Tardy Bulletin

Just a brief summary of recent events....

On 13 July I did a talk at Oxfam, Bradford, to a select but enthusiastic audience of friends. It went well, though I felt tired and not wholly in control, having started a 7-3 job a couple of weeks before. Next on the list: Buxton, 12 August....

Here are two online reviews that have appeared in the past few days:

Whatsonstage suggests the book as light summer reading for the beach, and calls it an "impressively detailed and entertaining biography".

Bookbag has a five star review: "captures the personality of this extraordinary man to perfection... a first-rate portrait".

Under a Bushel

On Sunday 12 June, I presented a talk at Waterstone's Bookshop, Bradford. There was technically a book signing session afterwards, but only one book was actually sold. Waterstone's, Bradford now has about 20 copies of the book festooned around the shop.

In the course of my talk, I mentioned Sir Jonathan Miller's views on G&S, which I've gone into elsewhere. I made a point of doing so because I happened to know the old gentleman was in Bradford that day to talk at the Media Museum about his screen directing career.

Afterwards, we (me, S and two friends) went up to the Media Museum for a restorative glass of wine, and of course ended up in the Museum's bar, sitting directly behind Sir J himself. My friends tried to persuade me to accost him and tax him on his dislike of G&S, but I, embarrassed, stonewalled them and just sat there, overhearing him express his views on other matters.

I suppose that in an ideal world I should have had the courage of my convictions and had it out with him, but it would have ruined both our days and would not have added to the sum of knowledge, so why bother?

The book is still out there, selling copies slowly but surely. The absence of press reaction continues to rankle. The new information in the book is out there (significant parts of the BBC Radio 4 series Gilbert's Glory are direct from my book) and I'm helping the sum total of accessible knowledge, but selfishly I would like to have some general acknowledgement of this.

Paris Turned Topsy-Turvy (a rejected article)

Right, I've waited long enough. The paper obviously isn't going to do anything about the article I wrote for them, so here it is.

On Thursday 8 September 1870, an Englishman was roaming the streets of Paris. He was there as a Special Correspondent for The Observer, and he was looking for news. The Franco-Prussian War was at an effective end. The French army had been routed, Napoleon III had been captured by the Prussian army, and the Prussians were marching on Paris unopposed. Everywhere, Parisians stopped in the street and discussed the situation in loud voices.

“It does seem strange,” the Englishman wrote, “that nowhere are to be found the strong-lunged thousands who shouted ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and ‘Vive l’Empire!’ when the ex-Emperor started for the frontier eight weeks ago.... I have not heard one word of sympathy for the deposed Emperor from any Frenchman to whom I have spoken on the subject. Nothing but savage, unreasoning abuse....”

Everywhere he looked, he found fantastic, absurd happenings, which he reported to The Observer with sardonic detachment.

The man’s name was W.S. Gilbert. He had not yet written any of his comic operas with Sullivan, with their cartoonish, topsy-turvy view of life, love and politics, but his attitudes had already been formed. He saw life as a crazy sideshow of unreasonable events. His experiences in Paris did nothing to shake this view.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In April 2010, I was in the middle of researching and writing a biography of Gilbert. I knew that Gilbert had gone to Paris as a correspondent for The Observer, because late in his life he wrote an autobiographical article called “The Lady in the Plaid Shawl” in which he said as much.

The article was mainly interested in recounting a funny incident which occurred to him at the time, and Gilbert’s biographers take great pleasure in retelling this story. But nowhere, in any biography or in any of the extensive literature on Gilbert and Sullivan, could I find any reference to the actual reports he was supposed to be sending to the paper. According to Gilbert’s account, he spent about ten days in Paris (actually it was six), but he was recalled because the Prussian army was approaching and “no letters from Paris would be likely to reach [The Observer] after the investment.” The biographers seem to have taken this to mean that he sent no reports at all.

However, I decided to check. I wish I could pretend that I made my discovery after an arduous trawl through a dust-filled newspaper archive. But the nature of research has changed immeasurably in the past ten years. All I had to do was click onto the Guardian and Observer website and pay a small subscription fee to search the digital archive. After about two minutes I found two long reports, dated 7 and 8 September, which made me want to rush round the house whooping.

They were published in the issue for Sunday 11 September 1870, under the headline: “War Correspondence. Paris Preparing for the Siege. (From Our Special Correspondent.)” Though unsigned, their authorship is not in doubt. Not only is the style consistent, but one story related in the Observer dispatches is repeated with very little variation in Gilbert’s “Lady in the Plaid Shawl.”

The story goes like this. Gilbert was travelling by train from Calais to Paris, and he shared his compartment with four Frenchmen. They appeared to be suspicious of him, and he wondered if this was because his full name was printed on his hand baggage, and his middle name happened to be a German one (Schwenck). He tried to allay their fears by handing them a visiting card on which he had written the word “Observer”, but this made matters worse, as they considered this might be another word for “spy.” He finally reassured them by pointing out that “a professional Prussian spy would scarcely advertise his calling on his visiting cards.”

Gilbert’s style and world view sing out from the Special Correspondent’s every sentence. At one level I am very puzzled why no one had noticed their authorship before. But actually I know the reason full well. They weren’t found because no one looked.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gilbert was not really a news journalist. He reviewed plays. He was a prolific contributor to the comic paper Fun, providing humorous and satirical squibs, not to mention the whimsical verses which he called The Bab Ballads. He was a writer of burlesques and farces. It seems an odd choice to send such a man to report on the biggest story in Europe. But all the London papers were dispatching correspondents to the beleaguered French capital, and the supply of suitable men was limited. Gilbert could at least speak and understand colloquial French, having lived for five years in Boulogne when he was growing up. Writing in haste, he produced six thousand words over two days, a direct and honest account of what he saw and heard around him. The incidents are like a series of vivid snapshots, seen for a moment before passing on.

Napoleon had surrendered to the Prussian forces on 1 September. When Gilbert travelled to Paris by train on the morning of Wednesday 7 September, he saw a nation in chaos. Passing through Amiens at five in the morning, he found the station’s waiting rooms crowded with refugees. He noticed a “rough, surly-looking peasant” feeding an old, sick dog with a feeding bottle “with as tender a care as if he had been bringing up a new-born baby by hand.”

At Creil, “I saw one family who must have been miserably poor, marching along the high road away from the station. They were six or seven in number and one bag, about the size of a bolster case, held all their moveable property. This was carried, not by either of the two strong young men, who formed part of the dismal procession, but by an elderly woman, apparently 60 years of age. This family actually had no means to pay a railway fare at such a crisis, and were hurrying away from the danger on foot.” This was a topsy-turvy world that he was entering, where heavy loads were carried by grandparents in order to save the strain on young and vigorous men.

On 4 September, when the Government in Paris learned of Napoleon’s capture at Sedan, they declared a new Government of National Defence, and the Empire silently became a Republic ruled by moderate leftists. Gilbert, arriving in Paris three days later, found the city in a state of stunned confusion.

