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+<title>Shorter Prose Pieces, by Oscar Wilde</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Shorter Prose Pieces, by Oscar Wilde
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Shorter Prose Pieces
+
+
+Author: Oscar Wilde
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 11, 2019 [eBook #2061]
+[This file was first posted June 2, 1999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORTER PROSE PIECES***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1920 Methuen edition of <i>Art and
+Decoration</i> by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.lorg</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/cover.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Public domain book cover"
+title=
+"Public domain book cover"
+ src="images/cover.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1>OSCAR WILDE&mdash;SHORTER PROSE PIECES</h1>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Phrases and Philosophies for the use
+of the Young</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Langtry as Hester
+Grazebrook</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page53">53</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Slaves of Fashion</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page56">56</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Woman&rsquo;s Dress</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page60">60</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">More Radical Ideas upon Dress
+Reform</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page66">66</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Costume</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page80">80</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The American Invasion</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page83">83</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Sermons in Stones at
+Bloomsbury</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page90">90</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">L&rsquo;Envoi</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page119">119</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>PHRASES
+AND PHILOSOPHIES FOR<br />
+THE USE OF THE YOUNG</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(December 1894)</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> first duty in life is to be as
+artificial as possible.&nbsp; What the second duty is no one has
+as yet discovered.</p>
+<p>Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for
+the curious attractiveness of others.</p>
+<p>If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in
+solving the problem of poverty.</p>
+<p>Those who see any difference between soul and body have
+neither.</p>
+<p>A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and
+Nature.</p>
+<p>Religions die when they are proved to be true.&nbsp; Science
+is the record of dead religions.</p>
+<p>The well-bred contradict other people.&nbsp; The wise
+contradict themselves.</p>
+<p>Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest
+importance.</p>
+<p>Dulness is the coming of age of seriousness.</p>
+<p>In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the
+essential.&nbsp; In all important matters, style, not sincerity,
+is the essential.</p>
+<p>If one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or later, to be
+found out.</p>
+<p>Pleasure is the only thing one should live for.&nbsp; Nothing
+ages like happiness.</p>
+<p>It is only by not paying one&rsquo;s bills that one can hope
+to live in the memory of the commercial classes.</p>
+<p>No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime.&nbsp;
+Vulgarity is the conduct of others.</p>
+<p>Only the shallow know themselves.</p>
+<p>Time is waste of money.</p>
+<p>One should always be a little improbable.</p>
+<p>There is a fatality about all good resolutions.&nbsp; They are
+invariably made too soon.</p>
+<p>The only way to atone for being occasionally a little
+overdressed is by being always absolutely overeducated.</p>
+<p>To be premature is to be perfect.</p>
+<p>Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in
+conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.</p>
+<p>Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.</p>
+<p>A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes
+in it.</p>
+<p>In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot
+answer.</p>
+<p>Greek dress was in its essence inartistic.&nbsp; Nothing
+should reveal the body but the body.</p>
+<p>One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.</p>
+<p>It is only the superficial qualities that last.&nbsp;
+Man&rsquo;s deeper nature is soon found out.</p>
+<p>Industry is the root of all ugliness.</p>
+<p>The ages live in history through their anachronisms.</p>
+<p>It is only the gods who taste of death.&nbsp; Apollo has
+passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on.&nbsp;
+Nero and Narcissus are always with us.</p>
+<p>The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect
+everything; the young know everything.</p>
+<p>The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection
+is youth.</p>
+<p>Only the great masters of style ever succeeded in being
+obscure.</p>
+<p>There is something tragic about the enormous number of young
+men there are in England at the present moment who start life
+with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful
+profession.</p>
+<p>To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.</p>
+<h2><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>MRS.
+LANGTRY AS HESTER GRAZEBROOK</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(<i>New York World</i>, November 7,
+1882)</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is only in the best Greek gems,
+on the silver coins of Syracuse, or among the marble figures of
+the Parthenon frieze, that one can find the ideal representation
+of the marvellous beauty of that face which laughed through the
+leaves last night as Hester Grazebrook.</p>
+<p>Pure Greek it is, with the grave low forehead, the exquisitely
+arched brow; the noble chiselling of the mouth, shaped as if it
+were the mouthpiece of an instrument of music; the supreme and
+splendid curve of the cheek; the augustly pillared throat which
+bears it all: it is Greek, because the lines which compose it are
+so definite and so strong, and yet so exquisitely harmonized that
+the effect is one of simple loveliness purely: Greek, because its
+essence and its quality, as is the quality of music and of
+architecture, is that of beauty based on absolutely mathematical
+laws.</p>
+<p>But while art remains dumb and immobile in its passionless
+serenity, with the beauty of this face it is different: the grey
+eyes lighten into blue or deepen into violet as fancy succeeds
+fancy; the lips become flower-like in laughter or, tremulous as a
+bird&rsquo;s wing, mould themselves at last into the strong and
+bitter moulds of pain or scorn.&nbsp; And then motion comes, and
+the statue wakes into life.&nbsp; But the life is not the
+ordinary life of common days; it is life with a new value given
+to it, the value of art: and the charm to me of Hester
+Grazebrook&rsquo;s acting in the first scene of the play last
+night was that mingling of classic grace with absolute reality
+which is the secret of all beautiful art, of the plastic work of
+the Greeks and of the pictures of Jean Fran&ccedil;ois Millet
+equally.</p>
+<p>I do not think that the sovereignty and empire of
+women&rsquo;s beauty has at all passed away, though we may no
+longer go to war for them as the Greeks did for the daughter of
+Leda.&nbsp; The greatest empire still remains for them&mdash;the
+empire of art.&nbsp; And, indeed, this wonderful face, seen last
+night for the first time in America, has filled and permeated
+with the pervading image of its type the whole of our modern art
+in England.&nbsp; Last century it was the romantic type which
+dominated in art, the type loved by Reynolds and Gainsborough, of
+wonderful contrasts of colour, of exquisite and varying charm of
+expression, but without that definite plastic feeling which
+divides classic from romantic work.&nbsp; This type degenerated
+into mere facile prettiness in the hands of lesser masters, and,
+in protest against it, was created by the hands of the
+Pre-Raphaelites a new type, with its rare combination of Greek
+form with Florentine mysticism.&nbsp; But this mysticism becomes
+over-strained and a burden, rather than an aid to expression, and
+a desire for the pure Hellenic joy and serenity came in its
+place; and in all our modern work, in the paintings of such men
+as Albert Moore and Leighton and Whistler, we can trace the
+influence of this single face giving fresh life and inspiration
+in the form of a new artistic ideal.</p>
+<h2><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>SLAVES
+OF FASHION</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Miss Leffler-Arnim&rsquo;s</span>
+statement, in a lecture delivered recently at St. Saviour&rsquo;s
+Hospital, that &ldquo;she had heard of instances where ladies
+were so determined not to exceed the fashionable measurement that
+they had actually held on to a cross-bar while their maids
+fastened the fifteen-inch corset,&rdquo; has excited a good deal
+of incredulity, but there is nothing really improbable in
+it.&nbsp; From the sixteenth century to our own day there is
+hardly any form of torture that has not been inflicted on girls,
+and endured by women, in obedience to the dictates of an
+unreasonable and monstrous Fashion.&nbsp; &ldquo;In order to
+obtain a real Spanish figure,&rdquo; says Montaigne, &ldquo;what
+a Gehenna of suffering will not women endure, drawn in and
+compressed by great <i>coches</i> entering the flesh; nay,
+sometimes they even die thereof!&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;A few days
+after my arrival at school,&rdquo; Mrs. Somerville tells us in
+her memoirs, &ldquo;although perfectly straight and well made, I
