How strange that modern Germany, so gruesome in her Art,
Where sheer sardonic satire has expelled the human heart,
Should also be the Germany that gives us, to our joy,
The perfect children's opera – pure gold without alloy.

I know there are admirers of the super-normal Strauss
Who hold him, matched with others, as a mammoth to a mouse,
And, though they often feel obliged his lapses to deplore,
His "cerebral significance" increasingly adore.

In parts I find him excellent, just like the curate's egg,
But not when he is pulling the confiding public's leg;
Besides, the height of genius I never could explain
As "an infinite capacity for giving others pain."

No, give to me my Engelbert, my gentle Humperdinck,
Whose cerebral development is void of any kink;
Who represents in music, in the most enchanting light,
That good old German quality, to wit Gemüthlichkeit.

I love his gift of melody, now homely in its vein,
Now rising, as befits his theme, to the celestial plane;
I love the rich orchestral tide that carries you along;
I love the cunning counterpoint that underpins the song.

Though scientific pedagogues that golden realm have banned,
He leads us back by pleasant paths to childhood's fairyland,
Till, bald and grey and middle-aged, we watch with childish glee
The very games we learned long since at our dead mother's knee.

There's not a bar of Hänsel's part that's not exactly right;
There's not a note from Gretel that's not a pure delight;
And having heard it lately for (I think) the fifteenth time,
I know I'm talking reason though it happens to be rhyme.

Then let us thank our lucky stars that in a squalid age,
When horror, blood, and ugliness so many pens engage,
One of our master-minstrels, by fashion unbeguiled,
Keeps the unclouded vision of a tender-hearted child.

The sequel is curious, for while the gentle Humperdinck signed the anti-British manifesto issued at the outbreak of the War by leading German professors, men of science and artists, the name of Strauss was conspicuously absent. And as I write Strauss, middle-aged and grey, is revisiting London and, no longer in the van of musical progress, is regarded by our emancipated critics not exactly as a "back number" but certainly as very far from being the "Mad Mullah" of music. Even before the War German operatic music had been superseded in popularity by the Russian school. In June, 1914, Moussorgsky's Boris Godounov was the great feature of the season, and to this, as to Borodine's Prince Igor, Chaliapine, in Punch's phrase, "brought that gift of the great manner, that ease and splendour of bearing, and those superb qualities of voice which, found together, give him a place apart from his kind."

In the domain of light and comic opera the severance of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, though a personal reconciliation was effected, was final so far as collaboration was concerned. Composer and librettist both formed new or renewed old associations – Gilbert with Cellier in The Mountebanks, and Sullivan with Burnand in The Chieftain– but without repeating their old triumphs. When Sullivan died in 1900 his services to art and humanity are read aright in Punch's memorial stanzas: —

In the immortal music rolled from earth
He was content to claim a lowly part,
Yet leaves us purer by the grace and mirth,
Human, that cling about the common heart.

Now on the bound of Music's native sphere,
Whereof he faintly caught some earthward strain,
At length he reads the "Golden Legend" clear,
At length the "Lost Chord" finds itself again.

In musical comedy the high-water mark of popularity was attained by The Geisha in 1896, but though Punch speaks handsomely of Mr. Jones's tuneful numbers – as they deserved – he makes it clear that the success of the piece was chiefly due to the talent and humour of the performers – Marie Tempest and Letty Lind; Monkhouse, Huntley Wright and Hayden Coffin. In 1907 the devastating popularity of The Merry Widow amounted, in Punch's view, as expressed in his "Dirge" on the waltz of that name, to a tyranny rather than a delight; and in the spring of 1913 he was moved to protest, in the name of Music, against the wholesale importation of American coon songs, "Hitchy Koo!" and rag-time generally.

In the middle 'nineties the banjo was still fashionable, and the amateur singer a source of grief and wonderment to Punch: —

WHY DOST THOU SING?

Why dost thou sing? Is it because thou deemest
We love to hear thy sorry quavers ring?
My poor deluded girl, thou fondly dreamest!
Why dost thou sing?

Why dost thou sing? I ask thy sad relations —
They shake their heads, and answer with a sigh.
They can explain thy wild hallucinations
No more than I.

Why dost thou sing? Why wilt thou never weary?
Why wilt thou warble half a note too flat?
I can conceive no reasonable theory
To tell me that.

Why dost thou sing? O Lady, have we ever
In thought or action done thee any wrong?
Then wherefore should'st thou visit us for ever
With thy one song?

