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Michael Goron
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Lincoln School of Performing Arts University of Lincoln Lincoln, UK
Aim of the Series
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.springer.com/series/15105
Michael Goron
Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Respectable Capers’
Class, Respectability and the Savoy Operas
1877–1909
Michael Goron
Southampton Solent University Southampton, UK
University of Winchester Winchester, UK
Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre
ISBN 978-1-137-59477-8 ISBN 978-1-137-59478-5 (eBook)
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F OREWORD
It’s hard to think of a more significant or substantial contribution to British theatre than that made by William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Over an intensive 20-year period, the pair created more than a dozen works, establishing a paradigm of popular yet respectable entertainment for the musical stage. The characters they created live on in popular memory, from the Pirate King to the Three Little Maids from School; and their songs continue to be sung by new generations, from ‘Dear Little Buttercup’ to ‘Poor Wand’ring One’. Indeed, across the length and breadth of Britain, amateur societies continue to perform their shows as staples of the repertoire, enjoying in particular the delights of several classic major works: HMS Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), The Mikado (1885) and The Gondoliers (1889).
It is true that Gilbert and Sullivan have not been without their detractors, and their work in some circles has been much maligned. The Savoy operas are commonly perceived (especially by younger audiences) as oldfashioned, dated set pieces calcifying British traditions in song and satire. Yet in their day, these works were cutting-edge, contemporary satires of the political and social landscape, with characters keenly sketched from the wit of two masters of their craft. Individually, both Gilbert and Sullivan produced an impressive oeuvre, but together, and aided by the impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte, they lifted comic opera into a different realm. Here was work accessible enough to appeal to popular audiences, yet also refined enough to cater to the requirements of the middle class. In equal measure a fond reflection of contemporary society and a satirical jibe at the status quo, the collected work offered a precursor not only to the musical
theatre repertoire of later years, but also the satire of journalism, radio and TV. Indeed, some of the greatest characters of British comedy can undoubtedly be traced back to role models invented and established by Gilbert and Sullivan: from Leonard Rossiter’s Mr Rigsby in Rising Damp to John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, and from Nigel Hawthorne’s Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes, Minister to Patricia Routledge’s Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances, British situation comedy and its consumption by the British public has, to a large degree, been enabled by the foundational work created by Gilbert and Sullivan.
Unsurprisingly, there has been plenty of scholarship on the Gilbert and Sullivan canon, and their place in history is undeniably assured; yet scholars continue to produce work focusing on this fascinating series of comic operas, and on the collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan. So why the need for a further study?
As the title suggests, Michael Goron’s Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Respectable Capers’ : Class, Respectability and the Savoy Operas 1877–1909 interrogates issues of respectability and class, as well as considerations of ephemerality and entertainment. To Goron, the works remain important as an abiding snapshot of Victorian Britain, shining a light on the legacy that this period has left on British values of today. As we are guided metaphorically by Goron to accompany him to a night at the Savoy, we appreciate the social etiquette and behavioural customs expected at the time; and we relive an impression of the way the experiences of attending the theatre in the late nineteenth century might have impacted on our lives. In this, Goron elevates studies of Gilbert and Sullivan beyond the standard approach to considering the works as texts and really observes their impact as staged performances engaged with by real people.
Goron’s description of the Gilbert and Sullivan works as ‘respectable capers’ characterises cleverly both the identity of the shows themselves and also the perspective with which his critical lens captures them. These are shows from a period in which respectability meant everything, both socially and culturally; a period which in many ways forged the complex amalgam of ‘class’ as a concept that has defined subsequent British identity. It is in trying to negotiate that complicated, contradictory notion that characters such as Fawlty, Rigsby, Appleby and Bucket fall down, to our great amusement. It’s also through the prism of that amalgam that Gilbert and Sullivan present to us their peculiarly British characters. Only in Britain, perhaps, can the concept of class be used ‘as both an economic
categorisation, and as a means of encapsulating a set of cultural values, a “middle-class” ideology’.
If this concern is the glue that binds the Savoy operas together (not to mention the sticky mess in which their characters become unstuck), it is an influence that has had just as much significance in the lives and careers of Gilbert and Sullivan themselves. Caught between their own pretensions of respectability and the trade-off they made in capering with commercial success, the artists themselves become characters who are at the same time frustrating and endearing, pompous and charming. In humanising their concerns and exploring their oeuvre from his particular perspective, Goron brings a very contemporary picture to life of a world of entertainment that still infects us today, and of a pair of collaborators whose brilliance came from their dynamic tensions as much as their creative talent.
