1922] on Gilbert and Sullivan 607 



One night, during the recent revival of Iolanthe, I was sitting 

 next to a celebrated modern author and an extremely accomplished 

 manipulator of words. When the chorus sang : — 



" To say she is his mother is a bit of utter folly ! 

 Oh, fie ! Strephon is a rogue ! 

 Perhaps his brain is addled and it's very melancholy ! 

 Taradiddle, taradiddle, tol lol lay ! " 



he said to me, " That's what I call poetry," and he added that he 

 thought that the most permanent and enduring achievement of the 

 Victorian age would be neither that of Tennyson, Browning or 

 Swinburne, or Gladstone, Disraeli and Parnell, or Darwin, Huxley 

 and Ball, but the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. I am inclined to 

 agree with him ; and I should not be in the least surprised if, in ages 

 to come, people will talk of the age of Gilbert and Sullivan, as they 

 talk of the age of Pericles. Perhaps they will confuse fact with 

 fiction, and the children of the future will think that trials by jury 

 in that amusing age were conducted to music ; that pirates and 

 policemen hob-nobbed at Penzance ; that Strephon, the Arcadian 

 Shepherd, brought about the reform of the House of Lords ; that the 

 Bolshevik Revolution took place in Barataria ; and the Suffragist 

 movement happened at Castle Adamant. 



In thinking of the triumph, and the permanent popularity, of 

 these operas and the excellent manner in which they are produced 

 and interpreted at the present day, it is impossible not to regret that 

 we should only be able to hear them during a short season at intervals 

 of two years. 



What we want is a permanent Opera House, where not only 

 Gilbert and Sullivan, but all other English music, such as The 

 Beggar's Opera, and foreign music too, should be done all the year 

 round. 



What a grand opportunity is here for a model millionaire such as 

 Gilbert would have invented, to create a permanent Gilbert and 

 Sullivan House, at which other operas might be acted, new operas 

 produced, and old operas revived ! Perhaps such a man will turn up 

 one day ; for although all millionaires are not model, some of them 

 are musical. 



[M. B.] 



