle, what might be understood by the suggestion that
late Victorian and Edwardian musical comedy can be seen as ‘“British” in
a stereotypical way’ (2004, p. 3)? If cultural products such as the stage
musical are always imbricated within, and constitutive of, the society and
culture in which they are created, in what ways did musical comedy con-
stitute or represent what might be called Britishness, when, in Platt’s view,
it was both commercial and implicitly modern, and might easily be dis-
missed in retrospect as a mere expression of frivolous gaiety?5 These
­concerns form the basis of this book, because while Platt proffers contin-
ued references to modernity as the means by which we can understand the
advent of musical comedy, the use of this perspective only offers a particu-
lar version of the story; after all, Britishness as a sense of identity cannot be
(and is not) the same for the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. Socially
and culturally, the experience of ‘being British’ likewise differed between
the reigns of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), King Edward VII (1901–1910),
and King George V (1910–1936), as the Empire changed, suffragists and
the working classes gained momentum for their causes, and the nation was
shattered by the first global conflict of the twentieth century.
By means of a forensic examination of the scripts and scores for over
forty musical comedies staged between 1892 and 1939, and in light of the
many complementary and contrasting stories told by Davis, Rappaport,
Bratton, Bailey, Platt, and many others, the rest of this book seeks to
engage in the ‘cross-examination’ encouraged by Banfield, expanding,
extending, and (at times) offering an alternative to Platt’s story. Doing so,
it asks one overarching question: As a form that dominated British popular
culture from the end of Gilbert and Sullivan’s collaboration through to
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 5

the outbreak of World War II, in what ways can musical comedy be under-
stood as constitutive, reflective, or representative of Britishness? To answer
this question, a definition of this term is a good place to start. Coincidentally,
this definition is the second (and oldest) story in the book.

‘Britishness’ (According to the English)

The year is 1890. The nineteenth century—often called the ‘imperial cen-
tury’—is drawing to a close. In the years since the defeat of France follow-
ing the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in 1815, and in parallel to the
industrial revolution, Britain has expanded its Empire, emerging as the
global hegemon, and Victoria is on the throne as ‘Queen of Great Britain
and Ireland, and Empress of India’. She has reigned for over half a cen-
tury, and will continue to do so for more than a decade from this point.
Between 1815 and 1914, British imperial rule would come to dominate in
excess of 400 million people worldwide, with the British Empire control-
ling around 10 million square miles of territories, dominions, and colo-
nies.6 With an empire built on trade routes and sea power, Britannia really
did rule the waves. Yet, beneath the regnal longevity and seemingly uni-
fied vision of imperial ‘civilising’ progress, there was trouble at home.
In 1886, incumbent Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone had
tabled a bill for Irish Home Rule in the House of Commons, as a result of
political upheavals that had been ongoing since 1878. Challenging the
motion, Lord Salisbury, Conservative Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition,
believed that the bill threatened not only the Union of Great Britain and
Ireland, but also the British Empire, and in a speech of 8 April 1896, he
pointed to the example of Turkey, which had recently granted autonomy
to Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria: ‘Turkey is a decaying Empire; England,
I hope, is not’ (in Roberts, 1999, p. 382). This short statement reveals an
anxiety about the future of the Union and simultaneously implies that the
Empire of Great Britain is, in fact, English. While it might be a small
semantic misadventure, Salisbury’s invocation of an ‘English Empire’ her-
alds a devastating plot twist in the story of Britishness.
It is not hard to see why Salisbury referred to the British Empire in
English terms. As historians have noted, Great Britain and its Empire were
‘creations’ of England (Kumar, 2003, p. 179). Considering the Act of
Union that joined Scotland to England and Wales in 1707, along with the
1801 Act of Union (Ireland), historian Linda Colley notes that ‘England
has always been the preponderant country [in the Union]’, with the
6 B. MACPHERSON

­ iggest population, a universal language, and an older centralised state

b
structure and regnal heritage than Scotland, Ireland, or Wales (2014,
p. 57). England was the nation that forged Great Britain and the subse-
quent British Empire, with a capital city that was the centre of the Empire
and the world’s largest metropolis when Salisbury defended the Union.7
In this light, defining Britishness does not seem too difficult, and a logical
working definition might be expressed as: ‘Englishness writ large’.
However, such an elision is fraught with dangers and generalities, for as
Colley further suggests, the British state was ‘an invented nation superim-
posed […] onto much older alignments and loyalties’ in a manner which,
Krishan Kumar notes, served to ‘supplement and, at times, suppress’
national identities at home, as well as in the Empire (1992, p. 5; Kumar,
2003, p. 145). In short, Britishness was born of political expedience, and
as Mike Storry and Peter Childs warn in their study of British Cultural
Identity, ‘political Union is not cultural Union’ (1997, p. 45). Subsequently,
the history of Great Britain is one of a fraught and paradoxical negotiation
between the unifying political ideal of Britishness and the distinct cultural
identities of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.8 Importantly for the
Welsh, Scottish, and Irish, the ‘older alignments and loyalties’ of cultural
and regional heritage have remained a crucial component of identity and
belonging, even while those nations retain political membership of the
British Union (Colley, 1992, p. 5).
However, a parallel sense of cultural identity is often absent in discus-
sions or histories of the English. In his study The Politics of English
Nationhood, Michael Kenny has noted that while there is a large body of
histories that explore Scottish, Irish, and Welsh cultural identities, English
identity ‘remains a subject which is usually skirted rather than directly
engaged, and is mainly confined to the margins of political analysis’; politi-
cal analysis which invariably concerns the Union, rather than the nation
(2014, p. 1). This English cultural identity crisis is further seen in the way
the English use (or abuse) the idea of Britishness as a synonym for what
are more correctly aspects of English cultural identity, in a situation that
Kumar calls ‘the English dilemma’ (2003, p. 179). He suggests that per-
ceived English indifference about the nation’s own cultural identity—
beyond mythologies and stereotypes including the Sunday roast, country
pubs, rainy seaside holidays, and Morris dancing—might be connected
directly to England’s historical position of political dominance in the
British Union. As the historical proponents of both Union and Empire,
the English ‘had to find objects other than the English nation on which to
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 7

fasten’, and Kumar concludes that this led to Great Britain and the British
Empire becoming cultural markers of English identity (2003, p. 179).9 In
other words, the cultural identity of the English became inextricably linked
with their role in the political identity of Great Britain. As journalist Jeremy
Paxman surmises, this ‘dilemma’ is one possible reason why the imperial
English—such as Salisbury in his speech above—‘didn’t need to think too
hard about whether being “English” was the same as being “British”: the
terms were virtually interchangeable’ (1998, p. ix).10 Unsurprisingly, for
an expedient political union built on military alliances and religious ideals,
the invisibility of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland that results when the
English freely interchange the name of their nation state and their union
has been a source of historical tension, leading to seismic political shifts in
the British landscape, including the devolution of power to Wales in 1997,
to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1999 and 2007, and further planned
devolution in Scotland, set in motion in 2014 following a referendum on
independence that took place that year.
This complex situation might be helpfully explained with reference to
cultural historian Raymond Williams’ definition of ideology. In his land-
mark text Culture, Williams considers the term ‘ideology’, suggesting a
fluidity between its two common definitions: ‘the formal and conscious
beliefs of a class or other social group’ (which he summarises as ‘dogma’),
and ‘the characteristic world-view or general perspective of a class or other
social group, which will include formal and conscious beliefs but also less
conscious, less formulated attitudes, habits and feelings, or even uncon-
scious assumptions, bearing and commitments’ (1981, p. 26). Understood
in these terms, ‘Britishness’—according to the English—might be defined
as follows:

Britishness (according to the English): A world-view that is not universal,

but which operates on an unconscious assumption by the English, that
English cultural identity and British national identity are synonymous. In
this definition, the latter is used as an expression of the former, manifested
through unconscious attitudes and historical habits that appear as ‘dogma’
to the other member nations of Great Britain, even if they are less formal in
reality.

In short, the English might be ideologically British in their expression of

cultural identity, and this reveals an implicit tension between that cultural
identity and their national identity as English subjects; for although
8 B. MACPHERSON

England is a member nation of the Union of Great Britain and (Northern)

Ireland, history has shown that this Union is far from the ‘homogenous,
superior and/or unchanging’ entity that its rhetoric seems to suggest
(Harvie, 2005, p. 2). In other words: it is complicated.
However, this complexity it is also telling, for if Barthes’ definition of a
myth is true, the historical reality of Britishness as experienced by the English
supplies some much-needed detailing to the story of musical theatre out-
lined earlier. Crucially, this detailing relates to Platt’s observation that early
musical comedy is ‘stereotypically British’ (2004, p. 3) because if Platt’s
understanding of ‘stereotypical Britishness’ is substituted by the definition I
have given above, then the history of late Victorian and early Edwardian
musical comedy may be less about Britain, and more about England and its
search for cultural identity. To begin examining this, the third and final story
of this chapter lays the groundwork for analysing early musical comedy in
terms of its English cultural identity (or, Britishness). It is the story of a very
personal sense of English identity, of hypocrisy and contradiction, of para-
dox and progress, of tension and anxiety. It is called ‘Knowing One’s Place’,
and perhaps more by design than coincidence it is also the story of how
musical comedy first came to be seen on the London stage.