Punch gave it up; but in 1910 he declared that "one of the finest efforts accomplished by the gramophone has been the obliteration of the inferior amateur singer."

Pioneers and Prodigies

The musical education of the million advanced apace. No more potent agency for the diffusion of a taste for orchestral music has existed in our times than the Promenade Concerts, directed since 1895 by Sir Henry Wood. The creation of this new audience is described with sympathy and delightful humour in The Promenade Ticket by the late and deeply lamented Arthur Hugh Sidgwick. While recognizing these new and beneficent activities, Punch did not forget the splendid pioneer work done by forerunners – notably Sir August Manns, whose seventieth birthday in 1895 is affectionately celebrated in punning verse. The action of the L.C.C. in 1897, which threatened to put a stop to the Queen's Hall Sunday Concerts, reawakened Punch's anti-Sabbatarian zeal. Not much account is taken of serious native composers, but the rise of Elgar's "star" is acknowledged as early as 1904 in the picture of Richter conducting The Dream of Gerontius.

In 1903 Punch was seriously perturbed by the glut of prodigies, and in a cartoon addresses the child violinist, "Get thee to a nursery. Go!" Yet in 1905, though "not as a rule favourably inclined to infant phenomena," he makes an exception in favour of the thirteen-year-old Mischa Elman. In 1908, in a burlesque account of "A Day in the Life of a Strenuous Statesman," the diarist records his reply to a Socialist Member that "the Government would think not once but twice before they refused to grant special pensions to the parents of infant prodigies earning less than £5,000 a year." On the compulsory musical teaching of the ingenuous youth Punch held views which may be gathered from his picture in 1911 of the unhappy small boy at the pianoforte, with the legend: "The only thing that comes between us, Mother, is this wretched music!" While Punch was benevolent to the little musician, he was decidedly hostile to the cult of bigness in musical scores and instrumentation, and more than once assails the prevalent "Jumbomania" as illustrated by huge bands and the extravagant explosion of all the sonorities. When Strauss in 1903 was the dernier cri of modernism, Punch addressed him in perversion of a much-parodied model: —

O teach us that Discord is duty,
That Melody maketh for sin:
Come down and redeem us from Beauty,
Great Despot of Din.

Hamlet (Mr. Punch) to Ophidlia (the Danish infant musical prodigy): "Get thee to a nursery. Go!"

Elegies and Eulogies

Many heroes and heroines of the Victorian musical world passed away in these years. I have already spoken of Sullivan, but may note the tribute to Rubinstein in 1894 and the song to Sims Reeves in 1895, in which Punch, who had on occasion handled him severely for his failures to fulfil his engagements, was now only concerned to chronicle the triumphs, in ballad and oratorio, of "the king of the tenor tribe" who had fallen in old age on evil days. Sims Reeves, when well over seventy, had been reduced to singing in the Music-Halls, and in 1897 Punch cordially supported the appeal for funds issued by the Daily Telegraph. The results of this public subscription, supplemented by a Civil List pension, helped to relieve his few remaining years.

Corney Grain's death in 1895 removed the most popular musical "entertainer" of the time. Punch, in his farewell salute, gave him the highest possible praise by describing him as having successfully succeeded to John Parry. In 1896 Punch bestowed the bâton of musical Field-Marshal on Lieut. Dan Godfrey on his retirement from the post of bandmaster to the Grenadier Guards, which he had held for fifty years. Dan Godfrey was the first bandmaster who ever held a commission in the army, and had rendered conspicuous service to the cause of military music. Punch's honour was well merited, and Dan Godfrey's son, Dan the Second, conductor of the admirable Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra for nearly thirty years, has added fresh lustre to the family name. In the same year Punch records the presentation, at Marlborough House, of a testimonial to Lady Hallé (Madame Norman Néruda). His account of the proceedings border on the burlesque, but there is nothing but admiration for the brilliant artist who had delighted British audiences ever since the days of her début as a prodigy nearly fifty years before, and who had been one of the glories of the "Pops" in their golden prime. Nor did Punch forget to add his congratulations to Henry Bird when that fine artist, respected and loved by all who knew him, celebrated his Jubilee in 1910: —

Minstrels, like bards, are irritable folk
Whom trifles oft provoke
To sudden fury or unseemly tears;
But you, blithe spirit, from your earliest years
Have been undeviatingly urbane,
Free from all frills, considerate, courteous, sane,
And to the end will so remain.
Wherefore, with deepest reverence imbued
For your supreme pianofortitude,
And by melodious memories rarely stirred,
Punch hails your Jubilee, O tuneful Bird!

