TOM TAYLOR.
LONDON literary society may justly regret Mr. Tom Taylor. He was not, it is true, a great artist, even in the lines that he had chosen, and very little, if any, of his work can be classed
as a permanent addition to the English reservoir of thought. He was a considerable playwright, rather than a great dramatist.
We should not rank him as a tragedian at all, though he had an art of making pathetic scenes ; and as a comedian, which was probably his true line, he was rather skilful than original, rather a man who wrote for the Stage, than one who wrote either for all time or even for his own generation. Still, he composed a great many dramas, most of which succeeded, having at the worst a certain quality of interestingness, all of which display a clear appreciation of the necessities of the Stage, and of the powers of his actors and the limitations on those powers, and two or three of which may live for a considerable time.
The Ticket-of-Leave Man, indeed, is better than that, and had it been written in a less conscious age, when men were more easily moved, might have been reckoned a performance of the
first class, and have given its author an enduring reputa- tion. There is a function in literature akin to that of a manager in a theatre, a distributive rather than a creative one, which requires very considerable and very varied capa- cities, and Mr. Taylor fulfilled that exceedingly well. He was a good playwright, who knew what his customers wanted, and gave it them, without ever pandering to them ; an honest and capable, though over-kindly critic, whose judgments, ephemeral as they were, constantly influenced artists ; and a very good versifier,—indeed, a poet, if one could by that word describe a man who did not intend his verses to live beyond their day. In fact, he was a man of varied powers, who did the work he elected to do—which was work slightly below what he could have done—very well indeed. This may seem scant praise, but it is all of it true, and it is not intended to be scant, but to imply that Mr. Taylor did well and in an intellectual way work a little below him, which in- ferior artists could have done, though in a far inferior way. It is well for the second-class work of the world that there are men conscious of a possibility of higher aims who yet will do this.
We should give Mr. Taylor just the same praise as Editor of Punch. There is probably no position in the world more difficult than that of the Editor of an English comic paper with a great reputation already made. He must secure an audience, that is, must make his paper sell, and must, therefore, prepare a supply of the good-humoured, domestic or political, but in either case very patent and intelligible, fun which the British lower middle- class appreciates, and will pay for. It is a very good public in its way ; it is easy-tempered, intelligent, and quick about ordinary things, such as it knows well, and extremely amused by a joke it comprehends ; but it will not do the author's or actor's thinking for him, it will not ponder—except when called upon to sympathise with some rather ghastly form of suffering—and it will not endure the smallest infraction of its idea of the proper and becoming, whether the in- fraction take the form of a jest for or against chastity, or for or against religion, or for or against the more important social convenances. Cham would succeed in London as little as Rochefort, and Rochefort as little as Veuillot. The public which buys comic papers will have the pulpit, and poverty— except in its extreme form of pauperism—and Cremorne all kept out of sight together, and obtain its fun either out of politics or out of decent middle-class interiors and the sights of respectable streets, or it will cease to buy at once. Punch, which is as much an institution as the Times, could be destroyed as a property in a single number. The Editor must do all his work in perpetual recollection of that fetter,— a most valuable fetter, be it understood, which no admirer of Punch wishes to relax, but a real fetter on the humourist—and also of another, not quite so visible. The Editor of Punch is like a West-End clergyman, who desires, first of all, to benefit his parish, but who cannot quite forget, as he preaches, that people accustomed to much stronger intellectual food are listen- ing to him, not altogether lost in reverential awe. The artists and writers in Punch cannot forget the culti- vated public altogether, must show themselves equal to entertaining them also, if only to foster their own self-respect, and so have occasionally to play to two audiences at once—one fastidious to the last degree, and one content if only it may have its solid, respectable fun. A third of the diners like and under- stand ortolans and quenelles, and two-thirds are connoisseurs in beef, and both must be sent away filled. It is difficult for the chef, and it is part of the very curious history of Punch—per- haps the most separate paper that ever existed—that the double demand is so fairly, though, of course, often imperfectly, supplied. It is much to keep up such a tradition, and Mr. Taylor, succeeding what is now quite a line of successful editors, kept it up very fairly well. We do not know that he improved Punch ; indeed, we should say that he did not. It may be that the difference is in ourselves, but to our minds the slowly-growing defect of Punch is a certain want of acid flavour, a certain flatness in tone and want of cutting effect in its hits, as if everybody on it were middle-aged and in good temper with most things, Irish- men excepted, and disposed to be rather jolly than effectively humorous. We should say, if we were permitted to criticise Punch—and why should we not criticise him, when he has become a personage in the State P—that in his late middle-age his • temper had improved, and very often his looks,—quoting in proof of the latter remark Mr. Du Mau- riers's often wonderful interiors, in which a dozen persons are portrayed, each with a character, yet each helping towards the picture,—but that his wit had not. Wit, satire, sharp and ringing epigram, these seem to us the features which tend to become too infrequent in Punch, and which are not replaced altogether by parody, however good, or jest, however humorous. We seem to want, though we were of those who found a fund of laughter in "Happy Thoughts" and " Mokanna," a little more Jerrold and a little less Burnand. Mr. Taylor did not contribute this needed flavour, partly, perhaps, because he was so good-natured, which Jerrold, with all deference to his biographers, was not, philanthropy not being, as they fancy, identical with intellectual good-nature ; but he kept Punch well on its feet, still in the forefront, though moving even more strictly than ever along the old lines ; and that was a consider- able thing to do. He had a thorough appreciation of good work, too, though it was the tendency of his mind to prefer good work of an accustomed kind, and possessed in himself a fund of genial and sometimes sly humour which he hardly cultivated sufficiently. What was lacking to make him a great humourist was probably a touch of the insanity or abandonment often visible in such men. There was a deep stratum of solid common-sense in Mr.Taylor. He regulated the political tone of Punch very wisely,
for example, keeping it Liberal, as most Englishmen are, resisting sore pressure to be Jingo when Jingoism was rampant, but allowing fair-play to individual tendencies, so that sometimes it was hard to say which party Punch in his heart considered the ridiculous one of the two, and so that, though both parties were often momentarily incensed, neither deserted the paper. He was himself a steady Liberal, being outside his work a thorough humanitarian, who hated to see human beings suffer, and be- lieved in rights, though not necessarily equal rights, for all men, and had in him a fund of benevolence which sometimes disturbed his judicial impartiality. The thousand friends he possessed, and who knew him better than we did, must, we think, regret that he did not get the best out of himself in some one department ; but he did an immensity of work of very different kinds very much better than most people could do it, and was, when it was done, a thorcughly sincere and humble- minded man. He will be missed, and justly.
Previous page