It was a wet, dismal day. He wandered the streets in search of the excitement that must surely accompany “a new-born revolution and an irresistible enemy within 50 miles.” But Paris had all the seething excitement of a wet blanket. “The Boulevards are all but deserted, the proprietors of the innumerable cafés have taken in their chairs and their tables.”

He found a crowd outside the Hotel de Ville, where the provisional government was set up, but “it was a quiet and orderly crowd, and appeared utterly depressed by the rain in which they were standing.” When he tried to sneak into the hotel and get a scoop, his plan was foiled by a “stout and bespectacled” National Guardsman who spotted him and said he needed a pass. Gilbert noted the man’s comments and made a strategic retreat.

Walking across the Place de la Concorde, he found the statues decorated with tricolours and garlands, and patriotic inscriptions scrawled at their base. A “draggle-tailed battalion of the Line, the 39th,” crossed his path, “untidily dressed and apparently lax in discipline, the men falling out of their ranks to talk to passers-by. Some had stoppers in their chassepots [rifles]; some had great coats and some had none.”

Gilbert considered himself an expert in military matters, having been a member of various volunteer forces in Britain since 1859, and he was not impressed by the military discipline of the volunteer militia, the Francs Tireurs, which consisted largely of muscly Bretons and other provincials. He noted in horrified tones that he had seen them throw their rifles into a pile in the middle of a road: “The rifles had no muzzle stoppers, and the drenching rain poured into the open barrels. One stack of arms had fallen, and lay in the thick mud.”

He investigated the Francs Tireurs’ encampment behind the Palais de l’Industrie, peering into their tents until he was challenged by a non-commissioned officer. The man barked: “Que desirez vous, monsieur?” Gilbert replied nonchalantly, “Monsieur, j’admire votre magnifique bataillon,” and strolled off. This was about as far as he got in the field of investigative journalism.

“Altogether, considering that a besieging army is within fifty miles of the capital,” he wrote, “this has been a particularly dull day in Paris.” The shops remained open, though after a thorough investigation he found the theatres closed, rather to his disappointment. He had hoped to vent a little virtuous anger at the expense of a theatre-going public who still wished to be entertained as the Prussians marched down on them, but in the event it seemed they didn’t, so he couldn’t.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He was woken on the Thursday morning by battalions of the Gardes Mobile passing under his window on their way to meet the Prussian army. “I hope their innate bravery will compensate for their unmilitary appearance,” he wrote, “for a more miserable, weedy set of men I have never seen, even in an English militia regiment.” They carried their tabatiere rifles with “an air of pleased curiosity” which didn’t inspire him with much confidence. “They will fight bravely enough, poor fellows, but it is hardly to be expected that they will fight well.”

Later, strolling down the Rue de Rivoli, he found a highly symbolic scene. A toy shop had arranged a window display of a toy siege. “The pasteboard battlements are defended in the most heroic fashion by undaunted Frenchmen, and the attacking party, consisting of grotesque Prussians, are flying ignominiously, terrified by the dramatic attitudes of their irresistible enemies.” The display was surrounded by a crowd of appreciative Parisians. Gilbert concluded: “Frenchmen are children.”

He was baffled by the attitudes he encountered. He always expected people to behave rationally, and he was always disappointed. The fact is that the people of Paris were in a state of heightened nervous apprehension and reacted in ways which Gilbert did not understand. They were sometimes boastful and melodramatic, sometimes cool and phlegmatic, and never, from Gilbert’s point of view, reasonable. Though bemused by much of what he saw, he was enough of a journalist to be able to report it. His account reads like a show of mad events passing before the reader’s eyes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the train to Paris, Gilbert had heard the four Frenchmen in his carriage discussing the situation, and telling each other that every man, woman and child in Paris would rush to defend the city. Gilbert interrupted to suggest that women and children would not be much use on the battlements. But the Frenchmen had their reply: the women would cut off their hair and the children would twist it into bowstrings. Gilbert asked them whether they were about to join one of the volunteer forces in Paris, but that replied that on the contrary they planned to travel on to Marseilles that evening. He commented: “The loudest and most frothy declaimers throughout Paris appear to be those who are on the point of leaving it for a haven of absolute safety.”

The city murmured with windy talk and crazy rumours. They said that the catacombs were filled with barrels of petroleum, to be exploded as the Prussians entered Paris. They said that the cellars of the Hotel de Ville were full of gunpowder, also the Louvre, that the gas mains would be pumped full of petroleum when the occasion arose. “In short, no scheme for the destruction of the invaders, should they ever desecrate the sacred soil of Paris, is too horrible or too extravagant to find ready credence just now.”

The streets teemed with soldiers. The Francs Tireurs handled their arms clumsily as Gilbert looked on, unimpressed. At intervals, crowds gathered round some battle-scarred hero who displayed his wounds and told his tale of courage. “Showers of sous, half-francs, and francs fall into his cap, and occasionally a broad five-franc piece clatters among the humbler coin.”

The United States had recognised the legitimacy of the provisional government, and that afternoon he saw a band of soldiers and others heading for the house of the American minister as a gesture of goodwill, carrying flags and shouting, “Vive la Republique!” and “Vive l’Amerique!” Gilbert unfortunately couldn’t get close enough to hear the details of what happened when they reached the house, but, he reported drily, “everything was quite satisfactory, and [the minister] and the procession parted on the very best of terms.”

He saw a man, “a miserable-looking creature,” arrested as a spy. He probably felt rather vulnerable himself, as a foreigner in a volatile war-torn city. If he had been arrested the British Embassy would probably have left him effectively unprotected. As he explained, the British Ambassador refused to recognise the new government and would only deal with the Corps Legislatif, “which no longer exists.” It was a thoroughly Gilbertian situation, and a frightening one.

Nothing of what he saw or heard made any sense to him. The boastfulness, the extravagant gestures, the absurd rumours, the soldiers marching and the lower-class roughs buying swordsticks and the newly-formed corps of police trying to keep order without weapons of any sort, the atmosphere of suspicion, the wounded soldiers displaying their injuries to the admiring crowd, the men of all classes standing in the streets and making speeches to the passers-by, all had the vivid inconsequence of a dream. He tried to understand the politics, but could only communicate his bewilderment. In other times he had been willing enough to mock Napoleon III, but now he found himself with nothing but sympathy for the deposed Emperor. “To renounce an Imperial regime and go to the other extreme because their Emperor has disappointed them is about as reasonable as it would be to renounce money for ever, because you have been swindled into taking a bad shilling. So, indeed, it seems to me, who am in truth but a poor politician.”

On the Friday, Gilbert dispatched his Thursday letter by travelling to Boulogne and posting it there. He then returned to Paris. The lines of communication were starting to close. If he wrote further dispatches, we do not have them. He left the city on Monday 12 September, the railway bridge at Creil being blown up just after his train had crossed it. The Siege of Paris began, lasting over four months. The heightened absurdities he had seen developed into something more grim.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The dispatches are hasty pieces of journalistic record, and they don’t pretend to be anything else. Most of his writings are, frustratingly for a biographer, personally unrevealing. He seemed to take great care to wrap himself in a cloak of impersonality. But these two Observer letters tell us much about his attitudes and philosophy.

