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- } - - ul {margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 0;} - li {list-style-type: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1.5em;} - - blockquote {margin: 1.5em 3% 1.5em 3%;} - - .poem-container {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%;} - .poem {display: block;} - .poem .stanza {page-break-inside: avoid;} - - .transnote { - page-break-inside: avoid; - margin-left: 2%; - margin-right: 2%; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - padding: .5em; - } - - .index {margin-left: 0;} -} - </style> - </head> - -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Men of The Nineties, by Bernard Muddiman - -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: The Men of The Nineties - -Author: Bernard Muddiman - -Release Date: September 25, 2016 [EBook #53142] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEN OF THE NINETIES *** - - - - -Produced by Clarity, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="transnote"><h2 class="nobreak p1">Transcriber’s Note</h2> - -<p class="center">Table of Contents added by Transcriber and placed into the -Public Domain.</p> - -<h2 class="nobreak p2" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> - -<table summary="Contents"> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">Prologue</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#PROLOGUE">1</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr rpad">I</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#I">13</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr rpad">II</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#II">36</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr rpad">III</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#III">55</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr rpad">IV</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#IV">79</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr rpad">V</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#V">101</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr rpad">VI</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#VI">118</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">Epilogue</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#EPILOGUE">131</a></td></tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdl">Index</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#INDEX">139</a></td></tr> -</table> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<h1>THE MEN OF THE NINETIES</h1> - -<hr /> - -<p class="newpage p4 center xlarge wspace"> -THE MEN OF THE NINETIES</p> - -<p class="p2 center vspace">BY<br /> -<span class="large">BERNARD MUDDIMAN</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 40px;"> -<img src="images/i_000.jpg" width="40" height="64" alt="decoration" /> -</div> - -<p class="p2 center vspace"><span class="large">G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS</span><br /> -NEW YORK<br /> -1921 -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="newpage p4 center"> -<i>All rights reserved</i> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1">1</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="wspace"><span class="larger">THE MEN OF THE NINETIES</span></h2> -</div> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak"><a id="PROLOGUE"></a>PROLOGUE</h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> day Beardsley left his stool and ledger -in a London insurance office and betook -himself seriously to the illustration of that -strange comic world of Congreve, a new manifestation -of English art blossomed. It had, -no doubt, been a long time germinating in the -minds of many men, and there had been -numerous signs pointing the way on which the -artistic tendencies of the nineties would travel. -For example, just about the same time as -Beardsley’s eighteenth year, a coterie of young -men, fresh from the Varsity in many cases, -made their appearance in London openly proclaiming -the doctrine of art for art’s sake under -the ægis of Oscar Wilde. So in the last age of -hansom cabs and dying Victorian etiquette, -these young men determined that the rather -dull art and literary world of London should -flower like another Paris.</p> - -<p>If, for the sake of making a beginning, one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2">2</a></span> -must fix on that memorable day when Beardsley -burnt his boats as the date of the opening of -the period of the nineties, it must be remembered -that this arbitrary limitation of the -movement is rather a convenience than a necessity. -To divide up anything so continuous as -literature and art into sections like a bookcase -is uncommonly like damming up a portion of a -stream to look at the fish in it. It breaks the -contact between what was before and what -came after. However, as one must go a long -way back to investigate accurately how a new -movement in art arises, and as it is tedious to -follow up all the clues that lead to the source, -it will be perhaps as well not to worry too -much over the causes of the movement or over -the influences from which it arose. Let us -accept the fact so well pointed out by Mr. -W. G. Blaikie Murdoch in <cite>The Renaissance -of the Nineties</cite>, that the output of the nineties -was ‘a distinct secession from the art of the -previous age ..., in fact the eighties, if they -have a distinct character, were a time of transition, -a period of simmering for revolt rather -than of actual outbreak; and it was in the -succeeding ten years that, thanks to certain -young men, an upheaval was really made.’</p> - -<p>It is to France if anywhere we can trace the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3">3</a></span> -causes of this new attitude. First of all, in -painting, the great French impressionists, with -Manet and Monet leading them; the doctrine -of plein air painting, and all the wonder of -this new school of painting gave a new thrill to -art. Then about 1885 the literary symbolists -killed the Parnassian school of poetry, while at -the same time there was a new <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">esplozione -naturlistica</i>. Paris, always the city of light, -was again fluting new melodies for the world. -In the Rue de Rome, Stéphane Mallarmé received -all the world of art and letters. To the -Rue de Rome came Whistler, John Payne, -George Moore, Oscar Wilde, and others. The -French influence that swept over to England -was as powerful as that which stirred artistic -Germany, creating a German period of the -nineties in the group of symbolists who, under -Stefan George, issued the now famous <cite xml:lang="de" lang="de">Blätter -für die Kunst</cite>. The Englishmen, indeed, who -attended these soirées of the Rue de Rome did -not come away empty-handed. Not only did -their own work suffer an artistic change -through this influence, but they handed it on -to their successors. So directly and indirectly -the great French painters and writers of the -day influenced the art of England, creating the -opportunity for a distinct secession from the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4">4</a></span> -art of the previous age. At the same time -French art and literature were never stationary -but always developing. It was only in 1890 -that we find the real Régnier appearing. In -the same year Paul Fort, just eighteen summers -like Beardsley, founded the Théâtre d’Art. All -this French art at high pressure had a stimulating -effect on English art; and, in fact, remained -its main stimulus until the Boer War, -when the imperialism of writers like Kipling -became the chief interest. So it was in no -small degree the literary symbolists, the plein -air painters and all the motives that lay behind -them, that awoke the Englishmen of the -nineties to new possibilities in art and life. In -Paris, in 1890, Rothenstein met Conder, and at -once the two became lifelong friends. There -they encountered artists like Toulouse Lautrec -and Anquetin.</p> - -<p>The first men, of course, to realise this feverish -activity in France were the elder men, who -handed on the tidings to the younger majority. -Thus the men of the eighties turned -the attention of the unknown of the -nineties towards France, so that Englishmen -again began to remember that something else -counted in Paris besides lingerie. In dealing -then with the influences that helped to beget<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5">5</a></span> -the period, it is as well to remember that if -Walter Pater and Whistler were its forerunners, -so to speak, Oscar Wilde and George Moore -were responsible in no small degree for many -of the tendencies that afterwards became -prevalent.</p> - -<p>Wilde himself, in fact, was artistically an -influence for evil on his weaker juniors. His -social success, his keen persiflage, his indolent -pose of greatness, blinded them as much as it -did the <span xml:lang="grc" lang="grc">οἱ πολλοί</span> to his real artistic industry -and merit. His worst works were, in fact, -with one exception, his disciples. Richard -Le Gallienne in his <cite>Quest of the Golden -Girl</cite> and <cite>Prose Fancies</cite> was watered-down -Wilde, and very thin at that. Even John -Davidson, in <cite>Baptist Lake</cite> and <cite>Earl Lavender</cite>, -strove in vain to overtake the masterly ease -with which Wilde’s ordered prose periods advance -like cohorts of centurions to the sound -of a full orchestra. Wilde’s best work—his -<cite>Prose Poems</cite>, his poem <cite>The Harlot’s House</cite>, his -one-acter <cite>Salomé</cite>, and one or two of the stories -in the <cite>House of Pomegranates</cite>—will, however, -remain as some of the finest flowers of the age’s -art. Yet Wilde, in reality, was senior to the -nineties proper, and was much too good an -artist to approve of much of the work that was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6">6</a></span> -done in imitation of himself during the period -by the mere hangers-on of the nineties. He -was with the men of the nineties, but not of -them. Beardsley, indeed, the age’s real king, -took the liberty of mocking at Wilde in the -very illustrations, or rather decorations, intended -for Wilde’s most elaborate production. -Wilde, in his turn, never wrote for <cite>The Yellow -Book</cite>, which he disliked intensely. Again, we -know what Symons’s opinion of Wilde was from -his essay on him as a poseur. In fact, Wilde -was a writer apart from the others, though -undoubtedly his presence among them up to -the time of his débâcle was a profound direct -influence.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, George Moore, as a reactionary -influence against Victorianism,<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</a> as a -senior who had lived and written in Paris, was -more of an indirect factor for the younger men. -For a time he lived in the Temple, where many -of them had come to live. By his works he -helped to disseminate the influences of the great -French writers and painters that had come into -his own life. His own writings came to others -surcharged with ‘The poisonous honey of -France.’ In his <cite>Modern Painting</cite>, in his novel, -<cite>Evelyn Innes</cite>, in his era of servitude to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7">7</a></span> -Flaubert’s majesty, he is of the nineties. But -the nineties with George Moore were merely a -phase out of which he grew, as out of many -others. But when the nineties began Moore -contrived to assist at their birth in the same -way as he did later at that of the Celtic renaissance. -Indeed, it is said, in Moore’s novel, -<cite>Mike Fletcher</cite> (1889), one can obtain a glimpse -of the manner in which the period was to -burgeon.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="fnanchor">1</a> See his <cite>Literature at Nurse</cite>, 1885.</p></div> - -<p>There was, indeed, amongst the younger men -in those early days a wonderful spirit of camaraderie. -It was an attractive period full of the -glamour of youth before it went down fighting -for Art with a capital A, before age had chilled -its blood or dulled its vision. And there came, -no doubt, an immense vitality for them all, a -stimulating energy to each one, from this -meeting together in London. Indeed, coming -together by chance, as it were, in London, they -not only discovered one another and the ineffable -boon of comradeship, but they also rediscovered, -through Whistler, London for art. So -once again the streets of London began to be -written about, not it is true in the Dickens -manner, but still with even as great a love as -his. They went so far as to attempt to institute -real French café life, by having meetings<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8">8</a></span> -at the Cheshire Cheese and evenings in the -Domino Room of the Café Royal. Symons -wrote of the ballets of Leicester Square; -Dowson of the purlieus round the docks; -Davidson made poems of Fleet Street; Binyon -sang of white St. Martin’s and the golden -gallery of St. Paul’s; Crackanthorpe sketched -his London vignettes; Street talks of the indefinable -romance of Mayfair. In fact the -nineties brought the Muses back to town. In -a cabman’s shelter, in Soho restaurants of -doubtful cheapness, in each other’s rooms, they -rejoiced in each other’s company. At the same -time Beardsley, by a stroke of luck through -the good services of friends, was commissioned -by Mr. Dent to illustrate <cite>Le Morte d’Arthur</cite>. -The Bodley Press had begun in Vigo Street in -1887. Symons, Yeats, and others had already -published their first books. The curtain had -gone up on the drama of the nineties, of which -this is intended as a brief appreciation.</p> - -<p>At the date of the appearance of these young -men amid a mass of lucubrators, there was -actually a band of genuine young writers -(besides the big Victorians like Meredith and -Hardy), who were turning out good work, and -who were under the sway of that old Pan of -poetry, Henley of <cite>The National Observer</cite>. These<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9">9</a></span> -young men of Henley must not be therefore -confused with the <cite>Yellow Book</cite> group. They -were often deliberately coarse, not because they -liked it, but because it was part of their artistic -gospel. And when one considers the methods -of the feeblest of them, one sees more ruffianly -sturdy British horseplay than art, more braying -and snarling than sounding on the lute. But -among the best of them, Stevenson, Kipling, -and Steevens, was a fine loyalty to the traditions -of the leading spirit of the <cite>Observer</cite> Henley—Pan -playing on his reed with his crippled hoofs -hiding amid the water-lilies of the purling -stream. All these last writers and artists were -men of the Anglo-Saxon tradition; while, on -the other hand, the young men who had, so to -speak, just come to town, were full of the Latin -tradition. The main thing in the lives of these -last was French literature and art, and out of -this influence came not only the art, but the -eccentricities, of the coterie, which is so often -called the nineties. Theirs was a new spirit. -They were of the order of the delectable ‘Les -Jeunes.’ Epigram opened a new career with -Oscar Wilde; Beardsley dreamed of a strange -world; Ernest Dowson used to drink hashish -and make love in Soho in the French manner -of Henri Murger’s Latin Quarter—for a time,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10">10</a></span> -indeed, hair was worn long, and the ties of the -petty homunculi of the Wilde crowd were of -lace; but, fortunately, artists like Beardsley -and the other men worth while did not cultivate -foolishness except as a protection against -the bourgeois.</p> - -<p>But enough of these affectations; the point -I wish to bring out here is that the men who -drew and wrote for <cite>The Savoy</cite> wrote their art -with a difference to that of those others who were -their contemporaries but appeared in the first -instance as a virile imperialistic movement in -<cite>The Scots Observer</cite> and <cite>The National Observer</cite>. -The artists of the nineties were more, as we -say rather badly in English, of the ‘kid-glove -school.’ A note of refinement, a distinction -of utterance, an obsession in Art marked all -their best as well as their worst work. But -this by no means prevented the two schools -having a very salutary influence on each other. -Indeed, we find a man like Mr. W. B. Yeats, -who really belonged to a third movement, his -own Celtic renaissance, publishing first of all -lyrics like ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ under -the banner of Henley, and attending a year or -two later the Rhymers’ Club meetings before -he found his own demesne. But to his former -comrades of the Cheshire Cheese, the men<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">11</a></span> -who concern us here, Yeats has found occasion -to render befitting praise in the well-known -lines:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">You had to face your ends when young—<br /></span> -<span class="i2">’Twas wine or women, or some curse—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But never made a poorer song<br /></span> -<span class="i2">That you might have a heavier purse;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Nor gave loud service to a cause<br /></span> -<span class="i2">That you might have a troop of friends:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You kept the Muses’ sterner laws<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And unrepenting faced your ends.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>In fact, since influences and counter-influences -in all ages of literature are such subtle vermin -to ferret out, I propose to avoid as far as possible -any generalities in that connection, and to -interpret broadly and briefly a somewhat vague -period that reviewers have acquired the habit -of calling ‘the nineties.’ What then was this -period? It was a portion of the last decade of -the last century which began about 1890, and -passing through the Rhymers’ Club, blossomed -out into <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> and <cite>The Savoy</cite> periodicals, -and produced works like Beardsley’s -drawings, Conder’s fans, Dowson’s poetry, and -Hubert Crackanthorpe’s short stories. The -men who composed the group are too numerous -to recall in their entirety, even if a satisfactory -list of such a nature could be produced. So all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12">12</a></span> -I intend to attempt here is a summary of the -activities of certain typical examples of the -group as will serve to furnish an appreciation -of their general work. And the way I propose -to obtain this view is to begin by considering -Beardsley as the central figure of the period; -to deal next with the two most vital manifestoes -of the movement and their respective literary -editors, <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> and Henry Harland, -<cite>The Savoy</cite> and Mr. Arthur Symons, passing -on in turn to the writers of fiction, the poets, -the essayists and dramatists not of the whole -decade, but only to those with whom this particular -movement is concerned; it will then be -time to make a few deductions on the spirit of -the whole of this tendency. By rigidly adhering -to only those men who were actually of the -nineties group I am only too conscious these -pages will be considered often to be lacking in -the great literary events and figures of the age, -such as Hardy’s <cite>Jude the Obscure</cite>, the rise of -the Kipling star, the tragedy of Wilde, the -coming of Conrad, etc. etc. Yet the sole -object of this scant summary would be defeated -if I began to prattle of these and others like -Bernard Shaw. In fact its <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">raison d’être</i> constrains -a method of treatment which must not -be broken.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">13</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="I"></a>I</h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">To</span> begin with Aubrey Beardsley has many -advantages, for it brings us at once -not only to the type of mentality most representative -of the period, but also to the man -whose creative power was probably the greatest -factor of the period, to the boy who changed, -as has been said, the black and white art -of the world, and to the artist, from whose -work we can most easily deduce the leading -contemporary characteristics. The art of these -men was in a way abnormal, while the men -themselves who produced it were exotics; and -Beardsley’s is not only the most abnormal art -of them all, but also he himself is the greatest -exotic. As Robert Ross well said as a mere -comment on the decade, he is invaluable: -‘He sums up all the delightful manias, all -that is best in modern appreciation—Greek -vases, Italian primitives, the “Hypnerotomachia,” -Chinese porcelain, Japanese kakemonos, -Renaissance friezes, old French and -English furniture, rare enamels, mediæval<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14">14</a></span> -illumination, the débonnaire masters of the -eighteenth century, the English pre-Raphaelites.’ -In Beardsley, so to speak, was inset all -the influences that went to make the period -what it was. And another reason why it -is so convenient to begin with him is that -he and not Oscar Wilde was in reality the -great creative genius of the age. Besides his -black-and-white work all the world knows, in -which, as Father Gray says, ‘His imaginative -gifts never showed a sign of fatigue or exhaustion,’<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> -Beardsley practised in other arts. -While a youngster at Brighton he promised -to become a musical prodigy, and in later days -Symons describes him at a Wagner concert gripping -the seat with nervous intensity. He wrote -some charming poetry, and as picturesque a -fairy tale for grown-ups as has ever been -written in <cite>Under the Hill</cite>. In an interview -he states, probably slyly, he was at work in -1895 on a modern novel<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">3</a>; while in 1897 he -said, ‘Cazotte has inspired me to make some -small contes. I have one in hand now called -<cite>The Celestial Lover</cite>.’ He began once to write -a play with the actor, Brandon Thomas. In<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">15</a></span> -his late illustrations for Gautier’s <cite>Mademoiselle -de Maupin</cite> he was clearly working towards -water-colour work, while at one time he began -under Walter Sickert his only oil painting (unfinished), -‘Women regarding a dead mouse.’ -By no means least, he became a leader in -English poster work. All of this was essentially -creative work. And when death came he -was very far from his artistic or intellectual -maturity. So is it not just to say that this -young man who practised nearly all the forms -of art, and who was also an avid reader and -student, remains the chief creative figure of the -nineties?</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> <cite>Last Letters of Aubrey Beardsley</cite>, with an Introduction -by the Rev. John Gray, 1904.</p> - -<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="fnanchor">3</a> <cite>The Sketch</cite>, April 10, 1895.</p></div> - -<p>Indeed, there is no more pleasing personality -in the whole period than this ‘apostle of the -grotesque,’ as his own decade loved to hail -him. Born at Brighton in 1872 he was educated -at the local Grammar School, whose -magazine, <cite>Past and Present</cite>, contains his -earliest work. The Kate Greenaway picture -books, it is said, started him drawing. At -school he was neither keen on his work or -games, but used to be continually doing -‘little rough, humorous sketches.’ Reading -was his great refuge, and when he fell in with -some volumes of the Restoration dramatists he -had already begun to find his feet in that world<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16">16</a></span> -of the mad lusts of Wycherley and the perfumed -artificiality of Congreve. Of school life -itself he speaks bitterly and with no regret. -At sixteen he must have been particularly glad -to escape from it and enter, first of all, an -architect’s office in London, and then, the next -year, the Guardian Life and Fire Assurance -Office, where his fatal illness unfortunately -first began to reveal its presence. Then came -his seed-time up till 1891, when he did -little but amateur theatricals. But at length -Beardsley discovered himself. Many gentlemen -have subsequently stated that they discovered -him. It may be that they discovered -him for themselves, but it was Beardsley and -Beardsley alone who found himself. He certainly -received, however, a large amount of -appreciative sympathy when he started to -draw a series of illustrations in his spare -time for Congreve’s <cite>Way of the World</cite>, -and Marlowe’s <cite>Tamburlaine</cite>. He was without -art training in the usual sense, though he went -of nights in 1892 to Professor Brown’s night -school at Westminster, but still kept to the -Insurance Office stool till August, when, after -being recognised by Burne-Jones and Watts -with kindness, he left his post to live by his -art. What had probably actually permitted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17">17</a></span> -him to take this step was the commission -given by J. M. Dent to illustrate <cite>Le Morte -d’Arthur</cite>. Any way he was launched out by -the first number of <cite>The Studio</cite> with Joseph -Pennell’s article on ‘A New Illustrator,’ and, -what was more important, with eleven of -Beardsley’s own works. At that time all his -art was intuitive without much knowledge -of modern black and white. Indeed he was -artistically swamped at the moment with the -glory of the pre-Raphaelites and Burne-Jones. -The <cite>Le Morte d’Arthur</cite>, really, was intended -as a kind of rival to the Kelmscott Press publications, -and Beardsley in his border designs -had small difficulty in excelling Morris’s work.</p> - -<p>Next year, 1893, finds these influences modified -to a certain extent, although the <cite>Salomé</cite> -drawings still belong to that cadaverous, lean -and hungry world of Burne-Jones, from which -Beardsley has not completely as yet rescued -himself by means of Frenchmen like Constantin -Guys; but his release has well arrived -in 1894 with his design ‘The Fat Woman,’ -a caricature of Mrs. Whistler. Watteau, -Rops, and the Japanese, and the thousand -books he is now reading throw open at last all -the splendour of the art world to him. He -lacks nothing, and he goes forward borrowing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">18</a></span> -lavishly, like Shakespeare, from any source -that suits him. Beardsley’s illustrations are -generally critical decorations, although it must -never be forgotten he did attempt on more -than one occasion a series of illustration pure -and simple in, for example, his early scenes for -<cite>Manon Lescaut</cite>, <cite>La Dame aux Camélias</cite>, and -<cite>Madame Bovary</cite>, which are not altogether successful. -He is perhaps at his best as the -illustrating critic, which he is somewhat scornfully -in <cite>Salomé</cite>, very happily in Pope’s <cite>The -Rape of the Lock</cite>, and triumphantly in Aristophanes’ -<cite>Lysistrata</cite>. It can be said of his work, -rather sweepingly no doubt, but still truthfully, -he began by decorating books with his -<cite>Le Morte d’Arthur</cite>; he then tried illustrating -them; but wound up in criticising them by his -decorations. ‘Have you noticed,’ he once -wrote to Father Gray, ‘have you noticed that -no book ever gets well illustrated once it becomes -a classic? Contemporary illustrations -are the only ones of any value or interest.’ -But Beardsley was always more than a mere -illustrator, for where a learned Editor writes -notes and annotations on Aristophanes, he -decorates him; where Arthur Symons would -write an essay on <cite>Mademoiselle de Maupin</cite>, -Beardsley does a number of critical designs.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">19</a></span> -It was, in fact, an age of the critical function; -but Beardsley’s criticism is of that supreme -kind Oscar Wilde called ‘creative criticism.’</p> - -<p>At one time it was customary for critics to -plead that he was only a supreme imitator of -the Japanese or somebody; but, in reality, as -has been pointed out by Robert Ross in his -admirable essays on his work, he was as intensely -original as an illustrator as Sandro -Botticelli was in his designs for Dante’s Divine -Comedy, or William Blake for the drama of -Job. None of them interpreted authors for -dull people who could not understand what they -read. Perhaps the very best way to appreciate -his work of this kind is often to take it away -from the text, and say this is the way Beardsley -saw <cite>The Rape of the Lock</cite>. As for all the -supposed influences he is pretended to have -laboured under, it can be at once said, he was -too restless a personality to accept merely one -influence at a time. If he took from anywhere, -he took from everywhere, and the result is a -great and original draughtsman, the music of -whose line has been the theme of many artists. -With little stippled lines in the background, -and masses of black in the foreground, the -Wagnerites burgeon forth. Black and white -in some of his drawings even tell us the colour<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">20</a></span> -of some of the silks his women wear, and his -white is the plain white of the paper, not the -Chinese subterfuge. A few rhythmic pen-strokes -on the virgin sheet and strangely vital -people live. The hand of Salomé may be out -of drawing, the anatomy of Lysistrata wrong; -but, all the same, they live with a rich malevolent -life. One has to go back to the Greek -vase-painters to find such a vivid life realised -with such simple effects. This simplicity and -austerity of lines, these few dots for the telling -eyelashes, these blank spaces of untouched -paper almost insult one with the perfect ease -with which everything is accomplished. But, -as a matter of fact, how different, how difficult -was the actual creation of these designs! -What infinite pains, what knowledge went to -their composition! ‘He sketched everything -in pencil, at first covering the paper with -apparent scrawls, constantly rubbed out and -blocked in again, until the whole surface became -raddled from pencil, indiarubber, and -knife; over this incoherent surface he worked -in Chinese ink with a gold pen, often ignoring -the pencil lines, afterwards carefully removed. -So every drawing was invented, built up, and -completed on the same sheet of paper.’