So why another book on Gilbert and Sullivan? Adopting a cultural materialist perspective and exploring the Savoy operas from a viewpoint that takes in their reception and consumption as much as their value as compositions, Goron’s exploration provides an answer to that question, and serves as a fitting first publication for this new series in British Musical Theatre.
Lincoln, UK Dominic Symonds
Winchester, UK Millie Taylor
The business syndicate, headed by Richard D’Oyly Carte, which presented The Sorcerer in 1877 and HMS Pinafore in 1879 was called ‘The ComedyOpera Company’. After Carte’s legal separation from the syndicate in 1879, the name was changed to ‘Mr. D’Oyly Carte’s Opera Company’. The name ‘The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’ was not professionally used before 1889. Touring companies prior to 1889 had various naming systems, involving letter or number prefixes/suffixes. For the purpose of this study, except when specific touring companies are mentioned, the term ‘The D’Oyly Carte Company’ is used to cover all Carte’s theatrical activities related to the Gilbert and Sullivan/Savoy operas. For convenience, the Gilbert and Sullivan operas produced under the D’Oyly Carte management will be referred to as the ‘Savoy operas’. This follows conventional practice and disregards the fact that the first four operas under Carte’s management were premiered at the Opera Comique, rather than at the Savoy Theatre, which opened in 1881.
Following a late-nineteenth-century usage (deriving from press coverage of the D’Oyly Carte operation) which is retained in contemporary Gilbert and Sullivan studies, Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte are referred to collectively as the ‘Triumvirate’. In annotations, William Schwenck Gilbert, Arthur Seymour Sullivan and Richard D’Oyly Carte are referred to as WSG, AS and RDC, respectively.
Pre-decimal British currency is conventionally expressed in pounds, shillings (s) and pence (d). Two shillings and sixpence would therefore be written as 2s 6d.
West End productions of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas under the management of Richard D’Oyly Carte and Helen Carte, 1875–1909. (The list does not include non-G&S ‘curtain raisers’)
Title (original productions in bold type)
Trial By Jury
25 March–18 December 1875
The Sorcerer 17 November 1877–24 May 1878
Trial By Jury 23 March–24 May 1878
HMS Pinafore 25 May 1878–20 February 1880
HMS Pinafore (Child cast) 16 December 1879–20 March 1880 (Matinees)
The Pirates of Penzance 3 April 1880–2 April 1881
HMS Pinafore (Child cast) 2 December 1880–28 January 1881 (Matinees)
Patience transferred 23 April–8 October 1881 10 October 1881–22 November 1882
Iolanthe 25 November 1882–1 January 1884
Princess Ida 5 January 1884–9 October 1884
Opera Comique
Opera Comique
Comique
Comique
Opera Comique
Opera Comique
Opera Comique Savoy
Savoy
The Sorcerer, Trial By Jury (Double bill) 11 October 1884–12 March 1885 150 Savoy
The Pirates of Penzance (Child cast) 26 December 1884–14 February 1885 ? Savoy
The Mikado 14 March 1885–19 January 1887
Ruddigore 22 January–5 November 1887
HMS Pinafore 12 November 1887–10 March 1888
The Pirates of Penzance 17 March–6 June 1888
The Mikado 7 June–29 September 1888
The Yeomen of the Guard 3 October 1888–30 November 1889
Savoy
Savoy
Savoy
Savoy
Savoy
Title (original productions in bold type)
Dates
Number of performances
Theatre
The Gondoliers 7 December 1889–20 June 1891 554 Savoy
Non-G&S full-length works presented by the D’Oyly Carte Company between June 1891 and October 1896 were The Nautch Girl, The Vicar of Bray, Haddon Hall and Jane Annie Utopia, Limited 7 October 1893–9 June 1894 245 Savoy
Non-G&S works presented by the D’Oyly Carte Company between July 1894 and March 1895 were Mirette, The Chieftain and Cox and Box
The Mikado 6 November 1895–4 March 1896 127 Savoy
The Grand Duke 7 March 1896–10 July 1896 123 Savoy
Non-G&S works presented by the D’Oyly Carte Company between February 1897 and May 1903 were His Majesty, The Grand Duchess, The Beauty Stone, The Lucky Star, The Rose of Persia, The Emerald Isle, Ib and Little Christina, Willow Pattern, Merrie England and A Princess of Kensington. These were interspersed with further revivals of The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, The Sorcerer, Trial By Jury, HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Patience and Iolanthe.
