Friends in Council Part 4

Dunsford. Very n.o.ble and full of faith.

Ellesmere. Touching the essay, I like it well enough; but, perhaps, people will expect to find more about recreation itself--not only about the good of it, but what it is, and how it is to be got.

Milverton. I do not incline to go into detail about the matter.

The object was to say something for the respectability of recreation, not to write a chapter of a book of sports. People must find out their own ways of amusing themselves.

Ellesmere. I will tell you what is the paramount thing to be attended to in all amus.e.m.e.nts--that they should be short. Moralists are always talking about "short-lived" pleasures: would that they were!

Dunsford. Hesiod told the world, some two thousand years ago, how much greater the half is than the whole.

Ellesmere. Dinner-givers and managers of theatres should forthwith be made aware of that fact. What a sacrifice of good things, and of the patience and comfort of human beings, a c.u.mbrous modern dinner is! I always long to get up and walk about.

Dunsford. Do not talk of modern dinners. Think what a Roman dinner must have been.

Milverton. Very true. It has always struck me that there is something quite military in the sensualism of the Romans--an "arbiter bibendi" chosen, and the whole feast moving on with fearful precision and apparatus of all kinds. Come, come! the world's improving, Ellesmere.

Ellesmere. Had the Romans public dinners? Answer me that. Imagine a Roman, whose theory, at least, of a dinner was that it was a thing for enjoyment, whereas we often look on it as a continuation of the business of the day--I say, imagine a Roman girding himself up, literally girding himself up to make an after-dinner speech.

Milverton. I must allow that is rather a barbarous practice.

Ellesmere. If charity, or politics, cannot be done without such things, I suppose they are useful in their way; but let n.o.body ever imagine that they are a form of pleasure. People smearing each other over with stupid flattery, and most of the company being in dread of receiving some compliment which should oblige them to speak!

Dunsford. I should have thought, now, that you would always have had something to say, and therefore that you would not be so bitter against after-dinner speaking.

Ellesmere. No; when I have nothing to say, I can say nothing.

Milverton. Would it not be a pleasant thing if rich people would ask their friends sometimes to public amus.e.m.e.nts--order a play for them, for instance--or at any rate, provide some manifest amus.e.m.e.nt?

They might, occasionally with great advantage, abridge the expense of their dinners; and throw it into other channels of hospitality.

Ellesmere. Ah, if they would have good acting at their houses, that would be very delightful; but I cannot say that the being taken to any place of public amus.e.m.e.nt would much delight me. By the way, Milverton, what do you say of theatres in the way of recreation?

This decline of the drama, too, is a thing you must have thought about: let us hear your notions.

Milverton. I think one of the causes sometimes a.s.signed, that reading is more spread, is a true and an important one; but, otherwise, I fancy that the present decline of the drama depends upon very small things which might be remedied. As to a love of the drama going out of the human heart, that is all nonsense. Put it at the lowest, what a great pleasure it is to hear a good play read.

And again, as to serious pursuits unfitting men for dramatic entertainments, it is quite the contrary. A man, wearied with care and business, would find more change of ideas with less fatigue, in seeing a good play, than in almost any other way of amusing himself.

Dunsford. What are the causes then of the decline of the drama?

Milverton. In England, or rather in London,--for London is England for dramatic purposes; in London, then, theatrical arrangements seem to be framed to drive away people of sense. The noisome atmosphere, the difficult approach, the over-size of the great theatres, the intolerable length of performances.

Ellesmere. Hear! hear!

Milverton. The crowding together of theatres in one part of the town, the lateness of the hours--

Ellesmere. The folly of the audience, who always applaud in the wrong place--

Dunsford. There is no occasion to say any more; I am quite convinced.

Milverton. But these annoyances need not be. Build a theatre of moderate dimensions; give it great facility of approach; take care that the performances never exceed three hours; let lions and dwarfs pa.s.s by without any endeavour to get them within the walls; lay aside all ambition of making stage waves which may almost equal real Ramsgate waves to our c.o.c.kney apprehensions. Of course there must be good players and good plays.

Ellesmere. Now we come to the part of Hamlet.

Milverton. Good players and good plays are both to be had if there were good demand for them. But, I was going to say, let there be all these things, especially let there be complete ventilation, and the theatre will have the most abundant success. Why, that one thing alone, the villainous atmosphere at most public places, is enough to daunt any sensible man from going to them.

Dunsford. There should be such a choice of plays--not merely Chamberlain-clipt--as any man or woman could go to.

Milverton. There should be certainly, but how is such a choice to be made, if the people who could regulate it, for the most part, stay away? It is a dangerous thing, the better cla.s.ses leaving any great source of amus.e.m.e.nt and instruction wholly, or greatly, to the less refined cla.s.ses.

Dunsford. Yes, I must confess it is.

Great part of your arguments apply to musical as well as to theatrical entertainments. Do you find similar results with respect to them?

Milverton. Why, they are not attended by any means as they would be, or made what they might be, if the objections I mentioned were removed.