<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> ‘But<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21">21</a></span> -Beardsley’s subtlety does not lie only in his -technique, but also in what he expresses -thereby. Looking at his drawings, one always -feels in the presence of something alive, something -containing deep human interest; and -the reason is that, while Beardsley seldom -aimed at realistic rendering of the human -form, he was a superb realist in another -respect, this being that his workmanship -always proved itself adequate for the expression -of the most subtle emotions, and for -the embodiment of the artist’s unique personality.’<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">5</a></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> <cite>Aubrey Beardsley</cite>, by Robert Ross, pp. 38–39. 1909.</p> - -<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="fnanchor">5</a> <cite>The Renaissance of the Nineties</cite>, by W. G. Blaikie -Murdoch, p. 29. 1911.</p></div> - -<p>This charming personality stood him in -good stead when the Beardsley craze burst upon -London. He had literally set the Thames on -fire. It was in 1894, when he became art -editor of <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> (which I discuss on -another page), that the craze began in earnest. -His poster for Dr. John Todhunter’s <cite>The -Comedy of Sighs</cite>, at the Avenue Theatre, a -three-quarter-length figure of a woman in -deep blue, standing behind a gauze curtain -powdered with light green spots, electrified the -dull hoardings of London. Another poster, -the female figure in a salmon-pink dress<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">22</a></span> -standing opposite a second-hand bookshop, -with its scheme of black, green, orange, and -salmon pink, advertising Fisher Unwin’s <cite>Pseudonym -Library</cite>, flashed its colours gaily amid -a mass of stupid commercial advertising. -<cite>Punch</cite> parodied ‘The Blessed Damozel’ with -a new version of lauds for ‘The Beardsley -Girl.’ A famous tea-shop exploited the type -of female beauty.</p> - -<p>Oscar Wilde’s play <cite>Salomé</cite> was illustrated by -the newly arrived young artist. The columns -of the papers and magazines spread his fame, -or more often belittled it. The new art -magazine, <cite>The Studio</cite>, not only raised him to -the skies, but had its first cover done by him. -And all this happened to a boy who had only -been gone from school six years, and whose -total age when he became the art craze of -London was only twenty-two. But he was not -to stop there. After four more years of -crowded, feverish work he was to die, after -having affected all the black and white art -of the world. He was to be at once accepted -in Paris. He was to raise a shoal of imitators, -and to influence more or less detrimentally -dozens of good artists.</p> - -<p>Yet all this phenomenal success was not to -change his charming personality in the least.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">23</a></span> -He still remained Aubrey Beardsley, the boy -doomed to death, but still with the lovable -heart of a boy who wanted to enjoy life.</p> - -<p>Max Beerbohm has given us a wonderful personal -record of his friend, in which he says: ‘For -him, as for the schoolboy whose holidays are -near their close, every hour—every minute, -even—had its value. His drawings, his compositions -in prose and in verse, his reading—these -things were not enough to satisfy his -strenuous demands on life. He was an accomplished -musician, he was a great frequenter of -concerts, and seldom when he was in London -did he miss a “Wagner night” at Covent -Garden. He loved dining-out, and, in fact, -gaiety of any kind.... He was always most -content where there was the greatest noise and -bustle, the largest number of people, and the -most brilliant light.’ In the Domino Room -of the Café Royal in London; outside the -Brighton Pavilion, whose architecture haunted -him all his life, Beardsley was at home and -happy. ‘I am really happy,’ he writes, ‘in -Paris.’ And it was Beardsley’s chief preoccupation -to communicate in his drawings the -surprise and delight which this visible world -afforded him—a world of strange demi-mondaines -and eupeptic stockbrokers, of odd social<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24">24</a></span> -parasites and gullible idiots. He always had -an engaging smile that was delightful for -friends and strangers; while he was big -enough, Robert Ross chronicles, to make -friends and remain friends with many for -whom his art was totally unintelligible.</p> - -<p>After he vacated <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> art -editorship, and <cite>The Savoy</cite> had been issued, -Leonard Smithers became the real Beardsley -publisher. There were no dead-locks with -him as to nude Amors, for Smithers had a -courage of his own—a courage great enough -to issue <cite>The Ballad of Reading Gaol</cite> when -Wilde was under his cloud, and no other publisher -would look at it. It was Smithers who -issued <cite>The Savoy</cite>, the two books of <cite>Fifty -Drawings</cite>, <cite>The Rape of the Lock</cite>, <cite>The Pierrot -of the Minute</cite>, the designs for <cite>Mademoiselle de -Maupin</cite>, and among others the eight ‘Lysistrata’ -and the four ‘Juvenal’ drawings. For -any one to study all this variety and rapid -growth to an astounding maturity of conception -and execution no better volumes can be -recommended than <cite>A Book of Fifty Drawings</cite> -(1897), and <cite>A Second Book of Fifty Drawings</cite> -(1899). The former book is much the better of -the two, for the latter is a book of scraps to -a large extent. Indeed, in the first book all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25">25</a></span> -the drawings were fortunately selected by both -Beardsley himself and Smithers. The artist -allowed no drawing to appear in it with which -he was at all dissatisfied. It includes his -favourite, ‘The Ascension of St. Rose of -Lima’; but one cannot help thinking that -there have crept into it far too many of -his immature <cite>Le Morte d’Arthur</cite> series. For -when this volume was issued he had completely -discarded that painful method of -design. Indeed, the <cite>Salomé</cite> decorations (1894) -had bridged this brief spell of his puerility -to the rich fulfilment of <cite>The Rape of the Lock</cite> -(1896). Whistler at once saw this difference, -for, it is on record, when Beardsley first showed -these last designs to him he ‘looked at them -first indifferently, then with interest, then with -delight. And then he said slowly, “Aubrey, I -have made a very great mistake, you are a very -great artist.” And the boy burst out crying. -All Whistler could say, when he could say -anything, was, “I mean it—I mean it.”’</p> - -<p>In reality one can of course now see signs of -the real artist even in the <cite>Le Morte d’Arthur</cite> -series. For example, the true Beardsley type -of woman appears in the design entitled ‘How -Queen Guenever made her a Nun.’ These -Beardsley women, Wilde hinted, were first<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26">26</a></span> -invented by the artist and then copied by -nature. They have, indeed, been the cause -of much fine writing, one androgynist -describing them as the fruit of a French -bagnio and a Chinese visitor. As Pierre Caume -demanded of Félicien Rops we are moved to -ask of Beardsley:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"> -<span class="i0">Quels éclairs ont nimbé tes fillettes pâlies?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Quel stupre assez pervers, quel amour devasté<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Met des reflets d’absinthe en leurs melancolies?<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">They belong to the same world as the women -of Toulouse Lautrec, Rops, Odélon Redon, -Bayros, and Rassenfosse—the type known as -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">la loupeuse insatiable et cupide</i>. They move and -have their being in French erotica and novels -like <cite>La Faustine</cite>.</p> - -<p>Beardsley had now (1896) reached his best -period with <cite>The Rape of the Lock</cite> and <cite>The -Lysistrata</cite> of Aristophanes, and of the two the -palm should be awarded to the eight designs of -the latter work. No one has yet dared to say -that these are probably his masterpieces; but -some day, when the kinship between Beardsley -and those old Greek Masters who designed -their exquisite vases and wine cups is established, -this truism may also come to light. It -is unlikely, however, to become revealed until<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">27</a></span> -Aristophanes himself is fully translated in the -vulgar tongue, for not even the most generous -Editor in his monumental edition has essayed -that impertinence to Mrs. Grundy. The -illustrations or rather critical decorations of -Beardsley are also not likely to become generally -circulated to all because of their frankness. -For phallism is purely pornographic if -it has nothing to do with your subject. But -unfortunately it is a considerable factor in the -<cite>Lysistrata</cite>, as every scholar knows. Beardsley -himself in his letters lays considerable emphasis -on the fact that he was illustrating Aristophanes -and not Donnay’s French version of the same. -And never was he more cynical or more incisive; -never did he use fewer lines with more effect; -never was love and its depravities more scathingly -or so disdainfully ridiculed. In all there -were eight drawings issued with a variant of the -third, though I have reason to believe there -was also a ninth, and even this, his worst -erotic drawing, has nothing to do with -obscenity. He had learned too much from the -men who designed the old Hellenic pottery -to be obscene. He was frank as Chaucer is -frank, not vicious as Aretino delighted to be, -or indecent like the English artists Rowlandson<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">28</a></span> -and James Gillray were in some of their -fantasies. Virgil dying wanted to destroy his -Æneids, and Beardsley <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">in articulo mortis</i> wrote -‘to destroy all copies of <cite>Lysistrata</cite> and bawdy -drawings.’ Yet he has nothing to fear from -the genuine issue of those drawings that -remain, or from the numberless pirated copies -that have since exuded mysteriously into -places like Charing Cross Road. Even Fuchs -in his <cite>Erotische Kunst</cite> has to say: ‘Beardsley -is specially to be noticed for the refinement of -his conceptions, his ultra-modern culture, his -taste, his sense of proportion, his maturity of -execution. No harsh or discordant notes, no -violent tones. On the contrary, a wheedling -finesse. In some respects he is the “maladive” -beauty of our time incarnate.’ Beardsley, -indeed, never descended to the horrors of an -Alfred Kubin or to the tone of certain of -Bayros’s designs. He was neither immoral nor -moral, but unmoral like Rassenfosse or any one -else who has not a fixed ethical theory to -teach. In his Juvenal drawings (1897), his -five Lucian sketches (1894), and the <cite>Lysistrata</cite> -(1896) he went straight to the great gifts of -classical literature, and in touching classical -things he took on the ancient outlook via,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">29</a></span> -I believe, those wonderful Greek vase designers<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">6</a> -which he, so assiduous a haunter of the British -Museum, must have not only seen, but revelled -in. But of these the best and freest are the -<cite>Lysistrata</cite> conceptions; and to enjoy these one -needs an initiation that is not every man’s to -receive.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="fnanchor">6</a> Ross says in his <cite>Aubrey Beardsley</cite>, p. 45, one of the -events which contributed ‘to give Beardsley a fresh impetus -and stimulate his method of expression’ about -the <cite>Salomé</cite> time was ‘a series of visits to the collection -of Greek vases in the British Museum (prompted by an -essay of Mr. D. S. MacColl).’</p></div> - -<p>We are, however, more interested here with -the literary side of his work, which divides -itself into poetry and prose. As a poet -Beardsley has been accused of over-cleverness. -Whatever that criticism means I do not know. -Probably it implies some similar reflection -to the statement that a dandy is over-dressed. -I cannot, however, discover any such affectation -in, for example, that charming poem, -<cite>The Three Musicians</cite>, which recounts how the -soprano ‘lightly frocked,’ the slim boy who -dies ‘for réclame and recall at Paris,’ and the -Polish pianist, pleased with their thoughts, -their breakfast, and the summer day, wend their -way ‘along the path that skirts the wood’:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">30</a></span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">The Polish genius lags behind,<br /></span> -<span class="i6">And, with some poppies in his hand,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Picks out the strings and wood and wind<br /></span> -<span class="i6">Of an imaginary band.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Enchanted that for once his men obey his beat and understand.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">The charming cantatrice reclines<br /></span> -<span class="i6">And rests a moment where she sees<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Her château’s roof that hotly shines<br /></span> -<span class="i6">Amid the dusky summer trees,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And fans herself, half shuts her eyes, and smooths the frock about her knees.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">The gracious boy is at her feet,<br /></span> -<span class="i6">And weighs his courage with his chance;<br /></span> -<span class="i4">His fears soon melt in noonday heat.<br /></span> -<span class="i6">The tourist gives a furious glance,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Red as his guide-book, moves on, and offers up a prayer for France.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>In <cite>The Ballad of a Barber</cite>, again, there is -nothing but a trill of song in limpid verse. -How Carrousel, the barber of Meridian Street, -who could ‘curl wit into the dullest face,’ -became <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">fou</i> of the thirteen-year-old King’s -daughter, so that</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">His fingers lost their cunning quite,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His ivory combs obeyed no more;<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">is a typical ninety <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">jeu d’esprit</i>, only much -better done than the average one. With the -fewest words Beardsley can sketch a scene or -character, as he used the fewest of lines in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">31</a></span> -his drawings. This is even better exemplified -in his prose. Time and again a single -sentence of <cite>Under the Hill</cite> gives us a complete -picture:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Sporion was a tall, depraved young man, with a -slight stoop, a troubled walk, an oval, impassible -face, with its olive skin drawn lightly over the -bone, strong, scarlet lips, long Japanese eyes, and -a great gilt toupet.</p></blockquote> - -<p class="in0">We seem to gaze with the Abbé Fanfreluche at -the prints on his bedroom wall:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Within the delicate curved frames lived the -corrupt and gracious creatures of Dorat and his -school, slender children in masque and domino, -smiling horribly, exquisite lechers leaning over -the shoulders of smooth, doll-like girls, and doing -nothing in particular, terrible little Pierrots -posing as lady lovers and pointing at something -outside the picture, and unearthly fops and huge, -bird-like women mingling in some rococo room.</p></blockquote> - -<p class="in0">One rubs one’s eyes. Are these not the drawings -Franz von Bayros of Vienna realised later? -But Beardsley’s output of both prose and verse -is actually so limited that one cannot compare -his double art work to that of an artist like -Rossetti. When all is said and done, his great -literary work is the unfinished ‘fairy’ tale of -<cite>Under the Hill</cite>. In its complete form it -belongs to the class of works like Casanova’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">32</a></span> -<cite>Mémoires</cite>, the <cite>Reigen</cite> of Schnitzler, the novels -of Restif de la Bretonne, and some of the -<cite>Thousand and One Nights</cite>. It is an enchanting -book in the same way as <cite>Mademoiselle de -Maupin</cite> or <cite>Le Roi Pausole</cite> are enchanting -books. In its rococo style it surpasses the best -rhythms of Wilde, who only succeeds in cataloguing -long lists of beautiful things, while -Aubrey Beardsley suggests more than he says -in the true impressionist way of all the writers -of the nineties. Indeed, the purple patches of -Beardsley are as rich in fine phrases as any -paragraphs of the period—as <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">faisandée</i> as -any French writer has written. Elizabethan -euphuists, Restoration conceit-makers, later -Latins with all the rich byzantium <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">floræ</i> of -brains like Apuleius, can make as finely-sounding -phrases, but I doubt whether they can -pack away in them as rich a pictorial glamour -as many of the writers of the nineties, and -Beardsley amongst them, achieved. We have -Helen in ‘a flutter of frilled things’ at ‘taper-time’ -before her mirror displaying her neck -and shoulders ‘so wonderfully drawn,’ and her -‘little malicious breasts ... full of the irritation -of loveliness that can never be entirely -comprehended, or ever enjoyed to the utmost.’ -Whole scenes of the book are unrolled before<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">33</a></span> -us like priceless tapestries. The ‘<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">ombre</i> gateway -of the mysterious hill’ stands before us:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>The place where he stood waved drowsily with -strange flowers, heavy with perfume, dripping -with odours. Gloomy and nameless weeds not to -be found in Mentzelius. Huge moths, so richly -winged they must have banqueted upon tapestries -and royal stuffs, slept on the pillars that flanked -either side of the gateway, and the eyes of all the -moths remained open and were burning and -bursting with a mesh of veins. The pillars were -fashioned in some pale stone, and rose up like -hymns in the praise of pleasure, for from -cap to base each one was carved with loving -sculptures....</p></blockquote> - -<p>To read <cite>The Toilet of Helen</cite>, with its faint -echoes perhaps of Max Beerbohm’s ‘Toilet of -Sabina’ in <cite>The Perversion of Rouge</cite>, is to be -lured on by the sound of the sentences:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Before a toilet-table that shone like the altar of -Nôtre Dame des Victoires, Helen was seated in a -little dressing-gown of black and heliotrope. The -Coiffeur Cosmé was caring for her scented -chevelure, and with tiny silver tongs, warm from -the caresses of the flame, made delicious intelligent -curls that fell as lightly as a breath about her -forehead and over her eyebrows, and clustered -like tendrils round her neck. Her three favourite -girls, Pappelarde, Blanchemains, and Loureyne, -waited immediately upon her with perfume and -powder in delicate flaçons and frail cassolettes, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">34</a></span> -held in porcelain jars the ravishing paints prepared -by Châteline for those cheeks and lips -which had grown a little pale with anguish of -exile. Her three favourite boys, Claud, Clair, and -Sarrasins, stood amorously about with salver, fan, -and napkin. Millamant held a slight tray of -slippers, Minette some tender gloves, La Popelinière—mistress -of the robes—was ready with a -frock of yellow and yellow. La Zambinella bore -the jewels, Florizel some flowers, Amadour a box -of various pins, and Vadius a box of sweets. Her -doves, ever in attendance, walked about the room -that was panelled with the gallant paintings -of Jean Baptiste Dorat, and some dwarfs and -doubtful creatures sat here and there lolling out -their tongues, pinching each other, and behaving -oddly enough.</p></blockquote> - -<p>There you have a Beardsley drawing transfused -into words. The same is true of his -description of the woods of Auffray. The -same is true of the wonderful supper served on -the terrace to Helen and her guests amid the -gardens. To find such another supper in -literature one has to turn to some French -author, or, better still, to the ‘Cena Trimalchionis’ -of Petronius himself. From this it -will be seen that Beardsley’s literary work,<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">7</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">35</a></span> -like his black-and-white, though the embodiment -of the spirit of his age, is also of -the noble order of the highest things in art. -It is for this reason, indeed, that I have -selected Beardsley as the centre-piece of this -brief sketch of a movement that is dead and -gone. He was the incarnation of the spirit -of the age; but, when the fall of Wilde -killed the age and the Boer War buried it, -neither of these things disturbed or changed -the magic spell of his art. His age may die, -but he remains. Even now he has outlived the -fad period, while many of the books that were -written at that date by others and decorated -by him are only valuable to-day because of his -frontispiece or wrapper. One has not forgotten -those wrappers, for as one will not forget -the work of William Blake, one will not forget -that of Aubrey Beardsley. His enthusiasts -treasure the smallest fragment.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> <cite>In The Influence of Baudelaire in France and England</cite>, -by G. Turquet-Milnes, pp. 277–280 (1913), there is -an interesting study of his Baudelairism.</p></div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">36</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="II"></a>II</h2> -</div> - -<p class="in0"><span class="smcap">Like</span> all artistic and literary movements this -one had, in the shape of various periodicals, its -manifestoes. In fact, it was a period particularly -rich in this kind of fruit. In <cite>The Hobby -Horse</cite> the voices of the new spirit were mingled -for the first time with those of the past. There -were, among other magazines, <cite>The Rose Leaf</cite>, -<cite>The Chameleon</cite>, <cite>The Spirit Lamp</cite>, <cite>The Pageant</cite>, -<cite>The Evergreen</cite>, <cite>The Parade</cite>, <cite>The Quarto</cite>, <cite>The -Dome</cite>, <cite>The Chord</cite>, while among the popular -papers <cite>The Idler</cite>, <cite>To-Day</cite>, and <cite>Pick-me-Up</cite> -produced the work of men like Edgar Wilson -and S. H. Sime; and, further, <cite>The Butterfly</cite>, -<cite>The Poster</cite>, and <cite>The Studio</cite> must be carefully -studied for the tendencies of the time. But -the two principal organs of the movement -were, beyond all doubt, <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> and -<cite>The Savoy</cite>. Round them, as around the -shrines of old beside the Ægean, gather the -faithful and the chosen. In the other publications -there was too much jostling with the -profane, but here ‘<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Procul profani</i>.’ It will be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">37</a></span> -well, therefore, although it has been done more -or less before, to study these two magazines in -some detail, and also their literary editors who -gathered the clan together. In both cases -Beardsley was the art editor, though he was -‘fired,’ to put it plainly, from <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> -after its fourth number. His influence, therefore, -permeated both. In fact, he made them -both works of value for the coming generations, -and particularly in the case of <cite>The Savoy</cite> he -bore the burden of the day and saved the -monthly from fatuity. When he leaves <cite>The -Yellow Book</cite> it will be found to be never the -same. When he is too ill to be active in <cite>The -Savoy</cite> it becomes very small beer. So interwoven -with the lives and values of these -publications is the genius of Beardsley that one -cannot speak of the one without referring to -the other. Of Beardsley himself I have already -spoken, so I propose to confine myself strictly -to the art editor, while dealing first with <cite>The -Yellow Book</cite> and its literary editor, Henry -Harland, and then with <cite>The Savoy</cite> and Mr. -Arthur Symons.</p> - -<p>The publisher, Mr. John Lane, says<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> this -much-discussed <cite>Yellow Book</cite> was founded one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">38</a></span> -morning during half-an-hour’s chat over cigarettes, -at the Hogarth Club, by himself, Beardsley, -and Henry Harland. While he states that -‘Mr. Harland had the faculty of getting the -best from his contributors,’ the publisher goes -on to add: ‘Beardsley’s defect as art editor -was youth. He would not take himself -seriously; as an editor and draughtsman he -was almost a practical joker, for one had, so to -speak, to place his drawings under a microscope -and look at them upside down. This tendency, -on the eve of the production of Volume V., -during my first visit to the United States, -rendered it necessary to omit his work from -that volume.’ Looking back on this, all that -one can say now is that although Beardsley -may have been trying, after all, he and not the -publisher was <cite>The Yellow Book</cite>, and with his -departure the spirit of the age slowly volatilised -from the work until it deteriorated into a kind -of dull keepsake of the Bodley Head. There -were thirteen numbers in all, and Beardsley -actually art-edited the first four. In the -charming prospectus for the fifth volume he is -still described as art editor, and four Beardsleys -were to have appeared in it: ‘Frontispiece to -the Chopin Nocturnes,’ ‘Atalanta,’ ‘Black -Coffee,’ and the portrait of Miss Letty Lind in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">39</a></span> -‘An Artist’s Model.’ However, the break -came, and Beardsley had no further connection, -unfortunately, with the fifth volume.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> In his pamphlet, <cite>Aubrey Beardsley and The Yellow -Book</cite>, p. 1. 1903.</p></div> - -<p>The first number, as in the case of so many -similar periodicals, was brilliant. The standard -set was too high, indeed, to last, and to the -staid English literary press of the time it was -something of a seven days’ wonder. <cite>The Times</cite> -described its note as a ‘combination of English -rowdyism and French lubricity.’ <cite>The Westminster -Gazette</cite> asked for a ‘short Act of -Parliament to make this kind of thing illegal.’ -Above all, the whole rabble descends howling -on the art editor. It is Beardsley that annoys -them, proving how he stands out at once -beyond his comrades. Against the literary -editor, Henry Harland, nothing is said; but -the press are full of the offences of one -Beardsley.</p> - -<p>As Mr. J. M. Kennedy, in his <cite>English Literature, -1880–1905</cite>, has devoted an admirable, if -somewhat scornful, chapter to the contents of -<cite>The Yellow Book</cite>, it is to Henry Harland, who -seems to have merited all the charming things -said about him, that I would now direct -attention.</p> - -<p>A delicate valetudinarian always in search of -health, he was born at Petrograd in March,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40">40</a></span> -1861. He commenced life in the surrogate of -New York State, whither his parents removed, -writing in his spare time in the eighties, under -the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">nom-de-plume</i> of Sidney Luska, sketches of -American Jewish life. Like Theodore Peters, -Whistler, and Henry James, he could not, however, -resist the call of the Old World, and he -was at journalistic work in London when he -was made editor of <cite>The Yellow Book</cite>. Besides -his editorial duties he was a regular contributor, -not only writing the series of notes signed -‘The Yellow Dwarf,’ but also turning out a -number of short stories. But London was only -to be a haven of brief sojourn for this writer, -whose health sent him south to Italy. Perhaps -his best work in the nineties was his short story -<cite>Mademoiselle Miss</cite>, while later in Italy he -opened up a new vein of dainty comedy fiction -in almost rose-leaf prose with <cite>The Cardinal’s -Snuff-Box</cite> (1900), whose happy delicacy of -thought and style he never equalled again, but -was always essaying to repeat until death -carried him off in Italy. Although, therefore, -sitting in the editorial chair at the Bodley -Head, Harland can only be said to have been a -bird of passage in the nineties, and not one of -its pillars like Arthur Symons of <cite>The Savoy</cite>.