Knowing One’s Place

While Salisbury and Gladstone were busy embodying the tensions between
imperialism and the fragile constitution of Great Britain, the social and
personal make-up of England’s population was also undergoing immense
social change. Along with an expansion of educational opportunities and
a narrowing of religious influence in daily life, this was a period marked by
overseas conflict, the appearance of the ‘New Woman’, the suffrage move-
ment, and the rise of proletariat socialism, coupled with the ascent of trade
unionism, that spawned the newly formed labour movement. Historian
Robert Ensor notes that the 1880s and 1890s saw a sharp rise in the visi-
bility of the working class, and concomitantly its increased voice in p
­ olitical
and social life, as trade union membership exploded from around
750,000 in 1880 to 4.1 million in 1914; the majority of these members
were unskilled labourers from the working classes (1936, p. 304; James,
2006, p. 285).11
At the same time, another class of society was also enjoying new-found
growth and prosperity. Earlier in the century, the industrial revolution had
seen mass migration from rural areas to urban centres, including London,
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 9

Manchester, and Liverpool, as the economy grew and a newly moneyed

middle class exercised expanding influence. Historian Lawrence James
casts this new middle class in the leading role of the story of Victorian
England: ‘Its members ruled cities and towns where, by 1901, four-fifths
of the population lived’, claiming as an absolute that ‘the middle classes
created modern, urban Britain’ (2006, p. 232). This claim to modernity
can be seen in the increasing reliance on commerce in public life at that
time, powered by means of an intense concentration of people in metro-
politan social and public arenas that encompassed an acute rise in con-
sumer demand for leisure pursuits. This increased emphasis on commercial
and material interests reflected one facet of modernity in England: a move
away from the centrality of religion in personal and social English identity.
Crucially, Peter Clarke (1972, p. 51) observes that this shift brought with
it a paradoxical electoral move from liberalism to conservatism: while the
middle classes purported to celebrate liberal modernity and individual
social aspiration, for seventeen of the years between 1886 and 1906, they
were largely responsible for returning a right-wing, imperialist Conservative
government to power in Britain.12 The story of increased modern leisure
pursuits and commercial consumption in this period is therefore implicitly
connected to the conservative rhetoric of growing social respectability, an
ideological driver largely derived from the social and economic anxieties
felt by the middle class, conscious of the need to distinguish itself from the
proletariat (Huggins, 2000, p. 586).
In the case of the theatre—which received patronage from Queen
Victoria and enjoyed a boom as mass popular entertainment in the long
nineteenth century—the drive towards respectability might find a natural
starting point in the Theatres Act of 1843.13 This legislation served to
enhance the ‘respectability’ of popular entertainment in at least three spe-
cific ways. First, the act served an economic purpose that resonated with
the middle-class pursuit of work and profit, removing the patent monop-
oly on performance and allowing local authorities to license more theatres.
Second, it wrote social respectability in performances into law, refining the
censorship powers of the Lord Chamberlain, whose role was now con-
cerned with ‘the preservation of good manners, decorum or of the public
peace’.14 Third, the act legislated against alcohol consumption in auditoria
and banned smoking during the performance. While many small saloon
bars closed their theatres as a result, magistrates were granted the author-
ity to license public houses to offer entertainment resulting in a vast
10 B. MACPHERSON

e­ xpansion of theatrical entertainments in pubs; this provision catalysed the

rise of the music hall, variety, and revue, in urban and regional centres.
Further indicators of the rapid drive towards respectability in theatrical
performance might be seen in the fact that theatre design had become a
specialist architectural occupation by the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury. With proponents including C.J. Phipps and Frank Matcham, larger
venues were built or older ones expanded, affording the opportunity to
model the auditorium and public areas in a way that would promote and
engender a sense of status and respectability among consumers as they
performed the ritual of theatre-going. Separate entrances and exits were
assigned for differing social classes of patrons, and the comfort, quality,
and range of amenities visibly differed between the stalls, the dress circle,
the boxes, and the upper gallery.15 The introduction of variable ticketing
also reinforced status and social expectations, although working-class
patronage was encouraged by means of such schemes as half-price ticket-
ing for those who ‘could only arrive at the theatre after their shops closed
or when work finished or who simply couldn’t afford the full price’
(Emeljanow, 2014, p. 56).
On this basis, the act of consuming popular culture was also an act of
class identification, and an enactment of aspiration or perceived respecta-
bility. Allardyce Nicoll’s (1949) account of theatre-going habits in London
during the nineteenth century echoes this narrative of the increasing
(class-based) sophistication of the theatre that resulted from the above
developments, and claims that the riotous lower orders found a more nat-
ural home in the seedy music halls. As Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow
suggest, ‘Nicoll’s narrative is very much one of triumphalist progress as
the century draws to its conclusion’; progress, that is, as a synonym for
modernity, respectability, and middle-class values (2001, p. 98). This link
between progress, modernity, and the middle class is also echoed in James,
when he suggests that: ‘After 1850, the theatres had endeavoured to shed
their reputation for vulgarity and noisiness’ as they strove for respectability
and mass appeal, ‘leaving the working classes to beat a path to the music
halls’ (2006, p. 385).
However, there is more to this narrative than the expansion of theatre
as a mass entertainment, built upon middle-class moralistic ideals of vir-
tue, restraint, and conservatism. The story of knowing one’s place is a
story of paradox, leading to a different historical reality from that sug-
gested by Nicoll; one in which the respectable conservative modernity of
late Victorian popular culture becomes ‘contested’, reflecting the ‘ram-
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 11

shackle’ and ‘diverse’ demographic of the consumers in metropolitan

urban centres (Huggins, 2000, pp. 585–586). This increase in consumer
culture, while accompanied by a drive towards respectable social interac-
tions, accompanied a more fundamental shift from ‘puritanism to raffish-
ness’ in attitudes towards (and relationships between) class, gender, and
vice in public life, as a result of which ‘the boundaries between sexual and
economic exchange all but disappeared’ and ‘the working class and the
wealthy, local residents and foreign tourists thought of [modern urban
spaces such as the West End] as a special arena’ (Ensor, 1936, p. 304;
Rappaport, 2001, pp. 179–180). While this modern, urban Britain was
outwardly conservative and increasingly commercial, its social make-up
complicates any attempt at an easy demarcation of class identity. In fact,
spaces of leisure and entertainment—and the very act of consumption
itself—were as diverse as their patrons, and involved a much more compli-
cated set of social parameters beneath, beyond, and because of this air of
middle-class respectability. As this story will demonstrate, while certain
commercial aspects and rituals served to reinforce class identities in the
consumption of entertainment, sating the moderate conservatism of the
middle class, consumers themselves configured spaces of public entertain-
ment as a much more fluid arena. It was out of this contested, complicated
and paradoxical cultural space that musical comedy was to appear, primar-
ily developing as the modern progeny of three popular Victorian forms of
entertainment: comic opera, burlesque, and the music hall.16

English Comic Opera

In part, the development of English comic opera was reactionary. In her
memoir, actress and soprano Jessie Bond recalled that London theatregoers
of the late nineteenth century began to grow ‘tired of heavy tragedy and
stale farce, and of French importations’ (1930). When impresario Richard
D’Oyly Carte took up residence at the Savoy Theatre in 1875, it was part of
a broader cultural reaction against Continental culture flooding the English
stage; a reaction which says much about England’s fraught relationship with
Europe even at the height of the British Empire. Nevertheless, English
comic opera still bore distinctly European sensibilities, with stock characters
borrowed from Italian opera buffa, while the farcical topsy-turvydom associ-
ated with the works of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan was derived from
French works of opéra comique such as Jacques Offenbach’s The Grand
Duchess of Gerolstein, which successfully transferred to London in 1867.
12 B. MACPHERSON

Two things seem to characterise English comic opera in relation to the

development of musical comedy. First, in his consideration of the influ-
ences on the American musical, Raymond Knapp examines the ostenta-
tion, satire, and topicality in the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, noting that
their comic operas ‘celebrated Englishness as much as mocked it’ (2005,
p. 45). Using HMS Pinafore (1878) as a case study, Knapp offers the para-
dox of self-praise and self-mockery as evidence of a particularly English
sensibility; a self-consciousness that is implicit in many musical comedies.
Secondly, as Regina Oost (2009) and Michael Goron (2016) have argued,
this paradoxical construction of praise and mockery was framed within the
boundaries of class concerns:

Gilbert’s notion of social hierarchy, at least in terms of the way it is present

in the operas, is […] essentially viewed from the standpoint of the confident,
socially assertive ‘middle classes’. Petit-bourgeois values are deemed poten-
tially comic and dispensable in The Sorcerer, and egalitarianism is shown as
untenable in that opera and in HMS Pinafore. (Goron, 2016, p. 25)

Paradoxical values of Britishness were, therefore, configured for the mid-

dle classes, in an effort to perpetuate the preoccupation with respectability
that Goron sees as symptomatic of Victorian social hierarchy. It is this
sense of class consciousness that elicits a ‘nationalism’ in the Savoy operas;
a cultural ideology seen in the many symbolic examples of eccentric and
paradoxical Britishness in Gilbert and Sullivan’s works: singing policemen
(The Pirates of Penzance), inept naval captains (HMS Pinafore), and ghostly
aristocrats (Ruddigore) (Oost, 2009, pp. 11, 46, 84, 98). This is impor-
tant to the story of musical comedy because while ‘the surface charm of
the Savoy operas’ enabled Gilbert and Sullivan to produce works with a
‘powerful thematic core’, the modishness and formulaic narratives often
found in musical comedy likewise obscured the ‘powerful thematic core’
shared with the Savoy operas; a core that was specifically concerned with
the British (English) middle-class condition and its attendant anxieties
about identity and ideology (Wren, 2001, p. 4).

Burlesque
Burlesque has a long history, dating back to sixteenth-century Italy. As a
term derived from the Italian word burla, the form embodied the idea of
the grotesque or comedic imitation of cultural polarities, either the highly
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 13

dignified or the incredibly pathetic. In Victorian England, burlesques were

illegitimate adaptations of popular plays, operas, and ballets, performed in
a manner that mocked the style and musical content of the original work.
Peppered with light innuendo and topical references, these burlesques
were, at times, risqué comedies that functioned by juxtaposing lofty sub-
ject matter with performances that celebrated the mundane or were at
odds with the cultural weight of their content.
In particular, burlesques were known for their irreverent handling of
classical literature or mythological themes. For example, in 1831, the
burlesque Olympic Revels opened with gods of Greek mythology playing
a card game. Studies have demonstrated the political and cultural func-
tions of Greek and Roman mythologies in Victorian culture—which
included the teaching of Latin and ancient civilisations in private schools,
a practice which, Edith Hall suggests, ‘served to create and maintain class
divisions’ (1999, p. 336).17 While the imperial romanticism of the ancient
world might have resonated with Britain’s civilising ideology, embodied
perhaps in the increased visibility of the goddess Britannia as a symbol of
British naval dominance, the trend for classical texts to become fodder for
burlesque could not have been driven simply by an imperialising ten-
dency, a desire to mock the middle- or upper classes, or a fascination with
the (seemingly) pious and elite cultures of the past. The reason for this, as
Hall demonstrates, is that burlesques ‘transcended class barriers. Unlike
virtually all other professionals, actors were recruited from across the class
spectrum. Theatre audiences also included the proletariat: in 1859 as
many as sixty thousand individuals attended the plebeian Standard
Theatre in the East End of London—at the time the largest theatre in
Britain—to witness John Heraud’s tragedy Medea in Corinth.’ In fact,
Hall goes further, and cites one audience member who describes the bur-
lesque audience as a mixture of ‘vapid groundlings who take stalls’, and
the fashionable ‘swell of our day’ (E. Hall, 1999, p. 338). Such observa-
tions demonstrate that the cultural space of theatrical consumption was
diverse, complex, and fluid.
Along with a preoccupation with grand themes from the ancient world
(although, of course, not all burlesques drew on this subject matter),
Victorian burlesque shared theatrical conventions with other English
forms, including ballad opera, in which topical lyrics were often added to
well-known melodies of the day. In the 1870s and 1880s, the short one-­
act burlesques began to extend, and some began to deviate from the use
of popular music, instead employing composers such as F. Osmond Carr
14 B. MACPHERSON

and Arthur Sullivan to provide original scores, as the ‘extravaganza’ of

burlesque performance became more modish, increasing its reliance on
dance, formal staging, and costuming.
Often, burlesques were referred to as ‘travesties’, a term directly
associated with a hallmark of their performance aesthetics: cross-gen-
der casting. Drawing our attention to its connection with the English
pantomime dame, Hall has suggested that the ‘trouser roles’ of a young
actress playing a boy highlighted the entertainment value of the theat-
rics, and knowingly sought to obscure or distract from the moral value
of the play that had been adapted. Importantly, the aesthetic qualities of
‘trouser roles’ were often erotic—with actresses embodying a ‘flashy,
“leggy”’ performance style, found to be debasing and demoralising by
certain contemporary critics (Heyward, 1885, p. 477). Yet, in her dis-
cussion of a similar practice in pantomime, that of the ‘principal boy’,
Millie Taylor notes that this role was often more androgynous than that
of the highly feminised burlesque ‘trouser role’ performer (2007,
p. 117). This sexualisation of the actress not only distracted from the
moral content of the performance, but the implicit invitation to the
male gaze also reflected the status of working actresses in London at
this time. This status, implicitly linked to class and gender identities, is
one that endured for most of the nineteenth century: paid female per-
formers were often viewed as little more than prostitutes, even at popu-
lar burlesque venues such as the Gaiety Theatre or the Royal Strand
Theatre (Buszek, 1999).