Repertory seasons at the Savoy Theatre 1906–1909—Produced under the supervision of W.S. Gilbert:
8 December 1906–24 August 1907: Patience, Iolanthe, The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers.
28 April 1908–27 March 1909: HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers.
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due firstly to my University of Winchester PhD supervisory team, who aided the progress of this project through seven years of research and writing. Thus I would like to thank Professor Millie Taylor for her guidance and abiding support through some challenging times, Dr Stevie Simkin for his focused criticism and attention to detail, and Professor Roger Richardson, who helped me pinpoint the direction of my research. Professor Richardson’s guidance, particularly in the early stages of the project, helped to shape my development as an historian—I wasn’t one beforehand! I would also like to thank Dr Dominic Symonds, who as joint series editor with Professor Taylor has encouraged the progress of this book and whose enthusiastic comments have helped to inspire its completion. Also thanks to Jen McCall and April James at Palgrave Macmillan.
I’d like to thank Professor Jackie Bratton and Professor Jim Davis for their observations and recommendations. They, along with a number of significant contemporary historians of Victorian theatre, have provided the methodological templates which underpin this study.
I am indebted to a number of Gilbert and Sullivan researchers, writers and enthusiasts who have provided me with information and specialist advice and assistance over the years. So thanks to Peter Parker, Tony Joseph and Andrew Crowther, and also to Professor Rafe MacPhail for his support and encouragement.
Savoynet, run by Marc Shepherd, is the electronic mailing list where ‘G&S’ and related matters are discussed online. As a long-time ‘lurker’ and very occasional contributor, I have often been inspired by comments
and observations which have appeared there. Whether they are aware that they have helped me or not, I would like to thank, among others, Dorothy Kinkaid, Michael Walters, Chris Goddard and Anthony Baker.
Thanks especially to Dr Helen Grime and Dr Cecily O’Neill for their support and advice—and, in the case of the former, for suggesting I undertake the PhD (from which this book derives) in the first place.
Finally, thanks to Rachel, Alex and Ronan for patiently putting up with it all.
L IST OF F IGURES
Fig. 1.1 The newly reformed Sir Despard (Rutland Barrington) and Mad Margaret (Jessie Bond) relax after their ‘respectable capers’. Ruddigore, Act Two. Public Domain 8
Fig. 3.1 The Triumvirate: Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan, with Savoy conductor François Cellier in the background. (Alfred Bryan, Entr’acte 1894) Public Domain 70
Fig. 4.1 Savoy Theatre, Somerset Street—main entrance. (C. J. Phipps 1881) Public Domain
76
Fig. 4.2 The Savoy auditorium during Act One of Patience. The artist’s impression exaggerates the spaciousness of what was an intimately proportioned auditorium. (Graphic 1881). Public Domain 82
Fig. 5.1 A view of a theatre pit. (Judy 1877). Public Domain 115
Fig. 6.1 Stage level plan of the backstage area at the Savoy Theatre. Principal dressing rooms separated by open upstage area (C.J. Phipps, Savoy Theatre Plans, 1881 [Metropolitan Archives, London] Photograph by the author) 148
Fig. 6.2 Level 3 plan of the backstage area of the Savoy Theatre. Note three large dressing rooms, with separate stairways and lavatories on either side. This plan was repeated on the floor above, indicating the use of these levels as chorus dressing rooms (C.J. Phipps, Savoy Theatre Plans, 1881 [Metropolitan Archives, London] Photograph by the author) 149
Fig. 7.1 Scene from Act Two of HMS Pinafore by David Friston. (Illustrated London News, 1878). Public Domain 177
Fig. 7.2 The middle-class ‘gentleman’ actor relaxes among the comforts of home. A portrait of George Grossmith by George Hutchinson (The Idler, 1893). Public domain 196
Fig. 7.3 ‘The Ironmaster at the Savoy’. Caricature by Alfred Bryan (Entr’acte, 1885) 205
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
Why produce a new study of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas which seeks primarily to re-assert their appeal to late-Victorian ‘middle-England’? Received wisdom, together with much existing literature on the Gilbert/ Sullivan/Carte collaboration would indicate that the values of both the creators and the original audience of the Savoy operas were self-evidently bourgeois. Indeed, it is likely that the subsequent survival of the company through the twentieth century depended on the extent to which such ‘respectable’ values, or at least a nostalgic affection for these values, remained relevant to succeeding generations of spectators.1 However, the originality of this exploration derives in part from a desire to examine the much-discussed Savoy phenomenon and its historical context specifically from the viewpoint of ideas of class, culture and ideology. Perhaps because of the popularity and ubiquity of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and the fact that, unlike much Victorian theatre, they are well known and still performed (and therefore cannot be ‘rediscovered’), they have, until recently, been relatively neglected by serious academics. In consequence, the application of issues of ideology and class as they relate to historical theatre production have rarely been employed to examine either the internal functioning of the original D’Oyly Carte Opera Company or its output and reception. This book is an attempt to redress the imbalance.