</p> - -<p>This later publication was started as a rival<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41">41</a></span> -to <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> soon after Beardsley gave -up the art-editing of the earlier periodical. -In 1895, when ‘Symons and Dowson, Beardsley -and Conder, were all together on a holiday at -Dieppe ... it was there, in a cabaret Mr. -Sickert has repeatedly painted, that <cite>The Savoy</cite> -was originated.’<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> It was issued by Leonard -Smithers, the most extraordinary publisher, in -some respects, of the nineties, a kind of modern -Cellini, who produced some wonderfully finely -printed books, and was himself just as much a -part of the movement as any of its numerous -writers. Indeed, no survey of the period can -be complete without a brief consideration of -this man.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> W. G. Blaikie Murdoch’s <cite>Renaissance of the Nineties</cite>, -p. 21. 1911.</p></div> - -<p>But to return to <cite>The Savoy</cite>, it can be aptly -described as the fine flower of the publications -of the age. It is true <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> outlived -it, but never did the gospel of the times -flourish so exceedingly as in its pages. Here -we see that violent love for a strangeness of -proportion in art that was the keynote of the -age. Here the abnormal, the bizarre, found -their true home, and poetry is the pursuit of -the unattainable by the exotic. It will, therefore, -not perhaps be out of place before dealing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42">42</a></span> -with its literary editor, Mr. Arthur Symons, to -discuss the eight numbers that appeared. -Number one (printed by H. S. Nichols) appeared -as a quarterly in boards in January, -1896. An editorial note by Arthur Symons, -which originally appeared as a prospectus, -hoped that <cite>The Savoy</cite> would prove ‘a periodical -of an exclusively literary and artistic -kind.... All we ask from our contributors is -good work, and good work is all we offer our -readers.... We have not invented a new -point of view. We are not Realists, or -Romanticists, or Decadents. For us, all art is -good which is good art.’ The contents of the -number included a typical Shaw article, full, -like all of his work, of the obvious in the terms -of the scandalous; some short stories by Wedmore, -Dowson, Rudolf Dircks, Humphrey -James, and Yeats. The other articles were -hardly very original; but the contributions of -Beardsley dwarf everything else. He towers -out above all else with his illustrations, his -poem <cite>The Three Musicians</cite>, and the beginning -of his romantic story <cite>Under the Hill</cite>.</p> - -<p>Number two (April, 1896, printed by the -Chiswick Press) had another editorial note -courageously thanking the critics of the Press -for their reception of the first number, which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43">43</a></span> -‘has been none the less flattering because it has -been for the most part unfavourable.’ The -contents included poems and stories by Symons, -Dowson, and Yeats, while John Gray and -Selwyn Image have poems and Wedmore a -story. Beardsley continues his romance, and -lifts the number out of the rut with his Wagneresque -designs. Max Beerbohm caricatures -him, and Shannon and Rothenstein are represented. -Among articles there is a series on -Verlaine; and Vincent O’Sullivan, in a paper -‘On the Kind of Fiction called Morbid,’ sounds -a note of the group with his conclusion: ‘Let -us cling by all means to our George Meredith, -our Henry James ... but then let us try, if -we cannot be towards others, unlike these, if -not encouraging, at the least not actively -hostile and harassing, when they go out in the -black night to follow their own sullen will-o’-the-wisps.’ -He is also to be thanked for -registering the too little known name of the -American, Francis Saltus.</p> - -<p>Number three (July, 1896) appeared in paper -covers, and <cite>The Savoy</cite> becomes a monthly -instead of a quarterly from now on. There is -a promise, unfulfilled, of the serial publication -of George Moore’s new novel, <cite>Evelyn Innes</cite>. -Yeats commences three articles on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44">44</a></span> <cite>William -Blake and his Illustrations to the ‘Divine -Comedy</cite>,’ and Hubert Crackanthorpe contributes -one of his best short stories. Owing to illness -Beardsley’s novel stops publication, but his -<cite>Ballad of a Barber</cite> relieves the monotony of -some dull stuff by the smaller men. The reproductions -of Blake’s illustrations are made to -fill the art gap of Beardsley, who has only two -black-and-whites in. The publication of his -novel in book form is promised when the artist -is well enough.</p> - -<p>Number four (August, 1896) at once reveals -the effect of Beardsley’s inactivity through -illness, and shows that Beardsley is <cite>The Savoy</cite>, -and all else but leather and prunella. The -number, however, is saved by a story of Dowson, -<cite>The Dying of Francis Donne</cite>, and on the art -side a frontispiece for Balzac’s <cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">La Fille aux -Yeux d’Or</cite>, by Charles Conder, is interesting.</p> - -<p>Number five (September, 1896) is for some -unaccountable reason the hardest number to -procure. Besides the cover and title-page it -contains only one Beardsley, <cite>The Woman in -White</cite>, but the cover is an exceptionally beautiful -Beardsley, the two figures in the park -holding a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">colloque sentimental</i> seem to have -stepped out of the pages of Verlaine’s poem. -Theodore Wratislaw and Ernest Rhys contribute<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">45</a></span> -the stories. Dowson, Yeats, and the -Canadian, Bliss Carman, contribute the best of -the poetry.</p> - -<p>Number six (October, 1896), has a very poor -art side, with the exception of Beardsley’s -familiar <cite>The Death of Pierrot</cite>. The literary -contents consists chiefly of the editor. One -notices the periodical is dying. The only -unique feature is a story, <cite>The Idiots</cite>, by -Conrad, and Dowson is still faithful with a -poem.</p> - -<p>Number seven (November, 1896) announces -in a leaflet (dated October) the death of <cite>The -Savoy</cite> in the next number. The editorial note -states that the periodical ‘has, in the main, -conquered the prejudices of the press ... it -has not conquered the general public, and, -without the florins of the general public, no -magazine ... can expect to pay its way.’ In -this number Beardsley returns to attempt to -salve it with his remarkable translation of -Catullus: Carmen CI., and illustration thereto. -Yeats and Dowson contribute poems and -Beardsley his Tristan and Isolde drawing.</p> - -<p>Number eight (December, 1896) completes -the issue. The whole of the literary contents -is by the Editor and the art contents by -Beardsley himself: in all fourteen drawings.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">46</a></span> -By way of epilogue, Symons says in their next -venture, which is to appear twice a year, ‘that -they are going to make no attempt to be -popular.’ Unfortunately for English periodicals -it was a venture never essayed.</p> - -<p>That <cite>The Savoy</cite> is far truer to the period -than <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> was perhaps in no small -way due to the fact that Mr. Arthur Symons -was its literary editor. For he at any rate in -his strenuous search for an æsthetical solution -for art and life, in his assiduous exploring in -the Latin literatures for richer colours and -stranger sensations—he, at any rate, has not -only been the child of his time, but in some -ways the father of it. His sincere love of art -is beyond all question, and it has sent him into -many strange byways. He has praised in purple -prose the bird-like motions and flower-like -colours of the ballet; he has taken us with him -to Spanish music-halls and Sevillian Churches; -he has garnered up carefully in English the -myths of the symbolists and translated for us -the enigmas of Mallarmé—<cite>Herodias</cite>, the blood -and roses of D’Annunzio’s plays and the throbbing -violins of Verlaine’s muse; he has taken -us to continental cities, and with him we have -heard Pachmann playing and seen the enchantments -of the divine Duse. All the cults of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">47</a></span> -Seven Arts has this Admirable Crichton of -Æstheticism discussed. He has worked towards -a theory of æsthetics. He has written charmingly -(if somewhat temperamentally) of his -comrades like Beardsley, Crackanthorpe and -Dowson. He was a leader in the campaign of -the early nineties, and his work will always be -the guiding hand for those who come after him -and who wish to speak of this movement. As -early as 1893 he was writing of it as ‘The -Decadent Movement in Literature’ in <cite>Harper’s</cite>, -when he speaks of the most representative work -of the period: ‘After a fashion it is no doubt -a decadence; it has all the qualities that mark -the end of great periods, the qualities that we -find in the Greek, the Latin, decadence; an -intense self-consciousness, a restless curiosity in -research, an over-subtilising refinement upon -refinement, a spiritual and moral perversity.’ -Perhaps, in a way, it is an immense pity that -Symons will become the universal guide to the -period, for it must be conceded that he has -always been prone to find perversity in anything, -as Sir Thomas Browne was haunted -with quincunxes. But of the subtilty of his -judgments and of the charming prose in which -he labours to express them there can be no -question. Listen, for example, when he speaks<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">48</a></span> -of the aim of decadence: ‘To fix the last fine -shade, the quintessence of things; to fix it -fleetingly; to be a disembodied voice, and yet -the voice of a human soul; that is the ideal of -decadence.’ How beautifully it is said, so that -one almost forgets how dangerous it is. Very -aptly did Blaikie Murdoch say the Mantle of -Pater fell on him. It is the same murmured -litany of beautiful prose. Indeed Arthur -Symons is the supreme type of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">belles lettrist</i>. -Just as in the early nineties he prided himself -on the smell of patchouli about his verse, so he -alone remains to-day with the old familiar -scent about his writings of a period dead and -gone which exacts rightfully our highest respect. -As one owes him a debt of homage for his fine -faithfulness to art, so one thinks of him, as he -himself has written of Pater, as a ‘personality -withdrawn from action, which it despises or -dreads, solitary with its ideals, in the circle of -its “exquisite moments” in the Palace of Art, -where it is never quite at rest.’ How true that -last phrase is, ‘never quite at rest,’ of the -author. For to him Art is an escape—the -supreme escape from life.</p> - -<p>Arthur Symons began with a study on -Browning and the volume <cite>Days and Nights</cite> -when the eighties were still feeling their way<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">49</a></span> -towards the nineties. It was in <cite>Silhouettes</cite> -(1892) and <cite>London Nights</cite> (1895) that he -appeared as perhaps the most <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">outré</i> member of -the new movement. His perfection of technique -in endeavouring to catch the fleeting impression -by limiting it, never cataloguing it, -marks the difference of his verse and that of -the secession from much of the school of the -eighties’ definite listing of facts. Symons, -indeed, is not only a poet impressionist, but -also a critic impressionist in his critical works -like <cite>Studies in Two Literatures</cite>, <cite>The Symbolist -Movement in Literature</cite>, and so on. This -impressionism, whilst it makes his verse so -intangible and delicate, also endows his -appreciations with a certain all-pervading -subtlety. It is as though a poet had begun to -see with the Monet vision his own poems. It -is as though a man comes away with an impression -and is content with that impression on -which to base his judgment. It is New Year’s -Eve: the poet records his impression of the night:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">We heard the bells of midnight burying the year.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Then the night poured its silent waters over us.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And then in the vague darkness faint and tremulous,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Time paused; then the night filled with sound; morning was here.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<p class="in0"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">50</a></span> -The poet is at the Alhambra or Empire -Ballet: like an impressionist picture a poem -disengages the last fine shade of the scene. He -wanders at twilight in autumn through the -mist-enfolded lanes:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Night creeps across the darkening vale;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">On the horizon tree by tree<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fades into shadowy skies as pale,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">As moonlight on a shadowy sea.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">The vision remains like an etching. The -poet is on the seashore at sunset:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The sea lies quietest beneath<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The after-sunset flush,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That leaves upon the heaped gray clouds<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The grape’s faint purple blush.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>It lingers like a water-colour in one’s memory. -He sees a girl at a restaurant and his poem is -at once an impression as vivid as a painter’s -work. In a phrase he can cage a mood, in a -quatrain a scene. Where does this ability -come from? The answer is, perhaps, given by -the one name Verlaine, whose genius Mr. -Symons has done so much to hail.</p> - -<p>In the gay days of the early nineties before -black tragedy had clouded the heavens there -was no more daring secessionist from the tedious -old ways than the editor of <cite>The Savoy</cite>. To -those days, like Dowson’s lover of Cynara, he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">51</a></span> -has ‘been faithful in his fashion.’ If the -interest is now not so vivid in his work it is -because the centre of art has shifted. If Mr. -Symons has not shifted his centre too, but -remained faithful to the old dead Gods, it is -no crime. It only means that we, when we -wish to see him as one of the figures of his -group, must shut up his volumes of criticism, -forget his views on Toulouse Lautrec and -Gerard Nerval, and William Blake, put aside -his later verses and his widow’s cruse of -writer’s recollections, and turn with assurance -to the débonnaire poet of <cite>Silhouettes</cite> and <cite>London -Nights</cite>.</p> - -<p>It has been said that Mr. Symons stands for -‘a Pagan revolt against Puritanism.’ It is -argued, because he was nurtured in nonconformity, -art came to him with something of -the hysteria a revelation comes to a revivalist -meeting. This may be true, but I cannot help -thinking that no writer amid all these French -influences which he had so eagerly sought out -yet remains so typical of the English spirit. -It may be heresy, but I always see in mind the -gaiety of a Nice carnival in a certain drawing -with one solid, solemn face surveying the scene -over a starched front. Beneath it is written: -‘Find the Englishman.’</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">52</a></span> -Like the American critic, James Huneker, -Mr. Arthur Symons has also occasionally -written short imaginative prose studies. One -thinks, too, in this respect of Walter Pater’s -wonderful <cite>Imaginary Portraits</cite> and particularly -his glorious study of Watteau, and I rather -think that this success must have moved the -spirit of the two later critics to a noble rivalry. -The best, indeed, of Mr. Symons’s <cite>Spiritual -Adventures</cite> are probably those studies which -are mostly attached to some theme of art which -has been after all the all-engrossing motive of -this delightful critic’s life. <cite>An Autumn City</cite> -and <cite>The Death of Peter Waydelin</cite>: the first, a -sensitive’s great love for Arles, whither he -brings his unresponsive bride; the other, a -study quaintly suggestive of a certain painter’s -life: both of these sketches are unquestionably -more moving than Mr. Symons’s studies of nonconformists -quivering at the thought of hell-fire. -To them one might add, perhaps, <cite>Esther -Kahn</cite>, the history of the psychological development -of an actress after the style of <cite>La -Faustine</cite>.</p> - -<p>Mr. Symons’s favourite word is ‘escape’; his -favourite phrase ‘escape from life.’ Now the -one and now the other reappear continually in -all kinds of connections. Of John Addington<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">53</a></span> -Symonds, for example, he writes: ‘All his work -was in part an escape, an escape from himself.’ -Of Ernest Dowson’s indulgence in the squalid -debaucheries of the Brussels kermesse he -writes: ‘It was his own way of escape from -life.’ Passages of like tenor abound in his -writings; and, in one of his papers on <cite>The -Symbolist Movement in Literature</cite>, he explains -his meaning more precisely:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Our only chance, in this world, of a complete -happiness, lies in the measure of our success in -shutting the eyes of the mind, and deadening its -sense of hearing, and dulling the keenness of its -apprehension of the unknown.... As the present -passes from us, hardly to be enjoyed except as -memory or as hope, and only with an at best -partial recognition of the uncertainty or inutility -of both, it is with a kind of terror that we wake -up, every now and then, to the whole knowledge -of our ignorance, and to some perception of where -it is leading us. To live through a single day with -that overpowering consciousness of our real -position, which, in the moments in which alone it -mercifully comes, is like blinding light or the -thrust of a flaming sword, would drive any man -out of his senses.... And so there is a great silent -conspiracy between us to forget death; all our -lives are spent in busily forgetting death. That -is why we are so active about so many things -which we know to be unimportant, why we are -so afraid of solitude, and so thankful for the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">54</a></span> -company of our fellow creatures. Allowing ourselves -for the most part to be vaguely conscious of -that great suspense in which we live, we find our -escape from its sterile, annihilating reality, in -many dreams, in religion, passion, art; each a -forgetfulness, each a symbol of creation.... Each -is a kind of sublime selfishness, the saint, the -lover, and the artist having each an incommunicable -ecstasy which he esteems as his ultimate -attainment; however, in his lower moments, he -may serve God in action, or do the will of his -mistress, or minister to men by showing them a -little beauty. But it is before all things an -escape.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Mr. Symons finds in his system of æsthetics -an escape from Methodism and the Calvinistic -threatenings of his childhood. He wishes to -escape ‘hell.’ In the story of <cite>Seaward Lackland</cite> -there is a preacher whom Methodism drove -to madness. Mr. Symons has turned to Art so -that he may not feel the eternal flames taking -hold of him.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">55</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="III"></a>III</h2> -</div> - -<p class="in0"><span class="smcap">One</span> endeavours to remember some one or two -outstanding novels written by any one of the -writers of this group. It must be at once admitted, -one fails to recall a great novel. It is -true that the great Victorians, Meredith and -Hardy, were hard at work at this time; but, -then, neither of these writers belongs to this -movement. Then there was Kipling, Stevenson, -Barrie, and George Moore. With the exception -of the last, we have little to do with these -here. They do not come within the scope of -the present study.</p> - -<p>None of the men of the nineties (as I have -defined them) produced a great novel. It -would be well, however, to give at once some -connotation for so loose a term as ‘a great -novel.’ Let us then say that a good English -novel is not necessarily a great novel; nor, for -that matter, is a good Russian novel necessarily -a great novel. A great novel is a work of -fiction that has entered into the realm of universal -literature in the same way as the dramas<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">56</a></span> -of Sophocles and Shakespeare and Molière have -entered that glorious demesne. As a matter -of fact, one can remember, I think in most -cases, very few English novels that are great in -this sense; while there are many more French -and Russian works that have an undeniable -right to this title. Therefore it is not, perhaps, -so damaging a criticism of the period as it -might at first sight appear to say it has produced -no great novel.</p> - -<p>But in so far as English fiction alone is concerned, -it cannot be said that the men of the -nineties produced work of a very high order in -this form. They do not seem to have had the -staying power demanded in such artistic production. -The short poem, the short story, the -small black and white drawing, the one act -play—in fact, any form of art that just displays -the climacteric moment and discards the -rest pleased them. It was, as John Davidson -said, an age of Bovril. While the novel, it -must be admitted, needs either a profusion of -ideas, as in the case of the Russians, or of -genitals, as in the case of the French. But the -art of the nineties was essentially an expression -of moods—and moods, after all, are such evanescent -brief conditions. So it is not unnatural -that the fruition of the novel was not rich<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">57</a></span> -among these writers. George Gissing and -George Moore, in a way their forebears (I have -in mind more particularly the latter), spread a -taste for such works. Indeed, in his <cite>Confessions -of a Young Man</cite>, George Moore may be said -to have predicted the masculine type of the -nineties. Gissing in 1891 was to daunt some -with his <cite>New Grub Street</cite>, while Henry James -was to inspire enthusiasm in a few like Hubert -Crackanthorpe. But naturally in the way of -stimulus the main goad was France, which was -at that date phenomenally rich in practitioners -of the art of the novel. The Vizetelly Zolas, -Mr. George Moore personally conducting the -novels of certain of the French novelists over -the Channel, the desire to smash the fetters of -Victorian fiction which Thomas Hardy was to -accomplish, were all inspiring sources which -were, however, singularly unfruitful. Walter -Pater long before in his academic romance -<cite>Marius</cite>, which they had all read eagerly, wrote -charmingly of a field that would appeal to -them when he said: ‘Life in modern London ... is -stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of -a youth to build his “palace of art” of.’ But -instead of taking the recommendation of this -high priest they read <cite>Dorian Gray</cite>, which Wilde -would never have written if Huysmans had not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">58</a></span> -first written <cite>A Rebours</cite>. The young men of -Henley, it must be confessed, did far finer work -than Richard Le Gallienne’s watery Wildism -in <cite>The Quest of the Golden Girl</cite>. George -Moore wrote a masterpiece in <cite>Evelyn Innes</cite>, -but Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore in <cite>A -Comedy of Masks</cite> and <cite>Adrian Rome</cite> did not -retaliate. Leonard Merrick, who started publishing -in the eighties, did not publish his best -work till the nineties were dead and gone; -while his best Bohemian Paris stories may owe -as much to Du Maurier’s <cite>Trilby</cite> (1894) as they -do to Henri Murger. Henry Harland, as I -have already said, only struck his vein of -comedy fiction when the Boer War had finished -the movement. George Gissing and Arthur -Morrison belong, with Frank Harris, to the -pugilistic school of Henley’s young men, -while Richard Whiteing, who turned from -journalism to write <cite>No. 5 John Street</cite> (1899), -was too old a man and too late with his book -to belong to the nineties’ group. Arthur -Machen, in those days, belonged to the short -story writers with Hubert Crackanthorpe, who -was the great imaginative prose writer of -the group. The sailor, Joseph Conrad, the -Australian Louis Becke, the Canadian, C. G. D. -Roberts, were working out their own salvation,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59">59</a></span> -and had nothing to do with the Rhymers’ Club. -The strong creative brain of Aubrey Beardsley, -indeed, in his unfinished picaresque romance, -<cite>Under the Hill</cite>, which I have already mentioned, -produced something new, but it was not a novel; -while it is John Davidson’s poetry that counts, -not his novels, which remain unread nowadays -on the shelf.</p> - -<p>Indeed, if the name of a good English novel -by any one of them is demanded, it will be -singularly difficult to suggest a satisfactory title. -One can even go further, and state that they -did not even have one amongst them who has -handed on to us a vivid picture of their own -lives in the form of fiction. Dowson, indeed, -in the dock life of his books may have autobiographical -touches, but they are purely personal. -What I mean is, that there was no one -standing by to give us a picture of them as -Willy, the French writer, has given us of the -sceptical yet juvenile enthusiasm of Les Jeunes -of Paris of the same period in, for example, his -<cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Maîtresse d’Esthètes</cite>. What is cruder than -Ranger-Gull’s <cite>The Hypocrite</cite>, which has pretensions -to be a picture of the young men of the -period? And when one comes to think of it this -is a great pity, as an excellent novel might have -been penned around the feverish activities of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60">60</a></span> -these young exotics of the nineties. Robert -Hichens’ <cite>Green Carnation</cite> is, after all, perhaps -the most brilliant attempt to picture the weaknesses -of the period, and it is merely a skit -taking off in the characters of Esmé Amarinth -and Lord Reggie two well-known personalities. -<cite>The Adventures of John Johns</cite>, it is true, is -supposed to be the history of the rise of one of -the smaller epigoni of the movement, but it is -not a very brilliant achievement, though it has -considerable merit and interest. One cannot -indeed say that it is up to the standard of -Ernest La Jeunesse’s <cite>Odin Howes</cite>, wherein the -French Jew has given a veritable flashing insight -on the last days of Wilde in Paris and -those holes into which he crept to drink. -What a pity, indeed, an English contemporary -has not done the same for the Tite Street days, -or given us in his book a serious study of the -strange world of Whistler or Dowson.</p> - -<p>In the face of this strange dearth of novels -in this school one cannot help asking the -reasons that engendered it. Without laying -down any hard and fast rules, it will, I think, -be seen that this vacuity came from the -Zeitgeist of the group itself. As has been said, -the large canvas, the five-act play, the long -novel were <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">démodé</i> for the period. The age<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">61</a></span> -demanded, after the long realistic studies of -the eighties in France, the climacteric moments -only when the passions of the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">personæ</i> of the -drama were at white heat, so to speak, and -life was lived intensely. Could not the great -scene up to which the five long acts lead be -squeezed into one? Was not the rediscovery -of the <cite>Mimes</cite> of Herod as a sign of the times? -Could not the great beauty of an immense -landscape’s spirit be caught and seized on a -small canvas? Could not the long-winded -novel of three tomes be whittled down to the -actual short-story motive? This reduction of -everything to its climax can be seen in all the -art of the period. Look at Beardsley’s decoration -for Wilde’s <cite>Salomé</cite>, entitled itself ‘The -Climax.’ Conder paints small objects like -fans and diminutive water-colours and Crackanthorpe -writes short stories. The poems of -Dowson are short swallow flights of song, and -the epic is reduced to Stephen Phillips’s -<cite>Marpessa</cite>. The one-act play begins on the -Continent to make a big appeal for more -recognition than that of a curtain-raiser. -Small theatres, particularly in Germany and -Austria, give evening performances consisting -of one-acters alone. It becomes the same in -music. The age was short-winded and its art,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62">62</a></span> -to borrow a phrase from the palæstra, could -only stay over short distances. So, whereas -there is a strange dearth of novels, the men -of the nineties were very fruitful in short -stories. In fact, it would not be perhaps too -much to say that it was then, for the first -time in English literature, the short story -came into its own. At any rate, it would be -more judicious to put the period as one in -which the short story flourished vigorously (if -not for the first time), in England, as a ‘theme -of art.’ To understand exactly what I mean -by this artistic treatment of the short story<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> as -a medium of literary expression, all that is -necessary is, perhaps, to compare one of -Dickens’s short tales, for example, with one of -Stevenson’s short stories. The result is apparent -at once in the difference of treatment—a difference -as essential as the difference between the -effect of a figure in stone and another in -bronze. The earlier tale has none of the facets -and subtleties that art has contrived to express -by the latter narration. This artistic treatment -of the short story by Englishmen, then, -was a new thing and a good thing for English<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">63</a></span> -literature. If the long staying powers required -for the great novel in the world of comparative -literature did not belong to the writers of -the nineties group, at any rate they developed, -more or less artistically, the climacteric effects -of the <i>conte</i>. For the short story crossed the -Channel by means of Guy de Maupassant, and -out of it arose on this side for a brief decade -or so a wonderful wealth of art. The short -stories of Kipling are by no means the only -pebbles on the beach. In fact, never even in -France itself was there such variety of theme and -treatment. The successful short stories of the -period are of all sorts and conditions. To -exemplify as briefly as possible this variety is -perhaps closer to my purpose than to waste -time in proving such obvious facts as the -anxious endeavours of all these writers to -raise their work to the artistic elevation demanded -of the short story, or their strenuous -struggle to attain a suitable style and treatment -for their themes.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> Frederick Wedmore in <cite>On Books and Arts</cite> (1899) -discusses the short story as a distinct artistic medium. -It can never be a ‘novel in a nutshell.’</p></div> - -<p>Numerous examples of their art at once -crowd the mind, such as Ernest Dowson’s -<cite>Dying of Francis Donne</cite>, Max Beerbohm’s -<cite>Happy Hypocrite</cite>, Frederick Wedmore’s tender -<cite>Orgeas and Miradou</cite>, Arthur Symons’s <cite>Death -of Peter Waydelin</cite>, the works of Hubert<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64">64</a></span> -Crackanthorpe, or the fantastic tales of Arthur -Machen, or Eric Count Stenbock’s<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> <cite>Studies of -Death</cite>. H. D. Lowry, though of Henley’s -young men, works at the same art of studies in -sentiment in his <cite>Women’s Tragedies</cite>. So does -Mr. G. S. Street in his <cite>Episodes</cite> and George -Egerton in her <cite>Discords and Keynotes</cite>. Among -the others who deliberately tried to write the -short story as an artistic theme at that period -and who were at the same time in the movement -can be mentioned Henry Harland, Rudolf -Dircks in his <cite>Verisimilitudes</cite>, Richard Le<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65">65</a></span> -Gallienne, Kenneth Grahame, Percy Hemingway -in his <cite>Out of Egypt</cite>, etc. Then we -have men like R. B. Cunninghame Graham -and H. W. Nevinson, clearly influenced by the -movement and writing alongside of it of the -ends of the earth they have visited. The -former, for example, in a short story like -<cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Aurora La Cujiñi</cite> (Smithers, 1898) clearly -reflects the influences of this period which -gloried in the abnormal in Art. Known as a -socialist of courage, Mr. Graham, whose name -betrays his origin, has also visited many of the -exotic places of the world. In his able book -<cite>Mogreb-el-Acksa</cite> he has given us vignettes of -Morocco that are unsurpassed; in his volume -<cite>Success</cite> he has told us of those Spanish-speaking -races of South America, of the tango, and -the horses of the pampas, and the estancias he -knows so well. In <cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Aurora La Cujiñi</cite> we have -a vignette of Seville so realistic that we almost -believe that one is justified in considering that -there is just enough motive in it to vivify it -with the quickening touch of the short storyteller’s -wand. It is slow in starting, but -when this motive comes suddenly at the end -we are almost left breathless, realising that -everything that went before was but a slow, -ruthless piling up of local colour. It is all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">66</a></span> -done with such deliberate deftness. How we -see the scenes unrolling slowly before us. Like -the thrilled people on the benches we watch -the Toreador about to make his kill as we -read:</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> Eric Stenbock was at Balliol, Oxford. He collaborated -in a volume of translations of Balzac’s ‘Short Stories.’ -He contributed to Lord Alfred Douglas’s <cite>The Spirit Lamp</cite>. -As a specimen of his style the following extract from his -short story, <cite>The Other Side</cite>, may be offered. It is supposed -to be an old Breton woman’s description of the -Black Mass: -</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>‘Then when they get to the top of the hill, there is an -altar with six candles quite black and a sort of something -in between, that nobody sees quite clearly, and the old -black ram with the man’s face and long horns begins to -say Mass in a sort of gibberish nobody understands, -and two black strange things like monkeys glide about -with the book and the cruets—and there’s music too, -such music. There are things the top half like black -cats, and the bottom part like men only their legs are -all covered with close black hair, and they play on the -bag-pipes, and when they come to the elevation then—. -Amid the old crones there was lying on the hearth-rug, -before the fire, a boy whose large lovely eyes dilated -and whose limbs quivered in the very ecstacy of terror.’</p></blockquote> -</div> - -<p>The “espada” had come forward, mumbled -his boniment in Andaluz, swung his montera -over his shoulder upon the ground, and after -sticking his sword in every quarter of the bull -had butchered him at last amid the applause -of the assembled populace. Blood on the -sand; sun on the white plaza; upon the women’s -faces “cascarilla”; scarlet and yellow fans, and -white mantillas with “fleco y alamares” in the -antique style...; women selling water, calling -out “aguá!” in so guttural a voice it seemed -like Arabic; Cardobese hats, short jackets, and -from the plaza a scent of blood and sweat acting -like a rank aphrodisiac upon the crowd, -and making the women squeeze each other’s -sweating hands, and look ambiguously at one -another, as they were men; and causing the -youths, with swaying hips and with their hair -cut low upon their foreheads, to smile with -open lips and eyes that met your glance, as -they had been half women. Blood, harlotry, -sun, gay colours, flowers and waving palm-trees, -women with roses stuck behind their ears,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">67</a></span> -mules covered up in harness of red worsted, -cigar girls, gipsies, tourists, soldiers, and the -little villainous-looking urchins, who, though -born old, do duty as children in the South.’</p> - -<p>As we read this magical evocation of the -spirit of place we rub our eyes and ask ourselves -have we not been there. This prose of -vivid impressionism is the goal of one and all. -As the plein air school painted in the open air -before Nature, so these men must write as -closely round their subject as actual experience -can allow them. The vivid realisation of a -mood, as we shall see in Hubert Crackanthorpe, -is the desired prize. Turn through the pages -of Ernest Dowson’s <cite>Dilemmas</cite>, and read, above -all, <cite>A Case of Conscience</cite>; leaf Frederick Wedmore’s<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> -<cite>Renunciations</cite>, and pause over <cite>The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">68</a></span> -Chemist in the Suburbs</cite>, wherein, as H. D. Traill -said, the story of Richard Pelse’s life is a pure -joy; in both cases vivid impressionism and -mood realisation are the keynotes of the work. -To understand these tendencies better and the -excellence of the work achieved, it will be more -advantageous, perhaps, to consider in more -detail one writer only who carried the charm -of the prose pen to a higher degree of emphasis -and finish in the short story than any of -the others, to wit, Hubert Crackanthorpe.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> About the worst of Frederick Wedmore’s short stories, -such as <cite>The North Coast and Eleanor</cite>, there is a hint of -the melodrama of Hugh Conway’s <cite>Called Back</cite>, but it is -a feeble replica of the original. The most successful of -his short imaginative pieces, as the author rightly terms -them, on the other hand, have a refined grace of slow -movement that is at once captivating and refreshing. It -seems impossible that the same man could have essayed -both the worst and the best. As a specimen of the -latter type of work, let me fasten on to the description -of the entourage of Pelse the chemist, the man with the -tastes above his position: -</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>‘There came a little snow. But in the parlour over -the shop—with the three windows closely curtained—one -could have forgetfulness of weather. There was the neat -fireplace; the little low tea-table; a bookcase in which -Pelse—before that critical event at Aix-les-Bains—had -been putting, gradually, first editions of the English -poets; a cabinet of china, in which—but always before -Aix-les-Bains—he had taken to accumulate some pretty -English things of whitest paste or finest painting; a -Worcester cup, with its exotic birds, its lasting gold, its -scale-blue ground, like lapis lazuli or sapphire; a Chelsea -figure; something from Swansea; white plates of Nantgarw, -bestrewn with Billingsley’s greyish pink roses, of -which he knew the beauty, the free artistic touch. How -the things had lost interest for him! “From the moment,” -says some French critic, “that a woman occupies -me, my collection does not exist.” And many a woman -may lay claim to occupy a French art critic; only one -had occupied Richard Pelse.’</p></blockquote> -</div> - -<p>A curious anomaly can be remarked here, -that in this period the great work of prose -fiction was not to be resharpened by the young -men to nearly the same extent as they resharpened -the poetry and the essay. None<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">69</a></span> -approach Meredith and Hardy, who move like -Titans of the age, while Kipling and Crackanthorpe -are the only two young men that give -any quantity of imaginative prose work of a -high new order (and in saying this one must not -overlook Arthur Morrison’s <cite>Mean Streets</cite>, or -Zangwill’s Ghetto Tales, or the work of Henry -James) until Conrad came from the sea and -Louis Becke from Australia to give new vistas -to our fiction. But it is not with them we are -concerned here, but with Hubert Crackanthorpe,<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">13</a> -of whose life the poet has sung:</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="fnanchor">13</a> It is interesting to note the verses also of the French -poet Francis Jammes dedicated to Crackanthorpe. -Jammes lived at Orthez when Crackanthorpe visited -that remote countryside.</p></div> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Too rough his sea, too dark its angry tides!<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Things of a day are we, shadows that move<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The lands of shadow.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Crackanthorpe commenced his literary career -as the editor, with W. H. Wilkins, of <cite>The -Albemarle</cite>, a monthly review started in January, -1892, with a splendid supplement lithograph.</p> - -<p><cite>Wreckage</cite>, the younger writer’s first volume, -appeared in 1893, and contains seven studies of -very unequal merit. Its French inspiration as -well as its French emulation is at once apparent,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">70</a></span> -for in place of a foreword is the simple, all-sufficing -French quotation as a keynote of the -type of work displayed: ‘Que le roman ait -cette religion que le siècle passé appelait de ce -large et vaste nom: “Humanité”;—il lui suffit -de cette conscience; son droit est là.’ The -youth of the writer (he was only twenty-eight) -must be remembered when discussing the inequality -of these studies in passion, for all -hinge on the old eternal theme. The last three -are perhaps more finished work than the first -four, and this is a pity from the point of view -of the reader. <cite>Profiles</cite>, indeed, the longest, is -also in some respects the worst-conceived -attempt. It is crude and immature in conception -and projection. A young officer, in -love with Lily Maguire, is deceived by her for -a very Emily Brontë-like figure of a bold, bad, -handsome man. The girl becomes a disreputable -member of the prostitute class, and Maurice, -like the young fool he is, wishes to redeem her. -But Lily, whom the sensuous, romantic life has -taught nothing, could never, she thinks, marry -a man she did not care for, although she would -sell herself to the first Tom, Dick, or Harry. -<cite>A Conflict of Egoisms</cite> concerns two people who -have wasted their lives and then utterly destroy -themselves by marrying one another, for they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">71</a></span> -were too selfish to <em>live</em> even by themselves. -<cite>The Struggle for Life</cite> is a Maupassant<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">14</a>-conceived, -but ineffectively told story of a wife -betrayed by her husband, who sells herself for -half-a-crown if she can go home in an hour. -<cite>Embers</cite> is much more effectively told, and here -at last we begin to realise Crackanthorpe is -getting at the back of his characters. The -same applies to that able gambling story, <cite>When -Greek meets Greek</cite>, while in <cite>A Dead Woman</cite> we -have Crackanthorpe at last in his full stride. -Rushout the innkeeper, inconsolable for his -dead wife, is as real as ‘bony and gaunt’ -Jonathan Hays, who was the dead woman’s -lover. How the husband discovers the dead -woman’s infidelity; how he and Hays were to -have fought; and how at last ‘each remembered -that she had belonged to the other, and, -at that moment, they felt instinctively drawn -together,’ is told by a master’s hand with a slow -deliberation that is as relentless as life itself. -Here the narrative is direct and the delineation -of character sharp. These two men with the -card-sharper Simon live, while as for the women -of the book we wish to forget them, for they -have nothing to redeem them except possibly -the little French girl from Nice.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="fnanchor">14</a> Maupassant’s <cite>Inconsolables</cite>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">72</a></span></p></div> - -<p>Two years later appeared a far more ambitious -and maturer volume containing half-a-dozen -sentimental studies and half-a-dozen -tales of the French villages Crackanthorpe so -loved and understood. His method of work -becomes more pronounced here, that is to treat -an English theme in the French manner, a task -which demands more culture than the ruck of -the conteurs for the English magazines attain -with their facile tears and jackass laughters, -their machine-like nonentities and pudibond -ineptitudes. Crackanthorpe, indeed, has left -no following behind him, and only once later -can I recall a volume of short stories that -suggests his manner: J. Y. F. Cooke’s tales -of the nineties in his <cite>Stories of Strange -Women</cite>.</p> - -<p>In this new volume as before, Crackanthorpe -devotes himself to the expansion of the sentimental -study, the problems of sexual relationships, -which are not altogether pleasing to -every one, and this may account for his limited -appeal. In <cite>Wreckage</cite> all the women were vile, -but here he evidently intends to picture the -other side of women in Ella, the wife of the -poet Hillier, with its slow Flaubert unrolling -of her infinite delusion. In <cite>Battledore and -Shuttlecock</cite>, in Nita, of the old Empire<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">73</a></span> -promenade days, he again develops the good -side. While in the study of the <cite>Love-sick -Curate</cite> we feel that Ethel is not hard-hearted, -but only that the Rev. Burkett is an unutterable -idiot. <cite>Modern Melodrama</cite> is the short, -sharp climacteric stab of Maupassant perhaps -not over well done. The sentimental studies -close with <cite>Yew-Trees and Peacocks</cite>, which -seems rather to have lost its point in the -telling. The tales of the Pyrennese villages -where Crackanthorpe used to stay are typical -productions of the delight of the men of the -nineties in their sojourning on the sacred soil -of France. <cite>The White Maize</cite>, <cite>Etienne Matton</cite>, -and <cite>Gaston Lalanne’s Child</cite> are perhaps not unworthy -of the master himself in their simple -directness, devoid of all unnecessary padding. -With a few phrases, indeed, Crackanthorpe -can lay his scene, strip his characters nude -before us. How we realise, for instance, Ella -lying in bed the night before her mistaken -marriage with Hillier. She is there in all -the virgin simplicity of the average English -country girl:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>The window was wide open, and the muslin -curtains swaying in the breeze bulged towards -her weirdly. She could see the orchard trees -bathed in blackness, and above a square of sky,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">74</a></span> -blue-grey, quivering with stifled light, flecked -with a disorder of stars that seemed ready to rain -upon the earth. After a while, little by little, -she distinguished the forms of the trees. Slowly, -monstrous, and sleek, the yellow moon was -rising.</p> - -<p>She was no longer thinking of herself! She -had forgotten that to-morrow was her wedding-day: -for a moment, quite impersonally, she -watched the moonlight stealing through the -trees.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Again, Ronald, the youth from the Army -Crammer’s, finds his way into the music-hall, -where he encounters Nita:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Immediately he entered the theatre, the sudden -sight of the scene stopped him, revealed, as it -were, through a great gap. The stage blazed -white; masses of recumbent girls, bathed in soft -tints, swayed to dreamy cadence of muffled -violins before the quivering gold-flecked minarets -of an Eastern palace. He leaned against the -side of the lounge to gaze down across the black -belt of heads. The sight bewildered him. By-and-bye, -he became conscious of a hum of voices, -and a continual movement behind him. Men, for -the most part in evening dress, were passing in procession -to and fro, some women amongst them, smiling -as they twittered mirthlessly; now and then -he caught glimpses of others seated before little -round tables, vacant, impassive, like waxwork -figures, he thought.... He was throbbing with -trepidating curiosity, buffeted by irresolution.</p></blockquote> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">75</a></span> -With the same exactitude the lonely fells -around Scarsdale, where Burkett is parson of -the small Cumberland village, arise before us.</p> - -<p>His posthumous volume, <cite>Last Studies</cite>, contains -only three rather long short stories, an -‘in memoriam’ poem by Stopford A. Brooke, -and an appreciation very gracefully done by -Henry James. Referring in the field of -fiction to the crudity of the old hands and -the antiquity of new, his appreciator finds it -difficult to render the aspect which constitutes -Crackanthorpe’s ‘troubled individual note.’ -He comes to the conclusion, ‘What appealed -to him was the situation that asked for a -certain fineness of art, and that could best be -presented in a kind of foreshortened picture.’</p> - -<p>The short story is mainly of two sorts: -‘The chain of items, figures in a kind of sum—one -of the simple rules—of movement, -added up as on a school-boy’s slate, and -with the correct total and its little flourish, -constituting the finish and accounting for the -effect; or else it may be an effort preferably -pictorial, a portrait of conditions, an attempt -to summarise, and compress for purposes of -presentation to “render” even, if possible, for -purposes of expression.’ From the French -Crackanthorpe learnt the latter method, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76">76</a></span> -practised it. When we come to look at these -last three stories (which with the tiny collection -of <cite>Vignettes</cite> completes his work) we see -how admirably exact is this criticism of his -senior.</p> - -<p>In <cite>Antony Garstin’s Courtship</cite> he is back in -his own countryside of Cumberland among -the shrewd, hard Dale folk. It is a little -masterpiece conceived almost in the hopeless -bitterness of Hardy at his darkest, most -pessimistic moment. The crudeness in workmanship -has gone, only the relentless inevitability -of it all remains like the tragedies -of life itself. Rosa Blencarn, the parson’s -niece, a mere cheap flirt of unfinished comeliness, -is but the bone of contention between the -personalities of Antony and his mother. The -widow Garstin is as fine a character as Crackanthorpe, -in his twenty-two stories, has created. -She lives, and in her veins flows the passion of -disappointed age. ‘She was a heavy-built -woman, upright, stalwart almost, despite her -years. Her face was gaunt and sallow; deep -wrinkles accentuated the hardness of her -features. She wore a widow’s black cap above -her iron-grey hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, and -a soiled chequered apron.’ How easily we can -see her saying to her great hulking son:<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77">77</a></span> -‘T’ hoose be mine, t’ Lord be praised,’ she -continued in a loud, hard voice, ‘an’ as long as -he spare me, Tony, I’ll na’ see Rosa Blencarn -set foot inside it.’</p> - -<p>It has all the unsavoury cruelty of humanity, -and to find other such scenes in English literature -we have to come down to Caradoc Evans’s -<cite>My People</cite>, or James Joyce.</p> - -<p>In <cite>Trevor Perkins</cite>, in a brief masterly way, -we have the soul of the average young man of -the nineties, who has ceased to believe in God -or tolerate his parents, sketched for us. He -walks out with the waitress of his bunshop, and -we realise at once he is of those who are -doomed to make fools of themselves on the -reef of her sex. The last story, <cite>The Turn of -the Wheel</cite>, is the history of the daughter -who believes in her self-made father, and -despises her sidetracked mother as an inferior -being, only to find she has made a great -mistake. It is one of the longest stories he -wrote, and moves easily in the higher strata of -London society. From this fashionable world -to the rude and rugged scars and fells of -Cumberland is a far cry; but here, as elsewhere, -Crackanthorpe finds the friction of -humanity is its own worst enemy. Yet behind -all this impenetrably impersonal bitter<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78">78</a></span> -play of human passions in these short stories, -one feels somehow or other the distant beats -of the author’s compassionate heart, which his -sickness of life made him forcibly stop in the -pride of his youth before he had time to realise -himself or fulfil his rich promise.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">79</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="IV"></a>IV</h2> -</div> - -<p class="in0"><span class="smcap">The</span> poetry of the period is essentially an -expression of moods and sentiments. It is as -much a form of impressionism as the art of -Monet and Renoir. Further, it seeks after, -like all the art of the nineties, that abnormality -of proportion of which Bacon wrote in -his ‘Essay on Beauty.’ It is, too, a period -wonderfully fertile in song. Besides the -nineties’ group, which is represented chiefly by -the Rhymers’ Club, there were many other -schools of song. Lord Alfred Douglas in his -<cite>City of the Soul</cite>, Oscar Wilde in his <cite>Sphinx</cite> -and <cite>The Harlot’s House</cite>, Stephen Phillips and -Henley, Francis Thompson in his <cite>Hound of -Heaven</cite>, are but some of the richness I am compelled -to pass over in order to adhere strictly to -the programme of this rough summary. Let -us, therefore, turn at once to the Rhymers’ -Club, whose origin and desires have been so -well explained by Arthur Symons, the cicerone -to the age, in his essay on Ernest Dowson. At -the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street it was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">80</a></span> -arranged that a band of young poets should -meet, striving to recapture in London something -of the Gallic spirit of art and the charm -of open discussion in the Latin Quartier. The -Club consisted of the following members: -John Davidson, Ernest Dowson, Edwin J. -Ellis, George Arthur Greene, Lionel Johnson, -Arthur Cecil Hillier, Richard Le Gallienne, -Victor Plarr, Ernest Radford, Ernest Rhys, -Thomas William Rolleston, Arthur Symons, -John Todhunter, and William Butler Yeats. -Besides these members, the Club, which was -without rules or officers, had at one time -affiliated to itself the following permanent -guests: John Gray, Edward Rose, J. T. Nettleship, -Morley Roberts, A. B. Chamberlain, Edward -Garnett, and William Theodore Peters.</p> - -<p>Oscar Wilde, though never a member, had a -great influence on many of those who were, -and Victor Plarr describes a memorable meeting -of the Rhymers in Mr. Herbert Horne’s -rooms in the Fitzroy settlement at which Wilde -appeared. The poet goes on: ‘It was an evening -of notabilities. Mr. Walter Crane stood -with his back to the mantelpiece, deciding, very -kindly, on the merits of our effusions. And -round Oscar Wilde, not then under a cloud, -hovered reverently Lionel Johnson and Ernest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">81</a></span> -Dowson, with others. This must have been in -1891, and I marvelled at the time to notice the -fascination which poor Wilde exercised over -the otherwise rational. He sat as it were -enthroned and surrounded by a differential -circle.’</p> - -<p>The influence of Verlaine and the symbolist -poets of Paris in this circle was profound. -Every one had a passion for things French. -Symons translated the prose poems of Baudelaire -and the verses of Mallarmé, Dowson -is inspired by the ‘Fêtes Gallantes,’ and so on. -As Mr. Plarr writes: ‘Stray Gauls used to be -imported to grace literary circles here. I -remember one such—a rare instance of a rough -Frenchman—to whom Dowson was devoted. -When a Gaul appeared in a coterie we were -either silent, like the schoolgirls in their French -conversation hour, or we talked a weird un-French -French like the ladies in some of Du -Maurier’s drawings.’<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">15</a></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="fnanchor">15</a> Victor Plarr, <cite>Ernest Dowson</cite>, p. 23. 1914.</p></div> - -<p>Of course it must not be supposed, however, -that the nineties ever remained at all stationary -in this condition or entirely under these -influences. Mr. Plarr is speaking of the early -nineties, the age when John Gray’s <cite>Silverpoints</cite> -was perhaps a fair sample of the poetry of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82">82</a></span> -moment for this group; but, when at the same -time it must be remembered, poets like Francis -Thompson and William Watson were carrying -on the staider traditions of English poetry -altogether unmoved by these exotic influences -from Montmartre and the studios of the south. -The nineties group itself only remained for -a restive moment like this before each man was -to go his own way. They were indeed all souls -seeking the way to perfection in art. Yeats -went off to assist to found the Irish School; -Richard Le Gallienne went to America; Gray -became a priest. Many disappeared shortly -afterwards from the lower slopes of Parnassus, -not being of those dowered with the true call; -and so, one after the other, all are to be -accounted for. The genuine men of the -nineties after the fall of Wilde seem to have -migrated to Smithers’ wonderful bookshop in -Bond Street, where their later works were issued -in ornate editions.</p> - -<p>The names of others besides the actual members -of the Rhymers’ Club must not be altogether -forgotten, such as Percy Hemingway with -his <cite>Happy Wanderer</cite>, Theodore Wratislaw, -Olive Custance, Dollie Radford, Rosamund -Marriott-Watson, Norman Gale, and many -others who were also of the movement. However,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">83</a></span> -of them I cannot speak here, but can only -refer the reader to the book-lists of Elkin -Mathews and John Lane for the first period, -and of Leonard Smithers for the second. In -the numerous slim plaquettes of verse issued -from these presses he will find golden verse -worthy of the labour of his research. Indeed, -amid so many writers one is compelled to resort -to the odious necessity of a choice, so I shall -here all too briefly deal with <cite>Silverpoints</cite> as -a typical volume of the early period, and then -trace succinctly the career of two poets, who -had certainly the right to that appellation, -Ernest Dowson and John Davidson, and who -were both not only of, but actually were the -movement itself. Lastly, in this section, as an -indication of the wide influence these writers -had overseas, as in the case of the Birch Bark -School of Canada and certain poets in Australia, -I wish to mention the young American -poet who was an intimate of so many of the -men of the nineties—William Theodore Peters.