Music Hall
In addition to comic opera and burlesque, music hall had grown into a
vast and popular form by the end of the nineteenth century. As places of
commerce at which to eat, drink, meet, solicit or be solicited, and hear
favourite songs and jokes of the day, the halls thrived by means of a variety
format that Dagmar Kift summarises as featuring ‘circus numbers, music
and theatre, and information and innovations’ (1996, p. 53). At the centre
of this format were the music hall songs, many of which courted innuendo
and suggestion in their titles and references.18 These songs often adhered
to strict musical styles and conventions that became symptomatic of the
music hall aesthetic, including the use of dance-form structures (predomi-
nantly the waltz and the polka), a reliance on the verse-and-chorus struc-
ture of popular song, and the inclusion of repetitive melodic shapes in the
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 15

chorus to encourage communal singing with the audience, often

prompted by a common lead-in on the dominant chord after the verse
had concluded on the tonic (Bennett, 1986, p. 10). These aesthetic and
musical features would find their way into musical comedy, and some of
them will be explored in the following chapters. However, this emphasis
on communal inclusion, simplistic harmonic structures, and the overt
use of popular dance rhythms led English composer Hubert Parry to
dismiss the fare on offer in the halls, branding it degraded and depraved,
unintelligent, and morally loose in its lyrical content (1881, p. 422). A
similar tenor of cultural discomfort at the content of music hall enter-
tainment (although without dismissing the intellect of its audiences) can
be seen in the essay ‘Theatre and Music-Hall’ by critic William Archer, in
which he suggests that the ‘“art” of the music-hall is like the “science”
of pugilism’, suggesting that the music hall celebrates the art of ‘elabo-
rate ugliness, blatant vulgarity, alcoholic humour, and rancid sentiment’
(1896, pp. 99–100).
Yet, far from its being solely a working-class and lowbrow form of
entertainment, the reality of music hall was somewhat different. By the
late 1880s, music hall had gained a crucial body of supportive journalists
and theatrical critics whose writings provide evidence of a growing gen-
trification and provide a means to understand its growing appeal to a
broad cross-section of society. Max Beerbohm saw the halls as a mirror of
the national character, while Elizabeth Rennell wrote ‘The Pedigree of
the Music Hall’, claiming the form had a ‘genetic resemblance’ to tradi-
tional English folk theatre, such as mummers’ plays and Everyman per-
formances (Beerbohm, 1969; Pennell, 1893, p. 575).19 As Barry J. Faulk
suggests, ‘cultured observers appeared certain that music hall accultur-
ated its audiences [as] the most authentic expressive form of native
Englishness. Star performers [were seen as] representatives of English
character’ (2004, p. 23).
This index of ‘native Englishness’ was not simply preoccupied with
end-of-the-pier innuendo or risqué content, for while the halls largely
operated outside of the formal remit of the Lord Chamberlain’s censor-
ship powers, Steve Attridge has noted that ‘it was in the commercial inter-
ests of proprietors to avoid antagonizing the authorities [and because of]
the possibility of licensing censure they tended to phase out anti-­
Establishment or overtly risqué songs in favour of sentimentality, “improv-
ing” patriotism and appeals to national unity’ (2003, p. 19). As ‘arenas of
changing social relations in England’, the halls also became vehicles for
16 B. MACPHERSON

patriotic sentiment and commercially driven populism—attitudes and vir-

tues that would appeal to the middle classes as echoes of the imperialist
zeitgeist (Attridge, 2003, p. 17). This appeal to a broad stratum of social
classes meant that, by the end of the nineteenth century, music hall audi-
ences were a heady mixture of ‘mashers’ (aristocratic bachelors), ‘judies’
(working-class prostitutes), and working-class and middle-class patrons, of
both sexes.20 This development in the audience demographic was not
always a welcome one. In his impassioned defence of the halls in 1912,
William Titterton bemoaned the imposition of a middle class who attended
the halls ‘to laugh at what we consider funny and they consider vulgar’,
championing the working-class origins of the halls as ‘a glimpse of a genu-
ine vivid life—the life of the working classes, so different from anything
one sees in the suburbs’ (1912, p. 11).21
Yet, as Louis Rutherford has noted, the mix of audiences led to an
increasingly satirical representation of the middle classes themselves in the
halls, as comedians, writers, and performers responded to the shift in a
topical and vital way: ‘Characters representing the hegemonic middle-class
culture were as vulnerable to ridicule as the comic working man, and there
were many instances of their social superiority and moral authority being
undermined by the lower-class comic protagonist’ (1986, p. 151). This
dramatic trope of satirising the nouveau riche was a staple of music hall in
much the same way that critical satire of the establishment was a bench-
mark of many of the Savoy operas, and along with the musical stylings of
the halls and many of their star performers, such topical satire would soon
find its way into the new form of musical comedy.

The Arrival of Musical Comedy

In his memoir, Good Old Gaiety, producer John Hollingshead recalls: ‘The
year 1892 was a black year for the Gaiety—as black as any year that has
ever fallen on a popular London theatre—especially a theatre dealing in
the lighter forms of the drama’ (1903, p. 63). In December 1891, Ellen
Farren—a regular star of burlesques at the Gaiety Theatre—was ‘seized
with an illness’ (Hollingshead, 1903, p. 63). This was followed by the sud-
den death the following year of Fred Leslie, a stalwart who would often
star opposite Farren in burlesques produced by Hollingshead and his co-­
manager of the Gaiety Theatre, George Edwardes. The absence of both
performers meant that Edwardes’ upcoming burlesque of Don Juan at the
Gaiety Theatre was jeopardised, eventually being postponed as a result of
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 17

the loss of two star principals. Edwardes—who had become joint manager
of the Gaiety with John Hollingshead in 1885 and was now sole propri-
etor—took the opportunity to experiment. Under his management the
Gaiety had already transformed itself from a popular music hall to a broadly
middle-class establishment, catering for burlesque, variety, and operetta in
a varied and popular programme. Yet, rather than continue with revivals of
previous fare, or updates and burlesques of popular successes, Edwardes
turned his attention to another venue and a new creative team.
Having experienced the equivalent of an apprenticeship with D’Oyly Carte
at the Savoy Theatre, Edwardes enlisted light opera composer F. Osmond
Carr along with writers Adrian Ross and James T. Tanner (James Leader).
Opening on 15 October 1892, the resulting show was entitled In Town, and
starred Arthur Roberts—a versatile performer experienced in burlesque, music
hall, and comic opera. It was this combination of influences—from all three of
the popular forms considered above—that led In Town to become a surprise
success, playing at the Prince of Wales Theatre (in which Edwardes held a
financial interest) and later transferring to the Gaiety, bringing newfound for-
tune for the venue as a producing house of this new style of work. Originally
described as a ‘Musical Farce’ in the playbill, In Town might be best seen as
prototypical of the new musical comedy form.22 More burlesque than a comic
opera, and yet notably more operatic than burlesque, In Town was seen by The
Era’s reviewer as ‘a variety entertainment in disguise’ (in Gänzl, 1986, p. 440).
In fact, while actress Ellaline Terriss was a lone voice in describing it as the first
musical comedy, Platt notes that it was too ‘wildly underdeveloped’ to be
afforded such a status (Terriss, 1955, p. 110; Platt, 2004, p. 43). In reality, it
was little more than a series of scenarios acting as a framework within which to
showcase its star leads. During its run, development and innovation were hap-
hazard. In common with many works of the period—despite its authorial
light-opera credentials—interpolations and additions from music hall fare
were rife, including ‘trademark’ stage business from its principal performers
and the inclusion of several bawdy songs in its musical score.23
However, although it proffered burlesque stage business, music hall
songs, and a structure that was more episodic than chronological, In Town
retains its importance as the first production to pave the way for modern
musical theatre in England primarily because of its subject matter and nar-
rative concerns. It tells the story of Captain Coddington, a penniless fop
who gives his friend Lord Clanside a tour of the slightly naughty side of
London as a place for leisure. As already demonstrated, in an era when
‘mashers’ were freely to be found in lower-class music halls and drinking
18 B. MACPHERSON

dens, the performance of such a scenario in a production that would

receive patronage from all classes meant that Ross’ and Tanner’s work
explicitly celebrated the fluid social spaces of the modern metropolis. As
even its title suggests, in contrast to the pastoral, mythical, imperial, or
historical concerns of many comic operas and burlesques, In Town was
avowedly modern in its intention, aesthetic, and appeal; a sensibility fur-
ther seen in the costuming of the actors and the self-conscious representa-
tion of the theatre as a modern site of ritualistic consumption.
In common with a growing trend that began in the 1880s, Edwardes
clothed his performers in the latest fashions from London department
stores. If they were to be ‘in town’ they had to dress the part. In an
early example of commercial product placement, the result would
encourage suburban middle-class audience members to aspire to fash-
ionable apparel in an effort to be modern and respectable, while the
presence of such fashion onstage would have also resonated with the
working-class shop girls and lower-middle-class male floorwalkers who
attended evening performances after a day spent selling similar items to
customers in their stores. While shop girls may be understood as sym-
bolic of the aspirations of modernity, such product placement perhaps
paradoxically reinforced the class distinctions so deeply engrained in
British society, echoed in the ticket prices and the architectural design
of the theatre itself.24
The story also portrayed the actress as a working woman. As part of
Clanside’s jaunt around London, Coddington invites a company of
actresses to lunch and Clanside offers to pay the bill if he is invited as well.
The plot’s preoccupation with Clanside discovering the less reputable side
of London immediately places the actresses into that category. Following
the lunch, Coddington and Clanside attend a performance at the theatre
and Coddington wins the heart of the leading lady. In a denouement that
is almost prophetic, the ascent of a burlesque actress into the aristocracy
further epitomises the complicated social zeitgeist of aspiration and social
progress in late Victorian London, reinforcing the aristocracy as the social
ideal, and theatricalising an alliance that would be played out in reality
many times over the next two decades as a host of actresses became titled
members of the upper echelons.
Following the success of In Town, George Edwardes continued to refine
this new form over the next few decades, launching the musical comedy
onto the London stage. In 1893, Owen Hall, Harry Greenbank, and
Sidney Jones wrote A Gaiety Girl, once again produced by Edwardes at the
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 19