+was enclosed in stiff stays, with a steel busk in front; while
+above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till the
+shoulder-blades met.&nbsp; Then a steel rod with a semi-circle,
+which went under my chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my
+stays.&nbsp; In this constrained state I and most of the younger
+girls had to prepare our lessons&rdquo;; and in the life of Miss
+Edgeworth we read that, being sent to a certain fashionable
+establishment, &ldquo;she underwent all the usual tortures of
+back-boards, iron collars and dumbs, and also (because she was a
+very tiny person) the unusual one of being hung by the neck to
+draw out the muscles and increase the growth,&rdquo; a signal
+failure in her case.&nbsp; Indeed, instances of absolute
+mutilation and misery are so common in the past that it is
+unnecessary to multiply them; but it is really sad to think that
+in our own day a civilized woman can hang on to a cross-bar while
+her maid laces her waist into a fifteen-inch circle.&nbsp; To
+begin with, the waist is not a circle at all, but an oval; nor
+can there be any greater error than to imagine that an
+unnaturally small waist gives an air of grace, or even of
+slightness, to the whole figure.&nbsp; Its effect, as a rule, is
+simply to exaggerate the width of the shoulders and the hips; and
+those whose figures possess that stateliness which is called
+stoutness by the vulgar, convert what is a quality into a defect
+by yielding to the silly edicts of Fashion on the subject of
+tight-lacing.&nbsp; The fashionable English waist, also, is not
+merely far too small, and consequently quite out of proportion to
+the rest of the figure, but it is worn far too low down.&nbsp; I
+use the expression &ldquo;worn&rdquo; advisedly, for a waist
+nowadays seems to be regarded as an article of apparel to be put
+on when and where one likes.&nbsp; A long waist always implies
+shortness of the lower limbs, and, from the artistic point of
+view, has the effect of diminishing the height; and I am glad to
+see that many of the most charming women in Paris are returning
+to the idea of the Directoire style of dress.&nbsp; This style is
+not by any means perfect, but at least it has the merit of
+indicating the proper position of the waist.&nbsp; I feel quite
+sure that all English women of culture and position will set
+their faces against such stupid and dangerous practices as are
+related by Miss Leffler-Arnim.&nbsp; Fashion&rsquo;s motto is:
+<i>Il faut souffrir pour &ecirc;tre belle</i>; but the motto of
+art and of common-sense is: <i>Il faut &ecirc;tre b&ecirc;te pour
+souffrir</i>.</p>
+<p>Talking of Fashion, a critic in the <i>Pall Mall Gazelle</i>
+expresses his surprise that I should have allowed an illustration
+of a hat, covered with &ldquo;the bodies of dead birds,&rdquo; to
+appear in the first number of the <i>Woman&rsquo;s World</i>; and
+as I have received many letters on the subject, it is only right
+that I should state my exact position in the matter.&nbsp;
+Fashion is such an essential part of the <i>mundus muliebris</i>
+of our day, that it seems to me absolutely necessary that its
+growth, development, and phases should be duly chronicled; and
+the historical and practical value of such a record depends
+entirely upon its perfect fidelity to fact.&nbsp; Besides, it is
+quite easy for the children of light to adapt almost any
+fashionable form of dress to the requirements of utility and the
+demands of good taste.&nbsp; The Sarah Bernhardt tea-gown, for
+instance, figured in the present issue, has many good points
+about it, and the gigantic dress-improver does not appear to me
+to be really essential to the mode; and though the Postillion
+costume of the fancy dress ball is absolutely detestable in its
+silliness and vulgarity, the so-called Late Georgian costume in
+the same plate is rather pleasing.&nbsp; I must, however, protest
+against the idea that to chronicle the development of Fashion
+implies any approval of the particular forms that Fashion may
+adopt.</p>
+<h2><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+60</span>WOMAN&rsquo;S DRESS</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, October
+14, 1884)</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Mr. Oscar Wilde</span>, who
+asks us to permit him &lsquo;that most charming of all pleasures,
+the pleasure of answering one&rsquo;s critics,&rsquo; sends us
+the following remarks:&mdash;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> &ldquo;Girl Graduate&rdquo;
+must of course have precedence, not merely for her sex but for
+her sanity: her letter is extremely sensible.&nbsp; She makes two
+points: that high heels are a necessity for any lady who wishes
+to keep her dress clean from the Stygian mud of our streets, and
+that without a tight corset the ordinary number of petticoats and
+etceteras&rsquo; cannot be properly or conveniently held
+up.&nbsp; Now, it is quite true that as long as the lower
+garments are suspended from the hips a corset is an absolute
+necessity; the mistake lies in not suspending all apparel from
+the shoulders.&nbsp; In the latter case a corset becomes useless,
+the body is left free and unconfined for respiration and motion,
+there is more health, and consequently more beauty.&nbsp; Indeed
+all the most ungainly and uncomfortable articles of dress that
+fashion has ever in her folly prescribed, not the tight corset
+merely, but the farthingale, the vertugadin, the hoop, the
+crinoline, and that modern monstrosity the so-called &ldquo;dress
+improver&rdquo; also, all of them have owed their origin to the
+same error, the error of not seeing that it is from the
+shoulders, and from the shoulders only, that all garments should
+be hung.</p>
+<p>And as regards high heels, I quite admit that some additional
+height to the shoe or boot is necessary if long gowns are to be
+worn in the street; but what I object to is that the height
+should be given to the heel only, and not to the sole of the foot
+also.&nbsp; The modern high-heeled boot is, in fact, merely the
+clog of the time of Henry VI., with the front prop left out, and
+its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten
+the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which
+always follows want of freedom.</p>
+<p>Why should clogs be despised?&nbsp; Much art has been expended
+on clogs.&nbsp; They have been made of lovely woods, and
+delicately inlaid with ivory, and with mother-of-pearl.&nbsp; A
+clog might be a dream of beauty, and, if not too high or too
+heavy, most comfortable also.&nbsp; But if there be any who do
+not like clogs, let them try some adaptation of the trouser of
+the Turkish lady, which is loose round the limb and tight at the
+ankle.</p>
+<p>The &ldquo;Girl Graduate,&rdquo; with a pathos to which I am
+not insensible, entreats me not to apotheosize &ldquo;that awful,
+befringed, beflounced, and bekilted divided skirt.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Well, I will acknowledge that the fringes, the flounces, and the
+kilting do certainly defeat the whole object of the dress, which
+is that of ease and liberty; but I regard these things as mere
+wicked superfluities, tragic proofs that the divided skirt is
+ashamed of its own division.&nbsp; The principle of the dress is
+good, and, though it is not by any means perfection, it is a step
+towards it.</p>
+<p>Here I leave the &ldquo;Girl Graduate,&rdquo; with much
+regret, for Mr. Wentworth Huyshe.&nbsp; Mr. Huyshe makes the old
+criticism that Greek dress is unsuited to our climate, and, to me
+the somewhat new assertion, that the men&rsquo;s dress of a
+hundred years ago was preferable to that of the second part of
+the seventeenth century, which I consider to have been the
+exquisite period of English costume.</p>
+<p>Now, as regards the first of these two statements, I will say,
+to begin with, that the warmth of apparel does not depend really
+on the number of garments worn, but on the material of which they
+are made.&nbsp; One of the chief faults of modern dress is that
+it is composed of far too many articles of clothing, most of
+which are of the wrong substance; but over a substratum of pure
+wool, such as is supplied by Dr. Jaeger under the modern German
+system, some modification of Greek costume is perfectly
+applicable to our climate, our country and our century.&nbsp;
+This important fact has already been pointed out by Mr. E. W.
+Godwin in his excellent, though too brief handbook on Dress,
+contributed to the Health Exhibition.&nbsp; I call it an
+important fact because it makes almost any form of lovely costume
+perfectly practicable in our cold climate.&nbsp; Mr. Godwin, it
+is true, points out that the English ladies of the thirteenth
+century abandoned after some time the flowing garments of the
+early Renaissance in favour of a tighter mode, such as Northern
+Europe seems to demand.&nbsp; This I quite admit, and its
+significance; but what I contend, and what I am sure Mr. Godwin
+would agree with me in, is that the principles, the laws of Greek
+dress may be perfectly realized, even in a moderately tight gown
+with sleeves: I mean the principle of suspending all apparel from
+the shoulders, and of relying for beauty of effect not on the
+stiff ready-made ornaments of the modern milliner&mdash;the bows
+where there should be no bows, and the flounces where there
+should be no flounces&mdash;but on the exquisite play of light
+and line that one gets from rich and rippling folds.&nbsp; I am
+not proposing any antiquarian revival of an ancient costume, but
+trying merely to point out the right laws of dress, laws which
+are dictated by art and not by arch&aelig;ology, by science and
+not by fashion; and just as the best work of art in our days is
+that which combines classic grace with absolute reality, so from
+a continuation of the Greek principles of beauty with the German
+principles of health will come, I feel certain, the costume of
+the future.</p>
+<p>And now to the question of men&rsquo;s dress, or rather to Mr.