Some people go through life radiating empathy: they have an instinctive understanding of other people’s points of view, even those that are radically different from their own. Gilbert was the precise opposite of this kind of person. He seemed to go out of his way to view other people with a kind of detached and intelligent incomprehension. It’s as if he wished to be alienated from his own society. The Special Correspondent of these reports, drifting through the streets of Paris and observing the bizarre events around him, tells us clearly and for sure one very startling thing: Topsyturvydom was not just a comic technique. It was how Gilbert saw the world.

The operas take great delight in mocking the powerful in their fancy costumes. Gilbert clearly considered that all pomp and circumstance were in some measure idiotic. But in these articles he more or less tells us that he was politically a Conservative. He was certainly no friends of the Socialists. Working people were “roughs”, and the Parisians were fools for having deserted their Emperor. Perhaps he remembered his Paris adventures when he wrote The Gondoliers nearly twenty years later and made fun of Venetian “red Republicans” who want to impose absolute equality on everyone: “The Noble Lord who rules the State--/The Noble Lord who cleans the plate--/The Noble Lord who scrubs the grate.” But more importantly, his Paris experiences confirmed his deep-held belief that human behaviour made no sense whatsoever.

The Pixie in the Armchair

My book, Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan, has an epigraph, a quotation from the Czech writer Karel Capek:

"... the English also contain pixies. They are enormously solemn, solid and venerable; suddenly there is a sort of rumbling within them, they make a grotesque remark, a fork of pixie-like humour flies out fo them, and once more they have the solemn appearance ofan old leather armchair."

Unfortunately this has been hidden away in the book a bit, on the reverse of the title page; and it's been put directly underneath the dedication, so that a casual reader might mistake it as referring to the dedicatee; but it is, in my mind, an important part of the book, and it is intended as a key to Gilbert's character.

I think it illuminates a vital part of English character, certainly as it used to be: that combination of surface respectability and normality and boringness, and underneath it all a broad streak of anarchy. Gilbert was a stolid middle-class man with a passion for money as a gauge of worth; but his mind was filled with fairies and absurdities, and the imaginative part of him despised the money-grubbing that his everyday self was so concerned with. Maybe that partly explains the anger that underlies so much of his work.

Has the English character changed? Do we still have that combination of reticence and anarchy, or has it been destroyed in two world wars and the sixties revolution and the hoodlumism of the eighties? Is the anarchism now all outward-facing and visible to the world? Have the pixies been let loose from the armchairs? Personally I feel like a rather old-fashioned English person such as Capek had met in England in the 1930s. I have a strong tendency to conform, to do as I am told; but when I write there is a savage other half that tends to show itself sooner or later. And somehow this seems to me to be how things should be.

Master of language

It's very easy to forget how good a writer Gilbert was. The way he wrote song lyrics that are so good they demand to be listened to.

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is taboo'd by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire--the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counterpane goes and uncovers your toes, then your sheet slips demurely from under you....

The way he created his own fantastic worlds that we the audience can enter and become engrossed in. The way he sneaks his philosophy of life into our brains and leaves us convinced of the absurdity, the irredeemable and enjoyable absurdity, of life. He uses words with a clarity of argument that is impossible to misunderstand--and for that reason he is deeply misunderstood. The key is that he meant it all.

When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an attorney's firm;
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor
And I poished up the handle on the big front door....

The simple, silly images that he puts into our heads! ...

People still don't like G&S; they ignore the operas and they think Gilbert should be forgotten. His works are so ingrained in the national culture that they can be set to one side, it seems. But of course they can't.

My brain feels weary and inarticulate; I can't express what I mean fully. But I know that listening to Gilbert is like looking at a piece of exquisite cut glass. It's clear, clearer than you have ever seen anything in your life. He saw things logically, a terrifying thing. But he made this clarity of thought hilarious.

Why be a writer?

I've decided not to post the articles that have been rejected (through inaction) by a certain newspaper. Not yet, anyway. They might still change their mind, or rather, decide tardily to make up their mind, and I suppose I had better not get their backs up too much in the meantime.

I wouldn't recommend anyone to be a writer. Even now that my book is published, no one outside a small circle of enthusiasts appears to be interested in it, and none of the nationals has shown the slightest interest in reviewing it, even though it contains substantial new info on one of the most influential writers in the English language and is (though I say it myself) ruddy well written.

It is also no way to get rich.

Unfortunately, becoming a writer isn't really a matter of choice. It's a kind of compulsion. I write plays and don't get paid for it, I have written a book for which I have been paid a small amount (now blown to the four winds) and which I happily promote for no money and in fact at personal expense. How do they do it, the rich writers? Will Self and the other guys whose names I can't think of at the moment? They are keep themselves airborne somehow, despite the fact that minimal numbers of people appear to read their works.

It's a mystery.

Gilbert's Glory

This week, on the run up to the Centenary (29 May), I suddenly seem to be everywhere. I was interviewed for a series which is on BBC Radio 4 all this week, Gilbert's Glory--an excellent set of programmes with a good range of talking heads and a proper celebratory tone. I almost cheered when Mike Leigh said, clearly and boldly, that Gilbert should be in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey! His tone was defiant enough to make it a talking point if we want.

I guess it may be possible that people will find this blog if they're looking for info about my biopgraphy after hearing the programme. Possible, not probable. But just in case, yes, my name is Andrew Crowther, and yes, I have written a new biography of Gilbert (some of the new info is used in Gilbert's Glory). The book's title is Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan (hence the blog title). It's a really good book and you should buy it now and if you're a journalist you should review it now. Favourably. You can find it on Amazon here.

On Monday I did my talk at the Redbridge Book and Media Festival, at Hainault Library. A good turnout--about 30--and the talk went well, with a very lively Q&A session afterwards. Nick Dobson, who organised the event, is lovely and charming. We drove there and back; by the end of Tuesday I was exhausted, even though it was my girlfriend who was driving!

A discussion which I had with Thos Ribbits and Jerry Pinel back in April is now available as a podcast. I haven't had the courage to listen to it yet, but I remember it as being very lively.

Well, all this is very nice and gratifying. If there's nothing about the book in the papers this weekend I'll a) get very depressed; b) feel angry and frustrated; c) not feel very surprised; and d) publish here some of the material which I have offered to a famous Sunday paper without them even bothering to reply.

Publicity

It's been a few days since I wrote an entry here, so I'd better bring you up to date. I've been busy being interviewed on BBC Radio--Radio Scotland, Lincolnshire, York, and Leeds. I don't feel like a natural broadcaster at all--I hesitate too much and in at least one interview replied to every question with the word "Absolutely." Still, that's done now. On 23 May I'm appearing at the Redbridge Media and Literature Festival talking about Gilbert, and on 12 June I'll do another talk at Waterstones in Bradford. These should be less stressful (I think!) because at least I'll be able to see my audience.