Prince of Wales Theatre. With a structure that improved on Ross and

Tanner’s efforts in In Town, A Gaiety Girl traded on a similar sense of
modishness as its predecessor. It told a simple tale of romance between a
military officer and an actress, and included some farcical topsy-turvydom
surrounding a comb that gets stolen. Full of badinage and quick-witted
exchanges, A Gaiety Girl was, Kurt Gänzl suggests, ‘a genuine play [cre-
ated by the writers] in the reasonable hope that it would be performed
fairly much as written. The leading roles were shared out more equitably
than usual, the characters were allowed some genuine depth and the dia-
logue was written in a clear and incisive style with no attempts at word-­
play or blatant popular references […] neither a burlesque libretto nor a
comic opera book but a light dramatic play’ (1986, p. 477). The story of
the actress and the stolen comb also included satirical comments about
the army, the clergy, and the judiciary, stylistically echoing some of the
more direct moments from Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas. For
example, in one early exchange, the judge (Sir Lewis Grey) is said to have
been unavoidably detained from attending an event at the barracks,
because ‘he has a society divorce case on and it is so amusing he can’t tear
himself away’ (O. Hall, Tanner, & Greenbank, 1893, p. 7). This type of
social satire was a particular ‘penchant’ of Owen Hall, with many such
lines not passing the censor (Gänzl, 1986, p. 477). Yet, where permissi-
ble, A Gaiety Girl portrayed the British love of self-deprecating humour,
and it proved a great public success in London, in the regions, and inter-
nationally: ‘The British Empire and America began to fall for the appeal of
the British musical comedy from the time when A Gaiety Girl was taken
on a world tour in 1894’ (Fox, 2005, pp. 61–72; Knapp, 2005, p. 45;
Lamb, 1986, p. 37).
The arrival of musical comedy on the London stage in the early 1890s,
therefore, does much more than merely introduce a passing phase in the
history of musical theatre. As Platt, Knapp and Williams have argued,
musical theatre as a cultural artefact has an intimate relationship with its
society. As a conspicuously commercial outgrowth of English comic
opera, burlesque, and music hall, the new musical comedy expressly per-
formed modernity on the London stage. Its sentiments of self-praise
mixed with self-mockery, configured in narratives of topsy-turvydom
drawn from comic opera, framed as a spectacular satire littered with topi-
cal references in a manner similar to burlesque, and performed with a
theatrical knowingness utilising carefully staged eroticism negotiated in
line with censorship laws, ensured its appeal to a broad cross-section
20 B. MACPHERSON

of society as the West End became ‘a site in which a diverse audience both
“provisioned and envisioned” itself’ through material and cultural con-
sumption (Rappaport, 2001, p. 110). As seen above, the personal and
liberal imperatives of modernity—even within the diverse and fluid spaces
of cultural consumption—co-existed in a society that was also predomi-
nantly imperialist and conservative. While the middle class may have rel-
ished the opportunity to ‘envision’ their modern experiences in a new,
modish type of musical theatre, this popular cultural form was also a prod-
uct of a Victorian era wrought with anxieties and tensions of identity.
These anxieties, and crises of identity, form the basis for the remaining
stories in this book, and are broadly grouped into two halves. Part
I—‘Domestic and Personal Identities’, will consider Story 4: ‘Nation’ and
Story 5: ‘Personal Identity’, while Part II—‘Imperial and Ideological
Identities’ will consider Story 6: ‘Empire’ and Story 7: ‘Nostalgia’. In Part
I, the concerns are explicitly more English, focusing on issues of home,
gender, and class, while Part II tells a broader story of Britishness on the
musical stage, placing the cultural phenomenon of musical comedy in an
international and imperial context. At home, the Industrial Revolution
had introduced a division between the increasing urbanisation of England
and the nostalgic romanticism of its enduring rural idyll. In the chapter
that follows, the fourth story in this book, ‘Nation’, will explore how
musical comedy was simultaneously a product of modernity and a form
which negotiated conflicting ideals of English domestic values. For exam-
ple, The Arcadians (1909) allegorised the domestic anxieties of urban
modernity and rural tradition, pitting pastoral idyll against progressive
industrial landscapes through a focus on London, as did works such as
Our Miss Gibbs (1909) and A Country Girl (1902). Anxieties about
English identity were also conditioned by the state of the union between
England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Chapter 2 also considers how the
musical stage sought to anglicise depictions of marginalised member
nations in successes such as The Gay Gordons (1907) and Florodora (1899).
These domestic tensions, between urbanisation and rural tradition, north
and south, and England and the other member nations of Great Britain,
offer an acute sense of why Britishness (According to the English) is so
complex.
Alongside domestic and infrastructural concerns, personal identities
were equally complicated at this time, especially in the ‘contested’ spaces
of the new metropolis with its ‘ramshackle’ and ‘diverse’ social make-up
(Huggins, 2000, pp. 585–586). The fifth story in this book, ‘Personal
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 21

Identity’, focuses on the performance of femininity and manliness. It is

told in two parts across Chaps. 3 and 4. Chapter 3 tells the story of per-
ceived social constructs for Victorian women as domestic daughters and
wives, drawing on the politics of George Edwardes’ famous ‘girl shows’
which often utilized variations of the Cinderella narrative to perform the
diverse and complicated configurations of women and womanhood. As
this story will demonstrate, the societal and imperial roles of women were
a much-contested topic, with satirical and diverse generational iterations
on the London musical stage in works such as A Gaiety Girl (1893) and
Betty (1915) that challenged—and simultaneously reinforced—Victorian
patriarchal expectations. Yet, equally complicated, and far less visible in
other accounts of this story, is the representation of masculinity on the
musical stage. The ways in which this changed between the late Victorian
period and World War I will be considered in Chap. 4.
While personal and domestic identities were fluid or contentious, evoking
a sense of Britishness as a paradoxical ideal with composite and contradictory
social facets, Britain’s global status and identity was altogether more complex.
The imperial status of Great Britain—and of the English as its ‘creators’ and
‘predominant’ nation—formed an essential part of the social conditions from
which musical comedy arose and within which it thrived on an international
scale.25 Considering the relationship between the British Empire and the musi-
cal at the turn of the twentieth century, Chap. 5 considers the way the British
Empire influenced the representation of Otherness on the English musical
stage, drawing on David Cannadine’s (2001) revisionary history of the Empire
to examine the ways in which musical comedies presented British ideologies of
sameness or hierarchy in representations of Japan, China, Germany, France,
Holland, Spain, and America. In each case, the process of anglicisation claimed
imperial superiority at a time when a quarter of the globe was dominated by
British rule; rule that was, nevertheless, increasingly fragile.
In 1914, the world changed. The final two chapters of this book tell the
story of musical theatre during the Great War and its aftermath. Chapter
6 explores the growth of revue and of cinema as competitors to Edwardian
musical comedy, identifying further complexities and tensions between
the need for change and the desire for continuity in popular culture. In
particular, this story revisits some anxieties considered in Chaps. 3 and 4
and the ways in which these continued to characterise the British musical
stage. While the Great War constructed a sense of democratised society
united by the war effort, the interwar years in Britain were marked by a
return to vivid class anxieties; shifting gender roles; questions regarding
22 B. MACPHERSON

the establishment; a faltering economy; a decrease in industry; the first

Labour government; and the early contraction of the Empire. Constructing
a sense of cultural stability amidst such anxiety was therefore imperative for
the culture industry. Britain’s balance of power on the world stage had
decreased, and growing independence movements within the Empire fur-
ther heightened anxiety over British imperial strength. All of this, along
with the continuing ascent of America towards becoming the world’s super-
power, saw Britain become isolated, reflective, and introverted. The ways in
which the musical stage negotiated this shifting social landscape will be
explored in the seventh chapter of this book (Story 7: ‘Nostalgia’), focus-
sing on the politics of nostalgia as a means by which the interwar condition
looked to a more certain past in order to understand a very uncertain future.
Finally, this book returns to one simple question: What might it mean to
talk about musical comedy as ‘stereotypically British’? In order to begin answer-
ing this question, Part I begins with the fourth story in this book, ‘Nation’.

