The president, Dr Dukinfield Scott, opened the proceedings by noting that they were commemorating the first time the ‘now classic term’ natural selection was used. He was delighted to say that of Darwin’s original supporters and friends Wallace himself and Hooker, now Sir Joseph Hooker, were present. The oldest of Darwin’s supporters, Lyell, had died in 1875, and the youngest, Huxley, in 1895. Wallace was the first recipient of the Darwin–Wallace Medal bearing the head of Darwin on one side and that of Wallace on the other, which had been specially struck for the occasion.172 Hooker was presented with the second medal, then Galton and Lankester stepped up for theirs. The latter praised Huxley as ‘the great and beloved teacher, the unequalled orator, the brilliant essayist, the unconquerable champion and literary swordsman’ that he undoubtedly was.173 The German ambassador collected a medal on behalf of Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena University, the leading proponent of Darwinism in Germany. Darwin himself had noted in his autobiography in 1876 that his work had borne fruit especially among German scholars. ‘In Germany’, he wrote, ‘a catalogue or bibliography on “Darwinismus” has appeared every year or two.’174
In his speech of thanks for his medal Hooker told his audience how the special meeting of 1 July 1858 had come about by the death of Robert Brown and the coincidental arrival in Darwin’s letterbox of the essay from Wallace, and how, Darwin being ill, he and Lyell had undertaken to arrange for the papers of both men to be read. Lankester spoke of the subsequent work of the Abbé Mendel, which took the study of evolution forward. Nonetheless, he said, ‘the main lines of the theory of Darwin and Wallace remain unchanged’; indeed, ‘the more it is challenged by new suggestions and new hypotheses’, the more brilliantly ‘does the novelty, the importance, and the permanent value’ of the work of the two men ‘shine forth as the one great and epoch-making effort of human thought on this subject’.175 On receiving his own medal Wallace said simply that he and Darwin had come to the idea of natural selection independently, but that the idea had occurred to Darwin twenty years earlier and he had been working patiently on it for that time, whereas he, Wallace, had merely had a ‘flash of insight’ which he sketched within a week in February 1858. He was proud to have shared this insight and to have explained and elucidated the theory in his own work, but to Darwin, ‘my honoured friend and teacher’, belonged the praise.176
Epilogue
The year in pantomime
EVERY LONDON THEATRE PRESENTED a pantomime over the Christmas and New Year period. Theatre-goers could choose from the famous houses in the West End – the two long-established patent theatres Drury Lane and Covent Garden, along with the Haymarket, the Adelphi on the Strand, the Princess’s Theatre on Oxford Street, and the Lyceum just off the Strand. Poorer Londoners patronised smaller theatres, often attached to pubs, in unfashionable parts of the capital; there was Highbury Barn in the north, the Grecian Saloon, the Effingham Saloon and the Britannia Theatre in the East End, and the Royal Surrey Theatre on the south bank of the Thames. Rather as everyone, rich and poor, went to Epsom on Derby Day, so pantomime was for everyone too. Edward Harvey, a young postman whose diary survives, attended the cheap theatres in east London, the Britannia in Hoxton, where he lived and did his rounds, the Standard in Shoreditch, and the Grecian on Old Street.1 At the other end of town Victoria and Albert took their children to Drury Lane or commissioned a pantomime to be played for them in Windsor Castle. Many theatres relied on the few weeks from Boxing Day to the end of January to ensure financial survival. The number of pantomimes performed had increased, as had the number of theatres to accommodate them, after the passing of the Theatre Regulation Act of 1843, which removed the monopoly on presenting plays with dialogue previously enjoyed exclusively by the two patent theatres.2