I've had a five star review for the book on Amazon.co.uk, which is brilliant, and Stage should be publishing an interview/review in a week or two. 23-27 May sees the BBC Radio 4 series Gilbert's Glory, including soundbites from me and a plug for the book, so fingers crossed, we may get some new readers from that as well.

There's a quite painful split in my life at the moment. It's all very successful in terms of public face--I have a book out, it's very well received so far (in so far as there has been any reception at all), and I'm actually being heard by more people than have ever heard me before, even if they didn't especially want to. But at the same time, I am jobless and effectively penniless. I actually have little idea what the future holds. It may end in disaster, and quite soon. I can only keep faith in my star, which has actually treated me pretty well in life so far. I don't know, maybe most writers are like this. But it's quite scary.

Bourgeois Attitudes

In the early part of his career, Gilbert wrote regularly for the comic paper Fun. One of his regular pseudonyms was The Comic Physiognomist (the C.P.). In the issue for 9 March 1867 he wrote in one of these columns:

"Man was sent into the world to contend with man, and to get the advantage of him in every possible way. Whenever the C.P. happens to see a human being in the act of assisting, directly or indirectly, another human being, he pictures to himself a foot-race in which the candidates are constantly giving place to each other from motives of sheer politeness. The great object of life is to be first at the winning-post, and so that a man attains that end, and yet goes conscientiously over the whole course, it matters nothing how many of his fellow candidates he hustles on the way."

Of course Gilbert was being funny. But he was also, I am almost sure, being quite serious. This is how Gilbert saw life. He did not, I believe, want to see it this way; he was by nature a dreamy and withdrawn character, much the happiest in the illusory world of the theatre. But he learned as a teenager that not to keep your eye firmly on the main chance was to lose that chance and was to become a failure. And Gilbert learned his lesson.

His 1877 play Engaged is a bitter exposition of this view of life, in which everyone is motivated entirely by selfish and monetary motives. It is so keenly meant and so real that it is the funniest thing he ever wrote. It is a vision of Victorian society both as it saw itself--as unfailingly genteel--and as it was--unfailingly brutal.

Now here's a quotation from the 1848 Communist Manifesto:

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value.... In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.... The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation."

My attention was drawn to this passage recently and it made me gasp. It is a complete explanation of Gilbert's attitudes to society and to the aristocracy (whom he despised). He was a Bourgeois in the sense meant by the Communists. It may be worth while to add that the Communist Manifesto praised the Bourgeoisie for these attitudes.

Counting my Blessings

The continuing absence of reviews of my book, among other things (such as the fact that the company I was interviewed by on Tuesday still haven't got back to me and my money situation is not brilliant), has led to my going through some pretty black moods of late. Have I wasted two years of my life?

So maybe I need to focus on the good things that have been happening to me. I have done four radio interviews--the last one, for BBC Radio Lincolnshire last Sunday, was actually rather fun--and, who knows, maybe they have led to a few more sales. I have a talk coming up at the Redbridge Media Festival in London (23 May). I have an offer on signed copies of the book, and people do keep requesting these. If I'm struggling to keep afloat, that's my fault; I should have asked extortionate prices for signed copies.

Some people I respect have said very nice things about the book. That it's the best biography of Gilbert yet written, that it's readable (a very rare quality in a biography these days).

Maybe, just maybe, I will get money from the book as well. Maybe, just maybe, people will start asking me to write articles for money on the back of it. It hasn't happened so far, but who knows? I want to be a professional writer; I believe the book shows I have the skills to do it. It will only take a few appropriate people to agree with this for the whole situation to change.

If the prospective employers phone me back, that will be good, too. Quite soon for preference.

Education, education, education

Yes, I think it's safe. I can afford to reveal some of the new material in the biography now that it's safely launched into the world. It's fair to say that the majority of the revelations relate to his early, pre-Gilbert-and-Sullivan, life. And, as I'm sure I've said more than once on this blog, and perhaps in every single entry since the beginning, that is what makes it important. I have been able to reveal some of the factors which made Gilbert Gilbert.

When Gilbert left King's College, London, in 1856, he had messed up his education to a remarkable extent. He did not, as intended, go on to Oxford. He did not even take his B.A. exam at the proper time, but waited until the following year. All this seems to have happened because he was distracted by the idea of getting an army commission and fighting in the Crimean War. Luckily, he didn't manage to do that either.

But all these failed ambitions meant that he was left in the big wide world without a career plan. It appears that his father, who had an "independent income", nevertheless refused to suppor his son until he found a career; at any rate, the evidence suggests he left the parental home about this time. And on 24 February 1857 he was appointed as an Assistant Clerk, (Third Class) at the Committee of Council on Education, otherwise called the Education Office. He remained there for almost six years, until he resigned on 14 November 1862, which he called "the happiest day of my life."

He hated working there, and he took every opportunity to revenge himself on his employers. At the end of 1861 he started contributing to a satirical weekly paper called Fun. One of his earliest cartoons, signed "Bab", was an attack on the Education Office, and it was published in the issue for 9 November 1861, while Gilbert was still being employed by them:

On the opposite page, a linked article described the department's new Education Code as "anything but a Code of Honour, for it systematically breaks faith with every certificated schoolmaster in the government employ." This article is, in my opinion, most probably by Gilbert.

He continued to attack the Office in the paper both before and after his resignation. On 23 April 1864, a topical poem called "Mr. Morell and the Privy Council Office" made fun of several Education Office officials, including a certain Ralph Robert Wheeler Lingen, who had been Gilbert's boss at the department all the time he was there, and whom he portrayed in the poem's "initial" with ass's ears (see above). The drawing is signed "W.S.G." and the poem itself is probably by him as well.

The political head of the department was Robert Lowe. Coincidentally (or not) Lowe was one of the politicians cruelly caricatured in the Gilbert/a Beckett satire The Happy Land of 1873.

One more revelation from the book. In April 1858 he was reprimanded at the Office for "disrespectful and insubordinate conduct." We may not be surprised.

In limbo

I don't know where I am heading at the moment. The book is out there; I understand there has been some interest in it from some papers; and three separate BBC Radio stations will be interviewing me next week!!!! But I don't know what people will think of it when they read it. I am sure that some experts will think it is wrongly focused, or that it misrepresents the facts, or that it ignores aspects that should be highlighted. I have had a reaction from a reader which suggests that it is--as I intended--readable. Hurray for that! It's supposed to be a portrait of Gilbert the man. It's supposed to give an impression of what he was like, as some recent biographies have not. But without the detailed and brutally honest feedback of reviews, how can I know what the book is really like? It is terrible to think this, but in a way the reaction to the book will show me what I should think about it. If it is a success, it will mean that my past twenty-five years' obsession has not been misdirected. If it is a failure... I won't think of that. Every day that passes without a review is another day of waiting, a day that feels wasted. I feel I am in a kind of limbo. The book is an attempt to demonstrate that I can write. Perhaps readers will disagree on that one. How can I know, without a review?