M. Goron, Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Respectable Capers’, Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59478-5_1
The general (non-specifically academic) literature on Gilbert and Sullivan is, to quote D’Oyly Carte historian Tony Joseph, ‘colossal’. Dillard’s Gilbert and Sullivan bibliography (1991) runs to 208 pages and contains 1056 separate items. As a bibliography, it omits press coverage, excludes unpublished archival material, and naturally predates information made available on modern electronic databases and in publications from the last 20 or so years. This superabundance provides a wealth of primary source material and secondary re-evaluation for the modern scholar, as well as much enjoyment for the interested general reader. However, while containing a great deal of biographical information and some criticism of musical and literary style, the overriding emphasis within the literature is on celebration and commemoration of a much-loved oeuvre and its creators. It does not provide much analysis or critical appraisal of the cultural forces which brought the operas into being and which underpinned their popularity.
Part of my task, therefore, is to locate a discussion of the company within the framework of contemporary academic trends towards reassessing the development of British theatre practice, and specifically that of the West End, during the nineteenth century. The bedrock of this recent reconsideration is formed by prominent studies such as Jacky Bratton’s work on the increased divergence of high and low theatrical forms through the nineteenth century (2004), Davis and Emeljanow’s study of audience demographics (2001) and Tracey C. Davis’s examinations of the economics of production and women in the theatrical workplace during this period (2000, 1991). The results of such scholarship have cast new light on the social and cultural factors underpinning Victorian theatre performance and spectatorship, and have been correspondingly influential in the stimulation and explication of my ideas.
Gratifyingly, there has, very recently, been a small but significant increase in studies using modern academic methods to specifically reassess the Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration (Lee 2010; Williams 2011). Most closely related to my approach is Regina Oost’s Gilbert and Sullivan— Class and the Savoy Tradition (2009). Oost’s extensive and meticulous research concentrates on charting the development of the D’Oyly Carte theatre brand within a consumer culture. Her method is to establish relationships between the consumerist tendencies of the late-Victorian bourgeoisie and cultural values contained within the libretti. Oost’s conception of the importance of social class is limited as, for her purposes, class iden2 GILBERT AND SULLIVAN’S
tity is defined almost exclusively by consumption and brand loyalty. She bypasses discussion of the place of D’Oyly Carte personnel within the social structure of their time, and the effects of class-related attitudes on their working lives.
Instead, I examine potential fissures and disparities in what Oost takes to be a comfortably middle-class entertainment experience. Her coverage concludes with a return to the texts of the operas as a vindication of her ideas concerning consumption. In contrast with Oost’s study and with most of the available literature, my argument uses the texts as one of several starting points for examining the mentalité of the late-Victorian bourgeoisie. Dramatic texts, while an essential component of this investigation, are not its focus. Consequently, my approach to the libretti is largely based on the function they fulfil in representing and reinforcing contemporary attitudes.