</p> - -<p>The narrow green octavo of <cite>Silverpoints</cite>, -with its lambent golden flames, strikes the eye -at once as some bizarre and exotic work. It -was one of the first of the limited éditions de -luxe that mark the new printing of the decade, -and is one of the most dainty little books ever -issued by Elkin Mathews and John Lane.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84">84</a></span> -Most of the titles are in French, and there are -imitations from Charles Baudelaire, Arthur -Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine—the -gods of the symbolist school at that -moment. Poems are dedicated (it was the -habit of the decade) to friends, including -Pierre Louÿs, Paul Verlaine, Oscar Wilde, -R. H. Sherard, Henri Teixeira de Mattos, -Ernest Dowson, etc. The predominant note is -that of tigress’s blood and tiger-lilies. Honey, -roses, white breasts, and golden hair, with -fierce passion and indolent languor, are -the chords of the book’s frisson. All the -panoply of the new English art begotten from -the French here burgeons forth with the Satanic -note that was then in the fashion. We find -this in the <cite>Femmes Damnées</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Like moody beasts they lie along the sands;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Look where the sky against the sea-rim clings:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Foot stretches out to foot, and groping hands<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Have languors soft and bitter shudderings.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Some by the light of crumbling, resinous gums,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the still hollows of old pagan dens,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Call thee in aid to their deliriums<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O Bacchus! cajoler of ancient pains.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And those whose breasts for scapulars are fain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nurse under their long robes the cruel thong,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These, in dim woods, where huddling shadows throng,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mix with the foam of pleasure tears of pain.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85">85</a></span> -There is more than an echo of Rimbaud’s -verses in this volume, and the poet is evidently -straining always after the violent effect, the -climacteric moment of a mood or passion. Probably -two of the most successfully carried -through crises are <cite>The Barber</cite> and <cite>Mishka</cite>. -The first of these as a typical example of the -whole school I venture to spheterize in full:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I dreamed I was a barber; and there went<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath my hand, oh! manes extravagant.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath my trembling fingers, many a mask<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of many a pleasant girl. It was my task<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To gild their hair, carefully, strand by strand;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To paint their eyebrows with a timid hand;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To draw a bodkin, from a vase of Kohl,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Through the closed lashes; pencils from a bowl<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of sepia, to paint them underneath;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To blow upon their eyes with a soft breath.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They lay them back and watched the leaping bands.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The dream grew vague, I moulded with my hands<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The mobile breasts, the valley; and the waist<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I touched; and pigments reverently placed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Upon their thighs in sapient spots and stains,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beryls and chrysolites and diaphanes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And gems whose hot harsh names are never said<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I was a masseur; and my fingers bled<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With wonder as I touched their awful limbs.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Suddenly, in the marble trough there seems<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O, last of my pale mistresses, sweetness!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A twylipped scarlet pansie. My caress<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">86</a></span> -<span class="i0">Tinges thy steel-grey eyes to violet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Adown thy body skips the pit-a-pat<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of treatment once heard in a hospital<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For plagues that fascinate, but half appal.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">So, at the sound, the blood of me stood cold;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy chaste hair ripened into sullen gold;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy throat, the shoulders, swelled and were uncouth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The breasts rose up and offered each a mouth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And on the belly, pallid blushes crept,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That maddened me, until I laughed and wept.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>Here we have a long amorous catalogue. It -is the catalogue age which comes via Oscar -Wilde’s <cite>Sphinx</cite> and <cite>Salomé</cite> from certain French -writers. But this does not make up for the -singing power of the poet, and in long poems it -becomes singularly laborious. However, this -phase of poetry is so typical of the age that it -is as well to have dealt with it before turning -to the essentially ‘singing’ poets of the period, -Dowson and Davidson.</p> - -<p>Indeed, there is no one in the nineties -worthier of the honourable title of poet than -Ernest Dowson. With his unsatisfied passion -for Adelaide in Soho; his cry for ‘madder music -and for stronger wine’; his æsthetic theories, -such as that the letter ‘v’ was the most<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">87</a></span> -beautiful of the letters; his reverence for things -French, he has caused Mr. Symons, in one of -his most notable essays, to draw a delightful -portrait of a true <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">enfant de Bohême</i>. Robert -Harborough Sherard has also kept the Dowson -tradition up in his description of the death of -the vexed and torn spirit of the poet in his -<cite>Twenty Years in Paris</cite>, a work which contains -much interesting material for a study of the -nineties. But Victor Plarr, another poet of -the nineties, enraged at the incompleteness of -these pictures, has tried to give us in his reminiscences, -unpublished letters, and marginalia, -the other facet of Dowson—the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">poète intime</i> -known to few.</p> - -<p>It is no question of ours, in a brief summary -like this, which is the truer portrait of -Dowson; whether he was or was not like Keats -in his personal appearance; whether Arthur -Moore and Dowson wrote alternate chapters -of <cite>A Comedy of Masks</cite>; whether in his last -days or not Leonard Smithers used to pay him -thirty shillings a week for all he could do; -whether he used to pray or not in front of the -bearded Virgin at Arques; whether he used to -drink hashish or not. All these problems are -outside the beauty of the lyric poetry of -Dowson; and it is by his poetry and not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">88</a></span> -because of all these rumours around his brief -life that he will live.</p> - -<p>He was the poet impressionist of momentary -emotions, and poetry with him was, as Stéphane -Mallarmé said, ‘the language of a crisis.’ Each -Dowson poem is more or less the feverish impression -of a hectical crisis. For in a way he -takes off where Keats ended, for Keats was -becoming a hectic, while Dowson started out -as one.</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Exceeding sorrow<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Consumeth my sad heart!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Because to-morrow<br /></span> -<span class="i2">We must part.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now is exceeding sorrow<br /></span> -<span class="i2">All my part!...<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Be no word spoken;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Weep nothing: let a pale<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Silence, unbroken<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Silence prevail!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Prithee, be no word spoken,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Lest I fail!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>His earliest poem to attract attention was -<cite>Amor Umbratilis</cite>, which appeared in Horne’s -<cite>Century Guild Hobby Horse</cite>. It has the real -Dowson note, and marks him down at once as -one of those poets who are by nature <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">buveurs -de lune</i>. That was in 1891. In 1892 came -out the first book of the Rhymers’ Club, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">89</a></span> -with six poems of Dowson in it he definitely -took his place in the movement. It is said -that the Oscar Wilde set sent him a telegram -shortly after this ‘peremptorily ordering him -to appear at the Café Royal to lunch with the -then great man.’ Dowson was flattered, and -might well be, for Wilde was a splendid judge -of good work.</p> - -<p>Two years later the Club’s second book appeared, -and Dowson has again half a dozen -poems in it, including the lovely <cite>Extreme -Unction</cite>, and that rather doubtfully praised -lyric ‘<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno -Cynarae</i>.’ Then in the same year as <cite>The -Savoy</cite> (1896) appeared his <cite>Verses</cite>, printed on -Japanese vellum and bound in parchment, with -a cover design in gold by Aubrey Beardsley—a -typical Smithers book. This volume contains -the best of Dowson, the handsel (if it is -not too big a phrase to use of such a delicate -and delightful artist), the handsel of his immortality. -For there is something about Dowson’s -best work, though so fragile in its texture, that -has the classic permanence of a latter-day -Propertius. He has a Latin brevity and clarity, -and he is at his best in this volume. Something -has vanished from the enchantment of -the singer in <cite>Decorations</cite> (1899). It is like the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">90</a></span> -flowers of the night before. One feels that so -many of these later verses had been done perforce, -as Victor Plarr says, rather to keep on in -the movement lest one was forgotten. But in -1899 the movement was moribund, and the -winter of discontent for the Pierrots of the -nineties was fast closing down. Remembering -these things, one murmurs the sad beauty of -those perfect lines of this true poet in his first -volume:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">When this, our rose, is faded,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And these, our days, are done,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In lands profoundly shaded<br /></span> -<span class="i2">From tempest and from sun:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ah, once more come together,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Shall we forgive the past,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And safe from worldly weather<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Possess our souls at last.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>Not without reason one feels he has been -called the ‘rosa rosarum of All the Nineties,’ -in so far as poetry is concerned; but, personally, -I would prefer to call him, if one has -to call such a true poet anything, the poets’ -poet of the nineties. The best of his short -stories rank high in the great mass of the -literature of those days, and are dealt with (together -with his partnership in two novels) in -another section. As for his little one-act play,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">91</a></span> -<cite>The Pierrot of the Minute</cite>, one is apt to feel -perhaps that Beardsley was not over unjust to -it, when he described it as a tiresome playlet -he had to illustrate. At any rate, it was the -cause of Beardsley’s doing one or two admirable -decorations, even if the actual play, in -which the young American poet of the nineties, -Theodore Peters (of whom more anon), and -Beardsley’s own sister acted, was not effective -as a stage production.</p> - -<p>There is no doubt but that Davidson, though -he was outside the coteries of the nineties, was -still of them. First of all he was a Scotchman -of evangelical extraction, and secondly he was -not an Oxford man. All this made him outside -the group. On the other count, he was of -the Rhymers’ Club, though he did not contribute -to the books. He was strongly influenced -by Nietzsche, though the French -influence in him was rather negative. His -books came from the Bodley Head and were -well recognised by its other members. Beardsley -even decorated some of them, and Rothenstein -did his portrait for <cite>The Yellow Book</cite>. In fact, -Davidson himself wrote for that periodical. -All this made him of the group. It would be -thus impossible to pass over such a poet in connection -with this movement, for Davidson has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">92</a></span> -written some magnificent lyrics, if he has made -his testaments too often and too turgidly. The -Davidson, indeed, of the nineties will be discovered -to be, by any one examining his works, -the Davidson that will most probably survive.</p> - -<p>He was born in 1857, but as Mr. Holbrook -Jackson admirably puts it, ‘John Davidson -did not show any distinctive <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">fin de siècle</i> -characteristics until he produced his novel -<cite>Perfervid</cite><a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">16</a> in 1890.’ His next work, a volume -of poetry, which was the first to attract attention, -<cite>In a Music Hall and other Poems</cite> (1891), -accentuates these distinctive characteristics, -and fairly launches him on the tide of the -movement. Before that time he had been -school-mastering and clerking in Scotland, -while his leisure had begotten three rather ill-conceived -works. Davidson discovered himself -when he came to London to write. The -movement of the nineties stimulated him towards -artistic production, and when that -movement was killed by the fall of Wilde, and -buried by the Boer War, Davidson again lost -himself in the philosophic propaganda of his -last years before he was driven to suicide. -Philosophy, indeed, with John Davidson, was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">93</a></span> -to eat one’s heart with resultant mental indigestion -that completely unbalanced the -artist in him. Therefore, so far as this appreciation -is concerned, we only have to deal -with the happy Davidson of the <cite>Ballads</cite> and -<cite>Fleet Street Eclogues</cite> fame; the gay writer of -<cite>A Random Itinerary</cite> (1894); the rather hopeless -novelist of <cite>Baptist Lake</cite> (1894), and <cite>The -Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender</cite> (1895). -The last tedious phase before he gave himself -to the Cornish sea is no affair of ours. In his -<cite>Testament</cite> he says ‘none should outlive his -power,’ and realising probably that he had made -this mistake, he wished to end it all.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="fnanchor">16</a> <cite>The Eighteen Nineties</cite>, by Holbrook Jackson, p. 215 -1913.</p></div> - -<p>But in the nineties he was like his own -birds, full of ‘oboe’ song and ‘broken music.’ -Seldom has the English river, the Thames, been -more sweetly chaunted than by him. While -if we are looking for his kinship with his time -there is no doubt about it in <cite>The Ballad of a -Nun</cite>, who remarks:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I care not for my broken vow,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Though God should come in thunder soon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I am sister to the mountains now,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And sister to the sun and moon.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">A statement which we feel many of the -Beardsley ladies cadaverous with sin or fat -with luxury would have been quite capable of -repeating. Again, his <cite>Thirty Bob a Week</cite> in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">94</a></span> -<cite>The Yellow Book</cite> is as much a ninety effort as his -<cite>Ballad of Hell</cite>, while his novel, <cite>Earl Lavender</cite>, -is a burlesque of certain of the eccentricities -of the period. In a poetical note to this -volume he sings:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Oh! our age end style perplexes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All our Elders’ time has famed;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On our sleeves we wear our sexes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Our diseases, unashamed.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">The prevalent realistic disease in poetry is -well represented by <cite>A Woman and her Son</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">He set his teeth, and saw his mother die,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Outside a city reveller’s tipsy tread<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Severed the silence with a jagged rent.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Above all, Davidson handles with marked -facility the modern ballad medium of narrative -verse. <cite>The Ballad of a Nun</cite>, <cite>The Ballad -of an Artist’s Wife</cite>, and others, relate their -story in easy, jogging quatrains. As a sample -one can quote from <cite>A New Ballad of Tannhäuser</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">As he lay worshipping his bride,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">While rose leaves in her bosom fell,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On dreams came sailing on a tide<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Of sleep, he heard a matin bell.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Hark! let us leave the magic hill,’<br /></span> -<span class="i2">He said, ‘and live on earth with men.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘No, here,’ she said, ‘we stay until<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The Golden Age shall come again.’<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">95</a></span> -But if Davidson could tell a tale in verse -it cannot be said he understood the novel form. -Although here it is rather noticeable that he -has a strange, unique feature among his contemporaries. -For he at least has a sense of -humour. Max Beerbohm, it is true, had the -gift of irony; but Davidson, almost alone, has -a certain vein of grim Scotch humour, as, for -example, in the character of little red-headed -Mortimer in <cite>Perfervid</cite>. In Dowson, Johnson, -Symons, and the others, one is sometimes -appalled by the seriousness of it all. Lastly, -but by no means least, Davidson occasionally -attains the lyric rapture of unadulterated -poetry in his shorter pieces, while his vignettes -of nature linger in the memory on -account of their truth and beauty. Both -these qualities—the lyric rapture and the -keen eye for country sights and sounds—are -to be found, for instance, in <cite>A Runnable -Stag</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">When the pods went pop on the broom, green broom,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And apples began to be golden-skinned,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We harboured a stag in the Priory coomb,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And we feathered his trail up wind, up wind!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Among many other ambitions, Davidson -wanted to fire the scientific world with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">96</a></span> -imaginative poetry. As he phrased it: ‘Science -is still a valley of dead bones till imagination -breathes upon it.’ There are indeed -evidences of an almost Shelleyan pantheism -in his credo. Unhappy was his life, but, -probably, he did not labour in vain, for a -handsel of his song will endure. Writing, indeed, -was the consolation of his life:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I cannot write, I cannot think;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis half delight and half distress;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My memory stumbles on the brink<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of some unfathomed happiness—<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Of some old happiness divine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What haunting scent, what haunting note,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What word, or what melodious line,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sends my heart throbbing to my throat?<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Indeed, why repeat it, both Dowson and he -will live by their poetry. But in the case of -Davidson, in addition, there is his rather -elephantine humour. While again it must -always be remembered that he had the courage -to state that the fear of speaking freely had -‘cramped the literature of England for a -century.’ It was the liberty of the French -literature indeed that in no small degree -captivated the minds of all these young men. -Very few of them, however, had the courage to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97">97</a></span> -speak freely. But it must always remain to -Davidson’s credit that he tried to write a freer, -emancipated novel, which, however, he failed -to do, because he had a very remote idea of -novel construction.</p> - -<p>It was in 1896 that the quaint little salmon-pink -volume of William Theodore Peters, the -young American poet, appeared, entitled <cite>Posies -out of Rings</cite>. This young American was an -intimate of some of the men of the nineties, -and though it is doubtful whether he himself -would have ever achieved high fame as a poet, -he had a sincere love for the beautiful things -of Art. Among all these tragedies of ill-health, -insanity and suicide that seemed to -track down each of these young men, his fate -was perhaps the saddest of all, for he died of -starvation in Paris,<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">17</a> where many of his verses -had appeared in a distinctly American venture, -<cite>The Quartier Latin</cite>. His volume of conceits -are a harking back, not always satisfactorily, to -the ancient form of the versified epigram. -What was wrong with his Muse is that it was -only half alive. He puts indeed his own case -in a nutshell in that charming little poem -<cite>Pierrot and the Statue</cite>, which I venture to -quote in full:</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="fnanchor">17</a> R. H. Sherard, <cite>Twenty Years in Paris</cite>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98">98</a></span></p></div> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">One summer evening in a charméd wood,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Before a marble Venus, Pierrot stood;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A Venus beautiful beyond compare,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gracious her lip, her snowy bosom bare,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pierrot amorous, his cheeks aflame,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Called the white statue many a lover’s name.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">An oriole flew down from off a tree,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘Woo not a goddess made of stone!’ sang he.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘All of my warmth to warm it,’ Pierrot said,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When by the pedestal he sank down dead;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The statue faintly flushed, it seemed to strive<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To move—<em>but it was only half alive</em>.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Such was the Muse’s response to Peters’ wooing; -while he, in that strange bohemian world of so -many of the young writers of that day, wrote in -another short poem the epitaph of the majority -of those who gave so recklessly of their youth, -only to fail. It is called <cite>To the Café aux -Phares de l’Ouest, Quartier Montparnasse</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The painted ship in the paste-board sea<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Sails night and day.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To-morrow it will be as far as it was yesterday.<br /></span> -<span class="i4">But underneath, in the Café,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">The lusty crafts go down,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And one by one, poor mad souls drown—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While the painted ship in the paste-board sea<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Sails night and day.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Such, indeed, was too often the fate of the -epigoni of the movement. Their nightingales<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">99</a></span> -were never heard; they were buried with all -their songs still unsung.</p> - -<p>The only other volume which Theodore -Peters essayed, to my knowledge, was a little -poetic one-acter like his friend Ernest Dowson’s -<cite>Pierrot of the Minute</cite> (for which work he wrote -an epilogue). Peters’ play, entitled <cite>The Tournament -of Love</cite>, is a very scarce item of the nineties’ -bibliography. He calls it a pastoral masque -in one act, and it was published by Brentano’s -at Paris in 1894 and illustrated with drawings -by Alfred Jones. As Bantock wrote the music -for <cite>The Pierrot of the Minute</cite>, Noel Johnson -composed the melodies for <cite>The Tournament of -Love</cite>. The masque was put on at the Théâtre -d’Application (La Bodinière), 18 rue St. Lazare, -May 8, 1894. Peters himself took the part of -Bertrand de Roaix, a troubadour, while among -the cast were Wynford Dewhurst, the painter, -and Loïe Fuller, the dancer. The scene is an -almond orchard on the outskirts of Toulouse, -on the afternoon of the 3rd May, 1498. ‘A -group of troubadours discovered at the right of -the stage, seated upon a white semicircular -Renaissance bench, some tuning their instruments. -Other poets towards the back. A -laurel tree at the right centre. On the left -centre two heralds guard the entrance to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">100</a></span> -lists.’ Pons d’Orange, the arrived poet, will -win at this tournament of love, the Eglantine -nouvelle, ‘that golden prize of wit.’ But it is -won by Bertrand de Roaix, who wants it not, -but the love of the institutress of this court of -love, ‘Clémence Isaure, the Primrose Queen of -Beauty.’ At his love protestations she laughs; -the troubadour goes outside the lists and stabs -himself. As he lies dying Clémence, clothed -in her white samite, powdered with silver fleur-de-lys -and edged with ermine, her dust-blonde -hair bound with a fillet of oak-leaves, comes -forth from the lists and finds her boy lover’s -body:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i6">Love came and went; <em>we</em><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Knew him not. I have found my soul too late.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">101</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="V"></a>V</h2> -</div> - -<p class="in0"><span class="smcap">The</span> Victorian literary era was fecund in -essayists, and the last decade lived up to this -reputation. The forerunners of the essayists -of the nineties were obviously Walter Pater, -John Addington Symonds, Oscar Wilde with -his <cite>Intentions</cite> and Whistler in his <cite>Gentle Art</cite>. -Behind these there was a great mass of French -influence which, together with literary impressionism -as exemplified in such books as -Crackanthorpe’s <cite>Vignettes</cite>, was to give the -essay and the so-called study a new lease of -life. Indeed, what came out of the period -was not merely criticism as a useful broom -sweeping away the chaff from the wheat, but -criticism itself as a creative art, as Wilde -chose to call it; not merely dry-as-dust -records of plays and cities, and other affairs as -in guide manuals, but artistic impressions, in -some ways as vital as the objects themselves. -Mr. Arthur Symons, in particular, has given -us an abundance of this kind of work of -which I have already spoken. So did Lionel<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102">102</a></span> -Johnson and Mr. Max Beerbohm, to whom -I propose to allude here, and many others like -Mr. Bernard Shaw, who, though not of the -movement, moved alongside it on his own way, -and Mr. G. S. Street, in his <cite>Episodes</cite>, Richard -Le Gallienne, Arthur Galton, Francis Adams -in his <cite>Essays in Modernity</cite>, etc. etc. One has -only to turn over the magazines of the period -to find a band of writers, too numerous to -mention, who aided on the movement with -their pens. To cite one prominent example -alone, there was Grant Allen with his essay -on <cite>The New Hedonism</cite>. Here, however, I -must be content with a brief appreciative -glance at the works of the two writers I have -mentioned, who were both actually of and in -the movement itself. I have not here of set -purpose referred to the Henley essayists like -Charles Whibley. But the two men of the -nineties I have chosen to speak of here have -been selected in the way an essayist should be -selected nine times out of ten, that is to say, -because of his pleasing personality. These two -writers—particularly Max—are such individual -writers, yet they never offend. They are just -pleasant garrulous companions.