I hope I don't cock up the interviews.

Plays: written and performed

My play Working Lives was performed on Wednesday, a one-off performance as part of a playwriting festival. It was a great experience, and it reminded me of all the stresses and rewards of writing for the stage.

When you create a script--sitting around brooding about characters and themes, and then pushing yourself to write down as much of what you have in your head as possible, and trying to mould it all into shape and keep quality control and all the other things you have to do to make something usable--when you're doing all this you're making something quite abstract, with parts that you think might work in front of an audience, it's all quite abstract and bloodless. In fact it's like a short story, but without descriptions and "fine writing."

This is fine. You feel you've done all the work, and having it performed is sort of an added extra. Then it gets passed over to the director and cast.

The rehearsal process, certainly this time, involved a rather complex combination of reactions as far as I'm concerned. The cast was very well chosen, and the director clearly knew exactly what he was doing, and seemed very sympathetic with my actual intentions. I saw three early rehearsals, then two late ones, including the tech run-through on the Monday two days before performance.

It was this rehearsal that made me very very anxious. At least two of the actors didn't know their lines, and while the performance was billed as "script in hand", the director wanted them to be off-book for the performance. So the actual run-through was very ropy, with some long embarrassing stalls. It was all very rushed--we had to be in the space and out again within an hour. The director afterwards assured the cast that he was very happy with their performances. I wasn't so sanguine.

On the Wednesday, the day of performance, the cast weren't able to get together again till about 6.30 (the play started about 8pm). A quick line-reading was all that was possible, and a cast member was having big trouble with two substantial scenes. He was forgetting lines, and persisted in skipping ahead in a scene bypassing about a page of dialogue. The director said (thank God) that it was okay for him to take the script on stage. One of the other actors also did this. But it was obvious to me that the performance would be very basic and I was prepared for a very embarrassing 45 minutes during the actual event.

And then.

It was to be the second play in a double-bill. I saw the first, an entertaining though afterwards rather unsatisfactory piece. We settled in for the second half. I was sitting next to the director. We smiled at each other, said each other was great, shook hands, and saw the lights go down. The play started. The first scene went all right. People laughed. The scenes progressed. One scene in particular, a job interview that goes disastrously wrong, took fire on stage--the audience laughed, really immediate, genuine laughter, and the director was almost creased double, in fits. And I knew the thing was working. The last scenes of the play turn very serious, but I think we held the audience right to the end. I was very relieved and very euphoric. There was much congratulation (genuine) and hugging and talk of taking the thing on tour. Don't know if it will happen, but it seems a real possibility.

What has all this to do with Gilbert? Well, rather famously, he wasn't able to watch his own first nights. He would leave the theatre, stroll on the embankment, go to his club or see another play, returning only for the curtain calls. This is a very idiosyncratic thing of his, an almost physical condition which made him sweaty and hysterical if he had to see his own plays performed in front of an audience. But I can understand it very well. It is simply a very stressful, though often very rewarding, experience. I believe at the start of his career he did witness his own plays. But there was a point at which he stopped. He decided it involved too much unnecessary suffering.

The W S Gilbert Society

It's strange how events crowd together. Through no one's fault the release of the book (two weeks ago) was followed last week by the printing of the latest W S Gilbert Society Journal, which I, as the Society's Secretary, had then to send out to the Society's members. That was last week. And in two days' time, a play that I wrote two years ago, called Working Lives, will be performed at the Bradford Playhouse as part of a new writing festival (and I'm supposed to be finding some last-minute props....)

This is in addition to the imminent prospect of a full-time job, coming at precisely the point when I am starting desperately to need the money.

The W S Gilbert Society has been going since 1985 but is still quite a small concern, with a membership of about 130. It should be much more, but at the same time I'm sort of glad it isn't, because the job of sending out the Journals would be so much less manageable.... It publishes a Journal twice a year, full of new information and ideas about the man and his work. What can I say? I'd be delighted if you wanted to join. Click on the link above, and you can do it.

I am also trying to write a novel. I've just written a little passage which puts into words how I feel for much of the time: as if there were too much for me to do in life and at the same time too little; it's as if nothingness were a physically real thing, which gets in the way of the somethings which I ought to be doing.

Speaking of which....

The book is unleashed

In a way I rather like the fact that practically no one is reading this blog. It takes the pressure off so much, and allows me to try out ideas. The book is now effectively published, even though the official launching date is at the beginning of May. Amazon is showing it as available. It is all rather frightening in that respect. I've been in contact practically all afternoon with someone in Marketing at The History Press; BBC Radio Scotland is showing an interest and I may be interviewed for two different programmes--one of them live!! The Sunday Express is taking a review copy, and The Stage, and probably others. I have a double attitude to this. I am very very keen for reviews in the proper papers, because it's the reviews, as far as I'm concerned, that publicise the book and lead to sales. But at the same time who knows what the fiends will say? I am aware that I myself have not proved very effective in organising publicity for the book. No interest in articles that I myself have suggested to others. But publicity is happening, not just organised by the publishers but also by friends and well-wishers. Ian Bradley apparently has written an article for History Today next month which refers to my book extensively. I also have another stupid idea, which however I am tinkering at because it might possibly work--a compilation of killer quotations from Gilbert. Things like this, from the opera Ruddigore: "Ah, you've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself, and how little I deserve it." Or this, from a letter to The Times:

"In the face of Saturday the officials of the [London and North-Western Railway] company stand helpless and appalled. This day, which recurs at stated and well-ascertained intervals, is treated as a phenomenon entirely outside the ordinary operations of nature, and, as a consequence, no attempt whatever is made to grapple with its inherent difficulties. To the question, 'What has caused the train to be so late?' the officials reply, 'It is Saturday' — as who should say, 'It is an earthquake.' "

And there's more, much more, where that came from.....

It's arrived!

The first copies of the book arrived yesterday, and they're looking good! I was getting pretty neurotic about it, imagining that my corrections to the proofs might have been ignored or translated into nonsense. But the book seems to be all right (barring a couple of minor glitches). They arrived just in time, as I am going down to London to give a talk to the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and will be able to sell copies. The big thing about the book is that it tells Gilbert's story as not just another Victorian success story, but as something more ambiguous and conflicted. It's a tale of struggle and opposition, and the success he achieved came at a price. There are some nice pics as well, particularly an unfamiliar one of Lucy Gilbert probably dating from the 1880s; she is magnificent in a formal gown, but there is an expression on her face which is impossible to describe. Most images of Lucy date either from her teenage years, when she had just married Gilbert, or from her years of age and serenity at the beginning of the twentieth century. I seem to have agreed to two interviews, one with the Stuart Box of the G&S Society and one with a guy who has a website. I'm just hoping I can be coherent and fluent on both occasions. We'll see.