The author of those lines, on another occasion, rendered Mr. Bird a serious disservice. A propos of the invasion of the Music-Halls by serious performers, he had published a purely fictitious announcement that Mr. Henry Bird would shortly appear on the Variety stage as "The Terrible Transposer" – an allusion to his notorious skill in that direction. This was copied into the parish magazine of St. Mary Abbot's, Kensington, where Mr. Bird had been for many years organist, but the editor's ironical comment was misinterpreted, and the announcement was taken seriously, with the result that Mr. Bird was bombarded with inquiries from applicants for the post. A man with a less angelic temper would have been annoyed; but Mr. Bird was only amused.

SPORT AND PASTIME

The chronicles of sport and pastime from the early 'nineties down to the outbreak of the War are one long and instructive commentary on the old saying that in the long run the pupil always beats his master. At the opening of this period, though assailed in the domain of athletic sports by the Americans, and in that of cricket by the Australians, Great Britain still led the world in games and most forms of sport. At its close there was no form of organized physical effort, whether individual or collective, in which we had not been effectively challenged or defeated by the superior skill or endurance of competitors from overseas. In cricket, football, rowing, golf, polo, yachting, lawn tennis and boxing, we had met our match and more than our match; and the insular complacency which prevailed in the 'nineties had given place in certain minds to a mood of depression, made vocal in the Duke of Westminster's letter to The Times in the autumn of 1913, in which he described our failure to take the Olympic games seriously and the loss of championships as "a national disaster." In the interval sport and pastime had become an international preoccupation. Punch in earlier years had been strongly in favour of international contests as a means of promoting international good will. He was not so certain on this point by 1913, but it is to his credit that he viewed the whole subject in its true perspective, recognizing that the spirit in which a game was played was a truer test of sportsmanship than the achievement of success; that the best sportsmen were "good losers"; and, above all, that national efficiency did not vary directly with the number of athletic championships collected by the nation. As early as 1892 these principles emerge in his reference to a boat-race at Andrésy on the Seine, when the English crew were defeated by the French. The title of the verses, "Froggie would a-rowing go," is not promising but their spirit is excellent: —

For in spite of the brag and the bounce and the chaff,
Heigho for Rowing!
The Frog beat the Bull by a length and a half,
With your Mossop and James, licked by Boudin and Cuzin,
Heigho! says R. C. Lehmann!

So in 1893 he hailed the appearance of the French crew at Henley: —

Punch greets you with cheers, may your shades ne'er diminish,
Though you row forty-four from the start to the finish.

Only friendship could result from such contests. At the same time, in "The British Athlete's Vade-Mecum," he rebukes his countrymen's contempt for the foreigner's idea of sport. When Oxford beat Yale in the inter-University sports in 1894, Punch was wise enough to foresee that the triumph was not final: —

Come again, Yale, come again, and again;
Victors or vanquished such visits aren't vain.
One of these days you will probably nick us.
We don't crow when we lick; we won't cry when you lick us!

A similar spirit animates the cartoon on the Cambridge and Harvard boat-race in 1906, in which Father Thames, as "The Jolly Waterman," takes pride in both crews, while the accompanying verses on "Light Blue and Crimson" emphasize that camaraderie of rowing which the writer, "R. C. L.," did so much to foster. The races for the America Cup were, in their earlier stages, when Lord Dunraven was the challenger, more productive of friction than cordiality. Sir Thomas Lipton's indefatigable persistence in his efforts to "lift the Cup" from 1901 onward does not pass unacknowledged, but Punch's consolation is not free from irony: —

Bear up, Sir T.; remember Bruce's spider;
Build further Shamrocks through the coming-years;
Virtue like yours, though long retirement hide her,
Ends in the House of Peers.

Cups, Championships and Olympic Games

So an element of ridicule is not wanting in the burlesque diaries published in 1903 of "Lipton Day by Day" and "Lipton Minute by Minute," or in the mock-heroic cartoon of Sir Thomas as "The Last of the Vikings and the First of the Tea-kings."