The operas are, and were, capable of being received and read polysemically by critics and audiences. They can be seen, for example, as genuine critiques of social practices and values (Hayter 1987), as reflecting ‘the levelling absurdities of the human condition’ (Crowther 2000, p. 121) or, as previously mentioned, as a celebration of conspicuous consumption, and veneration of social status (Oost 2009, pp. 1, p.107–16). For the purposes of the argument presented here, it will be presupposed that the satirical intent of the operas was intended primarily as a means of safely exploring and removing contemporary social and cultural anxieties through laughter, while tacitly reaffirming the values which instigated those anxieties in the first place.2 Hence their popularity with an affluent audience base, whose social position and financial standing required the maintenance of a stable, hierarchical and essentially deferential society. The Savoy audience was presented with a satirical critique of itself which avoided any kind of true radicalism, and which implicitly celebrated the very values which were being mocked. Occasionally a hint of an earlier, more radical Gilbert appears. Take for example the song ‘Fold Your Flapping Wings’ from Act Two of Iolanthe. In its original incarnation, Gilbert’s House of Lords satire contained a moment in which Strephon, newly elected to Parliament, reflects on the detrimental effects of social inequality on the disadvantaged:
Take a tipsy lout
Gathered from the gutter –Hustle him about –
Strap him to a shutter:
What am I but he, Washed at hours stated –
Fed on filigree –Clothed and educated?
The social criticism is unambiguous. However, Gilbert was perfectly willing to cut the number following negative press reviews which commented on the inappropriateness of such sentiments in a comic opera (Bradley 2001, p. 436). Clearly he had gone too far.
In common with Iolanthe , the other Savoy operas are permeated by both a criticism and implied reassertion of the culture and values of the Victorian ‘middle class’. Relocating the operas fi rmly within the customs of this culturally dominant group, and seeing the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and its work as being specifi c to a particular time and place, can enable an examination of the relationship between ‘historical forms of theatrical expression and the dominant ideology of a historical period’ (McConachie 2007, p. 92). It can also rescue the operas from being regarded as the pieces of vague, culturally ubiquitous ‘Victoriana’ imagined by later (twentieth- and twenty-fi rst-century) audiences when viewing the works through the nostalgic prism of ‘heritage’ culture.
So the fundamental intention of this book is to examine ways in which late-Victorian attitudes influenced the development and work of the D’Oyly Carte Company, and the early production and performance of this organisation’s most important cultural product, the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. A basic premise of the argument is that a sector of West End theatre in the mid nineteenth century was remade in the image of the respectable ‘middle classes’,3 and reflected the lifestyle, convictions and prejudices of this sector. Two interconnecting themes will be explored. First, that the presence of this organisation as a popular, financially successful and influential theatrical brand can be understood as a particularly important artistic manifestation of a specifically ‘middle-class’ nineteenth-century British cultural ideology. Second, that issues specific to the Victorian theatre, such as the drive towards social acceptability, and the recognition of theatre work as a valid professional pursuit (particularly for female practitioners) are particularly evident in the working lives of the D’Oyly Carte founders and employees.
Another central question is the extent to which the company and its output can be seen to represent a high point of ‘middle-class’ cultural dominance in the latter part of the century. ‘Middle-class’ culture can be so described because it was adopted and propounded by those who were members of the wide social grouping designated as middle class by the financial classifications of contemporary economists. But the term ‘middle class’ can be seen as a cultural, as well as an economic, designation. While the aristocracy retained much of the nation’s wealth and ultimate political power, and the working classes were far more numerous,4 the dominance of the middle classes as employers, and as the major creators and disseminators of cultural products, placed them in a position of cultural authority. Their values and practices were typically propounded in the wider culture by opinion formers who were themselves predominantly economically and occupationally bourgeois. Many of those who held positions of power as employers, professionals, administrators and educators were ‘middle class’ both occupationally and culturally.
Those who wished to improve their living circumstances might do so through processes of acculturation—adopting modes of thought, behaviour and consumption which enabled them to raise their social standing or affiliate themselves advantageously with the economically superior and higher-status ‘middle classes’. People desirous of raising their economic and social conditions by pursuing non-manual occupations were inevitably doing so within the expanding middle-class sphere and were, to some extent, absorbing its values. This kind of acquisition has been explained by Pierre Bourdieu as a desire for ‘cultural capital’—the ‘form of value associated with culturally authorised tastes, consumption patterns, attributes, skills, and awards’ (as described by Webb et al. 2002, p. x). Underlying the attributes of the types of ‘cultural capital’ available in mid- to late-nineteenth-century Britain can be seen a variety of modes of thought and behaviour which, in various combinations, were the manifestation of a late-Victorian ‘middle-class’ ideology. For the sake of conciseness, I propose to refer to this collection of values as ‘respectable’ or pertaining to ‘respectability’.5
‘Respectability’ was, at least in the first half of the century, underpinned by the moral strictures of evangelical Christianity. It encompassed the acceptance and public demonstration of cleanliness, sobriety, thrift, sexual probity, appropriateness of dress and personal presentation, correct speech, and the importance of ‘manners’ and etiquette as indicators
of individual status. To these may be added wider social concerns such as the general acceptance of existing social divisions and hierarchies to secure societal cohesion, and a consciousness of the importance of hard work to achieve financial and personal success. Domesticity was idealised, promoting a notional division between a comfortable, morally dependable family life and the distasteful problems of greed, exploitation and ambition associated with the workplace. Desirable bourgeois housing distanced the ‘middle-class’ family from the reminders of urban working life by being located as far away from the workplace as was financially practicable.