+Huyshe&rsquo;s claim of the superiority, in point of costume, of
+the last quarter of the eighteenth century over the second
+quarter of the seventeenth.&nbsp; The broad-brimmed hat of 1640
+kept the rain of winter and the glare of summer from the face;
+the same cannot be said of the hat of one hundred years ago,
+which, with its comparatively narrow brim and high crown, was the
+precursor of the modern &ldquo;chimney-pot&rdquo;: a wide
+turned-down collar is a healthier thing than a strangling stock,
+and a short cloak much more comfortable than a sleeved overcoat,
+even though the latter may have had &ldquo;three capes&rdquo;; a
+cloak is easier to put on and off, lies lightly on the shoulder
+in summer, and wrapped round one in winter keeps one perfectly
+warm.&nbsp; A doublet, again, is simpler than a coat and
+waistcoat; instead of two garments one has one; by not being open
+also it protects the chest better.</p>
+<p>Short loose trousers are in every way to be preferred to the
+tight knee-breeches which often impede the proper circulation of
+the blood; and finally, the soft leather boots which could be
+worn above or below the knee, are more supple, and give
+consequently more freedom, than the stiff Hessian which Mr.
+Huyshe so praises.&nbsp; I say nothing about the question of
+grace and picturesqueness, for I suppose that no one, not even
+Mr. Huyshe, would prefer a maccaroni to a cavalier, a Lawrence to
+a Vandyke, or the third George to the first Charles; but for
+ease, warmth and comfort this seventeenth-century dress is
+infinitely superior to anything that came after it, and I do not
+think it is excelled by any preceding form of costume.&nbsp; I
+sincerely trust that we may soon see in England some national
+revival of it.</p>
+<h2><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>MORE
+RADICAL IDEAS UPON DRESS REFORM</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, November
+11, 1884)</p>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">have</span> been much interested at
+reading the large amount of correspondence that has been called
+forth by my recent lecture on Dress.&nbsp; It shows me that the
+subject of dress reform is one that is occupying many wise and
+charming people, who have at heart the principles of health,
+freedom, and beauty in costume, and I hope that &ldquo;H. B.
+T.&rdquo; and &ldquo;Materfamilias&rdquo; will have all the real
+influence which their letters&mdash;excellent letters both of
+them&mdash;certainly deserve.</p>
+<p>I turn first to Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s second letter, and the
+drawing that accompanies it; but before entering into any
+examination of the theory contained in each, I think I should
+state at once that I have absolutely no idea whether this
+gentleman wears his hair long or short, or his cuffs back or
+forward, or indeed what he is like at all.&nbsp; I hope he
+consults his own comfort and wishes in everything which has to do
+with his dress, and is allowed to enjoy that individualism in
+apparel which he so eloquently claims for himself, and so
+foolishly tries to deny to others; but I really could not take
+Mr. Wentworth Huyshe&rsquo;s personal appearance as any
+intellectual basis for an investigation of the principles which
+should guide the costume of a nation.&nbsp; I am not denying the
+force, or even the popularity, of the &lsquo;&rsquo;Eave arf a
+brick&rsquo; school of criticism, but I acknowledge it does not
+interest me.&nbsp; The gamin in the gutter may be a necessity,
+but the gamin in discussion is a nuisance.&nbsp; So I will
+proceed at once to the real point at issue, the value of the late
+eighteenth-century costume over that worn in the second quarter
+of the seventeenth: the relative merits, that is, of the
+principles contained in each.&nbsp; Now, as regards the
+eighteenth-century costume, Mr. Wentworth Huyshe acknowledges
+that he has had no practical experience of it at all; in fact he
+makes a pathetic appeal to his friends to corroborate him in his
+assertion, which I do not question for a moment, that he has
+never been &ldquo;guilty of the eccentricity&rdquo; of wearing
+himself the dress which he proposes for general adoption by
+others.&nbsp; There is something so naive and so amusing about
+this last passage in Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s letter that I am really
+in doubt whether I am not doing him a wrong in regarding him as
+having any serious, or sincere, views on the question of a
+possible reform in dress; still, as irrespective of any attitude
+of Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s in the matter, the subject is in itself an
+interesting one, I think it is worth continuing, particularly as
+I have myself worn this late eighteenth-century dress many times,
+both in public and in private, and so may claim to have a very
+positive right to speak on its comfort and suitability.&nbsp; The
+particular form of the dress I wore was very similar to that
+given in Mr. Godwin&rsquo;s handbook, from a print of
+Northcote&rsquo;s, and had a certain elegance and grace about it
+which was very charming; still, I gave it up for these
+reasons:&mdash;After a further consideration of the laws of dress
+I saw that a doublet is a far simpler and easier garment than a
+coat and waistcoat, and, if buttoned from the shoulder, far
+warmer also, and that tails have no place in costume, except on
+some Darwinian theory of heredity; from absolute experience in
+the matter I found that the excessive tightness of knee-breeches
+is not really comfortable if one wears them constantly; and, in
+fact, I satisfied myself that the dress is not one founded on any
+real principles.&nbsp; The broad-brimmed hat and loose cloak,
+which, as my object was not, of course, historical accuracy but
+modern ease, I had always worn with the costume in question, I
+have still retained, and find them most comfortable.</p>
+<p>Well, although Mr. Huyshe has no real experience of the dress
+he proposes, he gives us a drawing of it, which he labels,
+somewhat prematurely, &ldquo;An ideal dress.&rdquo;&nbsp; An
+ideal dress of course it is not; &ldquo;passably
+picturesque,&rdquo; he says I may possibly think it; well,
+passably picturesque it may be, but not beautiful, certainly,
+simply because it is not founded on right principles, or, indeed,
+on any principles at all.&nbsp; Picturesqueness one may get in a
+variety of ways; ugly things that are strange, or unfamiliar to
+us, for instance, may be picturesque, such as a late
+sixteenth-century costume, or a Georgian house.&nbsp; Ruins,
+again, may be picturesque, but beautiful they never can be,
+because their lines are meaningless.&nbsp; Beauty, in fact, is to
+be got only from the perfection of principles; and in &ldquo;the
+ideal dress&rdquo; of Mr. Huyshe there are no ideas or principles
+at all, much less the perfection of either.&nbsp; Let us examine
+it, and see its faults; they are obvious to any one who desires
+more than a &ldquo;Fancy-dress ball&rdquo; basis for
+costume.&nbsp; To begin with, the hat and boots are all
+wrong.&nbsp; Whatever one wears on the extremities, such as the
+feet and head, should, for the sake of comfort, be made of a soft
+material, and for the sake of freedom should take its shape from
+the way one chooses to wear it, and not from any stiff,
+stereotyped design of hat or boot maker.&nbsp; In a hat made on
+right principles one should be able to turn the brim up or down
+according as the day is dark or fair, dry or wet; but the hat
+brim of Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s drawing is perfectly stiff, and does
+not give much protection to the face, or the possibility of any
+at all to the back of the head or the ears, in case of a cold
+east wind; whereas the bycocket, a hat made in accordance with
+the right laws, can be turned down behind and at the sides, and
+so give the same warmth as a hood.&nbsp; The crown, again, of Mr.