Lawn tennis in the middle 'nineties was still a predominantly British pastime. In his account of the Northern Tournament in 1895 not a single American or foreign competitor is named, and Punch bewails the absence of the old heroes, the Renshaws and Lawford, and the defection of Miss Lottie Dod, who had already given up lawn tennis for golf. In 1906 the prowess of Miss May Sutton, the American girl who carried off the Ladies' Championship at Wimbledon, is celebrated in eulogistic "Limericks." But it was still a far cry to the Wimbledon of even seven years later, when French and German, as well as American and Australian players, entered the arena. Uncle Sam had been busy collecting championships in the interval, and in August, 1913, Punch represented him, carrying a model yacht, a tennis racket and a polo stick (he might have added a golf club in view of Mr. Travis's triumph at Sandwich in 1904), saying to a rather rueful-looking John Bull in cricketing costume: "Say, John, what's this game, anyway? Cricket? Well, see here; mail me a copy of the rules, with date of next international championship. I'm just crazy on Cups." The Olympic Games furore left Punch cold. The Duke of Westminster's letter on the "national disaster" of 1912 prompts a satirical cartoon in which John Bull, "prostrate with shame," remarks: "My place in the Council of Europe may be higher than ever, but what's the use of that when the Olympic palm for the kneeling high jump is borne by another?" The "Olympic Catechism," published in the following number, is a bitter but not wholly undeserved criticism of the spirit, organization and results of these contests, and the evasion by their promoters of the difficulty of discriminating between professionals and amateurs. To the question, "How is the Olympic spirit acquired?" Punch supplies the following answer: —

A. By taking part in the Olympic games; by subscribing to the Duke of Westminster's fund; by devoting oneself to the discovery of champions; by advertising; by organizing a boom; by promising a public reception to successful athletes; by paying their expenses; by —

Q. I see. Then I suppose Great Britain has no athletics at present?

A. No, none of the right sort.

Q. What is the right sort?

A. The sort that is imbued with the Olympic spirit.

Q. Does everybody like the Olympic spirit?

A. Yes, everybody who is anybody.

Q. But if somebody says he dislikes it?

A. Then he is a crank.

Q. What is a crank?

A. One who has not got the Olympic spirit.

Q. Are the subscriptions coming in?

A. I refuse to answer further questions.

The search for Olympic talent inspired a succession of burlesque pictures; and the fostering of the "Olympic Spirit" is reduced to absurdity by the drawing of the lady presenting a classic wreath to the winner of the sack-race in some village sports.

The introduction of base-ball in 1892 is chronicled pictorially in a grotesque illustration of the attitudes of the players. But the interest now taken in the game, and reflected in the publication of "base-ball results" on the tape and in the sporting columns of the Press, was essentially a post-war product. Cricket reigned paramount in Punch's affections, at any rate in the 'nineties. When Mr. C. I. Thornton was presented with a silver trophy during the Scarborough Week in 1894, as a memento of the great part he had taken in the Scarborough Festival since its institution in 1869, Punch paid lyrical homage to "Buns," the "great slogger of sixes." The Preface to vol. cviii. (1895) is headed by a picture of Punch, "W. G." and the shade of Alfred Mynn. Reference is made in the text to the National Testimonial to Grace which was got up this year, and Punch suggests that "W. G." ought to receive a knighthood. He was not alone in the suggestion, for The Times subsequently referred to "Dr. W. G. Grace, whose name has been everywhere of late – except where it might well have been, in the Birthday Honours List," and Punch improved on the text in June: —

Gentleman and Players

True, Thunderer, true! He stands the test Unmatched, unchallengeable Best At our best game! Requite him! For thirty years to hold first place And still, unpassed, keep up the pace Pleases a stout, sport-loving race. By Jove! "Sir William Gilbert Grace" Sounds splendid. Punch says, "Knight him!"

In the same summer "W. G." is glorified in "The Cricket Three": —

Men of one skill though varying in race,
Maclaren, Ranjitsinhji, Grand Old Grace.

Ranji was "champion cricketer" of the year in 1896, and Punch indited an "Ode to the Black Prince" with a portrait by Sambourne. Yet the cricket world was not without its frictions and difficulties. In this year the professionals had claimed a higher rate of pay than the regulation £10 for taking part in matches against Australia, and Punch intervenes in a cartoon in which he gives Grace, Abel and Trott the toast of the Three F's – "Fair Play, Fair Pay and Friendliness." Punch a year earlier had congratulated the Committee of the Rugby Union on their decision that "Professionalism was illegal," thus showing their determination to "keep the ball out of the Moneygrub's sordid slime." But while he deplored the prospect of strikes and lock-outs in the cricket world, he clearly held that here, at any rate, the status of the professional was securely established and deserved considerate treatment. England won the rubber, rather unexpectedly, in 1896, and Punch singles out Grace, Peel, Hearne and Abel for special honour. The English visiting team were defeated in Australia in the winter of 1898, and Punch, in his "Eleven Little Reasons Why," genially satirizes those critics who tried to explain it away: —

Because of course they play cricket in Australia all the year round.