</p> - -<p>For those who care at all passionately for -the precious things of literature, the work of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">103</a></span> -Lionel Johnson will always remain a cherished -and secluded nook. The man was a scholar, -a poet, and a critic, whose dominant note was -gracile lucidity. A friend writing of his personal -appearance at the time of his death -said, ‘Thin, pale, very delicate he looked, -with a twitching of the facial muscles, which -showed even at the age of twenty-four how -unfit was his physique to support the strain of -an abnormally nervous organization. Quick -and mouselike in his movements, reticent of -speech and low-voiced, he looked like some -old-fashioned child who had strayed by chance -into an assembly of men. But a child could -not have shown that inward smile of appreciative -humour, a little aloof, a little contemptuous -perhaps, that worked constantly -around his mouth. He never changed except -in the direction of a greater pallor and a -greater fragility.’</p> - -<p>Cloistral mysticism was the key-chord of his -two volumes of poetry (1895 and 1897). In -some respects he seems to have strayed out -of the seventeenth century of Crashaw and -Herbert. His early training, no doubt, engendered -this aspect. After six years in the -grey Gothic school of Winchester he passed on -to New College, Oxford. Here he came under<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104">104</a></span> -the influence of Pater, and was charmed by -the latter’s then somewhat hieratic austerity. -A devout Irish Catholic, he was moved by -three themes: his old school, Oxford, and Ireland, -and to these he unfortunately too often -devoted his muse. After the quiet seclusion -of his Oxford years, on entering the vortex of -London literary life he found that the world -of wayfaring was a somewhat rough passage in -the mire for one so delicate. Out of the -struggle between his scholarly aspirations and -the cry of his time for life, more life, was -woven perhaps the finest of all his poems, <cite>The -Dark Angel</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Dark angel, with thine aching lust<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To rid the world of penitence:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Malicious angel, who still dost<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My soul such subtile violence!—<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Because of thee, the land of dreams<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Becomes a gathering place of fears:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Until tormented slumber seems<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One vehemence of useless tears....<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Thou art the whisper in the gloom,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou art the adorner of my tomb,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The minstrel of mine epitaph.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Most of his poems are subjective, and the -majority have a certain stiffness of movement -of a priest laden with chasuble; but sometimes,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">105</a></span> -however, as in <cite>Mystic and Cavalier</cite>, -or in the lines on the statue of Charles I -at Charing Cross, he writes with a winsome -charm and freedom of spirit:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Armoured he rides, his head<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bare to the stars of doom:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He triumphs now, the dead<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beholding London’s gloom....<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Surely this poem has the proud note of -Henley! There is another trait in his verse, -which, in view of his essays, it is as well not -to pass over. Like William Watson, his -literary poems are pregnant with phrases of -rich criticism. He calls back the immortals -in a true bookman’s invocation hailing ‘opulent -Pindar,’ ‘the pure and perfect voice of -Gray,’ ‘pleasant and elegant and garrulous -Pliny’:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Herodotus, all simple and all wise;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Demosthenes, a lightning flame of scorn:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The surge of Cicero, that never dies;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Homer, grand against the ancient morn.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>But we are here chiefly concerned with his -prose writings. If it is the duty of the -essayist to mirror the intellectuality of his -age, Lionel Johnson was a mirror for the -Oxford standpoint of the nineties. There<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">106</a></span> -still remain many of his papers uncollected -in various old newspaper files. But certainly -the best of his work has been lovingly collected -by friendly hands, and worthily housed in -<cite>Post Liminium</cite>. Take, for instance, this -passage from an essay on books published -originally in <cite>The Academy</cite> (December 8th, -1900):</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>The glowing of my companionable fire upon -the backs of my companionable books, and then -the familiar difficulty of choice. Compassed -about by old friends, whose virtues and vices -I know better than my own, I will be loyal to -loves that are not of yesterday. New poems, -new essays, new stories, new lives, are not my -company at Christmastide, but the never-ageing -old. ‘My days among the dead are passed.’ -Veracious Southey, how cruel a lie! My sole -days among the dead are the days passed among -the still-born or moribund moderns, not the white -days and shining nights free for the strong voices -of the ancients in fame. A classic has a permanence -of pleasurability; that is the meaning of -his estate and title.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Or again, Johnson in his paper on <cite>The -Work of Mr. Pater</cite>, sets forth perhaps the -best appreciation of his master that has yet -appeared:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>‘Magica sympathiæ!’ words borne upon the -shield of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, are inscribed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">107</a></span> -upon the writings of Mr. Pater, who found his -way straight from the first to those matters -proper to his genius, nor did he, as Fuseli says of -Leonardo, ‘waste life, insatiate in experiment.’... -‘Nemo perfectus est,’ says St. Bernard, ‘qui -perfectior esse appetit’: it is as true in art as in -religion. In art also ‘the way to perfection is -through a series of disgusts’ ... and truly, as -Joubert said, we should hesitate before we differ -in religion from the saints, in poetry from the -poets.... There is no languorous toying with -things of beauty, in a kind of opiate dream, to be -found here.</p></blockquote> - -<p>While Symons has written on all the arts, -the sphere of Johnson has been more limited to -traditional English lines. Johnson attempts -no broad æsthetical system like the former. -All that he does is to illuminate the writer -of whom he is speaking. And his little essays, -eminent in their un-English lucidity, their -scrupulous nicety, their conscious and deliberate -beauty, adding to our <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">belles lettres</i> a -classical execution and finish (which perfection -accounts perhaps for the classical smallness of -his bookmaking) have all the bewildering -charm of a born stylist. Certain of his -phrases linger in the mind like music. ‘Many -a sad half-murmured thought of Pascal, many -a deep and plangent utterance of Lucretius.’ -Or the line: ‘The face whose changes dominate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108">108</a></span> -my heart.’ Like the styles of Newman -and Pater, on which his own is founded, he -is singularly allusive. He cites critics by -chapter and verse like an advocate defending -a case. In fact, as in his critical <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">magnum -opus</i>, <cite>The Art of Thomas Hardy</cite>, he is -amazingly judicial. It is, too, since he is -essentially academic, to the older critics he -prefers to turn for guidance. As he writes: -‘Flaubert and Baudelaire and Gautier, Hennequin -and M. Zola and M. Mallarmé, with all -their colleagues or exponents, may sometimes -be set aside, and suffer us to hear Quintilian -or Ben Jonson, Cicero or Dryden.’ This habit -sometimes makes him strenuous reading, particularly -in longer criticisms like <cite>The Art of -Thomas Hardy</cite>.</p> - -<p>We grow weary of all this quotative authority. -Burton’s <cite>Anatomy of Melancholy</cite> cannot be -brought into every-day literary criticism. We -want to hear more of Lionel Johnson’s own -direct opinions and less of these selected passages -from his library. So it is to those passages -where Johnson is most himself we turn in -<cite>The Art of Thomas Hardy</cite>, which, in spite of -its academicism and the youthfulness of its -author, remains a genuine piece of sound -critical work. The delightful imagery of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109">109</a></span> -prose in such passages is often very illuminating, -as in this paragraph:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>From long and frequent converse with works of -any favourite author, we often grow to thinking -of them under some symbol or image; to see them -summed up and expressed in some one composite -scene of our own making; this is my ‘vision’ of -Mr. Hardy’s works. A rolling down country, -crossed by a Roman road; here a gray standing -stone, of what sacrificial ritual origin I can but -guess; there a grassy barrow, with its great -bones, its red-brown jars, its rude gold ornament, -still safe in earth; a broad sky burning with stars; -a solitary man. It is of no use to turn away, and -to think of the village farms and cottages, with -their antique ways and looks; of the deep woods, -of the fall of the woodman’s axe, the stir of the -wind in the branches; of the rustic feasts and festivals, -when the home-brewed drink goes round, -to the loosening of tongues and wits; of the hot -meadows, fragrant hayfields, cool dairies, and -blazing gardens; of shining cart-horses under the -chestnut-trees and cows called in at milking time: -they are characteristic scenes, but not the one -characteristic scene. That is the great down by -night, with its dead in their ancient graves, and its -lonely living figure; ...</p></blockquote> - -<p>There is, perhaps, a reek about it all of a -too-conscious imitation of Pater’s murmured -obituaries which makes one in the end rather -tired of this hieratic treatment of art, so that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">110</a></span> -one turns rather gladly to the one or two -tales he wrote. For example in <cite>The Lilies of -France</cite>, an episode of French anti-clericalism, -which appeared in <cite>The Pageant</cite>, 1897, he -slowly builds up a thing of verbal beauty -that one feels was actually worthy of him, -while in the previous number of the same -quarterly he perpetrated a delightful ironism on -the literary men of his period entitled <cite>Incurable</cite>, -in which, perhaps, we may trace faint autobiographical -clues. Such, briefly, was the work of -this young man who was found dead in Fleet -Street early one morning, aged thirty-five.</p> - -<p>But the writer who was to bring irony in -English literature to a consummate pitch, and -add to the age a strange brief brilliance of -his own wilful spirit, was Max Beerbohm. Max, -the ‘Incomparable’ as Bernard Shaw once -described him, is the charm of the gilded lily, -the fairy prince of an urbane artificiality: he is -in literature what the cocktail is among drinks; -he is the enemy of dullness and the friend of that -Greek quality called ‘charis.’ He is the public -school and Varsity man who is fond of, but -afraid of, being tedious in literature; so with -delightful affectation his vehicle is persiflage -with a load of wit he pretends to disdain. -Of all the prose writers of the Beardsley<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">111</a></span> -period he is the easiest and most charming -to read. In fact, he is the ideal essayist. -He titillates the literary sense. Fortunately -his glass is small, for if one had to drink it in -quart pots the result would be as disastrous as -in his one and only mistake—the long novel -<cite>Zuleika Dobson</cite>, which is a late work written -long after the nineties had been swallowed up -by that maw which swallowed up Lesbia’s -sparrow and all other beautiful dead things.</p> - -<p>Max said in jest, ‘I belong to the Beardsley -period,’ and it is one of those jests which is only -too painfully true. When he was at Oxford he was -caught up in the movement, and wrote, under -Wilde’s influence, <cite>A Defence of Cosmetics</cite> for -the first number of <cite>The Yellow Book</cite>, and he -also appeared in Lord Alfred Douglas’s magazine. -Thenceforward he contributed to various -quarterlies, while in 1896 the little red volume -with its white paper label appeared as <cite>The -Works</cite>, containing all the best of this precocious -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">enfant terrible</i> of literature, who assures -us that he read in bed, while at school, <cite>Marius -the Epicurean</cite>, and found it not nearly so difficult -as <cite>Midshipman Easy</cite>. At the age of -twenty-five he cries: ‘I shall write no more. -Already I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded,’ -and he religiously does not keep his word. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112">112</a></span> -keeps pouring out caricatures, writes <cite>More</cite>, the -companion volume to <cite>The Works</cite>, and perpetrates -his short story <cite>The Happy Hypocrite</cite>. -Beyond 1899 we cannot follow him, but he has -been busy ever since with his parodies, his <cite>Yet -Again</cite>, his lamentable novel, his one-act play, -and so on.</p> - -<p>It is to that Beardsley period to which he -said he belonged we are here restricted. And -it must be admitted that though the Boer War -and the Great War do not seem to have gagged -him, there is something so impishly impudent -in his earlier work which renders it more remarkable -than the complacent efforts of his -later years.</p> - -<p>Amid the searching seriousness of the -nineties, Max is like balm in Gilead. He -has the infinite blessing of irony. The others, -except Beardsley (who too has this gift), are so -appallingly serious. The French influences -that went to their making seem to have killed -the valiant English humour of Falstaff, Pickwick, -and Verdant Green. They are all like young -priests who will take no liberty with their -ritual; but Max saves the period with his -whimsical irony. His is not the fearful, mordant -irony of Octave Mirbeau, but a dainty -butterfly fancy playing lightly over the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113">113</a></span> -pleasures of a pleasant life. To be essentially -civilised is to be like a god. This is the pose -of such a mentality. It is a winsome pose -with no sharp edges to it, just as the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">poseur</i> -himself must be wilfully blind to all the -seaminess of life. In front of his window (if -a temperament be a window looking out on -life) there is a pleasant garden. Beyond is the -noise and dust of the highway. He is the -dandy in his choice of life as in his choice of -literature, and in more than one sense he has -written the happiest essays of the period.</p> - -<p>It has been said his caricatures are essays. -May we not equally say his essays are caricatures? -The essay, indeed, is the work of the -feline male, the man who sits beside the fire -like Charles Lamb. The out-of-doors man -writes the episode. But Max is essentially an -indoors man, who has a perfect little dressing-room -like a lady’s boudoir, but much neater, -where he concocts his essays we read so easily -by infinite labour, with a jewelled pen. It is -as though he had said: ‘Literature must either -be amusing or dull; mine shall be the former.’ -He is very much the young man about town -who has consented gracefully to come and charm -us. What he wrote of Whistler in <cite>The Gentle -Art of Making Enemies</cite>, we may say of him:<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114">114</a></span> -‘His style never falters. The silhouette of no -sentence is ever blurred. Every sentence is -ringing with a clear, vocal cadence.’ And the -refrain is Max himself all the time, and his -personality is so likeable we stomach it all the -time. It is the note that vibrates through all -his amiable satiric irony, whether it be on the -House of Commons Manner or in defence of -the use of Cosmetics, or in describing the period -of 1880. Everything, from first to last, is done -with such good taste. Even in his wildest -flights of raillery he is utterly purposed not to -offend. In his charming paper, <cite>1880</cite>, he has -given us a vigorous vignette of the previous -decade to <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> age. One can -hardly help quoting a small passage here from -this admirably worked up prose: ‘In fact -Beauty had existed long before 1880. It was -Mr. Oscar Wilde who managed her début. To -study the period is to admit that to him was -due no small part of the social vogue that -Beauty began to enjoy. Fired by his fervid -words, men and women hurled their mahogany -into the streets and ransacked the curio-shops -for the furniture of Annish days. Dadoes -arose upon every wall, sunflowers and the -feathers of peacocks curved in every corner, -tea grew quite cold while the guests were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">115</a></span> -praising the Willow Pattern of its cup. A -few fashionable women even dressed themselves -in sinuous draperies and unheard-of greens. -Into whatsoever ball-room you went, you would -surely find, among the women in tiaras, and -the fops and the distinguished foreigners, half -a score of comely ragamuffins in velveteen, -murmuring sonnets, posturing, waving their -hands. Beauty was sought in the most unlikely -places. Young painters found her -mobbled in the fogs, and bank-clerks versed -in the writings of Mr. Hamerton, were heard -to declare, as they sped home from the city, -that the Underground Railway was beautiful -from London Bridge to Westminster, -but not from Sloane Square to Notting Hill -Gate.’</p> - -<p>It is thus that Max can play with a chord of -almost tender irony on his subject, and such a -style, so full of the writer’s personality, has the -cachet of the veritable essayist. How charmingly, -for example, he records his reminiscences -of Beardsley. It is a delightful little picture -of the artist, interesting enough to place beside -Arthur Symons’s portrait: ‘He loved dining -out, and, in fact, gaiety of any kind. His -restlessness was, I suppose, one of the symptoms -of his malady. He was always most content<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">116</a></span> -where there was the greatest noise and bustle, -the largest number of people, and the most -brilliant light. The “domino-room” at the -Café Royal had always a great fascination for -him: he liked the mirrors and the florid gilding, -the little parties of foreigners, and the -smoke and the clatter of the dominoes being -shuffled on the marble tables.... I remember, -also, very clearly, a supper at which Beardsley -was present. After the supper we sat up rather -late. He was the life and soul of the party, -till, quite suddenly almost in the middle of a -sentence, he fell fast asleep in his chair. He -had overstrained his vitality, and it had all left -him. I can see him now as he sat there with -his head sunk on his breast; the thin face, -white as the gardenia in his coat, and the prominent, -harshly-cut features; the hair, that -always covered his whole forehead in a fringe -and was of so curious a colour—a kind of -tortoise-shell; the narrow, angular figure, -and the long hands that were so full of -power.’<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">18</a></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="fnanchor">18</a> <cite>The Idler</cite>, May, 1898.</p></div> - -<p>Outside this medium of the essay, with the -exception of the caricatures, Max is no longer -the incomparable, for his short story, <cite>The -Happy Hypocrite</cite>, is not a short story at all,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">117</a></span> -but a spoilt essay;<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">19</a> while his novel is not -merely a failure, but a veritable disaster. With -his first paper in <cite>The Yellow Book</cite> he fell in -with the step of the men of the nineties, and -he too became a part of their efflorescence. -Sufficient unto that time is his work, and with -a final quotation from this early paper so redolent -of the movement that there is no -mistaking it, we must leave him and his future -on the knees of the gods: ‘Was it not at -Capua that they had a whole street where -nothing was sold but dyes and unguents? We -must have such a street, and, to fill our new -Seplosia, our Arcade of Unguents, all herbs -and minerals and live creatures shall give of -their substance. The white cliffs of Albion -shall be ground to powder for Loveliness, and -perfumed by the ghost of many a little violet. -The fluffy eider-ducks, that are swimming -round the pond, shall lose their feathers, that -the powder-puff may be moonlike as it passes -over Loveliness’ lovely face.’</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="fnanchor">19</a> His Children’s Tale, <cite>The Small Boy and the Barley -Sugar</cite> (<cite>The Parade</cite>, 1897), should also be mentioned as -another case of shipwrecked ingenuity.</p></div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">118</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="VI"></a>VI</h2> -</div> - -<p class="in0"><span class="smcap">Here</span> I propose to go through a litany of some -of my omissions. In essaying to depict the -aspects of an age there is always this pitfall, -omission, which ambuscades the adventurous -spirit. For we who know so little even about -ourselves—how can we, without grave impertinence, -boldly say I wish to bring back to the -mind of others an age dead and gone? Everything -is so interwoven in life that it is, for -example, an unwarranted arbitrariness to discuss -the literature of this period without -brooding on the black and white art of the -time, or the canvases of its painters.</p> - -<p>I have worried for some space over Aubrey -Beardsley, but I have not spoken of men like -Mr. S. H. Sime, whose work Beardsley so delighted -in. Probably Sidney H. Sime’s work -in <cite>The Butterfly</cite>, <cite>The Idler</cite>, <cite>Pick-me-Up</cite>, <cite>Eureka</cite>, -etc., besides his book illustrations, is in some -ways the most powerfully imaginative of the -period. There has been a Beardsley craze, -and most assuredly there will be one day a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">119</a></span> -Sime craze, when collectors have focussed properly -the marvellous suggestive power of this -artist’s work. Unfortunately, scattered up and -down old magazines, much of this work is, as it -were, lost for the moment like Toulouse Lautrec’s -drawings in papers like <cite>Le Rire</cite>. But when it -is garnered up in a worthy book of drawings -like the Beardsley books, the power of Sime’s -work will be undoubted. Fortunately Sime is -still amongst us, and occasionally a Dunsany -book brings us fresh evidence of his genius.</p> - -<p>Again, I have not alluded to Edgar Wilson’s -bizarre and fascinating decorations of submarine -life and Japonesque figures. Like Shannon, -Ricketts, Raven Hill, and others, he received -his early art education at the Lambeth School -of Art. At the end of the eighties he began -collecting Japanese prints long before Beardsley -had left school. In fact, Edgar Wilson was -one of the pioneers of the Japanese print in -this country—a love for the strange which -came over to England from France. A typical -decorative design of Wilson’s<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">20</a> is ‘In the -Depths of the Sea,’ representing an octopus -rampant over a human skull, beneath which -are two strange flat fish, and in the background<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">120</a></span> -a sunken old three-decker with quaintly carved -stern and glorious prow. <cite>Pick-me-Up</cite> first -used his work as it did that of many another -young artist, and in its back files much of his -best work can be found. For <cite>The Rambler</cite> he -did different designs for each issue, which is -probably the only redeeming feature about that -early Harmsworth periodical. <cite>The Sketch</cite>, -<cite>Cassell’s</cite>, <cite>Scribner’s</cite>, and above all <cite>The Idler</cite> and -<cite>The Butterfly</cite>, are beautified among other -papers by his exotic decorations.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="fnanchor">20</a> <cite>Edgar Wilson and his Work</cite>, by Arthur Lawrence, -<cite>The Idler</cite>, July, 1899.</p></div> - -<p>Once more I have not spoken at all of Miss -Althea Gyles’s hectic visions which, in her illustrations -for Wilde’s <cite>The Harlot’s House</cite>, probably -reached the acme of the period’s realisation -of the weird. She is of course really of the -Irish symbolists, and not one of the nineties’ -group at all; but, in her Wilde illustrations, -she almost enters the same field as the men of -the nineties. Her connection, too, with the -firm of Smithers is another strong excuse for -mentioning her work here. In <cite>The Dome</cite> both -her drawings and poems appeared, while in the -December number for 1898 there is a note on -her symbolism by W. B. Yeats. In all her -drawings the fancy that seems to have such free -flight is in reality severely ordered by the -designer’s symbolism. Sometimes it is merely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">121</a></span> -intriguing, as in drawings like ‘The Rose of -God,’ where a naked woman is spread-eagled -against the clouds above a fleet of ships and -walled city, while in other designs the symbolism -is full of suggestive loveliness, as in ‘Noah’s -Raven.’ ‘The Ark floats upon a grey sea -under a grey sky, and the raven flutters above -the sea. A sea nymph, whose slender swaying -body drifting among the grey waters is a perfect -symbol of the soul untouched by God or -by passion, coils the fingers of one hand about -his feet and offers him a ring, while her other -hand holds a shining rose under the sea. -Grotesque shapes of little fishes flit about the -rose, and grotesque shapes of larger fishes swim -hither and thither. Sea nymphs swim through -the windows of a sunken town, and reach -towards the rose hands covered with rings; and -a vague twilight hangs over all.’ This is explained -to represent the search of man for the -fleshly beauty which is so full of illusions for us -all, while the spiritual beauty is ever far away. -To this kind of interpretative design Oscar -Wilde’s swan song, <em>The Harlot’s House</em>, lends -itself admirably, and Miss Gyles’s black and -white work here becomes inspired to the -standard of Beardsley’s and Sime’s best work. -The shadow effects illustrating the stanzas,</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">122</a></span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A phantom lover to her breast,<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Sometimes they seemed to try and sing.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Sometimes a horrible marionette<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Came out and smoked its cigarette<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Upon the steps like a live thing<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">must be seen before one can place Althea -Gyles’s drawings in their proper place. It is -not a replica of Beardsley, it is not a faint far-off -imitation of a Félicien Rops or Armand -Rassenfosse, but something genuinely original -in its shadow-graphic use of masses of black on -a white ground.</p> - -<p>Once more, <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">mea culpa</i>, I have paid scant attention -to Max Beerbohm’s caricatures, and I -have failed to call attention here to his earlier -and later method of work. I have not even -spoken of his little paper entitled <cite>The Spirit of -Caricature</cite>, wherein he discusses the spirit of -the art he practises. God forgive me! Or yet -again what meed of homage have I yet rendered -to Mr. Will Rothenstein’s lithographic portraits, -which are absolutely a necessity to anyone who -would live a while with the shades of these men. -Take, for example, his <cite>Liber Juniorum</cite>, which -alone contains lithographed drawings of Aubrey -Beardsley, Max Beerbohm, and Arthur Symons. -Then there are so many others over whose<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">123</a></span> -achievements I must keep a holy silence, such -as Mr. Charles Ricketts and his <cite>Dial</cite>, which was -published by the Vale Press, and to which John -Gray contributed many poems.