The foundations of this ideological outlook are marvellously lampooned by Gilbert and Sullivan in Ruddigore , which is set ‘early in the nineteenth century’. Two theatrical stock characters, the villain of Victorian melodrama and the mad heroine of romantic opera, are introduced in Act One. By a twist of plot, they reappear in the second act transformed into starched, black-suited, evangelical do-gooders. They explain their transformation from reprobacy to respectability in song, while executing a comically stiff dance to Sullivan’s intentionally portentous accompanying woodwind melody:
MARGARET: I was once an exceedingly odd young lady
DESPARD: Suffering much from spleen and vapours.
MARGARET: Clergymen thought my conduct shady
DESPARD: She didn’t spend much upon linen-drapers.
MARGARET: It certainly entertained the gapers.
My ways were strange
Beyond all range
DESPARD: Paragraphs got into all the papers. (Dance)
DESPARD: We only cut respectable capers.
As is sometimes the case in Savoy opera, Gilbert is satirising tendencies within Victorian society which, by the latter part of the century, had begun to seem old-fashioned and comically déclassé. Presumably, sophisticated West End audiences in the 1880s could be expected to raise a smile at the caricatured attitudes of their grandparents. However, from a twenty-firstcentury viewpoint, the ‘respectable capers’ of Despard and Margaret raise some crucial issues regarding cultural attitudes in the late-Victorian period. The comically abrupt change from the social undesirability of Despard’s
criminality to propriety and conformity carries several possible meanings. First, it reflects awareness among Victorians that, however absurd their manifestation, these traits were the bedrock of social acceptability and societal coherence. Even the possibility of pre-Victorian depravity is cosily diluted for spectators of the 1880s by Despard’s innate ‘goodness’:
SIR D: Poor children, how they loathe me—me whose hands are certainly steeped in infamy, but whose heart is as the heart of a little child! … I get my crime over the first thing in the morning and then, ha! ha! for the rest of the day I do good—I do good—I do good! (melodramatically) Two days since, I stole a child and built an orphan asylum. Yesterday I robbed a bank and endowed a bishopric. To-day I carry off Rose Maybud and atone with a cathedral!
(Ruddigore, Act Two)
Second, the dramatic rapidity of the moral ‘makeover’ in Act Two of Ruddigore indicates an awareness of the dramatic alteration in British attitudes which had occurred in the preceding century. The eminent social historian Harold Perkin notes that
between 1780 and 1850 the English ceased to be one of the most aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in the world, and became one of the most inhibited, polite, orderly, tenderminded, prudish, and hypocritical.
(Perkin 1969, p. 280)
This phenomenon is sent up in the opera through the apparent rapidity, in terms of stage time, of Sir Despard’s moral regeneration. In performance he passes from Regency rake to Victorian prude in about half an hour, give or take an interval break. Connected to Despard’s reformation is the suggestion that respectability is something which can be assumed as necessity dictates. It can be ‘performed’ both on the stage and off by a simple change of costume and a calculated alteration in demeanour. While an essential conformity to a set of dominant values underpinned the selfcensoring nature of Victorian propriety, there remains the notion that the outward show of decorum was just as important as the moral rectitude which lay beneath. Indeed, Margaret’s ‘madness’, which is really an ‘unladylike’ propensity to emotional outbursts, is shown to be in the process of being tamed through the use of a ‘safe word’—‘Basingstoke’—the
Fig. 1.1 The newly reformed Sir Despard (Rutland Barrington) and Mad Margaret (Jessie Bond) relax after their ‘respectable capers’. Ruddigore, Act Two. Public Domain
name of a Hampshire town which ironically represents the apogee of suburban respectability. Personal characteristics which compromise a socially acceptable demeanour are seen to be improved through the application of accepted codes of conduct and behaviour which define respectability. Outward conformity to conventionally reputable conduct is a theme which, as later chapters will show, is fundamental to the ethos of both the Savoy operas and those who brought them into being (Fig. 1.1).