Notes
1. See Jonathan Gottshall (2012).
2. For non-academic histories see Sheridan Morley (1987); Harry Stone
(2009); Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson (1969); and Alan Hyman
(1975). In addition, see John Snelson (2008) for a discussion of the cul-
tural status of British musical theatre in such histories.
3. For studies on music hall and its relationship to musical comedy, see Peter
Bailey (1998, pp. 175–193) and (1994, pp. 138–170); also J.S. Bratton
(ed.) (1986).
4. For additional considerations of the transcultural and international move-
ment of musical comedy, see Christopher Balme (2015, 2016), Henry
Balme (2016) and Marlis Schweitzer (2015). In addition to biographical
studies of producers such as C.B. Cochran and composers including Leslie
Stuart, and notwithstanding Kurt Gänzl’s extensive two-volume encyclo-
paedia entitled The British Musical Theatre (1986), studies of popular cul-
ture and the theatre are beginning to paint a much more nuanced
picture.
5. A parallel concern has been explored by Raymond Knapp in his book The
American Musical and the Formation of National Identity in which Knapp
articulated the ‘profound’ role that American musical theatre has played in
performing particular cultural moments of what might be termed
‘Americanness’ (2005, p. 5), which he defines with reference to changing
configurations of race, ethnicity, gender, national identity, Otherness,
immigration, and global conflict on Broadway and in Hollywood. The nar-
rowness of ‘the Broadway musical’ embodying the vast and disparate
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 23

e­ xperiences of America as a federal union notwithstanding, similar senti-

ments have been expressed about the Broadway musical and its role as a
mirror to popular cultural attitudes. Journalist Mark Steyn (1997, p. 142)
has remarked that while Broadway’s first generation ‘hummed the
American dream, Stephen Sondheim’s greatest contribution to the future
of the form was to tell us that such a dream was “a nightmare’”.
6. See Robert Ensor (1936), along with more in-depth discussions in Ronald
Hyam (2002); Simon Smith (1998); Timothy H. Parsons (1999).
7. Elsewhere in his consideration of English national identity, Krishan Kumar
(2003, p. 179) wryly suggests that the English controlled ‘two Empires’:
the British Empire, and Great Britain itself.
8. Notwithstanding the long history of a Union-wide elite, economic infra-
structure, labour movement, shared English language, shared legal system,
and shared ‘scientific, intellectual and literary culture’ (Kumar, 2003, p. 173).
9. In fact, Kumar goes further, suggesting that the elision of England and
Britain proved ‘highly advantageous’ for the English in that it allowed their
imperial domination to be concealed ‘behind the more benevolent and all-
embracing cloak of Britishness’ (2003, p. 179); see also Kumar (2010,
p. 475).
10. Elsewhere, Kumar echoes this sentiment, suggesting that in an act of ideo-
logical and semantic arrogance (or perhaps confusion), ‘British’ and
‘English’ have been made virtually synonymous or interchangeable in the
English psyche (2003, p. 174).
11. In his history of the working class in England, E.P. Thompson (1991,
p. 80) wrote that the ‘stance of the common Englishman was not so much
democratic, in any positive sense, as anti-absolutist’. A strong proletarian
tradition of individual rights can be seen in the writings of English philoso-
phers including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Thomas Paine.
12. Alex Windscheffel (2007, p. 2) notes that the shift to Conservatism was
not just a British phenomenon in this period, and that this move ‘was an
essentially passive achievement, founded upon organisational efficacy on
the one hand, and the failing of political opponents on the other. Liberal
schisms culminated in the Home Rule crisis, seen as an epiphanic moment
for an increasingly alienated and fearful middle class’ (2007, p. 4).
Windscheffel offsets these historical orthodoxies by noting that the sub-
urbs were not solely the preserve of the middle classes, and that certain
sections of the working classes voted for Tory rule. In this key respect,
English personal identity (particularly among the middle classes) can be
directly linked to broader national concerns and ideologies at play in the
British imperial government of that time. As the story of Britishness above
also indicates, personal identity—‘knowing one’s place’—is inextricably
related to the story of Britishness (as defined by the English). These two
identities, and their roles in constructing culture, will be considered at
length in Parts I and II of this book.
24 B. MACPHERSON

13. Allardyce Nicoll recorded that ‘there were nineteen theatres in London
during the summer of 1851. Nearly half a century later, in 1899, London
boasts sixty one theatres; thirty eight in the West End, twenty three in the
nearby suburban districts’ (1949, pp. 9, 28).
14. This act was revisited, and revisions proposed, by a select committee of the
House of Commons in 1866, 1909, and 1966. No material changes were
effected, however, until the act itself was repealed in 1968.
15. Although theatre was enjoyed by much of the population, it was not always
accessible throughout Britain. In rural areas of Wales the portable theatre
was popular. These theatres toured the country and could be dismantled
and moved easily. They were well supported in the small towns and villages
which could not sustain permanent theatrical venues, and lasted until
around World War I.
16. While variety theatre might be seen as a contributory form, its speciality
acts such as juggling, acrobatics, and ‘freak-show’ turns did not make their
way into the musical comedy in any meaningful or sustained way, aside
from specific instances such as in The Circus Girl (1896). Similarly, revue
was not as far-reaching in its cultural influence on other forms at this time,
although in the early twentieth century, this would change (see Chap. 5).
17. For a discussion of the ancient world in Victorian performances, see Jeffrey
Richards (2009).
18. Examples of these titles include: ‘Any Old Iron’ (homosexual suggestion),
‘They’re All Single By the Seaside’ (fornication), ‘I Don’t Want to Play In
Your Yard’ (unwanted sexual advances), ‘A Little Bit of What You Fancy
Does You Good’ (sexual excess), ‘She’d Never Had Her Ticket Punched
Before’ (virginity).
19. Further, in his essay ‘Demos’ Mirror’, Beerbohm (1969, p. 274) observed
‘There is no nonsense about the Halls [...] [Music Hall] is nearer to life
[and] distorts life exactly as the public likes to see life distorted. […] It is
an always trustworthy document’.
20. Faulk considers this point, concluding: ‘By the 1880s and 1890s, the music
hall had become a public space that was no longer subjected exclusively to
a strict male control or dominance […] the century’s close saw the end of
male, middle-class hegemony over London’s public areas’ (2004, p. 112):
See also Rappaport (2001), and Judith R. Walkowitz (1992).
21. In a melancholy expression of social change, Titterton concludes that: ‘the
“cultured” audiences of the West End Halls demand “cultured” plays by
notorious dramatists as a standing feature of their entertainment’ (1912,
p. 115).
22. Platt notes that ‘In Town, was, in many ways, a decisive break with bur-
lesque and an important intermediary on the road to the fully-fledged
musical comedy product’ (2004, p. 43), There is, however, some debate as
 THE BRITISH MUSICAL IN SEVEN STORIES 25

to which production deserves the accolade of ‘first musical comedy’. While

much discussion pits In Town against A Gaiety Girl (1893),
Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson point to My Sweetheart—adapted
from an American work—as an early example of the ‘musical comedy
drama’ seen in the West End in 1884, and also Jack in the Box from 1887,
which they similarly term a ‘musical comedy drama’ (1969, p. 11).
23. One such number was ‘Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow-Wow’, an innu-
endo-filled song made famous by Vesta Tilley, and in this instance, included
at the behest of Roberts. In his personal account of his father’s life in the
halls, politician John Major (2012, p. 111) records that this created a
furore with Tilley, as the printed sheet music ‘made clear that the song
could be sung ‘without fee or licence’, except at music halls’. The prohibi-
tion did not include theatres, and this was seized upon by the producers of
In Town.
24. While the profession of the shop girl was symptomatic of aspiration during
this era, Pamela Cox and Annabel Hobley (2014) notes that the poor con-
ditions of shop work often led to girls supplementing their income with
prostitution, either in grubby alleyways at night, or in more luxurious sur-
roundings at the whim of the nobility and professional classes. To this end,
they were often viewed as far from respectable in society, as seen in Chap. 2.
25. See Kumar (2003, p. 179); Colley (2014, p. 57).

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 PART I

Domestic and Personal Identities

 CHAPTER 2

Nation: Modernity and Mythology

Echoing the sentiments of Charles Baudelaire in his discussion of moder-

nité (1986), Platt suggests that, as it celebrated the ephemerality, fashion,
and vitality of the new metropolis, musical comedy was a modish and
urban entertainment with ‘few longings at all for the past and no serious
worries about the present’ (2004, p. 49). Indeed, from the moment In
Town captured the public imagination in 1892, commercial musical com-
edy celebrated urbane topicality in urban settings, performing an implicit
celebration of ‘the new’ and ‘the now’.1 This focus on the metropolitan
present typified the fin de siècle and can be traced back to the Industrial
Revolution, which shifted the British political and economic landscape
away from feudal structures and a rural economy, towards free-market
capitalism. As a result of this, industry expanded, urbanisation exploded,
and a new bourgeois suburban middle class gained influence, as consid-
ered in Story 3.2
Yet, beneath its imperial, metropolitan veneer of social and economic
progress, Britain was wrestling with a series of ideological pressures and
anxieties, as modern (sub)urban living competed with idyllic mythologies
of rural traditions, and the London-centric predominance of England
consigned Scotland, Ireland, Wales—and many English regions—to the
margins. The fourth story in this book, ‘Nation’, examines the ways in
which musical comedy enacted and reflected the complex interaction
between these pressures, embedding them within a commercial form of

© The Author(s) 2018 31

B. Macpherson, Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre,
1890–1939, Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59807-3_2
32 B. MACPHERSON

entertainment in modernity. Taken together, such interactions—messy,

confusing, and convoluted—offer a sense of Britishness as it was conceived
on a domestic level, beginning with the Industrial Revolution of the nine-
teenth century.

Urban Modernity and Rural Tradition

As a result of innovations in industry, economy, and infrastructure in the
early-to-mid nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution saw the land-
scape and social make-up of Britain shift from a rural and arable economy
to an industrial powerhouse. In many ways, these changes heralded the
beginnings of early modernity, and it is crucial to this story, as historians
acknowledge, that the subsequent global dominance of ‘British society
and its economy was an unprecedented experiment in industrial and finan-
cial capitalism’ (Matthew, 2000, p. 3). In the nineteenth century, this
industrial and social experiment was largely credited as the bedrock upon
which Britain’s global trading dominance and its Empire were built
(Massey, 1986, p. 34). This resulted in several specific consequences for
the make-up and cultural landscape of Britain—and particularly England—
in the latter half of the nineteenth-century as the country witnessed the
growth of densely clustered cities in the South (London), the West (Bristol
and Bath), the Midlands (Birmingham) and the North (Liverpool,
Durham, and Manchester). As the third story (‘Knowing One’s Place’)
noted, the geographical shift saw the simultaneous rise of the new indus-
trial elite as the middle classes emerged. Considering this foundational
shift, late nineteenth-century essayist P. Anderson Graham lamented that
no problem in modern society caused ‘a deeper anxiety than the increasing
tendency of populations to mass themselves in a few great centres […]
Our towns are already large beyond precedent, and yet they continue to
grow’ (1892, p. 1).3 Drawing on census data, Graham notes that in the
three decades between 1861 and 1891, the urban population increased
from 12,696,520 to 20,802,770, while the rural population had increased
by slightly fewer than 1 million people (1892, p. 3).4
Consequently, British industry ‘displayed an astonishing vigour’, while
the agricultural economy—and with it, rural ways of life—was suddenly
‘thrown overboard in a storm like an unwanted cargo’ (Ensor, 1936,
p. 115). It was surprising, then, that as late as 1926, Prime Minister
Stanley Baldwin chose to describe England—not in terms of industry,
urban density, or commerce—but with reference to ‘the hammer on the
 NATION: MODERNITY AND MYTHOLOGY 33