Because it was too hot for anything, and of course the English team were unaccustomed to the heat.

Because there was a chapter of accidents from the first, and everyone had bad luck.

Because the coin never would come down the right side on the top, and consequently the British could not go in first.

Because the ground got hopelessly out of order by the time that the first innings of the Australians was over.

Because the constant travelling and occasional fêting were enough to put everyone out of form.

Because there ought to have been more extra men to fill up the ranks on emergencies.

Because at least one admirable cricketer was left at home whose services on several occasions would have been invaluable.

Because the tea interval coming after the luncheon pause was confusing to the Mother Countrymen.

Because the glorious uncertainty of cricket is proverbial, and success may be deserved, but cannot on that account be always attained.

Lastly, and probably the right reason, because the other side had the better men.

Loving cricket as he did Punch was yet fully alive to the English tendency to think that success with the bat or ball qualified a man for anything, and made good capital out of a letter in The Times in 1899, in which the writer, "LL.B. and M.A., London," had written of the late Sir Michael Foster, then a candidate for the representation of the University in Parliament: "Michael Foster was a capital cricketer. He kept wicket for the first eleven… No better candidate could possibly be found." I have elsewhere noted his reference to the clergyman who in the same year had declared that what his village really needed in a curate was "a good fast bowler with a break from the off." Towards the new type of cricketing journalist which emerged about the close of the century Punch was not exactly benevolent; the duplication of functions was remunerative, but could not conduce to impartial reporting when the writer was also a performer. In the last ten years of this period Punch's references to cricket are much less frequent, but we may note his excellent Latin joke in 1906 on the discomfiture of the Players at Lord's —urgentur … longa Nocte, i.e. by long Knox, the famous amateur fast bowler. The triumph of Warwickshire – champion county in 1911 – is commemorated in the cartoon, "Two Gentlemen of Warwickshire," with the ingenious legend: —

Mr. F. R. Foster (Captain of the Warwickshire XI): "Tell Kent from me she hath lost." (II Henry VI, iv, 10.)

William Shakespeare: "Warwick, thou art worthy!" (III Henry VI, iv, 6.)

Lord's and Ladies

Cricket was increasingly played by girls, but both at the beginning and the end of the period the female spectator left much to be desired. After the Oxford and Cambridge match in 1896 Punch wrote some verses on the attraction of "Lord's" for ladies, which end on a note of severe remonstrance: —

If, Phyllis, you your place must take
Between me and the wicket,
Don't chatter, and for goodness' sake
Sit still and watch the cricket.

In 1912 appeared the picture, "At the Eton and Harrow Match." Here an "important lady" addresses deep square-leg, standing near the boundary, "Would you kindly move away? It's quite impossible for my daughter to see my nephew, who is batting."

First Officer (to very young Subaltern, who is packing his kit for South Africa): "What on earth do you want with all those polo sticks?"

Subaltern: "Well, I thought we should get our fighting done by luncheon-time, and then we should have the afternoons to ourselves and could get a game of polo!"

If cricket claims less notice in Punch's pages, it must not be taken to imply any lessening of his love. The reason is to be found in the richer field for satire and ridicule provided by other pastimes. The immense development of Association football as a spectacular game, and the wholesale importation of hireling players to represent a district to which they did not belong, found no favour with Punch. His picture of Football Fever in the Midlands on Saturday afternoon in 1892 is deliberately grotesque and hostile. By 1904 the achievements of the Dominions and of Wales in the Rugby game lend point to Punch's burlesque forecast of the "Football of the Future." International matches are to be "refereed" by well-known statesmen; Esperanto is to be spoken; and Great Britain is represented by a team of fourteen New Zealanders and one Welshman. In 1910 a weekly paper advocated weeping for men as "the true elixir of energy and the greatest of Nature's restoratives." This pronouncement was turned to good account in "A Cup Tie Episode," relating how a team, with three – love against them at half-time, turned the tables on their opponents after a copious outburst of tears. Again, when a daily paper in 1913 conducted a referendum amongst its readers to ascertain what subjects of public interest were insufficiently treated in its columns, Punch asserts that "to the Editor's question 465,326 readers replied, football; 235,473, golf; 229,881, flying; and 2, foreign politics." The burlesque snapshots published in the same year if reprinted to-day would hardly be an exaggeration of the latest inanities of the camera in the football field.

