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....