anvil in the country smithy, the corncrake on a dewy morning […] and the
sight of the plough team coming over the brow of a hill’ (in Ward, 2004,
p. 54). While modern industry and the creep of urbanisation dominated
British life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Baldwin’s
invocation of traditional ways of life demonstrates an implicit tension
between the reality of dominant modernity, and the mythology of life ‘as
it once was’. The recourse to ‘country life’ as the essence of England
(more so than of Britain) is also seen historically in literature from writers
including Robert Browning (1812–1889); Anthony Trollope
(1815–1882); and Thomas Hardy (1840–1925). In other words, two
‘Englands’ were at play in the cultural identity of the fin de siècle and
beyond: one which was modern, urban, and industrial, and another which
was pastoral, traditional, and rural. In many cases, these visions are read
comparatively, where industrial urban culture is seen as progressive and
modern, while rural communities are cast as the naïve and untouched
essence of an ‘Englishness’ under threat from indomitable modernisation.
The reality of these visions as constituent elements of domestic cultural
identity was complex, imbricated with dynamics of region and class, ten-
sions between capitalism and feudal ideals, and anxieties between the old
world and new century. The ways in which musical comedy performed or
employed these complexities reveals much about its role as a popular cul-
tural form at the turn of the century.
As Platt has suggested, musical comedy’s cultural position meant that it
was more readily given to celebrating modernity and ‘the present’ rather
than lamenting the loss of a rural past. For example, the contrast between
overpopulated cities and the declining numbers of rural inhabitants was
often embodied in fin-de-siècle productions through the sheer number of
characters featured in increasingly far-reaching plots. In A Country Girl
(1902), the ‘myth of [urban] abundance’ is seen in the ‘bewildering over-
load of characters’ that all descend on a quiet Devonshire village in the
first act, only to be transported to a London ball in the second act (see
Banfield, 2017, p. 132). However, several facets of the narrative in A
Country Girl suggest an ambivalent relationship between the metropolis
and the village, rather than a wholesale support of modernity.
Replete with formulaic narrative devices, including disguise and racial
stereotyping, the musical tells the story of village maiden Marjorie and her
childhood sweetheart Geoffrey, the son of a Devonshire village squire.
After his father spends the family inheritance reopening the local mines
and offering employment to the working classes and unemployed, Geoffrey
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 A long pause seemed to intensify the sinister significance of their
previous remarks.
“Look here,” cried Catherine, breaking in raucously upon the
silence, “why don’t you tell me straight out I can’t play?”
After she had said it she regretted her hastiness. She perceived it
was a foolish thing to say. She blushed fiercely.
Verreker raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. Razounov beamed
beatifically.
“My dear lady,” he began caressingly, “I will be perfectly fhrank
with you. Eet is best to be fhrank, is eet not? ... You will neffer be a
first-class player. Perrhaps a second, ohr a third, pairhaps you may
eahrn plenhty of money at eet, but you will never be a—you know
what I mean—a ghreat—a suphreme pianiste.” (He meant obviously:
“You will never be what I am.”) ... “Why? ... Ah, I cannot tell. Why is
zhe ghreat gift given to sohm and not to othairs? ... Eet is that you
haf not it in you, that zohmsing, that spark that is cault ghenius ...
you understand?”
Catherine understood. But she could not disguise her humiliation,
her mortification, her disappointment.
“Do you agree with me, Verreker?” asked Razounov, as if
desiring confirmation of his verdict.
Verreker said curtly: “I don’t profess to prophesy these things.
Still, in this case, I believe you’re right.”
That was worse! There was something contemptuous in those
words, “in this case.” Catherine hated him.
“Still,” purred Razounov, “you would improve with a course of
instruction. You will make a good player if you are careful. I cannot
give you lessons myself, as I am engaged all my time, but I will
supervise. And Mr. Verreker will gif you a lesson once a week. Efery
month I will supervise. Is zhat plain?”
Catherine could not answer. She was struggling with tears. The
second time that day that tears had troubled her. Yet what a different
variety of tears! These were tears of rage and disappointment, of
blinding disillusionment, of sullen mortification. She dare not trust
herself to reply. If she had attempted a word she would have been
caught in a maelstrom of burning indignation.
“I will drop you a card when I can give you a first lesson,” said
Verreker, quietly.... “Well ... er ... thank you for coming ...”
Catherine took the hint and put on her hat. She did not say a
word as she left the room. But her eyes were furiously blazing: there
was in them that danger glint of which Verreker, if he had seen it,
would have done well to beware.
Out in the Ridgeway, Catherine decided one thing. She would
never take lessons off Verreker; she would never go near that house
again....

§2
The fierceness of her indignation brought Catherine face to face
with one other thing that she had never hitherto realized. And that
was the absurd grandiloquence of her ambition. There was nothing
that Razounov has said of which she could legitimately complain. He
had even complimented her to the extent of saying that she would
make a good player if she were careful, and that she might earn
plenty of money as a pianist. Surely that was encouraging! ... No, it
was not. For he had also told her that she was not a genius, and
would never be supreme in her art. Well, what of that? Had she ever
had the conceited effrontery to think she was a genius? Catherine
decided no, not exactly that, but ... The fact was, Catherine, without
knowing it, had inclined to give herself the benefit of the doubt. At
any rate, she had always been serenely confident of the doubt. Quite
unconsciously she had developed an opinion of herself to which
there were no adequate frontiers. She was a supreme egoist, and
her life had come to be worth living only on false understandings.
Every book she read, every speech or sermon she listened to,
occasioned in her the feeling: “How does that fit in with me?” At a
school prize-giving once the speaker—a local vicar—had given an
address to the scholars in which he mentioned the three things
which a human being might legitimately desire—fine physique,
genius, and strength of character. When he came to the
consideration of the second, he said: “Of course, we’re none of us
geniuses, but——” Catherine (she was only fourteen then) had been
rather contemptuous of this modesty, “Of course, I suppose he has
to say that, and yet how does he know whether ...” she had thought.
To her his sweeping declaration savoured of the rash. It had been
the same on many occasions. Somewhere at the back of Catherine’s
mind had always been the supposition, so patent as to be almost
axiomatic, that she was different from other people. That difference
was, on the whole, the difference of superiority. She had done things
that no other girl of her age and acquaintance had done. She had left
home with five and sevenpence half-penny, obtained lodgings on her
own, and kept herself by work. She had played at concerts (one
concert to be precise). A young man who, whatever his drawbacks,
was undeniably clever, had fallen desperately in love with her. Her
own father, pining of remorse, had cut his throat to prove to her his
undying affection. And the invitation to meet Razounov had at first
seemed merely a further rung on the ladder of fame. There was no
doubt about it: she was marvellous, extraordinary, a constant
surprise both to herself and to other people. Her very faults became
demi-virtues. Passionate she felt herself to be. After reading Tess of
the d’Urbervilles her instinctive thought had been: “Am I like Tess?”
And she had frequently asked herself the question: “Am I a genius?”
and had shirked a plain answer. The crudity of the question, the
awful conceit of replying in the affirmative, drove her to subterfuge.
“Not exactly that, perhaps,” she told herself. “At least, how can I tell?
I shall have to wait and see. I can’t give a direct answer.” Yet if she
had been forced to give a direct answer, there is no doubt what it
would have been.
And now, disillusioned, humiliated, self-scornful, the preposterous
nature of her ambitions forced itself upon her. For the space of half
an hour she was perfectly frank with herself. She did not spare that
pitiable self-conceit of hers. She was ruthless. It was as if she
thought that if she could wound that self-conceit so that it died of its
injuries, so much the better. She employed first of all the cold steel of
logic. The facts were these. She had been told frankly that she was
not a genius. She was hurt and humiliated. Ergo, she must have
been cherishing the notion that she was a genius. Absurd creature!
Preposterous egoist! Conceited upstart! And all because she had
played at a third-rate concert!
She wound up with a bitter piece of advice. You aren’t a genius,
she insisted, you’re just an ordinary girl with as much
extraordinariness in her as falls to the lot of most people. And the
sooner you finish with your absurd dreams and ambitions and wake
up to the facts the better.
It was good advice. She tried conscientiously to take it. She did
take it—for about five and twenty minutes.
But those five and twenty minutes were among the most difficult
and miserable she had ever spent.
She flung herself down on the bed in the attic at No. 14, Gifford
Road, and was so wretched that she could not cry. Besides, she was
convinced that there was nothing she had a right to cry about. Yet it
was the utter horror, the unbelievable loneliness of existence that
appalled her. She was quite alone in her struggle with the world,
parentless, almost friendless. She knew now why it was that she had
not mourned the loss of her parents, why it was that her solitary
struggle had been up to then so exhilarating, so pleasant. It was that
absurd faith in herself, that fearful egoism, that terrible conceit, that
had enabled her to fight on alone. And now her succour, her comfort,
her support had suddenly cracked and given way, and she was left
clinging to wreckage. The future was simply blank, a dull, drab
hereafter of self-effacement. Life was not worth living. For the first
time in all her life she felt alone—alone with the wreckage of dead
dreams and shattered hopes....
“O God!” she cried, “if I’m only ordinary after all! ...”
Horror upon horror! To think of Gifford Road, of the Victoria
Theatre, without the conviction that these were but a means to
something infinitely higher! Her ultimate triumph provided the only
terms on which life amongst these things was worth living! To think of
herself as a mere unit in the society that lived in Kitchener Road,
Bockley, in Gifford Road, Upton Rising! To deny herself the privilege
of thinking what a good joke it was that she should have been born
in Kitchener Road! To realize suddenly that it was no joke at all, but
an ordinary, not inappropriate circumstance in which she had no right
to discover any irony at all. To regard herself as she knew Mrs.
Carbass regarded her, viz. as “the little girl wot plys the pienner at
the theayter.”
That was where her ruthless self-mutilation overreached itself.
She knew she was not as Mrs. Carbass regarded her. Even if she
were ordinary, she was not as ordinary as that. With feverish joy she
clutched at this undeniable admission.... Slowly her spirits rose out of
utter dejection. Cautiously at first, then with extravagant
recklessness, she flung together the wreckage that had fallen. At the
end of five minutes a phantom thought flashed by her—a swift,
entrancing, wayward, delicious, undisciplined, seductive idea. It was
like a breath of heaven upon her darkened soul. It whispered:
“Supposing Razounov is wrong? ... After all, why the dickens should
he be right? ...”