Thus, in order to investigate the extent to which the Savoy operas and the work of both their creators and the D’Oyly Carte Company were indeed ‘respectable capers’, a number of broad but interrelated areas of enquiry will be addressed. Chapter 2 will explore ways in which the ideological values of the ‘middle classes’ influenced the founding, organisation and internal operations of the D’Oyly Carte Company, and how this ideology was exemplified within the texts of the operas. Chapter 3 will investigate the growth of the West End in the latter part of the nineteenth century as a location for entertainment directed at affluent, socially respectable, middleclass audiences. Subsequent chapters will explore ways in which an evening at the Savoy can be seen to reflect and reinforce audience attitudes, the
composition of those audiences, and the ethos of the working practices of the D’Oyly Carte Company. This will lead to an examination, in Chapter 7, of the extent to which production and performance practice demonstrated the existence of a distinctive company ‘style’ which exhibited and embodied the influences of social and cultural factors. Crucial to my argument is the concept of a dual process of cultural influence. If Victorian ‘middle-class’ ideology influenced the founding, organisation and style of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, then the company and its work became, in turn, an exemplification and disseminator of that ideology.
‘Ideology’ and ‘Class’ as concrete terms require some definition in order to explain their significance in this study. As the validity of a class-based approach to Victorian social history has been cast into doubt over the last 30 years, it is worthwhile nailing my colours to the mast from the outset by stating that, in my view, perceptions of class difference, and divisions within social classes, are major factors influencing the economic and cultural origins, and subsequent success, of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. David Cannadine’s comment that ‘there is no such thing as the Late Victorian and Edwardian middle class: it was far too protean, varied and amorphous for that’ (Cannadine 1998, p. 121) is a salutary reminder that such usages are often hard to define as tangible absolutes.6 Nevertheless, if completely specific class definitions and affiliations are amorphous, and subject to interpretation by historians, it is impossible to deny that gross inequalities in distribution of wealth and standards of living were clearly observable in Victorian Britain and were clearly described by contemporaries in terms of ‘class’ difference (Hewitt 2008, p. 305). The triadic model of upper, middle and working classes, earning their livings from rent, from profit and from wages, proposed by Ricardo in the early part of the century, became a predominant (though not exclusive) method of describing social organisation in the nineteenth century. It formed the basis of Marxist class theory, which, in a developed form, underpinned the work of the influential post-war British school of Marxist social historians and cultural commentators (Borsay 2006, p. 75).7
The validity of these views as a determinant of the existence of actual social groupings, to which individuals claim specific and exclusive allegiance, has been eroded in the last 30 years by a number of historians, particularly Cannadine (1998), Joyce (1994) and Wahrman (1995). The concept of the ‘rise of the middle classes’ (popularised by Marxist historians), in which this group, as a ‘new formation … transformed Britain’s economy, society and culture’ (Kidd and Nicholls 1999, p. 2),
was a major casualty of this revisionist analysis.8 ‘Class’ became an ‘imaginary or discursive construct’ (Bailey 1998, p. 5) or ‘rhetoric rather than reality’ (Cannadine 1998, pp. 80–1), an inadequate descriptor of the way people thought, or communicated opinions about themselves. A distinct Victorian ‘middle class’ bounded by certain clearly definable economic, occupational or political parameters could, therefore, no longer be said to ‘exist’ as a historical phenomenon or even, according to Cannadine, as a realistic construct for the Victorians themselves (1998, p. 60).
But if it is no longer tenable to envision a view of society based on metanarratives concerning ‘class consciousness’ and ‘class antagonism’, the use of class by historians of all kinds (including those who rejected Marxist usages) as a means of describing different types of social differentiation in Victorian Britain remains common among scholars of Victorian society and culture.9 The ‘mark of class sticks like a burr in nineteenth-century society and remains among the most potent vectors of difference’ observes Peter Bailey. ‘If class is largely an imagined or invented phenomenon then it must still be imagined or invented out of some thing or things which include material being or experience’ (1998, p. 5). ‘Material being and experience’ are the factors which have been more recently employed to redefine the use of class by historians. For example, Simon Gunn (1999) uses the notion of identity as the means to explore and define the characteristics of the Victorian ‘middle classes’. Factors such as perceived status, gender-based behavioural assumptions, leisure pursuits and modes of consumption are, for Gunn and a number of prominent cultural historians,10 the identifiers of a social grouping which was subject to ‘a constant process of forming and re-forming’ and which resists categorisation via issues of politics or economics. Instead, cultural issues, which directly affected the everyday lives of individuals, can be seen as the factors through which social actors defined their ‘class’ or status position, or had it defined for them by contemporary commentators.