</p> - -<p>Again, there are the colourists of this group, -particularly Walter Sickert and Charles Conder. -The latter, above all, is the colour comrade to -Beardsley’s black and white. His figures are -the lovers of Dowson’s verse, his landscapes and -world have all those memories of the golden -time that haunt the brain of John Gray and -Theodore Wratislaw. No note, however short, -on the nineties would be complete without a -halt for praise of this painter of a strangely -coloured <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">dolce far niente</i>. For everything in -his work, be it on canvas, silk panel, or dainty -fan, is drowsy with the glory of colour (as Mr. -Holbrook Jackson admirably says), ‘colour -suggesting form, suggesting all corporeal -things, suggesting even itself, for Conder -never more than hints at the vivid possibilities -of life, more than a hint might waken his -puppets from their Laodicean dream.’</p> - -<p>Whether an idyllic landscape or a fantastic -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">bal masqué</i> of Montmartre or an Elysian <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">fête -galante</i> was his theme, the work itself is -always permeated with the spirit of Conder. -His nude figure ‘Pearl,’ his ‘L’Oiseau Bleu,’ -his ‘Femme dans une loge au théâtre,’ are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124">124</a></span> -typical of his successful achievements. The -‘Fickle Love’ fan is but one of the numerous -exquisite works he produced in this branch -of art; while ‘The Masquerade’ is the work of -a Beardsley-like fancy which could colour like -Conder.</p> - -<p>Like his personality, his work suffered from -certain unhappy moods, and that is what -makes so much of it uneven. Born in 1868, -a descendant of Louis Francis Roubiliac, the -famous sculptor, whose work for the figures -of our eighteenth century porcelain factories is -so well known, of Conder it may be said, as of -all artists with French blood in them, when he -is successful he is irresistible. He might not be -able to draw modern men, but how beautifully he -drew the women of his day can be seen in ‘La -Toilette.’ He delighted, indeed, in designing -women wandering in dream gardens, in painting -roses and Princes Charming.</p> - -<p>It would be pleasant to travel through this -world of delightful dreams, were we not restricted -of set purpose to the literary side of -the movement. And has it not already been -done in Mr. Frank Gibson’s <cite>Charles Conder</cite>?</p> - -<p>Again, some of the publishers who produced -the books of these men have their right to -something more than scant mention. To Mr. -Elkin Mathews, particularly as the first publisher<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">125</a></span> -of the Rhymers’ Club books and as the -issuer of John Gray’s first volume of poetry, -bibliophiles owe a debt of gratitude. In the -early days of the nineties Mr. John Lane -became associated with him, until the autumn -of 1894 witnessed ‘Parnassus divided into -two peaks.’ Later, after the Wilde débâcle, -an extraordinary figure, worthy of a romance, -in the person of the late Leonard Smithers, -who was at one time in the legal profession -at Sheffield, took the field as a publisher by -way of H. S. Nichols. He was no mere publisher -but a man of considerable scholarship, -who not only issued but finished the Sir Richard -Burton translation of Catullus. Round him, -to a considerable extent, the vanishing group -rallied for a little while before Death smote -them one by one. Here is no place to pay -due justice to this amiable Benvenuto Cellini -of book printing himself, but it must be remembered -his figure bulks largely in the closing -scenes. He kept Dowson from starvation. -Beardsley wrote of him as ‘our publisher.’<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">21</a> -He, when others failed, had the courage to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126">126</a></span> -launch on the English publishing market the -released Wilde’s now famous <cite>Ballad of Reading -Gaol</cite>. If he did exceed certain rules for himself, -he at least took risks to help others. He -was no supine battener on the profits of books -for young ladies’ seminaries. He was a printer, -and his bankruptcy may be said to have closed -the period.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="fnanchor">21</a> It is interesting that in an unpublished letter of -Beardsley’s to Smithers when the latter was intending -to produce <cite>The Peacock</cite>, an unpublished quarterly, -Beardsley promises him his best work.</p></div> - -<p>Lastly in this chaunt of omissions comes the -drama of the nineties. Unfortunately the -drama, in so far as it affects the group of -the nineties with which we are concerned, -is almost a nullity. Aubrey Beardsley once -commenced a play, which was never heard of, -in collaboration with Brandon Thomas. -Ernest Dowson wrote what Beardsley called -a ‘tiresome’ playlet. John Davidson perpetrated -a number of plays such as <cite>Bruce</cite> (1886), -<cite>Smith, a tragic farce</cite> (1888), <cite>Scaramouch in -Naxos</cite>, and two other plays in 1889 when -he was feeling his way, and translated much -later as hackwork a play of François Coppée’s -and Victor Hugo’s <cite>Ruy Blas</cite>. Theodore Peters’ -pastoral and other similar trifles only go to -show how barren the group itself was in the -dramatist’s talent. Nor can much be said for -such poetic plays as Theodore Wratislaw’s <cite>The -Pity of Love</cite>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127">127</a></span> -But it must be remembered, as a matter of -fact, such a sweeping conclusion may not only -be unjust but even impertinent. For where -in all the theatres of the London of the -nineties would the plays (if they had been -written) of these young men have found a -home? Probably the dramatic output of the -nineties was nil because there were no small -theatres in London at that date of the type to -give these young men a hope that any works -they might write could be produced. So only -at the end of the decade do we see the -dramatic outburst when the Irish movement -founded a theatre of its own and produced -J. M. Synge, and also when Miss Horniman -gave Manchester a repertory theatre, and then -Stanley Houghton came.</p> - -<p>True, at the same period as the nineties -Oscar Wilde was producing plays burlesquing -the world of Society, and Bernard Shaw was -getting ready to launch his own works by -bombasting every one else’s; but the little -movement of the younger men remained -dramatically dumb. Nothing came even when -George Moore produced <cite>The Strike at Arlingford</cite> -and John Todhunter <cite>The Black Cat</cite>. It -is a hard thing to believe that all these young -men were devoid of the dramatic instinct. I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">128</a></span> -prefer for my part to blame the London -theatrical world for the lack of those minute -theatres which have become so much a part of -the night life of big continental cities and are -so admirably adapted for the production of the -works of new dramatists.</p> - -<p>Indeed, the theatrical atmosphere of London -at that time was in its usual perpetual state -of stuffiness. There was not even a beneficent -society then such as we now have in the -Pioneer Players, whose theatre (if one may so -symbolise it) is the charity house for emancipated -dramatists. Ibsen’s <cite>Doll’s House</cite> had -been produced in London just before the -nineties’ epoch began, and, like anything new in -popular art over here, raised the hue-and-cry. -Then, too, the big ‘star’ curse, which Wilde -himself so justly spurned, was permanently -settled on our own insular drama like a stranglehold -on the author.</p> - -<p>Outside England, in the big art world of the -continent, Schnitzler was beginning in Vienna.<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">22</a> -Maurice Maeterlinck, in Belgium, had begun<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> -too the drama of expressive silences which -came to light in Paris. There were Sudermann -and Hauptmann in Germany; Echegaray -in Spain; D’Annunzio in Italy; Ibsen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129">129</a></span> -and Björnstjerne Björnson finishing their work -for the Scandinavian drama; while the playwrights -of Paris were, as always, feverishly -fabricating all sorts of movements, as when -Paul Fort, a boy of eighteen, founds in -1890 the Théâtre d’Art. But what was going -on in England? Pinero’s <cite>The Second Mrs. -Tanqueray</cite>, Wilde’s <cite>Salomé</cite>, and his light -comedies, together with stuff by Henry Arthur -Jones, Sydney Grundy, etc., represented the -serious drama. The critics were perturbed, as -they generally are. The musical comedy and -its singing, pirouetting soubrettes deluded the -populace into the belief that it had a great -drama, when all these spectacles should really -have been housed in London in spacious tearooms -for the benefit of that multitude which is -fond of tinkling melody and teapots. There was -not even in London a single Überbrettlbuhnen, -as the Germans mouth it, where those who love -beer could go to hear poets recite their verse -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">à la</i> Otto Bierbaum, let alone little theatres -where what we so dolefully term the serious -drama could be played.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="fnanchor">22</a> <cite>Anatol</cite>, 1889–90.</p> - -<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> <cite>La Princesse Maleine</cite>, 1889.</p></div> - -<p>Even, too, in those days, the newspaper -critics, muzzled by the business department, -which has never any wish to lose its theatrical -advertisements, said little, with a few honest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130">130</a></span> -exceptions like Bernard Shaw. Max Beerbohm, -when he took over the critical work of -Shaw on <cite>The Saturday Review</cite> was obviously -unhappy. English theatres rapidly became as -elaborate and as pompous as the Church Militant -in its palmy days. They kept growing -in size. In London, indeed, the small theatre -never had its boom. Indeed, the nineties was -the age when the big theatres were being built -to fill their owners’ pockets and the men of the -nineties themselves (be it for whatever reason -you like) did not produce a single play.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">131</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="EPILOGUE"></a>EPILOGUE</h2> -</div> - -<p class="in0"><span class="smcap">It</span> all seems a long time ago now since those -days when Verlaine was as a lantern for these -young men’s feet, to guide them through the -mazes of Art. Thirty years ago and more -Wilde was disclosing ‘décolleté spirits of -astonishing conversation’; Zola influenced that -Byron of pessimism, Thomas Hardy, to beget -<cite>Jude the Obscure</cite> (1895), and when the critics -assailed him the Wessex giant guarded a ‘holy -silence’ which has denied us up till now an -emancipated novel such as the French and -Italians have, though James Joyce may yet -achieve it for us. It was also the age of youth -in hansom cabs looking out on the lights of -London’s West End which spread out before -them as in a ‘huge black velvet flower.’ Ibsen, -Tolstoy, Maeterlinck, Nietzsche, D’Annunzio, -and Dostoievsky were beginning to percolate -through by means of translations that opened -out a new world into which everybody hastily -swarmed. It was an age in which young men<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">132</a></span> -frankly lauded the value of egoism. Indeed, -it was essentially the age of young men. In -those days a genital restiveness which came -over from France started the sex equation. A -hothouse fragrance swept across the pudibond -wastes of our literature. Hectics came glorying -in their experiences. Richard of the Golden -Girl with his banjo lifts up his voice to chaunt -‘a bruisèd daffodil of last night’s sin.’ Women -like George Egerton in her <cite>Keynotes</cite> take -questions further than Mrs. Lynn Linton had -ever done in the previous decade. Exoticism, -often vulgar when not in master hands, blabbed -out its secrets in works like <cite>The Woman who Did</cite>. -Confounding the good with the bad, a wail -went up against the so-called gospel of intensity. -Sometimes it was in the serious -reviews and weeklies; at another time it was -Harry Quilter. Some young undergraduates -at Oxford, even in <cite>Aristophanes at Oxford</cite> -(May, 1894), were filled with ‘an honest dislike -for <cite>Dorian Gray</cite>, <cite>Salomé</cite>, <cite>The Yellow Book</cite>, and -the whole of the lackadaisical, opium-cigarette -literature of the day.’ <cite>Punch</cite> produced a -Beardsley Britannia and sang of:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">133</a></span></p><div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The Yellow Poster girl looked out<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From her pinkly purple heaven,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One eye was blue and one was green,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her bang was cut uneven.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She had three fingers on one hand,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the hairs on her head were seven.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">And all these criticisms now, all these quarrels, -are like old spent battlefields the sands of -gracious time have covered over and hidden -from view. Alone the best work of the period -remains; for good art has no period or special -vogue.</p> - -<p>Indeed, the elements that destroy the worthless, -that winnow the chaff from the grain, -have been at work. For us, indeed, this landscape -has changed from what it once was, and -looking at it now we acquire a new impression -which was denied to the critics of the age -itself. Some of us, without a doubt, have -gone to the opposite extreme and prattle about -it as an age of platitudes, and accuse a work of -art of being as old as <cite>The Yellow Book</cite>. One -might as well accuse a violet of being as old as -the Greek Anthology. For always, to those -wandering back in the right spirit to those -days, there will come something of the infinite -zest which stirred the being of the men of the -nineties to create art. It was such an honest -effort that one has to think of those times when -Marlowe and his colleagues were athrob with -æsthetic aspiration to find a similitude. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">134</a></span> -nineties, indeed, are a pleasant flower-garden in -our literature over which many strange perfumes -float. There are times when one wishes -to retreat into such places, as there are moments -when the backwaters enchant us from the main -stream.</p> - -<p>It has been said it was an age of nerves. If by -this is implied a keener sensitiveness to certain -feelings pulsating in the art of this movement, -one will not have very far to go to find its -cause in the French impressionistic school of -Manet, which, after saturating all types of -French artists, undoubtedly invaded writers -over here even before the movement of the -nineties began. On the age without a doubt it -had a lasting influence, so that to a certain -degree, without being over-busy with what went -before, we may say its writers brought it to no -small degree into common use in our literature. -But just as impressionism in painting had -existed centuries before in the ever-busy mind -of men like Leonardo da Vinci, one cannot go -so far as to say it had never existed before -in our literature. Such a statement would be -perhaps frivolous. But it was with these men -it first came to exist as a kind of cry of a -new clan. It was these men who were essentially -hectics who essayed to etch the exotic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">135</a></span> -impression. The majority of the work of the -movement, in fact, can be described as impressionisms -of the abnormal by a group of -individualists. For in all their work the predominant -keynote will be found to be a keen -sense of that strangeness of proportion which -Bacon noted as a characteristic of what he -called beauty. It is observable as much in -the poems of Dowson as in the drawings of -Beardsley, two of the leading types of the -movement. It vibrates intensely in the minor -work of men like Wratislaw, and also in John -Gray’s early volume, as I have endeavoured -to show. All Mr. Arthur Symons’s criticism -is a narration of his soul’s adventures in quest -of it. It stirred the genius of Charles Conder, -and vitalizes the rather cruel analysis of -Hubert Crackanthorpe. We see it almost as -the animating spirit of the age itself in Oscar -Wilde’s poems, <cite>The Sphinx</cite> and <cite>The Harlot’s -House</cite>. It has become disseminated like a -perfume from the writings of Pater in the men -who came after him. It was, so to speak, a -quickening stimulus to them as the rediscovery -of a manuscript of Catullus, or a Greek figure -was in the years of the Renaissance itself. -With it came a sense of freedom. An attempt -was made, because of it, for instance, to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">136</a></span> -emancipate our literature to the same extent -as the literatures of Latin countries move -untrammelled by a hesitancy in the choice of -certain themes. And people at the time, watching -the fate of the prime movers, cried with -a great deal of assurance, ‘That way lies -madness!’</p> - -<p>Be this as it may, the men of the nineties -bequeathed a certain subtleness of emotion to -our art that is not without its value. They -took Byron’s satanism and inflamed it with -the lurid light of Baudelaire. <cite>Buveurs de lune</cite> -after the manner of Paul Verlaine, they -evoked something of the ethereal glamour of -moonlight itself. A realist like Crackanthorpe -tried to tread the whole <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">via dolorosa</i> -without faltering by the wayside. Poetry -caught the mood of bizarre crises and Edgar -Wilson wrought a strange delicate world of -visions. In Max Beerbohm irony took on a -weird twinge of grace almost Pierrot-like. -Perhaps, indeed, they all had something of -the Pierrot quality in them. Beardsley himself -was enchanted by that little opera without -words, ‘L’Enfant Prodigue.’ Dowson made a -play about him. <cite>The Happy Hypocrite</cite> might -be a story of the Pierrot himself grown old.</p> - -<p>As I have hinted, much of the work conceived<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">137</a></span> -by these men was doomed to die, as -in the case of every movement. What -then remains, what is their balance to the -good? Who knows? About everything man -has loved and fashioned there abides vestiges -of the interest of humanity. Only some -things are easier to recall than others. They -stand out more, so that one is bound to remark -them. They have, so to speak, a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">cachet</i> of -their own. Among these in this movement -there comes the work of the men I have so -hastily attempted to realise. Each has about -him something of that quality which is indefinable, -but easily recognisable. Each has -his charm for those who care to come with a -loving interest.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">139</a></span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="index p4"> -<h2 class="nobreak p1"><a id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2> - -<ul class="index"> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Academy, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Adams, Francis, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Adrian Rome</cite>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Adventures of John Johns, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Æneids, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Albemarle, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Allen, Grant, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Amor Umbratilis</cite>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Anatol</cite>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Anatomy of Melancholy, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Anquetin, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Antony Garstin’s Courtship</cite>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Apuleius, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>A Rebours</cite>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Aretino, Pietro, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Aristophanes, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Aristophanes at Oxford</cite>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Art of Thomas Hardy, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Artist’s Model, An</cite>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Ascension of St. Rose of Lima, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Atalanta</cite>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Aubrey Beardsley</cite>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Aubrey Beardsley and The Yellow Book</cite>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Aurora La Cujiñi</cite>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Autumn City, An</cite>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Avenue Theatre, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bacon, Francis, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Ballad of a Barber, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Ballad of a Nun, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Ballad of an Artist’s Wife, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Ballad of Hell</cite>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Ballad of Reading Gaol, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Ballads</cite>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Balzac, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bantock, Granville, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Baptist Lake</cite>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Barber, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Barrie, J. M., <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Battledore and Shuttlecock</cite>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Baudelaire, Charles, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bayros, Franz von, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Beardsley, Aubrey, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8–14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16–19</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23–32</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37–39</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41–45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121–123</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Beardsley, Aubrey</cite>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Beardsley, Aubrey, and the Yellow Book</cite>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Beardsley, Aubrey, The Last Letters of</cite>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Beardsley Girl, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Becke, Louis, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Beerbohm, Max, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111–117</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bierbaum, Otto, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Binyon, Laurence, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Birch Bark School, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Björnson, Björnstjerne, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Black Cat, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Black Coffee</cite>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Blake, William, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140">140</a></span></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Blake, William, and his Illustrations to the ‘Divine Comedy,’</cite> <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Blätter für die Kunst</cite>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Blessed Damozel</cite>, The, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bodley Head, The, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bodley Press, The, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Book of Fifty Drawings, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Botticelli, Sandro, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Bovril, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Brentano’s, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Brighton, Beardsley at, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">British Museum, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Brooke, Stopford A., <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Brown, Professor, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Browne, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Bruce</cite>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Burton, Robert, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Burton, Sir Richard F., <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Butterfly, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Café Royal, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Called Back</cite>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Cardinal’s Snuff-Box, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Carman, Bliss, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Carmen Cl.