§3
One effect the sudden (but only temporary) shattering of her
ambitions had upon her. It redoubled afterwards her efforts to
achieve them. She increased the number of hours devoted to
practice. She even made some attempt to get through an elementary
book on harmony and counterpoint.
And strangely enough, of all the composers whose works she
attempted none nerved her to such a fever of determination as
Chopin. For she had been told she oughtn’t to play Chopin....
On the Wednesday following a card reached her, addressed to
the Victoria Theatre. It simply said:
Come at two o’clock on Saturday.
r. verreker.
 The writing was sharply angular, rivalling the phrasing in
curtness. Nevertheless, Catherine had expected curtness. Of course
she was not going to go. She had long ago decided that. As if to
symbolize her contempt, she tore up the card and threw it into the
gutter as she left the theatre. After all, what was the use of keeping
it, since she was not going to go?
All through the remainder of the week she kept fortifying her
determination not to go. And yet dimly, in some strange intuitive
fashion, at the back of her mind she felt that it was quite possible she
would go. I won’t go, she told herself one moment. Bet you you do
go, after all.... She was surprised, almost fascinated by this charming
waywardness of hers. Anyway, she decided, it’s quite a simple
matter to settle: I won’t go. I wonder, she said to herself, smiling.
As a matter of fact she did not go. But it was from an absurdly
accidental reason. She was strolling along the Ridgeway soon after
lunch on Saturday when she suddenly reflected that she did not
know what time he wished to see her. Was it two o’clock or three?
She failed to remember, and of course the postcard had been thrown
away. At two o’clock she felt she would not run the risk of being an
hour too early. Something in her suggested half-past two as a
compromise; but when the half-hour chimed she decided that since
that would be wrong in any case she had better wait till three. And at
three she felt sure that his card had said two, so she went back to
Gifford Road. In a way she was pleased with herself. She had kept
her word. She had not gone. The narrowness of her victory seemed
to emphasize its magnitude.
At the theatre that evening an introductory film was shown. It
dealt with the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Something in
Catherine impelled her to play “Poland is Lost.” ...

§4
On Monday a letter arrived at the theatre for her. The angular
script on the envelope told her who had written it. It ran:
 I presume you forgot on Saturday. If so, come on Wednesday at
seven p.m.
r. verreker.
Catherine was conscious that the struggle was not yet over. On
the contrary, it was beginning again. The issue was not, Did she
want to go or not? It was, Should she keep the vow she had made to
herself? She made a great fuss over weighing both sides of this
crucial problem, yet she knew it was a foregone conclusion what the
result would be. Then she decided she was giving the matter a place
out of all proportion to its importance. After all, it was of little
consequence whether she went or not. She would wait till
Wednesday, and do just what she felt like at the time.
Then she pondered over the precise significance of his phrase “if
so.” Did he suspect that her absence on Saturday was not due to
forgetfulness?

§5
At the inquest on Mr. Weston the usual verdict was brought in:
“Suicide during temporary insanity.”
Catherine found herself in possession of a houseful of cheap
furniture and a sum of twenty odd pounds in the Post Office Savings
Bank. She retained a small quantity of clothing and a few kitchen
utensils; the rest of the stuff at 24, Kitchener Road was sold by
auction. It fetched fifty-five pounds when all expenses had been
deducted. She had a horror of hoarding vast quantities of lumber in
the form of keepsakes and mementoes, so she destroyed everything
that had no intrinsic value except the diaries Those she transported
to Gifford Road and kept.
After everything had been settled she found herself the richer by
a sum of sixty-eight pounds odd. She kept the eight odd and put the
sixty in a bank. It struck her as rather ironical that she should benefit
by her father’s death. Yet somebody had to have the money, so it
might as well be she. With the eight pounds she bought herself some
pretty dresses. For the first time in her life she could afford to put the
question, “Will it look nice?” before “Will it wear well?” She
experienced the keen joy of dressing from the artistic rather than
from the strictly utilitarian point of view. She did not believe in
“mourning”: her first dresses were reddish brown to match her hair,
and white to throw her hair into vivid contrast. Always it was her hair
that had to be considered....
When you saw her dressed up you would certainly not call her
pretty, but you might confess to a sort of attractiveness....
 CHAPTER X
ACCELERANDO
§1
SHE waited fully ten minutes in the drawing-room at “Claremont.”
“Mr. Verreker will be here directly,” the maid had said, and Catherine
had time to look about her. It was a lovely May evening: the windows
were wide open at the bottom, and from the garden came the rich
cloying scent of wallflowers. Somebody was working a lawn-mower.
He came in two minutes after the sound of the lawn-mower had
ceased. There were scraps of grass about the fringes of his trousers.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he announced briskly.
“Don’t mention it,” she murmured, with perhaps a trace of
sarcasm.
“I oughtn’t to, really, ought I?” he then said, “since you kept me
waiting an hour last Saturday.”
She said nothing, but the atmosphere was definitely hostile.
He asked her what pieces she played. She told him. He took a
sheet of paper, and scribbled them down as she recited them. He
made no comment till she had said, “and a few others.”
“Ambitious!” he muttered, pondering over the list.
“Oh yes, I am, very.” She thought she would seize this
opportunity of letting him know.
“Well, play the Debussy,” he said.
She did so.
“H’m!” he said, when she had finished.
 §2
After he had told her her faults (which took some time) and given
her something definite to practise, the hour was nearly up, and he
gave sundry indications that the lesson was finished.
“By the way,” he said, as she was on the way to the door, “did
you forget last Saturday?”
She might easily have said yes. Or she might have told the strict
truth, viz. that she had forgotten the hour he had fixed. But she did
neither.
“No,” she said, “I just didn’t come.”
He looked at her very much as Miss Forsdyke had looked at her
when she had been impudent.
“Oh!” he replied, with a gesture that might have meant anything.
“Well, the next time you intend to ’cut’ one of my lessons, drop me a
card beforehand, then I shan’t be kept waiting for you. My time’s
valuable.”
Curt!
And as she passed the table in the hall he suddenly gathered up
a heap of some dozen letters, and said: “By the way, you might
shove these in the pillar-box down the road as you go by.”
Before she realized the situation the letters were in her hands.
“Thanks!” he replied, opening the front door. “Good evening!”
If she had had the presence of mind she would have flung them
all back at him. “I’m not your office-boy,” she might have said.
But presence of mind did not come to her till she was half-way
down the Ridgeway.
She occupied her time as far as the pillar-box by reading the
addresses on all the envelopes....

§3
 Slowly the perspectives of her life were changing. The old
childish ideas and prejudices ceased to apply. In the matter of
George Trant, for instance....
It is curious, but the more she realized that she was not in love
with him, the more she realized also his essential good nature. At
one time he had been a villain of undepictable blackness, and now,
in the reaction from this melodramatic ideal, he appeared perhaps
more favourably than he deserved. At any rate, he was to all intents
a perfectly honest, well-intentioned young fellow, slightly clever and
of prepossessing manner. Whether he had changed, or whether she
herself had changed, Catherine could not with certainty decide. But
their attitude was fundamentally different from what it had been when
Catherine had met him at Bockley Station after her domestic squall.
Then he had appeared to her malignant, cruel, desirous of
entrapping all innocent girls that came his way. He had been the real
villain of the piece. Now it seemed incredible that she could ever
have taken him so seriously. For he was a very ordinary young man.
The glamour had fallen away from him—that glamour which might
have made him a hero, but which, by irony of circumstances, had
made him a villain instead. Catherine perceived that it was only her
crude idealism that had invested him with Satanic characteristics.
She had not a shred of evidence to convict him of ill-treatment of her.
The famous note which he had sent her from Manchester, and which
she had read on the top of a crowded tram-car, had unfortunately
been sacrificed to the dramatic requirements of the situation, but
Catherine, only half remembering its contents, had a feeling that if
she were to read them in the perspective of several years they would
seem wholly inadequate to justify the profound significance she had
given them.
It was apparent now to her that George was hopeless as a villain.
He said cynical things occasionally, but that was only an affectation.
In reality he was a typical example of the rather superior season-
ticket holder. His utmost criminality would not transcend the riding of
a bicycle without a rear light....
Of course his position was immensely complicated by the fact
that he had fallen in love with her....
 §4
One day (they had met upon the platform at Upton Rising
Station) she tackled him directly.
“Look here,” she said, “you remember that letter you wrote me
from Manchester? You enclosed it in Helen’s letter. Do you
remember it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What did you mean by it?”
He seemed puzzled.
“Well, it’s a long time ago, and I scarcely remember what it was
like.... I dare say it was rather fatuously clever: I used to think myself
a dab hand at letter-writing in those days.”
That was as reasonable an explanation as she could have
expected. She switched on to another line of questioning.
“You remember that time we were on the balcony at the Forest
Hotel—just before the others came up?”
“Yes.”
“You—I believe—you were trying to apologize to me—for
something. Now, what was it?”
He seemed embarrassed as well as puzzled.
“Well,” he began hesitatingly, “of course I may have been wrong
—probably I was—but I always understood—I mean I had gathered
that—that there had been a sort of—er, misunderstanding between
us.”
“Why should you apologize for that?”
“Well, if there had been one it might have been my own fault. So I
thought I’d apologize——”
“From whom did you gather there had been a
misunderstanding?”
 “I believe it was Helen who——”
“Oh, I see.”
He emboldened himself to start a cross-examination of her.
“May I ask if there ever was a misunderstanding?” he said.
Catherine lied, splendidly, regally, with magnificent disdain. It was
clearly an opportunity to demonstrate (to herself chiefly) how
completely the tables had been turned.
“I’m sure I don’t know what the misunderstanding you’ve been
talking about is or was supposed to be. But so far as I am aware
there never was such a thing.”
He tried to grasp all the significations of this. Then he resumed
the enquiry.
“Why have you been asking me about these things?”
“Merely curiosity,” she replied, with an undercurrent of implication
which said: “Do you suppose for one moment that my reasons could
have been any other than those of mere curiosity?”
Yet he wilfully ignored the implication. All day in the stuffy
accountant’s office in Leadenhall Street he kept pausing in his work
and treating himself to the riotous luxury of the thought: “I don’t
believe it was curiosity. Why should she have asked about that
letter? And besides, Helen sticks to it she was in love with me in
those days! After all, it’s extremely unlikely it was only curiosity.... Of
course, she had to say it was. She couldn’t easily have said anything
else. At least ...”
So that the position was really complicated instead of being
cleared up. And Catherine’s lie was perhaps excusable. That people
should fall in love with her was natural enough, but that she should
display a similar weakness was extremely undignified, to say the
least. And besides, she was not even sure she had been in love with
George Trant. Was not there in her an instinct which had said (in
effect, if not in so many words): “This is mere sentimental flapdoodle.
Wallow as much as you like in its painful ecstasy, but don’t imagine
for a moment that it’s the real stuff ...?”
 §5
George Trant was a member of the Upton Arts Club.
In the room over Burlington’s Music Emporium the Upton Arts
Club met on Sunday evenings at 8.30.
One Sunday during the discussion following a paper on
“Cézanne and the Modernists,” George drawled sleepily from his
arm-chair by the fire:
“Of course, as a staunch Conservative in politics, I——” A
startled hush fell upon the assembly. “Disraelian, I need hardly say,”
he added, and the amazement was more profound....