The proposition here is to use the concept of class as both an economic categorisation, and as a means of encapsulating a set of cultural values, a ‘middle-class’ ideology. By ‘ideology’ I follow Raymond Williams’s definition. Ideology is ‘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 unconscious assumptions, bearings and feelings’ (Williams 1980, pp. 26–7).11 This position argues that commonly held values and preoccupations are fundamental to the way individuals perceive society and social relations. They are ubiquitous, are often accepted unquestioningly,
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So the hoardings of Timothy Bayne at last came to do much good. It cleared Deacon Cornhill from his debts. It placed the members of Rob’s young republic all in comfortable circumstances, for it was his own wish and that of his father and mother, that it should be shared among all alike.
What followed can be imagined.
First of all, Mary Little and Tom and Jerry were restored to home. The prisoners were given a fair trial, at which it was shown that one of them was the murderer of Timothy Bayne, and that he had buried the miser’s body in the cellar He had afterward got a clew of the treasure buried in the cellar near where he had made the grave of his victim. He was induced to accompany his companions to dig for the treasure. The result is known. He and his pals were the ones who had robbed the store and post office, also the masked men who had tried to rob our hero on Flying Jump.
They were sentenced as their crimes demanded, and the public felt safer.
Phil Hardy, as Dr. Menter had said, escaped the jail. It was evident he had not really intended to set the fire, and the mill owner was more willing to receive pay for his property than to see the boy go to prison. It was a good lesson to Phil. Nor was it lost on his father, who afterward treated Rob and his friends as they deserved.
In fact, the families of Break o’ Day were now looked upon as the equals of any others in town. Rob knew this came about largely from the fact that they were among the richest now, but he did not mind that, having resolved to merit the good bestowed upon him.
Three new houses were built that fall on Break o’ Day, so it was a busy season. They had decided to live there, though the village people had hoped they would come into town.
Then followed plans for the future. As ours is a story of to-day, these cannot be followed to any great extent. Mr. Bayne and his happy wife live in a comfortable home, eagerly waiting to welcome their son home from college, while Mrs. Willet, quite recovered from former illness, lives with them, waiting, too, for a daughter to graduate,
when the two young people expect to join their fortunes in married life.
There will be another marriage at the same time, when Larry Little will wed sweet Lucy Howlitt, and go to her home to live. Larry is destined to be a prominent citizen of Basinburg, and the coming Fourth he is to deliver the oration of Gainsboro, without having to borrow anything from that consummate snob and worthless fellow, Pluto Snyder.
The other boys and girls of Break o’ Day are also finishing their education, for they believe in acquiring such knowledge as they can to help them in after life. I do not know what their plans are, but I do know that Rob intends to begin the study of medicine with Dr. Menter, and when next I go to Basinburg I expect to find him the regular physician there.
Deacon Cornhill has fully recovered his old-time spirits, and happy in the good work that he was instrumental in bringing about. He is honored and respected in Basinburg, and everywhere he is known, while he never tires of telling the story of his visit to “the big, wicked city, where houses are built edgewise, and men live under the streets.”
I do not think I have left anything unsaid which cannot be readily understood. Of course the strange sounds heard at the old house were not of a supernatural origin, unless the branch of a tree moved by the wind so as to scrape on the roof of the dwelling could be called such.
It has been nearly twenty years since I last visited Break o’ Day, but I remember distinctly the old red house where I stopped overnight, listening that evening to the thrilling story of the murder and mystery of “Old Tim Bayne.” I remember with equal vividness the dreary camps of the coal burners, then falling into decay, and but one of them occupied. I also remember the picture of utter loneliness the dismal scene presented, as the setting sun sank behind the distant forest. But all this has changed, and where then existed darkness and desolation are now to be found life and activity, comfort and happiness, peace and prosperity, for here, on the site of that thriving
village known by the happier title of Mount Delight, was founded, under such adverse circumstances as must have discouraged a less courageous heart, Ragged Rob’s young republic.
THE END.
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Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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