Plugging the Book

Among other things, I've been writing pieces to plug the book recently. An article on The History Press's Facebook pages, for instance: here. And yesterday I emailed The Observer hoping to interest them in an article about Gilbert's war correspondence in 1870, written for The Observer and only recently discovered (by me). I haven't had a reply yet, and I shan't be surprised if they show no interest whatsoever. I'll be furious, but I shan't be surprised.

I've also, just now, set up a Facebook page for Gilbert, here.

I'm sorry about the brevity of this entry. This does not seem to be a good morning for writing. I'll try and see if I can find a nice Bab illustration to add before I publish it. Ah! Here's one.

More about The Hooligan

After submitting the previous post yesterday, I browsed through Googlebooks and found two (in my opinion) interesting references to The Hooligan. They confirm that the play was unusually shocking and caused extreme reactions in the audience.

I should mention that I have posted this information, and the information in my previous blog posting, to Savoynet, and that my friend Wikipedia Sam is in the process of adding these quotations to the entries for The Hooligan. So Wikipedia is copying from me, not I from it.

In Dornford Yates's 1952 book As Berry and I Were Saying (House of Stratus edition, 2001):

"Berry put in his oar.

"'D'you remember Gilbert's The Hooligan? He was an East-End Jew. And that master, Jimmy Welch, in the title role?'

"'Shall I ever forget it? Women screaming and fainting all over the place. Scene--The Condemned Cell. A cut about twelve by eight in a great back cloth. At The Coliseum, not long before the first war. Which goes to show that Gilbert knew his world.'

"'I'll say he did,' said Berry." (p167)

It may be important to add that Yates's later "Berry" books were really disguised reminiscences, and this fictional conversation clearly derives from Yates's own memories.

In Holbrook Jackson's essay "Why Do We Laugh?" in his volume of essays Occasions (Grant Richards, 1922):

"I always felt that the laughter provoked by [James Welch's] characterization in The Man in the Street was an expression of relief from the underlying tragedy of the thing. But if there is any doubt about that, there could be no doubt whatever about the small gasps of hysterical laughter during his realistic interpretation of the condemned man in Gilbert's little tragedy The Hooligan. The theme is so painful as to be almost unbearable. I have seen people walk out in the midst of this play unable to stand any more of it. Yet those who remained in the grip of the horror, watching Welch revealing the fear of a condemned man during his supposed last few moments on earth--the fear of a man who is half idiot, and who has very little worth preserving in his life--those who remained laughed every now and then at the humour of it. Some things may be too deep for tears, but nothing is too deep for laughter." (pp94-95)

The Hooligan

nd so Gilbert's last play, The Hooligan, is 100 years old. It was premiered at the Coliseum music hall on 27 February 1911. It is, in my opinion, one of his best works. It is certainly unique in his output. You can read the play here.

The WSG cartoons shown here are all taken from his column "The Comic Physiognomist in Bad Company" (Fun, 23 July 1864). The scan of the photo is taken from The Illustrated London News of 11 March 1911, and shows a scene from The Hooligan with James Welch.

I want to quote some of the responses to the original production, because I think they show that the play provoked a uniquely direct emotional reaction. I'm having difficulty thinking of a parallel in Gilbert's output. The nearest equivalent might be the reaction to Engaged over 30 years before, in 1877--many were shocked by Engaged, though not in the same way as with The Hooligan.

From The Illustrated London News of 11 March 1911:

"We all reckon any stage-work of that veteran, Sir William Gilbert, as peculiarly worthy of attention and respect, but how much more than usually must he challenge our interest when he, the successor of Robertson, the apostle of fantasy, suddenly elects to rival the newest school of our dramatists on their own ground! Has Mr. Galsworthy submitted to us his realistic tragedy of 'Justice' and pictured for us all the horrors of the isolation cell? Sir William Gilbert will go one better: he will confront us with that grimmest of all scenes of human misery--he will show us the condemned murderer being prepared for his fate on the very morning of his execution.... [Precis of plot follows.] So ends a drama that is absolutely sincere, unflinchingly realistic, and makes no concessions in the way of fine writing or sentiment. It bears the very stamp of truth, as it should do, for it is the work of a magistrate, and its whole pathos--and that is irresistible--depends on its never straining a point. If playgoers are not moved by the almost bald simplicity of the episode and by the superb acting of Mr. James Welch as the criminal, then nothing will move them. Mr. Welch's study of awful fear is really great and memorable art. And this play and this acting, if you please, are to be seen, not in an ordinary drama-theatre, but at the Coliseum, or so-called variety-house, for 'The Hooligan' is a 'sketch.'"

Here is a more disapproving reaction from The Observer of 5 March 1911, though I think the reviewer still conveys the power of the play:

"Those who are in search of a 'mauvais quart d'heure' had better hie forthwith to the Coliseum, where, with 'The Hooligan' in his condemned cell, they may be assured of finding what they want. That there are such seekers is shown at the Grand Guignol and elsewhere by the fact that for some men a good shudder is a luxury, just as is for some ladies a good cry. At the Coliseum, though they may be surprised, they will certainly not be disappointed by the masterly and relentless skill with which Sir W.S. Gilbert and Mr. James Welch between them administer the desired sensation as part of an evening's variety entertainment.

"[Precis of plot follows] How far such a subject as this is suited for illustration on the stage may be open to doubt. But there can be no question about the relentless art with which Sir William has elaborated his gruesome study of character, or about the remorseless sincerity with which Mr. Welch his made the grim picture a living one in its terrible fidelity to fallen nature. If the thing was to be done at all it could not have been done better, and there criticism must leave it."

Finally, a comment from the Stageland column in the Penny Illustrated Paper of 11 March 1911 (a more racy and perhaps more working class paper than the others):

"It disturbed everyone. Most to applause; a few to resentment. There was the ruddy, ample gentleman whom I met in the bar during what the Col. calls the 'Intermission.' 'You come here to be amused, not to be----" He groped for the word and lost it. 'A man of a morbid turn of mind might think it all right, mightn't he?'

"A play that can wing a ruddy, ample gentleman; leave him puzzled, gasping, unsettled; stir up vague doubtings about killing folk and giving them 'no chanst'--a play like that is a play which you ought to pop in and see at once."

Well--I've nothing to add to that!

Waiting

The interview went all right I think (it's for Newstalk in Ireland, but I don't know when they'll broadcast it, if ever). A fairly straightforward interview with a guy called Sean Moncrieff, with the focus on Gilbert's character and family background. I had no notice of the questions so I was thinking on my feet mostly, trying to dredge all the information out of my brain about names and dates and so on, as well as trying to be interesting. I lost my track for a few seconds in the middle of one answer and had to backtrack.

This is the bit I don't like about what's happening with the book. I just want to fast forward to the moment when it's published and I can see what the actual reaction to the thing is. Because I think it will change the way people view Gilbert, but how can I tell before the event what they will say? After all, when Jane Stedman's great biography of Gilbert came out in 1996, Benny Green had the effrontery to say it contained nothing new!! So I mustn't think people will be predisposed to think well of my book. If it gets noticed at all (and maybe, like my last book, it will be effectively ignored) it will probably be skimmed by a bored reviewer and used as a prop for the expression of the reviewer's own opinions of Gilbert.