Dunsford. What do you say to the out-of-door entertainments for a town population?

Milverton. As I said before, my dear Dunsford, I cannot give you a chapter of a "Book of Sports." There ought, of course, to be parks for all quarters of the town: and I confess it would please me better to see, in holiday times and hours of leisure, hearty games going on in these parks, than a number of people sauntering about in uncomfortably new and unaccustomed clothes.

Ellesmere. Do you not see, Dunsford, that, like a cautious official man, he does not want to enter into small details, which have always an air of ridicule? He is not prepared to pledge himself to cricket, golf, football, or prisoner's bars; but in his heart he is manifestly a Young Englander--without the white waistcoat. Nothing would please him better than to see in large letters, on one of those advertising vans, "Great match! Victoria Park!! Eleven of Fleet Street against the Eleven of Saffron Hill!!!"

Milverton. Well, there is a great deal in the spirit of Young England that I like very much, indeed that I respect.

Ellesmere. I should like the Young England party better myself if I were quite sure there was no connection between them and a clan of sour, pity-mongering people, who wash one away with eternal talk about the contrast between riches and poverty; with whom a poor man is always virtuous; and who would, if they could, make him as envious and as discontented as possible.

Milverton. Nothing can be more strikingly in contrast with such thinkers than Young England. Young Englanders, according to the best of their theories, ought to be men of warm sympathy with all cla.s.ses. There is no doubt of this, that very seldom does any good thing arise, but there comes an ugly phantom of a caricature of it, which sidles up against the reality, mouths its favourite words as a third-rate actor does a great part, under-mimics its wisdom, over- acts its folly, is by half the world taken for it, goes some way to suppress it in its own time, and, perhaps, lives for it in history.

Ellesmere. Well brought out, that metaphor, but I don't know that it means more than that the followers of a system do in general a good deal to corrupt it, or that when a great principle is worked into human affairs, a considerable accretion of human folly and falseness mostly grows round it: which things some of us had a suspicion of before.

Dunsford. To go back to the subject. What would you do for country amus.e.m.e.nts, Milverton? That is what concerns me, you know.

Milverton. Athletic amus.e.m.e.nts go on naturally here: do not require so much fostering as in towns. The commons must be carefully kept: I have quite a Cobbettian fear of their being taken away from us under some plausible pretext or other. Well, then, it strikes me that a great deal might be done to promote the more refined pleasures of life among our rural population. I hope we shall live to see many of Hullah's pupils playing an important part in this way. Of course, the foundation for these things may best be laid at schools; and is being laid in some places, I am happy to say.

Ellesmere. Humph, music, sing-song!

Milverton. Don't you observe, Dunsford, that when Ellesmere wants to attack us, and does not exactly see how, he mutters to himself sarcastically, sneering himself up, as it were, to the attack.

Ellesmere. You and Dunsford are both wild for music, from barrel- organs upwards.

Milverton. I confess to liking the humblest attempts at melody.

Dunsford. I feel as Sir Thomas Browne tells us he felt, that "even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound contemplation of the first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers; it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of G.o.d: such a melody to the ear as the whole world well understood, would afford the understanding."

Milverton. Apropos of music in country places, when I was going about last year in the neighbouring county, I saw such a pretty scene at one of the towns. They had got up a band, which played once a week in the evening. It was a beautiful summer evening, and the window of my room at the end overlooked the open s.p.a.ce they had chosen for their performances. There was the great man of the neighbourhood in his carriage looking as if he came partly on duty, as well as for pleasure. Then there were burly tradesmen, with an air of quiet satisfaction, sauntering about, or leaning against railings. Some were no doubt critical--thought that Will Miller did not play as well as usual this evening. Will's young wife, who had come out to look again at him in his band dress (for the band had a uniform), thought differently. Little boys broke out into imaginary polkas, having some distant reference to the music: not without grace though. The sweep was pre-eminent: as if he would say, "Dirty and sooty as I am I have a great deal of fun in me. Indeed, what would May-day be but for me?" Studious little boys of the free-school, all green gra.s.shopper-looking, walked about as boys knowing something of Latin. Here and there went a couple of them in childish loving way, with their arms about each other's necks.

Matrons and shy young maidens sat upon the door-steps near. Many a merry laugh filled up the interludes of music. And when evening came softly down upon us, the band finished with "G.o.d save the Queen," the little circle of those who would hear the last note moved off, there was a clattering of shutters, a s.h.i.+ning of lights through cas.e.m.e.nt-windows, and soon the only sound to be heard was the rough voice of some villager, who would have been too timid to adventure anything by daylight, but now sang boldly out as he went homewards.

Ellesmere. Very pretty, but it sounds to me somewhat fabulous.

Milverton. I a.s.sure you--

Ellesmere. Yes, you were tired, had a good dinner, read a speech for or against the corn-laws, fell asleep of course, and had this ingenious dream, which, to this day, you believe to have been a reality. I understand it all.