Pantomimes, which up to the passing of the act had been slapstick knockabouts with comic songs and fairy scenes, were now able to add dialogue, often in the form of puns, rhyming couplets, and running commentaries on current affairs. In terms of scenery and spectacle, they became ever more elaborate, as new kinds of lighting and stage machinery came into use, especially for the high point of the show, the transformation scene, in which ordinary characters from the first part turned into the traditional figures of the harlequinade – the young lovers Harlequin and Columbine, the lecherous old Pantaloon, the boastful Scaramouche, and the silly boy Pierrot.3 By the late 1850s the transformation scene itself had become the main talking point. The two most successful purveyors of Christmas entertainment were the writer Edward Blanchard and the scene painter William Beverley, who produced ever more extravagant effects. His work on Blanchard’s Robin Hood at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in December 1858 drew gasps of admiration when the transformation scene unfolded. In the opinion of the Athenaeum reviewer on 1 January 1859, the scene was ‘one of Mr Beverley’s best’; ‘representing the Fairies’ Retreat, it is a moving and unfolding piece of mechanical work, which develops into an ever-changing prospect of extraordinary brilliancy and beauty’.4 The writer in the Era agreed, marvelling at the sight of ‘the trees of Porcelain created with golden branches, which constitute the foreground, opening in the centre and unfolding a vista, through which a torrent of living water is seen sporting and tumbling over a precipitous incline of rockwork … This vast scenic effort will, no doubt, be the talk of the metropolis for some time to come.’5 Drury Lane, which seated 3,000 people, was difficult to fill all the year round, and so relied on a successful pantomime to keep its proprietor solvent.6
In addition to the astounding transformation scenes and other startling effects, such as a revolving stage at the Princess’s Theatre, where The King of the Castle; or, Harlequin Prince Diamond and the Princess Brightness was playing,7 the pantomimes made sport of the main events of the preceding year. Topical allusions, jokes, and puns abounded. Naturally nothing was said, since nothing was known, about the new direction being taken in evolutionary theory, but some of the more visible advances in science and technology featured widely, as did the Great Stink and the plans to solve it.
Brunel’s great ship, usually referred to as the Leviathan, the Atlantic telegraph cable, and Donati’s Comet were popular topics. Blanchard’s Robin Hood combines the comet and the cable with the hot summer weather in a scene in which the character ‘The Year 1858’ speaks:
I have no long tail like my friend the Comet.
I’ve been a curious year with splendid weather,
But not I think a bad sort altogether.
Observe the world round which you may be able
Perhaps to notice runs the Electric Cable.8
C.J. Collins’s Harlequin Father Thames; or, The River Queen and the Great Lord Mayor of London, one of the best of the year’s shows, includes a song about the Atlantic Cable:
And now the line has once been laid,
Let’s hope the splice will soon be made,
By which once more from shore to shore
The flash shall fly to yankee land,
The work completed by the band
Who sailed in the Agamemnon.9
Of the many pantomimes which allude to Brunel’s Great Eastern, Blanchard’s other production for the 1858–9 season, Harlequin and Old Izaak Walton; or, Tom Moore of Fleet Street, the Silver Trout, and the Seven Sisters of Tottenham, produced at Sadler’s Wells, plays on the change of name and the desperate plea for a new owner during the summer. A man crosses the stage with a board which first reads ‘The Leviathan for sale’, then changes to ‘The Great Eastern for Sail & Steam’.10 Thomas Mowbray’s Harlequin Master Walter; or, The Hunchback Nunky and the Little Fairies at the Royal Soho Theatre also mentions the change of name and the fact that the ship, ‘a goodly boat’, has been, without money to finish fitting her out, ‘rather difficult to get afloat’.11 As if foreseeing the joint success in 1866 of the Atlantic Telegraph and the Great Eastern, George Conquest’s Harlequin Guy Faux at the Grecian Saloon in Hoxton plays on the idea that the two innovations are alike in seeking to cover a larger area
than had been achieved before. In this pantomime Antiope, the Amazonian queen, says she would invade England if she could get there. ‘I’d engage the Leviathan, but she isn’t fitted.’ Meanwhile Electricity offers to send a message to History: ‘Let me convey it, then no time is lost, / In half of no time half the world is crossed.’12