Why buy the book?

I need to focus my thoughts somehow. I'm being interviewed tomorrow and I need to be able to say why Gilbert deserves to be written about today and why my book deserves to be read. So why...?

Because it's the centenary of Gilbert's death this year. He died on 29 May 1911 after a life of success and defiance.

Because he deserves to be better known. He achieved so much, satire, lyrics, blah....

Because previous biographies, great though some of them are, don't provide an explanation of who Gilbert was and and the nature of his character. He tends to get simplified to a caricature of a gruff, bluff old buffer. He's usually seen at the height of his G&S fame when he was rich and comfortable. So what did he have to be grumpy about? But my book shows a different story, and a comprehensible one--a very familiar one also, I might add. Angry young man sets out writing satires against the hypocrisy and greed of his age. Gains a reputation on the strength of this. He continues to write satires against the, etc. People grow weary of the satire. Almost by chance he hits on a winning formula (with Sullivan). Fame and riches. He is no longer young, no longer angry. He becomes a pillar of the establishment that he used to mock. The angry young man is still within him, and sometimes rumbles and expresses himself, but he is almost smothered in the folds of respectability. In my view his story is a kind of tragedy of success.

Not sure if I can say this in the interview. But this is pretty much the kernel of it.

Why buy the book? It's very well written, it's entertaining, it's funny (of course it is, Gilbert was funny, and I tell a lot of the stories as well as I can). What else is there to say?

Is Gilbert still relevant?

A few days ago I was being interviewed. No details now; more later, perhaps. But one question I was asked went something like this: "Some people regard Gilbert and Sullivan as rather twee and irrelevant. What would you say to convince them otherwise?" Caught a little off guard, I said something about how G&S is still very relevant, and mentioned the still-current satire in "Utopia Limited". Afterwards, I realised I had missed the point rather. I should have said something like this....

Gilbert is one of the first "modern" humorists. His attitude is sceptical, ironic/sarcastic, and automatically anti-authority. One of the main lessons of the operas is that anyone with a high office and a flashy uniform is generally an idiot.

He also thinks human behaviour is, by and large, ridiculous and absurd. We govern our actions by selfish motives which we hide under polite forms. Sometimes we seem like clockwork automata. Life is a show, its palaces and pleasures are fantasies that fade. There is very little sense of religious faith in Gilbert. Nothing can be relied upon. Certainly the happy endings that fiction and drama drum into our heads are unreal and illusory.

If the operas seem twee and unreal, it is because he is exaggerating the conventions of drama to cartoon absurdity. The happy endings seem strained and unreal because Gilbert himself could not beleive in them, and often he seems to have made them unreal to the point of sarcasm, as in HMS Pinafore. He is a pessimistic humorist.

Maybe it's a good job that I didn't think of saying any of this in the interview....

Sadness Set to Song

I often wake up in the night, usually about four or five in the morning, and I lie in the darkness, depressing myself with gloomy thoughts about the world, and death, and the unsatisfactory aspects of my life. In my experience an interest in comedy is allied to a melancholic or depressive attitude to life. This is well known, but easily dismissed with the somewhat contemptuous phrase about the tears of the clown which everyone knows. But enough about that. Let's talk about Gilbert instead.

At the start of his career, when he was writing weekly for the comic paper Fun, he developed two comic personae: the Comic Physiognomist and Our Own Correspondent. The article "Our Own Correspondent at a Bal Masque" (29 October 1864) sees him in a highly depressed mood:

"Your correspondent is writing this article in the lowest possible spirits... he witnessed last night three hours' length of human idiocy in its most aggravating form, and... he has not yet recovered from the depression induced thereby. He has been awake all night endeavouring to argue himself into the belief that as the drivelling revellers with whom he came into contact last night were men, therefore he is nota man, but he regrets to say that he has not yet arrived at that desirable conclusion. In the meantime--until the problem is satisfactorily worked out, and he has convinced himself that he is a pig or a dog--please address communications to him as heretofore."

It is clear even from the operas that Gilbert was subject to moods of melancholia and despair. Even in The Mikado he intrudes a lyric inquiring into the mysteries of the world:

Is it but a world of trouble--

Sadness set to song?

Is its beauty but a bubble

Bound to break ere long?

Are its palaces and pleasures

Fantasies that fade?

And the glory of its treasures

Shadow of a shade?

In everything he writes there is a constant feeling that Gilbert saw life as a senseless show in which people act according to rules which make no sense. He saw life as topsyturvydom, in which people act in ways that are the direct opposite of rational good sense. Sent to Paris to report on the impending siege in 1870, he watched the Parisians and saw nothing but a pageant of absurdity.

He was in many ways a tough man, and he withstood a barrage of vicious criticism throughout his working life. But in later years certainly he began to feel somewhat bitter about the public reaction to his work, taking his frivolous nonsense to their bosom and ignoring his serious, solid work. The passing years saw the passing of his friends, and he saw himself as a tree with the leaves fallen. Every birthday was, he insisted, a cause for commiseration and not celebration. Some of his best lyrics are not in the least comic. They are meditations on this strange world of ours and our place in it.

Is life a boon?

If so, it must befall

That Death, whene'er he call,

Must call too soon.

Though fourscore years he give,

Yet one would pray to live

Another moon!

What kind of plaint have I,

Who perish in July?

I might have had to die,

Perchance, in June!

Is life a thorn?

Then count it not a whit!

Man is well done with it;

Soon as he's born

He should all means essay

To put the plague away;

And I, war-worn,

Poor captured fugitive,

My life most gladly give--

I might have had to live

Another morn!

Regarding Sir Jonathan Miller

Today, I'm going to write about something which the theatre director and Jack of all trades Sir Jonathan Miller said about Gilbert and Sullivan last year. "I've never had anything but contempt for Gilbert and Sullivan," he said in a documentary. "It's simply UKIP set to music."

For those who do not know, UKIP is a fringe political party in the UK which exists mainly in order to campaign, in defiance of all practical possibility, in favour of the UK's independence from Europe. It is generally "Little-England," right wing, and hyper-"patriotic." Hardly anyone takes it seriously.

Sir Jonathan Miller's opinion appears to have been made in ignorance of the nature of Gilbert and Sullivan. While it is true that the operas are very concerned with notions of Englishness and Britishness, the material in which this concern is expressed tends to be sarcastic and satirical in intent. Famously, the song "He is an Englishman" from HMS Pinafore is a satire on pastriotism:

For he himself has said it,

And it's greatly to his credit

That he is an Englishman!

(Chorus: That he is an Englishman!)

For he might have been a Roosian,

A French or Turk or Proosian

Or perhaps I-tal-i-an!

(Chorus: Or perhaps I-tal-i-an!)

But in spite of all temptations

To belong to other nations

He remains an Englishman,

He rema-ains an E-englishman!