+Huyshe&rsquo;s hat is far too high; a high crown diminishes the
+stature of a small person, and in the case of any one who is tall
+is a great inconvenience when one is getting in and out of
+hansoms and railway carriages, or passing under a street awning:
+in no case is it of any value whatsoever, and being useless it is
+of course against the principles of dress.</p>
+<p>As regards the boots, they are not quite so ugly or so
+uncomfortable as the hat; still they are evidently made of stiff
+leather, as otherwise they would fall down to the ankle, whereas
+the boot should be made of soft leather always, and if worn high
+at all must be either laced up the front or carried well over the
+knee: in the latter case one combines perfect freedom for walking
+together with perfect protection against rain, neither of which
+advantages a short stiff boot will ever give one, and when one is
+resting in the house the long soft boot can be turned down as the
+boot of 1640 was.&nbsp; Then there is the overcoat: now, what are
+the right principles of an overcoat?&nbsp; To begin with, it
+should be capable of being easily put on or off, and worn over
+any kind of dress; consequently it should never have narrow
+sleeves, such as are shown in Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s drawing.&nbsp;
+If an opening or slit for the arm is required it should be made
+quite wide, and may be protected by a flap, as in that excellent
+overall the modern Inverness cape; secondly, it should not be too
+tight, as otherwise all freedom of walking is impeded.&nbsp; If
+the young gentleman in the drawing buttons his overcoat he may
+succeed in being statuesque, though that I doubt very strongly,
+but he will never succeed in being swift; his <i>super-totus</i>
+is made for him on no principle whatsoever; a <i>super-totus</i>,
+or overall, should be capable of being worn long or short, quite
+loose or moderately tight, just as the wearer wishes; he should
+be able to have one arm free and one arm covered or both arms
+free or both arms covered, just as he chooses for his convenience
+in riding, walking, or driving; an overall again should never be
+heavy, and should always be warm: lastly, it should be capable of
+being easily carried if one wants to take it off; in fact, its
+principles are those of freedom and comfort, and a cloak realizes
+them all, just as much as an overcoat of the pattern suggested by
+Mr. Huyshe violates them.</p>
+<p>The knee-breeches are of course far too tight; any one who has
+worn them for any length of time&mdash;any one, in fact, whose
+views on the subject are not purely theoretical&mdash;will agree
+with me there; like everything else in the dress, they are a
+great mistake.&nbsp; The substitution of the jacket for the coat
+and waistcoat of the period is a step in the right direction,
+which I am glad to see; it is, however, far too tight over the
+hips for any possible comfort.&nbsp; Whenever a jacket or doublet
+comes below the waist it should be slit at each side.&nbsp; In
+the seventeenth century the skirt of the jacket was sometimes
+laced on by points and tags, so that it could be removed at will,
+sometimes it was merely left open at the sides: in each case it
+exemplified what are always the true principles of dress, I mean
+freedom and adaptability to circumstances.</p>
+<p>Finally, as regards drawings of this kind, I would point out
+that there is absolutely no limit at all to the amount of
+&ldquo;passably picturesque&rdquo; costumes which can be either
+revived or invented for us; but that unless a costume is founded
+on principles and exemplified laws, it never can be of any real
+value to us in the reform of dress.&nbsp; This particular drawing
+of Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s, for instance, proves absolutely nothing,
+except that our grandfathers did not understand the proper laws
+of dress.&nbsp; There is not a single rule of right costume which
+is not violated in it, for it gives us stiffness, tightness and
+discomfort instead of comfort, freedom and ease.</p>
+<p>Now here, on the other hand, is a dress which, being founded
+on principles, can serve us as an excellent guide and model; it
+has been drawn for me, most kindly, by Mr. Godwin from the Duke
+of Newcastle&rsquo;s delightful book on horsemanship, a book
+which is one of our best authorities on our best era of
+costume.&nbsp; I do not of course propose it necessarily for
+absolute imitation; that is not the way in which one should
+regard it; it is not, I mean, a revival of a dead costume, but a
+realization of living laws.&nbsp; I give it as an example of a
+particular application of principles which are universally
+right.&nbsp; This rationally dressed young man can turn his hat
+brim down if it rains, and his loose trousers and boots down if
+he is tired&mdash;that is, he can adapt his costume to
+circumstances; then he enjoys perfect freedom, the arms and legs
+are not made awkward or uncomfortable by the excessive tightness
+of narrow sleeves and knee-breeches, and the hips are left quite
+untrammelled, always an important point; and as regards comfort,
+his jacket is not too loose for warmth, nor too close for
+respiration; his neck is well protected without being strangled,
+and even his ostrich feathers, if any Philistine should object to
+them, are not merely dandyism, but fan him very pleasantly, I am
+sure, in summer, and when the weather is bad they are no doubt
+left at home, and his cloak taken out.&nbsp; <i>The value of the
+dress is simply that every separate article of it expresses a
+law</i>.&nbsp; My young man is consequently apparelled with
+ideas, while Mr. Huyshe&rsquo;s young man is stiffened with
+facts; the latter teaches one nothing; from the former one learns
+everything.&nbsp; I need hardly say that this dress is good, not
+because it is seventeenth century, but because it is constructed
+on the true principles of costume, just as a square lintel or
+pointed arch is good, not because one may be Greek and the other
+Gothic, but because each of them is the best method of spanning a
+certain-sized opening, or resisting a certain weight.&nbsp; The
+fact, however, that this dress was generally worn in England two
+centuries and a half ago shows at least this, that the right laws
+of dress have been understood and realized in our country, and so
+in our country may be realized and understood again.&nbsp; As
+regards the absolute beauty of this dress and its meaning, I
+should like to say a few words more.&nbsp; Mr. Wentworth Huyshe
+solemnly announces that &ldquo;he and those who think with
+him&rdquo; cannot permit this question of beauty to be imported
+into the question of dress; that he and those who think with him
+take &ldquo;practical views on the subject,&rdquo; and so
+on.&nbsp; Well, I will not enter here into a discussion as to how
+far any one who does not take beauty and the value of beauty into
+account can claim to be practical at all.&nbsp; The word
+practical is nearly always the last refuge of the
+uncivilized.&nbsp; Of all misused words it is the most evilly
+treated.&nbsp; But what I want to point out is that beauty is
+essentially organic; that is, it comes, not from without, but
+from within, not from any added prettiness, but from the
+perfection of its own being; and that consequently, as the body
+is beautiful, so all apparel that rightly clothes it must be
+beautiful also in its construction and in its lines.</p>
+<p>I have no more desire to define ugliness than I have daring to
+define beauty; but still I would like to remind those who mock at
+beauty as being an unpractical thing of this fact, that an ugly
+thing is merely a thing that is badly made, or a thing that does
+not serve it purpose; that ugliness is want of fitness; that
+ugliness is failure; that ugliness is uselessness, such as
+ornament in the wrong place, while beauty, as some one finely
+said, is the purgation of all superfluities.&nbsp; There is a
+divine economy about beauty; it gives us just what is needful and
+no more, whereas ugliness is always extravagant; ugliness is a
+spendthrift and wastes its material; in fine, ugliness&mdash;and
+I would commend this remark to Mr. Wentworth
+Huyshe&mdash;ugliness, as much in costume as in anything else, is
+always the sign that somebody has been unpractical.&nbsp; So the
+costume of the future in England, if it is founded on the true
+laws of freedom, comfort, and adaptability to circumstances,
+cannot fail to be most beautiful also, because beauty is the sign
+always of the rightness of principles, the mystical seal that is
+set upon what is perfect, and upon what is perfect only.</p>
+<p>As for your other correspondent, the first principle of dress
+that all garments should be hung from the shoulders and not from
+the waist seems to me to be generally approved of, although an
+&ldquo;Old Sailor&rdquo; declares that no sailors or athletes
+ever suspend their clothes from the shoulders, but always from
+the hips.&nbsp; My own recollection of the river and running
+ground at Oxford&mdash;those two homes of Hellenism in our little
+Gothic town&mdash;is that the best runners and rowers (and my own
+college turned out many) wore always a tight jersey, with short
+drawers attached to it, the whole costume being woven in one
+piece.&nbsp; As for sailors, it is true, I admit, and the bad
+custom seems to involve that constant &ldquo;hitching up&rdquo;
+of the lower garments which, however popular in transpontine
+dramas, cannot, I think, but be considered an extremely awkward
+habit; and as all awkwardness comes from discomfort of some kind,
+I trust that this point in our sailor&rsquo;s dress will be
+looked to in the coming reform of our navy, for, in spite of all
+protests, I hope we are about to reform everything, from
+torpedoes to top-hats, and from crinolettes to cruises.</p>
