CHAPTER XIX RECREATION

To amuse oneself is the great art of life. From the English point of view, the finest kind of amusement is to be obtained by killing something. Fox-hunting, deer-stalking, grouse-shooting, pheasant-shooting, pigeon-shooting, and even rabbit-shooting still stand for a great deal among the best class of Englishmen. Of old, the masses had their bull-baitings, dog-fights, and cock-fights. These, however, are no longer regarded as legitimate forms of amusement, and the masses, being for various reasons unable to hunt foxes and shoot pheasants, have to fall back on recreations in which killing takes place only by accident. There is the race-course and the football-field. The masses are expected to[Pg 184] consider themselves happy. Outside racing and football, however, the come-day, go-day Englishman has a good many facilities for recreation. Although in most communities the grandfatherly authorities have abolished the old feasts and fairs, which provided periodic saturnalia of merry-go-rounds and wild-beast shows, it is a poor townlet which cannot nowadays boast its permanent settlement of cocoanut-shies and shooting-galleries, where on Saturday evenings the true-born Englishman may find substantial joys. Then, for the Londoner, in addition to this kind of thing, there are from time to time provided vast orgies at Hampstead Heath, the Welsh Harp, Barnet Fair, and other choice resorts. Here, again, it is a case of cocoanuts, shooting-galleries, swing-boats, steam-roundabouts, and a?rial flights, backed up with donkey-rides, a free use of the tickler and the ladies' teaser, unlimited confetti throwing, and unlimited beer. These amusements, of course, are on the face of them quite innocent, and equally English and unintellectual.

[Pg 185]

Failing merry-go-rounds and cocoanut-shies, the delights of which are apt to pall, the English masses have still left to them their main redoubt of rational enjoyment, which, for reasons no man may skill, is called the music-hall. The English music-hall is practically an expansion or efflorescence of the old-fashioned "sing-song." Sixty years ago the man who went out to take a stoup of ale at his inn was accustomed to be regaled with a little music free of charge. Mine host had possessed himself of a second-hand piano, and secured the services of some broken-down musician to play it for him. There was a great singing of old songs, and the time sped merrily, as it did in the golden age. These feasts of harmony brought custom, and in course of time the evening "sing-songs" at certain hostelries became organised institutions and were run on lines of great enterprise, the piano being supplemented by an orchestra, and the pianist by a number of professional singers and entertainers. Within the last fifty years the "sing-song" has been[Pg 186] separated from its parent the alehouse, and has developed into the music-hall. To-day the English music-halls are almost as thick on the ground as churches and chapels. In the metropolis you would have a difficulty to count them. In the provinces every town of size supports two or three halls, and insists on London talent and London style. The class of entertainment provided may be costly and amusing, but it is certainly not edifying. The performers almost to a man, and one might say to a woman, are persons who can be considered "artists" only in the broadest sense, and whose ignorance and vulgarity are as colossal as their salaries.

Roughly, the entertainment may be divided into two sections, the one concerned with feats of strength, juggling, and the like, and the other with laughter-making and vocalism. As regards the first of these sections, a man who can balance a horse and trap on the end of his chin appears to give great satisfaction to an English audience. Why this should be so, nobody knows. The[Pg 187] good purpose that may be served by balancing a horse and trap on the end of one's chin is not obvious; but the English masses are ravished by the spectacle. They also have a great fondness for the stout lady who catches cannon-balls on the back of her neck, for the other stout lady who risks her life nightly on the flying trapeze, for the gentleman who walks about the stage with a piano under one arm and a live mule under the other, and for the gentleman who rides the bicycle standing on his head. To the mind of the English masses these are marvels and well worth the money. They give a zest to life, they provide material for conversation, and their attraction seems perennial.

The great stand-by of the halls, however, is the laughter-making and vocal department. Here shine the great stars whose names are familiar on English lips as household words. Here is purveyed the culture, the song, and the humour of the English masses. It is from the music-hall stage that the vast majority of Englishmen take their[Pg 188] tone and their sentiment. That renowned comedian, Fred Fetchem, strolls on to the boards of the Frivolity some night, and, assuming a fiendish grin, exclaims idiotically; "There's 'air!" Next morning and for many weeks thereafter all England says; "There's 'air!" on any and every occasion. "What ho she bumps!" "Now, we sha'n't be long," "Not half," "Did he?" and similar catchwords, all popular and all meaningless, capture the English imagination in their turn, and for a season, at any rate, Englishmen can say nothing else. It is the same with the music-hall song. Always there are current in England three or four "songs of the hour," which every Englishman worth the name sings, whistles, or hums; and always these songs, from whatever point of view regarded, are of the most blithering and bathotic nature. At the present moment the prime and universal favourite is that pathetic ditty, Everybody's Loved by Some One. For the benefit of the English, I quote the first stanza and the chorus of this work:

[Pg 189]

A lady stood within a busy city,
Her darling little daughter by her side;
She'd stopped to buy a bunch of pretty violets
From a ragged little orphan she espied.
The words she spoke were kinder than the boy had heard for years;
And in reply to what she asked, he murmur'd through his tears,

Everybody's loved by some one, everybody knows that's true,
Some have father and mother dear; sister and brother, too.
All the time that I remember, since I was a mite so small,
I seem to be the only one that nobody loves at all.

With this enchanting song the English welkin resounds by day and night. The great, broad-shouldered, genial Englishman, full of four-ale and bad whisky, howls it in chorus at his favourite "public," work-girls sing it in factories, mothers rock their children to sleep with it, and every English urchin whistles or shouts it at you with unflagging zest. Of course, there are others; for example, there is I'm a P'liceman, which goes like this:

[Pg 190]

In the inky hour of midnight, when the clock is striking three,
As I stroll along my beet-root, many curious things I see:
Ragged urchins stagger past me to their mansions in the west;
Millionaires, through cold and hunger, on our doorsteps sink to rest;
Dirty dustmen in their broughams, off to supper at the "Cri.";
Then "Bill Sykes," the burglar, passes, with an eye-glass in his eye.

Such are the sights I witness when I am on my beat,
Filling my heart with sawdust, filling my boots with feet;
Covering half the pavement up with my "plates of meat,"
Though mother sent to say that I'm a p'liceman—

which—need one remark?—is intended for what the Scots are supposed to call "wut." Also, there is He Stopped:

Pendlebury Plum had a wart on his gum,
And he rubbed it with sand-paper hard;
The wart on his gum made Plum fairly hum,
When it stuck out about half a yard.
The wart grew so quick, when he rubbed it with a brick,
Till it looked like a short billiard-cue;
Said Plum to himself, "I shall die on the shelf,
For I'm darned if I know what to do."
[Pg 191]
So he went and got a pick-axe and shov'd it underneath,
Then he lifted up his jaw, and he swallowed all his teeth;
Then he stopped!

The verses I have quoted are a good, true, and fair sample of the kind of thing that finds favour among the English masses. I do not think that anything better is being proffered, and it is pretty certain that anything less inane would be doomed to failure. The fact is that the English mind in the lump is flat, coarse, and maggoty, and the English understanding is as the understanding of a feeble and ill-bred child. A couple of generations ago the songs popular among Englishmen had some claim to coherence, decency, and common sense; nowadays, however, the Englishman admits that "he cannot sing the old songs." He has gone farther and fared worse, and among the many symptoms of his decadence, none is more pronounced than his easy toleration of the balderdash that is being served up to him by the "'alls."