When Gilbert retold the story of HMS Pinafore for children late in his life, he helpfully explained the joke of this lyric in fairly plain terms: "Speaking for myself, I do not quite see that Ralph Rackstraw deserved so very much credit for reemaining an Englishman, considering that no one seems ever to have proposed to him that he should be anything else, but the crew thought otherwise and I daresay they were right."

As a general rule, whenever a character in G&S becomes patriotic, it is a signal that something heavily sarcastic is taking place. Dick Dauntless's song "I shipped, d'ye see, in a Revenue sloop" from Ruddigore is another example: the jingoistic veneer conceals a tale of English cowardice in the face of the enemy. I may add in passing that Utopia, Limited is a consistently jaundiced parable on the theme of the English assumption of superiority over other nations.

I will briefly point out that Gilbert's contemporaries recognised this aspect of his writings very well, even though they usually did not approve. The cartoonist Arthur Bryan, depicting Gilbert in a page-size collection of sketches called "Days with Celebrities: Mr W.S. Gilbert" (Moonshine, 1882), showed Gilbert arguing with John Bull and growling, "Why are you such a humbug?" while John Bull asks, "Why are you always attacking my institutions?"

Why does Sir Jonathan Miller have such a poor opinion of G&S? Perhaps his contact with The Mikado has soured him. The Mikado is not everyone's cup of tea; it is relatively straightforward and seemingly simple; its plot is simple and its attitudes are not overtly taxing. He might have understood Ruddigore better, with its quirkiness, sour cynicism, tricksiness, and peculiar storyline. He seems to have taken no effort to try and understand Gilbert's point of view, or even to take on board his ironic and sarcastic style. It is as if one took all the attitudes in Beyond the Fringe at face value.

Is comedy history?

Another Gilbert pic, this one from Fun, 17 December 1864.

This is going to be quite a brief one today, I think. All I have is a question, but an important one from my point of view I think. What do people want from entertainment? This seems to have changed radically over the years. For instance, in the first half of the 20th century a very "soft" and unpolitical kind of comedy was generally preferred in the UK--cultured and without bite, Pierrot revues and so on. After the war, in the 1950s and 1960s, something more caustic came in, the Goons and Beyond the Fringe. Still very articulate and even whimsical, but directly relating to and criticising social and political realities. In the 1980s, with "alternative" comedy, it became almost a truism that comedy is radical and offensive. It was taken as given that the point of comedy is to question and to shock for political ends.

Today, in 2011, it seems to me that the political undertow has disappeared and it is accepted that comedy shocks, and that's all it does, as an end in itself. In fact it seems sometimes that a serious or political meaning is seen as a disadvantage in comedy. Certainly the verbal and articulate aspect of comedy has been downgraded so that it is enough to state obvious and stale ideas again and again in unending repetition. The one thing that is absent is the shock of a new idea.

Is, therefore, Gilbert's comedy, which is verbal and intellectual, suitable for today? Is it even recognised as comedy, containing as it does no gross or disgusting elements, relying instead on social and intellectual games? I ask because I don't know the answer.

In the beginning

Maybe I shouldn't say too much about this at the moment, but let's just say it looks like the BBC will be doing its bit to mark the Gilbert centenary.... More later, possibly.

I have a strange between-projects feeling at the moment, though I should be pressing on with the articles to publicise the book. I am also trying to write a play (actually two plays, a biggie and a little one-acter for a local showcase called Page to Stage) and there are other distractions as well. I stayed in yesterday, intending to write, but ended up wasting practically every minute. So today I went out and I've already achieved more. For one thing, I'm writing this blog!

I've nothing to say today, so maybe I could spend ten minutes describing the origins of the Gilbert biography. I've been obsessed with the man since I was about fifteen, and for about ten years my G&S friends have been saying I should write his biography. Abut three years ago I started tinkering with the idea. I wrote a ridiculous draft of a first chapter in which I thought I could get away with skimming over his childhood and starting with the "interesting" bit, his first plays (written at the age of 30). Because the fact is that I always find the early "childhood" chapters by far the most boring part of any biography, and naively I thought they might be unnecessary in Gilbert's case because so little is known about his early years. However, as I tried to proceed on that assumption it rapidly became more and more obvious that this could not possibly work. How can you construct the building without laying the foundation? Without Gilbert's childhood, he is incomprehensible. He is a miraculous goblin without motivation or background.

But still the problem remained. If you look at the previous biographies you see that very little has been written about his childhood, and the overwhelming impression is that there is no evidence to fill in the details. But as I dug more I realised this was not really the case. David Eden's deliberately provocative book W.S. Gilbert: Appearance and Reality contains a wealth of new information (and speculation) about Gilbert's family background, though assembled in no very coherent order. For my own satisfaction (I still didn't have a book contract at this point) I tried to reassemble Eden's information in a logical order, weeding out parts that I did not feel were supported by the facts (such as his contention that Gilbert's father was an alcoholic who had admitted himself into a lunatic asylum for his own good--an interesting idea, but one with no concrete support at all except father Gilbert's own descriptions of delirium tremens and lunatic asylums, written as part of novels and researched articles).

I also found other sources of information in Gilbert's own articles. His humorous articles for Fun include a good number of evidently autobiographical fragments which, amazingly, have not been used bhy previous writers. They describe his school days, his early affections, his time working at the Education Office. Other articles illuminate such matters as his view of childhood in general--"the most miserable period of our existence" he called it, as I recall without going to the faff of checking the quotation--and his early adoration of the pantomime Harlequinade.

I tinkered with this first chapter for about a year. Then, through a process which I will not describe in detail bt which boils down to knowing someone who knew a publisher, I got my contract, and I set to work with a will. I had already amassed enough new material (from the Fun columns) to convince me that it was worth doing. I took a research trip to London, and I made an entirely new Discovery which made me realise that previous biographers really had not covered the territory as I had thought, and that there really were new things to find out about Gilbert. That's a story for later, I think. But I will say this, not going into detail. At every stage of the writing I kept finding out new things which revived my interest in the project just as it flagged. Maybe it was finding his war dispatches for The Observer, maybe it was discovering a new article by him describing his "last client", and maybe it was reading the reviews of his plays which laid bare how much some of the critics loathed him. But it all added up to create (I hope) something like one of my early ideas of what the biography should be: a kaleidoscopic view of the man from all kinds of angles, contradictory and incoherent and multi-faceted. That book would have been called Aspects of Gilbert, in case you're interested.

Another idea I had was to write a seriously eccentric biography arranged like an encyclopedia under different headings. That would have been called The Gilbert Encyclopedia: An A-Y of Gilbert. Everyone I told about that objected that with a bit of finessing I could easily find an entry or two for Z (characters in some of his plays, like Zeolide and Zayda). I don't think they realised I wanted it to be an A-Y: it would be funnier. However. The eccentric ideas fell by the wayside, and what I've ended up with is something like a conventional biography, though with the slight oddity of not attempting to be utterly comprehensive as most biographies try to be these days.

That's enough for one day.