Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/359

Charles Dickens]

He drank, and said, "These wines, no doubt, Are pleasant in their kind, But, to my taste, a pot of beer Were worth them all combined."

TO THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN. .

Music Halls are not as the Pandemonium. To the height of that glittering, well-conducted, audacious temple of "life" no other manager has yet attained. It is true that ballet finds a place on the smaller stages of many halls. Minette and her bold comrades have found imitators about town. Moll Flanders forms a large and important portion of the attraction at other establishments besides that in Foreigneering-square—notably at one in the immediate neighbourhood, which appears to be very conveniently placed for that lady—but nowhere else is she so obviously the attraction; nowhere else is her presence so clearly relied on, to draw the shillings of credulity and inexperience. There is elsewhere, as a rule, a larger element of respectability among the audience: the dancing performances elsewhere, though often daring enough, are scarcely up to the standard of Nudita and her like. How long this will last it is difficult to say. Probably an early change may be looked for. It is scarcely likely that enterprising managers, pondering over the success of the Pandemonium, and musing on twenty-five per cent dividend paid its fortunate shareholders—for the mighty power of Limited Liability sways the destinies of the Palace—should hold their hands. New halls, arranged on principles derived from experience, may be expected to rise in all directions. As matters stand at present, there seems no reason why every quarter of London should not have, each its own Pandemonium. Possibly your Lordship may think this matter worthy of somebody's attention.

At present Your Commissioner has nothing to report adverse to the general run of Music Halls. That they are more undisguisedly public-houses, plus singing and dancing, than was the case in their earlier days, is plain. When the Music Hall first sprang into existence, and when it began to take its place among the recognised popular places of recreation a better class of entertainment was presented on its boards than is now the rule. The proprietors were eager to advertise good music: the comic singer was kept to a discreet extent in the background. Circumstances have changed. If any attempt be now made to get through an operatic selection, or any piece of good music, it is felt by all concerned to be a mere pretence—an impediment to the enjoyment of the real pleasures of the evening. It is the trapeze performer, on whose behalf the roof is festooned with strong rigging, and for whom complicated arrangements of trestles and carpets have to be made, who is wanted; or, worse still, it is the comic singer.

This comic singer (or comique as he loves to call himself) is a remarkable product of the last few years. That people, not afflicted with any obvious form of mental disease, can calmly sit and listen to—nay even sometimes laugh at—the extraordinarily imbecile and senseless outpourings of the music hall comic muse, is, to one of Your Commissioner's way of thinking, quite amazing. The words of these comic songs are, as a rule, beneath contempt. The loves of barmaids, the exploits of Rollicking Rams and other unpleasant persons whose sole themes are the delights of drink, and the pleasures of reeling home with the milk, are the subjects chiefly treated of. Snobbery and vulgarity are rampant and blatant in these effusions. The devices resorted to by the singers to raise a laugh, are feeble and melancholy in the extreme. Preposterous coats of violent colours and startlingly braided; great hats, frequently of the brightest blue or green; long yellow whiskers of the Dundreary type; these are some of the dreary substitutes for humour that are offered to the public on the Music Hall stage. The comic singer of to-day is responsible for the education of a very terrific form of snob, or gent. The younger male frequenters of the Music Hall are distinguished by an insolence of manner and tone, faithfully copied from the manners of their favourite on the stage. Constant familiarity with the topics treated of in the Champagne Charley kind of song, must have a deteriorating effect, and the breed of the little snobs, now coming to be usually called after their distinguished prototype, is alarmingly on the increase.

All these comic singers sing the same kind of song, all wear the same sort of costume, all have the same sort of "business", and, except when a pretty tune crops up among them, from some old country-dance book, the airs to which