+<p>Then as regards clogs, my suggestion of them seems to have
+aroused a great deal of terror.&nbsp; Fashion in her high-heeled
+boots has screamed, and the dreadful word
+&ldquo;anachronism&rdquo; has been used.&nbsp; Now, whatever is
+useful cannot be an anachronism.&nbsp; Such a word is applicable
+only to the revival of some folly; and, besides, in the England
+of our own day clogs are still worn in many of our manufacturing
+towns, such as Oldham.&nbsp; I fear that in Oldham they may not
+be dreams of beauty; in Oldham the art of inlaying them with
+ivory and with pearl may possibly be unknown; yet in Oldham they
+serve their purpose.&nbsp; Nor is it so long since they were worn
+by the upper classes of this country generally.&nbsp; Only a few
+days ago I had the pleasure of talking to a lady who remembered
+with affectionate regret the clogs of her girlhood; they were,
+according to her, not too high nor too heavy, and were provided,
+besides, with some kind of spring in the sole so as to make them
+the more supple for the foot in walking.&nbsp; Personally, I
+object to all additional height being given to a boot or shoe; it
+is really against the proper principles of dress, although, if
+any such height is to be given it should be by means of two
+props; not one; but what I should prefer to see is some
+adaptation of the divided skirt or long and moderately loose
+knickerbockers.&nbsp; If, however, the divided skirt is to be of
+any positive value, it must give up all idea of &ldquo;being
+identical in appearance with an ordinary skirt&rdquo;; it must
+diminish the moderate width of each of its divisions, and
+sacrifice its foolish frills and flounces; the moment it imitates
+a dress it is lost; but let it visibly announce itself as what it
+actually is, and it will go far towards solving a real
+difficulty.&nbsp; I feel sure that there will be found many
+graceful and charming girls ready to adopt a costume founded on
+these principles, in spite of Mr. Wentworth Huyshe&rsquo;s
+terrible threat that he will not propose to them as long as they
+wear it, for all charges of a want of womanly character in these
+forms of dress are really meaningless; every right article of
+apparel belongs equally to both sexes, and there is absolutely no
+such thing as a definitely feminine garment.&nbsp; One word of
+warning I should like to be allowed to give: The over-tunic
+should be made full and moderately loose; it may, if desired, be
+shaped more or less to the figure, but in no case should it be
+confined at the waist by any straight band or belt; on the
+contrary, it should fall from the shoulder to the knee, or below
+it, in fine curves and vertical lines, giving more freedom and
+consequently more grace.&nbsp; Few garments are so absolutely
+unbecoming as a belted tunic that reaches to the knees, a fact
+which I wish some of our Rosalinds would consider when they don
+doublet and hose; indeed, to the disregard of this artistic
+principle is due the ugliness, the want of proportion, in the
+Bloomer costume, a costume which in other respects is
+sensible.</p>
+<h2><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+80</span>COSTUME</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Are</span> we not all weary of him, that
+venerable impostor fresh from the steps of the Piazza di Spagna,
+who, in the leisure moments that he can spare from his customary
+organ, makes the round of the studios and is waited for in
+Holland Park?&nbsp; Do we not all recognize him, when, with the
+gay <i>insouciance</i> of his nation, he reappears on the walls
+of our summer exhibitions as everything that he is not, and as
+nothing that he is, glaring at us here as a patriarch of Canaan,
+here beaming as a brigand from the Abruzzi?&nbsp; Popular is he,
+this poor peripatetic professor of posing, with those whose joy
+it is to paint the posthumous portrait of the last philanthropist
+who in his lifetime had neglected to be photographed,&mdash;yet
+he is the sign of the decadence, the symbol of decay.</p>
+<p>For all costumes are caricatures.&nbsp; The basis of Art is
+not the Fancy Ball.&nbsp; Where there is loveliness of dress,
+there is no dressing up.&nbsp; And so, were our national attire
+delightful in colour, and in construction simple and sincere;
+were dress the expression of the loveliness that it shields and
+of the swiftness and motion that it does not impede; did its
+lines break from the shoulder instead of bulging from the waist;
+did the inverted wineglass cease to be the ideal of form; were
+these things brought about, as brought about they will be, then
+would painting be no longer an artificial reaction against the
+ugliness of life, but become, as it should be, the natural
+expression of life&rsquo;s beauty.&nbsp; Nor would painting
+merely, but all the other arts also, be the gainers by a change
+such as that which I propose; the gainers, I mean, through the
+increased atmosphere of Beauty by which the artists would be
+surrounded and in which they would grow up.&nbsp; For Art is not
+to be taught in Academies.&nbsp; It is what one looks at, not
+what one listens to, that makes the artist.&nbsp; The real
+schools should be the streets.&nbsp; There is not, for instance,
+a single delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of
+the Greeks, which is not echoed exquisitely in their
+architecture.&nbsp; A nation arrayed in stove-pipe hats and
+dress-improvers might have built the Pantechnichon possibly, but
+the Parthenon never.&nbsp; And finally, there is this to be said:
+Art, it is true, can never have any other claim but her own
+perfection, and it may be that the artist, desiring merely to
+contemplate and to create, is wise in not busying himself about
+change in others: yet wisdom is not always the best; there are
+times when she sinks to the level of common-sense; and from the
+passionate folly of those&mdash;and there are many&mdash;who
+desire that Beauty shall be confined no longer to the
+<i>bric-&agrave;-brac</i> of the collector and the dust of the
+museum, but shall be, as it should be, the natural and national
+inheritance of all,&mdash;from this noble unwisdom, I say, who
+knows what new loveliness shall be given to life, and, under
+these more exquisite conditions, what perfect artist born?&nbsp;
+<i>Le milieu se renouvelant</i>, <i>l&rsquo;art se
+renouvelle</i>.</p>
+<h2><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>THE
+AMERICAN INVASION</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(March 1887)</p>
+<p>A <span class="smcap">terrible</span> danger is hanging over
+the Americans in London.&nbsp; Their future and their reputation
+this season depend entirely on the success of Buffalo Bill and
+Mrs. Brown-Potter.&nbsp; The former is certain to draw; for
+English people are far more interested in American barbarism than
+they are in American civilization.&nbsp; When they sight Sandy
+Hook they look to their rifles and ammunition; and, after dining
+once at Delmonico&rsquo;s, start off for Colorado or California,
+for Montana or the Yellow Stone Park.&nbsp; Rocky Mountains charm
+them more than riotous millionaires; they have been known to
+prefer buffaloes to Boston.&nbsp; Why should they not?&nbsp; The
+cities of America are inexpressibly tedious.&nbsp; The Bostonians
+take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an
+accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their
+&ldquo;Hub,&rdquo; as they call it, is the paradise of
+prigs.&nbsp; Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustle
+and bores.&nbsp; Political life at Washington is like political
+life in a suburban vestry.&nbsp; Baltimore is amusing for a week,
+but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can
+dine in New York one could not dwell there.&nbsp; Better the Far
+West with its grizzly bears and its untamed cowboys, its free
+open-air life and its free open-air manners, its boundless
+prairie and its boundless mendacity!&nbsp; This is what Buffalo
+Bill is going to bring to London; and we have no doubt that
+London will fully appreciate his show.</p>
+<p>With regard to Mrs. Brown-Potter, as acting is no longer
+considered absolutely essential for success on the English stage,
+there is really no reason why the pretty bright-eyed lady who
+charmed us all last June by her merry laugh and her nonchalant
+ways, should not&mdash;to borrow an expression from her native
+language&mdash;make a big boom and paint the town red.&nbsp; We
+sincerely hope she will; for, on the whole, the American invasion
+has done English society a great deal of good.&nbsp; American
+women are bright, clever, and wonderfully cosmopolitan.&nbsp;
+Their patriotic feelings are limited to an admiration for Niagara
+and a regret for the Elevated Railway; and, unlike the men, they
+never bore us with Bunkers Hill.&nbsp; They take their dresses
+from Paris and their manners from Piccadilly, and wear both
+charmingly.&nbsp; They have a quaint pertness, a delightful
+conceit, a native self-assertion.&nbsp; They insist on being paid
+compliments and have almost succeeded in making Englishmen
+eloquent.&nbsp; For our aristocracy they have an ardent
+admiration; they adore titles and are a permanent blow to
+Republican principles.&nbsp; In the art of amusing men they are
+adepts, both by nature and education, and can actually tell a
+story without forgetting the point&mdash;an accomplishment that
+is extremely rare among the women of other countries.&nbsp; It is
+true that they lack repose and that their voices are somewhat
+harsh and strident when they land first at Liverpool; but after a
+time one gets to love those pretty whirlwinds in petticoats that
+sweep so recklessly through society and are so agitating to all
+duchesses who have daughters.&nbsp; There is something
+fascinating in their funny, exaggerated gestures and their