</cite>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Casanova, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Case of Conscience, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Cassell’s Magazine</cite>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Catullus, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Caume, Pierre, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Cazotte, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Celestial Lovers, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Cena Trimalchionis</cite>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Century Guild Hobby Horse, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Chamberlain, A. B., <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Chameleon, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Charing Cross Road, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Charles Conder</cite>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Chaucer, Geoffrey, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Chemist in the Suburbs, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Cheshire Cheese, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Chiswick Press, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Chord, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>City of the Soul, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Climax, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Comedy of Masks, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Comedy of Sighs, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Conder, Charles, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Confessions of a Young Man, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Conflict of Egoisms, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Congreve, William, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Conrad, Joseph, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Conway, Hugh, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Cooke, J. Y. F., <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Coppée, François, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Covent Garden, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Crackanthorpe, Hubert, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67–77</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Crane, Walter, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Crashaw, Richard, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Custance, Olive, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Dame aux Camélias, La</cite>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">D’Annunzio, Gabrielle, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dante, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Dark Angel, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Davidson, John, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91–97</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Days and Nights</cite>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Dead Woman, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Death of Peter Waydelin, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Death of Pierrot, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Decadent Movement in Literature, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Decorations</cite>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Defence of Cosmetics, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dent, J. M., <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dewhurst, Wynford, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Dial, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dickens, Charles, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Dilemmas</cite>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">141</a></span></li> - -<li class="indx">Dircks, Rudolf, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Discords</cite>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Divine Comedy, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Doll’s House, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Dome, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Donnay, Maurice, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dostoievsky, Feodor, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Douglas, Lord Alfred, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dowson, Ernest, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41–45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58–61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79–81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86–89</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Du Maurier, George, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Dunsany, Lord, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Duse, Eleonora, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Dying of Francis Donne, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Earl Lavender</cite>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Echegaray, José, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Egerton, George, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>1880</cite>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Eighteen Nineties, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Ellis, Edwin J., <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Embers</cite>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>English Literature</cite>, 1880–1905, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Episodes</cite>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Ernest Dowson</cite>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Erotische Kunst</cite>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Essay on Beauty</cite>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Essays in Modernity</cite>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Esther Khan</cite>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Etienne Matton</cite>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Eureka</cite>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Evans, Caradoc, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Evelyn Innes</cite>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Evergreen, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Extreme Unction</cite>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Fat Woman, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Femmes Damnées</cite>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Fêtes Gallantes</cite>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Fille aux Yeux d’Or, La</cite>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Fitzroy Settlement, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Flaubert, Gustave, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Fleet Street Eclogues</cite>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Fort, Paul, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Frontispiece to the Chopin Nocturnes</cite>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Fuchs, Eduard, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Fuller, Loïe, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Gale, Norman, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Galton, Arthur, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Garnett, Edward, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Gaston Lalanne’s Child</cite>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gautier, Théophile, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Gentle Art of Making Enemies, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">George, Stephan, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gibson, Frank, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gillray, James, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gissing, George, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Graham, R. B. Cunninghame, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Grahame, Kenneth, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gray, John, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80–82</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Green Carnation, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Greenaway, Kate, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Greene, George Arthur, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Grundy, Mrs., <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Grundy, Sydney, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Guardian Life and Fire Assurance Co., <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Guys, Constantine, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Gyles, Althea, <a href="#Page_120">120–122</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hamerton, P. G., <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Happy Hypocrite, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Happy Wanderer, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hardy, Thomas, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Harland, Henry, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37–40</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Harlot’s House, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Harper’s Magazine</cite>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Harris, Frank, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142">142</a></span></li> - -<li class="indx">Hauptmann, Gerhardt, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hemingway, Percy, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Henley, W. E., <a href="#Page_8">8–10</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Herbert, George, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Herodas, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Herodias</cite>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hichens, Robert, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hill, Raven, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hillier, Arthur Cecil, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Hobby Horse, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hogarth Club, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Horne, Herbert P., <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Horniman, Miss, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Houghton, Stanley, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Hound of Heaven, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>House of Pomegranates, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>How Queen Guenever made her a Nun</cite>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Hugo, Victor, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Huneker, James, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Huysmans, J. K., <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Hypnerotomachia, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Hypocrite, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Ibsen, Henrik, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Idiots, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Idler, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118–120</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Image, Selwyn, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Imaginary Portraits</cite>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>In a Music Hall</cite>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Inconsolables</cite>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Incurable</cite>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Influence of Baudelaire in France and England, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Intentions</cite>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>In the Depths of the Sea</cite>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Jackson, Holbrook, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">James, Henry, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>,<a href="#Page_75">75</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">James, Humphrey, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Jammes, Francis, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Job, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Johnson, Lionel, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102–110</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Johnson, Noel, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Jones, Alfred, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Jones, Henry Arthur, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Joyce, James, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Jude the Obscure</cite>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Juvenal, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Keats, John, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Kelmscott Press, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Kennedy, J. M., <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Keynotes</cite>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">‘Kid-glove School,’ <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Kipling, Rudyard, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Kubin, Alfred, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>La Faustine</cite>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">La Jeunesse, Ernest, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Lake Isle of Innisfree, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lambeth School of Art, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lane, John, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Last Studies</cite>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lautrec, Toulouse, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lawrence, Arthur, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Le Gallienne, Richard, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>L’Enfant Prodigue</cite>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Le Rire</cite>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Liber Juniorum</cite>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Lilies of France, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lind, Letty, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Linton, Mrs. Lynn, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Literature at Nurse</cite>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>London Nights</cite>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Louÿs, Pierre, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Love-sick Curate, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lowry, H. D., <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Lucian, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Luska, Sidney (i.e. Henry Harland), <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Lysistrata, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26–29</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">MacColl, D. S., <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Machen, Arthur, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">143</a></span></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Madame Bovary</cite>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Mademoiselle de Maupin</cite>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Mademoiselle Miss</cite>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Maeterlinck, Maurice, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Maîtresse d’Esthètes</cite>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mallarmé, Stéphane, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Manet, Eduard, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Manon Lescaut</cite>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Marius the Epicurean</cite>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marlowe, Christopher, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Marpessa</cite>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Marriott-Watson, Rosamund, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mathews, Elkin, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mattos, Henri Teixeira de, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Maupassant, Guy de, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Mémoires</cite> (Casanova), <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Merrick, Leonard, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Mike Fletcher</cite>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mimes, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Mirbeau, Octave, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Mishka</cite>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Mr. Midshipman Easy</cite>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Modern Melodrama</cite>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Modern Painting</cite>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Mogreb-el-Acksa</cite>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Molière, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Monet, Claude, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Moore, Arthur, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Moore, George, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5–7</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>More</cite>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Morris, William, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Morrison, Arthur, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Morte d’Arthur, Le</cite>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Murdoch, W. G. Blaikie, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Murger, Henri, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>My People</cite>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Mystic and Cavalier</cite>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>National Observer, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Nerval, Gerard de, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Nettleship, J. T., <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Nevinson, H. W., <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>New Ballad of Tännhauser, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>New Grub Street</cite>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>New Hedonism, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>New Illustrator, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Newman, John Henry, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Nichols, H. S., <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>No. <a href="#Page_5">5</a> John Street</cite>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae</cite>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>North Coast and Eleanor, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Odin Howes</cite>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>On Books and Art</cite>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>On the Kind of Fiction called Morbid</cite>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Orgeas and Mirandou</cite>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">O’Sullivan, Vincent, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Other Side, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Out of Egypt</cite>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Pachmann, Vladimir de, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Pageant, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Parade, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Past and Present</cite>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Pater, The Work of Mr.</cite>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Pater, Walter, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Payne, John, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Peacock, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Pennell, Joseph, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Perfervid</cite>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Perversion of Rouge, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Peters, William Theodore, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97–99</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Petronius, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Phillips, Stephen, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Pick-me-Up</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Picture of Dorian Gray, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Pierrot and the Statue</cite>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">144</a></span></li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Pierrot of the Minute, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a> <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Pinero, A. W., <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Pioneer Players, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Pity of Love, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Plarr, Victor, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Pope, Alexander, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Posies out of Rings</cite>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Post Liminium</cite>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Poster, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Pre-Raphaelites, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Princesse Maleine, La</cite>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Profiles</cite>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Propertius, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Prose Fancies</cite>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Prose Poems</cite>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Pseudonym Library, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Punch</cite>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Quartier Latin, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Quarto, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Quest of the Golden Girl, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Quilter, Harry, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Radford, Dollie, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Radford, Ernest, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Rambler, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Random Itinerary, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Ranger-Gull, Cyril, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Rape of the Lock, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24–26</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rassenfosse Armand, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Redon, Odélon, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Régnier, H. F. J., <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Reigen</cite>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Renaissance of the Nineties, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Renoir, P. A., <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Renunciations</cite>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Restif de la Breton, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Restoration dramatists, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rhymers’ Club, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rhys, Ernest, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Ricketts, Charles, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rimbaud, Arthur, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Roberts, C. G. D., <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Roberts, Morley, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Roi Pausole, Le</cite>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rolleston, Thomas William, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rops, Félicien, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rose, Edward, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Rose Leaf, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Ross, Robert, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rossetti, D. G., <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rothenstein, William, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Rowlandson, Thomas, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Runnable Stag, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Ruy Blas</cite>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Salomé</cite>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Saltus, Francis, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Saturday Review, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Savoy, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_10">10–12</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40–46</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Scaramouch in Naxos</cite>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Schnitzler, Arthur, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Scots Observer, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Scribner’s Magazine</cite>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Seaward Lackland</cite>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Second Book of Fifty Drawings, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Shakespeare, William, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Shannon, Charles H., <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Shaw, George Bernard, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Sherard, Robert H., <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Sickert, Walter, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Silhouettes</cite>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Silverpoints</cite>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Sime, S. H., <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Sketch, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Small Boy and the Barley Sugar, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Smith: A Tragic Farce</cite>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145">145</a></span></li> - -<li class="indx">Smithers, Leonard, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Sophocles, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Sphinx, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Spirit of Caricature, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Spirit Lamp, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Spiritual Adventures</cite>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Stenbock, Eric Count, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Stevenson, Robert Louis, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Stories of Strange Women</cite>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Street, G. S., <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Strike at Arlingford, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Struggle for Life, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Studies in Two Literatures</cite>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Studies of Death</cite>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Studio, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Success</cite>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Sudermann, Hermann, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Symbolist Movement in Literature, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Symonds, John Addington, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Symons, Arthur, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40–43</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46–54</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79–81</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Synge, J. M., <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Tales of Mean Streets</cite>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Tamburlaine</cite>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Testament</cite>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Théâtre d’Art, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Thirty Bob a Week</cite>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Thomas, Brandon, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Thompson, Francis, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Thousand and One Nights, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Three Musicians, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Times, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>To-Day</cite>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Todhunter, Dr. John, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Toilet of Helen, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Toilet of Sabina, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Tolstoy, Leo, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>To the Café aux Phares de l’Ouest, Quartier Montparnasse</cite>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Tournament of Love, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Traill, H. D., <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Trevor Perkins</cite>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Trilby</cite>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Tristan and Isolde</cite>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Turn of the Wheel, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Turquet-Milnes, G., <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Twenty Years in Paris</cite>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, 97·</li> - -<li class="ifrst"><cite>Under the Hill</cite>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Unwin, T. Fisher, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Vale Press, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Verisimilitudes</cite>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Verlaine, Paul, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Vignettes</cite>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Vinci, Leonardo da, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Virgil, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Vizetelly & Co., <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Wagner, Richard, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wagnerites, The, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Watson, William, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Watteau, Jean Antoine, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Watts, George Frederick, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Way of the World, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wedmore, Frederick, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Westminster Gazette, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>When Greek meets Greek</cite>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Whibley, Charles, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Whistler, James McNeill, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Whistler, Mrs. James McNeill, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>White Maize, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Whiteing, Richard, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wilde, Oscar, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79–82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125–129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wilkins. W. H., <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146">146</a></span></li> - -<li class="indx">Willy, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wilson, Edgar, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Wilson, Edgar, and his Work</cite>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Woman and her Son, A</cite>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Woman in White, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Woman Who Did, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Women’s Tragedies</cite>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Work of Mr. Pater, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Works, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wratislaw, Theodore, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Wreckage</cite>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Wycherley, William, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Yeats, W. B., <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Yellow Book, The</cite>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36–41</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Yellow Book</cite> Group, The, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">‘Yellow Dwarf, The,’ <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Yet Again</cite>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Yew-Trees and Peacocks</cite>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li> - -<li class="ifrst">Zangwill, Israel, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx">Zola, Émile, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> - -<li class="indx"><cite>Zuleika Dobson</cite>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</li> -</ul> -</div></div> - -<p class="p2 center"><i>London, Strangeways, Printers.</i></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="transnote"> -<h2 class="nobreak p1"><a id="Transcribers_Notes"></a>Transcriber’s Notes</h2> - -<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant -preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.</p> - -<p>Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced -quotation marks retained.</p> - -<p>Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.</p> - -<p>Whatever foreign language errors may exist in the text -are the author’s own, and have been left undisturbed.</p> - -<p>Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.</p> -</div></div> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Men of The Nineties, by Bernard Muddiman - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEN OF THE NINETIES *** - -***** This file should be named 53142-h.htm or 53142-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/1/4/53142/ - -Produced by Clarity, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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