Passing fads and fancies and sensational news stories from 1858 found their way on to the stage too, as might be expected. The new Divorce Act gets some mention, though no individual cases are highlighted. The year’s great fashion story features frequently. Crinolines crop up everywhere, exploited for their visual value and the chance to joke about the ‘hoop de dooden do’. As we have seen, Amy Robsart is saved by her crinoline in Kenilworth at the Strand Theatre. W.E. Sutor’s Harlequin and the Forty Thieves; or, Ali Baba and the Fairy Ardinella, playing at the Queen’s Theatre, also exploits the craze for crinolines, as does Blanchard’s Robin Hood at Drury Lane with its topical reference to the extra-wide dimensions of the brand new building of its rival patent theatre Covent Garden, the ‘famous mansion’ where ‘e’en crinoline finds room for its expansion’. W. Cusnie’s Tit, Tat, Toe at the Effingham Saloon in Whitechapel alludes to the fact that the craze was embraced by all classes of society; it features a simple farmer’s daughter who comes back from London ‘the pink of fashion, all dressed in Crynoline’.13
The year’s popular entertainments are given the nod. Mowbray’s Harlequin Master Walter includes a character whose singing is described as ‘worse than Christy’s Minstrels’. The comic business at the end of Robin Hood includes a board reading, ‘Wanted a partner who understands Horse taming’, followed by ostlers coming on stage with broomsticks and shouting ‘Cruiser’. Red Riding Hood at Covent Garden featured two horses driving the wicked baron’s carriage in tandem; one grows restive, and breaks away from the harness, only calming down when it is shown James Rarey’s card, after which it lies down as if tamed.14 Harlequin Guy Faux at the Grecian Saloon is one of several pantomimes to connect horse taming with ‘wife taming’ and the new Divorce Court. In Harlequin and Old Izaak Walton two placards appear in succession, one advertising the ‘Yankee Horse Taming Establishment’, the other the ‘Wife Taming Establishment 1858’. As the Era reviewer notes, this Sadler’s Wells offering embraces ‘all the principal topics of the past year’ – the comet, the Atlantic Cable, the art of horse taming, a theme which is ‘improved upon by the Clown showing the art of taming a wife, a hint to husbands in need of it’, all of which brings much laughter and applause.15 In Harlequin Father Thames at the Royal Surrey Theatre the Clown helps a couple to meet and get married, then displays a door inscribed ‘Office of the New Divorce Court now open’. Tit, Tat, Toe has the Fairy Queen rejoice in the new act, especially on behalf of women:
You’re right, the poor now have a chance, however low their station,
If they can’t knock their heads together, they have a separation.
And should the men desert us, we’re better off than many.
An order from the Beak we get, and stick to every penny.
And should they offer any threat, make any fuss or bother,
We get a cheap divorce – are free –
… Yes free to try another.
Among the serious events of 1858 the India Act attracts some attention, following on from the frequent allusions to the Sepoy rebellion in the previous year’s pantomimes. Buckstone’s Undine; or, Harlequin and the Spirit of the Waters at the Haymarket finishes in a palace in Delhi with an allegory of the inauguration of the British Empire in India, which had formally taken place on 1 November.16 In Harlequin and Old Izaak Walton Blanchard waves a cheeky farewell to the rotten old East India Company. An ‘East Indian Nabob’ comes on stage with a ticket reading ‘The Hon East India Company’, knocks on the door of the government office, and has his umbrella stolen from him by the clown, who tells him punningly, ‘Your reign is over’. He is then soaked by ‘The Victoria Extinguisher’.
The most topical topic of all was the Great Stink of the summer. Old Father Thames is the main character in several of the pantomimes, which bring verbal and visual ingenuity to the subject, and many whose titles do not mention the state of the Thames aim at least a passing swipe at the top news item of the scorching summer. Harlequin and the Forty Thieves at the Queen’s Theatre makes much of the ‘odour of the river’ and the notion that its water is more poisonous than strychnine, a favourite subject of the previous year’s pantomimes, after the Madeleine Smith poisoning case of summer 1857. So does Harlequin Master Walter, in which the wicked Sir Rowland, wishing to get rid of two young children, says he can easily buy poison for three pence an ounce, but ‘Thames Water does as well’, and is free.