+petulant way of tossing the head.&nbsp; Their eyes have no magic
+nor mystery in them, but they challenge us for combat; and when
+we engage we are always worsted.&nbsp; Their lips seem made for
+laughter and yet they never grimace.&nbsp; As for their voices
+they soon get them into tune.&nbsp; Some of them have been known
+to acquire a fashionable drawl in two seasons; and after they
+have been presented to Royalty they all roll their R&rsquo;s as
+vigorously as a young equerry or an old lady-in-waiting.&nbsp;
+Still, they never really lose their accent; it keeps peeping out
+here and there, and when they chatter together they are like a
+bevy of peacocks.&nbsp; Nothing is more amusing than to watch two
+American girls greeting each other in a drawing-room or in the
+Row.&nbsp; They are like children with their shrill staccato
+cries of wonder, their odd little exclamations.&nbsp; Their
+conversation sounds like a series of exploding crackers; they are
+exquisitely incoherent and use a sort of primitive, emotional
+language.&nbsp; After five minutes they are left beautifully
+breathless and look at each other half in amusement and half in
+affection.&nbsp; If a stolid young Englishman is fortunate enough
+to be introduced to them he is amazed at their extraordinary
+vivacity, their electric quickness of repartee, their
+inexhaustible store of curious catchwords.&nbsp; He never really
+understands them, for their thoughts flutter about with the sweet
+irresponsibility of butterflies; but he is pleased and amused and
+feels as if he were in an aviary.&nbsp; On the whole, American
+girls have a wonderful charm and, perhaps, the chief secret of
+their charm is that they never talk seriously except about
+amusements.&nbsp; They have, however, one grave fault&mdash;their
+mothers.&nbsp; Dreary as were those old Pilgrim Fathers who left
+our shores more than two centuries ago to found a New England
+beyond the seas, the Pilgrim Mothers who have returned to us in
+the nineteenth century are drearier still.</p>
+<p>Here and there, of course, there are exceptions, but as a
+class they are either dull, dowdy or dyspeptic.&nbsp; It is only
+fair to the rising generation of America to state that they are
+not to blame for this.&nbsp; Indeed, they spare no pains at all
+to bring up their parents properly and to give them a suitable,
+if somewhat late, education.&nbsp; From its earliest years every
+American child spends most of its time in correcting the faults
+of its father and mother; and no one who has had the opportunity
+of watching an American family on the deck of an Atlantic
+steamer, or in the refined seclusion of a New York
+boarding-house, can fail to have been struck by this
+characteristic of their civilization.&nbsp; In America the young
+are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves
+the full benefits of their inexperience.&nbsp; A boy of only
+eleven or twelve years of age will firmly but kindly point out to
+his father his defects of manner or temper; will never weary of
+warning him against extravagance, idleness, late hours,
+unpunctuality, and the other temptations to which the aged are so
+particularly exposed; and sometimes, should he fancy that he is
+monopolizing too much of the conversation at dinner, will remind
+him, across the table, of the new child&rsquo;s adage,
+&ldquo;Parents should be seen, not heard.&rdquo;&nbsp; Nor does
+any mistaken idea of kindness prevent the little American girl
+from censuring her mother whenever it is necessary.&nbsp; Often,
+indeed, feeling that a rebuke conveyed in the presence of others
+is more truly efficacious than one merely whispered in the quiet
+of the nursery, she will call the attention of perfect strangers
+to her mother&rsquo;s general untidiness, her want of
+intellectual Boston conversation, immoderate love of iced water
+and green corn, stinginess in the matter of candy, ignorance of
+the usages of the best Baltimore Society, bodily ailments, and
+the like.&nbsp; In fact, it may be truly said that no American
+child is ever blind to the deficiencies of its parents, no matter
+how much it may love them.</p>
+<p>Yet, somehow, this educational system has not been so
+successful as it deserved.&nbsp; In many cases, no doubt, the
+material with which the children had to deal was crude and
+incapable of real development; but the fact remains that the
+American mother is a tedious person.&nbsp; The American father is
+better, for he is never seen in London.&nbsp; He passes his life
+entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a
+month by means of a telegram in cipher.&nbsp; The mother,
+however, is always with us, and, lacking the quick imitative
+faculty of the younger generation, remains uninteresting and
+provincial to the last.&nbsp; In spite of her, however, the
+American girl is always welcome.&nbsp; She brightens our dull
+dinner parties for us and makes life go pleasantly by for a
+season.&nbsp; In the race for coronets she often carries off the
+prize; but, once she has gained the victory, she is generous and
+forgives her English rivals everything, even their beauty.</p>
+<p>Warned by the example of her mother that American women do not
+grow old gracefully, she tries not to grow old at all and often
+succeeds.&nbsp; She has exquisite feet and hands, is always
+<i>bien chauss&eacute;e et bien gant&eacute;e</i> and can talk
+brilliantly upon any subject, provided that she knows nothing
+about it.</p>
+<p>Her sense of humour keeps her from the tragedy of a <i>grande
+passion</i>, and, as there is neither romance nor humility in her
+love, she makes an excellent wife.&nbsp; What her ultimate
+influence on English life will be it is difficult to estimate at
+present; but there can be no doubt that, of all the factors that
+have contributed to the social revolution of London, there are
+few more important, and none more delightful, than the American
+Invasion.</p>
+<h2><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+90</span>SERMONS IN STONES AT BLOOMSBURY</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THE NEW
+SCULPTURE ROOM AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">(October 1887)</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Through</span> the exertions of Sir
+Charles Newton, to whom every student of classic art should be
+grateful, some of the wonderful treasures so long immured in the
+grimy vaults of the British Museum have at last been brought to
+light, and the new Sculpture Room now opened to the public will
+amply repay the trouble of a visit, even from those to whom art
+is a stumbling-block and a rock of offence.&nbsp; For setting
+aside the mere beauty of form, outline and mass, the grace and
+loveliness of design and the delicacy of technical treatment,
+here we have shown to us what the Greeks and Romans thought about
+death; and the philosopher, the preacher, the practical man of
+the world, and even the Philistine himself, cannot fail to be
+touched by these &ldquo;sermons in stones,&rdquo; with their deep
+significance, their fertile suggestion, their plain
+humanity.&nbsp; Common tombstones they are, most of them, the
+work not of famous artists but of simple handicraftsmen, only
+they were wrought in days when every handicraft was an art.&nbsp;
+The finest specimens, from the purely artistic point of view, are
+undoubtedly the two <i>stelai</i> found at Athens.&nbsp; They are
+both the tombstones of young Greek athletes.&nbsp; In one the
+athlete is represented handing his <i>strigil</i> to his slave,
+in the other the athlete stands alone, <i>strigil</i> in
+hand.&nbsp; They do not belong to the greatest period of Greek
+art, they have not the grand style of the Phidian age, but they
+are beautiful for all that, and it is impossible not to be
+fascinated by their exquisite grace and by the treatment which is
+so simple in its means, so subtle in its effect.&nbsp; All the
+tombstones, however, are full of interest.&nbsp; Here is one of
+two ladies of Smyrna who were so remarkable in their day that the
+city voted them honorary crowns; here is a Greek doctor examining
+a little boy who is suffering from indigestion; here is the
+memorial of Xanthippus who, probably, was a martyr to gout, as he
+is holding in his hand the model of a foot, intended, no doubt,
+as a votive offering to some god.&nbsp; A lovely <i>stele</i>
+from Rhodes gives us a family group.&nbsp; The husband is on
+horseback and is bidding farewell to his wife, who seems as if
+she would follow him but is being held back by a little
+child.&nbsp; The pathos of parting from those we love is the
+central motive of Greek funeral art.&nbsp; It is repeated in
+every possible form, and each mute marble stone seems to murmur
+<i>&chi;&alpha;&icirc;&rho;&epsilon;</i>.&nbsp; Roman art is
+different.&nbsp; It introduces vigorous and realistic portraiture
+and deals with pure family life far more frequently than Greek
+art does.&nbsp; They are very ugly, those stern-looking Roman men
+and women whose portraits are exhibited on their tombs, but they
+seem to have been loved and respected by their children and their
+servants.&nbsp; Here is the monument of Aphrodisius and Atilia, a
+Roman gentleman and his wife, who died in Britain many centuries
+ago, and whose tombstone was found in the Thames; and close by it
+stands a <i>stele</i> from Rome with the busts of an old married
+couple who are certainly marvellously ill-favoured.&nbsp; The
+contrast between the abstract Greek treatment of the idea of
+death and the Roman concrete realization of the individuals who
+have died is extremely curious.</p>
+<p>Besides the tombstones, the new Sculpture Room contains some
+most fascinating examples of Roman decorative art under the
+Emperors.&nbsp; The most wonderful of all, and this alone is
+worth a trip to Bloomsbury, is a bas-relief representing a