While Punch might plead guilty to an "insufficient treatment" of professional football, and glory in his guilt, he could not be charged with a similar neglect of golf. As a solace to the unsuccessful lady lawn-tennis player it is recommended, as early as 1894, in an audacious travesty of Goldsmith: —

When lovely woman tries to volley,
But finds that men refuse to play,
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What game can take her grief away?

The means her spirits to recover,
To still the jeers of those that scoff,
To fascinate the tardy lover,
And gain his favour is – to Golf.

First Caddie: "Who're ye foor this morning, Angus?"

Second Caddie: "A'm foor the petticoats."

Punch and Tom Morris

Sacrilegious hands are laid on Mrs. Browning, in 1902, in the lament of "The Golf Widows" – i.e. women whose husbands do nothing but play or talk golf – an excellent satire on the selfishness, the "shop," and the strong language of the "strong man off his game." But there are golfers and golfers; and Punch recognized one of the real heroes of the game in his "Royal and ancient friend," old Tom Morris, whose resignation of his post as green-keeper at St. Andrew's inspired this genial salutation: —

Well have you borne your fourscore years and two,
Faithful in service, as in friendship true;
Now, pacing slowly homewards from the Turn,
Long may it be before you cross the Burn,
And, ere you tread your well-loved links no more,
May eight-two (plus twenty) be your score.

The popularity of golf in France has led to the framing of a complete glossary of French equivalents for the terminology of the game. Punch, as a good humanist, essayed a similar task at a time when the revival of Latin for conversational purposes was proposed by some hardy classicists. As he justly remarks: "The advantages of Latin in this context will not have escaped the notice of even the most superficial observers. Thus the bad effect on caddies of using strong language in the vernacular is entirely obviated. Again, when the ball is lying dead, only a dead language can render justice to the situation."

"'I can only emphasize the fact that I consider that physically, morally, and socially, the benefits that cycling confers on the men of the present day are almost unbounded.' (Aside) Wish I were on a 'Safety'!!"

Bicycling, Croquet, Swimming

Of the brief vogue of bicycling among the "smart set" I have spoken already. The abuse of this indispensable machine inspired a new version of "Daisy Bell, or a Bicycle Made for Two" – "Blazy Bill or the Bicycle Cad" – of which it may suffice to quote the last stanza: —

Blazy! Blazy!
Turn up wild wheeling, do!
I'm half crazy,
All in blue funk of you.
The "Galloping Snob" was a curse, Sir,
But the Walloping Wheelman is worser;
I'd subscribe half a quid
To be thoroughly rid
Of all Bicycle Cads like you.

As a set-off, however, in "Facilis Descensus" Punch sings gaily and genially of the "dear little Bishop" who had bought a new "bike" and found that in the joys of the wheel nothing could come up to "coasting." The picture of Mr. Gladstone on the old "ordinary" is not a representation of fact, but I print it as a reminder of the appearance of that remarkable and perilous-looking machine. Croquet, which had led a submerged existence for several years, reasserted itself in 1894, and Punch, in affected astonishment, asked, "Are we back in the 'sixties again?" The revival was attributed by the Pall Mall Gazette to the abolition of "tight croqueting," a phrase which gave Punch openings for facetious comment. In the previous year he had disrespectfully spoken of croquet as the "feeblest game," and yet admitted that, given a pretty partner, it beat golf and polo. Swimming, in its heroic form, loomed large in 1905, and in Punch's picture the Channel is black with male and female athletes, while an article is devoted to a fictitious account of an hotel at Dover specially equipped to meet their needs. Women had by now taken so kindly to all kinds of sport and pastime that Punch sought to reduce their competition to absurdity in the dialogue of two stalwart young men who preferred arranging flowers to shooting or golfing, because they had become "so effeminate." The sporting woman, by the way, was no favourite of Du Maurier's. Ten years earlier he had portrayed an odious specimen of the new womanhood in Miss Goldenberg, who, in reply to the question of the charming vicar's wife whether she had had good sport, replies jauntily: "Oh, rippin'! I only shot one rabbit, but I managed to injure quite a dozen more!" The "Ballad of the Lady Hockey-player" in 1903 ascribes to her a distinctly matrimonial purpose: —