§6
George Trant was also a member of the Upton Rising
Conservative and Unionist Association.
The Upton Rising Conservative and Unionist Association existed
from 8 a.m. till 12 midnight every day for the purpose of playing
billiards, drinking whisky, and reading sporting newspapers.
Occasionally its members would talk politics. It was on one of these
comparatively rare occasions (the topic was Mr. Lloyd George’s
Land Tax) that George announced quietly from behind his evening
paper:
“Of course, as a convinced Socialist in the matter of landed
property, I——” The elderly white-whiskered gentlemen were thrilled.
“Not Marxian, I need scarcely add,” resumed George placidly, and
the conviction grew that George Trant was a very strange young
man.
The Disraelian Conservative and un-Marxian Socialist acquired
the reputation of being somewhat bewilderingly clever.... The
Bockley Advertiser reported in full his secondings of votes of thanks.
The Arts Club were proud to hear his exposition of “Ibsen: the Man
and the Prophet.” It was in the days when to read Ibsen was to be
modern. And the Conservative Club were never more conscious of
their brazen Philistinism than when he talked to them easily of
Scriabin and Ravel and César Franck.
“And of course one must not forget the Spanish School. There is
a great tendency to ignore the Spanish School nowadays. But it’s
wholly unfair. Such men as ... for instance.”
Even in politics he could be mystifyingly erudite. A reference to
Jeremy Bentham or Ricardo or Huskisson would floor them
absolutely...
“Queer chap,” was their verdict. “Must read a lot, I suppose....”
And, content with that explanation, they resumed their billiards or
their whisky or their Pink ’Un....

§7
It happened that upon a certain bright morning in August a smart
motor-cycle with side-car attachment went teuf-teufing along the high
road in the direction of the Forest. The side-car was occupied by a
girl with violently red hair, and the whole installation was manœuvred
by an individual in mackintosh overalls, who was (although you might
never have guessed it by looking at him) a Disraelian Conservative
and an un-Marxian Socialist....
Catherine, incidentally, was riding in a side-car for the first time in
her life.
George, incidentally, was driving a motor-cycle, if not for the first
time, at any rate for the third or fourth time in his life. The machine
was brand-new. One or two lessons on a friend’s motor-bike (to
which there was no side-car) had convinced George that he was
capable of taking a young lady for a hundred miles’ spin in the
country without undue risks. Accordingly, he had purchased a
machine out of the accumulated savings of several years, and had
written to Catherine the following note:
dear cathie,
 I have just bought a motor-bike and side-car. I shall run it round a
bit next Saturday, if fine, and should be pleased to take you if you
care to come.
And when he had met her (by arrangement) at the corner of the
Ridgeway, he had said, offhand:
“You see, there must be somebody in the side-car or else you
don’t give the thing a fair chance.”
And the implication was: “You are nothing but ballast, my dear
girl; a sack of potatoes would have done just as well, only you are
more easily procurable.”
Somehow the beautiful shining enamelled creature bristling with
taps and levers and handles made him talk with a cultivated
brusqueness. It was as if the machine occupied the first place in his
attentions and she came next. At the moment this may very likely
have been true. She seated herself snugly in the torpedo-shaped
car, and watched him manipulate levers and buttons. He looked very
strong and masculine in his overalls. For several minutes he tried in
vain to induce a liveliness in the engine. The policeman on point duty
at the corner (who knew Catherine) smiled; some street urchins
shouted facetious remarks. After five minutes of intense examination
he pounced upon an apparently vulnerable part of the mechanism
and performed a subtle and invisible operation. Then he pushed off,
and the engine woke into clamorous applause. They began to move.
The street urchins cheered ironically.
“I thought that would do it,” he shouted to her triumphantly above
the din, with the air of one who had performed a masterpiece of
mechanical surgery.
Yet to himself he blushed. For he had forgotten to admit the
petrol from the tank!

§8
When they reached Epping, George told himself: “It’s absurdly
easy to drive a motor-bike and side-car. Absolutely nothing in it. I’ll
put the pace on a bit between here and Stortford.” The thirteen miles
to Bishop’s Stortford were done in twenty-eight minutes. At Stortford
they had early lunch.
Afternoon saw them jostling in and out amongst the crowded
streets of Cambridge. They garaged the machine, and went to a café
for tea.

§9
He was full of a kind of boisterous arrogance.
“Stiff little bit from Stortford.... But, of course, we took it awfully
slow.... Road’s not so bad.... Ever been on the road from
Aberystwyth to Dolgelly?”
Catherine had not. (Nor had George for that matter.)
“Awful bit of road, that....” (It occurred to him as being a strip of
road that might conceivably be awful.)
She could see that he was showing off to her. He was proud of
his machine, proud of the white dust on his shoes, of his sun-tanned
face, of his goggles, his gauntlet gloves, and his earflaps. He was
superbly proud of having piloted himself and her from the corner of
Bockley High Street and the Ridgeway to the streets of Cambridge
without hitch or mishap. Six hours ago they were in Bockley. Now
they were in a self-sufficing and exceedingly provincial University
town, the very antithesis of suburbia. And the miracle was his! His
hands, his nerve, his eye had wrought it! He was excusably pleased
with himself.
But she was conscious of a curious sense of disappointment. It
was now three months since that evening when he had taken her to
Gifford Road in a taxi. It was three months since she had divined
intuitively that he was in love with her. And during those three
months he had been marvellously reticent, exasperatingly discreet.
She had almost begun to doubt the reliability of her instinct. And
though she knew she did not in the least reciprocate his feelings, she
was fascinated by the idea that she was something incalculable and
vital to him. Perhaps it was sheer pride of conquest, perhaps it was
merely her love of compliments and her extreme gratification at this,
the supreme compliment of all. Or perhaps it was just her own
inexplicable perversity.
He was anxious to get back before lighting-up time, and she, for
no very definite reason, was inclined to prefer a quick run under the
cool moonlight. She deliberately delayed him by showing
fastidiousness in the selection of a café. Then she got him talking
about the Arts Club.
“I hear you’re going to speak next Sunday.”
“Oh yes—just read a paper, that’s all. On Ibsen’s Wild Duck.... Of
course, you’ve read it?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t read any Ibsen.”
“Really? ... Oh, you must read him. Awfully good, you know.
Stimulating; modern; very modern. Doll’s House, you know.
Rosmersholm and Little Eyolf.... And, of course, Ghosts. Absolute
biological nightmare—Ghosts ... but terrifically clever.... I’ll lend you
the whole lot if you’ll promise to read them.”
“Right,” she said. And she thought: “Doesn’t he like to show he
knows more than I know? But if he is in love with me it won’t matter
about that.” (And she could not properly have explained that thought
either.)
But she kept him talking because she saw it was getting late.

§ 10
On the return journey they stopped to light the lamps at a lonely
spot called Stump Cross, some ten miles out of Cambridge. She
watched him as he stood in front of the machine with the acetylene
glare lighting up his face and his goggles and his earflaps and his
gauntlet gloves and his overalls, and, above all, his expression of
stern delight. They were two solitary figures with hills rolling up and
down on either side of them, and nothing in view save dim distant
ridges and a gaunt sign-post which said: “To London, by Stortford,
45½ miles.”
“We’ll put on a spurt,” he said, clambering into the saddle....
As they entered the outskirts of Bishop’s Stortford at a speed of
just over thirty miles an hour the full moon swept from behind a bank
of clouds and lay in pools over the landscape....

§ 11
It was in the narrow and congested portion of the main street that
something happened. (As a matter of fact they need not have gone
through the town at all: there is a loop road, but George was
unwilling to tackle a road he had not encountered by daylight.) There
is no doubt that George was feeling very conscious of himself as he
honk-honked his way through the crowded roadway. It was a
Saturday night, and the streets were full. As they swerved round the
corner of the George Hotel the huge acetylene beams lit up a sea of
faces. Men and women passed them on the kerb as in a dream: girls
with bright eyes and laughing faces, and men with the unmistakable
Saturday night expression flitted past them shadow-like. It was
ecstasy to be swirling past them all at a pace which, though not fast,
had just a spice of danger in it. George, in his overalls and headgear,
looked like a Viking steering his galley through heavy seas. What
was more, he knew he was looking like that, and was trying
desperately to look more like that than ever.
And then, at the point where the main highway narrows and
begins an S turn, with numerous side-streets complicating the
problem, George espied a vehicle proceeding slowly in the same
direction as he. It was a market-booth on four wheels, shuttered up
at the sides, returning to its stabling after the night’s market. On the
side in painted crimson lettering ran the inscription: “H. Bullock.
Temperance Liquors and Fruit Beverages.” The whole was drawn by
a tired, meditative horse. The existence of this equipage in the
middle of the road created a problem. George was rapidly overtaking
it, and of course he should have passed by on the right or off-side.
But that would have meant checking pace and honk-honking
vigorously to clear people out of the way. Whereas he was driving
close to the kerb and could see a space between it and the vehicle
which seemed ample for passage. Besides, it was rather stylish to
“nip in” between vehicles and the kerb. People would stare back at
him and mutter, “Reckless fellow!” and by the time they had resumed
their walk he would be on the outskirts of the town. Accordingly,
summoning his features for an intensely Viking expression, he
decided to “nip in.” The road was narrowing, and he knew he would
have to put on a spurt. The accelerator moved, and they went
forward with a bound. Blurred mists of passing faces swept by along
the kerb.... There was a sudden jar. The side-car wheel had mounted
the pavement, which was here only an inch or so above the
roadway. Nevertheless, no harm had yet been done. And then the
appalling vision of a lamp-post seized hold of George and wrought
havoc with his presence of mind. That lamp-post obsessed him,
possessed him, threw him into inarticulate terror. That lamp-post
would slice off the wheel of the side-car as a scythe cuts grass. It
was therefore necessary at all costs to avoid that lamp-post. With a
mighty sense of the tremendous issues that hung upon the merest
fractional movement of his hands, George swerved to the right. Even
as he did so he could almost feel the sickening impact of the lamp-
post. He waited for what seemed a long minute—waited for the
sudden jar and shiver and crumple. Strange to say it did not come....
Then with a feeling of overwhelming relief he perceived that the
obstacle had been passed. The lamp-post was already behind him,
an unsuccessful syren baulked of its prey. Exquisite moment!
Colossal thrill! Magnificent piece of steering! And then ...
A sudden grind of the front wheel, a sort of convulsive jerk which
threw him sideways on top of the side-car, and a medley of snapping
and shivering and crumpling sounds. Then (it seemed an age before
he mastered the situation) he shouted to Catherine, whose ear was
not so very far from his mouth: “By Jove, we must have cannoned
into that cart!”
His voice was as the voice of one who is immensely interested in
a subtle and curious phenomenon....