+marriage scene, Juno Pronuba is joining the hands of a handsome
+young noble and a very stately lady.&nbsp; There is all the grace
+of Perugino in this marble, all the grace of Raphael even.&nbsp;
+The date of it is uncertain, but the particular cut of the
+bridegroom&rsquo;s beard seems to point to the time of the
+Emperor Hadrian.&nbsp; It is clearly the work of Greek artists
+and is one of the most beautiful bas-reliefs in the whole
+Museum.&nbsp; There is something in it which reminds one of the
+music and the sweetness of Propertian verse.&nbsp; Then we have
+delightful friezes of children.&nbsp; One representing children
+playing on musical instruments might have suggested much of the
+plastic art of Florence.&nbsp; Indeed, as we view these marbles
+it is not difficult to see whence the Renaissance sprang and to
+what we owe the various forms of Renaissance art.&nbsp; The
+frieze of the Muses, each of whom wears in her hair a feather
+plucked from the wings of the vanquished sirens, is extremely
+fine; there is a lovely little bas-relief of two cupids racing in
+chariots; and the frieze of recumbent Amazons has some splendid
+qualities of design.&nbsp; A frieze of children playing with the
+armour of the god Mars should also be mentioned.&nbsp; It is full
+of fancy and delicate humour.</p>
+<p>We hope that some more of the hidden treasures will shortly be
+catalogued and shown.&nbsp; In the vaults at present there is a
+very remarkable bas-relief of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche,
+and another representing the professional mourners weeping over
+the body of the dead.&nbsp; The fine cast of the Lion of
+Ch&aelig;ronea should also be brought up, and so should the
+<i>stele</i> with the marvellous portrait of the Roman
+slave.&nbsp; Economy is an excellent public virtue, but the
+parsimony that allows valuable works of art to remain in the grim
+and gloom of a damp cellar is little short of a detestable public
+vice.</p>
+<h2><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+119</span>L&rsquo;ENVOI</h2>
+<p class="gutsumm">An introduction to <i>Rose Leaf and Apple
+Leaf</i> by Rennell Rodd, published by J. M. Stoddart and Co.,
+Philadelphia, 1882.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Amongst</span> the many young men in
+England who are seeking along with me to continue and to perfect
+the English Renaissance&mdash;<i>jeunes guerriers du drapeau
+romantique</i>, as Gautier would have called us&mdash;there is
+none whose love of art is more flawless and fervent, whose
+artistic sense of beauty is more subtle and more
+delicate&mdash;none, indeed, who is dearer to myself&mdash;than
+the young poet whose verses I have brought with me to America;
+verses full of sweet sadness, and yet full of joy; for the most
+joyous poet is not he who sows the desolate highways of this
+world with the barren seed of laughter, but he who makes his
+sorrow most musical, this indeed being the meaning of joy in
+art&mdash;that incommunicable element of artistic delight which,
+in poetry, for instance, comes from what Keats called
+&ldquo;sensuous life of verse,&rdquo; the element of song in the
+singing, made so pleasurable to us by that wonder of motion which
+often has its origin in mere musical impulse, and in painting is
+to be sought for, from the subject never, but from the pictorial
+charm only&mdash;the scheme and symphony of the colour, the
+satisfying beauty of the design: so that the ultimate expression
+of our artistic movement in painting has been, not in the
+spiritual vision of the Pre-Raphaelites, for all their marvel of
+Greek legend and their mystery of Italian song, but in the work
+of such men as Whistler and Albert Moore, who have raised design
+and colour to the ideal level of poetry and music.&nbsp; For the
+quality of their exquisite painting comes from the mere inventive
+and creative handling of line and colour, from a certain form and
+choice of beautiful workmanship, which, rejecting all literary
+reminiscence and all metaphysical idea, is in itself entirely
+satisfying to the &aelig;sthetic sense&mdash;is, as the Greeks
+would say, an end in itself; the effect of their work being like
+the effect given to us by music; for music is the art in which
+form and matter are always one&mdash;the art whose subject cannot
+be separated from the method of its expression; the art which
+most completely realizes for us the artistic ideal, and is the
+condition to which all the other arts are constantly
+aspiring.</p>
+<p>Now, this increased sense of the absolutely satisfying value
+of beautiful workmanship, this recognition of the primary
+importance of the sensuous element in art, this love of art for
+art&rsquo;s sake, is the point in which we of the younger school
+have made a departure from the teaching of Mr. Ruskin,&mdash;a
+departure definite and different and decisive.</p>
+<p>Master indeed of the knowledge of all noble living and of the
+wisdom of all spiritual things will he be to us ever, seeing that
+it was he who by the magic of his presence and the music of his
+lips taught us at Oxford that enthusiasm for beauty which is the
+secret of Hellenism, and that desire for creation which is the
+secret of life, and filled some of us, at least, with the lofty
+and passionate ambition to go forth into far and fair lands with
+some message for the nations and some mission for the world, and
+yet in his art criticism, his estimate of the joyous element of
+art, his whole method of approaching art, we are no longer with
+him; for the keystone to his &aelig;sthetic system is ethical
+always.&nbsp; He would judge of a picture by the amount of noble
+moral ideas it expresses; but to us the channels by which all
+noble work in painting can touch, and does touch, the soul are
+not those of truths of life or metaphysical truths.&nbsp; To him
+perfection of workmanship seems but the symbol of pride, and
+incompleteness of technical resource the image of an imagination
+too limitless to find within the limits of form its complete
+expression, or of love too simple not to stammer in its
+tale.&nbsp; But to us the rule of art is not the rule of
+morals.&nbsp; In an ethical system, indeed, of any gentle mercy
+good intentions will, one is fain to fancy, have their
+recognition; but of those that would enter the serene House of
+Beauty the question that we ask is not what they had ever meant
+to do, but what they have done.&nbsp; Their pathetic intentions
+are of no value to us, but their realized creations only.&nbsp;
+<i>Pour moi je pr&eacute;f&egrave;re les po&egrave;tes qui font
+des vers</i>, <i>les m&eacute;decins qui sachent
+gu&eacute;rir</i>, <i>les peintres qui sanchent peindre</i>.</p>
+<p>Nor, in looking at a work of art, should we be dreaming of
+what it symbolises, but rather loving it for what it is.&nbsp;
+Indeed, the transcendental spirit is alien to the spirit of
+art.&nbsp; The metaphysical mind of Asia may create for itself
+the monstrous and many-breasted idol, but to the Greek, pure
+artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which
+conforms most closely to the perfect facts of physical life
+also.&nbsp; Nor, in its primary aspect, has a painting, for
+instance, any more spiritual message or meaning for us than a
+blue tile from the wall of Damascus, or a Hitzen vase.&nbsp; It
+is a beautifully coloured surface, nothing more, and affects us
+by no suggestion stolen from philosophy, no pathos pilfered from
+literature, no feeling filched from a poet, but by its own
+incommunicable artistic essence&mdash;by that selection of truth
+which we call style, and that relation of values which is the
+draughtsmanship of painting, by the whole quality of the
+workmanship, the arabesque of the design, the splendour of the
+colour, for these things are enough to stir the most divine and
+remote of the chords which make music in our soul, and colour,
+indeed, is of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a
+kind of sentiment . . . all these poems aim, as I said, at
+producing a purely artistic effect, and have the rare and
+exquisite quality that belongs to work of that kind; and I feel
+that the entire subordination in our &aelig;sthetic movement of
+all merely emotional and intellectual motives to the vital
+informing poetic principle is the surest sign of our
+strength.</p>
+<p>But it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the
+&aelig;sthetic demands of the age: there should be also about it,
+if it is to give us any permanent delight, the impress of a
+distinct individuality.&nbsp; Whatever work we have in the
+nineteenth century must rest on the two poles of personality and
+perfection.&nbsp; And so in this little volume, by separating the
+earlier and more simple work from the work that is later and
+stronger and possesses increased technical power and more
+artistic vision, one might weave these disconnected poems, these
+stray and scattered threads, into one fiery-coloured strand of
+life, noting first a boy&rsquo;s mere gladness of being young,
+with all its simple joy in field and flower, in sunlight and in
+song, and then the bitterness of sudden sorrow at the ending by
+Death of one of the brief and beautiful friendships of
+one&rsquo;s youth, with all those unanswered lodgings and
+questionings unsatisfied by which we vex, so uselessly, the
+marble face of death; the artistic contrast between the
+discontented incompleteness of the spirit and the complete
+perfection of the style that expresses it forming the chief
+element of the &aelig;sthetic charm of these particular
+poems;&mdash;and then the birth of Love, and all the wonder and
+the fear and the perilous delight of one on whose boyish brows
+the little wings of love have beaten for the first time; and the
+love-songs, so dainty and delicate, little swallow-flights of