Two of the most successful shows are set on or beside the Thames. Blanchard’s Harlequin and Old Izaak Walton opens in ‘the muddy mountains of Old Father Thames’. He himself is ‘in a very bad state surrounded by four mudlarks [boys who collected items from the river at low tide] bearing large smelling bottles’ and attended by four physicians named ‘Parliament’, ‘The Press’, ‘Town Talk’, and ‘Public Opinion’. There are bottles labelled ‘Deodorising Powder’, ‘Disinfecting Fluid’, ‘Lime’, and ‘Whitewash’, the last of which is an indication that this pantomime has a sharp edge to its fun. The much criticised Board of Works is here represented as a doctor drawn along by snails and fussing about the cost of curing Old Father Thames. The medicines do not work, and Father Thames exclaims: ‘I must be put to rights, / At present I’m the shockingest of sights. / Away with all of you, od’s shrimps and frogs! / Hence throw your physic to the Isle of Dogs.’
As its title suggests, the most thoroughgoing critique of the state of the Thames comes in Collins’s Harlequin Father Thames. More than any other pantomime, it attracted the blue pencil of William Donne, the examiner of plays in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. Whole passages of dialogue concerning parliament, the Board of Works and its personnel, as well as Sir Benjamin Hall and Alderman David Wire, recently elected as the lord mayor of London, were struck out on the grounds that they attacked public figures too directly. Any attempt to represent members of the royal family was prohibited, and a few of the plays were reprimanded for trying to smuggle in scenes representing Victoria and Albert’s second son, Prince Alfred, as a midshipman, Alfred having joined the navy, aged fourteen, in the summer.17 Harlequin Father Thames was one of the culprits; Donne demanded that the scene in which Prince Alfred ‘rolls up his Trowsers and dances a hornpipe’ be expunged.18 Many passages mentioning cabinet ministers and other public figures by name also attracted his disapproval, as did too political a treatment of the Great Stink, though some things do seem to have got past him, such as the passage in Tit, Tat, Toe discussing the act allowing Jews to sit in the House of Commons and praising ‘Little Lord John Russell’ for his efforts on that issue.
The title character of Harlequin Father Thames, revealed in the opening scene at Waterloo Bridge ‘at night’ and at low tide, wears ‘an immense beard’ and carries his trident. He addresses the scavengers ‘grubbing about’ his muddy banks, punning freely on the geographical conjunction of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament: ‘My house of Commons are the common Sewers. / With my favour they have great pretence / As common Sewers produce us common scents.’ The sewers enter, ‘allegorically represented’, and are greeted by Father Thames as follows:
… it’s from you that I get my supplies.
Each morning liberally you pour down
Into my stream from every part of town.
Go summon in the Peers from all the Bridges;
This day I will confirm their privileges.
The wordplay on ‘peers’ (as in members of the House of Lords) and ‘piers’ (as in support structures on bridges) displeased the censor. When Westminster Bridge enters, much of his speech is ordered to be cut, including the following lines:
Why there my liege indeed you speak aright.
I am in a most miserable plight.
/> I am you know the oldest of the peers
And bending ’neath the heavy weight of years.
Pray burden me no more with jokes to crack.
Father Thames replies: ‘Why lately you had Hall upon your back’, to which Westminster Bridge responds (critically): ‘Yes so I had[;] in him lies all my guilt. / He should have seen me long ago re-built. / But he was rude – the rudest of all planners …’ Chelsea Bridge comes on next, complaining that ‘Sir Ben Hall denounced my toll’, which means, as Father Thames, points out, that ‘Big Ben is now without a toll’ (punning on the recently cast chimes for the parliamentary clock named after Hall). Chelsea Bridge announces: ‘That for a cracked joke may do very well / I meant the Gentleman and not the Bell.’
All these speeches were crossed out by the censor.
The play continues relentlessly with its sanitation theme; Father Thames is reluctant to agree to have new intercepting sewers to clean him up. Those empowered by parliament to set about organising the work – the chairman of the Board of Works (Thwaites) and various aldermen on the committee – are seen getting drunk and raucous in a pub with Father Thames rather than getting on with the job. The censor demands the deletion of much of this scene, and also that of a song, ‘I’m a Wire, I’m a Wire’, in which the name of the lord mayor of London is connected with the Atlantic Cable.
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