+music, and full of such fragrance and freedom that they might all
+be sung in the open air and across moving water; and then autumn,
+coming with its choirless woods and odorous decay and ruined
+loveliness, Love lying dead; and the sense of the mere pity of
+it.</p>
+<p>One might stop there, for from a young poet one should ask for
+no deeper chords of life than those that love and friendship make
+eternal for us; and the best poems in the volume belong clearly
+to a later time, a time when these real experiences become
+absorbed and gathered up into a form which seems from such real
+experiences to be the most alien and the most remote; when the
+simple expression of joy or sorrow suffices no longer, and lives
+rather in the stateliness of the cadenced metre, in the music and
+colour of the linked words, than in any direct utterance; lives,
+one might say, in the perfection of the form more than in the
+pathos of the feeling.&nbsp; And yet, after the broken music of
+love and the burial of love in the autumn woods, we can trace
+that wandering among strange people, and in lands unknown to us,
+by which we try so pathetically to heal the hurts of the life we
+know, and that pure and passionate devotion to Art which one gets
+when the harsh reality of life has too suddenly wounded one, and
+is with discontent or sorrow marring one&rsquo;s youth, just as
+often, I think, as one gets it from any natural joy of living;
+and that curious intensity of vision by which, in moments of
+overmastering sadness and despair ungovernable, artistic things
+will live in one&rsquo;s memory with a vivid realism caught from
+the life which they help one to forget&mdash;an old grey tomb in
+Flanders with a strange legend on it, making one think how,
+perhaps, passion does live on after death; a necklace of blue and
+amber beads and a broken mirror found in a girl&rsquo;s grave at
+Rome, a marble image of a boy habited like Er&ocirc;s, and with
+the pathetic tradition of a great king&rsquo;s sorrow lingering
+about it like a purple shadow,&mdash;over all these the tired
+spirit broods with that calm and certain joy that one gets when
+one has found something that the ages never dull and the world
+cannot harm; and with it comes that desire of Greek things which
+is often an artistic method of expressing one&rsquo;s desire for
+perfection; and that longing for the old dead days which is so
+modern, so incomplete, so touching, being, in a way, the inverted
+torch of Hope, which burns the hand it should guide; and for many
+things a little sadness, and for all things a great love; and
+lastly, in the pinewood by the sea, once more the quick and vital
+pulse of joyous youth leaping and laughing in every line, the
+frank and fearless freedom of wave and wind waking into fire
+life&rsquo;s burnt-out ashes and into song the silent lips of
+pain,&mdash;how clearly one seems to see it all, the long
+colonnade of pines with sea and sky peeping in here and there
+like a flitting of silver; the open place in the green, deep
+heart of the wood with the little moss-grown altar to the old
+Italian god in it; and the flowers all about, cyclamen in the
+shadowy places, and the stars of the white narcissus lying like
+snow-flakes over the grass, where the quick, bright-eyed lizard
+starts by the stone, and the snake lies coiled lazily in the sun
+on the hot sand, and overhead the gossamer floats from the
+branches like thin, tremulous threads of gold,&mdash;the scene is
+so perfect for its motive, for surely here, if anywhere, the real
+gladness of life might be revealed to one&rsquo;s youth&mdash;the
+gladness that comes, not from the rejection, but from the
+absorption, of all passion, and is like that serene calm that
+dwells in the faces of the Greek statues, and which despair and
+sorrow cannot touch, but intensify only.</p>
+<p>In some such way as this we could gather up these strewn and
+scattered petals of song into one perfect rose of life, and yet,
+perhaps, in so doing, we might be missing the true quality of the
+poems; one&rsquo;s real life is so often the life that one does
+not lead; and beautiful poems, like threads of beautiful silks,
+may be woven into many patterns and to suit many designs, all
+wonderful and all different: and romantic poetry, too, is
+essentially the poetry of impressions, being like that latest
+school of painting, the school of Whistler and Albert Moore, in
+its choice of situation as opposed to subject; in its dealing
+with the exceptions rather than with the types of life; in its
+brief intensity; in what one might call its fiery-coloured
+momentariness, it being indeed the momentary situations of life,
+the momentary aspects of nature, which poetry and painting new
+seek to render for us.&nbsp; Sincerity and constancy will the
+artist, indeed, have always; but sincerity in art is merely that
+plastic perfection of execution without which a poem or a
+painting, however noble its sentiment or human its origin, is but
+wasted and unreal work, and the constancy of the artist cannot be
+to any definite rule or system of living, but to that principle
+of beauty only through which the inconstant shadows of his life
+are in their most fleeting moment arrested and made
+permanent.&nbsp; He will not, for instance, in intellectual
+matters acquiesce in that facile orthodoxy of our day which is so
+reasonable and so artistically uninteresting, nor yet will he
+desire that fiery faith of the antique time which, while it
+intensified, yet limited the vision; still less will he allow the
+calm of his culture to be marred by the discordant despair of
+doubt or the sadness of a sterile scepticism; for the Valley
+Perilous, where ignorant armies clash by night, is no
+resting-place meet for her to whom the gods have assigned the
+clear upland, the serene height, and the sunlit air,&mdash;rather
+will he be always curiously testing new forms of belief, tinging
+his nature with the sentiment that still lingers about some
+beautiful creeds, and searching for experience itself, and not
+for the fruits of experience; when he has got its secret, he will
+leave without regret much that was once very precious to
+him.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am always insincere,&rdquo; says Emerson
+somewhere, &ldquo;as knowing that there are other moods&rdquo;:
+&ldquo;<i>Les &eacute;motions</i>,&rdquo; wrote Th&eacute;ophile
+Gautier once in a review of Ars&egrave;ne Houssaye, &ldquo;<i>Les
+&eacute;motions</i>, <i>ne se ressemblent pas</i>, <i>mais
+&ecirc;tre &eacute;mu</i>&mdash;<i>voil&agrave;
+l&rsquo;important</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Now, this is the secret of the art of the modern romantic
+school, and gives one the right keynote for its apprehension; but
+the real quality of all work which, like Mr. Rodd&rsquo;s, aims,
+as I said, at a purely artistic effect, cannot be described in
+terms of intellectual criticism; it is too intangible for
+that.&nbsp; One can perhaps convey it best in terms of the other
+arts, and by reference to them; and, indeed, some of these poems
+are as iridescent and as exquisite as a lovely fragment of
+Venetian glass; others as delicate in perfect workmanship and as
+single in natural motive as an etching by Whistler is, or one of
+those beautiful little Greek figures which in the olive woods
+round Tanagra men can still find, with the faint gilding and the
+fading crimson not yet fled from hair and lips and raiment; and
+many of them seem like one of Corot&rsquo;s twilights just
+passing into music; for not merely in visible colour, but in
+sentiment also&mdash;which is the colour of poetry&mdash;may
+there be a kind of tone.</p>
+<p>But I think that the best likeness to the quality of this
+young poet&rsquo;s work I ever saw was in the landscape by the
+Loire.&nbsp; We were staying once, he and I, at Amboise, that
+little village with its grey slate roofs and steep streets and
+gaunt, grim gateway, where the quiet cottages nestle like white
+pigeons into the sombre clefts of the great bastioned rock, and
+the stately Renaissance houses stand silent and apart&mdash;very
+desolate now, but with some memory of the old days still
+lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved
+doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing masks, and
+quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people who could
+not think life real till they had made it fantastic.&nbsp; And
+above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we used to
+go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that
+bring the wine in autumn and the wood in winter down to the sea,
+or lie in the long grass and make plans <i>pour la gloire</i>,
+<i>et pour ennuyer les Philistins</i>, or wander along the low,
+sedgy banks, &ldquo;matching our reeds in sportive
+rivalry,&rdquo; as comrades used in the old Sicilian days; and
+the land was an ordinary land enough, and bare, too, when one
+thought of Italy, and how the oleanders were robing the hillsides
+by Genoa in scarlet, and the cyclamen filling with its purple
+every valley from Florence to Rome; for there was not much real
+beauty, perhaps, in it, only long, white dusty roads and straight
+rows of formal poplars; but, now and then, some little breaking
+gleam of broken light would lend to the grey field and the silent
+barn a secret and a mystery that were hardly their own, would
+transfigure for one exquisite moment the peasants passing down
+through the vineyard, or the shepherd watching on the hill, would
+tip the willows with silver and touch the river into gold; and
+the wonder of the effect, with the strange simplicity of the
+material, always seemed to me to be a little like the quality of
+these the verses of my friend.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORTER PROSE PIECES***</p>
+<pre>
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